Strong 03 - Twice (26 page)

“James Ross is not the bogeyman. He’s a viable suspect for two murders and he’s wandering around Haunted unchecked. He’s dangerous,” said Lydia.

“Sounds to me like he’s only dangerous to his family.”

“I beg to differ,” said Dax. “I’ve got eight bloody stitches to make my argument.”

“We don’t know that,” said Lydia, responding to Jeff. “He’s got to get picked up at some point for questioning at the very least.”

“But we’re not the people to do it at the moment. And I don’t feel like answering to the police about why we broke into the Ross home.”

“So, what? We just leave him out there?”

“No, we’ll call Ford, tell him what we’ve found. He can arrange something with the Haunted police.”

“What if it’s too late by then?”

“Lydia, the guy has been on the run for ten years and he’s still
hanging around his own backyard. My guess is he’s not going to go far. In fact, if he’s mentally disturbed, I bet he even goes directly back to his tent in the basement. We’ll get him. Just not tonight.”

For once, Lydia was too tired to argue. Her head was pounding and fatigue made her limbs feel like they were filled with sand. Besides, Jeffrey’s logic, as usual, was irrefutable.

Lydia had wanted to stop at Maura Hodge’s again before leaving Haunted, but she didn’t even bother to broach the subject as Jeffrey pulled onto the highway going back to New York. The air between Lydia and Jeffrey was charged with a million things each of them wanted to say. But neither had the energy to say any of them. So after Jeff put in a call to Ford, letting him know about James Ross, they rode in silence until Lydia fell into an uneasy sleep, jerking awake every few miles, seeing alternately the face of her attacker and Jed McIntyre raging toward her over and over again.

W
COU
Bar on Second Avenue was slow on Monday nights. That, and the fact that the old bartender mixed a dangerous Manhattan and looked as much like a relic as the antique jukebox and the glowing neon art deco clock on the wall, was the reason Ford chose to stop there with Irma. The room was smoky and narrow, dim, with high tables and stools against the walls. It had atmosphere in that kind of nonchalant way that made it real. If the lights came up, you’d see cigarette butts on the floor, nicks in the wall, that the ceiling was mottled with water stains. But in the glow of low-wattage bulbs beneath glass shades, you felt like you were in a black-and-white movie and any second Humphrey Bogart was going to saunter through the door and bum a smoke.

So far, the forensics team had turned up nothing at the laundry room. He and Irma had stopped up after the interview with the twins to check in with the forensics scientist heading up the team. The Luminol had detected no blood traces. Because so many people had access to the laundry room, no one was optimistic that any of the prints, hairs, or fibers collected at the scene would have any relevance to the case. And no one was happy about how much work it was going to take to determine that.

Ford ordered their drinks from the bartender and then carried them back to the table Irma had chosen at the far back corner of the bar. Shedding his coat, he folded his arms and looked at her.

“So what are your thoughts on the twins?”

Irma sighed lightly and took a sip of her Cosmopolitan. “The children are deeply veiled,” she said, keeping her voice low and her face close to Ford’s. “Someone is exerting a lot of power over them. They’re both very intelligent, especially Lola, so they have an instinct that something is wrong. But they feel powerless. And, of course, they are, in the context of their situation.”

“So who’s exerting this power?”

“Someone who frightens them, someone who in Nathaniel’s mind has taken on the proportions of a monster, his bogeyman.”

Irma took another sip of her cocktail, while Ford drank his Perrier with lime. Technically, he was still on duty, so the Manhattan was going to have to wait for another night.

Ford’s mind jumped from Irma’s comments, to the news Jeffrey had just given him about Julian’s twin, to the picture he’d seen in the gallery, and then to the description of the man Jetty Murphy claimed he saw the night Tad was killed. Was James Ross the bogeyman Nathaniel claimed to have seen? Was he also guilty of the murder of Tad Jenson?

