Mercy Falls (31 page)

“H
EY
, C
ORK
. Long time no see.”

Adam Gabriel closed the door and offered Cork his hand. He stood six feet tall and was slender, with curly blond hair and a serious look in his face.

“What are you doing here, Adam? I thought you were with Highland Park.”

They were in an interview room of the Winnetka Village Police.

“I’m also assigned to NORTAF. We float all over.”

“That’s right. I remember Boomer saying that.”

“Good old Boomer.” Gabriel allowed himself a brief smile, then sat down across the table from Cork.

“Good to see a familiar face,” Cork said.

“They’ve been rough on you?”

“Just doing their jobs. You’ve got yours, too. They send you in to play good cop?”

Gabriel gestured toward the Styrofoam cup that held coffee, which was cold now. “Want something besides that?”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you could use sleep. I understand you drove all night.”

“A lot of ground between me and Jo to cover. I’d love to be with her right now.”

“She’s in good hands, Cork. With someone from SANE. Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program.”

“I know what it is.”

“Sure.”

“How’s Lucille?”

“Back in school. Almost fifty and she’s finally finishing her degree. Never too late, huh?” He folded his hands on the table. “So this is what I understand. You came down here because Jo disappeared. You went to Jacoby’s because of the message on Rose’s phone. By the way, I didn’t know she’d moved back down here. Happy to hear she’s found a good man.”

“We all are.”

“So you and Willner head to Jacoby’s. You see Jo’s car in the garage, ring the bell—”

“We didn’t ring the bell.”

“Did you knock?”

“No. I tried the door.”

“Which was locked?”

“Yes.”

“So you started looking for another way in. You were on the south side of the house when you heard the shots and dove for cover in the shrubbery. Because you thought you were being shot at?”

“That’s right.”

He nodded in an understanding way. “Skittish. After that business on the reservation in Minnesota, it makes sense. How’s the ear?”

“Doesn’t bother me anymore. Stitches’ll be coming out pretty soon.”

“How long did you stay there in the shrubs?”

“Couple minutes.”

“No more shots?”

“No.”

“Then you continued to the backyard, which was empty.”

“Except for Jacoby on the bottom of the pool.”

“You saw no one leaving the scene?”

“No one.”

“You told the other detectives that you thought Jacoby was dead. You think about pulling him out, checking for a pulse?”

“No.”

Gabriel seemed a little troubled with that. “You know dead when you see it?”

“Jo came from the house at the same time. I was more concerned with her.”

“And besides, you figured it was Jacoby who’d kidnapped her, right?”

“I didn’t want him dead. I just wanted Jo back safely.”

“But things got out of hand. I can understand how that might happen.”

“Look, Adam, I know you have to do this. I didn’t shoot Jacoby.”

“But you did have a gun.”

“Which I didn’t fire. Winnetka Police can easily confirm that. They swabbed my hands for residue. They decide to have it analyzed, it’ll show negative. But I’m sure they told you all this already.”

“Cork, they’re searching for gloves.”

“Gloves?” He thought about it a few seconds and understood. “They found the gun that killed him. Let me guess. A throw-down?”

“That’s right.”

“Adam, you know me. You know I’m not a dirty cop.”

“I told them that. But they don’t know you, Cork. They’re looking at a guy who believed his wife had been kidnapped, who believed Jacoby was responsible, and who charged in on his own, thinking he’d save her. On top of that, he’s a guy who’s currently suspended from his duties as sheriff pending psychological evaluation.”

Cork sat back, weary to the bone.

“It would have helped if you’d told them about that last part.”

“They ready to charge me?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Timing and motive are strong, but they don’t have any physical connection between you and the throw-down. Plus, you’ve been extremely cooperative.”

“Are they going to hold me?”

“No. But they want you to stick around for a while. You know the drill.” Gabriel breathed a deep sigh. “There’s something else, Cork. Phillip Jacoby came in a while ago with his lawyer, Lawrence Blumenthal. He’s admitted that he had sex with Jo, but says it was consensual.”

