“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’ll speak later.” Amberson gave him a confident smile. “We have a lot to talk about.”
Chapter 40
Desmond took the 6 train back to Forty-Second Street, feeling a low-grade rage burning in his chest. It had started bubbling over when Trin had brought up his family. In his mind, his mother was a hero. No one could hold a candle to her, and her selfless devotion to her family made him proud. But he realized that the rest of the world didn’t hold her in any kind of esteem. They looked at her as a murderer. That was a burden Dominique had had to carry through her life. Desmond, at least, got to visit their mother in prison. But their grandmother wouldn’t allow that for Dominique—she always maintained it would harm the girl, seeing her mother in such a state, as she put it—so the last time Dominique saw her mother was when she was four. His sister had been robbed of her childhood, while their mother was robbed of her freedom.
Desmond had always assumed that, one day, he would talk to Dominique about it. He owed her the truth, even though revealing it would break the promise he’d made to their mother. Swear to me, swear before God, that you will never tell anyone what happened here tonight. When he closed his eyes, he could hear his mother’s voice demanding that vow from him. More than anything in his life, he regretted making it. There had been blood on his mother’s hands when she’d said it, blood from the oozing wound in her husband’s head. She was kneeling beside the corpse, and her voice cracked, even though her eyes were dry.
Coward, he chided himself. You are nothing but a coward, hiding behind a promise. You should’ve died, not Dominique. He couldn’t shake the uneasiness. He could never set things right, and he was starting to see he’d have to live with that sickening realization every day for the rest of his life.
He picked up a sandwich inside Grand Central’s subterranean food court and went up to his room at the Hyatt. The maid had been in, so the bed was made and he had fresh towels. There was no view from his little cell, since it looked into an airshaft. He ate his lunch standing up, staring out the window anyway.
His greatest fear, at that moment, was that Westergren would be slapped down by his superiors and the Pennsylvania cops would sign off on Dominique’s and Gary’s deaths as accidental. It wouldn’t surprise him if the police wanted to back off the case. Cops didn’t like having an unsolved murder on the books. Accidental death made everybody happy. Everybody except the families of the victims, who saw justice moving out of their grasp like a balloon carried off by the wind.
He left a message for Westergren. Right before he hung up, he added, “Please don’t give up on this.” He needed to be in motion, and the thought of waiting pained him. The longer things stalled, the greater a chance Max had to get away scot-free. The trail was getting colder by the hour. He’d been assuming that Trinity would be behind the plot, but now he wasn’t so sure. The man who murdered Dominique was out there, nameless, faceless, and completely free.
The phone on the desk rang, and Desmond picked it up. “Mr. Edgars? There are a couple of people here to see you. A Detective Iorio and a Detective Reich.”
Hairs stood up on the back of Desmond’s neck. The cops just showing up at his hotel? That set off alarm bells. Well, if they wanted to arrest him, this was as good a time as any, he figured.
“I’ll be right down,” he said.
When the elevator doors opened, Iorio and Reich were loitering in the lobby. “Desmond,” Iorio said, and she smiled, as if it were entirely normal for them to stop by his hotel. Reich’s expression made it clear they weren’t there for afternoon tea, in case Desmond hadn’t figured that out already.
“It’s your lucky day,” Reich said.
“How’s that?”
“We made a few calls, and we actually found a lady on Roosevelt Island with a chocolate Labrador retriever named Hershey,” Iorio said.
“Even better, she remembers you,” Reich added.
“The quote from Ms. Forbus is actually pretty funny,” Iorio chimed in again. “She said, ‘Yeah, I noticed that guy. I figured he was either a creep who was going to kidnap a child, or else he got stood up for a date.’”
Desmond stared at them. He knew he should be grateful anyone remembered him from his fruitless trip to Lighthouse Park. But he wondered how these cops could suddenly be so lighthearted. He didn’t trust a word out of their mouths. Before he could say anything to change their minds and get himself arrested after all, his phone rang. It was Westergren. “I need to take this call,” he said. “Excuse me.”
He walked toward the waterfall in the lobby, glad to put some distance between himself and the cops. He could feel the detectives’ eyes on him, just as he had the night before. Nothing had changed, in spite of Iorio’s smiling face. They were still looking at him as Tom Klepper’s killer.
“You aren’t going to believe what I found!” Westergren’s voice was hot with excitement.
“Please let this be good news.” Desmond glanced at the detectives.
“It is. I found Max.”
That hit Desmond like a thunderbolt. “Talk to me. Where?”
“We got a DNA hit from a database,” Westergren said. “It’s a definite match for a Max Brantov from Long Island. Only… here’s where it gets bizarre.”
“He’s already got a criminal record?”
“No, I mean, it’s bizarre that we found him in this database.”
“What database?”
“The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,” Westergren said.
“He… he kidnapped a child?”
“No. Max Brantov is a missing child.”
