What You See (42 page)

He began to lift the black cashmere, teasing the sweater up from the bottom edge, Lanna, full out laughing now, lifted her arms.

“Mom,” Tenley said. “Mom.”

“Mrs. Siskel?” Sergeant Naka called from across the room. “We’re ready for you now.”

Catherine slammed the laptop closed.

62

Nothing like a takedown to give you a jolt of adrenaline. Jake watched the collapse of Robyn Wilhoite’s charade with some satisfaction, the reality emerging, absurdly, in the ridiculous towel-lined supply room. Apparently Angie Bartoneri had wrapped up her doctor’s appointment and returned just in time to work the big event with DeLuca. As always, Jane had asked just the right question. With Gracie’s coup de grâce answer, the woman’s story began to unravel. And now was pouring out of her.

As Jake had predicted, it was all about the money. The child support that Daniel Fasullo had paid all these years. The money he had sent to support a child who, Robyn had finally admitted, was not his biological daughter.

“You can’t understand what it was like. What was I supposed to do? It
might
have been Daniel’s, you know? He
believed
it was, and he—did the right thing.”

“Even though
you
didn’t,” Jake said.

“Does Daniel know?” Jane asked. “Does Gracie?”

With the wedding on the way, and Gracie about to be taken from them, Lewis had lost it, Robyn said. Insisted she should tell the truth. Threatened to spill all to Daniel and Melissa in hopes of keeping Gracie at home.

“I told him, I
told
him,” Robyn wailed. “Gracie was happy, we were happy, he
wasn’t working,
for God’s sake. I should never have told him in the first place! We needed the money and—”

“So you just made it all up? A phony abduction?” Jake asked.
What a freaking piece of work.
“So you could pretend to kill him in self-defense?”

He pointed to DeLuca and Angie, motioning them into action. “Robyn Wilhoite, you’re under arrest for the attempted murder of Lewis Wilhoite. You have the night to remain silent…”

Robyn struggled against D and Angie as they put her in cuffs, talking over Jake as he finished her rights.

“It was all for Gracie,” she insisted. “I want a lawyer.”

“Good call,” Jane said.

“Your husband will live, by the way,” Jake said. “So you know.”

*   *   *

Lewis would live, Jake had said. Jane thought of the man she’d seen only in photos. Lewis with his sandy hair, his glasses. Just like Gracie’s.

Almost afraid to ask, Jane looked at Jake, then back at the woman in custody. Jake couldn’t ask any more questions, she knew, since Robyn had demanded a lawyer. But Jane could. “Robyn? Is
Lewis
Gracie’s biological father?”

“Lawyer,” Robyn said.

“Good one,” DeLuca said.

“We’re done here,” Jake said.

DeLuca and the woman detective cuffed Robyn, who continued to mutter under her breath. Jake opened the supply room door, motioned for the team to take their prisoner away.

“Jake,” Jane said.

He turned to her as the others went into the corridor, and she signaled with two thumbs—
text me.
He signaled back—
drink?
She pointed to her chest
—my house.

Love you,
he mouthed the words. And turned away.

“Love you, too,” she said, silently, because Jake was already gone.

*   *   *

Back downstairs, Jake saw that the hotel lobby had fully come back to life. Fountain. Muzak. Tourists. Again, Jane had asked the killer question. A DNA test—and Lewis’s testimony—would provide the final answers.

With a thank-you and adios to the cops still monitoring the hotel’s front door, Jake headed for City Hall.

Now Catherine Siskel wanted “to talk.” Well, yeah. He did, too.

Curley Park was in full rush-hour hubbub, as if nothing had happened here—he looked at his watch—about thirty-six hours ago. But he’d gotten past being tired. Closing a case, at least being close to closing, always helped.

He punched the Walk button at the intersection, impatient. In one second, he was going to jaywalk.

Robyn Wilhoite.
Piece of freaking work. She’d arranged a prewedding father-daughter outing—leaving father and daughter in the dark about her true motive. She’d found another Lewis Wilhoite and planted the phony identification to set her husband up as a diabolical con artist. Pretended to talk to Lewis on the phone, dramatically and calculatedly escalating her “panic” to Melissa and Jane. If Lewis had died, it might have worked.

