Childless: A Novel (27 page)

Matthew read the letter twice before the meaning finally sank in. Maria Davidson had just said goodbye. Or rather, good riddance!

He cursed again as he let the tablet fall to the floor.

I won’t let this happen,
he thought. Then he frantically searched his dresser drawers to locate some stationery and a pen.

Sitting at
her dining room table, Rebecca Santiago tried to push past her fear. Her weakness. She picked the letter up from the floor and read it one last time.

Rebecca walked into the kitchen, where a small stack of dirty teacups and saucers reminded her that she had been plunged into a different universe from the one she had inhabited only a few minutes before. Hadn’t she just waved goodbye to Shelly, the last straggler from a chatty afternoon with friends? Hadn’t she intended to complain to Victor about the tragedy of burned pumpkin scones? It was part of their daily ritual over dinner to share the high points and low points of their day. She suddenly had a new, dreadful low to report. And it couldn’t wait until dinner.

She found the phone and pressed the image of Victor smiling back at her. She heard his recorded voice begin the custom greeting made for her ears only.

“Hi, Rebecca. There’s two things I want to do at this moment. First, answer your call. Second, tell you how much I love you. Unfortunately, I’m probably in session at the moment. So I’ll have to settle for saying that I love you. I’ll call back as soon as I can.”

She smiled. Then she panicked. What if he could
never
talk to her again? What if the crazy killer had been impatient and decided not to wait until September fourth after all?

She quickly tapped another image. A live voice answered.
Thank God
!

“Jennifer?” It was all she could say, her fear and sorrow surfacing at the relief.

“Rebecca?” Jennifer responded to the sound of crying. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

Jennifer McKay had been like a daughter to the Santiagos. There was no one Rebecca would rather have called, short of Victor himself.

“Rebecca? Are you hurt?” Jennifer was asking through the phone with urgent concern.

She finally regained a semblance of composure. “I’m all right, Jennifer.” Then she swallowed back another ocean of moisture and took a deep breath. “But I’m afraid for Victor. We need to do something to protect him!”

She had never said anything like it before. Victor had always been the sentry in their relationship. It was his job to worry about his frail bride. Rebecca knew herself to be weaker than she wished. She relied on Victor’s strength. But in this moment she would settle for Jennifer’s.

“A letter arrived today,” she continued. “Somebody wants to kill my Victor!”

No response.

“Did you hear me, Jennifer? I said—”

“Did the letter specifically mention killing?”

“Yes, of course. Why would I make something like that up?”

“Is the letter signed?” Jennifer asked.

Why doesn’t she seem alarmed?

“I’m afraid, Jennifer. I’m so afraid.”

“Listen to me, Rebecca. I need to know if there is a signature.”

Rebecca walked back to the dining room to find the letter and search for a name. “Someone named Manichean,” she replied. “Why, what’s going on?”

Before Jennifer could respond Rebecca saw a line in the letter she hadn’t noticed before.

“You’ve received other letters, haven’t you?”

“Yes, we have. But don’t worry. We have a detective investigating the situation.”

A detective? Situation
? Rebecca felt her fear becoming anger. “What situation? And why didn’t you tell me about this? Why didn’t Victor tell me?”

A long, torturous silence. Jennifer finally answered. “Rebecca, Victor doesn’t know about the letters.”

She couldn’t believe her ears. Why would Jennifer keep such an important secret from her boss? From Rebecca’s husband? “What do you mean?”

Jennifer explained everything: Victor’s policy of ignoring any correspondence related to an open case, her role of deciding how to handle each situation, and why in this instance she had chosen to hire a private investigator rather than go to the police.

Rebecca looked back at the signature.
A Manichean
. “Do you have any idea of his identity?”

A two-second delay. “We have a few leads.”

Rebecca sensed the truth. They had no idea. “I want to talk to Victor immediately,” she insisted.

“I understand,” Jennifer said. “But, please, can you read me the letter? Word for word.”

She did, her voice breaking again when she reached the ultimatum.

