by Kylie Brant
“I suppose I have the same interest in him that the CPD is beginning to show.” The stillness that came over Mannen’s features was fiercely satisfying. “See, they know about the connection he has to Delgado. And that connection leads right to you, too. You realize that, don’t you?”
Having accomplished what he came for, Dare stood. Pulling out his wallet, he extracted a business card, dropped it on Mannen’s desk. “When Rollins gets back, have him call me. After he’s done with the police, of course.” His smile was hard. “I never pass up a chance at an exclusive.”
Being a cautious man, Victor waited until the front desk had called to affirm McKay was out of the building before speaking again. “You may come out, Peter.”
An adjoining door opened, and the huge man who’d served him faithfully, if somewhat unimaginatively, for the past nine years, stepped out. There was a look of worry on his usually impassive face. “You think there’s anything to what McKay said, sir?”
He hadn’t hired the man for his brains, but his dullness could be trying at times. “Of course there is.” His voice was patient, as if addressing a small child. “I’m very certain that you can expect a visit from the police shortly. Come.” He waved the man to a seat. “I can hold them off with tales of your travels on my behalf until we’ve finished with our current business.”
The other man set himself down gingerly on the chair. One hand went to his neckline, as if it had suddenly grown too tight. “Do you think this calls for a change of plans?”
Mannen cocked his head, as if considering the possibility. “That wouldn’t be prudent. We’ve already set them in motion, after all. But perhaps it would be best if you went on a vacation when we finish. The French Riviera is exquisite at any time of year, with enough gambling to keep even a man of your appetites happy. All expenses paid, of course.”
The advantage of employing the terminally dull, Mannen thought, was the certainty that man wouldn’t suspect he would never return to Chicago. Or, for that matter, be given long to enjoy his vacation. “Let’s focus on the matter at hand. Is everything in place for phase two of my plan?”
“Yessir. It’s set for tonight, just like you ordered.”
“And you remember the points you’re to follow?” It was tedious, really, to have to deal with these mental plodders, but he’d always thought a brighter, more ambitious associate could pose another sort of threat. He listened with a long-suffering air while Peter ponderously listed the points in their strategy. When he’d finished, Mannen praised him like a well-performing pet. “Excellent. Now if all goes well, we’ll have this whole nasty mess behind us by tomorrow.”
Dismissing his employee, he went behind his desk, pressed a spot on an almost invisible seam in the wall, and a safe swung open. From it he extricated a gun and an extra cartridge. He hadn’t taken the risk of becoming personally involved for many years now. It was safer that way, if less fulfilling.
He snapped the cartridge into place, enjoying the weight of the gun in his palm. It was a beautiful piece—a German-made Lugar Special with a hand-crafted silencer. He wasn’t totally displeased that the plan called for his personal supervision. There were loose ends to be taken care of. And the best thing to do with loose ends—he hefted the piece, took imaginary aim—was to snip them off. One thread at a time.
Dare figured Addie had had enough time to deal with Delgado and Beardmore so he called her as he was leaving Mannen’s office. It was a letdown to hear Song explain that she’d left the building on a personal matter.
“What kind of personal matter?”
The woman hesitated, and his voice went persuasive. “Now, Song, if you don’t tell me, you know I’m just gonna have to come on in there and wait for her. You don’t want to be tripping over me for the next few hours, do you?”
“Actually, Mr. McKay,” the woman lowered her voice conspiratorially. “It was her mother’s hospital calling. I think there was some kind of emergency.”
His previous good mood suddenly evaporated. “What’s the name of the hospital?”
“St. Anne’s. It’s on the corner of Fifth and West, across from the park.”
Dare made it to the hospital in record time, but he still figured his arrival had to have been a good forty-five minutes behind Addie’s. He stopped by the front desk, where a plain-faced nun was writing up some charts. “I’m looking for Addie Jacobs.”
