“Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you file a missing person report in the first place? How long had he been missing?”
“The last time I saw him was January 20. It was Saturday night and we had a date. He’d been so busy I-” Tears sprang to her eyes. Normally, when a woman started crying, Claire became suspicious. Girls used tears to get any number of things they wanted, or to avoid getting into trouble. But watching Tammy-her demeanor, her posture, the way her hands clenched and unclenched her biology book-Claire decided the emotion was authentic.
“It’s okay,” Claire said, not sure how to console her. Claire never cried. Especially in public.
“I told him I was going to break up with him if he didn’t spend more time with me. That was awful of me, I know, but I missed him, and I missed us.”
“What was he working on that kept him so busy?”
“He’s a third-year law student. He had a full schedule, plus he was working on his thesis.” She paused. “You know, I told all this to the police when I filed the report. Did you talk to them?”
“Yes, but they’re not actively looking for Oliver. It’s been nearly four months, it’s a cold case. And he’s an adult.” Though Claire hadn’t actually talked to the police yet, it was sad but true that the missing persons department in many cities was understaffed. Children were, rightfully, given priority. And while the police always looked into a disappearance, the more time that passed, the colder the case got.
Several tears escaped and Tammy wiped them away. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“It’s not,” Claire agreed. “What was Oliver’s thesis on? I have down that he was working on something for the Western Innocence Project. Could he have left to do research? Maybe not told you?”
Tammy looked down. “Oliver lied about that.”
“Excuse me?”
“He wasn’t working for the Western Innocence Project. That’s his dream job. Oliver is so compassionate. That’s why I love him. He cares so much about people and doing the right thing. Sometimes too much.”
“Why would he lie?”
“He interned for the Project last summer and found a file when he was boxing up cases for storage. He read the whole thing and went to the director and asked to look into it. The director said the case had been reviewed and they’d decided not to get involved. Oliver tried to change his mind, but couldn’t. So he thought he’d look into it himself. He was obsessed, decided he would write his thesis on the case. He called it ‘The Perfect Frame.’ ”
Claire’s heart thudded. “Why?”
“I’m studying to become a veterinarian. Legal stuff doesn’t interest me so I really didn’t pay much attention to the details. All I know is that he was really excited about it, and thought he had it figured out. He said he was going to talk to his advisor Monday morning, try to convince him, but even if he didn’t, he planned to go to the director of the Project with another appeal to look into the case.”
“Was it urgent?”
“Oh, yeah, the guy’s on death row. He has no appeals left.”
“And you didn’t talk to him after Saturday?”
She blushed. “Well, Sunday morning. I stayed at his place. He has a town house on F Street.”
“Rented?”
“Owned. His parents died when he was just a kid. He lived with his grandmother most of his life, but he had an inheritance-wrongful-death lawsuit. His parents were killed by a drunk driver.”
“How awful.”
“The police went there and said it looked like he’d packed up, but I know Oliver wouldn’t have left without talking to me. I know it.”
Claire believed her. She was starting to get a very bad feeling about Oliver Maddox’s fate.
“Who’s his advisor? It wasn’t in the report.”
“It wasn’t? I thought I gave that information to the police. Professor Don Collier. He’s a law professor and does pro bono work for the Project. Oliver absolutely worshipped him.”
The assassin was not happy.
He drove fast, away from the opulent, gated mansion where he’d just met with two of the three men who’d blackmailed him into murder. They called him “our assassin” and it pissed him off. Not that they thought of him as an “assassin,” but because they considered him their property.
Fifteen years ago he’d made a choice-and huge sacrifices-to stay near the woman he loved. He’d thought one murder (okay, two murders) would have bought his freedom, so when he made the decision to stay in Sacramento after killing the prosecutor and his whore lover he expected to be left alone.
But they wouldn’t let him go. Holding that one ancient accident over his head, they made him their hatchet man. And they had the evidence to send him to prison. Or to death.
He shivered involuntarily as a glimpse of his body, dead and rotting, flashed in his mind.
He feared death. In death there was nothing but cold, damp dirt and carnivorous bugs. In death, he would watch his body be devoured with time and the elements. His skin would slough off. He knew what happened to the dead. He’d seen it.
When he was a rookie, the first time he went to the morgue to view an autopsy he saw firsthand what they did. The pathologist cut the body open. Removed everything-stomach, brain, heart-and weighed it. They looked at everything, a fucking full-body rectal exam. Then they put everything they took out back in, dropping the mess into the torso, and sewed the body up. Put it on a metal gurney and twenty-four hours later the body was taken to be buried or burned.
He also knew what happened to the dead after they were buried. After the flood in 1997 when he had major drainage problems around his house, he had to move one of the bodies. She’d been underground fourteen months.
He didn’t know why, but he had expected her to look pretty much as she had when he’d dumped her in the hole. He thought she’d be dirty, maybe a little foul-smelling, but he hadn’t expected her to be half-skeletal. And then the worms. .
Rubbing hands over his body as if brushing off an ant attack, he almost crashed the speeding car. He still had nightmares about that day. . sometimes, his body was being eaten, and his skull stared back at him with empty eye sockets.
His own future death gave him frequent nightmares.
It wasn’t because he killed people-he didn’t really mind that. And they paid him-pretty well actually, after he’d called their bluff. The assassin learned who one of the principals was, and the slimy developer certainly didn’t want his dirty secrets spread around town. Yeah, they paid him now, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they controlled his life. They knew his true identity. It didn’t matter that he cleared twenty grand with every killing; he was stuck in involuntary servitude, which sucked.
Now he knew who all the players were and he considered taking them all out. Pop pop pop! They’d be sorry they fucked with him. He was a better killer today than fifteen years ago. They’d made him one.
But they had leverage on him. Solid evidence that he had killed Jessica so long ago. And that was what made the bastards so good at the conspiracy game: blackmail.
But everything would come crashing down if Thomas O’Brien wasn’t stopped. And now that Oliver Maddox’s body had been found, there could be other people looking into things better left dead and buried.
What had angered him was his blackmailers’ reaction to the discovery in the river. That they felt Claire had to be watched, that she would be a threat if she got wind of what that idiot Maddox had been working on.
He would not let them touch Claire. Claire was his. He’d protected her, taken care of her, practically raised her since her father went to prison. He made sure unworthy men stayed away. He felt no guilt for killing her mother and framing her father-her mother was a slut, and obviously her father couldn’t keep that whore in line. If it had been his dad? He’d have punished her. But his mother would never have strayed in the first place. His mother knew her place.