All the Best Lies E-Book

Joanna Schaffhausen

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The electrifying third novel from the author of the nail-biting thriller, The Vanishing Season FBI agent Reed Markham is haunted by one painful unsolved mystery: who murdered his mother? Camilla was brutally stabbed to death more than forty years ago while baby Reed lay in his crib mere steps away. The trail went so cold that the Las Vegas Police Department has given up hope of solving the case. But then a shattering family secret changes everything Reed knows about his origins, his murdered mother, and his powerful adoptive father, state senator Angus Markham. Now Reed has to wonder if his mother's killer is uncomfortably close to home. Reed enlists his friend, suspended cop Ellery Hathaway, to join his quest in Vegas. Ellery has experience with both troubled families and diabolical murderers, having narrowly escaped from each of them. Far from home and relying only on each other, Reed and Ellery discover young Camilla had snared the attention of dangerous men, any of whom might have wanted to shut her up for good. They start tracing his twisted family history, knowing the path leads back to a vicious killer - one who has been hiding in plain sight for forty years and isn't about to give up now.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Joanna Schaffhausen and available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Las Vegas, 1974

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About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Also by Joanna Schaffhausen and available from Titan Books

The Vanishing Season

No Mercy

TITANBOOKS

All the Best Lies

Print edition ISBN: 9781789090581

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789090598

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: February 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Joanna Schaffhausen. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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Las Vegas, 1974

Camilla Flores had always been in the wrong place at the wrong time, starting with the day she was born, six weeks early, in Puerto Rico, before her mother could cross the ocean and land on continental American shores. If Cammie had just stayed in the womb a few more days, people would understand she’s an ordinary citizen with as much right to this country as anyone else. Instead, she’d had to move to Las Vegas eighteen years later to make her own kind of luck. So far, she had a crappy “garden” apartment with a view of some faded pink rocks and dented aluminum garbage cans, a rusted-out electric stove that only worked on one side, and a seven-year-old car with a broken alternator. Cammie’s checking account currently had twenty-two dollars in it, and the repair bill for the car totaled almost a hundred. This time, though, maybe she had caught a break.

“You sure they won’t care it’s me and not you?” she said to Angela as she shimmied into the tight skirt with its flashy gold sequins.

Across the room in bed, Angie paused her shivering long enough to look Cammie over from head to high-heeled toe. “Are you kidding? Look at you. I wish I had your ass. Besides, they probably won’t even notice the difference. You know how it is—brown’s the only color they ever see.”

Cammie briefly met Angie’s eyes in the full-length mirror, and she had to smile. The chills and 102-degree fever hadn’t dulled her friend’s acerbic wit. Cammie was born in Puerto Rico and Angie in Colombia, but in Vegas everyone assumed they were both Mexican, the nearest source of brown people. Mr. Crocker, their creepy landlord, hung around pretending to do maintenance work whenever Cammie and Angie had a few moments to lie out in the sun. He always got their names mixed up, and he didn’t care if they corrected him. “One chalupa’s as good as another,” he liked to say.

Cammie slathered on the foundation and eye shadow like they were war paint, as though she were going into battle. The false eyelashes, rouged cheeks, and teased-up hair all made her look like a first-class hooker, and she said a brief prayer of thanks giving that her mother wasn’t alive to see her now. She wouldn’t recognize her. Probably even the girls down at her usual job, waiting tables at the Howard Johnson’s, wouldn’t know her, either. That was the idea, after all. Tonight, she wasn’t Cammie. She was going to be Angie, and she would make three hundred dollars.

A frisson of excitement went through her at the thought, making her bare shoulders shiver. “Tell me again what I have to do,” she said to the reflection in the mirror.

Angie coughed, a rickety, wheezing sound that vaguely alarmed Cammie whenever she heard it. Maybe she could use some of that three hundred dollars to make Angie see a doctor. “You go to room 611,” Angie said from amid the pile of pillows. “You knock on the door. Mark will be there with the others. It’s past ten already, so they’ll be drunk off their asses. Just put on some music and wiggle around in your underwear. Maybe, if you feel like it, grind on ’em a little. You get more money that way.”

Cammie made a face at herself, considering it. “But no going all the way, right? I don’t have to get naked or...” She left the most distasteful part hanging there in the room.

Angie raised up her head. “No! Jeez, Cammie—you think I’m turning tricks now? I’m a dancer, not a hooker. The most they get is a little feel. Mark knows the routine. I’ve done this for him many times.”

