Merciless (18 page)

Angie straightened, cleared her throat, and recrossed her legs. “I’m Angie. I’ve not taken a drink in four hundred and seventy-two days.”At some meetings she mentioned that her mother had left her when she was four. Other meetings she discussed her bout with cancer. And at others she’d mention her sister’s imprisonment. But this time she opted out of the personal details. She couldn’t say why. Maybe Kier’s warnings had put her senses on high alert. Maybe it was the presence of the
new guy. Maybe she just wasn’t up to it. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t sharing today.

Sara waited an extra beat, and then smiled. “Congratulations, Angie. That is no small feat.”

And she was proud of it. “Thanks.”

“We have a new member,” Sara said.

With a boldness Angie didn’t feel, she swung her gaze over to the man beside her, as if daring him to ask her a question.

Brilliant blue eyes stared at her with an intensity that warmed and chilled her in an instant. She could see that The New Guy had to be in his late fifties. He had an olive complexion, lines around his eyes, graying hair that dipped slightly below his collar, and a square jaw. He wore no aftershave, but the faintest aroma of soap mingled with his scent.

With ease, he shifted his gaze from Angie to Sara. The brittle blue eyes softened. “My name is Robert. Like Angie, I’m not interested in discussing too many details. But I will say I’ve not taken a drink in six months, two days.”

Robert’s voice was steady, deep—the voice of a man in control. That was the thing with people with addiction. It was a sneaky, quiet affliction, and those who suffered with it worked double-time to look normal.

The others had supplied a good many details initially. Even Angie had said more than she’d intended the first day. But Robert ended his statement with a clear control that piqued her interest. He either didn’t need the group, or he was here to satisfy someone other than himself. Unless the extreme control masked deep chaos.

Sara offered her warm
Welcome
smile. “I’m glad you could join us, Robert. Feel free to chime in at any time.”

Robert nodded to Sara. “Thanks.”

Again, the brief answer gave nothing away. Angie found his silence intriguing. Was there someone else in the world who didn’t like blathering on and on about their problems?

Sandi discussed a nightmare. Denise mentioned a panic attack in the grocery store. Winnie talked about her dead sister’s birthday. She’d wanted to toast her with a can of beer. Through it all Angie and Robert didn’t speak, remaining silent witnesses to the carnage.

Finally, when Sara had finished giving Winnie meditations to consider, she shifted her gaze to Angie. “You’re quieter than usual today. Everything all right?”

She refused to talk about Sierra or Lulu. The investigations were open and active, and she did not want to say anything that might compromise the police department’s work. The information shared here was considered sacred and not to be shared. But after her affair with Connor Donovan, she didn’t trust anyone.

Folding manicured hands over her lap, she told of restless nights and the desire to sit on a beach with her toes in the sand. For a moment, everyone in the room stared at her, their expressions reflecting varying degrees of understanding. “My nerves are on edge. I even got a little freaked out in the parking garage the other day. Not like me to worry about shadows.”

Robert’s gaze remained direct and unmoved by the account. “You’ve a talent for saying a lot and not saying anything. You a lawyer?”

Angie glared at him. “I am.”

Robert folded his arms over his chest. “Thought so.”

Sara cleared her voice like the schoolteacher reining in a couple of children. “Robert, I hear judgment.”

A half smile tweaked the edge of his lips as he
glanced to Sara and then back at Angie. “No judgment intended.”

Angie didn’t spare Sara a glance. She didn’t need a defender. “If you have something to say you are welcome to say it, Robert.”

The muscle in his jaw pulsed before it eased, and he smiled. “I know you. I’ve read about you in the papers. If I were you, I’d drink too.”

Sara sat forward. “Robert. That’s unnecessary.”

Angie held up her hand. “No, Sara. Let Robert say what he needs to say.”

“I’m not saying anything that everyone else in the room isn’t thinking. You are the attorney that defended that guy Dixon, and now you got that client who was murdered. Body reduced to bones. Kind of an odd coincidence.”

“Really?”

“You must think there is a connection.”

If law school had taught her anything it was to turn an attack back on the attacker. “You know so much about me, and I know so little about you.”

Robert frowned, but if Angie thought he’d trip into some long explanation of the demons that had brought him here she was mistaken. In seconds, he slipped behind a steel veil. “Maybe another day.”

She folded her arms over her chest.

Forty minutes later the meeting ended, and Angie found herself grateful to stand. She rarely remained after the group to chitchat with the others.