The woman looked up. “Addie?” Then she smiled. “You must mean A.J. Yes, she’s here, but I’m afraid she’s busy with her mother at the moment.”
“What room are they in?”
Her face closed. “I’m afraid I can’t divulge that information. But if you’d like to wait in the visitors’ area right around the corner, I’ll be sure and let her know you’re here.”
Dare nodded, smiled. “I’ll do that.” He dawdled until the phone rang, and when she went to answer it he checked the chart on the woman’s desk. By the time she’d turned around he was already out of sight.
It wasn’t difficult to figure out which room he was heading for. The keening sounds coming from room 118 mingled with low, comforting tones that he immediately recognized. Pausing in the doorway, he took in the scene, felt it grab him hard in the chest.
An older woman with hair a shade lighter than Addie’s was rocking back and forth in a wooden rocker, clutching a doll to her chest. Addie was kneeling in front of her, her quiet voice having little effect on the woman’s mournful wails.
He was sure he made no sound. Certainly the other woman seemed unaware of his presence. But Addie looked up and for a moment he thought, he hoped, he saw relief.
The next instant her face went expressionless, and he knew if he gave her the opportunity, she’d throw up her damnable defenses, effectively locking him out.
He didn’t intend to let that happen. “I called your office. Song said you were here.”
She rose from her position on the floor. “You didn’t need to come. Mama just had an upset.” It was easier, she thought, than to say setback. Easier and oh, so much more optimistic.
“Is she all right?”
She forced a brisk tone. “She’ll be fine. She’s had a sedative, and she’ll sleep soon.” As if to deny her words, the woman grasped her hand, clung tightly.
“It was Rich, A.J., come back for me.”
“No, Mama.” It was harder, far harder than it should have been to keep the bleakness out of her tone. “You’re imagining things.”
“He had his gun. Remember? He had his gun and was going to shoot us both.” Her face crumpled and she wrapped both arms around her middle. “Make him stop, A.J. Make him go away.”
The past slapped her with a malevolent force. This time she was aware of the quaver in her voice. “He’s gone, Mama. I took care of it, remember? He can’t hurt you again.”
“He’s gone.” Her mother repeated the words in singsong, in rhythm to her rocking. “He’s gone. A.J. made him go away. And he never can come back, can he?” Her eyes filled with tears, and her tone turned wistful. “You made him go away and never come back. He’ll be better next time. He loves us, I know he does.”
Dare watched the scene narrowly, noting Addie’s reaction. She jerked a little. Then, in a familiar move, she straightened her shoulders. “You should try and sleep now.” He could almost believe the even tone, devoid of anything but concern, if he hadn’t seen her eyes.
He recognized the look he saw in them, was certain he’d worn it himself when he’d stood by his father’s hospital bed and railed at the randomness of fate. And he wondered what had happened to put that load of guilt on Addie.
A nurse appeared in the doorway in response to the lit button Addie had pushed. “Would you help her to bed, please?” The nurse hustled to comply, and Addie bent, kissed her mother on the forehead. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Mama.”
“And Rich will come, too.” The hopeful tone in her mother’s voice had fangs and stabbed deep. A.J. walked swiftly from the room, holding tenuously to
control.
Dare followed her out, put his hands on her too-stiff shoulders, drew her to rest against his chest. She was rigid for a moment before the fight streamed out of her and she allowed herself to lean against him. For just a moment. It really wasn’t that difficult, she discovered, to lean on a strong shoulder if she tried hard enough.
“It never changes,” she murmured. His arms closed around her, and she leaned even more heavily on him. “My father drank. Beat all of us. Threatened to kill her more than once. Came damn close a time or two.” A bitter laugh escaped her. “And still she calls for him. Still she has some sick need for a man who was never any kind of husband, any kind of father.”
He tucked his chin on top of her head, tightened his arms and wished he could vanquish the past. “It sounded like she was having some kind of flashback.”
