by Liliana Hart
I didn’t bother to try and move past him. He’d let me go whenever he was ready. Malachi had a way of showing up when he wanted something. I doubted I’d have ever seen him again if we hadn’t taken a few of his precious flash drives.
“I know,” he said, his smile never wavering. He had a charm about him, my dad, that could almost make you forget he was a murderer at worst, a traitor at best. “But I wanted to see you now that you’re a married woman. I wished I could’ve walked you down the aisle.”
“There would’ve been cops falling all over themselves to arrest you,” I said. “It would’ve taken the attention off me a bit.”
He laughed like we were talking about something as simple as the weather. “I’m proud of you and Jack, I hope you know that. I always thought the two of you would be good for each other. That maybe you could heal each other.”
“Don’t…” I said, shaking my head. I felt the tears prick at the corner of my eyes, but I was determined to hold them back. The fact that he’d known how much healing I had to do spoke volumes. My parents had been selfish bastards, and I’d been a convenient side-effect of their cover.
“Everything is not as it seems, Jaye. Your mother and I, we weren’t the best parents, but that didn’t mean we didn’t love you. But we had obligations that had to be finished long before you came into the picture. If we’d stopped what we were doing, you wouldn’t be alive to have that newlywed glow about you. In fact, a lot of people would be dead.”
“People are already dead,” I said. “Who’s to say who should still be alive? It’s not like I can trust that you’re on the side of the good guys.”
He sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets, jingling the change there. He used to do that when he was thinking of the right thing to say. Only now I knew he was trying to think of the right lie.
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “That’s naivety talking. Ask Jack about the many sides of right and wrong and all the shades of gray in the middle.”
“I don’t have to,” I said, tilting my chin up with pride. “Jack stands on the side of what’s right. Always.”
“Maybe now, but ask him where the lines started to blur back when he was working on the fringe. Things get a little more complicated when you’re wading your way through blood and money.”
“Jack’s a good man. Nothing you say will ever convince me otherwise.”
Malachi nodded. “He is a good man. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner for my daughter or father for my future grandchildren. I wanted to see you and tell you congratulations. It was a beautiful wedding.”
I didn’t bother to ask how he knew that. It was obvious he’d been there in some capacity. It would have been even more thrilling to a man like Malachi to slip between the cracks with cops and FBI agents in the room. He was probably laughing all the way to the buffet table.
“You were here yesterday?” I asked. “When Jack and I came?”
He smiled and continued to jingle the change in his pocket. “I like places like this. It feels like having a home again, even if it’s temporary. It’s a good spot to keep up with what’s going on in Bloody Mary. It’s always refreshing to see that some things never change.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Sex, for one thing. This whole street is an episode of Desperate Housewives. Let me just say that this house gets a lot of activity for being vacant. That man across the street and the lady next door do things that you can only find on the internet. The realtor lady next door uses it as her personal boudoir and has entertained quite a few ‘clients’. And her husband brings the cute little blonde from down the street here on her lunch hour since her husband sleeps during the day.”
“What man across the street?” I asked. “How long have you been staying here?”
He shrugged. “Off and on for a while. It’s a good house. It’s furnished. And it has a crawl space in the attic that’s easy to get to when people drop in unexpectedly. Which happens more often than you think.”
“Who else?” I asked.
“Uh uh uh,” he said. “My turn. You give some and you set some. That’s how these things work.”
“Oh, right,” I said, smacking myself on the forehead. “For a second there I was under the illusion that you were just a father talking to his daughter.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Jaye.”
“Sure it does,” I said. “Ask anyone.”
“Where are the missing flash drives?” he asked. “The ones from the boxes I had in the bunker.”
“You mean the boxes you stole out of our safe?”
“They’re my boxes. Technically, you stole them from me.”
“Considering you’re wanted by the FBI for a thousand heinous crimes, you don’t really have claim to personal property anymore.”
“You’re not a child anymore, Jaye. It’s time to grow up. Your mother and I were caught in the middle of a game that was bigger than just two people.”
“That’s what happens when you sell secrets to other countries,” I explained patiently. “The people who originally hired you get mad and want to put you in prison.”
“That’s not what happened, and I can prove it. Those boxes are my salvation. They’re your mother’s salvation. We were soldiers. Just like so many others. We followed orders. And sometimes we were in so deep it was easy to forget we were the good guys. It was easy to forget what country we were fighting for. Governments are all the same. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that one is better than the other. In the end, they’ll all sacrifice you to save themselves.”
Bitterness and anger shone briefly in his eyes before his face cleared of all expression. I could see the pulse pounding in the side of his neck. He wasn’t as cool and collected as he wanted me to think.
“The things that are on those flash drives will put a lot of people in prison. Maybe I go down with them,” he said, shrugging. “Who knows? But sometimes a house needs to be cleaned, and the best way to do that is to start at the top.”
“I don’t have them,” I said. There was part of me that believed him. The other part of my brain was telling me how stupid I was for believing him.
His eyes narrowed. “You turned them over to someone,” he said. “Someone with more tech skills than anyone in King George County. Son of a bitch,” he said, turning and walking out of the room.
