Читать книгу The Death Dealer - Heather Graham, Heather Graham - Страница 9

Sam Latham.

Another Raven.

Coincidence?

How many millions of people were there in the city?

Gen frowned as the newscaster went on to talk a bit about the man that had been killed, though she was relieved to hear that his young niece had been saved by a man who had left the scene after rescuing the little girl and pulling her uncle’s body from the car moments before the explosion that had destroyed it.

Joe?

How many millions of people in the city? she taunted herself.

No way.

That would be too much of a coincidence.

But Joe should have been on the FDR right around that time, on his way to the Met.

As she neared O’Malley’s, she noticed a number of people on the streets and was grateful to see that the lights in the area were bright. Maybe she was more spooked by what had happened to her than she’d thought. She parked, pleased to find a spot right outside the bar.

At the door, she hesitated.

She’d been coming here what felt like all her life. It was an authentic Irish pub, and her family was authentic New World Irish. This was pretty much the first place she had come after she was rescued, and it was one of the few places where she had felt truly comfortable, one of the few places where people hadn’t stared, where she hadn’t felt as if she needed to describe her ordeal in detail, so that people would save their pity for the dead women and not waste it on her.

She wasn’t uncomfortable about going into O’Malley’s.

She was uncomfortable about confronting Joe.

What if he was with a woman? He might not have skipped the Met just because of traffic.

Then she would sit at the bar, have a soda and chat with the bartender. She didn’t know who was on, but whoever it was, she would know him. Just as she would know a dozen of the old-timers who came here. Guys who had long since retired. Perhaps they had lost their wives, perhaps they’d never been married, but they liked to come to O’Malley’s. It was comfortable. The beer was good, the food was tasty and the prices were reasonable.

No matter what was up with Joe Connolly, she would be fine.

She pushed open the door.

Joe wasn’t with a date. At least, she didn’t think so. He was leaning against a bar stool, shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loosened.

“Hey, Joe.” She walked over to him.

Joe was a regular at the pub, too. She knew that he spent a lot of time here because he liked it. Because the beer was good, and the food was tasty and the prices were reasonable. But it was still more her place than his, she told herself. Even if he fit in just fine.

He was playing darts with Paddy O’Leary and Angus MacHenry. Regulars. Neither one of the octogenarians really drank much. She usually found them drinking soda, water or tea—hot Irish breakfast tea, always with sugar and milk.

She greeted both of them as she got closer.

The older men paused to kiss her cheek and offer her giant smiles. “Y’ doin’ okay?” Angus demanded.

“On top of the world,” she assured him.

“Y’ sure, lass?” Paddy demanded, searching out her eyes.

“I’m just fine.”

She’d been saying the same thing for a year now, but with Angus and Paddy, it was all right. They asked after her every time they saw her, took her word that she was doing fine and moved on.

Joe threw his dart. It was just shy of a bull’s-eye. He walked over, and also offered a hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was awkward, though. As if he were simply going through the expected motions.

They were friends, she told herself. Like she was friends with Paddy and Angus.

Except that Paddy and Angus could have been her great-uncles, while Joe was young and straight and pretty much the perfect man.

Too damned perfect.

“Aren’t you supposed to be up at the museum, girl?” Paddy asked.

“I was at the museum,” she said. “Now I’m here.” She smiled to take any sting out of the words.

“Ah, a great night, eh?” Angus asked, rubbing his white-bearded chin.

“It was a very good night,” she agreed. Then she hesitated. “I need to speak with Joe,” she said. “I don’t mean to mess up your game or anything.”

“Ah, don’t be silly, child,” Paddy told her.

“Get on over there with the girl, Joseph Connolly,” Angus said cheerfully. “Ye can knock the socks of the both of us old geezers later.”

Joe arched a brow, but he didn’t complain; he just reached for his jacket and said, “Certainly, gentlemen. I’m delighted to speak with Genevieve. At any time.”

