Читать книгу Sullivan's Last Stand - Harper Allen - Страница 14

“Let’s take it from the top again. Why the hell did you and your lady here break into the house anyway?”

They were back at Sullivan Investigations, where Sullivan had told the police they would be when he’d contacted them from the trashed bungalow on his cell phone. Bailey could guess why he hadn’t wanted to hang around waiting for the authorities to show up, and as soon as the two of them returned to the office her guess had been proved right. Giving a quick rundown of the situation to three of his top operatives, he’d grimly instructed them to drop whatever other cases they were on and start looking for their missing comrade.

His haste in getting a search under way was justified. Within minutes of the briefing session, two police detectives had showed up asking for him and Bailey, and it was clear from the attitude of the younger man of the pair that he was prepared to grill them all night if he didn’t get the answers he wanted. So far he’d concentrated his attention on Sullivan, but at this last query Bailey couldn’t keep silent any longer.

“Hold it right there, Detective Straub.” She pushed herself from the edge of the gleamingly polished conference table that she’d been leaning against and took a step nearer the man. He was fair skinned, with sandy hair that was already starting to recede, and at her interruption he turned a blank look upon her, as if he’d forgotten she was in the room. His partner, a man about Sullivan’s age, burly and solid, swiftly hid the flash of amusement that momentarily lightened his somber expression.

“I’m not anyone’s lady, Detective.” She bit the words off curtly. “I run an investigative agency of my own—Triple-A Acme Investigations. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

“It’s the first one in the phone book,” Sullivan added blandly.

She shot him an annoyed look. “I dropped by this afternoon to discuss an unrelated business matter with Mr. Sullivan. When he learned that one of his employees hadn’t been in to work for a few days and couldn’t be contacted, I suggested we continue our talk on the way to Jackson’s place so he could check the situation out.” She didn’t meet Sullivan’s alert gaze. “Frankly, I think he acted entirely appropriately. Our first thought was that the man had been taken ill and possibly needed assistance. It wasn’t until we saw that his house had obviously been searched that we knew the matter was anything more than just an employee laid low by a flu bug.”

She was lying through her teeth, Bailey thought in faint surprise, and until the words had actually come out of her mouth, she hadn’t known that she had no intention of telling the truth—the whole truth, she fudged weakly to herself. After all, she had come here originally to discuss business with Sullivan, not realizing initially that it would have any connection to the absence from work of one of his operatives.

If it did, she added mentally. Finding her sister’s case file at the man’s house wasn’t proof positive that the two disappearances were linked. It could mean quite the contrary, but that didn’t alter the fact that there was one other detail that she—and Sullivan, too, she now realized—hadn’t bothered to mention to the two detectives. She resisted the impulse to glance guiltily at her oversize shoulder bag, only a few feet away from her on a chair, but when Straub’s partner finally spoke, she wondered at first whether he’d somehow been able to read her mind.

“Seems strange that someone would go to so much trouble to empty filing cabinets when all they contained were historical research for a book,” he mused, propping one polyester-clad thigh on the conference table and fishing in the pocket of his disreputable sport coat for something. His hand withdrew, and in it was a paper-wrapped toothpick. With the same fascination that a mouse would give a snake, Bailey watched him as he slowly peeled the paper away, wadding it up into a tiny ball and looking around the room as if there was nothing more important on his mind right now than to find a wastebasket in which to throw his minuscule piece of trash. Not seeing one, he sighed and dropped the wadded-up ball into his pocket. Then he inserted the toothpick between his lips and gave it a thoughtful chew.

Straub looked as if he was about to burst into impatient speech again, but the man that Sully had called Fitzgerald gave him a glance and, with obvious difficulty, Straub bit back whatever he’d been about to say.

Fitzgerald was the bulldog to Straub’s high-strung fox terrier, she thought suddenly. With his big build running slightly to fat and his slow, deliberate movements, he gave the impression of being the stereotypical plodding cop.

But he was the one she had to worry about. His next comment, although it was phrased as an afterthought, made that abundantly clear.

“I know I don’t have to ask if you left the scene exactly as you found it, Sullivan. You’ve been in this business long enough not to be removing evidence, haven’t you?”

There was the faintest of brogues in his inquiry, and when Sullivan spoke his voice held an echo of it.

