Twice Dead (27 page)

“No, I'm all right.” She licked her lips, looked over into the shadows, clutched his hand, and whispered, “Adam, he really is my father, isn't he? That story he told me, it's the truth? It happened that way?”

“Yes, all of it is true. His name is Thomas Matlock. He never died, Becca. There is probably a whole lot more to tell you—”

“Yes,” Thomas said, “a lot more. So many stories to tell you about your mother, Becca.”

“My mom said I had dreamy eyes. You do, too. I have your eyes.”

Thomas smiled and his eyes twinkled. “I guess maybe you do have my eyes.”

Adam said, stroking his chin, “I'm not sure about that. The thing is, Becca, I've never before looked at his eyes in quite the same way I look at yours.”

Suddenly, all her attention was on Adam. She said, “Why not?”

“Because—” Adam stopped dead in his tracks. She was actually coming on to him, teasing him. He loved it. He cleared his throat. “Now's not the time. We'll talk about that later, you can count on it. Now, are you up to telling us about this guy who took you?”

“You mean Krimakov.”

“Yes.”

“A moment, Adam. Sir, you sent Adam to protect me, didn't you?”

“Yes, he did, but I screwed up, big-time.”

Becca said, “Sorry, Adam, but you can't take all the credit. What that monster did was very clever. None of us would have ever guessed that he came back to the house while we were out looking for him. How'd he get me out of the house without being seen?”

“Sherlock figured that one out really fast. He knocked out Chuck and tied him up. That's how he escaped with you.” He saw the worry in her eyes and quickly added, “He's okay—a headache for a while. I'm sorry, Becca, so sorry. Did he hurt you?” It hurt to say it, but he did: “Did he rape you?”

“No. He licked my face. I told him not to do it again because it was creepy. That made him really mad, but you see, that drug he shot into me, it also calmed me, made me all loose, so when I woke up that first time I wasn't afraid of him. I don't think I was afraid of anything. It was a side effect of the drug, he said, and he didn't like it. He wanted me to be real afraid, he wanted me to beg and plead, like Linda Cartwright did.” She shuddered as she said the name. “He said she didn't matter. She was only his present to me.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

She shook her head. She said to her father, “I can't even describe him. He never let me see him. When he had me tied down to a bed, he always stood in the shadows, beyond what I could make out. I don't think he was old, but I can't be one hundred percent certain. Was he young? I don't know. But when he cursed, he used a mixture, some American, some British, and some in a language I didn't recognize. Isn't that strange?”

“Yes, but we'll figure it out.”

Thomas was standing beside her bed, opposite Adam. He was wearing a dark suit, the dark red tie loosened. He looked tired and worried and, oddly enough, happy. Because of her? Evidently so, and that pleased her very much. He picked up her left hand and held it. His hand was strong, lightly tanned. He was wearing a wedding ring. She stared at that ring, stared and stared, touched her fingers to it, then said finally, “My mother gave you that ring?”

“Yes, when we got married. I wore it all our married lives. I plan to wear it until it finally dissolves off my finger sometime in the distant future. I loved your mother very much, Becca. Like I said, I had to leave both of you so you wouldn't be killed. I know it's all still very confusing. There are lots of facts and details, but the bottom line is exactly what I already told you. I accidentally killed a man's wife and he swore he would kill my family, and then he would kill me, but only after I saw, firsthand, how he had killed everyone I loved. I had no choice. I had to leave my family in order to protect them.”

Adam said, “We believe this man who is stalking you, who murdered that old bag lady, who shot the governor, we believe it's Krimakov and somehow he found you and began terrorizing you.” He paused for a moment, nodding to Thomas.

Thomas was looking down at this lovely young woman who was his only child. It took him a moment before he said, “Vasili Krimakov was one of the KGB's top agents back in the seventies, as I was for the CIA. Again, there's a whole lot more, but it can wait for a while. Right now, what's important is that we find him, that we neutralize him once and for all.”

“You're sure it's Krimakov.”

He smiled then. “Oh yes, I'm very sure, particularly after what he told you.”

