Face of a Killer

7

Any chance Sydney had of sneaking out of the skat- ing rink was thwarted when her half sister, Angie, insisted she skate a few rounds with her. It was hard to resist anything Angie requested. She’d been a surprise midlife baby, born eight years into her mother and Jake’s marriage. And while neither had expected or wanted any children when they were married the year after Sydney’s father had been killed, no one would guess it now. They were devoted parents. As for how Sydney felt about Angie, her heart had belonged to her baby sister the very moment she grasped Sydney’s finger in her tiny little fist. Sydney knew right then and there that she’d give her life to protect her sister’s. Not that she needed to worry about Angie. Jake was easily the most overprotective father on the face of the earth, though at the moment conspicuously absent, which surprised her.

At the skate desk, Sydney checked out a pair, then carried them well away from the senator and his groupies. She sat, removed her shoes, wondering about Donovan’s interest in learning anything that might exonerate Wheeler. Because he was truly concerned? Or because of his real agenda, doing what he thought was right to keep his numbers up in the polls? He certainly didn’t need help in that regard, but she supposed it was the nature of the beast, none of which had anything to do with why she didn’t come out and tell him exactly what she’d learned from talking to Wheeler. Out of context it would sound completely ridiculous, she told herself as she tied her skates, then sought out Angie in the rink, somehow managing to skate without falling on her face. She tried to remember the last time she’d even worn skates. Probably when she was Angie’s age, she realized, eyeing her sister.

Sydney had always thought Angie resembled Jake much more than their mother, with Angie’s blond hair, dimples, a dusting of freckles across her nose, a smile that lit up the room, and a sharp eye that missed nothing. As in now.

“Are you upset with Uncle Don?” Angie asked. “Not just him. Politicians in general.”

“I’d rather be a cop than a politician.” She grasped Sydney’s hand, helping her to get her balance.

“A very wise decision. The not being a politician part.” Sydney lurched, wobbled, but remained upright with considerable effort. “Didn’t think I could skate, did you?”

“Is that what you call that?” They’d made it all the way around, then twice more, before she added, “Why’s Mom staring at you every time we pass her?”

“Is she?” Sydney didn’t doubt it, was purposefully avoiding her mother’s gaze.

“Yeah. Is she mad at you?”

“Just worried.”

“What is that? The grown-up way of saying mind your own business?” Angie craned her head to see as they skated past. “That is so not a worried look.” Then, “Oh my God. Do you have any of your cards?”

Angie came to a stop, and Sydney nearly fell in the process. She pulled her hand from Angie’s, grabbed the wall. “For what?”

“Nick Santos just skated on. He thinks he’s all that, because his dad is a deputy sheriff. You have to show him your card.” And then, before Sydney knew it, Nick Santos, the boy in question, skated alongside them, and Angie gave him her sweetest smile. “Hi, Nick.”

“Angie.”

“This is my sister. She’s an FBI agent.”

“I know,” he said, giving Sydney only a fleeting glance as though he’d heard this line before. “My dad’s a deputy. He’s on SWAT.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But Sydney draws dead people.”

Nick eyed her with renewed interest. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Angie said, crossing her arms with a burst of confidence. “You have to see her card. It says Forensic Artist on it.”

Nick gave Sydney a skeptical look, and, to defend her sister’s honor, she pulled out the soft card case from her blazer pocket and removed a business card, handing it to Angie, who then gave it to Nick.

“Dead people? That is so cool,” he said, tracing his finger over the embossed letters that spelled out Forensic Artist. He glanced at Angie, his gaze more respectful, as he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, keeping the card. “You want to skate around with me?”

Her eyes lit up, until she looked at Sydney, no doubt recalling that she had promised to skate with her.

“I really need to take a break,” Sydney said.

Angie gave her a grateful smile, then skated off with the boy who was “all that,” leaving Sydney no choice but to face their mother.

She navigated off the floor, feeling her mother’s gaze on her the entire time.

“Hi, Mom,” she said when she reached the table, where her mother sat monitoring the shoes and kids’ belongings strewn about the several tables claimed for the occasion.

