Twilight Whispers

by Barbara Delinsky

  For long hours the three of them sat, eyes glued to the set as one tape after another rolled. From time to time they would replay a section when a question arose, but the results were sadly unproductive. Then came the tape of the orgy, and Jordan did turn to Katia. “You don’t want to see this,” he whispered.

  “Are you kidding?” she whispered back. “After those other boring ones you want me to leave now?”

  “They’re disgusting.”

  “Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “Adventure? You call this adventure? I call it—”

  “Disgusting. I know.” She leaned closer to his ear. “If I didn’t have firsthand knowledge to the contrary, I’d think you were a prude.”

  Jordan’s lips twitched, but he couldn’t quite smile. Knowing that his brother had not only taken part in what they were watching, but had filmed it did something unsettling to his stomach. In fact, it had the same effect on Katia, who had resorted to humor as an antidote.

  Cavanaugh was beyond feeling unsettled. He stopped the tape at one point, reversed it for a minute, then ran the particular segment again. “Who is she?” he muttered under his breath.

  “Who?” Jordan asked.

  “That girl. The one off on the right.” He stopped the tape at the spot. “Dark-haired girl with a dark-skinned guy. Something about her is familiar. I saw it when I was watching before, and I feel the same thing now. Does the face ring any kind of bell with you?”

  Jordan studied it. “No. Looks like she’s very much into the thing.” Her eyes were closed, her lips parted.

  “Either she’s high on something,” Katia remarked dryly, “or this really is her style. How old would you say she is?”

  Cavanaugh continued staring at the face in silence. It was Jordan who answered. “It’s hard to tell from the distance and with all the makeup she’s wearing, but I’d say she’s about twenty-five, maybe twenty-six.”

  Cavanaugh took a quick breath. “Twenty-four,” he said with sudden conviction. “If I’m not mistaken that’s Julie Duncan. Her husband showed me a picture. It was a profile shot of the two of them, soft focused, a little fuzzy. Yeah, she’s more made up here. She looks older. I guess I was so taken with Duncan’s story that nothing registered when I was with him.”

  “But it does now.”

  “Right.”

  Katia was looking appalled. “She’s the one who supposedly got pregnant by Mark? That’s not Mark with her there. How could she possibly know the baby was his?”

  “Deborah knew, so Mark must have told her. If he did there must have been some truth to it.”

  Cavanaugh’s mind was elsewhere. “But why did I recognize her the first time I saw this tape? That was before I’d met Duncan or seen the picture.” He paused, wracking his brain for the proper placement. “Julie … Julie.” He frowned. There was something about the nose. “Julie Duncan.” And the mouth. “Julie. Julie Duncan. Julie—Oh, shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “Julie Ryan.”

  “Who’s Julie Ryan?” Katia asked.

  Cavanaugh sagged back in his seat. “Julie Ryan. Originally from Boston. One of six kids—and only daughter, now deceased—of John Ryan.”

  “John Ryan,” Jordan said quietly. “Your superior?”

  “Right. My superior.” The man who had assigned Cavanaugh the case. The man who had hinted right off the bat that one of the Whytes or Warrens had committed the murders. The man who had known that the tapes existed.

  Jordan was sitting forward. “What do you think?”

  Hell of a coincidence was what Cavanaugh thought, but for a moment he said nothing. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then the crease between his eyes. “I think,” he began slowly, “that I’d better be careful. We’re playing with fire here. It could be something or nothing.” But damn, it would almost make sense.

  “Are you sure that’s the same girl?” Katia asked.

  “No. It’s been years since I’ve seen Julie Ryan, and maybe I’m imagining the resemblance to John. I’ll have to check it out. A simple question to one of the other guys on the force about the married name of Ryan’s daughter should do the trick.”

  Jordan’s expression was grim. “And then what?”

  “Then I’ll have to think.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “Christ, the implications are mind-boggling.”

