Daddy's Little Killer (34 page)

"You can't … please don't tell that boy some
wild story that you can't possibly prove."

"A simple DNA test, Mr. Hartley, that's all
it will take to prove it."

"But it can't make a difference
anymore."  Desperation etched the deep lines in his
face.  "It would kill him to know the truth.  He'd never
understand why we hid it from him all these years."

"I'll keep your secret – provisionally, Mr.
Hartley."

"What do you want from me?"

"If I have more questions, you're going to
be completely honest with me.  Otherwise, I'll march into
Vinnie's room, wake him up and tell him everything.  Do we
have an agreement?"

My sincere hope was that the mere threat
would push Hartley to reveal anything he thought to hold back, like
why Gwen's murderer could've have been the same man who raped her
and left her pregnant and a few years later, slaughtered
Brighton.

"If I have to, to protect Vinnie."

I would later discover how vain my hope
truly was.

Chapter 32

The tension in Charlie's car was a palpable
living thing.  I could hear it breathing, feel it's pulse
throbbing against my flesh.  My protégé was one unhappy
camper.  He'd probably never seen anyone pound a potential
witness so hard before.  From what I'd heard, Central Division
didn't have a whole lot of solved cases let alone
interrogations.

"Charlie –"

"Don't."

"I know that was difficult to watch, but
Hartley had no intention of telling me the truth tonight.  He
needed to know how serious this is.  He needed a little push
to invest in helping us find this guy."

"I get that part, Helen.  I do. 
And as hard as it was to watch you go after that poor guy, I know
it had to be done."

"Then what's the problem?  Why do I
feel this silent rage battering me?"

"You looked like you were enjoying it."

The theory rolled around in my brain hard
enough to nearly miss his next accusation.

"And you'll be lucky if he doesn't call the
chief to file a complaint that you threatened him."

"I did no such thing."

"Really?  You didn't threaten to
destroy the life of the only family that poor guy has left?"

It was a thing of beauty.  Charlie's
righteous indignation pointed out a subtle clue that I hadn't
seen.  If Gwen was Vinnie Bennett's mother, and our perp was
the father, Harlan Hartley wasn't related to the young man at
all.  Scores of new questions popped into my head.

What would make a friend so deeply invested
in a family that wasn't his own lie to the police?  For that
matter, hadn't Hartley claimed to meet the family only after his
fictitious sister died?  He sure knew an awful lot about
Gwen's reaction to an assault. Did Hartley stand to gain something
by keeping the family secret?  Was Hartley as close to Datello
as Frank had been? 

I had no doubt that there was deep
familiarity between the two men.  He called him Danny. 
And that attempt to keep Datello's name out of Gwen's exile was the
lamest thing I'd ever heard.  Datello paid to have Gwen sent
off to some sanctuary for unwed mothers to protect her. 

It opened the door to even more
questions.  What had forged such friendship and loyalty
between amoral scum like Datello and Frank Bennett, who by all
accounts had a very rocky start to his relationship with
Datello?

"We need to go back, Charlie."

His cell phone rang.

"Haverston."  A long pause
ensued.  "That sounds reasonable.  Did he put up much of
a fight?" 

I felt the sharp stab of a glare in the
darkness.

"Fine.  Good.  I don't think she'd
disapprove.  Any word on the Blevins girl yet?"

Breath burned in my
lungs. 
Breathe, Helen.  He'll
tell me what I won't disapprove of.  Be patient.

"All right.  I'll let her know." 
He thrust the phone back into his pocket.

"What happened?"

"Thieg said that there's a convention in the
homicide squad room tonight.  Lowe, Myre, Rogers, Daltry, they
were all up there when he and Adams came on shift.  Rather
than risk any sort of confrontation between Orion and his former
peers, Adams decided to stay at central and keep an eye on him
personally."

The interest of Jerry Lowe was
understandable.  He'd been cut out of the communication loop
for the most part.  I didn't doubt why Myre, Rogers and Daltry
were sniffing around.  Lowe wanted to know what we were
learning.  What I didn't understand was why he didn't simply
ask for an update.

