Aim to Kill (22 page)

“I’m going to run away,” she said. “If you won’t help me, I’ll go by myself.” She sniffed.

“You can’t leave me.”

“I don’t want to. I’m scared.” She leaned into him and let him hug her. The anger was gone, but the fear was stronger than ever.

“I’ll find a way. I’ll find a way to keep him away from you forever.”

CHAPTER

18

After Hamilton Craig’s funeral, Gary Porter walked into his empty house. He missed his wife, Janet, but considering all the sacrifices she’d made during his career, he couldn’t stop her from pursuing her dreams now, even though they were in their sixties. She’d been a European history major in college and was now a docent for a major travel company. Currently, she was leading a senior-citizen tour through France. She always asked him to join her, but Gary had no desire to travel. He liked being home, having a routine. For him, travel equaled stress.

While he missed Janet, when she was home their relationship was better, stronger. He liked hearing about her job and the sights and loved the slideshow she’d put together for him after each tour.

Tonight, however, he felt old and would have given anything to have Janet with him. It was Hamilton’s funeral, of course, making him feel mortal. Reminding him that life was unfair, that a random act of violence could steal the life of a good man.

Gary absently flipped on lights as he made his way to the den, his steps echoing on the hardwood floors. A quick glance at the clock in the hall told him it was already too late to call Janet in Paris.

A corner floor lamp next to his reading chair—an old La-Z-Boy he’d had for twenty-some years—and a desk lamp provided the only light for the room. He sat heavily into the upholstered desk chair and booted up the computer. While he waited, he opened his bottom drawer and took out a bottle of
Glenlivit
. He didn’t drink when Janet was home, but he’d taken to sipping a glass or two in the evenings when she was away. He missed her.

He missed the job.

Gary ran a hand over his face, feeling the whiskers that were now predominantly gray. Hamilton’s funeral was the fourth he’d been to this year. Two of the deaths were heart attacks, and one was a cop killed in the line of duty. As his colleagues aged and retired, more and more funerals would be the result of natural causes.

He poured two fingers of Scotch into his glass and sipped as he logged into his e-mail account.

At least he was still able to help. He’d made contact with Ned Palmer, one of the assistant district attorneys who was familiar with the Melissa St. Martin investigation, and Ned promised to jump on getting an interview with Brian Hall. Gary passed on the Seattle contact information, worried about Olivia.

She had been a scared five-year-old when he’d met her, but she kept everything bottled up inside. Her parents had neglected her, lost in their own grief, and both he and Hamilton had taken her under their protective wings. Made sure she didn’t have to testify in court, only tell the judge what she’d seen. No cross-examination. Nothing to further terrify the child.

She’d grown into a brilliant, beautiful woman, but Gary knew her sister’s murder had forever changed the course of her life. He’d seen it happen many, many times. Violent death destroyed more than one life.

The room went dark.

“Shit,” he muttered as he rummaged in his desk for the small
Maglite
he kept handy. Probably a blown fuse. Hadn’t had one of those in a while.

He couldn’t find the
Maglite
and stood, feeling his way to the door and down the hall. There was a flashlight in the kitchen, right there on the wall in a charger, because Janet was always worried about earthquakes. When the power went out, the light went on so you could see your way in the dark. Gary could see the shadows it cast as he neared the kitchen.

At the same time he crossed the threshold, the back door opened. He reached for his gun out of habit, but he no longer carried.

“Who—”

Before he finished his sentence, he recognized Brian Harrison Hall. The man raised his arm, revealing a small semiautomatic handgun. At the same time Gary turned to run, he heard the report of the firearm and fire spread across his chest. Again the sound, but the pain didn’t get worse.

He knew he would die.

Gary fell, tried to get up, stumbled down the hall a few feet, then collapsed.

He couldn’t catch his breath. He sensed Hall standing over him.

“Bastard,” he sputtered, his voice sounding far away. Down a long tunnel.

“You made me a killer,” Hall said.

Gary heard another sound, but the last thing he thought of was Janet and her beautiful, laughing brown eyes.

Zack, Olivia, and Doug Cohn worked in the main conference room mapping the abductions and evidence from the increasing pile of reports other jurisdictions had sent them. They were looking for anything, any connection, to give them another lead. Maybe something that tied in with the Morse code or the word
angel.

Chief Pierson popped his head in at nine that night and said, “I’m leaving, but I just got off the phone with the Seattle bureau. They’re going to jump on the ‘angel’ connection and also run all Vietnam veterans who were discharged from October 1971 through October 1972 and had a
California
address. It’s going to be a huge list, but it’s in a database. They can get it to us tomorrow afternoon.”

He continued, “They’re putting one of their top agents on it immediately, and he’ll probably be in contact with you.”

“Who?” Olivia heard herself asking.

“Quincy Peterson. Know him?”

She nodded, unable to speak. Quinn. Miranda’s husband, as well as a good friend.

Out of all the agents she knew, she couldn’t have asked for a better one.

But now she was going to have to admit to her closest friends that she’d been lying to them.

“Is he any good?” Zack asked her after Pierson left the room.

“The best,” she said.

The phone rang and Olivia jumped as Zack answered. She needed food and sleep. She needed to get out of here. Her nerves were all over the place. Should she call Quinn tonight and explain everything? Yes, she needed to tell him exactly why she’d done what she did. He deserved it.

Quinn played by the book, but he knew when to bend the rules. She just didn’t know if he was willing to break them.

