“Did you mention the car?”
“Figured I’d wait until I got home. But we have to tell them. I mean, if this is some sicko looking to pick up kids…”
“Yeah. We have to tell them.”
Kayla licked her lips. “You gonna say anything to your mom about the rest—the thing that was missing from your bag?”
Dawn sighed. “I think maybe I have to. I mean, if I made it worse, she deserves to know.” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “I’ve got to think some more, first.”
“I think you should tell her.” Kayla shrugged. “Then again, I don’t even know what this is about, so don’t go by me.”
The two adults finished talking. Dawn’s mother gave the old man a gentle hug and hurried inside. Dawn braced her shoulders and prepared herself to face the music.
* * *
“What have you got?”
Sean sat on a bar stool, nursing a Guinness. Beside him, Freddy Drummond sipped his seven-seven. Sean had bought.
“Did you get me a sample from the victim?”
“No, but I learned his blood type.” Sean glanced around the place. The bartender was at the other end, deep in conversation with one of the regulars. Others milled around, but not close enough to listen in. Still, he kept his voice low. “O negative.”
“Interestingly, that’s the same type that was all over the blade.”
Sean closed his eyes. “I was afraid of that.”
“We got some prints off the handle. Two very clear ones. They matched the prints on cola can number two.”
Frowning, Sean said, “I was afraid of that.” Can number two had been Dawn’s soda can. He’d hoped the kid had had more sense than to get her fingerprints on the murder weapon. “Any other prints?”
“None.”
Sean swallowed hard, relieved there was no evidence Jones had been the one to wield that blade. Still, Dawn’s fingerprints were on it. Dammit to hell. He didn’t for a minute think the kid was capable of murder, but that didn’t mean the police wouldn’t. He’d seen kids younger than her tried as adults. Hell.
“What else do you need?”
He managed to shake the dust from his head long enough to think. “Nothing. Nothing, that’s all I need to know.” God knew what Jax and the D.A.’s office would do with this evidence if they got hold of it. He wouldn’t be surprised if they used it to wring a confession out of Jones. She would give it, too. She would do anything to protect her daughter. “I need the item back,” he said at length. He’d made up his mind. He had to get rid of it.
Freddy nodded. “Finish your Guinness, then, and follow me. It’s at the lab.”
Sean nodded, drained his glass and left his money on the gleaming oak bar. “Let’s do it.” He glanced at his watch. “And let’s make it quick.” He still hadn’t managed to let Dawn know he was the one who’d taken the blade from her bag. She hadn’t answered the phone after school. He wasn’t worried—he knew her mother had people watching her like hawks—but he was concerned that she would freak out when she found the blade missing, which she must have by now. He would have to speak to her just as soon as he could.
Freddy drove a Ford Taurus. A new one, but still, Sean thought he could have afforded something a little pricier. His private lab brought in good bucks. Excellent bucks. He was hired by lawyers and district attorneys all the time, and he was a PI’s dream come true. By the book, but completely discreet. Nothing entrusted to him went any further. It was how he stayed in business.
His place was downtown, not far away. A one story brick rectangle, it housed laboratory facilities, offices and a reception area always stocked with coffee and tea. The red Taurus wagon pulled into the paved driveway, and Sean pulled his Porsche in right beside it. By the time he shut his car off and got out, Freddy was swearing a blue streak and yanking out his cell phone.
Sean rushed forward, but Fred held up a hand to stop him.
That was when Sean saw the double doors. They’d been made of glass. Now they were made of air, mostly, aside from the few broken spears that still glimmered in the frames. “Jesus.”
Fred was speaking into his cell phone, rattling off the address, saying he didn’t know if the person was still on the premises, giving details.
Sean moved past him, stepping through the broken doors, shards of glass crackling under his feet.
“Sean, don’t! They might still be inside.” Fred folded his phone and stuck it into his pocket. “Just be patient. The police are on their way.”
“That’s why I can’t be patient. I need the knife, Fred, and the report and the cans. Everything. Now.”