The fact that Julian had a twin brother was another crucial piece of information he hadn’t had when investigating Tad’s murder. The thought made him sick with frustration and anger—anger at himself for not digging deep enough. The knowledge threatened a cornerstone in his self-narrative. In his own mind, the excuse he gave himself for being a shitty father and husband was that he was a good cop. Tonight he didn’t even feel like he was that. His mood was low and getting lower.

Efforts to calm Nathaniel Stratton-Ross had failed and Irma convinced Ford that pressing forward to find out why they were in the laundry that night would be pointless at best, traumatic at worst. So the interview with the twins had ended with both of the children in tears, Nathaniel screaming his head off, and Eleanor threatening Ford’s job. Not that he cared much about that at the moment. The conversation he’d had with Lydia in the car kept coming back
to him.
I don’t even know what I am if I’m not a cop
, he’d told her.
Maybe you should find out
, she’d answered him. He was starting to wonder if she was right.

“Lola is clearly the dominant personality,” Irma went on. “But I sense that she’s just as afraid as Nathaniel is; she’s just better at hiding it under a sullen façade.”

“Do you think it’s possible that they saw who killed their father?”

“I’m inclined to say that no, they didn’t witness the murder. To be honest, there haven’t been that many studies done on children who witness the death of their parents. But to watch their father murdered so brutally and to display no evidence of trauma or distress would be highly unusual.”

“What if they’re repressing the memory,” said Ford.

Irma shook her head. “Repressed memory is far less common than you think. If anything, emotionally charged events are the
least
forgettable of all memories.”

“But it’s possible.”

She shrugged her assent. “It’s possible. But say they had completely blocked out their memories of the event, there would be other indicators of repressed memory of the trauma. Probably any mention of that night would cause terror and panic. But they remember every detail happily until they went to bed.”

“But Lola
was
down in that laundry room. We’ve got the videotape. And Piselli found Lola’s nightgown back at the apartment. She didn’t mention
that
.”

“But that doesn’t mean they’ve repressed the memory. It will take more time to find out what happened at that point. They’ve been instructed not to discuss that with anyone. That much was clear. Lola tried to warn Nathaniel to be quiet. But he couldn’t hold it in. He’s afraid of someone. They both are.”

“What about Nathaniel? If Lola went into the laundry room to move the washing machine …”

“Wait, she’s just a little girl. How is she going to move that machine by herself?”

“It was on casters, very easy to move.”

“Okay.”

“Is Nathaniel smart enough to turn off that camera, wait till his sister and whoever have cleared the laundry room, and then turn the camera on again?”

She thought about it for a second. “It’s hard to see Nathaniel acting like that on his own. He seems very dependent on Lola. He’d probably be able to follow instructions, but I doubt very much if he’d be able to carry out a task like that alone.”

Ford took a sip from his Perrier and wished it were a Manhattan. He turned the pieces around in his mind, circling the edge of his glass with his fingertip, trying to fit everything together, what he knew, what Lydia and Jeffrey had come across.

Things weren’t falling together, even with the possibility of James Ross as a suspect. There were just too many questions: Where had he been all these years? Why would he kill his sister’s husbands when it was
her
he supposedly hated? And logistically, how would he have gotten from Haunted to New York City and back again? How did he know there was a tunnel leading to the building? How was he communicating with the children? It just seemed too far-fetched. Maybe Lydia and Jeffrey had time to play
X-Files
, but he needed a chain of hard evidence. He could only hope that, after taking James Ross in for questioning and analyzing the evidence Lydia and Jeffrey had collected, some tangible connection could be made, that answers would start to evolve from the tangled mass of questions in his mind.

He felt Irma’s eyes on him and he looked up from his glass.

“Welcome back,” she said, and gave him a smile that reminded him how pretty she was. There was concern in her eyes, and something more.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Lost in thought.”

She put a warm hand on his arm and he looked down at her slender fingers, her perfectly manicured nails. Her blond hair looked like spun gold and framed her face in a delicate flattering way. He found himself remembering how long it had been since he’d been this close to a woman. It opened the hole in his heart that Rose had occupied, and for a moment he felt like putting his head down on his arm and sobbing. Luckily, his cell phone rang and he was spared the embarrassment.

