And Durand’s murder-premeditated and involving torture and decapitation-made the senator eligible for the death penalty.
Louis stopped at the door to Kavanagh’s room. There was a deputy seated outside, leafing through a magazine. Normally, there would be no reason to assign a cop to guard a victim, but Cryer’s cautiousness didn’t stop at the idea of ruining a political career without due cause. He reluctantly yielded to Louis’s insistence that not all of the killers in this case were dead and assigned the guard until Kavanagh was released.
The deputy outside Kavanagh’s room got up from his chair as Louis approached.
“Has Major Cryer been here?” Louis asked.
The deputy shook his head. “Not today. He had a long night and asked me to call him only if the guy was awake and talking.”
“Nothing yet?”
“No, sir. But if he says anything, let me know, okay?”
Louis nodded. “Will do.”
Kavanagh was awake, the bed elevated. His face was still bruised from Dickie Lyons’s assault, but it was his body that was jarring to see. He was bare to the chest, his skin marked with a web of cuts. An air tube protruded from the turtleneck of bandages that wrapped his throat.
Louis stepped to the side of the bed.
Kavanagh’s eyes slid to him, teary with pain.
“My name is Kincaid,” Louis said. “I’m an investigator. You up to talking to me?”
Kavanagh motioned weakly toward a small dry-erase board and a marker on the night table. Louis gave them to Kavanagh.
With everything the guy had been through, Louis didn’t want to be insensitive. The best thing to do was to keep his questions pointed so Kavanagh could supply one- and two-word answers.
“Who did this to you?” Louis asked.
Kavanagh wrote something and angled the board so Louis could read it.
DONT KNOW
“I’m sorry?” Louis said. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
Kavanagh underlined his answer. DONT KNOW
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe this will help. You were found out on a ranch near Clewiston with your throat cut. Do you know how you got there?”
NO
Louis stared at the board, baffled. He had seen a lot of victims in his life, some so traumatized it took them weeks to put together a cohesive story. But they were usually visibly shaky and barely able to begin reliving the event. Kavanagh looked tired but in control. In fact, he seemed mildly annoyed.
But maybe his reluctance to talk was something else. He was only twenty-three, paid to provide sex to rich older women. Maybe he felt humiliated that he had been overpowered and almost killed by those same women.
“Look, Kavanagh,” Louis said. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about. And if someone has a gun on you, you do what you’re told. I understand that. So will everyone else.”
NOT EMBAR
“Then tell me who took you to the pen and attacked you,” Louis said.
Kavanagh erased the board with his hand and wrote in hard slashes.
DONT KNOW
Louis glanced at the door, wondering if he should find a doctor and ask if Kavanagh had suffered some form of amnesia. Then he decided against it, not wanting some nurse to force him to leave. He’d find out himself what this kid remembered.
“Do you know who and where you are?” Louis asked.
BYRNE. FUCKIN HOSPITAL
There was nothing wrong with Kavanagh that a little pressure wouldn’t fix. He’d start with something Kavanagh couldn’t pretend not to remember.
“We know you were at Tink Lyons’s house the night before you were taken to the pen. Do you remember getting beat up by her husband?”
NO
“Do you know why you were at her house?”
Kavanagh stabbed at his board to reiterate his answer.
“Do you even know Tink Lyons?”
NO
“Do you have any idea how you were injured?”
NO
What the hell was going on here? Was it possible Kavanagh’s brain had shut completely down? Had the women given him a powerful drug that blocked his memory? Is that how they had subdued him?
But if that was what had happened and he really didn’t remember anything, why wasn’t he asking Louis questions? What kind of person wouldn’t want to know?
“Okay, Kavanagh,” Louis said. “I’ll leave you alone, but you’re going to be getting visits from lots of other people. Cops. You need to think about telling them the truth.”
Kavanagh stared at his board.
Louis turned to leave, then caught a glimpse of something on the windowsill, a potted flower. It wasn’t red; it was white. But it was definitely an orchid. He went to the window. No card or label, nothing to tell him what shop it had come from or who had sent it. He looked back at Kavanagh.
“Who brought this orchid to you?” Louis asked.
DONT KNOW
“Did Senator Osborn come to see you this morning?”
WHO THAT
“Did anyone come to see you? A guy named Greg, maybe?”
NO
Louis looked back at the orchid. It was the most bizarre thought he’d ever had, but he knew it was true, because the evidence was right there in front of him-and in Kavanagh’s preposterous lapses of memory.
He looked back to the bed. “How much did she pay you?” Louis asked.
Kavanagh turned his head only enough for Louis to catch the flash of guilt in his eyes. Then he looked away.
“How much?” Louis pressed.
Kavanagh scribbled on the board.
DONT KNOW WHAT U MEAN
Louis walked back to the bed. “These women killed three men before they tried to kill you,” he said. “You were nothing to them but a toy that they got tired of and threw away.”
Kavanagh had his head down and a white-knuckled grip on the marker.
“Good God,” Louis said. “That woman left you for dead in a stinking cow pen. You’re going to let her get away with it?”
Kavanagh’s head came up, and he looked slowly to the orchid, his eyes dull. For a long time, the only sound in the room was the wet rasp of air through his tube.
Louis studied Kavanagh’s profile, trying to imagine what he might have looked like when he walked into Carolyn Osborn’s bedroom in a white Armani shirt, carrying a red orchid.
But now…
Split lip, broken nose, one eye pooled red, deep cuts stitched closed with knotted black thread. And forever with the voice of an old man. If he could speak at all.
How much was that silence worth?
Louis turned to leave, but as he reached the door, he could hear the squeak of Kavanagh’s marker moving across the board. He turned back.
Kavanagh held up his board.
WHERE MY CAT???
For a moment, Louis felt a twinge of pity. But it evaporated when he thought of Rosa Díaz, Burke Aubry, and all of the nameless people waiting for the young men they loved to come home. He was tired of these selfish people whose only concern was for whatever money and comfort they could wring out of other people’s lives. And that now included Byrne Kavanagh, who was willing to shelter a murderer so he could make a few bucks.
Kavanagh punched the board.
WHERE MY CAT???
“Don’t know,” Louis said, and left the room.
Chapter Forty-two
Carolyn picked up the pencil and leaned toward the mirror. She carefully outlined her top lip but then her hand began to shake, and she let the pencil fall to the dressing table. She pressed her palms to her forehead and bowed her head.
She didn’t hear Tucker come in and pick up the pencil from the floor. When he set it in front of her, she looked up.
“You’ve got to stop this, Carolyn,” he said.
She looked up into his eyes in the reflection of the mirror.
“It’s barely noon,” Tucker said. “How much have you had to drink?”