by Lisa Gardner
Shana finally roused herself enough to acknowledge Phil’s presence. She looked him up and down, grunted once, then swung her attention to her sister.
“I like that color,” Shana announced. “Pretty shade of blue. That cashmere?”
“How are you feeling?” Adeline asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Do you think I still ask questions just to be polite?”
“I think you wish you were anywhere but here right now. I think you wish you weren’t adopted, and that doctor was your birth father, and you really were an only child.”
Adeline made a show of glancing at her watch. “A lot of self-pity for first thing in the morning,” she observed mildly.
“Fuck you,” Shana said, but the words lacked heat, instead sounding dispirited. The depression, D.D. figured. She hadn’t considered it before, but dejection made sense. The root of most rage was self-loathing.
Adeline finally moved. She pushed away from the door and calmly approached the table, moving around Phil until she could slide out the second chair and take a seat. The move forced Shana to confront both parties and, for the first time, truly consider Phil.
He remained silent, his face a study in patience. D.D. liked it. Draw the target out. Make Shana do all the work.
“How long you been a detective?” Shana asked abruptly.
“Twenty years.”
“Why?”
“Good job.”
“You like violence?”
“No. Personally, I’m a big fan of hands are for hugging.”
Phil’s easy admission seemed to throw Shana. She frowned again.
“You research me? You know what I did?”
“Yes.”
“Think I’m guilty?”
“Yes.”
“Well, at least you’re not stupid.”
“Do you like violence?” Phil asked her.
“Sure. All the time. What’s not to love?”
“Prison,” he said.
She gave an unexpected bark of laughter. “Sure as hell got that right. Then again, plenty of violence in here. In here, hands are for hitting. Or shanking. Personally, I prefer a quality homemade blade. My weapon of choice.”
“Then why are you trying to escape?”
“Who said I’m escaping?”
Phil gestured to her hand, still bandaged from the IV needle. “Cutting yourself, nearly bleeding out. Sounds like a woman trying to escape to me.”
“Nah. You heard wrong. Cutting isn’t about the future. It’s about enjoying the here and now. You look like a family man. The right age to have at least one or two teenagers. Ask your daughter about it sometime. How good it feels to watch the razor slide beneath your skin. Like masturbation. Bet she can tell you all about it.”
Phil leaned forward, arms crossed on the table. “Who scares you, Shana?” he asked quietly. “Who do you know, what happened, to make a woman as tough as you slice open your own veins?”
The bluntness of the question surprised D.D. It seemed to catch Shana off guard as well.
She leaned forward as well, though her motions were more awkward due to her shackled hands and heavily bandaged legs. “You wouldn’t understand,” she informed him, tone equally solemn. “You don’t know me, Mr. Detective Phil. And you can talk and talk, and ask and ask, but it won’t matter. You don’t know me, and no amount of time in this room can change that.”
Her gaze shot to Adeline. “Same with you. All these monthly meetings, and what for? I’m nothing but a project to you. You don’t see me as a sister, not even a person. You flutter in, do your good deed for the month, then flutter away to your respectable job and fancy home. Only reason you’re here now is because you need something from me. Otherwise, I’d still be counting down twenty-nine days. That’s what I get to do in here, you know. Count down the days. How often do you do that?”
“Stop,” Adeline said calmly.
“Stop what?”
“The pity parade. That’s between you and me. Sisterly resentment for us to discuss in—you’re right—approximately thirty days. But this detective didn’t drive all the way here to listen to us squabble. This visit isn’t personal, Shana; it’s professional.”
Shana smirked. “’Cause you want something from me. That’s what it comes down to. You need something from me.”
“So,” Phil interjected briskly, trying to regain control over the conversation, even as his right hand resumed picking on his left thumbnail. “Let’s talk. You agreed to the request, after all, and it’s not like you have to.”
“You mean I can get up and walk away?”
“Sure. Right now. Leave if you want to. I’m sure you’re a busy woman. God knows I have plenty of things to do.”
Shana regarded him suspiciously. “You’re lying.”
“Have you been advised of your rights, Shana? Do you understand you don’t have to answer any of these questions? And you’re entitled to your lawyer being present, if you want.”
Now she snorted. “What’s he gonna do? For that matter, what are you gonna do? I’m already here forever. Can’t punish a woman any more than that.”
“Is that why you cut yourself instead?”
“Shut the fuck up!”
Which D.D. took as a yes.
Phil leaned forward. He had his hands clasped before him, his expression still patient. A man with all the time in the world and who was still waiting to be impressed.
“You know what I see when I look at you?” he asked now.
“The future Mrs. Detective Phil?”
“A bright girl who once made a mistake. But you can’t go back, can you? Thirty years later, no one knows that better than you. What’s done is done. You can hate Donnie Johnson for dying on you. You can resent this overwhelming need you have to slice and dice human beings, but what’s done is done. And here you are. Thirty years wiser, and still going nowhere. No, you’re not trying to hurt yourself to escape the violence of prison, Shana. It’s the boredom that’s killing you.”
