Wild Justice (14 page)

“Did we miss breakfast?” I called.

She shook her head and looked from me to Jack. He murmured, “Fuck,” under his breath.

“You’ve got time to wash up before you eat,” she said. “Not much, though, so you’d better step to it.”

She stayed at the bottom of the steps, drying her hands on a dish towel. As we reached her, she said, “John?”

“Hmmm?” Jack said.

“Can I have a word?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Emma said. She glanced at me, too quickly for me to read her expression, and then she headed up and inside.

“Fuck,” Jack muttered as the door closed behind her. “Feel like I’m sixteen. Got caught sneaking you out for the night.”

“Which isn’t like Emma at all. Hell, she practically shoves me at every guy who looks my way.”

He shrugged. “Different.”

“I’m sure she’s long past believing we’re actually related.”

“Not that. Age difference.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “But I’ll talk to her.”

“Nah. I will.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Got it,” he said and went into the house before I could argue.

Jack came out as I finished loading body-dump supplies into my old pickup. He was carrying a picnic basket and a thermos.

“Either you totally charmed her,” I said, “or we aren’t allowed to dine with civilized folks.”

“Wasn’t about that.”

“No?”

He waited for me to accompany him down to the dock. I turned on the heater in the gazebo as he set up breakfast inside.

“Emma heard the news about Aldrich.”

“His suicide?”

“Yeah. Said she was going to tell you and I offered to do it.”

“That saves me from finding the right look of shock. Thank you.” I poured coffee as he put out the plates.

“Emma said the papers are reporting that the suicide note was a confession. About Amy.”

“Which is good on all counts. He’s dead and she gets justice.”

“And you? Your justice? How’re you doing with that?”

“I think it still hasn’t entirely sunk in. It feels like it happened to someone else.” I lifted my hands. “
Not
that I’m claiming it did. I know what happened to me. It’s just not . . . sinking in.”

“You gonna talk to someone?”

“A therapist, you mean?” I shrugged. “Probably not. I had that after Amy died and after I shot Wayne Franco. I know it works for people, but I can’t talk to strangers. Which sounds utterly ridiculous to anyone who knows me.”

“It’s different. Personal.” He snagged my gaze. “You don’t do personal.”

I’m sure that if I did talk to a shrink, she’d tell me that my hyper-friendliness was a defense mechanism. If I’m open and extroverted, no one will notice that I don’t really say anything about myself. In my own way, I carry a Do Not Trespass sign as big as Jack’s. I’m just better at disguising it.

“Speaking of dealing with it, I still want to read that journal and see if I can give other families closure. But the first order of business is to track down this Roland guy before he realizes his pro is dead and sends a backup.” I paused. “I believe we’ve been in this situation before. Pretty soon middlemen are going to stop sending their guys here. Eastern Ontario: the Bermuda Triangle for professional killers.”

Jack snorted.

“So we need to find Roland and get a lead on the client, preferably without telling Roland he’s lost a hitman. As much as I hate to cut out on the Waldens again, I think we’re off to Pennsylvania.”

Jack asked if he could talk to Evelyn. I had photos of Aldrich’s killer’s license plate and that might help her find who’d hired that hitman. Normally, I’d hand the plate number over to Quinn, but that wasn’t happening.

While I did have other resources—and so did Jack—Evelyn was a convenient choice. There’s always the worry that she’s a little too convenient, kind of like a little store in the middle of nowhere, where you can get what you need easily, but you know you’re going to pay through the nose for it. I knew the cost for this—she’d insist on talking to me about the Contrapasso Fellowship again. She wouldn’t do it overtly, but she’d ask if I’d heard about some case or other of delayed justice, a victim finally vindicated, and then say, “I heard the Contrapasso did that,” and the minute she saw my resolve wavering, as I thought “Maybe I was too hasty,” she’d pounce. I didn’t need that. I already saw such cases in the paper and wondered if it was them, and sometimes felt the pangs of regret, of thinking maybe they were what I needed . . . No, I didn’t need that.