“Great. I’m glad somebody knows what they’re doing,” Cammie muttered, tugging at her short skirt, forcing it toward her knees. Like it mattered how much she was showing now when she was going to have to take the whole thing off soon.

“You’d better get going.”

As if on cue, the cab honked outside. Cammie wiped her damp palms on her hips. No one wanted a clammy stripper. With a last look in the mirror, she raised her chin and forced herself into a confidence she didn’t feel. In two hours, it would be over and she’d have three hundred bucks in her pocket. Eyes on the prize, chica, she told herself. “Get some sleep,” she said to Angie, tucking the blankets around her friend. Angie snuggled in, her eyes already closed.

Cammie climbed into the waiting cab and ordered the driver to the new crown jewel of The Strip, the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. Her stomach did a little flip of excitement at the thought of going inside. After Caesars opened almost a decade ago, it had seemed like there would be no more big, brash hotels. Now the newly opened MGM towered over everything, the biggest of all, with its enormous stack of suites and the pyramid-like entrance on Las Vegas Boulevard. Cammie had read that celebrities were flocking to stay there. She felt like a movie star herself as she entered the lush, dazzling lobby. Crystal chandeliers glittered overhead and gleaming white statues gave an ambience of total class. She could almost smell the money.

By the time she reached room 611, she had her smile in place, ready to do business. “Hey, it’s about time,” said the man who opened the door. Angie had said Mark was a fifty-something banker with thick glasses and a beer gut, but this guy was younger, dressed in a powder-blue leisure suit, with a Rolex watch sticking out at the end of one sleeve. “Come on in, honey.”

Cammie’s smile faltered at the hungry look in his eyes, but he ushered her forcefully across the threshold.

“Gather round, gentlemen,” he announced from behind her. “It’s showtime!”

Cammie froze at the sight of them, the half-dozen men in various shapes and sizes who all turned to look at her. The room lived up to every bit of her imagination, with its rich tapestry drapes, thick rug, and plush chairs. There was a big TV console and a low coffee table that held a mix of alcohol and half-eaten shrimp cocktails. “Are you Mark?” she asked the nearest one.

The man behind her touched her naked back, making her jump. “Mark’s not here tonight, honey. He let us have the suite instead. You can call me Rob.”

From the way the other men chuckled, she knew Rob wasn’t his real name. She didn’t care, really, as long as his money was green. “I’m Angie.”

“Well then, Angie . . . the floor is yours.”

He turned on the music—some big-band number with lots of horn blaring from the expensive stereo—and Cammie got down to business. She shimmied. She swayed. She got almost close enough to touch and then spirited away again. The men grinned and hooted and howled through her act. It was easy to pretend she was someone else because none of them looked at her face. If they wanted to pay her fat money for gyrating her ass at them for a few minutes, well, that would be the easiest cash she’d made in her lifetime.

Maybe, she thought as she twisted away from Rob’s groping hand, I should think about joining up with Angie full-time.

She did three songs for a total of twenty minutes, just like Angie had told her, ending dewy and breathless, with little more to cover her than a G-string and a demi bra. “Thank you,” she said, reaching down for her skirt. “It’s been a real pleasure, gentlemen, but I’ve got to be going now.” She hoped fervently that this would be enough to prompt payment; Angie hadn’t explained the details of how to collect the fee.

Relief washed over her when she saw Rob reaching for his wallet. “Let me walk you out,” he said, slurring noticeably, sweeping his hand toward the door.

She followed him until they stood alone in the narrow alcove just inside the door. Just a few more feet and she would be free on the other side.

“Mark didn’t tell me you were so pretty,” he said as he touched her cheek with the back of his knuckles.

She willed herself not to flinch. “Thank you. I’ve really got to get going . . .”

He lurched forward unsteadily, and she could smell the liquor on his breath. “Aw, what’s your hurry? Stay awhile. Have some fun.”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, but—”

“Butt,” he breathed, reaching around to grab hers. “Yeah, you got a real nice one. Mmm.”

Cammie tried to sidestep him, but he’d backed her up against the wall. “Rob,” she said, trying to sound reasonable instead of desperate. “I’m on the clock here. It’s business, mmm? I don’t show for my next gig and the boss will come looking for me.”

“Yeah? He wants the money, does he? I’ve got lots of money. Here, look.” He pulled a wad of cash out of his pocket and sprinkled it over her head like a shower. “What’ll this buy me?”

