The Fear in Her Eyes

by Grant McKenzie

  His attire was neat and crisp, perfection in everything except for untamed silvery-white eyebrows. He liked to keep his eyebrows on the wild side because it endeared him to jurors who never trusted anyone too polished, too exact. It was a trick he claimed to have learned from actor Spencer Tracy. He had learned other tricks, too—a man who wore his public image like a costume and rarely dropped out of character.

  “Ian?” His legendary eyebrows arced in surprise. “What are you doing here? Is that my suit?”

  Feet firmly planted, Ian punched the man with everything he had.

  With perfect leverage and placement, Ian’s knuckles landed flush at the moment of impact. BOOM! A jolt of electricity ran up his arm as Royce Fairchild’s grandfatherly face imploded under the blow, and his cheeks practically wrapped themselves around the impacted fist.

  Caught by complete surprise, Royce’s feet flew out of his rubber-soled slippers and his head smacked the marble floor when he landed hard on his back with blood gushing from broken nose and busted mouth.

  Ian stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “If I had a gun, I would kill you, you sonofabitch.”

  Royce Fairchild looked up in a daze, his eyes swirling with disbelief. Both hands were wrapped around his pummeled face as blood pooled in the palms and dripped between pampered fingers.

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Royce spat out the shards of two broken teeth.

  “I’ve never been more sane.”

  A startled gasp made Ian turn to see Helena’s mother standing in the entranceway to the dining room at the foot of the grand oak staircase. The very first time Ian had been introduced to Helena’s parents, the tall, striking woman standing before him in the solid black pantsuit, silk camisole, and pearl earrings had introduced herself as Mrs. Annabelle Fairchild. Not Annie or Belle, but the whole three-part moniker. Then, as now, her look had been one of barely restrained horror.

  “Did you know?” Ian barked at her.

  Annabelle, always a strong and proud woman who paraded her wealth without guilt or conscience, steeled her eyes and squared her shoulders. “Do I know what, Ian? That you are and always have been a common thug?”

  At any other time, Ian might have smiled at her disdain, but not now. He pointed a quavering finger down at the man bleeding on the marble floor. “Did you know about the contract your husband put out on your only granddaughter?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. What contract?”

  “He had Emily killed.”

  “Now I know you are insane. Why would Royce ever do such a horrendous thing?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out.”

  Annabelle sniffed. “I am calling the police.”

  Ian reacted in the blink of an eye. Moving behind Royce, he wrapped his hand tight around his shirt collar and twisted, choking off his air supply.

  “If you call before I get my answers, I’ll break his neck. If you wait, I’ll hand myself over.”

  Annabelle didn’t once glance down at her husband as she considered the offer. Instead, she pointed to the cherry-paneled library off to their right.

  “In there,” she said. “I could use a drink.”

  Annabelle led the way as Ian secured his grip on Royce’s collar and dragged him across the floor. Kicking his heels in protest, Royce’s face turned purple from rage, humiliation, and lack of oxygen. In the library, Ian threw the older man onto one of the leather armchairs, while Annabelle moved to a small bar and began to pour herself a large gin and tonic on the rocks.

  Leaving a trembling Royce to gulp down lungfuls of air, Ian walked over to the cold stone hearth of a rarely used, wood-burning fireplace. He picked up a black-iron poker with a carved wooden grip. When he returned, he prodded the tip of the poker just beneath the lip of Royce’s kneecap and applied an ounce of pressure. The man winced and dropped his hands from his ruined face to glare daggers at his estranged son-in-law.

  “Oh, dear.” Annabelle studied the full extent of her husband’s facial injuries. “That looks very nasty indeed.” She tutted her tongue, and swirled the ice in her glass. “I’ll need to call our dentist, too, I suppose.”

  Ignoring her, Ian leaned in close to Royce. “How could you kill my daughter?”

  Royce spat blood, but without enough force behind it to properly leave his lips, it merely dribbled down his chin and onto his now-ruined shirt. “I didn’t.”

