Last to Know (6 page)

Harry’s laugh was without amusement. “Not a shot,” he said. “This one’s just a poor kid who survived an inferno that should by rights have killed her too.”

“That mean you think the mother is dead?”

“I’d bet on it,” Harry said. “Now, will you please go to Mass General and check on that motherless young woman for me? I’m gonna get some clothes on, I’ll be with you in a couple of hours.” Harry paused, suddenly remembering. “Oh God,” he said, “I’m supposed to get a flight to Paris tomorrow. Today. Mal said she’d meet me.”

Rossetti straightened up, slicked back his hair, and unbuttoned his black leather jacket. “Story of your life,” he said. “Better call her. And don’t leave Squeeze behind in your hurry to check the girl.”

“I’d never do that,” Harry assured him.

Walking through the parking lot to his black BMW, Rossetti thought that was probably part of Harry Jordan’s problem. That and his relationship with women. One woman. Namely, Mallory Malone. “Love of his life.”

10

Here I am again, and you can see, I am getting closer, not on target yet but then, I like a little foreplay. You really thought my target was that mother? Think it was the hunky detective who’s always saving folk that should not be saved? What about the little kid who’s always looking where he should not be looking and might, in the end, be the one that proves to be the greatest danger to me. Spyers, voyeurs, call them what you will, always have a sharpened sense of normalcy; they know through seeing it so often what is usual and what is out of sync, out of place. Different.

I’ve seen him up in that fig tree, “spying on the spy” you might say. Though of course he would not have seen me. Nobody does when I don’t wish to be seen. Funny, I’ve always had that ability to disappear in front of your very eyes, almost to become invisible by becoming someone other than who I truly am. Which, in my heart, and yes I do have one, is a perfectly attuned killer who loves getting away with it, loves fooling everyone. Why not go to your local library and look me up in the many manuals on psychological and sexual deviants. Or just Google it.

Diabolical, you might say. Depraved. A demon. Don’t put all those labels on me. I am perfectly normal. I look normal. I look like anyone in your neighborhood. I look like you. I could be you. Or a friend of yours.

Well, now, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we, what happens next, and to whom.

11

Back at the lake, the helicopter had left. Diz saw his siblings waiting on the shore as he stepped out of Harry’s boat and trudged through knee-high water to the shore. Cold water, Diz realized now, with a shiver, he hadn’t noticed that earlier, in the “heat of the moment,” you might say. His brother Roman was already there. He flung a friendly arm over Diz’s shoulder, something he had never done before. Diz guessed mostly big brothers were like that, keeping their distance and not letting you into the lordly high place where they “lived.” But now, he seemed to think he had done something remarkable, jumping into the lake and swimming to the rescue of the girl whose name Diz still did not know. He had suddenly become a hero, even though he had not been the one to rescue her. Harry Jordan had done that. Jordan had pretty much rescued Diz as well because by that time Diz had been running out of breath and might simply have had to strike out for the island instead of the girl.

Roman was tall and muscular and good-looking, like his dad. He was everything Diz was not. His twin sisters were standing there, wrapped in blankets against the cold. The girls’ long hair was blowing sideways in the wind that had gotten up, and they were looking admiringly, not at him but at the soaking wet and half-naked Harry Jordan.

His mother rushed forward and wrapped him in a blanket. Tears gleamed in her eyes as she said, “Oh God, Diz Osborne, don’t ever scare me like that again or I’ll have to strangle you myself.”

Harry Jordan had dragged the rowboat out of the water and now he came to stand next to them. Rose gave him a blanket and Wally lent him his cell phone so he could call Detective Rossetti.

“Cover your nakedness, sir,” Rose said to Harry with that wonderful caring smile which, though she was unaware of it, hit Detective Jordan right in the place his heart was. He hadn’t been the recipient of that kind of smile, of that personalized deep look of caring, for too long a time. In fact, not for a very long time, even before the end was flagged by his fiancée.

“Sorry about that.” He wrapped the rough plaid blanket over his wet boxers. “I took off my pants before I jumped in. Left them on the bank near my house.”

“I’ll get them for you if you like,” Roman volunteered. “You must be freezing.”

