The Other Side Of Silence

“That’s right.”

“Personal business, my wife said. What does that mean, exactly?”

“Court Spicer.”

Rossi closed up, tight. You could see it happening, like watching a desert cactus flower fold its petals at sunset. But the poker face revealed nothing of what was happening behind it. He looked at Fallon, hard, for several seconds. Then he looked at his wife.

“Sharon,” he said, “please leave us alone.”

She said, “No. I want to hear what he has to say.”

“Sharon…”

“I know about Court Spicer, David.”

“You know? What do you know?”

“That you’ve been paying him money. That he has some kind of hold over you. I’m not blind and I’m not stupid.”

Rossi said, “Oh Lord,” in a low, pained voice. Then, with a flare of anger, “Dammit, we’re not alone here.”

“I already knew about it,” Fallon said.

“You… How? How did you know?”

Sharon Rossi gave Fallon a look of appeal. He said, “It doesn’t matter how I found out.”

“What are you, another bloodsucker? Is that why you’re here?”

“No.”

“Spicer. Did he send you?”

“Nobody sent me.”

“Then why? What do you want? Who are you?”

“A friend of Spicer’s ex-wife. He kidnapped their son four months ago.”

“He… what?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“I didn’t even know he had a son.”

“Eight and a half years old. The mother had custody and Spicer kidnapped him. I’ve been helping her try to find him.”

“My God. He’s an even worse bastard than I thought.”

“The last time you saw him was when?”

“A week, two weeks, I don’t remember exactly.”

“A week ago Sunday,” his wife said. “The last big jam.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Fallon said, “He came with a big man with a dragon tattoo on his right wrist. You remember him?”

“Yes, but I don’t know who he is. I never saw him before. A lot of people come to my jams, they bring others with them…”

“Have you talked to Spicer since then?”

“No.”

“You know he’s been living in the Laughlin area?”

“Yes.”

“Where, exactly? His address?”

“No.”

“Sure about that?”

“You think he’d let me have his address? Not if you know him, you don’t. A mail drop, that’s all he gave me.”

“Where were you between five and eight last night, Mr. Rossi?”

Rossi said stiffly, “Why are you asking all these questions? What do you want from me?”

“Answer the last one and I’ll tell you.”

Sharon Rossi said, “Answer him, David.”

“I was in Phoenix,” he said. “A business engagement. Drinks at five, dinner at seven. There were five of us. Would you like their names?”

A man with Rossi’s money and corporate status could get five people to lie for him if he needed to, but Fallon didn’t think he was lying. Now was the time to make sure. Pull the pin on a verbal grenade.

He said, “Spicer’s dead.”

The explosion rocked them both. Shock is one of the hardest things to fake; the open mouths and staring eyes were genuine. The brief silence that followed had a charged quality.

“Dead?” Rossi said numbly. “Dead?”

His wife said, “How? What happened?”

“Somebody killed him last night in the house he was renting.”

“Somebody… you?”

“No, not me. I wouldn’t be here telling you about it if I had.”

Rossi moved over to one of the leather chairs, started to sit down, changed his mind, and went around and leaned on the back of it. “You thought it was me,” he said then.

“I thought it could be,” Fallon said. “I don’t anymore. Whoever killed him took the boy and maybe the mother too. She was down there with me and she disappeared last night. You might’ve snatched the boy if he was a homicide witness. I couldn’t see any reason why you’d go after the mother, but I had to make sure.”

Rossi didn’t seem to be listening now. Or to notice when his wife went over next to him and put her hand on his shoulder. His eyes had a unblinking, inward focus. “Dead,” he said. “Now I really am screwed.”

“David, be quiet.”

“They’ll find it. They’ll come after me.”

“Be quiet! You said it yourself-we’re not alone.”

Rossi said, “He already knows,” meaning Fallon.

“No, he doesn’t, not everything.”

“Screwed. They’ll put me in jail. A stupid accident three years ago and I’ll go to prison.”

Sharon Rossi surprised Fallon by moving backward a step and then slapping her husband across the face, hard. The sound of it was like a pistol shot in the quiet room. Rossi recoiled, lifted a hand to his cheek, stared at her as if he couldn’t believe what she’d done.

“All right, then,” she said in that coldly angry way of hers. “Go ahead, tell us both. What stupid accident? What did you do?”

Rossi shook his head, but it wasn’t a refusal. Under that cool corporate facade, the man had a conscience that had been giving him hell for a long time. You could see it in his eyes, the grayish pallor that had replaced the ruddiness. Whatever he’d done, he was haunted by it.

Sharon Rossi sensed it too. She glanced at Fallon, an unreadable look this time, then fixed her gaze on her husband again. “I’m tired of all the secrets and evasions, David. I have a right to know. Did you hurt somebody? Kill somebody? What?”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“What wasn’t your fault?”

Rossi didn’t answer until she jabbed him with the heel of her hand. Then he said in a halting voice, like a man confessing a mortal sin to a priest, “I had too much to drink that night, I don’t remember everything that happened. The woman… dark street… all of a sudden right there in my headlights, running like somebody was chasing her… she must have been drunk. I couldn’t stop in time. I swear to God it wasn’t my fault.”

“Hit and run,” Sharon Rossi said. “You hit some woman and then drove away without reporting it.”

“God help me, yes.”

“Did you even stop to see how badly she was hurt?”

“I stopped. She was… there wasn’t anything we could do. He said we had to get out of there before somebody came. I was confused, scared… I let him talk me into it.”

“Spicer. He was in the car with you?”

“There was a jam in South Vegas. I went alone, you didn’t want to go. It was late, four A.M., when it broke up.