by Gayle Wilson
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“They’re consistent. I told you. On the message. I couldn’t figure out why you’d come here tonight…” He paused, and then the voice she had always thought so pleasant continued. “They match the DNA.”
“What DNA? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Barrington’s. From the bombing. They match Barrington’s DNA.”
“That’s a lie,” Thorne said softly, almost as if he were speaking only to her. “There was no DNA profile done. There was no reason for that to be done.”
“Are you saying that Thorne put the confetti in my bed?” she asked. Her lips felt numb, unwilling to form the question.
“And killed Garrison,” Kahler agreed. “There’s enough physical evidence to tie him to both. I told you all this. You didn’t get my message?”
“No,” she said. The cold knot was back. Was it possible that what Kahler was saying was true? She had gone straight into the bathroom when she’d gotten home today, too eager to get out of her clothes, too eager to return to Thorne, and then Lew’s package arrived. She had never bothered to check her messages.
“If you really believe what you’re saying,” Barrington said, his voice still controlled, still enforcing a calmness she knew he couldn’t feel, “then I would like to call my attorney.”
“You can call from the precinct,” Kahler said dismissingly. “Kate, come down the hall toward me. Don’t try to touch her, Barrington. I’m not likely to miss at this range.”
“He said there was no DNA profile done,” Kate said. “There was no reason for one.”
“We were suspicious from the start,” Kahler said. “Despite the old man’s explanation about destroying the wrappings from the package, none of the rest of it made any sense. It always seemed strange that the judge would be opening his mail in the basement, but given Barrington’s reputation—”
“That’s a he, Kate,” Barrington said, speaking over the detective’s explanation, his voice still low, directed only to her. “That’s not how it happened. You know that.”
But she didn’t. She couldn’t remember anything in the files about the location of the explosion, perhaps because of the press blackout Barrington himself had imposed or because the police had tried to protect his privacy.
Again Kahler’s voice came from the darkness behind the light, almost an echo of her thoughts. “We were suspicious, just not enough. We were too willing to believe what he said because of who and what he was supposed to be.”
She wished she could see Kahler’s face. He had told her none of this before, despite the times they’d talked about the case, about Barrington. Something here didn’t ring true.
“Are you telling me that the police have suspected all along that the first bomb didn’t originate outside Barrington’s house?”
Kahler had suggested that, but only recently. Maybe he had an accident. Did you ever think about that? And she hadn’t. She had been so certain that Kahler’s warning had been born of his jealousy. Certain because she had already been caught up in her own fantasy about Barrington? A fantasy that had become so real that it had interfered with her judgment?
Standing in the darkness of the narrow hallway, she was no longer sure of anything. Her instincts about Thorne Barrington had been completely free of threat. She had trusted him, and now.. now she didn’t know who to trust.
“You’re alone?” she asked. That wasn’t right. No cop went into an unknown situation without backup. Kahler was too good a cop not to follow the rules.
“My backup hasn’t arrived,” he said.
“Then you have called someone? They’re on the way?”
“Of course.”
But with the word “call” she remembered that the phone lines from the house had been cut. The police didn’t cut lines. Kahler shouldn’t have done that, even if he were acting alone, even if he’d been worried about her safety. And why would he take the folders from her car? Unless…
Oh, dear God she thought, the realization producing a roller coaster of sensation in her stomach Because there was, of course, a folder in that stack about Byron Kahler, one of the hunters, his name neatly labeled in Lew’s script. A folder she had never read, had never seen before. But maybe Lew had. Oh, dear God she thought, Lew had.
Kahler had come to take care of the unfinished business he had begun three years ago, and the knowledge that she was in Thorne Barrington’s house had not been a deterrent to his plans.
“I got a package tonight, Kahler,” she said softly. “It came through the mail.”
“Kate.”
That was Thorne, trying to warn her. He had already figured it out. That’s why he had stopped before, why he hadn’t told Kahler the reason she had come to his house. Now he was trying to warn her not to mention the folders, but he didn’t know what she knew. Kahler had already discovered she had the files. He had taken them out of her car, and he must be aware of whatever damaging information was in the one with his name on it.
Obviously Lew had given himself away. Somehow he’d revealed whatever he’d found, perhaps unthinkingly, maybe in a phone conversation to the detective, jotting those habitual notes of his on the desk calendar as they talked. Then, belatedly realizing that what he had said might be dangerous, Lew had thrown the files into one of the big Priority Mail envelopes, conveniently on hand in the newsroom, and addressed it to her—the only person he could be certain would understand the significance of what he’d found.
Had he then rushed to the seeming safety of his suburban home, trying to decide if he should act on whatever he’d found? Maybe important. Maybe nothing, his voice echoed in her memory.
Oh, God, Lew, I wish you’d been right. I wish it had been nothing. She knew that she was not mistaken. It all fit. Even the profile the FBI had done so long ago matched what she knew about Byron Kahler. A loner. Product of a dysfunctional family. Very smart, meticulous about details. It all fit. As a bonus, he had an insider’s knowledge of how the game was played.
