Secrets to the Grave

69

“I wish we didn’t have to do this so late,” Anne said. “Nighttime is difficult. She already doesn’t want to go to sleep because of the nightmares.”

“We don’t have a choice, sweetheart,” Vince said. “We’ve got a killer running around loose who’s going to be on the ragged edge when he finds out Gina Kemmer isn’t dead. Time is of the essence here.”

Anne sighed. “I know.”

She stood at the door to Haley’s room and looked at Haley, sitting on her bed in her pink pajamas playing quietly with Honey-Bunny and the new stuffed toy cat Milo Bordain had given her.

Sara had picked Wendy up and gone home right after dinner. Anne and Haley had gone through what Anne wanted to make a nightly ritual of a bath, quiet time, then story time, then bed. Routine would help give Haley a sense of stability, and the downward progression of activities would help teach her to relax and quiet her mind.

Anne knew from her own experience over the last year the value of that kind of routine. Now she could put what had been a difficult experience for her to a positive use for Haley. But tonight she would interrupt that routine to potentially draw out the most terrible memory a child could possibly have: the memory of a monster.

Vince rested a hand on her shoulder, reading her emotions perfectly.

“We’ll show them to her together,” he said. “You and me. Okay?”

“Okay,” Anne said. “Let’s get it over with.”

Vince turned to Mendez. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

Mendez took a seat on a bench in the hall to wait.

Vince pressed Anne into the room with a hand on the small of her back. Her heart was thudding in her chest.

“Haley? We’re going to play a little game, sweetie,” she said, feeling like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Haley looked up at her, wide-eyed and innocent. “What kind of game?”

“We’re going to look at some pictures,” Vince said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to put them down on the bed, then you’re going to look at them and tell us if you know any of the people in the pictures.”

Haley got on her knees and leaned sideways into Anne, chewing on the tip of her index finger as Vince laid the pictures out.

Anne watched her face carefully, looking for any nuance of expression that might indicate recognition.

Haley reached out a finger. Anne held her breath.

“That’s Zander,” Haley said, pointing at the wide-eyed math genius with his wild cloud of gray hair. She looked up at Vince and crinkled her nose. “Isn’t he weird?”

“He looks kind of funny in this picture, doesn’t he?” Vince said. “Do you know anybody else here?”

Haley studied the pictures one by one. With the exception of Steve Morgan, Anne only knew who they were because Vince had told her. The head of the music department at McAster. An architect. Steve Morgan’s law partner.

Darren Bordain in a photo from a magazine—a shot of him and his mother dressed to the nines at a charity function. He was almost a carbon copy of Milo.

Steve Morgan, handsome, dressed for golf, a wide white grin splitting his features. It was hard for Anne to look at him so happy when she knew he was making Sara and Wendy miserable with his bad behavior. Here he was in a lineup as, at best, a man who cheated on his wife, and at worst a murder suspect.

Haley looked at all of them very carefully. Anne held her breath. Vince was holding his breath and watching the little girl’s reactions as carefully as Anne was.

Finally, Haley looked up and smiled like a pixie. “These are all my daddies!”

She proceeded to point to each face and name them.

“Daddy Mark and Daddy Don and Daddy Bob and Daddy Steve and Daddy Milo and Daddy Darren and Zander.”

“Daddy Zander?” Vince asked.

Haley shook her head. “Just Zander.”

Anne felt limp with relief. As much as the detectives needed a positive ID, she couldn’t help but be glad Haley hadn’t looked at these men and seen the face of the person who had choked and smothered her.

“Do you see Bad Daddy?” Vince asked.

Haley ignored him and turned instead to Anne. “Mommy Anne, will you read me a story?”

“Sure, sweetheart. In a few minutes. You get under the covers and I’ll be back before you know it.”

“You won’t turn the lights off?”

“Nope. I won’t turn the lights off.”

“Bad Daddy comes when the lights are off.”

“Bad Daddy can’t come here,” Anne said, gathering the pictures back up off the bed.

She followed Vince into the hall, pulling Haley’s door only partially closed.

Mendez got to his feet with a look of tense expectation.

Vince shook his head. “No go. It may have been too dark for her to recognize the killer that night. Or she might only relate that person to Bad Daddy if he was dressed all in black.”

“You know, people don’t look the same when they turn on you,” Anne said quietly. “I remember how Peter Crane looked when he was above me, choking me. His eyes went flat and cold, like some kind of beast’s. The angles of his face stood out as if the skin were being pulled tight against the bone. He didn’t look like Tommy’s dad, or everybody’s favorite dentist, or the man who had come to my door just minutes earlier. It was like he was wearing a mask and then he took it off and I saw what he really was.”

Vince slipped his arm around her and drew her closer to him, just to let her feel that he was there and strong and protecting her.

“Haley may not have recognized the man who hurt her,” she said. “Because it wasn’t a man who hurt her, it was a monster.”

Mendez sighed, defeated. “I’d better call my mother and ask her to light a candle for Gina Kemmer then, because she’s the only one left who can ID this guy.”

Good, Anne thought, as she slipped away and went back into Haley’s room. Just relating her own experience in a few brief sentences had brought the terrible image of Peter Crane’s face that night back to her mind with such sharp clarity it was painful. Her heart was beating quick and shallow, and she felt weak both physically and mentally.

If Haley could be spared that ...

“Let’s make up a story tonight,” she said, settling in beside her little charge.

Haley snuggled into her, thumb at the ready. Anne brushed her hair back and kissed her forehead and began.

“Once upon a time there was a land where there were no monsters and no mean people and no bad daddies ...”

When Haley had drifted off, Anne slipped from the bed and padded downstairs in her stocking feet. The house was quiet except for soft smoky saxophone music drifting out of Vince’s office. He was sitting at his desk with only the desk lamp on, concentrating, peering down through his reading glasses at notes he had made.

He glanced up at her and smiled, took off his glasses and set them aside. He looked tired. Anne tunneled her fingers into his thick hair and smiled back.

“Come to bed, Daddy Vince,” she said.

“Mmmm ...” He pressed his cheek to her breast and sighed. “I am so exhausted, so wiped out, so out of gas ... and I still want you, Mrs. Leone.”

He pulled her face down to his and kissed her, a deep, slow, sexy kiss.

“But ... ,” Anne said as they emerged back into the real world.

“But ... I want to go over these notes one more time. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s an answer in here somewhere and I’m just not seeing it.”

“Maybe you’ve been looking at it too long.”

“Can’t see the forest for the trees? Maybe so. It’s probably hiding right in front of me. I’m just beating myself up over Zahn,” he admitted. “I pushed too hard. I’m afraid I might have triggered something in him he can’t get back from.”

Anne brushed a thumb over the bruise on his cheek where he told her Zander Zahn had struck him. “We can’t know somebody else’s tipping point. Most of the time, we don’t even know our own until it’s too late.

“I looked at those pictures tonight ... ,” she said. “I’m sure not one of those men ever believed they could do what was done to that woman. And yet, one of them probably did.”

Vince nodded, then broke the darkness of the thought.

“How’d you get so smart?” he teased.

“I married well,” Anne said, smiling. “Come upstairs. You can tell me a bedtime story.”

They walked up the stairs hand in hand.

Vince spoke softly. “Once upon a time there was husband who loved his wife ...”