Harry thanked Roman but said it was okay, he’d be getting back, his dog was still there.

Then without warning, the air was rocked by another explosion. They turned as one and looked at what was a large expensive house being flattened to glowing red rubble with flames shooting out, and fire trucks swarming and a swooping aircraft dropping water.

Neighbors drifted over in hastily flung-on shorts and bathrobes, and Rose, taking charge, said, “I have soup for everybody in my kitchen. And brandy. I think we all need it.”

Privately, Harry thought the explosion did not look like a normal fire, it was too grand, too all-encompassing; there was almost something planned about such an inferno.

He thought again about the mother, wondering if she’d been in there, and what little must remain of her. Or had the girl in fact been alone in that house?

He decided he’d better get over to Mass General and ask her some questions.

Diz was with Wally, still staring at the faint light that was all that could be seen of the fast-disappearing rescue helicopter. Wally told him they’d better join the others in the kitchen, where Rose always had soup ready for emergencies.

“Well, this time she really has an emergency,” Harry said.

“There’s also brandy,” Wally added. “I could use one myself. What d’you say, Detective?”

Harry hadn’t known that Wally Osborne even knew his name, let alone that he was a detective. He thanked him, but said he must be on his way.

Wally said, “To Boston, I guess. To the hospital, see about the girl.”

“My partner’s already there; gotta know she’s okay, and hopefully hear what she has to say.”

“About her mother, you mean?”

Harry wondered if Wally knew the mother, but the man fell silent, staring across the lake to where firefighters were still attempting to douse the flames.

Harry thanked him for the loan of the phone and went to retrieve his clothing from the lakeside path. Back at the house he gave Squeeze the leftover steak grilled earlier on the Weber. He hadn’t felt like eating much so the dog got lucky. Then he took a hot shower, pulled on his jeans, a gray tee, and the black leather bomber jacket. He and the dog were in his car and en route to Boston while Wally Osborne was walking down the side of his house to the jetty and the boathouse, where he cleaned off the still-wet rowboat.

He checked the oars, still slimed with greenish weed, cleaned them too, and slid them back into place. Then keeping to the trees he walked back to the house. He did not notice his son Roman, who was waiting in back of the boathouse, go in and, when his father had disappeared, relaunch the boat and row across the lake.

Rose turned as he came in. “Wally!” she cried. “I was beginning to worry. Diz said you were still out there, I thought you might have taken the boat and gone across to try to help.”

Wally shrugged as he poured himself a drink. “Nobody’s over there but the firefighters and cops,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “A mere civilian couldn’t get near it, not even a detective.”

“You mean Harry Jordan?”

“I spoke with him. He’s on his way to the hospital to see that girl. He thinks she’s unharmed but in shock. I guess he wants to know what happened.”

Rose clutched a hand to her heart over the heavy wool sweater she had thrown on over her nightshirt. “To her mother, you mean?”

Wally’s eyes challenged his wife’s. “I don’t know who she is. I never met her.”

Diz’s brows raised in surprise. He knew his dad was lying. His gaze swiveled to his mother, but she was nodding sympathetically. One thing you could guarantee about Rose was her sympathy. Sometimes, like now for instance, Diz thought she might sharpen up a bit, catch on to his dad, see what was going on. Suddenly scared, he thought he couldn’t, after all, tell his mother that her husband was lying; that he’d just seen him rowing from the other woman’s house before it exploded in flames. Could he?

12

Rossetti was waiting in Boston, lounging against the wall near the emergency entrance, arms folded over his neatly buttoned chest, dark glasses on. Seeing him, Harry thought he looked more like one of those guys holding the velvet rope, the ones who decided whether you could be allowed into a popular nightclub, than a homicide detective.

Rossetti was thirty-six and hot, yet he still lived at home with his mom, who ironed his shirts, fixed his favorite pasta, and never allowed him to bring home a girl. Harry knew Rossetti kept his own apartment but he simply couldn’t bear to hurt his widowed mother by letting her know about it. He was a good old-fashioned Italian son.

Harry hit the brake, told the dog to get in the back, then put down the window. “Hey, mama’s boy,” he yelled, grinning as Rossetti glanced quickly from side to side to see if anybody had caught the insult.

