The Other Daughter (41 page)

“Yeah,” Chenney said, but he sounded troubled now. “Riggs …I got more news.”

“That's what they pay you for.”

“I …uh …I kinda started exhumation proceedings for Russell Lee Holmes.”

“Jesus, Chenney.”

“My off-the-wall theories aren't so off the wall anymore, Riggs. I even got Lairmore scared. Remember the shrine in Melanie's room? The blue scrap of fabric with the two types of blood?”

“Of course. Come on, Chenney, spit it out.”

“Okay. They've positively ID'd one blood sample as belonging to Melanie Stokes. It's an absolute match. A lot of blood work was done when she was first found twenty years ago, so they had plenty to go on. Which brings us to the second blood sample …They did a DNA test, Riggs. There is a fifty percent match between the second DNA and Melanie's DNA, what you'd see between parent and child.”

“Oh, shit.” David closed his eyes. He already knew what Chenney was going to say next.

“I think we finally found the missing player in our game, Riggs. We've just sent away for Russell Lee Holmes's medical files and blood samples to confirm, but we can already tell you that the second bloodstain is an XY chromosome. We're talking Melanie Stokes's genetic dad. And, Riggs, the lab swears that bloodstain is less than one week old.”

HARPER STOKES STOOD alone in the middle of his study. He had turned on the lights earlier, but the illumination had only frustrated him, revealing the glowing powder, the torn curtains, the ripped-up floorboards. For the past twenty-four hours Boston homicide had swarmed his home, investigating every carefully decorated nook, manhandling every lovingly acquired antique.

It seemed there was no place he could go anymore without being watched by a uniformed officer. No refuge left in the respectable life he'd spent his whole life building.

Jamie was gone. Patricia was gone. He wondered if she was finally happy with Jamie O'Donnell, and that thought left him gutted.

No Brian. He'd called his son's practice. They said Brian had been out for days. He didn't believe it. He'd swallowed his pride, begged for his own son's emergency number, knowing it would probably belong to some man. It had.

Nate had been polite. Brian was gone. He didn't know where. He did consider him missing.

Harper had hung up the phone feeling suddenly old and, for the first time, lonely.

Empty house. Crime-scene tape. A bandage on his hand. Once again smug Jamie O'Donnell was right. It had all come full circle.

He couldn't just stay here and mourn forever. He was a man of action. It was time to get something done. For his family. For himself.

He went up to the bedroom. From a locked safe in the walk-in closet he pulled out a gun. The bandage on his right hand made it too hard to grip, so he unwound the gauze. The fresh tattoo blazed up at him: 666.

He muttered, “But I am not the devil. I didn't harm Meagan, dammit, and I'm not even close to Russell Lee Holmes.”

At least, not yet.

THIRTY-SIX HOURS AFTER abandoning her husband, the euphoria had left Patricia Stokes.

She'd tried to use her credit card; it had been canceled. She had tried to use her ATM card; it had been declined. She was fifty-eight years old, carrying a suitcase of designer clothes, and she was penniless. A wave of fear had hit her, and she simply wanted to run to the safest place she knew — the arms of her husband.

She'd spent the previous night with friends. It had gotten her through the first few hours. With daybreak, however, had come the realization that she needed a purpose. For once in her life she needed to take control.

She'd tried the Four Seasons. Jamie O'Donnell was gone. She'd tried her son's apartment. She found her son's lover packing up her son's things and telling her that Brian had left town. He had no idea where her son had gone.

Patricia knew only one other person to try.

Now she stood with her suitcase in front of the home of Ann Margaret Dawson. She knew Ann Margaret only as her daughter's boss. Now Patricia swallowed her pride and knocked.

After a moment the door cracked open. Ann Margaret peered out cautiously, as if she were expecting something unpleasant. Then her eyes widened in surprise.

“Patricia,” she said, and opened the door all the way.

“I left Harper,” Patricia blurted out.

“Are you looking for Jamie?”

“No,” Patricia said in bewilderment. “I'm looking for you!”

Ann Margaret closed her eyes. There was something sad about her expression. “Do you love him?”

“Who?”

