Deception (8 page)

Running north, he passed the Planetarium, then Grant Park, home to several of the city’s most famous museums. His long, effortless stride took him across the Chicago River and straight to Navy Pier Park, where he executed a broad circle and began to head back.

By the time he reached Mercy Hospital, where he had parked his car, he was sweating and feeling good. His watch read nine o’clock. Damn. He would have just enough time to drive home, shower and change before his meeting with the chief of police.

The meeting wouldn’t be pleasant. Because of a rash of grisly murders in the South Side, Chief Brennan had asked Dan’s assistance in catching the killer. The occasional requests from various police departments gave him an opportunity to put his experience with serial killers to good use and involve his students in a real case study.

Dan’s phone was ringing when he walked into his Hyde Park studio apartment ten minutes later.

In two long strides he reached the end table and grabbed the receiver, sliding off his jacket as he did so. “Hello.”

“Dan, it’s Ashley Hughes. Jill’s friend.”

Instinctively, Dan tensed. “Is Jill okay?”

“Yes,” Ashley said quickly. “I mean … she is now.”

“Ashley, for God’s sake, what’s wrong with her?”

“Someone tried to kill her last night.”

Dan felt as if he had been sucker punched. “Jesus He ran his fingers through his hair.

In front of her apartment building. It was late and some maniac came up from behind and tried to strangle her.”

Dan’s jaw clenched. “Are you sure she’s all right?”

Positive. A teenager who lives in the area came to her rescue.”

Relief loosened the pressure in his chest. “Did they catch the bastard?”

“No. And it’s not likely they will. It was too dark for her to identify the attacker.” She paused. “She thinks it was intentional, Dan, that whoever attacked her wanted to kill her.”

would she think that?”

She’s been investigating her father’s death. She doesn’t believe that was an accident, either.” Ashley’s voice betrayed her anxiety. “And neither do I.”

Under different circumstances, the thought of Jill playing amateur sleuth would have made him smile. She had always had a fertile and inquisitive mind and loved a good puzzle. That Nancy Drew side was one of the things he had loved most about her. But Ashley was right. This brutal attack had to be taken seriously.

“Did Jill ask you to call me?” he asked.

There was a low chuckle at the other end of the line. “Hardly. This was my idea, one I may soon live to regret.” There was a brief, expectant pause. “You’re the only one who can help her, Dan, the only one she’ll listen to.”

The remark made him laugh. “You have a short memory, Ashley. Jill was never very good in the listening department. Especially if I was the one dispensing the advice.”

“That was thirteen years ago. She’s grown up a lot since then.”

Though he already knew the answer, he asked the question anyway. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

Ashley let out a nervous laugh. “Would finding the killer be too much to ask? Assuming Jill is right and Simon was murdered.

Dan was silent as he considered the request. Time wasn’t a factor. With semester break just started, he had over a month of vacation coming. The trip to New York would even present a bonus—spending Christmas with his family in Brooklyn. Chief Brennan would be disappointed, but Dan could put him in touch with a former FBI agent who was an excellent profiler and lived only fifty miles out of Chicago.

The real question was more difficult. Did he want to get involved in Jill’s life again? Stir up all those old memories? if the answer was no, then he was better of giving Ashley the name of a good private investigator in New York City. of course, getting Jill to hire a PI. when she was so determined to do the job herself might not be an easy task.

“Dan?” Ashley’s voice was heavy with worry.

“All right.” Dan sighed. He was going to regret this, but what the hell. “I’ll take the first available flight.”

Seven

Dan arrived at the airport just in time to make the 11:02 flight to La Guardia Airport.

As he sipped a 7-Up the flight attendant had just poured him, he stared out the plane window, thinking about Jill, trying to anticipate her reaction and remembering his tempestuous marriage, in spite of the promise he’d made to himself not to.

She had a way of doing that to him, sneaking into his thoughts. Even now, after all these years.

He had met her in the spring of 1984. He was a police officer with the NYPD at the time and she was a sophomore at Columbia University. The odds of two such different people ever coming face-to-face, much less falling in love, were about a million to one. But on that balmy April night, the odds had been the last thing on his mind.