She’d just reached the top step of the banister leading out of the church basement when she heard steady, purposeful footfalls on the staircase. It didn’t take a glance over her shoulder to know who followed. Robert had an energy that radiated and announced his presence.

“Angie,” he said.

She exited the staircase and moved to the sunny, wide-open lobby of the church. The warmth of the sun gave her a calming sense of connection. “Yes, Robert.”

“I didn’t mean to go after you back there.”

Sitting he’d been intimidating, but standing he overwhelmed. He stood over six-five, and his shoulders filled the average doorjamb. Her pulse throbbed faster in the base of her neck. “You were just asking questions. No harm, no foul.”

“Are you sure?” He dipped his head a fraction as if to whittle off some of his height. She guessed this was a practiced move he’d done a thousand times before.

“No worries, Robert.” She checked her watch. “And I don’t mean to be rude, but I have a meeting in a half hour.”

“Of course.”

She tossed him a smile because it seemed the right thing to do and turned.

“Interested in coffee?”

She hesitated. “I have a meeting.”

“Yeah, but you’ll be here next week won’t you? I could tell by the way you sat in that room that you’re a regular.”

“You could tell that by just looking at me?”

“You act like you’re in charge of the group.”

“That’s Sara’s job.”

“But people glance to you when they speak. I mean they look at Sara too, but they want your approval just as much.”

“You’re mistaken. I’m in the same boat as they are.”

“In their eyes, you are the leader.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Nothing like being captain of the
Titanic.
”

His grin broadened. “So is that yes or no to the coffee next week?”

Instinct had her shaking her head even as curiosity tempted her to say yes. “I don’t think so.”

He grinned. “So that’s a maybe.”

“You’re persistent.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“If I see you next week, we’ll see.”

He cocked a brow. “If?”

She didn’t like being pushed. “Like I said, if I come to the meeting.”

He slid his hands into his pockets and leaned forward. “I bet you almost never miss.”

This guy had known her for less than an hour, and already he sensed things about her that few recognized. Not good. And more than a little unsettling. “Take care, Robert.”

She turned and left without glancing back, but she felt the steady weight of his gaze on her even after she pushed through the front door and hurried down the street. With each step she resented Robert more and more. Who was he to interlope on her group and read her as if she were a book? Who the hell was he?

And of course, she had no answer.

Friday, October 7, 8:45
A.M.

Angie sat at her desk, grateful to have her meeting behind her, a mug of hot coffee beside her. The papers on her desk remained neatly stacked and piled as she lifted a silver letter opener and sliced open the back of an envelope.

She scanned e-mail, surprised to see a note from Dr. Evans. She clicked it open.

Angie stared at the last word:
NEGATIVE.
Her heartbeat pulsed in her chest. She released a deep sigh letting it carry the worry from her body.

NEGATIVE.
She smiled.

For this year she’d dodged another bullet. She was cancer free. Evans said that she should have no worries.
But the elevated blood levels had added a layer of stress she couldn’t shake until now.

Her mother had been dead by forty-eight of the same cancer, and she’d seen firsthand how devastating her death had been. As much as she’d loved her mother, she was in no rush to follow her.

She printed out the e-mail, neatly folded it, and replaced it in an envelope, which she tucked in her desk drawer. She deleted the message from her in-box and recycling bin. She’d told Eva, but Charlotte and Iris didn’t know she’d had cancer, and she planned to keep it that way.

Her mind clear, she turned her attention to the mail. It included news from a subpoena company, discovery documents from a North Carolina attorney, and several notices from other clients. It was the last letter that sent a jolt down her spine.

The handwritten envelope was from a private detective, Bill Patterson. She’d done him a few legal favors, and he’d repaid the deeds with investigative work.

Angie had had Bill look into Blue Rayburn’s past. Though Eva had never asked Angie to delve into her past, Angie had decided she needed to know more about the man who’d been her father’s friend and her mother’s seducer.

Angie ripped open the manila envelope and pulled out the typed report. Bill was efficient, and if there’d been facts to dig up about Blue, then he’d find them.

Angie sat back in her chair, staring at the typed words. She’d known Blue had worked for the museum but had never known what he’d done before that.

Angie set the letter aside and opened the smaller envelope marked PHOTOS. She pulled a black-and-white photo of Blue when he was in his early twenties and, judging by his uniform, still in the Navy. He and
Eva shared the same dark hair and high slash of cheekbones. He had been a darkly handsome man who looked as if he radiated energy.

