“Have you seen him?” Miss Evaline kept a good eye out on activities in the terminal. “He might have been in a wheelchair. Without the dog.”
Miss Evaline looked down at Edison. He was sitting in front of her door, and as soon as he caught sight of her, he whimpered and cocked his head. Miss Evaline’s face softened, and she pursed her lips. Vivian wanted to give Edison a treat — he knew how to melt the hardest of hearts.
“I saw a man pushing a wheelchair, and he came from the same direction as the Lucid office. His back was to me, and I couldn’t see the man in the chair either. The man in the chair was wearing a hat and he was kind of slumped over, but he was tall like your Mr. Tesla.”
He’s not my Mr. Tesla, Vivian corrected automatically, but silently. “How about the man pushing the chair? What did he look like?”
“Tall, blond. There was something familiar about his walk.” She pursed her lips again, clearly thinking hard. “It might have been Mr. Gallo.”
“Are you sure?” Vivian’s heart sped up.
“I just said I wasn’t.” Miss Evaline crossed her arms. “I said it might have been.”
Not much to go on.
Vivian thanked her and headed back outside to get another cab.
“Where are we going?” Parker and Edison kept pace with her. The dog carried his leash in his mouth.
“To Leandro Gallo’s house,” she said. “I’ll call Dirk on the way, see if he can meet us at the door with reinforcements.”
Chapter 47
Joe finally managed to open his eyes. He was in a simple room. Three sides were painted a soft yellow, but the last was floor-to-ceiling glass. A band of sunshine fell across terra cotta tiles. A simple chandelier hung from the white ceiling.
He didn’t have the courage to look through the glass, so he studied the rest of the room. A high table stood in the sun. It looked the right height to be wheelchair-accessible. Celeste probably parked there during the day.
The table was empty except for a black tube of lipstick. It looked just like the ones he’d seen in the tunnel. A sick feeling rose in him. Was it Celeste’s? Or had Leandro brought a tube he’d stolen from one of his victims? Both thoughts were equally horrible.
In the sun by the glass wall was a baby monitor. That must be why he could hear them so clearly. It probably also meant that they could hear him, too.
One wall held a painting in swirls of red. His heart sank as he recognized it. It was titled, “The Number Three.” Celeste had painted it years ago and refused to sell it, even to him. If the painting was here, then he was in her apartment.
He steeled himself and looked through the glass panel at a rooftop garden. Fall flowers bloomed orange and purple. A juniper in a giant pot sat next to a scarlet Japanese maple under a bright blue sky.
He wanted to close his eyes again at the sight of that limitless sky, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked at a small figure hunched in a wheelchair, a yellow blanket tucked under her pale chin, her body a shapeless lump. Even so, he would know her face anywhere.
A breeze blew wisps of butterscotch-blond hair around her face. Her head was tilted at a strange angle, and her gaunt face shocked him. She looked so small and frail. Tears sprang into his eyes. He’d seen her again, after all.
“You look like sunshine,” he called. “Warm and beautiful.”
She smiled and, for an instant, she looked like her old self.
She might look like sunshine, but he was afraid of sunshine, and he could never go to her out there on the rooftop. Even if he could see her, she was as far from him as she’d ever been. Leandro’s poison had taken her from him, and Joe would do anything to get her back.
Her brother stood by her side, one hand on the back of her wheelchair.
She looked at her brother. “Why is Joe here?”
“I wanted to bring him earlier, but he wouldn’t come.”
Lies. But truth lay at the core. Joe hadn’t come to her. He’d had so much time to come to her, to share the last months of her life, and instead, he’d cowered underground like a rat. He’d let her suffer alone. Worse, he’d abandoned her to the care of her crazy brother.
“Earlier?” Celeste asked.
“I told him to rent the apartment downstairs.” Leandro stood behind her, his fingers inches from her soft, blond hair. She was in danger, and Joe had to go to her. He pushed back at the despair and fear the drug had brought to life in him.
“Why is he here?” she asked.
“I wanted you to see him for what he is,” Leandro said. “Before something happens to me.”
“What would happen to you?” she asked.
“I won’t last forever.” Leandro cupped the back of her head. With his thumb, he stroked her hair.
She seemed not to notice his touch, but a flicker of anger at that possessive gesture burned through Joe’s despair.
He found the point where the zip tie fastened. He struggled to push the little plastic tongue up to unlock the cuff and free himself, but it wouldn’t budge. He could cut it free if he could find something sharp.
He looked around the room again. Just the table with the lipstick and something on the ground beneath the table. A black cap. He ducked his head to see the cap more clearly. He recognized it at once — it was wired with electrodes. It came from the wheelchair that he’d had made for her. She’d used his gift after all.
“I had to risk it, Zag,” Leandro said.
She gazed up at her brother. She seemed unafraid. “Risk what, Zig?”
Joe remembered their old nickname: Zig and Zag, the twins.
“I had to risk everything to show you the truth,” Leandro said. “The truth will set us free, just like it set them free.”
“Them?” she asked.
“The women,” Leandro said.
He hooked his fingernail underneath the tab for the zip tie and pushed. His fingernail ripped loose from the nail bed and blood gushed onto the tie. His finger slipped off.
“Your truth,” she responded. “Your truth is so dark, Zig. Always dark. It doesn’t have to be so dark.”
“He killed women, Celeste,” Joe yelled. “At least ten.”
She looked so sad that he longed to take her in his arms and make everything go away. But he couldn’t get to her.
“Really, Zig?” She was talking only to her brother. She hadn’t even looked at Joe since the first quick glance. It was as if he didn’t exist.
“They wanted my help.” Leandro bent down and kissed the top of her head.
“Help?” she asked.
“Help.” Leandro touched her hair, and she shifted her head a tiny fraction under his hand, leaning into his touch. Joe felt like he was watching a movie and had missed the first half.
“Why am I here?” Joe’s fingers were slippery with blood, and his eyes stung. He coughed.
Leandro smiled then, and Celeste flinched away from him.
“You’re both here to make a choice,” Leandro said. “Just like the women.”
Chapter 48
Ziggy saw a flash of understanding in Tesla’s eyes. The man trembled with fear, just as the women had. The drug caused that, and it should have incapacitated him, but his gaze never wavered. Tesla knew what choice he would be forced to make, but he didn’t seem too upset about it.
Tesla turned away from the rooftop, stood up as much as he could with his arm tied to the wheelchair, and limped to the door that led back into the apartment. He pulled his wheelchair behind him. He’d not get through that sturdy metal fire door. Ziggy had locked it himself, and he had the key in his pocket.
Ziggy reached down and picked up a weathered pine board. He put it against the roof’s parapet. The board was long, and it provided a gentle slope up over the roof’s edge. He’d brought the board weeks before, to be part of a privacy fence he’d never need to build now.