Cloaked in Blood (36 page)

Datello crossed his arms over his
chest.  “Oh really?  It no longer concerns you that he
lied about me, that he lied about Franchetta, that whatever Seleeby
said might be laced with more than just a little bit of fact?”

“Of course it concerns me,” I said
grimly.  “We’ve just got a bigger problem right now.  And
if Johnny is transferring his concerns about David to
this
case, to my infant abduction and human trafficking through
Darkwater Bay, he’s missed the biggest clue of all.”

“That the guy has some sort of personal
investment in the city, which Levine doesn’t have.”

“I can’t let whatever he’s really up to be
the reason this bastard slips through our fingers again.  I
won’t.  Now are you coming or not?  I promise you, if
Crevan gets here before we’re gone, he’ll stop me.”

“He let you go to Henderson’s apartment
earlier,” Danny argued.

“Let,” I snorted.  “He had to run to
catch up with me.  Don’t get me wrong.  He’s my brother
and I adore him, but… well, let’s just say he’s got too much heart
to have much backbone.”

“What a cold thing to say,” Crevan said.

I startled and stared at the doorway to the
butler’s pantry.

“Crevan –”

“Save it, Helen.  It’s nice to know
that you and Johnny finally agree on something.  Too bad it’s
a low opinion of me.”

“You misunderstood,” Danny said. 
“Helen doesn’t want to drag you into this battle between her and
Orion.  We both know he’ll be livid when he finds out she’s
off working this case after he sent you to make sure she didn’t do
it.”

“And if you tell him I was gone when you got
here, you won’t be involved,” I slid easily into Danny’s quick
lie.

“I’m already involved, like it or not. 
Devlin Mackenzie is back, Helen.  Johnny’s had him working
some very quiet search since he got back into town.”

“When did he get here?”

“Around the time I got you home. 
Didn’t Johnny tell you?”

“I haven’t spoken to him since he kicked me
out of his crime scene.  Dammit!  What the hell is going
on tonight?  And how do you know that Dev’s back?”

“I got a call from Briscoe on my way over
here.  He wanted to know what the hell was going on, why every
division was asked to send officers to Hennessey Island to
barricade another city block and specifically, to bar all entry
except for Chris Darnell.  He figured I was down there in the
thick of things, but when he arrived, he saw Devlin.”

“Jesus,” I said.  “He really doesn’t
trust me.”

“Have you given him much of a reason?”
Crevan asked coldly.

“I suppose I haven’t.”

“So how is Johnny wrong about all of
this?”

Since Crevan caught me before I could slip
away, I saw no reason to rush out now.  “He’s not looking for
someone with deep roots in Darkwater Bay,” I explained.  In
tandem, Danny and I rehashed our brainstorming session in the
middle of the night.  “All this stuff that I attributed to
Lowe, it might not have been him at all.  Think about it
Crevan.  Dad was right when he said that you don’t schmooze
your way into a police academy.  How the hell would I know
that?  The FBI sought me out, not the other way around.”

“True,” he mused.  “Rodney was a few
years younger than us.  I don’t remember him from his early
days with the department, plus he started out with Bay View
Division.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Hmm,” Crevan nodded.  “That much I
remember clearly.  It was after all, Dad’s ultimate slap in
the face.”

“Aidan?” I echoed.  “What in the world
does he have to do with anything?  I thought he hated your
career in public service.”

“He did.  Of course he made his digs in
other ways, Helen.  Our biological father is not a nice human
being.  Basically, he hides his cruelty in the shadow of
Christ’s cross.  It justifies everything he’s ever done.”

“What did he do?” Danny asked.  “I was
living out on Hennessey Island when Bay View opened its satellite
on the island.  As I recall, your father helped with the
fundraising to outfit some of the more modern police surveillance
equipment.  He even deigned to allow some of us less than
savory types to contribute to the projects that solicited
donations.”

“Oh yes,” Crevan nodded.  “But that was
before I was even out of high school.  What Dad did when
Rodney took his post in Bay View was announce to the world how
proud he was of this upstanding young man, that Rodney was the
future of the Darkwater Bay police department.”

