Taboo (24 page)

Back at GFU headquarters, as Jack Gorman’s complaints about her activities in his absence (as well as the surprising revelation about Lucy) shifted in and out of focus, Reilly prayed that Chris would be able to locate Mike.

That message – she knew in her bones that it referred to her and by association, her father. Daniel was right; the taboo killer was now openly targeting her and her family. But how did he know so much about her?

Her mind drifted back to that awful day, a day that at first had seemed little different to any other but would turn out to be one that would haunt their lives forever.

By then, Reilly’s mother had been absent from their lives for many years; she and Jess had no idea where Cassie was or why she had gone. When they were little, they’d grown used to their mom’s erratic moods and sudden disappearances, but when one day Cassie left and didn’t return, it was as though everyone sensed that this time was different. Mike was saying nothing and in the intervening years the family seemed to have drawn a veil over the entire business.

But as the sisters grew older, questions eventually began to rise in their minds – particularly Jess’s – and although Reilly never wanted to come out and actually ask their dad, she got the impression that their perpetually restless mother had gone off with another man.

Ghosts – to say nothing of monsters – were hard to keep in closets and that year in particular her curious sister had become more and more inquisitive, and more demanding about why Cassie had come to abandon her family.

‘Let it go, Jess.’ Reilly had admonished, but she knew she was wasting her breath. When she got something into her head, Jess could be like a dog with a bone.

One day, Reilly had been out driving her car – Mike had bought it for her eighteenth birthday and knowing how hard he’d worked to scrape the money together made it all the more special. It was just a little two door Mazda – a rice burner her dad called it – bright cherry red, but it was hers and she loved it.

It was lunchtime, there wasn’t much traffic, and Reilly had slowed for a red light when she got a call from Jess.

‘Reilly?
It’s me,’ her sister cried, her voice somewhat manic. ‘I’m at Mom’s house.’

‘Mom’s house?
What?’ Reilly was stunned. ‘Jess, have you gone crazy? How did you … I mean, what … where…?’ Her thoughts were going a mile a minute. Jess had located their mother? How and, more importantly, where?

‘I need you, Reilly
. I need you to come here.’ There was something desperate in her voice, a sound Reilly hadn’t heard since she was a pre-schooler. ‘What? Come where? I don’t understand, Jess. Where are you?’

‘Reilly, I need you to come here right now.’ Jess’s voice had suddenly fallen flat, which somehow sounded even scarier than the frantic way she had started the conversation. Something was wrong. Of course, their mother had never been predictable; never your
typical apple pie housewife, and Reilly suspected that the much-longed for reunion with Cassie had not gone as planned.

‘OK, honey, just calm down and tell me where you are. How do I get there?’

She listened wide-eyed as Jess quickly rattled off directions to a place only about a mile away. Had Cassie remained living in the Bay area all this time? For some reason, Reilly had always assumed that she’d taken off somewhere back east, where she was from. So to think that for all these years she’d been nearby and yet never once made an effort to contact either of them … Yet, knowing Cassie, was it really that much of a surprise?

She swung the car up the ramp and on to the freeway. How Jess had located her, Reilly had no idea – but as she well knew, when Jess set her mind on something, there was absolutely no way anyone could stop her.

She sped down the freeway, her heart beating fast, unable to imagine what awaited her and more importantly what could have got Jess so upset. Clearly Cassie had no interest in reuniting with her daughters, or playing happy families.

A little later, she navigated her way through some narrow suburban streets, finally pulling up outside the address Jess had given her. It was a pink stuccoed house, mission style, on a quiet residential street of similar properties.

She paused in the car for a minute, trying to remain calm. Her mother – the woman who’d given birth to her, yet whom she hadn’t seen since she was eight – lived here? It looked so suburban, so normal, that she couldn’t quite get her head around it. Then again, what else did she expect?

She jumped from the car, hurriedly locked it,
then approached the porch, keeping an eye out for Jess. There was no sign of anyone outside, but the front door of the house was open.

