by J. D. Robb
“Fascinating,” Dennis commented and gave Roarke his smile.
“To kill in defense of another. The innocent. The child,” Mira said with a nod to her husband. “A child in his care. His responsibility. The brother, troubled, younger, also his responsibility. Yes, a man who had been raised, trained, indoctrinated to be responsible, to stand as the family head, could make that choice. If he killed his brother, it may have been an accident, a struggle between them with the child at stake.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No, you think, and I largely agree, that while the elder brother was raised to be in charge, the younger was raised to obey him. He would have stopped, at least in that moment. He wouldn’t have defied his brother, not face-to-face. But while again I largely agree, he might have been under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or simple fervor.”
“Fervor?”
“The religious overtones. A fervor to complete the rite, if indeed it was a rite. If Nashville killed Montclair in that building where he had poured such hope and effort to fulfill what he saw as his duty and destiny, it adds to the complete withdrawal from it.”
Once again, Eve sat on the arm of a chair. “I didn’t think of that. That plays.”
“The abandonment of it, which goes beyond the financial situation,” Mira continued. “The Mark of Cain—fratricide. This would weigh on a man of faith and responsibility, even as he justified it. And rather than report to the authorities, he, too, concealed. Not for himself, but for his brother, his family, and the greater mission.”
“So what, in the end he decides it was a selfless act?”
“How else could he live with it?” Mira asked.
“Why run now? That’s not selfless. That’s self-preservation.”
“Are you sure he’s running?”
“He’s gone,” Eve pointed out. “He took a suitcase and cash. He’s not using credit cards, he hasn’t contacted his sister.”
“I believe he will, contact his sister. I believe his makeup will demand that he come back. It’s his duty.”
“Well, that would be easy,” Eve replied. “Then all I have to do is prove all the other stuff.”
“To continue the theme, I have faith you will. If the girl—woman now—DeLonna—”
“She’s just Lonna now. Lonna Moon.”
“Lovely name. If she reaches out to me, I’ll help her remember. It’ll unburden her, and give you what you need.”
Two for one, Eve thought. Maybe Jones figured the same. He’d unburdened his brother of evil, and given his sister the illusion she needed.
Later, because they were already downstairs, she had dinner with Roarke in the dining room. Another fire simmering, another tree glittering. And some really excellent chunky soup of some kind along with crusty bread slathered in herbed butter.
“Did you ever wish for a sibling?” she asked him.
“My mates were enough. I wouldn’t have wished my father and Meg on anyone else.”
“Yeah, I never thought about a brother or sister either. It can be complicated and full of drama, right? I mean somebody like Peabody, with all her sibs, she’s good with it. Happy with it,” Eve corrected. “It all adds something for her. I bet they had plenty of fights growing up, but that’s part of it, I think. Probably.”
“Likely.”
“There’s that whole rivalry thing. Who gets what, who doesn’t think they got a fair shake, who wants more—or just wants yours.”
“Do you think that plays into it, with the Joneses?”
“I don’t know. Just spitballing. Families are minefields, even the good ones have little traps you can step into. You and me, it was what it was. It was overt and ugly and painful, and not much else. It was like that for some of the vics. Not all, but some. It’s why you’re doing what you’re doing with what’s still my crime scene.”
“It was what it was,” he agreed. “And when you’re in it, it’s just your life, however vicious.”
“But when you’re out of it and you look back, it’s still hard. When you look at somebody else, somebody going through some of the same . . .”
“Who’s powerless, particularly. What Dennis said about evil is absolute truth to my mind. We’ve both seen plenty of it, but when it’s a child, it’s magnified. If you have the power to stop it for some, if you have the means, it makes a difference.”
“I think Jones stopped it, without knowing how far it had already gone. I don’t think he could’ve lived with it if he’d known. Not even for his brother.”
“You see him as a good man.”
She shook her head. “I see him as a man, and one who’s worked to try to make a difference. I’ll give him that. But if this went down the way I see it, or along the lines? It’s not right. All these years parents, siblings, they’ve had that hole in their lives. That not-knowing. And okay, maybe, probably, he didn’t know. But I see it more as he didn’t let himself know. How could he assume Lonna was the first, the only?”
“I’d think,” Roarke considered as he tore a piece of bread to share with her, “it could be inconceivable. Your brother—and younger at that. Inconceivable to believe he’d killed, that what you found and stopped wasn’t the first time.”
“Maybe so.” Eve bit into the bread. “Maybe, but that’s just shutting your eyes. And more—even giving him that, how could he let the kid live with that nightmare, that not-knowing, or the not being able to face?”
“There we walk the same line.” He touched her hand, just a graze. “Homeland did that, and worse, to you. Knowing what Troy did to you, even hearing it, and putting their mission, we’ll say, above your welfare. Even your life.”
He’d never forget, she thought, or forgive. That was fair, she decided. Neither would she.
