44 Delusion in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “We’ll find out.”

  “There’s no break, as yet, on a supplier for the illegals or the medicals elements. Knowing his source, pulling the source in, that would add weight and pressure.”

  “How about using your power of persuasion to get us a search warrant on his place?”

  Teasdale smiled into her coffee. “I suspected you’d ask. I have it. I was told I could liaise with APA Cher Reo. Between us we managed it. When would you like to move on it?”

  “Before he leaves here. I want to bring Roarke in on that, if he’s able. He’s got a good nose for hidey-holes, and for dealing with encrypted data.”

  “It must be satisfying to be married to someone who not only understands your work, but is willing and able to share in it.”

  “Plus, coffee. Want another hit?”

  “I would, but I’d better not. I’m not used to it. I like your office,” Teasdale said as she rose.

  Mildly surprised, Eve glanced around. “I think you’re the first one who’s ever said that.”

  “It’s small and efficient with few distractions. And it has this coffee in the AutoChef.” She set the empty cup aside. “I’d like to say something to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your files with HSO have been redacted or removed. Some destroyed or … rather inexplicably deleted.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is. But before that occurred I had occasion to familiarize myself with some of the data—during the early stages of our internal investigation. I want to say to you that I’m very sorry for what happened to you, and very sorry the organization I represent was culpable, was heartless. Was wrong.”

  “It’s done,” Eve said flatly.

  “Yes, it’s done. I wonder, should our positions have been reversed would I have agreed to work with you. I don’t know the answer.”

  “You weren’t part of it.”

  “No, nor was the man I answer to. Director Hurtz is an honorable man. Our business is often secretive and fueled by deception, so I couldn’t work for less than an honorable man. But you have no reason to know or believe that.”

  “I know and I believe over a hundred and twenty people deserve justice. I’ll use any tool, weapon, or means at my disposal to make certain they get it.”

  “I’m determined to help you make certain.”

  “Then we’re good.”

  She waited while Teasdale answered her ’link. “Yes, thank you. Interview B, please. The Callaways are here,” she said to Eve.

  “Then let’s dig out the tools.”

  17

  The Callaways, Russell and Audrey, sat on opposite sides of the table in Interview. She looked nervous; he looked belligerent.

  He’d have been in his seventies, but she could clearly see the man Audrey Hubbard had found attractive. Russell emanated strength, steadiness, and a no-bullshit toughness.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Callaway.” Eve kept her tone and her step brisk as she moved to the table, sat. “I’m Lieutenant Dallas, and this is Agent Teasdale. Thank you for coming.”

  “Don’t see we had much choice.” Russell gave her a hard stare out of faded blue eyes. “Your people come onto the farm, right onto private property and say how we gotta go with them to New York City. Nobody tells us a damn thing, just get and go. We got squash to harvest.”

  She could safely say it was the first time she’d heard that used as a complaint or excuse in Interview.

  “And we’ll try to get you back to that quickly. We’re going to record this interview.”

  “Can I get you anything before we begin?” Teasdale asked. “Coffee, water, a soft drink?”

  “We don’t need anything.” Russell folded his arms, set his squared, weathered face into pugnacious lines.

  “Record on,” Eve said. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Teasdale, Agent Miyu, in Interview with Russell and Audrey Callaway. I’m going to read you your rights.”

  “We haven’t done anything. Russ.” Audrey reached across the table for her husband’s hand.

  He gave hers an impatient pat. “Don’t worry. They’re just trying to scare us.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Eve read them both their rights, asked if they understood.

  “We’ve got the right to mind our own business, too. And that’s what we do.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Callaway. But in minding your own business, I suspect you’ve heard about the two incidents here in New York.”

  “It’s all over the screen night and day, isn’t it?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “It’s nothing to do with us.”

  “No? Your son, Lewis Callaway, was in On the Rocks, the bar where the first incident took place. He left minutes before it happened.”

  “Lew was there?” Audrey clutched at her throat and the small gold cross she wore there.

  “You didn’t know?” Eve leaned back, rocking slightly on the back legs of her chair. “Reports on the incidents are all over the screen, you have a son who lives and works not only in New York, but within blocks of both locations. You didn’t think to contact him, make sure he was okay?”

  “I—”

  “How are we supposed to know all this happened near his work or his place?” Russ demanded. “We don’t know the layout of New York. We’ve never been here before, and don’t much like being here now.”

  “You’ve never come up to visit your son?” Teasdale asked them, in the most pleasant and sympathetic of voices.

  “He’s the one moved to this godless place. We don’t have the time or wherewithal to come hieing up here. He comes home to visit.”

  “Is he all right?” Audrey asked. “I tried to get a hold of him, but he didn’t answer. He texted me back last night, just to say he was fine, and he was busy. But you said he was there, at that place where it happened.”

  “That’s right, with some coworkers. One of them died there.”

  “Oh.” Again she closed her hand over her cross. “Rest his soul.”

  “He lost other coworkers there, and at the café where the second incident took place.”

  “Oh, this is terrible. Russ, we have to go see him. He must be very upset.”

