“What’s wrong?” Brynna asked as she and his partner followed him.
“Jack Gaynor is what’s wrong,” Eran said in a clipped voice. “Anlon’s second rescue. He beat his wife and stepson to death this morning. A neighbor heard screaming and called the cops, and he attacked the officers who came to the door. It happened so fast and the guy was so crazed that one of the uniforms ended up shooting Gaynor just to stop him. He’s dead.”
Brynna wasn’t surprised, but for the first time, Bheru’s calm expression changed to one of shock. “So two out of the three rescues he has successfully accomplished have ultimately ended in tragedy.”
“Oh, we’re not done yet,” Eran said. “I also just found out that Danielle Myers—that’s the mentally disabled girl Anlon tried to pull out of the river—was resuscitated at Cook County Hospital. It turns out she’s very much alive.”
THERE WAS A SECURITY guard in the lobby but a flash of Eran’s detective’s star got them past the guy with barely a pause. The three of them rode the elevator up to Casey Anlon’s condo in silence, and Brynna could only imagine what was going on in her companions’ minds. Eran, perhaps, wasn’t so hard to guess—he might still be subconsciously struggling against it, but he’d seen some things that were pretty out there as far as human believability went. Bheru, on the other hand, was a little harder to gauge. He had said and shown that he had the inclination to believe, but did he have the heart to go all the way? Eventually they might all find out.
The hallway was pretty plush, with gold- and green-striped carpeting and muted, modern brass-rimmed light fixtures spaced evenly between the doors to each unit. The doors were steel fire doors cleverly disguised as wood and there were no bells or knockers, probably because all visitors were expected to have stopped at the guard desk and been cleared before they ever got to someone’s front door. Eran rapped on Casey Anlon’s door with his knuckles and the sound was oddly loud and out of place in the quiet, upscale corridor.
“Who is it?” came Anlon’s muffled voice. Smart, Brynna thought. Even inside the supposedly secure building, he wasn’t going to open the door unless he knew who was on the other side.
“Detective Redmond, Mr. Anlon. We’d like to speak to you.”
The silence was long enough so that they all knew Casey was considering refusing. Eran opened his mouth to call out again, but the quiet sound of the expensive dead bolt turning stopped him. Anlon opened the door just wide enough so that he could see them. His gaze found Brynna and darkened. “What do you want?”
“We would like to speak with you regarding Mr. Jack Gaynor,” Bheru said in an ultra-polite tone.
The young man’s face was blank. “Who?”
“Jack Gaynor,” Eran answered. “He’s the guy you pulled from the burning car on the Kennedy Expressway on Wednesday.”
“What about him?” Casey’s voice was just shy of querulous.
Eran looked pointedly at the semi-closed door. “May we come in?”
“I would prefer yu didn’t.”
“He’s dead,” Brynna said before either of the detectives could answer. “Do you really want to have this conversation in the hallway where one of your neighbors might show up at any time?”
Anlon’s mouth worked but for a long moment nothing came out. Then he stepped back and pulled the door open enough for them to enter. “Come on in.”
Eran led the way, with Bheru trailing behind Brynna. Brynna had seen the way most of the men downtown held the door for her and the other females—an endearing cultural thing, although she was perfectly capable of opening her own door. Eran himself had treated her the same, most of the time acting like the quintessential gentleman. Here, however, he stepped in front of her like the professional cop that he was, making sure all was safe before allowing anyone else to move into unknown territory.
“Have a seat,” Casey said, although he clearly wasn’t happy about it. “What was she just saying? That guy I saved from the fire—now he’s dead?”
Instead of sitting, Eran leaned against the granite breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room area of the small apartment. “He is. He died this morning.”
Casey hesitated as he looked from Eran to Bheru and Brynna. Finally, he had to ask. “How?”
Eran kept his face impassive. “He was shot by one of the police officers who responded to an assault-in-progress call. Afterward, the responding officers entered his residence and discovered he had killed his wife and stepson.”
Anlon’s complexion went suddenly gray. “You can’t be serious.”
Eran just stared at him. “This is not something a person jokes about, Mr. Anlon.”
Although no one else had sat, Casey sank onto the couch. The black leather made his skin look the color of wet concrete. “He killed them?”
“Yes,” Bheru put in. “And he would have killed the policeman had he not defended himself.”
"-1" face="AJensonPro-Disp" color="#000000">“So I’m going to ask you again, Mr. Anlon. Who’s giving you the information about the people you’ve rescued? Who’s telling you to go save them?”
The younger man looked down, focusing on the carpet rather than taking a chance and meeting Eran’s eyes. “No one. I just . . .” The lie dwindled before he could fully voice it.
Brynna had been standing close to Bheru and doing nothing more than listening. The whole apartment was permeated with that familiar ocean breeze nephilim smell, and she couldn’t help enjoying it. Now she walked over and sat on a matching black chair, careful to stay far enough away so that he couldn’t balk as he’d done at the police station. “Who are you protecting?” she asked quietly. “The young lady who met you at Starbucks this morning?”