Reilly approached cautiously, something telling her that all was not right.

She slowly climbed the wide steps to the porch. Like the other houses on the block it had a faded wooden swing seat, which moved very slightly in the gentle breeze. A small white side table sat beside it, two drinks on it. Both were half empty, the ice melted, a film of condensation running down the glasses to pool on the table.

Reilly stepped slowly across it, the boards creaking beneath her feet. For some reason, the street seemed deathly quiet – no cars passed, no birds sang, no children called out. She reached the front door and paused. There was no doorbell.

Reaching out to knock on the door, she realized that it was not fully closed and she gently touched it, swinging it open to reveal a pretty room with polished wooden floors and several brightly colored ethnic rugs. A large couch filled the centre of the room.

And oh God, there it was. Her mother’s unique scent, so recognizable and achingly familiar, it almost made Reilly feel weak. Despite her best efforts, and having rummaged through her mother’s stuff many times over the years, she’d never been able to figure out what the fragrance was exactly; it wasn’t perfume and definitely not body cream. Floral and yet faintly spicy, to Reilly, it represented carefree summer days at the beach, and lazy family evenings in the garden – the peace of mind and happiness she’d always craved.

She gingerly stepped inside and called out. ‘Hello? Anyone home?’

There was no answer, no movement. From where Reilly stood it might have been deserted, abandoned. ‘Jess … Jess it’s me, Reilly.’

The late afternoon light was forcing it way through the pale wooden blinds, casting long beams of yellow light across the room. As Reilly’s eyes gradually adjusted to the light, she saw, on the far side of the room, a dark trail of something smeared across the floor. There was a strong smell in the air, one that in the future she would come to know only too well.

She stepped through the room, heart beating faster. All her senses were on edge, raw and open, though she didn’t understand why. A deep, almost primal instinct again screamed
that something was very wrong. Wanting desperately to turn and flee, she moved slowly across the floor, her footsteps the only sound in the quiet house.

Only worry for her sister, and the desperate pleading in Jess’s voice when she’d called, kept her moving forward.

As Reilly reached the far side of the room, she saw with horror that the dark trail she was looking at was blood – a long, wide smear of it trailing across the room, leading her toward the kitchen. With rising horror, she realized that someone had dragged themselves, bleeding, across the floor.

She paused, her heart in her mouth, not wanting to go further, yet knowing that she had to. Every
fiber of her being screamed at her to turn around and run, call the cops and let them deal with whatever was in there. But she knew she couldn’t.

Not while she thought that Jess was in there.
Jess, her little sister, whom Reilly had spent most of her life looking after. She couldn’t quit now, even if she wanted to.

The blood trail led into the kitchen and, heart pounding, Reilly slowly turned the corner, knowing deep down that what happened next would change her forever.

There was a man lying face down on the floor, surrounded by a pool of his own blood. He looked to have been stabbed – two or three times – and had dragged himself into the kitchen to try …

Reilly put her hand up over her mouth, fighting back a horrified gasp and the same time an unbelievable urge to gag.

On the far side of the kitchen lay their mother – still so recognizable even after all these years. She had the same soft face that haunted Reilly’s dreams, the same light blond hair framed her face.

In those dreams she was always smiling down at Reilly, yet, today there was no smile. Instead, her mother’s face was twisted into a grotesque expression of horror, and a large kitchen knife was embedded in her stomach. She had bled profusely, her hands
covered in blood where she’d held her stomach, trying to staunch the flow of life seeping out.

She put a hand over her mouth, torn between shock and terror.

Oh my God …

‘I knew you’d come.’

Reilly jumped at Jess’s voice and then Jess herself gradually swam into focus. She was holding their mother’s head in her lap, gently stroking her hair. She looked up slowly, seeing Reilly standing in the doorway.

‘Christ, Jess, what’s happened?’ Her throat seemed to close over as she tried to find the right words, something,
anything
to say.

