Phoenix drummed his fingers on a large wooden coffee table to the beat as Sarah approached him from behind. She pushed past Julia and stuck the barrel of the gun against the back of Phoenix’s neck.
“On your feet, asshole,” Sarah said. “Get up slowly. You try to reach for anything, you’re dead.”
“Easy. Easy,” Julia said, trying to keep the situation from spiraling out of control. “Listen to me, Phoenix, and no one needs to get hurt.”
Phoenix Pontiac dropped the remote he was holding onto the leather sofa and raised his hands up by his head in a surrender gesture as he rose to his feet.
“You’ve been telling me a string of lies. Is Phoenix Pontiac really your name?” Julia asked. She walked in front of Phoenix; and Sarah stood behind, with the gun pressed against the back of his neck.
“This is a misunderstanding,” Phoenix said. “I just called you.”
“Right. A few minutes ago when Agent Kenny was still here.”
Phoenix’s dark eyes shifted away from Julia and flicked down to the floor as he tried to come up with his latest story.
“Let me explain.”
“How much money did Kenny give you?” Julia asked. “Let me see the envelope.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can’t even lie worth a shit. Give Julia the envelope,” Sarah said.
Phoenix reached into his pants pocket and handed the envelope to Julia. She looked inside and did a quick count. “There’s probably five grand in here.”
“Against the wall. Now,” Sarah said to Phoenix. She trained the gun at his head and followed him until he reached it. “Turn around, place your hands on the wall, and spread your legs. You know how to assume the position, right?”
Phoenix looked over his shoulder pleadingly at Julia, but he followed Sarah’s directive.
“Make sure he’s not carrying,” Sarah said.
Julia had never frisked anyone in her life, but she’d seen enough cops on her beat do it in real life, so she patted Phoenix down to be sure he didn’t have a weapon. Julia moved her hands over Phoenix’s body until she felt the shape of something hard between the back of his shirt and belt.
“Gun,” Julia said.
Sarah snapped the tail of Phoenix’s shirt up and carefully pulled out a revolver from his rear waistband.
“What do you want to do here, Julia?” Sarah asked.
“I want answers.”
Sarah looked toward a small, round table in the kitchen and slapped Phoenix on the arm. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to walk to that table and sit down. Then you’re going to lay your hands flat down on the table.”
“I’m not doing that,” Phoenix said.
Sarah cuffed the butt of her gun against the side of Phoenix’s temple.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Phoenix asked.
“Getting a liar to move.”
Phoenix quickly made his way to the kitchen table and shot a look toward a cell phone that lay on the counter.
“Don’t think about it. Like I said, hands, palms down,” Sarah said, and tossed Julia the roll of duct tape from the bag. “Tape his hands to the table. Just the knuckles down to the wrists. Make sure you don’t get his fingers.”
“I don’t like this,” Julia said.
“It’s that, or you hold the gun on him, and I’m betting you don’t do guns. If this is going to turn out the way you want it to, then you need to trust me. The only way to beat the bad guys at their own game is to play dirtier than they do.”
Julia thought about the charm bracelet Ben had given her, and how Pontiac had somehow hijacked her brother’s memory and a precious moment they had shared, and she begrudgingly relented. She grabbed the roll of tape and began to tightly affix strips of it across the bottom of both of Phoenix’s hands.
“No one gets hurt here, Sarah. I mean it,” Julia said when she finished.
Sarah checked the tape when Julia was done and then grabbed the roll and taped Phoenix’s feet to the front chair legs.
“You’ve got a captive audience. It’s your show now. Ask him what you want,” Sarah said.
Julia sat down at the table across from Phoenix and stared into his eyes, which darted back and forth between her and Sarah in a nervous tic.
“You lied about knowing my brother and him being alive, didn’t you?” Julia asked.
“No. I’m in deep shit here, and if I tell you what I know, I’m going to be dead or Kenny is going to put me back in jail. Please. I didn’t lie to you. You’ve got to believe me.”
