Die for Me (39 page)

Van Zandt’s smile was unpleasantly smug. “I know. I really just wanted Derek watched. If he attempted to go to the police . . . about you . . . then my head of security would merely attempt to dissuade him. Imagine my surprise when I saw that.”

It was him, with Derek. He was the old man, but he stood upright. The photo didn’t show it, but his gun had been pressed into Derek’s back. Carefully he put the pictures back in the envelope. “I repeat. What do you want?”
Before you die.

“I didn’t come alone, Frasier. My head of security is at one of those tables over there, ready to call the authorities.”

He drew a frustrated breath. “What . . . do . . . you . . . want?”

Van Zandt’s jaw tightened. “I
want
more of what you’ve been giving me. But I
want
it untraceable.” He rolled his eyes. “What kind of idiot kills people that can be identified?” He pulled a smaller envelope from his coat pocket. “This is a cashier’s check and a plane ticket to Amsterdam for tomorrow afternoon. Be on that plane. And when you get there, you change the faces of every character in the
Inquisitor
or our deal is off.” He shook his head, furious now. “Are you that arrogant? Did you believe no one would find out? You have jeopardized everything I own with your stupidity. So fix it.” He drained his wine glass and slammed it to the table. “
That’s . . . what . . . I . . . want.
”

He had to laugh, despite the fury boiling in his gut. “You would have really liked my father, Jager.”

Van Zandt didn’t smile. “Then we have a deal?”

“Sure. Where do I sign?”

Thursday, January 18, 7:35
P.M.

“Please, sit down.” Vito Ciccotelli gestured to a large table in a conference room. Daniel did a quick count. Six people already sat around the table. Ciccotelli closed the door and pulled out a chair for Susannah, who was still shaking like a leaf.

Daniel had offered to do the ID of their parents himself, but Susannah had insisted she’d stand with him, and she had. The medical examiner had come back with them from the morgue and now sat at the end of the table, next to the tall blonde that Ciccotelli had introduced as their consultant, Dr. Sophie Johannsen.

“Do you need more time?” This came from Ciccotelli’s partner, Nick Lawrence.

“No,” Susannah murmured. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You’ve got our attention, Agent Vartanian,” Ciccotelli said. “What do you know?”

“I hadn’t seen my parents in many years. Our family is . . . was . . . estranged.”

“How many in your family?” Sawyer asked.

“Now, just Susannah and me. We hadn’t talked in a while, not until this past week. The sheriff in our hometown called, said my parents had gone on a trip, but they hadn’t returned. My mother’s oncologist had called to check on our mother when she missed several appointments. It was the first either my sister or I had heard about her cancer.”

“Hell of a way to find out,” Nick murmured. He would be the good cop, Daniel thought.

“Yeah. Anyway, the sheriff and I searched the house. My parents had closed it up and taken all their suitcases. I found brochures in my father’s desk for destinations out west. I thought it was my mother’s last trip before she died.” He tried to block the picture of his mother on that metal table in the morgue. Susannah squeezed his hand.

“Do you need a minute?” Jen McFain asked kindly.

“No. The sheriff and I were ready to leave when I realized my father’s computer was still running—in fact, it was being controlled remotely at that moment.” He’d been watching Ciccotelli and was rewarded with a flicker of interest in the man’s dark eyes.

“Why didn’t you report them missing then?” Sawyer asked.

“I almost did. But the sheriff thought my mother should be able to keep her privacy, and it looked like they really had gone on vacation.”

“The remote computer thing didn’t concern you?” Nick Lawrence asked.

“Not so much at the time. My father was a computer person. He liked to play with networks and motherboards and such. So . . . I got a leave of absence. I wanted to find her, to make sure my mother was all right.” He swallowed. “To see her again.”

He took them over his search, ending with the hotel safe and the mailbox store, but not mentioning the envelope his mother had left for him. He wasn’t sure he could. “I knew I had to report the blackmail. Susannah agreed. So here we are.”

“So the last time your father made a withdrawal was when?” Sawyer asked.