I was so surprised by his departure that I followed him. He was pacing back and forth across the floor, muttering to himself.
“Okay,” he said. And then he took a deep breath and said, “Okay,” again. “Logically, Jack would’ve turned to someone at the FBI. He’s got friends there. But he also would want to keep it quiet. I’ve got tabs on the FBI database, and my name hasn’t been flagged. Whoever’s got them hasn’t been able to crack my codes. I’m a hell of a lot better than any desk jockey they’ve got at the bureau nowadays.”
I was pretty sure Ben Carver wouldn’t be pleased to hear that.
“You’ve got to get them back for me, Jaye.”
“What? No,” I said, a little more forcefully that I’d planned. “I’m not helping you. You’re a wanted man. A criminal. Helping you would make me a criminal too. I’m married to a cop. A cop who’s running for re-election. Are you trying to screw up my life? Again?”
“Of course not,” he said. “But this is bigger than us. I need help.”
“There is no us,” I said, shaking my head. “Just stop right there. I’m not helping you. In fact, I’m going to call Jack right now and let him know you’re here. I’ve read the proof with my own eyes of the things you’ve done.”
“You’re read but a fraction of the story,” he hissed. “You know nothing. I raised you better than this. To look at all the facts. To see things from every angle.”
“You didn’t raise me at all,” I yelled, finally having enough. The tears had finally escaped, but I was too angry to care. “You tried raising another version of you. Someone who doesn’t give a damn about anyone but the
mselves. Someone who circumvents channels when things don’t go their way. Someone who cheats to get the outcome they want. Someone who will lie and steal and kill for ego and money. For the game.”
“You think those lessons haven’t served you well over the years?” he asked, his smile razor thin. “Tell me again how that cancer patient died when you were working at the hospital.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Maybe you’re more my daughter than you want to give yourself credit for.” He looked down at his watch. “Unfortunately, I have to go. Unless you’ve changed your mind about the flash drives.”
I shook my head.
“Hardheaded,” he said, as if I were the one in the wrong. “You know I’ll get them eventually. With you or without you.”
“It’ll be without me,” I said. “Let me make myself clear about that.”
“In that case, we’re going to have to part ways.”
He took a step closer as if her were going to embrace me, and I froze. When was the last time he’d hugged me?
“It really was a beautiful wedding,” he said, and then he used the side of his hand to chop at the pressure point at the side of my neck, and I was down for the count.
Chapter Eleven
I felt the wooly texture of the rug beneath my face before I had the courage to try and open my eyes. When I did open them, the room spun as things came back into focus, so I closed them again.
I took in several deep breaths and waited for my stomach to settle before trying to focus. I had no idea how long I’d been out. It could’ve been seconds or hours. But either way, I had one hell of a headache.
I rolled onto my hands and knees and saw my phone a few feet away. I crawled toward it and checked the time, relieved to see it wasn’t yet nine. I had twenty minutes to make the briefing at the station. If I was lucky, I’d keep my coffee down the whole way there. I needed to tell Jack what had happened, and I needed to tell him fast, before Malachi had a chance to go underground for good.
I left through the back door, not caring if anyone saw me leaving, and wobbled my way back toward the front of the house. Nothing had changed. Everyone was still going about the business. And there was still a killer on the loose.
The memory of Mrs. McGowen’s murder made me want to kick myself. I’d taken one look at Malachi Graves and completely lost my senses. Why hadn’t I asked him about Mrs. McGowen? Was it because I was afraid maybe he was the killer? There was certainly more than a chance he could be. And now that I knew he’d been living in the house, he’d have to be as high up on the person of interest list as Harrison Taylor.
I didn’t notice the van parked in the driveway of Mrs. McGowen’s house until I was almost back to the Suburban. I had to get a hold of myself. At what age would I stop letting my father rattle my cage?
The van was white and non-descript, but the side door was open and I could see a mountain of equipment and cleaning supplies.
“The sheriff gave me the all-clear,” a soft, lilting voice said from behind me. It was about the most non-threatening voice I’d ever heard, but still, I jumped.
“Oh, Aoife,” I said, putting a hand to my heart. “You snuck up on me.”
Her look of confusion was understandable. She was standing plain as day in the middle of the driveway with a vacuum pack strapped to her back and a mop bucket in her hand.
Aoife Donovan, pronounced EE-fa, did crime-scene cleanup for the county. She barely came up to my shoulders and had a nice, soft look about her. Everything about her was soft. Her hair was a soft red. Her cheeks and body were softly rounded. She wasn’t overweight, but she looked like the kind of woman who could give a comfortable hug. She had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and eyes the color of Irish moss. Her looks were the only soft thing about her. She didn’t take crap from anybody. A high-profile divorce that left her pretty much destitute had toughened her up real fast.
She was dressed in a hazmat suit and had an oxygen neck hanging from her neck. Yellow industrial rubber gloves came up to her elbows and rubber fishing boots came up to her knees. She was dressed how I wish I’d been dressed the first time I’d gone into the house. Someone must’ve warned her. My guess was Jack. He had a soft spot for women who worked their tails off while trying to raise kids by themselves.