Exhaustion washed through her, a bone-deep weariness that had more to do with the soul than with the physical. “That last night, he threatened us with a gun. Actually shot her, grazed her in the arm. I don’t know if he meant to or not, but I honestly thought he’d kill us all. That was the night I made her leave for good.”
She closed her eyes against the memories she was too weak to fight off. “Even then I had to bribe her, to keep her from going back. I told her that the only way I wasn’t going to turn him in to the police was if she promised to move away from him for good this time. That’s the only reason she left. To protect him.” She gave a bitter laugh. “She agreed, so I took her to the hospital one more time. Lied to the doctors and the social workers one more time. Because I thought it would be over then, you see. I thought at last it would be over. I was fifteen. I still believed in, if not happy endings, at least peace.”
Her gaze was sightless, blind to the nurse leaving her mother’s room and discreetly slipping away. “But it wasn’t over. Because she never stopped loving him. Never stopped needing him in some perverted way. He stole her sanity. Most of the time I really believe that. But then there are times,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “when I think maybe I’m the one at fault. Because I took her away from the thing she needed the most. He was her lifeline, and I removed it. And no matter how much I tried, I could never take his place.”
Comprehension swept through Dare in a brutal wash, and he brushed her hair with his lips. He thought he understood her now, far better than she would have liked, and the knowledge was bittersweet. It was all too easy to see where her distrust had sprung from. “You probably saved her life, baby. And that wasn’t love your mother felt. At least not a healthy kind. Love doesn’t have to be like that.”
“I wish I could believe that,” she whispered, her voice so soft he could barely make out the words. But he did hear them, and they clawed a hollow furrow deep in his chest. Because God only knew, he wished she could believe it, too.
Chapter 14
The call came as they were walking through the hospital doors. A.J. reached for her cell phone to answer. As she listened to the person on the other end of the line, her movements slowed, until she finally halted. “How long ago?” The words were terse, forced out a throat that had suddenly clenched. “Where?” She was aware that Dare was watching her, his expression alert. “You tell him I’m going to want some answers before he goes home tonight. We’re on our way.”
She flipped the phone closed, the action imbued with frustration. “That was Connally.” Her gaze met Dare’s, held. “He wants to meet us at the police morgue.” She forced the next words out, wishing futilely that there had been some mistake. “Delgado’s dead.”
Dare swore quietly, with a great deal of inventiveness. “How?”
“If the medical examiner sticks around like I ordered, we may be able to get the answers to that question very shortly.” With grim purpose in her voice, in her step, she headed outside. “This is just too damn coincidental, isn’t it? The day after he fires Paquin? Just when he decided to flip on Mannen?”
His tone matched hers. “I have the feeling we’re going to find that coincidence had nothing to do with it.”
From her first look at Gabe’s face, A.J. knew she wasn’t going to like the news he had for them.
“The medical examiner, Doug Trump, is in there working on the body now.” He jerked his head toward the door. “I gave him your message, but he was none too happy about sliding Delgado to the top of his priority list.”
“Well, I’m not particularly happy, either, so that makes two of us.” She looked at the door. “How long’s he been working on him? Does he have any ideas yet?”
“It’s been a little over an hour, and if Connally hadn’t ticked him off and gotten us thrown out of there, we might have had a little more information by now.”
Gabe threw his partner a dark look. “Doug was being touchy. I just made a few suggestions.”
Madison rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like how to do his job.”
“What do we know? When did this happen?” she asked.
“Midafternoon. The security camera showed a commotion in Delgado’s cell. The jailer went in there, and Delgado was lying on the floor. He called for backup before going in, and they couldn’t find a pulse. Medics tried to bring him to, but he was already gone.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Just like that?” Then her eyes narrowed. “Has anyone checked the food to see if it had been tampered with?”
Gabe nodded. “We’ve got a technician on it. But I’m afraid there’s a chance this is due to plain bad luck. Delgado had a heart condition he was being treated for.”
“So you’re telling me it’s possible he died of a heart attack?” She couldn’t believe her cosmic bad luck.