  “Not upset enough to tell you he lost someone he’d worked with for years. Someone he’d just had a drink with.”

  “He’s got no cause to worry his mother.”

  “Maybe not, Mr. Callaway, but it strikes me his mother was already worried. That’s why she tried to contact him. When’s the last time you saw or spoke to him?”

  “He came down a few weeks ago, stayed a couple days. Audrey, you stop fretting now.”

  “I see he’s come to see you several times in the last few months.” Eve opened a file, scanned data. “Yet previously, his visits were spaced much further apart. Once a year.”

  “He’s very busy.” Head down, Audrey spoke quietly. “He has an important position in his firm. People depend on him. He has important clients, and a very demanding job.”

  “Have you ever met any of his coworkers?”

  “No.” Russell spoke before his wife could. “We’ve got nothing to do with any of that.”

  “I’m sure he’s shared stories.” Teasdale spread her hands. “About the people he works with, his friends, his work.”

  “I said we’ve got nothing to do with it.”

  “But an important man with such a demanding job, and all these recent visits. Surely he’d talk about his life here.”

  “We don’t really understand his work.” Audrey shot her husband a nervous glance.

  “Why has he come home so often recently?” Eve demanded.

  “It’s restful. It’s restful on the farm.”

  “Restful ’cause you wait on him hand and foot. Up till all hours doing God knows what. Can’t risk his soft hands on a good day’s work.”

  “Now, Russ.”

  “The truth’s the truth, but it’s none of your business,” he said to Eve. “What are you after here?”

&n
bsp; “Oh, it isn’t clear? Your son is a person of interest in this investigation.”

  “What does that mean?” Audrey looked from Eve to her husband, back again. “I don’t understand what that means.”

  “You mean you think he had something to do with it? With killing those people?”

  “No. No. No.” Audrey covered her face with her hands, did her best to turn herself into a ball while Russell stared at Eve.

  And she saw it in his eyes. Shock, yes. And a little fear. But not dismissal, not rejection of the idea.

  “You moved a lot while he was growing up,” Eve commented.

  “I went where the work was.”

  “I don’t think so. You were—are a trained medical, Mr. Callaway, and someone with your qualifications and experience doesn’t have to travel for work. He did things, didn’t he? Got into trouble. Small things at first. Boys will be boys, right? But there was something, always something not quite right. The neighbors didn’t much like him. The other kids didn’t want to play with him. Then there were bigger things, things you had to deny or cover over. Best thing to do is move away, start again. He never made friends. Nothing was ever really enough, or satisfying to him, not for long.”

  “He got picked on,” Audrey claimed. “He was sensitive.”

  “Broody,” she suggested, remembering Elaine’s words. “Moody, sulky. Holed up in his room. You schooled him from home. It was better that way, for him. You thought that because he didn’t make friends, didn’t like being told what to do and when to do it.”

  “He just needed more attention. Some boys need more attention. He never hurt anyone.”

  “He’d start rumors.” Teasdale sat in her quiet way. “Tell the boy next door what the girl down the block said about him, whether she did or not. He enjoyed stirring up trouble—maybe stealing things, then planting them on someone else. Watching others fight over the trouble he’d stirred.”

  “He did the same to the two of you,” Eve continued. “You especially, Mrs. Callaway. Little lies, quiet little sabotage to cause conflict and friction between you. He still does it when he can. When he comes to visit you, there’s always some upheaval, some new tension.

  It’s such a relief when he’s gone again.”

  “That’s not true, that’s not true. He’s our son. We love him.”

  “Love’s never been enough for him.” Eve saw it clearly in Audrey Callaway’s eyes. “When he comes you make his favorite meals, wash his clothes, wait on him like a servant. And still, he looks at you with contempt—or worse, boredom.

  “But just recently, he’s taken more of an interest. He’s had questions. When did he find out Guiseppi Menzini was his grandfather?”

  “Oh no. No.”

  “Hush now, Audrey. Hush now.” Russell laid his big, hard hand over his wife’s, but Eve saw a gentleness in the gesture this time. “We’re Christian people. We live our life, don’t bother anybody.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.” Teasdale folded her hands neatly on the table. “I’m sure you tried to be a credit to Edward and Tessa Hubbard, Mrs. Callaway.”

  “Of course.”

  “When did you learn they weren’t your biological parents?”

  “Oh God. Russ.”

  “Listen here, Audrey, she was raised by good people. She didn’t know anything about Menzini until her father was dying. He thought she needed to know. It’d been better if he’d let it die with him, but he was sick and dying and afraid she’d find out when he wasn’t there to explain how it was.”

  “That man wasn’t my father. Edward Hubbard was my father, and Tessa Hubbard was my mother. The woman who bore me, she strayed, she did bad things, but she repented. She redeemed herself. She died trying to protect me.”

  “When did you tell him? When did you tell Lewis?”

  “Russ—”

  “If he did something, Audrey, it’s our responsibility to say. He’s our son, and we’re the ones who have to say.”

  “He couldn’t do something like this.”