Domestic violence. Jake hated that term. It was simply violence. He wished these stories could have happy endings, no kids affected, no one hurt, only adults working out their stupid differences while their kids’ lives stayed untouched. But in real life, tragedy damaged everyone involved. After all these years, Jake knew there were more victims than the ones who wound up in hospitals and morgues.

Like every cop who dealt with the aftermath of violence, Jake could do no more than hope that Gracie would be okay.

Jake pushed through the heavy revolving glass door into the first floor of City Hall and flashed his badge at the rent-a-guard.

Now to Catherine Siskel. Who had promised to tell him the truth about
her
husband. When Jake called her back, she’d haltingly admitted Greg Siskel was not missing, but murdered.

That she knew it because she’d seen it on the video that did indeed exist. She’d told him about a girl named Brileen and a mysterious middleman. And about a five-minute clip of unauthorized surveillance. Who was on it and how she’d obtained it.

The Siskels and the Wilhoites. There were no happy families in Jake’s line of work.

63

“What can I do for you?”

His voice sounded so superior. Tenley’d always known he was a sleaze. Tried to tell Lanna so, too, every time her sister mentioned him, hadn’t understood why Lanna kept talking about the guy. Now she knew. Now, here he was, in Mom’s office, acting like nothing horrible had happened.

Her mom stood, waved him to a chair across from her desk. “Hey, Ward.”

Tenley had recognized what her boss hadn’t disguised in the video. His stupid watch. “Mom,” she’d said. And then she’d told her. And Brileen.

Even though Ward Dahlstrom tried to keep himself out of the greenroom camera shot, Tenley knew he must have been Lanna’s … Tenley couldn’t even think about it. Mom had gone crazy. They’d rewound the disgusting tape, twice, confirming. Then Mom made the phone call.

“Sorry our meeting kept getting postponed.” Tenley couldn’t figure out how Mom, hair in place and even wearing lipstick, could look so pleasant. “Lots going on. Any more on the police subpoena? For the Curley Park video?”

“Nope, nothing. Kelli Riordan says we may have dodged this bullet. The key is to steer clear of the cops, long as we can.” Dahlstrom scanned the room, ignored Tenley, gestured to the guest chair. “Mind if I—”

Mom ignored him, which rocked. Ward Dahlstrom, king of creeps, stood there, shifting his stupid feet.

Tenley sat in the corner of her mom’s couch. She’d promised she’d keep quiet, just watch and listen. City Hall was pretty empty. Almost six and most employees had bolted, even annoying Siobhan had buttoned her sweater to her chin and scuttled away. Tenley’s father had been dead—
oh
—for a little more than a day. Tenley almost felt like she existed in a different world as half an hour ago they’d taken the thumb drive her father had died for, plugged it into Brileen’s laptop, and held their breath. And clicked.

But there were no pictures on it. Nothing. There was video, and it was from Mom’s greenroom, but there was no one in the picture. They’d watched until it ran out. No one. Nothing. An empty room.

Her mom had jerked the blank thumb drive from the port, then stood, holding it like a bug, as if she didn’t know whether to throw it away or stomp on it. But the police had taken it back.

“Extortion, pure and simple,” her mother had said as the three of them drove away from the morgue place.

“That bastard,” Brileen said.

“Bastard is right,” Mom said. “I bet—dammit. Once your father paid the money, who knew if he’d ever look at the drive? Even if he hadn’t watched the video of Lanna, she’d confessed it was real. So when Brileen was told there were pictures of you, honey, maybe he simply believed it was true. And wanted to protect you.”

Tenley felt so sad. Had her father not trusted her? But Mom had told her that Dad said he loved her. She’d remember that.

Her mom had sighed, an angry sad frustrated sigh. “Question is, who else knows? And who got that money? And who killed Greg?”

So now here was Ward Dahlstrom, all pin-striped suit and pocket square. Standing in front of Mom’s desk like it was an ordinary day. Had he known about the money? He had to, right? She wanted to leap up from the couch and punch the guy, but that wasn’t the part she was supposed to play.

Her mom’s desk phone rang, as Tenley knew it would. Her mother answered.

“Yes,” Mom said. “Give me a minute, please.” Mom hung up, flapped open her computer, clicked the mouse. Narrowed her eyes at the screen. Then turned to Ward, still with that smile.

Tenley could hardly keep from smiling too. She felt powerful, for the first time.

