Twilight Whispers

by Barbara Delinsky

  A promotion was the last thing on Cavanaugh’s mind. “Right now I’m thinking that I really want to tell you about what happened after I found those tapes.” He didn’t give Ryan time to argue. “I viewed them carefully, like a good detective would, and I found the one with Jordan’s threat. But I found another one. This one was of an orgy, with bodies all over the place, faces sticking up in between. One of those faces looked familiar, a woman’s face, young, maybe twenty-four, but I couldn’t place it.” He thought he saw Ryan pale, but his complexion was such a pasty color anyway that it was hard to tell. He had the older man’s attention, that was for sure. So he went on.

  “It bothered me, that face. It also bothered me that you’d known about the existence of those tapes before I did.”

  “I’m a better detective than you’ll ever be, Cavanaugh. You lack imagination.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” was the detective’s smooth reply. “I started imagining all kinds of things, particularly when I learned that Mark Whyte had had an affair with a girl named Julie Duncan.”

  “He had affairs with lots of girls.”

  Cavanaugh began to close in. “Not ones who got pregnant, had abortions, then committed suicide. Not ones who were married, and whose maiden names were Ryan, and whose father was you.”

  More warily, Ryan glanced at Jordan and Katia, then back at Cavanaugh. “So? My daughter did something foolish. She paid for it with her life.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me, Ryan?”

  “It was none of your business.”

  “It had direct relevance to this case.”

  “I decided it didn’t.”

  “Was that before or after you had my brother killed?” Jordan demanded. Katia felt the tendons in his arm straining against her hand. She suspected that he shared her opinion on strangling Ryan, and she was grateful that Cavanaugh was along to prevent it.

  Cavanaugh, bless him, stayed cool. “It gave you a motive, John. But I knew I’d have to find out how you did it if I was to have any chance of nailing you.”

  “You won’t find out,” Ryan said lightly, “because I didn’t do it.”

  “I know that now. Chip did.”

  “What does Chip have to do with this?” Ryan asked, but his smugness of moments before was gone.

  Cavanaugh scratched his head. “It seems that Chip was on duty at the Harbor Patrol Unit that night. He used the scuba gear there.” He grinned at Jordan. “You hit it on the head when you said that the only people who swam through the harbor were nuts or cops. Chip is both.”

  “Now wait just a minute.” Ryan rose to his feet, but awkwardly this time. “That’s my flesh and blood you’re talking about. He’s a damned good cop, and a damned good son.”

  “No, John. If he was either he’d have talked you out of this scheme.”

  Ryan was shaking his head. His lips were pursed, his eyes filled with what could only be called murder. “If there’s a nut around here he’s standing in front of me now. I think I’ve heard enough, Cavanaugh.” He reached for the phone, but the detective was suddenly there, slamming both Ryan’s hand and the receiver back down. It was his first and only sign of anger. When he spoke, his voice was evenly modulated.

  “Chip talked, John. It’s all over.”

  “Chip didn’t talk. He had nothing to say.”

  “Would you like to hear the tape?” He took perverse pleasure in the other man’s recoil. “Filmmakers aren’t the only ones who record things. Cops do it too. I spent five hours with Chip last night.”

  “You couldn’t have. He was on duty.”

  “Only until we brought him in for questioning. When he realized we had him right down to the foot powder he uses he spilled it all.”

  Ryan yanked his hand from beneath Cavanaugh’s. “You forced him. I know the methods. I’ve used them often enough myself.” Which reminded him of something. “And who the hell are you to take it upon yourself to do an independent investigation? Under whose authority did you drag my son in to ask him questions about some murder?”

  “Not some murder,” Jordan grated, taking an ominous step forward. “My brother’s murder.”

  Ryan ignored him. “I’ll have you kicked off the force, Cavanaugh. And that’s just for starters. I have friends all over this city. You try to get another job here and you’ll be laughed to kingdom come!”

  “I don’t think so,” Cavanaugh returned. He walked to the window and glanced out. For a minute the only sound in the room was the faltering click of a distant typewriter. Katia shivered at the eerieness of it.

