Zero at the Bone (29 page)

Katherine sat across from Sophie, studying the pattern of blotches that reddened her cousin’s fair skin. She refused to meet Cooper’s eyes. If she did, she knew he would read in her eyes the suspicion that was almost a certainty now. She glanced over at the door where Vic stood, his back turned to them as he watched Sharb’s team finish dusting for prints in the hall.

When would they all get out? She couldn’t tolerate sitting here much longer. She was impatient to talk to Vic alone, to tell him what she’d learned from Max Friedlander today, and to enlist him in her plan to finish this off.

Since the moment she had seen Belle lying dead with her throat cut, she had felt hardened, crusted over. She had surveyed the ransacked house coolly. It had been ravaged—drawers dumped out, closets emptied, beds cut open and pulled apart, pictures and mirrors pulled down and smashed, furniture slashed, bookcases upset, books thrown everywhere. The wreckage of the kitchen lay all around them—piles of food from the refrigerator and freezer, broken dishes, cans, cutlery, pans, and, on top of it all, a layer of garbage already beginning to smell. She had barely glanced at it.

But under the table she pressed Ra’s big head against her leg, her fingers stroking the silky expanse of ear. Finding him unharmed in the backyard had brought her to her knees, for a long, desperate hug of relief, but even then her eyes had stayed dry.

If this had been done to frighten her, it had succeeded. She was frightened. But she was damned if she’d show it or give in to it.

Sophie broke the long silence. “How could they do that to an innocent creature? Why would anyone do all this?” She gestured at the ravaged kitchen. “I really need a drink,” she said in a low voice. “Do you have anything, Katherine?”

Katherine had thrown out the white wine and the one old bottle of Scotch her father had kept in the cupboard when Sophie had come to stay—to eliminate temptation. “No. Nothing,” Katherine said.

“Now, darlin’,” Cooper said to his daughter, patting her shoulder with thick fingers, “you just be glad you and Katherine weren’t here. Letting you two gals stay here alone with this maniac on the loose was real bad judgment on my part.” He looked at Katherine’s lowered eyes, willing her to look up at him. “You can’t say you weren’t warned.”

Vic turned around looking puzzled and opened his mouth to say something when Lieutenant Sharb appeared in the doorway, his face tight and angry. Vic stood aside to let him in. “Just about finished,” Sharb said, facing Katherine. “You know you can’t stay here tonight. You either,” he said to Sophie. “Back door’s splintered, needs replacing, and this mess is just too depressing.”

From his place behind Sophie, Cooper Driscoll strode around the table toward Katherine, stepping over a pile of smashed crockery, his high-heeled boots striking the linoleum with such force it made the floor shake. He rested a heavy hand on Katherine’s back. “My niece is coming home with us as soon as you’re finished with her, Lieutenant,” he said. “It’s clear she needs some rest.”

Katherine came to attention with a flash of panic. She hadn’t thought about needing a place to stay, but she certainly couldn’t stay at the Driscolls’. It would be like going from the frying pan into the fire.

Sophie lifted her head. “Please come, Katherine.”

“Thanks,” Katherine said, directing her words to Sophie, “but I’ve already made arrangements with Vic to stay at his house.”

She glanced at Vic’s face to catch his reaction to this lie. He nodded, his face calm.

Cooper raised his chin and looked down at Katherine with deep-set navy eyes. “That doesn’t seem really … appropriate, does it? Katherine, I insist. Lucy’s expecting you. I already called her to get the guest room ready. You can keep the dog with you in there. No problem.”

Katherine still didn’t look at him. “Tell Lucy thanks, but I’ve already accepted Vic’s offer,” she said. “I’ll be fine there for tonight.”

Cooper raised his voice. “But, Katherine, this—”

Sharb interrupted him. “Miss Driscoll, have you been thinking about what I asked you? This house was searched like nobody’s business, turned inside out. What do you have that someone would go to all this trouble to find?”

Katherine concentrated on keeping her voice low. “I told you I don’t know.”

Cooper, his scowl now a deep gash in his face, turned to face Sharb. “Lieutenant Sharb, you’ve already been over this and Katherine says she doesn’t know. Surely that’s enough for now. It’s pretty clear this … pointman, who sent her that threatening note, is just escalating his threat.”

