Gone Too Far (Devlin & Falco), page 28
Falco had called late last night with an update. Tara McGill was dead. They’d found her body in her bathtub. An autopsy would be coming, but for now it looked as if she’d swallowed a fistful of pills, then proceeded to drown her sorrows in a bottle of vodka and her tub. She’d left a note confessing to the murders of her boss and Walsh. The proper caliber of weapon was even right there next to the tub. How convenient was that?
Except her computer was missing.
Cross had confirmed the computer had been there on Wednesday afternoon, which was likely how she’d obtained the info on McGill’s financials. Kerri wasn’t judging. Cross wasn’t a cop anymore. She wasn’t bound by the same rules. All she had to do was not get caught.
The suicide note, along with the news that McGill was possibly stealing money from the tobacco shop and, according to Lucky Vandiver, using the shop as a way to distribute drugs, might seem like a break in the ongoing case. It was in reality a distraction. McGill’s death, in fact, elevated the case from a double homicide to a triple.
Not exactly an ideal break. She and Falco were meeting this morning to strategize how to prove their scenario to the LT. The wrap-up with McGill was obviously what the task force wanted, since a “speedy closure” had been underscored on numerous occasions. Especially by the mayor. In every single press briefing she’d tossed out that promise.
McGill’s confession also ensured there was no further need to talk to José Cortez. The mayor’s desire to protect the family simply because Alice was in her mentoring program didn’t sit right with Kerri. Sure, having the father involved in a murder case would reflect badly on the mayor’s choices, but wasn’t she supposed to be the big antidrug advocate? Was stopping crime less important than her program?
Kerri’s research last night had uncovered a couple of potential kernels that merited further digging. She had been under the impression the mayor had been born and raised in the Birmingham area. Not so. She’d moved to Birmingham from Galveston, Texas, when she was fifteen. Like Alice Cortez, she’d been raised by a family that wasn’t her own. Her parents, too, had died, and she had no other family. Possibly neither of those similarities was anything more than coincidence, but they could explain why the mayor felt especially protective of Alice.
Still, the part of Warren’s early history that nudged at Kerri was the other similarity to Alice’s. The Odell family, who had taken in the future mayor, had suddenly come into a great deal of money about that same time. Or at least their lifestyle had changed dramatically. They’d moved from a modest home in Gardendale to a mansion in Mountain Brook. More research would be required to determine the details of the transition, but the cost of the new home didn’t fit with Mr. Odell’s employment at Alabama Power.
Interviewing the Odells wasn’t possible since the couple had died in a car crash shortly after Emma entered college, and there were no other children. Emma—the mayor—had no other family and no children of her own. There was only her husband.
Basically, the mayor’s history could be whatever she chose since there was no one to say otherwise.
Kerri shook off the thought. Maybe she was reading too much into the connection. Either way, she needed to talk to Falco about this. They should do more digging into not only the mayor but the Walshes. Considering the secret trips to Birmingham the mother had been making, it was possible she had hired someone to take out her son. The scenario didn’t fit with how she’d urged Kerri to find his killer. Then again, she’d looked almost furious about the reward being offered. There were just too many conflicting vibes coming from the woman. The mayor, too, for that matter. Until Kerri found something more concrete—if she found something more concrete—there was nowhere to go with either of those theories.
She should make breakfast and then drop Tori at Diana’s for a few hours. Not the whole day, just enough time for her and Falco to do some research and determine where they went from here on this case. If Tori wasn’t game for that scenario, Falco could come to the house and work with Kerri. They’d done it plenty of times before.
There wasn’t a whole lot they could do related to the Kurtz-Walsh case until after the ballistics report came back on the handgun Falco had found at McGill’s town house.
She exhaled a big breath, opened the fridge, and checked for the necessary breakfast ingredients. French toast was sounding good to her this morning. It was one of Tori’s favorites.
