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Authors: Deirdre Savoy

Tags: #Romance

Body of Lies (9 page)

BOOK: Body of Lies
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Mrs. Hassler nodded. “I'll be right back.”
As Smitty came into the room Zack walked to the window. He brushed aside the sheer white curtain to look out. There was a tree outside the window, but not close enough for someone to get into her window or for her to sneak out. To Smitty, he said, “Did you notice anything?”
“Only that this place feels like I've slipped into a time warp. When was the last time you saw plastic slipcovers? I think my grandmother got rid of hers in '73.”
Maybe that was the problem here. Too many generations separated mother and daughter. He couldn't imagine the woman he'd seen knowing how to manage an out-of-control teenager. Hell, he was the cool uncle, and he couldn't get Stevie to go to sleep.
They spent a few moments checking the room, finding nothing of note, before Mrs. Hassler came back holding a sheaf of paper in her hand. She extended it toward Zach. “These are all the names I can think of. Will that help?”
“Thank you.” He gestured toward the desk. “We'd like to take a look at what's on her computer, if you don't mind.”
“No, take it. Neither my husband nor I know how to use it.”
Smitty, who was closer to the desk, picked it up. “We'll get this back to you as soon as we can.”
They left after that, with a promise to Mrs. Hassler to keep her and her husband informed of their progress. Once they were back in the car, Zach said, “Where to next?” in imitation of Smitty's earlier words.
“What say we drop the computer off and head over to Lilly's? There ought to be enough time for a quick bite before we need to go to the autopsy.”
“A meal and a show,” Zach said, though he wasn't looking forward to either.
Ten
About five o'clock Alex decided to call it a day. Usually she kept Wednesdays light, not accepting any appointments after four o'clock. She used the rest of the day to transcribe notes, fill out paperwork, and take care of other drudgeries. She could just as easily do these things from home on her laptop.
Only a few stalwart reporters were waiting for her when she left the building. Apparently not every media outlet in the city had the wherewithal to keep a crew all day on a story that wasn't producing results. She got into her car with a minimum of fuss and went home.
Dressed in a short apricot nightgown and robe and eating a dinner of reheated Chinese food from two nights ago, Alex quickly finished the work she'd brought home from her office. But as she turned her attention to the printout she hadn't finished reading, restlessness set in. She knew it wasn't the case or even Zach's reappearance in her life, though both weighed on her mind. It was this house.
It had been a mistake to move back in here after her marriage dissolved. There were too many memories, both good and bad, clinging like ghosts to this place. She'd known that almost from the beginning, but she'd held on. This house was the only place on earth that for her held the memory of her mother.
But before, those memories had been mostly dormant, an underlay to her conscious mind. Zach's reappearance in her life breathed new life into them, making them stronger and more potent. She didn't want to remember, but apparently she had no choice. Even her dreams were swamped with images she thought she'd forgotten.
Brushing her papers aside, she stood and walked to the piano. Maybe part of her malaise was her own fault. The same photos still stood on its surface as a visual reminder of what was. She picked up a photo of herself and her father taken at her high school graduation. Zach had held the camera.
The picture itself was an oddity, one of the few in which she'd been smiling. She'd known then that freedom was only a few months away. She'd be going to Adelphi in the fall, much as her father hated that. She'd learned from the master. When the time came she'd blackmailed him into letting her go. Her grades ensured her a full scholarship; he only had to pay for room, board, and books.
She'd loved being at school. For the first time in her life she had friends and freedom, and she flourished. She hadn't worried about how her father was faring in her absence until the last night she was home during Easter break.
For no reason she'd woken in the middle of the night. The sound of the TV playing low drew her to the living room. Her father was sitting on the sofa wearing his robe loosely tied over a wife beater T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. His feet, encased in a pair of leather slippers, rested on the coffee table. He looked disheveled, exhausted, and, beyond that, ill.
“What are you doing up, little girl? Don't you have to go back to school tomorrow?”
