Daddy's Little Killer (2 page)

Had I done everything right, or was Rick's
death conjuring questions about my past, about the long dead
relationship I had with a father who no doubt still loves me very
much?

Even though a week had passed, the memory
hadn't faded.  If it were possible, the damned nightmare had
become more vividly etched with each passing hour.

Those were not the thoughts that should've
been running through my mind right now, as I stood over another
gaping wound in the ground, listened to a godless invocation this
time (Rick and I never were keen on religion).  Questions that
were muted two years ago when Rick was arrested for money
laundering were etched into every face around me now.  My
abrupt divorce was compelling evidence of my ignorance of Rick's
business practices.

And I was ignorant.  It violated Dad's
cardinal rule.  Compartmentalization was absolutely
necessary.  Never could one sully the life of perfection with
something so easily traceable.  While a husband didn't
necessarily have to be boring, it was a plus in my case. 
Banking.  It doesn't get much duller than that.

My mind won't stop thinking.  Why are
they looking at me this way?  This case is a no-brainer. 
Rick laundered money for Sullivan "Sully" Marcos.  He got
caught.  Two years into interrogations and negotiations, Sully
got worried that Rick was going to cut a deal and had him
killed.  Open and shut.

Right?

I don't pray, but the eyes
skewering me gave me great temptation to utter one simple plea to
the great unseen being in the cosmos. 
Please let them believe the obvious.

Thunder rumbled overhead. 
Ominous.  A symphony of umbrellas whumped against the air in
preparation for the coming rain.  Its earthy smell hung
heavily around me. 

David perched his umbrella over my
head.  I hadn't brought one, an outward sign of my grief, but
not really.  It, like everything else was a calculated
reaction to Rick's brutal murder.  I was too overwhelmed to
remember the little things. 

The officiant concluded
the ceremony without ashes and dust or even a single
may God have mercy on his soul
.  I watched the casket slowly sink.  This is the
part I don't want to see.  It brings back too many memories of
Marie and what she selfishly did to my father.

I stepped away from
David's shield.  Another stepped forward.  And
another.  And more until I was surrounded by stern faces with
the words
confess your crime
etched into the withers of their
foreheads.

"Agent Eriksson, we need to talk." 
Mark Seleeby.  Head witch hunter in the crusade to use any
means at his disposal to prosecute Sully Marcos.

"Not today, Mark."

"Yes.  Today.  Right now."

Our eyes met.  Mark isn't a
particularly large man, and I'm too tall.  "Not without an
attorney."

"Agent Eriksson, you aren't under arrest, so
you aren't entitled to one.  I can have you brought before the
office of professional –"

I turned abruptly, tuned Seleeby out. 
"No attorney?  Not in this lifetime." 

David stood behind me, chin tucked to
chest.  Guilt radiated from under his umbrella.  He knew
what was coming.  Had he seen this too?  I pulled the
badge and the side arm out of my purse and thrust them under his
nose.

"Consider this my resignation."

Chapter 2

If good news travels fast, scandals dwarf
the speed of light.  By the time I got home from Rick's
funeral, Seleeby had arrived with a warrant to search my
brownstone.  To say that it made me amenable to a ridiculous
offer that rolled into my voicemail before the silk cushions on my
sofa were mutilated was an understatement.

Of course Wendell taught me well. 
There was nothing to find in the brownstone.

I started wading through messages while
agents debated whether they should crack through the plaster and
lath walls looking for evidence.

The first call was Rick's attorney. 
Yahoo.  I'm an heiress and the recipient of his life insurance
policy – double indemnity since he was murdered.  When we were
married, he carried a two million dollar policy.  Nice nest
egg.  Great for proving my motive.  I didn't need it.

Sixteen calls from area newspapers asked for
interviews, statements, reactions to the FBI turning on one of
their own.  I changed the outgoing message to include that my
response to media inquiries could be summed up in two words. 
No comment.

David.

Four more reporters.

David again.  "Please consider what
your resignation looks like, Helen."