The creeping unease settled again at the
nape of my neck.  I didn’t like what Crevan was saying, didn’t
like what it implied, recalled with crystal clear clarity how Aidan
Conall threw his weight around in January and told me my time in
Darkwater Bay was finite.  No.  I didn’t like where my
thoughts were going one little bit.

Chapter 36

Helen learned to keep secrets from a very
early age.  Only when Wendell taught her to be private and
circumspect, it was never with the intention of instilling paranoia
or mistrust of the whole world.  He simply wanted her to be
guarded with Marie.

He had his reasons. 

And he didn’t need DNA testing to fortify
what his gut had known for nearly 39 years.  Marie Eriksson
had never given birth to
his
child.  He wondered
then.  It was simply his tender heart where all children were
concerned that made him brush that knowledge aside and accept the
beautiful baby placed in his arms that sunny June day as his.

The irony was, Helen didn’t belong to either
one of them, but she was still better off with Wendell than she
would’ve been with her biological father. 

There were a great many things Wendell
shared with Helen when she was a child that he probably should’ve
kept to himself.  To keep her safe, he made sure she
understood what they used to call
stranger danger
.  He
couched horror stories within fairytales he devised to amuse
her.  Those lessons were important.  She needed to learn
that while it’s fine to hope for the best, one should always be
prepared for the worst.

Perhaps he over-prepared her.

Wendell donned his priestly frock and
stretched his neck to slip the clerical collar into place. 
He’d had the small radio in his apartment at Saint Agnes Parish
rectory on all night.  No news was good news.

Oh sure, the third murder on Hennessey
Island had been reported, with the sketchiest of details. 
Either the fourth hadn’t been uncovered yet, or Johnny was keeping
Lyle Henderson’s demise under tight wraps.  He suspected the
latter.

That son in law of his was no slouch. 
Wendell saw a darker side to Orion, one that was hard not to
admire, but at the same time, concerned him.  Helen was on a
slippery slope.  He knew it as well as she did. 

Timing was everything.  He had to get
into Bay County Correctional before news broke that Lyle Henderson
was dead.  He had to be the first one to break that little
nugget of news to a certain someone.  Necessity aside, Wendell
was itching to see the reaction to the news, desperate for the
result that would identify the man he’d seen last night after the
unplanned moment of self defense on a rooftop.

He’d gone to Hanging Gardens with every
intention of beating the truth out of Lyle Henderson if he had
to.  If the knowledge that Wendell had prevented an assassin
from slaughtering him wasn’t enough to pry the truth out of the
phony bastard, maybe a split lip would do the trick.  Lyle was
a coward after all.

The workman’s clothing allowed him to move
unquestioned through the building.  He took the service
elevator to the tenth floor and made his way through the back
hallway where closets housed mechanical devices that were stored
out of sight and out of mind for the well-to-do aged folks living
in the building.

But when he reached the doorway to the
residential hallway and started to exit, he rethought the strategy,
and  slipped back inside.  He left the door open just a
crack and peered through at a tall, thin man with dark hair who
wiped the inside and outside of one of the doorknobs to an
apartment before he closed the door, straightened his tie and
strode casually down the hallway, as if some odd form of OCD
dictated his behavior every time he left home.

Wendell thought it beyond odd.  In
fact, it raised his suspicious hackles to the nth
degree.   He set his toolbox down and pulled a pair of
workmen’s gloves out of his back pocket.  Donning them, he
retrieved a lock pick from the toolbox and made his way to the
door.  1024.  It was Henderson’s apartment.

Swiftly, Wendell slid the pick into the
flimsy lock and giggled it.  The tumbler gave way. 
Without missing a beat, he stepped into the apartment and closed
the door behind him.

There was no movement, no commotion across
the street yet, nothing that betrayed that anything was
amiss.  At least nothing was amiss outside the
apartment.  Wendell stood in the pitch blackness and waited
for his eyes to acclimate.  After a few moments, it was clear
that there was nothing obstructing his immediate path.

