Blind Spot (41 page)

Yet, Suki thought, I’m not hurt yet. She tried to smile. “I’m fine, really, I am.” She had to convince him she felt safe, get him to lower his guard, let go of her hand. “That’s … that’s an interesting key chain.”

Warren continued to hold her hand. “It’s the Hebrew letter aleph,” he said. “A mathematical symbol used in set theory. Order of numerousness, finite, infinite—that kind of thing.” He shifted his gaze from her to the fire, which was now raging, then back to her. “Topic of my doctoral dissertation.”

Suki couldn’t take her eyes off the aleph; she began to tremble. “I’m … I’m fine,” she said, although he hadn’t asked again. “Really.”

Warren looked at her oddly; his pupils were dark and dilated. “You’re shaking.” He reached across her and locked her door. “Don’t want you to fall out.” Then he kissed her.

Suki was revolted by his hot breath and the smell of his hair. She wanted to kick him and run as fast and as far as she could, but the vision of Alexa huddled in her stainless steel cell kept Suki in her seat. She sucked in her breath and tried to still the trembling of her hands. She had to get out. Away. As quickly as possible. Go to the police and have Warren arrested. Free Alexa.

She kissed Warren back, trying to ignore the horror of his lips on hers, to think of walking into that cell and taking Alexa home. But as he pulled her closer, she was filled with another horror: the police wouldn’t arrest him on her word alone, and she had nothing else. What could she say? That she knew he was guilty because her daughter could see into the future? She needed proof, and she had none.

Warren moaned and thrust his tongue deeply into her mouth.

Suki couldn’t help it. She pushed him away, more forcefully than she intended. “Blanket,” she gasped. “Cold. Need a blanket. For the shock.”

He dropped back into his seat, dazed, and blinked at her. “Sure,” he said after a moment and reached down to press the trunk release. “I’ll be back in a flash.”

As soon as his wide shoulders disappeared behind the lid of the trunk, Suki slid across the seat and twisted the key. She smashed her foot on the gas pedal. As the car lurched forward, both the driver’s door and the trunk slammed shut. She swerved into the sandy shoulder, yanked the wheel and managed to pull back onto the road.

Suki swiped her forearm across her mouth and risked a glance in the rearview mirror. Warren was running after her, his fist raised in the air. He was shouting something she couldn’t hear. The bastard, Suki thought. Drug-dealing, lying, slimy bastard. And suddenly Suki realized she did have proof of Warren’s guilt. It was at home, in her desk drawer, hidden beneath piles of paper.

She put both hands on the wheel and swung the car into a hard left turn. As the tires threw up a veil of gravel and dust, Warren was lost from view.

Suki brought the baggie of methamphetamine to the police station and told the dispatcher she had to see Kenneth right away. When Kenneth came upstairs, Suki dragged him into the interrogation room where Alexa had first told him about the shooting. She was somehow surprised to see that the children’s drawings still adorned the wall. “I need your help. Fast.”

He waved her into a chair. “What’s all over your face?”

Suki pulled the baggie from her purse and threw it on the desk. “I want you to check the inside bag for fingerprints.”

Kenneth pushed the baggie with the back of a pencil. He flipped it over. “Methamphetamine?” he asked.

“I know who the witness is. It’s the dealer, like I thought. The person who sold this to Alexa. But we have to move fast. He could be destroying the evidence right now.”

Kenneth raised his eyes from the meth and looked at her carefully. “Is that soot?”

She rubbed her cheek impatiently with the palm of her hand. “There was a fire at my office. He set it to try to scare me away from my search.”

“Someone set the Hayden house on fire just to scare you?” Kenneth looked a bit skeptical. “Who?”

“Warren Blanchard.”

Now Kenneth looked more than just a bit skeptical. “I’ve coached soccer with Warren for years. You must be mistaken.”

“His fingerprints are going to be on that baggie,” Suki insisted. “I know it. Please, there isn’t time to argue.”

“Are you saying that Warren was the one who called nine-one-one the night Jonah was killed?” Kenneth asked slowly, rubbing his beard. “That he left his own nephew on the road to die?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I also know it’s true.” She bit her lip and ordered herself to stay in control. She had to make him believe her. “Maybe he didn’t know it was Jonah. Maybe he was too busy trying to save his own skin.”

