See How She Dies

by Lisa Jackson

  Finally Detective Sergeant Jack Logan had his turn. Zach felt the skepticism in Logan’s eyes as he asked questions, noticed the way two officers shared a dubious look when he told them about the prostitute. No matter what he said, he knew they thought he was lying.

  Even though Logan went through all the motions, recording the conversation while the officers took a few notes, Zach read the disbelief in the old policeman’s eyes.

  “These men who attacked you,” Logan finally said as McHenry packed up his doctor’s bag. “Rudy and Joey?”

  “That’s what they called each other.”

  “You ever seen them before?”

  “Never.”

  “He’s got to go to the hospital,” the doctor interrupted.

  Logan didn’t miss a beat. “Look, Doc, we’re trying to find Witt’s little girl. I shouldn’t have to tell you that time is critical. We just need Zach to come down to the station and look at a few pictures, that’s all.”

  “I’d advise against it.”

  Witt’s frown deepened. “Zach?”

  His mouth tasted foul, his head thundered, and his shoulder throbbed like holy hell, but he nodded to his father. “I’ll go.”

  There was nothing further McHenry could do. He pulled Witt aside, warned him about something, but Zach couldn’t make out what. They rode in a squad car to the police station and, seated in a small room with flickering fluorescent lighting and the thin smell of stale cigarettes and old coffee, Zach flipped through pages of mug shots and stared at black-and-white pictures through a haze of pain.

  “What about this one?” an officer would ask and Zach would focus, only to shake his head. There were more people in the room than had been in the hotel. As the hours passed, officers would come and go, glancing at him as they strapped on weapons, took statements, or told dirty jokes.

  “Him. What about him?”

  The questions didn’t stop and Zach stared at photograph after photograph—grainy black-and-whites of men he’d never seen. He thumbed the pages, shook his head, and thumbed some more. His father was in the room, pacing, looking as if he wished he could tear someone, anyone, limb from limb.

  The pictures started to look alike and swim before his eyes. His back ached and he felt as if he hadn’t slept for a hundred years. One officer sat on the corner of the table, watching his reactions, while another went out for coffee.

  Zach slumped in his chair and craved a cigarette. The coffee didn’t help.

  “That’s it. Nothing,” a burly officer said over a yawn as another, a slim woman who had just come on duty, started gathering the books.

  “I guess Rudy and Joey weren’t processed here,” Officer Ralph O’Donnelly said as he squashed out the butt of his cigarette in his empty coffee cup.

  “Rudy?” The woman glanced from Logan to Witt.

  “Yeah, the kid, here, heard their names.” Officer O’Donnelly stood and stretched. His back popped loudly.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” she asked, searching through the books again and flipping one open. She shoved the open pages under Zach’s nose. “Look again.”

  Every eye in the room was on Zach, as aching, he ran his finger under the pictures and forced his eyes to each face. They blurred for a second, but he kept looking and he felt the air in the room charge. “I don’t think—”

  “Look again! Imagine your man clean-shaven or with different-colored hair or whatever,” Logan muttered angrily. “Let’s get an artist in here.”

  Zach gritted his teeth, eyeing the mug shots, knowing that there wasn’t a clue on the page, when he stopped at a shot on the bottom row. The hair was different, longer now, and a beard and mustache in the photo covered what appeared to be a pockmarked jaw, but the eyes, the malicious eyes, were the same.

  His throat barely worked as he laid a finger on the incriminating shot. “I think—”

  “Rudolpho Gianotti,” the woman officer said with a satisfied grin. Zach got the impression she liked beating the men at their own game. “A speed-head who hangs out with Joseph Siri.”

  “Hell,” Witt ground out. He strode across the room and glared at the mug shots. Red in the face, he trembled. “I bet they’re connected with Polidori.”

  “Bingo,” the woman said. “The vice squad is checking them out—drugs and prostitution, maybe even some penny-ante gambling.”

  “I told you!” Witt growled, kicking at the leg of the table. “When I get my hands on Polidori, there’s gonna be hell to pay. Let’s go!”