Fred held his gaze for one moment, then nodded and followed him inside. They moved slowly, but it was clear within a few moments that no one was inside but them. Sean followed his friend through the place and into his private office. The refrigerator door stood open, its padlock bent and broken on the floor. Gasping, Fred ran to the fridge. “Oh, Jesus. Sean, it’s gone. The knife you brought—it’s gone.”
Sean snapped his head around. “It can’t be—” He ran to the cooler, where he knew Fred would have stored the blade to keep the blood from deteriorating. But the knife wasn’t inside, confirming the knot he’d felt in his gut from the first moment he’d seen the broken doors. Somewhere, deep down, he’d known. What other thing could Fred have been working on that was as big as the murder of a state senator’s brother?
He stood there, staring into the open refrigerator, and slowly let his head fall forward. “Dammit.”
“I’m sorry, Sean. They must have disabled the alarm somehow. I can’t believe—look, this is my responsibility. I know that.”
Sean shook his head slowly. “You had no way of knowing. I should have thought…”
“How do you want it handled? With the police, I mean?”
Sean stared at him for a long moment. “It was never here. I was never here. Forget you ever saw that blade. Can you do that for me?”
Freddy’s tongue darted out to moisten his lips. “Just tell me one thing. Has this got anything to do with the murder of Harry Blackwood?”
“It’s got to do with protecting an innocent kid, Fred. That’s all I can tell you. You’re gonna have to trust me on this.”
Fred held Sean’s eyes, then sighed, lowering his head. “Get your report out of the files, assuming it’s still there.”
Sean opened the file drawer, located his folder and took it out, while Freddy turned to a cabinet, unlocked it and fished out the large plastic bag containing the soda cans from Jones’s house. He tossed it to Sean.
“Now get out of here before the cops arrive.”
“Thanks, Fred. You’re a decent guy.”
“You’re a good customer.”
* * *
“We need to talk.”
Julie stood in her open front door, staring at Sean MacKenzie and wondering just how much it was going to take to get him to drop his snooping and leave her alone. She had enough to worry about without him poking around. God, why the hell had fate conspired to tangle him up in her life? And yet, part of her was glad to see him. Part of her knew he’d pulled her from the path of destruction by giving her an alibi tonight, on the air, in front of the entire viewing audience. And part of her just wanted to hug him for that.
“Sean, not tonight, please. It’s just not a good time.”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“Hi, Sean,” Dawn called from behind her mother. “Coffee or cocoa?”
“Sean can’t stay,” Julie said, making her voice firm. “And stop with the delaying tactics. We’re going to discuss what you did tonight.”
“Cocoa,” Sean said, coming inside anyway, walking past Julie and focusing on her daughter instead. “What’d you do, Dawnie?”
“I promised to ride home with Kayla’s mom, but we decided to walk instead.”
“Dawn,” Julie said, using a warning tone.
“There was this car that kind of—I don’t know, followed us, I think.”
Se
an stopped where he was, and Julie thought the shock in his eyes was real. He seemed to go tight all over, and a muscle worked in his jaw. “Are you okay?”
Dawn nodded. “It was scary. He passed by us three times, and the third time he slowed down, and I think he stopped. We took off, used the shortcut by the lake, and came in the back door. But when we got here, he was parked across the street.”
“Did you get a plate number?”
Dawn shook her head side to side. Sean shot Julie a look. “Have you called the police?”
“Not yet.”
His lips thinned. He lowered his head, pushed a hand through his hair. He seemed as upset as Julie had been.
“I learned my lesson, I’ll tell you that,” Dawn said. She was moving around the kitchen, putting water on to heat and pouring packets of cocoa mix into three mugs. “I know you’re mad, Mom, but I swear to God, it won’t happen again.”
Sean drew a breath, sighed heavily, started to speak, then stopped himself.
Julie frowned at him. “What, Sean? What is it?”
