Darker Than Desire (6 page)

“Is that a family trait?”

Well, if Sorenson expected shock, he was destined to be disappointed.

Max was staring at David, like his reaction was crucial.

No.
Necessary
. Like he'd live or die, depending on how David reacted.

David?

As he turned and leaned against the window ledge, there was something of amusement on his face, the faintest grin lurking on his lips as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Is that what you call
getting it done
, Chief? If it is, I feel sorry for any female you might date. You probably hump her leg and call that a wild party.” He shoved off the ledge then and prowled across the floor, stopping five feet away, dark hair spilling into his eyes, his blue eyes bright, glinting, almost a mirror of the man lying on the bed. “Do you not know how to just ask what you're asking or is it a cop thing?”

“Fine. I'll ask. I heard a … well, I can't call it a rumor as it's not really flying around town. But one of the women I spoke to, trying to nail down the events of twenty years ago, was Elsie Darby. Owns the B and B outside of town.”

David just lifted a brow.

Sorenson looked away from David, then, focusing on Max. “Elsie seems to recall a time, right before you and Miss Mary hooked up. You spent a few weekends with Hilda Pritchard. She left town not long after, came back while you were off serving in the army.”

“Yes. That sounds about right.” Max just watched him.

Damn the both of them.
Neither of them was going to make it easy, were they?

“She came back with a little girl, ended up having to move in with her father. He didn't exactly make her life easy. Her life, or her daughter's life. Word has it that Diane had a rough time of it.”

“Yes.” Max sighed now, turning his head. “Yes, she did.” He looked back then, but not at Sorenson. His entire focus was locked on David. “I didn't know. Not at first. Mary and I saw a preacher the summer I enlisted. Sometimes, I think the only thing that brought me back was knowing that she waited. Then I get back here and I see that little girl with my eyes … my eyes, and her granddaddy was so mean to her.” He ran a shaking hand across his eyes. “I told Miss Mary. We had no secrets. She was upset, as you can imagine. Then I talked to Hilda. Tried to see if we couldn't just adopt Diane, but she wouldn't hear of it. That little girl was the only happiness she had, she told me. She did let me give her money, but she banked it. All for Diane, keeping it away from her daddy, not telling anybody. She didn't want anybody to know, though. I was a fool, not pushing harder, not trying harder. It took me years, though, to realize how much of a mistake it was, letting it go as I had.”

David's face was like stone, his gaze staring at nothing.

“You knew,” Sorenson said softly.

Slowly, the younger man lifted his head to meet Sorenson's gaze. “I've got his eyes. I've got his hands. I've been in his house and I've seen pictures. As I got older, the resemblance got stronger. Figured it out a while back.” There were words unspoken in the back of his eyes, but no amount of pushing would get him to reveal any secret he wasn't willing to share.

Sorenson hadn't even been sure. Just how this was connected to the mess he was trying to unravel he didn't know, but he'd reached out, taking that blind stroke, hoping to catch something.

Well. He had the truth.

But not much else.

Looking away from David, he said to Max, “It must have been hard on you, all of these years. Not knowing where your grandson was. Even as a boy, seeing him, but not being able to reach out to him the way you wanted, especially seeing as how you and Miss Mary couldn't have kids. And it turns out he was here all along. Did you see it? He saw you in him, but didn't you see him in you?”

“I guess we all see what we expect to see.” Max met Sorenson's eyes levelly. He didn't bat a lash and his gaze was dead-on.

He also lied through his teeth. Sorenson would bet his badge on it. But what proof did he have?

“I guess it burns some, looking back now. Seeing as how you lost twenty years with him. You never really had him for any time, but the past twenty years—”

“You want to know what burns?” Max asked, his voice going hard as a diamond. “Want to know what hurts?”