Speaking of Tori, Kerri glanced at the clock. It was twenty before eight. Tori was always up by now even on Saturday after a late night. Kerri headed for the stairs. She stopped at her daughter’s door and knocked before opening it. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”
Standing in the doorway, Kerri stared for a moment before her brain assimilated what her eyes saw.
Tori’s bed was empty.
She had passed the bathroom on the way to Tori’s door. The bathroom door had been open, the room empty. She wasn’t in the bathroom.
When Kerri would have taken a step back to go to her own bedroom and check there, something on her daughter’s bedside table caught her eye.
A note.
Fear slowly overtaking her, Kerri crossed the room and picked up the handwritten note.
Mom,
Please don’t be mad. I know I can’t trust Alice, but Sarah has run away and she needs my help. I need Sarah to help me figure this out.
Love you,
Tori
Fear burst inside Kerri’s chest, spreading icy cold through her body. She snatched the cell from her hip pocket and called Tori’s cell. Ring after ring went unanswered. When the call went to voice mail, as calmly as possible, Kerri said, “Call me. Love you.”
Hands shaking, she called Sarah’s mother next. Each unanswered ring had Kerri’s heart beating harder.
“Hello.” Renae Talley sounded exhausted, defeated.
“Renae.” Kerri caught herself. This woman’s daughter had tried to kill herself. She had to tread softly. “How is Sarah?”
For a long moment there was nothing but silence.
Was it true then? Sarah had run away, and Tori was out there somewhere trying to help her? Anguish knotted inside Kerri.
Renae cleared her throat. “She’s better. Until this morning she hadn’t spoken a word to us or anyone.”
Shock joined the fear tugging at Kerri. “You’re still at the hospital?”
“Yes.”
Kerri moistened her lips and dared to hope. “Has Tori spoken to you or Sarah?”
“No.” Renae took a deep breath. “I’m not supposed to talk about any of this since the detectives talked to Sarah only a few minutes ago, but there is something I need you to know—from mother to mother.”
Kerri’s heart stumbled.
“Sarah swears she doesn’t remember pushing Brendal. She also said Tori never suggested she do so. We didn’t press her about why she’d said so in the note. When she’s stronger, we’ll get to the bottom of this. I’m sorry . . . I don’t understand what’s happened or why.”
The tears streaming down Kerri’s face were filled with relief. She should be elated, but what she was beneath the brief flash of relief was terrified.
“Thank you for telling me,” she managed. “I’ll check in on Sarah later.”
Kerri ended the connection and called Falco. He answered on the first ring. Kerri blurted the words burgeoning in her throat, “Tori is missing.”
Every bit of restraint Kerri possessed was required to hold back a howl of misery. “She left a note saying Sarah had run away and she’d gone to help her. But I just spoke to Sarah’s mother, and she’s still in the hospital. They haven’t heard from Tori.”
“Call it in,” Falco said. “I’m on my way to you.”
40
7:50 a.m.
Sadie’s Loft
Sixth Avenue, Twenty-Seventh Street
Birmingham
Her head ached.
Sadie touched the back of her skull. Groaned at the new sore spot. She told her eyes to open, but the dreams weren’t quite ready to let her go.
She was back there . . . in Mexico. In the place where they’d kept her locked away. Eddie was there, holding her, telling her everything would be all right. The baby was crying in the background.
No. That wasn’t right. Eddie couldn’t have been with her then. He was dead.
She had killed him.
He had asked her why. Why she’d betrayed him. Sadie had told him the truth. She was a cop. Working undercover. Her real name was Sadie Cross, and she was carrying his child. She loved him, but she had a job to do, and his father was evil. What he was doing was evil.
Eddie had moved his head slowly from side to side and told her the truth. “I cannot save you.”
The weapon had been lying on his desk. It hadn’t been a pen as she’d thought; it was a gun. The two of them were in his office alone. She had a chance—slim, but still a chance.
Sadie grabbed the gun and fired without hesitating, without thinking.
