Speak of the Devil (8 page)

On the next page, a boutonniered Jack waited for Nina at the front of the church. He was beaming. Anna wondered if he would look that happy on
their
wedding day. Their own relationship had been conducted so clandestinely, with so many pressures from work, she’d rarely seen his face light up like this. Did he love Nina more than he loved her? No, of course not. He was just a different man today than the one who’d stood in that church seven years ago. Now his eyes were etched with lines earned from supervising hundreds of homicide cases, from burying a wife, from years of widowerhood and single parenting. Anna loved the man he was today, his reliability, wisdom, and strength. But she felt a pang of regret that she would never know that younger, more carefree version of Jack Bailey.

A few pages later, Jack stopped flipping and drew in a sharp breath. There, among pictures of cheering people throwing rice at him and Nina, was a blank white spot. A ghost of a rectangle showed where the picture used to be. Jack inhaled sharply and placed the album on his desk, now touching it only by the edges. He held up the copy of the photo that had been in Psycho’s pocket. Nina’s hairstyle and radiant smile in that photo were identical to those on the rest of the page.

The photo Psycho was carrying had been taken from this wedding album. From Jack’s study. Anna shivered with the realization that someone had been in the house.

Jack turned to Luisa. Very quietly, he asked. “Do you know how anyone could have gotten this picture from this album?”

She shook her head. “No, Mr. Jack. I don’t know.”

“You’re home all day. I trust you completely. But I need to know who you’ve allowed in the house, for any reason.”

She looked scared. “No one. I mean, Olivia’s friends come over for playdates, and their parents or nannies pick them up. Once in a while, a friend of mine comes over, but they do not wander the house alone.”

“Tell me about your friends.”

She listed a few women’s names, none of which Anna recognized. Jack wrote the names down. He looked at the paper, then back up at the nanny. “What about Benicio?”

Benicio was Luisa’s sixteen-year-old nephew, who occasionally came over with her.

“Sure, Mr. Jack, you know Benicio stops by sometimes. But he did not take this picture from your album! Why would anyone even want it?”

“That’s exactly my question.”

“Okay.” The nanny looked frightened. “There—there is something I wanted to tell you for a while. But I don’t want you to laugh at me.”

“What is it?”

Luisa bit her lip and looked at his bookshelves. “Sometimes, things move around in this house.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like . . . little knickknacks. They’ll be in a different spot in the afternoon than in the morning. Or the papers on your desk will be sitting a little different.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“A year or two? I’m not sure. At first, I thought it was just me, being forgetful. Or it was all in my head. Now—I think it’s something else.”

“What?”

“The ghost.” Luisa took a deep breath. “Nina’s ghost. I’m afraid she doesn’t want you to get remarried.”

“Nina would have loved Anna. There’s no ghost,” Jack said. “There’s something worse.”

12

Forty minutes later, two uniformed MPD officers walked around the perimeter of Jack’s house, checking for signs of forced entry. A crime-scene technician dusted the photo album for prints. Detective McGee spoke to Jack and Anna downstairs while Luisa took Olivia upstairs so the girl wouldn’t see all the officers in her house. The uniforms came back into the house, shrugging. “Nothing we could see.”

“Check the basement,” McGee said.

Jack stood in his study, too upset to sit. Anna stood next to him, her hand on his arm. She hoped her touch was soothing, although it didn’t seem to be. His muscles were as taut as piano strings. McGee perched against Jack’s desk, a notepad in his hand.

“Do you know when the photo was removed from the house?” McGee asked.

“No.”

“When was the last time you looked at the album?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a while, at least since I started dating Anna, probably longer. Could be two or three years.”

“So, far as you know, this photo coulda been stolen three years ago?”

“It’s possible.”

“Anything else missing in the house?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Any things moved?”

“My nanny says things get moved sometimes.” Jack shook his head. “She thinks there’s a ghost.”

“Mm,” McGee jotted on his notepad. “How well do you know this nanny?”

“She’s been with me since Nina died. She’s helped me raise Olivia. I trust her implicitly.”

“Sometimes it’s the people you think you know . . .”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “Not Luisa.”