  “Whoa!” the woman officer said. “We’re not talking about the old man. These guys”—she tapped a short-clipped nail on Rudy Gianotti’s mug shot—“are involved with the kid. Mario.”

  Witt’s eyes darkened to the color of midnight. He hated the son as much as the old man. “Bring him in, Jack. Let’s talk to him.”

  “We will,” Logan assured him, “but first, let’s find Gianotti and Siri. See what they have to say, what they know. Then we’ll round up Mario Polidori.”

  “And his old man.”

  “Maybe.”

  Witt’s face twisted in ugly rage. “He’s behind it, Jack. I told you that from the beginning. He took my little girl and God only knows what’s happened to her.”

  “Don’t worry, Wit, we’ll find her.” Logan’s voice lowered and Zach didn’t really care what was said. The room was spinning, his head reeled, and his bones seemed to melt. He blinked to stay awake, but blackness enveloped him. With a moan, he slid from the chair and lost consciousness.

  Two days later, Zach woke up in a hospital room, his shoulder on fire, his mouth tasting like puke. He couldn’t breathe right because something—cotton wadding, he guessed—was rammed up his nostrils. Bandages swathed his head and held his shoulder together and everything reeked of antiseptic.

  “You look awful.”

  He turned quickly at the sound of Jason’s voice. Pain seared down his arm. Memories—Sophia, the thugs, the switchblade, and London—ran through his mind. “You bastard,” he said, his tongue thick. “You set me up.” He tried to rise up, yanking hard on the IV taped to the back of his hand.

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Zach, I’m sorry. I had no idea that—”

  “Liar!”

  Jason squeezed his eyes shut for a second time. “It’s true, I knew I was in a little trouble with Sophia’s pimp.”

  “A little trouble—those guys wanted to cut off my balls!” So angry he could barely talk, Zach silently swore at himself for being such a fool, falling into Jason’s lust-filled trap. “You make me sick!”

  “I didn’t know they were going to be there.”

  “Like hell!” Zach turned away and stared out the window. He could see the sky and the wake of a jet as it streamed across the blue vastness. Jaw clenched so tight it ached, he refused to look at his brother. The pillowcase felt rough against the wounds on his face and his head pounded. God, he hated hospitals. Almost as much as he hated Jason right now.

  “Dad thinks Polidori’s behind London’s kidnapping.”

  Zach didn’t respond. The feud between the Polidoris and the Danverses had existed for generations. Anything that went wrong in Witt’s life was quickly laid at the feet of Anthony Polidori, deserved or not.

  “We haven’t heard anything new. Not even the FBI has an answer. No one’s asked for ransom and Jack Logan’s afraid that London may have been taken by some terrorist group.”

  “Logan’s a prick.”

  “But he has a point.” Jason walked around the end of the bed, forcing himself squarely in the middle of Zach’s line of vision. “Look, I know this all looks bad, Zach, and I feel…” His face screwed up as he searched for the right word. Shaking his head, he said, “…Well, I feel responsible, I guess.”

  “You should.”

  “But I really didn’t think they’d come after you.”

  “You knew they’d be there.”

  “No way, man! I swear. I only knew that Sophia was waiting for me. I had no idea that her pimp
would be pissed off enough to send some goons with switchblades.” He tugged anxiously at the corner of his mustache. “You gotta believe me, Zach—if I’d had a clue, I wouldn’t have sent you to the Orion.”

  Zach let out a sound of disgust.

  Jason sighed loudly. “I don’t blame you for not believing me, ’cause the truth of the matter is, I’d already decided not to meet with Sophia. I would have avoided the place like the plague, but I didn’t think you’d get cut. I thought you’d get laid, that’s all. I swear it. You gotta believe me.”

  Zach didn’t. He’d been a fool to trust Jason the first time and he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He shifted his gaze to the metal bureau near the bed.

  “If I could change things, man, I would.” Jason thrust one hand into his pocket and rested the other on the bureau. “You may as well know, things are bad at home. Dad’s on the warpath against Polidori. Kat’s usually either drunk or on sleeping pills and Valium. And Trisha. Well, she’s a basket case, but what else is new?”