“Fuck you.” Rossetti circled the Jag and clambered in. “Daddy’s boy.”

Harry grinned. “Never. Not even a shot. In fact I’m surprised ‘Daddy’ ever talked to me since I always did what I wanted and not what he wanted me to do.”

Rossetti shrugged. “I hope you called Mal and informed her you were not gonna make it to Paris tomorrow,” he said, as Harry slid into a No Parking spot and slammed the blue police light on top of the car.

“I’ll text her,” Harry said. Right then, his mind was on other things than flights to Paris.

“Anyway,” Rossetti said, changing the subject to the matter at hand, “Talking real now, the girl’s name is Beatrice Havnel. The woman in the house is—was—I guess we can assume she is dead—her mother. Name of Lacey Havnel.”

“How do you know all this?”

“She spoke.”

Harry looked at him, astonished. The last time he’d seen the girl she was being airlifted after almost being caught in a fire and then drowning.

“She hasn’t said a lot yet, the docs are not letting us near her until they make sure she’s okay and that we won’t stress her out, though how we can stress her out any more than she already is beats me.”

“Doctors always think cops stress their patients out. And maybe we do,” Harry said, thoughtfully. “Besides, they are right, she’s just seen her home go up in flames, probably with her mother in it.”

“Jesus.” Rossetti took an emery board from his inner breast pocket and filed a nail, stone-faced. He’d heard it all before, seen it all before, though maybe not quite like this. “Poor kid,” he said, suddenly sympathetic.

Harry cracked open a window for Squeeze, and climbed out of the car. “Get your ass out of there, Rossetti, we have to talk to her. We have to know if the mother was in there, who in fact she is, what she is, and how that fire started anyhow.”

“But the doctors…” Rossetti hurried after Harry as he strode through the emergency room door.

“Fuck the doctors. We may be looking at murder here, Rossetti, and I’d like to know who my suspect is.”

“Shit, you don’t mean you think the girl…”

“I never just ‘think,’” Harry said, already heading toward the nurses’ station. “I find out.”

*   *   *

Bea Havnel was in a small private room at the end of a very long corridor, far enough away, Harry guessed, to make it difficult for the media to access her. Not that TV cameras or even a cell phone would stand much of a chance; the nurses were on full alert and a uniformed cop stood guard outside her door, which was firmly closed. And anyhow Harry and Rossetti were accompanied by the doctor who had attended her in Trauma.

The doctor took her chart from the slot on the door and glanced at it, brows raised, in astonishment. “She’s amazing,” he said, turning to Harry, “coming through a fire like that practically unscathed.”

“How exactly ‘unscathed’?” Harry asked.

The doc shrugged as he opened the door. “See for yourselves,” he suggested, lifting a hand in greeting to his patient, who was sitting up in bed sipping orange juice through a straw.

The doctor introduced them and Bea Havnel threw the detectives a soft glance from under her lashes.

Unburned lashes, Harry noted. And unburned hair. Apart from a bandage on her right wrist, there was no evidence of what the girl had just gone through. Except perhaps the scared look in the back of her eyes, behind the sweet-little-girl smile that Harry had to admit was endearing.

“I’m so sorry for what you just went through,” he said. “I have to ask some questions but if you feel unable to talk we can come back later.”

“No. Please.” Bea waved a slender white hand at the chair next to her bed. “I need to talk to someone, I need to ask you…” She hesitated. “I need to know about my mother.”

Harry’s eyes met Rossetti’s briefly. He hated being put in the position of messenger of doom.

“It’s all right,” Bea said quietly. “I can guess what your answer is. I was with her when it happened.”

“When exactly what happened?” Harry asked. He and Rossetti were still standing by the bed, uncomfortable in their roles.

“It was all so sudden.” Bea put down her glass of juice. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest, clutching her shoulders with her hands. She was wearing a blue-flowered hospital garment that was way too big for her and in which, Harry thought, she looked even more childlike.

“I saw the explosion,” Harry told her. “I was on the opposite side of the lake.”

“Oh God, then it must have been you who saved me!” Bea reached out to him and instinctively Harry took her hands in his. “Oh my God,” she said again, gazing at him in wonderment. “If it were not for you I might not be here.”