“Sure, Fitz, and you were right the first time. You don’t have to ask.” His attitude was as lazily unconcerned as the other man’s, but Bailey had the unsettling feeling that the real conversation between the two was as antagonistic as it was unspoken.

“I’ve changed, Fitz,” Sullivan went on, pulling out a chair from the table and straddling it backward. He folded his arms along its back and shook his head ruefully. “You still see me as that crazy lad I used to be, but those days are behind me. I’ve learned to play by the rules, now.”

“Is that so?” There was a harder note in Fitzgerald’s voice, but his expression was one of mild interest, no more. “The way I heard it, it took you entirely too long to learn that lesson, and it was an expensive one. But you seem to have come through unscathed.”

“The same way you came through that unpleasantness at that godforsaken little desert town unscathed,” Sullivan said softly. “Who the hell were we fighting that time, anyway, Fitz? I forget.”

His arms were still folded casually along the back of his chair, and his posture was easy and relaxed, but glancing sharply at his face, Bailey saw a muscle at the side of his jaw tense. Puzzled, she flicked her gaze back to Fitzgerald. There was a rigid stillness on his expression, and she saw that Sullivan’s words had meant something to him.

“The enemy,” the detective said shortly. “That’s all we ever had to know, Sully. But maybe we were always really fighting ourselves. You saved my life that night—except we never should have been so far away from backup in the first place, Terry, and you know it.”

Their eyes locked, and for a moment Bailey had the uncomfortable feeling that if she dared to step between the burly police detective and the big man lounging in the chair, it would be like intercepting twin laser beams. She’d known from Sullivan’s greeting of Fitzgerald that there was some level of familiarity between them, but now she realized that that familiarity ran much deeper than she had first suspected.

Fitzgerald had obviously served with Sullivan as a soldier of fortune. Unlike the graying Englishman she’d spoken with that day on the Common, it seemed he hadn’t approved of his methods.

“What the hell has this trip down memory lane got to do with anything, Donny?” Straub burst out, his limited supply of patience obviously depleted. “Whatever wars you two fought together in are long over, so why don’t we get back to the matter at hand here?” He turned to Sullivan. “I think we should go over your story one more time, mister. Maybe you’ll remember a few more details down at the station.”

He’d done what she had known instinctively would be foolish, Bailey thought. He’d interfered in whatever private battle was going on between Sullivan and Fitz, and suddenly the two ex-comrades were once again on the same side, united against him.

“Wars are never over, Petey boy,” his partner said in a deceptively silky tone. “Not that you’d know about that, since you never fought in one. If you had, you might have learned something about reading men. Sully here is lying about something, I’m sure of it—but I’d bet my next paycheck that he’s telling the truth when he says he doesn’t know what happened to his man Jackson.”

“Yeah? Well, any lie is grounds to take him in as far as I’m concerned,” Straub said tightly, his fair skin coloring. “Once we get him into an interrogation room, I’m willing to bet my paycheck that I can hold out longer than he can. I want some answers from your foxhole buddy, and I’m going to get them.”

Sullivan finally spoke. The edge of amusement in his voice was deliberate, Bailey knew. “I don’t think so, boyo. Wearing you down would be so easy it wouldn’t even be fun. You might be hell on grilling petty thieves and hookers, but you’re way out of your league with me. Your partner here will back me up on that one.” He glanced over at Fitzgerald, and the burly detective allowed a ghost of a grin to cross his features. He shifted the toothpick in his mouth and nodded.

“Thirty-seven hours of questioning by the leader of that insane rebel faction in the mountains, wasn’t it, Sully?”

“Thirty-eight,” Sullivan said, frowning slightly. “Or maybe thirty-nine. That last hour was pretty much a blur. I was beginning to think you and the boys had taken a vote and decided to wash your hands of me.”

“When we finally showed up, I seem to recollect you were going through Al-Hamid’s family tree for him. It was hard to make out exactly what you were saying through a broken jaw and with the side of your face the approximate size of a football, but it appeared as though he was getting the gist. Something about a sheep, or was it a goat?”

