Playing With Fire (16 page)

She closed her eyes as if to blot out the scene. Connor
relished the thought of smashing his fist through Nate’s smug face, but wanted
to hear the rest of Erin’s story, no matter how dreadful it was.

“Don’t think about Nate, Erin. We’ll deal with what he said
later.”

Tears welled up in her eyes but she gave a resigned little
nod and continued with her painful story.

“I thought about suicide a lot. More than drugs. I decided
if I was going to kill myself I’d do it quick. All at once. Not the way my mother
did — slowly, over the years, until she didn’t know her own name or who she’d
slept with the night before. The only thing that mattered was getting her next
fix.”

Connor forced himself to speak as calmly as he could.

“Do you have records of the abuse?”

She shook her head.

“I reported it in the beginning. Dylan broke my collarbone
once, both of my arms a couple of times, and my wrist once. I reported it to
the police, but the Chief was a good friend of Dylan’s and the reports got
wiped away. No one ever followed up. All the ‘incidents’ were listed as
accidents. That I’d fallen, running.”

“How about the hospital? Any medical records? You know it’s
against the law not to report suspected abuse.”

Erin snorted. “You really don’t understand who Dylan was,
what he was. The new emergency wing at the hospital has his name on it. No,
Connor, my hospital records will show that I was a very clumsy girl and that I
had a lot of running accidents.”

“Can anybody document this, back you up, Erin?”

“How, Connor? They wouldn’t then. Who would come forward
now? No Connor, the only person who can verify the story is the little liar.
The girl who left her rich husband, changed her name, and is now suspected of
murdering him. Imagine that. Such a nice wealthy man who apparently left her a
lot of money. Very unintentionally, I can assure you.”

Erin’s voice trailed off. She was staring into the trees.
For a moment Connor thought he had lost her to some kind of a fugue state. He
snapped his fingers.

“What is it, Erin. What else? Tell me.”

She took a deep shuddering breath. Her eyes were deep dark
tourquoise pools, lakefuls of anguish.

“Connor, I have never told anyone this. You have to promise
me you won’t tell Nate.”

He held up his hands and nodded.

“Dylan started insisting that I strip for his friends. I
refused, but he became more and more adamant. I was already planning to run
away. But that was the last straw. I had connected with Simon Bergner, and paid
him money to help me get away. I had a plan. I’d worked on it for years. Right
before I was getting ready to go, Dylan was preparing to celebrate his 45th
birthday. He had this crazy idea that he wanted me to come out of a cake,
naked, and dance for his friends. Like Marilyn Monroe did for some party. I
refused. I said I wouldn’t humiliate myself like that. He warned me what would
happen if I didn’t. He’d always liked burning me with lit cigarettes. The marks
were small and he could hide them. But he said if I refused to strip for his
birthday party, he would start burning my face.

“I finally said I would do it. It was a big event. Lots of
important people were invited. The police chief, doctors from the hospital, a
senator. The kinds of people who surrounded him. The party started in the
afternoon by the pool. I tried to stay away like I always did. I was laying in
the meditation room next to the fitness center when I heard Dylan talking with
some of the men from the party. I recognized their voices. The police chief,
some of the doctors, others whose voices I didn’t know. There were several of
them. They were talking about me. It was ugly. They were all laughing, excited.
From what they were saying, I realized that Dylan had promised them they could
all ‘have’ me. He said like all good little whores, I liked being ‘fucked by a
lot of men.’ He said I ‘got off’ on being watched, and that I liked unusual
positions. Those were lies, Connor. I never did any of those things. I realized
then that they were drawing straws. To see who got me first and the order the
rest of them would follow.

“Of course, Dylan hadn’t told me there was to be an encore
to my striptease. I waited until I was sure they had left. I ran and hid in the
woods like a wild animal.”

She paused, a quizzical expression crossing her face.

“And do you know what, Connor? I didn’t stop running until I
got here.”

She shook her head in wonder.

“Isn’t that amazing, Connor? For nearly three years I
managed to escape one of the most powerful men in the country. And then he
finally caught me. Right here.”

She waved at their surroundings.

“In Chicadia Falls, Minnesota.”

