“Is he retired?”
“Oh, yeah, he was older than me. Let me make some calls and I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks, Dad, I really appreciate this.”
“Yeah, yeah. I shouldn’t be doing this, you know.”
“You’re just trying to help out your little girl.”
“Right, my little girl who has Daddy wrapped right around her little finger.”
“You need to stop listening to Mom.”
“You try that. And I wish you luck. You’ll need it.”
He clicked off and she headed to her office.
The kids were with Silva. With the situation the way it was, she had arranged with the woman to come over every day for the next week, and luckily Silva’s schedule allowed for that.
As soon as she got to her office her phone buzzed. It was Wilson Sullivan.
“You busy?” he asked.
“I’m never too busy to help you, Detective Sullivan,” she replied brightly.
“You know, you’re very good at that.”
“At what?” she said innocently.
“Exactly. Anyway, we have some developments. Can you meet me at Stormfield? Or do you have kid stuff to do?”
“I have a babysitter today. I can be there in about an hour and a half. What developments?”
“I’ll fill you in when you get here.”
Gibson thought, Did I just get my official cover?
She quickly changed into jeans, a white blouse, and a dark jacket, checked in with Silva, hugged her kids, and drove off in the van. When she arrived at Stormfield, Sullivan was standing out front. Nearby, a trooper was sitting in a marked car.
She walked up to Sullivan, and he said, “Let’s go inside.”
As they entered the home, she suddenly had a weird feeling that this might be a setup.
Did someone see me dusting the mailbox for prints and rat me out? Am I about to be arrested for obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, or for just being stupid?
He led her to where the body had been discovered.
“What I’m about to tell you goes no further, okay?” he said.
She made a show of locking her lips and throwing away the key.
He pointed to the chair where Pottinger had been found. The fan had been taken away and everything was coated in fingerprint powder.
“First of all, like you intimated before, Daniel Pottinger was not his real name.”
She managed, she hoped, to look suitably surprised. “But you said people around here knew him.”
“He hadn’t owned the place for all that long, and he wasn’t here full-time. In fact, he was almost never here. So local people never got to know him.”
“So who is he really, then?”
“Fellow named Harry Langhorne.” He studied her in the dim illumination provided by a pair of battery-powered police work lights set on tripods. “Ring a bell?”
She pretended to think on this. “Not really. Should I know the name?”
“I only asked because he was from your neck of the woods, but a totally different generation.”
“He was from Jersey City?”
“No, sorry. In the south we just tend to lump all of New Jersey into one place. He was from Trenton.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He was an accountant for the mob decades ago. Apparently he turned state’s evidence on them, and brought down some mafia families.”
“So you think they finally caught up to him? All this time later?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have much experience with the mob.”
She smiled. “And since I’m from Jersey, I do? Is that why I’m here?”
“I didn’t mean to imply that. But I suspected he was mob related even before we had identified him.”
“Why?” asked Gibson.
In answer Sullivan held up his hand, palm facing her. “He had a burn mark here on his right hand.”
“How’d he get it?” she asked.
“As an initiation the mob would prick the person’s finger, smear the blood on a picture of a saint, and set the picture on fire, and the initiate would have to hold the burning picture while repeating the oath of loyalty to the mob.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. And if you break the oath, you burn like the saint did. I didn’t know that beforehand. I had to research it after I was shown the mark.”
Gibson decided to take control of this opportunity. “Look, I’ve got contacts back in Jersey. I’ll talk to them and maybe they can put us in touch with somebody who knows something.”
“ ‘Us’?” said Sullivan.
“Look, you called me. I’m just trying to help. But if I’m going to call in some markers to help you, I feel an obligation to at least be in the loop on this sucker. I do have a reputation to maintain.”
He studied her for an uncomfortably long time. For some reason her gaze dipped to his ring finger, and she saw that it was naked of gold, silver, or platinum.
“Well?” she finally said.
“Deal.”
“Do we shake on it? I don’t want to do the burning-picture thing,” said Gibson.
They did so and she said, “So how did he die?”
“Why do I think I just got suckered?”
“My request is pretty reasonable if I’m going to help you on this.”
“He was poisoned,” said Sullivan.
“If it was poison, how do you know he was murdered? It could have been suicide.”
Sullivan touched his wrist and pointed to his ankles. “He was restrained.”
“I didn’t see any evidence of that.”
“You wouldn’t. The restraints were removed after he was dead. The marks were under his clothing.”
“So they watched him die?” said Gibson.
“Could be. Which might dovetail with this being a revenge killing.”
“Okay, I’ll call you as soon as I know something from my sources.”
“Thanks.”
“You could have told me all this on the phone,” Gibson noted.
“I also wanted to show you something.”
“Where?”
“Follow me.”
Chapter 18
Do as I say, not as I do.
Gibson was reading this off the wall at the end of the secret room. It had been written in foot-high letters using a broad-tipped red marker.
She turned to look at Sullivan, who was shining his flashlight on it.
“What do you take it to mean?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I mean, I know what it’s supposed to mean in a general sense. ‘Don’t follow my example or actions, only my words.’ ”
“Yeah, it’s a way for people to do what they want and then hold others to a higher standard.”
“You sound like you speak from experience.”
“Every woman I know can speak from experience on that one.”
Sullivan coughed into his hand. “Right, I get that. Especially in police work.”
“In any work, where there are lots of guys around. When did you find it?”
“Just recently. The team spent most of its time with the body and crime scene, but they finally made their way down here and found this.”
“And you think it ties the killer to Langhorne somehow? Presuming they were the ones to write it.”
“My people examined it and told me it hasn’t been here any longer than the body.”
“Okay,” Gibson said. She was wondering whether the killer had written it, or Clarisse, her new phone friend. Or whether they were one and the same, because she had no reason, right now, to believe otherwise. “If it does tie into Langhorne somehow, we might be able to track it down. But the nexus is pretty vague.”
“But not to whoever wrote it,” Sullivan pointed out.
“No, to them it’s crystal clear. Can I see the flashlight?”