“How long has she been gone?”
“She ran a few minutes after you left.”
Three hours ago.
“Okay, keep me in the loop.”
Titus hung up. He sat back and tried to analyze this situation rationally. To date, the operation had grossed more money than he had ever imagined. The current count was $6.2 million. How much, he asked himself, would be enough?
Greed brought men down more than anything else.
In short, was this the endgame? Had this profitable operation, like all others before it, run its course?
Titus had planned for this day. He knew that no business venture could last forever. Eventually, too many people would be found missing. The authorities would have to take a good, hard look, and while Titus had tried to think of every eventuality, it would be hubris to think that if he continued, he would never get caught.
He called back to the farmhouse. It took four rings for Dmitry to answer. “Hello?”
“Are you aware of our problem?” Titus asked.
“Reynaldo said Dana is on the run.”
“Yes,” Titus said. “I need you to bring up her phone information.”
Mobile phones are traceable if left on, so when a new “guest” arrived, Dmitry transferred all the phone information onto his computer, basically duplicating the contents onto the hard drive. Once that was done, the batteries were pulled out of the phones and dumped in a drawer.
“Dana Phelps,” Dmitry said. “I got it up. What do you need?”
“Bring up her contacts. I need her son’s phone number.”
Titus could hear the typing.
“Here it is, Titus. Brandon Phelps. Do you want his mobile or his number at school?”
“Mobile.”
Dmitry gave him the phone number. Then he asked, “Do you need me to do anything else?”
“It may be time to abort,” Titus said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Set up the self-destruct on the computers, but don’t enact yet. I’m going to grab the kid and bring him back.”
“Why?”
“If Dana Phelps is still hiding somewhere, we need to flush her out. She’ll come out when she hears his screams.”
• • •
“I don’t understand,” Sugar said. “I thought they caught the man who killed your father.”
“No. He just took the fall.”
Sugar stood up and stared, pacing. Kat watched him.
“Cozone found out about you two a few months before he died, right?” Kat asked.
“Right.” There were tears in Sugar’s eyes now. “Once Cozone started to blackmail your father, everything changed.”
“Changed how?”
“Your father broke it off with me. Said we were through. That I disgusted him. That rage, like when we first met—it came back. He hit me. You have to understand. He directed the rage at me, but it was mostly toward himself. When you live a lie—”
“Yeah, I get it,” Kat said, cutting him off. “I really don’t need the pop psychology lesson right now. He was a self-hating gay man trapped in a straight, macho world.”
“You say it with such coldness.”
“No, not really,” Kat said. She felt the lump in her throat and tried to make it go away. “Later, when I have the time to think about all this, it will break my heart. And when that happens—when I let it in—it will crush me that my father was in such pain and I couldn’t see it. I will crawl into bed with a bottle and vanish for as long as it takes. But not right now. Right now, I need to do what I can to help him.”
“By finding out who killed him?”
“Yes, by being the cop he raised. So who killed him, Sugar?”
He shook his head. “If it wasn’t Cozone, then I really don’t know.”
“So when was the last time you saw him?”
“The night he died.”
Kat made a face. “I thought you said you broke up.”
“We did.” Sugar stopped pacing and smiled through the tears on his face. “But he couldn’t say away. That was the truth. He couldn’t be with me, but he couldn’t let me go, either. He waited for me behind the nightclub where I was working.” Sugar looked up, lost in the memory. “He had a dozen white roses in his hands. My favorite. He wore sunglasses. I thought they were to disguise himself. But when he took them off, I could see his eyes were red from crying.” The tears were flowing freely down Sugar’s cheeks now. “It was so wonderful. That was the last time I saw him. And then later that night . . .”
“He was murdered,” Kat finished for him.
Silence.
“Kat?”
“Yes?”
“I never got over losing him,” Sugar said. “He was the only man I ever really loved. Part of me will always hate him too. We could have run away. We could have found a way to be together. You and your brothers, you’d have understood eventually. We’d have been happy. I stayed with it all those years because that chance existed. You know what I mean? As long as we were alive, I think we both stupidly believed we would find a way.”
Sugar knelt down and took both of Kat’s hands in his. “I’m telling you so you understand. I still miss him so damn much. Every day. I would give anything, forgive anything, just to be with him for even a few seconds.”
Block, Kat thought. Keep the blocks up for now. Get through this.
“Who killed him, Sugar?”
“I don’t know.”
But Kat thought that maybe now she knew who could give her the answer. She just had to make him finally tell her the truth.
Chapter 40
Standing outside the precinct, Kat called Stagger’s cell phone.
“I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other,” Stagger said.
“Wrong. I just talked to Sugar. I’m thinking there’s still a lot to say.”
Silence.
“Hello?” Kat said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m coming down to your office right now, unless this is yet again a bad time.”
“No, Kat.” She had never heard Stagger sound so weary. “I think it’s a good time.”
When she arrived, Stagger was sitting at his desk. The photographs of his wife and kids were in front of him now, as though that could somehow shield him. Kat started in on him pretty hard, accusing him of lying and worse. Stagger came right back at her. There were shouts and tears, but finally Stagger made several admissions.
Yes, Stagger knew about Sugar.
Yes, Stagger had promised Monte Leburne favors for a simple confession.
Yes, Stagger had done that because he feared the affair would become public.
“I didn’t want that for your father,” Stagger said. “I didn’t want his name dragged through the mud. For his sake. For yours and your family’s too.”
“And what about yours?” Kat countered
Stagger made a maybe-yes/maybe-no gesture.
“You should have told me,” Kat said.
“I didn’t know how.”
“So who killed him?”
“What?”
“Who killed my father?”
Stagger shook his head. “You really don’t see?”
“No.”
“Monte Leburne killed him. Cozone ordered him to.”
Kat frowned. “You’re still trying to pedal that story?”
“Because it’s true, Kat.”
“Cozone had no motive. He had my father right where he wanted him.”
“No,” Stagger said in that same tired tone. “He didn’t.”
“But he knew about—”
“Yeah, he knew about it. And for a little while, Cozone had your old man under his thumb. I sat back and watched your father back off. I even let him, so maybe I had something to lose here too. Once Cozone learned about Sugar, your father changed. He was trapped. He saw no way out until he just . . .” Stagger’s voice faded away.
“He just what?”
Stagger looked up at her. “Had enough, I guess. Henry had lived with all those years of deception, but it hadn’t affected his job. Now all of a sudden, in order to protect his lies, he had to compromise his police work. All men have their breaking point. That was your father’s. So he told Cozone to go to hell. He didn’t care anymore.”
“How did Cozone react to that?” Kat asked.