“I called them,” Hadley said. “He came to pick us up and give us a ride to our dinner. Mad Mel lost control of herself. She attacked him. I called them so we could get on with our night.”
“Hadley,” Cassidy whimpered. Tears slid down her face, leaving a trail through the powder she’d applied. “Don’t say too much.”
Hadley bent down to adjust the strap on a high-heeled shoe. “I’m not letting people think Dad’s a wife-abuser. That’s exactly what Mad Mel wants.”
“Mum, Hadley. Mum.”
The gentle correction softened her older sister. She signaled to Riv. He put his arm around Cassidy’s shoulder and led her across the street.
“Christ. She does this every time I come to get the girls.”
“You share custody, Mr. Blessant?”
His laughter was harsh. “I try to share it. She’d suffocate my girls if she could.” He said it loudly enough for his ex-wife to hear. Raging, she flew across the lawn at him. Khattak intercepted her, receiving the full impact of her overblown frontage.
“Inspector,” she bleated. “You have to help me—Dennis was threatening me.”
“God, Mel. More lies? I’ve warned you to be careful about Dad. You need to stop the lies.”
The woman would have jumped on Hadley if Khattak’s grip had let her.
“You have to believe me, Inspector. He hates me and he hated Chrissie. They fought, did you know that? The night that Chrissie fell. Maybe Dennis pushed him just to get at me. Because he knew Chrissie loved me and wanted to take care of me like he couldn’t.”
Khattak released her. “Is that true, sir?”
Hadley looked between her father and mother, her face ashen.
“Of course it’s not true! That man was saving my life. He was taking this witch off my hands. No more alimony. No more child support.”
“I knew it!” Melanie shouted. “I knew this whole ‘I love my girls’ thing was a lie! You wanted Chrissie to take them over. You wanted them off your hands!”
A tearing sob escaped Hadley’s throat. She shoved past her mother into the house.
“You useless bitch. You don’t know anything. I argued with Drayton because he wouldn’t agree to marry you unless I gave you full custody of Hadley and Cass. I told him that would never happen. I begged him to marry you anyway.”
“You’re lying!” she shrieked. If she could have bulldozed her way past Khattak, Blessant would have been on the ground, shielding himself from the fury of her nails. “The only thing Chrissie wanted was to marry me! You wouldn’t let him. You wanted to keep me in this rathole forever.”
Dennis wiped a hand over his face, agog. “You’re a lunatic. Do you hear yourself? I went down on my knees and thanked God the day you met Drayton. You couldn’t marry him fast enough for me.”
“You followed him.” She was howling at him now. “You followed him to the Bluffs and you shoved him over. Maybe you did it because you wanted me to be miserable. Maybe you did it to show you can still control me. Or maybe you did it because you knew Chrissie was a thousand times the father you are. You knew he’d get the girls if I pushed for it.”
Just as Rachel stepped forward to intervene, Hadley rocketed out of the front door and threw herself between her parents. She held a large envelope in her hands that she waved at them.
“Your goddamned lies.” She swore at her mother. “I warned you, Mel. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She upended the contents of the envelope over the lawn. “There’s your Chrissie. There’s the bastard you wanted to marry. And you’re the one who knew about his will. You’re the one who followed him. If anyone pushed him, you did.”
“No!” Cassidy’s wail reverberated across the street.
“I’m sorry, Cass, I’m sorry. But it’s true, it’s all true.”
Rachel stared at the contents of the envelope with horror, Dennis Blessant slack-jawed beside her. Hadley had scattered documents and photographs across the lawn between her parents. Rachel slipped on her gloves and knelt on the grass to collect them.
Some of it was pornography. The most depraved and violent pornography she’d come across: terrified women tied up, threatened and debased by knives and guns and other implements of torture. Cross-cutting these were Polaroids. Close-ups of Hadley and Cassidy in their beds at Krstić’s house, sleeping. He had drawn their covers aside and photographed their legs, their breasts. There were photographs of Hadley and Cassidy coming out of the shower, their hair wet, their towels slipping.
