Giant looked at Jenna as if this was news to them, too, and scribbled something in his notebook. Now, finally, this information could be made public. ‘Did she say how she found out about this?’ Giant asked, knowing that if Brook had found the photos that he, Giant, had given to Logan, then he was complicit in this whole thing.
Reyes shook his head. ‘No, she didn’t. She – Ms Connor – said she’d killed her husband and now she had nothing left to live for.’ He paused and adopted a pained expression. ‘She had the gun against my wife’s head at the time. And then she just … pulled the trigger. I couldn’t believe it.’ He shook his head. ‘Then she turned the gun on me. I thought she was going to shoot me, too. She had madness in her eyes. Thankfully, the sound of the gunshot alerted two of my staff and they both came in, armed with licensed firearms. They managed to get her to drop the gun, and I asked them to get some tarpaulin to wrap my wife’s body in.’
Giant frowned. ‘Why would you do that? Your wife had just been murdered. You call the police; you don’t wrap her in tarpaulin. That’s tampering with evidence.’
Reyes made a confused hand gesture. ‘But I’m not a police officer. I don’t know about evidence. I thought it was the best thing … I’m sorry. I was going to call the police straight away, but, as my staff members were wrapping Maria’s body, Ms Connor attacked me, got hold of her gun and shot both my men. Are they both all right, by the way?’
‘They’re being treated for gunshot wounds,’ said Jenna. ‘But the conditions of both men are stable. They’ll live.’
‘Thank God for that small mercy at least,’ said Reyes. ‘I was very lucky not to get shot myself. I fled into the back yard and Ms Connor chased me.’
‘Why would she chase you?’ asked Giant. ‘Had you done something to cause her to act in that way?’
‘Not at all. I was simply trying to escape. She caught up with me, there was an altercation …’
‘And she beat you up?’
For the first time there was a flash of anger in Reyes’s eyes and he gave Giant a cold stare. ‘I don’t hit women. So when they attack me, I try to calm them down. Unfortunately there was no way of calming down this woman. She kicked me in the groin and, naturally, I was incapacitated for a few moments. I thought she might shoot me, but instead she ran off. I assume you haven’t caught her yet?’
‘Not yet, no,’ said Jenna. ‘We have a major search going on around your property, but so far there’s no sign of her.’
‘You need to track her down – she’s dangerous,’ said Reyes, without a hint of irony. ‘She killed my wife.’
‘We’re putting all our resources into finding her,’ said Jenna.
‘Good. I want to see her go on trial for murder.’
‘I still can’t work out why she targeted you,’ said Giant. ‘It was your wife having the affair, not you.’
‘Who can tell with these people?’ Reyes said with an exaggerated sigh.
The way he was talking annoyed the hell out of Giant. Reyes knew Giant didn’t believe his story, and he didn’t care. It was as if he couldn’t even be bothered to take Giant and Jenna seriously.
‘You don’t seem that upset about the death of your wife,’ Giant said.
‘I assure you I am. But I prefer to grieve in private. Now, I’ve told you everything that happened, so I’m assuming I can go.’ He looked at his lawyer.
The lawyer, a big, silver-haired guy in his sixties – one of a number whom Tony Reyes kept on his books – nodded firmly. ‘Absolutely. There’s no reason to hold my client any longer, is there?’ He gave both detectives a bored, patronizing look.
‘No, there isn’t,’ said Giant reluctantly. Reyes’s story might have had holes in it, but it was plausible enough to convince most observers, which meant they’d just get in trouble for holding him. ‘We may need to talk to you again, though, Mr Reyes, so please don’t leave town.’
‘I absolutely expect to talk to you again, Detective. If nothing else, I need to be kept abreast of the investigation into my wife’s murder. And I want Brook Connor caught, before she harms anyone else. Now if that’s all …?’ Reyes and his lawyer stood up. ‘Thank you for your time, Detectives.’
