The Sinner

by J. R. Ward

  Butch shook his head and went back over to the Pit’s sofa. Sitting his ass down, he went to take a drink from his glass of Lag and was surprised to find the thing empty. Instead of refilling it, he put the sturdy cylinder of crystal on the coffee table.

  “So I met an old friend tonight.”

  V leaned out around the forest of his monitors, one black slash of an eyebrow lifting, his diamond eyes sparkling. “What’s her name.”

  “I didn’t say it was a woman.”

  “You don’t have to. That guilty tone is a driver’s license with a picture.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  Butch shot up to his feet and went to the door to the outside. Then he turned around and walked back to the rack. And back to the sofa.

  Fucking sunlight.

  “Look, cop,” V said as he pushed away from his keyboards. “I was just pulling your leg. You would castrate yourself before being with another female. But what’s the deal?”

  “She was a friend of Janie’s.”

  “Jesus…” V crossed his arms over his chest and kicked out thick-socked feet, using one of his subwoofers as an ottoman. “Why didn’t you say?”

  “I’m talking about it now, aren’t I.”

  V nodded down the hall. “You tell Marissa?”

  “No, but it’s not a thing.” When Vishous just stared across the sitting area, Butch wanted to throw something. Like maybe the Foosball table. “I’m serious. It isn’t.”

  “Sure it’s not. Absolutely not. You wanna talk about the weather? What Fritz is serving for First Meal, maybe?”

  Butch put his hands up to his hair and grabbed onto the shit. “Her name was Mel. I haven’t seen her for like… I mean, twenty years? Maybe longer.” He pictured the bustier he’d helped remove. “She turned out different than I thought she would. She and Janie were supposed to be married by now, like my sister Joyce. Couple kids. Husband who works at a job that pays enough so they can stay home.”

  “So what happened to her?”

  “Not any of that. Not by a long shot—she, ah, yeah, she moved to Caldwell. She used to be a model down in NYC. She collects clothes, just like I do.”

  “Used to be a model and moved out of Manhattan? She’s an escort—”

  “I didn’t fucking say that,” Butch snapped.

  “Don’t have to.”

  Butch rubbed his eyes and reflected that his roommate’s penchant for piercing insight was really fucking annoying sometimes.

  “Did she ask you if you wanted to pay her something?” V said. “And did you say no, but even as your mouth formed the answer, your brain went in a different, more naked direction? One that, even though you would never, ever pursue it in real life, made you feel bad for the mere thought?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I have that solace at least. She took a bath in front of me, as a matter of fact. As beautiful as she was, I didn’t feel a thing below the waist, and that’s the God’s honest.”

  “Well. Look at you being all choirboy and shit. I’m honestly not surprised, true? And listen, you’re referring to her in the past tense. Just thought I’d point that out to your overactive conscience.”

  Butch just shrugged. “I’d first run into her a few nights ago, see. Randomly, downtown. She was on her way to a club, I was coming out of the garage after I parked the R8. And last evening, after you and I talked? She was there on the street when I came out. She’d been… hurt. Bad. By a man.”

  “Shit. Did you send her into the human system?”

  “She refused to go.” Butch picked up his glass and took a sip from the empty, proof positive that addictions were part biochemical, part muscle memory from habit. “I took her to her home. You know, to make sure she got there.”

  As images of all those cuts and bruises played through his mind, he winced. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

  “You’re not sure, at all.”

  As wild, paranoid conclusions jumped around his skull, Butch threw them all out, one by one. Or tried to. “I think I’m just exhausted.”

  “Nah, come on, you look like you’ve been on a tropical vacation for a month. If you glowed from health any more than you do right now, you’d be a fucking night-light.”

  Butch let that dig go.

  “I’m not seeing her again.” He cleared his throat. “I’m just going to forget about her. Besides, she promised she wouldn’t tell Joyce she ran into me. It’s a non-issue.”

  “If it’s a non-issue, why haven’t you told Marissa?”

  Butch stared over at the suits hanging from the racks and wondered exactly why he needed so many variations on the color dark blue in his life. “I’m thinking about giving my wardrobe away.”

  V cursed under his breath. “Did that woman hit you on the head with a brick or something? What the fuck.”

  “I like the clothes, but I’m using them as camouflage.”

  “ ’Cuz you’re hiding what? Other than your meat and two veg.”

  Butch shot his roommate a flat look. “I’m trying to camo the fact that I’m a piece of shit unworthy of the female who shares my bed every night. I put the good threads on my body and hope she doesn’t look any further than the surface of ’em. That’s what I’m doing with them.”

  “You are not.”

  “Yeah, I am. And I didn’t realize it until I was at Mel’s place tonight. She does the exact same thing. Maybe it was something in the water in Southie—you know, from when we were growing up.” Butch shook his head. “I haven’t talked to Marissa about it yet, not because of Mel. But because of me.”

  He rubbed his eyes. The back of his neck. His shoulder.

  “And there was something else,” he heard himself say.

  Stop talking, a voice inside his head countered.

  Abruptly, his roommate sat up straight. “What else, cop.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Well, Josephine. This is a real surprise. Sit down, will you?”

