“No,” Abby said, moving one step closer but keeping her husband’s chest in her sights. “Pat told me he knew Harlan Mortimer’s son years ago, and he was dead. You must have been in this with him. You tell me the truth now.”
Nieswand stared into his wife’s face and seemed to shrink into his clothes. Perhaps he realized it was over. Possibly, he believed his wife would shoot him if he didn’t talk. Maybe he just ran out of energy and gave up. Finally he said “It was all Louis’ idea.”
“What was?” Rissik asked, pulling a pad from his pocket.
“He knew Jacob Mortimer was dead. He found this girl somewhere who bore a strong resemblance to him, and she was the right age to be his daughter. He wanted to slide her into Mortimer’s family and when she got a big inheritance, he’d take it from her. I had no choice but to go along. He was right here watching me, and if I told anyone what he was doing he’d have told the world about his affair with my alcoholic, drug-addicted wife. I figure he must have something on Angela too, to keep her in line.”
“That won’t wash,” Hannibal said, sitting on the bed. “Lots of people in this town have survived lots worse scandals. Besides, he might have gotten close, but he couldn’t talk to the Mortimers. Only you could have planted the idea in Camille’s head to look for Jacob as a bone marrow donor. So you had to have an active part in this. In fact, I’ll bet it was your idea to use me.”
“Yeah, why bring you into it at all?” Rissik asked from the doorway.
“Well, Angela couldn’t just stroll up and ask ‘are you my grandpa’ could she?” Hannibal said. “They set me on the trail knowing I’d find Jacob’s grave, and they simply positioned Angela where I’d have to fall over her. Most private detectives would have been happy to take the credit for finding the lost heir and dropped out of the picture.”
“Thank God you didn’t,” Lippincott said. Then to Nieswand, “I’ve known you a lot of years, you sniveling bastard, but I didn’t think even you could be capable of such pernicious villainy. You would have let Kyle die. And what you did to this woman. What you had me do.” He turned to Abby, pain etched on his face. Rissik took the doctor’s arm and guided him out of the room, into the hall.
“Okay, you got the picture,” Nieswand said from the floor. “Abby, could you put the gun down now?”
“I should kill you for shooting Pat,” Abby snarled. “There was no reason to kill him. Didn’t you know I still loved you?”
Cindy stepped forward until she was within arm’s reach of Abby’s gun hand. The pistol’s focus never left Gabriel. “You had nothing to do with the reason Pat Louis is dead,” she said. “They were business partners. He didn’t care who you slept with. In a sense those two were already in bed together.”
“So did Louis try to squeeze you out?” Hannibal asked Nieswand. “Or did you just decide you wanted it all?”
Nieswand stared at the carpet. “The bastard got greedy. I wasn’t going to let him cut me out. His plan worked just fine without him. I saw a chance to blame his death on his old mob contacts. I just didn’t know Abby was watching.”
“Sounds like a confession to me,” Cindy said. “I have no doubt, Mrs. Nieswand, that your husband will spend a great deal of time in jail. Why don’t you give me that gun now?”
Abby took a step back. “No, I don’t think so. I think maybe I’ll kill him.” Her clear eyes and her smooth unwrinkled brow chilled Hannibal more than her steady hands wrapped around the small revolver. Abby had reached a point where she could calmly kill the man she loved. Across the room, Nieswand was changing again. His jaw shook, his eyes spread round and his breathing was labored. He sat back on his heels, a dark stain spreading from his crotch. Aside from trembling he held very still, his mouth silently forming the word “no” again and again. Like he finally realized if you tell a person they are insane often enough, they will eventually fulfill your expectations.
Bed springs squeaked as Hannibal leaned to his side, trying to position himself for action. “I know this sounds like a cliché, but you can’t get away with it,” he said. “You may not have noticed, but several more policemen have joined Detective Rissik in the hall. If your gun goes off, one of them will kill you.”
“No, I’ll shoot my way out.”
Cindy reached out slowly. “You don’t want to.”
