“Since when? Yesterday afternoon I learned that I’m a bad influence on Sidney. That my skills are nonessential. That my boss is incapable of adjusting his initial conclusions no matter how wrong they are. Forget the facts, everyone. If it’s on paper, it must be true.” She bent over her aching, glued torso.
“Giulia, what hurts? Can I help?”
“Everything hurts. You weren’t there. You didn’t see it. He lied to her, and she believed him. Of course she did—he’s Urnu the Snake. He mesmerizes people. He has sex with new cult members in front of the rest of the cult. He told me that he wanted Scott in the cult only to get me in that bed.”
“Wait. I’m not following all of this. Falke’s brother wanted to have sex with the Second Violin and with you?”
“Yes, Frank, wake up. Have you missed the theme of this investigation? He tried to rape me and Pamela in the same night. Blake used all the exes for what he could get from them. Urnu convinced Sandra that sex is power. She wanted Mr. Perfect so bad that she made herself into Urnu’s slave. Didn’t you hear Blake in the hospital? Urnu snapped his fingers and Sandra got on her knees and—” She choked on the phrase. Every cell in her body had had enough of words about sex, watching sex, being forced into sex.
“And gave him a blow job.” Frank lowered his voice. “Yes, I heard him.”
Two boys and a girl on skateboards zipped past the windshield. The girl performed a kick flip and laughed as one of the boys tried and failed.
Giulia watched them rather than look at Frank. “You don’t understand the extent of their violation. She had sex with her brother in my room. She nearly had sex with Blake in my bed. She helped Urnu cut off my clothes with a knife that matched his weird-colored eyes.”
“Giulia—”
“Funny, isn’t it? I once thought what a perfect sitcom Blake in my apartment would make. It turned out to be porn theater of the absurd. Sandra must’ve been Urnu’s prize pupil—she graduated from dressing up Barbies to undressing me in two short weeks.” Shut up, Giulia. Frank doesn’t care. Go live under a bridge so you’ll bother no one but the rats. You don’t matter. “Forget it. I don’t know why I’m explaining all this to you. You told me more than once what you think of me. Look, if you could just drive me to the Sleep Cheap, the last words you’ll ever have to hear from me are ‘Thanks for the ride.’ ”
“I don’t... I mean... hifreann is damnú. Giulia, before I drive you anywhere, don’t you want to know how I showed up at your door just in time to be the hero?”
She moved her eyes to Frank’s face. “That’s right. You did.”
“Where is an appreciative audience when I need one?” He formed a tentative smile. “You gave me the idea, you know. I went back to the office this afternoon to see what you’d worked on. I read your notes about an accomplice and I threw them away.”
“You what?”
“I know, I know. I was mad. Don’t say anything yet. Why didn’t you open the overnight delivery?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because I never open mail not addressed to me.”
“Thought so. You should’ve broken that rule for once. It came from my friend in D.C. who did the fingerprint check.”
“The pomegranates. Of course.”
“My friend e-mailed me on Friday to tell me it was coming. That’s why I went to the office Saturday. When I didn’t see it on the door, I assumed he didn’t make the Saturday delivery cut-off. Not till this morning did it occur to me that you might’ve picked it up and brought it to my desk. I didn’t have time before orchestra call to go to the office, but I dashed there as soon as the show was over. I found a charming photo of one Sandra Falke with spiky hair and too much makeup holding a row of numbers across her chest.”
Giulia’s brain went from “standby” to “on.”
“Sandra was arrested once?”
“Yup. In college, for possession. Half an ounce of pot. Only an overnight jail stay, but her fingerprints are on record.” Frank’s smile changed from amused to exasperated. “I picked up the phone to call you and remembered you were out with the Second Violin. I called Blake. No answer. I wonder if that’s when Sandra and Don were following him, waiting for the right moment to slip him their combo drug.”
“Did you go after Sandra?”
