Cloaked in Blood (20 page)

He went on the offensive.  “And you’ve
been completely honest with me?  How many times have you lied
to me in the past year, Helen?  First, you knew nothing about
Rick’s death.  Then your husband insinuates it could’ve been
suicide.  Then you were there.  Andy Gillette implicated
a man running for governor of this state as a conspirator in your
kidnapping, yet you lied by omission, and lest you forget, you kept
the entire FBI in the dark when you knew this thing was about more
than a single kidnapping.  What did you do instead of being
honest?  You staged your own abduction to run off and search
for answers on your own.    What else are
you
hiding from
me
?”

Before I could respond, the phone
rang.  I grabbed the respite from this confrontation and
answered it.  “
What
?”

“Sprout, stop antagonizing him.  We can
hear you all the way up here in this attic hideaway.  Danny’s
about to suffer the vapors.  We don’t want Levine
suspicious.”

“I’m not interested.  Please add this
number to your do not call list.”  I hung up the phone and
struggled for a little composure, a little perspective, a hell of a
lot of control.  It would take nothing less than all to tamp
down my rage.  I sucked in a deep breath.

“Well?  What’ve you got to say for
yourself?”

“Everything you’ve accused me of lying
about, I’ve already explained.  I had no reason to trust the
FBI long before Rick killed himself.  You know as well as I do
that Seleeby was on a witch hunt, David.  The bureau threw me
under the bus the day Rick was arrested for laundering money for
Marcos.  I was too smart to be ignorant, remember?  Do
you think I didn’t see the way people looked at me after
that?  All the doubts because of who I am resurfaced. 
What could anyone expect?  Wendell Eriksson’s daughter, no
surprise there that she turned out to be a criminal after
all.  A real chip of the old block.”

“Dammit, Helen.”

“And my suspicions about Sanderfield were
just that.  A wild theory that there’s still precious little
evidence was accurate.”

“Except that he too is now dead.”

“Am I a suspect in that murder too?”

“That’s not fair.  Even if you didn’t
have an ironclad alibi, I’d never suspect you of killing
Sanderfield.  He had answers, Helen, answers I know you’re
desperate for.”

“I am, but Gillette had them too.  I
killed him.”

“In self defense!”

“So making excuses for me, that’s supposed
to rebuild my trust?  I don’t think so, David.  This
pregnancy has dulled my wit.  But I’ve had little else to do
but ponder everything that’s happened to me over the past several
months.  There’s too much that doesn’t add up.  There
have been too many times that you or someone else from the FBI has
suddenly appeared without explanation.  It’s not a
coincidence.  All your assurances that I have nothing to worry
about are lies.  I don’t believe them anymore.  I don’t
believe that you’re here about anything but Franchetta’s
ever-changing story.  So stop playing games with me and spit
it out.  Tell me the truth for once. Why are you really
here?”

David sighed and slid onto one of the
kitchen barstools.  “I should’ve known that you’d start asking
the questions I’ve prayed wouldn’t come.  You
are
too
smart, Helen.  Too smart for your own good.”

“So I’m still a suspect.”

“God, no,” he said. 

Our eyes met and held.

“I’m trying to protect you.”

“Then tell me the truth.”

“Will you be honest with me too for a
change?”

My arms folded over my chest.

“Fine.  Franchetta changed his story to
suicide because I confronted him with the truth after Danny
Datello’s arrest.  He caved, Helen.  He admitted that he
knew all along that you were innocent.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He threw up his hands.  How could he
convince me, when I made up my mind that no answer would be
satisfactory?  There was no way.  Push came to
shove.  I stood with my father, with Datello, ironically. To
my way of seeing things, we were interested in true justice, not
the kind that resulted in a win for the Justice Department. 
Lawyers are a sickening lot of creatures after all.  They
don’t want less than perfect cases where a win is assured.  If
they’d done the right thing and prosecuted Rick instead of trying
to flip him on Marcos, none of this would be happening.

“But now he didn’t take the gun that they
found in Sully’s waste processing plant,” I said.  “Has no
clue at all how it got there, isn’t that what you said? 
Someone wants him to lie and change his story, to implicate me in
Rick’s murder, when in fact, we know that it wasn’t a murder at
all.  Christ, the insurance company even reduced the amount of
his life insurance payout after the bureau officially ruled his
death a suicide.”