“Yes, I do,” Abby snapped. “You get over in the doorway. That way they’ll have to shoot you to get me.” The gun barrel moved toward Cindy’s face and she backed into the doorway. Rissik watched over her shoulder. Hannibal saw Rissik’s gun peeking out under Cindy’s arm. His heart drummed triple time in his chest and cold droplets rolled down his spine. This could get awfully messy awfully fast, and Nieswand was not worth his wife’s life.
“Let’s think about this,” Hannibal said as calmly as he could. “Old Gabe here shot at me out the window. Then he made that hole there in the ceiling. And you made one over there in the wall. Now I figure that leaves you just three bullets. Hardly enough for a shootout.”
Abby smiled in spite of herself. “Not quite a blaze of glory, is it? Him, you, maybe your girlfriend.”
“Not really,” Hannibal said, leaning a bit farther. “You don’t kill anybody with one round from a thirty-eight. That thing won’t handle thirty-eight specials or magnums. Just regular ball ammo. You’d use up all three bullets on your husband.”
“Yeah. But he’d be gone,” Abby said, her voice as cold as the grave she planned for her husband. He seemed to feel the chill clear across the room.
“Maybe. And maybe you too when the jury’s through. This is cold-blooded, premeditated murder.”
Abby seemed to consider his words. Her brow furrowed a bit, and her head tilted to one side. The tip of her tongue poked out a corner of her mouth. Then her lips pressed together and she shook her head once decisively, and turned to Hannibal.
“Consider what’s written in my medical records. Think I could win with an insanity plea?”
As she turned back to face her husband, Hannibal knew she would do it. Her finger tightened on the small chrome-plated trigger as he launched himself across the bed. In slow motion, he saw the little gun’s hammer move back as he fought against inertia and gravity to push himself across the queen size space. He could see the tip of Abby’s index finger whiten as she squeezed.
-31-
Hannibal’s gloved hand pressed against Abby’s forearm as the concussion rocked his ears and the world returned to full speed. He landed on Abby’s soft body, both his hands struggling to keep hers over her head on the floor. Acrid smoke choked him and the familiar metallic taste of cordite filled his mouth.
Abby actually growled as she grappled with him, and her head snapped forward, banging into him above his right eye. Blue floaters danced in front of him and his ears were still ringing but he leaned forward, pinning Abby’s hands in place. Then a foot crushed down on the gun and strong hands jerked him to his feet. Three policemen rushed in to get Abby under control. And Lippincott was there too, close beside her, talking to her in soothing tones. Hannibal sat back on the bed and turned his head, setting off a pulsing headache. When he zeroed in on Nieswand Cindy was kneeling in front of him. Another bullet hole hung two inches from his head.
Cindy bent her head toward her one time mentor. “I am truly sorry I had to be part of this. To a great extent, I feel I should have been defending you. Instead, I helped bring you down.”
Hannibal watched them with more than casual curiosity. He did not understand this man at all. Now he appeared quite reasonable, clear and lucid, the man Cindy had described in the past. Nieswand put a hand gently on Cindy’s shoulder and held her gaze.
“Don’t you ever regret what you’ve done here today,” Nieswand said. “I wish I had earned your loyalty, but in truth I didn’t. And today, when it mattered, your loyalties were in the right place. You remember forever that your proper fidelity, allegiance and faithfulness is to the system of justice we, all lawyers worship. Or should.”
/> A uniformed officer stood on either side of Nieswand and slid him to his feet. Abby was again quiet, standing in the opposite corner of the room. Nieswand watched her as the police began to guide him out of the room.
“Hold up a minute please,” Hannibal called. When they turned, he held Nieswand by an arm. “Listen, there’s still one thing that just doesn’t make sense. You took a big gamble here, but I think you knew the stakes all along. You’re not crazy, and you’re not stupid. You might have talked your way out of all this today, got Lippincott to sedate Abby again and just got yelled at for taking your wife out of the hospital. Nobody even suspected you. So why on earth did you take that shot at me?”
“I got scared,” Nieswand said. “I thought you were Angela and Malcolm coming back to get me.”
“Whoa.” Hannibal’s head started spinning again. He pulled Nieswand back into the room. “Angela was here? When?”
“This morning, early. They came pounding on my door at the crack of dawn.”
“What could she have wanted with you?” Cindy asked.
