by Gayle Wilson
“Not if you consider only method, but the interesting thing is that Barrington was the judge who finally put him away. On some lesser charge, of course, but he burned him with as much time as he could Barrington’s convinced Mays did the school bombing. Mays, as you can imagine, hates Barrington’s guts.”
“So what does that mean as far as the Tripper bombings are concerned?” Lew asked carefully.
“Damned if I know,” Kate said, shrugging, feeling the frustration of not knowing as strongly as she had on the way back into the city. “But it’s got to mean something. Doesn’t it?”
Lew said nothing for a moment, thinking about whether it did or not, she guessed, trying as she had been to fit the pieces of the triangular-shaped puzzle together. Only, Lew was probably not considering the confetti bomber as part of the equation.
“Even if that’s a motive for sending a bomb to the judge, why would Mays hit the others?” he finally queried.
“He asked me that—why would he want to kill those other people. I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t. But that’s a hell of a coincidence. Barrington and Mays.”
“How many cases was Barrington involved in through the years, on and off the bench? Is it such a stretch to imagine that one of them might involve another bomber? Have you talked to Kahler about this?”
“He’s the one who mentioned Mays. Barrington says he told the police about Mays from the first, but somehow the word never got back to Kabler. He just picked up the connection on his own, going back over the cases Barrington had handled one more time.”
“But he thinks there’s some connection?” Lew asked.
“Kahler’s like the rest of us, grasping at any possibility.”
“What did you think about Mays?”
“That he’s one scary old man. You believe at first he’s this harmless old coot, and then all of a sudden, you see something in his eyes. I think he’s capable of almost anything. He certainly hates Barrington, but that doesn’t mean he had a reason to kill the other people Jack targeted. To be fair, it’s been a long time since Mays was even rumored to be involved in anything violent—thirty or thirty-five years.”
“Any current association with the hate groups?” Lew asked. He had picked up the pen he’d been jotting notes with and doodled along the edge of his crowded appointment calendar.
“I don’t know. You think I should try to find out?”
“Let me ask around, talk to Kahler about running the membership lists, and I’ll let you know. Maybe we ought to do exactly what Kahler did.”
“Which is?”
“Go back over everything we have one more time. Reread it all. Try to see if anything reaches out and grabs us.”
“I don’t have to reread it. I know it all by heart. I swear, Lew, there’s nothing else there. And I’m still left with the confetti bomber. I don’t even know if that’s connected to the others.”
“A one-time shot. Some kook thought it’d be cute to send the person writing about the bombings a fake bomb. It probably has no connection. Kahler said everything was different.”
“There was confetti in my bed when I got back from Tucson.”
It took a split second for the impact of that to be reflected in his eyes, and another few while he sorted through the implications. “In your bed?” he repeated. His voice was still calm and restrained, but his eyebrows had arched, his forehead wrinkling upward into the receding hairline.
“It was worse, somehow, than the other. I felt violated. Invaded. He was in my home.”
“That’s it, Kate. No more. This has gotten beyond crackpots sending letters. It’s too damned dangerous.”
“I had a new lock put in. Kahler says my lack of security was just an invitation to trouble.”
“At least that should take Barrington out of the picture for you. There’s no way he would have anything to do with that.”
“Given the fact that he never leaves home,” she agreed. “At least not in the daylight. Counts Dracula and Barrington.”
Lew laughed. “Don’t you think you’re letting your imagination run away with you? Are you picturing Barrington as some kind of night crawler? A monster who only comes out after dark? Come on, Kate Think about the reality of the man we’re talking about. Even given your theory about head injury, you know that’s a stretch.”
“That reminds me. What have you found out about Barrington’s injuries? You said you’d check around.”
“Yeah, I know. I haven’t found out much of anything yet, but I’ll try again,” he promised, making a note. “I want you to understand that I’m not doing this because I think the judge had anything to do with your harassment. That’s way off base, Kate. Way out in left field.”
She nodded, relieved that Lew was as adamant in his denial as he had been before. She didn’t want to believe Barrington was capable of doing the things that had been done to terrorize her. It didn’t fit with any of her impressions of the judge, either before or after she had met him. Unlike Wilford Mays, her sense of Thorne Barrington was free of menace, and she acknowledged to herself that she really wanted it to stay that way.
THE GATE WAS CLOSED, standing guardian again against the invasion of the outside world. She turned off the engine and sat in the darkness, looking at the wrought iron patterns and thinking about what Mays had told her.
Had Barrington allowed the state to frame the old man because he needed the goodwill of the political establishment? A different picture from the one that had formed in her mind and from the one Barrington had painted when they’d discussed the case. It was obvious that the old man believed he’d been done wrong. The ring of that conviction had been in every word. And insanity behind his cold eyes, she reminded herself.
