Sleepwalker (44 page)

“It’s a burn,” Mick said.

“Aunt Mick stuck her hands in the furnace,” Kate told him.

Jason’s face was suddenly grim. “Forget the investigation. You’re going to the hospital, too.”

Mick might have argued, except the entire crew chimed in. And now that she remembered the injury, her wrist really did hurt. She piled in the ambulance with Jenny and the girls. Because there wasn’t room, Jason and her dad caught a ride in a separate car.

Treating and bandaging her wrist didn’t take long. Jenny and the girls were still in the examining rooms by the time she was finished. She walked out into the waiting room to look for Jason and her dad, but they were nowhere in sight. A few tired-looking people slumped in
the plastic chairs waiting to be seen, and there was activity behind the nurses’ station as the hospital personnel worked to get patients in and out. Beyond the glass doors stretched the shadowy reaches of the parking lot, its darkness alleviated by the occasional tall streetlight. Mick stepped outside to look around for any sign of them.

Instead, she found Wheeler and another FBI agent—Rice, she thought his name was—getting out of a car. They nodded at her when they saw her, and, huddling deep inside Jason’s coat against the cold, she waited for them to come up to her.

“Everybody make it here okay?” Wheeler asked when they reached her.

“My sister and nieces are inside.”

“How about Lange? And Davis?”

“I’m still waiting for them to show up.”

“Glad everything worked out,” he said. “Well, just checking on things.”

When he would have left her and walked on inside with Rice, Mick thought of something she really needed to know.

“Nicco Marino—what’s happening with him?”

Wheeler turned back to her. “He’s already been picked up. Charged with racketeering, running a criminal enterprise, and eight murders so far. And the investigation is still ongoing. The Bureau’s actually had its eye on Marino for a number of years, but this is the first time we’ve been able to get anything solid on him. Or any of the guys around him, for that matter.”

Her father’s cell phone suddenly seemed to be burning a hole in her pocket. This was the perfect opportunity to pull it out and hand it over. She didn’t.

“The guy’s going down,” Rice added. Mick was glad, although she felt a pang for the family, for Angie. They didn’t deserve this. But then, how many people actually ever deserved what life dished up?

They went on inside. Mick was just getting ready to join them when she saw her father walking toward her through the parking lot. He saw her, too, and lifted a hand to wave just as he stepped into the white spill of light from one of the halogen lamps. It washed over him, illuminating his bright hair, his beloved features.

Mick looked and went dizzy.

It was his face. The face she saw when she went sleepwalking. The pale oval that all these years had remained blurry in her mind’s eye. This was the terrible knowledge she had hidden from herself for so long. Now she realized why that was: her father was the man she had seen standing by that apartment building in the moments before her mother was shot. The man who had haunted her nightmares. The man who, she had long suspected, had fired the shots that had killed her mother.

Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced. Her blood thundered in her ears. Her stomach cramped so hard that she thought she might vomit.

There was a black iron bench just steps away. Somebody, hospital maintenance, who knew, kept it cleared of snow. Mick took an unsteady sideways step and sank down on it.

“Something wrong?” her father asked, reaching her. He was frowning, concerned. Meeting his gaze, she felt as if her heart might break.

“I saw you.” The words came spilling out, stark and cold and full of pain. “The night Mom was shot, Jenny and I were running through the field to get to her and I looked over at that apartment building and saw you standing there. You were holding a rifle. I saw your face just as clearly as I’m looking at it now.”

His face went utterly white. His eyes looked stricken. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then sank down on the bench beside her as if suddenly unsure if his knees would continue to support him.

What he didn’t do was deny it.

“Did you shoot Mom?” Dry-mouthed, Mick asked it point-blank.

“No. God, no.”

She knew what she had seen. The mists of time had lifted. That night now lived in her memory, clear as a bell. But at his denial, a tiny bit of hope struggled for life inside her, like a crocus butting its head against a crust of snow.

“You were there by the building.” Her tone carried absolute certainty.

He sighed heavily. “Yes. I was. I saw you girls, but I didn’t know you saw me.”

Mick was barely breathing. “So tell me.”