“No, I decided to park in Blake’s driveway and wait for him. I didn’t want to deal with more of his ‘I need that promotion’ whining. I wanted his express permission to take this to the police. I would’ve gone anyway if he said no. As I crossed the threshold, I stepped on one of those six-by-nine envelopes.”
“Oh, God.”
“It was a note like the others. Part of it read, ‘It’s time for you to be punished,’ and another part said, ‘Your friends have turned into your enemies.’ Or something like that. There was a photo of you on your bed, too.”
“I don’t want to know, Frank.”
“Yes, you do. You were naked—”
“I said—”
“Shut up, Giulia. You were naked and your chest was cut open and your heart was missing. For one second, I thought she’d already killed you. But she wrote a time and date in the corner: ‘Midnight, Monday, June eighteenth.’ Ten minutes from now.”
Giulia saw herself on her rug, on her bed, Urnu and Sandra keeping her alive from six until midnight raping her and cutting her until the Snake chose to finish his battle ritual. She remembered now: when Sandra had asked for the knife to take Giulia’s underwear, Urnu said something like, “Not time for it yet.” The image of herself, filleted, expanded in her head until she saw nothing else. What else would they have done? Would they have violated me
together? Would they have forced Blake to assist? Would they have forced that drug into me so I couldn’t stop myself from enjoying—
“Giulia. Giulia, stop shaking. You’re safe now. She’s dead. He’s in jail. You’re with me. You’re okay.” Frank pushed the hospital supplies onto the floor mat and contorted his body until his left leg straddled the shift and he balanced half on Giulia’s seat and half on the hard plastic catchall between the seats. Then he put his arms around her, and with a light touch rested her head on his chest. “Does that hurt anything?”
“No.”
“Okay, now just listen for a minute. That photo looked just as real as the other ones. I turned on all the lights and got the loupe and studied them. I looked at the one you said showed the rug instead of the sheet. I looked at shadows and angles of light.” He swallowed and her head moved with his Adam’s apple. “I realized that if one photo was faked, then all of them could be faked.”
Giulia shouldered herself out of Frank’s embrace. “I told you that from the moment she taped them to the door.”
“I was furious, Giulia. All the bragging Blake’s done over the years rushed into my head, and I jumped to conclusions. You don’t want to know how many women he’s slept with. The last time a girl said no to him, he was a senior and she was a Bible-thumping freshman. She actually lectured him on purity. He repeated most of it to me and got ticked off when I laughed.”
“So you decided to un-fire me.” Anger—good, clean, righteous—filled her with a hit of energy. “Rather, you decided to overlook the fact that I quit yesterday.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll say it as often as you want. I was a pig-headed idiot who didn’t know enough to analyze the facts without emotion.”
“That’s a start. So tell me why I should keep working for you.”
“Because you’re talented. Because you’ll be wasted stocking cheap shampoo and stale candy at the dollar store.” He rested his hand on her shoulder, but without the protective embrace. “Because you’re not a pig-headed idiot who digs in her heels and won’t accept an apology.”
A man and woman parked two spaces over, their car swathed in white paper streamers and finger-painted everywhere with phrases like Just Married, Congratulations, and Honk and they’ll kiss. They walked to the inn’s front door, kissing, and half a dozen people appeared at the ent
rance, throwing rice and blowing bubbles.
Giulia stared at Frank’s dashboard, looking for a cosmic answer in its dust patterns. Frank had been a first-class worm for days, but he’d just saved her from a terrifying death. And she wouldn’t be the Franciscan she still was inside if she refused to forgive him.
“Sandra sent me the same note.”
Frank’s arm twitched. “What?”
“The one you said she attached to the last photo. She broke into my apartment Saturday and hid it in my flute case.” How calm she sounded. “I don’t know which Prophet said it, but she found an effective closing line: ‘You are fallen, never to rise again.’ ”
Frank snatched away his arm. “She broke into your place yesterday? Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve—”
“You would’ve what?” Giulia bounced against the seat when he moved, and her glued skin stretched. “Told me to ask Scott for protection? Told me how appropriate it was that my apartment was open to all, just like I spread my legs for anyone who asked?” Her desire to forgive evaporated. “I tried to tell you before and after the show. You turned your back on me both times.”