“November 16.”

Ciccotelli noted it. “What did you do when you got to the mailbox store?”

“More than I should have, less than I wanted. I thought if I knew who was doing the blackmailing . . . I asked the kid behind the counter who rented the box. I wanted him to give me the contents of the box, but I knew I’d pushed too far as it was.”

Ciccotelli gestured impatiently. “Drumroll, Agent Vartanian?”

“The name on the box was Claire Reynolds. She was blackmailing my parents and probably killed them. That’s all I know.”

This time Ciccotelli’s eyes did more than flicker. He blinked once, then sat back and looked at his partner, then his boss. Everyone at the table looked stunned.

“This sucks,” Nick Lawrence muttered.

For a moment Ciccotelli said nothing, then looked again at his boss. Sawyer lifted a shoulder. “Your call, Vito,” she said. “I checked them out while you were all at the morgue doing the ID. They’re both legit. I’d bring them in.”

Daniel searched every face. “What? What’s going on here?”

Ciccotelli frowned. “Claire Reynolds is an issue.”

Susannah stiffened. “Why? She was blackmailing our parents and now they’re dead. What’s stopping you from finding her and bringing her in?”

“Finding her isn’t the issue. It’s arresting Claire Reynolds for your parents’ murder that’s problematic,” Ciccotelli said. “She’s dead. She’s been dead for more than a year.”

Stunned, Daniel looked at Susannah, then shook his head. “That’s impossible. She’s been blackmailing our father for the last year. The kid at the mailbox store said she’d paid her account on time just last month. In cash.”

Ciccotelli sighed. “Well, whoever paid her bill wasn’t Claire Reynolds. You don’t know who else could have been blackmailing your father?”

Susannah shook her head. “No. I don’t know.”

“Do you know how or why?” Lawrence asked softly.

Daniel shook his head mutely. But it wasn’t true. He knew. It was bad enough that it haunted him. So he held his counsel. Besides, he knew Ciccotelli wasn’t telling him everything and until he did, and maybe even if he did, Daniel would not reveal what should have been his father’s greatest shame.

And through him, mine.

Ciccotelli took a sketch from his folder and slid it across the table. “Do you recognize this man?”

Daniel stared hard at the picture. The man had a hard face, rigid jaw, prominent cheekbones. His nose was razor sharp, his chin blunt. But his eyes made Daniel shiver. They were cold, and the sketch artist had imparted to them a cruelty that Daniel knew too well from years in law enforcement. Still, there was a familiarity about the man’s eyes that gave him pause. The mailbox had dredged up all the old ghosts. But they were ghosts. This man was real and had murdered his parents and left them to rot in an unmarked grave. “No,” he finally said. “I don’t. I’m sorry. Suze?”

“No,” she echoed. “I was hoping I would, but I don’t.”

“They should listen to the tape,” Nick said. “Maybe they’ll recognize the voice.”

“All right, but just the first part, Jen,” Ciccotelli said.

McFain opened her laptop. “This part isn’t very loud, so you’ll need to listen.”

“Scream all you want.”

Daniel’s blood ran cold. His heart froze and he stared at the sketch again. At the man’s eyes. And he knew. But it was impossible.

Susannah’s hand went lax, but he could hear her panting and knew she knew, too.

“
No one can hear you. No one will save you. I’ve killed them all.
”

He closed his eyes, clawing at denial. “Not possible,” he murmured.
Because he was dead.
They’d buried him, for God’s sake.

“They all thought they suffered, but their suffering was nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you.”

But it was him.
Dear God.
Bile rose in his throat.

“
Stop it
,” Susannah snapped. “Stop the tape.”

Jennifer McFain did so instantly and Daniel felt every eye watching them. The room was suddenly too warm, his tie too tight. “We didn’t lie,” Daniel said hoarsely. “It is just the two of us now. But we had a brother. He died. We buried him in the family plot in the church cemetery.”

“His name was Simon,” Susannah whispered, horror making her voice shake.