“What?” Vic asked, taking a step forward. “What threatening note?”

Katherine groaned inwardly. She hadn’t told Vic about the note yet.

Cooper answered before she could find the words. “On Tuesday my niece got one of those notes like her father and Travis Hammond got. And that’s why she should—”

Sharb interrupted again. “This does look like a threat, Mr. Driscoll—the dog killed like that, the house tossed way beyond what was needed. But it doesn’t look to me like the pointman’s style. He’s already made his threat.” He shook his head. “This is too messy. Not his MO. Could I see you in private for a minute, Katherine?”

It was the first time he had used her given name. Katherine rose from the table quickly and patted her leg for Ra to heel. She followed Sharb through the hall, where they skirted the chalked outline of a dog’s body on the floor.

Sharb was silent for several minutes, leaning against the sofa arm and looking down at his small, scuffed shoes. Katherine recognized his technique and remained silent, too. She discharged her nervous energy by kneeling down and rubbing Ra’s ears more vigorously than he liked. He walked away from her and settled down under the window.

Finally Katherine was unable to endure the silence. “Lieutenant Sharb, have you found out anything more about Dorothy Stranahan?”

“Nope,” Sharb said. “We’ve drawn a blank so far. No Donald or Dorothy Stranahan owned property or were registered to vote or had a telephone in Austin in the late fifties. And zero on the son, too. If Donald Stranahan, junior, was in one of the armed services, it was under another name.”

Abruptly Sharb looked up, his tiny black eyes intense as a raptor’s. “What the hell is going on here, Katherine?”

Katherine wanted to turn and run. She hated lying to him; during the last two weeks she had come to feel some admiration for his persistence. But she couldn’t tell him. It was a family matter, not her secret to tell. Before she could tell anyone, she needed to discuss it with Anne Driscoll, and before she did that, she wanted an incontrovertible piece of proof to present to her.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “Someone ransacked my father’s house and killed his dog and I don’t know why.”

“Oh, hell! You know why they killed that damn dog. It never would shut up, so they killed it.”

“Probably.”

“It was also a good way to let you know how serious they are. Katherine, if there’s something you haven’t told me, please tell me now.”

She sighed and looked down at the threadbare carpet. Lying was exhausting. When she finally looked up, she said, “What’s your first name?”

“Bernard,” he said with a shrug.

“Okay, Bernard. I don’t know. When I do know something, I’ll tell you. We all need to get to bed. May I go?”

He let a puff of air out through his nose and shook his head. “Why don’t you want to stay at your uncle’s?” he asked. “It was real obvious you didn’t want to go there.”

Katherine jerked her head up. Lying to him had made her angry. “Where I stay really isn’t any of your business, is it, Lieutenant?”

He flinched as if she’d hit him. Then he squared his shoulders. “It certainly is my business. You’re right in the middle of this case. You’ve gotten a warning from a murderer who’s killed twice. Your house has been tossed, one of your dogs butchered. Unfortunately, it’s all my business.” He was breathing hard when he finished. Then he waved a hand of dismissal at her. “Go on. We’re finished for tonight. Sergeant Lomas is coming to board up the back door. I’ll wait for him. If I was you, I’d tend to that first thing tomorrow.”

*   *   *

With Ra in the back along with a suitcase containing her two zoo uniforms and a few personal items she’d salvaged from the chaos of the house, Katherine followed Vic’s car to a rutted road in Westlake. He turned into a winding driveway at the end of which a small stone-and-glass house nestled in the middle of a large wooded lot.

Vic pulled her bag from the car and unlocked the front door. He switched on the lights and stood aside. Katherine and Ra entered a living room in which there was a leather sofa and nothing else. “I never seem to get time to shop for furniture,” he apologized, dropping her bag at the door. “For the past eight years I’ve been saying I’ll do it on my next day off, but then something happens and I never get around to it.”

Katherine shrugged.

Turning to lock the door, Vic said, “I’m glad you’re staying here and not at the Driscolls’.” His back still to her, he said, “Why didn’t you tell me about the note, Katherine? Sharb knew about it. Sophie knew. Even that asshole Cooper Driscoll knew. Why keep it secret from me?”

