Daddy's Little Killer (33 page)

Hartley muttered under his breath, but
shuffled out of the room. 

"Where are you going with all these
questions about Danny Datello?" I whispered to Charlie.  "I'm
certain he didn't have anything to do with Gwen's murder.  I'm
equally positive that if we don't handle this case just right and
the perp slips through the cracks again, guilty or not, he'll meet
the same fate as Masconi."

"Sorry," Charlie muttered.  "I thought
maybe Hartley might let something slip that would point to Datello
knowing what happened to him."

"There's no statute of limitations on
murder."  Good fact to remember with the FBI lurking in my
shadow.  "We can dig into that after this case is
resolved.  Any leads we uncover won't go any colder in a day
or two."

Vinnie Bennett floated into the kitchen on a
cloud of benzodiazepine.  He stood at least six five and
couldn't have weighed an ounce more than 160.  He bent like a
willow twig into the chair Hartley guided him to and nudged with a
gentle tap to the bony shoulder.  One long swath of jet black
hair flopped down to cover half his face.  The other side was
puffy and red, particularly around the crescent slit of his
eye.

"Vin, this is Dr. Eriksson and I'm sure you
remember Officer Haverston."

"Yes, sir," he gave a zombie nod and stared
at the Formica.

"Vinnie?"

Blank.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions about
Gwen.  Would that be all right?"

Vinnie shrugged.  "Guess."

"Do you know of any problems she might've
been having recently?"

"Gwen didn't talk to me about that kind of
stuff."

"Ever?"

"No."

"Did she seem like she was acting different
over the past several months?"

Valium receded.  His chin lifted from
where it had been tucked to his chest.  The visible eye
cracked open wider.  "Maybe a little."

"In what way?"

"Johnny."

"Was Gwen involved in a personal
relationship with him?"

"Like being friends?"

"Or more than friends," I suggested as
gently as possible.

"No way.  Johnny's a good guy and all,
but Gwen was smarter than that." 

I cringed inwardly at the insult no one but
me realized he doled out.  As angry as I was at Orion for the
lies and manipulation, I knew better than to see him right
away.  I needed that rage boiling and etched in stone before
he could turn on the charm and tap into my hormones with his
soulful gazes.

"Because of Johnny's reputation with women?"
Charlie picked up the gauntlet again.

I shriveled into my
navel.  How was I supposed to know that reputation? 
Orion invaded
my
turf when he set a foolish attraction into motion.

"Well yeah," so obvious even a teenager
could see it.  "But it wasn't ever like that with Johnny, not
that I can ever remember.  I don't think Gwen was his type,
really."

"What type was that?"  I bit my
tongue.  Stupid question!

"Young," Vinnie said.  "Way younger
than Gwen."

Like Candy Blevins young.  I struggled
to resist the urge to rush to judgment.  "Was Johnny around
more over the past few months?"  We already knew the answer to
that question thanks to the Gladys Kravitz-like stereotypical nosy
neighbor.

"That's what the strange thing was. 
He'd just sit out at the curb sometimes all night."

Stalker.  It fit my
theory. 
Orion has an airtight alibi,
Helen.  It was corroborated, remember?

"Did Gwen say she hired Johnny to work for
her for any reason?"

Vinnie shook his head and slumped into a
less animated human form.  "She didn't hire him.  Johnny
wouldn't have taken her money even if she tried to hire him."

"Did she act strange in any other way?"

"Sometimes.  I don't know what was
going on, Dr. Eriksson.  She wasn't as happy, maybe.  And
she seemed a little bit nervous, I guess.  Sometimes I'd see
her trying to hide that she was crying.  I could tell. 
You can tell when somebody is crying."

And how.  The creases of Vinnie's nose
were cracked and bright red.  Puffy eyes, moist with tears
shed and those waiting for release.

"You never heard her talking to Johnny, to
anyone about what was making her sad?"  Charlie asked an
excellent question.

"A couple of times when Johnny actually came
in, I walked in on them.  They stopped talking right
away."

"Was Gwen dating anybody?"