Bile rose in her stomach.
“Sir,” she said to Khattak. Blessant tried to take the photographs from her. She blocked him.
“I’m sorry, sir, these are evidence.”
“My girls,” he whispered. “My girls. Hadley, did he—?”
“No,” she said quickly. “My God, no, Dad. I never would have let him. I never left him alone with Cassie for a second. But Mel was willing to. She couldn’t see what was right in front of her face.” Her voice dripped with contempt.
Rachel felt sick. A fifteen-year-old girl was talking about her mother.
“What do you mean?”
“I knew what kind of a man he was when he called my mother a whore every night,” Hadley said with disgust. “‘Shut up, you stupid whore. Take it, you filthy whore.’ And still she kept pushing him for a wedding date.”
“He loved me,” Melanie said blankly. “He loved me and I loved him. I don’t care what they say he did. He didn’t do it.”
Hadley grabbed her by the shoulders and screamed into her face. “He was a war criminal, Mother! Christopher Dražen Krstić! He killed people. He raped them. Didn’t you ever ask yourself why he wanted us at his house? Didn’t you ever wonder why he insisted you get sole custody? Didn’t you see the pictures?” Her face was soaked with tears. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her dress.
“No,” Melanie whispered. “It’s not what you’re saying. He was a family man. You’re making this all up.”
With a swift movement, Rachel blocked Dennis Blessant’s sudden lunge.
“Why won’t you believe me?” Hadley released her grip on her mother’s arms and turned away. “You’re my mother. Why would I lie to you?”
Melanie hesitated. “You don’t want me to be happy.” But her voice lacked conviction. She made a tentative gesture to reach for her daughter, then dropped her hands. “It’s just a misunderstanding,” she said. “You misunderstood him.”
“I didn’t, Mum.” She hadn’t used this name for her mother in years, Rachel was sure. “Honestly, Mum—I didn’t.” She sank down onto the grass, crying.
Rachel couldn’t bear it.
“Sir,” she said again.
Khattak motioned the officers from the scout car over. “Take them in,” he said of the Blessants. “To separate rooms. We’ll meet you there.” He looked at Rachel. The color had left his skin, a green tinge beneath its surface. “We’ll need someone to stay with the girls.”
Rachel swallowed her nausea. This was the last moment in the world to rely upon Mink Norman. She watched him make his call, rose from her knees, and awkwardly gathered Hadley into her arms. Hadley didn’t resist. After a moment, she rested her head on Rachel’s shoulder.
Riv brought Cassidy back from across the street and all three of them hugged each other.
Hadley gripped Rachel’s wrist. She motioned at her sister. “Don’t let her see,” she mouthed.
Rachel shoved the envelope under her blazer.
Khattak patted Marco River’s arm.
“Audrey Clare is coming,” he said quietly. “She’ll take you to Winterglass. Stay there, won’t you?”
Riv stared at him, man-to-man. “I won’t leave until you say it’s okay.”
He took Rachel aside. “We’ll need to get someone from Crisis Response up there, but for now Audrey will be able to handle things. What she does with her NGO is mainly social work.”
He could still surprise her.
“And what about us, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s begin with Ms. Blessant.”
29.
We saw them rape the hadji’s daughter—one after the other, they raped her. The hadji had to watch too. When they were done, they rammed a knife into his throat.
Khattak didn’t want to talk to this woman. He loathed her. Charles Brining had been right. There was nothing about Chris Drayton’s past that Melanie hadn’t known. She just hadn’t cared.
He thought of Hadley and Cassidy, their luxurious youth and innocence. Their devotion to their father. He rued a system that left them under the negligent care of a woman like Melanie. The photographs sickened him. They weren’t something Drayton had purchased off the Internet and hoarded like a treasure. They were personal, intimate. Photographs Drayton had either taken himself or had his subordinates take for him. The women were Bosnian. The photographs were from rape camps.
