She dished eggs onto two plates and put them on the table. “Like I said, Alex was devastated and he spent a lot of time drunk. Not an excuse, but… One night he got approached in a bar by a young woman who seduced him. Lena.”
“Lena seduced him just to get back at her mother? She really was Lena the Bad.”
“It gets worse. Lena and Anna had it out. Lena ran away, and Anna came home to Pittsburgh to lick her wounds. I think Anna really loved Alex and expected to marry him.” She toyed with the food on her plate. “Nine months later, Lena came home with a bundle of joy.” She twirled her fork. “Voilà. And that’s how I came into the picture.”
“A child of an illicit affair conducted because of another illicit affair,” Vito said quietly. “Then you met Brewster and unwittingly did what your mother and Anna had done.”
“I’m not that hard to figure out. But I am a good cook. Your food’s getting cold.”
She’d closed the door on her life again, but each time it stayed open a little longer. He still didn’t know what happened to her mother or how Katherine Bauer had come to be the ‘mother she’d never known’ or the significance of the body bag, but Vito could be patient. He pushed his clean plate aside. “What will you do about your bike?”
“I’ll get it towed. Can you give me the name of your mechanic?”
“Sure, but you should report it to the police, along with the dead mouse. Brewster’s wife can’t just get away with terrorizing you like that.”
She made a scoffing noise. “You can bet your double bonus I’ll report it. That woman bullied me once, but I’m done with her.”
“Good girl. How will you get to work this morning?”
“I can use Gran’s car until my bike is fixed.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s an okay car, it just smells like Lotte and Birgit.”
At their names, the dogs came running, wagging their rainbow butts as they begged for handouts. Vito laughed softly. “Lotte Lehman and Birgit Nilsson. Opera legends.”
“Gran’s idols. Naming these girls after them was the biggest honor she could think of. These dogs are like Gran’s children. She spoils them rotten.”
“Did she color them?”
Sophie put their plates in the sink. “No, that was my mistake. I brought Gran home from rehab after her stroke-before she got pneumonia and had to go to the nursing home. She’d sit at the window and watch the dogs play outside, but her eyes were bad. Then it snowed and they were white and she couldn’t see them at all.” She trailed off. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was just food coloring. It’s actually faded a lot.”
Vito laughed. “Sophie, you’re incredible.” He walked to the sink, pushed her hair aside and ran his lips down the back of her neck. “I’ll see you tonight.”
She shivered. “I’m going to sit with Gran tonight. It’s Freya’s bingo night.”
“Then I’ll go with you. How often can I meet a legend?”
Wednesday, January 17, 6:00
A.M.
Something was different. Wrong. He drove the highway to his field, Gregory Sanders’s body in a plastic bag under the tarp in the bed of his truck. Normally he never passed another car on this road. But he’d passed two cars already. Sheer instinct had him driving past the access road without slowing down, and what he saw as he passed stopped his heart. There should have been untouched snow where the access road met the highway, but instead he saw the crisscross of tire ruts, indicating repeated access by multiple vehicles.
Bile rose in his throat, choking him. They’d found his graveyard.
Somehow, someone had found his graveyard. But how? And who? The police?
He made himself breathe. Most certainly the police.
They’ll find me. They’ll catch me. He made himself breathe again. Relax. How can they catch you? There’s no way they can identify any of those bodies.
And even if they did, there was no way to link any of the bodies to him. His heart was pounding hard and he wiped a shaky hand across his mouth. He needed to get out of here. He had Gregory Sanders’s body in a plastic bag in his truck. If for any reason he was stopped… Even he couldn’t explain a dead body away.
So breathe. Just breathe. Think. You have to be smart about this.
He’d been so very careful. He’d worn gloves, ensured none of his own body came in contact with the victims. Not even a hair. So even if they identified every damn one of the victims, they couldn’t link them to him. He was safe.
So he breathed. And thought. His first step was to get rid of Gregory. Next, he had to find out what the cops knew and how they’d found out. If they were close, he’d bolt.
He knew how to disappear. He’d done it before.
He drove for five miles. No one followed him. He pulled off the road, behind some trees. And waited, holding his breath. No police cars drove by. No cars of any kind.
He got out of the truck, for the first time grateful for the chill of a Philadephia morning on his heated skin. The land beyond the edge of the road sloped sharply down into a gulley. This was as good a place as any to dump Sanders.
Quickly he lowered the tailgate, pulled away the tarp and grabbed the plastic bag in his gloved hands. He heaved the bag into the snow, shoving with his foot until it started to slide. The bag hit a tree, then rolled the rest of the way down. There was a visible path in the snow marking its descent, but if he was lucky it would snow again tonight and the cops wouldn’t find Gregory Sanders before the spring thaw.
He’d be long gone by then. He got back behind the wheel and turned in the direction he’d come, wondering if he’d done the right thing.
Then he knew that he had. Two police cruisers sat at the entrance to his access road where none had been before, one pointed in, one out. Shift change, he thought. He’d slipped through their shift change by the skin of his teeth. An officer got out of one of the cruisers as he approached.
His first inclination was to hit the accelerator and take the cop out, but that would be foolish. Satisfying, but ultimately foolish. He slowed to a stop. Made himself frown in polite puzzlement as he rolled his window down.
“Where are you headed, sir?” the officer asked with no smile.
“To work. I live down this road.” He squinted, pretending to try to see past the cruiser. “What’s going on over there? I seen cars comin’ and goin’.”
“This is a restricted area, sir. If you can take another route, then do.”
“Ain’t no other route,” he said. “But I reckon I can keep my eyes to myself.”
The officer took his notepad from his pocket. “Can I get your name, sir?”
This was where long-term planning paid off, and he settled into his seat, confident now. “Jason Kinney.” It would be the name registered to his license plate, because he’d filed the change in title with the DMV himself a year ago. Jason Kinney was just one of the driver’s licenses he had in his wallet. It always paid to be thorough.
The officer made a big show of walking to the rear of the truck and writing down the license plate. He checked under the tarp before coming back and touching the tip of his hat. “Now that we know you’re a resident of the area, we won’t need to stop you again.”
He nodded. Like he’d ever come this way again. Not. “I appreciate it, Officer. Have a nice day.”
Wednesday, January 17, 8:05
A.M.
Jen McFain frowned. “We seem to have a problem, Vito.”
Vito slid into his seat at the head of the table, still a little breathless from his mad morning dash. After leaving Sophie’s he’d raced home, showered, and apologized profusely to Tess about staying out all night without calling. Then he’d headed in to work, only to be accosted at the precinct door by a horde of reporters with flashing cameras.