Closer Than Blood (22 page)

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Authors: Gregg Olsen

BOOK: Closer Than Blood
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“You look so damp, I just thought . . .”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to get out of our lives.”
Lissa took a step backward. “I'm out. It's over.”
“Really? I know women like you never give up on what you want. I brought these for you,” she said, shoving the white flowers at Lissa as if they were a weapon. “When my mom died we buried her with these, her favorite flower.”
Reflexively, Lissa took the bouquet thrust at her. “I don't want any drama, Tori. I made a mistake. I'm working through it.”
“Poor you.”
Tori looked around the condo, her eyes taking in the expensive furnishings, the original artwork over the fireplace.
“You have expensive taste, Lissa. Uninteresting, but expensive. You can't have my husband.”
A chill ran down Lissa's spine. “I don't want him. Will you go now?”
“I'm leaving. I just wanted to make my point. If I can't have Alex, no one can. You see, he's boring and rich. That's enough for me. At least the rich part is. You'll be sorry—he'll be very, very sorry—if you cross me.”
The elevator holding Lissa and Kaminski started to move and the female executive quickly pushed the button to the next floor with her perfectly squared-off French-manicured nails.
“I'm getting out here,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that Tori Connelly was a total bitch. I might have deserved what she said, but I want you to know I felt that she making a serious threat. She looked at me with those ice-cube eyes of hers and told me basically that it wasn't beyond her to make sure that no one got in her way.”
Lissa stepped across the threshold of the elevator. She was more composed than she had been. It was as if getting the story out had eased her mind.
And maybe her conscience.
“If she couldn't have him, no one could,” Kaminski repeated.
“That's right.”
“Did you think she was threatening to kill you?”
“No. Not at all. I think she was going to kill
him
.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Tacoma
The previous summer
Tori Connelly looked out the front window, the sun falling in patches over the precision-mowed lawn onto the street and into Darius Fulton's front yard. She sipped a diet soda through a long red plastic straw. She'd bleached her teeth to an icy white and didn't want to stain them. She was dressed in a filmy sleeveless blouse and capri pants. A strand of liquid silver coiled around her spray-tanned neck.
There was a lot to think about. The summer was edging toward fall. Alex had been more distant than ever, and Tori wasn't exactly sure why. She'd been so very careful, covering her tracks.
Taking a lover right under their own roof had seemed reckless at first, but it had proved to be the cleverest solution to a problem that needed solving.
Parker came down the stairs, showered and with a tiny piece of tissue red-glued onto his chin. He'd shaved, though he barely had to.
“Plans for the day?” she asked. “We're having dinner tonight with your dad at Indochine.”
“I hate Thai food,” he said.
“Oh, really? I thought you liked a little spice, now and then.”
The teenager smiled, catching the sexy undercurrent of her words. He felt himself get hard. All she had to do was look at him in a certain way, turn her head, laugh, talk. Just about anything excited him to the point where he had no control over his body.
At least what was below his belt buckle, anyway.
“You're going to have to learn how to tame that,” she said, looking at his obvious arousal.
He moved closer and touched her. She pulled back.
“What up?” he asked.
“I've been thinking,” she said. “You might want to try using your other head.” She was irritated, but she hadn't meant to hurt him. The look on his face told her she'd gone too far.
“That's harsh,” he said.
“What I meant is that we need to figure a way out of this, and that will take two of us. I can't be expected to do everything, Parker.”
“Just leave him. We can go away.”
“I've explained that to you. Maybe you just can't grasp what I need you to.”
“I know what I want you to grasp,” he said.
“Knock it off, Parker.” She looked out the window again. She could see Darius Fulton move about the space of his open carriage-house garage. He was clearly organizing the things that his ex-wife had left behind.
“I'm going to wash the Lexus,” she said.
“I can do that for you,” Parker said.
Tori shook her head and went toward the staircase. “Why don't you play a video game or something?”
“You can be such a bitch,” he said, softly, in the quiet voice that is still meant to be heard.
“I guess I can be,” she said.
A few minutes later, she passed by Parker's bedroom. She was wearing short shorts and a tank top sans bra.
“I hope I don't get my top wet,” she said.
He watched her from the window, as she lathered up the car, allowing the spray to fall over her. Darius Fulton was watching, too.
They always did.
Later that night after the strained dinner with Alex, Tori arched her back and Parker's eyes landed on the scars under each of her breasts. They were thin, faint, but unmistakable reminders of the surgery that had made her look the trophy wife that his father had wanted. She had once told him that his father had always wanted triple Bs.