“McKirdy,” he answered, looking at Irma with apology in his eyes. She withdrew her hand and looked down at her Cosmo.

“Henry Clay here. This better be good.”

Ford had put in a call to the Haunted PD and convinced the desk sergeant to rouse his chief from bed.

“Chief, you have someone residing in your town that I need to bring in for questioning. I’d like to send two of my detectives up to you tomorrow and I am hoping you can put some uniforms on this.”

“Who exactly are we talking about here, Detective?”

“James Ross.”

There was a leaden silence on the other end of the phone.

“Chief?”

“Are you fucking with me, Detective?” asked Clay, and Ford could hear an angry quaver in the man’s voice.

“I don’t have
time
to fuck around,” said Ford, dropping the polite formality he’d employed up to this point and turning away from Irma. Ford was old school, and old school men don’t swear in front of women, if they can help it.

“James Ross has not lived in this town for more than twenty years.”

“I have good information that he’s residing in his family home.”

Silence again. Ford could hear Clay breathing on the line.

“Where did you get your information?” he asked finally.

“That’s not important.”

“The hell it isn’t. We had reports of a break-in at the old Ross house tonight. Was that your people?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Ford lied.

More silence.

“Look, are you going to help me or not?” said Ford, at the end of his patience. “I’ll send someone up there either way. I was just giving you the respect of a phone call to let you know we’d be entering your jurisdiction to question a suspect in a murder investigation.”

“Well, you won’t get any of my men to go near that house.”

“What are you talking about? Why not?”

“Because it’s … not right, that house. It’s evil.”

Ford shook his head slowly in disbelief. He let out an uncertain laugh.

“Bad things happen to the people who go into that house,” Clay continued, his voice low and serious.

Ford let a second pass before saying, “You’re supposed to
stop
the bad things from happening, Chief. That’s what cops do.”

“Your men want to go up there, be my guest. But I guarantee you’re not going to be bringing James Ross in for questioning.”

“Why not?” Ford asked.

There was static on the line when Clay spoke, and Ford was sure he hadn’t heard him correctly. “Can you repeat that?”

The man issued a mighty sigh.

“I said, because he’s dead, McKirdy. James Ross is dead.”

“
W
hen you love someone, I mean really love someone,” she said, “it hurts so much. Even the pleasure can feel like a blade. It’s all temporary and your heart recognizes that transience because
it
is temporary. Even the beauty of love is edged with the knowledge that an end will come horribly, sadly, inevitably.”

Marion Strong sat serene and beautiful at the edge of Lydia’s bed. Jeffrey slept soundly beside Lydia, his breathing heavy and even. The angry words they’d spoken before bed still danced in the air.

“You look like an angel,” Lydia told her mother.

“Only because you love me.”

Marion’s black hair streaked with gray flowed down over her shoulders to the small of her back. She wore a crisp white cotton nightgown that Lydia remembered from her childhood. Sitting there, the amber light from the street lamps outside leaking through the blinds, she seemed to glow.

Lydia observed every line on Marion’s face, the way her strong veined hands rested in her lap, the arch of her dark eyebrows, the black of her eyes. She wanted every detail seared into her memory. Because that was all she would have of Marion to share with her own children. It was all she’d had for so long. Sometimes it seemed as if the sadness she felt over the loss of her mother was a well within her that could never be filled.

“I’m pregnant,” Lydia said, feeling an odd longing, a kind of desperation, grow in her heart.

But Marion only smiled sadly and shook her head.

“People die,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard. “But love lives on, we carry it in our blood and our bones. When you lose someone, you’ve only lost the
giver
, not the
gift
.”

When Lydia awoke she was already sitting up, her heart rate elevated, her breathing coming sharp and shallow. She reached for Jeffrey and shook him awake. He sat up quickly, startled.

“What’s wrong?”

She didn’t know what to say, so she moved to him, clung to him, feeling the soft skin and hard muscles of his chest against her cheek. He held on to her tightly. She needed to be as close as the boundaries of their bodies would allow so that she could feel his life and the warmth of blood flowing beneath his skin.