Twilight Whispers

by Barbara Delinsky

  A long time later she returned to the room, where she dried and dressed and realized she felt much, much better. Jordan was still asleep. Love swelled inside her as she looked at him; the frustration she felt was far more emotional than physical.

  With a whisper-soft sigh, she walked to the door, closed it quietly behind her and went downstairs in search of coffee.

  Jordan was awake when she returned. He stood in the center of the small room. With his hair mussed and the snap of his jeans undone he looked like he had just that minute awakened, except that his eyes held an expression akin to fear. She stopped on the threshold, confused.

  “Jesus, Katia! I didn’t know where in the hell you were!”

  Relieved, she smiled, closed the door and handed him a mug filled with hot coffee.

  “I woke up and you weren’t here,” Jordan raved on. “I didn’t know what to think. I searched the room and couldn’t find you—”

  “It’s a pretty small room. Not many places to hide.”

  “You can take that silly grin off your face. I was worried.”

  “Where could I have gone?” she asked innocently. “You’re my ticket out of here.”

  “I didn’t know where you’d gone!” He thrust a hand through his hair, then took a drink of the coffee and burned his tongue. “Unh. Shit. This isn’t my day.”

  “You got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

  “I wasn’t on the bed.”

  “Poor baby. Why don’t you take a long bath? I did. It helped.”

  He gave her an annoyed glance before disappearing into the bathroom. But the remedy must have worked, for he was in a better mood by the time he returned from the bathroom. Better … but still not up to snuff.

  Katia, who remembered—albeit in vague wisps that might well have been a dream but were just that little bit too real—what had happened before she had passed out the night before, wasn’t sure what to make of him. During her own long soak she had decided to avoid mention of their brief interlude together on the bed. But the more she thought about it, the more she felt that she was the one who had a right to be angry. He had done it to her again, turned her on, then pulled away. The only thing she could do by way of retaliation was to act as though she simply didn’t care.

  They ate breakfast in the restaurant downstairs, which was a higher tribute to the inn than its woeful attic room. Katia hadn’t expected conversation from Jordan; she knew he wasn’t good for much in the morning until he had had two cups of coffee and something solid, but even then he seemed unusually preoccupied.

  They left the inn and started to walk, aimlessly she thought, until he guided her onto a sidewalk bench. Then he said something that took her completely by surprise. “Have you heard from Robert Cavanaugh?”

  “The detective?”

  Jordan nodded.

  “No, I haven’t heard from from him yet.” Her eyes were riveted on his grim expression. “What’s wrong?”

  He stared out toward the harbor, hesitated, then spoke slowly. “There’s something you don’t know, Katia. Something I don’t think anyone in the family knows other than me.”

  “About Mark and Deborah?”

  “About Mark.” The muscle beneath his eye twitched. “He was messing around with child pornography.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “I wish I weren’t, and I sure as hell wish I didn’t have to tell you about it. But Cavanaugh has probably been to the coast by now, and if that’s the case he knows.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because the police there know. Mark told me so.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two months back. I was out there, so I dropped in to see him. He wasn’t thrilled that I showed up when I did.”

  She shook her head, willing away the image. “Pornography. I don’t believe it.”

  “Kiddie porn, and you can believe it. I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “But why? Why would he get into something as sick as that?”

  Jordan’s mouth twisted. “Why do you think?”

  “He was that hard up for money? But I thought he was doing okay.”

  “Okay isn’t good enough if you want to live in Beverly Hills. He put every cent he had into legitimate filmmaking, and then when he needed more to live on he resorted to … to that.”

  “But why children? Why not plain old skin flicks?”

  “Because fewer people were willing to do it with kids, so the demand was greater.”

  Katia closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. “It’s sickening.”

  “Think of what I felt seeing it.”

  “You talked to him afterward?”

  “Yeah, if you can call it that. It was more like a shouting match. I told him he was crazy, and he told me to mind my own business. So I told him that it was my business, because he was my brother—even if I wanted to deny it at the time.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He said it was already too late, because the cops knew what he was doing. God, Katia, I could have strangled him then and there, and I told him as much, but he didn’t care. He said that he had his life and I had mine, and that I should just keep my nose out of his affairs. I mean,” Jordan looked at her in bewilderment, “it was like he didn’t hear anything I’d said about hurting people, like he was oblivious to hurting even himself.”

  Katia caught her breath. “Do you think it could have been suicide after all?”

  Jordan shook his head firmly. “No. He seemed immuned to any and all worry. He was riding high on himself. He was convinced that the law would never turn on him because he was greasing palms right and left.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair. “Somewhere along the line the guy became amoral.”

  Katia sat staring at Jordan for several long moments. Her heart ached for him because she knew he was suffering. His eyes were on the waterfront, but she could tell he saw nothing. His legs were extended limply, his shoulders slumped and his jaw was darkened by the beard he hadn’t bothered to shave.

  “No one else in your family knows?”

  “No one but you.”

  “Why have you told me?”

