DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS (18 page)

Laney stared at the unmasked woman in shock and horror, scarcely able to believe what she was seeing. “It was you!” she said. “All the time, it was you.” She was staring at Benita Davis, dressed all in black with platform boots and a mask. “You shot Senator Sills and me.”

“Oh, shut up, you stupid—” the vulgar word Benita was about to say was cut off when one of the officers yanked on her arm to turn her toward the EMTs. “Ow!” she shrieked. “Police brutality! Help me! Call my lawyer. I demand my lawyer.”

Laney opened her mouth, but a hard, firm hand grabbed her arm. She turned. It was Ethan.

“What did you just say?” he asked, frowning at her.

“I didn’t say it,” she responded. “I was going to but then I—”

“No. What did you say when you realized it was Benita behind that Mardi Gras mask?”

“Oh, Ethan. It’s her. I mean it
was
her. She’s the man in black. The one who killed Senator Sills and shot me. Look at her in that black sweater and pants. How skinny she is. How bony. It’s her.”

“But from the beginning you’ve said it was a man.”

“I know. I thought it was. Being so skinny and—I mean, look. You can hardly see her breasts, and it was dark in that hotel room. But look at her,” she gestured toward Benita. “She’s skin and bone. And in those sky-high platform heels, she’s almost as tall as I am.”

Ethan shook his head. “That’s not going to be easy to prove,” he said. “All the reports, your witness statement, everything assumed the killer was a man. In fact, I was about convinced it was Buddy.”

The EMTs had placed a protesting Benita on a stretcher and were carrying her out to the ambulance. Cristy had already been taken out. As soon as they loaded Benita in, the ambulance would take them both to St. Bernard Parish Hospital for evaluation and treatment.

Around Laney and Ethan, people in crime scene jackets swarmed all over the apartment, taking fingerprints, marking small areas with numbered plaques and taking dozens and dozens of photographs. After a few minutes, Laney sat down on a small chair in the corner of the living room. Ethan stood beside her, as stoic as a palace guard. Dixon walked past them, calling out that he was following the ambulance to the hospital to try to talk to both Benita and Cristy.

A few minutes later, Officer Farrantino came up to Ethan to ask him if he wanted her to take Laney to the station. He declined, saying he’d handle her. Slowly the house cleared out.

Laney waited, staring down at the hardwood floor. She knew that Ethan was standing over her, looking down at her. She didn’t even raise her head.

Finally he spoke. “You want to tell me what the hell you thought you were doing?”

She didn’t move. He was going to have to get it all out. All the anger, all the frustration, all the resentment he held for her. Once he did, she doubted there would be anything else inside him. Certainly nothing positive—nothing caring. She’d probably never see him acting as anything other than bad cop from now on.

“Laney, I’m talking to you.”

She sighed, stared at a nail in a plank in the floor for a few more seconds, then looked up at him. “I know you are. I know you’re angry and you have a right to be. There is no telling how many laws I’ve broken, and I’m prepared to face the consequences for that. I don’t have an excuse. I wanted to see Cristal Mackey. I wanted to meet her for myself so I could find out what she knew about my father. Turns out she knew a lot—a whole lot that I didn’t know. My father did pay blackmail to Senator Sills, but he didn’t do it to protect himself. He paid it as protection for Cristal. For her to be able to take back her given name and to make a new life for herself. I knew my father was not bad.”

“You knew—” Ethan stopped himself. He was so angry he felt sick. He knew he was on the verge of the kind of life-sucking, debilitating anger that his father had exhibited throughout his life. Anger that had always terrified him and his younger brother and sister growing up. Anger that had given his dad a stroke and confined him to a wheelchair.

Ethan had never wanted to experience that much rage. He’d spent his life convincing himself that he’d missed that gene. That he didn’t have that anger inside him. But tonight, he found out that he did have that much rage inside him. And he found out what it took to bring it to the surface. Laney Montgomery. He took a deep breath. “You almost got Cristal and yourself killed. What the hell did you think you were going to do with that gun?”

