The Inquisitor

by Gayle Wilson

  “I’m saying that’s what Bingham thinks.”

  “What do you think?”

  “That he saw your interview that night. And he responded to what you said exactly like I did.”

  They were back to that. Of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Sean’s entire premise about the Inquisitor targeting her had been based on the few words she’d said on camera.

  “But…Bingham thinks the whole time you thought he was watching me, he was really following you.”

  “Bingham’s a local cop with a whole lot of shit going down and not enough expertise or experience to know what to do about it. Besides, maybe he doesn’t know everything you and I do.”

  “Like what?”

  “That they save every newspaper clipping about their work. Pin them on the wall. Make shrines of the more lurid tabloid stories. You know he was watching the news that night. Especially that night. The day they made the announcement about his accomplishments here. You aren’t Bingham. You have the expertise. You damn well know he saw you.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The long brown fingers hesitated before they repeated the journey across the counter to pick up another egg. He cracked it hard enough to make the bowl sing, then adroitly separated the halves with his thumb and ring finger.

  “I thought you were hungry.”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, Sean. That may work with the cops, but as you pointed out, I’m not Bingham. This is what I do for a living.”

  “Analyze people?”

  “Analyze their motives for saying the things they say. So now I’m wondering why, after all your arguments to the contrary, you’re trying to convince me the killer isn’t interested in me.”

  “Bingham’s the one who wants to convince you of that.”

  “Why? What does it matter to Bingham what I believe? Or who I call on for protection? Right now, I’m just one less woman he has to worry about.”

  “He thinks that if I walk away from you, he will, too.”

  If I walk away from you, he will, too…. Again, there was only one interpretation that made sense.

  “Because…it’s you he wants?”

  “That’s the current thinking downtown.”

  “Is it what you think?”

  His eyes came up, holding hers for perhaps five seconds. Then they dropped again to the eggs he was breaking for a breakfast she could no longer imagine trying to choke down.

  “I think he’d get more satisfaction out of doing what he did before.”

  This wasn’t about Carol Cummings’s murder. That wasn’t what Sean was talking about. This was about Makaela. And what the killer had done before…

  “He’d get more satisfaction from destroying someone you should have protected.”

  He broke another egg, the movement of his hand as steady as it had been with all the others. Whatever he felt about his sister’s death had long ago been rigidly encased in the hard-ass persona he wore like a medal.

  Or like a shield.

  If not for his determination to avenge Makaela’s death, even if it cost him his own life, she might have believed he’d come to terms with its trauma. Now she knew that he hadn’t.

  “You weren’t there when it happened,” she said, unable to ignore his pain, no matter how skillfully he pretended.

  “Wherever I was, wherever she was, she was my responsibility.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was my sister.”

  “She was an adult. There comes a time when—”

  “Maybe for you. Things didn’t work that way in my family.”

  The kind of bond he’d shared with Makaela would have been forged in something other than an ideal family situation. The out-of-proportion responsibility he had felt for his sister was probably the product of a skewed sibling relationship, something beyond a normal big brother attitude.

  “So how did they work?”

  “We looked out for one another.”

  “Did you? All of you? Or was it really only you looking out for Makaela?”

  “I’m not one of your patients, Doc. Go peddle your psychobabble to someone who might be inclined to buy it.”

  “So it’s okay for you to play psychiatrist, but your psyche’s off limits.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You told me in no uncertain terms how what I said in that interview would have been interpreted by the man who murdered your sister. If that isn’t playing psychiatrist, what is?”

  “I read the profile the FBI put together.”

  “So did I. It seemed pretty run-of-the-mill. A lot of guesswork, which is always the case. And nothing I read made me half as sure about anything as it made you. So that makes me wonder if there isn’t something else going on here.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. And I’d be willing to bet you won’t tell me. Actually, I doubt you’ve ever told anyone.”

  “You want to know what makes me tick? Is that it? Hell, there isn’t all that much to tell. I grew up in a slum, and I grew up fast. When I was old enough to leave, I did. And I never went back. End of story.”

  He held her eyes defiantly, clearly waiting for a response. There was literally nothing she could say to that recital. As far as it went, it was more than likely true.

  But she knew it wasn’t complete. Not by a long shot.

  He looked down at the eggs he’d broken and then back up again, meeting her eyes. “Still hungry?”

  She shook her head, knowing that whatever the truth behind the man Sean Murphy had become, she wasn’t going to learn it by asking questions. Not of him.

  “Yeah, well, I guess that’s the difference between you and me. I am. You mentioned something about a pantry.”

  Without answering, she walked across the kitchen and opened the double doors on the far side of the room to reveal shelves loaded as they always were with canned goods and staples. As she stood there, trying to solve the enigma Sean represented, he came up behind her.