Frank deflated. “I said I was sorry.” His forehead-puckering frown reappeared. “What more do you want?”
“I want my reputation back. I want to be innocent again.” She needed another rush of purifying anger. “A hundred I’m sorrys can’t give that to me. God doesn’t want me. No man would want me.”
Frank kissed her.
Surprise wiped everything else from Giulia’s head.
Frank broke the kiss and took her face in his hands. “You are innocent. Evil tried to touch you but it failed.” He kissed her again, his lips soft, gentle.
Giulia had the awful impression she looked like a deer in the headlights. Where was the angry Frank? The smug Frank? The pig-headed Frank?
“I don’t know much about God’s omniscience, omnipresence, all the other omnis the priests tell us He’s supposed to be.” Frank kept hold of her face. “But if I’m made in His image—I am, right?” He nodded her head for her. “Then I’m going to risk lightning striking out of a cloudless sky and speak for Him. God still wants you. But I’m glad you divorced Him, because flesh-and-blood men have a chance now.”
This time when he kissed her, her lips gave him a fragile response.
He released her head, and his grin challenged her. “That means I have a chance now.” A pause. “Right?”
“I, I...” She gulped. “Maybe. Right.”
He pocketed his keys. “Then that’s settled. Can you pick up that bag?”
She bent halfway and stopped. “I’d rather not.”
“Thought so. All right, sit there a sec. I’ll help you out of the car and grab everything.” He untwisted himself from the gearshift and took a plastic grocery bag from the floor in the back.
While she leaned against the back passenger side of the two-door Camry, Frank piled everything into the hospital bag, then took her arm and led her into the inn.
“I called for a reservation when I got the car from the emergency-room lot. It’s on the first floor, so you don’t have to deal with stairs.”
“I don’t have any luggage.”
Frank laughed. “I shall give a censored explanation to the desk clerk. He or she will have no cause to raise an eyebrow at you.”
_____
“Blast.” Giulia fished the new toothbrush out of the sink for the third time.
“Need help?” Frank’s voice reached her over the soccer game on the room’s TV.
“Gotta learn how to brush my teeth sometime.” If she held it with her thumb and last two fingers, the stitches bent only a little. She tried squeezing the travel-sized toothpaste tube using the same three fingers on her left hand, and it worked.
She wanted a shower, but not with Frank here. Besides, her head still hadn’t quite wrapped around that kiss.
Except “Ten Minutes Ago” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella was running through her mind.
Shelve it. You’re on overload. Give it a day or two.
Frank patted the other cushion of the loveseat when she came into the bedroom. “Come here, Ms. Falcone, and I will wrap up this case for you. After which I will tuck you into bed and you will sleep the sleep of the righteous.”
Giulia laughed. “Frank, since when do you speak like Philo Vance?”
He grinned wider than before. “Since that’s what finally got you to laugh again. Want me to brew you some pre-measured, weak, bitter coffee?”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“Smart woman.” He turned off the soccer game. “Okay, after the angels sang over the photo revelation, I headed for Blake’s. While I waited in his driveway, I called Pamela and made the angels sing for her over the photos, too.” He put his arm around her.
She started to relax. Don’t be a marshmallow. Don’t give in.
Their reflections in the TV screen started to merge. Despite all her aches, she did not sink against him like a spineless B-movie heroine. The Giulia who’d survived the past two weeks intact mentally patted herself on the back.
Frank said, “When I hung up, I reread the last note and I swear something invisible punched me in the gut. At first read, the note was just another rant from Ms. Falke.”
Giulia tilted her head toward him. “I thought the same thing, except for that last sentence. It creeped me out.”
“But when I put the note with the photo, I realized it wasn’t a threat. It was a description.” He tried to put his other arm around her. “She—well, her brother—created the photo of you, dead, and put the Bible verses as your epitaph.”
