“He managed to convince Patty’s granddad.” Jane got into the passenger seat. “She’s freaked out about it. She said it’s almost as if he’s not her grandfather.”
“That much difference?”
Jane nodded. “He took her hand and told her that she had to take care of herself. She said she couldn’t remember a gesture of affection from him all the time she was growing up.”
“Sad.”
“She was used to it. She’s not used to warmth and caring from him. She’s wondering if he’s had a stroke or something.”
“Or something.”
“It’s as if Caleb hypnotized him.”
Eve remembered that moment in the restaurant when she’d thought Caleb’s intensity was almost hypnotic. “Not likely. It takes time to induce hypnosis, and he was only in that room for a few moments. Maybe what he said to the old man just struck the right note.”
“He said something about her grandfather really caring about her. If that’s true, you’d never know it from the way he treats her.”
“Sometimes people can’t show how they feel.” Eve started the car. “Maybe he’s one of them.”
“Until Caleb walked in and had a talk with him,” Jane said. “Crazy . . .”
“Yes,” Eve said. “But what hasn’t been crazy since Jelak appeared in our lives? We just have to deal with it.”
“I’M ON MY WAY HOME,” Joe told Eve, when she picked up the call at the cottage two hours later. “I just left the precinct, so it will be forty minutes or so. Is everything okay there?”
“Yes, I’m working, and Jane is out on the porch with Toby. Have you eaten?”
“I grabbed a sandwich from the machine.” He paused. “Charlie Brand will take over surveillance tomorrow morning. I couldn’t get him tonight.”
“Good enough,” Eve said. “It will be like having a friend out there. Patty needs all the friends she has around her right now. I’ll see you soon.” She hung up.
Eve had sounded abstracted, Joe thought as he hung up. But then she was always abstracted when she was working. After the first measurements of the skull, she became totally engrossed in the process of turning clay into a perfect replica of the face of the victim. It was a combination of scientific exploration and sheer instinct and creativity. When she’d finished putting on her tissue depth markers, the skull resembled a voodoo doll. Then she started taking strips of plasticene and building up the spaces between the markers and lastly came the smoothing and working of the clay. She always told him that there was no such thing as perfection in forensic sculpting, but Eve came very close. He always thought that her instinct became almost magical as the face grew beneath her fingers.
At any rate, he was glad that she was doing something that would keep her mind off Jelak. The bastard was coming closer every minute and touching people they both cared about. Patty had been a part of their lives for years and that goblet was—
“He didn’t want Patty,” Nancy Jo said. “Eve is the only one he wants.”
That car swerved as he glanced at the passenger seat. She was sitting there, next to him.
“No!” He drew a deep breath, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “I thought I was rid of you. What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t come back to the lake. I had to come to you.” She frowned. “It wasn’t easy. I didn’t know how to do it. Someone had to teach me.”
“Then you should have stayed there. I’m doing everything I can do.”
“He’s still alive. He still has my blood. And Daddy is getting impatient. I can feel it.”
“Then go get someone to teach you how to reach him. Your father is damn persistent. I’m not going to be able to stop him.”
“I know.” Her blue eyes were full of tears. “He won’t give up. He has someone following you right now.”
“What?”
“The blue Camry in the next lane. It’s someone he hired to keep an eye on you. He didn’t like it that you wouldn’t take a bribe.”
“You seem to know a lot about what’s going on.”
“I’m learning. I have to learn. No one is helping me . . . except her.”
“Except who?”
“The little girl.”
He stiffened. “What little girl?”
“The one who taught me how to come to you. She said I should get away from the place where it happened. She said if I was going to stay, I should go away somewhere and begin to heal.”
“She appears very knowledgeable about this kind of situation,” he said.
“Yes, she said it happened a long time ago for her. I liked her. She wasn’t like the others. She didn’t try to push me. She just sat with me and told me she knew what I was feeling. She was quiet, and yet she made me feel . . . good.”
