The Red Queen Dies (20 page)

“Rain check on breakfast? I have something I need to do.”

“What?”

“Go see Adam before he reads this.”

“He's probably seen it already.”

“In that case, I'm sure he'll have a few things he'd like to say to me.”

“That might be a good reason to stay out of his way for a couple of days.”

“That's not how it works. Talk to you later.”

*   *   *

Adam opened the door of his apartment in his bathrobe and pajama bottoms. His long-toed feet were bare on the footrests of his wheelchair.

“Sorry, did I get you out of bed? Pop was still asleep, too, when I—”

The sound of a cabinet door closing drew her eyes toward the kitchen. A woman with black hair to her waist, wearing white shorts and a blue T-shirt with Asian characters, smiled and waved. “Hi, I'm Mai. One of Adam's colleagues at UAlbany.”

“I'm Hannah. Adam's sister.”

“Nice to meet you, Hannah. Are you staying for breakfast?”

“Thanks, but I just came by for a quick conversation with Adam.”

Adam turned in his wheelchair. “Let's go out on the balcony. Excuse us, Mai.”

He closed the French doors behind them and brought his chair to a stop beside the balcony railing. “What's up?”

“This.” McCabe passed her ORB with the article on display over to him.

She looked out across the green space that the four apartment buildings in the complex shared. If Adam stayed in Albany, he would probably buy a place of his own. He'd had a condo in Chicago.

“Did you talk to this reporter?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I didn't know about the article until Chelsea called me this morning. But I was afraid this might happen. When they're covering high-profile cases, reporters like to include human-interest stories about the people involved in the investigation.” McCabe cleared her throat. “I was hoping now that we have the task force, they wouldn't notice me.”

“According to the article, you're the lead investigator.”

“I'm the investigator who caught the case. I was there when the call came in and the lieutenant needed to send someone to the scene. Mike Baxter responded, too.”

“Nothing much about Baxter in the article. In fact, he doesn't seem to be mentioned at all.”

“No. The article's about you and me.”

“‘Lead Cop on Serial Killer Case a Child Hero.' Catchy.”

“Adam, I am so sorry. I hope this…” McCabe glanced toward the closed French doors. “I hope this won't be awkward for you with Mai and your other colleagues.”

“Why should it be? They already know how I got in this chair.”

McCabe's breath caught in her throat. Before she could speak, Adam smiled.

“Don't sweat it, sis. You were the hero of our little saga. And it is just a newspaper article. After the hatchet job that guy Redfield did on you on his thread, you could probably use some good press.”

“Right,” McCabe said. “I'd better go and let you and Mai have your breakfast.”

He followed her to the door. “Drop by anytime.”

“I'll call first next time.” McCabe waved to the woman in the kitchen. “Nice meeting you, Mai.”

“You, too, Hannah. See you again soon.”

If Mai thought that, she must not know how many women had passed through Adam's life. Of course, he might be more careful when it came to colleagues. And, of course, they might only be friends.

But being in a wheelchair had not changed the attraction women of all ages seemed to feel for Adam. That at least was something that had been salvaged. But McCabe had never been sure if he considered that a blessing or a curse. Maybe it only made it worse when he thought of some day meeting a woman with whom he would want to spend more than a few months … and wondered if she would want him for a lifetime.

*   *   *

Her father was in the kitchen when she got back. Like Adam, he was in his pajamas and robe, but he had slippers on his feet and was moving between stove and counter.

He was loading a tray with his breakfast, whole-wheat toast, scrambled egg whites, turkey bacon, blueberries, and green tea. Good. He was sticking to his diet plan.

“You back from Chelsea's already?” he asked.

“I didn't go. I had to go see Adam.”

“See him about what?”

She went over to the wall and brought up the
Chronicle
node. “This,” she said. “An article about me and Adam.”

Angus put down his tray and came over to read the display. “What did your brother have to say about having the story rehashed?”

“He said not to worry about it … that I could use some good press after Clarence Redfield's thread. Did you see that thread?”

“I saw it. Your brother's right. If some reporter were going to do this story, it couldn't have come at a better time. After Redfield's thread, you needed some humanizing.”

“Learning that I shot a burglar when I was nine should certainly humanize me for the readers of the
Chronicle.
”

“What else would they expect you to do in that situation? Your brother was struggling with a man with a gun. The man shot him.”

McCabe closed out the
Chronicle
node. “As Mama pointed out to me when we were waiting to see if Adam would live or die, he was shot because he was trying to keep me from being shot.”

“I loved your mother. And she was distraught at the time, so you have to cut her some slack. But sometimes she could be full of crap. I've told you that.”

“I know you have.”

“Then why are you even thinking about it?”

“Because it's hard not to think about it. Aside from the
Chronicle
article, now that Adam's back—”

“Well, do you want him to go away again?”

“No, I want us to be brother and sister again. The way we were that day when we walked into the house together laughing.”

“You can't go back in time.”

“I know. If I could, I would turn as I'm walking out the door and remember to reset the security system.”

“If your mother hadn't thought a nine-year-old ought to wear deodorant—”

“If I'd remembered to put it on when I was getting dressed—”

“If Adam hadn't told you to hurry up and get ready if you wanted to go with him to the park to watch him play soccer. Or if I hadn't bought that gun. Or if your mother and I had stayed home that Saturday instead of driving to Boston. We can ‘if' ourselves to death. And it'll still come back to the fact that nobody was responsible for what happened except the guy who broke into our house.”

“I know that. And I'd like to be able to make peace with it once and for all. But I look at Adam in that wheelchair—”

“All right, then tell him to get the hell out of that wheelchair so you can get on with your life.”

