by Karen Rose
“Mmm. Your fancy furniture made me nervous, but that tub I could live with.”
“And me?” The words were out of his mouth before he knew he’d planned to say them. It was far too late to take them back. Not that he wanted to. He wanted her in his life. But it was too soon to ask. Except now he’d gone and blurted it out.
Her eyes widened. “What did you say?”
He was saved from an answer by Rex sauntering up to their table. “Well, well, if it isn’t the Lone Ranger and Tonto,” he sneered.
Paige rolled her eyes. “Sit down, Rex.”
He took a chair and turned it backward, straddling it. He still wore the clothes from the night before. But his attitude was very different. Rex was scared. And angry.
“Thanks for the hall pass, Counselor,” he mocked. “Always nice to get out among the good people of our fair city.”
Grayson had made a call to Rex’s correctional supervisor, advising him that he needed to speak with him outside the allowed range of the ankle bracelet. He wanted no family interference this time. Just Rex. Maybe this time I’ll get the truth.
“Did you know Betsy Malone was dead?” Paige asked, as they’d previously agreed.
Rex’s eyes flickered. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “She OD’d.”
“That’s what someone wanted us to think,” Grayson said. “She was drugged.”
Rex sat up straighter. “And you think I did it?”
“No,” Grayson said. “You’re wearing a bracelet. You went nowhere near her home.” He’d asked the correctional officer.
“I didn’t kill Crystal either,” Rex asserted. “You can’t prove I did.”
“Then who do you think killed her?” Paige asked. “We know it wasn’t Ramon Muñoz. And I’m not so sure anymore that it was you.”
Rex stared at her for a long moment. “I thought it was Ramon. I really did. I don’t know who did it, and that’s the truth.”
“Rex, do you remember a group of kids in the MAC program?” she asked.
Rex’s flinch was barely perceptible, but Grayson saw it. From the look on her face, Paige had seen it, too. “Crystal was one of those kids,” she said.
Rex’s mouth fell open. “Oh,” he said so softly it was almost inaudible.
“Explain anything?” Grayson asked.
“No.” But it was obviously a lie.
“Okay, this is the way we see it,” Paige said. “Someone molested those girls, year after year. Maybe they were threatened, too scared to tell, but for whatever reason, they never told. Or maybe they tried and no one believed them. Until Crystal. She came to your party to blackmail someone. Was it you?”
Rex shot her a cold look. “You don’t know nothin’.”
“I know they’re dead, Rex,” she said. “Most of them murdered.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“All but one. Sixteen years, fifteen dead women. The killings started after Crystal’s death. I know she was found with a note, signed ‘RM.’ I know your alibi was faked. And I know that you are the family fuckup,” she finished harshly.
He paled. “You’re trying to pin those murders on me?”
“A better question is, is your family trying to pin the murders on you? They’ve cut you loose, Rex. They’re gonna let you take the fall.”
His jaw bulged. “I didn’t do anything. I swear it.”
“I believe you,” she murmured and his eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“Because you were too young to have done anything to those girls when they were twelve. You were only fourteen when the last MAC group would have visited the estate. That they would blackmail you makes no sense at all.” Paige leaned closer. “What happened that day, Rex? When you were fourteen?”
His lip curled. “What makes you think anything happened?”
“Because Betsy said before that you tried to make your grandparents notice you. Be proud of you. After that, you got into fights. You went out of control. What did you see?” When he said nothing, she sighed softly. “Was it your stepfather?”
“There’s no point in my telling you. Nobody would believe it anyway.”
“Try me,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot of unbelievable things today. The MAC program went on throughout your entire childhood. If you know anything, please tell us.”
Grayson’s mind was uneasy. Something didn’t add up. And then it hit him. Rex hadn’t even been born in 1984, the first MAC year. His mother was still married to Rex’s father at the time. “When did your mother marry your stepfather, Rex?”
