by Неизвестный
But in the back of his mind, Connor acknowledged that it was the thought of Dillon intimately touching Julia that set him off. Kissing her lips… touching her breasts… making love to her.
“I think we’re done,” Connor said, jumping up. “Let’s go.”
“What about the disk you got?” Julia said. “I thought we were going to look at it.”
Connor pulled it from his pocket and tossed it to her. “I assume you have a computer somewhere.”
Julia frowned. She led the way down the hall to an office. It was perfectly furnished, with built-in bookshelves filled to the brim with legal, historical, and fiction books. Her computer sat on a large mahogany desk in the middle of the orderly room.
Parking herself in the leather swivel chair, Julia booted up the hard drive and put in the CD. Dillon and Connor looked over her shoulder. “So what did you get?” she asked Connor.
“I copied anything that looked potentially relevant, including e-mails.”
“Hmmm.” Julia clicked this and that and dragged the e-mail file into a program.
“He didn’t use his home computer much, did he?” Dillon said, looking at the sparse information.
“No,” Connor concurred. “There weren’t a lot of files to download.”
“Nothing about Wishlist,” Julia said, disappointed. “Just messages from his nephew, his girlfriend, colleagues. And they’re all recent, nothing older than two months.”
“He may well have purged his e-mail file,” Dillon said. “I do it regularly.”
“Dammit. I really thought there’d be something here.”
“It wouldn’t be admissible in court anyway, Julia,” Dillon reminded her.
“I know,” she snapped. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”
Dillon glanced at his watch. “It’s late,” he acknowledged, then said to Julia, “It’s been a long couple days for you. Are you okay here?”
Julia smiled, nodded. “I’m fine, thank you for your concern. I talked to Emily earlier and am going by the hospital in the morning. She sounds better. I just—I’m scared about letting the police in to talk to her. Do you think she’s ready?”
“Yes, I do. We’ll prepare her in the morning. Meet there at ten? Will isn’t coming until noon.”
“What’s going on tomorrow?” Connor asked, feeling out of the loop.
Julia said, “We’re meeting at the hospital to talk to Emily about her police interview. I thought I told you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Julia began.
“I have a vested interest in this case, Julia. You hired me to help Emily. Don’t keep me in the dark.”
Dillon intervened. “I’ll pick you up on the way,” he said to Connor. “All right?”
Connor nodded. “Fine. Good night.” He walked out. He heard Dillon mumble something incoherent to Julia, then follow him to the front porch. Behind them, bolts slid into place.
“What was that about?” Dillon asked. “Julia’s been through hell this week and you just jumped all over her.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
Connor slid into Dillon’s passenger seat and drummed his fingers against the dashboard.
Dillon turned on the ignition. “What’s with you?”
“Nothing.”
When Connor didn’t elaborate, Dillon said, “It’s difficult for you to let go of the hatred you felt for Julia, isn’t it?”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Dil. I don’t need it.”
“She’s beautiful and smart. It’s impossible to hate her.”
“So you’re hot for her,” Connor said, his jaw tense.
“I like her. I’ve worked with her on several cases over the years and have the utmost respect for her. I wouldn’t say I was hot for her.”
“Then what would you say?” Connor demanded, slapping his palm on the dashboard.
“I’d say that you were hot for her.”
“That woman destroyed my career, Dil. I shouldn’t have to remind you of what happened.”
“No, you don’t. And it was lousy. But it wasn’t Julia acting alone. The case was bigger than her, bigger than you. I hate that you were pushed off the police force. You’re a great cop with better instincts than anyone I’ve met. But sometimes things happen and they’re no one’s fault. Would you have wanted Crutcher to get off? To go back to pocketing an extra hundred thousand a year to turn his back on the murders of dozens of young women when they became too much trouble for their pimps?”
“Of course not. But it’s the Blue Code. You don’t turn on your own. I gave them everything they needed. They didn’t need my testimony. I had already gone farther than I wanted.”
“Evidently, they did need your testimony. And it worked. And just because some of your colleagues couldn’t get beyond the Code doesn’t mean you did the wrong thing.”
No one outside law enforcement could understand. Being a cop was a different job from any others out there. On the other side of the shield, you were a family. Your brothers and sisters went through marriages because marriage was difficult enough, but as a cop they were almost impossible to sustain. You lost them to violence, to violent junkies pumped up on PCP or heroin. Good cops were sued by rapists and murderers who hurt innocent citizens, but who screamed brutality when they were slammed to the cement during arrest.
The cards were stacked against them. Criminals had no rules to follow, but cops were strangled by regulations, rules that sometimes got them killed or, if they broke the rules to save their life, got them sued.
When Connor learned about Wayne Crutcher’s dirty dealings, he was physically ill. This wasn’t a free Starbucks latte every morning when you walked the beat, but cold, bloody cash. Connor felt he had to do something.
He just didn’t expect to lose everything he had, including his identity as a cop. He didn’t expect to be threatened by a district attorney who’d never seen the world through a cop’s eyes.
But Dillon was right. It wasn’t just Julia he was angry with. The system had let him down, as had his former friends and colleagues who dropped him and forced him to resign.