“We know where the pressure to change his
story is coming from, Helen.  If Marcos can point a finger at
you, it alleviates his culpability.”

“But then, you’ve still got the Datello
disk.  And Sully isn’t aware of it at all.  Isn’t that
what you expect me to believe?”

David cursed softly.  “No, Helen,
Marcos knows there are more charges that we could file against
him.  He knows we’ve got the disk that
he
sent
Southerby out here to find, not just last fall, but sixteen years
ago when Ireland was murdered too.”

“So you knew that Datello was
innocent.  When did you know?  When I arrested him? 
Was that why you showed up?  You not only wanted the files,
but you wanted to make sure we were capable of protecting the
government’s star witness.”

“It isn’t like that, Helen.”

“It’s exactly like that.  If Datello
were acquitted of the charges against him, you could’ve swooped in
and snatched him to be your star witness.  Too bad Preston got
to him first.  Or were you aware that Preston was dirty? 
Is that why Soule was out here?  Was he spying on me, or
keeping tabs on a dirty agent?”

“We had reason to be suspicious of
Preston.  I told you he went on the record supporting the case
Seleeby tried to build against you.”

“And what did you learn when Seleeby was
summoned back to Washington, David?  Did he admit that he
tried to coerce Franchetta into lying about what happened to Rick
the night he died?”

“He stuck to his story.  Franchetta
told him he witnessed the murder of Rick Hamilton.  Marcos’
defense team wants to subpoena Seleeby to testify to that
conversation.  I told you Franchetta is impeachable.  The
prosecutor isn’t going to put him on the stand, Helen.  We
can’t risk it.”

“So my involvement in this –”

“Is moot.  Marcos isn’t charged with
anything related to Rick’s death.  And why would he be? 
It was suicide.”

“And you think the gun in Sully’s waste
management facility isn’t going to be submitted into the trial
evidence?  If the prosecution doesn’t introduce it, how will
they explain why the bureau and Homeland Security took over the
investigation of an industrial accident? You can be damn sure the
defense will mention it, and they’ll point directly at me.”

My cell phone chimed into the deafening
silence.

“Are you going to get that?”

I suspected who it was.  I pulled the
phone out of my pocket and activated the screen. 
Get rid
of him, Helen.  Stop arguing and send him away.

“Johnny?” David asked.

“No, a friend.  I’m sorry, David, but I
need to leave for a little while.”

“I’ll stay here and wait for Johnny to get
back.”

“You won’t.  I’m sorry, but you can’t
stay with us this time.  I won’t have the FBI in my home,
spying on me, lying to me.”

“You don’t mean that,” David said
quietly. 

“Helen?  What’s going on?”

I’d been so engrossed in verbal warfare with
David that I hadn’t even heard the garage door open.  Johnny
stood in the doorway staring at me with a rather disapproving
expression.

“I was just telling David that he needs to
leave.”

His fingers quickly gripped my upper arm and
steered me toward the office.  “Excuse us for a moment,
David.  And please, make yourself at home.”

He closed the door behind us and hissed,
“Have you lost your mind?  What the hell is David doing here
when Wendell and Danny Datello are presumably hiding somewhere in
the house?”

“I was ten seconds from kicking him out
–”

“And you don’t think that’ll raise a read
flag or two?”

Speaking of things rising, Johnny’s brow
stretched for the rafters. 

“It’s not like I knew he was coming here,
for God’s sake!  Did you know?”

Johnny cringed.

“Oh my God!  Why didn’t you tell me he
was headed back to Darkwater Bay?”

“It must’ve slipped my mind with all the
other surprises cropping up.”

“
You
deal with him.  Get him out
of here.  Take him to OSI.  Get him set up in a hotel
closer to headquarters, send him back to Montgomery, I really don’t
care.  I don’t want him here, Johnny.”

“Helen, we can’t act like anything has
changed.  He’ll be suspicious, not that he isn’t
already.  How much worse was the conversation I interrupted
than the little bit I heard?”

