Follow Her Home (22 page)

Quinn gave me a long appraising look, and I wondered if he recognized me as Iris's sister. I had expected he would. I'd shown Diego pictures of Iris and our parents, and if Iris saw Quinn as her boyfriend, it was natural that she would talk about me.

He gave me an inscrutable smile. “Can I help you?” he asked.

I smiled back, though it was at least half sneer. “Let's talk, Elliot.” I pushed past him through the doorway, my shoulder bumping his chest, and found my way to the living room. I took a seat on the couch.

He came in behind me with a scowl. “Hey, who do you think you are, barging into my house like that. I don't know you.”

“Elliot.” I leaned forward and crossed my legs. “Don't bother playing innocent. I have you in a corner, and you probably have a good guess as to who I am.”

He studied my face from where he stood, and, to my pleasure, a stiff look of fearful recognition spread into his features. “What do you want from me?”

“I just came to tell you in person that you won't get away with raping my sister.”

His face colored in splotches and in seconds it was a uniform Coke can red. He balled his fists and I could almost see smoke come out of his nostrils and ears. “Get out of my house. I don't have to listen to your lies.”

“Lies? I would hope that you had the presence of mind at some point to look up the law on statutory rape. Because I have, and it doesn't concern me nearly as much.” I bored my eyes into his and he stared back, unblinking with angry defiance. “How old are you, Elliot? Because it doesn't matter if she said yes. It doesn't even matter if she somehow convinced you she was eighteen—not that that one's likely, her being a junior and you being in a position to learn her date of birth if you were interested. Unless you're under twenty years old, you're a rapist before the law, sure as any.”

“Get out of my house.”

“You're missing a photo. Aren't you worried about where it went? Come on, just sit. I told you we needed to talk.”

His body folded onto the other side of the couch in sharp right angles. “You? You were in my room?”

I nodded. “I was let in and it wasn't hard to find. You don't stock much in the way of literature, and
Lolita
? Must be Iris's idea of a joke, because I don't think you've ever read it, Humbert. You might've learned a thing or two.”

His head was in his hands, bent forward with his face dipping toward the floor. “What do you want from me, Juniper?”

I smiled. I had won, and despite my hatred and anger and Iris's despair, the feeling was euphoric. “Nothing. You will pay for what you did to my sister. I'm going to make sure you regret it for the rest of your life.”

“Listen, please. I love Iris. I never meant to hurt her.”

“Wow. Did you come up with those lines all by yourself?”

“She loves me too. Listen, she flirted with me. I didn't just pursue her like some animal. We fell for each other.” He swallowed. “But you're right. I regret it. I never should've laid a hand on her. There's something deeply wrong with me. When I was younger, I—”

I put my hand out in front of his face. “Stop. I'm not interested in your psychology. I know you're fucked up. You seduced a sixteen-year-old student. There was never a question of whether or not you have some kind of baggage. I don't care.” I paused. “Was Bernadette Loo eighteen when you slept with her?”

He didn't look at me. “What?”

“You remember her. Couple years older than me, so, lucky for you, Iris wouldn't know her. I hope Bernadette turned out okay, but I'm angry with her. If she had gotten you fired and prosecuted like she should have, you would never have touched Iris. Which is why I have a responsibility, knowing what I know.”

He sat up straight and gave me a pleading look. “She was eighteen. Look, I don't know what or how you heard about Bernie, but please do not say anything to Iris. It would only hurt her.”

A cold tingle went up my spine and ended at the back of my head. I had no real proof on Bernadette, who I only knew by name, and the confirmation that Quinn's affair with Iris was not an isolated case born of a unique and burning love clung to my skin like a layer of sweat.

“No, it wouldn't only hurt her. It would hurt you. You want her to see you as the love of her life, as some brooding, romantic older man. As long as she thinks she's special, she'll protect you to the grave.” I stood up. “Well, I've done what I came here to do, and I'll see myself out. If I were you I'd resign while I still could.”

I started to walk past him but he grabbed my arm. “Wait,” he said. He was pale.

