Dead Wrong (16 page)

She sipped her iced tea and, for the first time in years, felt something akin to loneliness—something apart from what she felt when she missed Julianne—settle in around her. She figured it would pass soon enough. After all, Aidan had been there for less than a week.

With the fingers of her right hand, she touched the place on her cheek where he’d kissed her. A kiss, no doubt, to celebrate his liberation.

She leaned back and looked upward, waiting for the first star to appear, and tried to recall its name.

Vince Giordano had been surprised when the guard appeared at his cell door and announced that he had visitors.

“My lawyer’s not due till next week,” he’d said.

“It’s not your lawyer,” the guard told him as he cuffed the prisoner’s hands behind his back.

“Who then?”

“don’cha wanna be surprised?” The guard grinned, showing severely crooked teeth.

“Oh, sure. I love surprises.” Giordano shrugged and followed the guard through the maze of hallways.

They stopped in front of one of the visitors’ rooms, and it occurred to Giordano before the door even opened that something must be up, since it wasn’t visiting hours. He shuffled into the room to find two county detectives seated at the beat-up plastic table, waiting for him.

“Hello, Vincent.” Evan Crosby rested his elbows on the table.

“Detective Crosby. Always a pleasure.” Giordano smiled and took a seat opposite the officers. “Detective Sullivan. Good to see you again, as well.”

“We’re both delighted to see you, too.” Evan Crosby nodded, his mouth a grim line that barely mimicked a smile.

“To what do I owe the visit, gentlemen?”

“We just thought we’d stop by and offer our condolences.”

“Condolences?” Giordano raised one eyebrow. “Someone die?”

“Your mother-in-law. Former mother-in-law, I should say,” Joe Sullivan told him.

“No shit. What happened? Heart attack?” Giordano looked surprised and almost concerned. Almost. “I always told her those cigarettes were no good for her.”

“It wasn’t cigarettes that got her, Vincent.” Crosby leaned forward and dropped his voice. “She was shot through the head two nights ago.”

“No shit,” he said again, this time genuinely shocked. “You sure it was
Flora
Esposito?”

Detective Sullivan nodded.

“Mother of the deceased Diane Esposito Giordano. Grandmother of the late Matthew and Vincent Giordano the third.” Crosby couldn’t help but get a lick in. He’d been on the team that had investigated the killings of Giordano’s wife and two little boys. His disgust was obvious.

“So Flora got whacked, eh? For real?” Giordano shook his head. “Who’d want to kill that miserable old bitch?”

“We thought maybe you’d have some thoughts on that.”

“Nah. I can’t think of anyone. . . .” He looked up at the two detectives, his eyes darting from one to the other, realizing the scrutiny he was under. “Oh, give me a fucking break, will you? You can’t be serious. Yeah, right, I slipped out of here, whacked Flora, and sneaked back in.”

“You could have arranged for someone to do it. It was very obvious at your trial that there was no love lost between you and the mother of your murdered wife.” Another dig from Crosby.

“Arranged how, through a psychic?”

“You could have contacted someone. . . .”

“I haven’t had contact with anyone except for my lawyer since I got here. Early on, I had a couple of requests for interviews, but I wasn’t interested. I never contacted no one about them. No one calls, no one writes, no one comes to see me. You can check with the warden. I get no mail, I send no mail. I ain’t had any visitors and I ain’t used the phone in months.”

“Not even family members?”

“Especially not family members.” He snorted. “I’m one of them . . . what do you call ’em . . . persons not grata’d.”

“I can see you studied Latin,” Crosby noted dryly.

“Ah, that’s right. You’re the funny one.” Giordano’s eyes went back and forth between the two men who sat across from him. “Is there anything else, now that you’ve delivered the sad news?”

“You don’t seem as broken up as I thought you might.”

“Kiss my ass, Crosby.” Giordano turned toward the door and called for the guard, then stood as the door opened.

“If I find out that you had anything at all to do with the murder—”

“Good luck, Detective. I mean that. I hope you find the killer and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. Isn’t that what the D.A. said he was gonna do to me?” He was openly sneering. “And you know where that got you, don’t you? I’ll be out of here before another coupla weeks have passed. Thanks to your good buddy Officer Caruso. And I do thank him. Every day. You let him know that, hear? Let him know that Vince Giordano owes him big-time for planting that evidence and then having the stones to brag about it. Tell him I remember him in my prayers every night . . . and that I’ll be seeing him real soon. . . .”

Giordano was laughing as he was led away, but he still could hear the curses of the two detectives as the door closed behind him.

He walked back to the cell in silence, standing calmly while the guard removed the cuffs, let him into his cell, and locked the door behind him. Giordano sat on the edge of his mattress and covered his face with his hands and laughed until he cried.

This latest news confirmed something he had begun to suspect when he’d heard about the first Mary Douglas killing.

He did it. The crazy bastard really did it. . . .

At first, he’d thought it was some crazy coincidence. But from subsequent news reports, it began to dawn on Giordano that maybe Channing had gone through with it. That maybe he’d gotten the wrong Mary Douglas the first two times, but hey, he’d have had no way of knowing how many women there were in Lyndon with the same name. What were the chances of that? It was okay. Giordano could probably have been a little more specific.

Channing, wherever you are, my man, I owe you big-time. . . .

Of course, there’d been that news report earlier that day identifying the Douglas slayer as the son of one of the victims, but Giordano seriously doubted that could be true. After hearing about Flora’s untimely demise—he loved that expression, as if dying was ever timely—there was no doubt whatsoever in his mind who was behind it all.