He was the mirror opposite of her father, a tall, slender man who avoided the sun and loved his books. Frank Carlson had been steady and focused but not exciting.

The next photo was a group picture that appeared to have been taken in front of one of the museum’s collections. There were ten people in the group, her father included. All men and all in their early thirties. They appeared genuinely happy as if the photo had just been snapped during a celebration.

She studied her father’s face, alight with a smile that she never remembered seeing. He’d always been so somber, and though he smiled, it wasn’t the brilliant explosion of glee that this grin radiated.

Beside her father stood Blue, who had wrapped his arm casually around Frank’s shoulders as if they were old, casual friends.

She glanced in the corner and saw that the picture had been taken twenty-eight years ago. Just before Blue had begun his affair with her mother.

The men’s smiles looked so true and bright that it seemed unimaginable that treachery lurked down the road. By the end of that year her mother had left her father and Angie’s safe world had been shattered. Loving parents had morphed into an emotionally absent father and a mother she saw only once a month.

Angie flipped the picture over and read the inscription.

Darius Cross!

Her face flushed, and her heart raced. She reread the inscription.

Angie had never imagined that her family’s ties to the Cross family stretched back beyond the dark night Josiah had raped Eva. She’d assumed Darius’s taste for revenge was due to grief. But now it appeared that Darius had known Eva and Angie’s history better than they did themselves.

She searched the faces of the men in the photo and realized the man on the far right was Darius Cross. Thirty years ago he’d have been in his forties. He cut a striking figure. His hair was thick and only grayed at the temples. His skin sported a deeply tanned hue, and his teeth flashed bright and even. Micah strongly favored his father’s appearance.

The Darius Cross she’d remembered was heavier. His hair had been much thinner, and the rawboned cheeks had softened. At the trial, his eyes had reflected anger and mistrust, not excitement and joy.

She traced Darius’s face. Her family had deep ties to the Cross family. That fact stirred unease and scared her for reasons she could not explain.

Angie picked up her phone and dialed Eva’s cell. She’d commissioned the report without her sister’s knowledge, but she could not sit on the information. Eva had a right to know what had happened to her father.

And perhaps, this new information would jog Eva’s earliest memories, and they could learn more about the families’ connections.

“
This is Eva
,” the voice mail message said.
“You know me, I never remember my phone but leave a message anyway.”

“I swear to God, Eva, I am going to surgically implant
that phone in you. I will just talk to you later.” Angie snapped the phone closed.

Whatever she had to say to her sister would have to wait until a return call or dinner tonight when Angie went to King’s.

Malcolm arrived at the home of Vivian Sweet just after ten. Her home was a small, one-story rancher located off of Glebe Road. Like the other homes around it, it had been built after World War II, and despite the low square footage, the homes in this area sold quickly when they went on the market. The homes to the right and left of Mrs. Sweet’s house looked as if they’d undergone facelifts. No doubt the older owners had sold out to young professionals. Whereas Mrs. Sweet’s house looked tired, dated, as if it hadn’t seen much TLC in a long time.

He climbed the brick steps and rang the bell. A planter by the door sported a mum with dying orange blossoms, and chipped and rusted black paint covered a cast-iron railing.

Seconds passed and no one answered. He rang the bell again, glancing toward a large picture window to the right of the steps. Drawn curtains blocked his view into the house.

There was no solid connection between Lulu Sweet and Sierra Day. Most would question the time he’d spent this afternoon looking for Lulu when he was knee-deep in an active murder investigation. But they still had no real leads in Sierra’s case. And as the hours ticked by and he found no sign of Lulu, he believed there might be a connection between the two cases.

Finally, he heard footsteps on the other side of the
door. A chain scraped against a lock and dropped to dangle against the door. A dead bolt slid free, and the door opened.

Standing on the other side of the screen door was a willowy woman. She wore a blue housecoat and slippers. A baby’s cry drifted out from another room.

“Can I help you?” the woman said through the screen door.

“Mrs. Vivian Sweet?”

“Yes.”

He withdrew his badge from the breast pocket of his jacket. “I’m Detective Kier with Alexandria Police.”

The baby’s wail grew angrier, more insistent. “Are you here about Lulu?”

“How did you know?”

“You’re not the first policeman to show up on my doorstep asking about Lulu. Trouble finds her pretty quick.”

“Can I ask you a couple of questions about your daughter?”

Mrs. Sweet glanced back into the house toward the source of the baby’s wail. “I have to get my grandson.”