“Last chance. Is Ben alive, or was the whole story a lie you concocted with Kenny to get to me so I’d bring you to Duke?” Julia asked.
“I like you, Julia. I do. But I can’t tell you anything more,” Phoenix said.
Sarah made her way over to the kitchen and a row of light wood cabinets. She opened each one up and began to poke around inside. Sarah studied the contents of a bottom drawer next to the oven and stood back up with an ice pick clutched between her fingers.
“What’s she going to do with that?” Phoenix asked.
Sarah bent down over the table with the ice pick and pointed with her other hand at Phoenix’s fingers.
“Spread ’em. If I were you, I’d move my fingers as far apart as possible. The closer your fingers are together, there’s more of a chance I’ll cut you. We’re going to go fast now. Ready?”
Julia was ready to tell Sarah not to do it, but her sister was already busy with the ice pick. Sarah’s hand was a blur as she drove the pointed tip of the blade skillfully between the spaces of Phoenix’s fingers.
“You’re crazy. Stop her!” Phoenix begged Julia.
“Did you lie about my brother being alive?” Julia asked.
“No. But I can’t tell you anything more,” Phoenix said.
The steady tap-tap-tap rhythm of the ice pick broke its stride as Sarah slammed the blade down hard a whisper away from Phoenix’s middle finger.
“Stop! Jesus,” Phoenix cried.
Sarah ignored Phoenix’s plea and continued her game, this time grazing the tip of the ice pick against his thumb, leaving a fresh hole in his flesh, which started to draw blood.
“Okay! Please. I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just keep her away from me,” Phoenix said in a shaking voice.
Julia pried the ice pick out of her sister’s hand and then grabbed Sarah by the arm.
“No more,” Julia warned.
Sarah took a seat across from Phoenix, looking almost sulky without her toy.
“Okay. This is the truth. I swear. My job was to get you to give up Duke to the FBI. I’m an informant for Kenny. I got popped on a drug deal. I was going to be facing some serious time. I was desperate and pulled out an old ace in the hole, thinking I might have something to use. I told the cops about the Mueller thing when I was a kid, about being abducted and held there and how Max was running a human-trafficking ring. I sat in my cell for three days after that, so I figured the cops weren’t interested because it was so long ago and Max Mueller had just died, but then Agent Kenny showed up, asking me about some art stuff. I told him I didn’t know anything about it, but I did tell him what happened at the house in the woods. Kenny kept going back to some old notebook he wanted to know about that belonged to some painter. After about an hour, he stood up to leave. That’s when I mentioned Ben, and Kenny sat back down, looking all interested this time. I swear, everything I told you about meeting Ben in that house was true.”
“Things in life don’t fall into place that easily. You’re telling me that Kenny shows up, offers you some kind of deal if you can get me to bring him my father, and then Ben comes out of the woodwork? You tried to play on my vulnerability. But you made a big mistake,” Julia said.
“Okay, I know how crazy this sounds, but Ben was just here, I swear. I couldn’t believe it was him, but it was. Kenny arranged everything. All I know is the FBI is protecting Ben, as long as he gives up information o
n your dad. Ben agreed to anything they asked, as long as you were protected. Ben’s been in hiding, but he went to the FBI when Duke came back to Sparrow to get the painting and the notebook. Ben knew you’d be in danger if people found out your dad was alive. That’s all I know. I swear. Kenny wouldn’t give me any more details, only that Ben got away from Ahote in the woods one night when he was hunting him. Ben was able to get to the road and flag down a car that helped him. I don’t know anything else. I swear.”
“If my brother was just here, where is he now?”
“I don’t know. I swear to God. He left with the agent when Kenny was here the first time, about an hour ago. I’m an outsider in all this. Kenny paid me to get to you so you’d bring him your dad. Everything I told you about meeting Ben in the house in the woods, that was all true. Agent Kenny is using me as much as he’s trying to use you.”
“Let him go,” Julia said.
“What?” Sarah responded.