“Consensual?” Cork almost leaped from his chair.

“That’s his statement. He says his father came home, found them together. Jo had had too much to drink and had passed out. Jacoby was extremely upset and sent Phillip to stay with an old friend who just happened to be Lawrence Blumenthal, one of Chicago’s best defense attorneys. Blumenthal insists that Phillip was at his home when Ben Jacoby was murdered.”

“Money makes everything so much easier, doesn’t it?” Cork said bitterly.

“When Boomer called me yesterday, I wish I’d known what all this was about. I’d have been happy to help.”

“That was yesterday, Adam.” He reached across the table and shook Gabriel’s hand. “And you
have
helped.”

Dina Willner was waiting for him.

“You look like the walking dead,” she said. “Why don’t I give you a ride back to your Pathfinder. We need to talk.”

While the police were questioning Dina, one of her operatives had delivered her car to the village police station. It was a red Ferrari, and she fit into it as if she’d been born in the driver’s seat.

“I saw Phillip at the police station, but they wouldn’t let me talk to him,” she said.

Cork told her what he’d learned from Gabriel.

“Consensual? That’s ludicrous.” Her voice was pitched with anger.

“Adam says his attorney’s one of the best in Chicago.”

“Blumenthal’s good, but Phillip’s got a history of date rape. The Jacobys hired me last year to make a Rohypnol situation go away.”

“Do the police know that?”

“The police know all about the Jacobys, but money’s an enormous protective moat.”

She stopped at a light. The Ferrari purred under her like a contented lion.

“There are things I haven’t told you, but now that Ben’s dead, I think I should.”

The light changed. She shifted and accelerated with a roar of the powerful engine.

“I can understand why you thought it was Ben who was responsible for Stone trying to kill you, but you’re wrong. He didn’t know anything about it. Eddie was mostly all about Eddie, except where Ben was concerned. He looked up to Ben, desperately wanted his approval, wanted to feel like they were true brothers. The trouble was, he was the kind of guy who fucked up everything he did.

“Eddie knew about Ben and Jo. When he turned up dead and Ben went to Aurora and heard about the ambush on the reservation, he didn’t believe it was just a coincidence that Eddie was there when it happened. He was afraid Eddie might have done something stupid, like arrange the hit. I wasn’t hired just to make sure the investigation was handled correctly. I was hired to find out if what Ben feared was true.”

“And if it was?”

“My first priority was to make sure you and your family were safe. Then, if Eddie was responsible, identify the person he hired for the hit and intervene discreetly. Dissuade that person any way I could and keep the Jacoby name out of it.”

“Tall order.”

“I’m well paid.”

“So I was wrong about Ben Jacoby wanting my wife?”

“I don’t know about that. Ben always struck me as a man who never had a handle on happiness. If Jo made him happy once, maybe he would have given almost anything to get her back. He might even have been just fine if it had to be over your dead body, so long as he wasn’t responsible, but he wasn’t the kind of man who’d have had you killed for it.”

“You seem to know Jacoby pretty well.”

“In my business, people tell me their secrets.”

“You’re paid to keep those secrets. Why are you telling me this?”

“Call it a moral imperative. Anyone who’d care is dead. Ben, Eddie, Stone. And with everything that’s happened to you and your family, I think you deserve to know the truth. But if you ask me to testify in court, I’ll refuse. You understand?”

“Sure.”

“However, I can give you the name of the girl and her family in the date rape incident. I’d bet it wouldn’t take anything at all to make them turn on the Jacobys.”

They were on Sheridan, not far from Ben’s place.

“So who killed him?” Cork said.

“Until you told me about Blumenthal, I’d thought it might have been Phillip. An argument, maybe.”

“If Blumenthal’s telling the truth, Phillip’s off the hook. From what I’ve gathered, Jacoby was probably shot with a throw-down, so that would indicate a planned killing.”

“Ben was a powerful man. I’m sure he had enemies. Maybe his murder didn’t have anything to do with the rest of this business.”