And if Kahler were Jack, he wouldn’t let her go. He couldn’t afford to. He knew she had seen the files. He had removed them from her car. What he couldn’t know was that she hadn’t finished reading them. And he would never believe that, she realized. It had been so against her character not to read them all. She hadn’t, but only because of Barrington’s invitation, only because of what she had heard in his voice.
“A package?” Kahler said finally. Although the thoughts had been tumbling through her mind at lightning speed, she knew the pause before his response had been fractionally too long.
“Don’t,” Barrington said again. He didn’t know that the files had been taken out of her car. He was still trying to protect her, as he had been when he’d requested to be allowed to call his lawyer. He didn’t realize, as she now did, that Kahler had to kill them both. Thorne still thought she could be saved, but she knew better. Kahler wouldn’t leave a witness to whatever was going to happen tonight. No witnesses at all.
A bomber don’t care who gets blowed up in the process of getting what he wants. He purely don’t care. Wilford Mays’s voice was in her head, cold and full of hate.
Kahler had given her Mays’s name, she remembered suddenly. When she had mentioned she might go to Hall Draper’s hometown, he had thrown out the information about Mays’s long-ago contact with Barrington to stop her. When she had indicated that she might try to find the girl Jackie Draper had told her about, Kahler had sent her off in another direction, pursuing a thirty-year-old case against another bomber. A wild-goose chase—to direct her away from whatever connection Draper had with Kahler. Through the girl? she wondered. Through the girl Hall Draper had gotten pregnant so many years ago? The image of a dark-haired child in an old blackand-white photograph flashed into her mind.
With that realization, she must have made some sound, some movement, because Barrington said again, questioning, “Kate?”
He couldn’t see her, of course. He s
tood with his head lowered, both hands raised now against the intensity of the light Kahler kept focused on his face. She knew that what Kahler was doing was deliberate. The migraine had probably already begun. Thorne was trying to protect her, even as he was fighting the maelstrom of pain pounding sickeningly in his skull, and suddenly she knew who to trust. No longer any doubt in her mind.
“What kind of package?” Kahler asked.
“The files,” she said. “All the Tripper files. Lew mailed them to me before he died.” She took a step closer to them both.
“You’ve been through them?” It was said without inflection, but despite his effort, the tone was subtly wrong, more obviously wrong perhaps because she couldn’t see his face. There was only the voice she had admired speaking from the darkness.
“I didn’t have time,” she said. She needed to be closer. Whatever happened, she could do them no good so far away from the gun. She had to keep up the pretense. Keep him talking until she could get closer. “I brought the folders with me. That’s why I came here tonight. I thought Barrington might be able to see something I hadn’t seen. I’d been through them a hundred times. I thought he might see something, and instead…”
“It’s all right,” Kahler said. “It’s over, Kate. You’re safe. Move past him.”
Was he only trying to get her to move so they would be closer together, a more certain target in the darkness, or was it possible that he had believed what she’d said?
“They’re in the car,” she added. “I’ll get them before we leave. We’ll take them with us to the station.” She took another step, near enough now that she could have reached out and touched Thorne.
“I don’t think there’s anything there,” Kahler said. “If there were, someone would have found it by now.” It was the same lie he had told her from the beginning.
“You’re probably right. You don’t think that’s why he killed Lew? Because of something Lew found in the files?” she asked. She took another step, turning her body so that she could slip between the wall and the shoulder of the man who stood unmoving beside her, hands still shielding his eyes.
“He killed Lew because Garrison discovered what he really is. Maybe one of Barrington’s friends revealed something about his medical condition. Maybe the brain damage you suspected. Something unhinged him and turned him into what he is.”
“A murderer,” she said. Another step. Past Thorne now. Nearer to Kahler. “Why would he kill all those people?” she asked. “Why would anybody kill all those people?”
“I’ve told you from the first I don’t have any idea why he’s done the things he’s done. That’s for someone else to figure out. All I know is I’ve got evidence tying Barrington to two crime scenes, one of them a homicide.”
“You’re going to take him in.”
“As soon as help arrives. Then I’ll take you home and all of this will be over.”
“I guess you must be right,” she said softly. She was almost to Kahler, able to see him clearly now that she was past the intensity of the beam. He looked just the same. The flashlight and the gun were remarkably steady, professionally held. And why not? she thought bitterly. He was a professional, with years of training at his command. A real insider. That was why he had been able to get away with it so long.
“I can’t help but believe he must have had a reason. Something set him off,” she went on, playing for time, trying to create an opportunity. Hoping for any opportunity. “Why did Barrington start building bombs? Why do people set out to kill other people?”
“You’ve always thought there had to be a connection,” Kahler said, a hint of mockery in the deep voice.
“Yes,” she acknowledged.
He smiled, the small intriguing lines around his eyes moving, the top of his face shadowed and the lower highlighted by the light he held, still focused at Thorne Barrington.
“Was it because of Jenny?” Kate asked. Her voice was very low, but she was close to him now. So close. “Was Jenny the girl Hall Draper got pregnant?”