“Pop—”

He glared at her. “It ain't going to happen. Until your brother or someone else comes up with a medical or technological miracle, he is not going to have legs that function on their own. So you can either learn to live with the fact he's in that wheelchair or you can make yourself crazy and drive your brother away once and for all.”

“Drive him away? It isn't just me. Adam—”

“Adam what?”

“Can't you see that he … sometimes he … I think he resents the fact that I—”

“You don't think he ought to be pissed now and then that you're whole and he ain't? And did he ever tell you that he resents you?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know he does?”

“You make it sound like I'm being childish—”

“You are. He might be now and then, too. And, God knows, sometimes he can be his mother's son. One of his little looks or the way he says something. But he loves you. You're still his sister. Just the way you were your mother's daughter.”

McCabe said, “Right. Of course, we can both acknowledge that Mama loved Adam best.”

“Sure she did. He was her favorite, the way you're mine.”

“And you don't think there's anything wrong with those family dynamics?”

“It might be wrong, but that's the way humans are. We love the way we love, and you take it or leave it. And my breakfast's gotten cold while we've been standing here talking about it.”

McCabe sighed. Whatever else Pop was, he was a realist, prone to pragmatism, she thought. He never quite got that it wasn't always that easy for the rest of them.

Not that it was always that easy for him, either. If it were, he wouldn't have drunk himself half to death when Mama died.

“Hearts don't break,” he had informed her in one of his drunken hazes. But for a while, she had thought his would.

“I'll heat your breakfast up for you.” She took his plate from his tray. “Pop, changing the subject—”

“Good. About time.”

“The case I'm working on. We're trying to find some information that doesn't seem to be there.”

Angus sat down at the table. “What kind of information?”

“If I tell you this … and I'm only telling you because I really need to know—”

“Stop filibustering and get on with it.”

“You have to promise me first that you will keep this to yourself.”

“Who am I going to tell? If you're talking about me telling your brother—”

“I'm talking about you telling anyone. I know when you get hold of a good story, you find it hard—”

“As you keep reminding me, Ms. Detective, I'm retired now. Where am I going to write about it?”

“Maybe in that book you might get around to writing.” She filled a mug with hot water and added another tea bag. “Or, who knows? You might decide to start your own thread.” She turned back to him and smiled. “I wouldn't put that past you.”

“Wouldn't you? What is it that I know that you don't? Must be important for you to be willing to take a chance on me keeping it to myself.”

“The serial murder case. We've finally found a link between the first two victims.” She set his breakfast plate and the fresh mug of tea on the table in front of him. “When they were kids, both attended a two-week summer science camp for twelve- to fourteen-year-old girls sponsored by a women's group. We're trying to reach the officers of the group, but what we know so far is that something happened during the time the girls were at the camp.”

“What?”

McCabe sat down across from him. “A bullying incident. A girl was being teased by another girl. The girl who was being teased ran away when the teaching assistant was out of the classroom. She was picked up in a car by a boy. We don't know what, if anything, happened. She was found. But she didn't go back to the science camp. Instead, her very angry mother went in the next day. The teaching assistant was called to the office. She left crying. She didn't go back to the camp, either.”

“Sounds like a real dustup.”

“It may have been. But so far, what we have is based on what we were told by the mother of one of our murder victims. No one seems to have called the police that day when the girl ran away from camp.”

“Got any names for these people?”

“No, other than Bethany Clark and Sharon Giovanni, our two murder victims, who both attended the camp. Sharon told her mother what happened. According to her mother, Sharon was involved because the girl who was bullying the other girl drew a picture and showed it to Sharon. Both the bully and Sharon got into trouble when the teaching assistant saw the drawing and called them out of the classroom to scold them.”

“But, according to her mother, Sharon was as innocent as the driven snow in all this?”

“Claims her mother. Actually, Bethany, our other murder victim, seems more likely to have been the instigator. Her sister remembers an odd little incident involving Bethany.” McCabe looked at him across the table. “Does any of this ring a bell?”

“Who was running the camp?”

“A group called Girls in Science, which as far as we can tell, was organized specifically to sponsor the camp.”

“Where'd the money come from?”

“Good question. We don't know yet. None of the group's officers seems to have been wealthy. We're thinking they might have had some type of grant. By tomorrow, we should have access to any paperwork that they filed.”

Angus scooped some egg whites onto the toast he had smeared with strawberry jam. “This would have been when? 2009?”

“2010.”

“Hand me my ORB over there on the counter.”

McCabe got up and brought it to him. “You remember something?”

“Not off the bat. But all of the crime stories the paper covered that year are on here. Indexed. What month?”

“First two weeks of July.”

She waited while he scanned the files.

“Robbery … hit-and-run … arson … missing baby found with father.” He shook his head. “Nothing coming up on a runaway girl.”

“She probably wasn't missing more than a few hours.” McCabe said. “So you don't recall anything?”

“I didn't say that. I just said we didn't report on anything like that.”

“So you do remember something?”

“I didn't say that, either.”

“Pop, you're making me crazy here.”

“Make yourself some breakfast and let me finish mine.” He took another bite of toast. “I've got my notes for that week here in another index.”

McCabe shook her head. “I don't understand why you can't write a book about your life and times as a reporter and editor when you have your notes organized right down to the week.”

“I wrote the notes as journal entries. That doesn't mean I can make any sense of them years later. I've got some entries after your mother died, when I must have been on weeklong benders. Don't know how in the hell I ever got anything written fit to print.”