  Jordan and Katia were thinking the same thing. They discussed it into the early morning hours, long after Cavanaugh left, and they grew hopeful, angry and incredulous in turn.

  “I think you should call VanPelt,” Katia finally announced.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Jordan, this is a lead.”

  “Not unless the name checks out.”

  “But if it does, VanPelt should know about it.”

  “Not yet.”

  Jumping from the sofa, she paced to the far side of the room, then whirled to face him. “What’s with you, Jordan? Don’t you want to find the real killer?”

  He shot her a hard glance. “You should know better than to ask me that. Of course I want to find the real killer. But I think I owe it to Cavanaugh to let him do his thing first.”

  “And just how is he going to do it with Ryan breathing down his neck? Do you really think Cavanaugh’s going to jeopardize his career by accusing his superior of murder?”

  “He won’t accuse Ryan of anything unless he finds evidence to support it. Right now all we can do is speculate. Suppose the name does check out? All we’ll really know is that John Ryan’s daughter had an affair with Mark, got pregnant, had an abortion, then OD’d on drugs.”

  “But that would give Ryan a motive for killing Mark. Hatred. Vengeance. Don’t you see? It’s a more plausible motive than the one they claim was yours.”

  “Cavanaugh needs solid evidence to prove Ryan committed murder.”

  “He doesn’t have that kind of evidence on you.”

  “He has a threat. He needs something like that on Ryan.”

  “And if he can’t get it?”

  “Then I’ll tell VanPelt.”

  “Then it may be too late! You may have already gone to trial!”

  “In which case VanPelt can use the matter of Julie Ryan Duncan—if that’s her name—to raise doubt in the jurors’ minds. Listen to me, Katia,” he sighed. “I want to get out of this every bit as much as you do, but when I do, I don’t want there to be a single, possible doubt in the world about my innocence. I want to be utterly and completely vindicated. If that means I have to stand a little more pain it’ll be worth it in the end. Hell, we’ve already suffered. It’s not like I can turn the clock back and erase all that’s happened. But I do trust Cavanaugh. I’m willing to sit back and wait awhile longer.”

  Katia stood very still. “This isn’t like you, Jordan. You were always aggressive. You’d have taken the bull by the horns rather than waiting around for it to gore you.”

  “Maybe I’ve changed.”

  “I’ll say. There are times when you sit here and I could just as well be a—” she gestured wildly, “a picture on the wall. It’s like I’m not even here. You draw into yourself. You don’t talk to me.”

  If Katia had reached the end of her tether, so had Jordan. “Hell, Katia, what do you want from me? I feel bad enough putting you through all this. Do you really want to know all the dark little thoughts I have, all the contingency plans I’m making for what I’ll do if I’m convicted? My God, it’s not like I don’t have a thing on my mind!”

  “Share it with me!” she cried. “That’s all I ask. Share it with me and then I won’t have to hold everything in myself. I won’t have to sit here wondering what you’re thinking, wondering whether you’d rather be alone, wondering whether you regret having married me, wondering whether you resent the way I rushed our marriage!” Not wanting him to see her tears, she stormed past him and headed straight for the bedroom. There she tore off her clothes, yanked on a nightgown, threw herself on the bed and buried her face in the
pillow.

  She was exhausted. And discouraged. The past weeks had been like years to her. She loved Jordan more than ever, which was why his silences cut her so deeply. She hadn’t meant to lose her temper, but strain had gotten the best of her.

  “Katia?” Jordan’s voice came softly through the darkness, his approach silenced by the carpet. The mattress gave beneath his weight, then heaved again when he stood back up.

  Katia lay still, unsure what to do. She heard the rustle of cloth when he removed his shirt, then the rasp of a zipper and slither of denim down his legs. Moments later his weight returned to the mattress, and he curled himself half over her.

  “I’m sorry, babe.” His breath was by her ear. “I know how hard this is on you. That makes it even harder for me.”

