A Blood Thing Read online

  He quickly spit and rinsed, then hurried into the bedroom. Rebecca was propped up by several pillows behind her back, a hardcover novel in her hands. Andrew picked up the mystery phone and headed toward the door to the hall.

  “Stay here,” Rebecca said. “I know about it now anyway.”

  Andrew hesitated. The phone vibrated in his hand. He started for the hallway, sneaking a glance over his shoulder at Rebecca. After thirteen years of marriage, they were good at reading each other’s faces. At that moment, hers was registering disappointment. About precisely what, he wasn’t quite certain. The phone vibrated again.

  Out in the hall, he closed the door behind him. He’d forgotten his personal phone, so he wouldn’t be recording this conversation, but he wasn’t sure it mattered. If anyone was ever inclined to believe him, the two recordings they had already made would likely be enough. And if people chose instead to believe that the calls were fakes intended to create reasonable doubt, then a greater number of such recordings wasn’t going to sway anyone.

  The phone was vibrating yet again when Andrew answered with a curt “Yes?”

  The familiar, grating, metallic voice intoned, “You know about the underwear yet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Like I said, the DNA is your brother’s. The blood is Sally’s.”

  The phone felt fragile in his hand. He could have crushed it to plastic shards with ease. He wanted to crush it.

  “Governor Andy? You still there?”

  “You’re sick.”

  “By some people’s definitions, probably,” the robotic voice said. “But let’s not waste time with that kind of talk. It’s not productive. I need you to understand that I have more evidence, Andy. A lot more. Enough to make sure your baby brother is locked away for the remainder of his days with the rest of society’s most violent criminals.”

  “Listen, I can’t do what you—”

  “You’re out of time. This is your last chance before I go nuclear and give everything I have to the police.”

  “There has to be another way. Something else you—”

  “I need an answer. Right now.”

  “Please . . .”

  “Don’t make me start counting as if you’re a naughty child. Make your choice. Does Gabriel Torrance go free soon, or does Tyler never go free again?”

  “Give me a second here. This is—”

  “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two—”

  “I need proof,” Andrew practically shouted.

  After a moment, the caller said, “Proof of what?”

  “I need to see the video you have showing that Tyler didn’t do it. I need to see what I’ll be getting if . . . if I agree to this.” He almost hadn’t been able to choke out the last few words.

  The caller seemed to consider that. “If I send you the recording, then you’ll have it and lose all incentive to do what I’m asking.”

  “We could meet. You could show it to me.”

  “Yes, and I’ll trust that you’ll be alone. That the cops won’t be hidden behind every mailbox and shrub.”

  “Looks like we’re at an impasse then. I can’t do what you’re asking without knowing whether you even have what you say you do.”

  They fell silent a moment. Finally, the caller said, “I’ll be honest, Andy, I expected this. I planned for it. So here’s what’s going to happen: When we hang up, I’m going to text meeting instructions to the phone in your hand. You show up where and when I say, or send someone on your behalf, for all I care. I’ll have a representative of my own there who will show you or your guy the video. Then you can decide if what I have is worth trading for. Aaaaaand . . . for a limited time only, if you act soon, I’ll throw in the rest of the evidence against Tyler absolutely free.”

  The creepy robotic voice imitating the chipper style of a late-night infomercial pitchman was beyond unnerving.

  “Am I correct in assuming that you won’t want to agree to my demands during a phone call?” the caller asked. “Which I could be secretly recording?”

  “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “No, I do not. So tomorrow, send someone authorized to close the deal for you. And don’t do anything dumb like sending the cops instead, or following my representative after the meeting. That will only make me assume you have no intention of coming to, or keeping, an agreement, and I’ll have no choice but to pull the pins on all my grenades. I don’t care who you send, as long as it’s not a cop. And that includes Detective Henry. Understand?”

  Andrew said nothing.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Don’t worry, Andy. If all goes well, both Gabriel Torrance and your brother will be free men soon.”

  The caller disconnected. Andrew suddenly felt the need for a shower. Instead, he returned to the bedroom and slipped under the covers beside his wife, who had turned off the lamp on her nightstand but was still sitting up, wide awake.

  “Well?” she said. “Are you going to do what he wants?”

  Earlier in the evening, Andrew had shared with her the news about the victim’s bloody, DNA-covered underwear. She knew how strong the case against Tyler was growing.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Andrew?”

  He hesitated. “I sure as hell won’t do it without proof he can exonerate my brother.” He paused again, then said, “I’ve told him I need to see he has that.”

  “And if he does?”

  “I don’t know, Becca.”

  But that wasn’t true. He knew it, and she did, too. If the blackmailer had what he said he had . . .

  She rolled onto her side, facing away from him, without giving him the peck on the cheek she’d given him every night they had ever shared a bed. A moment later, though, she reached behind her, took his hand, and placed it on her hip. It wasn’t a kiss, but it was something, at least.

  He reached up and turned off his bedside lamp, plunging them into darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “I don’t like this,” Andrew said.

  “I’m not wild about it, either,” Henry added.