But Jack knew it and he wouldn’t put me in a position where I’d need to hear it. He’d talk to her. He’d say he wanted her help, and he was the one person she couldn’t refuse, even if she’d be gnashing her dentures, knowing he was asking on my behalf.

I told Emma I was taking off again. Then we dealt with the body and went back to the lodge to pack. By the time I came down the stairs, half an hour later, Jack was waiting in the car. I flew out the lodge door, flung my bag into the trunk, and settled into the passenger seat with a sigh.

Jack said, “Look like you ran a marathon.”

“I got a call just as I went to pack.”

“Wasn’t reporters, was it?” he asked as he pulled from the lodge lane.

“Believe me, I wouldn’t have held you up for that. It was one of my cousins.”

“You guys keep in touch?”

I fastened my seat belt. “We do. I’m still in contact with most of my extended family. It’s the immediate family that doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Jack made a noise in his throat. I’d barely spoken to my mother since she remarried and moved to the States. Same with my brother. There was no precipitating fight, no ongoing feud. We just drifted apart, and the greater the physical distance, the less need for contact. I think we all embraced that excuse. My mother had never made any effort to know me, even as a child. Nor had Brad. Dad had been my real family, and he’d died before the Wayne Franco incident.

I continued, “I still see Neil a few times a year for dinner, and since his divorce, he’s been coming up to the lodge with friends. He lives in Burlington, so it isn’t too far.”

“Between Toronto and Buffalo. Right?”

I nodded. “Which is a segue to a question. Would you mind if we stopped in? He was at the station when I escaped from Aldrich, and he stayed with me while my dad and uncle went back for Amy. He was young, but he was family, which means he’d know . . . whatever there is to know.”

“About you. The rape.”

I flinched at the word. I tried to avoid it myself. I talked about “what happened” or “what Aldrich did.” I didn’t say the word. That was, I think, part of the problem. Use euphemisms and not only did it avoid the ugly reality of what happened, but it diminished Aldrich’s culpability. He hadn’t raped me. He’d just . . . done something.

“I want to understand what happened,” I said. “Did Neil know? Did I tell
anyone
? Why wasn’t Aldrich charged? How did I get raped and spend twenty years not knowing? Maybe he can fill in some of the blanks, because there are a whole lot of blanks.”

“Just tell me where to go.”

I called Neil to warn him I was coming. It was past one when I rang his doorbell. It was the same bungalow I’d visited for the past fifteen years. He’d gotten it in the divorce. His ex had a McMansion in the suburbs with their two kids and her new husband. Fifteen years married to a vice cop had added up to too many nights when she knew he was out on a case and didn’t know a damned thing about it except that it almost certainly involved drugs and guns and all kinds of shit that ate away at him and left her jumping every time the phone or the doorbell rang. My cousin loved his career, and his career made her fall out of love with him. It happens. Too often.

The last time I’d seen him he’d been carrying some divorce-stress weight, but that was gone now. Maybe a sign he’d met someone. Or maybe just a sign he was trying. It was good to see.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey yourself.” He swung open the door. When I stepped in, he gave me a hug. Then he glanced over my shoulder. “You brought company?”

“A friend. We’re driving down to Buffalo for the weekend.”

“Would your friend like to come in?”

“He’s fine.”

I waved to Jack—for Neil’s sake, so he didn’t think I was being rude. Then Neil led me past the living room and into the kitchen. Stafford tradition. The living room is for guests; the kitchen is for family.

We chatted for a while. That, too, was tradition. A Stafford had to be polite and friendly, even with family. So we drank coffee and ate Oreos and chatted until talk turned to Aldrich.

“I don’t want to give that son of a bitch any due,” Neil said. “But I’m glad he confessed before he went. It makes it easier.”

“It does.”

“Have you heard from your mom?”

“Nope.”

He swore under his breath.

“Last I knew she was in Arizona,” I said. “And Brad was in New York doing some off-Broadway play.”

“Off-off-off Broadway, you mean.”

I quirked a smile. “Yeah.”