  Then Cavanaugh’s voice came quietly. “I’ve been working with Holstrom. He authorized my actions. Right now he’s waiting in his office for your confession.” He turned in time to see Ryan’s cheeks, pasty earlier, turn red with rage.

  “Holstrom? Confession? What do you take me for, some kind of fool?” His eyes narrowed. “You really are going for that promotion, aren’t you? You’re determined to do it with a bang and at my expense. Well, I won’t have it!”

  “You don’t have any choice, John.” Strangely, some of the pleasure had gone out of it for Cavanaugh. He saw the signs of rage as synonymous with desperation, and there was something very sad about desperation, even in a man he disliked as much as he had come to dislike John Ryan. “We have Chip’s confession, taped, typed and signed. You can claim your innocence for as long as you want, but if you come clean now there won’t have to be a trial. If you’re talking about bangs, spare yourself one.”

  “You don’t have a case,” Ryan scoffed. He plopped back into his chair. “We’ll prove that you manipulated Chip into that confession. He’s not old enough to know that he can’t be forced.”

  “Which is why he did your bidding, I assume. You know, John, I have to hand it to you. You planned it well. You bided your time, then pounced, and Chip did okay, too. He even knew enough not to use his own revolver. Then you started making mistakes. Your first one was in assigning me to the case. I was honored. I thought you’d done it because you thought I was good. And I am, but in my own sweet time. Then you got impatient. That was your second mistake. After all that waiting you got impatient. You started pushing, and that puzzled me.”

  “It was an important case!”

  “We’ve had other important cases, but you’ve never stuck your nose in so much. It was your harping on the tapes that really did it.”

  “If I hadn’t harped, you’d never have found the tapes and he—” Ryan rolled his head toward Jordan, “wouldn’t have been caught.”

  “Did you know Julie was on the tape? Did she tell you that?”

  “You’re bluffing there, too. She wasn’t on any tape.”

  “I saw her.”

  “You haven’t seen her in years.”

  “I talked with her husband. He showed me a picture. It was the same girl who’d looked so familiar to me on that tape.”

  “My daughter wouldn’t have gone to an orgy.”

  “Would you like to see the tape?”

  “She wouldn’t have gone. She wasn’t on that tape. She wasn’t on any tape. She told me she wasn’t—”

  “Ahh.” A break at last. “She told you. She told you about the tapes, but she assured you she wasn’t on them. Or did she die before she could get to that part?”

  Ryan gave a convulsive little shake of his head, and each of the three others in the room felt a moment’s sympathy. But only a moment’s.

  “Apparently she underestimated the filmmaker,” Cavanaugh said quietly.

  Ryan’s upper lip twitched and curled. “She knew him for the scum he was. That was why she had the abortion. She couldn’t bear the thought of carrying any part of him, much less bringing it into the world.”

  Jordan started forward, restrained first by Katia’s hand, then by Cavanaugh’s retort.

  “But the abortion did her in. She should have been relieved afterward. Instead, she cracked.”

  Nostrils flaring, Ryan shifted his gaze to Jordan. “Your brother d
id that to her. He deserved to die. He wasn’t worth the ground she walked on.”

  “And Deborah?” Jordan goaded angrily. “Did she deserve to die?”

  “She was as bad as he was, going along with that sicko group! She was at the parties. She took drugs like the rest of them. She stood there saying nothing while her husband took obscene pictures of little kids! The two of them deserved to die!”

  Jordan struggled to keep his fury in check. “And me? What did I do to deserve to be framed?”

  Ryan was beyond caution. “You’re a Whyte! The whole bunch of you—Whytes and Warrens—are disgusting! You walk around like you own the world and you don’t give a damn who you trample in the process. Well, my daughter didn’t deserve to be trampled. It was a Whyte who introduced her to drugs, a Whyte who made her pregnant, a Whyte who forced her into an abortion and suicide. An eye for an eye, so they say. He deserved to die, and you—as far as I’m concerned a life sentence wouldn’t be long enough!”

  “Tell me one more thing, Ryan,” Jordan persisted. “Why me? Why not my brother or my sister?”