He pawed at her breast, squeezing hard, and she yelped, “Stop!” She raised her voice, hoping the men would hear her over the music still blaring from the other room. “Let me go!”

“In a minute.” He started fumbling under her skirt. “I just want a taste, honey. Just a sweet little taste.”

Cammie screwed her eyes shut and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Help! Stop it!”

“Shut up!” He slammed her so hard into the wall she saw stars. “If you quit fightin’ me, this would be done by now!” She kept yelling, pushing at him, but the struggle only seemed to excite him more. His fingers bit into the soft flesh of her thigh as he wrestled for her underwear. “Hold still, dammit.”

“Get off of me!”

She heard pounding and it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t inside her head. Someone was beating at the door. Thank you, Jesus. She wilted as Rob backed away, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He yanked open the door and another man immediately appeared inside, this one big and angry looking. Only he wasn’t angry at her. He took one look at her torn skirt and the tears in her eyes and he pinned Rob up against the closet door, an arm to his throat. “What the hell are you doing?”

“N—nothing,” Rob wheezed.

“You okay, darlin’?” Her rescuer had a Southern accent.

“I’m fine.” She scrambled around, picking up the money that was owed her and then some.

“We can call security. Have them get the cops.”

“No! Ah, no, thank you.” She eased past the men on wobbly legs and gasped out a breath when she found herself at last in the safety of the hallway. “I just want to go home.”

Her savior gave Rob another shove, pushing him deeper into the hotel room. “You’re lucky this time,” he said. “Next time, maybe I’ve got a gun with me.”

He stalked into the hall and she could see him clearly now that the fear had receded its grip on her sight. He had broad shoulders and thick arms that strained at the cloth of his rolled-up shirtsleeves. His blue eyes were dark with concern. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, still clutching a fistful of cash. “How did you know I was in trouble?”

“I heard you screaming,” he said with a touch of a smile. “That’s my suite right over there. You want to come in—sit down for a minute? You still look a little shaken.”

“Oh. I don’t think I’d better . . .”

He raised his palms in a gesture of surrender. “No funny stuff —scout’s honor. I just thought you might care for a drink of water.”

Her free hand went to her throat. It did feel raw on the inside. All of her did.

“My name is Angus Markham, by the way,” he said, and this time she believed it was the truth.

“Camilla,” she told him. “Cammie.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cammie. You’re sure I can’t offer you that water?”

“What I need is a cigarette,” she confessed in a single breath, and he answered with a grin.

“I’ve got that, too. Come this way.”

So she allowed herself to be led along to his suite, which was a mirror image of the one she’d been in earlier. The place was neat, with only his shoes on the floor. He’d rushed to her aid in his stocking feet. “What brings you to town?” she asked automatically, because it was her lifeblood. Talk up the customers, make them like you, and they’ll give you more money.

“Fund-raiser,” he told her from over by the bar.

She drifted over to the window, where partially open drapes revealed the lights of the neighboring casinos down below. The repeated flashing was almost hypnotic. He touched her lightly on the arm, and she turned to find him holding a tumbler of ice water and an unlit cigarette. He waited at attention while she drank a liberal few swallows before he handed her the cigarette. “Fund-raiser for what?” she asked.

He smiled and handed her the cigarette. “If I may?” He withdrew a silver lighter from his trousers that looked like it Probably cost a week’s worth of her rent. She nodded and slipped the cigarette between her lips. When he leaned in to light it, she caught the scent of sandalwood on his skin.

“You’re from the South,” she observed as she blew out the smoke.

He lit a cigarette for himself and tucked away the lighter. “Virginia, born and raised. And you? Where are you originally from? No, wait. Let me guess.” He looked at her appraisingly and she waited for the inevitable guess of Mexico. “Puerto Rico,” he decided finally, giving an emphatic nod. “Am I right?”

“Yes,” she said as her cheeks warmed with pleasure. “How did you know?”

“I’m good at reading people.” Then he leaned into her personal space and dropped his voice in a conspiratorial manner. “Also, it’s well known that all the prettiest girls come from Puerto Rico.”

“Stop,” she told him, but this time she didn’t mean it. She checked his left hand: no wedding ring, and he had a nicer manicure than she did. “You didn’t tell me what you were here raising all these funds for.”

“Politics,” he told her as he crossed back to the bar and began making himself a drink. “Boring old politics. You sure I can’t get you something stronger?”

She evaluated the water in her hand, admiring the heavy crystal. Imagine having all your drinks served this way. “Maybe just one,” she told him. “Vodka rocks, if you have it.”