“This guy’s nothing more than a jailhouse snitch. Everything that comes out of his mouth is going to be another lie. He’s a waste of time.”
“Let me have another round with him,” Sarah said.
“It wouldn’t make a difference. Give Agent Kenny a message for me,” Julia said to Phoenix. “If he wants to play, he delivers up Ben. Otherwise, no deal.”
CHAPTER 24
Liam Mueller stripped down to his underwear and changed his clothes in the five-million-dollar home he lived in near the Birmingham Country Club. He still felt dirty after being forced to sit in a hideous police station for three hours and then being brought back a second time when the Detroit police questioned him again, this time not about Julia Gooden and someone trying to kill her in Stinson Trail, but about Ahote.
Liam got into the shower and nearly rubbed his skin raw before he felt clean. He dressed and started to relax, only after he put on Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” his favorite piece of music ever since he was a child. Liam slipped on his Italian loafers and poured himself a snifter of Glenmorangie Signet scotch.
The warmth of the liquor settled nicely through his entire body after his first sip, and he sat down at the head of a long, formal dining table as he tried to push away the darkness that was settling in all around him. He started to feel easier and closed his eyes, when an image of his father Max’s black cane coming down hard on him when he was a child caused Liam to bolt up from his seat. Liam took one more drink of the expensive scotch and then threw the rest of its contents and the crystal snifter as hard as he could against the dining room’s fireplace. He walked toward the mess he had created and picked up a fresh piece of glass, pressing it into the palm of his hand until it slid through his flesh. Liam winced when the pain hit, but he continued on with his self-inflicted assault. After all, why did he deserve to treat himself well, when his own father had beaten him and treated him like garbage?
Liam looked down at his phone and saw his lawyer’s number flash across the screen. He knew it would be just a matter of time before the police would bring him in again, and he would be forced to tell them about Ahote and his father Max’s business, one that had brought them both works of art that were far too glorious to put into words. Liam knew he would have to tell the dirty little story in order to protect himself. A plea deal was better than life in prison.
He closed his eyes and thought about the van Gogh notebook, dreaming of what it would be like to hold it in his hands and then open the cover to find the master’s innermost thoughts, which he didn’t share with anyone else, before van Gogh lost his mind and took his own life.
Liam’s security system sounded with one short beep, which echoed down the hallway in his direction, alerting him that someone was on his property. Liam pulled out his phone and looked at the image on the screen. It showed the view from his front door and the street and the two men who were getting out of a car.
They were coming for him, because they somehow knew he was going to turn.
Liam walked to his desk, an antique. His grandfather had taken the desk, along with the entire art collection, from a Jewish family, four children, a grandmother, and two adults, in Germany before they were sent to a concentration camp. Liam ran his fingers over the hand-carved wood, the antique desk a piece that had a sordid history, but one that was still so, so beautiful.
The alarm sounded again, one long beep this time, alerting Liam that the two men had just deactivated it. Liam reached into the drawer of the antique desk and pulled out a gun as the music played on triumphantly in the background.
Liam felt a bittersweet ache of unrequited lust over the notebook he would never get to see, and how it likely held the secrets of the artist, his brilliance and madness, and the doubtless haunted shadows that skirted through his mind before he completely lost it.
As the sound of footsteps approached down the hall, Liam closed his eyes, stuck the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 25
Julia gave the cabdriver twenty dollars, since Sarah didn’t have any money, as he let them off in front of the parking garage across from the Renaissance House.
“What level are you parked on?” Julia asked.
“The sixth floor.”
“Let’s take the stairs. The police are looking for Ahote, so I’m guessing he’s going underground, but I’d rather not be fighting for my life and be boxed in with him in a tight space if he comes around, so no elevator.”
Julia panned the first-floor stairwell, which smelled like urine, and started to run up the stairs.
“Slow down, you’re going to kill me,” Sarah said, panting from behind.
“You’ve got to push yourself,” Julia said, not slowing her pace.
