„I want you to make a copy of any of the transmissions regarding this. We’ll take care of it.“
„Okay. Okay.“ He scooped his fingers through his disordered hair. „That’s the right thing to do, isn’t it? I’m just not thinking straight. I can’t see what I should do.“
„You contacted the owner of a shop called Bygones. Care to tell me why?“
„Bygones? Oh, oh, right. Mr. Buchanan. My father sold him some memorabilia. I think maybe Buchanan was one of the backers on Number Twelve. My father mentioned him when I gave him the five hundred. Said something like Bygones may be Bygones, but he wouldn’t be nickel-and-diming it any more. How he’d pay me back the five ten times over because he was about to hit the jackpot.“
„Any specific jackpot?“
„He talked a lot, my father. Bragged, actually, and a lot of the bragging was just hot air. But he said he’d been holding onto an ace in the hole, waiting for the right time. It was coming up.“
„What was his hole card?“
„Can’t say he actually had one.“ Cliff heaved out a breath. „Honestly, I didn’t really listen because it was the same old, same old to me. And I wanted to get him moving before my mother got wind of the loan. But he said something about letters Bobbie Bray had written. A bombshell, he said, that was going to give Number Twelve just the push he needed. I didn’t pay much attention at the time because he was mostly full of crap.“
He winced now, drank again. „Hell of a thing to say about your dead father, huh?“
„His being dead doesn’t make him more of a father to you, Mr. Gill,“ Peabody said gently.
Cliff’s eyes went damp for a moment. „Guess not. Well, when all this started happening. I remembered how he talked about these letters, and I thought maybe he’d sold them to Bygones. Maybe there was something in them that would clear my grandfather. Something, I don’t know. Maybe she committed suicide and he panicked.“
He lowered his head, rubbed the heel of his hand in the center of his brow as if to push away some pain. „I don’t even care, or wouldn’t, except for what’s falling down from it on my mother. I don’t know what I expected Mr. Buchanan to do. I was desperate.“
„Did your father give you any indication of the contents of the letters?“ Eve asked. „The timing of them?“
„Not really, no. At the time I thought it was just saving face because I was giving him money. Probably all it was. Buchanan said he hadn’t bought any letters from my father, but I could come in and look at what he had. Waste of time, I guess. But he was nice about it – Buchanan, I mean. Sympathetic.“
„Have you discussed this with your mother at all?“ Peabody asked him.
„No, and I won’t.“ Any grief seemed to burn away as anger covered his face. „It’s a terrible thing to say, but by dying my father’s given her more trouble than he has since she divorced him. I’m not going to add to it. Chasing a wild goose anyway.“ He frowned into his glass. „I have to make some arrangements for – for the body. Cremation, I guess. I know it’s cold, but I’m not going to have any sort of service or memorial. I’m not going to drag this out. We just have to get through this.“
„Mr Gill – “
„Cliff,“ he said to Eve with a weak smile. „You should call me Cliff since I’m dumping all my problems on you.“
„Cliff. Do you know if your father kept a safety deposit box?“
„He wouldn’t have told me. We didn’t see each other much. I don’t know what he’d have kept in one. I got a call from some lawyer this morning. Said my father’d made a will, and I’d inherit. I asked him to ballpark it, and the gist was when it all shakes out, I’ll be lucky to have enough credits to buy a soy dog at a corner cart.“
„I guess you were hoping for better,“ Peabody commented.
Cliff let out a short, humorless laugh. „Hoping for better with Rad Hopkins would be another waste of time.“
Nine
„You have to feel for the guy.“ Peabody bundled her scarf around her neck as they walked back outside.
„We’ll pass off the copy of his ‘link calls to a couple of burly uniforms, have them knock on some doors and issue some stern warnings. About all we can do there for now. We’re going back to Central. I want a quick consult with Mira, and you can update the Commander.“
„Me?“Peabody’s voice hit squeak. „Alone? Myself?“
„I expect Commander Whitney would be present as you’re updating him.“
„But you do the updates.“
„Today you’re doing it. He’s going to want to set up a media conference,“ Eve added as she got into their vehicle. „Hold him off.“
„Oh my God.“
„Twenty-four hours. Make it stick,“ Eve added and pulled out into traffic as Peabody sat pale and speechless beside her.
Mira was the top profiler attached to the NYPSD for good reason. Her status kept her in high demand and made Eve’s request for a consult without appointment similar to trying to squeeze her head through the eye of a needle that was already threaded.
She had a headache when she’d finished battling Mira’s admin, but she got her ten minutes.
„You ought to give her a whip and a chain,“ Eve commented when she stepped into Mira’s office. „Not that she needs one.“
„You always manage to get past her. Have a seat.“
„No thanks, I’ll make it fast.“
Mira settled behind her desk. She was a sleek, lovely woman who favored pretty suits. Today’s was power red and worn with pearls.
„This would be pertaining to Number Twelve,“ Mira began. „Two murders, nearly a hundred years apart. Your consults are rarely routine. Bobbie Bray.“
„You, too? People say that name like she’s a deity.“
„Do they?“ Mira eased back in her chair, her blue eyes amused. „Apparently my grandmother actually heard her perform at Number Twelve in die early Nineteen-seventies. She claimed she exchanged an intimate sexual favor with the bouncer for the price of admission. My grandmother was a wild woman.“
„Huh.“
„And my parents are huge fans, so I grew up hearing that voice, that music. It’s confirmed then? They were her remains?“
„Lab’s forensic sculptor’s putting her money on it as of this morning. I’ve got the facial image she reconstructed from the skull, and it looks like Bray.“
„May I see?“
„I’ve got it in the file.“ Eve gave Mira the computer codes, then shifted so she, too, could watch the image come on-screen.
The lovely, tragic face, the deep-set eyes, the full, pouty lips somehow radiated both youth and trouble.
„Yes,“ Mira murmured. „It certainly looks like her. Something so sad and worn about her, despite her age.“
„Living on drugs, booze and sex tends to make you sad and worn.“
„I suppose it does. You don’t feel for her?“
Eve realized she should have expected the question from Mira. Feelings were the order of the day in that office. „I feel for anyone who gets a bullet in the brain – then has their body closed up in a wall. She deserves justice for that – deserves it for the cops who looked the other way. But she chose the life she led to that point. So looking sad and worn at twenty-couple? No, I can’t say I feel for that.“
„A different age,“ Mira said, studying Eve as she’d studied the image on screen. „My grandmother always said you had to be there. I doubt Bobbie would have understood you and the choices you’ve made any more than you do her and hers.“