And even better, it was obvious that the police had not made the connection between the Mary Douglas slayings and the murder of his former mother-in-law.

Channing, you slick bastard, you’re a real one-man crime wave.

He wondered then if Channing remembered the name of the judge.

He fervently hoped that he did.

That bitch deserved whatever it was that Channing would do to her. Damn, but he’d give anything to be there, to watch her get what was coming to her. After all, everything was her fault. Diane and the boys would still be alive if it hadn’t been for her. Who did she think she was, that bitch judge, telling him that he couldn’t see his boys no more? That he couldn’t so much as set foot on the property that he’d worked his ass off to buy?

Who did she think she was talking to? She was gonna tell him what he could and could not do with his own family?

He shook his head. No one told Vince Giordano what to do. No one.

As far as he was concerned, she had been the one to push Vince past his limits, forcing him to do what he’d done. Diane’s blood, the blood of his children . . . it was all on her hands.

Restless anger grew within him. He got off his cot and looked up at the barred window, wondering where Her Honor was at that very moment, and if she had any idea of how little time she had left. Hours? Days? A week?

It put a smile on his face, just thinking about it.

CHAPTER
NINE

I
T WAS COOLER BY THE OCEAN THAN IT HAD BEEN IN
Lyndon, and Aidan dug out an old blue sweatshirt to layer over the thermal shirt he’d planned to wear during his walk. If he’d been running, the thermal would have been too much. But it had been a year since he’d run, and he doubted he’d be doing it again anytime soon, if ever. But he could walk. Over the past week, he’d walked more than he had in months. He grudgingly admitted he’d almost enjoyed it.

He’d have enjoyed the walk along the water more if he’d had that little dog with him, though. He’d forgotten how much he liked dogs. Maybe he’d pay a visit to the local SPCA and get a dog of his own. Still, that was a commitment he wasn’t sure he was ready to make. He wasn’t sure he was ready to be steady company for anyone, man or beast.

And then, of course, there was Mara.

When he’d promised Annie he’d keep an eye on her sister, he’d had little memory of Mara but he’d somehow expected her to look like Annie, blond and blue-eyed, soft, round, feminine to the core. He hadn’t been prepared for Mara, petite and dark, with wide green eyes, her face beautiful despite its leaness. She’d been a surprise to him in every way, but he’d found that he liked her, in spite of himself. Mara was a real no-nonsense kind of woman, like her sister, and he’d appreciated that. He gave her credit for trying to make the best of the situation, for being hospitable when he knew she’d been uncomfortable with him living under her roof. Of course, he’d been uncomfortable, too. She’d just dealt with it better than he had.

In his defense, he reminded himself, it had been a long time since he’d spent any time with any woman who wasn’t a nurse or a therapist, and even that contact had been months past. One might excuse him for being less than charming.

Aidan’s thoughts drifted to Mara’s ex-husband. The bastard. What kind of man would steal a child from her mother?

Aidan walked along the waterline, his feet sinking into the cool sand as the tide began to come in. He couldn’t imagine how that must feel, to know your child was out there, somewhere, but not know where.

Hell,
he thought,
after seven years, Mara doesn’t even know what her daughter looks like.

Aidan wished he could do something to help, something that would take that haunted look from those green eyes. . . .

The old Aidan Shields could have helped, he knew. He’d have moved heaven and earth to help Mara locate her daughter. After all, there had been very little that the old Aidan Shields could not do.

He slowed his pace and fought against a wave of self-pity. Being at Mara’s, with other things to occupy his mind, had taken his focus off himself and his own problems for the first time in months. As a consequence, he hadn’t spent quite so much time dwelling on what he’d lost. Now that he was back home, he was going to have to try to get his life back on track. He’d never forget what had happened in the alley that night, would never stop grieving for Dylan, but over the past week, he’d come to understand that maybe the time had come for him to stop grieving for himself.

He would call the therapist when he got back to the apartment, he’d go every time he was supposed to, he’d do his exercises at home. He’d lose those extra pounds and he’d gain back what strength he could. He’d been a ninety-pound weakling for long enough.

Okay, make that a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound weakling, but it was all the same, wasn’t it? Weak was, well,
weak,
inexcusable. And over the past five or six days, he’d realized just how tired he was of being weak.

He’d seen pity in Mara’s eyes when he couldn’t keep up on their walks, and he’d hated it. It had angered and embarrassed him and had kept him in a foul mood when he was around her. He hadn’t wanted it to be that way, but there it was. He couldn’t help but wonder if, every time she looked at him, Mara was wondering just what kind of a bodyguard this wreck of a former FBI agent could possibly be.

He hadn’t wanted her to look at him that way. He’d wanted . . . hell, he didn’t know what he’d wanted. As close as he came to understanding that all week was when he was leaving, and he’d kissed her. As close to her mouth as he could get without, well, kissing her on the mouth, though he’d been sorely tempted to do just that. What if she’d pushed him away? Rejection wasn’t something he’d wanted to deal with right now. He had enough trouble accepting himself.

So he’d gone for the buddy kiss, the kiss on the cheek. At least she hadn’t seemed offended. That was something.

He walked until his hip threatened to give out on him, then he thought about sitting for a while on the sand, but figured since he’d have difficulty getting up again, he’d just as well stand. He tried to balance his weight on both legs, tucked his hands into his pockets, and watched an osprey dive headfirst into the ocean, wings folded to its sides, only to emerge seconds later with a good-size fish in its beak. The bird flapped off toward its nest with purpose. Aidan watched it until it was no more than a dot in the sky.