Khattak had had them copied and dusted for prints. Tomorrow he would send them to Tom Paley with an urgent request that they be forwarded to the tribunal at the Hague. For the twenty thousand rapes that had been reported during the war, much less than the actual number that had taken place, fewer than forty men had been sentenced—less than a handful of these at the international tribunal. Perhaps the photographs would bring other men to justice. After that, he fervently prayed they would be destroyed.
“You knew the code to Drayton’s safe?”
He was as far across the room from Melanie as possible. Rachel sat opposite her at the small table in the room. Melanie didn’t bother with deception.
“Yes. I watched him open it once.”
“You took the envelope from the safe? That’s how you knew about the will?”
“I didn’t take it. I just happened to see it in there once. I had a look.”
“So you knew he was leaving everything to you.”
“So what?” She sniffed. “I loved Chrissie. I wanted to marry him. He was no good to me dead.”
“I think you’ll find that’s true, given his real identity. His policies will be void, his assets frozen until their provenance is determined.”
“Come again?” All pretense of kittenish helplessness dropped from her manner at this threat to her windfall.
“His money. It’s likely not his to leave. The bequests from his will won’t be paid out. Tell me, Ms. Blessant. If you didn’t take the envelope from the safe, how did Hadley come to have it?”
Melanie’s face reflected her indecision about Hadley’s revelations. “She just told you. She was spying on us. That’s probably how she figured out the code.”
“Her prints weren’t on the safe.”
This time her answer came quickly. “I like to keep it clean in there.”
“Did you see what else was in the envelope?” Rachel asked. “The photographs, the letters to Dražen Krstić?”
Melanie arranged her breasts on the table like two giant lumps of unbaked bread. Rachel backed away. Melanie’s façade was beginning to splinter: there were cracks at the line of her jaw, cords that stood out against her neck, white lines in her suntanned cleavage. The faintest blur of mascara discolored the pits beneath her eyes.
“I told you, it was just the one time. I had a quick look.”
Rachel very much doubted that that had been Melanie’s only incursion into Drayton’s privacy.
“You saw the photographs,” she insisted.
“What of it?”
Rachel wanted to smack her self-satisfied face. “What of it? Ms. Blessant, those were photographs of your daughters in various states of undress.”
“No,” she denied immediately. “He loved them. They’re just pictures of the girls asleep.”
Khattak jerked forward. “Do you really believe that? After everything your daughter just said to you?”
“Oh honey,” the woman said. “You don’t think it’s possible Hadley was looking for a little attention? Because her father doesn’t give her enough?”
And Rachel saw how the woman had already orchestrated an alternate scenario in her mind—one that renewed her vendetta against her husband at the expense of Hadley’s need for solace and support. That fleeting moment when Melanie Blessant had truly seen her daughter had already passed.
“You can’t honestly believe your daughters weren’t at risk.”
Melanie stared at her, gritty-eyed. “He was a good man. His interest in them was harmless.”
Rachel nearly choked. The woman’s need to believe in Drayton’s single-minded adoration of her had made her blind to everything else.
“Did you find the other photographs harmless as well? Considering their connection to Dražen Krstić?”
She shrugged, the movement rippling through her breasts like an underwater wave. “What man doesn’t hold on to a little pornography? Why would I care about that? And who the hell was Dražen whatever to me? No one.”
“Not quite,” Rachel said. “He was an indicted war criminal, a fugitive from justice. That wasn’t pornography you were looking at. It was evidence of his crimes.”
“Don’t kid yourself, honey. It was women tied up. Or don’t you know that most men are into a little kink?”
Rachel wanted to slap her. “You evidently did. Weren’t you worried about your daughters in view of the ‘kink’ your boyfriend was into?”
“Fiancé,” she corrected automatically. Her gaze stroked over her sumptuous figure in the mirror behind Khattak’s head. “Why would I worry? I could handle anything he wanted.”