“Wendy worked in a bank. Nicco—we were like brothers growing up—we got into some stuff together, you know how kids are. I didn’t think what he was doing was so bad, just trying to make money for his family like everybody else. When I became a cop, and he kept on doing what he was doing, I helped him out with some things here and there, when I could. We were close, our two families, even though he kept getting richer and richer and, well, I was a cop. Then Nicco got into some trouble. He needed a way to launder a lot of cash, fast. He came to us, Wendy and me, and wanted her to run some money through her bank for him. Up until that point, she hadn’t had any idea he was a crook. She just thought he had a lot of businesses that did really well. But once she knew, she didn’t want anything to do with it. She said we had to go to the cops. I said I was a cop, that wasn’t going to work. Next thing I knew, she left me over it. Left me, and started talking to the feds. Somebody tipped me off that Nicco was going to have her whacked. That very night, when she got off work. I rushed over there as fast as I could, took my rifle. I was going to take whoever showed up to hit her out.” He took a deep breath, and Mick could feel a shudder pass through him. She saw the glint of sudden tears in his eyes. “Like you know, I was just a couple of seconds too late.” He reached out, took both her hands in his, clumsily, because she didn’t make it easy.
She was busy searching his face. “We had some ups and downs, but I loved Wendy. I would never have hurt her, much less killed her. If for no other reason, I never would have done that to you girls.”

Mick felt a rush of remembered anguish for her mother, along with a corresponding easing of the terrible current pain that had been holding her heart in a vise. In his eyes, in his grip, in his voice, she recognized truth. She felt tears start to build in her own eyes and let go of his hands to brush them angrily away.

“Oh my God, Dad, why didn’t you have him arrested? Uncle Nicco? If you knew …” She broke off because he was shaking his head at her.

“I had done some things. Helped Nicco out. Hell, Mick, I’m not a perfect man. He had things on me. Plus if he’d had any hint I was going to turn him in, he would have hit all of us, not just me but you and Jenny, too. I had to wait, bide my time, continue to be his friend. And he tried to make up for what he’d done as best he could, making a big to-do over you and Jenny. But I never forgot, and I never forgave. I’ve been waiting, all these years, until you girls were grown, until I thought the time was right. I’ve been waiting to pay that son of a bitch back.”

Needing to hear it all, Mick reached into her pocket and pulled out his phone.

“I saw the pictures of the Lightfoot murders on this,” she said and gave it to him. She already knew that there was nothing else she could do. He had said he wasn’t a perfect man. Well, she wasn’t a perfect woman, either. Or a perfect cop. He was her father. Come what may, she wasn’t turning him in.

He dropped the phone in his coat pocket.

“I was there. I took them,” he admitted. “Nicco had a beef with Lightfoot for taking a bribe then not doing what he promised. I heard through the grapevine that he was going in person to the Lightfoots’ that night. I figured he was going to threaten, maybe have some guys
rough Lightfoot up, so I went on over there thinking maybe I could keep things from getting out of hand. When I got there, the house was dark, but two cars were in the driveway, including Nicco’s. I went up to the door, and it was unlocked. So I went in. It was a big house, nobody around, but I heard some noise in the basement. I figured Nicco had Lightfoot down there. I went down the stairs, but the basement was divided into rooms, and the first two rooms after the stairs were empty, dark. I didn’t see anybody. But I sure as hell heard commotion in the basement’s far end. When I got there, got where I could see, it was too late to stop anything. I was just in time to watch Marty Camino put his gun up to Lightfoot’s head. If I’d said a word, if they’d known I was there, if they’d seen me, I would have been dead, too. I had my phone, and I took some pictures, as quick and quiet as I could. Then I got the hell out of there. And I realized I’d just found the weapon I’d been looking for all these years. With those pictures, I could destroy Nicco.”

Mick stared at her father. All her life, they’d been close. She’d thought she’d known him. Now she realized she had had no idea. “The printouts of the pictures that were in the suitcases full of money in Nicco’s safe—how did they get there?”

