Cloaked in Blood (3 page)

“I believe you.”

“Now I expect some honest answers from
you.”

I swallowed hard.  “All right.  If
I know the answers –”

“You know them.  Tell me if this
Sanderfield gentleman was really behind your abduction,
Helen.  It’s imperative that I know the truth.”

“We’re not sure, Dad.  The evidence
seems to indicate that he was involved.”

“And Lyle was his step-father?  He
married the Sanderfield widow after Suzy died?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought.  Now, was Lyle
part of this?”

My lips rolled inward.  Johnny pried
the phone from my fingers and reengaged the speaker function. 
“Wendell?”

“Yes, Johnny.”

“What did you want to know about
Sanderfield?”

My eyes widened.  I made a slicing
motion over my throat.  Johnny ignored it and stared intently
at the cell phone.

“I asked if you’re sure that Lyle is part of
this human trafficking business.”

“I’m sure,” he said grimly.  “But as
Helen and I have discussed many times over the past year, knowing
something and proving it are two different things.”

“What makes you suspect him?  This is
important, Johnny.”

Damn right it was.  It was important
that Johnny keep his mouth shut.  Of course, he didn’t.

“Helen’s biological mother recognized a
photograph from Helen’s baby book, Wendell.  She couldn’t
understand how the woman who abducted her infant the night she was
born could look so much younger a year after Helen was taken than
she did the night that it happened.”

“
Marie
abducted Helen?”

“We think it was Lyle’s wife Suzy.”

“Nonsense,” Wendell said.  “Marie
looked nothing like Suzy.”

My eyes widened.  “But Marie wasn’t
pregnant when she stole that baby from Saint Mary’s Hospital,
Dad.”

“It doesn’t surprise me one little bit,
Helen.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Good heavens no.  Lyle was much closer
to Marie than he was to his wife.  In fact, I always
suspected… well, never mind what I suspected.  If Marie looked
older the night you were abducted, you can be certain of two
things.  Number one, it was intentional.  Number two, the
reason she wasn’t pregnant was probably because the child was
already born and either didn’t survive or wasn’t going to be given
to me.”

“So they stole
me
to keep your real
child away from you?”

“Helen,” Wendell said , “get this through
your head now.  As far as I’m concerned, the only
real
child I have is you.  Nothing will change that.”

“We still need to prove that Lyle is
involved in this,” Johnny said.  “Just because it appears that
Marie Henderson stole an infant in Darkwater Bay doesn’t put him in
the firestorm of a human trafficking ring.”

“You leave Lyle Henderson to me,” Wendell
said.

“
Dad
–”

“I’ll be in touch.”  Wendell
disconnected the call before we had the chance to argue with
him.

Chapter 3

Crevan slouched on the sofa.  Devlin
paced in front of the fireplace.  Johnny stared into an
untouched glass of Glenlivet.  None of them spoke.

“Are we just going to –” 

Devlin silenced me with a glare.  He
was angry.  No doubt about it.

Johnny swirled the whiskey again, held the
crystal to his lips and drained it in one smooth swallow.

“You’re certain you believed him?” Crevan
broke the silence and looked at me.

“Of course I –”

“Helped him
escape from Attica
,”
Devlin growled.  “Lied to us, let us run around wasting
valuable time chasing someone who wasn’t even missing
or
in
danger.”

“She’s still in danger, Dev,” Johnny
said.

I noticed the twinkle that hadn’t quite died
out in his eyes.  Perverse bastard was really enjoying the
fact that Devlin Mackenzie no longer worshipped me with utter
adoration.  Ah, but at least his insane jealousy was cured
once and for all.

“Devlin –”

He held up one hand to me again.  “I
don’t want to hear it, Helen.  Crevan and Johnny explained
your backward thinking on the matter to me already.  I don’t
agree with it.”

“So you think that an innocent man should
die paying for a crime he didn’t commit?” 

Gotta love my brother.  He certainly
has this family loyalty thing down pat. 

“Think about it, Devlin,” Crevan urged our
friend.  “There was no other option for a legal appeal. 
Hell, you were the one that questioned the veracity of the state’s
evidence against Wendell in the first place.”

