The Unquiet Dead (29 page)

Dennis wiped a hand over his face, agog. “You're a lunatic. Do you hear yourself? I went down on my knees and thanked God the day you met Drayton. You couldn't marry him fast enough for me.”

“You followed him.” She was howling at him now. “You followed him to the Bluffs and you shoved him over. Maybe you did it because you wanted me to be miserable. Maybe you did it to show you can still control me. Or maybe you did it because you knew Chrissie was a thousand times the father you are. You knew he'd get the girls if I pushed for it.”

Just as Rachel stepped forward to intervene, Hadley rocketed out of the front door and threw herself between her parents. She held a large envelope in her hands that she waved at them.

“Your goddamned lies.” She swore at her mother. “I warned you, Mel. Don't say I didn't warn you.” She upended the contents of the envelope over the lawn. “There's your Chrissie. There's the bastard you wanted to marry. And you're the one who knew about his will. You're the one who followed him. If anyone pushed him, you did.”

“No!” Cassidy's wail reverberated across the street.

“I'm sorry, Cass, I'm sorry. But it's true, it's all true.”

Rachel stared at the contents of the envelope with horror, Dennis Blessant slack-jawed beside her. Hadley had scattered documents and photographs across the lawn between her parents. Rachel slipped on her gloves and knelt on the grass to collect them.

Some of it was pornography. The most depraved and violent pornography she'd come across: terrified women tied up, threatened and debased by knives and guns and other implements of torture. Cross-cutting these were Polaroids. Close-ups of Hadley and Cassidy in their beds at Krstić's house, sleeping. He had drawn their covers aside and photographed their legs, their breasts. There were photographs of Hadley and Cassidy coming out of the shower, their hair wet, their towels slipping.

Bile rose in her stomach.

“Sir,” she said to Khattak. Blessant tried to take the photographs from her. She blocked him.

“I'm sorry, sir, these are evidence.”

“My girls,” he whispered. “My girls. Hadley, did he—?”

“No,” she said quickly. “My God, no, Dad. I never would have let him. I never left him alone with Cassie for a second. But Mel was willing to. She couldn't see what was right in front of her face.” Her voice dripped with contempt.

Rachel felt sick. A fifteen-year-old girl was talking about her mother.

“What do you mean?”

“I knew what kind of a man he was when he called my mother a whore every night,” Hadley said with disgust. “‘Shut up, you stupid whore. Take it, you filthy whore.' And still she kept pushing him for a wedding date.”

“He loved me,” Melanie said blankly. “He loved me and I loved him. I don't care what they say he did. He didn't do it.”

Hadley grabbed her by the shoulders and screamed into her face. “He was a war criminal, Mother!
Christopher Dra
ž
en Krsti
ć
!
He killed people. He raped them. Didn't you ever ask yourself why he wanted us at his house? Didn't you ever wonder why he insisted you get sole custody? Didn't you see the pictures?” Her face was soaked with tears. She wiped her nose with the sleeve of her dress.

“No,” Melanie whispered. “It's not what you're saying. He was a family man. You're making this all up.”

With a swift movement, Rachel blocked Dennis Blessant's sudden lunge.

“Why won't you believe me?” Hadley released her grip on her mother's arms and turned away. “You're my mother. Why would I lie to you?”

Melanie hesitated. “You don't want me to be happy.” But her voice lacked conviction. She made a tentative gesture to reach for her daughter, then dropped her hands. “It's just a misunderstanding,” she said. “You misunderstood him.”

“I didn't, Mum.” She hadn't used this name for her mother in years, Rachel was sure. “Honestly, Mum—I didn't.” She sank down onto the grass, crying.

Rachel couldn't bear it.

“Sir,” she said again.

Khattak motioned the officers from the scout car over. “Take them in,” he said of the Blessants. “To separate rooms. We'll meet you there.” He looked at Rachel. The color had left his skin, a green tinge beneath its surface. “We'll need someone to stay with the girls.”