“And Jones put his brother’s welfare—maybe his mission—ahead of the needs and welfare of the child. The kid should’ve gotten help. She should’ve gotten justice fifteen years ago.”
“I can’t argue with you as I agree. But I can see the how and the why of what he did. So can you.”
She shook her head again. “That doesn’t make it right. He made a martyr out of a murderer, and left a lot of people hurting for a long time.”
“Blood’s thicker, they say.”
“Yeah, I said the same to Peabody before. If that holds true, then he’ll do what Mira thinks he will. He’ll come back. I have to be ready for him.”
• • •
In her home office she scraped at every detail she could find on Nashville Jones. Financials—and she sent an e-mail to her go-to ADA to see if she had enough for a warrant to freeze those financials—his medicals, his education, his travel.
Nearly all travel, right back to his childhood, was primarily what she thought of as work related. Retreats, conferences, missions. Spreading the word or gathering more words to spread and different methods of spreading them.
And they called her work-obsessed? As far as she could tell he had very little life outside the work.
She’d been there once, understood the territory.
She ran searches for anything written about him or either house he’d founded.
When she found them, she read carefully, looking for any direction he might have taken.
No favorite places she could see, no haunts, no little cabin in the woods.
Still she culled out anything she found remotely interesting, filed it, then did exactly the same on the brother she believed had died right here in New York, and not thousands of miles away in some lion-eating jungle.
“He never traveled alone,” she said, jabbing a finger in the air when Roarke joined her. “Not one time I can find here. Not even to see big sis—and the locals checked her out. Jones didn’t take his passport, so he’s not hiding on a sheep ranch in Australia, but she let him—even insisted—they check all her communications, so
we’d know he hasn’t contacted her.”
“Some are what they seem,” he commented. “Law-abiding.”
“Some. When little brother went anywhere, he was either with big brother, big sister, the parents. The father acted as chaperone or whatever they’d call it the single time he went on a mission—a youth group deal. Everything I find has one of them with corresponding travel. So I call a big pile of bullshit on him sailing off to Africa, for Christ’s sake, to break his cherry.”
“One way to put it. You’d already concluded the younger brother didn’t go to Africa.”
“Conclusions aren’t proof, and neither is this. But it adds weight. I travel,” she said. “Now. I travel now. We go places where there aren’t dead bodies.”
“We do, on occasion. And as you’ve mentioned it, I thought we might do just that for a few days after the holidays. Go somewhere without corpses.”
“Oh.”
He flicked a finger down the dent in her chin. “Your usual enthusiastic reaction. I’m thinking warm, blue skies, blue water, white beaches, and foolish drinks with umbrellas stuck in them.”
“Oh,” she said in an entirely different tone.
“I know your weakness, yes.” Now he kissed her lightly. “I thought the island, unless you have some secret desire to see another tropical locale.”
Not everybody had a husband with his own island, she thought. She’d even mostly stopped feeling weird about it. Because white sand, blue water hooked her like a fish.
“I could put in for the time, if I’m not in the middle of a hot one.”
“We’ll imagine us both in several hot ones—on the island. It’s already, tentatively, on your calendar.”
“That damn calendar has a life of its own.”
“Which means so do you.”
“Yeah. He doesn’t.” She gestured to Jones’s photo. “His work’s his life, and I get it. But he struck me as sort of balanced and content on that initial impression thing. Not like little brother. They surrounded him. No solo travel, like I said—at least none that shows. No particular job, and what he did have they ran. No hint of relationships unless we count Shelby and her famous bjs.”
“Let’s not.”
“No one mentions any friends, none of the staff ever had anything but the lightest, vaguest things to say. He never left an impression. He was weightless. What time is it in Zimbabwe?”
“Too late. And here as well. Sleep on it.” He pulled her to her feet. “If Mira’s right, and she most often is, he’ll come back. At the very least he’ll contact his sister. Will she tell you?”
“I think she will. Blood may be thicker, but she’s scared, and she’s sick. People who are scared and sick call the cops.”
“Then sleep on it.”
She stopped on her way out with him, looked back at the board. “The last vic? We can’t find her. No matches, not yet, and we’ve been running the search for hours. Feeney’s doing a global, and no matches. She’s no one.”
“She’s yours.”
For now, Eve thought, that had to be enough.
• • •
She had all the faces, and woke with a faint memory of dreaming of them again. But she couldn’t remember what they’d said. She felt as though there was little left for the girls to tell her now.
She had it all in front of her, somehow. If she’d taken the right track, if her beliefs were valid, she would deliver justice, what she could of it, to the victims. She would give answers to those who’d loved and searched for them.
And if she’d gone wrong, if she’d turned the wrong way, she’d go back and start again.
She said as much to Roarke as she dressed for the day.
“You’re not wrong, not about the core of it. I’ve slept on it as well,” he added. “And a man doesn’t leave his work, work he’s devoted to, along with a sister he feels strongly he’s bound to protect for no reason.”