  “Then you can help clear it up, put him off the list,” Eve prompted. “What did he find? What did you tell him?”

  “There were things—journals and essays and mementos, pictures. I’m not sure. I never really went through all of it. My mother boxed everything up. They talked about destroying it all, Dad said, but it didn’t seem right. So they kept it all boxed up, put away, and my father told me about what had happened before he died.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Russ, I can’t.”

  He only nodded. “I tended to Audrey’s father while he was dying, and I guess he could see I cared for Audrey. And she cared for me. So he told me everything, or everything he knew. Tessa’s half-sister was wild. She married a good man, but she betrayed him, and ran away to join Menzini’s cult. They used God’s word, twisted and defiled it to prey on the weak. She lay with him, and had his child. She was one of them. But she came to realize she’d taken an evil path, came back to her husband with the child. She begged for forgiveness from him, from her family.”

  “And William took her back,” Eve prompted. “Took you as his own.”

  “He was a good man,” Audrey said. “And he forgave her. They were going to take me away from her, and she ran away with me, went home.”

  “But this Menzini found them,” Russell continued. “He killed them, took the child. William Hubbard was a soldier. He and his wife searched for the child, and finally found her. Menzini had vanished, but they feared for the child. They left their home, their friends and family, and came here to America. They changed her name, and raised her as theirs.”

  “They loved me. They were good, and gave me a good life. I’m their daughter. Theirs.”

  “Mrs. Callaway, I don’t believe in the sins of the father. I believe we make our choices, make ourselves. I believe Edward and Tessa Hubbard did the very best they could for you, and loved you, and that you were their daughter.”

  “I was. I am.”

  “Lewis found the boxes?”

  “He came home. He was restless, and upset. Something at work. Someone stole one of his ideas.”

  “Audrey.” Russell sighed.

  “They didn’t appreciate him or respect him enough,” she insisted, with an edge of desperation in her voice. “That’s what he said. I don’t know why he went up in the attic. We were working outside. He found some things, and started to ask questions. We talked it over, and decided we should tell him. We should tell him what had happened all that time ago, and we should destroy everything. It isn’t who we are.”

  “But he didn’t want you to destroy it.”

  “He said it was his legacy, his right. That he should know his family tree, the truth of it. He seemed—not happy, but satisfied. He seemed calmer. As if, I thought, he’d always known something was different, and now that he knew the truth, it contented him.”

  “He came back for more.”

  “I had things of my mother’s. My mother,” she said, laying a hand on her heart. “And some things she’d kept from when she and her half-sister were young. Some I have in the house. My mother’s dishes, and some of her jewelry. Not heirlooms, really,” she said as her hand covered the little cross again, “but they matter. He was sure there was more, on Gina MacMillon, my mother’s half-sister, on Menzini. He searched the attic, the basement, the outbuildings. He came back again, again, looking, asking the same questions.”

  “You don’t know what was in the boxes? You never went through them.”

  “Not really. I looked, after my father died. I read some of Gina’s journal entries, but they were upsetting—written when she’d run off with the cult—so I stopped. She died for me, so I couldn’t throw her things away, but I didn’t want to read what she’d written when she’d lost her faith.”

  “But he wanted to. Lewis wanted to read the journals.”

  “He said it was important to know. And he …”

  “What?”

  “Don’t b
e angry,” she said to her husband. “Please.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Russell’s fist balled on the table.

  “No. No, he didn’t.”

  “Has he hurt you before?” Teasdale asked.

  “It was a long time ago. He lost his temper.”

  “He wanted shoes, some fancy shoes we couldn’t afford. His mother caught him stealing money from her household bank. When she tried to stop him, he struck her. He struck her with his fist. He was sixteen, and though she tried to make excuses for him, I could see what he’d done. He came home with those damned shoes, and for the first time in his life, I laid hands on him. I struck him, my son, as he had struck his mother. I burned the shoes. He apologized, he made amends, and for a while …”

  “It seemed better,” Teasdale prompted.

  “But it wasn’t, not underneath it all. We knew,” he said to his wife, and laid a hand over hers again. “We knew.”

  “We just couldn’t make him happy. But he’s a successful man now. He has a good job.”

  Russell shook his head. “He lies, Audrey, he’s always lied and sneaked around, and connived to cause trouble. What do you think he’s done?” he asked Eve.

  “I think he found information, and he’s used that information, as his grandfather did. He’s responsible for the deaths of more than a hundred and twenty people.”

  “That can’t be true. You’re only saying that because you found out about Menzini. You’re using that to accuse Lew. Russell, tell them!”

  But he only sat, and to Eve’s surprise, and pity, tears slid down his cheeks. “He’s our son. We wanted a child, so much. We did our best by him. We did everything we knew. You’re saying he’s evil. How do we believe that? How do we live with that?”

  “They’re wrong. They have to be wrong.”

  “I can pray they’re wrong. But we always knew.”

  “You don’t love him!”

  “I wish I didn’t.”

  Audrey broke down, laid her head on the table, sobbed. Russell sat, head bowed, silent tears running down his face.