  The breakfast room in her parents’ house was an ancillary of the dining room, a circular offshoot decorated with a garden mural that was cheerful as a spring day. The glass table in the center was set upon a pedestal of white iron curlicues, and there were eight white wicker chairs around its beveled edge. A bank of diamond-paned windows, that overlooked the pool and the actual garden, let so much light in, Jo had to blink.

  The table was set with only one place, the sterling silver fork and knife as yet unlifted from the folded damask napkin, the New York Times and the Washington Post still in their mille-feuille arrangement on the right-hand side. The plate in the center of the sterling silver charger was monogrammed, and there was half of a sectioned ruby grapefruit on it. A soft-boiled egg in a cup was next to where the coffee had been poured.

  “Josephine?”

  She shook herself back to attention and pulled out one of the vacant chairs. As she sat down and put her backpack in her lap, she made sure her knees were together and her ankles crossed under her chair.

  “Would you care to have something to eat?” her father inquired. “I will have Maria prepare whatever you like.”

  Thus far, Jo had not looked at the man, even when he himself had pulled open the great, well-oiled door at the front entrance. His voice had therefore been that of a ghost. Except he was really there.

  “No, thank you. I’m not hungry.”

  “Well.” He pulled his own chair out on the short-napped, green-and-yellow rug that had been custom-made to fit the space. “I must confess, this is a surprise.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I should have called. Where is Mother?”

  “She is away with Constance Franck and Virginia Sterling. They’re on a vacation to Bermuda for a week. Did you know that Virginia and her husband just bought a house there? Your mother was very impatient to check it out. They’ll be back on Sunday. Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

  As if this were a hotel with a restaurant.

  “No. Thank you.�
�

  Jo was unaware of falling quiet, except then her father cleared his throat. “So,” he prompted.

  “I don’t need money,” she said. “I just have to talk to you.”

  “About what? You know, this all seems rather ominous.”

  Taking a deep breath… she looked up.

  Her first thought was that Randolph Chance Early III had aged. The full head of salt-and-pepper gray hair was now far more salt than pepper, and there were new wrinkles around his watery blue eyes. Other than that, the physical impression he made was all as she remembered. The lips were still thin, testimony to the man’s predilection for self-control, order, and the absolute denial of any passion, anywhere, and the clothes were the same, the navy-blue blazer, gray wool slacks, white button-down, and club tie the kind of thing he surely had come out of the womb wearing.

  Her second thought was that her father was less scary than she had always made him out to be. It was amazing how being financially independent made her feel taller than the five-year-old she reverted to every time she set foot in this house. Not that she was rich, by any means. But she was surviving, on her own, and no amount of disinterest or disapproval from him or anyone else could diminish that.

  Unzipping her backpack, she took out the manila folder she’d taken from her kitchen drawer. Opening the front cover, she slid free the black-and-white photograph of Dr. Manuel Manello and placed it on the glass.

  “Do you know this man?” she asked as she spun the image around and pushed it across the smooth surface.

  Her father dabbed his lips even though he hadn’t taken a sip of coffee or a spoonful of grapefruit or any of that egg. Then he leaned in, holding his tie in place though there was nothing for it to brush into.

  On the far side of the flap door that the servants used, subtle sounds of a kitchen in full swing percolated, filling the silence. And as Jo’s anxiety rose, she clung to the soft voices. The chopping. The occasional scrape of metal on metal, a pan dragged across the sixteen-burner stovetop.

  “No, I do not.” Her father looked up. “What’s this about?”

  Jo tried to find a perfect combination of words to explain herself, but realized that there really wasn’t one. Besides, what exactly was she protecting him from?

  Maybe it was more like she was looking for the combination to unlock her past in the syllables she could shift around.

  “He’s supposedly my brother.”

  Chance Early frowned. “That’s impossible. Your mother and I only adopted you.”

  Jo opened her mouth. Closed it. Took a deep breath. “No, he’s supposedly related to me by blood.”

  “Oh.” Her father straightened in his chair. “Well, I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t know anything about that. Your adoption was a closed one. We have no records on the woman who birthed you.”

  “Do you remember the name of the agency you used?”

  “It was through the Catholic Church. The local diocese here. But I am sure it’s been shuttered for years. How do you know he’s a relation?”

  “I have a friend of mine who is a reporter. He worked back from the hospital I’d been born in. Talking to people there, he discovered that my mother had been given a pseudonym, and that someone with that same name had also given birth to this man, who had been adopted. His name is Dr. Manuel Manello.”

  “So you already know the story. Why do you need to question me about it?”

  Jo moved her eyes to the windows. Outside, in the cold, a man in a dark green landscaper’s outfit strode into view with a hoe.

  “I just thought that perhaps you or Mother might recall something.”

  Her father picked up the silver teaspoon by his knife. Digging into the grapefruit, he frowned again as he put a piece in his mouth.

  “I’m afraid the answer is no. And why do you want to look into all this?”

  Jo blinked. “It’s my history.”

  “But it doesn’t matter.”

  She refocused on the gardener. “It does to me.”

  When she went to get up, he said, “You’re leaving?”