Jess fixed her gaze on Reilly for a moment, before looking down again at their mother. ‘She’s at peace now,’ she said, finally. ‘She was so upset, so ashamed about what she had done.’ She continued stroking her mother’s hair, leaving a bloody streak across her forehead. Yet rather than seeming stunned or sad, the gesture struck Reilly as being eerie more than anything else.

‘Jess, I think we need to call the police—’

‘She was a whore, Reilly!’ Suddenly her sister’s face changed, her peaceful expression replaced by a snarl of almost animal-like ferocity.
‘Always leaving us, always abandoning us. She was a miserable, stinking whore – it was what she deserved!’

‘What?’

It was as if all the walls had suddenly begun closing in on them. She stared in horror as Jess defiantly met her gaze as if daring her to contradict her. Jess … was she involved in this … somehow responsible for this? Reilly swallowed hard, as her brain struggled to take in what she was witnessing, unable to deal with the dark and dangerous animal her sister had suddenly become.

Her first instinct was to try and calm things down, take control, be the big sister she’d always been. She took a fearful step closer, looking down at the blood on Jess’s hands. ‘Honey, what happened here today?’ she asked softly. ‘Are you OK?’

Jess looked up at Reilly with a soft, almost beatific smile. ‘I’m fine – now,’ she replied, finally. She looked around the room and her gaze settled on the man. Almost like a switch being clicked her mood changed again and her face shuttered. ‘He got what he deserved,’ she snarled. Reilly stayed rooted to the spot, tears welling up in her eyes as she struggled to understand what on earth had taken place.

Jess looked down again at their mother. ‘As did Mommy,’ she went on, continuing to smear blood across her forehead. She glanced up at Reilly, as if suddenly remembering something. ‘We won’t see her in heaven either; there’s no place up there for lying whores.’ Then she leaned down and kissed their mother’s bloody forehead. ‘You should say goodbye to her too now, Reilly, seeing as it’s the last time you’ll see her.’

Reilly stood there, her shoulders heaving, huge tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Jess, what have you done?’

Jess gently set her mother down on the cold wooden floor and climbed to her feet.
She examined the body, as though looking for defects, before finally reaching down and gently crossing Cassie’s hands across the gash in her stomach.

Then, she padded lightly across the kitchen floor, and wrapped her blood-soaked arms around her sobbing sister. ‘It’s OK, Reilly,’ she murmured into Reilly’s ear. ‘I fixed it – now everything is OK.’

Having endured a thorough chewing-out from Gorman, most of which she didn’t hear, Reilly finally escaped from his office and immediately checked her cell messages.

Nothing from Chris other than a missed call from earlier that morning.

Damn, why hadn’t he called since? Even if the news wasn’t good, surely he’d have the decency to keep her updated.

She quickly
dialed his number but frustratingly it went straight to voicemail. Next she called Kennedy, who’d apparently heard nothing in the meantime either.

‘Don’t worry, I’m sure he and Forrest have got everything under control,’ the detective assured her.

‘Daniel? Daniel went with him?’ For some reason this seemed to panic her even more.

‘That’s what the guys at the station said. They left here about an hour and a half ago. Look, try not to worry, I’m sure everything’s fine – if it wasn’t, Chris would’ve been in touch.’

She wanted to believe him, she really did, but if the killer’s message had indeed been meant for her, Reilly knew she couldn’t take anything for granted. How could he have known about Cassie – or about Jess? Her sister had been underage at the time, and so she hadn’t been named in the newspapers.

If the killer did know, she could see why he’d have a field day with it. Daniel was right; to think that one of those trying to catch him had a personal insight on his preferred
modus operandi
and knew all about taboos …

Had Daniel suspected this all along? Had he realized that the killer had gained an advantage by tapping into Reilly’s murky past, exposing her shameful family secrets? And if he had, what was he intending to do about it?