“Darlin’, I’ve got some of everything,” he drawled, and her insides thrilled at the rise and fall of his voice. He touched her again when he brought her a fresh drink—just a brush of his warm fingers on her arm. Nothing untoward. “Shall we?” he asked, indicating the couch.

She decided to sit with him, just for a few moments. She could pretend this was her room, too, that she wasn’t wearing a cheap skirt and carrying a wad of sweaty cash in her purse.

Angus Markham sat a respectable eighteen inches away, his body angled toward hers.

“I’m sorry about that Neanderthal next door,” he said after a beat.

Her face flamed. “Forget it; it’s over.” She didn’t want him to think she was total trash. “I don’t usually do this, you know. I’m filling in for a friend. She’s sick tonight.”

“You might want to tell your friend to find a safer line of work. What do you usually do?”

She hesitated, knowing the truth probably wouldn’t be much better in his eyes. “I’m a waitress.” She forced a bright smile. “I can prove it to you and go freshen up your drink.” She nodded at his glass. “Really, it’s the least I could do.”

“No, ma’am,” he said with a slow smile. “You sit just where you are and tell me how you got that set of lungs on you.”

She looked down at her chest, and his gaze followed hers.

“I mean all the yelling,” he clarified with a chuckle. “I expect they could hear you in Texas.”

“Oh,” she said, blushing again. “That. I did always want to be a singer . . .” Somehow, she got to telling him all about her early life in Florida and how then her mother died of ovarian cancer and with her loss went all of Cammie’s hopes and dreams. This man didn’t interrupt her when she talked. He watched her face and not her boobs. She felt him drawing closer, saw herself reflected in the endless blue of his eyes. “Who are you?” she murmured, reaching out to touch his face.

“I’m going to rule the world one day,” he said, not breaking her gaze. “But tonight, darlin’, I’m all yours.”

Later, when his large hand crept under her skirt, past the bruises, and up to the place where her underwear hung together in tatters, Cammie didn’t stop him, didn’t move away. The protest died on her lips when he kissed her. It was easier like this, to believe it had been her idea all along.

1

The Internal Affairs investigator, a bald man with an egg-shaped head, regarded Reed over the rim of his glasses as he asked the question. “Agent Markham, you were positioned next to the victim when Ms. Hathaway shot him. How far away?”

How close had he been? Close enough that Reed could still taste the gunpowder. They all sat around a conference table in a windowless room in Boston, deep in the middle of frozen February, but the questions put Reed squarely back in the humid farmhouse, splinters like razors in his hands and William Willett dead at his feet.

“I was very close,” he said, sitting up straighter. “Mr. Willett, your victim, had been recently engaged in the act of trying to murder me.”

The police commissioner himself coughed at this, and Reed’s interrogator pursed his lips. “Yes, thanks, we’ve all read your statement.”

“Then why are you asking me these questions?”

“For context. We want to make sure that we fully understand Ms. Hathaway’s actions before we make any judgment.”

Reed glanced at Ellery, who slouched in her chair next to her union rep, looking disaffected and disinterested in the outcome of the proceedings, despite the fact that her career hung in the balance. “The fact that we’re here at all signifies judgment,” Reed said, while Ellery studied her fingernails. She was the only woman in the room, he noticed, taking in the frowning members of the shooting review board and Internal Affairs who ringed the room—men with lines on their faces and stripes on their sleeves. “As for context . . .” He reached down into his briefcase and pulled out his carefully prepared eight-by-ten glossy photographs from last summer’s crime scenes. The bodies, or what was left of them, spilled out across the table. “Here you are. Have as much as you want.”

“Agent Markham—”

“Context,” Reed cut in sharply. “That’s why I’m here. You don’t encounter these kinds of men very often—in fact probably never before—but I have. I’ve made a career out of it, as I think you’re aware, so please feel the weight of all that experience behind me when I tell you: Willett was a killing machine. He murdered four people and that could have easily been five or even six. I think if that had happened, if the search teams had shown up just a little later, we’d all be looking at a different sort of narrative—one where Officer Hathaway was a victim and a hero, the only one to recognize the work of a serial murderer operating for years under everyone’s noses. She raised the concern repeatedly to her superiors. No one believed her.”

Ellery shifted to look at him, her attention obvious for the first time. She might have even smiled. The IA investigator’s eggshell head stained a vivid shade of pink. “She stopped him,” he allowed tightly, “and we’re all grateful. She also put a bullet in his head at an angle that suggests he was on the ground at the time.”