Dillon said softly, “Doing the right thing isn’t always the easiest thing.”
“Tell me about it,” Connor grumbled. His anger toward Dillon had dissipated. His brother had always stood by him no matter what. You couldn’t buy that kind of loyalty.
“Are you going to cut Julia some slack?” Dillon asked.
“I’m helping her now, aren’t I?”
“I guess that’s a start.”
“A start to what?”
“Forgiveness. Because I sure wouldn’t want to hold a grudge against one of the sexiest women in San Diego, who also happens to have a sharp head on her shoulders.”
“You do like her.”
“Oh yes, I do. But not half as much as you do.”
NINETEEN
THE MANSION on La Gracia in Rancho Santa Fe was empty. The housekeeping staff was gone for the night; Garrett detested strangers, even servants, living under his roof. The caterers had cleaned and packed up after the last guest left. Tristan’s art was still displayed, to be picked up Monday morning by the new Art Center that was to benefit from this fund-raiser.
But it was more than his need to be alone. Tomorrow was special.
Monica. She died eight years ago tomorrow—no, today. Twenty-six minutes from now marked the true anniversary of her death.
Shaking his head, Garrett strode to the library and poured himself a drink. He knocked it back. It had not been murder. Monica had already been dead inside, her body black with cancer.
Garrett, please don’t let me suffer anymore.
She would have been dead in months—or weeks. There was no hope for her.
The thick tumbler shattered in his hand. Garrett startled, stared at the blood dripping from his palm onto the white carpet.
He hadn’t lost his temper once since that last time years and years ago. Before the
cancer, before the murder.
Dr. Garrett Bowen taught people control because he was in control. That he hadn’t felt his hand squeeze the glass to breaking point unnerved him.
He cleaned up the glass, then wrapped his hand in a small towel he’d found in the bar area and stared at the blood drying into his carpet.
Thump.
The sound came directly above him. He frowned. Could there be an intruder? Maybe a drunken guest who had gone to sleep in one of the bedrooms. He couldn’t think of anyone off the top of his head, but over two hundred people had come in and out of his house this evening.
He walked upstairs and looked in all the bedrooms. Empty. The house was far too big for him, but it was an architectural masterpiece, an exquisite minimalist structure that had been written up and photographed in numerous magazines.
His wife had designed and decorated the house. It was a tribute to his long-dead wife Janine that he never moved. To their timeless love.
His den.
He’d seen Connor Kincaid earlier that evening. That Kincaid wasn’t on the guest list, and he left before everyone else, but Garrett was certain he must have come in with Dillon Kincaid and Julia Chandler. Now, he wondered, how long had Connor been in the house?
Garrett opened the door to his office.
Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, but he smelled something… perfume. Marisa? No, it wasn’t her scent and she would have no reason to come up to his office. Still, a lingering female presence hung about the room.
He booted up his computer. He wasn’t savvy enough to be able to tell if someone had looked through his files or e-mail, but he could at least make sure he had in fact removed all hints of Wishlist on his system.
Everything was in order. He was okay. Not that he wouldn’t be okay if everything came out. True, Bowen’s approach to anger management wasn’t yet accepted among his colleagues, but it worked. He’d been tracking the success of the program for over three years, and was documenting his findings to obtain needed funding and support to reproduce the program in a controlled university setting. He’d already been talking to the head of psychiatry at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, which was also affiliated with a top-ranked accredited hospital that specialized in mental health. Wishlist would catapult Garrett Bowen to the top of his field. Those who called him foolish and derided his theories would bow down to his brilliance. He’d turn every anger management program in the country into his model and finally receive the acknowledgment he richly deserved.
He needed to better assess prospective members, but he was working on the few glitches in the system. That’s why he was doing this in the first place, to fix any potential problems before he took his theories to the industry.
He wasn’t about to allow holier-than-thou Dillon Kincaid or his PI brother to stop him.
Except for the scent of perfume, Garrett was confident no one had gone through his office. Perhaps one of the guests had come in to powder her nose, or was just nosy.
Garrett left his office and walked into his former patient Faye Kessler, who was standing just outside his door.
“Faye?” Faye shouldn’t be here. He hadn’t been counseling her for months, and she’d always unnerved him just a bit. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
“Cami let me in,” she said, her voice oddly flat.
“Camilla?” Why? He stepped back. A tickle of fear crept up his spine. Call the police. “Where’s Camilla?”
“She left with her mother, of course,” Faye said. “You saw her leave.”
Faye’s monotone troubled him, but it was her eyes—flat, emotionless, old—that increased Garrett’s trepidation.
He tried to smile as he walked along the upper balcony overlooking the foyer below. Except for dim lighting in wall sconces perfectly placed twelve feet apart along the rounded hall, no lights were on in the house. Hadn’t he left the foyer lights on? He generally did. Now everything was cast in odd shadows, and the foyer looked like a bottomless pit. “How have you been?”
She touched his sleeve. “Look.”
He reluctantly stopped walking. He couldn’t let her sense his fear. He was a trained psychiatrist, he told himself, if she planned on doing something, he could talk her out of it.