Mary said nothing at first, while Sydney sat, deciding to remove the skates before she broke her neck. Mary watched her for several very long silent seconds, then, “Why?”

“I told you, it was something I had to do.”

“You’ve said that every year for the last, what? Four, now? And you’ve never done it.” Sydney had no idea what she should say, what made it different, except that with the impending execution, she knew this was her last chance.

Mary Fitzpatrick-Hughes fixed her gaze on Angie as she skated round and round with the boy, Nick. “Did you get my message about babysitting Angela?”

“Yes. I’m sure it’ll be fine, Mom.”

“It’ll just be overnight, and she doesn’t have school the next day, but I can call Rainie if you’d rather not.”

“Mom. I want to do it.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, and finally her mother said, “So what happened?”

Sydney wanted to let her know, quite simply because she longed for nothing more in that moment than to have her mother wrap her arms around her and tell her that everything was okay, that there was some mistake, and the killer wasn’t out there still. But Sydney couldn’t. It wasn’t for her to burden her mother with anything more than what she’d already been saddled with in her time, and Sydney ignored the thought that she’d done that very thing, just by telling her mother of her visit. “Nothing, Mom.”

“Nothing? He just sat there and stared at you? I thought you went there to ask him why?”

“That was only part of the reason I went. And I don’t want to talk about it right now. I can’t.”

Her mother’s lips pressed together in a thin line. She sat there for a moment, still watching Angie. Finally, “I can’t believe you went. How could you do that?” And then, with one last stab of maternal guilt to bestow, she added, “On today, of all days.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Her mother’s gaze remained steadfastly on Angie, and Sydney slipped her feet from the skates, and into her shoes.

She walked over, kissed her mother on the forehead. “Good-bye, Mom. I love you.”

Mary stared at her clasped hands, and reluctantly Sydney turned away. And then, in a barely audible voice, her mother said, “There are things you don’t know about your father. He’s not the saint you thought he was.”

Sydney stopped in her tracks, thinking of what Scotty had told her. “What do you mean by that? What did he do?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. But you put him on a pedestal he should never have been on. And I was willing to let you live with that belief. He’s your father. He loved you.”

“You can’t just tell me that and not say what he did.”

“Yes, I can. Like you, I don’t want to talk about it. He’s gone, and you have to get on with your life.”

Her mantra. Sydney had gotten on with her life just fine, and wanted to tell her mother exactly what she thought of it right then, but she heard Angie laughing and realized this was not the time or the place. “I should go.”

Mary said nothing, not even demanding that she stay and get her photo taken for the senator’s campaign, and so Sydney kissed her once more, then left, stopping only long enough to tell Angie that she had to leave.

“Why?”

“Work,” Sydney said, waving her cell phone at her, and earning a look of awe from Nick.

An easy lie, and at least Angie was smiling when she left.

But things did not get better, because Sydney ran into her stepfather, Jake Hughes, in the parking lot. He was tall, fit for a man in his fifties, and like Angie, he had blond hair and dimpled cheeks, though you couldn’t see the dimples. He was not smiling when he saw her. “I can’t believe you entertained such an idiotic idea.”

And then Sydney wondered if telling her mother of her visit to San Quentin was selfish, that maybe, had she really stopped to think things through, she would have realized this. “I shouldn’t have told her. I just thought-”

“Thought? You weren’t thinking. You should have left well enough alone, without putting your mother through that sort of misery.”

“Her misery? What about mine? You have no idea what it was like for me. He was my father.”

“And it’s been twenty years, for God’s sake. Twenty years today. You can’t go on like this forever, letting your father’s death define your entire life.”

“That’s not true. And I resent your saying so.”

“Resent it, then. But think about why it is you chose a profession that lets you carry a gun twenty-four/seven. Your father’s killer has been caught, he is not coming after you or your mother. She has moved on with her life. You should do the same, and not drag her back into the pain it took her so long to get past. Nothing is going to happen to you if you vary from your schedule, or you break a rule, Sydney. Nothing.”

She crossed her arms, staring down at the ground, feeling his hard gaze on her, not daring to tell him she thought Wheeler might be innocent. She wasn’t sure that was the best move right now. In his mind she had crossed the line. He had been her father’s friend, was there for her mother in her time of need, had helped to raise Sydney, and voiced his objections when she chose to go in law enforcement.