He stumbled backward. Fell to the floor. Blood spreading across his chest.
She ran.
But the guards caught her before she could escape.
The girl was there . . . the one wearing the mask. She seemed bigger, older. Sadie must be mixing up the Isabella from nearly five years ago with the Alice now.
“Shh-shhh. You must be quiet.”
It was dark. Where had the day gone? Where was Eddie’s body? Sadie was confused.
“Take my hand.”
Sadie stared at the hand. Not the hand of a child. The wrinkled, gnarled hand of someone old.
“Take my hand,” the voice demanded, “and you will be invisible.”
Sadie didn’t understand, but she took the old woman’s hand. She fell into the darkness. Deeper and deeper. There was nothing but darkness. Then the voices came. His voice. Demanding that she be kept alive. And hers . . . the woman she’d heard in the conference call. The one who seemed to be making the decisions. Then Sadie had awakened under the overpass on Eighteenth.
How had she gotten there?
Sadie didn’t know the female voice she’d heard.
But she knew his voice.
It was not Carlos or Eddie.
It was her father. She’d heard him demanding that she be allowed to live.
Sadie’s eyes flew open. She blinked. Stared out the windshield of her borrowed car—the piss-yellow one.
The taste in her mouth was of vomit and something else. A drug she had tasted before.
Pain split her skull.
She touched the back of her head. Where the hell was she?
Sadie looked around. A frown pulled at her face. Made her head hurt worse. She was home. The borrowed car parked in the alley next to her place. How the hell had she gotten here?
She stared at the steering wheel, the keys . . . her hands.
Oh yeah, she’d obviously been drugged and driven here. But by who?
Her last memory was of being at the Cortez house. She had seen the girl in the mask.
Was it the girl? Alice/Isabella?
Couldn’t have been the old woman. Hell, she was probably dead by now. She’d been ancient nearly five years ago when she was serving as the healer at the Osorio compound. Eddie had said she’d been with the family since before he was born.
Eddie was dead.
Sadie had killed him.
She blinked, held perfectly still. The rest of the dream rushed in on her.
She’d heard her father’s voice.
That wasn’t possible. She must have confused the timing. She had awakened in the hospital, and he had been there. But he hadn’t been with her before that. Not under the overpass and certainly not in Mexico.
Had he?
Cross Residence
Eagle Wood Court
Birmingham, 8:30 a.m.
Sadie beat her fist against the door. She winced at the pain the sound made in her skull.
The door opened, and her father stood there, dressed as he always was when he was off duty—in khakis and a button-down shirt. She didn’t have to look to know he would be wearing his favorite leather loafers.
This was the dad side of him. Not the hard-ass agent.
Good. This was the Mason Cross she wanted.
“Sadie, what a pleasant surprise. Come in. I’ve been thinking about you.” He said these things as if they hadn’t been estranged for nearly a year.
“No.” She started to shake her head but thought better of it. She probably had a concussion, maybe two, considering how hard she’d hit her head when she’d wrecked her car. “I have a question for you.”
He frowned now. Likely taking in her wrinkled clothes, unbrushed hair. No doubt he smelled the sweat and vomit emanating from her every pore.
“Are you all right? You don’t look well.”
That was his fatherly way of saying she looked like hell.
“You were in Mexico after I killed Eduardo Osorio.”
He stared at her, his face, his eyes abruptly shuttered. “You should come inside.”
“No. We’ll talk right here.” She tried to moisten her lips, but her mouth was too dry and bitter—probably whatever drug they had used on her. “You were there. I remember hearing your voice. You pleaded for my life.” This part should make her feel good about him. She should be grateful. Except she wasn’t.
He had been there. At the compound. There was no other explanation.
He exhaled a big breath. “I knew you would remember eventually. There was no guarantee the drug therapy would be permanent.”
She stared at him, startled that he’d actually told the truth. What the . . . ?