His words were polite, almost gallant, but then, Joe was always polite. It seemed to come naturally to him.

But he seemed distant. He indicated an empty booth, and she took a seat. He sat across from her and ordered “another beer” as soon as the waitress arrived. Gen asked for a soda and frowned. Joe had apparently had a few drafts already.

“Are you driving?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t worry. I came by subway. You know me.”

Do I? she wondered.

“So how was the party?” he asked her.

“Great. I actually think you would have enjoyed it.”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry. I intended to come.”

She nodded. “My mother wanted to see you.” Oh, that was horrible. Laying a guilt trip on him when she knew how much he liked Eileen.

“How is she?”

“Fine. Not as worried as I think she should be.”

He arched a brow. “Ah. The ‘Poe Killing.’”

“You don’t appear to be too concerned, either.”

Again, he shrugged. It bothered her that he seemed so distracted. “I wish I could lose sleep over every terrible thing that happened, but I can’t. We all need to keep a certain distance. It’s the key to sanity and survival.”

“I want you to take the case.”

He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “Gen,” he said softly, giving her his attention at last, “your mom isn’t one of the key players in that organization. She doesn’t write about Poe. Hell, she belongs to a zillion clubs, most of them trying to make the world a better place. I can’t see her as a target.” His argument was rational, and the same one Eileen had given her.

“You can’t know that,” Genevieve said.

He inhaled, looking off into the distance. “Gen, I’m thinking about heading out to Vegas.”

She was stunned, and upset that his sudden announcement hurt her so badly. Sure, he was tall. Rugged, handsome. Frigging charming, even.

But she had led a life that didn’t include a lot of wild dating, and that was by choice. If she had wanted…well, there had been plenty of willing men out there, if for no other reason than that she was rich. She had just thought that…

She shook her head. “Fine. Move to Vegas,” she said with a shrug. “But take this case first.”

“Gen, I’m willing to bet this murder was committed by someone who just wanted to kill Thorne—the Poe angle was just a convenient smoke screen.”

“Prove it.”

He looked away for a moment.

She leaned forward urgently. “Joe, did you know that Sam Latham was driving the first car that got hit in that accident on the FDR today?”

“What?” He looked at her with a frown.

“Sam Latham. He’s a member of the New York Poe Society, another Raven.”

“And I’ll bet that at least two-thirds of the other people involved were all members of some society or other. We’re social creatures. Usually,” he added.

She shook her head, irritated. “Joe, the New York Poe Society is not a huge group. The local membership is pretty small. Both Thorne Bigelow and Sam Latham are…were on the board. As is my mother.”

For a moment, at least, that seemed to pique his interest.

“Joe, there are only nine other board members, and two are Bigelow’s family members. Jared, his son, and Mary Vincenzo, his sister-in-law. Then there are Brook Avery, Don Tracy, Nat Halloway, Lila Hawkins, Larry Levine, Lou Sayles and Barbara Hirshorn. There were twelve in all, but Thorne is dead. And now Sam is in the hospital.”

“Genevieve…it was an accident. I’m sure I don’t know Poe’s stories as well as the Ravens do, but since he died in the middle of the nineteenth century, I don’t think any of his characters murdered anyone with a car. Somebody was probably driving recklessly, might have been drunk, might have been an asshole, but it was an accident.”

“Or maybe the driver was pretending to drive recklessly, but he was really trying to hit Sam.”

“No,” he told her firmly. “I saw it, and it was an accident.”

“You saw the whole thing?”

He hesitated. “I saw a lot of it.”

“A lot of it?”

He didn’t answer her at first. It was as if he hadn’t even heard her. He was frowning, as if he were deep in thought. “Joe?”

“I told you, I saw most of it. And before that…before that, I saw the guy who probably caused it. He could have hit any car on that highway. He was driving like a maniac.”

“Did you get a look at him?”

“A saw a car weaving through traffic, and my instinct was to stay the hell away from it. Genevieve, I’m not a traffic cop.”