“Hard to believe he had a heart,” Dare muttered.
Rubbing her brow, she considered the news. Delgado had given verbal agreement to his attorney, instructing him to retrieve supposed evidence to turn over to her. Evidentiary rules plainly indicated grounds for her to utilize that evidence as she saw fit. But there was no doubt that by losing Delgado as a witness against Mannen, they’d lost a valuable piece of any case they would build against the man.
Her gaze flicked to Gabe. “At least it’s over for Meghan. She won’t have to go through the trial.”
He nodded. “She’ll probably be relieved. Me, though…” His eyes hardened. “I would have just as soon seen him live out his days in maximum security.”
A.J. seconded that emotion. She couldn’t help feeling that, by his death, Delgado had somehow escaped justice.
Her thoughts were interrupted when the morgue door opened. A tall dark-haired man with deep-set eyes approached. “Assistant State Attorney Jacobs? I’m Doug Trump, medical examiner. I understand this corpse is one of yours.”
“I’m working the case, yes.”
“Get to it, already, will you, Trump?”
The coroner made a point of ignoring Gabe. “You know your guy had heart problems, right?”
“So I’ve heard.”
Doug went on. “The organ shows signs of older, moderate damage, but nothing that would suggest any massive infarction that would have killed him.”
“So you’re saying he didn’t die of a heart attack?” Dare said. “Can you say with any certainty at this point what he did die of?”
The man stalled. “It will be a day or so before I can be sure. I need to run several more tests, and the technicians have left for the day already. But I did do a preliminary screen on the blood and found something disturbing. His records indicate he was being treated with digitalis. He had three times the normal level in his blood.”
There was a moment of silence. “What’s that mean?”
A.J. asked.
“You’re saying that it wasn’t a heart attack that killed him,” Dare said slowly. “He OD’d on the medication.”
“Which means someone got to him,” Connally put in bitterly. “And I think we can all guess who.”
She still couldn’t quite believe it. “Could there be some other explanation? A blood disease, or…” Her
imagination failed her. “Something else?”
Trump rubbed the back of his neck. “At this point I wouldn’t rule out other possibilities.” He paused for just a moment. “But I’d suggest you get your hands on the medication that was being given to him and have some tests run on it. Because right now I’m leaning toward overdose as cause of death.”
A.J. was barely aware of the medical examiner’s departure. She slumped against the wall, still reeling from the ramifications. “How is this even possible?” she demanded of the detectives. “Is Mannen’s reach so long he even has contacts in the jail?”
“He was able to pierce a protective custody arrangement for the witnesses who were going to testify against him six years ago,” Gabe reminded her grimly. “If he has contacts in the U.S. Marshal’s Department, it’s not too hard to believe he’s got someone in the jail, too. C’mon, Cal.” He was already striding away. “We’ll seize the medication and then start listing everyone who would have had access to it.”
Dare and A.J. trailed the detectives out of the morgue and up the stairs. She rubbed her forehead tiredly. She didn’t even want to guess Beardmore’s reaction when he heard that the high-profile trial he was counting on to give him a political boost was never going to transpire.
Slipping his arm around her waist, Dare said, “It’s been a long day. Why don’t we grab dinner and relax for a while?”
Considering his suggestion wistfully, she said, “I’m going to have to let Dennis know about this.”
“He’ll go ballistic.”
“Definitely.”
“All the more reason to put the conversation off until tomorrow.” Dare’s voice was coaxing and much too persuasive.
“I can call him from the restaurant,” she decided. She’d wait until after they’d eaten. Something told her that the upcoming conversation would kill any appetite she might have.
By the time they reached her home there was a dull throb in A.J.’s temples. Any pleasure she’d taken in the meal she’d shared with Dare had been marred by Beardmore’s reaction. Not surprisingly, he’d been more concerned about the loss of the exposure the trial would have afforded his campaign than by the murder itself.