“Does she have family?” McGee persisted. “Friends? People who come over here, visit with her?”

Jack cocked his head. “Her sister comes by from time to time. And the sister’s son, Benicio. He goes to Blair High School.”

“Give me their full names, addresses, phone numbers.”

Jack went to his desk, picked up his address book, and gave the information to McGee. “It wasn’t my nanny’s family. They’re good people.”

“Who else is allowed in your house?”

“The usual suburban types. Handymen, grocery delivery guys, plumbers. Olivia’s friends, over for playdates. Parents of Olivia’s friends. Their nannies.”

“Names,” McGee said. “Addresses.”

Jack flipped through the address book, listing as many as he could. He handed McGee the list of names that Luisa had given him.

“I’ll run background checks,” McGee said. “What about Olivia? My nieces are always cannibalizing their mom’s scrapbooks. Could Olivia have taken this photo?”

“No. She’s not allowed in my study.”

“Sometimes a kid’s definition of ‘not allowed’ isn’t the same as their parents’.”

“Goddammit, Tavon. This isn’t about scrapbooking. Someone is stalking my family. Those guys decapitated a man. Why did they have a picture of Nina? A picture from my
den
. I want to know who the hell’s been in my house.”

“Okay, Chief, calm down.” McGee put his hands up in a gesture of peace. He looked over at Anna. “Tell me about the warrant you signed for the brothel. Did you—did anyone—think MS was involved, going in?”

“No. It was just supposed to be a run-of-the-mill bust of a nuisance brothel.”

“So it’s just a coincidence that these MS guys were in there? Nothing bigger than that?”

“Not that I know of.” She turned to Jack. “The guy who had Nina’s picture was named Jose Garcia, aka ‘Psycho.’ Does that ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Is it possible he was connected to Nina’s death? Maybe the photo is a trophy.”

“No. Her death had nothing to do with MS-13.” Jack sounded adamant. He put an arm around Anna’s shoulders. “I want protection for her.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” McGee said, “but I don’t think they’re gonna go for that. No specific threat, et cetera.”

Jack nodded, knowing he was overreaching. “The house, then.”

“Gonna be tough. You don’t live in D.C. Only reason we got these guys here”—McGee gestured to the MPD officers emerging from the basement—“is the tie-in to the brothel case. We can try to convince Takoma Park to run some patrol cars past.”

“I’ll call them myself.” As D.C.’s Homicide chief, Jack had connections to all the neighboring police forces. “Meanwhile, Four-D’s only three blocks away. Not hard for them to drive a few feet over the line, right?”

If Anna stepped to the edge of Jack’s property and peered down the street, she could see D.C.’s Fourth District.

“I’ll make sure a marked cruiser drives by tonight.”

“Every hour,” Jack said. “For the next few weeks.”

McGee sighed mightily and put his notebook back in his suit pocket. “Man, you are a tough negotiator. I shoulda had you handle my divorces.”

“Thanks, Tavon.” Jack pulled Anna closer. “I owe you one.”

After the police left, Jack took her hand. “Come on. I need to show you something.”

He led her up the stairs to the second floor. They passed Olivia’s bedroom, where Luisa was coaxing Olivia into pink pajamas. Jack kept going, leading Anna up a second flight of steps to the attic. She’d never been up here before. He swung open the door at the top of the stairs, leading to a dark, cavernous room that smelled of mothballs, old wood, and uncirculated air.

He pulled a chain hanging from the ceiling and a single lightbulb flickered on. Boxes and old furniture dotted the rough wood floors. Brown-paper reams of insulation lined the walls. Jack shut the door quietly and led Anna to a corner of the attic, where the wooden beams came down so low, they both had to crouch. A heavy black gun safe sat atop an old dresser. The door of the safe had a covered keypad. Jack stuck his hand under the cover and keyed in a pattern.

The door swung open with a creak; Jack reached inside and pulled out a smaller box, which he cracked open. Nestled inside gray foam was a black semiautomatic handgun. He popped out the magazine, then racked the slide and glanced inside the chamber to confirm it was empty. Jack held the weapon, barrel-down, to Anna. She made no move to take it.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“Learn to use it. We’ll go to the range.”