Sullivan grinned wryly. “Hell, all I was trying to do by then was make him mad enough to get careless. It would have worked, too, if you and McGuire hadn’t barged in just when I was getting to the good part.” He glanced over at Fitzgerald. “Anyway, it all worked out in the end. I got the troop strength and materiel figures we needed, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.” The faint amusement left the other man’s face, and his tone was quiet. “And you nearly got what you really wanted. Of course, that didn’t stop you from trying again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Fitz.” Watching him, Bailey saw the blue eyes become instantly opaque, although there was no change in the easy good humor of his expression. “I got out alive—that time with Al-Hamid, and every other time.”

The detective’s gaze was steady and unwavering, and under it Sullivan looked suddenly away. “Don’t lie to yourself, Sully.” There was an odd intensity in his tone. “Lie to everyone else if you have to, but not to yourself. You did get what you wanted in the end, didn’t you? You’re a dead man walking,” he said softly, his voice pitched so low that Bailey had to strain to hear him.

The conference room was well lit and spacious, but all of a sudden she felt as if the walls were closing in on her and the lights had flickered and powered down. Dead man walking. What did Fitzgerald mean by that? Even as the question came into her mind, she knew it was unnecessary to voice it. The heavyset ex-soldier, with his deceptively stolid demeanor and his prosaically unimaginative manner, had simply put into words the impression that she had always told herself was too fanciful and melodramatic to consider. Fitz saw the same thing in Terrence Patrick Sullivan that she’d subconsciously seen the first time she’d laid eyes on him.

He was good-looking, charming and seemingly invulnerable, Bailey thought. But something had a claim on his soul, and eventually that something would call in its claim.

“Your Irish imagination is running away with you, boyo.”

Sullivan’s wry grin looked so natural that Bailey felt a momentary doubt. Maybe both she and Fitzgerald were wrong. Maybe Sully was exactly what he appeared to be on the surface, and what he insisted he was—a risktaker, yes, but with no more ulterior motivation behind his actions than an innate tendency to push situations to their limits, simply for the thrill of it.

“Next you’ll be taking a leaf from Quinn McGuire’s book of fairy tales and telling me that the wild geese have laid their mark on me. Is that what you think, Fitz—that they’re waiting to take me with them from some battlefield that still lies ahead? Because if you do, then you’re forgetting one thing.” His brogue thickened. “I’ve got no intention entirely of joining them in eternity. That’s why I walked away from the profession, isn’t it now? They can’t take me if I never go back, Fitz.”

His words were gently mocking, but, glancing surreptitiously at the man he was directing them at, Bailey didn’t see an answering smile on Fitzgerald’s face. Instead his eyes closed for an instant, as if in pain. Then he opened them again and fixed Sullivan with an unwavering gaze.

“They don’t have to. You’re already up there with them, Sully.”

“I thought we were here on an investigation, Donny.” Straub’s interjection was harsh. “What’s all this crap about freakin’ geese and battlefields and fairy tales got to do with anything?”

“Nothing at all, Detective.” Sullivan’s answer was just as harsh, but although he was apparently answering Straub, he didn’t take his eyes off Fitzgerald. “It’s a legend, that’s all. Your partner here likes to trot out his Irish fatalism once in a while. It’s all part of it, like the wearing of the green on St. Paddy’s Day, getting into drunken arguments with strangers over the Troubles and insisting that one day you’re going back to the old country for good. Like you so eloquently phrase it, it’s crap.”

His grin was tight. “And to be sure, I’d love to get together and lift a pint to Erin go Bragh sometime with you, Fitz, but right now I’ve got a business to run. If your baby pit bull intends to take me in for questioning, let’s go. I’ll call my lawyer and tell him to meet us down at the station. If not, then let me get back to work. Jackson was supposed to be looking into a case of industrial espionage this week, and I’m going to have to get another operative to take over the file.”

“All right, that’s it.” Straub’s fair skin was mottled with anger. He took a step toward the chair that Sullivan was lounging in. “Call your lawyer now, mister, because you’re under arrest—”

“For God’s sake, Pete, put the cuffs away,” his partner cut in tiredly. “Until we know what he lied about, it’s hands off.” The big man looked at the toothpick he was holding with sudden distaste, and then he sighed. “You know, Straub, I’m just counting the days until Tarranova comes back from maternity leave and you get assigned as temporary partner to some other hapless soul.”