  “Because if I don’t Cavanaugh will, and I want you to be prepared. Better you should hear it from me than from him. You may just be able to convince him not to tell my parents right away. I’m going to try to do that, but I don’t know which one of us will get to him first.”

  “Won’t your parents have to know eventually?”

  “Not if Cavanaugh finds his killer. If the killer is somehow connected with the porno work, it’ll all come out anyway. But if there’s a totally different connection there’s a chance my mother can be spared all that. God, she’ll die if she learns what he was up to. She raised her children to respect certain things. You’d think that if he wasn’t bothered by the principle of child pornography, at least he’d have been concerned about its illegality.”

  Katia didn’t know what to say. She agreed with every one of Jordan’s feelings, and she racked her brain in a futile search to find something to say by way of consolation. In the end she simply took Jordan’s cold hand in hers and warmed it between her palms.

  “I’m sorry, Jordan. Sorry that you have to bear the weight of this on your shoulders.”

  “My shoulders are broad enough. I just wonder if Cavanaugh’s are. If he’s as principled as he led me to believe he won’t go public with what he learns unless he has a good reason to do so. On the other hand, if he gets his jollies out of making people squirm he’s got the means. Boy has he got the means.”

  * * *

  Cavanaugh was more principled than even he himself had thought. When he learned about Mark Whyte’s involvement in child pornography he simply tucked the knowledge under his belt and went on with his investigation. Oh, he was excited; he had something concrete on the Whytes, at last, and the feeling of power that gave him was incredible. But he was also a cop, and a good one, and there was no way he was going to jeopardize
his case by leaking something to the press that could later cause problems in a trial.

  But where he thought John Ryan would be pleased with what he had done he returned to Boston to find the man disgruntled.

  “So you know that Whyte was on the verge of indictment for child pornograpy. So what? And you know that he was living high off the hog out there. So what? And you know that he had a handful of pretty lousy associates. So what?”

  “So there’s plenty more to investigate and plenty of reason why someone may have wanted to kill him. We have a motive.”

  “What good is a motive without a suspect? And if the porno thing was what got the guy killed, how do you explain why someone killed his wife, too? She wasn’t involved in the filming. She was out of it. And if all that took place on the west coast, why the hell would someone fly east to do the dirty work?”

  Cavanaugh could feel himself getting angry. He had asked himself the same questions many times; Ryan had to know that. He wasn’t sure why Ryan was so upset, but he sensed that it would be better to bide his time than confront the man.

  “We interviewed over sixty people while we were out there,” he said calmly. “A dozen of them might have had cause to kill Mark. We’re looking into them further.”

  Ryan’s pudgy hand hit the desk in annoyance. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that one of the Whytes or Warrens knew that there would be an indictment and decided to eliminate the source of the problem? No criminal, no indictment, no trial, no scandal. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Oh, it’s occurred to me. But there are ways to do an investigation and there are ways to do an investigation. Personally, I’d like to rule out the possibility of an outside murder before I go pointing a finger at someone within the family.”

  “What are you? Some kind of bleeding heart? You don’t have to protect them, for Christ’s sake!”

  The more Ryan attacked, the firmer Cavanaugh stood. “I want this done right. I thought you did, too.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then trust me. There’s as much of a chance that one of his associates from the coast killed Mark and his wife as there is that one of the family members did it, and for exactly the same reason. No criminal, no indictment, no trial. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Don’t throw my own words back at me, Cavanaugh,” Ryan warned, but the worst of his fury seemed to have been spent. “I don’t like it.”

  “I’m just pointing out that you’re right.” The last thing Cavanaugh needed was Ryan’s thirst for blood to mess up the case. “I’ll be starting on the families soon enough, but I want to do more work on the coast before that. I left Annello and Webber out there to see what else they could dig up; they’ll be calling in every day. If necessary, I’ll go back myself.”

  “Have you looked at the tapes?”

  “The porno films? A couple. Buddy and Sharon will be going through the rest. Those films are pretty pathetic.”

  “What about other tapes?”

  “What about them?”

  Ryan blew out an exasperated breath. Cavanaugh wondered if the man ate sour pickles for breakfast, too. “Whyte was a filmmaker. Don’t you think it would be a good idea to take a look at what he’s done? There must have been a cabinet in the house filled with his work. All those guys keep private collections.”

  “He had one, but I didn’t exactly have time to sit around and watch movies. The reels in the cabinet had standard labels on them. I doubt we’ll find clues to a murder in edited and polished pieces.”

  Ryan’s jaw was set. “All right, Cavanaugh. I put you in charge of this one, so it’s your baby. But if I were you I wouldn’t settle for standard labels. Anyone as rotten as Mark Whyte—anyone who could hire kids to do obscene things and then film them—is apt to be kinky in other ways. Think about it.”

  Cavanaugh did, long and hard, and he came up with several new avenues to explore. But what nagged at him more than anything after that conversation was Ryan’s impatience with the way he was handling the case. He didn’t understand it.