Dan was on his way home from work when he spotted the green BMW convertible parked on the side of the street in SoHo. The driver, a stunning redhead in a black evening gown, was standing beside the car,

* fists on her hips, glaring at a very flat rear tire.

When Dan stopped and offered to change it for her, she let out a sigh of relief and gratefully accepted his help. Hitching up her dress and crouching next to him’ she told him that she had been at a party and hoped her father wouldn’t realize it was almost 2:00 a.m.

“He doesn’t seem to understand that I’m nineteen.” She spoke as if she were thirty instead of nineteen. “And that I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

As she talked, her scent enveloped him like a seductive cloud, toying with his senses and causing him to take longer with the tire than he needed to. While he slowly unscrewed each bolt, he had learned that she was studying to become an architect, like her father, and someday hoped to design skyscrapers all over the world.

She had great legs, he noticed. Even more seductive was the way she flipped those glorious red waves over one shoulder.

Ten minutes later Dan was finished and she was asking him for his phone number. “I want to thank you properly,” she explained.

Dan wasn’t quite prepared for what she meant by that. The following morning, after a personal thank-you from Simon Bennett himself, Jill stopped by the station and with the eyes of every officer in the squad room upon her, she walked up to Dan and invited him to lunch, her eyes gleaming with adoration.

It didn’t take a genius to realize the kid had a major crush on him, a condition he had no intention of encouraging. Especially now that he knew about the vast disparity in their backgrounds.

Because she was young, vulnerable and very sweet, he had let her down gently, explaining she didn’t owe him a thing. As a police officer, it was his duty to help citizens in distress And, so there would be no misunderstanding, he had also explained that between his job and his part-time studies at NYU, he had no time whatsoever for a social life.

Far from being discouraged, Jill continued to call him every day. In fact, his excuses had become such a standard joke around the squad room that each morning, his colleagues hung around to hear the latest one.

Then, one day, tired of the teasing, Dan finally gave in and took Jill out to lunch—not to one of her fancy uptown eateries but to Mama Rosa, a tiny restaurant in Little Italy where the pasta primavera simply melted in your mouth.

As Jill devoured her meal and confessed her fondness for Italian food’ Dan, captivated by her charm and absolute candor, fell under a spell he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried.

Soon, the waiters, delighted by her enthusiasm for the food, brought her samples of other dishes. Even the cook came out to see who was the enchantress everyone was raving about.

Two months later, Dan and Jill were married, but not until Jill had agreed to one condition. They would live on his salary alone, without any help from her family—her trust fund.

At first, they were blissfully happy. They loved their loft and Greenwich Village, which they explored together whenever their schedules would allow. And Jill, a child at heart, never tired of watching him perform some of the magic tricks he had learned from his uncle Guido.

But little by little, problems began to surface. Their most serious disagreement occurred when Dan gave up his courses at NYU and took a second job—tutoring college students-so he could pay for Jill’s tuition.

“But that’s silly,” she argued. “My tuition has nothing to do with you. It’s a commitment I made before I met you. Therefore, it’s my responsibility and should come out of my trust fund.” Hoping to end the argument, she added, “Besides, my money is your money now and being hardheaded about it isn’t going to change a thing.”

Dan’s immense pride wouldn’t allow him to accept Jill’s rationalization. No man in his family had ever taken one single penny from a woman and neither would he.

He wasn’t sure when the real trouble began. It was too subtle at first for either of them to detect it. But as the weeks and months passed, Jill became more and more restless. She complained that he was working too much and that she was beginning to feel more like a widow than a newlywed.

“It’ll be different once I make detective,” Dan kept telling her. “Be patient, Jill.”

The arguments kept erupting, virtual shouting matches that almost always ended in bitter accusations and slammed doors.

One week before their first wedding anniversary, Dan asked Jill for a divorce.