“I told you, we were tussling.”

“So she could have just as easily shot you.” He rapped out the words like bullets. “That’s the question we’re facing here, Mr. Markham. No one is talking about charges. No one wants to punish Ms. Hathaway for what happened. But we have to be assured that she is fit for duty, that she can be relied upon not to endanger herself or anyone else in future investigations.”

Ellery glared in his direction. Reed opened his mouth to object, but the IA guy held up his hand to forestall him.

“We’re undergoing this review for Ms. Hathaway’s protection,” he said. “Hers and the citizens she would be sworn to safeguard. If she’s unable to handle the demands of the job, then it’s best for her to find more suitable employment elsewhere.”

His pronouncement sat heavy over the room. The men looked to Ellery, who looked steadily at the wall. Reed imagined she was about two minutes away from giving them both her middle fingers and telling them exactly what they could do with the job. This was partly why he was here, to save her from herself. In return, he hoped maybe she’d do the same for him.

He fanned out the photos until he found the pictures of the victims from last summer, photos taken before the murders, back when they’d all had their hands attached. “These people died,” he said slowly, “because the Woodbury Police Department took more than three years to admit they had a serial offender operating in their borders. Ellery sounded the alarm early, when several of these people were still alive.” He plucked their smiling photographs from the pile to show them off to the group. “I’d say she’s handling the job just fine. I’m wondering when you’ll be launching the investigation into the many officers who ignored her. Perhaps they’re the ones who are struggling with the demands of police work.”

Not surprisingly, Reed was dismissed soon after this, banished to the corridor. He hung around anyway, like a schoolboy waiting at her locker. The men exited first, heads down, muttering to one another, and none of them spared a glance at Reed. Ellery, when she appeared, spotted him immediately. She looked up and down the now-empty hallway and approached him slowly. “You know,” she said when she came to stop in front of him. “You could’ve just sent a letter.”

He tilted his head as he considered. “I don’t think a letter would have had the same impact. What was the verdict?”

She shrugged. “This was about fact-finding today. They have to meet again to make a final decision. I think they want to delay as long as possible so people forget what happened last summer.”

“Ah. Well, I wish them luck on that score.”

She shoved her hands into her pockets and looked down at the compact wheeled carry-on he had with him. “You’re getting back on a plane, I take it?”

“Not just yet. I thought you might like to have dinner.”

“With you?” She hesitated just long enough for him to know he’d messed up. He hadn’t replied to her last few texts or emails, and that was partly why he’d made the trip up to Boston to see her—to explain. The problem was he couldn’t find the words to explain it to himself yet, so he had no idea how to start the conversation with her.

“You. Me. That would be the guest list, yes.”

She fixed him with a clear gray stare. “Seems I recall that didn’t work out so well the last time.”

He felt a flush go up the back of his neck at the memory of his hands on her body, at how he’d been so distracted by the instant heat between them that he hadn’t seen the end coming. “This would be different,” he said, and she thinned her lips, looking almost disappointed. He reached out to touch her arm but stopped short when she froze. “I—I could use your advice about something. About a case, actually.”

Wry amusement returned to her gaze. “You’re asking my advice? About work? I don’t know if you were paying attention in there, Reed, but popular wisdom says I’m unfit.”

“I don’t know about that.” He eyed her purposefully, taking in her long legs, full hips, and thick tangle of dark hair. Just because he was here on business didn’t mean he couldn’t admire the scenery a little. “You look plenty fit to me.”

She smacked his arm. “Okay, dinner then. But this time, I’m buying.”

She took him to her apartment, an old foundry building that had been converted to modern-style lofts with high ceilings, big windows, and no closets. Reed had spent a bunch of days camped on her couch a few months ago, so he felt at home the moment they stepped through the door. The sixty pounds of canine that came barreling at him, ears akimbo, was familiar, too. “Yes, hello again,” Reed said, trying to maneuver around the worst of the slobber. Speed Bump the basset hound ran his considerable nose back and forth across Reed’s Italian leather shoes while Ellery looked on with a grin.

“He’s missed you,” she said. “You left a sock here last time and he carried it around with him for three straight weeks.”

“I’d wondered where that sock had got to.”

“I have it around here someplace. You’re welcome to it back.”

Reed made a face. “No, thank you. He—he can keep it.”

She leaned down and clipped on the dog’s leash. “I’m going to take him out for a walk. You can order pizza if you want. The number’s on the fridge.”