Casey jerked, then his expression slipped into something just short of panic. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course you do,” Eran said. “You’re a smart guy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the police are watching you.”
“That was just a friend,” he said. His shoulders were hunched and tight. “That’s all.”
Brynna raised an eyebrow. Liar, liar. The signs were so obvious to her—especially his increased heart rate and temperature—but of course, Eran and Bheru couldn’t tell. On the other hand, they instinctively knew better so it didn’t matter. Maybe she could shock him into spilling the information. Brynna leaned forward. “You know she’s married, right?”
Two splotches of red appeared high on Casey’s cheeks.
Oops—guess not.
“I told you. She’s just a friend.”
“Who kissed you on the mouth,” Eran said.
“An old friend.”
Eran brought out his notebook and flipped it to a blank page. “What’s her name?”
More hesitation. “Gina.”
Eran waited, pen ready, but Anlon didn’t say anything else. “I need more than that, Mr. Anlon. Last name, employer, her address and telephone.”
“Why?” Casey demanded. “She’s not involved in anything.”
“Because I’d like to ask her that personally.” When Anlon still didn’t respond, Eran added, “Because I don’t think you know any of it.”
They waited an uncomfortable amount of time before Anlon finally answered. “All right, so I don’t know her all that well—her name and that she works for some kind of government agency. I didn’t know she’s married, but I guess that explains a lot.” Brynna heard him mutter under his breath, “Does it ever.”
“If she’s the one giving you this information—”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he interrupted. “Where would she get it? She’s not involved.”
“Oh, I think she is,” Brynna said calmly. “A lot more than you realize.”
“She does not work for any government agency,” Bheru told him. “Her full name is Georgina Whitfield and she is a saleswoman at a tailoring shop on Michigan Avenue.”
Anlon’s jaw dropped, then his face hardened. “If you knew all this, why ask me?�
�� he demanded. “Because you’re trying to trap me or something, that’s why. But guess what? I haven’t done anything wrong, so your stupid games aren’t going to do any good.” He took a breath. “And really, if she did work for a secret agency of some kind, what makes you think you’d know it?”
Eran’s forehead lifted. “Secret?”
Anlon snapped his mouth shut. “I think you should—”
“Casey,” Brynna cut before he could finish telling them to leave, “we’re not interested in where Georgina works. I talked to her, face-to-face, and I know she’s the one giving you the names and information on people to rescue. I’m even fairly certain I know why she’s doing it.”
“What we’re interested in,” Eran said, “is who she told you to rescue next.” He took a step closer to the younger man. “We’re trying to prevent another tragedy here, Mr. Anlon. This is going to sound odd but it’s looking like a whole lot of folks would be alive if each of these people she’s telling you to save might had been left to their original destiny. And really, is saying that any stranger than her telling you who to rescue and where to go to do it?”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the saying ‘Leave well enough alone,’ ” Bheru added.
“But you don’t know that!” Anlon got to his feet with a jerk. “You don’t have a crystal ball—”
“But Georgina’s is clearly not working properly,” Brynna said.
“You don’t know that,” Casey said again. “Would you want to be responsible for letting someone who might be a good person die when you know you could have saved them?” He held up his hand. “Don’t answer that, because it doesn’t matter what you say. I don’t. It’s just coincidence, nothing more.”
“There’s no such thing,” Brynna said.
“So you say,” Casey retorted. “I disagree.”
“What did she tell you this morning at Starbucks?” Bheru asked suddenly.
His timing was perfect enough so that Casey couldn’t hide the guilt that shifted across his features. “Nothing. We talked about the weather.”
Eran scowled. “Oh please. Do you think we’re idiots?”
“If you’re planning another rescue—”
“I’m not.”
“I don’t believe you,” Brynna said.
“Thanks for calling me a liar in my own house,” Casey said stiffly. “You can all leave now. In fact, I insist.”
“Sorry,” Brynna told him as she rose and went to stand next to Eran. “I’ve always been a tell-it-like-I-see-it creature.” Eran elbowed her in the ribs and she shot him a perplexed look, then realized what she’d said. Ah well; she’d certainly said worse things in her time here.
“You know where the door is,” was all Casey replied.
As they walked out, Brynna saw Eran pull out another one of his business cards. When Casey ignored his outstretched hand, Eran dropped it on the breakfast counter as he passed. “If you change your mind,” he said quietly, “call me.”
“You already gave me a card,” Casey said with a withering glance toward it.
“I swear, we’re all just trying to do the same thing here—the right thing,” Eran said. “Call me and let’s talk about it before you decide to go and play Superman again. Please.”
“Of course,” Anlon said. His voice was level and carefully modulated, obviously false. “I absolutely will.”