Police Commissioner George Hardy from
Darkwater Bay.

My brain did a double
take. 
Darkwater Bay?  This
cannot be a coincidence.  Why would they want to talk to
me?

The crystal swan figurine Dad gave me for my
twelfth birthday crashed to the floor, and shattered.  He
tried to remind me that I was his swan, no matter how much I was
teased for being too tall, too thin, too plain. 

The snap decision was made for me. 
Darkwater Bay was blissfully far away from Washington D.C.  I
hadn't been there in nearly a decade and a half, the summer after
Dad's conviction to be exact.  What was that young man's
name?  The undergraduate who befriended me while I was working
as a teaching assistant during my post graduate studies… 
Roger?  Rodney something  …  At the time, I thought
he had a bit of a crush and was flattered by it more than anything
else.  After two weeks in Darkwater Bay, I was ready to return
to the balmy spray of the North Atlantic and leave the icy shards
of the North Pacific forever.

And I hadn't seen much of the young man
during my stay in Darkwater Bay.  He was busy currying favor
with the locals on his quest to join the police academy after his
graduation that spring.  Rodney Martin.

I grabbed my cell phone
poised to dial directory information.  The shadow of one of
the agents ransacking my home gave me pause.  Did I want them
knowing who I spoke to after I became a person of interest in
whatever case they were pursuing now?  Dad's words echoed in
my head. 
Admit nothing.  Deny
everything.  Demand proof.
 

Defiance burned through my veins.  I
grabbed my purse, stalked over to Seleeby and thrust it under his
patrician nose.  "Search it.  I don't want to be accused
of hiding anything."

His eyebrows stitched
together and slid down in a narrow V.  "Did anyone say we
thought you were hiding something,
Mrs.
Hamilton
?"

I didn't bother correcting him.  He
wanted to provoke an angry reaction from me.  "I want it
entered into the record that I offered my bag and you refused to
search it."

Seleeby and I had never been what I would
term friendly toward one another, even before Rick's arrest. 
With an irritated huff, he grabbed the leather straps and dug
through the contents of my purse quickly.  "There.  I
searched your purse.  Happy now, Helen?"

"Delighted.  Good bye, 
Mark.  Please be sure that your team locks up before they
leave."

"Where are you going?"

I spun on my heel at the front door. 
"Am I under arrest?"

"No."

"Then it's none of your business where I'm
going."  I flung the door open and pointed at the dark SUV
with tinted windows.  "It's not like you won't have your gang
watching every step I take anyway,  Mark.  Don't play
dumb.  Or perhaps this is your true intellect surfacing."

He feigned shock, and as if on cue at his
appearance at the door, the SUV quickly pulled away from the curb
and disappeared. 

"Did you get the license plate number?"

I snorted.  "Like you need it. 
Really,  Mark, do you think I'm this gullible?"

His eyes fixed out the front door, darting
from one end of the street to the other.  "I don't think you
should leave.  Have you forgotten who your husband's business
partners were?  Whoever was in that SUV wasn't from the
bureau."

"They just happen to perform surveillance
outfitted exactly like you do?  I don't buy it.  You're
trying to frighten me into cooperation.  It won't work."

"If I were you, I'd be more terrified of
Sully Marcos and his crew than I would be the FBI, Helen."

"You've forgotten who my father was," bitter
words bubbled from my mouth, words I would no doubt come to
regret.  If they hadn't been so reckless in their search and
broken a piece of my heart that still mattered to me, I probably
would've kept my emotions in check.  Instead, Seleeby had
provoked a reaction I was determined not to give. 

I pushed my way past him.  The reminder
of why I needed to leave was imprinted in my mind like a cattle
brand.  Getting away from the FBI, from all things related to
Rick Hamilton, his master, Sully Marcos, it had to be my first
priority. 

Necessity made that call from George Hardy
in Darkwater Bay intriguing.  Before I would accept an offer
blindly, I needed to do a little research, namely to uncover how
anyone that far away could know I was available for work in the
first place.  Since the bureau was intent on keeping me under
its thumb, I'd have to find a way to contact Hardy without them
finding out.

