Chương 5
“My son is here,” the older woman said. “He has the baby.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not saying you can’t come home.”
“You’re saying not tonight.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
It was not okay, but Mrs. Alvarez had a grandchild in the apartment. Fear did not become cruelty simply because it hurt.
After the call, Grace found a packet of instant coffee beside the sink. The machine produced a brown liquid that smelled faintly burned. She drank it anyway.
At Adrian’s house, Mason made coffee in a steel press and counted exactly four minutes before lowering the plunger. Adrian drank espresso after dinner, then complained that he could not sleep. Nurse Carter took hers with too much vanilla creamer. Dr. Brooks had not appeared to drink anything all day.
Grace caught herself cataloging people the way she cataloged stains: what caused them, what set them, what might lift them without damage.
Her mother had once told her that being observant was not the same as being wise.
“You notice the knife,” she had said after Grace finally left Lily’s father. “You just keep washing around it.”
At nine that evening, Mason knocked.
One officer opened the door but remained between him and the room.
Mason held a paper bag. “Food.”
“We have food,” Grace said.
She had eaten half a cheese sandwich and three of Lily’s crackers.
“This is from the kitchen downstairs.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Lily will.”
The bag smelled of chicken broth and fresh bread. Lily slept through the exchange.
Mason handed it to the officer, who checked inside before setting it on the counter.
“Adrian’s blood pressure is improving,” Mason said.
“Dr. Brooks told me.”
“The police searched my car.”
“Did they find anything?”
“No.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I sound tired.”
For the first time, she noticed a line of gray at his temples. Mason was forty-two, only thirteen years older than Grace, but men like him seemed to age by a different calendar. He had probably been tired since before she knew his name.
He looked at the sleeping child.
“I did not touch Adrian’s dressing.”
“Did you touch Lily’s rabbit?”
“No.”
“Did you send someone who did?”
“No.”
“Did one of your men?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer came too quickly to be practiced and too plainly to be comforting.
Grace folded her arms. “Tell the police everything.”
“I told them what concerns the hospital.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Adrian was shot at a warehouse on the south riverfront at eleven twenty-seven yesterday morning. The weapon has not been recovered. The shooter escaped through a service alley. Adrian refused a public trauma center because he believed the ambulance route had been compromised.”
“And this hospital took him under a false name.”
“Yes.”
“Who arranged it?”
“I did.”
“Who knew where he was?”
“Eight people.”
“The men with the rings?”
“Some.”
“Why would one of them kill him?”
Mason looked toward the officer.
Grace said, “You wanted to question my child in a public corridor. You can answer me in front of a cop.”
He took a slow breath.
“Adrian discovered that money had been removed from one of his companies.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“That means nothing.”
“Fourteen million dollars.”
Grace almost laughed again. Her checking account had contained sixty-three dollars before payday.
“Who took it?”
“That is what he was trying to determine.”
“You?”
Mason’s eyes rested on hers. “Some of it.”
The officer shifted his stance.
Grace said, “Why?”
“Because I believed I could put it back.”
“That is what people say when they take money.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do with fourteen million dollars?”
“I did not take fourteen.”
“How much?”
“Three.”
The absurdity of the number made the room feel unreal.
Mason continued before she could speak. “Nolan moved the rest through trucking invoices. Adrian found the discrepancy. He believed the money financed a narcotics operation he had forbidden.”
Grace thought of the night six weeks earlier when she had cleaned the dining room during a meeting. Adrian had said, “No powder through my trucks.” A man she could not see had replied, “You don’t get to grow a conscience after twenty years.”
Then a chair scraped. Grace had carried the polishing cloth into the pantry and turned on the faucet until the voices stopped.
“Nolan Sykes said that,” she whispered.
Mason’s expression changed.
“You heard them?”
“I heard Adrian say no drugs through his trucks. I heard Nolan say something about a conscience.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“I work in a house where men lower their voices when I enter. I thought that was how I stayed alive.”
Mason glanced at Lily.
“Adrian intended to remove Nolan,” he said. “He also intended to give financial records to a federal attorney if Nolan refused to shut the operation down.”
“To save himself.”
“In part.”
“And you?”
“I had signed transfers. If the records surfaced, I would be exposed.”
“So you needed Adrian dead too.”
Mason’s face remained still. “Yes.”
The officer’s hand moved closer to his radio.
Mason noticed.
“Needing a problem to disappear is not the same as murdering a man.”
“It is probably how murder starts.”
“Sometimes.”
Grace hated him for agreeing.
He nodded toward the paper bag. “The soup will keep an hour.”
“Why are you telling me any of this?”
“Because if Nolan is responsible, he will assume Lily can identify him.”
“Can she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It is the truth more often than people admit.”
He turned to leave.
Grace said, “Why did you take your cuff links off?”
Mason stopped.
“The silver compass,” she said. “You were wearing them when Lily mentioned the ring. Later they were gone.”
“They are in my pocket.”
“Why?”
“Because she was frightened.”
“Or because you were.”
He looked back at her.
“Yes,” he said. “I was frightened.”
The door closed behind him.
May you like
The chicken soup went cold before Grace touched it.
Near midnight, Dr. Brooks called the room. Adrian’s condition had stabilized enough for the ventilator settings to be reduced. He was not awake, but his heart was tolerating treatment. The monitor remained volatile. More surgery might be necessary.