He shook his head.  "She was kinda
private about that stuff.  I suspected there might be
somebody, but she never had him around when I was home."

The neighbors hadn't reported seeing a
suitor either.  It meant nothing.  Gwen could've seen him
on neutral ground or at his home.  It prompted another
question.  "Vinnie, did Gwen ever spend the night away from
home or go away for the weekend?"

"I wouldn't know about during the
week.  I boarded at Sisters of Mercy and was only home on
weekends.  At least I did until January.  Gwen told me
she wanted me to come live at home for my last semester of
school."

"Did she tell you why?"

He frowned.  "No, but come to think of
it, she was acting a little jumpy then already.  It seemed
like it got better for awhile, but then in late March, Johnny
started hanging around all the time."

"Thank you for answering my questions," I
said.  "We're so sorry for your loss, and I want you to know
that we're doing everything possible to find the person who did
this to your cousin."

He nodded. 

"I'd like to talk to you some more, Mr.
Hartley.  We'll wait until you help Vinnie back to his
room."

Charlie lifted his eyebrows when we were
alone.  "What else?"

"Gwen Foster was obviously married at some
point.  She also had a baby.  Now come the tough
questions.  Feel free to let me take this part of the
interview, Charlie.  Hartley is going to have to be coerced
into telling the truth.  If I can't do it, this interview is
going down like the Hindenburg."

Chapter 31 

Harlan Hartley was the embodiment of askance
when he stalked back into the kitchen.  "I don't know what the
hell this is all about, but I think I've said all I have to
say."

Charlie started to rise.  I gripped his
arm and tugged him back down.

"Mr. Hartley, I am not leaving this house
until someone gives me some straight answers."

"I already did that.  I can't help it
that they weren't the ones you wanted."

"But I haven't asked the important questions
yet.  For instance, what happened to Gwen's baby?"

The swarthy seemed to wither in front of us
into a state of cachexia.  For a moment, it looked as if he
might miss the chair he left scooted out from the table.  "Why
in the name of all that's holy would you say such a thing?"

"The body doesn't lie, Mr. Hartley. 
Did you think for one second that Gwen died at the age of 34 and no
one considered performing an autopsy?" 

Given Charlie's hesitation to interview
Vinnie alone, I was confident that none of the details of Gwen's
violent death had been shared.  It was probably cruel to
inform Hartley in such a frank manner, but answers were no longer
optional.  If I had to reduce the man to a sack of weeping
bones, so be it.

"You … cut her open?"

"I know she had a baby.  I know that
the child was born at or close to full term.  We have
irrefutable proof of this.  She either had this child in a
foreign country or was tended by a doctor who didn't follow the
standards of practice in this country.  Is that what happened,
Mr. Hartley?  Did an incompetent doctor like Riley Storm
deliver Gwen's child?"

"Stop saying that!"

"I won't.  What was she, fifteen years
old?  Maybe sixteen when she got pregnant?  Did Frank
send her away to give birth so no one would know and the Bennett
family would be spared the shame of a bastard child?  I know
Frank was religious enough to send Gwen to Catholic school, Vinnie
too.  Gwen upheld the family –"

"Don't you call him that!  He is not a
bastard.  It's no more his fault how he came into this world
than it is any other child's!"  Hartley's voice boomed through
the kitchen, probably a lot farther truth be told.  Apparently
he wasn't concerned who heard him.  Vinnie was too gorked out
to understand he had a secret cousin out there in the world
somewhere. 

I didn't care about the Bennett family
secrets. 

"Was she raped?"

Harlan Hartley's hands shook.  He
gripped his face tightly, shoulders shaking.  "How in the
world can you know this?  We never … there isn't a soul alive
other than me now who knows these things."

"The body doesn't lie, Harlan.  Tell me
what happened to Gwen.  What did Frank do to protect her?"

Silence was punctuated with the irregular
keening of a man desperate to get his emotions back under
control.  Finally he spoke.

"After the deed was done, there wasn't a
whole hell of a lot that could be done to protect our Gwennie."