“You’re doing well, though. The lodge is getting bigger and fancier every time I’m there. You’ve got a dog. Got a
friend
.” He nodded in the direction of the driveway.

I laughed. “He’s not that kind of friend.”

“But you
were
seeing someone, weren’t you? Last time we spoke.”

“Yep. Last time we spoke.”

“Damn. I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “I’m fine. And you? Anyone special?”

“Working on it.”

“Good.” I cleared my throat. “As I said on the phone, I want to ask you a few things about Aldrich. About the case. His death is bringing it back and I just . . . I have some questions.”

“About all the ways we monumentally fucked up?”

“Of course not.” I met his gaze. “You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, sorry. It still stings, obviously, and this vindication helps, but it’s not enough.” He reached for another cookie. “What do you want to know?”

“What happened to me.”

His hand stopped. It was just a momentary pause before he picked up the cookie, but it was enough.

“You did know,” I said.

He set the cookie, untouched, on his plate. Waiting to be sure we were talking about the same thing.

“I’ve had suspicions for a while,” I said. “Bad dreams. Confusing memories. Then this news hit and I saw his face online and it . . . I remembered. Amy wasn’t the only one Drew Aldrich raped.”

Silence. Slowly, his gaze lifted to mine. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you have something to be sorry for?”

“Yeah. We all do, don’t we?” He rubbed his hand over his face. “It’s so easy to screw up. To make a choice that seems right. Then time passes and you look back and you say, ‘How the hell did I do that?’ Attitudes change. Insights change. Eventually things that you were so damned sure were right become . . . incomprehensible.”

“I know.”

“I remember you coming into the station that day. I remember what it was like, seeing you staggering in, barely able to walk, the blood.” He rubbed his mouth and shook his head. “It was like one of those nightmares. Where you’re on a case, a terrible case, and you start dreaming that it wasn’t a stranger who got hurt—it was someone you care about. Except this was real. Uncle Eddie had just come back from the station, panicked because you and Amy weren’t on the train. Before anyone could even react to that, you came in screaming for your dad. He tried to take you into the back, but you wouldn’t go. Amy was in trouble—we had to get to her. Your dad wanted to send everyone else. He’d stay with you. You were hurt. You said you weren’t, that it was Amy’s blood and you only cut your throat getting away. You said no one touched you, that your dad had to go, he had to help Amy.”

“I was blocking the rape.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. It was like . . . I had this call once. Years ago. Car accident. The wife was trapped inside, passed out. The car was on fire. The husband had been thrown clear—no seat belt. We tried to help him, but he kept saying he was fine. Save his wife. Wouldn’t even let the paramedics check him. Everyone had to help his wife. We saved her. He died from internal injuries. You would have told us anything to convince us you were fine so we’d concentrate on Amy. Your dad still didn’t want to leave, but you started screaming and fighting when he wouldn’t. So he told me to stay with you and call Doc Foster.”

“Which you did.”

“The doc came and he took you into the back for an examination. When he came out, he confirmed . . . what we suspected . . . that Aldrich hurt you.”

“Raped me.”

He tensed as if he, too, would rather avoid that word. Then his face mottled as red as his hair, and he clenched the coffee cup in his hand. “You were a child. You were just a goddamn child and that—”

“Go on,” I said. “Please. Tell me what happened. So Dr. Foster confirmed it . . .”

Neil nodded. “He did, but you wouldn’t. You insisted you were okay. You wanted him to go to the cabin to help Amy. He said you couldn’t process the experience . . . I don’t agree. I think you were confused and embarrassed, and you didn’t want to talk about it to an old man. All you could think about was Amy. You hadn’t forgotten what happened. You were just putting it aside. And then your dad called and . . .” He inhaled sharply, gaze emptying, as if lost in those memories.

“Amy was dead.”

He nodded. “We didn’t tell you. As terrible as that news was, your dad’s main concern was still you. When he came back, that’s what he wanted to deal with, before he told you. Except you wouldn’t talk about the rape. You knew something had happened to Amy, and you were hysterical, and you insisted nothing happened to you. Doc Foster said if you wanted to block it out, we should let you.”