Paige’s shoulders stiffened and Grayson knew she was doing the math, too.
Rex looked up, wary. “When I was three. Why?”
“Because your stepfather wouldn’t have been on the estate during the first three MAC years,” Grayson said. It must have been… He shook his head, disbelieving.
Rex’s body tensed as if anticipating a blow. Anger flashed in his eyes, along with shame. And that’s when Grayson knew he’d guessed right. “It was your grandfather, wasn’t it, Rex?”
Paige’s eyes widened. “The senator?” She considered it, then nodded, accepting.
Rex swallowed hard. “He’s an icon. A family hero.”
“If he sexually assaulted those girls, he’s a criminal,” Grayson said firmly.
“You’ll never prove it.” Rex rested his forehead on the back of the chair he straddled. “No one will believe you. He’s Mr. Family Values. Loving husband.” His mouth twisted. “Good father. Hell of a politician.”
“I’ve been prosecuting a long time, Rex. I know that molesters don’t generally wear trench coats and flash people. They’re people who look normal. Many have good jobs and serve the community. That’s why many of them go undetected—and unpunished—for so long. Am I surprised that your grandfather is a molester? A little. He doesn’t fit the profile and he is older. Am I shocked? I wish I were.”
“When I was a kid, I thought he was a hero. I thought he could do no wrong.”
“What did you see?” Paige asked. “We need to know. And you need to tell.”
“Him.” Rex’s throat worked. “She was scared. She fought and he hit her. Hard. She tried to scream and he covered her mouth… and did it. She was just a little girl.”
“What did you do?” she asked him, her voice thickening.
“I…” Rex’s face contorted. “Nothing. I did nothing. I ran away.”
There was an amazing amount of guilt that came with running away, Grayson thought dully. I was only seven. Rex was fourteen. Was that old enough to be expected to take action? He wished he knew the answer. “And then?” he asked.
“The kids were taken home in our limo. They usually made several trips, a few kids to a carload. They gave them ice cream and cheap plastic medallions,” he said bitterly.
“But the girl was crying,” Paige said. “Somebody had to have noticed something when they took her home.”
“He told her nobody would believe her,” Rex mumbled. “He told her that if she told, he’d have her parents killed. He told her if she was a good girl, he’d give her parents money and they’d have food.”
“Your grandfather?” Grayson asked.
“No. The driver. He’s dead, so you can’t ask him. But I heard him. The old man got done with the girl and left her there, crying. Then the driver came in and got her ready to go home. He… cleaned her. Made sure no one would know.”
Paige could barely speak. “When did the driver die?”
“Right after the parties stopped. Killed himself. OD’d.”
Grayson and Paige shared a glance. “Where did this assault happen?” Grayson asked.
“In my mother’s old bedroom. It was decorated like a little girl’s dream.”
Grayson wondered if Rex’s mother had been assaulted in that bedroom as well. He filed the distasteful thought away for later. “Did your mother live at the estate then?”
“No. She was in Europe all the time. When she’s in town, she has
a condo in the building.” He gestured to the McCloud building across the street with a tilt of his head.
“How did you hear the driver?” Paige asked. “If you ran away, how did you hear?”
“I ran after. I hid during. I was too shocked to come out at first. Then too scared.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Grayson asked quietly.
“My mother. I called her the next day. She said it never happened. She said if I told anyone that she’d call me a liar and say I was delusional. And she’d send me away.”
“She did that anyway, according to Betsy,” Paige said and Rex shrugged.
“She couldn’t stand the sight of me from the time I was a kid. It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” Paige said gently. “It matters, Rex.”
“Whatever. So now you know. What do you think you’re gonna change?”
“We’re going to find the only woman left alive,” Grayson said. “And we’re going to ask her to tell. If she does, will you testify?”
Rex shook his head. “I still have a trust fund. If I tell, they’ll cut me off entirely.”
“If they’re in jail, they can’t control your money,” Paige said, annoyed.