  She stepped to the side to allow him an unimpeded view of the contents. At the very least there should be canned mushrooms. Those, with the cheese he’d laid out on the counter—

  “Call Bingham.”

  He was standing slightly behind her left shoulder, close enough that his breath stirred her hair. She nodded again.

  “He could be right, you know. If I walk away from you now, the Inquisitor might follow me.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does to me. We had a bargain. I’ve kept my end of it. And I expect you to keep yours. You can tell the lieutenant for me that I’m not interested in whatever it is he has to say.”

  “Tell him yourself. Maybe if it comes from you, he’ll believe it.”

  The day had seemed endless. The local television broadcasts and even the cable news networks were full of Carol Cummings’s murder. The police confirmed that she’d been butchered by the same man responsible for the torture and death of the three other Birmingham victims.

  During the afternoon, a couple of people from work, including Paul Carlisle, had called Jenna on her cell. He’d confirmed that he had asked Gary to check on her, which seemed to put Sean’s concerns about her co-worker’s nighttime visit to rest. Still, as a result of his warning, Jenna had told no one other than her boss that she was staying at her parents’.

  She’d put off calling Bingham as long as she could, figuring that he’d be dealing with the media most of the day. Finally around four o’clock she’d phoned his office, expecting to be told that they’d take a message and have him call her back. Instead, she was put through at once, as if he had been waiting for her call.

  The detective had gone through everything she’d heard from Sean this morning. He had even offered her around-the-clock protection to replace the services of the man he was now convinced the killer was really after.

  Jenna had refused. All she had to go on was instin
ct, and it was telling her, as it had from the beginning, that her best chance for survival lay with Sean. A man who was almost as much a mystery now as the day he’d stormed into her office.

  She raised her eyes from the novel she’d been pretending to read to find him watching her. He didn’t look away, not even when she closed the book and put it on the table beside her chair.

  “I think I’ll go up now.” She stood and realized that he had risen, too.

  Although she hadn’t been able to find fault with Sean’s manners, she didn’t believe they extended to standing whenever a lady did. Which meant—

  “You don’t have to come,” she said quickly.

  She didn’t want to deal with the sexual tension that had been thick in her mother’s bedroom this morning. Something in his eyes then had made her far too aware of the thinness of the silk gown she wore.

  Aware, too, that they were alone. Isolated from an outside world that seemed full of danger.

  As absurd as it sounded, right now Sean Murphy represented everything she had once believed characterized her life. Safety. And familiarity.

  Given her circumstances, it was far too easy to want to cling to both. And far too dangerous.

  Not the danger the Inquisitor offered, but an escape from it. An escape back to the sense of security she’d always felt here. The sense of security that Sean gave her now.

  “I need to check out the rooms upstairs,” he explained.

  It was a reminder of reality she could have done without. Now that he’d made it, however, she couldn’t deny she’d feel more comfortable if he went upstairs with her.

  “Thank you.”

  “All part of the service.”

  “Don’t,” she said softly.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Pretend you’re the hired help.”

  “As I remember, that’s what you wanted.”

  “I thought it was the only way you’d agree. Obviously, I was wrong. Again. Do you want me to apologize for that, too?”

  “Why not? You do it so well.”

  “Apologize?”

  “All the social graces.”

  “And that makes you uncomfortable.”

  “What it makes me—”

  For a moment she thought he must have seen or heard something that had made him stop in midsentence. His eyes were still focused on her face, however.

  “I know you don’t like me—” she began.

  “You don’t know anything about me. Especially not how I feel about you.”

  The shimmer of sexual awareness she’d felt this morning stirred again. Deep within her body there was a flutter of anticipation. This was what the sparring between them had been leading up to. This was why he’d been on edge all day.

  On some level, long before she had admitted it, she’d known that eventually this was going to happen between them. She just hadn’t known it would be tonight.

  “Then why don’t you tell me? Explain it to me so I’ll understand exactly what I’ve done wrong. Or what I’ve said that’s made you so angry.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be good at your job.”

  “I am good at my job.”

  “Analyzing motives. That’s what you said, right?”

  “Among other things. Behaviors themselves, for example.”

  “As in ‘actions speak louder than words.’”

  “Because something’s a cliché doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

  “And what do you make of my behavior?”

  “That you’re very confident of your abilities when you’re in a situation you understand and can control. It’s the things you can’t control that make you vulnerable. And angry.”

  “Isn’t that true for everyone?”

  “Maybe, but I think with you it’s to the extreme. You’re absolutely certain that if you can find your sister’s murderer, you can kill him. That’s why you left the motel room last night. You never even considered calling the cops.”

  “Did you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I was also sure that if you get the chance, you’ll kill him.”

  “And you want me to.”

  It hadn’t been a question, but she answered it, anyway. If she was asking for the truth from him, it seemed she was obligated to provide that in turn.