A laugh escaped her throat before she could stop it. “I’m more likely to shoot off my own foot than a robber.”

“That’s why you go to the range, and take classes about gun safety.”

“You know the statistics, Jack. Olivia is more likely to get shot with this than any intruder.”

“No, we keep it locked up, and you learn to use it safely. I’ll wager those statistics would be different if they only measured homes where a gang member had already broken in.”

She nodded. Fair point. “Where did you even get this?”

“It was Nina’s.”

Anna had no idea that Jack owned a gun. What else didn’t she know about him? She looked around the shadowy attic, wondering what was in all the other boxes.

She sank down into an old chair. It sent up a poof of dust, making her sneeze. He handed her a handkerchief. “Thank you.” She wiped her nose. “I don’t
want
to learn to use a gun.”

“Why not?”

She thought,
I’m moving into Nina’s house, taking over Nina’s family. I don’t need to carry Nina’s gun, too.
She said, “I’ve worked on dozens of cases involving civilians with guns. They never end well.”

“You’re talking about cases where the criminals are armed. You haven’t seen a case where the
victim
had a gun, have you?”

“No.”

“That’s my point.”

“When did you become a spokesman for the NRA?”

She was trying to make a joke, but Jack’s face remained dead serious. He pulled up another rickety chair next to hers and took her hand.

“Anna, I love you. I’m worried about you. The danger out there is real. I can’t go through that again. I can’t let Olivia go through it again.”

She met his eyes. They were filled with love and a sort of fear she’d never seen there before.

“How did it happen?” she asked quietly. “When Nina died?”

Jack set the gun back in the box and looked up at the wooden beams, as if they might provide a clue. “She was a sex-offense detective with MPD for many years. But a few weeks before she was killed, she got transferred to the power-shift to do drug buy-busts. They made her the UC.”

The power-shift was a fancy name for a crappy job—putting in overtime in trouble spots in the city. Going from sex-offense detective to buy-busts was a demotion. As the undercover drug officer, Nina would have dressed like a street addict and bought dime bags from corner boys. It was dangerous work, and it paid less than being a detective.

“One night, after she made a buy, an addict tried to steal the drugs off of her. He put a gun to the back of her head, and shot her.”

“Mm.” Anna cringed. “Did they catch him?”

“No. MPD investigated, and they threw a lot of resources on it, but they never made an arrest.”

He leaned back against the chair, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples between his thumb and middle finger. His jaw clenched and unclenched.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She put her hand on his neck and kneaded his tense muscles.

They sat quietly for a while. Finally, he turned to her. “We’ll go to the range this weekend.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t want to learn to use a gun. I don’t want it in the house, not with Olivia running around. I’m sorry. Can’t we just update the alarm?”

Jack sighed and locked the firearm back in the safe. “You’re damn right we’re updating the alarm.”

He carried the safe down to the second floor and put it up on a top shelf in his bedroom closet. When they came out, Luisa was just closing Olivia’s door.

“She’s all tucked in,” the nanny whispered.

“Thanks, Luisa,” Jack said. “Let me walk you out.”

As Jack and Luisa headed downstairs, Anna went into Olivia’s bedroom. The little girl was awake, watching with big eyes as Anna came into the room and sat on the side of the bed. Olivia curled herself around Anna’s knee. Tentatively, Anna reached up and stroked Olivia’s hair.

“Anna?”

“Yes, pretty girl?”

“I’m scared of the dark.”

“Don’t be. Everything is exactly the same in the dark as it is in the light.”

“Yeah. But you can’t see it so well.”

“Good point. Want me to get you a night-light?”

Olivia nodded.

Anna could hear Jack and Luisa talking downstairs, using the low voices adults use when they’re upset but trying to keep that fact from children. Olivia strained toward it. Jack’s voice was soft but decipherable.

“I don’t want you letting
anyone
in the house, Luisa. Not your friends, not your nephew, not the gardeners. I don’t even want Olivia having playdates. Not until we figure out who took this picture, and why.”

Anna got up and shut the bedroom door. Moonlight from the window now provided the only illumination in the room. She sat back down on the bed.

“Do you believe in ghosts, Anna?”