“By the way,” Brynna said as she and the two men paused in the outside hallway. A few inches away, Anlon was swinging his door closed. “The girl you helped pull out of the river is very much alive, Casey.” The door halted its movement, although it didn’t open again. Fine, if he was going to insist on going this route, she would leave him with one final thought to go over in his mind. As many times as necessary.
“I wonder what she’s going to do when they let her out of the hospital?”
WITH THAT WOMAN’S WORDS ringing in his mind, Casey didn’t even make it back to the couch. He got the door closed and locked, took two steps, then put his back to the wall and slid down to the carpet. Then he just sat there, hearing them over and over in his head. He couldn’t even remember her name, yet her voice, the tone, pitch, everything, played inside his skull like a damned tape recorder.
“I wonder what she’s going to do when they let her out of the hospital?”
What, indeed?
He lowered his face to his hands and scrubbed at his skin, but it didn’t make the jumble of thoughts any clearer. Who was telling the truth, and who was lying? Because for all his protests and his face-to-face hard-line refusal to accept what those cops and that woman had said, the bottom line was he did not know Gina any better than he knew, say, the woman who lived in the next unit over on his floor. In fact, he knew more about his neighbor than he did Gina, because during their occasional chats she had been a whole lot more open than Gina had in all these weeks of having lunch together. After all that had happened, he felt like Gina kissing him those two times was nothing more than dangling a feather in front of a cat . . . on the other side of a window. And he had been too stupid to realize he was never going to reach that prize.
Casey lifted his face and let the back of his head thump against the wall. So be it. It was hard to admit it, but he’d already gotten the feeling he and Gina were over—not that they’d had anything real to begin with. Fun lunches, yeah, but not much more, and those had started to turn sour right at the beginning of the month. There had been a change in Gina, something elusive she had tried very hard to hide although he’d still picked up on it. In any case, she was married—he did believe that. There was the reason she would never go out with him, and why when she finally did call him, she didn’t do it from a phone he could call back. It was back to dangling that feather in front of him.
He inhaled deeply, held it, then let his breath out in a slow count of five. Let’s be honest—he believed everything Detective Redmond and his partner, and even the woman, had said. How could he have swallowed that bit about her working for some secret government agency? Ridiculous. How stupid had he been not to realize she was lying right from the start, going all the way back to when she’d claimed that her so-called secret employer wasn’t keeping track of the people about whom she had visions? If any of that had been true, they would have kept track of everything. If he wanted to, on Monday morning Casey could probably start at Wacker Drive and walk south on Michigan Avenue until he found the shop that Gina worked at, walk in and surprise the crap out of her. Wouldn’t that be special. It hurt—in his heart, and yes, in his pride—but Gina and her lies were no longer the major focus of the dilemma he was in. Not by a long shot.
Now the thing he needed to concentrate on was tomorrow.
At just past eleven-thirty in the morning at the Smith Museum of Stained Glass on Navy Pier, in a bizarre, spur-of-the-moment argument that was going to escalate out of control, a man who was only two years older than himself was going to die.
“It’ll be easy to step in and stop it, Casey,” Gina had told him this morning. “Think about it—all you have to do is be there when the two guys start arguing and say something like, ‘Hey, you need to take it outside. Look at all this glass.’ That will be enough to break the momentum and calm them both down.”
Of all the crazy things he now realized Gina had told him, these were the parts that had turned out to be true. Even so, he had argued with her, he had demanded to know why she kept telling him these things, he had reminded her, again, about the tragedy that had resulted from him saving Glenn Klinger. Her rebuttal had been hard to argue with because it touched a nerve inside him, the raw one that his brain had long ago marked as the what if button. It was the same one that was mentally tied to his own version of if only, and it was at the crux of everything he’d modeled his life on since he was old enough to understand that the man who’d played a fifty percent part in giving him life hadn’t bothered to stay around. He wasn’t so dense that he didn’t realize it was a sort of grass-is-greener fixation, but he also believed it was a
whole lot more complex. At the core of it all was guilt. If he couldn’t follow through on his responsibilities, whether they had to do with how good of a job he did at work, how good of a son he was, or the decision to help someone out who needed it—to save someone’s life, for God’s sake—then he was no better than the guy who’d impregnated his mother then walked out of her life without a backward glance. He was scum.
This time it wasn’t the tall woman he remembered, but Detective Redmond, his expression as he was saying that the man Casey had pulled from the burning car had killed his wife and stepson. Jesus—why? Casey would never know, of course, but that wasn’t the point. As with Klinger, the point was that if Casey hadn’t been there to help him, the man would have died and his wife and stepson would be alive today. It would be one dead and two alive, rather than three dead. How old had they been? Did the wife work, how old was the kid, what kind of people were they? The answers to all those questions had ceased to matter not when Gaynor had killed them, but when Casey had stepped in and saved Gaynor’s life. That was the moment at which he had altered . . . what was the word Redmond had used?
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