He was irritated, which surprised her.

“What did the car look like?” she asked.

He shook his head, still looking irritated. “Some kind of sedan. Black, dark blue, maybe dark green.”

She wasn’t sure why, but she was certain he was angry with himself, and not with her.

Because he should have noted the car. He should have known the exact color, make and model. He should have gotten the license plate. He was an ex-cop, and in his own mind, he thought he should have done all those things, because the driver had ended up killing someone.

“It was you!” she exclaimed suddenly.

“What?”

“It was you.” She knew it beyond a doubt, without need for verification. Oh, yeah. It sounded just like Joe, saving a life, then walking away. The man hated the limelight.

“I was not driving drunk!” he said indignantly.

“I’m not talking about the driver,” she said.

A curtain seemed to drop over his eyes, along with a lock of his wheaten hair.

“What was me?” he asked warily.

“The missing hero.”

He waved a hand in the air, his gray-green eyes as expressionless as steel.

“What are the odds? I’m not sure myself. Eight million who live in the city, how many million more when the work force is at its peak? During rush hour—”

“It was you,” she said. “There were eyewitnesses, and you’ll be identified eventually.” She saw his hand where it lay on the table and grabbed it. He winced. She turned it over. There was a big scrape mark on his palm.

“Look, I really don’t want a media frenzy. You understand that.”

“Yes, I do,” she said quietly. Life could be so odd. She had met Joe when he and Leslie MacIntyre had discovered the horrible pit in the subway tunnel where she had been taken after she’d been kidnapped by the monster who’d been stalking the streets of Lower Manhattan. His other victims had wound up dead. Leslie had been killed in the showdown.

Joe had been devastated.

But that day he and Genevieve had formed a certain bond. Maybe because they were both broken in a way.

Genevieve wasn’t certain if she had made it through because she had been smart, because she had stroked the killer’s ego or only because her instinct for survival had been desperate and strong. She had relied on herself in the awful days when she had been a prisoner, and in the aftermath she had created a block against those memories.

What had been harder to handle had been the press. Finding the right words to say at all times. Her uncle—who had raised her as his own child—had been a fierce taskmaster. She had been born to privilege, and he had taught her to be responsible. He had made her tough, had expected her to work hard and then harder.

After the rescue, she had been treated as if she were as fragile as a thin-shelled egg, though she had told the truth about her ordeal. Even so, rumors had found their way into the press that were more horrible than anything she’d been through, and for much too long she had been an object of pity. She appreciated that people could be compassionate, but she loathed being pitied, loathed the possibility that she might end up in the papers again.

She looked at Joe. “But it was you, on the highway, who saved that child, right?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Joe, my voice is down.”

“I won’t be able to work if this gets out. Come on, please. Don’t say anything to anyone.”

She lowered her head, smiling. Leave it to Joe. It was all about the work. She forced the smile to go away. “Take this case, Joe.”

He groaned. “Are you blackmailing me?” he demanded.

Her smile deepened. She hadn’t thought of that, but it wasn’t a bad idea. “Maybe. Now, come on, I’ll drive you home. It’s late.”

“No, but I’ll see you home.”

“Joe, you’ve had a few.”

“I meant that I’ll drive with you to your place and take a cab from there.”

“I’m okay, Joe. I carry Mace now, and I can take care of myself,” she said firmly.

Hmm. She was touchy, she realized. Friends saw friends home all the time.

Maybe being defensive was a good thing if he thought that he needed to look after her. She definitely didn’t want his pity or to have him as a guardian. She was tough enough to take care of herself. She had proven it. She had survived. And she meant to keep doing so. She had thrown herself into self-defense classes, and she spent hours on a treadmill, getting fit.

Running.

As if she could outrun the past.

“I know you can take care of yourself, but I’d still like to see you to your place. And I’d like you to promise you’ll keep your mouth shut about me helping out at the accident,” he said firmly.

