Compulsion (Max Revere Novels Book 2)

by Brennan, Allison

  Reasonable doubt could be a tricky area, though, because some of it was subjective. Max thought Charlene did a competent job laying out the murders and building her case that Adam Bachman was the only person who could have committed the crimes. At a minimum, the jury would have to find Bachman guilty of assault and kidnapping; but the forensics team was good enough to be able to state that the drug used on Ava Raines was the same formula as the drugs used on the other five victims. Though it was tenuous, it did establish a clear connection between the Ava Raines kidnapping and the other five victims.

  Max thought it was enough.

  She settled in to listen to Gregory Warren list off the weaknesses in the prosecution’s case. And by the end of the closing statements, Max was confident that Bachman would be convicted.

  As the prosecution closed, she turned her attention back to Adam Bachman.

  Hunched over in his chair, his head was swallowed up by the gaping neck of his suit, the same suit he’d worn on Monday. His hair wasn’t perfect, as it had been every other day. Did he sense his pending conviction? New York wasn’t a death penalty state, but if convicted, he’d be spending the rest of his life behind bars. The prosecution was asking for five consecutive life sentences. He would never be eligible for parole. Was he seeing his life end? Did he fear prison? Did he have regrets?

  She would get in to see him again. Richard would allow it, she was fairly confident. Monday, after the jury came down with a verdict. She didn’t think it would take them longer, just long enough to prove to the court they’d done due diligence.

  He wouldn’t be transported to prison until after sentencing. She could get in, talk to Adam, convince him to tell her about his partner. She’d come up with a strategy this weekend, while she was enjoying her time alone with Nick.

  It was odd, she thought, that she was looking forward to the break with Nick Santini when generally she resented any time away from an active investigation. Did that mean she had deeper feelings for him than she’d admitted to herself? Why him, and not the other men who’d come in and out of her life?

  Stop overthinking, Maxine. Enjoy it while you can.

  * * *

  Detective Sally O’Hara had spent the last two days searching for the Palazzolos’ car, going on the assumption that it was in a location near where it had been spotted. But she had limited resources and wanted to be completely thorough, so she called in a favor from crime scene guru Frank Morelli to search deeper into the abandoned rail yard near where the empty lye container had been found. She was risking a reprimand because her chief had already told her, “Finding garbage in Queens is not a clue.”

  She stood on a broken cement platform waiting for Morelli’s team to return from his excursion deep into the tunnels. She would only get in their way, and Morelli knew what he was doing. The trees and shrubs here were overgrown, haunting even in the daylight. Traffic could be heard, but not seen. Graffiti marred the crumbling walls, and she wondered what this place had been like in its heyday. Now, it was a perfect place for murder.

  A chill ran up her spine when she remembered what Max had said to her the other night.

  Adam Bachman agreed to the interview the day after you found the lye container.

  Sally had dismissed it as coincidence, but she wasn’t fooling herself, or Max. And Sally owed Max. She’d said that this would make them even, but nothing could. How could she put a limit on the value of her sister’s life? Jane was messed up, she might never get her life together, but Joey was perfect. Their parents were now in their fifties, but they were caring for Jane and raising Joey. And Sally loved that kid. He was seven now, about to start second grade, and he knew nothing about what happened to his mother, who’d been fourteen when she had him. As far as Joey knew, Jane was his sister just like Sally. Maybe it was wrong to lie to him, but what were the alternatives? The truth was not an option. It would mess him up when he should be a happy kid without the crap world he’d been conceived in.

  Max and Sally had become close during the time they were looking for Jane, and remained friends, but they had one huge fight shortly after Joey was born and hadn’t completely mended fences.

  * * *

  Max had come to visit Jane in the hospital. The baby was small, a month premature, but perfect and healthy in every way. Jane treated him like a precious doll, looking every bit a child even though she’d just given birth.

  Sally was with her parents. They’d been crying, with happiness and sorrow and fear for the future. They’d talked about giving the baby up for adoption—but the O’Haras loved family, and Joey was their grandson. He was family, as much as Jane, and they could and would love and care for him. It wasn’t an easy decision, but once made the dark veil that had covered the family for nearly two years lifted. It was the right decision for them.

  Max walked in, stood in the doorway, and waited until Sally came over. Sally hugged her tightly. Max wasn’t huggy like the O’Haras, but Sally didn’t care—she’d saved their family. “Thank you.”

  “He’s beautiful,” Max said. “I heard Jane is recovering well.”

  “Physically,” Sally said. “But she’s not all there. Last week she asked my mom when was she going back ‘home.’ That ‘they’ would be mad that she had the baby without them.” Sally’s hands fisted. She was so angry all the time about what the Butcher family had done to her sister and the other girls. How they’d brainwashed them. Even Jane, who’d willingly come to Sally when she saw her, kept having flashbacks to her “real family.” Jane was confused and sullen and though she was in therapy, it hadn’t seemed to work. At least not as fast as Sally wanted.

