Big Bad, page 29
Jack’s face had become a hot stone, but his eyes had turned deep and sympathetic. The self-righteous bastard felt bad for her, and she hated that. “How long you been working on the speech?” she said, feigning apathy.
“You’re the coward, Em. Not me. You told me to own it. Well, I have. It’s you who hasn’t.”
“You hit her,” Emma said, and suddenly the words felt so pathetic and thin.
Jack shook his head, smiling ironically. “Look at you. You don’t even look mad when you say it. You don’t even care, because you know it was a mistake. You just let it be more because it suited you. Because you didn’t have to come around and see your little sis’s life… the life you couldn’t make for yourself, even if you tried to. Especially if you tried to. You didn’t have to come around because Asshole Jack was a monster who beat his wife. The monster that pushed you and your sister apart. Except that’s bullshit, Em. And worst of all, you know it. Yesterday you said I made her choose between you and me. But only one person made Molly choose, and that was you.”
Emma stared at him, hoping her face wouldn’t betray her, because right now she wanted nothing more than to scream. Because she realized he might be right. Because while what he was saying was a shotgun blast of scattered ideas, fired off by a hot charge of emotional black powder, the underlying logic was there, and it was spot-on.
“Did she ever tell you what she said to me that night?” Jack said. He was on a roll, and this was his capper, his big finish. Once he got this out, it would no longer be about him. He would be free and clear, and she alone would be the bad guy in all this. The one who couldn’t let it go and move on.
“I don’t care, Jack,” she said.
“But I care,” Jack said, “because you’ve been carrying around your own story all these years. I want you to know so that you can have it right. Then you can do whatever you want with it, but at least it’ll be the real thing, not some twisted-up bullshit you mold into whatever shape you want.”
Emma started to walk out of Molly’s studio. “Maybe another time. I can only take so much insight for one night. If I find anything else, I’ll be in touch.”
“She told me she should have killed Ben,” Jack said.
She froze, her back turned on him. Just go! a voice screamed in her head. But she didn’t obey it, because that voice was a liar. That voice was a tendril of the dark thing she kept tucked away.
Jack lowered his voice. “She said she should have killed him the day he was born. ‘Smothered him with the hospital pillow’ were her exact words. She said it was the only way she wouldn’t end up stuck on this island. So yeah, I smacked her. I lost my temper like I never have before. That doesn’t make it right. I know that. I shouldn’t have hit her. But it happened.” Jack paused. “She let you hate me because she knew it was easier for you. In her own screwed-up way, she thought she was protecting you.”
Emma turned around. “What would you like me to say, Jack?” Suddenly she felt like she was standing naked in the center of the room, every inch of her exposed.
“Nothing, Em. That’s my point. You don’t have to say or do anything. But if you want to move past it, then just move past it and be finished with it. Because I’m done being your villain.”
She stood there, staring at all the paintings. She didn’t know where to go from here, so she offered the best she could do: “That witness you mentioned yesterday? The one who saw Molly the night she died?”
Jack straightened, caught off guard. His hot eyes cooled to curious. “Yeah. What about him?”
“It was a local homeless guy named Dougie Jepson. You guys call him—”
“Rabbit,” Jack said, finishing the sentence for her. “That’s the witness? Rabbit?”
Emma nodded.
“Did you talk to him?”
“No,” she said. “He’s dead.”
“Dead? When did that happen?”
“Just today,” she said.
“How?”
“Drug overdose. At least, someone wanted it to look that way.”
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
“Certain things are usually at a scene where there’s been a heroin overdose. It’s almost always the same. But this scene was off. It was missing things that should’ve been there.”
“How do you know what was at the scene?”
“I found him,” Emma said. “Went to talk to him, but someone got there first.”
“You think it was staged? So another murder.” He looked sideways, then back at her. “Two in a week? I don’t think there’s ever even been one in Rockcliffe. Not in my lifetime. Two can’t be a coincidence.”