She smiled slyly. “Gonna entertain me, Mr. Detective Phil?”
He glanced at his watch. “For another twenty minutes, maybe.”
“Why only twenty minutes?”
“Because you’re hurt, Shana. You need your rest. I won’t interfere with that.”
Shana blinked, clearly perplexed by his gentle tone. Phil didn’t give her any time to recover.
“Tell me about your father.”
“What?”
“Your father. I’m told you two were very close.”
“No.” Abruptly, her face shuttered up. She sat back. “I won’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“It’s for her, isn’t it?” She gestured at Adeline, plastic zip ties rattling. “Dad, Dad, Dad, tell me about Dad. She’s the one who always wants to talk about him. Because she doesn’t remember. She was just a baby.”
“I don’t remember him,” Adeline agreed quietly, glancing for the first time at Phil. “I was only an infant. The few things I know come from memories Shana has shared with me.”
Shana sat back, clearly gloating.
Phil ignored her, focusing his attention on Adeline instead. The skin around his left thumb had started to bleed from his picking, but he didn’t seem to notice. “But you’ve researched your father, haven’t you?” he asked Adeline.
“Yes.”
“Did he have any close friends, known associates?”
Adeline pursed her lips, seemed to be considering the matter. “I could look it up for you. I have the old police reports—”
“What?” Shana sat forward.
“The police reports,” Adeline said, not even looking at her sister anymore but continuing to address Phil. “From Harry’s case file. I have them all. I could make you copies, Detective, if that’s
quicker than accessing them through official routes.”
“That would be great.”
“Hey!” Shana said.
“Is there other information you’d like?” Adeline continued, eyes still on Phil. Then suddenly, “Oh my goodness, what happened to you?”
She reached over, raised Phil’s bleeding thumb.
“Oh, it’s just a hangnail. Never—”
Phil’s voice trailed off, as Adeline placed her index finger against the torn flesh and pressed hard. He stared at her pale finger with rapt fascination. As she slowly lifted it up, inspected his wound, then the tip of her carefully manicured nail . . .
“Oh dear,” Adeline murmured softly. “I got blood on my finger.”
Now she stared her sister in the eye. Raising the bloodstained finger in the air, then slowly but surely bringing it toward her own lips . . .
The result was immediately explosive.
“No! No, no, no. That’s mine!”
Shana was up, chair rocked back, zip ties shaking around her wrists.
“It’s not,” Adeline retorted, low and fast. Professional psychiatrist was gone. This was a dark-haired, dark-eyed wild woman who seemed intent on pushing her own sister to the brink. “I earned it. I helped him. It’s mine.”
“You bitch—”
“You’ve done nothing! Sitting there, smirking, pretending to know it all. I bet you don’t even remember our father; you were just a toddler, after all. Why do you think I ask so many questions? Because I know you’re lying, making it all up. You can claim to remember Harry all you want. But I have the files. I know the truth, Shana. I’ve always known the truth!”
“One hundred fifty-three!” Shana declared abruptly. Her gaze was locked on Adeline’s bloodstained finger, still suspended between them.
Phil had shoved back his chair slightly, hands braced on the table, as if preparing for fight or flight, except he wasn’t sure which.
“One hundred and fifty-three what?” Adeline demanded.
“You’re so smart, you figure it out!”
“No. This isn’t about me. It’s about you, Shana. It’s about you finally proving yourself. Thirty years you’ve been wasting away in here. Detective Phil wasn’t lying before. You’re smart. You’re capable. You could be someone, Shana, even behind bars. You could assist with a real murder investigation, do some good in the world. Maybe then you wouldn’t be my pity project. Maybe then I’d call you sister instead.”
“I know Daddy,” Shana spit out. “You do not know Daddy!”
“Prove it!”
The two sisters glared at each other. Phil swallowed slowly.
“You want me to be useful?” Shana suddenly drawled.
“I think you might find it an interesting change of pace.”
“Fine.” Shana smiled. “Tomorrow morning, I’m going to be useful. I’m going to be the most useful person you know. In fact, I’m going to be so fucking useful that you will sign me out of this prison and take me home.”
“Not likely.”
“Oh, but it will happen. Mr. Detective Phil will even agree that you should do so.” Shana gestured with her bound hands toward Phil. “And, since I’ll be your sister and not your project, you’ll let me stay in your house, Adeline. You’ll even let me sleep in your bed. Forty-eight hours.” She nodded. “That’s what my usefulness is going to cost you. Forty-eight hours of me wearing your clothes, showering in your shower, living in your luxury high-rise. That will be the price of my usefulness.”
“No.”
Shana whispered: “One hundred fifty-three.”
“Shana—” Phil began.
“Shhh,” she informed him softly. “This isn’t about you, Mr. Detective Phil. You be quiet now. This is about me and my sister. It’s always been about me and my sister, and unfinished business.”
“What is one hundred and fifty-three?” Adeline demanded.
Shana smiled again. But the expression was devoid of emotion and didn’t do a thing to hide the cool, calculating gleam in her flat brown eyes.