  “Yes, I do. And if wanting that is a sin, then it’s one I can live with.”

  “Especially since his blood won’t be on your hands.”

  The sarcasm was clear. Biting. The accusation undeniable.

  “If I help you, it is.”

  “And how are you going to help me?”

  “I told you. It’s what I do.”

  “You think you can do a better job than the FBI profilers?”

  “They don’t have a patent on guesswork. And I doubt they know anything about him you don’t.”

  She could read the surprise in his eyes. The important thing was how quickly it was replaced by interest.

  Of course with Sean it was always difficult to tell what he was thinking. It was an art he’d perfected long ago, either as part of his military background or earlier. In whatever family situation that had led to the unusual relationship with Makaela.

  “You think we can come up with something the cops didn’t?”

  “I think that working together, we have a chance.”

  She was aware as she extended the olive branch that the idea of their working together might backfire. That it might turn into the very thing she’d been attempting to avoid in giving them something to think about other than the reality that they were alone in this house.

  And the equally undeniable fact that, however their relationship had begun, it had become something neither of them had anticipated. And something neither of them wanted to do anything about.

  Twenty-One

  “I still think he was abused. Obviously by a woman. Someone close to him. Someone in a position of authority.”

  “Maybe he just went to Catholic schools.”

  Jenna looked up from the page of notes she’d jotted down. She expected to find amusement in the blue eyes, but they were cold. Just as they had been last night.

  “Did you?”

  “As long as my mother could afford it.”

  “And Makaela?”

  “Until high school. Mom saw it as a form of protection for her.”

  From the neighborhood? Or from someone else? In any case, the theme of protection for his sister was repeated, although Sean didn’t seem to realize the significance of its recurrence.

  Without commenting on the revelation he’d just made, she wrote “Nuns” on the paper and drew a question mark after it. “Actually, I was thinking about his mother.”

  “The usual suspect.”

  She nodded, ignoring his sarcasm as she considered other possibilities. “It could have been a grandmother. Or an aunt.

  More rarely a neighbor or a teacher.”

  “No father around?”

  “The most likely scenario, but we can’t be sure of that, of course. Not without other evidence.” They couldn’t get that without the ability to do research, and they couldn’t research without somewhere to start. “Was yours?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve mentioned your mother and your sister. I just wondered if your dad was around while you were growing up.”

  “More analysis?”

  “Idle curiosity. I don’t seem to be coming up with any earth-shattering ideas on him.”

  She lifted the pad she’d been scribbling on. There really wasn’t much new or of value there, she admitted.

  “You know the stereotype. It isn’t far off the mark.”

  Stereotype? His father? “What stereotype is that?”

  “The shiftless, drunken Irishman.”

  Her heart started to beat faster, but she controlled her face and her voice. “Was he?”

  “Most of the time.”

  She’d resisted
the urge to ask the logical question earlier. She didn’t resist it now. “Is he the one who abused Makaela?” And then she waited for the explosion.

  “Until I was big enough to stop him.”

  She had thought she might learn something from his reaction, but she’d never expected him to answer. She wasn’t quite sure what to say now that he had. “When was that?”

  “He was six-five. Two-hundred-seventy, eighty pounds. Even stinking drunk, he managed to kick my ass on a regular basis. Up until I was seventeen.”

  Given what she’d already figured out about the family dynamics, she would have been willing to bet those beatings had been in response to Sean’s intervention in something else that had been going on in that household. That was something she didn’t dare ask about.

  “So what happened at seventeen?”

  “Idle curiosity?” he mocked.

  “No, you were right. I want to know what makes you tick.”

  He laughed. “It’s not all that interesting. He was drunk, pounding my mother pretty good, even for a Saturday night. I got in from my shift at the plant in the middle of it. He had her down in the corner of the kitchen, pummeling her head. When I pulled him off, I hit him in the mouth as hard as I could. And by that time it was pretty hard. He stumbled over her feet, fell backward and cracked his skull on the cabinet.”

  Her years as a therapist should have made her better prepared. Still, the story, told with complete dispassion and by someone she was attracted to, shocked her. “It killed him?”

  “Unfortunately not. The cops got involved, however, and he ended up in jail, luckily that time for longer than my mother was in the hospital. When she got out, she finally got up the courage to take Makaela back home to her parents in Michigan.”

  “You didn’t go with them?”

  “I went to juvenile detention until I turned eighteen. The judge suggested the army. I took him up on the offer, and the rest, as they say, is history. So now that you know everything there is to know about me, you want to get back to him?”

  Everything there is to know. She didn’t, of course. But at least now she understood why what she’d said in that stupid interview bothered him so much.

  To Sean Murphy, abuse didn’t give you a license to hurt. In his case it had produced the opposite effect, making him overprotective toward the sister whose share of those drunken, senseless beatings he’d probably taken for years.