“Jamie.”

“Of course not. That was years ago. I just want my daughter back!”

Ann Margaret said quietly, almost gently, “Patricia, I believe it's time we talked.”

BRIAN STOKES HUNKERED down lower in his seat at the airport waiting lounge. The first flight to Houston wasn't until morning, so he might as well catch some sleep. He was anxious though, already worried that he was too late.

He'd done wrong by Meagan. There was no escaping the hard, cold facts, he thought. His troubled mother had had an affair with his godfather. She'd given birth to Jamie's child and Harper had found out. Harper had engineered the death of Meagan, probably out of rage but also out of greed. His dad had killed his sister for a million bucks.

And Brian had never said a word.

Well, he'd been a child back then. Now he was an adult, and he vowed to do more for Melanie.

He fidgeted in his seat, trying to stretch out his spine, then stiffened.

He could have sworn he caught a glimpse of someone familiar, but when he looked again, no one was there.

MELANIE WAS NOT sleeping well. She was in the cabin. In the cabin in the middle of the woods, watching the spider ease across the window. And Meagan was behind her. Meagan was rocking back and forth, clutching her pony.

“Please let me go, let me go, let me go.”

You have no idea what he can do.

Then a shadow fell across the wood floor. A man filled the doorway and he took a step into the room. Cold wind swept through the cabin. Meagan shrank back and Melanie already knew that all was lost. He was back and it would only get worse.

“No,” Meagan whimpered.

“
No
!” Melanie cried out.

“It's okay,” David Riggs murmured in her ear, and cradled her close. “I've got you now, Melanie. I've got you.”

She whispered, “Too late.”

WHEN MELANIE WOKE up next, she was alone in the bed. The room was shadowed, the thick curtains tightly drawn against a blazing Texas sun. In the background came the rhythmic hum of cars racing over a concrete interstate. Closer was the rattle of a metal cart wheeling across the balcony as a cleaning woman performed her rounds.

Melanie blinked a few times. Her head was fuzzy, the impression of lingering dreams still hovering around her like a shadow she couldn't dispel. A dull throbbing had burrowed in behind her left eye. Not a full-blown migraine yet, but she should probably take some aspirin.

She finally turned her head and searched for signs of David.

Clothes were strewn across the floor. She spotted his slacks and his suit jacket, carelessly tossed by the chair.

Then Melanie heard a new sound, low, half muffled. A moan of pain.

Melanie rushed to the bathroom. She wasn't prepared for what she found.

David Riggs was writhing on his stomach on the cold tile floor.

“Oh, my God, it's your back.”

She went down on her hands and knees beside him, but David didn't reply. His face was bone white and contorted into a horrible expression as he beat the floor with the heel of his hand.

“Do you need ice? What about medication? Surely you're on something for this.”

For answer, his legs kicked out and another guttural moan escaped his lips. She leaned closer, and when she looked into his eyes she saw something worse than pain — she saw impotent rage.

“Go …away,” he gasped.

Melanie compromised. She threw on clothes and went running for ice. When she returned, he was still on his stomach, but he was crawling now. In many ways it was an even more horrible sight.

So this was arthritis. This was strong, capable David Riggs's world.

Melanie discovered tears on her cheeks. She put the ice in his dress shirt with shaking fingers and fashioned a clumsy ice pack.

“I'm going to put this on your back,” she told David.

David muttered something that might or might not have been a curse. Melanie plopped the makeshift ice pack on his naked lower back. Immediately his body arched, the muscles in his neck cording, and his lips curled back to bare his teeth.

“I'm sorry,” Melanie whispered. “I don't know what else…”

“Leave …it,” David snarled. “Time.” His head sagged between his shoulder blades, his body still convulsing.

Melanie sat beside him and waited. Eventually his limbs stopped twitching. His face relaxed more, still red and flushed. He finally got to curl his legs up, assuming the fetal position.

“How is it?” she ventured.

“Fucking …awful.”

“Does this happen a lot?”

“Has …phases.”