“Jenny?” Thorne said, his voice coming from behind her. She didn’t turn at his comment, still watching Kahler, still waiting for a chance. And then Barrington said, not a question this time, but a realization. “Jenny Carpenter. My God, Jenny Carpenter.” There were so many emotions trapped in the soft shock. Recognition. Remembrance. Regret?
“I’m surprised you even remember her,” Kahler said. “She was just a nobody. One of the hundreds of nobodies you dealt with through the years.”
“I never thought she was nobody,” Thorne said.
“A cheap hooker. An addict. Of course you did. Did you even care what happened to her? Did you even know?”
“I knew.”
“What happened?” Kate asked. She could not prevent the question. The public’s right to know brushed through her consciousness, but she needed to know. She needed to understand what had set all this off.
“He put her in a cell, and she hanged herself.”
The words were brutal, as cold and as horrible as the imagery they evoked.
“To him, she was scum,” Kahler went on. “So he put her away, locked her up. Just to get her off the streets of the city his family practically owned. It didn’t matter that someone had loved her. That she had once been someone’s child, someone’s—”
The sentence was broken, the pain it had revealed silenced, but in the darkness, Kate spoke the words he had left unspoken.
“Someone’s sister,” she finished for him, her voice almost as agonized as his.
“The bastards destroyed her. They all destroyed her.”
“All those people had something to do with Jenny?” she asked. This was the heart of the mystery, the soul of the evil he’d perpetrated. A girl too young to die. A child in a black-and-white photograph. Innocent.
“They brought her to that cell. They all played a part in her destruction, so I found them. I hunted them down. All the steps on her journey to that place. It took me years, but I didn’t care. I needed to understand what had happened. They all were guilty. They all killed Jenny.”
“So you killed them,” she said softly.
“Do you pity them, Kate? They used her. They corrupted her. From Hall Draper’s teenage rutting to that bastard’s sanctimonious judicial murder, they all were to blame for her death. First they taught her to use her body, a way to earn affection. That was one of my mother’s many boyfriends.” The word was bitter, still hating, still vindictive. “Jenny’s father had deserted her. She just wanted someone to love her. That’s all she wanted, and he used that need. They all used her.”
“How did you find them?” she asked, so close to him now she could have reached out and put her hand on the gun. Just keep him talking, she thought. Try to think of something to do.
“The diaries,” he said, a thread of amusement, gentle with memory, in his tone. “She’d kept them. I had given her the first one. She was maybe six or seven. A birthday present, one of those little plastic things girls used to buy at the five-anddime. Hers were always pink. Even the last one was pink.”
Kate could hear the memories in his voice. It had changed, the accent of his youth stronger now. He was lost in the past, a time when he had been the whole world to a little girl. When he had bought her a birthday present, a simple thing she had cherished, maybe because she had so little else.
“When she was dead, they sent all those diaries to my mother. I found them when she died. Those pitiful childish books were what Jenny had kept through the years, and everything I needed to know was there. The boyfriend. Draper. The college boy who gave her her first hit. The people who pushed her down when she tried to straighten out her life. People who fired her from jobs, put her back on the streets because she wasn’t strong enough to leave the stuff alone. She wasn’t strong like you, Kate, but she didn’t give up. She didn’t stop trying to make something of her life, trying to straighten herself out…”
His voice stopped, controlling emotion that had crept
in. Not regret. Not even love, Kate thought. Hate? The need for revenge had occupied Byron Kahler for so many years, long, patient years of seeking those he believed had led Jenny to a cell, to a cold and lonely dying. She was sorry for the lost child Jenny Carpenter had been, but surely that was not reason enough…
“He has to pay for his part, and then, finally, it’s over,” Kahler finished.
Did he really believe that? Was he so twisted by hate and his need for revenge that he thought this insanity made sense?
“And me, Kahler? What about me?” she whispered the unwanted thought aloud. She hadn’t been mistaken about what he felt for her. She knew that he cared. Even as she was falling in love with Thorne Barrington, she had known that Kahler loved her. She had been sorry it was not a feeling she could ever return, that he was not the man she loved, but now she understood why.
“You were so strong. I admired that. Jenny was…”
Kate watched him swallow emotion, the movement of the muscles in his throat visible even in the shadowed darkness.
“You were so different So determined to find the answer. I tried to keep you safe, Kate. I tried to warn you.”
“That’s what the confetti was—a warning?” she asked. “And then you sent me after Mays to take me away from the connection between Draper and Jenny.”
“I didn’t want you to be the one to figure it out. After I met you…I just wanted it to be over. I couldn’t stop. Not until it was done. Until the debt was paid. You understand that. But when I met you, I wanted it to be over.”
“That’s why the timetable changed. Because of me?” she whispered. Hall Draper had died three months early because of her. Because of Kahler’s growing feelings for her. Just get it done. The need to make everybody dead, so he had broken his own rigid schedule. He had gone against the pattern.
“I deserved something,” Kahler said. “After all this time. Something for me. Was I wrong to want that, Kate? To want you?”