Normally, he’d offer to cook, but given his nerves, he’d probably end up slicing off a finger or two. He called in the pizza order and then paced the length of her living room, watching for her out of first one window and then the next. She caught him looking and hunched deeper into her leather jacket, turning away from him. He smiled reflexively and touched his fingertips to the cold glass. Ellery had tried to escape her past by changing her name, dyeing her hair, and moving seventeen hundred miles from home, but she was constitutively unable to be anyone other than herself. He would know her anywhere.

“Boston again,” his ex-wife, Sarit, had observed lightly when Reed dropped off their six-year-old daughter, Tula. “I assume it’s that girl?”

To Sarit, Ellery was still the shattered fourteen-year-old from their bestselling book, the girl he’d rescued from a serial killer’s closet during his first few weeks on the job. “It’s not what you think,” he’d told Sarit.

Sarit, who already had a steady new romantic partner—a sensible single dad of one of Tula’s classmates—had made a tsking noise in reply. “It doesn’t matter what I think, Reed. I realize I no longer have say in what or who you do.”

“But . . . ?” He’d put his hands on his hips and waited for the zinger.

“But whenever you go up there to see her, you end up getting shot at. She’s still suspended, right? They think she’s unstable?”

“Ellery saved my life.”

“Yes, and you saved hers. Perhaps the both of you should quit while you’re ahead.”

Ellery returned twenty minutes later with a burst of wintry air, interrupting his thoughts. Speed Bump’s nails danced across the hardwood floor as he raced over to greet Reed anew, as though they’d been separated for years instead of only minutes. Ellery lingered by the door, steeped in purple shadow, where the leather jacket, boots, and unruly hair combined to make her look like a fallen angel. “I’d give you the tour, but it’s a one-bedroom apartment and you’ve seen it plenty by now.”

“The sofa, at least,” Reed replied, glancing at the place that had been his bed for several days in December when Ellery had decided to take on a serial rapist as a side project during her suspension.

“Yeah? You can keep it as far as I’m concerned. I’m tired of the damn sofa. Bump would lie on it all day, but to me, it’s becoming a prison.”

At the sound of his name, the hound nosed his food bowl out into the living room, leaving it pointedly at Reed’s feet. He looked up expectantly and gave a boisterous woof. “I’ve got nothing but airline crackers,” Reed told him as he patted his pockets.

Ellery picked up the bowl. “Well? Are you going to tell me the story now?” she asked over her shoulder as she went to retrieve the kibble. “The one you came all this way to get my advice on?”

The buzzer rang, signaling their pizza arrival. He glanced at his briefcase. The dead woman he had hidden inside had been gone for forty years; she could wait another hour. “Let’s eat first.”

He and Ellery ate on tall stools at her kitchen island, with only the pendant lamps illuminating the whole apartment. The glow created an intimate feeling as the pizza bones piled up between them. “What will you do?” he asked as he refilled their wineglasses with a blackberry merlot. “If they don’t give you your job back?”

“Don’t know. Maybe I’ll move to Saskatchewan and raise otters.”

His brow furrowed. “Do they have a lot of otters in Saskatchewan?”

“They would after I moved in.”

“I think the department will see reason,” he told her. “No need to go rounding up the wildlife.”

She shrugged and sipped her wine. “Maybe then I’ll quit. It’d be nice to tell them where to shove it after all the B.S. they’ve put me through. What about you? Still waiting on that promotion?”

“Ah, no,” he admitted, leaning back. “McGreevy took an early retirement at the start of the year. I’m running the unit now—nothing official yet because they still want to do an outside search for candidates. I’ll be in the unusual position of interviewing for a job I already have.”

“Wow, congratulations. They’ll pick you. Of course they will.”

Reed ducked his head. At one time, he’d been sure of it, too, but he and Ellery had a hand in forcing McGreevy to step down. Then there was his current dilemma. If he was going to act, it had to be soon, before he lost the opportunity. “As head of the unit,” he told her, “I get to pick my cases.”

“Aha,” she said with satisfaction. “That must be where I come in.”