“Just like you, she wanted to know who killed Pat Louis. The girl was crazed, I’m telling you. And she had a gun. I was the only other person she could talk to, since I knew what Louis was up to. She figured I must know him well enough to know who’d want to kill him.”
“Okay, so you were scared,” Hannibal said. “And guilty. So what did you tell her?”
Nieswand seemed to be reliving Angela’s visit. “I had to think fast. They were desperate and not real rational. I told them it must have been his ex-wife. He told me about her once. She was the real baby’s governess or something I guess, so I said I figured she might hate Louis enough to do him in, especially if she thought he did something with the real baby.”
“You stinking son of a bitch,” Hannibal said. “You set those lunatics on Daisy Sonneville?” Before anyone could stop him, Hannibal slammed his right fist into Nieswand’s midsection. The lawyer doubled over, and spit his last meal down onto the carpet. Hannibal stalked out into the hallway and grabbed a young uniformed officer. “Rissik,” he said. The youngster blinked and pointed toward the stairs. Hannibal jogged down them. He found Rissik in the living room using the telephone. Lippincott hung at his shoulder, bouncing from one foot to the other like he had to go to the bathroom. Rissik hung up as Hannibal reached him. He seemed too calm for Hannibal’s tastes, like he had days like this all the time.
“Where is she?” Hannibal demanded. “Where’s Angela?”
Rissik looked at him the way policemen do, as if whatever your problem is, is not important. “Lost her.”
“Lost her?” Hannibal’s pitch rose with his frustration level. “Lost her? How the hell could you lose her? Did your boys fall asleep or what?”
“Look,” Rissik said, as if explaining a simple concept to a child, “we only had her while she wasn’t in a hurry. Wherever she decided to go, she was very much in a hurry today. I’d like to blame somebody too, but the fact is, I got nothing in my motor pool that could chase down that Porsche.”
Hannibal turned away, fighting to contain his anger. As much as he hated it, he knew what Rissik said was the ugly truth. In her vehicle, Angela could have disappeared whenever she wanted to. He had no way of knowing where she might be. But he did know one place she went. While he contemplated this, Lippincott tugged on his sleeve.
“She has my son. Can you bring him back?”
“I don’t know,” Hannibal said. “All depends on if I can find them.” He turned toward the door.
“I’ll pay you,” Lippincott said, laying a hand on Hannibal’s arm. “I’ll hire you on the spot to find my son and bring him back.”
Hannibal shook free of Lippincott’s grasp. “I don’t exactly think he’s a captive here.” Then he scanned the room for Cindy. Not seeing her, he scanned his memory. She passed him, he recalled, while he was trying to speak to Rissik. She had passed through the door, as had a dazed and handcuffed Abby Nieswand. Hannibal went to the door and leaned out. A new sprinkle had commenced. Cindy stood beside a police car, consoling the woman who minutes ago threatened to shoot them all. He trotted out into the lengthening shadows and tapped her shoulder.
“By now Bonnie and Clyde must have paid a visit to Daisy Sonneville,” he said. “She might know something. You coming?”
Racing down the highway, Hannibal considered he had done way too much traveling on this case. The sun was a dull red fireball low in the sky on his left. A persistent busy signal drowned out the whine of his tires on the asphalt. He reached up and pressed the button to stop the noise.
“It’s too long. They’ve got it off the hook.”
“They must be terrified,” Cindy said. “Sure hope those kids haven’t done anything stupid.”
Hannibal pulled out left to pass a tractor trailer. “Little late for that.”
“And Malcolm Lippincott is as much a part of it as Angela now,” Cindy said. “His father’s heartbroken. What would make a person betray their own flesh and blood that way?”
“He’s no worse than his old man if you ask me,” Hannibal said. He cut off a Camry to get onto the off ramp, raising a blare of horn which he ignored. “Lippincott’s about the same age as Harlan Mortimer. He’s been hanging around the Mortimers for decades, waiting for a fat inheritance to finance his clinic downtown when he’s gone. His legacy, I guess. He hired me to bust Angela, not because he cared about Mortimer, but because she threatened his golden egg. And don’t forget, he kept Abby Nieswand drugged and hidden as best he could at her husband’s request, without ever once questioning why.”
