Renee Simons Special Edition (24 page)

"That's all?" She could see he was finding it difficult to stay calm. "That's enough!"

"Ethan, you promised."

He shook his head. "This isn't the first time I've made a promise only to regret it later."

"I refuse to let the man get to me, and you mustn't either. The trial is only days away. We have to hold out until then." She touched his arm. "Please?"

"I promise to try, love, but I can't help being concerned when you seem hell-bent on destruction."

"Have you been talking to Dominique again?"

"Nope. I may be stupid, but I'm not bonkers."

She smiled. "You're neither, as far as I can tell."

"I'm glad you see it that way." He took the cup with one hand and hoisted her to her feet with the other. "Now, go on up and have your shower. Mrs. Willis is holding breakfast for you."

A day or two later, the last strategy meeting took place at the house. Lieutenant Torres lifted all restrictions on
Jordan
’s comings and goings, but kept in place the surveillance team at the house. The other trailed discreetly behind her or her car at all times as she moved about within the city.

Sgt. O'Keefe asked
Jordan
to come down to the police station and try to identify some of her father's mob contacts. One or two faces looked familiar, but she didn't think she'd been of any real help.

"It was worth a shot," the officer said. "Thanks for taking the time."

Exhausted after an entire morning of looking at mug books, she left the building, nodded at the surveillance team and got into her car. A package wrapped in emerald green paper topped with a shiny gold bow the size of a cabbage rose filled the passenger seat.

Despite her raging curiosity, she decided to wait before looking inside. When she opened the box and laid the object on the bed, she was grateful for the privacy of her room.

To a casual observer the baby doll with its mint green dress and lacy bonnet would have seemed perfectly harmless. To her it meant that Volpe's assault on her senses had begun. She returned the doll to its bed of tissue, replaced the cover and placed the box at the back of her closet.

After arriving home from dinner with Ethan the following evening, she found another sitting on her dresser. With a pounding heart and trembling hands, she dashed to the closet and pulled out the box, posing both play things side by side on the edge of the dresser. They were identical except for a broken finger on the new "present."

"I wonder if he got it cheap because it's damaged," she muttered, knowing the doll had probably been perfect at the time of purchase.

How had Volpe or, more likely, someone in his employ twice gotten past the surveillance team? The warning voice she had managed to beat into submission on numerous occasions spoke again, urging her to tell Dominique. Three more dolls came in rapid succession. She knew she would have to inform the task force.

They had gathered in a conference room across the hall from Dominique's office to discuss strategy for the trial, slated to begin in one week. Present were Ethan, Drew, the lawyer Wallace Patterson, Lieutenant Torres, Captain Mahan and Dominique.

Throughout the discussion with its rapid fire exchange of ideas,
Jordan
found concentrating difficult. Tired from too little sleep, preoccupied by the need to be in control of a situation clearly beyond her control, she doodled on a yellow legal pad and sipped black coffee. Occasionally, she struggled up through the maze of conflicting thoughts in which her mind foundered.

Once the talk centered on Ethan's testimony, once around Drew's. Captain Mahan expressed reservations about Drew's effectiveness as a witness. Dominique felt certain she could counteract any negative feelings the jury might experience over his homosexuality, by making the fact known during his testimony. Finally,
Jordan
’s turn came.

As Dominique prepared to question her, a knock sounded on the door. An officer entered the room with a package. "This just came for Ms. VanDien," he said to Captain Mahan.

"Did you check it out?" the Captain asked.

The patrolman smiled. "Well, it isn't ticking, if that's what you mean."

Glaring at the young police officer, Lieutenant Torres, took the delivery and placed it on the table, then resumed his place beside
Jordan
. Ethan rose as if to come to her but Mahan held him back. Finally, she tore apart the wrapping. She worked slowly, deliberately. Why hurry. After all, she had a pretty good idea of the contents. Finally, she tipped the box toward her to see what was inside.

The object was an ugly perversion of the dolls Tony had sent before. While he'd damaged each one in some way, this barely resembled the others. He'd smashed it beyond recognition, except for its dress of bridal white and the great, shining glass eyes staring up at her, eloquently frozen in time.

She knew that tomorrow or the next day he would find her and try to destroy her as he had this innocent toy. She sighed, silently pushing the box toward Torres, who removed the doll and with a vicious curse slammed it down on the table.

"What in damnation is that?" Mahan asked.

"Me."

"What's going on?" Dominique asked softly. "Who sent that - thing?"

Jordan
’s eyes shifted to her. "Volpe."

"What have you been hiding from us?"

Ethan leaned forward. "Has this been going on since the phone call." She merely nodded. "You bloody fool." He shook his head. "I think you are trying to get yourself killed. Or you wouldn't have let it go on." 

"What phone call, Ethan?" Dominique asked. When he explained, she turned back to
Jordan
. "Talk."

"Not in front of them,"
Jordan
insisted.

"Here and now. As is."

Ethan spoke up. "Some of this could be quite... sensitive. Why don't you give her a break, Dominique?"

She motioned to the lieutenant, who left the room briefly, returning with a policewoman carrying a stenotype machine.
Jordan
gave Dominique a questioning look as the officer made ready.

"Your break," she replied with a shrug. "You'll only have to tell your story once."