  “You were a perfect patsy,” Ryan spat and turned his face away as though the sight of Jordan turned his stomach. “You had a reputation for brashness. You were visible. And you threatened Mark. When I learned about that I knew I had it made.”

  “You learned about that before Julie died,” Cavanaugh remarked. “Were you planning on murder even then?”

  Ryan sent him a venomous look. “There was plenty to justify murder even before her death. And after—all I needed was the right fall guy. Whyte here was ripe for the picking. It was too good to believe.”

  “I think we have enough,” Cavanaugh said softly. His gaze slid from Jordan to Katia, then back to Ryan, whose venom had mellowed to something akin to confusion. Cavanaugh drew his blazer open to reveal the tiny microphone fastened to the breast pocket of his shirt. “We have it all, John.”

  Ryan was very still for a long minute—disbelieving, dismayed, stunned. But the minute passed. “I don’t think so,” he murmured. “I think I’d like to put something down on paper.” Laboring around his protruding belly, he opened the side drawer of his desk.

  A second too late Cavanaugh realized what he was up to. He had barely drawn his gun before Ryan put his to his own head. It was a twist Cavanaugh hadn’t expected.

  Katia gasped and grabbed Jordan’s elbow when he stepped in front of her.

  “Put it down, Cavanaugh,” Ryan said with the calm of one truly mad. “Put it down or I’ll pull the trigger.”

  For the sake of the audience listening in another room Cavanaugh said quietly, “Ryan is holding a gun to his head.” Then, to Ryan, “You won’t do it.”

  “Why not? I have nothing to lose.”

  “Your life is nothing?”

  “Thanks to you. Put down the gun.”

  If he had been alone, Cavanaugh would have done so in a minute. But he was worried about Jordan and Katia. The last thing he wanted was for Ryan to turn his gun on them. So he held his own steady and said, “Suicide isn’t your style.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s against your religion.”

  “So is abortion. And murder. My daughter committed suicide. Apparently she found it painless.”

  Jordan was slowly shaking his head. “Don’t do it, Ryan. For your family’s sake, don’t do it.”

  The wheels on the chair moved as Ryan’s stocky legs slowly maneuvered it free of the desk. “Do you think my family’s going to enjoy seeing me suspended and put on trial?” He was pushing the chair steadily back into a corner so that he faced diagonally into the room. Though his head was slanted toward Jordan, he didn’t take his eyes from Cavanaugh for a minute. The short barrel of the revolver remained firmly pressed to his temple.

  Jordan swallowed hard. “They’ll understand that you did what you did out of love for your daughter.”

  “Do you understand it, Whyte? Do you forgive me?” Both questions were laden with such sarcasm that it was all Jordan could do not to lunge.

  “That’s asking a lot,” he answered tightly.

  “Perhaps,” Ryan agreed, then his voice hardened. “Put it down, Cavanaugh. Put it down now or I’ll shoot. Do you want your friends here to see my blood all over the place? Do you think the memory of that will give them sweet dreams for years to come? Do you want my death on your head?”

  “Your death will be on no one’s head but your own.”

  “Moot point. Mine will be blown apart.”

  “You won’t do it,” Cavanaugh repeated, praying he was right, but Ryan was proving to be a complex man.

  “Want to try me?”

  Cavanaugh didn’t. He’d been half hoping Ryan would have remained at his desk, where a sharpshooter would have had a chance through the window—if it came to that. But, shrewdly, Ryan had moved. He was cornered, but protected. And he refused to look away, even for a minute. Another shrewd move. Cavanaugh would have disabled him himself given the briefest lapse of attention.

  Realizing that his only hope was in hurtling toward Ryan if the man aimed at either Jordan or Katia, Cavanaugh started to return his gun to its holster.

  “Uh-uh,” Ryan prompted. “Over here on the desk.”

  Cavanaugh put it on the corner farthest from Ryan.

  “Closer. Slide it over.”

  “I can’t. There’s too much crap on your desk.”

  Ryan was undaunted. One fat forefinger pointed to where his feet were flattened on the floor. “Toss it here.” A second fat forefinger tightened on the trigger in warning that if the toss were anything but gentle and to his feet he would shoot himself.