He shoved the blanket back, grimacing as he pulled himself up farther in the bed, shoving skinny legs ropy with muscle over the side so he could face Sorenson. “What
burns
is the fact that my daughter, a girl I helped bring into this world, grew up so twisted that she turned a blind eye to what was happening to her own son.
My
blood. What burns is that that the man who was supposed to protect
my
grandson was nothing more than a monster. What
burns
is that fact that all of that time, I didn't know a thing. None of us did, because those snakes in the grass hid it. If I had known, no force on this earth could have kept me from helping my grandson, or any of those boys. But I didn't know. Not until it was too late.”

He paused to take a breath. “And now I—”

David stepped forward, rested a hand on the old man's shoulder while silently Sorenson cursed.
Now you what?
What had he been going to say?

David crouched in front of his grandfather and the two of them stared at each other for a long, taut moment. “This is pointless,” David finally said. “Neither of us can undo what's done. You can blame yourself. I can blame you. But it's all wrong and we know it.”

“Do we?” Max watched David. “If I'd fought Hilda harder, when I saw how she struggled, how bad her daddy was to her and Diane, could I have had that little girl with me? Maybe she would have had a chance to be … something better. She would have done better by you then.”

Sorenson cleared his throat, awkward now, caught in a moment where he knew he didn't belong.

David rose, turning to look at him, arms crossing over a chest heavy with muscle, strong from years of hard labor. He looked nothing like the pictures of the skinny boy that had been passed around this town over the years. The resemblance to Max wasn't overpowering—they had the same eyes, they had the same hands, and if somebody knew what Max had looked like fifty years ago they might see a similarity, but then again, maybe not.

Max had been robust, full of life, full of love for his Mary.

David was more than half-dead inside. Too hard. Too cold.

“Did you get whatever you were hoping to get?” David asked, his voice just a step above a whisper.

“I wasn't hoping to get anything,” Sorenson said. But he lied. He hated that this big, cold man could make him feel nervous inside his skin. David hadn't even done anything, hadn't moved toward him.

But David had a way of looking at you that made you realize that you didn't even exist. Not to him.

It was … unsettling. Eerie.

“You don't tell lies as well as you need to,” David said. “Not if you want me to believe them. I grew up on lies and I've survived on them for longer than you can imagine.”

“How long is that, David?” he asked.

“All my life.” He moved now, taking one step away from Max's bed. “You want to push at me, do it. I can handle it. You got questions you want to ask Max about Miss Mary or the day he was shot? I can't stop you. But don't come hammering at him. He's got nothing that will help you.”

“I'm afraid you don't get to dictate how I do my job there, son.” He looked past David then, met Max's tired blue eyes. “I'm sorry if I brought…”
any inconvenience?
This was more than that.
Unhappiness?
That didn't touch it. Floundering for a word, he finally said, “I'm sorry for this. But I've got crimes to solve, some of them going back for twenty or more years, and I can't do it without asking questions. Feelings will be bruised when I'm done, but there are dark, ugly secrets and they need to be exposed, and the criminals need to be brought before a court of law.”

David turned away. “Too bad you're too late for the worst of them. That would be my father and his lackeys. Too bad you didn't come along in time to get them.”

“They can get theirs in hell,” Max murmured. “The devil can torture them from now until eternity.”

A humorless laugh escaped David. “Hell is here on earth, Max. The devil? He was every man who took a child into that room.”

Then he looked back at Sorenson, and for a minute the cop was left to wonder if maybe David wasn't right. Maybe hell was here on earth, and maybe the devil did dwell inside men—perhaps even inside the man standing across the room from him.

 

CHAPTER THREE

“No visitors,” Max said again to the nurse David had hunted down.

Melanie Hawkins nodded. “Got it, Judge Max. It's noted in the book, I've got a sign up and you're right by the desk, so I'll be keeping an eye out myself.” She paused and then asked, “Are you okay?”

Max didn't respond, just shifted around in the bed. After a minute, he said, “Tell that damn doctor I can't sleep. I want something so I can sleep. Every time I close my eyes…”

He didn't finish his sentence, but David imagined he knew the problem. He'd close his eyes and see Mary. Lifeless. Gone. Everything he'd lived for.