Malcolm grinned. “Boy’s got some lungs on him.”

A ghost of a smile tipped the edge of her lips. “That he does. Come on in and wait in the living room while I get him.”

She unlocked the screen door and Malcolm stepped into the house, which smelled of baby powder and Vicks VapoRub. Circumstances had forced together two generations that didn’t really fit.

Mrs. Sweet reappeared with a baby resting on her hip. The kid was bald, had big watery blue eyes, and chewed on his meaty fist. The kid’s bulk made his grandmother look all the more frail and old.

“What’s his name?” Kier said.

“David.”

The baby wiggled in his grandmother’s arms and then thrust out his hands toward Malcolm. Instinct had Malcolm moving toward the kid, who reminded him of his nephew, Jack, and his niece, Elizabeth. When he was in Richmond, he was always hoisting those two, tossing them in the air or changing a dirty diaper.

Mrs. Sweet hesitated. “He’ll drool all over your jacket, and sometimes he spits up.”

Malcolm grinned. “I’ll chance it.”

“Suit yourself.”

Malcolm held out his hands to the kid, who tipped his body weight forward and all but plunged into Malcolm’s waiting hands. The kid stared up at him, his big eyes searching and curious. David had “handful” written all over him. “He looks like he might walk soon.”

Vivian nodded. “You’re right.You mind holding on to him while I grab a bottle? It should be warm now.”

“Sure.” The kid smelled of powder, but judging by the mushy weight of his diaper, he had already filled it up. When Vivian vanished into the kitchen Malcolm looked at the kid. “You’re carrying a load, aren’t you, pal?”

The boy gurgled and laughed.

“Figured as much.”

Vivian reappeared. “I can feed him.”

The veins in the woman’s hand blazed blue and bright, and he noted her fingers shook very slightly. “Let me. I’ve got some experience.”

They sat on the small sofa and chair in the living room. Vivian released a sigh as she sat down. “You got kids?”

“No. Not yet. My brother has a couple of kids, and I see them often.” Malcolm cradled the boy, who greedily
grabbed the bottle, tossed his weight back into the crook of his arm, and sucked the nipple. “He’s an eater.”

“He’s going to be a bruiser.”

“He seems healthy.”

She pushed a wisp of gray hair from her face. “He is, thank God. Lulu was clean when she was pregnant.”

“That’s good for the kid.”

“Yes.” She smoothed her palms over thin thighs. “No matter how hard she tries to climb out, the junk drags her down every time. No matter how much she swears she’ll never use again, she does.” She picked at a stray thread on her housecoat. “Did the courts send you?”

“I came because Ms. Carlson was worried about your daughter. I promised to ask around.”

The scent of illness clung to the woman, and he guessed she wasn’t plagued by the flu or a cold but was gravely ill. “I spoke to Ms. Carlson in the courthouse yesterday. She looked frazzled when she came barreling into the courtroom. She’d been waiting on Lulu. She’d been so convinced that Lulu would show.” She shook her head. “Funny that Ms. Carlson would help. She all but tore my girl apart on the stand.”

“I remember.”

“I was so blistering angry with Ms. Carlson. I wrote her a few letters after the trial and told her I thought she was a bloodsucker. Dixon didn’t deserve a fair trial. He deserved to be hung. Lulu has her faults, but he hurt her bad.”

Malcolm had had similar thoughts regarding Dixon, and still he heard himself defending Angie, saying, “A fair trial is a basic right for everyone.”

“I don’t care about rights. Dixon was bad. He needed to die.”

“Has your daughter seen him at all since the trial?”
No one in their right mind would seek out a man who’d brutalized them, but he’d seen a lot of odd behavior since joining the force.

“She said no. And I believed her. But she’s lied before. Are you here to tell me she’s been seeing that monster?”

“He patronized the bar where she worked. I don’t know if she knew that or not.” He glanced at the kid. The boy’s eyes had drifted to half-mast. “Were you surprised when Lulu didn’t show in court?”

She sat back on the couch. “I had hoped she’d make it. I really want my girl to get her act together. David needs a mother.”

“You’ve not heard from your daughter in the last couple of days?”

“Not a word. Each time the phone rings I think it’s her. That’s her pattern. Mess up and then call and apologize. Not hearing from her has me wondering if she really has screwed up this time.”

“She mention anyone that she hung out with much lately?”

“No. We don’t talk a lot.”

He hesitated. Mrs. Sweet knew Lulu better than anyone. “What do you think has happened to her?”