  Unable to leave his worries at the office, he broached them with Jodi over dinner. Strangely, he was in the mood to talk, and there was no one he felt was more insightful than she. Moreover, he reasoned, it wouldn’t hurt if he tried to mend a few fences. Jodi had welcomed him back from California with a smile, but it had been a cautious one. He knew that she liked it when he shared things with her. And he knew that he didn’t like this faint wall between them.

  “I don’t know why Ryan’s displeased,” he concluded after he had filled her in on the rough details. “I’m going by the book on this one. I’d think he’d be grateful.”

  “He’s looking at the case from the outside. Maybe he doesn’t understand or appreciate all the work you’ve been doing on the inside.”

  “He should. He was in my shoes once, and it wasn’t so long ago that he could have forgotten. Then again, he’s always been a little strange.”

  “Strange?”

  “Private. He never opened up to anyone on the force, not about his inner thoughts or about his family. He never mixed socially, kept his home life totally separate. Rigidity in a nutshell. Only it’s gotten worse in the last few months. He hasn’t been the same since his daughter died.”

  “They were very close?”

  “I don’t know. Large family, devout Catholics, I suppose they were close, even though she didn’t live around here. I can grant him the right to mourn, but to take it out on everyone else?”

  “Maybe he’s getting pressure from upstairs on this one.”

  “Still, he’s never been as uptight before.”

  “He’s never had as potentially explosive a case before.”

  Cavanaugh’s eyes grew wide in emphasis. “You can say that again. I’m telling you, if it does turn out that Mark and Deborah were eliminated by someone inside the families to keep the kiddie porn stuff from coming to light, explosive will be a mild word to describe the results.”

  “Do you think that was what happened? It is rather … incredible.”

  “As in farfetched?” He tried not to be offended, but couldn’t help sounding a little defensive. “A jury would go for the motive, especially with families like those. They think they’re outside the law. It wouldn’t be so incredible to imagine that they assumed they’d get away with murder.”

  “But to kill two of their own? What kind of people could do that?”

  “People to whom power and status mean the world,” he said with a smug half smile.

  It was that tiny smile that got to Jodi, who, given the circumstances surrounding Cavanaugh’s departure a week before, was less indulgent than usual. “They’re human, Bob. I saw those pictures you took at the funeral.” She held up a hand and raced on. “No, you didn’t show them to me, but you left them lying on the table and I looked. That was grief. Couldn’t you see it?”

  “I’m sure it was grief. The whole situation has to be grievous for them. Can you imagine how your mother would feel if you set out to be a porno queen? That must be how the Whytes felt about Mark.”

  “Okay. But even if Mark had gone to trial, even if he’d been convicted, the Whyte Estate wouldn’t have been ruined. It’s huge and powerful. Unless the company was somehow involved in Mark’s activities it wouldn’t have been threatened. And as far as Gil Warren is concerned, he’s been in the House … how many years?”

  “Twenty-three. Nearly twenty-four.

  “Well, the same thing would be true for him. He wouldn’t have been hurt by Mark’s misadventures unless they’d have incriminated him.”

  Cavanaugh sighed. “Jodi, we’re not dealing with the average human mind here. Who are you and I to guess why they did what they did?”

  “So you’ve already got them pegged? Cop, judge and jury rolled into one?”

  “Goddamnit, that’s unfair! I thought we were talking hypothetically.”

  “Could have fooled me, what with the words you used.”

  “Just words. I’
m trying my best to give them a chance.”

  “Are you? You know, Bob, I think your problem is that you simply can’t conceive of family loyalty. You can’t conceive of the idea that people can love one another and still have differences. You can’t conceive of the idea that members of a family could stand behind one another even in the worst of times. And there’s good reason why you’re so blind,” she raced on. “Your mother left your father when his business went bust. You and your wife split when things got shaky. You don’t have any experience in fighting for those you love, so you can’t conceive of anyone else doing it!” She was breathing hard and her fists were clenched. “It’s called commitment, Bob, and there are many people who believe in it. So until you know otherwise, wouldn’t it be nice to give the Warrens and Whytes the benefit of the doubt?”

  Without awaiting his answer, she turned and stalked from the room, which was just as well, because Cavanaugh was, at that moment, speechless.

  * * *

  By the time he had flown to New York two days later and taken a taxi to Katia’s office, however, Cavanaugh was fully in command. He had suspected that Jordan would have warned her that he would be coming, so he wasn’t surprised when she appeared in the reception area fully composed.

  With a pleasant smile she extended her hand. “Detective Cavanaugh, I’m Katia Morell. I was wondering when you’d make it here.”

  He returned the handshake, noting that she was even more striking close up than she had appeared through the lens of his camera on the day of the funeral, now over a month ago. “I was wondering if we could talk. I know you’re working, but if you could spare a few minutes, I’d appreciate it.”

  “There’s a coffee shop downstairs. Let me just leave word that I’ll be gone.” She went over to the receptionist and spoke with her quietly for a minute, then returned and led the way to the elevator.

  Cavanaugh admired her poise, just as he admired the fact that as soon as they were beyond hearing of the receptionist, she calmly asked to see his identification.