“When she does, Fitz, come back and pay me another visit.” Rising easily from the chair he’d been straddling, Sullivan shoved it in under the table, the innocuous gesture clearly signifying that the meeting was over. “She’s a sweetheart, besides being a damn good cop, and I wouldn’t mind seeing Jennifer again. But from now on keep this rookie away from me and my people, understand?”

“I understand, Sully.” Fitzgerald’s voice lost its weary tone and took on a harder edge. “Don’t worry, I won’t return unless I have to.” He stood in front of Sullivan, as if sizing him up. “Just seeing me brings it all back, and you can’t live with that, can you? You never could.”

“See you around, Fitz,” Sullivan said shortly, walking to the doorway of the conference room and ignoring the other detective. “You know the way out.”

“Yeah, I do.” As Straub shot a black glance at Sullivan and stalked out of the room, Fitz hesitated. For the first time his attention focused on Bailey, and she felt oddly off balance under his intent scrutiny.

“You lied, too, Ms. Flowers,” he said softly. “You didn’t just come here on business. Take my advice and let him go, lady. He’s gone already.” The blue eyes narrowed on her searchingly. “But maybe you already knew that,” he said, so quietly that Bailey realized Sullivan, a few feet away, wouldn’t have heard him. “You can’t save him, you know. No one ever could.”

“Maybe no one ever tried.” The words came from her mouth unthinkingly, and in just as low a tone as his. “Or maybe they just didn’t try hard enough.”

The big detective shook his head slowly. “You’re as doomed as he is if you let yourself believe that. He can’t change the road he’s on. Don’t go down it with him.”

As Sullivan glanced over impatiently from the doorway, Fitzgerald gave Bailey one last look, and then turned from her. Without another word, he strode past his ex-comrade and was gone, leaving behind him a sudden silence.

Very carefully, Bailey walked over to the conference table. Pulling out a chair, she lowered herself into it, her movements slow and deliberate. The atmosphere in the room seemed close and heavy, but despite that she felt oddly chilled. She hugged herself for warmth and realized with a small shock that the fine hairs on her skin were standing up.

She didn’t blame Straub for being confused. She had no idea what that conversation had been about. She didn’t even know what her part in it had meant.

Why hadn’t she laughed off Fitzgerald’s cryptic warning, or at least asked him to explain what he’d meant by it? Why had she answered him the way she had, and so promptly?

Maybe they didn’t try hard enough…Her lips pressed together in a line and she sat up straighter in the chair, feeling a flicker of anger catch somewhere deep inside her. She wasn’t here to save Terrence Sullivan, dammit. She’d come here to get some answers about what had happened to Angelica. Admittedly, she’d also hoped to gain some closure on her former relationship with him by finally learning the truth about why he’d needed to tear her life apart so completely a year ago, but that had been for her own sake, not his.

She looked up as he moved from the doorway and met her eyes, his own as unclouded as if he’d already forgotten the scene that had just taken place with the two detectives.

“He knew we took the file.” He perched on the edge of the long mahogany table and looked down at her, one corner of his mouth lifting. “Well, maybe he didn’t know what we took, but he knew we had something from Jackson’s house. Fitz doesn’t miss much.”

“I’d already come to that conclusion.” She didn’t match his light tone. “What was the legend he was talking about? What are the wild geese?”

“ Who are the wild geese, darlin’,” he corrected her, shrugging. “They’re the souls of mercenaries who die in battle, if you’re inclined to believe in that sort of thing. I’m not. Fitz and Quinn McGuire, another of my old comrades, are.”

Despite his wry smile, his tone was clipped, and Bailey knew he was about to change the subject. Before he could, she went on, frowning. “Where are they supposed to be flying to?”

He gave an impatient sigh. “Fitz and his old wives’ tales, for God’s sake. The story goes that they’re fated to fly for eternity, searching the world over for the homes they never had.” Without seeming to realize what he was doing, his hand went to his pants pocket and pulled out a small object. He continued, his manner verging on brusqueness. “But he can’t have it both ways. If his damned legend were true, then it’d be easy enough to escape fate. All a poor Irish boy like myself would have to do is turn his back on that life and take up another profession, and he’d be out of their reach. All my wars are behind me, honey. I’m safe from Fitz’s ghosts now.”