Emma thought of Guppy’s son. He’d been murdered, hadn’t he? But she had a feeling that wasn’t the story the vast majority of Rockcliffe knew. Thanks to Margot Winthrop, the version they’d heard over the years was probably a distorted account that had become a cautionary tale about why it wasn’t safe to play on the cliffs. She doubted very much that more than a few knew the truth of it: that a troubled adoption case had shoved another kid to his death, and his mother had covered it up. And then there was the cover-up itself. Perhaps another murder. Emma didn’t bring it up, though. It wasn’t hers to offer.
“Not a chance,” she said. “They’re connected. The photographs, Adam Winthrop, Molly’s death, Rabbit, it’s all linked. Might even be bigger than that. I don’t know how or what yet. Just bits and pieces of a bigger picture I can’t see,” she said.
“Too bad you didn’t get a chance to talk to Rabbit. He must’ve known something. Otherwise, why kill him?”
Emma shook her head. “Not necessarily. I spoke to the cop who picked Rabbit up that night, a guy named Jim Highmore. You know him?”
“Sure, I know him,” Jack said. “What he say?”
Emma told him everything Officer Highmore had told her, leaving out the part about his old fling with Molly, of course. When she was finished, she said, “Rabbit’s account didn’t really prove anything or damn anyone. It was curious, sure. But not proof that could put anyone in jail—or even disprove suicide. He was just low-hanging fruit. They took care of him rather than risk it. Whoever’s behind this is playing it safe and covering their tracks. They’re spooked. That’s what I think.”
“Spooked by you?” Jack said.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Emma said.
“Sure… I guess.” Jack made a face that said maybe he didn’t understand.
“Molly’s been dead almost a week now. They would’ve taken care of Rabbit sooner if they’d wanted to. Why hesitate?”
“Maybe they didn’t know about him,” Jack said, but not confidently.
“I don’t buy it, not in a chatterbox town like this. No way that would’ve been kept quiet this long,” Emma said. “They probably decided to go ahead with it when word got around that I was asking about Molly.”
“You’ve hardly been here a day,” Jack said.
“That’s a good thing. It means I’ve been beating the right bushes. The longer it takes to get back to the people in charge, the more people it had to go through. Quicker means closer to the source,” Emma said. “If you ask me, it also confirms Chief Bayard is playing a part in all this.”
“What makes you so sure?” Jack said.
“Comes back to Rabbit again. Think about it. If I hadn’t shown up and started making people nervous, Rabbit probably would’ve gone right on living. So no one’s worried about the police. If they were, Rabbit would’ve been taken care of already. It wasn’t until an outsider started asking questions that they decided to tighten up.”
“Think they know you’re with the FBI?” He quickly corrected himself: “Or… used to be.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Could be they just don’t want to take any chances. And with Rabbit gone, the suicide story sticks a little better if they need it to.”
Jack crossed his arms, then rubbed the side of his face with a flat hand. “You really think Bayard’s dirty?”
“Either he’s dirty, or someone’s got something bad on him and he’s being forced to look the other way. But I don’t know. I have a tough time getting a good read on him. I’m a little conflicted.”
“Maybe that’s because he’s conflicted,” Jack said.
“Yeah. Maybe,” Emma said, and caught herself nodding in agreement. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
“What about the rest of the police? They can’t all be dirty,” Jack said. “Jesus. What if—”
“It doesn’t work that way. Doesn’t have to, not in a small department like Rockcliffe’s. If the top guy is corrupt, chain of command takes care of the rest. Officer Highmore already told me Bayard told him not to poke around on Molly’s case. If he doesn’t obey, he gets slapped with a nice fat suspension without pay for insubordination. The same goes for anyone else. It’s easier than you’d think to bury an investigation, especially in a small town where power’s so concentrated.”
“You think Jim would’ve lied to you about what Rabbit saw? Kept something back maybe?”