He laughed, a hollow sound. “You’ll never put them in jail. They’re the McClouds. They can do whatever the hell they want and get away with it. And if I play by their rules, so can I.” He stood up. “I’m done.”
“One more question,” Paige said. “Why were you hiding in the closet of your mother’s old bedroom? There was an ice-cream party going on downstairs.”
“I wasn’t allowed to go to the ice-cream parties, even when I was small. I was told to stay in my room. I was always told to stay in my room, out of sight.”
She just looked at him for a moment. “You hid something in that closet. Weed?”
“You speakin’ from experience?” he sneered.
She wasn’t baited. “A teenage boy doesn’t just hang in a room decorated like a little girl’s dream for no good reason. Either you’re gay or you were using. Or both.”
His jaw twitched. “Pills, not weed. I’d taken them from my mother’s bathroom.”
“Why were you taking pills at fourteen?” Paige asked.
“Just because a kid’s got stuff doesn’t mean the kid’s got value. Nobody wanted me. Not my mother and certainly not my grandparents.” His lips curled. “Because, as you so astutely noted, I was the family fuckup. Even before I did anything wrong.”
They watched him go back to his building, his step heavy.
“I should be more shocked, I guess,” Paige said. “But honestly, my first thought wasn’t ‘No way.’ It was ‘Why didn’t I see this before?’”
“Same here. Maybe because the senator is old, we just didn’t see him as a pervert.”
“And Dianna is ‘his heart.’” She rolled her eyes, furious. “She had to have known.”
“I don’t doubt it. But what I don’t understand is—why? Why the MAC kids? And are there any other victims? It’s going to be hard enough to prove he did it. That she knew will be even harder.”
“But you’re going to try.” It wasn’t a question.
“Absolutely,” he said grimly.
“We still don’t know who killed Crystal.”
“Yeah, but now we know who had the most to lose.” Grayson tugged her to her feet. “Let’s go get some food and figure out what to do next.”
Twenty-four
Thursday, April 7, 11:10 p.m.
Paige looked up from her notebook when Grayson came through his mother’s front door. He held Peabody’s leash in one hand, a bag of Chinese takeout in the other. His cell trapped between his shoulder and ear, he closed the front door with his foot.
Paige let herself imagine what it might be like to see him do this domestic ballet every night. He caught her gaze and held it and she knew he was thinking the same.
Soon. Soon they’d be able to talk about whatever future they might have. But not yet. Violet didn’t have much longer. If she was still alive. Adele was still missing.
And the senator was a child molester. He’d set all this trauma into play with his perversion. It made her furious every time she thought about it.
Grayson sat, still listening to whoever was on the other line. Too hungry to be polite, Paige started without him, watching his brow furrow, hoping it wasn’t more bad news.
“Okay,” he finally said. “You’re sure? Thanks.”
He hung up and took the chopsticks she offered. “Who was that?” she asked.
“Lucy. She checked the other names. More of the same. Only two died of natural causes. I reported it to Hyatt. We have an official serial murderer on our hands.”
“Any word on Violet?”
“No, not yet. They checked the names we gave them from Bond’s law firm. None of them panned out. They have another lead from a maid in the hotel in Toronto, but her description is sketchy at best. Give me a minute.” He ate steadily, emptying his plate. “I’m still hungry, but at least I can think now. Lucy found something else.”
He opened another carton, dumped noodles on his plate. “She examined the photos of the ligature mark around Crystal’s throat. She thinks the person who strangled her had one hand weaker than the other. The ligature is uneven in depth across the neck.”
Paige’s smile was sharp. “And our good buddy the slimy sex-pervert senator had a mild stroke in 2001. His left hand was affected. Sonofabitch. He did kill her.” Then she frowned. “Wait. The strangulation didn’t kill Crystal. The stab wounds did.”
“Which brings me to the other thing Lucy said. The autopsy photos show wounds that may not have been made by the same person. The angle of entry is too different.”
