Kiss of Evil (31 page)

“Doesn’t
that
sizzle my slippers on New Year’s Eve. What else?”

“I need you to cross reference a homicide by the victim’s name.”

“Who’s the vic?”

“Anthony C. del Blanco.”

“Got it.”

“Thanks, Tonya. Call me.”

“On the case, detective.”

Paris hangs up, glances back at the mess on the floor.

All right. Where is the
straight
line from Mike Ryan to Fayette Martin to Willis Walker to the Levertovs?

Before the line can begin to be drawn in his mind, Paris hears Greg Ebersole’s heels clicking down the hall. Fast. Greg grabs onto the doorjamb, pokes his head into Paris’s office.

“We’ve got physical,” Greg says, out of breath.

“Lay it on me.”

“Just walked in the front door.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just got a package via courier. Inside was a leather jacket. The delivery kid said he picked it up from a woman in the lobby at the Wyndham. He’s with a sketch artist now.”

“You think it’s the jacket Fayette and the killer talked about online?”

“I’m betting on it.”

“Why?” Paris asks.

Greg finds his wind, says: “It’s covered in blood.”

Paris stares at the jacket on the lab table, trying to think of a single reason why it doesn’t look
exactly
like the jacket Rebecca wore when he had seen her at Pallucci’s, the jacket that had felt so sexy in his hands. This jacket is a motorcycle type, studded and multizippered. So was Rebecca’s.

But there are millions of them, right?

When Greg had said “covered in blood” he meant, as many cops do, that there was trace evidence, not that it was blood-
soaked
. There certainly is not a great deal visible to the naked eye, but as Paris watches the lab techs work, he sees that they are retrieving samples from all over the jacket, inside and out.

At seven-forty
P
.
M
., December 31, the break comes. Buddy Quadrino, head of the CPD’s latent print unit, is standing in the doorway to Elliott’s office. Paris and Carla Davis hold down the chairs.

“Have good news, BQ,” Carla says, wearily. “
Please
have good news.”

Buddy holds up a sheaf of paper, grinning broadly. “We’ve got patterns,” he says. “If he’s anywhere in anybody’s database we’ll have him in four or five hours.”

Paris and Carla high-five, then bolt for the door.

Captain Randall Elliott picks up his phone, slams a button, and barks a command he’d held inside for the past six days: “Get me the prosecutor’s office.”

56

The South Euclid library, the splendid, multilevel stone building that was once the William E. Telling estate on Cleveland’s far-east side, has an archive of back issues of the
Plain Dealer
, as well as the long-defunct
Cleveland Press
.

Mary sits down at one of the microfilm readers, loads the film, her heart accelerating with the whirring of the reels. Days, weeks, months fly by in a blur of light gray. So many stories. She zeroes in on the date. It hadn’t taken her long to find it. What had Jean Luc said that night?

It takes place a few years ago. I was barely a teenager. If I remember correctly, the Indians beat the Minnesota Twins that day
 . . .

After a little digging, and a little math based on Jean Luc’s age, she finds only three likely dates. The first two produce nothing. She forwards to the day after the third date and feels her skin begin to crawl when she finds the small article in the Metro section.

CLEVELAND MAN FOUND BEATEN
,
MUTILATED
.

The dead man’s name was Anthony C. del Blanco.

She follows the story for the next five weeks, checking every page on which a follow-up story might be run. Nothing. It seems the investigation just evaporated. No arrest, no suspects, no justice for the dead man. Even if the dead man was a pig.

Jean Luc and his sister had simply gotten away with murder.

On page B-8 of the current
Plain Dealer
, she finds another story of interest, one that tugs at her heart. It is accompanied by a photo of Jack Paris standing next to a tall, fair-skinned guy. She reads the caption. The event was a benefit for Max Ebersole, six. A Fraternal Order of Police benefit that raised more than twenty-nine hundred dollars.

She looks into Paris’s eyes, at his smile, the way his presence just fits so perfectly in this setting, a benefit for someone else. She looks at his big hands, recalling them on her body and how protected she had felt, how good.