“I didn’t get that idea about him. He was sticking his neck out talking to me.”
“Seems odd he’d do that,” Jack said. “He doesn’t know you.”
Emma shrugged. What she couldn’t tell Jack was that Officer Highmore had done it because his connection to Molly had allowed him to know that Emma had a history in law enforcement. It had been more than that, though, Emma thought. Jim had liked Molly, had maybe even still been a little in love with her. If it had been another woman he’d found, Highmore might’ve just followed his chief’s orders, left it alone, and forgotten about it. He might not have liked it, but he would have been more apt to let it go.
Since Emma couldn’t say all that, she went with something vague but still close to truth: “Some cops take it personally when they find a body. It sticks with them. He probably thinks of this as his case, and he’s being told he can’t follow it where he knows it should go. Also, he heard me talking to Bayard when I went in. He knew where I stood, and I think he wanted me to know I wasn’t alone.”
“This is crazy,” Jack said. “How the hell did Molly end up involved in something that could get her killed? This isn’t some big city, it’s a goddamn sleepy little island off the coast of New England, for Christ’s sake. People don’t get murdered here. They grow old, they get arthritis, they get cancer, but they don’t get murdered.”
“Obviously someone thought she was a threat to something,” Emma said. “I just need to find the connecting thread that leads us to whatever that something is.”
“So where do we go from here? How do we do that?” Jack said in a hopeful how-can-I-help voice.
“We don’t. You just take care of Ben,” Emma said. “I’ll keep going with this.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
OUTSIDE HELP
1
It was ten thirty when Jack dropped Emma off in front of the Lamplighter Inn. She hung around out front for a few minutes after he drove off, faking a phone call and scanning the parking lot for anything that seemed out of place. At this point, she needed to consider the possibility she was being followed. If her digging around had made people nervous—nervous enough to put another murder on the tab—there was a good chance the same people were now keeping an eye on her.
Emma turned away from the parking lot, went inside, and headed up the double-wide staircase to her second-floor room. It was late, and she was tired. It’d been a long day. But before she slept, she still had some work to do.
As she came in, she dropped her key on the credenza of room 217 and flipped on the lights. She went over to the bed, sat, shrugged off her coat—carefully pulling her bandaged hand through the sleeve—and kicked off her shoes. She unwrapped her hand and slowly opened and closed it when it was free. It still felt made of rubber, but the ache had subsided some. Either from the drugs or from getting used to it. She supposed it didn’t matter.
Beside her on the bed was her phone. She picked it up. Looked at it. Put it down. She went to the minibar. It had been restocked. She chose the Bombay Sapphire, poured it into one of the water cups, and drank it in one gulp. After she took a quick shower, she drank another—this time going for the Grey Goose—and turned on the TV. Murder, She Wrote was playing on one of those stations that specialized in old reruns. She didn’t want to watch it, just needed the companionship of it as background noise, so she lowered the volume to a murmur.
Emma sat back down on the bed, wearing only a sweatshirt and underwear. Water from her still-wet hair dripped down the back of her neck. She rewrapped her hand. The compression helped. She picked up the phone again and called Malcolm. When it began to ring, she lay back on the bed. Between her shoulders, she could feel the seam where the two twin beds had been pushed together to form a king.
He answered on the fourth ring. “Didn’t think I’d hear from you,” he said.
His voice didn’t sound tired, but Emma suspected he might’ve been faking it. She’d seen him do it before when they’d been in bed together—wake up from a dead sleep, clear his throat, then greet the person on the other end of the line as if of course he was up at two o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday.
“Didn’t think I’d call,” she said. “I wake you?”
He laughed. “Sleep? What’s that?”
“You working something?” Emma asked.
“Flew out to Texas ten hours after I dropped you off at the airport. Got an early morning tomorrow in Dallas.”
“Anything I’d like?”