He put out a hand and Giant thought of the Hernandez family, torn to pieces on that living-room floor, and of all Reyes’s other victims over the years. Lives that he’d snuffed out without a second thought. Giant wanted to punch him, but he held back. He didn’t take the proffered hand, though. He looked at it, then back at the man holding it out, the beginnings of a smile on his face. ‘You’d better go get that face looked at. She really did a number on you back there.’
Reyes’s expression darkened and he stared at Giant. ‘I think you need to talk to ordinary citizens with more respect, Detective,’ he said icily.
‘I do,’ said Giant. ‘I’m always respectful to ordinary citizens. It’s lying killers I tend not to be so polite to.’
The lawyer took Reyes by the arm. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I think we’re finished here. Come on, Tony. And, Detective, at least make an attempt at being professional.’
‘You want to watch yourself,’ said Reyes as he passed.
A familiar voice, deep down, told Giant to get a grip and not say anything that he might later regret, but for once he found himself ignoring it. He took a step forward. ‘Are you threatening me?’
He felt Jenna take his arm. ‘Easy, Ty. Let’s leave it.’
‘That’s right,’ said Reyes, glaring at him. ‘Leave it, Ty. And try to remember you’re not some big hotshot. You’re just a small-town, hick detective.’
The truth in the words stung Giant, but before it could go any further, Jenna gave him a pull, and Reyes’s lawyer gave Reyes a push, and both men were separated.
As the lawyer manoeuvred Reyes out of the door, he gave Giant a withering look. ‘I’ll be making a formal complaint about this. You cannot talk to my client like that.’
‘Come with me,’ said Jenna and, still holding Giant’s arm, she led him down the corridor to the canteen. It was empty. Most of the marshals were up in the Carmel Valley, either crawling over Reyes’s house or trying to track down Brook Connor in the area around it, and the Chief was fast asleep at home, so thankfully no one had been around to witness Giant’s near-meltdown with Reyes.
‘What the hell was that about?’ demanded Jenna when they were alone at one of the corner tables. ‘His lawyer’s right. You can’t go talking to Tony Reyes like that, especially when his wife’s just been murdered and it looks, for once, like he’s actually a victim.’
Giant sighed and looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He’d come close to losing it completely, and the thought scared him.
Jenna leaned forward and touched his arm, more gently this time. ‘Look, I know it’s hard, having to let a lowlife like Reyes go, but those are the breaks – you’ve got to live with it, Ty. We’ll get him another day.’
He forced a smile. ‘I know. I don’t usually get that irate. Did you believe his story?’
Jenna thought about it for a second. ‘It makes sense. We know Brook Connor abducted Maria Reyes, and that the car they were both in made it to the Reyes household, so it seems a fair assumption that Brook wanted to harm Maria. So yeah, I believe him.’
Giant still wasn’t convinced. ‘But if she just wanted revenge on Maria, why not take her some place isolated and kill her? Why get her to drive all the way to her home when, as far as we know, Tony Reyes has got nothing to do with the affair, and where there’d be armed security?’
Jenna shrugged. ‘Connor is an angry, violent woman, probably with some kind of death wish. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s not acting rationally.’
‘But she managed to escape, so she’s not being that irrational.’ Something else struck him. ‘You know, when Reyes was confronted by Brook Connor, he told us she said – and I quote – “she’d killed her husband and now she had nothing left to live for”.’
‘And?’
‘All
our witness statements suggest Brook was very close to her stepdaughter, Paige. And yet, according to Reyes, when she came to his house hell-bent on revenge, she never once mentioned anything about Paige. It seems strange. As is the fact that we can’t find any trace of Paige anywhere. Or of the nanny. No sightings, no bodies. No nothing. So what else are we not seeing?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jenna. ‘The only person who can give us some answers is Brook Connor.’
Giant sighed. ‘And for a mad, irrational woman, she’s damned good at hiding.’