He was right in some respects. Her father’s death had given her purpose, had defined her. “Just tell Mom I’m sorry.”

He gave an exasperated sigh, took a couple of steps toward the door, then paused. “Was it worth it? Did he tell you something that made a difference?”

She hesitated. She wanted to tell him, wanted someone on her side. But she couldn’t. Not without proof. “Nothing that would make a difference.”

He stared at her for several long seconds, and then he shook his head, pulled open the glass door, and walked inside. Sydney stood there for a bit, alone in the parking lot, feeling the rain start up again, wondering what she should do, what she could do. She wanted things to be right with her mother and with Jake. She wanted things to be like they were yesterday, before she’d opened her mouth about going to San Quentin. Maybe if she apologized to her mother, found the right words to say… But as Sydney opened the glass doors, looked inside, it was just as Angie discovered her father’s arrival, and she skated off the floor to give him an excited hug. He embraced her, lifted her from the ground to give her a kiss, and Sydney glanced over at her mother, who was watching her husband and young daughter with a smile, her disappointment in her older daughter momentarily forgotten.

Sydney backed out, unseen, feeling a bit of envy, thinking that it all seemed so… normal, that if she went back in right now, the daughter of a murdered man that her mother had tried to forget, it would change things. Everyone would somehow discover that the world her mother had built around herself, her young daughter-and her older-was only a facade.

The rain let up by the time she got home, but her mood was still dark, especially when she had to double-park, knock on the next-door neighbor’s house, asking the sullen teen who answered the door to have his friend move his car from her driveway, so she could pull into her garage. She waited by her car, while the lanky friend exited the house next door, sauntered to his car, got in, revved the engine. He rolled down his window, flipped her off, then sped away, doing his best to lay some rubber on the wet pavement.

“Slow down!”

Like that helped. His car fishtailed around the corner, tires squealing. She pulled into her driveway, parked in the garage, wanting to forget this day had ever occurred. She trudged upstairs, unlocked her door, and Topper was there to greet her, not caring that she’d gone to some prison, or might have upset anyone else. And just in case Topper’s presence wasn’t enough to remind her that she was watching him for a day or two, there was now a very large bag of dog kibble set inside her door. The big red bow stuck to the top of the kibble bag was a nice touch, but not as nice as the note taped to it, telling her to look inside the fridge. Not one but two dishes therein. One was cheesecake, with a note taped to the plastic wrap, and she pulled it off to read: Cheesecake does not count as one of the four essential food groups. Look in the casserole dish. Love you, Arturo. P.S., don’t give any to Topper.

As if, she thought, lifting the lid on the casserole dish, and discovering enough lasagna to last her the week. A girl could get used to this.

Topper, however, wasn’t about to let her sit down and relax. He nudged his snout against her thigh, then turned and walked toward the door, waiting with baleful eyes. A very orderly canine. She liked that in him.

“You ready for a walk?”

He wagged his tail, then pranced by the door. When she picked up the leash, she caught sight of the envelope McKnight had sent. She knew she should look at it, try to figure out what it meant, but Topper whined. She’d get to the damned thing later. First things first.

“Sit.”

Topper sat as well as his wiggling tail would allow. She clipped on the leash, then off they went. The pair circled the block in companionable silence, Sydney lost in her own thoughts until they turned the corner that led back up the hill to the house, and Topper stopped at his favorite fire hydrant just a few doors down. Suddenly he started growling. Sydney gripped the leash tighter, figuring Topper was defending the neighborhood from whatever cat was straying nearby. She glanced up, saw a sedan cruising down the hill, slowing in the vicinity of her house, its headlights keeping her from seeing who was driving.

“With my luck, it’s probably Scotty.”

Topper gave a sharp bark, then resumed his growling.

“Where were you when I met the guy? Hmm?” She gave a tug on the leash. “Let’s go see what he wants.”

They started up the hill, but as they neared, the car’s engine revved, its high beams came on, blinding her. The screech of tires on the wet pavement echoed off the houses.

And the car headed straight toward them.