Rachel swallowed her nausea. This was the last moment in the world to rely upon Mink Norman. She watched him make his call, rose from her knees, and awkwardly gathered Hadley into her arms. Hadley didn't resist. After a moment, she rested her head on Rachel's shoulder.

Riv brought Cassidy back from across the street and all three of them hugged each other.

Hadley gripped Rachel's wrist. She motioned at her sister. “Don't let her see,” she mouthed.

Rachel shoved the envelope under her blazer.

Khattak patted Marco River's arm.

“Audrey Clare is coming,” he said quietly. “She'll take you to Winterglass. Stay there, won't you?”

Riv stared at him, man-to-man. “I won't leave until you say it's okay.”

He took Rachel aside. “We'll need to get someone from Crisis Response up there, but for now Audrey will be able to handle things. What she does with her NGO is mainly social work.”

He could still surprise her.

“And what about us, sir?”

“Was the will among those documents?”

“Yes.”

“Then let's begin with Ms. Blessant.”

 

29.

We saw them rape the
hadji's
daughter—one after the other, they raped her. The
hadji
had to watch too. When they were done, they rammed a knife into his throat.

Khattak didn't want to talk to this woman. He loathed her. Charles Brining had been right. There was nothing about Chris Drayton's past that Melanie hadn't known. She just hadn't cared.

He thought of Hadley and Cassidy, their luxurious youth and innocence. Their devotion to their father. He rued a system that left them under the negligent care of a woman like Melanie. The photographs sickened him. They weren't something Drayton had purchased off the Internet and hoarded like a treasure. They were personal, intimate. Photographs Drayton had either taken himself or had his subordinates take for him. The women were Bosnian. The photographs were from rape camps.

Khattak had had them copied and dusted for prints. Tomorrow he would send them to Tom Paley with an urgent request that they be forwarded to the tribunal at the Hague. For the twenty thousand rapes that had been reported during the war, much less than the actual number that had taken place, fewer than forty men had been sentenced—less than a handful of these at the international tribunal. Perhaps the photographs would bring other men to justice. After that, he fervently prayed they would be destroyed.

“You knew the code to Drayton's safe?”

He was as far across the room from Melanie as possible. Rachel sat opposite her at the small table in the room. Melanie didn't bother with deception.

“Yes. I watched him open it once.”

“You took the envelope from the safe? That's how you knew about the will?”

“I didn't take it. I just happened to see it in there once. I had a look.”

“So you knew he was leaving everything to you.”

“So what?” She sniffed. “I loved Chrissie. I wanted to marry him. He was no good to me dead.”

“I think you'll find that's true, given his real identity. His policies will be void, his assets frozen until their provenance is determined.”

“Come again?” All pretense of kittenish helplessness dropped from her manner at this threat to her windfall.

“His money. It's likely not his to leave. The bequests from his will won't be paid out. Tell me, Ms. Blessant. If you didn't take the envelope from the safe, how did Hadley come to have it?”

Melanie's face reflected her indecision about Hadley's revelations. “She just told you. She was spying on us. That's probably how she figured out the code.”

“Her prints weren't on the safe.”

This time her answer came quickly. “I like to keep it clean in there.”

“Did you see what else was in the envelope?” Rachel asked. “The photographs, the letters to Dra
ž
en Krstić?”

Melanie arranged her breasts on the table like two giant lumps of unbaked bread. Rachel backed away. Melanie's façade was beginning to splinter: there were cracks at the line of her jaw, cords that stood out against her neck, white lines in her suntanned cleavage. The faintest blur of mascara discolored the pits beneath her eyes.

“I told you, it was just the one time. I had a quick look.”

Rachel very much doubted that that had been Melanie's only incursion into Drayton's privacy.

“You saw the photographs,” she insisted.

“What of it?”

Rachel wanted to smack her self-satisfied face. “What of it? Ms. Blessant, those were photographs of your daughters in various states of undress.”