Looking back at that year, Dan realized he hadn’t had a clue what married life was all about. He had lacked patience and understanding and had been too focused on carrying the financial burden alone. In the process, he had overlooked one of the most fundamental requirements of marriage—to work as a team. When he had finally realized his mistakes, it was too late.

As the years passed, he’d had to face another truth. He would never get over Jill. Not that he hadn’t tried. He’d dated often. He had even come close to remarrying-just so he could prove to himself that he no longer gave a damn about his ex-wife. On the day he’d been about to propose, he had realized that marrying a woman he didn’t love in order to forget the one he did love was a lousy foundation for a lasting relationship.

Twenty thousand feet below, the sprawling vastness of New York City and its five boroughs came into view, obliterating the memories. As the Fasten Your Seatbelt sign lit up and the Boeing 737 began its final descent into La Guardia Airport, Dan finished the last of his 7-Up and handed the empty glass to the flight attendant.

Maybe seeing Jill again was the answer to his problem. Maybe now he’d finally get her out of his system.

Three hours later, Dan parked his rented Land Rover on Brooklyn’s busy Eighteenth Avenue in Bensonhurst, where he had grown up. Getting out of the car, he looked around, feeling the same nostalgia he always experienced each time he came back here. Home.

Bensonhurst was Brooklyn’s answer to Manhattan’s Little Italy. It was a neighborhood rich in traditions and, for Dan, filled with memories of a full, happy childhood. He passed the corner where he had played stickball with his two brothers after school, and the store where he had sipped thick strawberry shakes.

Later, in their teens, they had cruised up and down the street in Dan’s first car, a 1968 Mustang he had buffed and coddled like a priceless jewel.

Brooklyn had changed over the years, but somehow this section of town had remained untouched. Not only was Santini’s Deli still there, catering to the same old clientele, but so was the shoe-repair shop next door and the bridal boutique at the end of the block. Even the old movie theater, where the Santini brothers had spent every Saturday afternoon, was still standing.

Dan pushed the door to the deli and walked in. Behind the counter, Angelina Santini, a gray apron around her waist, had taken a braid of fresh mozzarella from the display case and was placing it on the scale.

At sixty-seven, Mario Santini’s widow had stood the test of time and tragedy better than any woman Dan knew. Her face was plump and practically Unlined, her eyes bright and sharp as she read the weight on the digital scale. She had buried one husband and one son and yet somehow had found the strength to survive both events. Her energy and good humor were legendary, and while she no longer made her famous sausages, she still rose at dawn each morning to make fresh mozzarella.

He watched her as she quickly folded the heavy white paper twice, secured it with tape and handed it to her customer.

“Here you are, Mrs. Remundo. One pound of the freshest cheese in town. You find fresher, I’ll give it to you free.”

Her customer laughed. “Not much chance of that, I’m sure.”

Angelina smiled and handed the woman her change.

As she looked up, she saw Dan. Her mouth opened. “Danny!”

Stepping down from behind the counter, she ran to him as fast as her short legs would allow. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

Laughing, Dan closed his arms around her and gave her a warm embrace. “Hello, Ma.”

Her eyes were bright with tears as she held his face between her callused hands. “What are you doing here? When did you get in?”

“Just got off the plane, Ma.”

Linking her arm through his, Angelina turned to her customer. “Mrs. Remundo,” she said proudly, “I don’t think you know my older son, Danny. He’s the college professor.”

Dan shook the offered hand.

“I just moved into the neighborhood,” Mrs. Remundo explained. “Your mother talks about you all the time.” She laughed. “She’s as proud of you as she is of her cheese.”

“Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?” Angelina scolded when they were alone. “Your brother would have come to pick you up. And I could have prepared your room.”

“I don’t want you to fuss, I’ll prepare my own room.”

“Then you’re staying for Christmas?” The excitement in her voice did his heart good. “This isn’t one of your hurried visits?”

“I’ll stay for Christmas. Even longer if you’ll have me.”

* “If I’ll have you?” Angelina gave him a playful push. “What kind of remark is that?” Her hazel eyes,

so much like Dan’s, clouded. “Did you get a chance to talk to Jill?”