Our brownstone, with its beautiful turret
and every brick painstakingly restored, mortar perfectly sculpted,
looked lonely and desolate.  I wondered if I would ever step
foot through the old girl's front door again, ever sit on the steps
on a balmy summer evening with a glass of sweet tea and watch the
world lazily pass.  Would I smell the sweet fragrance of our
lilac bushes in the garden behind the wrought iron fence next
spring?  Would my sensible shoes ever clop against the uneven
brickwork that served as a dated reminder of what this district of
our nation's capital once was? 

I swayed and clutched the handrail for a
moment.  Dad always warned of the dangers of getting too
attached to anything.  "Be ready to leave it all in a moment,
Sprout."  Yet it was advice he hadn't followed.  If he
had … if my father had the common sense God gave a rubber duck, he
would've walked away before that accident could've happened.

"Why didn't you walk away, Daddy?" I
whispered.  "I would've found you.  I would've always
come for you."

Now it was impossible. 

Our rain storm at the apex of Rick's funeral
had blown over, but the droplets of moisture clung to the trees
overhead and splashed to the sidewalk with each gust of wind. 
I loved the sound of leaves whispering against each other.  I
loved everything about my life here.  I loved my father too,
but hated him at the same time.  I despised his wisdom and his
caution and the words that still twisted my view of the world into
something unimaginably dark.

Would life have been different if I had
simply rejected all of it, lived like a normal person?  Would
I have found true love instead of the farce I invented?

Everyone has secrets, Helen.  The
mistake normal people make is trusting another with those
secrets.  Never make that mistake, my dear daughter. 
You'll be stronger and better for it.

In the clinical sense of my training, I
would've diagnosed my father with paranoid delusions.  The
part of my mind that was still his little girl clung to his words
like they were a heritage far more valuable than the piles of cash
he had deposited in offshore bank accounts.  I could've
funneled that money into his defense fund and seen him walk out of
court a free man.

The look flashed beneath my eyelids again,
the last one I saw on his handsome face.  It was worth a
thousand words, a million fortunes squired away into secret
caches.  My father was shoving me out of the nest, his little
chickadee ready to spread her wings and fly.  My heart ached
to hop on the first flight available that could deliver me to the
stone walls and iron bars that confined him. 

I stepped off the curb.  Dad would be
disappointed if I came running at the first brush with
catastrophe.  Not that this was technically the first, it was
merely the first time I felt everything crumbling to dust around
me.  Time for plan B.  Or C.  Or whichever one
looked like it made the most sense.

The first step involved covering my
tracks.  The last thing I needed was the shadow of my former
compatriots lurking behind me.  They knew exactly who they
were looking for – Helen Eriksson, too tall, too thin, dressed
perpetually head-to-toe in black, hair nondescript in its tight bun
at the nape of her neck, no makeup, dark horn-rimmed glasses hiding
her eyes.  They probably started pinging the GPS in my car the
moment that Rick's body was discovered.  As for my telephones,
I had no doubt that they knew every call I made or received for the
past two years.

I flung my Blackberry out the window of the
car when I started across the Key Bridge.   Probably my
imagination, but I was certain I heard it splash into the
Potomac.  The Fashion Centre in Pentagon City would be a
one-stop shopping spree.  Between Nordstrom's and Macy's, I
could replace clothing and purchase luggage.  A local salon in
the shopping complex could give me a new cut and style. 
Harris-Teeter would supply a box of hair color.  BestBuy would
offer a wide variety of pre-paid cell phones that could not so
easily be traced to me, particularly if I paid cash. 

I patted my purse.  Agent Seleeby had a
few buttons he wasn't aware were so easily accessed.  I pushed
every single one of them to first annoy and then refocus his
curiosity on my awareness that we were being watched.  I
shouldn’t have doubted Seleeby's ignorance.  David would've
sent another team along without telling anyone if it meant keeping
track of me.