Kenneth shook his head. “Warren making drugs? Selling drugs? It’s a tough one to buy.”

“He’s a scientist.” Suki was frantic. “He’s got money trouble. Access to the kids. It makes sense, it does, in its own sick way.”

“And you think he set the fire because you were getting too close?”

Suki could see that Kenneth thought she had finally gone over the edge. She took a deep breath, hoping that Kenneth’s belief in the paranormal was strong enough to overcome his doubt about Warren. “Over the last couple of weeks, Alexa’s been telling me she’s afraid of Warren. She predicted he’d do something to harm me. Something that had to do with a ring with a Hebrew letter on it—and fire.”

Kenneth’s eyes widened. “You saw the ring?”

“It wasn’t a ring. It was a key chain with a mathematical symbol. The symbol is a Hebrew letter.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in this stuff?”

“Lindsey said that the man Alexa was afraid of was the one who would save her.”

“And you think Warren Blanchard’s that man?”

“Couldn’t you just please check the fingerprints?” Suki begged.

Kenneth opened up the small lab at the station and dusted the baggie, then placed it under an oblong magnifying light. As everyone in Jonah’s family had been printed at the time of his death, Warren’s fingerprints were on file. Kenneth pulled the file and stared at the two sets of swirls before him. Suki held her breath.

Finally, he raised his head and threw his reading glasses on the table. “Bingo.”

•  •  •

Kenneth needed a warrant to search Darcy’s house, but as it was Saturday, it wasn’t going to be as easy or as quick as either of them would have liked. He told Suki to go home, that she couldn’t come with him to the Wards’ anyway, that it could be hours. But Suki refused to leave the police station. She sat outside Alexa’s cell, wishing she could tell Alexa what had happened, but afraid this too might backfire, that once again, she would be bringing Alexa false hope. She wasn’t going to say anything until she knew for certain that Alexa was free to go home.

Alexa still lay on the bench, knees pressed to her chest, back to the door. A reticent policewoman sat at the desk doing paperwork. Suki concentrated on keeping her mind a perfect blank. Every second was painful. Warren could disappear, he could destroy the evidence, all this could come to nothing.

“Ma’am?” a stocky policeman stuck his head into the doorway.

Suki jumped to her feet. It had been less than an hour; it felt as if it had been a lifetime. “Is Detective Pendergast ready to leave?”

“Already gone, ma’am. Said you should head on home. That he’d call you there.”

Suki was not surprised Kenneth had slipped away. “I think I’ll stay here.”

The policeman shrugged. “Your choice.”

The dispatcher brought Alexa dinner from McDonald’s, which Alexa refused, but the police woman ate. A janitor mopped the floor. Sirens came and went. A cop Suki didn’t know told the policewoman that Charlie Gasperini’s death had been officially declared an accident. Suki startled at the policeman’s words, but then realized she wasn’t startled at all. Doors slammed. Walkie-talkies crackled. Suki waited.

Kenneth sent another message that it was going to be a long night and Suki should go home, but she didn’t. She called Scott Fleishman’s mother and asked if Kyle could sleep over. Then she got in Darcy’s car and drove to Darcy’s house.

When she reached the modest ranch on the “less desirable” side of Witton, there was not as much activity as she had expected. Kenneth’s unmarked car and a cruiser were parked in the driveway, but aside from the open front door, there was nothing to indicate that a police drama was taking place inside. There was no spectacle like the spectacle at her house yesterday, and Suki realized someone must have informed the media prior to Alexa’s arrest.

She walked up to the open door and looked in. Kenneth was seated on the living room couch. No one else was visible. The house was eerily silent. This wasn’t about lack of media, Suki thought, this was about lack of evidence. She slumped into the doorjamb, glad she hadn’t said anything to Alexa.

“Suki!” Kenneth jumped up. “I told you to go home,” he said as if he were sending a naughty child to her room.

“Where is everyone?” She forced herself to stand tall. “Did you find anything? What’s going on?”

Kenneth frowned and shook his head, but Suki could see from the sparkle in his eye that he wasn’t really angry.

“Tell me,” she said as she strode into the small room, her hopes rising. “Did he confess?”

“No,” Kenneth said, a slight smile playing beneath his beard. “No confession—lots of denial, as a matter of fact.”

Suki stepped closer, trying to reconcile his words with his expression.

