'I knew a professor of physics who murdered his wife, and a minister who murdered a child.'
Considering recent events, Mitch no longer believed that the detective might be one of the kidnappers.
If you had spilled your guts to him, Mitch, Holly would be dead now.
Neither did he any longer worry that the kidnappers were keeping him under surveillance or were monitoring his conversations. The Honda might be fitted out with a transponder that allowed it to be tracked easily, but that was of no concern anymore, either.
If Anson was right, Jimmy Null — he of the gentle voice, with concern that Mitch should remain hopeful — had killed his partners. He was the whole show now. Here in the final hours of the operation, Null would be focused not on Mitch but on preparations to trade his hostage for the ransom.
This did not mean that Mitch could turn to Taggart for help. John Knox, laid out in the Woody Wagon as if it were a hearse, thrice dead of a broken neck and a crushed esophagus and a gunshot wound, would require some explaining. No homicide detective would be quickly convinced that Knox had perished in an accidental fall.
Daniel and Kathy would be no more easily explained than Knox.
When Anson was discovered in such miserable condition in the laundry room, he would appear to be a victim, not a victimizer. Given his talent for deception, he would play innocent with conviction, to the confusion of the authorities.
Only two and a half hours remained before the hostage swap.
Mitch had little confidence that the police, as bureaucratic as any arm of the government, would be able to process what had happened thus far and do the right thing for Holly.
Besides, John Knox had died in one local jurisdiction, Daniel and Kathy in another, and Jason Osteen in a third. Those were three separate sets of bureaucracies.
Because this was a kidnapping, the FBI would most likely also have to be involved.
The moment Mitch revealed what had happened and asked for help, his freedom of movement would be curtailed. The responsibility for Holly's survival would devolve from him to strangers.
Dread filled him at the thought of having to sit helplessly as the minutes ticked away and the authorities, even if well meaning, tried to get their minds around the current situation and the events that had led to it.
Taggart said, 'How is Mrs. Rafferty?'
Mitch felt known to the bone, as if the detective had already untied many of the knots in the case and used that rope to snare him.
Reacting to Mitch's nonplussed expression, Taggart said, 'Did she get some relief from her migraine?'
'Oh. 'Yeah.' Mitch almost could not conceal his relief that the source of Taggart's interest in Holly was the mythical migraine. 'She's feeling better.'
'Not entirely well, though? Aspirin really isn't the ideal treatment for a migraine.'
Mitch sensed that a trap had been laid before him, but he could not tell its nature — bear, snare, or deadfall — and he didn't know how to avoid it. 'Well, aspirin is what she's comfortable with.'
'But now she's missed a second day of work,' Taggart said.
The detective could have learned Holly's place of employment from Iggy Barnes. His knowledge didn't surprise Mitch, but that he had followed up on the migraine-headache story was alarming.
'Nancy Farasand says it's unusual for Mrs. Rafferty to take a sick day.'
Nancy Farasand was another secretary at the Realtor's office where Holly was employed. Mitch himself had spoken to her the previous afternoon.
'Do you know Ms. Farasand, Mitch?'
'Yes.'
'She strikes me as a very efficient person. She likes your wife very much, thinks very highly of her.'
'Holly likes Nancy, too.'
'And Ms. Farasand says it's not at all like your wife to fail to report in when she's going to miss work.'
This morning Mitch should have called in sick for Holly. He had forgotten.
He'd also forgotten to phone Iggy to cancel the day's schedule.
Having triumphed over two professional killers, he had been tripped up by inattention to a mundane task or two.
'Yesterday,' Detective Taggart said, 'you told me that when you saw Jason Osteen shot, you were on the phone with your wife.'
The car had gotten stuffy. Mitch wanted to open the window to the wind.
Lieutenant Taggart was approximately Mitch's size, but now he seemed to be larger than Anson. Mitch felt crowded, in a corner.
'Is that still what you remember, Mitch, that you were on the phone with your wife?'
In fact, he had been on the phone with the kidnapper. What had seemed a safe and easy lie at the time might now be a noose into which he was being invited to place his neck, but he could see no way to abandon this falsehood without having a better one to use in its place.
'Yeah. I was on the phone with Holly.'
'You said she called to tell you that she was leaving work early because of a migraine.'
'That's right.'
'So you were on the phone with her when Osteen was shot.'
'Yes.'
'That was at eleven forty-three a.m. You said it was eleven forty-three.'
'I checked my watch right after the shot.'
'But Nancy Farasand tells me that Mrs. Rafferty called in sick early yesterday, that she wasn't in the office at all.'
Mitch did not reply. He could feel the hammer coming down.
'And Ms. Farasand says that you called her between twelve-fifteen and twelve-thirty yesterday afternoon.'
The interior of the Honda felt like a tighter space than the trunk of the Chrysler Windsor.
Taggart said, 'You were still at the crime scene at that time, waiting for me to ask a series of follow-up questions. Your helper, Mr. Barnes, continued planting flowers. Do you remember?'
When the detective waited, Mitch said, 'Do I remember what?'
'Being at the crime scene,' Taggart said drily.
'Sure. Of course.'
'Ms. Farasand says that when you called her between twelve-fifteen and twelve-thirty, you asked to speak to your wife.'
'She's very efficient.'
'What I can't understand,' Taggart said, 'is why you would call the Realtor's office and ask to speak to your wife as much as forty-five minutes after, according to your own testimony, your wife had already called you to say that she was leaving there with a terrible migraine.'
Great clear turbulent tides of air drowned the alleyway.
As Mitch lowered his gaze to the dashboard clock, a helpless sinking of the heart overcame him.
'Mitch?'
'Yeah.'
'Look at me.'
Reluctantly, he met the detective's gaze.
Those hawkshaw eyes didn't pierce Mitch now, didn't drill at him as they had before. Instead, worse, they were sympathetic and invited confidence, encouraged trust.
Taggart said, 'Mitch…where is your wife?'
Chapter 54
Mitch remembered the alley as it had been the previous evening, flooded with the crimson light of sunset, and the ginger cat stalking shadow to shadow behind radium-green eyes, and how the cat had seemed to morph