Within another minute, Melanie was gone and David moved to stand by the bed, pulling a chair up so Max could see him.

“You got any idea how many are left?” David studied him.

Max flicked a look at him. “Don't know what you're talking about.”

“Don't give me that, Max.”

“You know, for once in your life, wouldn't hurt you to call me Grandpa.”

Sighing, David bowed his head, hair falling to shield his eyes. Slowly, he reached up and caught one of Max's hands in his, squeezed. “I don't know if you really want that. I think of family and I think ugly things. I don't have that connection with you.” Breaking the contact, he looked away. “I wish I could tell you the sort of things a man should be able to say to his grandfather. I do owe you; I know that—”

“The fuck you do.” The words ripped out of Max, ugly and full of poison. “You don't owe me shit. I never should have—”

“Please don't. You didn't know.” Because David did wish he could give the man something, he decided to give what little he could. Rising, he made his way to the window. “Back before things got bad, I used to dream, you know. My father's parents were dead. Mother never spoke of hers. Now I know why. But kids would talk about their grandparents and sometimes, I'd make up my own. In my head, my grandpa always looked like you. Big and strong, not afraid of anything—tough. That was how you looked to me. And my grandmother would look like Miss Mary. Sweet, with a voice pretty and soft.”

He looked back at Max, but Max had his eyes closed.

“I need to know who else is left,” David said softly. “Don't tell me you don't know. I know what you've been doing. I need their names.”

A moment passed, then another. David counted the beats of his heart, it had grown so quiet.

“There is a journal,” Max finally said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “It was in Harlan's study. I got it now. You want it, you'll find it at my house.”

“Where is it?”

A faint smile came and went on Max's face. “Look around my house. I've got the journals there. I…” His gaze moved to the door, and his voice dropped. “Just you look. But there's not much left. Most of them are either dead or in jail.”

A band wrapped around David's chest. “Most. Not all?”

“Don't start down this trail, David. There's nothing down it but death for you if you take even the first step.”

“I took the first step years ago. I can't undo it.”

“You can. You're not too far gone.” Max blew out a heavy sigh. “I was willing to take those steps, because I'd made a promise. It was a risky, fool thing to do, and if I'd messed up it would have hurt Miss Mary something awful. But every time I thought of what had been done…” He shook his head. “I had to do it. You don't. The cops here, now, they care. The men I know about are gone. You can let it go. Take the journal to them. Let them do their job. Don't go chasing death down. After all this time, boy, you deserve a life.… Don't let them take anything else from you. Not even because you want vengeance.”

David didn't answer.

A life. He wouldn't know how to make one even if he wanted one. He didn't understand the concept. Vengeance, though …
that
was something he understood.

He went to slip outside and a quiet question made him pause.

“Will you come back?”

He gripped the door frame, stared straight ahead. He wanted to say no. Wanted to pretend he hadn't heard. But it wasn't possible. There weren't many in this world he felt he owed much of anything to. But Max was definitely one of the few he did owe. “Yeah. I'll be back.”

*   *   *

“Come on, you icy bitch. All I need is a grand. Five hundred would do it.”

Sybil blocked out the anger, blocked out the insults and just said, “No.”

Layla reached out. With the ease born of years of practice, Sybil sidestepped her younger sister's hand—and those half-inch-long nails—and avoided being scratched or grabbed for what was probably the dozenth time in just the past ten minutes. “It's not like you're hurting for money,” Layla said, her tone snide. “Look at this place.”

She picked up a Nikon that had cost Sybil over five thousand—
not
including the accessories. Pursing her lips, Layla held it up. “I bet you could put this on pawn and get a few hundred easy.”

“Put my equipment down.”

Hearing the threat in her sister's voice, Layla looked up. “Shit, what crawled up your ass and died?”