“Surely there's something you're supposed to do. Exercises, medication…”

David didn't say anything, but his gaze darted toward his travel bag. Puzzled, Melanie got up and opened it. Inside she found a bottle of orange pills. Naproxen, she read. The date on the bottle was almost a year ago, but it looked completely full.

“David, I don't understand.”

“It's arthritis,” he muttered, looking cornered. “My spine is fusing. Sometimes I wake up at night with the muscles locked around my ribs so tightly, I can't breathe. On my really good days, maybe I can skip to work. But then I get days like this to bring me back to earth. What's a fucking pill gonna do about all that!”

Melanie touched his cheek. “You're afraid, aren't you? You're afraid that if you take this first pill that you'll finally be giving in. You'll finally be admitting that you have a chronic disease and you will have it for the rest of your life.”

“
No, goddammit
! I'm afraid I'll take that damn pill and
it won't get any better
. That
nothing will change
and what will I look forward to then, Melanie? What will I have to hope for then?”

“Oh, David,” she whispered. “Oh, sweetheart, you have arthritis, not cancer.”

The haunted look on his lined face undid her. He broke and she took him into her arms, cradling his head on her lap, rocking him against her.

“They put her through chemo so many times,” he muttered hoarsely. “So many times and they never did any good, and we cleaned and it never did any good. Nothing ever did any good.”

“I understand, I understand.”

“I wanted to make my father so proud. I wanted to make him so damn proud.”

“He is, David, he is.”

“Goddammit, Melanie, I loved baseball. And there's nothing I can do. I'll never be everything I wanted to be. Never.”

“Oh, David,” she said quietly, “none of us ever are.”

Eventually the worst passed. She remained curled up on the floor with him, still stroking his hair, neck, shoulders. And then she became aware of the smooth feeling of his skin, the distinct delineation of lean muscle and sinew right beneath her touch. His head came up. She saw his fierce blue eyes, and then she was on her back and they made love again, fiercely and with unexplained need.

Afterward they lay without speaking, intertwining their fingers over and over again, and listening to each other's heartbeats. It told them enough.

“I have a name and an address for the midwife,” David said finally, hours later.

“All right,” Melanie said.

They both got up and dressed.

THE ADDRESS LED them to a nice neighborhood, much nicer than what Melanie expected of a woman who had once assisted Russell Lee Holmes. The modest ranch house was nestled in one of the new suburbs bursting up all around Houston, where every fourth house looked exactly the same, just painted slightly different. The yards were lush, well manicured. A few young saplings thrust toward the sun, their meager year's worth of growth marking the age of the houses around them.

A few kids on dirt bikes looked at them curiously as David pulled over. He returned their stares with a level gaze of his own and they quickly sped up. There was just something about FBI agents, Melanie thought. You could spot one twenty feet away.

David opened the car door for her. Melanie had to take a deep breath, then she walked ahead of him to the doorway.

The woman who answered on the second knock was not what Melanie expected. In comfortable beige slacks and worn white shirt, she had dirt stains on her knees and a gardening trowel in her hand. Her silver-white hair was all but hidden beneath her straw hat, making her an easy match for someone's favorite grandmother, down to the warm blue eyes and scent of fresh baking hanging in the air.

“May I help you folks?” the woman asked politely, going so far as to smile at the strangers. She had an easy smile. Melanie found herself returning it.

“Mrs. Applebee?” David inquired somberly.

“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Applebee agreed amiably. “Though I should tell you now, I'm a happy retired woman right down to the fixed income. No encyclopedia sets or nouveau religions for me. At my age, all I need is a pack of sunflower seeds and a few more grandkids — but don't tell my daughter I said that.”

David grinned, then caught himself and struggled for professionalism. Melanie could tell Mrs. Applebee had also taken him by surprise.

“I understand that, ma'am,” he assured her. “Trust me. Actually, I'm Special Agent David Riggs with the FBI, and I'm here about a man you spoke to three weeks ago — Larry Digger.”

Rhonda Applebee stilled, the friendly smile replaced by wariness. She looked at Melanie curiously, then she looked back at David, who was now holding up his credentials. She said finally, “I see. Well, then, I suppose you should come on in. I'll get us some iced tea.”