“I overnighted the pictures to him from Florida, along with a note telling him I’d be in touch later about what I wanted in exchange for keeping those pictures out of circulation. Of course, he didn’t know the package came from me. He would have gotten it on New Year’s Eve, right before he left for his Palm Beach vacation.” He smiled. “He must have collected the money the same day and stuck the pictures in there with it to keep them safe until he could figure out what to do about them. He must have been in a cold sweat. Probably ruined his trip.”

“Your plan was to blackmail him?” Mick asked.

Her father shook his head. “My plan was to torture him. Just a little
payback. Make him worry. Then I was going to take those pictures and go to the feds.”

“What?” Mick looked at him sharply.

He nodded. “Yeah. It was the only thing to do. I finally figured out a way to take Nicco down and at the same time keep from going down myself for all the things we’d done together. Little things,” he added hastily, with a quick look at her. “Your mother deserved some payback, after all this time.”

“Dad,” she began, only to be interrupted by the emergence of Wheeler and Rice from the hospital. They spotted the two of them on the bench and came toward them.

“Hey, Charlie. I was looking for you,” Wheeler greeted her father. “You ready to do this thing?”

Eyes widening, Mick shot to her feet. “What thing?” She turned to her father, who had risen more slowly. “Dad?”

“I told them what I had. They cut me a deal: if I gave them the pictures and agreed to testify, I’d have immunity against any crimes I might—and you hear me saying
might—
have committed. It was a good deal. I took it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Then he handed it to Wheeler. “It’s all in there.”

“Let’s go give a statement,” Wheeler said, looking at the phone like it was pure gold.

“
Dad
. You need a lawyer. You need …” Mick was still sputtering when her father wrapped her up in a big bear hug.

“No, I don’t. Wheeler and me, we shook hands. It’s all fixed up. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Then he let her go. Giving her a smile and a thumbs-up, he turned to go with the agents.

“Wheeler.” Mick looked at the man with a combination of entreaty, fear and warning.

Wheeler said, “He’s right, he’s going to be fine. He’s the break we’ve
been waiting for for a long time. We’ll take such good care of him, he’s never going to want to come home again.”

“But I will be home,” her father called back over his shoulder. “You can count on that. Wouldn’t leave my girls for too long for anything.”

“Dad.” Mick kept repeating it helplessly because she didn’t know what to say. He was already getting into the car with the agents. She walked toward it. As he disappeared inside and the doors slammed, she leaned down to look at him through the driver’s window. Wheeler was right there. He rolled the window down.

“Where are you taking him? How long will he be gone?” She looked into the backseat at her father, who was putting on his seat belt and seemed perfectly happy. “Dad?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll be in touch,” her father said as Wheeler started the car.

“You need to get hold of him, you can always call me.” Wheeler shifted the transmission into reverse. “I gave my card to your sister. If worse comes to worst, Davis knows where to find me.” He grinned. “I almost forgot. Davis gave me a message for you. He had to go home suddenly—not that I know where home is for him, because I don’t—because things were starting to get a little hot around here for him when some of the guys started asking questions about how this entire series of events came about in the first place. But he told me to tell you, you might want to think about taking a vacation real soon.”

Then he rolled up the window and drove away, leaving Mick standing there in the parking lot with her arms folded over her chest, staring after the car.

Epilogue

F
our days later, Mick walked down the sloping green lawn toward the white crescent beach at Old Man Bay. It was a perfect day, bright and sunshiny. The sky was blue, the bay was bluer, and whitecaps rolled in toward shore in an endless rhythm that she didn’t think she could ever grow tired of. She could see Jason, wearing shorts and a tee, sitting on the overturned catboat. He was looking out to sea, with no idea she was there. She smiled. The smell of the sea, the sound of the waves, the warmth of the sun: they had managed to claim part of her heart during the brief time she’d been there before.

But not nearly as big a part of her heart as the man in front of her.

He didn’t know she was coming. She’d taken a commercial flight, then a taxi from the airport, only to be confounded by the compound’s locked gate and high walls. Before she’d had to resort to something as drastic as scaling the wall in the summery skirt and soft yellow tee she wore, Tina and Jelly, returning from the grocery, had shown up in their car. Tina had greeted her ecstatically, Jelly with a lot less love. But they’d let her in, suitcases and all, and told her that the last they’d seen of Jason, he’d been walking down by the shore.