  Molly loved her brothers and knew they were only looking out for her, but they were being stupid—which didn’t surprise her. This certainly wasn’t the first time they’d been stupid about trying to protect her. How many boys had they scared away from her in high school? How hard had Andy tried to convince her not to join the army, which had turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of her life?

  “I’m the only option, guys. You two can’t go. Who else is there? Rebecca? No offense, Andy, but unless she did two tours in the Middle East like I did that I’m not aware of, I’m the only logical choice. And what’s there to worry about? We have no idea who this guy is, what he looks like. If he wanted to try to hurt me, he could do it anytime he felt like it, right on the street, or even in our house. He wouldn’t have to get me alone in a deserted parking lot at night. Besides, you sexist pigs, since when haven’t I been able to take care of myself? I’m battle-tested, remember? How many people have you had to kill, Andy?”

  “None,” he admitted.

  “Henry? Ever killed anyone?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “That’s a no for you, too, then,” she said.

  The two brothers shrugged and mumbled a bit. Eventually, Andrew made clear that he was folding when he asked, “Should she be wearing a wire, Henry? So we can record the meeting for evidence?”

  Henry shook his head. “Again, they’d just say we set it all up to create reasonable doubt. It’s no better than giving them the phone and a fairy tale about the boogeyman who gave it to you. Besides, whoever he sends to the meet may check Molly for a wire, and if we piss our guy off, he may say to hell with it and give all the evidence against Tyler to the cops and destroy the recording proving his innocence.”

  “Look, this is simple,” Molly said. “I check out whatever evidence he has to show me. If it looks legit . . .” She glanced at Andrew.

  He hesitated, then said, �
��If it looks legit, tell him I’ll agree to his demand.”

  No one said anything for a moment. Molly and Henry exchanged glances. Then they looked at Andrew. He took a long, slow breath, then nodded.

  “Okay then,” Molly said. “Time for me to go.”

  Molly eased her car to a stop at the edge of the parking lot of the Burr and Burton Academy—a secondary school founded almost 200 years ago—where the meeting was to take place. At 10:53 p.m., the lot was deserted, and the nearby buildings looked dark and lifeless. The moon was bright tonight, though. Molly raised a pair of binoculars and looked out through the windshield, her army training kicking in as she coolly scanned the area for threats—the parking lot, the buildings, the tree line at the north end of the lot. She snuck a glance at her watch: 10:59.

  A minute later, a solitary figure appeared at the far end of the lot. A man. She wasn’t concerned. She could handle herself. She considered retrieving the slim, sleek Glock 43 she kept in the glove compartment, but after assessing the situation decided against it. She truly believed she wouldn’t need it, in which case its presence could make a tense situation far more tense . . . and dangerous. Besides, she could handle herself without a gun.

  She stepped from her Land Rover and was about to start walking toward him, to meet him in the middle, when she thought, Why the hell should I do the walking? She leaned against the front of her SUV and watched him approach. She hoped he saw her easy confidence. Finally, he came close enough that she could see him reasonably well in the dark. He carried what looked like a cell phone in one hand and something long and thin—maybe a weapon—in the other. He was Hispanic. Late twenties. Medium height. Big tattoo on his neck. Wiry but muscular.

  When he was ten feet away, Molly said, “That’s far enough for now.”

  He stopped. She noticed earbuds hanging around his neck and could hear faint music emanating from them. Their cord trailed into the front pocket of his jeans, where she could see a rectangular, smartphone-size bulge.

  “Just so you know,” she said, “I’m a trained killer. Army. I could end you in five seconds. If that’s a weapon of some kind you’ve got there, it might take me ten.”

  “Damn,” the guy said, smiling. “That was pretty cool. Like a line from a movie. Is it true?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”

  The guy was still smiling. “Damn.”

  She nodded toward the long, skinny thing in his hand. “What’s that?”

  “Something he gave me to see if you’re wired. I’m supposed to wave it over your body.”

  She didn’t like the way he said the word body.

  She pushed off the vehicle, stepped forward, and raised her arms. “Get it over with.”

  He took his time, looking her over while he scanned. When he briefly met her eyes and caught the threat there, he stepped back and announced, “You’re clean.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t see a cell phone in any of your pockets, either.”

  “I was told not to have one. So who are you?”

  “Nobody.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy who sent you.”

  “I don’t. He gave me four hundred bucks and this detector. Told me if it made any noise when I waved it over you, I should walk away. Also gave me this phone, which I’m supposed to show you if the wand didn’t beep.”

  She eyed the phone. If there was a recording that would prove Tyler innocent on it, all she had to do was take it from the guy. She could do that. No problem at all.

  The guy nodded knowingly. “He said you’d be thinking about trying to take the phone from me, so I’m supposed to tell you the video’s not on it. But you’ll see it there.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That’s all he said about it.”

  “You know his name?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “He looked like a guy in a ski mask. Pulled up next to me and offered me a quick hundred bucks. I thought he was looking for a blow job or something, and I was trying to decide whether to just walk away, or to pull him out of his car and beat him bloody and then walk away. Then he upped it to four hundred and told me what he wanted me to do. He talked with one of those things that made his voice sound weird. Like a robot’s.”