"And Candy Blevins?"

"Taylor found Carrie at work and asked the
question we neglected in our haste to bully a grieving family."

"Where is she?"

"Carrie didn't know, but told her boss she
needed to leave work due to a family emergency.  She's out
with Thieg scouring the usual dives, talking to the regulars in
Candy's haunts with the hope that someone will be more likely to
talk to the twin sister than they have been the cops."

"Charlie, when you talked to Thieg, did he
mention if Rodney Martin was at central too?"

"As far as I know, he's still MIA."

"Maybe that's why so many people are at
central tonight.  Nobody has talked to him for two days. 
It could officially be a missing person's case.  Do you know
Captain Martin well?"

"Not really.  He doesn't rub elbows
with the lowest rank in the department if you know what I
mean.  Why? Is that important?"

"Rodney was in one of the undergraduate
classes that I helped teach when I was finishing my doctorate," I
said.  "He was the one who brought me to the attention of
George Hardy and Don Weber."

"Are you you implying that his disappearance
is related to your arrival in town?"

"I'm not sure."  My gaze pointed behind
us.  No headlights.  "Charlie, have you noticed anyone
following us tonight?"

"No.  Has someone been following
you?"

More than one.  Where
were Seleeby and David?  I gnawed the inside of my
cheek.  If I called David, it would reopen a door I wanted
shut forever.  "It's probably nothing."  The sudden
disappearance of Kelly and Varden disturbed me.  Was I no
longer considered an interest to whoever hired them to detain me,
or was it a matter of
mission
accomplished
after what
happened to me yesterday?

"It
probably
isn't?"  The previous
level of ire evaporated.  Charlie glanced over at me. 
"Who was following you?"

"Considering that Orion identified the men,
I'm not sure if he told the truth or not.  I believe that
whoever it was accosted me in Washington before I arrived in
Darkwater Bay, and are the same men who stole my laptop computer
from my hotel room."

"Who did Johnny say they were?"

"Local private detectives, a Kelly and
Varden.  You suspected the same thing."

"Yeah," jaw clenched, muscles bunched and
tense.  "I didn't realize this was an ongoing issue. 
They're not exactly nice people, Helen.  Mostly they shake
people down for the highest bidder in any given dispute."

"What kind of disputes?"

"Typically?  Union bullshit."

"Unions."  Hadn't someone mentioned
union activity?  Maybe Briscoe and Conall the night they gave
me the history lesson.  Recent events felt jumbled, on an
uncertain timeline in my mind.  The big stuff had come
back.  Rick's funeral.  My arrival in Darkwater
Bay.  The murder scene.  And while I recalled
generalities of other things, the specifics tickled my
consciousness.  They teased awareness and frustrated me with
their elusive nature.

"Yeah," Charlie continued.  "We've got
more than our fair share of them in Darkwater Bay.  There's
the fishing union, the logging union, the service worker's union, a
trucking union, school teachers … and then ours."

"Ours?"

"Law enforcement.  But you know, it's
pretty benign.  Mostly they provide legal counsel if one of us
gets into trouble.  There's the retirement fund and whatnot,
but they're not like the others about stuff like no mandatory
overtime, or making sure we get triple or quadruple pay if we're
required to work over eight in a day or forty in a week."

"And Kelly and Varden are involved in these
kinds of union disputes?  To the highest bidder, you
said."

"Uh, yeah, which is usually the union in
question."

"That makes no sense.  Why would these
guys be interested in me?"

Charlie shifted in his seat enough to tap
the accelerator.  The car surged ahead and didn't slow when he
settled.  "Because the guy most directly involved with union
business in this city is –"

"Danny Datello," I muttered.

"How the heck would Datello know that Hardy
and Weber wanted to snatch you away from the FBI?  That
doesn't make any sense.  Orion must've been wrong.  Or
lied."