He fetched his briefcase and returned to the island. “I can’t talk to anyone else about this, for reasons that will soon become clear.” His heart rate accelerated as he reached in to retrieve the folder. Right now, the secret was his alone, but once he said the words to her, the whole thing would become real. He couldn’t take it back. He laid out three separate black-and-white photos from an old crime scene, each showing the same bloodied, broken young woman lying on the floor. Her face had been beaten beyond recognition, and there was a knife sticking out of her chest. “This is Camilla Flores,” he said. “On December 11, 1975, someone broke into her Las Vegas apartment and stabbed her to death. Whoever it was, she fought him hard—there was blood all over the apartment, and the coroner counted more than twenty separate wounds to her body.”

Ellery picked up the closest picture and studied it. “How awful,” she murmured.

Reed took out another picture. “Her friend and neighbor, Angela Rivera, called it in. The responding officers found stereo equipment, a jewelry box, and a bunch of albums stacked at the front door. They decided Camilla must have arrived home and surprised a burglar. I don’t think that’s so.”

“Why not?” Ellery was still frowning at the photographs, rearranging them like tarot cards.

“For one thing, she had an unusually expensive watch for someone in her circumstances—see it here on her left wrist? Why didn’t he take it? Also, there’s a pocket book sitting in plain view on the kitchen counter.” He tapped his finger on the photo to point out the white leather bag, easily missed amid the chaos. Camilla Flores had not been much of a housekeeper. “The purse was quick money. The thief could have grabbed it on his way out the door.”

“Maybe he panicked after the murder and fled without taking any property.”

“That was the theory, yes.” He cleared his throat twice, trying to ease the lump there. “The local detectives pressed that angle hard to no avail. But you see, there was another anomaly at the scene. Camilla’s baby, her four-month-old son, was asleep in his crib in the bedroom at the time of her murder. How did he get there if she’d just walked in to surprise an intruder?”

“Baby,” Ellery said slowly, angling the picture so she could see it better. Her head jerked up, and her eyes went wide. “This is your mother,” she said. “You were the baby.”

He dropped his chin to his chest, acknowledging the truth that he’d told her in the past. His birth mother had been murdered in her own apartment at age nineteen. “After she was killed, the Markhams stepped in and adopted me. Her murder, as you know, is unsolved.”

“And you finally want to take a whack at it,” she guessed. “Now that you’re in charge.” She picked up one of the gruesome photos and studied it a moment. “I don’t blame you. I’d want the truth, too. But Reed . . . it’s been more than forty years.”

“I’m aware of the math,” he said, his voice hoarse.

She looked him over searchingly, her gaze full of sympathy, and she didn’t yet know the worst of it. “You said you’d looked into it before and the trail had gone too cold.”

His father had presented him with the bare facts on Reed’s eighteenth birthday. When he’d signed on with the FBI, he had enough clout to ask to see the murder book, which appeared complete, if unsatisfying with its lack of conclusion. At the time, he figured there was nothing more to be done. “I know what I said.”

“You’ve had twenty years on the job to investigate this formally and you never did,” Ellery said softly. “Why now?”

Reed clenched and unclenched his fist. “Because I . . .” He stopped and started again, his heart hammering in his throat. “Because it’s possible my father may have murdered her.”

2

“Your father?” Ellery asked, confused. “You mean your biological father? Does that mean you’ve found him, too?”

“Oh, yes, I found him all right,” Reed replied. “Turns out he was right there all along.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Do you remember that little DNA project my sister had going at Christmas?” He bent down and retrieved his laptop.

Ellery nodded. One of Reed’s many sisters had decided that the whole family should get DNA tests as some sort of genealogy project for their father. The sister asked Reed to get tested, too, even though he was the only one in the family who was adopted, a twist that had struck Ellery as a cruel joke. Reed had insisted that his sister meant no harm and that she was hoping they might even find they had a common ancestor, someone way back on the family tree who would finally link them all by blood. “You said you weren’t sure about going through with the genetic analysis,” she said to Reed.

“I wasn’t, not at all. I sent in the DNA swab and got the results, but then it took several weeks before I could make myself look at them. Finally, I thought maybe it would be better to know. That I should find out anything I could about my background for my daughter’s sake. So, I looked.” He turned around the laptop so that she could see the screen. It had a lot of information on it, with numbers and bar graphs, but what jumped out at Ellery immediately were the three names listed under Reed’s: Kimberly, Suzanne, and Lynette—Reed’s three older sisters. Probable match, it said next to each one: 99 percent. Probable relationship: half sibling.

Ellery leaned in closer. “I’m not sure I’m reading this right,” she said. “Does this mean the DNA test shows you’re related after all?”