“A side skirt I haven’t turned up, and a sudden need to nail her like a bagful of hammers. And no,” she said, “I would’ve found her if he had an important woman, or if he had an important man for that matter. Plus, sex isn’t nearly as important to him as his mission, and his sister. He wouldn’t leave her to deal with me alone without some sort of solid purpose or desperation.”
“So you’re left with his involvement in some way, and a woman whose memory of her experience as a child, almost certainly in that building, is partially blocked.”
She sat for a moment, an indulgence, and added to it with more coffee. “I’ve got the core of it, you’re right about that. But I have a whole ream of unanswered questions that keep it from firming up. If it wasn’t Montclair Jones in Africa, and I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t, who ended up in a lion’s digestive system, and why did he agree to masquerade as Jones’s brother? What did Jones do with his brother’s body, because the only way a serial killer stops cold is death or incarceration.”
“A spanner in the works.”
“That’s a wrench. I remember that one. Why don’t you say wrench, because this is America.”
“A wrench then. Is it plausible it went somewhat as you see it, but on that night when DeLonna was taken, Jones discovered them, but rather than play Cain, his brother was afraid of the discovery, of his brother’s righteous wrath, of the thought of being exposed, going to prison, he agreed to go away, to go to Africa. Where he was able to control his urges for that short time, perhaps even believed that higher power he’d been raised on had given him a sign. Then fate or justice, or whatever you chose, intervened to punish him.”
“I don’t like it. I don’t like it because it’s just over the edge of plausible. And I don’t like it because I can’t believe, and neither can you, that after killing twelve—and the time line reads the count comes in at under three weeks. Twelve murders in what comes out to roughly eighteen days. Somebody does that, he doesn’t just stop, and say, ‘Hallelujah, I repent, and I’m going to Zimbabwe to spread the good word.’”
He gave her a friendly little poke. “You just like saying Zimbabwe.”
“It’s hard to give up. But regardless, my ‘I don’t like it’ stands. But it’s plausible.”
She got up. “I’m going to contact Zimbabwe now, and review my notes one more time before I head in.”
“I’ll walk with you.” He slid a hand around her waist and they started out, and the cat streaked by them. “That’s a place we’ve never been. Africa.”
“We haven’t. Have you?”
“Not to spend any quality time, so to speak. There are, however, many exceptional channels for smuggling in Africa. But that was long ago.” He danced his fingers up her ribs. “We could go, take a safari.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I’m not sure cows aren’t going to try some payback and stage a mass revolution, why would I risk going where there are lions just walking around loose, and really big snakes who’ll wrap around you and squeeze and swallow you whole? And, oh yeah, quicksand. I’ve seen the vids. Of course, now I know how to deal with quicksand if that ever happens.”
“Do you now?”
“Yeah, long story. I’ll give you some tips sometime. The river’s probably the thing.”
“Which river? I think Africa has several.”
“Not in Africa. Here. Jones could have weighed his brother down, dumped him in the river. Or taken him out to New Jersey, up to Connecticut, somewhere where there’s a lot of ground, woods, buried him. They’ve got a van now, which Jones didn’t take on his getaway. Maybe they had one then, too. Something to check.”
“While you do, I’m in my office.”
She went to her desk first, saw the incoming light blinking, ordered the messages up.
“Damn it!”
Roarke stopped in his doorway, turned around. “Bad news?”
“No, no, Zimbabwe sent me an e-mail wi
th attachment a few hours ago. Stupid Earth, axis, revolving crap. It’s a picture. Two pictures.”
Curious now, Roarke walked over to study them with her. One showed a man wearing a safari-style hat, amber sunshades, a khaki shirt, and pants. He smiled out, a camera strapped around his neck, a little white building at his back.
“Supposed to be Montclair Jones. It could be him. Same coloring, same basic body type. Hat and sunshades make it tough to be sure. Same with the group shot here.”
In that one, the man, similarly dressed, stood with several others in front of the same building.
“I can enhance, sharpen it up. I can do that. I can run a match with his last ID shot. But . . . before I do.”
She turned to her ’link, ordered Philadelphia’s personal contact.
Philadelphia answered before the first beep had completed. “Lieutenant, you found Nash.”
“No. I’m sending you a picture. I want you to tell me who this person is.”
“Oh. I was so sure that . . . Whose picture? Sorry, you don’t know, otherwise why would you ask.”
“It’s coming your way now.”
“Yes, I see. Give me a moment. There it is. Oh, it’s—” Then she shook her head, sighed. “My brothers are so much on my mind, for a moment I thought it was Monty. But it’s . . . what was his name? He worked with us for a short time, though he rarely stayed in one place long as I recall. He’s actually a cousin, distant, which we discovered as he and Monty looked more like brothers than Nash and Monty. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Kyle! Yes, yes, Kyle Channing, a cousin on my mother’s side. Third or fourth or fifth.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Oh yes, that’s Kyle. But this had to have been taken years ago. He’d be in his forties now. How did you get this picture?”