“That was when I
thought
he was dead,
when I had no doubt that he’d been duped by his in laws, and
couldn’t possibly be part of a human trafficking ring himself.”

“He wasn’t,” Johnny said quietly.  He
rose and put his empty glass on the coffee table.  “I’ve
talked to him, Devlin, numerous times, now.  The guy… well,
I’ve got my theories as to why he was conned by his wife and her
family, and let’s just say they had nothing to do with his
complicity in their crimes.”

“What does that mean?” Devlin’s stare
impaled Johnny with its intensity.  “Why would they swap out
one kid for another?  And I don’t buy that this is all about
using Helen to control Wendell’s behavior.”

“Because nobody has ever been blackmailed in
the past, right?” Crevan snorted.  “My ex-wife tried to bleed
me for every dime she could by threatening to out my sexuality on
the job if I didn’t give in to her demands.  Hardy and Weber
were being blackmailed to keep Darkwater Bay a law enforcement
cesspool, probably by Danny Datello.”

I snapped my fingers.  “Or maybe
not.”

Three pairs of eyes turned to me. 

“What?” This from my husband.

“Think about it.  We’ve been over this
a million times, I swear.  Johnny, didn’t we have a
conversation that because of Danny’s ties to the Marcos crime
family that he made an ideal patsy for everything that went wrong
in this city?”

“Yeah, but he was at Donald Weber’s press
conference in December, Doc.  He wasn’t too happy with what he
heard either.”

“No, but who knows how he would’ve reacted
to the news if I hadn’t goaded him.”

Johnny grinned.  “Well, to be fair, he
was irate after he saw you kiss me, and seemed pretty bland before
that.”

“I’m sure a lot of people were curious about
what Don had to say, particularly since Jerry Lowe’s arrest. 
We know for certain that Danny was responsible for the deaths of
two men – David Ireland and Salvatore Masconi.  While I am
still disgusted by Ireland’s murder, I do understand the motivation
behind Masconi’s.  Danny thought he was protecting young
girls, righting a wrong done by the criminal justice system when
Masconi slipped through the cracks.”

Devlin cursed.  “It’s exactly that kind
of vigilantism that’s the problem, Helen.  People cannot
simply take the law into their own hands because they disagree with
due process!”

I gnawed the tender patch of flesh on the
inside of my cheek.  He was right.  Masconi might’ve been
a felon, might’ve been a sexual predator in the statutory sense,
but he wasn’t a rapist per se, nor was he a murderer.  Yet
Danny Datello had him killed.

We thought.

Johnny read my mind.  “Dev, we’re not
sure what happened to Masconi.  We are sure that David Ireland
was murdered by Mitch Southerby.  Of course, he’s recanted his
old confession now, but it’s moot after what he did to me and
planned to do to Helen.  None of that is the point at the
moment.  We’re still trying to figure out if Sanderfield was
in on all of this, or if he was a pawn.”

“Then why aren’t we talking to Lyle
Henderson?” I asked.  “Shouldn’t he be the one answering
questions now?”

“No!” three voices chimed in
immediately.

“I’m not making a request, Helen.  Stay
away from Lyle Henderson.  The last thing we need is you
confronting the man before we’ve got any evidence,” Johnny
said.

“And if he is behind all of this, no way in
hell should you go anywhere near him,” Devlin concurred.  “Or
have you forgotten that my old partner claimed you were already
bought and paid for by some bastard?  For all we know,
Henderson was the buyer.”

“So what?  I sit here knitting baby
booties?”

Johnny chuckled.  “No, you aim all of
that incredible focus and insight on finding Wendell.”

“He’s not answering the phone, Johnny. 
For all we know, he had the same idea you did about using a toss
away to make contact with me in the first place.”

“I need to talk to him again,” Johnny
said.  “There’s still the matter of identifying this FBI agent
that went to see him.”

“Not Seleeby,” Crevan added.  “You’re
certain he said the guy was taller than –”

“We didn’t think it was Seleeby who saw
him,” Johnny interrupted.  “Wendell said the guy was older and
had dark hair.  My thought, considering that it was FBI, was
that it was Helen’s friend David Levine.  You weren’t there
when we talked in December.  He was pretty appalled to learn
that I’d gone to New York and visited Wendell.”