“We’ll be there.” Zack dropped the phone on the hook as he scribbled on a notepad. “Hey
Superagent
, we need to hightail it down to
California
. That was the assistant D.A. in
San Mateo
County
. He tracked down Hall’s attorney and we have a meeting scheduled for ten
A.M
.” He picked up the phone before Olivia could respond. “Hey, Joe, could you call the airport and get two tickets to San Francisco? Myself and Olivia St. Martin. The chief will clear it, I promise. I think this is our break.”

He hung up again. “Joe says we’ll need to fly out tonight. He’s setting it up. Let’s swing by my place and your hotel and grab a bag.”

“I can’t go,” Olivia blurted out. She glanced at Doug Cohn and wondered how to get out of this. The day Zack was gone would buy her time to talk to Quinn.

“Why?”

“I—look, I can’t ask Doug to do all this work. These are a lot of files to go through; it’ll take him all night working alone. Probably all of tomorrow, too.”

“Boyd and O’Neal can cover us. This is big, Olivia. You have to come; you know more about the old cases than I do. Come on, we’ll talk about it on the way.”

Zack had a way of running all over her arguments, and she didn’t know what to say. She wanted time to talk to Quinn before he showed up, but flying to
California
killed that idea.

She followed Zack from the room and tried to think how she would tell him the truth about her sister’s murder.

CHAPTER

19

Zack drove by his house first because Olivia’s hotel was closer to the airport.

“Make yourself at home,” he said as he unlocked the side door and flipped on the lights. “I’ll only be a minute.”

The side door opened into a window-enclosed eating area, a room that promised to be sunny and cheerful in the mornings. The table was an immaculate fifties style with red Formica top and sturdy steel legs, the kind that twenty years ago was outdated, but now was trendy. Little pots of herbs and flowers filled a window box.

Framed pictures of fruit crate labels lined the one wall, and as Olivia stepped into the kitchen she found the quaint art filling every available space. She wandered from the kitchen—which matched the table in the nook except for the modern appliances—and into a formal dining room.

The furniture was old, obviously antique, but well cared for. Lace doilies that didn’t fit Zack’s personality clung to the surface of the buffet and table. She left that room and found herself in the living room, and knew this was where Zack spent his time when at home.

The dark leather furniture was soft and smooth. Pictures of the Pacific Northwest and ocean scenery lined the walls. Several antique paintings in gilded frames were set off by lights. Books were crammed two-deep into floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on either side of a brick fireplace. Stacks of books lined the corners—mostly mysteries, bestsellers, and biographies. But what surprised her most were the plants—lots of them. Several hung from the ceiling; there were two large floor plants,
pothos
if she remembered correctly, and several small plants of all kinds on the tables, all of them thriving. She wouldn’t have thought Zack Travis had such a green thumb.

The room was cluttered but not overly messy. Comfortable.

She walked over to a round table in the corner. Intermingled with the plants were a few photographs in antique silver frames. She recognized a young Zack immediately—his eyes were just as dark and intense when he was a child.

At first, Olivia thought the older woman in the photographs was his mother, but when she saw them together she realized the tall, elderly matron was his grandmother.

She wondered why he had no pictures of his mother in the house.

A girl showed up in several of the pictures, possibly ten years younger than Zack. There was no doubt they were brother and sister—Amy, he’d told her. And she was dead.

Olivia wondered what had happened to her. She’d been a beautiful child and lovely young lady.

She heard Zack’s footsteps on the hardwood floors and turned so he didn’t think she was prying. “I like your house,” she told him.

“Thanks. It was my grandmother’s.”

“She died?”

“Sixteen years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked over at one of the pictures on the table and smiled wistfully. “I called her Mae. Short for Margaret. She didn’t like being called ‘Grandma’ or anything like that. She was a hoot, and I couldn’t have been raised by a better woman.”

“What happened to your parents?” Olivia asked, then put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, I’m prying.”

Zack waved off her apology. “My mother didn’t want to be burdened with kids. She left me here when I was nine. I guess I was a handful. Mae took me in—she hadn’t seen me since I was a baby; my mother and Mae didn’t get along. But Mae never took it out on me. Then, three years later, my mother came by again, pregnant and penniless and heartbroken. She moved in and she and Mae bickered constantly, but they wanted to make it work.

“Then she had Amy, and left four weeks later with some guy she’d met the night before. We never heard from her again.”

“Oh, Zack, that’s awful.” Olivia didn’t know what was worse, to be abandoned by your mother physically like Zack, or emotionally like she’d been after Missy died.

“When I was eighteen I tried to track her down. More for Amy than anything. Amy constantly asked about her, wanted to know when she was going to visit. I think it was hard on her having an old woman for a mother and a teenager for a brother. So I did some research, looked at some public records, and I think I figured out what happened.”

“What?” Olivia couldn’t help but ask.

“She died in a drunk-driving accident.” He laughed, but there was no humor in his voice. “She was driving, she was drunk, and she killed two innocent people in the collision.”

He hoisted a bag over his shoulder. He’d showered and shaved, Olivia noted—his hair was still damp and a fresh, soapy scent surrounded him. “The police never contacted us because they didn’t know who she was. I found her in a Jane Doe database with the help of a Seattle cop. They were very helpful—I wasn’t the easiest kid to deal with. A lot like our witness Sean Miller. Chip on the shoulder and all that. It was after finding out about my mother that I decided I wanted to be a cop. I said goodbye to some bad influences, went to community college, and the rest is history.”

“What about Amy?”

Pain and conflicting emotions clouded his face, but he looked like he wanted to tell her. She held her breath, but didn’t know why. She had a feeling this was important to Zack, and sensing he wanted to share it with her opened her heart. It was as if they each had taken an emotional step closer to something she couldn’t recognize or define, but a place she yearned for. Trust? Understanding? She didn’t know.