“‘Say hello to your daddy.'”

“Yes. No one else would know that.”

“My mom wore a ring like yours. When she died—” She couldn't speak, the tears clogged her throat, burned her eyes. He said nothing at all, held her hand, squeezed it a bit more tightly. She swallowed, looked away from him toward the window. It was black out there, no sign of stars from her vantage point. “—I wanted desperately to have something to connect me to her and I almost took that ring, but then I remembered how much she loved you, and I couldn't take it from her.

“Sometimes when she spoke to me of you, she would start crying and I hated you for leaving us, for leaving her, for dying. I remember when I was a teenager I told her she should get married again, that I would be going off to college, and she needed to put you in the past. She needed to find someone else. She was so young and beautiful, I didn't want her to be alone. I remember she'd only smile at me and say she was fine.” Then, suddenly, Becca said, “He came after me so he could get to you, didn't he?”

“Yes,” Adam said. “That's exactly right. But he didn't know where Thomas was, so he came up with a way to flush Thomas out. He dumped you right in front of One Police Plaza.”

“What I don't understand,” Thomas said, “is why he didn't simply announce all over the media that he had her, threaten to kill her if I didn't show myself in Times Square. He must have known that I would be there. But he didn't.”

Adam said, “Who knows? Maybe a cop saw him, saw an unconscious woman in the backseat, and he was forced to dump Becca in order to escape. However, it's far more likely that he planned this down to the exact spot he'd leave her. I think it's gamesmanship. He wants to prove he's better than you, smarter than all of us, and he wants you to suffer big-time in the process.”

“He's succeeded admirably,” Thomas said. “He has flushed me out. I guess maybe that's why he didn't let you see him, Becca. He wants to keep playing this insane game. He wants to terrorize you and now he can continue the terror, with me squarely in the game with you.”

“And only he knows the rules,” Becca said.

“Yes,” Adam said. “I wonder if he's been living on Crete all this time.”

“Probably so,” Thomas said.

“Wait,” Becca said, chewing on her bottom lip. “Now I recognize those curses—they were Greek.”

“That settles that,” Thomas said. “We've got all the proof we need that the ashes in that urn in the Greek morgue aren't Krimakov's.”

He leaned down and kissed Becca's forehead. “I won't leave you again. Now we'll find Krimakov, and then you and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“I'd like that,” she said. Then she smiled over at Adam, but she didn't say anything.

TWENTY-ONE

Detective Letitia Gordon and Detective Hector Morales of the NYPD looked over at the woman who lay in that skinny hospital bed, looking pale and wrung-out, IV lines running obscenely into her arms, her eyes shiny with tears.

Detective Gordon cleared her throat and said to the room at large, “Excuse me,” and flashed her badge, as did Hector Morales, “but we need to speak to Ms. Matlock. The doctor said it was all right. Everyone out.”

Thomas straightened and looked at them, assessing them, quickly, easily, and smiled even as he walked forward, blocking their view of his daughter. “I'm her father, Thomas Matlock, detectives. Now, what can I do for you?”

“We need to speak to her now, Mr. Matlock,” Letitia Gordon said, “before the Feds get here and try to big-foot us.”

“I am the Feds, Detective Gordon,” Thomas said.

Detective Gordon cleared her throat. “It's important, sir. There was a murder committed here in New York, on our turf. It's our case, not yours, and your daughter is involved.” Why had she said all that? Because he was a big federal cheese, and that's why she'd tried to excuse herself, tried to justify herself. What was he going to do?

Detective Morales smiled and shook Thomas's outstretched hand. “Hector Morales, Mr. Matlock. And this is Detective Gordon. We didn't realize she had any relatives other than her mother.”

“Yes, she does, detectives,” Thomas said. “There's still some drug in her system, so she's not really completely back yet, but if you would like to speak to her for a couple of minutes, that probably wouldn't hurt. But you need to keep it low-key. I don't want her upset.”