“No,” she denied immediately. “He loved them. They're just pictures of the girls asleep.”

Khattak jerked forward. “Do you really believe that? After everything your daughter just said to you?”

“Oh honey,” the woman said. “You don't think it's possible Hadley was looking for a little attention? Because her father doesn't give her enough?”

And Rachel saw how the woman had already orchestrated an alternate scenario in her mind—one that renewed her vendetta against her husband at the expense of Hadley's need for solace and support. That fleeting moment when Melanie Blessant had truly seen her daughter had already passed.

“You can't honestly believe your daughters weren't at risk.”

Melanie stared at her, gritty-eyed. “He was a good man. His interest in them was harmless.”

Rachel nearly choked. The woman's need to believe in Drayton's single-minded adoration of her had made her blind to everything else.

“Did you find the other photographs harmless as well? Considering their connection to Dra
ž
en Krstić?”

She shrugged, the movement rippling through her breasts like an underwater wave. “What man doesn't hold on to a little pornography? Why would I care about that? And who the hell was Dra
ž
en whatever to me? No one.”

“Not quite,” Rachel said. “He was an indicted war criminal, a fugitive from justice. That wasn't pornography you were looking at. It was evidence of his crimes.”

“Don't kid yourself, honey. It was women tied up. Or don't you know that most men are into a little kink?”

Rachel wanted to slap her. “You evidently did. Weren't you worried about your daughters in view of the ‘kink' your boyfriend was into?”

“Fiancé,” she corrected automatically. Her gaze stroked over her sumptuous figure in the mirror behind Khattak's head. “Why would I worry? I could handle anything he wanted.”

In a clinical voice, Khattak asked, “You didn't feel a responsibility to protect Hadley and Cassidy from his appetites?”

“I've told you before. The only one Chrissie wanted was me. Hadley's never had that kind of attention from a man—you can't blame her for feeling a little jealous.”

It was obvious that she believed this. Rachel didn't know if that increased or lessened her disgust. In her own twisted way, was this how Melanie found common ground with her daughter? Because nothing they were saying about Dra
ž
en Krstić was getting through to her.

“Ms. Blessant, did you see your husband follow Mr. Drayton to the Bluffs the night that he fell?”

“I heard the fight. I was with Chrissie that night.”

“But not when he went to his walk.”

“He asked me to leave. He said his mood was off after Dennis. He wanted to be alone.”

“So you didn't see your ex-husband follow him.”

“No. But I know he did. He won't rest until he's ruined everything for me.”

“You're referring to his desire for custody.”

“Yes.”

“Then you did know that you and your daughters were a package deal for Drayton.”

“You're turning it into something it wasn't. We both knew he'd make a better father for them than Dennis.”

Khattak left it. “Did you light candles that night before your ex-husband arrived?”

“Are you crazy? In this heat?”

“It's been raining off and on for the past two weeks.”

“Even if it was, it was sweltering.”

“You didn't mention any of this to us before.”

“You didn't ask. Say,” she said, lively with a new thought. “This would be news, wouldn't it? Big news? Who Chrissie really was? The kind of news the papers pay big money for? If they're going to freeze Chrissie's assets, I mean.”

She had already forgotten her daughter's anguish.

Revolted, Rachel opened her mouth to speak. Khattak swiftly forestalled her.

He leaned down toward the table, faced Melanie head-on. “Ms. Blessant, I find you appalling.”

And when that came up in the inevitable complaint against CPS, Rachel would swear on her life that Khattak had never said it.

*   *   *

“Shall we drive you back to your car, Mr. Blessant?”

“Call me Dennis. You're not keeping me here?”

“We only brought you here to spare your daughters any further unpleasantness.”

Dennis barked out a laugh. “That's one word for it, I suppose. My ex doesn't exactly scream maternal devotion from the rafters.”

“If you were so poorly matched, why did you marry her?” Rachel asked.

“For the same reason men do most stupid things. She has a great body. I thought that was enough. I had money. She thought that was enough.”