37
Brook’s mom had grown up in Iowa, but her dad had been a California native. He was brought up near Sacramento before moving first to San Francisco, then to England when Brook was five, the same age as Paige was now. Her mom had been an only child, but her dad had been the eldest of two boys. He and his brother Charles, who was two years younger, hadn’t been especially close. Apparently Brook had met Charles a couple of times as a very young child, before they moved to England, but after that she’d only seen him once, and that had been at her parents’ joint funeral. Charles had come alone, even though he was married, and he’d said little, beyond offering his condolences and saying he couldn’t believe that his brother could have done such a thing (but, interestingly, he didn’t say that he didn’t believe it), and telling Brook that she’d grown into a beautiful young woman. He’d left immediately after the service.
At the time Brook had been so shell-shocked by her parents’ deaths that she hadn’t paid too much attention to Charles, and had simply put his indifference down to the fact that he and her dad weren’t close. But looking back now, his behaviour hadn’t seemed natural. Something had gone wrong between the two brothers, and it was for this reason that Brook was looking up Charles now. She wanted to find out more about the side of Dad that she’d never known. The one where he didn’t talk to his brother, and where he’d allegedly beaten his wife to death, before putting a bullet in his own head.
What Brook was going to do with this information was anyone’s guess. Once again, she’d been all over the news that morning. The reports were talking about the altercation at the Reyes house the previous night. There was no mention of Tony Reyes’s gangster credentials. Instead, the report said that a woman believed to be Maria Reyes had been shot dead and two other men shot and wounded, and that Brook was the main suspect.
It was incredible how everything in her life had been turned upside down in such a short space of time. Last Wednesday she’d been on San Francisco radio promoting her new book, and the world – if not exactly at her feet – was at least giving her a pretty easy ride. Now, on Sunday, she was a fugitive being hunted by every law-enforcement official in the state, with a one-hundred-thousand-dollar bounty on her head. She also knew that the moment she gave herself up, she would never see Paige again. She would probably never see the outside of a jail cell, either. She might even end up on death row. Things were looking that bad.
Her uncle Charles still lived in the place that he and her dad had grown up in. She’d looked him up online this morning and, having registered with one of those websites that sell you individual addresses, had located his.
Knights Landing was a pretty little town on the Sacramento River, and Charles’s home was situated in the middle of a new development of small, neat houses on its northern edge. A red Hyundai stood in the driveway and Brook parked behind it. She checked the rear-view mirror to see if there was anyone around (there wasn’t, the place was deserted) and then, taking a deep breath, and knowing this was her last hope, she got out of the car and walked up to the front door. A sticker on the window next to it stated that the occupants of the house didn’t buy from door-to-door salesmen. A sticker below that one announced that the occupants were also members of the NRA and for burglars to beware.
Brook rang the doorbell and waited for what felt like a long time, before she saw someone moving slowly towards the door through the frosted window glass.
She took a step back as the door opened and found herself staring at a handsome blonde-haired woman in her mid-sixties, dressed in an unflattering pantsuit. Either way, it wasn’t Uncle Charles.
‘Yes?’ said the woman, looking at Brook suspiciously.
‘I’m looking for Charles Connor,’ Brook said. ‘I’m related to him.’
‘Not very closely,’ the woman replied. ‘Otherwise you’d know he died earlier this year.’ Then she looked at Brook more closely and something seemed to click. ‘Oh, my goodness, you’re his niece – the woman they’re after …’
Her eyes widened and she tried to shut the door, but Brook put her hand in the way and stepped over the threshold, pushing the woman aside. She was in enough trouble already. A little more wasn’t going to make any difference.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, I promise,’ she said, shutting the door behind her and putting her hands up in a semi-passive stance as the woman retreated down the hall and into the kitchen. ‘Please. I just need to talk.’
Brook followed her into the kitchen, then stopped as the woman – who she now realized was her Uncle Charles’s wife – reached into a drawer, removed a handgun and pointed it at her. ‘Don’t come a step closer or I’ll shoot,’ she said, her grip on the gun steady. ‘You’re a wanted woman. You need to hand yourself in while you still have the chance.’