  Jason moved into Zach’s limited field of vision but Zach wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking up at his eyes.

  “As for Nelson, you’re a hero in his eyes.”

  Zach gritted his teeth.

  “Yep,” Jason said, grabbing the jacket he’d draped over the back of the one chair in the room, “Nelson thinks that anyone who makes it with a whore, then gets cut by a switchblade, is some kind of hero.”

  “Zach?” Her voice was familiar and brought back warm memories from a long, long time ago. In his mind he heard childish laughter and smelled the scents of cinnamon and hot chocolate and the jasmine of her perfume. Somewhere, maybe on the back porch, a dog barked. But it had been so long ago…

  “I came as soon as I heard.”

  Groggily, Zach opened an eye. The lamps had been dimmed. Only the night-light illuminated the hospital room, though from the window, the reflection from the security lights guarding the parking lot splashed against the wall. He squinted and saw a movement before he made out the features of a tall, big-boned woman in an expensive blouse and skirt. His mother, Eunice Patricia Prescott Danvers Smythe. She stood on the far side of the rails of his hospital bed. A dozen emotions riffled through him, none of which he wanted to examine too closely, and his head throbbed. “Wha—what’re you doing here?”

  Her eyes were sad, filled with a lifetime of grief for the mistakes of her youth.

  “Nelson called…explained what happened and I took the first flight out of San Francisco.” She reached across the rails and folded her long, cool fingers over his hand. Her grip was strong, the lines around her face desperate. “I’m so sorry this happened, Zach. Are you all right?”

  He’d never been all right. They both knew it. “What do you care?” he said, drawing his hand away and forcing his thick tongue to form words.

  She winced, but didn’t move. “I do care, Zach. I care lots. More than anyone you’ll ever meet.”

  He snorted.

  “You don’t believe that I love you,” she said, her voice losing all inflection. “You never did.”

  He closed his eyes again and wished he had the strength to cover his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear her lies. If she’d loved him, really loved him, she wouldn’t have left him with Witt.

  He didn’t reply, just pretended, as he had for years, that she didn’t exist. It was easier that way. Her rejection didn’t hurt anymore. He’d had a long time to recover and heal. She could say what she wanted, Witt had bought her off, paid her enough money so that she gave up her children.

  “I thought you and I shared something special,” she said on a tremulous sigh. He felt, rather than saw, her move to the window. How long had it been since he’d trusted her? Eight years? Nine? Maybe never. “I hate to admit it, Lord knows a mother shouldn’t, but you’ve always been my favorite. Of all my children, you were the one closest to my heart.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Mom. We both know you’ve never had a heart.”

  Her intake of breath was swift. “Zachary, don’t you ever—” As quickly as her anger had come, it disappeared. “I suppose I deserved that.”

  What a bunch of crap! Why didn’t she just shut up? Yet he couldn’t stop listening.

  “I would never have left you, but…well, your father made sure I couldn’t get near you kids. You probably don’t believe this, but it was a horrible price to pay. I’ve regretted it…”

  He closed his eyes. He wouldn’t trust her. She’d carried on her affair with Polidori for years, knowing the inevitable consequences. In Zach’s mind, she’d turned her back on her children, on her husband, on her life, for a fling with a man who used her just to get even with Witt. Zach didn’t believe for a minute that there had ever been any love between Anthony Polidori and his mother. No, what they’d shared was sex, pure and simple, and that thought turned his stomach. Polidori had chosen Eunice to best his opponent and Eunice had slept with her husband’s sworn enemy for a quick thrill in a life devoid of any kind of excitement. She’d had the affair to prove that she was still attractive to a man and to show her neglectful husband that she could still make her own decisions.

  Zach had heard her rationalizations and deep in his heart he knew that she and Witt had never been happy. The house had always been tense while they were married, no safe refuge. He wondered how she’d become involved with Polidori, where she’d met him, who had taken the first step…but those were things children weren’t supposed to know and he figured he was better off left to his imagination.

  “You judge me too quickly, Zach,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “You don’t know what it’s like to be lonely and ignored, to have your life sorted out and planned for you, to have to pretend to be happy when you’re not, to smile when you feel like crying your eyes out.”