“The TV woke me.” It was a lie. The skeptical look he cast her told her he knew it, too. But she wasn't the only one telling untruths lately. In the last week her father had taken to having a “lie down” after dinner almost every night, and particularly those nights when Zach was here. That wasn't like him, and as domineering as he'd always been it surprised her that he'd leave her alone in the same room with any man for that long, regardless of the fact that he was in the house and the man in question was his partner.
She'd never asked him about it directly, but she did now. “What's up with you? Why do you keep leaving me alone with Zach?”
That question hadn't come out as she had hoped. It sounded as if she were complaining, which she wasn't. She'd harbored a secret crush on Zach since almost the first day he walked in the door. At least she hoped it was secret. If either her father or Zach had noticed, neither had said anything to her about it.
“You could do worse, little girl.” He paused, adjusting his robe, for so long that it made her wonder what he meant by that, until he continued. “As far as company goes, I mean.”
She agreed with him, but that wasn't the point. She studied his face. Dark circles discolored the area beneath his eyes, though the rest of his complexion seemed pale. She hated knowing that she cared about the health of this man she both loved and hated, but she did. “Are you sick, Daddy?”
His eyebrows shot up at her use of the word “daddy.” She never called him that except when other people were around. “What's the matter with you, girl? Can't a man get a little tired every once in a while without folks thinking he's going to die? I've worked this job more than twenty-five years. Whose business is it if I want to lie down every once in a while?”
She didn't believe him. It was too much bluster even for him. “If you're sick, I have a right to know.”
“Don't you worry about me, little miss. Ain't nothing going to kill me except the job, and even that's a long way off.” He turned his attention to the TV screen, ignoring her.
She went back to her room after that. For the next week back at school she considered calling Zack to ask if he knew anything about her father's condition. In the end she decided against it. If her father had confided in Zach and asked him to keep the secret, Zach likely would. She didn't want to put him in the position of lying to her, nor did she want to hear him lie to her. Besides, it wasn't his responsibility to tell her, it was her father's.
In the end it didn't matter. Two weeks later her father's prediction came true. He was shot to death while on duty. He'd bled to death in Zach's arms waiting for an ambulance to arrive. And it had been Zach who'd taken her to see her father's body when she'd insisted. He'd been the one to stand beside her as they put him in the ground. And later, when everyone else had gone home ...
She shook her head, not wanting to dwell on that time. She'd known Zach was vulnerable, that he blamed himself for her father's death, that he'd needed comforting as much as she'd needed something else. She couldn't blame him for walking out on her the next day. He'd considered himself an honorable man, one of the good guys, and that being with her would have tarnished that self-image.
It hadn't done her much good, either. She'd gone back to school to finish the semester, but she'd been changed, both by her father's death and that night. She'd held it together all those years after her mother died, yet when she was finally free, she lost it, drowning herself in the one thing every man in her life had seemed to value her for.
It wasn't until she'd found herself standing at the campus precipice known less for its beauty than the number of suicides who leaped from it each year that she got herself together, sought help, and tried to rebuild her life. She never wanted to go back there again, either literally or any other way. Watching stones crumble at your feet to fall into the watery ravine below, wondering if the unstable land would hold you or set you free, was no way to live a life.
The sound of the doorbell ringing pulled her from her reverie. She put the photo back where it belonged, then tightened the sash on her robe. She could imagine only one person showing up at her house at this hour. He still needed something from her, though she wasn't exactly sure what.
If it was absolution, he hadn't asked for her forgiveness. If it was her renewed friendship, he'd allowed her to rebuff him easily. But she did notice the way he looked at her. He wasn't exactly broadcasting his attraction to her, nor was he hiding it, either. It simply existed between them. She recognized it because she felt it, too. On some level she wondered if that one night between them had been a fluke or if things between them could really be that good.
Whatever he wanted, she couldn't give it to him. She had used his vulnerability against him once and she would do it again if she had to to preserve herself. She only hoped it didn't come to that.
When she opened the door to him, she saw he wore the same clothes he'd had on earlier. Didn't this man ever go home?
She noticed the way his gaze strayed from her face, down her body and back again. His perusal of her wasn't obvious, but noticeable enough for her to detect it. His Adam's apple bobbed, but he made no reference to her appearance. “Can I come in, Alex?”