“Didn’t think you liked any of it anymore,” Malcolm said in a playful but probing tone.
A beat of silence passed between them.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. Well, I did. But you know…” He cleared his throat.
“It’s fine,” Emma said. She knew his intent was well meaning, and that was all that mattered. He hadn’t been trying to hurt her, just prod her in that way that people do when they want to take the temperature of a serious subject but would rather not outright ask.
“Are you?” he said. “Fine, I mean. How’s it been going with your sister? The funeral was today, wasn’t it?”
“She’s still dead, if that’s what you mean,” Emma said, and regretted it immediately after it came out of her mouth. It was tacky and transparent.
“Didn’t lose your sense of humor, I see,” Malcolm said, and sounded like he took a bite of something and started to chew and talk with his mouth half full. “Anyway, what’s going on? You wouldn’t call me to chat. You didn’t call me to chat. So what’s up?”
“I was right,” she said. “As right as I can be without hard proof.”
“Right about what?”
“Molly didn’t kill herself, Malcolm. She was into something, and I think it got her killed.”
He paused then said, “Into what?” and it sounded like whatever he’d been eating, he’d swallowed it.
“I don’t know. I’ve done some asking around, chased a few weak trails, but I don’t have much. The whole thing’s so bizarre. Something’s going on here, though. I’m certain of it.”
“Like what?”
“Not exactly sure. But whatever happened with Molly, someone wanted it covered up. They pushed it as suicide.”
“How certain are we talking, Em?”
“As certain as I’ve ever been. There’s more, too, but it’s scattered at the moment. I can feel it… I just can’t see it. It’s there, though.”
“All right. So lay it out for me. I’ll listen,” Malcolm said.
Emma sat up and looked down at her toes. “You sure?”
“I wouldn’t’ve offered,” he said.
So she ran it all out for him.
2
All told, it took Emma twenty minutes to tell Malcolm everything she knew up to that point. She had also helped herself to a third drink—Jim Beam mixed with a little Coke—which had rounded off the sharp corners of her words and added a few more pounds to her already-heavy eyelids by the time she was through running it out for him. She had done her best not to try to piece any of it together as she went along, just laid it out like raw ingredients that would eventually need to be combined in a manner that produced something edible.
“So far that’s all I’ve got,” she said. “I know it’s not a lot, but…”
“But it’s not nothing, either,” Malcolm said.
And the way he said it—quick and sharp and without even the smallest trace of hesitation—comforted her. Yet it still wasn’t quite enough.
“Yeah? You don’t think I’m chasing my sister’s ghost? Just can’t accept that she killed herself?” Emma said in a lighthearted tone, but the question had been real.
“Is that what you think, Em?”
“That’d be the easy way out, wouldn’t it? Call it a sad case of depression and move on?”
“Someone else could, maybe. But you couldn’t. So why’d you even ask?”
“Insecurity. Self-doubt. Needing to hear it, I guess.”
Malcolm snorted a little laugh. “The usual suspects, then.”
“Yep.”
Now, she supposed, it was enough. A ripple of shame ran its way through her. Was it weak that she needed his validation? She thought maybe not. Self-doubt was, after all, part of any endeavor when a person went at it alone. Although she hadn’t been entirely alone in this, not quite. She wouldn’t discount that Guppy had been somewhat helpful in that regard. It was just that she needed to be sure, and Malcolm wasn’t a person who would tell her what she wanted to hear. He would tell her the truth, no matter how ugly.
“So what do you think?” she said.
“Well, like you said, it’s scattered.”
Emma stood up and began pacing around the room, mindlessly tugging at the skin beneath her chin. “Besides that.”
Suddenly Malcolm’s voice changed gears, dropping to the lower, more conflicted tone of someone who needed to get something off their chest before they could go any further. “Look, I know you won’t heed my advice here, but I feel inclined to say it, anyway, if for no other reason than to keep my conscience clean. Right now you’re just a civilian and—”