“Huh?” Parker had never heard of the size.
“Boobs, blond, and brainless,” she said.
“That makes me sick. I think you were probably perfect before,” he said.
She wrapped her arms around her breasts and shook her head.
“I don't like talking about it.”
“I'm sorry. I just think, well, that I would love you no matter what. You're more than a beautiful body,” he said.
“Your father didn't think so.”
“He's an asshole.”
He reached over and loosened her arms, to expose all that she was.
“He's just wired like a lot of men, Parker. You're not that way. You're deeper, more evolved than those typical guys. That's one of the reasons you fascinate me so.”
Her words pleased him and he wanted to know more. It was as if whatever Tori had to say was like a giant candy bar; he'd always want another bite.
“I fascinate you?” he said.
Tori smiled slightly, the kind of smirk that promised some kind of conspiratorial disclosure. “Of course you do.”
Parker kissed her. “You really love me, don't you?”
“I love you more than you will ever know,” she said, embracing him with a forceful hug. “We are like those swans. We are forever.”
Down the hall in the master bedroom, Alex Connelly woke up and turned to the empty place in his bed. He felt around, but nothing.
Where is Tori?
he thought.
It took him a moment to compute that it was a sound, not spicy Thai food, that had awakened him in the first place. A thumping and voices. It was coming down the hall from the room where Parker was staying.
The dark wood of the hallway floor made it difficult to navigate in the night, so he flipped on the lights. The noise stopped instantly.
He turned the knob on his son's door.
Tori was sitting on the edge of the bed. Parker was under the covers, his face turned away.
“What's going on?”
Tori turned around and faced her husband. “Oh, you startled me.”
“What's happening here?” he said a second time.
“Did you know Parker has night terrors?” Tori patted the teen on the shoulder.
Alex took a couple of steps closer. He noticed a candle was lit on the nightstand. A damp washcloth was folded next to it.
Did the boy have a fever?
The bed was so completely thrashed that it was clear that Parker had been in some kind of sleepless torment.
“Son, are you all right?”
Parker seemed out of breath, but he answered. “I'm okay.”
Tori looked at her husband and then over at her stepson.
“I'm so glad I could be here for you, Parker. Let me know if you need anything more.”
Parker lifted his head slightly from the pillow. “Thanks, Tori. You really helped me a lot.”
Tori and Alex backed out of the bedroom and returned to their own.
“I don't think you should dress that way around Parker,” Alex said, indicating the short, thin nightgown. Underneath she wore no panties.
“Honestly,” Tori said, “how I dressed when I went to help him was the last thing on my mind. The boy needed me. Needed someone, for God's sake. You wouldn't know much about that, would you? You seem too wrapped up in work. Too wrapped up with that bitch Lissa in the office.”
“Let's not go there. I was just saying . . .”
“Good night, Alex. You don't have a clue how to be a decent person. Not to me. Not to your son.”
Parker lifted the top sheet and comforter that he and Tori hastily pulled over his naked torso when the hallway light went on. It was a close call. Somehow the fact that he and his stepmother-lover had almost been caught red-handed excited him. He reached for the washcloth and wiped up the semen.
Tori had been there for him that night.
Oh yes, she had.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tacoma
The interrogation room at the Tacoma Police Department was windowless. The only break in the pale gray drywall was the grate for the heating duct that filled the room with stifling warmth on a cold winter's day and so much cold air during the summer that a pair of gangbangers actually asked for—
and got
—a couple of blankets.
“Trying to do something about the AC,” Eddie Kaminski said as he led Maddie Crane and client Darius Fulton to a pair of plastic molded chairs that would be more appropriate for a campus dining hall.
Maddie dropped her coat onto the table to demonstrate that she was bored and irritated. It was a couture label, but so convoluted in its design that one had to know it by sight and not read it.
To be sure, Kaminski didn't care about those things. There was a good bet that the man sitting across from him was exactly who he was looking for.
Maddie was as high priced as she was shrewd. She wasn't about to show up with her client if she didn't think she could persuade the police to back off and look somewhere else.
“What you have so far is annoyingly circumstantial,” she said, her flinty eyes bearing down on Kaminski.
“The gun was his,” he said, glancing at Darius before returning his gaze to the lawyer with the great coat and imperious demeanor.
“So? It was stolen.”
“Wasn't reported.”
“He didn't know that.”
“Are you kidding me?” He glanced at Darius, who looked passively in the direction of the vent as it funneled hot air right at his face. “Look, everything about your client suggests that he runs a tight ship. He knows where everything is.”