And knows, without question, that it is over.

57

The cauldron is full. I can watch the recording again. I put my coat on, cross the living room, hit Play.

“
This was a cold-blooded killing of a police officer in the line of duty
,” the man in the old video begins. “
I think the evidence will show that the defendant, Sarah Weiss, pulled the trigger. . . . Mike Ryan was a good cop. . . . Mike Ryan was a family man . . . a man who woke up every day and chose—chose—to strap on a gun and jump into the fray. . . . Mike Ryan died in the line of duty protecting the people of this city. . . . So the next time you find yourself picking through a pile of garbage, or hiding in the bushes like some pervert, or running down the street with a forty-pound video camera just so you can invade the privacy of a heartbroken ten-year-old girl in a wheelchair, I want you to stop, take a deep breath, and ask yourself what the hell it is you do for a living . . . Mike Ryan took a bullet for the people of this city. . . . Mike Ryan was a hero.
”

This is where the woman reporter asks a question I cannot hear.

But I hear the man’s response. Loud and clear and full of arrogance. I have heard it every ten minutes, like maddening clockwork, for a very long time. As I listen, my silence momentarily gives way to the sound of a beast, stirring in its nap.

“
Sometimes, the monster is real, people
,” the man says. “
Sometimes, the monster has a pretty face and a perfectly ordinary name. This time, the monster is called Sarah Weiss.”

58

Ronnie’s Famous is fully lighted, empty. Paris had called Ronnie earlier in the day and asked him to put together two dozen doughnuts and coffee for the stakeout team. And damned if there aren’t a pair of bulging white bags on the counter, right next to the register, right next to a tray of large white foam cups and one of Paris’s Thermoses. Even on New Year’s Eve. Paris had said he would be by at nine-thirty, and he is right on time.

Paris makes a U-turn, parks in front of the shop, grabs his empty Thermos, steps inside, his mind afloat on the increasingly bizarre facts of a case that is starting to look like it began twenty-six years ago when a woman named Lydia del Blanco got beaten nearly to death by her ex-husband, a man who once lived at Fortieth and Central.

If God is doling out luck this New Year’s Eve, he will begin to get some of these answers in the next few hours. One way or another.

Paris looks around Ronnie’s. No customers at the short counter. No one behind the glass. Paris can hear the whine of a vacuum cleaner in the back, the sound of a television.

“Ronnie?” Paris yells.

Nothing.

Just the mewl of a motor and some kind of sitcom. Paris grabs everything on the counter, drops a twenty, then turns to leave before Ronnie Boudreaux can come out of the back room and object.

“Happy New Year, Ronnie!” Paris yells, but he is certain the drone of the vacuum has drowned him out.

As Paris approaches his apartment building he sees two men standing by the front door. Two familiar shapes. Bobby Dietricht and Greg Ebersole. At
his apartment
.

A first.

Something must be going down. Why hadn’t they called?

Paris parks on East Eighty-fifth Street, grabs his Thermos. “Hey guys,” he says, climbing the steps, letting the surprise register on his face. “What’s up? We have a name?”

“Hey,” Bobby Dietricht says, reading the surprise, ignoring the question.

The three men step inside the lobby of Paris’s building as an icy gust wraps around the building. “What’s goin’ on?” Paris asks, checking his watch. He is due at the Westwood stakeout in thirty-five minutes. “We starting a doo-wop group?”

Greg laughs a little too hard. Although he is on the task force, he is not part of the raid team. Early that evening, amid Greg’s violent protests, Captain Elliott had taken one look at him and ordered him off duty.

Bobby Dietricht reaches into his overcoat and pulls out a manila envelope. “Full lab reports are in.”

“What?” Paris says. “Why the hell didn’t someone call me?”

“This is it, Jack,” Bobby says. “This is the call. I just got the report ten minutes ago.”

“What’s Elliott’s take?” Paris asks.

“He hasn’t seen them yet.”

Wrong answer, Paris thinks. Wrong,
wrong
answer.
Why not?
“Talk to me, Bobby.”