  “I think it’s for the best.”

  “Well.” Her father patted his mouth with that napkin. “As you wish. But do you have any message for your mother?”

  “No, I don’t.” At least not her adoptive mother. “Thank you.”

  As she took the photograph back, she had no idea what she was thanking him for. The fact that she had made it to maturity still alive? That was about it.

  Returning the folder to her backpack, she re-zipped things, nodded, and turned away. Walking out through the dining room, she paused in front of the portrait of her mother that hung over the sideboard. Mrs. Philomena “Phillie” Early was beautiful in the Grace Kelly kind of standard, a platinum blonde with cheekbones like a thoroughbred.

  “Jo.”

  She looked over her shoulder. Her father had come to stand in the archway of the breakfast room, his napkin in his hand, his thin fingers worrying the damask.

  “Forgive me. I have always found that I handle this subject badly. One feels a sense of failure that one could not provide one’s wife with a child. I’m sure you understand this.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jo said because she felt like she had to.

  “I can give you the name of our attorney at the time. I don’t believe he is in practice anymore, but he must have known the real name of the woman as he processed the paperwork with the diocese. Even if whatever hospital she was in gave her a pseudonym for the birth, legally, she would have had to use her given name to relinquish parental rights. Perhaps that would help you?”

  “But she died.”

  “Not as far as we were told.”

  Jo recoiled, unsure what story to believe. But then she refocused. “I would like that contact information, please.”

  Her father nodded and walked over. “It will be in my records in the study.”

  Jo followed him out across the polished foyer and into a wood-paneled room that had always reminded her of a jewelry box. Over at the desk, her father leaned down low.

  “You have your own file,” he said.

  As if she were a car and he were keeping her maintenance records so the warranty held up.

  Extracting a thick portfolio tied with a band, he sat down as he dove into the paperwork, and she wondered how it was so voluminous.

  “I saved all of your school reports and test scores,” he said as if he read her mind.

  Why, she wanted to ask. Then again, maybe he thought he might need them if he sought to return her to the hospital she had been born in.

  Watching his spindly fingers pick through the pages he had retained, she reflected on how frail he seemed, his thin body bent, his narrow shoulders hunched. For some reason, his physical weakness made her think about all of the propriety he always insisted upon, and how his protocols had defined her childhood and early adulthood, presented to her as a test of morality or worthiness she had to pass. Funny—now, she saw all of the arbitrary rules as the defense mechanisms of a feeble and conflict-averse man, one who had muddled through life with a remarkable lack of personal distinction for all the historical distinction of his pedigree.

  “Here,” he said. “His name and number.”

  Her father held out a business card and Jo took it. Robert J. Temple, Esq. With a downtown Philadelphia address and an original 215 area code. No firm name listed.

  Putting the stiff little rectangle on the leather blotter, she got her phone out and snapped a photo of it.

  “Thank you,” she said as she handed the thing back.

  “You are welcome.”

  Jo felt as though she had to wait as the business card went back into the portfolio, and the flap was battened down once again with the band. Her father then returned the collection of documents to the lower drawer and got to his feet. As if the business meeting were over.

  “Do give Mother my regards,” Jo said.

  Now, the man smiled. “Oh, I most certainly will. And she will
return them to you, I’m sure.”

  He was pleased because that was an appropriate thing to say and do. Which would provide him with an appropriate thing to communicate to his wife when the subject of the unannounced visit came up.

  “Oh, do you need a ride somewhere?” Chance Early asked. “I didn’t see a car in the drive.”

  “No, I’ll get a Lyft.”

  “From whom? Tom can take you where you need to go.”

  Of course the man had never heard of Lyft or Uber.

  “A taxi, I mean.” She one-strapped her backpack. “I’m just going to wait on the front step after I call for it. I will enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.”

  The relief on her father’s face wasn’t something he bothered to hide. “Very well. It has been lovely to see you again, Josephine. I look forward to our next meeting.”

  He stuck his hand out.

  Jo shook what she was offered, finding his palm bone dry and skeletal. “Thank you. I’ll see myself out so that your breakfast is not unduly interrupted.”

  “That is most considerate.”

  As Jo left the house, she got out her phone again. A number not in her contacts had called and left a message, but she ignored the notification as she went into the Lyft app.

  She was leaning back against the warm stone of the house, her face lifted to the sun, when a Nissan Stanza pulled up. Getting in the back, she declined mints, control over the Sirius radio, and an alteration—hotter or cooler—of the air temperature. The driver was chatty and she was glad. As he hit the gas, she had the sense she was not ever going back to her parents’ house again and she needed a distraction from that conclusion.

  Except of course she would go back. She had visited her parents for Christmas just three months ago. And Christmas would be coming back around in another eight. So surely she would return…

  Jo didn’t remember much about the drive back to the 30th Street Station. Or precisely how she came to be on a train again.

  At least she managed to get another window seat.

  As she settled in and hoped that she would continue to have the car mostly to herself, she took out her phone and checked again to see if Syn had called. She was disappointed to find that he hadn’t. Then again, she needed to reach out to him first, didn’t she.