"Yeah, that's probably it.  Like I
said.  It's probably nothing."

The heart knows what the mind wants to
deny.  I knew that Datello had an axe to grind with me before
George Hardy ever conceived of picking up the telephone to ask for
my help.  The code of family meant something different to
Danny than it did to most, even to his corrupt Uncle Sully.  I
violated the code.  I turned on the man I promised to love and
honor 'til death parted us. 

Explaining that to anyone, let alone Charlie
Haverston, opened a well hidden can of worms that I wouldn't even
acknowledge existed. 

"It can't be nothing, Helen.  They were
in Washington you say?"

"Charlie, not right now.  We've got
another more serious matter that demands our full attention. 
We've got to get Candy Blevins into custody before someone else
gets hurt.  I'm still a little bit fuzzy on some of our
conversations this week, so I don't remember if I shared a theory
Maya postulated when she discussed the autopsy findings on Gwen
Foster."

"I wasn't aware there was a final
report."

"There isn't yet.  Toxicology testing
takes time, so she can't close the file from her end until that's
finished."  I filled him in on the bruising Maya discovered
and the possible source.

"So you're thinking that this guy gained a
partner at some point, and that this smaller, weaker person would
have to be female since Foster wasn't a giant like …"

"Like I am," I chuckled.  "I think that
sums up the obvious."

"And Candy Blevins fits the bill."

"She wasn't held for two days.  She
didn't come home naked or her parents would've known that she
wasn't lying about the sexual assault.  She has a criminal
history that stretches back into early childhood.  In a
twisted way, it fits the Foster crime scene and helps explain why
this one felt so much different than what I read about Brighton
Bennett's murder."

"Because Candy would've been seven years old
when Brighton was murdered.  She couldn't have been part of
it."

"This is my theory right now.  If our
perp happened on Candy first and abducted her, the response he
received from his typical scare tactics wouldn't have been one he
ever anticipated.  We're talking about someone who thrives on
psychological terror."

"And Candy is that messed up?"

"From what Carrie told us
tonight and what I gleaned from the statements that Candy made to
the police, and her criminal record in Portico as well as the
continued arrests here in Darkwater Bay, I would conclude based on
that alone that before Candy reached her teens she suffered from
something we call
conduct disorder
in psychology.  It can be a precursor to
antisocial personality disorder, a maladaption during personality
formation that predisposes its subjects to a total lack of empathy
for others."

"It's that mirror image twin thing, isn't
it?  You're saying that Candy is more than the physical
reverse of Carrie."

"There is no research or documentation that
would support that theory, Charlie.  As far as I know, its
never even been studied.  But the thought occurred to me while
Carrie was talking to us tonight.  We don't fully understand
why personality disorders develop in general, but for antisocial
personality, it has been suggested that childhood trauma may be a
factor.  Early trauma, not what Candy and Carrie endured at
the hands of our perpetrator."

"So what was it for Candy?"

"Like I said, it's just a theory,
Charlie.  Nobody really knows for sure.  You can find
examples of extremely violent people with antisocial personality
disorder in patients who had storybook childhoods.  We simply
don't know why it happens."

"Head full of bad wiring," he grunted
softly.  "In my opinion."

"You could be right.  Several years
ago, a scientific study was done to ascertain brain activity when
subjects were exposed to ethical dilemmas.  An MRI was
performed while the subjects were presented with scenarios. 
When they believed that they had achieved the most ethical decision
they could, the researchers noticed an interesting correlation on
the brain scans."

"What was it?"

"The same primitive area of the brain that
compels us to feel pleasure when we eat or have sexual intercourse
lit up like a Christmas tree.  The implication was that
perhaps the human species evolved successfully because in social
settings, it feels good to do the right thing.  Our social
skills, our ability to work together for the common good of a group
is what is absent in other animals.  At least we've always
thought it was absent.  Researchers are learning new things
all the time about the cooperation capacities in the ape
kingdom."