refuse. You understand?”
“Sure.”
“However, I can give you the name of the girl and her family in the date rape incident. I’d bet it wouldn’t take anything at all to make them turn on the Jacobys.”
They were on Sheridan, not far from Ben’s place.
“So who killed him?” Cork said.
“Until you told me about Blumenthal, I’d thought it might have been Phillip. An argument, maybe.”
“If Blumenthal’s telling the truth, Phillip’s off the hook. From what I’ve gathered, Jacoby was probably shot with a throw-down, so that would indicate a planned killing.”
“Ben was a powerful man. I’m sure he had enemies. Maybe his murder didn’t have anything to do with the rest of this business.”
Cork shook his head. “Think about it. After you called him with your report on Lizzie’s interview, he canceled his meeting with Jo and went somewhere. You said it yourself, that he put something together. What was it he figured out? That might be clear if we knew who he went to see.”
“You think his death had something to do with Eddie’s murder?”
“It’s the only connection I can see at the moment. It’s all too closely related to be just coincidence.”
Dina pulled onto the brick drive that led to Jacoby’s home. The crime scene team was still there, but the media vans were gone and the neighbors had all retreated back into their own big houses. She pulled up to the Pathfinder, still parked where he’d left it earlier that morning.
“Cork, I’m not on the Jacoby payroll anymore. Eddie, Ben, they’re not my worry now. But you are.” She reached into the glove box, pulled out a business card, and gave it to him. “If you need me for anything, call.”
“Listen,” he said. “That was a lousy thing I pulled in Aurora. I’m sorry.”
“Done in a good cause,” she replied, then smiled wistfully. “ Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, it might have been.’”
She leaned over, kissed his cheek, watched him get out, then growled away in her Ferrari, a car that cleaning up the messes made by people like the Jacobys had paid for.
By the time he arrived at the clinic, Jo’s examination was over and she’d gone home with Rose.
At the duplex, he found the women gathered around the kitchen table-where else?-drinking tea. The long night of despair had left them with puffy, dark-circled eyes and faces still pinched with worry. Jo was safe, but Cork suspected that for Jenny and Annie the ordeal was not over. It was clear they knew what she’d been through, were probably even now imagining it, living it in their own minds, feeling the filth of it on their own bodies. What had happened to their mother had been the kind of thing that happened to other women, other families, in other places, but here it was at their table, the monster of all fears, and Cork understood that for a while it would shadow their world.
He kissed Jo and held her.
“They kept me a long time,” he said. “I would have been there.”
“It was fine. Rose was with me.”
“Thank you.” He spoke over Jo’s shoulder to his sister-in-law. “Where’s Stevie?”
Rose said, “Mal took him to the park. He doesn’t really know what’s happened.”
“Good. Hi, guys.” He kissed both his daughters as he circled the table toward an empty chair.
They smiled bleakly.
“Would you like some tea?” Rose offered.
“Sure, what the hell. Wouldn’t happen to have a cookie to go with it?”
“Chocolate chip.”
“Rose, you are an angel.”
He looked at the two most dour faces at the table and he spoke especially to them. “You know, in the last week I’ve been shot at, threatened with a bomb, attacked with a knife. Your mother’s gone through her own terrible hell. But here we are together around this table, and I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt so lucky. Rose,” he called, “cookies all around. And don’t stint on the chocolate chips.”
Smiles like small bright caterpillars crawled across his daughters’ lips.
Later, in the privacy of the room Jo had shared with Stevie, Cork held her for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.
She spoke, her breath soft against his cheek. “The truth is, I don’t remember anything. I only have vague impressions, like a bad dream. I suppose that’s lucky.”
“It may hit you later.”
“Probably.”
“I have to see Faith Gray when I get back to Aurora. Maybe you should, too.”
“All right.”
“I wish I could have kept it from happening.”
She drew back just enough to look into his eyes. “How could you? It was such a predatory act, who could have predicted it?”
“It’s not the first time Phillip’s done something like this, Jo. I’m going to do everything I can to make certain he doesn’t prey on anybody else.”
“Do they have any idea about Ben? Who killed him?”
“Not yet. I get the feeling they’d like to pin it on me.”
“They can’t possibly suspect you.”
“If I were them, I’d consider me a pretty good suspect. Jo, Dina told me some things I think you ought to know.”
They sat on the bed in the room she had shared with Stevie, and he told her everything he knew.
“All this,” she said, “because Eddie Jacoby thought he could make a gift of me.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“All this death.”
He touched her cheek, felt her heat, her life flowing into his fingers. “We’re not dead, you and me.”
“But Ben is. Why him?”
“I don’t know.”
“I want to leave here, Cork. I want to go home.”
“The Winnetka police would like us to stay awhile. They’ll have more questions when they’re finished with the crime scene and start looking at the evidence.”
“I’ve told them everything I know.”
“So have I, several times. They’ll ask again. Before we talk to them we should have a lawyer. And there’s something else, Jo.”
He told her about Phillip Jacoby’s assertion that she had consented to the things he’d done.
“That little son of a bitch,” she gasped.
“So for a while, we sit tight and see what develops and make sure that we’re prepared to face the worst.”
She felt the tears welling, her throat closing. “Shit doesn’t just happen, does it, Cork. It happens and happens and happens.”
“Here,” he said. He kissed her hands, lifted them, and waved them gently over their heads.
“What was that?” she asked.
“A shit shield.”
She was laughing quietly when the knock came at the door.
“Cork?” Rose called. “There’s a call for you.”
Jo followed him to the kitchen, where he took the phone and said, “Yes?” He listened, looked concerned. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up.
“What is it?” Jo asked.
“That was Lou Jacoby. He wants to see me.”