Cork shook his head. “Think about it. After you called him with your report on Lizzie’s interview, he canceled his meeting with Jo and went somewhere. You said it yourself, that he put something together. What was it he figured out? That might be clear if we knew who he went to see.”

“You think his death had something to do with Eddie’s murder?”

“It’s the only connection I can see at the moment. It’s all too closely related to be just coincidence.”

Dina pulled onto the brick drive that led to Jacoby’s home. The crime scene team was still there, but the media vans were gone and the neighbors had all retreated back into their own big houses. She pulled up to the Pathfinder, still parked where he’d left it earlier that morning.

“Cork, I’m not on the Jacoby payroll anymore. Eddie, Ben, they’re not my worry now. But you are.” She reached into the glove box, pulled out a business card, and gave it to him. “If you need me for anything, call.”

“Listen,” he said. “That was a lousy thing I pulled in Aurora. I’m sorry.”

“Done in a good cause,” she replied, then smiled wistfully. “ Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, it might have been.’”

She leaned over, kissed his cheek, watched him get out, then growled away in her Ferrari, a car that cleaning up the messes made by people like the Jacobys had paid for.

By the time he arrived at the clinic, Jo’s examination was over and she’d gone home with Rose.

At the duplex, he found the women gathered around the kitchen table—where else?—drinking tea. The long night of despair had left them with puffy, dark-circled eyes and faces still pinched with worry. Jo was safe, but Cork suspected that for Jenny and Annie the ordeal was not over. It was clear they knew what she’d been through, were probably even now imagining it, living it in their own minds, feeling the filth of it on their own bodies. What had happened to their mother had been the kind of thing that happened to other women, other families, in other places, but here it was at their table, the monster of all fears, and Cork understood that for a while it would shadow their world.

He kissed Jo and held her.

“They kept me a long time,” he said. “I would have been there.”

“It was fine. Rose was with me.”

“Thank you.” He spoke over Jo’s shoulder to his sister-in-law. “Where’s Stevie?”

Rose said, “Mal took him to the park. He doesn’t really know what’s happened.”

“Good. Hi, guys.” He kissed both his daughters as he circled the table toward an empty chair.

They smiled bleakly.

“Would you like some tea?” Rose offered.

“Sure, what the hell. Wouldn’t happen to have a cookie to go with it?”

“Chocolate chip.”

“Rose, you are an angel.”

He looked at the two most dour faces at the table and he spoke especially to them. “You know, in the last week I’ve been shot at, threatened with a bomb, attacked with a knife. Your mother’s gone through her own terrible hell. But here we are together around this table, and I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt so lucky. Rose,” he called, “cookies all around. And don’t stint on the chocolate chips.”

Smiles like small bright caterpillars crawled across his daughters’ lips.

Later, in the privacy of the room Jo had shared with Stevie, Cork held her for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

She spoke, her breath soft against his cheek. “The truth is, I don’t remember anything. I only have vague impressions, like a bad dream. I suppose that’s lucky.”

“It may hit you later.”

“Probably.”

“I have to see Faith Gray when I get back to Aurora. Maybe you should, too.”

“All right.”

“I wish I could have kept it from happening.”

She drew back just enough to look into his eyes. “How could you? It was such a predatory act, who could have predicted it?”

“It’s not the first time Phillip’s done something like this, Jo. I’m going to do everything I can to make certain he doesn’t prey on anybody else.”

“Do they have any idea about Ben? Who killed him?”

“Not yet. I get the feeling they’d like to pin it on me.”

“They can’t possibly suspect you.”

“If I were them, I’d consider me a pretty good suspect. Jo, Dina told me some things I think you ought to know.”

They sat on the bed in the room she had shared with Stevie, and he told her everything he knew.

“All this,” she said, “because Eddie Jacoby thought he could make a gift of me.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“All this death.”

He touched her cheek, felt her heat, her life flowing into his fingers. “We’re not dead, you and me.”

“But Ben is. Why him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want to leave here, Cork. I want to go home.”

“The Winnetka police would like us to stay awhile. They’ll have more questions when they’re finished with the crime scene and start looking at the evidence.”