The lawyer had quick answer. “He's had some personal problems as of late. He's recently divorced. His wife took things from the house and he wasn't exactly sure what she pilfered. She absconded with his stamp collection, for crying out loud.”
“And my dad's antique decoys,” Darius said.
Maddie shot him a look. “You'll talk when I say so.”
Kaminski almost felt a blush of embarrassment for the guy just then. His wife took his stamp collection and his lawyer had snipped him of his manhood.
“All right. That's your explanation for the whereabouts of the gun—that, by the way, conveniently turned up in a murder across the street.”
“Yes, Detective,” she said. “That really is an interesting coincidence.”
“All right, then,” Kaminski said, reaching for a file folder that both the person of interest and the lawyer had been keeping an eye on like it was some scorpion sitting on the table in front of them. “What can you tell me about the e-mails?”
Darius seemed confused. “What e-mails?”
Maddie leaned across the table. “I'm talking here. What e-mails?”
Kaminski pulled out a sheet of paper, making sure that it was obvious that there were many, many others inside.
I want you. I need you.You are everything to me.
Darius shook his head. “I didn't write that. I didn't even know her e-mail address.”
Maddie touched his shoulder with the tip of her index finger. It was not a gesture meant to calm and show support, but to pointedly get him to zip it.
“Please, I'll handle this,” she said.
Darius wasn't having any of that. He was flustered. “Handle this? This thing is beginning to spin out of control. This damn
handling
you've been doing is going to send me to Walla Walla with a needle in my arm. I didn't write to her. I had sex with her once—and I admitted that. I didn't even fantasize that there would be any other encounters. Not seriously, anyway.”
He slumped back down in his chair and put his hands on his forehead. He started to rub the beading sweat from his eyes. He looked puffy and red.
A heart attack waiting to happen.
“Can we turn down that goddamn heater?” he said, loud enough for the investigator on the other side of the mirror to hear without the benefit of a microphone.
“Sorry. We'll get you out of here in a minute.”
“We're going now,” Maddie said. She snatched up her coat and moved toward the door, motioning for her client to follow.
Kaminski went in for the kill just then. He didn't want Darius Fulton to drop dead, but he was all but certain this was the last chance they'd be able to speak unencumbered by a legal process that would send up walls to keep them apart.
“Your hair was in a ski mask hidden between the cushions on your sofa. Tori Connelly confirms that it was the mask that the intruder wore the night she and her husband were shot. Will you stop lying just for a second?”
Darius looked like he was going to have a heart attack. His eyes popped like a hermit crab.
“I'm not lying,” he said.
Maddie shook her head at Kaminski. “This interview is over. Mr. Fulton wanted to be helpful—against my advice.”
“Fine,” he said. “Just one more.”
Darius looked at the bottled water but didn't touch it. He'd crawl on his hands and knees through Death Valley before he'd fall for that ruse a second time.
“Drink it. We don't need your prints again,” Kaminski said.
“I'm fine.”
“You don't look fine,” Maddie said, still hovering with her coat.
He took the bottle and guzzled.
“You really want me to believe that you've been set up by Tori Connelly? That she screwed you one time to spin a web around you and make you the fall guy? Why in the world should I believe that? You haven't given me any reason to make that seem one bit plausible.”
Darius blinked hard. “I wish I had some answer that would satisfy you, Detective. I wish that I hadn't been a big, dumb, old fool.”
“Did you think that the plan to kill Alex would allow you to step right in?”
The lawyer glanced at her client, telegraphing with a finger to her glossed lips for him to remain mute.
“We've already told you, Detective,” she said. “Mr. Fulton had absolutely nothing to do with the murder—the planning, the execution of it. None of it. If I were you, I'd focus on the merry widow. We're done here.”
When she opened the door, the air felt like a blast from a freezer as it met the Panama heat of the interrogation room.
Darius lingered. “I didn't hurt anyone. I would never shoot anyone.”
“Shut up, Darius. We're leaving.”
His eyes were pleading.
“Now!” she said, snapping him to attention the way his wife had done throughout their whole marriage. Darius jumped to his feet.
Their father had always said that one had to “break some eggs to make an omelet,” but Tori Connelly highly doubted that he was referring to murdering people in order to get one's heart's desire. Yet the thought circled through her brain. She would not always be beautiful. She might not always be rich, but she was willing to do what she had to do to try to get that way.
She owed it to herself.
Tori looked at the date on her phone. In just a few days, Parker would turn eighteen. Her sister would be dead. She'd be rich.
Life would be so, so good.

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