There was nothing Reilly could do to change things, in the same way that back then, there was nothing she could do but turn over her badly damaged 14-year-old sister to the cops. Jess, having discovered their absent mother’s whereabouts, had sought Cassie out and subsequently learned that she had indeed left Mike for another man.

As was often the case with Jess, the encounter had evidently been fraught and angry, and when mother and daughter were interrupted by Cassie’s partner, the highly emotional teenager grabbed a kitchen knife and lashed out in the most unimaginable way.

Even now, Reilly could hear Jess pleading with her not to call the police.

‘I didn’t mean it, Reilly, I swear I didn’t. He just crept up behind me. I was protecting myself, I swear.’

‘But you killed him … you killed him and Mom.’

‘I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t. She was screaming at me, even after I told her how much I missed her, how much
we
missed her, Dad too. You know what she’s like, Reilly – it wasn’t my fault.’ She grabbed at Reilly’s arm, a wild look in her eyes. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here – nobody saw us, they’ll never know.’

‘Jess, we can’t just walk out of here. You killed two people.’ Reilly could barely move. ‘We should call Dad, maybe he’ll know what to—’

‘No, you can’t tell him, you can’t tell anyone! Reilly, you’re my sister, you promised to look after me, to protect me. Now I need you to help me.’

There was something eerily matter-of-fact in her voice, as if she’d decided all along that Reilly had no choice but to go along with all this or, worse, had no choice but to help her get away with it.

‘This is different, Jess. This is serious. Big-time serious.’ She moved toward the phone at the end of the kitchen counter and Jess grabbed her arm, a feral look on her face. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said in a tone that made Reilly stop in her tracks. Quick as a flash, the vulnerable, teenage demeanour disappeared and was replaced by a calm control that was deeply unsettling. ‘Don’t be the bad guy or you might be catching up with Mommy dearest sooner than you think.’

This, and the cold, terrifyingly threatening way she said it, made Reilly wonder if the preceding event had played out as accidentally as Jess painted it.
And in that brief, horrifying moment, she remembered seeing the same look the day her little sister teased and assaulted Randy Reynolds and her matter-of-fact pronouncement that ‘bad guys had to be punished’.

But, luckily for Reilly, the decision was taken out of her hands. Soon after, the cops arrived. Someone – a
neighbor probably – had heard a commotion in the house earlier and called 911.

Recalling the look on Jess’s face as each girl was led separately away, she knew her sister would never forgive her for failing to protect her like she’d sworn to do.

It was a look that remained that day in court, when Jess was sentenced to fifteen years in the Central California Women’s Facility. Reilly had sat in the courthouse alongside a shocked and broken Mike who, it turned out, had inadvertently revealed Cassie’s whereabouts to Jess. Reilly felt utterly torn and betrayed, having always hoped their mother would return someday. Instead, she would be forever haunted by that last memory of Cassie as a grotesque, lifeless corpse.

Now, Reilly sat at her desk and put her head in her hands. That was the last time she’d seen her sister, the last time Jess had allowed any of her family to see her. Despite Reilly’s pleas, she continuously refused to appear for any of her and Mike’s visits to the CCWF.

As the years went by, Mike dealt with the tragedy by turning more and more to the bottle while Reilly, unable to get a handle on her sister’s actions, had found herself drawn into forensic psychology. But, unlike Daniel Forrest, she’d eventually found the study of dark and troubled minds far too difficult and unsettling, preferring instead more hands-on crime scene investigation.

Then, when a few years earlier Mike, in a sudden attempt to rouse himself out of the booze-filled existence he’d been living, decided to return to the country of his birth after retirement, Reilly agreed, hoping that it would be the start of a new life for him, the perfect opportunity to start over. But very quickly it became apparent that the vastly changed Ireland did little to calm his spirit and all too soon he was back in the same self-destructive cycle.

While Reilly had hoped that taking the job in Dublin and being nearby might help, now it seemed that her actions had indirectly put her father right in the path of danger.