“Don't touch me, you fucking predator.” I wrenched my arm from his grip and headed out the door.

*   *   *

The house came into view around the last curve, and Yujin Chung pulled into the entrance. She rolled down her window and slipped in the security code with thin-boned alacrity. Luke's birthday, naturally. The grand wooden gate opened and we rode patiently up into its yawning jaws.

The Cook mansion was smaller than the Buckingham Palace, but it might've given the White House a run for its mint. The driveway led up to a space large enough for a motorcade, cobbled with stones so smooth and shaven they were almost tile. Yujin stopped the car and the three of us walked to the front door. In another life, I had been a welcome visitor, armed with wine and high heels for this or that holiday soiree. Now the huge white doors themselves seemed to eye me with suspicion.

Not so much as an “It's me” came from Yujin's mouth before the door opened to reveal the big man himself, dressed in a clean green polo tucked into belted khakis pleated perfectly down the middle of each leg. He emanated musk from a fresh spritz of cologne and his sandy cheeks glistened with aftershave. He'd been expecting us.

He smiled at me with good nature written across bright, bared teeth. “It's been too long, Song.”

I wanted to smile back, just to show him I could. I couldn't. Not without shaking. “I might have borne it a bit longer.”

“Still funny, I see.”

“Not trying to be. You murdered one of my best friends, Mr. Cook. One of your son's best friends. And now you've gone and kidnapped the other.”

His smile snapped shut faster than a Venus flytrap. “I had nothing to do with what happened to Diego, Song.”

“We're going to have to have a long talk if you expect me to believe the first letter of that lie.” I looked around the marble foyer and the four empty rooms it led into.

“Let's sit down.”

The four of us shuffled into a parlor with lush couches between a fireplace and a seven-foot grand piano, expensive oriental rugs decorating the floor.

Cook led the way inside, where both Yujin and Lori waited prim as buttons for the man to take a seat before settling onto the couch cushions themselves. I sat on the piano bench some feet away and knuckled a couple of notes on the polished keys of the Schimmel. They rang round and dewy and golden in the chapped silence.

“I'm sorry we had to bring you here like this, Song.”

“Me too. I'm going to smoke. Mind if I smoke?”

“Go ahead.”

I made a show of patting myself down. “Actually, I don't have a cigarette. Could I get one from you? It looks like someone stole all my shit.”

“Would you like a cigar?”

“Only if it's expensive.”

He stood up with dignified leisure and retrieved a cigar from a cedar box on the mantel over the fireplace. His brown leather loafers looked new and they patted the floor with rhythm and secrecy as he walked back to me with the cigar in one hand. I took it from him and gave it a showy sniff. I didn't know the first thing about cigars. They were social currency for men like William Cook, and this would be the last I ever smoked. He cut the tip and lit it with a wood match before taking a seat on the empty cushion of the couch nearest to me.

I puffed at the fat tube of tobacco with squinted eyes and a stiff wrist. Its width splayed my smoker's grip to full V. I was almost certainly holding it wrong.

Yujin and Lori sat quietly on the couch. Yujin put a finger in Lori's spine and Lori straightened her shoulders.

“I've always liked you, Song. I'm sorry I had to bring you in like this. I'm glad to see you're taking it all rather well.” His voice was smoother than usual, like he'd practiced each line before it left his head.

I didn't have that luxury. “Do I look that way to you? 'Cause I'm wretched and scared out of my mind.”

“Of me?”

“Of you, of her.” I pointed at Yujin Chung. My heart thumped in my ears. “Are you surprised? I've found a corpse, I've been threatened, I've been knocked unconscious twice in the past forty-eight hours. One of my best friends died in what can only have been a sloppy setup. And incidentally, your son is missing, though judging from your serenity, you know exactly where he is.”

He looked at Yujin, holding his fingers in a loose lock between his knees. His eyebrows pushed well-fleshed wrinkles into his forehead, deep enough to hold lengthwise number 2 pencils. “Yujin, can you take Lori outside?”