Because she didn’t want to go home, dreading again having to walk into a place she knew had been touched by a different kind of insanity, she opened the car door and then after a moment stepped outside. The heat was less intense since the sun had gone down, but the humidity was still as oppressive. As she stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of the Barrington house, she lifted her hair up off the back of her neck. She should have put it up, she thought. Or maybe she should just get it cut. She was getting too old to wear it this long. Everyone said—
A hand touched her arm and she gasped, turning around with both fists raised defensively. At some point before she completed the blow her terrified brain had ordered, she recognized the man standing behind her. Her right hand almost connected with the side of his jaw anyway, her flash of recognition not quick enough to override the motion she had begun. Thankfully his reflexes were faster than hers. Thorne Barrington caught her arm, holding it high between them, holding tightly enough to prevent another blow.
“God, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought—”
Her gaze had fallen to where his right hand was wrapped around her wrist. At least what was left of his hand, she realized. The thumb and the first two fingers seemed to be intact, heavily scarred as was the back of the hand, but at least they were still there—unlike the other two that should have been and were not. Her shocked eyes moved to his face to watch all the muscles tighten, his mouth firming to a slit and his eyes narrowing. His hand unclenched suddenly, freeing her wrist.
“Sorry,” he said.
She knew what he was apologizing for. For touching her with that mutilated hand. He had told her he no longer shook hands and this was, of course, the reason. She could imagine the polite, veiled reactions that damage might provoke, especially if one was aware of the way in which he had been injured.
The dark eyes were still stubbornly holding hers, but there was something different in their midnight depths. Not a coldness like Mays’s, but still, something.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked, without making any reference to his damaged hand. “Were you coming to see me?”
“I came…” she began and then wondered what in the world she could tell him. “Because I couldn’t stand to go home,” she finished, a t
ruth she had certainly not intended to share.
“What’s wrong?”
“The bastard put his damn confetti in my bed. It was there when I got home from Tucson. I just couldn’t face walking in there again tonight. I know how stupid that is, but I couldn’t make myself go home. I was just driving around, putting off the inevitable, and somehow—I ended up here.”
He was still looking at her with that focused intensity. “You don’t have to go home. Not until you’re ready. Come inside,” he said. “We can talk. Have you eaten? Elliot’s probably got something stashed away.”
It was an invitation she had no right to expect, and for some reason, her throat tightened with its unexpected kindness. Come inside, her subconscious echoed, recognizing how unusual this situation was. Thorne Barrington was standing beside her on the sidewalk outside his house.
“What are you doing out here?” she blurted out her unthinking question.
“Out with the normal people?” he mocked her surprise, the amusement she had heard before suddenly back in his voice.
“Considering the folks I’ve been around lately, I’m not so sure about the normal part,” she said smiling. “You seem far more normal to me than the people I’ve been dealing with.”
“At least I promise not to put confetti in your bed,” Thorne said, and suddenly she remembered Kahler’s comment about foreplay. She took a breath, fighting the images the word had produced in her head and knew that despite everything, her obsession with him was still there.
Her eyes fell, determined not to let him see the effect he had on her. When she raised them again, he was smiling at her. Just the smallest lift of that very sensuous mouth. She felt her own lips move, answering. “I’ll count on that,” she said.
He turned back to the darkness behind him and whistled, the sound low and pleasant. It was apparently as compelling to the dog that bounded out of the shadows along the fence he had been investigating. Kate bent to welcome the coldnosed greeting, and then watched the retriever return to dance around his master as if they had been separated for days instead of the few minutes Barrington’s attention had been directed to her.
“This is why I’m outside,” Barrington explained, allowing the dog’s unrestrained welcome without the least trace of annoyance. He caressed the silken ears with his damaged hand, and when Kate realized she was watching that movement, she deliberately pulled her eyes away. “Elliot’s gone to visit his sister. She had a stroke a few days ago.”
“So you had to walk the dog.”
There was a small silence before he said, his hand still touching the puppy’s head, “Despite the fact that you believe I’m in hiding.”
“I had no right to say that to you, Judge Barrington. I wish—”
“Thorne,” he corrected. “I thought we’d settled that.”
She didn’t repeat the name this time, still hesitant to believe that he wanted to be on a first-name basis with her.
“Why is that so difficult for you?” he asked.
“Since I started working on this story, in my head you’ve always been Judge Barrington. Someone who was not quite…real, I guess.”
“Not real?” Again his tone was openly amused.
“Someone I had read about. I wanted to interview you before I did the profile, but you had an unlisted number, and you didn’t answer my written request. You just seemed…unapproachable. Unknowable. Always at a dis tance.”
“Do I still seem unapproachable?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Would you like to come inside, Kate?” he asked again. Patiently. “At least it would offer a respite from having to face your apartment.”
“I’d like that,” she said, managing a smile, although incredibly her mouth had gone dry, her stomach nervously fluttering. She didn’t know why he affected her this way. She could only hope her fascination wasn’t obvious.
“So would I,” he said. The line of his mouth was controlled, no answering smile, but again there was something in the dark eyes that she had not seen there before.
If this had been any man other than Thorne Barrington, she would have had no doubt about what was in his eyes, but he was so far removed from the world she inhabited that she wasn’t quite ready to assign to him its normal masculine attributes.