  Cavanaugh tossed the gun, then stepped back, away from Jordan and Katia. But Ryan saw through that move as well. The same finger that had pointed to the floor now wagged toward Jordan and Katia.

  “With them. Over there.” When Cavanaugh hesitated he put pressure on the trigger. Cavanaugh moved, but only a few feet.

  “This isn’t necessary, John. A judge will be sympathetic. It’s not like you have a record.”

  “Don’t be patronizing. There isn’t much sympathy for murder.”

  “Why did you do it?” Katia asked, very much on impulse. “Your daughter knew what she was doing when she went to bed with Mark—”

  “She did not! She was conned by him. She was conned by that whole crowd. I don’t like cheap thrill seekers. I don’t like users.”

  “Listen to me, John,” Cavanaugh said quickly. He didn’t want Katia talking. He didn’t want her in the room. But there wasn’t time to berate himself for his stupidity in allowing her to come. “This is absurd. Why don’t you let these two leave? You and I can talk in private.”

  “I wanted that before but you wouldn’t have it. Now it’s a little too late. I want them to stay.”

  “They don’t need to be here.”

  “I like having them here.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  Ryan pushed his lips out as he thought about that for a minute, then answered flippantly, “I’m not really sure.”

  Cavanaugh half believed him, which was why talking seemed the smartest thing to do. If he could wear Ryan down, get him to crumble, even for a minute … “You don’t have many choices. It’s between shooting or leaving.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “You shouldn’t have brought out the gun. You could have surrendered quietly.”

  “But I did bring out the gun.”

  “You could still put it away and leave peacefully.”

  “Leave? Are you kidding? There are probably a dozen guys with their own guns in the squad room right about now.”

  “They won’t shoot.”

  “You’re right. They’d rather see me suffer. They don’t like me. They’ve always been jealous.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “You can’t sit here forever with a gun pointed to your head.”

  “I can d
o whatever I want. I’m the one with the gun.”

  Jordan decided to give it another try. “Think of your daughter, Ryan. Is this what she would have wanted?”

  “She sure as hell wouldn’t have wanted to see me in prison. Try again.”

  He did, this time wearily. “Turn over the gun. None of us wants you hurt.”

  “There’s hurt and there’s hurt. You’d be more than happy to see me locked up for life, yet you don’t want me to kill myself. It’s ironic when you think of it.” He laughed, but it was an ugly sound. “You won’t budge, none of you, because you don’t want to see a man die before your eyes. You don’t want to see me die—me, who was responsible for two deaths. What’s a life worth, anyway? Just a breathing body. Easily replaced by another sucker.”

  He rocked back in his chair, but the gun remained at his head. “I should have been named commissioner. You know that? I had the experience. I should have been named commissioner. But no. The mayor brought someone in from Baltimore. You wouldn’t have stood for anyone doing that to you, would you, Whyte?”

  Jordan simply said, “Put the gun down.”

  “What? When I’m beginning to enjoy myself? There are guys all over the squad room right now. There are more at the other end of Cavanaugh’s little microphone. And then there’s Holstrom, sitting in his office, waiting for my move. I don’t think I’ve had this much attention since I nabbed the dwarf who was plotting to kill the Pope when he was here.”

  Jordan was sickened, but he forced himself to talk. “If it’s attention you want, think how much more you’ll get when you walk out there. The press will be all over the place. They’ll take your picture, trip over each other to ask you questions. You’ll be a celebrity. I know. I’ve been there.”

  “You’ve been everywhere,” Ryan drawled disdainfully. “It’s always you first and everyone else second. Now, if I were to kill myself, that would be something you’ve never done.”

  Jordan said nothing. He darted a glance at Cavanaugh, who seemed as frustrated as he. Meanwhile, Katia was standing behind Jordan’s shoulder, fed up with the whole scene. She wanted to be celebrating with Jordan and the rest of the family in Dover. She wanted to be making up for all the smiling and laughing she had missed in the past weeks. She wanted to be able to hug her husband, knowing for the first time that their future was free.