Giulia drew away just enough to emphasize the tiny space between them. “I’m missing something. Why did he create a photo? Why not just take a picture of me, um, afterward, and send you that?” She shivered, and Frank rubbed her arms without taking advantage of her moment of remembered fear.
“I think brother Falke is smarter than anyone expected. They planned to kill you and frighten Blake into silence. If the police ever suspected them, all the photo would prove is that he’s a sick puppy who creates digital snuff pictures, not that he killed you and memorialized it. A clever lawyer could twist that into an insanity plea.”
“You mean he’d get away with it? What about now? What about everything he and Sandra did?”
“Jimmy has him for kidnapping, sexual assault, and possession of controlled substances. He had a gonzo stash of pot in his car inside a winter emergency kit. We’ll both have to testify against him, but he’ll serve time.”
“I have to face him in court?” Giulia drooped.
“Pamela probably can’t identify him for certain—the parking garage was dark. Blake will tell about the bedroom incidents, but you can testify to both. You want him to get away with it?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“All right. You’re a strong woman. You can do it.”
He shifted position and Giulia made another move away, but he pulled her closer.
“You’re not leaving me just yet, Ms. Falcone. The idea that the photo was a prediction scared the hell out of me. I peeled out of Blake’s driveway and went straight to your place. Did you know that your neighbor across the hall watches everything through her peephole?”
“It’s her hobby.”
“When I knocked on your door, she stuck out her head and said your party started an hour ago. I asked her what she meant, and she had a lot to say about the lovely blonde and the man in black holding up the singing drunk.” He snorted. “She was still passing judgment on them when I pulled out my gun and started kicking the door.”
“Your timing was impeccable, Mr. Driscoll.”
“Naturally. That’s what makes Driscoll Investigations top of the line.” He gave up trying to get her to snuggle and stood, stretching his back. “Time for you to get some sleep. I fully expect you to be at work in the morning. And I don’t want to hear any excuses about overtime on a Sunday. You don’t punch a clock.�
�
“I know. Assuming I still work for you. I put in as many hours as necessary to get the job done.” Giulia stuck out her tongue. “That’s what I told Sidney Saturday night.”
Frank moved to the bed and folded the comforter down to its foot. “I saw her in the audience with a tall black man. Is that the hunky boyfriend? Did you talk afterward?”
“It is. Olivier and Sidney and I had an in-depth discussion over dessert. You may have some explaining to do.”
“What? Why?”
“I told her I quit and that you’d probably promote her. I gave her a summary of the case as it stood last night.”
“Giulia, Sidney is not my kind of partner. Bubbly and eager are good qualities, but she’d drive me to violence in a month.”
Giulia stood in increments. “But think how healthy you’d be. She actually ate frozen tofu at the Garden.”
Frank shuddered. “The thought makes my tongue curl.” He pulled back the sheet and balanced Giulia’s elbow as she creaked into bed.
“Ohhh, that’s comfortable.”
Franked tucked the sheet under her chin and paused before opening the door. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning. You’re safe now, a ghrá. Sleep tight.”
_____
Giulia jerked awake at the knocking on her door.
Kick harder—she has a knife—
“Wake up, lazybones.” Frank’s voice through the closed door. “All good employees are halfway to the office by now.”
She breathed again. Just a nightmare. “Be right there.” Off with the sheet. Ouch. She was stiff.
Frank barged in as soon as she turned the handle. “Move back. I have to drop this.”
Giulia’s ancient black overnight bag hit the floor. Frank walked straight to the circular table beneath the window and set a loaded tray on it.
“That was heavier than I expected.” He poured coffee from a chrome carafe into a real china cup and handed it to her. “Sit. You take it straight, right?” He sat in the opposite chair and poured a cup for himself. “The sign of a class hotel: real cream for the coffee.” He added a generous amount and drank half the cup. “Don’t stand there; come and eat. We’ve got Belgian waffles, fresh strawberries, and whipped cream—the real stuff, too. I tasted it.”
Force of Habit: A Falcone & Driscoll Investigation Page 23