Brook stood still, keeping her hands where the woman could see them. ‘I know this is difficult to believe, but I’m innocent. My husband was murdered and my stepdaughter has been kidnapped. Someone is trying to destroy me.’
The woman eyed her coolly. ‘They’re doing a good job.’
‘I know. And the only reason I haven’t surrendered is that Paige, my stepdaughter, is still missing and I need to find her. She was abducted four days ago.’
‘I’ve seen her photo on the news. She’s a beautiful little girl.’
‘She’s everything to me.’
‘But they’re making out you killed her.’
‘I’ve never harmed a hair on that child’s head. I know they’re saying some terrible things about me on the news, but I’ve never been in trouble before. I’ve never done anything I’m truly ashamed of, and I’ve never killed anyone. Ever. Look, I’m unarmed.’ Very slowly Brook opened up her jacket so that the woman could see there wasn’t a gun underneath. She then turned round and lifted up the back. ‘Please. I just need to ask you a few questions.’
‘I don’t see how I can help you.’
‘You’re Charles’s wife, aren’t you? Annie?’
‘I am.’
‘I think the person who’s doing this to me is the same person who killed my parents. I’m certain Dad never killed Mom. I’ve been certain about it ever since it happened.’
Annie sighed and seemed to relax a little. ‘I never believed it, either. If anything, it would have been the other way around.’
Her comment surprised Brook. ‘What do you mean?’
Annie stared at her for a few seconds, as if she was working out what to do. Brook didn’t say anything and eventually she seemed to come to a decision. ‘You’d better come in and sit down,’ she said, lowering the gun, but keeping hold of it.
‘Can I have a cup of coffee and a drink of water?’ asked Brook. The thought of a coffee made her almost deliriously excited.
‘Sure,’ said Annie, taking pity on her and putting the gun down on the worktop next to her.
Brook waited while she used a machine to make her a strong black Americano and poured a glass of water from a bottle in the fridge, then followed her through to a small lounge that looked over a paved back yard with a fence at the end. Annie sat down in an armchair and put the gun on the coffee table next to her, so it was still within reach. Brook sat down in a chair facing her.
They didn’t say anything for a few seconds and then finally Annie spoke. ‘I don’t know how much I can help you. I haven’t seen your parents in over thirty years, so anything I tell you about them is old, old news. My best advice to you would be
to give yourself up to the authorities and tell the truth. They’ll find your little girl.’
‘And I will. I know I can’t keep running much longer. But while I’m here, would you mind telling me why you said that you could understand if my mom killed my dad, but not the other way around?’
Annie sighed again and gave her a sympathetic look. There was something about her that Brook trusted, and it made her yearn for her own mom.
‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’ she asked. ‘Because I don’t see how it’s even relevant.’
Brook took a sip from the coffee. It tasted delicious. ‘Tell me anything you can. Please.’
‘Your father was a charmer. In his day he was very handsome and he had a way about him that was very attractive, I have to admit. He was also’ – she paused – ‘and I’m sorry to have to say this, he was also a philanderer, at least when I knew him.’
‘How do you know?’ Brook asked tightly.
Annie crossed and uncrossed her hands. ‘Because I had an affair with him.’
Brook felt sick. Her dad had meant so much to her. It was a huge jump for her to believe that he’d ever cheated on Mom, and yet somehow she knew that what she was being told was true.
‘I’m not proud to have to admit that,’ Annie continued. ‘I remember being attracted to him the very first time we met. Your father was very different from Charles. There was so much more about him, and I think I got swept up in his charm. At the time I was working in Oakland, not far from where your dad was lecturing at Berkeley. We met a couple of times – just for coffee, he said, but I could tell he liked me.’ She paused, looking up at the ceiling and then back at Brook. ‘One thing led to another and we began a liaison. I knew it was wrong and I kept telling myself to stop, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I was young and in a dull marriage with a man who I thought, at the time, was dull, too. Your father represented a way out for me, and I’ll be completely honest with you here, I wanted him to leave your mother and you for me.’
We Can See You Page 19