“He’s going to kill my Victor!” she said, the panic recoloring her voice. “We have to tell him now!”

A momentary hush meant Jennifer must have been assessing her dilemma. If she did as Rebecca suggested she would be violating Victor’s policy. A policy Rebecca both admired and suddenly hated.

“Listen, Rebecca,” Jennifer began. “The judge will be in session for at least another ninety minutes. Security is on high alert due to the earlier letters, so nothing can happen to him here.”

“Nothing can happen to him? Come on, Jennifer.
Anything
could happen!”

“Please, Rebecca. I promise we’ll protect him. But I need to come over and see that letter right away. I’ll call the detective and we’ll meet you there. Then we’ll decide. One hour, that’s all I ask.”

Rebecca considered the request. What would Victor want her to do? She knew the answer immediately.

“OK,” she said reluctantly. “One hour.”

The call ended. Rebecca felt light-headed. She sat back down at the dinner table where her living nightmare had begun. Then she refolded the note, slid it back into the envelope, and wrapped her arms around a delicate frame now home to the consuming demon of terror.

Jennifer McKay
was sitting on the living room sofa beside a distraught woman who was downing the last swig of a drink that was not, Tyler presumed, her first. Although he had never seen her before, Tyler knew the woman immediately: the judge’s wife, understandably shaken.

He glanced toward the dining room table, then groaned at the sight of Assistant Chief Greg Smith. Tyler had hoped to arrive in time to read the letter first and then debrief his former partner rather than the other way around. Jennifer had said she’d phoned the police before calling Tyler. He had raced through downtown Denver in slow motion behind rush-hour traffic hoping to beat Smitty to the house. No such luck.

Tyler heard the clack of a dead bolt latching behind him as an officer closed the front door. The sound prompted a glance from Smitty, who looked up from the letter to offer a summoning wave.

“Tyler,” he said in a hushed voice.

“Smitty,” Tyler replied with a nod. “What’ve we got?”

It was the same question he’d asked a hundred times before, back when he and Smitty had investigated everything from petty burglary to serial homicide. But this time it felt impertinent. They were no longer partners. Tyler wasn’t on the force. Nor was he an effective private investigator—he had failed to prevent whatever threat Smitty was reading.

He quickly corrected himself. “I mean, what have
you
got?”

Smitty handed Tyler the page. “Take a look for yourself.”

He did. Then he glanced in Jennifer’s direction. She was rubbing Rebecca Santiago’s forearm to offer comfort. Their eyes met. His shot an
I told you so
rebuke. Hers stubbornly refused any
I should have listened
regret.

“I was afraid of this,” he said while following Smitty around the corner to speak in private. Tyler wanted his former partner to believe the letter hadn’t been a surprise. And in a way it hadn’t. Tyler’s gut had told him the situation could escalate. He had told Jennifer she should write back to smoke out the culprit. That she should alert the judge so that he could resign from the case to protect his life. “Maybe now Ms. McKay will take my advice,” Tyler continued.

“What advice is that?”

“Tell the judge about the letters.”

“You mean he doesn’t know?”

“No sir. He has a strict policy against paying attention to any correspondence related to an active case.”

Smitty sighed. “Of course.”

Tyler waited a moment to let Smitty appreciate his dilemma. “I have a few potential suspects,” he lied. “But I need the judge to write back so we can spring the trap.”

Smitty looked at Tyler questioningly but said nothing. Then he glanced back into the living room.

“Ms. McKay, may I speak to you for a moment?” he asked. “That is, if Mrs. Santiago doesn’t mind.”

The woman shook her head deferentially while reaching for the bottle of brandy sitting strategically beside her now-empty glass. “Go ahead, Jennifer. I’ll be fine.”

Jennifer appeared grateful for the promotion from comforter to collaborator. She clearly disliked the thought of Tyler and Smitty discussing next steps without her input.