“I listened to the recordings of your sessions with Holden. He gave them to me. Unwillingly, of course.”
Fury belted her. “You blackmailed my shrink into giving you my private files.”
Her father nodded. “Don’t blame him. He had no choice. He genuinely felt bad for you, but his need to protect himself overrode his sympathy. Besides, I paid him well.”
Sadie held up a hand. “So you were there—in Mexico. You’re admitting this?”
He nodded. “I was there. You’d gone missing, and no one in the official operation seemed able to figure out what happened. I went directly to the compound.”
“Wait. Wait.” Sadie held up her hands stop-sign fashion. “They let you in and then allowed you to leave.” She laughed. This was crazy. He was lying or leaving something out. Maybe he was the one who’d had a breakdown. Maybe insanity ran in the family.
Or maybe this was another of her bizarre dreams. She could be hallucinating. Last night and this morning could be just one long hallucination. Maybe she wasn’t even here, standing at her father’s door, talking to him.
Holy shit, she was so screwed.
“Everyone has secrets, Sadie. There was one person in the Osorio family with whom I could negotiate. That person made a deal with me. I agreed, but first I insisted on proof of life. I wanted to see you for myself. Once I knew you were alive, I agreed to the terms of the negotiation.”
A sound burst out of her. A kind of laugh but not. “You came there, saw me, and left. You left me there to be tortured and brainwashed for months.”
He nodded. “I did. Those were the terms. You would be released alive at a place and time they chose. I was just grateful I would get you back alive.”
Okay, so maybe this wasn’t a hallucination. “You made this deal with a woman, not with the old man. I remember a woman’s voice.”
He stared at Sadie now, his face rearranged into that blank she knew so well.
“Who set the terms of the agreement?” she demanded.
“I’m afraid I can’t share that information with you.”
“Did you share it with your superiors? With the BPD?” She was yelling now. She didn’t care. “Was this an under-the-table deal? Is that what you’re saying? Did your superiors even know about it?” Of course they didn’t know! All this time everyone had looked at her as if she’d done something wrong. Had something to hide. Because no one could figure out what happened. Why she was even alive.
“You son of a bitch,” she snarled.
“You should come inside and have coffee with me.”
Jesus Christ. Her old man, the hard-ass DEA agent, had crossed the line. Oh, he’d left the “father” line behind decades ago . . . but this . . . this was that holier-than-thou, self-righteous asshole-of-the-century line. The one he revered above all else. Mason Cross, the decorated hero, had just confessed to crossing—or at least blurring—the line of honor, of duty.
Sadie backed away. “No way. You made a deal for my life, and I want to know who else was involved. It was my life.” She pounded her chest. “I have a right to hear the details.”
“I kept you from being executed,” he stated, his patience thinning. “You should be grateful, not questioning my methods. Especially in light of the sacrifice I made.”
Sacrifice? She held up her hands again. “Fine. Fine. Then tell me this, Daddy. What did you give them? A negotiation is about give-and-take. What did you give? What was your sacrifice?”
“I can’t answer that question either.”
Outrage blasted her. “Can’t or won’t?”
“It’s the same thing, Sadie. You’re alive because I did what I did. Please, let that be enough.”
Her cell vibrated in her pocket before she could say anything else. She dragged it out with the intention of stopping the damned distraction, but Falco’s face flashed on the screen. She crammed the device against her ear. “What?”
“We need your help. Tori is missing. We think she’s with Alice. We just pulled up at the Cortez house.”
Worry sloshed over her fury, dousing it as surely as water pouring onto a fire. “I’m on my way.”
Sadie shoved the phone back into her pocket and glared at her father. “I will have the answers to my questions.” She turned and headed for the shitty yellow car parked at the curb.
“Sadie!”
Despite her best efforts to ignore him, she couldn’t. She turned back and waited for him to impart whatever the hell fatherly wisdom or asshole warning he had on his mind.