  “I’m so ashamed.” Her whisper was muffled in the pillow. She couldn’t face him. “I sounded like a shrew. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. You have enough to worry about without adding my frustration to the list.”

  “But it’s there. I know you’re frustrated and angry and impatient. I’m feeling the same things. And I do worry about you.” He ran his hand along her upper arm. “I don’t want to have to put you through a trial. It was bad enough with the arraignments.”

  “Are you sorry we got married so quickly?”

  His hand wandered to her hip, caressing it through the silken fabric of her nightgown. “Oh, no,” he murmured. “It’s meant the world to have you with me, Katia. Even in that I’m a selfish bastard. But you’ve been the only thing that’s seemed real these past weeks.” He kissed her ear, drew away, then, unable to resist, returned to run his tongue along its edge. “But I do feel guilty—”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s what I feel. You don’t deserve all this.”

  “Neither do you,” she argued, but her voice was wispy, as it always was when his bare body was near. “Half of my frustration is in not being able to do more to help you. Then I go and sound off like a witch—”

  “Shh. You could never be a witch,” he whispered. His mouth drifted to her neck, then her shoulder. “You’re human. Like me.” He slipped his hand between her legs, pushing her nightgown up as he went. When he began to caress her, she sucked in a breath. “Relax. That’s it.”

  “Jordan.…”

  “Mmm. Like that?”

  “Oh, yes.” She felt she had been injected with a sensual brand of morphine. Pleasure flowed through her body.

  His fingers delved softly, deeply, while he kissed her cheek, her neck, the sensitive spot beneath her earlobe. She started to turn, needing to hold and touch, but he held her there on the bed.

  “I love you,” he whispered, and she could only sigh her response, because his fingers were magic, sweeping her mind clean of everything but the fire he stoked. Gently, he raised her hips and spread her thighs, then just as gently eased into her.

  Katia’s fingers clenched around the softness of the pillow. Jordan had never made love to her this way before, and while moments earlier she had wanted nothing more than to face him, she found that there was something to the deprivation that heightened her other senses. With vivid clarity she felt his slow withdrawal and more forceful return. With a repeat she heard the sound of his breathing growing shorter, more ragged. The press of his body against her back created a line of heat that broke only on the recoil of his thrusts. His gentle caress of her breasts kept time with that lower, deeper stroking.

  Blindly she reached for one of his hands, twining her fingers through his and anchoring them by her lips on the pillow. Then she held on for dear life as the heat within rose and crested. Only when Jordan, too, had reached his climax and slumped against her did she make another effort to turn. This time he allowed it. He took her in his arms and cradled her close.

  “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said brokenly. “The best thing.”

  At that moment she knew that regardless of what the future held these moments of closeness made it all worthwhile.

  * * *

  Cavanaugh was thinking similar thoughts several nights later as he and Jodi walked, arm in arm, along the waterfront. In the past days they had been closer than ever, which was an irony, Cavanaugh mused, when professionally he was in such a quandary. He would have expected his problems to drive them apart, but they hadn’t. Between Jodi’s persistence and his own love for her he had discovered that there was, indeed, more to his life than being a cop. Oh, he still had his moments of withdrawal, when habit locked his worries inside, but she was understanding even as she gently pried and he had learned that he actually felt better for opening up. Better … freer … more adventuresome, which was perhaps why he had dragged her from their apartment so late to grab an impulsive midnight snack in the North End.

  Bellies filled, they had walked a bit, then stopped at a bench facing the harbor and sat down. The night was cold and still. Even the rank smell of the harbor was mellow. They leaned into one another, watched their breath mingle in the air, then dissipate. From an occasional boat or townhouse window a Christmas light blinked, but the only sound was that of the water lapping against the hulls of the boats that swayed in the breeze.

  “That’s where it happened, isn’t it?” Jodi asked, looking toward the pier.

  “Yup.”

  “Right about this time, too.”