  “I talked to your puppet Aguilar,” said Ian. “He gave you up.”

  “And what did you do to that handsome boy?” Annabelle asked with another tinkle of ice against crystal.

  Ian flashed her an angry scowl. “If he survives, you can ask the surgeon. Otherwise it’ll all be in the coroner’s report.”

  “Oh.”

  Ian returned his attention to Royce. “I know Aguilar had Hogg released from prison so that Tosh could kill Young. I don’t give a fuck about any of them. But why was Emily killed?”

  Royce shook his head and his voice was a croak. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Bullshit! Aguilar was terrified for his life. He gave me your name.”

  Ian twisted the poker, making cartilage crunch and causing Royce to scream and hold up his hands.

  “OK! OK!” he yelled. “I know about Young, but I had nothing to do with Emily’s death. I swear to you.”

  “You’re fucking lying!”

  “No! I swear.” He began to blubber. “I would never have done that to Helena. She’s the most valuable thing in my life. I love her, and I loved Emily.” He flicked his gaze toward his wife. “We both did.” His eyes flicked back, harder than before. “And no matter how much pain her death caused you, or the immense joy I felt when my Helena came home where she belonged, I would never have wished for that. You have to believe me.”

  “Then why kill Young?”

  From the other side of the room, Annabelle cackled with all the warmth of a frostbitten witch as she topped up her glass with straight Bombay gin.

  “It was that woman, wasn’t it?”

  Both Ian and Royce looked in her direction. The steel in her eyes was streaked with rust, and leaking.

  “That African whore,” she added.

  Royce looked away with more than physical pain etched upon his weary flesh.

  “What woman?” Ian asked.

  Annabelle sneered and took another large gulp of gin. “The one that got his dongle hard without a little blue pill. But it wasn’t his dongle she was after.” She glared across the room. “Was it Royce? And unlike the others, it wasn’t even your money she wanted to get her hands on.”

  “I-I didn’t know.” Royce’s voice matched his face, shattered and weak.

  “Know what?” asked Ian.

  “She’s the one who hired that drunk to kill our little Emily, isn’t she? Our precious baby angel.” Annabelle’s voice cracked, but she quickly soothed it with gin. “After she was a client. After she seduced my pathetic husband. After he became bound by both privilege and adultery, she confessed it all and watched the cold realization cross his face as his cheating cock went limp inside her. Is that how it was, darling?”

  “And you didn’t tell the police?” Ian dropped the poker and collapsed onto the edge of a coffee table as the walls in the room began to spin and his knees went weak. “You didn’t tell Helena or me?”

  “What could I say?” Royce buried his face in his hands once more. “She would deny it and the scandal would be a mess. She had tapes of us in hotel rooms. Hours of it. She let me do … anything.”

  “He prefers it when he can just buy their silence,” interjected Annabelle. “But this one didn’t need money.”

  “And Young?” Ian asked.

  “That was the price,” said Royce. “Silence Young and she would leave me alone. I was to take over Tosh’s case. Get him early release in exchange for … the dark deed.”

  Ian tilted his head, recalling a similar conversation. “Aguilar said almost the same thing. His price was removing Hogg.”

&
nbsp; Annabelle snorted in a most unladylike manner. “Guess she was screwing him, too.” Then, as her own bitter words sunk in, she winced. “Poor Helena. This will be so difficult—

  “She knows,” Ian interrupted sharply. “But I need a name.”

  Royce shook his head. “I can’t. That’s part of the deal. If I break it, she’ll release the tapes. Everything I’ve built—

  “Screw what you’ve built! She murdered your grandchild!” Ian kicked the iron poker with his foot, sending it flying across the room to smash against the wall. “She murdered my daughter!”

  Royce’s head snapped up with a renewed burst of adrenaline and his voice became a roar. “Because of you! This is all because of you. We lost our grandchild, we damn near lost our daughter—and it’s all your fault!”

  A police siren yelped nearby as Ian was staggered by the accusation.