He met her eyes, then looked at Dawn. “Considering what’s happened, kiddo, don’t you think you ought to tell your mom about what you had in your backpack yesterday?”
She blinked at him, clearly unsure what he knew. Then Dawn’s face seemed surprised and relieved at once. “You mean it was you?”
“Yeah,” Sean said. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, kid. I tried, but…” He just shook his head.
Julie fought a chill. What could MacKenzie possibly know about her daughter that she didn’t? No one was closer to Dawn than she was. “Dawn, what is this all about?”
Dawn’s lips thinned. “Okay. I…there are a couple of things I haven’t told you. First…the other night, the night of that party, when Kayla came over?” Julie nodded. “When she was out on the lawn, there was—I thought I saw something. Someone, I mean.”
“Someone?”
Dawn nodded. “In the bushes. Kind of watching. But then you opened the back door and told her to come inside, and he was gone, and I thought it was all in my head.” She shrugged. “It was probably nothing.”
My God, someone was stalking her daughter. Julie went to the telephone.
“What are you doing?” Dawn asked.
“Calling the police.”
Dawn moved closer, put her hand over her mother’s on the phone. “Don’t, Mom. There’s more.”
Julie put the phone down and searched Dawn’s face.
Dawn licked her lips, then glanced toward Sean. He gave her an encouraging nod. “I messed up, Mom, but I was only trying to help.” She lowered her eyes. “When I came home yesterday, I took out the trash. And there was…something in the trash can out in the garage.”
Julie frowned. “What?”
“A knife. It was a knife, and it had something on it that looked like…like blood.”
Julie’s eyes widened. She shot a look at Sean, but he only shrugged and shook his head.
“I didn’t know what to think. You were on the news talking about that man who’d been murdered. And I thought—I thought—”
Julie frowned. “You thought I might have had something to do with it?”
Dawn looked up slowly, tears brimming in her eyes. “I didn’t know what to think. I just wanted to get rid of that thing until I could find out. I grabbed it out of the trash, wrapped it in a dish towel and crammed it into the bottom of my backpack.” She sniffed. “That’s why I decided to walk home. I planned to throw it into the lake on the way. But…but when I looked in my bag, it was gone.”
“But, Dawnie, how could you think…” Julie shook her head slowly, then shifted her attention to Sean. “How did you know about this?”
“What do I look like, an amateur?” He walked into the kitchen, where the teakettle was whistling insistently, turned off the burner and calmly filled the three cups. “When we arrived to find the cops here, I noticed Dawn shove the backpack onto the floor of my car, out of sight. She went back out to get it after the police left. I knew there was something in there she didn’t want them to see, so I took a look while you two were distracted by the lock guys.”
“It was none of your business, Sean.”
He lowered his head. “I know.”
“Then why did you do it?”
He shrugged. “I can’t stand secrets.”
“So you were digging, just like always. Looking for dirt.”
He nodded. “Yeah. At first, that’s exactly what I was doing. But now, I want to help.”
“You want to help,” she repeated. “My worst enemy wants to help me out of a bind.”
“I don’t exactly see anyone else lining up and offering.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you’ve got no ulterior motive here? No angle to play?”
“If I did, I’d have written the story by now. I haven’t. Hell, I covered for you on the air tonight. If that’s not enough to convince you, I don’t know what is. You want an oath signed in blood or what?”
She pursed her lips, turning and pacing away from him. If it were anyone but him offering to help her, she might have taken them up on it. But him? God.
“Dawn thinks you’re in trouble, Jones, and so do I.”
“He’s right,” Dawn said. “Mom, I…I heard you on the phone that night. I heard that man giving you a hard time. And I heard you call him Harry. Then you left, in the middle of the night like that….”
“I did not kill Harry Blackwood,” Julie said. “My God, I can’t believe you ever thought for one minute that I could be capable of murder.” She closed her eyes, fought for calm.
“I don’t,” Dawn denied. “I believe you, Mom.”
“For what it’s worth, I believe you, too.”
Julie shot Sean a look. “Right. Sure you do.”