Paige bit at her lip. “So two people killed Crystal?”
“Don’t know. Lucy thought that maybe the first person strangled her, then may have stabbed her once. The second person stabbed her deeper. That was the fatal blow.”
“Shit. This changes a lot.”
“Not really. If McCloud’s hands were too weak to kill Crystal, somebody helped him finish the job. Just like the driver helped him intimidate all those girls into silence.”
“The driver was dead years before Crystal’s murder, though,” Paige said, considering the logistics. “He had to have had another helper, one strong enough to hang all the MAC victims after they were drugged.” She shook her head, rage bubbling anew. “He raped them and then hunted them down years later and killed them. There is no hell hot enough.”
“Agreed,” Grayson said grimly. “Although the best I can do is a needle in the arm.”
“We have to catch them first. At least we know where the senator is. We need IDs on his helper, and the broker. And we need to find Violet and Adele.”
“The broker has Violet and the senator knows who he is. But we can’t pick up the senator until we have a complainant.”
“Adele,” she said. “If the senator killed all the other MAC women, and if Adele didn’t just run away from home, the senator either has her or knows where she is.”
“We still can’t pick him up. We don’t have a body—we don’t have any proof other than Rex’s story, which he’s said he won’t repeat in court. Other than that, we have nothing but very tenuous circumstantial evidence. It’d get thrown out of a grand jury.”
“I want to scream,” Paige said, frustrated. “This is like a giant circle with no end.”
“I know. I could use some good news about now.”
“I have news, kind of good. Do you remember Detective Perkins? He took my statement in the ER after the parking garage. He called while you were gone. He has an ID on the parking-garage guy. They got his DNA from your briefcase.”
“Well, who is he?” Grayson asked fiercely, his hand tightening to a fist.
“Name’s Roscoe ‘Jesse’ James. He’s a professional fighter. Or was.”
“He’s dead?”
“Perkins didn’t know. James disappeared Tuesday night
after his fight. He was last seen at his favorite bar. Security camera shows him sitting next to a guy who could have been Silas. The guy dumped something into Roscoe’s drink and later said he’d give him a ride home. Roscoe’s car is still in the lot—he never made it home.”
“Silas killed him?”
“Perkins said they’re checking the vehicles found in Silas’s garage. His van had a lot of blood in it. Same blood type as they found in the wood near the nursing home, which would be Kapansky’s. They’ll have to see if they can find James’s blood, too.”
“If I hadn’t seen him in action with my own eyes, I’d still have trouble believing Silas could have done all this,” Grayson said. His cell phone rang and he checked the ID. “It’s my mother.”
“Tell her thank you for letting us use her place,” Paige said.
“I will.” He hit the green button. “Hey, Mom.” He frowned. “Are you in a safe place? I just had that car tuned up. It shouldn’t have just stopped on you like that… What are you doing there?” He let out a sigh. “The GPS is only useful when you turn it on, Mom.”
Then the color drained from his face and Paige’s heart started to pound. He surged to his feet, his face filled with fury. “Who are you?… Yeah,” he bit out. “I understand.”
Blindly he set the phone on the table.
Panic grabbed her throat. “What? What happened?”
“He has my mother,” he said tonelessly. “And Holly. At first she said the car broke down. And then she said, ‘I love you, Tony.’ When I was small and we were hiding…” His voice broke. “If she ever called me Tony, I was to run as fast as I could.”
Paige kept her voice calm. He didn’t need her getting hysterical. “And then what?”
“Whoever has her knew she’d given me a message. He hit her. Hard. Then he came on the phone and said if I wanted her to live, I’d come with you. No cops.”
Paige made herself breathe. “We need to call Joseph.”
Grayson stood. “I’ll call him on the way. You stay here.”
“No. Don’t ask me to do that. I’ll just follow you anyway.”
“He wants us both dead. I won’t let him have you.”