Since whatever conversation they were about to have was best accomplished away from her doorstep she stepped back and let him enter. He proceeded to about the same spot he had two nights ago.
Unlike the other night, she didn't bother to claim a seat on the sofa. She drew to a stop a couple of feet away from him and folded her arms in a silent challenge. “Well?”
For a long moment, he said nothing, leaving her again to wonder what he wanted. He'd told her before that if he wanted to talk to her about the case he'd see her in her office. So, did that make this a personal visit of some sort? She doubted it, since the strongest emotion she read off him was not supplication or even desire, but agitation.
She sighed. “What is it, Zach? It's late and I was about to go to bed.”
It wasn't a total lie. Once she'd started strolling down memory lane, she'd known she no longer had a head for much of anything else that night. Already, a dull pulse beat at her temple signaling another migraine.
His eyes scanned her face. It wasn't a sexual gaze, yet in some ways she felt laid bare in ways that had nothing to do with her lack of clothing. Did he know how much these nocturnal visits of his were killing her, and if he did, why didn't he stay home?
“I just wanted to tell you, you were right. Thorpe found the girls on the Internet. The Hassler girl's best friend told us she'd snuck out of the house to meet some guy. Three of them had Web pages at Yourplacedotcom. It's a site kids frequent. They all had pictures up, where they went to school, everything but their goddamn home addresses. More information than you'd give to a stranger on the street.”
True, but a stranger on the Internet seemed much more harmless. “Kids assume their information is only going to be viewed by other kids.”
“Obviously, they got that wrong. There are a hell of a lot of sick folks out there waiting to prey on the naive.”
She couldn't argue with that. But it wasn't necessarily naivete that got the kids in trouble. The adolescent personal myth that they were invincible was more likely to blame. Bad things happened to other people, not them, except when they didn't. She doubted he needed a lecture on the subject, anyway.
“What are you going to do about that?”
“We've got a couple of detectives working a sting already. We put this guy on their radar. Though we don't know what screen name he goes by. We're looking for a correlation between users all three girls corresponded with. The chat room for the site doesn't keep a log, and as far as we can tell, none of the girls saved instant messages from him.”
Alex nodded, not knowing what else to add. Computer stalking wasn't an area of her expertise, though she knew it occurred with greater and greater frequency with more and more people online and the increasing deviousness of some of its users.
She regarded Zach, who'd stopped talking, shoving his hands in his trouser pockets. Although they'd exhausted their topic, there was something more, something he left unsaid. It was impossible to read what that might be from his expression, but she thought she knew anyway.
“Is that it, or are we going to get to the real reason why you're here?”
His gaze narrowed as he surveyed her face. “Which would be?”
She tilted her head to one side, considering him. “Let's face it, Zach. There's nothing you told me right now that couldn't have waited until morning, which begs the question, why did you bother to drive over here in the first place?”
He let out a heavy breath. “Look, Alex, I—”
“You don't need to put a nice face on it, Zach. Don't you think I noticed the way you looked at me? Not just now, but in my office? In that damn conference room when you didn't even know who I was?”
“That's not why I came here.”
“Sure it is.” She lifted her chin in a way that suggested she was sniffing the air. “I can practically smell it on you. You're thinking about that night. We'd just put my father in the ground, and there we were, just you and me. Do you remember that night, Zach? I know I do.”
If he hadn't been thinking about what happened between them before, she knew he was now. His gaze darkened and his nostrils flared. His voice when he spoke was huskier and deep. “What's your point?”
She paused a moment, gathering strength to say the words she planned. “How much money have you got this time? I'm not as cheap a date as I used to be.”
His expression was half confused, half incredulous. “What the hell are you talking about? I never tried to buy you, Alex.”
“No, but you sure as hell paid for me, didn't you?” For a moment, she stared up at him, angry, defiant. Until that moment, she had no idea how close to the surface her own emotions ran. She'd thought she'd been looking at the situation from a veil of distance, but all the old hurt and shame washed over her, making her more a victim of her words than he.
BOOK: Body of Lies
11.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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