“All four of us,” Reed replied grimly. “It seems we’re siblings by blood as well as circumstance. And since I’ve seen enough family photos taken around the time that I was born to know for sure that my mother wasn’t pregnant at that time, that means that the DNA link has to come from my father.” He punched a few keys and called up a picture of Virginia State Senator Angus Markham, an aging lion complete with a full head of white hair. “Meet my dear old dad.”

Ellery looked from the picture to Reed’s face and back again. “What? How? I mean, I know how, but—Why would your own father have to go through the charade of adopting you?”

“Because he obviously didn’t want anyone to know he was my father.” Reed’s voice took on a hard edge. “You’ve seen the crime scene photos, so I’m betting you can guess why. What was he supposed to do—swoop in and say, ‘The child is mine from some random Latina waitress I impregnated on a trip to Vegas’? You think my mother would have stood for that? You think the voters in Virginia would have?”

“He could have told you the truth. He owed you that much.”

“He plucked me out of foster care and set me up in a sprawling mansion,” Reed said darkly. “He probably thought he’d done enough. Besides, do you think he could have shared this little bombshell with me alone? It would have detonated the whole family.”

“You’re saying your mother doesn’t know,” Ellery realized. “You think she’s been kept in the dark just like you have.”

Reed scrubbed his face with both hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. I can’t see how she could’ve known and kept up the good face all these years. Dad’s always been the showman, not her. But maybe I’m the one lying now, lying to myself. Maybe I just don’t want to believe it.”

Ellery stretched her hand across the countertop, almost but not quite touching him. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “It’s terrible that he lied to you all those years. Still, he must have loved you, must’ve wanted you . . .” She let her voice trail off. Her own father had skipped out on her family when Ellery was ten, and he hadn’t looked back—not when she was kidnapped and brutalized by Francis Coben, not when her brother, Daniel, had died of leukemia. Ellery had spent weeks and months waiting by the phone or at the window, hoping for some sign that John Hathaway remembered the family he’d left behind. She’d designed a million scenarios to explain why he might not have been in contact. Maybe he was secretly an American spy who’d had to abandon his children to keep them safe. Maybe he’d been kidnapped himself, held prisoner by some crazy person like Coben. At fifteen, she’d floated this idea past her mother, that maybe her father was trapped somewhere, needing their help, and that they should look for him. She must have picked a bad day, one where her mother had worked since dawn cooking, cleaning, and looking after deathly ill Daniel, because her mother’s answer was uncharacteristically flat and direct: Your father left because he wanted a different life. One that didn’t include us. If he wants us, he knows damn well where to find us. Meantime, we’re not going chasing after him.

So, they didn’t chase, and he hadn’t come around again. Not for fifteen years. Then a few weeks ago, Ellery had received a letter forwarded from the Woodbury Police Department with a return address of John Hathaway in Franklin, Michigan. She’d put it directly in a drawer. During her growing-up years, she’d made up every excuse in the world to justify his behavior. Now she knew—there was nothing he could say to make it right.

“What did your father say when you told him what you’ve found out?” she asked Reed.

“I haven’t asked him about it yet.” He frowned at his father’s image on the screen.

“What?” Ellery would’ve taken the DNA results and shoved them in Angus’s face. “You have the proof. It’s not like he can deny it.”

“Yes, he’d have to acknowledge the truth about my paternity, but that’s not enough for me anymore. All these years, I thought I knew who he was—I thought I knew myself. Now it turns out everything I thought I knew was based on a huge lie. I don’t want a little bit of the truth; I want the whole thing. All right, I can prove he’s my biological father—that’s great, fine. I want to know who he was when he slept with this girl. I want to know why he didn’t step up right away. I want to know . . .” He broke off and swallowed hard. “I want to know if he could’ve done this to her.”

Ellery’s gaze drifted to the horrific crime scene photos. “You really think he’s capable of something like this?”

“I don’t want to think it.” He touched the pointed edge of one photo. “Camilla’s killer stabbed her twenty-seven times. She fought him hard. The autopsy shows numerous defensive wounds on her hands and forearms.” He raised his arms as if to protect his face. “The knife kept coming at her over and over again until she was on the floor bleeding to death. But her attacker didn’t stop there. He stabbed her at least six more times and then left the knife like that, stuck inside her body. Even that wasn’t enough to satisfy his rage, because then he grabbed a metal horse head bookend from Camilla’s shelves.” Reed sifted through the photographs until he came across one that showed a heavy metal horse head. “He used this bookend to bash her face in. He didn’t just want to kill her. He wanted to obliterate her entire existence.”