"How old was she?  Fifteen?  Did
the attack happen in early spring?"

His hands slowly dropped from wet
cheeks.  "How can you know this?"

"Because he's done it before, and has
continued to do this time and again.  What I find incredible
is that this man attacked the Bennett family not once but
twice."

This time, Harlan didn't hide his tears or
try to suppress the brokenhearted sobs that wracked his body. 
"Brighton.  Oh my God.  Brighton too."

"Mr. Hartley, what did Gwen tell her father
about the rape?  Why didn't Frank report it to the
police?  Why was Gwen forced to bear the shame of what
happened to her in silence without any hope of justice?"

"He knew where we lived!  My God, he
snatched her out from under our noses.  And what good would it
have done to call the police?  She never even saw his
face.  What that child endured, we couldn't make her tell
anyone about it again.  It was hard enough when Frank and I
found her and brought her home."

"Gone two days?  Found wandering along
the roadside without any clothing?  He threatened her with the
vilest of crimes and taunted her to attack him?"

Harlan's eyes widened in horror.  "She
never gave us the details.  It was pretty obvious what he did
to her, Detective Eriksson.  Frank asked her who it was. 
She said he wore a mask, and then she didn't speak for a solid
week.  Didn't sleep.  Didn't eat.  She sat at the
window in her bedroom staring out at the lane like the devil
himself might appear if she looked away."

"You didn't take her to a doctor for medical
care?"

"We wanted to," he rasped.  "Every time
Frank tried to get her to move, she started shrieking.  She
couldn't even stand to have her own papa touch her."

"How long before you realized that Gwen was
carrying the child of her rapist?"

"It wasn't that baby's fault, doctor. 
He was innocent."

"How.  Long."

"Five months.  Gwen was so quiet after
it happened.  She started moving around after the first week,
like a little ghost.  That son of a bitch killed her
spirit.  She was such a frail little thing, only five two and
not more'n a hundred pounds soakin' wet.  It wasn't long
before we noticed some changes.  Gwennie would get this real
empty look when Frank tried to talk to her about it.  So he
went to a friend and confided in him, asked for advice. 
That's when the doctor started comin' out to see her
here. 

"Gwennie was all shook up when she realized
what was happening to her body.  We got some help for her,
sent her to a real nice place our friend knew about, and they took
care of her until the little guy was born."

Homes for unwed mothers had gone out of
fashion to my knowledge long before Gwen would've given
birth.  Then again, who knows what the Catholics do in such
situations.  Abortion probably hadn't been offered.  "Go
on," I coaxed.

"When she came home the next year –"

"She was gone a year?"

"Long enough to go to school a full term at
the home she went to.  We just told the folks at Sisters of
Mercy that Gwennie was in one of those student exchange
programs."  He shrugged.  "She did learn to speak Spanish
while she was gone, so nobody thought a thing about it."

"What country was she in?"

His jaw set stubbornly.  "I don't see
how any of this helps figure out who murdered our girl."

"It matters because Gwen died the same way
Brighton did."

A good fifteen minutes passed before Hartley
was able to compose himself enough to continue.  I soldiered
on.  "So you see, this is related.  For whatever reason,
Gwen remained his target, unless you can think of someone else who
she would've confided the truth to, who hated her enough to make it
appear that the same man who killed Brighton killed Gwen."

"That ain't possible!"

"Because she wouldn't have told
anyone?  Not even the man she married?"

"She never had a husband.  We only had
her change her name when she got so bad away from home that she
couldn't leave her apartment anymore.  She was terrified to
come back here as Gwen Bennett.  That was when Frank bought
the house for her in Nightingale and set her up.  Danny hired
her.  I wasn't lying when I said Gwen got up every morning,
went to work and came home at night.  She could barely stand
to do more."

"Why would you allow Vinnie to live with
someone so emotionally crippled?  Is this why he boarded at
the Sisters of Mercy?"

"She loves that boy!"  Hartley's
protest strangled in his throat.  "Loved him."

I sucked in a deep breath.  "Does
Vinnie know that Gwen was his mother?"