He was being kind because she had told him she was afraid. That’s all it was. She shouldn’t imagine there was anything else involved in his invitation, she reminded herself. Despite that very sound advice, her heartbeat had accelerated slightly because what she thought she had seen in the depths of Barrington’s eyes had been a very different invitation, one not motivated by kindness or decency. Very compelling to someone who had spent a major part of the last four months daydreaming about him, she admitted, and when he turned to unlock the gate, like the puppy, she followed him inside without question.
Chapter Eight
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked. The retriever had bounded ahead, disappearing into the darkness behind the staircase, but they had stopped in the shadowed foyer.
“I thought you mentioned something about food,” she reminded him, smiling.
“You haven’t eaten?”
“That was something else I didn’t want to do alone in my apartment. I thought about grabbing a bite somewhere, but…”
She paused, because she didn’t really know how to explain why she hadn’t. She had tried to phone Kahler at work, only to be told he was out. She hadn’t left a message, because she didn’t know where she was going to be. Not at her apartment. Maybe at some restaurant. Indecisive, she had simply told the policeman who had taken her call that she’d try again later.
She hesitated over confessing to Barrington that while she had daydreamed about him the last four months, Detective Kahler had been her only dinner partner. It sounded as if her relationship with Kahler was more personal than it really was.
“I know,” Thorne said. “I always hated eating out alone.” His left palm rested lightly against the small of her back, directing her toward the dark into which the dog had disappeared. “There’s something about the way people look at you, as if they’re wondering why you don’t have a friend to join you.”
“Or if you’re a woman, they decide there’s something wrong with you because you couldn’t get a date.”
She must have hesitated as the passage behind the stairs narrowed to a small hallway, so black she couldn’t see three feet in front of her face. The pressure of the guiding hand increased minutely and then disappeared.
“Sorry,” he said. “I forget how dark this must seem.”
The explanation faded as Thorne stepped around her to lead the way. The white knit shirt he was wearing made following him easy, even through the shadowed hallway. The kitchen was better, illuminated by the filtered glow of the streetlights outside.
“I can make you a sandwich. And there’s peach cobbler left from dinner.”
“I’ll settle for the cobbler. If it’s not too much trouble,” she added.
“You’re sure?”
“Just the pie. I have a sweet tooth.”
“Confessions of the damned. Me, too. That’s why Elliot plans dessert before anything else.”
As he talked, he opened the refrigerator and took out a casserole. Kate wondered why the action seemed vaguely wrong, and then she realized there had been no automatic flash of light when he opened the refrigerator. He closed the door and set the dish on the counter.
“You want it heated?” he asked.
“Not really. When I was a kid I used to eat the leftover cobbler cold. I’d stand in front of the refrigerator, grab a couple of spoonfuls straight out of the bowl, and gobble them down. My mother would have died if she’d caught me.”
He laughed. Like Kahler’s, his laugh was deep and pleasant, nice to listen to. She watched as he dipped two generous portions into bowls and then opened a drawer to supply them with spoons. The damage to his right hand didn’t seem to have caused any loss of dexte
rity. He had learned to compensate for the missing fingers, and here in his familiar darkness, it seemed he had also forgotten to be self-conscious about them.
He carried the bowls to the small round table set in a windowed bay. He pulled one of the chairs out for her and then seated her. He sat down across from her, unconsciously licking the thick juices of the cobbler off his thumb. The dark eyes looked up to discover she was watching him.
He grinned. Not distant. Not unapproachable.
“My mother would have killed me, too,” he said.
She laughed, and then embarrassed to have been caught staring at him, she concentrated on the cobbler and not on Thorne Barrington. The pie was cold and delicious, the peaches sweet and the thickened juices congealed under the sugar-glazed crust.
“This is wonderful,” she said after a few mouthfuls. “My compliments to the chef.”
“I’ll tell Elliot you enjoyed it.”
“You don’t have a cook?”
“Elliot’s the only staff I have. We have a cleaning service that comes in once a week, but Elliot cooks. He’s wasted on just me, I’m afraid. His talents were appreciated in my mother’s day when there was a lot of entertaining.”
“Then he hasn’t always been your butler?” she asked, taking another bite of Elliot’s cobbler.
“He started in service here when my great-grandfather was alive and worked his way up. Or, as he explains it, he simply outlived everyone else. Becoming my butler was the only way he’d consider letting me pay him half of what he’s worth to me. Elliot’s standards of being in service are rigidly pre-war.”
There was something archaic about his speech patterns, she thought. She had noticed it before. Maybe it was simply the rarefied social atmosphere he had grown up in. Maybe they all talked this way. It wasn’t that she didn’t like the way he talked. It was just a little more formal than she was used to, a little out of her league, as she and Kahler had decided. She hadn’t even been sure which war Thorne meant. Someone accustomed to those who were “in service” would probably have known what the phrase implied, but her family had never had a butler or a cook, other of course, than her mother.