“He’s been dead for twelve years. But that was his voice. And those are his eyes.” Daniel met Ciccotelli’s dark eyes and choked out the words past the dread that closed his throat. “If that’s truly Simon on that tape, you have a monster on your hands. He’s capable of just about anything.”

“We know,” Ciccotelli said. “We know.”

Thursday, January 18, 8:05
P.M.

Vito dragged his palms down his face, his stubble scratching his skin. Daniel Vartanian told them about his brother’s death in a fiery car crash and the subsequent burial. That their brother had been a cruel person who’d taken pleasure in tormenting animals, but who’d also been a gifted student with a broad base of talent. Everything from art, literature, and history to science, math, and computers.

Simon Vartanian was a twenty-first-century Renaissance man of sorts. But knowing all that brought them no closer to putting the monster in custody.

“I think we’ve got more new questions than answers,” Vito muttered.

“But now we have his real name,” Nick said. “And his face.”

“It’s not the way he looked before,” Daniel said.

“But his eyes are the same,” his sister said, still staring at Tino’s sketch, her expression a mixture of pain and horror and grief.

Vito put the sketch back in his folder. “We’ll need to exhume the casket that’s buried in your family’s plot.”

Daniel nodded. “I know. Part of me doesn’t want to know what’s inside. My father took care of everything when Simon ‘died.’ He identified the body, bought the casket, had Simon prepared, and brought him home to be buried.”

“It was a closed-casket funeral,” Susannah Vartanian added. She was dangerously pale but sat straight in her chair, her chin lifted as if she expected the next blow to be personal, and Vito wondered what these two knew that they weren’t telling him.

“That’s normal when the body is badly disfigured,” Katherine said. “This body was in a car accident and burned badly. If you had seen the body, there’s nothing to say you wouldn’t have thought he was your brother, too.”

Daniel’s mouth lifted, just barely. “Thank you. But I’m not worried about the body we’ll find inside, per se.”

Nick’s eyes widened. “You’re worried the casket will be empty, that your father knew your brother wasn’t really dead.”

Daniel just lifted his brows. Beside him, his sister stiffened a little more. This was the blow she’d been expecting, Vito thought.

“Why would your father fake an entire funeral and burial?” Jen said.

Daniel smiled bitterly. “My father was in the habit of fixing Simon’s messes.”

Vito had opened his mouth to probe when Thomas Scarborough cleared his throat.

“You said your family was estranged,” Thomas said. “Why?”

Daniel looked at his sister, for support, for guidance. For permission even, Vito thought.

Susannah’s small nod was almost indiscernible. “Tell them,” she murmured. “For God’s sake, tell them all of it. We’ve lived in Simon’s shadow long enough.”

Thursday, January 18, 8:15
P.M.

Van Zandt thought he was smooth, instructing his hired gun to follow him from the restaurant. Of course that would never do, allowing VZ to know his true address. It would just give the Dutchman one more thing to hold over his head.

Taking pictures of me
. . . Van Zandt had one hell of a lot of nerve. Although it was, in its own way, damn ironic, he supposed.

Van Zandt’s security man had parked in an alley, his eyes fixed on the door of the Chinese restaurant across the street through which he’d had entered, waiting for him to return to his vehicle the same way. Instead, he approached from behind and tapped on the driver’s side window. Startled, VZ’s man swung around to look at him, then relaxed. He rolled down the window. “What do you want, buddy?”

The man’s tone was belligerent, but he only smiled. “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but my organization is selling calendars to—”

“No. Not interested.” He started to roll up his window, but the man was a second too late. His knife had found its target, and now Jager’s head of security was bleeding like a stuck pig. The man’s eyes widened, flickered, then went dead, treating him to yet another moment of death.

“That’s okay,” he murmured. “It was last year’s calendar anyway.” Leaving his knife behind, he exited the alley and headed for his vehicle, parked conveniently right outside the Chinese restaurant’s front door. He navigated the street with ease, passing all the poor motorists who’d been forced to find parking blocks away. Just another side benefit to his current mode of . . . personal transportation.