He closed his eyes and remembered what he’d
seen from his vantage point earlier when he watched Lyle from the
building across the street.  The layout refreshed in his mind,
Wendell began making his way methodically through the
apartment.  Nothing in the kitchen.  Empty bedroom. 
Bathroom was the blackest room of all.

Dammit!  Had the assassin showed up for
nothing?  He was about to give up on his quest when the arm
flung over the side of the sofa caught his attention.  Wendell
approached cautiously.  Lyle was older than dirt.  He
could
simply be napping.

But who was the visitor wiping away
fingerprints?  Why would Lyle fall asleep while someone was in
his apartment?

Wendell moved closer, feet gliding quietly
over the marble-style floor.  He stared down at the body on
the sofa.  Lyle’s eyes were slightly parted, his lips
bruised.  The pillow under his head was tucked in a manner
that produced an odd angle, like it had been placed there as an
afterthought, perhaps after it was used to smother the old
bastard.

“Shit,” Wendell spoke, eerily into the too
quiet space.  “The bastard must’ve been watching.  He
must’ve known his assassin failed, so he did the job himself.”

The anticipated satisfaction leeched out of
Wendell as he stared down at one of the men responsible for so much
misery.  Only the sounds of approaching sirens snapped him out
of his thoughts and prompted his hasty retreat from the
apartment.

That was when he headed to Helen’s house, to
see how long it would be before the body was discovered, to lie if
needed, and place himself far away from Hennessey Island.

Now the advantage was his again, as long as
he got to the county jail before the press trumpeted the news that
a fourth murder victim was found on Hennessey Island during the
night.

He tucked the small, but never opened Holy
Bible prop under his arm and left the rectory.  Wendell slid
behind the wheel of the old black sedan parked in the alley behind
the parish and breathed a wish into the universe.  “Let me
protect her, just one more time.”

The plates on the car were stolen from one
nearly identical to it in Montgomery.  Wendell planned to
visit the jail, but until last night, had no idea what ruse would
grant him entry.  Lyle’s death was the perfect excuse.

Inside the jail, he was met with courtesy
and respect.  He smiled benevolently.  The priest gig
wasn’t a bad choice in a city so steeped in the Catholic
faith.  Nobody questioned his presence or doubted his
intentions.

All that would change the moment he uttered
the name of the prisoner he came to visit.  It had to. 
She was notorious these days.

“I’m here on a sensitive matter, officer,”
Wendell said to a large man wearing an identification badge that
named him Officer Saul Becker.

“Oh?  How can I assist you,
Father?”

“Melissa Sherman’s father has died.  I
was sent by the parish in Montgomery to not only give her the news,
but provide spiritual counsel.”

Saul frowned.  “Wasn’t aware she had
any family other than the dead bastard she was married to.” 
His face flushed crimson a moment after he spoke.  “Beg
pardon, Father.  It’s just that the man was part of a pretty
horrific crime.”

“He’s at God’s mercy now, my son,” Wendell
said before making the sign of the cross.  “And while Mrs.
Sherman must account to man for her crimes, God’s mercy is always
available to any who repent.  Christ said,
judge not, that
ye be not judged
.”

“Of course,” the officer said.  “Would
you like to see her in one of the visiting rooms?”

“That won’t be necessary.  I’m
accustomed to ministering to men and women in their cells. 
This isn’t my first visit to a jail or a prison.”

Saul hit a button and the lock on the door
released.  “I’m going to have to look at that bible,
father.  Nothing personal.  It’s just policy.”

“Of course,” Wendell smiled.  He passed
the book to the jail officer.  “She’s bound to be devastated
by this news, Officer Becker.  Losing a parent is a terrible
thing.”

Saul thumbed through the bible and handed it
back.  “Come with me.”

Wendell followed him through the maze of
corridors until they reached one that was very quiet. 

“She’s the only woman on the block at the
moment,” Saul said.  He disengaged the electronic lock. 
“When you’re through, just push the call button on this side. 
I’ll wait out here.”

Wendell walked down the hallway, glancing
into each cell until he reached the one with a woman who looked a
great deal younger than her actual age sitting on the cot.