“He came to our house in Columbus. We had a nice house there, a nice neighborhood. I was happy. And he came, late at night. I knew when I heard my mother’s voice, and his, I knew we’d have to leave. I had a friend right next door. God, I can’t remember his name. I thought he was the best friend I’d ever have, and that I’d never see him again. And well, I didn’t.”
Boo-hoo, Trevor thought in disgust, but he kept his tone light and friendly. “It wasn’t easy for you, or Grandma. How old were you?”
“Seven, I think. About seven. It’s difficult to be sure. One of the things my mother did to hide us was change my birth date. Different names, a year or two added or taken away on our ages. I was nearly eighteen when we stuck with Whittier. He’d been dead for years, and I told her I needed to stay one person now. I needed to start my life. So we kept it, and I know she worried herself sick because of that.”
Paranoid old bat, Trevor thought. “Why do you suppose he came to see you there and then? Wouldn’t that have been around the time of the heist? The diamonds?”
“Keeping tabs on me, tormenting her. I can still hear him telling her he could find her wherever she ran, that he could take me from her whenever he wanted. I can still hear her crying.”
“But to come then.” Trevor pushed. “Of all times. It could hardly have been a coincidence. He must have wanted something. Told you something, or told her.”
“Why does this matter?”
He’d plotted it out carefully. Just because he found his father foolish didn’t mean he didn’t know how the man worked. “I’ve given this a lot of thought since you first told me. I don’t mean to argue with you, but I suppose it’s upset me to realize, at this point in my life, what’s in my blood.”
“He’s nothing to you. Nothing to us.”
“That’s just not true, Dad.” Sorrowfully, Trevor shook his head. “Didn’t you ever want to close the circle? For yourself, and for her? For your mother? There are still millions of dollars of those diamonds out there, and he had them. Your father had them.”
“They got nearly all of them back.”
“Nearly? A full quarter was never recovered. If we could piece things back together, if we could find them, we could close that circle. We could work a way to give them back, through this writer-this Samantha Gannon.”
“Find the diamonds, after over fifty years?” Steve would have laughed, but Trevor was so earnest, and he himself so touched that his son would think about closing that circle. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Aren’t you the one who tells me constantly that anything’s possible if you’re willing to work for it? This is something I want to do. I feel strongly about it. I need you to help me put it back together. To remember exactly what happened the last time he came to see you, to remember exactly what happened next. Did he ever contact you from prison? You or my grandmother? Did he ever give you anything, send you anything, tell you anything?”
“Steve?”
Steve looked over as he heard his wife’s voice. “Let’s put this away for now,” he said quietly. “Your mother knows all about this, but I don’t like dragging it out. Down here, Pat. Trevor’s dropped by.”
“Trevor? Oh, I’ll be right down.”
“We need to talk about this,” Trevor insisted.
“We will.” Steve gave his son a nod and an approving smile. “We will, and I’ll try to remember anything that may help. I’m proud of you, Trevor, proud of you for thinking about trying to find a way to make things right. I don’t know if it can be, but knowing you want to try means the world to me. I’m ashamed I never thought of it myself. That I never thought beyond putting it all away and starting fresh instead of cleaning the slate.”
Trevor kept his annoyance behind a pleasant mask as he heard his mother hurrying downstairs. “I haven’t been able to think of much else for weeks.”
He left an hour later and strolled along in the steamy heat rather than hail a cab. He could count on his father to line up details. Steve Whittier was hell on details. But the visit had already given him his next move. He’d play concerned grandson the very next day and go see his grandmother in the loony bin.
About the time Trevor Whittier was crossing the park, Eve stifled a yawn. She wanted another hit of coffee, but knew that would mean getting through Roarke. He had a habit of knowing when her ass was dragging before she did.
“Three potentials on the woman, twice that on the kid.” She scratched her scalp, hard, to get the blood moving.
“If we discount the rest of the first-level matches.”
“I’m discounting them. The computer likes these picks, so we go with them. Let’s move on the kid-man now. See if anything looks good.”
She shot those six images on screen and began to scan the attached data. “Well, well, lookie here. Steven James Whittier, East Side address. Owns and runs his own building company. That’s a nice pop for me.”
“I know him.”
She looked around sharply. “You know this guy?”
“Mostly in that vague professional sense, though I’ve met his wife a number of times at various charity functions. His company has a solid rep, and so does he. Blue-collar him, meets blue-blood her. He does good work.”
“Check the lists from the job sites you got earlier. Let’s see if Whittier’s got anything going in or around Alphabet City.”
Roarke brought up the file, then leaned back in his chair. “I should learn not to question your instincts.”
“Rehab on Avenue B. Five-story building, three sections.” She pursed her lips, made a popping sound. “More than enough to take a closer look. See there, he’s got a son. One son, Trevor, age twenty-nine. Let’s get that image.”
Roarke did the tech, and they studied Trevor Whittier’s face together. “Not as close on the artist rendering as I’d like, but it’s not a total bust. Let’s see what else we can find out about Trevor.”
“You can’t do anything about him tonight. It’s nearly one in the morning. Unless you think you can build a case strong enough with this to go over and scoop him up and into a cage, you’re going to bed. I’ll set the computer to gather data while you get a few hours’ sleep.”
“I could go wake him up, hassle him.” She considered. “But that would just be for fun. And it would give him a chance to whine for a lawyer. It can wait.” She pushed to her feet.
“Until morning. We’ll check out this job site, see if we can nail it to the trace from Cobb’s body. I need to approach Whittier and find his mother, interview her, too. They might be in on this. This Trevor feels the best to me. Smarter to wait to move on him until I have it all lined up.”
“While it lines up, you lie down.”
She’d have argued, but her eyes were starting to throb. “Nag, nag, nag. I’ll just contact the team and tell them we’re going to brief at seven hundred instead of eight.”
“You can do that in the morning. It’s easier, and more humane.”
“Yeah, but it’s more fun to do it now,” she protested as he took her hand and pulled her out of the room. “This way I get to wake them up so they have to work at getting back to sleep. The other way, I just get them out of bed a little early.”
“You’re a mean one, Lieutenant.”
“Yeah. So?”
Chapter 12
While she slept it all played in her head. Father to son, murder and greed, blood gleaming on sparkling stones. There were legacies you couldn’t escape, no matter how fast or how far you ran.
She could see herself, a child, with no mother to panic or protect. No one to hide her or stand as a shield. She could see herself-she could always see herself-alone in a freezing room with the light washed red from the sign blinking, blinking, blinking from the building next door.
She could taste her fear when he came in, that bright, metallic flavor. As if there was already blood in her throat. Hot blood against the chill.