Laney pushed herself to her feet, stifling a groan at the soreness in her back and hips from being slammed against the wall. “I took the gun after I knocked George out. Should I have left it there for him to pick up when he woke up?”

Ethan scowled at her. “You knocked him out?” he finally asked.

“With the copper vase. That one over there.” She pointed. “I’ve already told you I’ll take the consequences. I’ll go to prison if I have to. But I can’t be sorry I came here. I found Cristal and she gave me the information I needed. She gave me something else, too.” She dug in the pocket of her jeans and pulled out two slightly wrinkled snapshots.

Ethan stared at them, first one, then the other, then the first one again and so on. He swallowed. He tried to speak but nothing would come out of his mouth.

“Where—” he croaked. “How—”

Laney just shrugged.

As the last two crime scene techs picked up their gear and walked out of the house, Ethan stared at Laney in undisguised shock.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked, holding the photos up.

She nodded. “Proof,” she said tiredly.

Ethan shook his head slowly back and forth. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he muttered.

* * *

W
HEN
E
THAN
STEPPED
into the interview room at just after midnight, he found Laney sitting at the table with her head on her crossed arms on the table, asleep. He’d spent the past four, no, five, hours interrogating suspects. He’d started with George Firth, the Davises’ chauffeur, who had shot Christine Mackey. George was only too happy to spill everything he knew in exchange for a plea deal. As it turned out, George and Benita had been lovers for years, and Benita had talked him into helping her frame Buddy, who was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, for the death of Darby Sills. Benita wanted the senator dead because she was sick of paying ever-increasing blackmail to him to keep him from exposing Buddy as, as she put it, a “whore-chasing son of a bitch.” Benita had been sure that the silver belt buckle would prove that it was Buddy, and that the reason he’d worn it when he’d killed Sills was because he’d forgotten he’d had it on.

When Ethan got through with George, he had a pretty clear picture of Benita’s means, motive and opportunity. She’d given Buddy a sleeping pill that night to ensure that he wouldn’t wake up, then while she’d taken care of the senator at the hotel, she’d had George waiting outside to drive her back to the Circle of Faith compound and sneak in as if they’d never been gone.

Ethan tried to talk with Benita, but she demanded her lawyer and would not say another word. So he moved on to Carolyn, the woman Grayson Reed had brought in. She’d been carrying her own driver’s license, so it was simple to identify her as Carolyn Gertz, Benita Davis’s daughter from her first marriage. Benita had talked her into distracting Laney so George could sneak in and bug her phone.

Ethan sat down opposite Laney and rubbed his face tiredly. Laney stirred, but didn’t awaken. He knew she was exhausted. He was, too. But he had a job to do before either one of them could get any sleep.

Laney’s mouth was slightly open and Ethan could hear her soft, even breaths. He watched her sleep. Every minute or so, she’d jerk slightly and make a distressed-sounding noise. He wondered if she were dreaming about the shoot-out in Cristal’s apartment. Thinking about that made his scalp tighten with fear for her. It was a miracle that she hadn’t been hit by a stray bullet. He pushed a strand of hair back from her temple where it was threatening to fall over her face, brushing the backs of his fingers across her soft skin.

She opened her eyes.

He jerked his hand away.

“Oh,” she said drowsily, lifting her head but leaving her eyes closed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I just—”

He stood, backing away and leaning against the wall, hoping he looked a hell of a lot more relaxed than he felt. His unease was not only from interviewing reluctant―and in Benita’s case, hostile―suspects. It wasn’t only from being so angry at Laney for putting herself in such terrible danger. It was also that when he’d seen her asleep with her head in her arms, he’d been hit with a poignant ache in the middle of his chest. It was painful and sweet at the same time, and he didn’t like it.

He didn’t want to feel pulled in two different directions when he looked at her. He didn’t want to care that she was exhausted, or worry that she might be ill or injured. He didn’t want to realize that the only way he could be happy and content was if she was happy and content. He huffed in frustration.

She forced herself to open her eyes, squinting at the bright light in the room. “Look, Ethan, I’m sorry—” she started.