“It’s the police,” Mom whispered to Ward.

“Shit,” he muttered. He glanced at Tenley, but she pretended to be looking at her fingernails.

“Yeah.” Mom pointed to the side door, conspiratorial. “Why don’t you wait in the greenroom? I’ll let you know the minute they’re gone.”

*   *   *

Before Jake could say a word, Catherine Siskel had opened the door and gestured him into her office. She put one finger to her lips, then pointed it to her desktop computer. Signaled him to follow her across the room.

Jake nodded, understanding. They’d stay quiet. Could her plan work?

Tenley uncurled herself from the sofa and joined her mother and Jake behind the desk. On the computer screen, Jake saw an unnaturally blue-tinted view of a flowered couch, two wing chairs, two end tables, an elaborate Oriental rug. A closed door in the back wall. And, pacing in front of the couch, a man in a pin-striped suit. Ward Dahlstrom. The “chief of surveillance.” Perfect.

Jake acknowledged Tenley’s skills with a thumbs-up. Tenley shrugged, accepting the approval. On the phone, Catherine had explained the girl had rigged up the greenroom laptop as a one-way computer video feed—like Skype or FaceTime. And this time Mr. Surveillance had no idea he was the one being secretly watched. And recorded.

Catherine had flapped a yellow legal pad to a clean page. Uncapped a felt-tip pen.

Tenley says he can hear us,
she wrote.

“Hello, Detective,” Catherine’s voice was louder than normal. She looked at the screen, not at him. “What can I do for you?”

Jake matched her volume, also keeping his eyes on the screen. “We need to talk, ma’am. I need to see your…” Jake paused, made something up. “… calendar from the past week.”

On camera, Dahlstrom took three paces to the left, turned, and paced to the right. The man stopped, hands on hips, and looked up at somewhere on the wall in front and above him.

That’s where I found cam,
Catherine wrote.
Upper left, in smoke alarm.

Jake held his hand out for the pen.
You touch it?

No.

“Let me look for that calendar, Detective,” Catherine said. “It’ll take a moment.”

The camera’s microphone made a barely audible buzz thorough the computer speaker. Dahlstrom, fidgeted, looked at his watch.

Jake and Catherine exchanged glances. Tenley stood, pulled out her cell phone, looked at her mom, then at Jake. Held up her phone, inquiring with her eyebrows.

Jake nodded, mouthed the words. “Do it.”

Tenley’s thumbs moved across the phone’s tiny keypad. Jake saw her hit Send, then smile.

On the screen, the light changed in the greenroom, the surveillance blue diffused by a fluorescent glare as, with a click, the door in the back wall opened.

Dahlstrom turned at the first sound, his back now to their clandestine computer. “What?” they heard him say.

And there, on camera, was Brileen.

*   *   *

Moment of truth,
Catherine thought. Would Brileen be able to pull this off?

Catherine watched the video feed coming from the greenroom. An opaque wall separated them, but thanks to the laptop’s video camera, the layers of wallpaper and plaster and insulation might as well be nonexistent. They could see and hear everything.

“What are
you
doing here?” Brileen said. “I was in the bathroom.”

On the way back from the morgue, the three women, Catherine, Brileen, and Tenley, had plotted the trap to catch Ward Dahlstrom. They knew they couldn’t simply confront him with the Lanna video. He’d just insist he hadn’t known it was being taped.

They needed the police to clinch the trap. Now the three of them—mother, daughter, and cop—would watch the charade unfold.

Brileen had sworn she’d do anything to make up for what she’d done.

Now they’d see.

Brileen had positioned herself behind the couch. A barrier. Just in case.

Even with the inferior video quality, Catherine could see Dahlstrom’s posture change, his back straighten.

“What are
you
doing here?” Dahlstrom’s voice, wary, came through the speaker perfectly. He reached into his pocket. “I have no idea who you are.”

He took a step toward Brileen.

“Mom,” Tenley whispered.

Catherine saw Brogan move toward the door to the greenroom, hand to his waist. As they’d planned. If Brileen were in danger, he’d have to act.

But Dahlstrom had simply taken out a cell phone.

Catherine signaled the detective to come back to the screen. “Is this the calendar you wanted to see?” she said, keeping up their pretense. She hoped Dahlstrom was too distracted to eavesdrop.