“Joe, I’ll keep my mouth shut. And you can see me home,” she told him gravely, “if you promise to take on the case.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so afraid, Gen. Really. I simply don’t believe your mother is a target.”

“Joe…” She hesitated. She didn’t know herself why she was so concerned. Her mother hadn’t been a close friend of the dead man. Eileen and Thorne had been casual acquaintances, at best, brought together only by their membership on the board.

But she was scared. Bone-deep frightened. It was something that had just settled over her, and she wouldn’t be comfortable until the killer was caught.

“Please. The cops aren’t getting anywhere.”

“Give them time.”

“In time,” she told him, even though she herself had been thinking earlier that the press should cut the cops some slack, “somebody else could die.”

He lifted his hands, staring at her, shaking his head.

“Eileen hasn’t been threatened in any way, has she?”

“No.”

“Genevieve…” He lowered his head for a moment, then shook it again. “Gen, it’s only been a week, which is no time at all. You’ve been watching too much television. A murder like Thorne Bigelow’s isn’t solved in a one-hour episode.”

“I know that,” she said sharply.

“Then…”

“Joe, this is what you do for a living. I want to hire you.”

He sighed. “I’d be stepping in where people are hard at work already. I don’t know that I could find out anything new.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe you could do something. Before somebody else gets killed. That’s just it, Joe. Someone else could die.”

It was strange, but just then Kathryn, their waitress, came by, her eyes wide. “Man, what a night for the bizarre!”

“Why? What happened?” Genevieve asked.

Joe was studying Kathryn with apprehension.

The waitress shook her head. “There’s always one in every crowd, you know? Someone who just has to stick their nose in and make a tragedy worse.”

“What are you talking about?” Joe asked.

“The psychic,” Kathryn said.

“What psychic?” Joe demanded.

“Go look at the television,” Kathryn said disgustedly. “There’s a reporter talking to her right now, actually. Just turn around and you can see. It’s that Robert Kinley, and he’s with some so-called psychic named Lori Star, who claims that some guy named Sam Layman or Latham or something was supposed to die in the accident, and that it was the Poe Killer behind it.”

“How could she know that?” Joe asked, his expression darkening.

Kathryn shrugged. “She said she just knows it. And she says she knows more, too.”

“See?” Genevieve said.

“Oh, please!” Joe said.

“Joe, I’m telling you, it makes sense. That’s why I’m afraid,” Genevieve pressed.

“She is convincing,” Kathryn admitted. “She says that in a few days, someone else will die.”

“A Raven?” Genevieve breathed.

“She didn’t say. Just go watch. All she said was that the Poe Killer will murder someone else.”

Genevieve slipped out of the booth first, but she was quickly followed by Joe.

The woman, who was at the accident scene talking to the well-known anchor, was attractive enough. She just seemed to be slightly…rough around the edges. Her voice was clear, though, and her grammar was good. She didn’t have an identifiable accent.

She also seemed to know how to play to the camera. She was direct and dramatic, without overplaying her cards. “It’s true,” she whispered to the camera, wide-eyed.

“Most people would say that’s impossible,” the anchor told her. There was slight scoffing in his voice. Nothing direct. He was too professional for that.

“It was as if I were there,” the woman said. “As if I were driving.”

“And you said that you felt heat and anger?”

“Yes. It was as if I were someone else, and I could feel that person’s feelings.”

“Were you a man or a woman?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But as I said before, I do know this. It was the Poe Killer. And I know this, as well. He, or she, intends to kill again—soon.”

“Thank you, Miss Star.” The anchor turned his full attention to the cameras. “Truth or fiction? What’s in store for New York? Well, first things first. The police are busy cleaning up the FDR, and it’s going to be a long ride home for anyone on that highway tonight.”

Another anchor picked up from the studio, and Genevieve turned to look at Joe, but he was already turning away.

“Kathryn, I’ll take another beer, please,” he called.