I shook my head.  “He would’ve told me
if he’d talked to Wendell personally.  Dad mentioned a guard,
Mike Lucero.  We should focus on talking to him, or getting
the record from Attica regarding who my father’s visitors
were.  We already know the identity of two of them.”

Dev pinned me with another disappointed
stare again.  “Johnny and Thomas Peterson,” he said. 
“Really, Helen, what were you thinking?  Impersonating an FBI
agent –”

“Is a felony, yes, I’m well aware. 
Christ, if I thought you’d act like such a little girl about all of
this, I’d have never let them tell you the truth,” I muttered.

“A little girl?” he bristled.  “Listen
here.  I’ll have you know that just because I think we have a
duty to uphold the law and not just break it whenever doing things
the right way is a little inconvenient, that does not make me
a
little girl
!”

“Oh for God’s sake, Dev.  Are you
trying to tell me you’ve never cut a corner
anywhere
in your
career?” Crevan sighed.  “It’s not like she killed Thomas
Peterson so she could impersonate him.  She was scared
shitless.  Let’s not forget who was supposed to have her back
the night she was abducted, whose former partner it was that
snatched her, chained her in the cargo hold of
The Celeste
and planned to sell her.”

“That’s enough,” Johnny intervened before
the blame game could begin in earnest.  “There’s plenty of
system failures to go around, plenty of mistakes made in the
past.  None of it is relevant now.  At the present time,
we’re going forward honestly with each other.  Dev, if you’d
be more comfortable with Helen coming clean with the FBI about her
impersonation –”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Devlin
hissed.  “They’d arrest her, and Wendell would be on some FBI
most wanted list by sunset!”

Crevan grinned.  “So you’re not really
opposed to bending the rules here and there – you just don’t like
being kept in the dark about it.”

I curled into the corner of the sectional
sofa and wished I could simply turn back time.  None of this
would’ve happened if I had a stronger sense of morality.  If I
hadn’t turned out just like my father – Wendell that is.  I’d
never regret being nothing like Crevan’s sire.

“I’m not breaking any laws, bending them,
loosely interpreting the intent or any other such nonsense,” Dev
grumbled.  “Hell, I don’t like being a party to this after the
fact.”

“Then you know where the door is,” Johnny
said quietly.  “But Helen’s still in danger.  My
sons
are still in danger.  Do I wish she’d simply come
to me before doing something so… foolhardy?  Of course I do,
but as Helen so astutely reminded me when she confessed, I wouldn’t
have lifted a finger to help her liberate her father.  On the
contrary, I’d have locked her up if necessary to keep her from
doing what she did.  At the same time, it’s not something we
can change now.  Wendell’s out.  As far as anyone is
concerned, he’s as dead as Terrell Sanderfield.  If the goal
is to put him back in prison, that can’t be done without putting my
wife
there right along with him.  I won’t allow
that.”

“Shit,” Devlin said.  ”I’m not
suggesting anything of the kind, Johnny.  And I hope you know
that my… disappointment… well it hasn’t dented my resolve to see
these people brought to justice.”  He pinned me with a pointed
stare.  “
Legal
justice, Helen, not just some perverted
sense of it.”

“Then find out who visited my father. 
Go to Mike Lucero. Learn everything you can about who was there and
why that visit happened.  In the meantime, I’ll try to track
down Dad again and get some more information from him.”

“All he said was that he the FBI was the
other branch of law enforcement to visit him?” Crevan asked.

I nodded.  “I was so hell bent on
getting answers about Marie and Lyle that I didn’t focus on what I
should have,” I said.

“And what was that exactly?” Devlin
asked.

“I needed to make sure Dad wasn’t really
part of this other thing, Dev.  I know I should’ve thought
about all of that more carefully before I helped him escape from
Attica, but all I could see was that I was righting a wrong that I
should’ve never allowed to happen in the first place.  He
convinced me that he had no idea that I wasn’t his biological
daughter.”

“He convinced me too,” Johnny said. 
“This man, this very flawed cop, might’ve done a lot of things
worthy of incarceration, guys, but he loves Helen.  He was
sickened by what’s been happening in Darkwater Bay.  I won’t
say I’m not worried about what he might do to protect his daughter,
but I believe completely that he isn’t abducting and selling human
beings.”