  Well, just in case Molly had harbored any doubt that she was at the right meeting . . .

  “Show me what he wants you to show me,” she said.

  “I gotta wait for it to ring.”

  “How long do we have to wait for that?”

  He shrugged. “Wanna have some fun while we wait?”

  “Wanna piss through a special tube for the rest of your life?”

  He smiled appreciatively. “Damn.”

  They stood in awkward silence for another minute or so until the phone rang. The guy turned the screen toward her. Then, with his other hand, he slipped the earbuds into his ears, one by one. “Doing as I was told,” he said. “Can’t hear a thing now.”

  The phone rang again.

  “It’s a video call,” the guy said a little too loudly in the deserted parking lot, to be heard over the music pounding in his ears. “For your eyes only. Press the ‘Answer’ button.”

  She did, and an image appeared on the screen. An image of another screen. She realized that the camera on his end was facing a computer monitor. She could see nothing else in the frame, just the monitor, on which she saw a frozen scene. Looked like an apartment. There was someone in the center of the frame, across a dimly lit room.

  “Are you there?” a harsh robotic voice said from somewhere offscreen. It sounded like metal scraping against metal. It was the first time Molly had heard it herself.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “I can’t see you, of course. A woman, though. Is that Molly Kane, the governor’s sweet little sister?”

  “Not that little. Definitely not sweet.”

  “I guess your brothers have let you in on this. Welcome.”

  “I hope you know that if I ever find you, I’ll do terrible things to you. I learned a lot of terrible things in the Middle East.” Without waiting for him to reply, she said, “Now show me what I’m here to see.”

  The camera shook slightly; then the image on the screen unfroze, and the person across the room in the video moved.

  Smart, showing her the video in a way that made it impossible for her to steal it by grabbing the device playing it . . . which she had totally been planning to do if she got the chance. The recording she needed wasn’t on the phone in front of her. It was somewhere else. It could have been anywhere—two blocks away or in Paris.

  On-screen, the person—a woman, Molly was now able to discern—was doing something with her hand. Ah, she was drinking from a glass. She put the glass down and stood motionless for a moment, staring in the direction of the camera. Then she took a tentative step forward, followed by another. Suddenly, a figure stepped into frame, apparently from behind the camera. It walked toward the woman . . . toward Sally Graham, she realized. This must have been her apartment. The figure kept getting closer to her. A man, by its size. In fact, a man several inches taller than Tyler. And heavier, too, by at least forty pounds. But that was all she could tell about him, because everywhere she should have seen skin was covered by white fabric of some kind, like a chemical protective suit she’d seen others wear in the army, only his was white instead of olive or camo. The suit had a hood, and dark goggles covered the man’s eyes. Over the white suit, he wore regular clothes that were quite obviously a few sizes too small for him: a long-sleeved Pac-Man T-shirt, blue jeans, sneakers. He looked like a white mannequin wearing ill-fitting garments. The clothes were—

  Tyler’s. She was nearly positive. She’d bought him that T-shirt last fall.

  The man stepped up to the woman, and she . . . didn’t do anything. She didn’t run. She didn’t scream. Why didn’t she run or scr
eam?

  He reached out and put his hand over her mouth, then he stepped behind her and . . .

  He stabbed her in the chest. She grunted.

  Molly almost cried out.

  He stabbed her in the chest again, the knife making a wet thudding sound. She grunted again.

  Molly had seen death. She’d seen people die. She’d seen them killed by other people. She’d killed enemy soldiers herself in conflicts. But the cold, methodical way the man on-screen stabbed the woman—then slowly sliced her stomach open—was the most disturbing thing she’d ever witnessed. His actions were so mechanical and precise that she wondered for an irrational moment whether he truly was a robot.

  The man lowered the woman’s body to the carpet, almost gently, and hovered over her, touching her . . . no, not just touching her. He was positioning her—straightening a leg a little, arranging her hair. What the hell?

  Finally, mercifully, the image froze again.

  “Do you understand, Molly?” the robot asked.

  He was questioning whether she could see why this video would clear Tyler. And she could. The man was undoubtedly too big to be her brother. Also, she realized, the level of planning evident in the video was likely beyond Tyler’s capabilities. He was innocent. She had believed it in her heart. She’d believed what her brothers had told her. But now she’d seen it.

  “If I’m ever in the same room with you,” she said, “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Your tough talk is getting boring, Molly. Now, there’s a little more for you to see.”

  The camera turned away from the computer monitor and panned across several items of clothing laid out on a big, otherwise empty surface, perhaps a dining room table. Men’s clothes. Tyler’s clothes, she realized again. Several shirts and pairs of pants.

  “I took these from the hamper in Tyler’s room. They undoubtedly have his DNA on them. I could use them in any number of ways to dig his hole a lot deeper. But if Governor Andy does what I ask, I’ll give these to you guys along with the recording.”