In a clinical voice, Khattak asked, “You didn’t feel a responsibility to protect Hadley and Cassidy from his appetites?”
“I’ve told you before. The only one Chrissie wanted was me. Hadley’s never had that kind of attention from a man—you can’t blame her for feeling a little jealous.”
It was obvious that she believed this. Rachel didn’t know if that increased or lessened her disgust. In her own twisted way, was this how Melanie found common ground with her daughter? Because nothing they were saying about Dražen Krstić was getting through to her.
“Ms. Blessant, did you see your husband follow Mr. Drayton to the Bluffs the night that he fell?”
“I heard the fight. I was with Chrissie that night.”
“But not when he went to his walk.”
“He asked me to leave. He said his mood was off after Dennis. He wanted to be alone.”
“So you didn’t see your ex-husband follow him.”
“No. But I know he did. He won’t rest until he’s ruined everything for me.”
“You’re referring to his desire for custody.”
“Yes.”
“Then you did know that you and your daughters were a package deal for Drayton.”
“You’re turning it into something it wasn’t. We both knew he’d make a better father for them than Dennis.”
Khattak left it. “Did you light candles that night before your ex-husband arrived?”
“Are you crazy? In this heat?”
“It’s been raining off and on for the past two weeks.”
“Even if it was, it was sweltering.”
“You didn’t mention any of this to us before.”
“You didn’t ask. Say,” she said, lively with a new thought. “This would be news, wouldn’t it? Big news? Who Chrissie really was? The kind of news the papers pay big money for? If they’re going to freeze Chrissie’s assets, I mean.”
She had already forgotten her daughter’s anguish.
Revolted, Rachel opened her mouth to speak. Khattak swiftly forestalled her.
He leaned down toward the table, faced Melanie head-on. “Ms. Blessant, I find you appalling.”
And when that came up in the inevitable complaint against CPS, Rachel would swear on her life that Khattak had never said it.
* * *
“Shall we drive you back to your car, Mr. Blessant?”
“Call me Dennis. You’re not keeping me
here?”
“We only brought you here to spare your daughters any further unpleasantness.”
Dennis barked out a laugh. “That’s one word for it, I suppose. My ex doesn’t exactly scream maternal devotion from the rafters.”
“If you were so poorly matched, why did you marry her?” Rachel asked.
“For the same reason men do most stupid things. She has a great body. I thought that was enough. I had money. She thought that was enough.”
He followed them to Khattak’s car, settling into the backseat. “I was supposed to take my girls to a dinner tonight. I doubt they’re in any shape for it now.”
“They’re up at Mr. Clare’s house. You can ask them, if you like.”
He’d been about to leave off his seat belt, then thought better of it. “Cops, right? Look—Mel wasn’t always as bad as she is now. She was good to the girls, at first. She treated them like little dolls. When we split up, she took it pretty hard. I would have said that half of what she says and does to the girls is to punish me. It isn’t about them. They’re her daughters. At some level, she loves them.”
Rachel picked on his choice of words. “Would have said?”
“The photographs, Christ, the photographs. What the hell was he? Some kind of pedophile?”
“We don’t know. We don’t know how deep his perversions ran. He was a sadist, without doubt.”
“So Hadley wasn’t kidding. He really did call her mother a whore.” He sat up straight. “Did he hurt my girls? Did the bastard touch them?”
“We don’t know, sir. This is the first we’ve heard of any of this.”
“But you were at our house. Looking into him and Mel. What did Hadley mean when she called him a war criminal?”
Rachel eyed him uneasily. “We’re not at liberty to discuss that, sir. It’s best if you just focus on your girls for the present.”
They pulled up beside his car.
“Mr. Blessant, would you hold up a moment?” Khattak said. “Your ex-wife said that you argued with Drayton on the night of his death. On what subject?”
Dennis fumbled for his car keys. It had been easier to talk to the woman. She looked tough, but her manner was kind. He didn’t trust Khattak’s courteous detachment.
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