Omens

Chapter Fifty-nine

At 5:30 a.m., I was awakened by a buzzing. I leapt up thinking there were bees in my room, which meant I’d have a visitor—and if I killed the bee, the visit would not be pleasant. It was not, however, an omen, but only my cell phone. Which, I suppose, is a “visit” of sorts.

I picked it up, muttering, “Gabriel,” then glowered at the screen, saw Will Evans’s number, and remembered that Gabriel was presumably in my living room.

I answered.

“Olivia.” My name came out on a sigh of relief. “I am terribly sorry to call you at this hour. I’ve been trying to wait for a more reasonable one, but I simply couldn’t hold out any longer.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s come to my attention that you’re working with Gabriel Walsh again.”

Damn. That was fast.

I moved to the bedroom door to tell Gabriel to keep quiet if he was awake. He wasn’t.

He was still on the sofa bed, sprawled on his stomach, head turned to the side. He’d taken off his shirt, but left his pants on, and the sheet was twisted around him as if he’d had a hard time getting comfortable. He was comfortable now, though, and deeply asleep. Also? Very nice to look at in that particular pose, muscular arms and back bare, wavy black hair tousled, long inky lashes against his cheek. Damned nice.

I closed the door. If I was eyeing Gabriel that way, I really should consider giving Ricky a call.

“I know you aren’t fond of him—” I began.

“Fond?” A short laugh. “My feelings about Gabriel Walsh do not approach the realm of fond, Olivia. The man terrifies me. There, I’ve said it.” An exhalation. “I know it sounds ridiculous. After all, whatever his reputation, he is still a man of law. An educated man. Presumably a civilized man. I’ve been trying to remember that, to give him the benefit of the doubt and merely suggest—strongly—that you not work with him. But…”

“What is it?”

“I told you I have reasons for distrusting him. I was given those reasons in confidence, which is why I’ve not done anything more than hint.”

“Something about his mother.” I lowered my voice. “She was a drug addict, wasn’t she?”

“Yes.” A pause. “Has he told you what happened to her?”

“We have a professional relationship. He doesn’t share anything like that.”

“Okay, then. Seanna Walsh was an addict, con artist, petty thief—pickpocket mostly. Never married. There’s no father listed on Gabriel’s birth certificate. It was just the two of them until Gabriel was fifteen and Seanna left.”

“Left?”

“Presumably. Now, if such a thing were to happen under normal circumstances to a fifteen-year-old boy, he would take refuge with a relative, would he not?”

“I guess so.”

“Instead he stayed where he was for almost a year, pretending his mother hadn’t left. I don’t know how he paid the rent, but I doubt it was through a part-time job. Otherwise, he continued living normally, even attending school. Eventually, his aunt Rose discovered Seanna was gone. As soon as Gabriel realized she knew, he ran. She seems to have pursued him for about six months, during which time police records list him as a missing teen. Then she told police he’d been found and the file was closed. She hadn’t found him, though. She stopped looking so he would stop running. A few months later, ‘Seanna Walsh’ rented an apartment again. No one ever saw her, though. Just her teenage son.”

And this story was supposed to turn me against Gabriel? How? Because he’d likely been involved in something illegal to support himself? The guy had been abandoned by his drug-addicted mother at fifteen, and he’d made it through law school. On his own.

The story explained a few things about Gabriel. Hell, it explained a lot. And it did change my opinion of him, but not in the way Will Evans seemed to expect.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Think about it, Olivia. Do Gabriel’s actions make any logical sense? He had an aunt he was apparently close to, who could have easily and happily supported him, yet he refused. He told no one his mother had disappeared. He ran away when his aunt discovered it. Those are not the actions of an abandoned child, and I believe I know why.”

“So tell me.”

“Seanna was last seen in late September that year. In mid-October, the body of a woman was discovered in an abandoned building several blocks away. The coroner believed she’d died of a drug overdose. The police found evidence to suggest she hadn’t died there—she’d been moved to that location. The woman had no identification on her, but her description matches that of Seanna Walsh.”

“So the police believed the body was Gabriel’s mother and told him—”

“The police never connected the events. The woman was buried as a Jane Doe because Gabriel hadn’t reported his mother missing. When his aunt reported Gabriel missing, police did not connect the dots back to the Jane Doe. My investigator did.”

“You think Gabriel knew his mother was dead?”

“Think about his behavior, Olivia.” His voice snapped with impatience now. “Those aren’t the actions of an abandoned child. They’re the actions of a guilty conscience. Gabriel Walsh gave his mother that overdose, then he hid her body in that building and pretended she was still alive.”

“That … No, he—”

“—wouldn’t do that? She was an addict, Olivia. I’m sure she made his life hell. Gabriel Walsh is an amoral man with clear sociopathic tendencies. Perhaps his mother is to blame, but whatever the reason, he saw her as an obstacle. He rid himself of that obstacle. I have evidence to prove it, and that’s why he’s trying to frame me for my son’s death.”

“W-what?”

When Evans started to explain, I was sure either he was crazy or I was still sleeping. Neither possibility completely disappeared as he went on.

When Gabriel first tried to interview him, Evans said he’d looked him up. What he found made him even more curious.

“I’m an old man, Olivia,” he said. “Life gets dull after a certain age, and it doesn’t take much to pique my curiosity, and a potentially interesting psychological profile always does the trick.”

That led him to the missing-person reports, which turned mild curiosity into a full-blown project. Here, presumably, was a boy abandoned by his mother and left on the streets … who became a defense attorney. An intriguing case study. So Evans hired an investigator.

“Yes, it sounds borderline obsessive and certainly an invasion of privacy, but I was completely fascinated.”

Then he discovered the fate of Seanna Walsh. The investigator gathered enough evidence to make a convincing case that Gabriel was responsible.

“That’s when I realized I’d gone too far,” Evans said. “That—along with other deeds that the investigator uncovered—convinced me I was dealing with a sociopathic personality. I stopped digging. I refused to see Gabriel Walsh. I hoped he would simply go away. And he seemed to.”

“Until now.”

“Yes.”

Evans believed that when he insisted on seeing me instead of Gabriel this time, Gabriel did some investigating of his own and discovered that Evans knew his darkest secret.

“I’m sure Gabriel had learned that I worked for the CIA long before now. But suddenly it’s a matter of great interest to him. Edgar Chandler called me last night and as soon as he described his visitors, I knew it was you two. And I knew what Gabriel was doing. Framing me for my son’s death.”

“I don’t—”

“How did the investigation change course, Olivia? The last I heard, you were pursuing Christian Gunderson as a suspect. Did you discover this new lead? Or did he?”

“It was a joint effort,” I lied.

“Was it? And it led to Edgar Chandler?”

No, first to Josh Gray, who wound up dead. Then to Desiree Barbosa, his girlfriend.

Or the woman who claimed to be his girlfriend.

Could Desiree have been playing a part? Leading me to Evans with her “secret” about him and the CIA? No. Especially not after all that runaround with the bikers and the drugs. The idea was almost as crazy as Evans’s whole “Gabriel Walsh is framing me” theory.

“I did work for the CIA, Olivia. As part of MKULTRA on a classified subproject in Chicago. I’m not proud of what I did. I was young and I naively thought I was helping my country. As soon as I began to doubt that, I left.”

“So why would Gabriel frame you? You could do the same to him.”

“I don’t know what his endgame is. Perhaps simply blackmail. I’ve heard he’s fond of that. Whatever his plan, he’s using you. Right now, that’s what worries me the most.” He paused. “Come to the house, Olivia. I know you don’t believe me, but I have the evidence here. I can prove that Gabriel Walsh killed his mother.”