She nodded and laced white fingers around Lori's browned wrist. She rose, then she rose, and daughter followed mother out the front door and into the dying heat of a dying Sunday afternoon.

I nodded toward the door. “Are they going on their merry way?”

“I doubt it. But in the meantime, it's just you and me, Song.”

“Who's the audience?”

“I'm sure you have a thousand questions, but I have a few for you too.”

“Can I assume that you have a better, let's say, macro understanding of the situation than I do?”

He hesitated.

“Come on, boss, or I'm going to assume everything else you say is a lie.”

He smiled, teeth hooded by a sneering upper lip. “Yes, if you know very little.”

“Well, I know very little.”

He leaned back and crossed his arms, then leaned forward again. He ran a hand through his hair and let it come to rest on the back of his neck. His Adam's apple showed a swallow.

“Yujin mentioned that you came by certain photographs. Can you tell me how?”

I took another puff at the cigar and decided I'd had enough. “What should I do with this thing? It's an awful nice rug to scrub it out on.”

He took the cigar from my fingers and left the room, returning so quickly that I had no time to take clever advantage of my seconds of privacy.

“So you were saying?”

“Before I answer that, why don't you tell me why those photos exist. I already know they were taken for you. Tell me why.”

“Why do you assume they belong to me?”

“Don't insult me, Mr. Cook. We both know I wouldn't be here if they didn't.”

He grimaced. “I don't have to answer to you.”

“No, I guess not. You can let me think the worst of you, and believe me, I do.”

“Look. I'm not some kind of pervert. I'm a family man.”

“And Lori—she's the Soon-Yi to your Woody?”

“I took an interest in her. She needed someone to do that. I care about her a lot.”

“Oh my God, so many snide things to say, I don't even know which one to go with.”

“She means a lot to me. So what if I wanted pictures of someone I care about. Like I said, I don't answer to you.”

“Fine. What about Luke?”

He reddened. “What about Luke?”

“You wanted to know where I found those pictures, which means you haven't gotten it from your son. I—or we, rather—found them in Greg Miller's office.” I called up all the defiance in my reserves to look him in the eyes. “Know the name?”

He looked like he could use a smoke. He screwed his lower lip off center and sighed across it.

“He was a troubled young man, but I was sorry to hear of his death.”

“Is this you disavowing the handiwork?”

“Do I look like a murderer to you?”

“Do I look like a naïf to you?”

“Why—”

“For a thousand reasons? He was a creep? He was stalking your girlfriend? And how about this one—he was a piece-of-shit first-year associate with the gumption to blackmail a named partner of Stokel, Levinson and Cook, L-L-fucking-P.”

My voice quivered at the end as my chin wobbled and my volume increased. Mr. Cook looked hard at the ceiling, and I found crisp satisfaction in the observation that he was visibly stunned.

When he spoke, his voice had lost its studied gloss. “I didn't kill him.”

“But I'm right, aren't I? He knew about you and Lori. I mean, of course he did. He was obsessed with her, after all. He must've made it his business to know who she went to bed with. And it must've killed—ha—it must've just murdered him when he found out it was you.” I slapped my knee. I was feeling high. “And then he came by some pictures he must've known were destined for your personal spank bank. So how much?”

He hesitated, but not for too long. He spoke fast. “A lot. But do you really think I would've killed some cheap blackmailer? Even if he was getting a little expensive?”

“Add to that the fact that he was on Lori's lawn when he got dead, and I think we have a motive. I'd even venture that he wanted you to cut things off, that maybe an ultimatum was on the horizon.”

“You're right.” For the first time since I'd known him, his voice was out of his control, booming with misery. “He threatened to go to my wife.”

The admission struck me silent for a few seconds, and before I could say a word, he continued.

Softly now, pleading and humbled: “You've known Luke for a long time. Do you know much about Erin?”

“I know some.”

“I knew when I met her that she'd never make things easy for me. It's not like she was this put-together person who fell apart after I married her. I went in with my eyes open.” He clasped his hands together. “I loved her so much, I just had to hope she'd get better.”