The small object was a shell. Bailey watched it flash and reappear as he unthinkingly maneuvered it between his fingers, like a gambler with one last coin. He saw her watching him, and his fingers stilled.

“That’s pretty. Can I see it?”

She held out her hand, and after an almost imperceptible hesitation he dropped it into her palm. She looked at it more closely. It was fan shaped, with a perfectly round hole in the exact middle of the fan. It was smooth, as if its ridges had been worn down over the years, and instead of being cool, as she had expected, it felt oddly warm in her hand.

She looked up at Sullivan. “How did you drill such a tiny hole—” She halted abruptly, shocked at the expression on his face.

His eyes were dark with pain, and the skin over his cheekbones seemed to have tightened, sharpening the hard angles of his face. His lips were a tautly compressed line, and when he spoke they barely moved.

“I didn’t drill it. It was formed that way, or at least that’s what my father told me. He carried it on him for years. After he died, it was sent to me along with the rest of his final effects, and now I keep it on me, just like he did. He said it was his talisman.”

As if he couldn’t help himself, he held out his hand for the shell and she handed it back. As soon as his fingers wrapped around it, he seemed to relax, and carefully he dropped it into his pocket again.

“Psalm 91,” he said, his voice once more edged with rueful humor. “‘The arrow that flieth by day, the pestilence that walketh in darkness.’ Thomas Sullivan believed that as long as he carried it, he would be protected from them, and now his son’s carrying on the tradition. I guess there’s a little superstition in me after all.”

Superstition hadn’t been the cause of that terrible bleakness she’d seen on his face, Bailey thought, shaken. But she knew the man well enough to realize that if that was what he wanted her to believe, nothing she could say would get anything more out of him. Needing suddenly to bring some semblance of normalcy back to the conversation, she reached for her purse on the chair beside her and pulled out the file.

“I guess this is called withholding evidence,” she said, hoping that her voice sounded steadier than she felt. As if he was just as eager to seize upon a new topic as she was, Sullivan took the slim sheaf of papers she handed him.

“Obstructing the police in the commission of their duties, at least.” He flipped through the first few pages of Jackson’s report, scanning them rapidly. “Nothing here that you didn’t already know, is there?”

“Just details.” She lifted her shoulders. “But they’ll help. He mentions the name of the hotel, for example, and the number of the room Plowright and his playmate were staying in.”

“And the photos he took.” Sullivan was on the last page of the report. “This is a list of them, with a description of where and when each one was taken. Listen to this. ‘Roll 2, frame 16: Subject Plowright beside bed. Unidentified female companion on bed, wearing negligee. Blinds on hotel suite’s French doors fully open.’ He must have been using a telephoto lens to get that shot.”

He handed the report to her. After a moment she looked up from it in disappointment. “That was the spiciest one he got. Before Plowright got down to business he closed the blinds.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. Frame 19 is him, shirtless, closing them, according to Hank’s list.” Sullivan shrugged. “Still, it’s pretty conclusive, even if they weren’t caught on film actually doing the wild thing with each—”

“Little pitchers have big ears, Terry,” a brisk voice said from the doorway. “I know it’s asking a lot of you, but try to keep it clean for the next few minutes.”

Bailey looked up swiftly. The woman who had spoken was fixing Sullivan with a glare from blue eyes that looked a lot like his. Her hair was as almost the same midnight shade as his was, too, and not much longer, its urchinlike cut framing an angry, heart-shaped face. Beside her was a young girl with long coltlike legs and a mane of coppery hair tamed into a thick braid that was coming undone.

Sullivan looked at his watch and then swore under his breath. “I said seven o’clock, didn’t I?” he said weakly. “I’m sorry, Lee. Something came up and I lost track of the time. But you’re here now, so why don’t we—”

“Some things just never change, Terry. Not where the Sullivan men are concerned, anyway.” The dark-haired woman’s expression was tight and closed. “It’s way after regular office hours, so I’m guessing this isn’t a business appointment.”

She jerked her head stiffly at Bailey, her voice rising. “Like father, like son. It’s obvious that you can’t fit into a normal life any more than Thomas could. Why don’t you just go back to being a damned mercenary, like he did in the end?”