  “What did she tell you?” Ian yelled back. “What did I do?”

  The siren became deafening as warm tires screeched to a halt on the driveway outside, and flashing red and blue lights cut through the library’s front windows.

  Annabelle held up a small cell phone in the hand that wasn’t clutching a nearly empty glass. “Oops.”

  Heavy footsteps slapped onto the stone steps, and a nightstick was rapped aggressively on the front door.

  “Should I let them in?” Annabelle’s perfect vowels had softened as her lubricated tongue slid more easily within her mouth. “They sound large and brutish, and I don’t believe they will like what you have done to my husband.”

  “How did Helena come from this?” Ian asked. “You’re both as mad as each other.”

  Annabelle smiled thinly before opening her throat and screaming, “Police!”

  Ian heard the front doors slam open in the foyer behind him as he bolted for the secret door that connected the library with Royce’s private smoking room.

  He knew the house and knew its exits. He just hoped it would be enough.

  30

  It was.

  Ian slid out the large bay window in the smoking room to the side garden and quickly made his way to the front of the house while the police were heading in the opposite direction inside. By the time they discovered his boomerang deception, Ian had slid behind the wheel of the Jaguar and was leaving the manor’s automatic gate in his rearview.

  As soon as he was clear, he pulled out his phone. He had switched the ring to vibrate before confronting Royce, and one glance at the screen told him the small tremors he had felt against his thigh had come from Jersey.

  Before talking to his anxious and likely annoyed friend, however, Ian had another obligation first. He just hoped Jeannie wasn’t the one who—

  “Hey, Jeannie.” He recognized her voice the moment the call was picked up, which meant he had to bite back his impatience. “Sorry about before. Things are hectic at the moment …” He heard a siren and glanced in the rearview to make sure there were no flashing police lights closing in. “… but that’s no reason for me to be short with you.”

  “That’s OK.”

  “No, it’s not, Jeannie. You deserve better, and I’m very sorry. Lord knows, I need all the friends I can get.”

  Her voice brightened. Apology accepted. “OK.”

  “Is she free?”

  “Hold on.”

  Ian glanced in his rearview again, but the siren was fading as the police car moved off in the opposite direction. He wouldn’t be surprised to discover that it was rushing to the Fairchilds’ home to back up the first unit and give the area’s prominent citizens a good display of their tax dollars at work.

  Linda came on the line. “Thanks for that. Jeannie’s gone from lethargic mope to skipping around the kitchen and baking your favorite cinnamon buns for the office tomorrow. Will you be coming in?”

  Ian struggled to answer and settled on “I’ll try.”

  “Make sure you do. Good work with Molly, by the way. I talked to her last night and she sounded really happy to be back in her own room. She was asking to see you, though. Said you stole her uncle’s motorbike and she had to go home in a police car.”

  “Couldn’t be helped,” said Ian. “I’ll make it up to her soon. But can you do me a favor and call Royce Fairchild at home and tell him his daughter needs a good lawyer? She’s most likely been taken to University Hospital.”

  “Helena?” Linda sighed with exasperation. “Let me get this straight. Your lawyer needs a lawyer and you want me to call a high-profile lawyer who hates you and tell him his daughter, who is also your estranged wife, is in the hospital.”

  “Now you’re confusing me,” said Ian. “But just a heads-up that Royce won’t be happy to hear from you. Ignore any yelling or nasty slurs against my parentage that may follow. Just deliver the message and hang up.”

  Linda laughed. “Anything else?”

  “If the police come on the line, you haven’t heard from me.”

  The laughter ended. “How far up to your neck are you this time?”

  “If I stand on my tiptoes and breathe through a nasal straw, I’m fine.”

  “Geesus, Ian. What’s going on? Is this still about Emily?”

  “It’s all about Emily,” said Ian. “It always has been. I’m closing in on whoever hired Young to kill her and she doesn’t like it. She silenced Young and Hogg, but she couldn’t erase the whole trail.”