‘Reilly?’

Her head snapped up as she heard the soft knock on the door and saw Lucy standing in the doorway looking hesitant.

‘Lucy, hi, sorry – I was miles away.’

‘Um … hope I’m not interrupting but I just wanted to say that I hope I didn’t get you into trouble earlier – with my dad, I mean.’

Reilly looked at her. ‘You must have known I had no idea.’

The younger girl wouldn’t meet her gaze. ‘I wasn’t sure to be honest. Everyone else knows and it’s mentioned in my personnel file, but I try not to draw to much attention to it at work.’

‘Lucy, if I was ever disrespectful—’

‘Are you mad? I don’t know how you managed to stay so nice. My dad … I know better than anyone how he can be sometimes.’

‘Even so.’

‘This doesn’t change anything though, does it? You still want me on your team?’ Her voice was so small and uncertain that Reilly’s heart went out to her.

‘Of course I do – you’re the fastest learner I know.’

Lucy exhaled. ‘Thanks, Reilly. I’ve learned so much from you since you came here and I love working with you. We all do.’

She couldn’t help but feel touched by this. ‘Feeling’s mutual. And don’t worry about your dad. We’ve sort of come to an understanding.’

‘You’re sure? He was pretty mad.’

‘You can say that again.’ The man’s rant still echoed in her head, but it was faint amongst the cacophony of everything else on her mind just then.

‘Well, anyway,’ Lucy hovered a little in the doorway, ‘a couple of things have just come through from the lab, stuff from the break-in actually.’ She dropped a sheaf of papers on Reilly’s desk. ‘Dead ends mostly. For example, that hair you found in the stairwell? We ran the DNA like you asked and it looks like it’s your own.’ When Reilly frowned, she looked apologetic. ‘I know, I suppose we should have thought of that but—’

‘You’re sure?’ She snatched up the papers and looked for the relevant report.

‘Well, yes – the genetic profile came back a high percentile match against your registered sample.’ It was standard procedure for all law enforcement personnel, but most importantly for GFU staff to provide DNA samples – essential to rule out any form of evidence contamination.

Yet, Reilly was still hopeful that the hair she’d found was her attacker’s and it had been this that had sent her down the female accomplice route. She kneaded her forehead. Clearly, Daniel had a point and she’d been wrong. She flicked through the bundle for the relevant report and quickly scanned through the profile for the hair. It seemed there was a high percentile comparison but what caught her attention was the short scribbled note in the lab comments.

‘Hold on, this isn’t right …’ She stood up. ‘Who ran the sample?’ she asked, heading for the door.

Lucy followed closely at her heels. ‘Julius, I think. Why?’

Reilly didn’t
answer, instead she went directly to Julius. He was bent over, studying something under a microscope when she arrived.

‘What kind of anomalies?’ she asked, without preamble.

‘Sorry?’

‘The hair sample – in your notes you said that notwithstanding
allelial anomalies, there’s a high probability it’s my DNA.’

‘Correct.’ He turned to give her his full attention, and for the first time since she’d known him, he looked somewhat uncertain. ‘I ran the test twice.’

‘And?’

‘Well, let me clarify.’ He stepped forward and pointed to the printout. ‘On first glance it’s a solid comparative to your file DNA, enough to suggest the hair is yours. However, if you drill down and compare the alleles …’

She looked again at the attached printout; a more detailed comparison of both samples, which told a slightly different story. The DNA alleles were a close match certainly, but not a complete one. Reilly’s brain felt foggy, as she tried to get her brain around what she was looking at.

‘What’s going on?’ Lucy asked. ‘I thought it was a straightforward match.’

Julius cleared his throat. ‘Not quite. It’s a genetic match, certainly, but … well it’s one you might expect to see between—’

‘Siblings,’ Daniel Forrest finished the sentence as he came into the room, closely followed by a strained-looking Chris. ‘Reilly, why don’t we head back to your office? We need to talk.’