The Whole Truth (29 page)

He nodded at the attendant again and turned away. The bed rolled back and the door clanged shut and with Frank’s help Shaw left the death room on shaky legs.

“Let’s go get drunk,” Frank said.

Shaw shook his head. “I have to go to Anna’s apartment.”

“What, are you some sort of masochist? First you see her on the slab and now you want to go rip your heart out some more. What’s the point, Shaw? She’s not coming back.”

“I’m not asking you to go. But I have to.”

Frank hailed a cab. “Right, but I’m still going.”

They climbed in the taxi and Shaw gave the driver the address. Then he hung his head out the window trying to fight the waves of nausea that were pounding him.

He shouldn’t have gone to the morgue. Not to see her like that.
Not Anna
.

Shouldn’t have, but had to.

He opened the door to her apartment a few minutes later, entered, and sat down on the floor while Frank stood nearby, his gaze on him. As Shaw looked around at the familiar sights, he slowly calmed. This was the living, breathing Anna here, not the butchered object he’d just left lying on unforgiving stainless steel. Here, Anna was not dead, not murdered.

He rose, lifted a photo off the mantel; it was of him and Anna in Switzerland last year. She was a fine skier, he was less than that. But the fun they’d had. Another photo of them in Australia. A third shot of them atop an elephant she’d nicknamed Balzac for its love of coffee that it would slurp right from the cup with its trunk.

Everywhere were her belongings, her loves, her passions.

Her.

He sat down again. In a few seconds he endured a million obvious thoughts that run through a bereaved person’s mind at a time like this. The bite of Adolph’s saw blade didn’t even come close to the pain he was feeling now. One bloody wound versus your entire mind, body, and soul being slowly crushed. They had no painkillers that could fight that.

Frank must’ve noticed the change in his expression. “Come on, Shaw, let’s go get that drink now.”

Shaw finally realized he couldn’t stay here either. In some ways the living Anna was more catastrophic to him than the dead one on the metal slab. It brought back so clearly what he’d lost, what they’d both lost together.

He struggled to his feet, but before Frank could reach it the knob turned and the door opened.

The next moment Shaw and Frank were standing eye to eye with Anna’s parents.

Wolfgang’s face flushed. He reached out to grab Shaw, but Shaw stepped back, out of the man’s range.

“No, Wolfgang, no!” screamed his wife.

“This monster, this monster.” Wolfgang was so incensed he was sputtering, choking on the few words, his eyes all the time shooting dangerous volleys at Shaw, who hung back, unsure of what to do.

“Now just hold on,” Frank said. “He’s hurting too.”

“What are you doing here?” demanded Natascha, clutching at her husband’s arm, trying to hold him back.

“Do not talk to him, to that filth,” yelled Wolfgang. “He killed our daughter. He killed Anna.”

Now Shaw took a step forward, his eyes flashing like blue acid. “What the hell are you talking about? I had nothing to do with Anna’s death.”

“Shaw, let me handle this,” Frank said.

Wolfgang pointed a fat finger directly in Shaw’s face. “Anna would not be dead but for you. You killed her.”

Frank yelled, “Wait a minute. That’s bullshit!”

Shaw started to move past him, but Wolfgang suddenly charged forward, grabbed him around the throat, and his heavy bulk caused both men to fall back hard against the wall. Natascha screamed and tried to pull her husband off. “No! No! Wolfgang. No!”

Frank tried to tug Wolfgang off Shaw but the man was too heavy.

Wolfgang’s thick shoulder collided with Shaw’s wounded arm and he grunted in pain. He managed to lever the big German away from him by pushing a knee against his gut. When Wolfgang charged him again, Shaw sidestepped the far slower man, who was breathing so hard and whose face was so red, Shaw thought he might be having a heart attack. Wolfgang struck the wall. Before he could turn around again and attack, Shaw used his hand to pinch a nerve right next to the man’s thick neck. Wolfgang slumped to the floor crying out in pain.

The next instant Natascha’s heavy purse struck Shaw in the face, cutting his cheek. He felt the blood ooze down. Frank ripped the purse from the woman’s hand and threw it across the room. Natascha knelt next to her husband, her arms protectively around him.