Chapter 13

Jordan
stared at the officer for a moment more, then turned to Dominique. "You don't need her. I can say it all in two sentences."

"Okay. Say it."

"When I was fifteen I was raped. By Volpe."

In a room of people involved daily with the violent side of life, who'd had ample evidence of the cruelty of humans to their own kind, the statement shouldn't have been a shock. But the dead silence told her it had exactly the effect she had always dreaded.

Dominique pressed. "And the doll?"

"That's what he called me...Baby Doll. Over and over. When I demanded he use my name he said he didn't know it, and didn't want to. It was a job and to do a job right, you had to be impersonal. Later, I was glad. I would have changed my name rather than have it remind me of him."

She motioned to the box. "He sent several of these, each damaged in a different way to let me know what his plans are. His way of wearing me down." She sighed and rubbed her temples. "It worked."

"Why didn't you tell us about him?"

She glanced around the room. Those at the table looked everywhere but at her. Only Ethan's gaze met hers, holding promise of support despite his disapproval of what she'd done. Did he understand what a victory over fear their lovemaking had been?

"I was afraid you'd treat me differently if you knew. That you'd prevent me from continuing with Conlon and from avenging my father's death."

"And your mother?"

Jordan
didn't answer.

"What about your mother?" Dominique repeated. "What happened to her?"

"If you checked on me, you know the answer to that."

"Tell us."

She shook her head. "No."

"
Jordan
..." Dominique's voice coaxed. "We need it all."

"Damn you! I'm not the enemy. I refuse to bare my soul before the world." She pushed back her chair and went to the window, staring out but seeing nothing.

Wallace spoke up for the first time. "Just consider this a preview of the trial."

She turned to him. "What do you mean?"

"The defense will ask these very same questions," he replied, "only it won't be as polite."

"But why?" she asked, truly confused, and desperate to avoid laying out her entire past before the others.

"To suggest that you'd be willing to lie on the witness stand in order to exact revenge." His tone and the expression he wore spoke of his regret. "We have to know everything. It's the only way we can be ready for them."

Defeated, she returned to her seat. She looked at Dominique. "Will you at least tell me what you know about her before I begin?"

"Your mother was only eighteen when she married your father. She'd led a sheltered life and he cared for her in the same way. They adored each other. A storybook marriage, especially after your birth. She fell apart emotionally when your father died and lasted only one year without him. She was gone by the age of thirty-six."

"You have it all. What more do you want?"

"You have nothing to add?"

"Nothing."

"Where were you when your mother died?"

Jordan
stared at her. "Don't do this to me, Dominique. I've spent my adult life trying to put those years behind me. Don't make me dredge them up again."

"I have no choice. We need to hear your past from you, before the defense throws it in our faces."

Resigned that she had no choice but to reveal everything, she answered, "I was away, in a hospital."

"Why?"

"They finally let me go after my father died. I was a mess, ripped apart physically and emotionally. My mother sent me to a private sanitarium for medical attention and psychotherapy." Her gaze met Ethan's across the table. "I spent three years there while they tried to make me into a whole person, with all my parts in working order. They had somewhat better luck with my emotions than my body, but I did have the best that money could buy and help when my mother died. The doctors and counselors got me through it all. I finished high school while I was there, then went on to college and a life."

"Do you know where the money came from for all that?" the lawyer asked.

Jordan
shrugged. "I always assumed from my mother or her estate."

"It was Conlon."

She stared unbelieving at Wally. "How do you know this?"

"He told us. Frankly, I don't think he knew about the rape, but he blamed himself for the kidnapping, for not notifying your father in enough time to pull you away. He paid for everything during those years and kept your mother going as long as he could. Unfortunately, he couldn't give her a reason to live."

"She tried to kill Volpe, you know."

"We didn't," Dominique said.

"My mother seethed quietly for months, trying to figure out how to get even with him. ‘That man,’ she called him, so I never knew his name. Anyway, she took my father's gun and went to see Volpe, but when she pulled the trigger, it failed to fire. She felt humiliated, but I told her she was the bravest person I knew and I was proud of her for trying. That seemed to please her. It was the only time I saw her smile during that whole period."

She waited in silence as each person at the table digested in his or her own way what they had just heard.

Finally, Lieutenant Torres cleared his throat. "Would you tell us when and how you received the other dolls?"

"I found the first in my car after looking at mug shots. The second in my bedroom after being out one evening." She thought about the others. "The third came in a florist's box to my beauty salon. The next was waiting at reception in the lobby of Wally's office building."

She paused again to put down the feelings of fear and revulsion she'd experienced only the night before. "Last night, when I went for my run, I found another hanging from a street lamp, with a dead canary tied around its neck. I thought that would be the last." She looked at the box again. "I was wrong."

Captain Mahan looked at the Lieutenant. "What's troubling you, Bernie?"

Torres grimaced. "The same thing that would trouble you if you were running surveillance. Either my men are unbelievably and unforgivably sloppy, or we've got a bad cop on our hands. Either way, I have a problem."

"What are you planning to do?" Torres' superior asked.

The lieutenant turned to her. "Would you consent to remain a target for a little longer? To help me find out where the weak link is?"

"Yes," she replied.

"No!" Ethan thundered.

Torres looked from her to Ethan. "If she's willing, what's your objection?"