“Look, sir,” Detective Gordon said, pumping herself up, knowing that she should be the one giving the orders here, not this man, this stranger who was with the government. “Ms. Matlock ran away. Everyone was looking for her. She is wanted as a material witness in the shooting of Governor Bledsoe of New York.”

Thomas Matlock merely arched a very patrician brow at her and looked intimidatingly forbearing. “Fancy that,” he said mildly. “I can't imagine why she would ever want to leave New York what with all the protection you offered her.”

“Now see here, sir,” Detective Gordon said, and tried to shake off Hector Morales's hand on her arm, but he didn't let go, and she looked yet again into that man's face, and she shut up. There were words bubbling inside her, but she wasn't about to say them. He was a Big Feeb, and she saw the power in his eyes, something that flashed red warning lights to her brain, an ineffable something that shouted power, more power than she could imagine, and so she kept her mouth shut.

“There is a lot we do not understand, Mr. Matlock,” Detective Morales said, his voice stiff, with a slight accent. “May we please speak to your daughter? Ask her a few questions? She does look very ill. We won't take long.”

The thing of it was, Letitia Gordon thought as she walked to the bed where the young woman lay staring at her with dread, her dyed hair tangled and dirty about her face, she wanted to stand very straight in front of that man, perhaps salute and then do exactly what he told her to do. And here was Hector, acting so deferential, like this guy was the president or, more important, the police commissioner. Whatever he was, this man wore power like a second skin.

“Ms. Matlock, in case you don't remember, I'm Detective Gordon and this is Detective Morales.”

“I remember both of you very well,” Becca said, and concentrated on clearing the sheen of tears out of her eyes. These people couldn't hurt her now, Adam and her father wouldn't let them. And she wouldn't, either. She'd been through enough now that a couple of hard-boiled cops couldn't intimidate her.

“Good,” Detective Gordon said, then she caught herself looking over at Mr. Matlock, as if for approval of her approach. She cleared her throat. “Your father said we could ask you a couple of questions.”

“All right.”

“Why did you run, Ms. Matlock?”

“After my mother died and I'd buried her, there was no reason for me to stay. He found me at the hotel where I was hiding, and I knew he would get me. None of you believed me, and so I didn't think I had a choice. I ran.”

“Look, Ms. Matlock,” Detective Gordon said, coming closer, “we still aren't certain there was a man after you, calling you, threatening you.”

Adam said mildly, knowing until he and Thomas had discussed it, Krimakov's probable identity would remain under wraps to the NYPD, “Then who do you think kicked her out of a moving car at One Police Plaza? A ghost?”

“Maybe it was her accomplice,” Detective Gordon said, whirling on Adam, “you know, the guy who shot Governor Bledsoe.”

Becca didn't say anything. Thomas saw she was pulling away, even though she hadn't moved a finger, trying to draw into herself. She looked unutterably tired.

“Also,” Detective Gordon added, not looking at Mr. Matlock, “our psychiatrist reported that he believed you have big problems, Ms. Matlock, lots of unresolved issues.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “Unresolved issues? I love shrink talk, Detective. Do tell us what that means.”

“He believes that she was obsessed with Governor Bledsoe, that she had to have his attention, and that was why she made up these stories about this guy calling her and stalking her, threatening to kill the governor if she didn't stop sleeping with him.”

Adam laughed. He actually laughed. “That's amazing.”

“I'm sure that old woman who was blown up in front of the Metropolitan Museum didn't think it was funny,” Detective Gordon said, her jaw out, not ready to give an inch.

“Let me get this straight,” Adam said. “You now think she blew up that old woman to get the governor's attention?”

“I told you the truth,” Becca said, cutting in before Letitia Gordon could blast Adam. “I told you he phoned me and told me to look out my window, which happens to face the park and the museum. He killed that poor woman, and you didn't do anything about it.”

“Of course we did,” Detective Morales said, his voice soothing and low. “There were a lot of conflicting stories coming in.”

“Yes,” Becca said. “Like the ones Dick McCallum told the cops in Albany that made all of you disbelieve me. This guy probably paid off Dick McCallum to lie about me, and then he murdered him, too. I don't understand why it isn't clear to you now.”