“You’re
sorry?
” he mimicked. “Really? Well, that’s just great. That wipes away everything you did.” Wincing, he tried to ask himself what the hell he thought he was doing, being mean to her after all she’d been through. He realized he had no answer. He didn’t know why. All he knew was that he was furious with her for putting herself in harm’s way.

“I know it doesn’t. I just—”

He sliced his hand through the air like a saber, cutting her off. “Damn straight it doesn’t. You ignored me, you ran away from a protected house where I’d placed a bodyguard to keep you safe. You took information from an ongoing investigation—” he stopped and stared at her. “You eavesdropped on an official police conversation.”

Laney ducked her head. “I could hear both sides of the conversation,” she said meekly.

That was his fault. “I should have been more careful, but,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve got to tell you, I’d have thought you had more sense than that.”

“I didn’t mean to cause problems. I just wanted to know if she knew my dad and what she could tell me about him.” She paused for a second before continuing. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to find out that the father you trusted, that you worshiped, went to prostitutes, did things that made him vulnerable to blackmail, lied to you? Do you know what it’s like to learn, within the space of a couple of days, that you never really knew your father at all?”

“You’re not alone in how you feel, Laney. I think every adult eventually realizes their parents are just people, not saints and not superheroes. The difference is how you deal with it.”

He drew in a frustrated breath. “And the way you dealt with it was to go running off like a—a kid with no sense of responsibility, and get a woman shot.”

“How do you figure that I got her shot?” she demanded. “Benita had no idea I was there.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, would it surprise you to know that when you typed Cristal’s address into your phone, the information transferred immediately to Benita’s chauffeur, the guy who bugged your phone?”

“Oh, my God. The phone can do that?” Laney paused. “That means it’s my fault they knew where she was.” Her face crumpled.

“That’s right. Cristal had taken back her real name, so Benita had never been able to find her. Buddy had told her that Cristal had pictures. She didn’t know you were there. She went to Cristal’s house to get the photos. Not to protect Buddy. Benita wanted to plant them so they implicated Buddy and helped prove that he wanted Sills dead.”

“She wanted to implicate Buddy? I thought they were inseparable. Why?”

“Apparently Buddy is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. He’s forgetting things, getting confused. According to her chauffeur, who’s turning state’s witness, she had this big plan to kill Sills to stop the blackmail and frame Buddy for it. Then she’d take over the Circle of Faith ministries and she and George, the chauffeur/lover/computer hacker, could live happily ever after. It almost worked, too. If she’d managed to kill Cristal and get out of there with the incriminating photographs, she might have succeeded.”

Laney was staring at her hands. “It was my fault Cristy was shot.” She looked up at him. “I’ve messed up everything, haven’t I?”

Ethan shrugged. “No,” he said with a little smile. “You didn’t screw up everything. You did get the photos. And believe me. It was only a matter of time before Benita and George found her. So actually, by leading them there while you were there to help her, you saved her life.”

Laney nodded, pushing her fingers through her hair. “How is she doing? Cristy, I mean.”

“Last I heard she was doing fine. The bullet went through her shoulder without hitting the bone, so she’s got a nice entrance and exit wound, but no serious damage.”

“That’s good.” Laney took a long breath. “So do you need me for anything else?”

Ethan wondered how he was supposed to answer that question. He looked at her for a long time.

“Ethan?”

“No,” he said. “You’re free to go.”

She stood with a sigh and slid past him to the door and turned the knob. “Ethan?”

He turned. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad I got to know you,” she said.

His heart felt as though it had dropped to his toes. “Me, too,” he said. “But we’ll be seeing each other again.”

“We will?”

His head snapped up. Had she sounded hopeful? He studied her face, but all he saw was pale exhaustion. It was all he could do to keep his expression neutral. “Yeah. I’ll need to get you to sign your statement and you’ll probably have to testify about the photos and about your father’s finances, whenever this comes to trial.”

“How—how long do you think that will be?”

“Could be as long as several years. It depends on how good Benita’s lawyers are, and whether George sticks to his plea agreement.”

She nodded. “So I guess I’ll hear from you?”

Ethan looked at her long and hard, then stepped up closer to her. “I could have someone else get in touch with you.”