“I do. I figure, if you were capable of murder, I’d be six feet under by now.”
“You’d be dust by now.”
He smiled a little. She took some small comfort in the brief, familiar sniping.
Sean said, “So what we deduce from this, is that someone planted the knife in your garage. That’s the only other answer. Julie, your house keys were missing, remember? They must have used them to get in. The blade was planted here before the locks were changed.”
Dawn looked up fast. “The door was unlocked when I got home! I thought it was odd at the time, but I forgot, with everything else. God, Mom, do you think someone’s trying to frame you for murder?”
Julie’s head was spinning. “Stop, just stop.” She paced into the living room. “Dawn, this isn’t the kind of thing you should be worrying about at your age. Trying to protect me, lying to the police, hiding what might be a murder weapon—no. No, this is not going to happen.” She paced, talking to herself. “I’m going to have to find somewhere safe for you, Dawn. To hide you until this is over. A private school maybe, or—”
“No!”
Dawn shouted the word so loudly that it stopped Julie in her tracks. She turned and saw her daughter standing in the kitchen doorway, tears brimming in her eyes, a cup of cocoa in one trembling hand. Sean gently took the mug from her.
“Baby, I have to protect you. That’s got to be my first priority.”
“Mom, I’m sixteen years old. I’m tired of you always trying so hard to protect me from everything in the world. I’m not going anywhere, and if you try to send me away, I’ll just leave and come right back. I swear I will.”
“Dawnie…”
“I can help,” she said. “Stop sheltering me as if I were a two-year-old. Let me help you, Mom. I’m not useless, and I’m not a child.”
Julie went to Dawn, wrapped her arms around her and pulled her close. “I know you’re not useless, honey. And I know you’re not a child. But, my God, someone is following you now. You’re not safe here. Baby, I have to do whatever is necessary to keep you safe, even if it breaks my heart.”
Dawn wrenched herself free of her mother’s arms, turned and fled up the stairs.
Julie heard the bedroom door slam and flinched bodily.
She pressed her hands to her head. “God, oh, God, why is this happening?”
She started when she realized Sean was standing close to her, having all but forgotten his presence in her anguish over seeing her daughter in so much pain. When he slid his arms around her shoulders, pulling her against his chest, she went rigid in surprise. What the hell was this?
But he only held her there, his hands gentle. “It’ll be okay,” he said.
He was actually comforting her. It wasn’t a come-on, and it wasn’t a joke. He was actually trying to reassure her.
“Th-thank you.”
He released her, and she looked up, searching his face. He honestly seemed as worried as she was. She shook her head slowly. “So what did you do with the knife?”
“I took it to a private lab for analysis.”
She blinked at him. “You did what?”
“Like it or not, Jones, knowledge is power. We needed to know whose blood was on that blade, and whose fingerprints. We can’t fight this thing unless we know what it is we’re fighting.”
“What the hell do you mean, we?” She stared at him. “I want it back. You had no business doing this, MacKenzie.”
His sympathetic expression hardened slightly. “I can’t give it back, Jones. There was a break-in at the lab. It was taken.”
The blood rushed from her head so rapidly she felt dizzy. She actually swayed a little, but he caught her shoulders.
“I know you could probably kill me right now. I can’t say I blame you, but Jesus Christ, Jones, if you’d come clean with me from the beginning…”
“It’s none of your goddamn business!” She shouted it, furious at him.
He kept his own voice level and low. “I’m making it my business.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Why? For the love of God, Sean, why are you so determined to dig around in my life?”
He held her gaze, and she saw something there, just briefly, before he lowered his head. He released her shoulders, turned and paced a few steps away. “Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but I’m compelled to help. And I don’t need a shrink to tell me why. You were at that goddamn compound during the raid I still have nightmares about, and somehow you survived. I was there. I watched it happen, and I did nothing. Then I let them silence me when I could have told the story. It’s guilt, all right? I’m using you to ease my own guilty conscience.”
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