  “Time,” Max said. “She has family.”

  “That’s what her therapist says, but I don’t know.”

  “Have you decided about adoption?”

  “We’re keeping the baby. I have an attorney friend of mine drawing up the papers. My parents are legally adopting Joey. His birth records will be sealed, but we’re telling him that my parents are his. That he’s my brother, Jane’s brother.”

  Max frowned. “I don’t understand. What about Jane?”

  “She agrees that she’s too young and too damaged to be a mother. She’s not always confused. And we don’t want to confuse Joey. He’s going to have questions. What do we tell him? That his mother was kidnapped and raped and was seven months pregnant when we found her? He’ll think we would have wanted him to be aborted. And God, I’ve thought that. That if we’d found her sooner, if she was only a month or two pregnant, it would have been so much easier to start with a clean slate. But seven months—we couldn’t even think about it.”

  “First, don’t think about what might have been. That thinking will drive you crazy. Second, you need to be honest with Joey. He’s going to figure it out.”

  “No, he won’t. Everybody’s on board.”

  “Even Jane?”

  “Yes.” But Sally wasn’t certain of anything. “She’s so confused right now. We’re doing everything we can.”

  “It’ll be worse if he finds out the truth on his own. No child wants to learn that they’ve been lied to their entire life.”

  “He won’t.”

  “Sally—I know this is hard, but I think you and your parents need to reconsider—”

  “What the fuck do you know about how hard this is? You’re not part of this family, you don’t have any right to judge us or our decisions. But I swear, if you write one word about what happened to my sister—”

  “I promised I wouldn’t.”

  Sally was crying. She didn’t want to take her anger out on Max. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scream at you. Just—please—just respect our decision. This wasn’t easy. But it’s for the best.”

  Max said, “Lies are never for the best. But no one will hear about Joey from me.”

  * * *

  Over the years, they’d bonded again and put the argument behind them, but Sally knew in the back of her mind that Max still judged her family’s decision ab
out telling Joey that his grandparents were really his parents.

  He called her parents Mom and Dad. Jane treated him like a little brother, and Sally and her two brothers doted on him. None of this had been Joey’s fault.

  How do you repay someone who saved your family? Who believed you when you knew, in your heart, that your sister was alive? When no one else, not the police, not the D.A., not the FBI, wanted to listen to your wild theories? Max did. Max not only listened, she helped and never asked for anything in return. She even did the one thing Sally never thought she’d do—kept the O’Hara name out of all the stories about the Butcher family and how they kidnapped girls to use as breeders.

  So even though Sally had said they were even, they weren’t. Every time Max asked for help, she had a reason that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with helping the families of missing persons. Sally wouldn’t shut her out. Finding the Palazzolos would give their three children closure, and that meant more than anything except finding them alive. If you’ve never lost someone—a child, a sibling, a parent—you didn’t understand how the not knowing shredded you inside. Knowing, even the bad, was the first step toward peace.

  Frank Morelli appeared in the tunnel opening, shielded his eyes against the light, and looked around. “Morelli,” she called and walked toward him.

  He approached her. “We found something. But I need to bring in more lights.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. “A car?”

  He nodded. “We can’t get to it. Debris from the storms last fall washed down into the tunnel, and because the tunnel’s not in use, it hasn’t been cleared.” He talked into this walkie-talkie, then said to Sally, “How did you know? We’d never have gone that far down without you pushing.”

  “It was an educated guess.”

  “This car was deliberately hidden. It would have been difficult to drive it down there with all the obstructions in the way, but not impossible.”

  “It would have been hidden nearly a year ago. Before the hurricane. I wonder why no one called it in. The homeless go into these tunnels in bad weather. Kids party.”

  “It’s way down there,” Frank repeated. “There was a cave-in years ago, way before your time. The city sealed off many of these underground tunnels because they’d become a hazard. Sealing off usually means fences, easy enough to get through if someone is determined. Someone cut through this fence, drove in the car, and then used wire ties to reconnect the fencing. At first glance, you can’t see that it was tampered with, which is why we missed it the first time around.”

  “He didn’t want it found.”

  “It’s going to take an hour or more to get the equipment here.”

  “Frank, I have a favor to ask. I want to bring in a civilian.”

  Frank looked her straight in the eye. “It’s your call. I won’t say anything to O’Malley, but I’m not going to lie if asked.”

  Sally hoped that O’Malley didn’t ask.

  * * *

  Max and David found Sally standing apart from the rest of her team on the broken sidewalk next to the abandoned rail yard. There were at least a dozen people on scene, and they were busy unpacking a supply truck. Everyone was donning gear. Their helmets had lights. It was late in the afternoon, the heat of the day still radiating from the cement.

  “Thank you, Sally,” Max said.

  “I shouldn’t let you be here.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “If it weren’t for you nagging me, and David helping yesterday, we wouldn’t have found them.”

