Nemesis (15 page)

Kerry shook her head. A shiver created a discernible ripple effect across her shoulders. “I hate this kind of thing,” she said in a low voice.

“So do I.”

“It makes me…” She let the rest of it dribble off, but I sensed what the unspoken words were; they resonated like a silent echo inside my head: “… even more afraid.”

I let a few seconds pass before I said carefully, “Jake was there for us in Green Valley. And he was there for me a couple of times before that. I have to do the same for him now.”

“Yes. Of course you do.”

“It means going back to work for a while. More or less full-time until this is cleared up.”

“All right.”

“Tamara and I discussed it. Alex Chavez has a heavy caseload and a court appearance coming up. The only other thing we could do is hire out an investigation, but another agency wouldn't have the personal stake in it that we do.”

“I said all right.”

“I hate to have to leave you alone, but I just don't see any other way. We could get someone to come in during the day—”

Wrong thing to say. Kerry slapped the desk with the flat of her hand. “For God's sake, I'm not an invalid and I'm not afraid to be alone. I don't need a nursemaid.”

“I didn't mean—”

“And don't you dare let Cybil come over here. Don't even tell her you're going back to work.”

We'd been over all that before. Her mother had offered several times to move in temporarily, to help with Kerry's recuperation, but it wouldn't have been a good idea even if Cybil's health had permitted it. Or possible, for that matter, because we didn't have room to put her up. In her frail condition and showing signs of age-related dementia, it was Kerry who'd have had to care for her instead of the other way around.

“Don't worry,” I said, “I won't do anything you don't want me to.”

The little fit of anger died as suddenly as it had flared up. Her expression altered to one of contrition; she stood up, came around the desk to stand in front of me. Not touching, which meant she didn't want to be held, but close enough so that I could smell the sweetness of her breath.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I know it's hard for you, too. Worse now with Jake in trouble. But you do what you have to do for him and let me do what I have to do for me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Brief wan smile, brief touch on my arm. “I feel so sorry for Jake,” she said. “Help him. Any way you can.”

I nodded.

You, too,
mia amore,
I thought. Any way I can.

*   *   *

Emily came home at six, after a day out with a friend at some sort of pop concert. Kerry was still in her office, which gave me a chance to talk privately to the kid while the two of us fixed dinner.

Kid? No, that was no longer accurate. Just fourteen, sure, but a lot of pain and adversity had been crammed into those fourteen years—the painful loss of both of her parents, her mother a victim of sudden violence, and all the crap Kerry and I had been through separately and together since we'd adopted her. Less bright, less adaptable girls her age might have suffered irreparable psychological damage. Not Emily. Each incident had made her stronger, hastened her maturity until now she seemed to me more grown up than women two and three times her age.

Beautiful girl, too, already filling out into womanhood; by the time she was twenty-one she'd be stunning. But her beauty wasn't now nor would it ever be the brittle, egocentric kind you saw so much of these days. She'd turn heads, but she'd never allow hers to be turned: I had no doubt she'd make the right choices when it came to education, love, career. If there was any justice in this world, she'd be the singer she dreamed of being, have all the other good things she wanted out of life. No one deserved it more.

I'd never treated or talked to her as a child, and I didn't now. I explained the situation with Jake Runyon in detail, including the conversation I'd had with Kerry earlier, and when I was finished she paused to consider before she said, “I think Mom will be okay here alone most of the day.”

“Well, she seems to think she will.”

“It might even be a good thing. For her, I mean.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She has to learn not to be afraid anymore. It's the only way she's going to get back to her old self.”

“That's right, it is. And she is learning, slowly.”

“Maybe it wouldn't be so slow,” Emily said, “if we weren't making her dependent on us.”

That surprised me a little. “You think we're making her dependent?”

“I don't know. Maybe. We're always kind of walking on eggshells around her—doing things for her, trying to get her to do things for herself. That could be why she spends so much time in her office.”

“Then why hasn't she said anything?”

“Because it's easier not to. And because she wasn't ready to.”

“But now you think she might be?”

“Don't you, Dad? After what she said when you told her you were going back to work?”

Smart girl, Emily. Twice as smart as I'll ever be.

I could only hope she was right this time.

*   *   *

Kerry had little to say at dinner, but at least she didn't retreat into her office afterward. The three of us watched a movie, again mostly in silence, but that was all right because the two hours sitting together in semidarkness had some of the old sense of family closeness we'd shared previously. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but the strain and tension that I'd felt on so many recent evenings like this seemed mostly absent.

Same in our bedroom later. More silence from Kerry, but not the uncomfortable kind. And just as I was starting to doze, I heard and felt her rustling around on her side of the bed, then she was there beside me, her arms sliding around my body and turning it so that it fitted tightly against hers. But it wasn't like the other nights when I'd awakened to find her clinging desperately to me in the darkness. Those nights she'd wanted only to be held. Those nights she'd been wearing her nightgown and tonight, now, she wore nothing.

“Make love to me,” she said against my chest.

I was wide awake by then. But hesitant, uncertain. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Please.”

So warm in my arms, but still I held her gingerly, my hands unmoving on her bare flesh. “If you'd rather we can just hold each other—”

“Hush.” Her hands were the ones that moved, urgently—caressing, seeking. “There, that's it. Yes, good. No more talking now. Just make love to me.”

It started slow, like always with us, but it was too slow for Kerry. Too gentle, too tender. What she wanted, demanded, was like a collision. Over too quickly for me, and so intense for her at the end that she made a sound almost like a muffled shriek of pain.

Afterward, almost immediately, she edged away to her side of the bed and turned on her side, facing away from me. And huddled there, she began to cry. Silent weeping, the most heartbreaking a man can endure from the woman he loves.