“Danny’s right.  He’s been lying to me
all along.  Did he ever tell you that he’s the one
communicating with Franchetta, the one who spoon-fed him the
information about Rick’s suicide?  Jesus, Johnny.  Do you
have any idea what that means?”

His expression grew very grim. 

“Yeah,” I sighed.  My fingers dug into
my temples.  “If he told Franchetta what the story should be,
the odds are pretty good that Franchetta told him what actually
happened.”

“You weren’t arrested, Helen.  Let’s
not assume anything.”

“No, but Joel Soule was lurking around
Darkwater Bay while we were frantically searching for the Datello
baby.  Why was that, Johnny?  What was the FBI doing
here?  It wasn’t like Preston didn’t show up eventually. 
They could’ve been helping us find that baby, but instead, they
were in the shadows doing God only knows what.  And then they
swept in and took Danny into protective custody and faked his
death.  I understand why they’d do that, but it doesn’t
explain their presence in the first place.”

“Do you think they’ve still been
investigating you?”

“Or watching,” I said bitterly.  “I
feel like I’ve been under more than my fair share of microscopes
lately.”

“Well, you can’t alienate David all of a
sudden.  It’ll make all of them more suspicious than
ever.”

“He can’t be here, Johnny!  We asked
Datello to hide under our roof.  You wanted him here for easy
access, remember?”

“I remember.”

“Then you deal with David.  Get him out
of here.  I don’t care if you have to tell him it’s crazy
pregnancy hormones, but make him go away.”

“All right.  I’ll do what I can, but I
can’t promise to keep him out of here indefinitely.  We’ll
have to consider an alternate plan for Datello and your
father.”

I thrust my leg out.  “Get rid of this
anklet.  I need to think, and it occurs to me that I do that
best in the whirlpool.”

Johnny grinned.  “You do seem a little
pregnancy-crazy right now.  It’s probably the best explanation
I can offer David.”  He unsnapped the device and dropped it on
the desk.  “Promise to put it back on if you plan to
leave?”

I nodded.  “Just get rid of David
quickly.  I’ll get rid of Dad.”

“Get a DNA sample first,” he said. 
“Crevan and I picked up Melissa Sherman’s lunch tray before I came
back here.”

My fingers dug into Johnny’s forearm. 
“You heard from Devlin?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Seems that Henderson
and his wife had a kid named Melissa almost forty years ago that
they raised in Poughkeepsie.  I think we’ve probably found
Wendell’s long-lost daughter.  Devlin said nobody recalled
Suzy Henderson actually being pregnant, you see.  But
suddenly, they had a baby.”

“She was too old to give birth thirty-nine
years ago.  My grandmother was almost sixty when I was born,
Johnny.”

He pulled a DNA kit out of his pocket and
thrust the small swab packet into my hand.  “Compliments of
Maya.  She asked me to give you a message.”

“If it involves calling me princess, you’d
better assign a protective detail to her.”

Johnny chuckled and kissed the tip of my
nose.  “In that case, she simply wants you to call her
ASAP.”

Chapter 20

Dad was reluctant to let me swab his
cheek.  In the end, he consented, but only after I promised
him that no matter what the results were, it mattered less to me
than it did to him.  Datello was conspicuously silent
throughout the minor skirmish.

David was whisked away to OSI when Johnny
told him about our suspicions of Jerry Lowe.  His paranoia
seemed to be assuaged when I burst into tears during an apology for
not being myself and secluded myself in the bathroom.  I
eavesdropped at the door and heard Johnny explain that he talked me
into a long soak in a bubble bath, because it always seemed to
improve my mood.

I smiled.  Not because Johnny convinced
David to leave, but because he took the anklet off and I was, at
least for the time being, free without him asking questions I
didn’t want to answer.

The sun dipped deeply into the ocean to the
west, hidden by the cliff atop which my house sat when Danny and I
sat down for our first conversation without any witnesses. 
Palpitations fluttered in my chest.  In many ways, I think I’d
been anticipating this little chat for a very long time, ever since
I learned that Rick was his cousin.

He was nervous.  Kept fidgeting with
his right pinky, the one where he used to wear a gaudy ring. 
That’s the thing about hiding one’s identity.  Gotta leave all
identifying trappings behind.