  “You okay?” Max asked. Sally had always been sensitive. It’s what made her good with victims and survivors, but it also made these type of scenes more difficult.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Frank Morelli, one of the two most senior members of the Queens crime investigative unit, approached. “Maxine.”

  “Frank.”

  Frank gave Sally a look. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a reporter. If O’Malley hears”—he shook his head, then turned to David—“Frank Morelli.”

  David took the offered hand. “David Kane.”

  “Okay, this is how it’s going to go.” Frank handed each of them hazmat coveralls. “This is for precaution only, but you’re not to touch the vehicle or go beyond our tape. I’m sending in a small team to assess the stability of the car and verify there are human remains, but we don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  “Understood.”

  “Just put these over your clothes.” He glanced down at Max’s feet, clad in three-inch heels. “You can’t wear those.”

  “I have boots,” she said.

  “Get them on, we’re heading into the tunnel in five minutes.”

  Max climbed into the backseat of David’s car and shut the door. The windows were tinted, so she pulled off her dress and slipped on a pair of jeans that she always kept in her gym bag. She grabbed a white tank top and pulled a lined Windbreaker over it. It was a warm June day, but it would be cold underground.

  She slipped on socks and boots and was out of the car in less than three minutes.

  David handed her the hazmat coveralls, and she pulled them on over her clothes. He and Sally already had theirs on.

  “Yellow is not your color, David.”

  “I could say the same to you,” he said.

  “Which is why I own no yellow clothes.”

  Max looked pointedly at Sally. She’d pulled her mass of curls back into a sloppy bun and her skin was drawn and pale. “Sally, what are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing. Don’t start with me, Max.”

  David raised an eyebrow. Max didn’t answer his unspoken question. Instead she said, “We know they’re dead, Sally. This isn’t the same as going into the compound where Jane was held. They’ve been dead a long time.”

  “I hate this part.”

  “It sucks,” she concurred.

  Sally smiled and almost laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that word before.”

  “I have a new assistant. Her mouth isn’t as clean as mine.”

  Now Sally laughed.

  There were four cops and twelve people from the investigative and recovery unit. Sally rushed to catch up with Frank, so Max and David followed on her heels. Frank walked behind the two CSIs leading the group. “We set up two lanterns near where we found the vehicle, but it’s going to be dark for about two hundred yards in. That’s why my people have lights on their helmets. Stick with us. There’s nooks and crannies all through here, maintenance tunnels, and much of it is unstable. The storm last October did serious damage to much of the city’s drainage system, and years ago, before you were a cop, O’Hara, an underground rave was partly responsible for a collapse. The area was gated off, but someone got through. That’s where we found the car.”

  The train tunnels were part of an old system that had stopped functioning decades ago. New York was filled with abandoned buildings and underground spaces. When Max first moved to New York, she and Karen, her college roommate, met two urban explorers. Karen started dating one of them and they took the girls on a few tours of the bowels of Manhattan. Homeless, gangs, runaways, urban explorers, criminals, the mentally ill—there was an entire culture that lived beneath the city.

  Max had been fascinated by the buried history of New York, but the dark underbelly was unsettling. It was never quiet. Noises above, around you, below. Things moving that you couldn’t see. The constant sound of water. If damp had a smell, it was under the city. She wasn’t squeamish about the dark or even being underground, but the rodents and bugs … they got to her.

  She walked between Sally and David. It helped.

  The ground was wet, and shallow pools of standing water gave the entire cavern a moldy stench. The lights from the powerful flashlights, both the ones that the investigative team held and those on their hats, bounced off the curved walls.

  “Another hundred yards,” Frank said. “There’s a curve up ahead, and then a fenc
e.”

  Frank led the way through a chain-link fence that had been attached to poles on the sides and bolted to the brick ceiling. “Here,” he said, using his bright flashlight to illuminate the fencing. “Can you see where it was cut?”

  David responded. “Someone cut it away at both poles and lifted it up from the bottom.”

  “Bingo,” Frank said. “When we got down here earlier, we saw the fence had been resecured with zip ties. They’re all bagged and tagged, but they’re common supplies. We’ll process the entire area but if the Palazzolos are in the car, this is a year-old crime scene. We’re not going to get much that isn’t contaminated. I don’t know that we’ll be able to get the car out without taking it apart down here. We’ll talk to a towing company, figure out our options.”

  Frank motioned for them to stop, then said to his team, “Set up the lights along the perimeter. We’re going to photograph and assess the status of the vehicle before we attempt to search it. Everyone who approaches the car will wear full gear.”

  “Is sodium hydroxide still dangerous after a year?” Max asked.

  “Not usually—it dissipates, the chemical reactions will have long been over. But if there are pockets of undissolved crystals, if they’re introduced to liquid it can create a noxious gas, destroy evidence, or burn the skin. If there are human remains in the car, they present their own biohazard issues, depending on the condition of the bodies.”