“Cooper knew about it because I asked Sophie to come stay with me. I just didn’t think about telling you, Vic. I’ve been preoccupied with the photographs, and the note just seemed like another issue. I wasn’t keeping it secret.”

He turned around to face her. “Another issue, shit! Your father gets killed. No one knows why. Then his attorney gets killed. You inherit these photos. You start asking around and then you get a note just like the ones they got, threatening death. And the house you’re living in gets ransacked. Surely they were looking for the photographs today.”

Katherine nodded. “I think so.”

“But you took the copies to New York with you?”

She nodded again.

“What about the originals?”

“They’re in a safe-deposit box at a bank,” she said.

“So they didn’t get anything?”

Katherine shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

“Good.” He collapsed on the sofa and patted the place next to him. “Who might have known about the photos?”

She sat down to think it over. “Damned if I know. You and Max Friedlander are the only ones I’ve told. But on Wednesday I asked Hans Dieterlen some pretty direct questions about game ranches.” She put her hands to her cheeks. “That was a bad mistake. He’s certainly in on this with Cooper. But I don’t know how they could have known about the photos.”

Vic moved closer to her on the sofa. “Tell me what Max Friedlander told you. I could see in your face the whole time over at the house that you have news.”

Katherine began to talk. She told him everything Max Friedlander had told her. “And the shipping orders were all signed by Hans,” she finished.

Vic gasped and hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I’m so fucking dense. When you showed me the photographs the other night, I just couldn’t believe what they seemed to say. But for the past year I’ve wondered. Every damn time a shipment comes into Dallas, Hans Dieterlen insists on going personally to collect them instead of sending one of the animal maintenance people. And he has stopped asking me to go along. This has been going on right under my nose and I’ve been so stupid. I just thought the guy was a glutton for work.”

He shut his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “I just can’t believe Sam is in on this. At the very least, he must be deliberately ignoring it.”

His voice grew in volume, echoing around the bare room. “And that goddamned, overbearing Cooper Driscoll, the big philanthropist, standing there tonight with his belly hanging over his belt, pretending innocence. God. I’d like to see that pretentious son of a bitch go to Huntsville for this.” He lowered his voice. “And maybe for murder, Katherine.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Katherine said, leaning back in the deep sofa and closing her eyes. “What I’m pretty sure about is this: Cooper buys the animals with foundation money, pretending to the dealer that they’re for the zoo, then he resells them to the game ranches and keeps the money, or shares it with Hans Dieterlen, maybe others. My father finds out somehow, follows them, takes the photographs, and copies the zoo records.”

Vic leaned back and stretched his legs out, his foot coming to rest touching hers. “Let’s take it further. Cooper finds out your father knows and arranges for him to be killed, probably has Hans do it. But it’s too late; your father has left the photographs hidden for you.” Vic reached over and picked up both her hands in his. “Katherine, why not call Sharb right now and tell him? This may be just the piece of information he needs.”

She was silent.

“Why not, Katherine?”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I can’t tell him yet and there are some bothersome things you don’t know.”

“What things?”

“I’ll tell you in the car,” she said, jumping up. “Everything. I’ll bare my soul.”

“The car?”

“Yeah. On the way to Kerrville.”

“Now? It’s almost nine.”

“Yeah. That’s good because it’s dark. Vic, I can’t think about anything else. It’s urgent. I can’t stand not doing anything. I want to tell my grandmother all this, but I need some proof to convince her. Let’s go right now.” She reached down, took his hand, and pulled on it.

He nodded and a small smile spread into his big flashy display of teeth. He looked like a buccaneer or a highwayman—a perfect companion for the task she had in mind. “I suppose you want me to bring my tranquilizer pistol,” he said, squeezing her hand and letting her pull him up so he stood close to her.

She smiled back. “And your camera. If it weren’t for the problem of getting a bongo to lie down and spread its legs, I could do it myself.”

*   *   *

Katherine thought that Texas highways at night were the darkest places in the world, and the loneliest. Highway 16 was an inky ribbon undulating through total blackness, pulling the car around its smooth curves at a relentless speed.

Vic woke up just as they crossed the Pedernales, fifteen miles outside of Fredericksburg. He’d fallen asleep on the outskirts of Austin after she’d told him all about her father’s payments to Dorothy Stranahan and he had slept soundly through Dripping Springs, Johnson City, and Stonewall.