  He cracked a lid and saw that she’d rested her forehead on the window, her chin nearly touching her neck, her breath fogging the glass. She looked weary and he wondered if that aura of exhaustion was from her stormy marriage to Witt or her guilt over choosing her lover over her children, or because of her new marriage to one of the most well-recognized heart specialists in the country.

  She glanced over, as if sensing that he was staring at her. “Don’t hate me, Zach,” she said, blinking and dabbing the tips of her fingers at the corners of her eyes. “Don’t hate me for loving you.”

  “You don’t know what love is.”

  “Oh, yes, I do. I know love and the pain it causes. Unfortunately, so will you. No one, not even you, will get through life without it.” She wrapped her arms around her middle section and rocked back on her heels. “You want to hate me, Zach, because it’s easy. I hurt you because I cheated on your father.”

  “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “Well, I had to, do you understand? Witt was so…inconsiderate and he had other women, plenty of them before…Anyway, I met Anthony at a fund-raiser, he was charming and attentive and even though I knew I shouldn’t…well, that’s what started it,” she admitted. “So now you know. I suppose you still want to strike back at me. That’s understandable.”

  “I don’t really give a shit.”

  “Sure you do. Does it make any difference if I tell you I’m sorry?”

  He didn’t bother responding.

  “I’d do anything for you, Zach.” She sounded so sincere that he was tempted to trust her, but only for a second.

  “What about sticking around? Was that too much to ask?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to.” His head was beginning to throb again.

  She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. When she spoke again, her tone was icy. “You know where to reach me, Zach. You can pretend all you want, but I know that life with your father isn’t easy for you. If you want to come to San Francisco and live with Lyle and me for a while, I’d—”

  “No, thanks.” He didn’t need this. If Eunice had some latent maternal feelings, fine, but he didn’t wan
t to hear about them. As far as he was concerned, she came up to see him only because her guilt was gnawing away at her again, the same as it did during each Christmas and some birthdays. She was a part-time mother at best and content to be no better.

  “You might change your mind.” She was gathering up her purse and a navy jacket that she slung over one arm.

  “I won’t.”

  “Whatever you say, Zach, but I only came here because I love you.”

  She walked out of the room, the scent of the same expensive perfume that he remembered from his earliest days trailing after her.

  Pain and loneliness engulfed him but he fought it. He didn’t belong with anyone. His father didn’t trust him, his mother—despite her protests—didn’t love him, and he felt little kinship with his brothers and sisters. He thought of his stepmother in indecent terms and he didn’t have many friends—didn’t want them. And now London was missing. He was surprised how much it bothered him, thinking that she was small and scared and alone. He blinked rapidly and refused to cry. Not for his mother. Not for London. Not for himself. He’d shed enough tears when Eunice had walked out all those years ago; he wouldn’t be foolish enough to do it again.

  He decided it was time to move on. As soon as he was well enough, he’d sell his car and…God, quit dreaming. He couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not until this thing with London was straightened out; otherwise he’d look guilty as hell and half the cops in the state would be after him. But maybe, hopefully, by the time he was released, London would be found and home safely. Then no one would notice if he left.

  He’d have to be patient, which wasn’t going to be easy. Patience had never been his long suit. But right now, he was stuck. There was just no damned way out.

  9

  Jack Logan didn’t like the Polidoris. Especially Anthony. Never had, never would.

  He snapped in the cigarette lighter of his pride and joy, a 1969 Ford Galaxy two-door. Cherry red with an ivory top and horsepower that wouldn’t quit, the car was a gift from Witt Danvers—an expensive gift. Logan didn’t want to think of it as a bribe. Frowning as he caught a glimpse of his weathered face in the rearview mirror, he tried not to dwell on the fact that he, who was basically an honest cop, had been bought by Witt Danvers. Idling at a light near Seventeenth, he slid out a Marlboro from the pack he kept on the dash and stuck it between his lips. Truth to tell, he didn’t like Danvers much more than he did Polidori. The lighter clicked and he lit up as the light changed.