His chest heaving, blood running in his mouth, Shaw stared down at them. “Is he all right?”

“You go. You go now!” Natascha screamed at him. “You leave us alone. You have done enough. Enough!”

“I had nothing—” Shaw stopped.
What the hell is the use?

Frank was pulling him to the door. “Let’s get out of here before somebody really gets hurt.”

Shaw wiped the blood off, turned and left, shutting the door behind him.

As they walked down the stairs Frank said, “They were not told you were some kind of monster, Shaw. We just—”

Shaw suddenly stopped, sat down on the steps, and let out a sob so loud that it seemed to clang off the walls like the boom of artillery. The remaining blood on his face was washed away by the tears that were coming in droves. For ten minutes he wept uncontrollably, his body thrashing from side to side.

Frank just stood there looking down, his hands clenched in fists, his own eyes moist.

And then Shaw stopped crying as abruptly as he’d started. He stood up, wiped his face dry.

“Shaw?” Frank said, eyeing him warily. “You okay?”

“I’m perfect,” he answered in a mechanical tone. Then he rushed down the steps, leaving Frank to gape after him.

When Shaw hit the street he started jogging. Jogging with a purpose. He was done with mourning. What was the point of trying to cope by letting the normal grieving process take place? He would never get over Anna’s death. So now he had to get back to something that really mattered: revenge. He would not lose sight of that again. And he would never stop until he’d gotten it.

And he knew just where to start.

Katie James.

This time he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

CHAPTER 62

“I
CHECKED ON YOUR STORY
about Krakow and about your father,” Katie said. She and Aron Lesnik were sitting in his tiny room at the hostel near the Thames in a far less fashionable part of London than The Phoenix Group digs. She’d brought him food and coffee, which he was devouring as she spoke.

“You check?” he said between mouthfuls of ham sandwich and crisps.

“Of course I checked. Journalists just assume everyone is lying to them.”

“I not lie to you!” Lesnik exclaimed and then took a gulp of coffee.

She looked at her notes. “Your father was Elisaz Lesnik, editor of a daily newspaper in Krakow. He was killed in 1989.”

“The Soviets murdered him. Poland was fighting for freedom then. We had Lech Walesa, the liberator, fighting for us. But my father he writes the truth and the Soviets they do not like that. They come one night when I am little boy and then he is dead.”

“That was never proven,” she pointed out.

“I do not need proof! I know!” Lesnik pounded his fist against the wall.

“So you have quite the grudge against the Russians?”

He gaped at her. “You do not believe me? You think I make this up because I hate Russians? I see people dead. I see blood everywhere. You ask me questions, I tell you truth.” He stared at her defiantly and took a vicious bite of his sandwich.

“So why are you afraid to go to the police?”

“I go to police and they think I have something to do with it. To them, Pole is like Russian. And then they tell people and killers come after me. I see what they do to my father. I no want to die like that.”

“You say you’re good with computers; mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Ask.”

She fired off some highly technical questions that she didn’t understand at all, but that a techno-friend had given her along with the answers. Lesnik responded to each of them correctly.

“Do you have computer you want me to fix, if you still not convinced?” he said crossly.

“Can’t blame a girl for checking,” she said sweetly. “Now about this Harris fellow? Tell me about him.” She’d gotten a description of Harris and wanted to see if it jibed with what Lesnik said.

“He is okay guy. Old. White hair, smells like cigar. We talk about job. He likes me, I think. He say it is good place to work, this Phoenix place. I drink some water and then I go to bathroom down the hall. Coming back is when I hear shots downstairs. I hide. Like I say already to you.”

Katie was writing all of this down. “Okay, now talk to me about—”

She didn’t finish because the door had been kicked open and he was standing there.

“Shaw! How did you know . . . ?” She glared at him. “You followed me!”

He didn’t bother to respond. Shaw only had eyes for Lesnik, who’d shrunk back in the corner, his half-eaten ham sandwich forgotten, his coffee spilled on the floor.

He marched toward the small man, who pressed back until the wall stopped him from going anywhere else. Lesnik cried out, “Don’t let him hurt me. Don’t let him. Please!”

“Shaw, you’re scaring him.”