Connor burst through Nate’s outer office, ignoring Naomi’s
pleasant greeting.

She hollered out after him, “Guess you didn’t need me to
announce you, huh Lieutenant?”

Nate glanced up and shook his head.

“Christ, Connor, you always were a dramatic little shit.
What the hell do you want now? If I remember correctly, I’m on your shit list.
So tell me, as if I don’t already know, what might you be on my ass for today?”

Connor saw the anger lurking in Nate’s gaze, barely hidden
beneath his contemptuous arrogance. He also didn’t miss the strain on his
cousin’s face. Maybe the fucker had been affected by the show he put on today
at Erin’s expense. He hoped so.

“Tell me, Cuz. You trying out some below-the-belt techniques
to add to your famed interrogation prowess? You so determined to fight off the
other alpha sniffing around your territory, you’re willing to sacrifice a
woman’s dignity?”

Nate reared out of his chair.

“What the hell are you talkin’ about Connor?”

“A lot of things, Nate. Only one of which is how you are
letting your jealousy of Blake Richards color your judgment.”

Nate’s voice dropped to ice.

“I think you better leave, Lieutenant. You’re treading on
dangerous ground. I warned you yesterday not to interfere in police business.
I’m not going to warn you again.”

Connor returned his glare.

“Fraid you’re just gonna have to write me up, Detective,
because I’m not leaving until you hear what I came to say.”

Knowing that Nate was slow to fury, and that his own temper
was easily triggered, Connor tried to pull back, to lower the heat. He needed
to talk to Nate — and he needed him to listen. He held up his hands in a
conciliatory gesture.

“Nate, I apologize. I shouldn’t have burst in like this and
started by throwing Blake Richards at you.”

Seeing the crease on Nate’s cheek deepen, Connor pulled it
back more.

“Nate, I just finished an hour-long conversation with Erin.
And you’re right about Richards. He’s a pompous jagoff, and he is giving her
bad advice. That’s why I needed to talk to her. I wanted her to answer the
question Dan Coulter told me she didn’t answer this morning. The question you
asked her. ‘Why did she run away from her husband.’ It took everything I had
Nate, but I got her to talk.

“Yeah, Connor. So what are you going to tell me that I don’t
already know?”

“To begin with, I’d like to think that you don’t know —
because if you did you wouldn’t be treating her the shitty way you are.
Belittling. Humiliating. Damn near abusing.”

A black cloud settled over Nate’s face.

“Connor. Leave. Now. This isn’t going to work, for either
one of us.”

Connor groaned. “Christ, man. I’m sorry. I gotta admit, I’m
shaken up. But damn, I don’t want to take it out on you. Listen, Nate, I just
listened to a horror story, the plot of which you and I have heard way too many
times from desperate women. That’s part of our business. We run into the bad
shit. You even more than me. And abuse is ugly no matter what, but the stuff I
heard from Erin is ugly, damned ugly.”

Nate seared him with a disparaging leer.

“Jesus, Connor, what kind of an idiot do you take me for.
You think I didn’t consider abuse. Shit, I figured her for that after ten
minutes at Mama D’s. Do you think I don’t know how very rich men think about
pretty little women? But I’m not stupid, Connor, and you’re not either. Yeah,
maybe she did run because he got nasty, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t like
being the very wealthy Dylan Masterson’s wife. And better yet, his widow. All
the goodies without the occasional smack from Dylan.”

Connor’s jaw convulsed.

“You insufferable asshole!”

Nate’s lips were compressed in an even tighter line.

“Listen to me, Connor. I know you enjoy being the White
Knight, but I already raised this issue with the Monterey cops, and the
hospital Erin frequented. Neither the cops nor the hospital have any record of
the wealthy young Mrs. Masterson ever being abused. No records, Connor, nada.
You hear me?”

Connor stared at Nate, incredulous.

“And that’s it. You stopped there?”

“Yeah, Connor, I did. Because as hard as the truth is
sometimes—”

Connor held up his hand.

“Never mind, Nate. Don’t bother explaining. I forgot. I was
thinking you were the same hotshot cop who never accepted anything at face
value. The great Detective Nate Stryker who criminals feared like the Black
Plague. Why Nate? Because they know that you actually track down leads, that
you are like a fuckin’ dog with a bone if there is a smithereen of a chance
your first guess might be wrong. But that was before Erin, right, Nate?”