Aoife was a Bloody Mary transplant. She’d moved here from King George just after Christmas. She had a six-year-old son, a distrust of men, and a whole lot of gumption. She was about ten years older than me, and I adored her.
Jack’s secretary, Betsey Clement, had decided to retire earlier than expected, so Jack had opened up the job search to replace her. In had walked Aoife, her son in tow because she couldn’t afford to put him in daycare, and Jack had decided on the spot that whether or not she was the worst secretary on the face of the planet, she was going to be his.
Unfortunately, Betsey Clement was having a harder time retiring than she’d thought, which left Jack without a new secretary who wasn’t a hundred years old, and Aoife without a job. And she’d really needed a job.
But she hadn’t let the news get her down. She and Jack had put their heads together and made a list of all of Aoife’s job skills. Since she’d been a housewife for the twelve years she’d been married, her talents mostly lent themselves to cookie baking and house cleaning. Which was when Jack came up with the idea of having an official crime scene clean up company. After Jack had gotten done spinning the position to the council and the community, you’d have thought it was the most needed position in the state.
Aoife said after changing diapers and being thrown up on, cleaning up crime scenes was kind of anti-climactic. It was statements like that one that made me glad I was still taking Lenny Kowalski’s birth control pills. Kids were kind of gross.
“It’s a mess in there,” I said for lack of anything better.
She nodded soberly. “Reminds me of my granny’s house. You couldn’t swing a dick without hitting a cat. Half the time, I wasn’t even sure if she knew what she was putting in the oven. Cats everywhere.”
I was still caught on the swinging dick comment, so I didn’t have a lot to offer as far as replies went.
“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “Good luck.”
“As long as my check doesn’t bounce I’ll clean anything,” she said. “This neighborhood is creepy as hell. It’s like someone is always watching.” Her eyes darted back and forth and I found myself looking up and down the street. It was creepy.
“Just for the record, I don’t believe one word of what Madam Scandal wrote in her column.”
“Thank you,” I said, startled. “Honestly, I’ve forgotten all about it with the murder. Maybe everyone else has too.”
“Doubtful,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But maybe you and Jack should stay out of the back seats of vehicles.”
My lips twitched. “Probably good advice.”
“Not that I blame you. My ex used to have that kind of sex appeal. When we were first married, it was hard to keep my clothes on at all. It got easier though after most of the tri-state area became familiar with the birthmark shaped like Florida on his genitals.”
I nodded in sympathy. Aoifa’s husband had gotten caught with his pants down, literally, and had ended up being the focus of several unfortunate social media memes. I hated to tell her, but it was a heck of a lot more than the tri-state area that knew Paul Donovan’s penis had paid homage to the sunshine state.
“Well, I’ve got to get to it,” she said. “Those blood stains aren’t going to clean themselves.”
I waved goodbye and got in the Suburban, and then I drove the four blocks to the Town Square. The city complex was right in the middle of the square. The courthouse was on the left, the sheriff’s office and jail in the middle, and the fire department was on the right. Parking was a nightmare no matter which building you were headed to.
I parked the Suburban in one of the spots reserved for city employees with a whole ten mi
nutes left before the briefing started. I took a second to look in the rearview mirror and then quickly wished I hadn’t. I looked like hell. My face was still pale and there were dark circles under my eyes. I could practically see the headache radiating across my skull. Jack was going to take one look at me and know something was terribly wrong.
I got out of the Suburban and locked the door before heading into the sheriff’s office. From the outside, the city complex building looked beautiful. The architecture was Tudor, and it was a big white elephant of a building. In fact, the entire Town Square was Tudor, so it looked like a little English village. Which made sense, considering the names of the towns that made up King George County.
Where the outside was a white elephant, the inside was pure seventies revival. At least in the sheriff’s office. I walked through the double glass doors into the entry area. It was a small operation, so there was a place to process those who’d been arrested in an area on the right, and on the left was where visitors could check in. One uniformed officer manned both desks. There was a Plexiglass partition and a locked door that separated the officers from the civilians.
“Hey, Riley,” I said to the officer behind the desk. There was a young man in his early twenties handcuffed to the chair by the wall. He looked like he’d been greased from head to toe, and someone had worked him over pretty good. “Busy morning?”
“Not for me, Doc. But Lewis and Cole got called over to the Waffle Hut bright and early. It seems our friend and one of the waitresses have been having a Waffle Hut romance in the store room when it’s not busy. Only this time the storeroom door didn’t latch all the way and several angry customers came back to the kitchen to see what was taking their food so long. There was a scuffle, seeing how all those people weren’t too keen on Billy here finishing up their breakfast.”
“Understandable,” I said. “Do I want to know why he looks like he just came through the birth canal?”
Riley chuckled. “Probably not, but I’ll tell you anyway. It seems Crisco is Billy’s lube of choice. The unfortunate part is that when Lewis and Cole arrived, Billy decided it was a good idea to run, but he was still mostly naked and a lot lubed up. That stuff doesn’t just come off. So when Cole tackled him to the ground, it was more like wrestling a greased pig. Cole’s been in the shower for twenty minutes. There’s a pool going around to see if he’s going to quit. Want in on it?”