Cindy stayed quiet as they entered suburbia. Hannibal knew the way to the Sonneville house by heart, but he did not remember the neighborhood looking so much like a prison. Each house as much like the next as cells in a penitentiary, and providing each family about as much privacy. Many of these people, he knew, hardly ever went beyond this little community, except on their daily run to work and back. Even then, they usually took the same route. They were not locked in by others who feared them. Their own fear kept them prisoner. Prisoner to their routines, their jobs, their four walls with a television in every room.
Hannibal parked around the corner from the Sonneville house, which apparently got Cindy thinking.
“You don’t suppose they’re still there?” she asked. “Oh, God, maybe the Sonnevilles are hostages.”
“Not likely,” Hannibal said, opening his door. But standing outside the car, he bent his head back inside. “Why don’t you sit tight while I see if they’re home?”
“Like hell,” Cindy snapped, bouncing out of the car. “This is not one of those movies where the woman stays behind.”
Despite her bravado, Cindy hung well back from Hannibal as he approached the front door. Once on the welcome mat bearing the Sonneville name he rang the bell, then pivoted so his back was to the wall beside the door. He drew his pistol and held it down at his side, wondering if any of Daisy’s neighbors were watching. While he waited for an answer, his mind ran every possible scenario, including those which stopped with him calling the police and letting them knock on the door. None looked better than the others to him. Then he focused on the doorknob, watching it slowly revolve.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice asked. The door opened a crack and an eye pressed to it, staring over a heavy security chain.
“It’s me, Mister Sonneville. Hannibal Jones.”
“Go away,” Phil Sonneville said, staring up into Hannibal’s face. “We’ve had enough trouble.”
Hannibal slid slowly forward, so he and Phil could make eye contact. “Are they still in there?” he asked.
“Nobody here but me and my wife,” Phil Sonneville said, “and she’s been scared enough.”
“Mister Sonneville,” Cindy called from the end of the cement path leading to the door. “We’re here to help. May we please come in?”
From inside Hannibal heard Daisy’s voice. “Oh, Phil, let them in. What more could t
hey do?”
The door slammed and Hannibal was not sure what was happening, but he slid his gun back into its holster. He heard muffled conversation from inside, then the chain slid away and the door swung slowly open. Phil’s lips were pressed together and his hands clenched and opened rhythmically. He said “Come in” in the same cadence and hard tone a person might usually say, “screw you.”
Hannibal nodded his head, showed his empty hands as a sign of friendship, and eased past the man of the house. There was nothing to be gained by challenging him. Cindy followed Hannibal inside. Daisy Sonneville sat on the sofa, her hands clasped desperately, her blonde locks hanging forlornly around her brown face. Hannibal stood against the front wall, backed by the bay window, hoping to present a less intimidating appearance. He even considered removing his dark glasses and gloves, but he would be too uncomfortable. Instead, he looked to Cindy, wordlessly telling her she should speak first.
“We’re looking for the girl calling herself Angela Mortimer,” Cindy began. Daisy nodded without looking up. “We think she came here, with a man.” Another nod. “And I guess they frightened you. Can you tell us what happened?”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Phil shouted. “They had a gun. I sent my little girl to stay with friends in case they come back for more trouble.”
Daisy released a loud sob and started pouring tears on the floor. “I don’t know where they came from, but they were crazy. I came home from work like normal. Soon as I unlocked the door, they came up behind me, pushed me in the house and slammed the door. She didn’t look no more than a teenager, but she had this gun.” Then Daisy’s tears overwhelmed her voice and she started crying. Phil sat beside her, wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and shook with her weeping.
Hannibal dropped to his haunches to be at eye level with Daisy. “Did they hurt you?” Daisy shook her head.
“What did they want?” Cindy asked.
“The baby,” Daisy wailed. “They wanted to know about the baby. The family. All about Bobby Newton and his family, only she said Bobby’s real name was Jake something. She was fanatic, frantic. It was like she thought I was a criminal or something. Yelling, yelling, yelling, demanding details about everything. It was so long ago. I thought it was over.”
Blood and Bone Page 21