“You mean Sarah Marie Masterson, don’t you?”

Connor was just a few feet away from his cousin. In a matter
of seconds they would be pounding each other into the floor. Connor took
several steps backward.

“No, you fuck. I mean Erin McFadden.”

He strode to the door and had his hand on the knob. But
remembering the image of Erin sitting at the picnic table, her face as white
and breakable as porcelain, her brave voice recounting the horrors she endured,
he turned back. Nate’s unyielding anger was palpable from across the room.

Connor realized he couldn’t, shouldn’t yell — it was too
ugly. No one else deserved to know Erin’s pain.

“Jesus, Nate. He beat her, he burned her, he broke more
bones than she had. And he offered her to his friends. Groups of them. And yeah
those friends included men like your buddy the Police Chief, and a hell of lot
of others.”

Nate’s face crumbled. The anger that had turned his
expression to concrete momentarily shattered, morphing into pain. He ran his
hands through his messy hair then stalked to the window, staring outside.
Connor could see the tension in his shoulders from across the room.

But when Nate turned around, he’d recovered his usual
practiced indifference.

“I’m sorry to hear that. As with a number of other critical
things, it would have served Ms. McFadden well to have told me about these
things. The fact is that she didn’t. The additional fact is that in my
‘preliminary’ research I can’t find evidence to back up her story. Her story,
by the way, that she has only told you. I have to assume that while there
likely was a good reason for her to leave her husband, his despicable actions
only make it
more
likely that she would want to kill the bastard. If
anything Connor, you have provided two excellent motives for Erin to murder her
husband: The first is that he deserved to be killed. And I would do it if he
was still alive. The second is that she became a millionaire many times over
when he died.”

Connor wasn’t sure where he found the breath to heave out
his words but somehow he did. “You. Son. Of. A. Bitch.”

A voice in the doorway cut through both of their fury.

Dan Coulter hesitated.

“Sorry, Nate, Connor. I wouldn’t interrupt, but this is
important.”

Connor brushed by him.

“I was just leaving.”

Dan held up his hand.

“I dunno, Connor. It’s up to Nate, but since you and I
agreed I’d keep you and Halloran updated on the case, you should hear this
too.”

Nate motioned to the chairs in front of his desk. His voice
crackled through the room.

“Sit down. Both of you.”

Connor glared at him, but then joined Dan in the chairs in
front of Nate.

Dan handed Nate a fax.

Nate eyes widened as he read it. He jerked back in his chair
and met Dan’s gaze.

“Holy fuck!”

Dan nodded in agreement. “You can say that again.”

Nate scanned the sheet again, then tossed it to Connor.

Connor’s face blanched as he read. Dan filled in the
details.

“Simon Bergner is the PI Erin hired to help her keep track
of the men Masterson sicced on her. She’s been sending Bergner money every
month for nearly three years. To a PO Box in Phoenix, AZ.”

Connor reread the fax, dread roiling in his gut.

Nate interrupted Dan’s account.

“Apparently Simon chose not to cash his last two checks, but
then I’m not sure how many banks there are in Hell.”

Connor stared at his cousin and nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, you should look like that, Connor. Simon is another
of Erin’s back up stories that don’t exist. According to the police report, he
took a single bullet from a revolver — in the kill spot at the base of his
skull. Shooter knew enough not to leave casings. A professional hit, pure and
simple.”

Nate sprang from his chair and began pacing. He turned to
his cousin, then continued.

“I dunno, Connor, seems like our little Erin McFadden is
even more complicated than I imagined. Hell, Cuz, we may have a Black Widow on
our hands, and one with ‘connections’ to boot.”

Connor tossed the report on the desk and moved to the door.

He threw Nate a scathing glare.

“I don’t know who you are, Nate.”

Nate shrugged. His voice was cool.

“Apparently you never did, Connor.”

He added as Connor left the room, “And by the way, Blake
Richards is an arrogant asshole. That Erin chose to confide in him rather than
you or me just shows how poor her judgment is.”