  “Yup.”

  “How do you think he did it?”

  “Ryan?” Cavanaugh frowned. He had quickly learned that Julie Duncan was John Ryan’s daughter, but beyond that he had been stewing for clues. “I don’t know. One thing’s for sure. He didn’t do the killing himself. There’s no way that tub of lard could have made it through the water, much less hauled himself up over the side of a boat.”

  Jodi didn’t miss the hardening of his voice or the bitterness in it. “You never did like him, did you?”

  “There was always something about the guy that bugged me. An arrogance, maybe. An air of superiority. Right about now I’ve got damn good reason to hate him. He used me. He set me up to pin a rap on someone who is innocent. I don’t like that.”

  “Still, he asked you to do the job.”

  “Yeah. He assumed I’d only go so far with the investigation. What does that say about his opinion of me?”

  “What does it matter? Knowing you did your job better than he’d planned has to give you some satisfaction.”

  “Not yet. Not until I clinch it.”

  Her elbow tightened around his. “There has to be evidence somewhere. Ryan had to have hired someone. Who would have done his bidding without demanding something powerful in return?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Are there any signs that he’s compromising himself on other cases?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then he had to have paid someone outright. Have you checked his bank?”

  “Oh, yeah. There was nothing. But let me tell you, it was touchy enough doing even that.”

  “Holstrom’s on your side.”

  “Fortunately. But everything has to be kept so damn quiet. It’s like I’m walking on eggs. I don’t dare breathe a word about this to anyone else in the department. I’m just not sure who my friends are.”

  “Or who Ryan’s friends are.”

  “Bingo. In some respects I’m surprised Holstrom went along with me.”

  “He had to. There was one coincidence too many where Ryan’s involvement with this thing is concerned. Even if, by a long shot, it turns out that Ryan had nothing to do with the murders, he should have steered clear of this case. He was too emotionally involved.”

  “I wasn’t all that pure myself,” Cavanaugh pointed out.

  “Yes you were. From the first you were determined to do the job right.”

  “There are some who might say the same about Ryan.”

  “But he was dishonest. He could have come clean at the start. He could have told you about his daughter. Was there ever any mention of what caused her death?”


  “There was very little mention of her death at all. It came and went. Julie was buried in California quickly and with little ceremony from what I’ve learned. At the time Ryan didn’t welcome more than the token expression of sympathy. And he wasn’t the type you’d approach and question, particularly about something like that.”

  Jodi thought about that for a minute. “It fits in with what you said about his maintaining strict barriers between the office and his home. But if your suspicions are correct, he crossed them himself.”

  “If my suspicions are correct he’s as sick as they come.”

  “He’s sick anyway. If he was innocent he should have told you about Julie after Mark and Deborah were murdered. And he should have come right out and told you about the existence of the tapes rather than coyly dropping hints.” Consternation dominated the expression on her face. “What I don’t understand is why he’d want the tapes found if he knew his daughter was on them.”

  “He may not have known that. We don’t know what she told him other than that Mark did make the tapes.”

  “How could she have known about the argument between Mark and Jordan?”

  “Either she saw the tape herself shortly before she died or Mark must have told her.”

  A new thought brought Jodi’s eyes wide. “My God, Bob. Do you think it’s possible that Mark had something to do with her death?”

  Cavanaugh was shaking his head even before she had finished. “I checked it out with the department in Bakersfield. She’d taken a room in a small hotel for the night. No one met her there. No one saw her after she’d locked herself in. It wasn’t until the next day, after her husband got worried, that the police traced her to the place and broke down the door. Mark was one of dozens of people who were later questioned. He was in Boston on the night of her death and had been here for the two days preceding it. A solid alibi, and no evidence to suggest that he supplied her with the stuff.”

  “I suppose we should be grateful for that,” she mused. “You know, it’s interesting from a psychological standpoint that Julie chose to marry a man named John.”