 

16

They wouldn't let me see Runyon. No visitors allowed, I was told at the main jail, except for the prisoner's attorney. Lockdown, because of his law enforcement ties? Either that, or Administrative Segregation dictated by the nature of the crime.

I called Thomas Dragovich's office on my cell, but he wasn't in; his secretary said he had a court date this morning. So then I went down to the Homicide Division to see if I could get an audience with the investigating officers. Nothing doing there, either. They were out in the field and none of the other inspectors would discuss the case with me.

Not like the old days, when I knew several ranking cops from my own time on the force and could have called in a favor. Eberhardt, once a lieutenant in General Works, who'd been a close friend and later my partner before he screwed up his life—and mine for a while—with bad decisions. Jack Logan, the last of the old guard, who'd risen to assistant chief before yet another departmental shake-up not long ago had forced him to retire. Casual and nodding acquaintances with a handful of others over the years who might have been able to pull a string for me, now also gone. Victims of time and change, like me, like all of us.

From the Hall of Justice I drove to South Park. Tamara was in her office, and when I went in there she said, “You talk to Jake?”

“No. No visitors yet except his attorney. And Dragovich is in court today. I'll just have to wait … unless Kayabalian knows somebody at the Hall who can get me a few minutes with Jake.”

“I just got off the phone with him—Kayabalian. Thought he should know the score right away.”

“What did he say?”

“Well, the good news is that we're off the hook on the civil suits. Daniels had no heirs to carry them on, and there's no case without her anyway. If we can get Jake off the hook, too, then we'll come out of this mess pretty clean. Woman did us a favor getting herself knocked off.”

“You call being beaten and strangled a favor?”

“She deserved what she got.”

“Come on, Tamara, show a little compassion. Nobody deserves to die by violence. Nobody.”

“Okay. But how much compassion did she show Jake? And you and me and most of the other folks in her miserable life?”

Too young to be so cold, callous, bitter, even if there was a certain amount of justification here. But it was not the time or place to deliver a lecture on humanity. I said, “How long ago did you talk to Kayabalian?”

“Few minutes.”

“So he should still be in his office.”

He was. “As Runyon's attorney in the civil matter,” he said when I got through to him, “I may be able to get you an audience with him. I'll see what I can do and get back to you.”

“Thanks, Charles.”

“Don't thank me yet.” Pause. Then, with mild censure in his voice, “Are you as happy as your partner that my legal services will no longer be required?”

“No. Not at the expense of a woman's life.” I was in my office with the connecting door to Tamara's office closed, so she couldn't hear what I said next. “Tamara's young and still learning. Everything including justice is black and white to her—and that's not a pun.”

“Mm. I remember what it was like to be young,” he said wryly. “And most of the time, professionally speaking, I'm glad I'm not anymore.”

“Me, too,” I agreed. “Most of the time.”

Not long after we rang off, while I sat poring through a printout of the Daniels casefile, Runyon's lady friend, Bryn Darby, called. She'd just heard the news about Jake's arrest and couldn't believe there was any truth in it; I assured her there wasn't. Was there anything she could do? Nothing except to lend him moral support.

“Will they let me see him, do you think?”

“Depends. Maybe not right away. You'll have to check with the main jail at the Hall of Justice.”

“God, that place. After what happened a few months ago … it gives me chills just thinking about going back there.”

“I know how you feel, but it's worse for Jake now.”

“Yes. You'll do everything you can for him? To get him out of there?”

“Try not to worry too much, Mrs. Darby. We're already on it.”

After the call ended, I thought that Bryn Darby had sounded worried, all right, but not quite as upset as Jake had been about her when their situations were reversed. Hard to tell about something like that over the phone, but I had the feeling just the same. Things cooling down between Bryn and Jake? Not that he ever talked much about his private life, but from the way he'd gone to bat for her when she'd falsely confessed to the murder of her son's abuser, I'd assumed that they were pretty close.…

Back to the file. I'd looked at it before the conference in Kayabalian's office last week, but this time I paid closer attention to Runyon's reports and Tamara's search notes. None of it told me much in the way of specifics. Each of the three men in Verity Daniels's past that Jake had interviewed had cause to hate her, and it was possible his visit to one of them had stirred up old antagonisms to the point of violence. The ex-husband, Scott Ostrander? Six years was a long time to hold a killing grudge. The insurance agency owner, Vincent Canaday? Even if he had had a fling with Daniels, she didn't seem to have posed any threat to him after the inheritance move to San Francisco. The brother of her drowned fiancé looked like the best bet. But as much as Hank Avery considered her responsible for his brother's death, he hadn't made a move against her in three years. Why would he all of a sudden take his revenge now?

And the biggest question: Why frame Runyon for the murder? A revenge killing, if that was the motive, is a crime of passion; premeditation, the kind that includes diverting suspicion to someone else, doesn't usually enter into it. Any of the three could have found out about Jake's arrest on the assault charge, from Verity Daniels or in some other way, but how would any of them have gotten hold of the cuff button? Assuming Daniels had found it in her condo after the struggle, she had no reason to show it to a man she hadn't seen in months or years.

Unless she wasn't as estranged from one of the trio as she'd let on. Been seeing Canaday again, for instance. Or even her ex-husband on the sly, maybe taunting him with the promise of money from her inheritance; Ostrander's surprised emotional outburst at the nursery could've been faked for the benefit of his current wife. Daniels had been capable of just about anything; we had plenty of evidence of that.

Somebody she knew, in any case. She'd been killed somewhere other than her condo; security in that building was too tight for a violent confrontation to go unheard and uninvestigated, a dead body to be removed day or night. Lured out, then, for the purpose of killing her or for some other reason. Or she'd made the date herself and the meeting had erupted into violence.