As he watched, she turned around and pulled up her shirt. Her back was covered with scars, old and new. Her back. Someone was cutting her. She was allowing it. He had thought she stopped. For the last year, he’d believed she was clean.
How could he have been so wrong?
She turned around and he caught a glimpse of her braless breasts, also defiled. Who had done it to her? Why had she allowed it?
“Who hurt you?”
Her laugh was borderline insane. “You never understood. You pretended to, and I let you think you got it, but you never realized the power.” She pulled down her shirt, took a step toward him. Unconsciously, he took a step back and found himself backed against the balcony railing.
A door opened to his left, at the top of the staircase he was trying to reach. Skip Richardson emerged.
Panic hit Garrett Bowen head-on. Why were these two former patients in his house?
Now he didn’t care whether they saw he was scared. He needed to get to his bedroom and lock the door. There he could hit the panic button that would bring the police and alert his private security company.
He ran down the hall, away from Faye and Skip. Ahead, his bedroom door opened.
Robert Haxton held a gun, its muzzle aimed at Garrett’s chest.
“What’s up, Doc?” Robert grinned at his poor joke.
“What do you want? Money for your drugs? You’re still on drugs, aren’t you?”
“You should know. You got me hooked on them.”
“I did no such thing,” Garrett said, a newfound fury breaking through his fear.
“Oh, yeah. You’re a fuckin’ pusher. Ritalin. Then Wellburtin when I turned thirteen. And the downers and the uppers and everything in between.”
“You were depressed and ADHD,” Garrett said. “You attacked your father.”
“You never believed me!” Robert screamed, his voice echoing in the dark foyer below. “You believed that bastard when he said I’d thrown the first punch. Bull-fucking-shit.”
“You were delusional when first brought to me, and—” but a tickle of doubt niggled in Garrett’s mind. Robert’s anger had been attributed to ADHD coupled by losing his mother at the age of eight. And George Haxton was a pillar of the community. He was mild-mannered and had defended himself when his son attacked him.
Hadn’t he?
“Robert, we can talk about this.”
“No talking. You didn’t believe me then, you’ll only lie to me now because I have the gun.” He raised it and put his finger on the trigger.
“Stop!” He didn’t want to die. “What do you want? Money?” That was ridiculous. Skip, Faye, Robert—they were all from wealthy families. “Drugs? I don’t keep drugs here, but we can go to my office—” Anything to buy time until he could alert someone he was in danger. There were panic buttons in key parts of the house. His garage. The front door. His den…
“Drugs? Money?” Robert laughed. “And I used to be afraid that you could read my mind. The only thing that will make us happy is to jump up and down on your grave.”
Garrett turned to run, away from the gun, heading for the stairs.
Skip was right behind him, his hand outstretched. He had a gun, too.
Not a gun. A Taser. Garrett ran right into it.
Deep electric pain radiated throughout his body as a powerful energy pulsed through his clothing, into his body, causing him to lose control of his limbs. Five seconds might as well have been five hours. Skip pulled the device away and Garrett collapsed against Faye. She was surprisingly strong and held him up. No. Not just Faye. Robert was there, too.
His body frozen, the pain made Garrett’s teeth clench, his muscles tighten. He couldn’t move. Move, Garrett,
move! But he was paralyzed.
Faye whispered in his ear, her voice low and warm. “Cami cut me. And she sucked my blood.”
“No,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t make his voice work.
The boys pulled something rough over his neck. The lights came on, too bright, and Garrett squeezed his eyes closed. Something scraped his neck, but the pain was minimal compared to the throbbing that radiated through his body. He was beginning to feel again.
He opened his eyes. The chandelier swayed in front of him. A rope was attached to the base.
He reached for his neck. Noose.
“No, please, no!” His voice was weak.
“Get his legs, Robbie,” Skip said. “We need to do this fast, the shock is wearing off.”
Garrett felt himself lifted up onto the railing. He flailed, kicked at the teenagers trying to kill him. He got Faye in the chest as he tried to grab on to the railing to steady himself.
“Bastard!” Robbie gave him a shove.
Then Garrett was falling, down, down, down. Flashes of light. He barely made out the three silhouetted figures at the railing above him. He tried to reach the noose around his neck, take it off, but everything happened too fast.
He couldn’t scream.
He heard the snap of his neck breaking as his body jerked the noose tight. His vision faded, and his body swung back and forth, back and forth as his lungs fought for air that did not come.
“An eye for an eye, Garrett.”
That voice! He was dying, he couldn’t have heard her voice.
“Good-bye.”
He’d wanted to be there when Garrett Bowen swung from the chandelier, but he needed an alibi, just in case, so he’d asked Faye to bring him back a visual.
She brought him four Polaroids.
“Excellent.” Glee flooded through him as he stared at each subsequent picture. Garrett falling. Swinging like a pendulum. Dying.
He stared at the last picture. “You took a picture of her? She wasn’t even supposed to be there. What happened?”
Faye became defensive. “She showed up just as we were throwing him over the railing. Turned on the lights and we saw her. I didn’t mean to take her picture.”