She joined them in the dining room, where Tyler still hoped to control the situation. He spoke first. “Smitty and I were just discussing the need to show this letter to the judge—”

“No!” she interrupted. “This is a very important case and he’s only a few days away from issuing an opinion. The judge would be very upset if we—”

“Come on!” Tyler said, too loudly. He hushed himself before continuing. “You can’t be serious. The man’s wife is sitting in the next room so alarmed she’s drowning her fears in booze. I think it’s about time you woke up to what’s happening here, Ms. McKay.”

“I know exactly what’s happening here, Mr. Cain! And I know exactly what Judge Santiago would want.”

“You’re just too stubborn to admit I was right!” Tyler added before Smitty raised a hand to silence the whispered spat.

“Ms. McKay is right,” he began.

Tyler’s head jerked in Smitty’s direction, then back toward Jennifer, who appeared equally startled.

“What?” Tyler said.

“I don’t think we need to show Judge Santiago this letter.”

Jennifer grinned in triumph as Tyler weighed his response. How to save face? More importantly, how to protect the judge? Then it struck him.

“We don’t have a choice,” he said. “His wife will tell him the second she sees him.”

“No, she won’t,” Jennifer said with surprising confidence. “I explained the situation. She knows the judge better than anyone. She knows he would want us to wait until after he issues an opinion.”

Tyler peered back around the corner toward the shaken woman. “Look at her, for Pete’s sake! Even if she managed to keep her mouth shut, which seems highly unlikely, the judge will know by looking at her that something’s up.” He turned toward Smitty. “Imagine the fallout if it gets out that the police knew about this threat and didn’t try to stop it.”

“I didn’t say we wouldn’t try to stop it,” Smitty said. “I said I don’t think the judge needs to see the letters. We can inform him of a threatening situation without specific details. If we do our job properly, there’s no reason we can’t let the man do his.”

If we do our job properly
. A dig at Tyler’s failed investigation?

“We’ll tell the judge that we have evidence he may be the target of an assassination attempt,” Smitty continued. “Then we’ll tell him it’s related to a court case without saying which or what decision the suspect demands. The judge can make his own decision on whether he wants more detail or not.”

“He won’t,” Jennifer insisted as Tyler seethed.

“We’ll see,” Smitty replied. “But for now, tell me everything either of you knows so that we can determine the best course of action.”

Jennifer reminded Smitty that she had called the chief of police to request a recommendation for a private investigator. She sounded like a disappointed customer complaining to the store manager.

Then Tyler shared what little he had learned from the earlier letters. He decided to leave out the part where he called Evan Dimitri. No need to further sully his reputation by describing the blunder. A mistake that had gotten him nowhere and, he told himself, was probably irrelevant to the case.

Smitty sighed reflectively after listening to Tyler’s debrief. “So,” he began, “our only real clues are the postal facilities in which the letters were processed and an odd pseudonym.”

“A Manichean,” Tyler inserted in an attempt to prove useful.

“Right,” Smitty said without interest as he considered options. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Ms. McKay, I want you to inform the judge of a threat.”

“Of course,” she said, obviously pleased by Smitty’s wise tactic.

“Tyler, I want you to further analyze this new letter.”

Smitty handed the note to his former partner, who accepted it eagerly and with relief. “You got it, boss,” he said, grateful to still be on the team.

“I’ll assign an officer to guard the judge’s house and another to his chamber until he either resigns from the case or issues an opinion.”

“Only two officers?” Jennifer asked, like a still-disgruntled customer.

“It’s two more than I can afford, Ms. McKay,” Smitty explained.

She huffed. “We have security guards at the courthouse already. Would it be possible to assign both officers to the house? I’m sure it would make Mrs. Santiago feel much more secure.”

A single nod. “Done.”

Tyler joined Smitty in offering reassurance to Mrs. Santiago before heading to his car. He closed himself in and breathed deeply the sun-warmed air. As the engine engaged, the date and time appeared on the dashboard. September 1, 2043. Only three days until Judge Santiago was scheduled to issue an opinion on the wrongful death appeal initiated by NEXT Transition Services.

He had less than seventy-two hours to find the culprit. And, he hoped, to prove himself worthwhile to his former partner.