When they reached the sixth-floor stairwell, Sarah grabbed Julia’s arm.
“Hold on. Just in case,” Sarah said. She pulled out Duke’s gun from the duffel bag she had brought along and then covered the gun with the vinyl bag and held the gun close to her stomach.
Julia opened the door to the sixth-floor parking level and quickly scanned the space, but on first blush, it appeared to be empty of people. Julia followed Sarah until her sister stopped in front of a faded, old Nissan with a dent in the bumper.
“Hey, it’s paid for,” Sarah said as she moved toward the driver-side door.
“One second first,” Julia said, and looked underneath the car. “Pop the trunk.”
Julia did a quick inspection and saw nothing more than a spare tire and a carton of cigarettes.
“Thanks for the ride. I think we’re good,” Julia said.
Sarah unlocked the Nissan and the two sisters climbed inside.
“Why’d you let Phoenix go?” Sarah asked as she started the car.
“Because he’s a jailhouse snitch, and he’ll say anything to help himself. Everything he told me was a lie and a manipulation. No use wasting my time with him. People like that from my beat, they’ll tell you anything you want to hear in order to get out of the trouble they’re in.”
“If Phoenix is a liar, how did he get your charm bracelet that Ben gave you?” Sarah asked.
“It was probably a replica. People can fake items, but they can’t fake memories. Someone told him about how Ben gave me the bracelet for my birthday. I need to talk to Agent Kenny. He’s the one pulling the strings.”
The older Nissan almost stalled as it made its way toward the exit, where Julia handed the attendant a credit card to pay for the two-day and overnight charge.
“You don’t have to pay for everything. I’m trying to get on my feet,” Sarah said. She hit the gas hard and maneuvered around the light, early-evening traffic until they reached the highway to Rochester Hills and Julia’s house.
“This isn’t the life I want anymore, you know?” Sarah asked. “Did you ever wonder what our lives would’ve been like if we had different parents?”
“Ben would still be here. I know that. I’ll be honest with you. Through the years, I met a lot of people who had worse situations than we did. It w
asn’t good growing up, but I know it could’ve been worse.”
“You were the lucky one, always were. A purebred. You stood out, even in the shit we were in when you were little. Me, I’ve never been lucky. Some people are born with a dark cloud over their head, like you’re cursed even before you’re born. People like me, we’re the dregs, black dogs in the sun, mutts tied up and chained in the heat. You can’t escape from who you really are.”
“If you believe that, then you’re destined to stay down. No one is lucky. You fight your way out of your situation. When you went into foster care and I was with Aunt Carol, I knew she didn’t really want me. I know it was better than where you ended up, but growing up in a place where you’re a nuisance, that didn’t feel good. I held on to Ben and that got me through.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I can’t see any way that Ben’s alive. That FBI protection claim Phoenix swore was true, that sounded like bullshit to me. You really think if Ben had been alive all this time, he wouldn’t have come back for you?”
“If he thought it would protect me, yes.”
Julia watched the city pass by and the sun made its last appearance of the day as it slowly slipped down on the horizon; the signs for Rochester Hills appeared against the backdrop of its glorious orange-and-yellow brilliant finale.
Julia navigated Sarah to her address and felt uncomfortable when Sarah turned the car off in front of Julia’s house. Helen’s old Volvo was parked in the driveway, and Julia knew Logan and Will would be inside.
“Thanks for the ride and for sticking around back there. I can’t invite you in. My kids are home.”
A flicker of hurt passed across Sarah’s eyes for a second, but then it was gone. “Sure. I’m no good with kids anyway. It’s lucky I never had one. The kid and me, we’d both be miserable.”
“I’ll see you around, Sarah,” Julia said. She reached across the seat and was surprised when at the last second, she found herself squeezing Sarah’s hand.
* * *
Julia got out of the car and watched until the old Nissan pulled out of sight. She then headed into her house, where Helen, who was wearing bright red lipstick and had her hair pulled away from her face, was forming dough into bow tie shapes on a cookie sheet.
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