“But we did find a lab in the basement.” Kenneth’s face broke into a grin. “A laboratory Blanchard claims he uses for his schoolwork. Things are kind of a mess, as if someone had tried to clean it up in a hurry: empty containers, just-rinsed bottles …”

“He’s into math,” Suki said. “Mathematicians don’t need laboratories.”

Kenneth nodded. “Especially not ones stocked with large quantities of Sudafed, iodine—and what looks to be phosphorous.” The ingredients in meth-amphetamine.

Suki threw her arms around Kenneth, and he hugged her back. “Where is he?” she asked, pulling away as heat raced to her cheeks. “Where’s that slimy bastard now?”

“He’s in the basement with Frank.” Kenneth stepped back and shrugged with gawky discomfort. He ran his hand over his beard. “We’re playing good-cop-bad-cop. Keeping it mellow so as not to freak him—he’s jittery as hell.”

“Has he said anything about Alexa?” she demanded. “About that night?”

“Not directly, but I think it’s coming.”

Suki dropped into a wing chair, its fabric shiny with age. She slouched within its comforting arms, afraid to believe this was actually happening, and afraid not to.

Kenneth knelt down next to her. “It might take days to wear Warren down,” he said. “Or it might not happen at all. You’ve got to be patient.”

“I can’t be patient when my daughter’s locked in a jail cell.”

“You have to be,” he said, slapping his knees and standing. “And you have to get out of here. It’s probably not a good thing for Warren to see you—it could make it worse.”

“I want to see him.” Suki stood up and faced Kenneth, her hands on her hips. “I deserve that.”

“Not now.” His voice was firm. “Trust me, it’s not a good idea. You need to go home, get some sleep, and let us take care of this our way.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Kenneth said and turned her toward the door.

“Can I at least see the lab?”

He started to shake his head, then hesitated. “Stay here.”

Suki followed Kenneth to a doorway at the far end of the kitchen. Standing behind him, so his body blocked her from the view of anyone downstairs, she leaned in when he did. She didn’t see Warren or Frank, although she could hear their voices. What she saw was a long workbench. It could have been any handyman’s workbench, with its jars of nails and open coffee tins, except that on this bench stood a beam scale, a Bunsen burner and at least a dozen packets of Sudafed. Next to the Sudafed were boxes of baggies. Multiple sizes.

•  •  •

Suki didn’t go home as Kenneth had suggested. She went back to the police station. She wanted to be there when they brought Warren in. It was late, so she gave Alexa a sleeping pill, but she didn’t take one. She fell into a fitful sleep in the chair at the matron’s desk and dreamed of sandpipers.

A hubbub outside woke her. She blinked, reoriented herself and slipped from the room into the shadowy hallway. They were bringing someone in through the rear entry. Suki went to the empty booking area and looked down the long corridor that led to the garage. It was surreal. The bright lights of the back parking lot. The middle-of-the-night stillness of the building. The smell of disinfectant. The low rumble of men’s voices approaching the open doorway.

“Move it.”

“This way, asshole.”

“Where the hell’s Smitty?”

Suki crept silently down the empty corridor, toward the voices. She pressed her palms against the cool cinder blocks and held her breath.

The hallway exploded with light and noise and commotion. Three uniformed policemen burst through the open garage door. They were followed by Kenneth, who had a tight grip on Warren’s arm. When Suki saw that Warren was in handcuffs, her knees buckled and, as if in slow motion, she slid down the wall. She was sitting on the floor when Warren passed by. He lowered his eyes and whispered something that sounded like, “Sorry.” She didn’t dignify him with a response.

Kenneth turned Warren over to one of the other cops and knelt down next to Suki. He took her gently in his arms. “They never found any fingerprints on the gun,” he said into her hair. “Blanchard made it up.”

“So why was Alexa arrested?”

He shrugged. “Someone must have gotten Frank to break the deal.”

“Did Warren confess?”

“Not quite yet, but he’s willing to sign a statement that he saw Alexa driving that night. That it—”

Suki pulled away and stared at Kenneth. “He left Jonah?”

“He didn’t know who had been shot—just like you thought.”

Suki pressed her cheek to the lapel of Kenneth’s jacket. “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

“Anytime.” Kenneth pulled her more tightly to him. “Anytime at all.” Then he lifted her gently from the floor. “How about we get Alexa out of that cell?”