She’d been pretending, D.D. realized slowly. Her show of belligerence. Her attempts to shock them with graphic details of her own self-mutilation. Even her awkward flirtations with Phil. Those hadn’t been real emotions, but simply masks Shana slipped on and off the way other people changed clothes.
This was the real Shana Day. A stone-cold killer, whose gaze now lingered almost tenderly on her sister’s bloodstained fingertip.
“One hundred fifty-three,” Shana whispered. “That’s my proof. I do remember Daddy. And I love him. I’ve always loved him. Now, go home, baby sister. Read your files. Talk to your little cop friends. Then lock your doors. Just because you can’t feel pain, doesn’t mean that when he comes for you, it won’t hurt anyway.”
Chapter 17
I LEFT THE INTERVIEW ROOM, struggling for composure, but in truth, rattled to the core. My adoptive father had been right; reconnecting with my sister merely returned me to the house of horrors I’d been lucky to escape the first time.
Now I dropped my bloodstained finger to my side, aware of D.D.’s gaze upon me, as Phil and the superintendent continued speaking in the background.
“Come on,” D.D. said abruptly, gesturing to my hand. “Let’s find a washroom, clean up.”
She was already moving, so I followed. From a doctor’s point of view, I thought D.D. appeared to be feeling better this morning. Whether that came from effective use of approved pain management techniques or simply the adrenaline rush of once more being a detective on the chase . . .
While the interview with my sister had wrung me out, D.D. seemed almost giddy.
“You played her,” she said now. “First you were all cold clinician, then suddenly you were on the attack, belittling her memories, stealing her glory. Acting all, well, sisterly. Then, that whole bit, waving around Phil’s blood on your fingertip. Pure genius.”
I didn’t say anything, but tucked my red-stained finger into my fist. The problem with talking to my sister was never her obsession with violence; it was the way her appetites called to my own. Beast to beast, family member to family member, until I really did want to lift my finger to my lips, take a quick, delicate taste . . .
We arrived at a single unisex bathroom, complete with a windowed door that eliminated any chance of an inmate’s—or visitor’s—privacy. I’d been hanging around the prison long enough to know the facilities. I stuck to washing my hands and nothing else.
D.D. waited in the corridor.
“Do you think she really knows something?” she asked when I reemerged. “A connection between your father’s forty-year-old crimes and these recent killings?”
I hesitated. “Do you know a reporter by the name of Charlie Sgarzi?”
The detective shook her head. We worked our way back to Phil and Superintendent McKinnon.
“He’s the cousin of Shana’s twelve-year-old victim, Donnie Johnson,” I explained as we walked. “He’s been writing to Shana for the past three months now, requesting permission to interview her for a book he’s writing on his cousin’s murder. Given how much damage Shana did to his family, he feels she owes him one.”
“Okay.”
“Shana never replied to his letters, so he showed up on my doorstep last night in order to plead his case in person. He also claims to have interviewed other inmates who once served time with Shana. According to him, they say she knows things she shouldn’t know. As if she still has connections to the outside world and can manipulate things from behind bars.”
“Like a crime boss?” D.D. asked, frowning.
“Possibly. Except here’s the issue: Shana doesn’t bond with fellow inmates, exchange notes with pen pals or entertain during visiting hours. I am her sole guest each month. Otherwise she spends twenty-three hours a day locked in the isolation of her cell. I can’
t picture her having the capability, let alone the opportunity, to forge the kind of complex social network required to reach beyond the prison walls. And yet . . .” My voice trailed off.
“Yet?”
“She does know things. Small, random things, say, the color of a new sweater I recently purchased. The kind of details that are slightly worrisome, but not significant. And easy enough to explain away. Maybe I mentioned the sweater purchase and just forgot. Except . . . There have been more and more of those kinds of observations lately. The past few months, each time I’ve visited, my sister has known something about me that, in theory, she shouldn’t.”
“You think she’s watching you? Or, more accurately, having someone else watch you?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“One hundred and fifty-three,” D.D. prodded.
I shook my head. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Nothing about that number that reminds you of Harry Day?”
“No. I’ll have to check the case files.”
“That’d be great. God knows Phil wasn’t lying in there; it takes about a pound of paperwork and a lifetime of patience to get old case files pulled from the city’s archives. If we’re lucky, we’ll get access to the same info in a mere six weeks or so. Meaning it would be very helpful if you could just look the info up, at least for now.”
“First thing when I get home.”
“Perfect. In the meantime, let’s speak with the superintendent. If anyone knows how your sister might be making contact with the outside world, it’s gotta be her.”
• • •
SUPERINTENDENT MCKINNON WAS BLUNT on the subject:
“Communicate with the outside world? Please, most of these inmates are having sex in a no-contact facility. Talking is the least of our concerns.”
According to the superintendent, the methods used for communication between inmates were numerous and ingenious. While Shana was confined to a maximum-security cell, she regularly checked out books from the roving library cart, ordered items from the prison commissary and received food trays three times a day. In prison life, each transaction was an opportunity to send or receive a message, whether a handwritten note, a hastily whispered word or a carefully crafted code.