“We’ve got matches. All over the fuckin’ map. Blood, prints.”

“No shit.”

“None. Most of the blood is Fayette Martin’s. But there was also trace evidence of Willis Walker’s blood, too.”

“What about the prints?”

A look passes between Greg and Bobby. “Yeah. We’ve got a match. And we’ve got it a half-dozen times.”

“Do we
like
someone? Please tell me we
like
someone.”

“Yes and no,” Bobby says. “Mostly no.”

“What the hell are you saying? We have a hit on the prints or not?”

Bobby nods.

“Great,” Paris says, his stomach starting to centrifuge with tiny needles that soon work their way down to his groin, where the real fear lives. And he knows why. “We’ve got the connection.”

“Not so great,” Greg says, a look of distilled heartbreak on his face.

“The prints,” Bobby says, cop-stare locked in place, cold and unnerving. Paris had never been on this side of it.

“What about them?” Paris asks.

Bobby: “They’re yours.”

59

The fifth time she texts Jesse Ray she stops, halfway, defeated, her tears no longer an enemy. No one is going to save her. No one is going to wave a magic wand and keep her out of prison. This had gotten so bad, so fast, that everything she had worked for in the past two years seemed to be slipping away. If she had just been able to get the money into a trust for Bella, to show her father that the little girl’s future was secured, she might have had a life.

Jean Luc had told her to call no one, to stay inside her apartment until he came for her.

But she knows that if she can just get to her car, she will find the courage to drive down to the Justice Center, walk inside and start talking before she can stop herself.

She puts on her navy wool parka. In her right pocket she slips her Buck knife. In her left pocket is her pepper spray.

Keeping the lights off, she crosses the apartment, tiptoes through the small foyer, sidles up to the door. She checks that the security chain is on, the deadbolt turned. She looks through the peephole: just the fish-eye view of the hall, exactly the way it looks every time she gets paranoid and peers through it. Quiet, empty, monastic. She puts her ear to the door, listens. Nothing. Not even the hum of the elevators. She looks through the peephole again, then takes a step back, turns her deadbolt to the left and silently rotates the knob, opening the door an inch.

She is alone.

She steps through the door, locks it, eases her way to the stairwell, cringing at the sound of the squeaky hinge. A few moments later she steps into the small, deserted Cain Manor apartment lobby. Earlier, she had come home to find a pair of men working on the front doors. They told her that, due to the recent murder in Cain Park, they were putting in new, high security locks. The thought had made her feel a little better, but only a
very
little.

Now it no longer matters.

She glances around the empty lobby, then floats silently down the corridor and out into the rear parking lot.

The first thing she notices is the deep lavender moonlight on the snow. As she approaches her parking space, the light on her car returns a greenish cast to her eye, a color that makes her pause for a moment, disoriented, thinking it may not
be
her car. A glance at the license plate. It
is
her yellow Honda. Right where it is supposed to be. Then why is—

She stops in the middle of the thought, her mind tripping over an image that her heart doesn’t seem to want to process. She cannot understand why someone is sitting in the passenger seat of her car. She cannot understand why this person looks so familiar.

She cannot understand why
Isabella is sitting in the passenger seat of her car
.

It is Bella’s tam-o’-shanter, her round face, her dark curly hair. Yet, although most of her daughter’s face is obscured by shadow, one thing is clear to Mary, and that is this:

Her daughter is not moving.

Mary sprints to the car, slipping on the ice, fumbling with the keys, a spike of raw terror in her heart. It seems like a full minute before she can get the key in the frozen lock, the frosted window now clouding with her breath, concealing her daughter’s tiny form.

She whips open the door and grabs her child from the front seat. Too hard, too light, not a child not a child not Isabella
not Isabella
—

The world stops. Relief washes over her in a huge hot wave, taking her legs out from under her. She falls to her knees.

It is not her daughter.

It is Astrid, her daughter’s big doll, the one she herself had sent by UPS for Isabella’s last birthday.
Astrid wearing Isabella’s old clothes
.