Shaw took a fistful of Lesnik’s shirt in his good hand. “He should be scared.”

“You say no one else know!” screamed Lesnik as he looked pitifully at Katie.

“Shaw, let him go.”

“You’re going to tell me everything you saw and heard that day. And you better not leave one damn apostrophe out! I just heard the part about you going to the john and hiding, now pick it up from there.”

Lesnik looked ready to faint, his knees buckled.

“Shaw!”

Katie grabbed at his good shoulder to try and pull him off, which was akin to a gnat harassing an elephant.

“Don’t get in the way, Katie,” Shaw said menacingly as he glanced at her.

Lesnik, however, used this moment of distraction to pluck up his courage and nail Shaw with his fist directly on the man’s bandaged arm.

“Damn it!” Shaw doubled over in pain.

The Pole leapt past him, pushed Katie down, and sprinted through the door. Shaw recovered and, holding his arm, ran after him, Katie right on his heels. They clattered down the steps, Shaw moving as fast as he could with his bad wing, but the much smaller Lesnik was seemingly jet-propelled. He hit the door to the street and was through it while Shaw and Katie were still a flight above.

Shaw smashed the door open and skidded to a stop to survey the street. Katie bumped into him. She grabbed his jacket.

“Have you lost your damn mind!” she screamed.

He suddenly saw Lesnik across the street, on the Thames side. He bolted across the road, car horns blaring, taxis swerving to avoid him as Katie followed in his wake yelling at him to stop before he killed himself.

Shaw shouted at Lesnik, who was running down the sidewalk. The Pole turned around for an instant, his face full of fear.

The shot struck him right between the eyes. He stood there for a moment, seemingly unaware his life had just ended. Then he pitched backward and over the railing. A few seconds later his body hit the flat surface of the river. A few moments after that Lesnik disappeared under the dull-colored Thames, the water briefly turning a murky crimson.

At the sound of the shot, Shaw had immediately hunched down. As Katie started to run past him yelling for Lesnik, he reached out his good arm and snagged her leg, wrenched her down, and then pulled her over behind a parked car for cover.

“Stay down!” he urged. “That was a long-range rifle round.” He edged his head above the car’s fender and took a look around, checking for an optics signature from the sniper gun but seeing none.

He looked back at Katie and his expression softened. She was shaking.

“It’s okay now.” He put an arm around her.

“No, it is
not
okay,” she snapped, ripping his arm off her. “You had to come here. You had to butt in. And now an innocent man is dead! Because of you!’

“Neither one of us knows how is innocent he really is,” Shaw said calmly. “But right now we need to get out of here. The police—”

“You can run. I
want
to talk to the police. It’ll be good background for the story.”

“You’re still going to write it?” he said incredulously.

“You bet I am. And you want to know something funny? Until you bulled your way into this whole thing I’d decided to table it, at least for a while. But now?” She looked in the direction of where Lesnik lay dead. “Now, I changed my mind.”

“Katie, listen to me—”

She cut him off again. “No, you listen to me, Shaw. I know the woman you loved got killed. I know you’re hurting. I know your life is even
shittier
than mine right now, but you crossed the line back there. No, you
obliterated
it. And I will never trust you again.”

The sound of a siren reached them. Shaw glanced away and then looked back at her.

“You better get going. The police won’t be your best friend right now.”

“Katie, I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.”

“What I’m getting into, you sorry-ass son of a bitch, is the truth. Now get the hell out of here.”

Shaw’s eyes flashed at her for an instant, but they seemed to have lost their effect on the woman.

“Now!” she screamed at him.

As he rose to go, she said, “Don’t worry, I won’t mention you in the story. Consider it a
parting
gift.”

CHAPTER 63

K
ATIE CALLED KEVIN GALLAGHER
and filled him in on what had happened. When he finally stopped hyperventilating, he only had one question: “When can you deliver the story?”

“It’s already written. I can e-mail it to you right now. You can fact-check the crap out of it and then run it.”

“Your contact is dead?”

“Yes. The police are investigating.”

“Did they talk to you?”

“I only gave them the barest essentials and didn’t reveal anything he’d told me. This is front page, right, Kevin?”