  “She? Do you have a name?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How will you find it?”

  “I have an idea. I just need to …” He paused, distracted. Mind whirling, he tried to connect the dots from memory, failed.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  Ian’s focus snapped back to the curving road in front of him. “Best you stay on the sidelines for this one, Linda. It’s only going to get messier before it’s done.”

  “Be careful, hon, OK?”

  “Sorry,” he said, “that’s one promise I can’t make. I’m going to do whatever it takes. Caution be damned.”

  THE MOMENT he hung up, the phone buzzed in his hand. He glanced at the caller ID before accepting.

  “Jersey. I was just about to call.”

  “I told you to stay put. What the hell are you thinking? This isn’t a fucking game.”

  Hackles raised, Ian gnashed his teeth and spewed out his frustration. “I know that better than anyone, friend. You don’t think I wish my daughter was alive and that her mother didn’t have to find out her new boyfriend is covering for the killer? The last thing I think this is, is a fucking game.”

  “OK, hold up! Helena wouldn’t say a word to me and Aguilar is unconscious and barely alive. All I know is that you fled the scene of a second stabbing in as many days, which doesn’t look good to the brass breathing down my neck. There’s only so much pull—

  “Is he going to make it?” Ian interrupted.

  Jersey sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Here’s my statement: I didn’t stab him. Helena’s lawyer will tell you the rest.”

  “That’s how it’s going to be?”

  “I can’t speak for her.”

  “But you’re also saying Aguilar was involved in Emily’s death?”

  “Not the death, I don’t think. But he knows who is and he conspired to have Young killed to cover the tracks.”

  “That’s a heavy accusation.”

  “I can back it up.”

  “OK. At least I know you’re not completely crazy.”

  Ian snorted. “Listening to myself, I don’t know how you come to that conclusion.”

  “Who cut off Aguilar’s pants?”

  “I did to …” Shit! The knife. I used the same knife as Helena. “… bandage the thigh wound.”

  “A few things fell out of his pockets.” Jersey hesitated. “Think carefully. Did you touch any of them?”

  Ian thought back, remembered the tinkling of coins as the discarded cloth hit the floor.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t even look.”

&nb
sp; “Good, so at least you kept your prints off something.”

  “Funny,” he said dryly. “What did you find?”

  “Two metal tags. I’m no expert, but I would say they look like Vehicle Identification Numbers. Old ones. Possibly pried off a ’69 Super Bee?”

  “Son of a bitch. He murdered Hogg.”

  “Possible,” said Jersey. “If so, Helena was damn lucky. She didn’t know it, but she was up against a killer.”

  Ian exhaled heavily, but it did nothing to lessen his burden. “How is she holding up?”

  “The paramedics took her and I sent along two uniforms to stand guard.”

  “You expecting more trouble?”

  “You tell me. First her condo and now this. If it was over, you would be sitting by her bedside, right?”

  Ian almost smiled. Always the detective.

  Jersey continued, “I’m also hearing radio chatter that Royce Fairchild looks like he fell face first onto a bowling ball after somebody broke into his home. What’s the connection?”

  “He naming names?”

  “Not yet, but it’s curious that’s your first reaction.”

  This time, Ian did smile, although he couldn’t understand why Royce wasn’t using his considerable political muscle to issue a shoot-to-kill decree and have him hunted down like a rabid fox.

  When Ian didn’t answer, Jersey said, “I can’t pretend you weren’t here. You need to come in and give a proper statement, you know that, right?”

  “Not yet.”

  Jersey sighed. “This has become bigger than you can handle on your own, Ian. These people aren’t ex-cons and drunk drivers anymore. You try and wrestle the DA’s office with one hand and the city’s top law firm with the other, you’ll end up getting both appendages ripped off at the wrist.”

  “See, that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t give a crap about either of them. They’re not important.”

  “No?”

  “Aguilar and Royce are puppets. Fuck ’em!”

  “Then who’s pulling the strings?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”