Brazen Virtue (12 page)

“Whenever you’re too close to something, the vision blurs, Grace.”

Her hackles rose, prompted by the strain of the last twenty-four hours. She felt her temper slip and barely managed to catch it. “All right. That’s why I’m asking you to talk to him. You’ll see for yourself. Then you can tell me.”

Ed ate his salad slowly. The longer this went on, he thought, the harder it was going to be. “Grace, I can’t tell you about the investigation, not specifics, not any more than the department decides to release to the press.”

“I’m not a goddamn reporter, I’m her sister. If Jonathan had anything to do with what happened to Kathleen, don’t I have a right to know?”

“Maybe.” His eyes were on hers, very calm and suddenly distant. “But I don’t have the right to tell you anything until it’s official.”

“I see.” Very slowly, and with a precision she possessed only when she deliberately controlled her temper, Grace tapped out her cigarette. “My sister was raped and murdered. I found her body. I’m the only one left to comfort my parents. But the cop says the investigation’s confidential.” She rose, knowing she was on the edge of another crying jag.

“Grace—”

“No, don’t give me any platitudes, I’ll hate you for it.” She willed herself to calm down again as she studied him. “You have a sister, Ed?”

“Yeah.”

“Think about it,” she said as she reached the back door. “And let me know how much departmental procedure would mean to you if you were putting her in the ground.”

When the door shut, Ed pushed aside his plate, then picked up her beer. He finished it off in two long swallows.

J
ERALD WASN’T SURE WHY
he sent flowers to her funeral. In part it was because he felt it necessary to acknowledge the odd and unique role she’d played in his life. He thought too that if he acknowledged it, he would be able to close the chapter, stop dreaming about her.

He was already searching for another, listening hour after hour for that one voice that could bring him the rush and thrill. He never doubted that he’d find it, that he would recognize it with one phrase, one word. The voice would bring him the woman, and the woman would bring him the glory.

Patience was important, timing was vital, but he wasn’t sure how long he could wait. The experience had been so special, so unique. To experience it again would be, well, perhaps like dying.

He was losing sleep. Even his mother had noticed it, and she rarely noticed anything between her committees and her cocktails. Of course she’d accepted his excuse about studying late and had tutted and patted his cheek and told him not to work so hard. She was such a fool. Still, he didn’t
resent her. Her preoccupations had always provided him with the space he needed for his own diversions. In return, he’d given her the illusion of the ideal son. He didn’t play loud music or go to wild parties. Such things were childish anyway.

He might have considered school a waste of time, but he maintained good, even excellent, grades. The simplest way to keep people from bothering you was to give them what they wanted. Or to make them think you were doing so.

He was fastidious, even fussy, about his room and his personal hygiene. In that way it was accepted that the servants would stay out of his personal space. His mother considered it a mild, even endearing, eccentricity. And it insured that no one would find his cache of drugs.

More important, no servant, no family, no friend ever touched his computer.

He had a natural aptitude for machines. They were so much better, so much cleaner than people. He’d been fifteen when he’d tapped into his mother’s personal checking account. It had been so easy to take what he needed, and so much more rewarding than asking for it. He’d tapped into other accounts, but he’d soon tired of the money.

It was then he’d discovered the phone, and how exciting it could be to listen to other people. Like a ghost. The Fantasy line had been an accident at first. But soon it was all he cared about.

He couldn’t stop, not until he’d found the next, not until he’d found the voice that could soothe the pounding in his head. But he had to be careful.

He knew his mother was a fool, but his father … if his father noticed anything, there’d be questions. Thinking of it, Jerald took a pill, then two. Though he preferred amphetamines to barbiturates, he wanted to sleep that night, and dreamlessly. He knew just how clever his father was.

He’d put his talent to use for years in court before he’d
made the almost seamless switch to politics. From Congress to the Senate, Charlton P. Hayden had earned a reputation for power and intelligence. His image was that of a wealthy, privileged man who understood the needs of the masses, who fought for lost causes and won. A paragon, without a shadow to smear his reputation. No, his father had always been a very careful man, a very dedicated man, a very clever man.

Jerald had no doubt that when election year was over, when the votes were tallied and the last of the confetti swept up, his father would be the youngest and most glamorous resident of the Oval Office since Kennedy.

Charlton P. Hayden wouldn’t be pleased to learn that his only son, his heir apparent, had strangled one woman and was waiting for the opportunity to do so again.

But Jerald knew himself to be very clever. No one would ever know that the son of the front-running candidate for president of the United States had a taste for murder. He knew if he could hide it from his father, he could hide it from anyone.

So he sent the flowers, and he sat late at night in the dark, waiting for the right voice and the right words.

T
HANK YOU FOR COMING
, Sister.” Grace knew it was foolish to feel odd about shaking a nun’s hand. It was simply that she couldn’t help remembering how many times her knuckles had been whacked by one with a ruler. And she couldn’t quite get used to the fact that they didn’t wear habits anymore. The nun who had introduced herself as Sister Alice wore a small silver crucifix with her conservative black suit and low-heeled pumps. But there was no wimple and robe.

“All our prayers are with you and your family, Miss McCabe. In the few months I knew Kathleen, I came to respect her dedication and skill as a teacher.”

Respect. The word came again as it had, in cold comfort, for an hour. No one spoke of affection or of friendship. “Thank you, Sister.”

There were several members of the faculty as well as a handful of students in the church. Without them, the pews would have been all but empty. She’d had no one, Grace thought as she stationed herself in the rear, no one who hadn’t come out of a sense of duty or compassion.

There were flowers. She looked at the baskets and wreaths in the nave. She wondered why she seemed to be the only one who found the colors obscene under the circumstances. Most were from California. A bunch of gladioluses and a formal card were apparently enough from the people who had once been a part of Kathleen’s life. Or of Mrs. Jonathan Breezewood’s life.

Grace hated the smell of them, just as she hated the glossy white casket she’d refused to approach. She hated the music that flowed quietly down the aisle and knew she’d never be able to hear an organ again without thinking of death.

These were the trappings the dead expected from the living. Or was it that the living expected them from the dead? She wasn’t sure of anything except that when her time came, there would be no ceremonies, no dirges, no friends and relatives staring teary-eyed down at what was left of her.

“Grace.”

She turned, hoping nothing showed on her face. “Jonathan. You came.”

“Of course.” Unlike Grace, he looked down the aisle at the white casket and his former wife.

“Still image-conscious, I see.”

He noted the heads that turned at Grace’s statement but merely glanced at his watch. “I’m afraid I can only stay for the service. I have an appointment to speak with a
Detective Jackson in an hour. Then I have to get to the airport.”

“It’s good of you to fit your wife’s funeral into your schedule. Doesn’t it bother you, Jonathan, to be such a hypocrite? Kathleen meant nothing, less than nothing to you.”

“I don’t think this is the appropriate time or place for this discussion.”

“You’re wrong.” She took his arm before he could pass her. “There’ll never be a better time or place.”

“If you push, Grace, you’ll hear things you’d prefer not to.”

“I haven’t begun to push. It makes me sick to see you here, playing the grieving husband after what you put her through.”

It was the murmurs that made up his mind. The murmurs, and the almost guilty glances over the shoulder. Clamping his hand to Grace’s arm, he drew her outside. “I prefer to keep family discussions private.”

“We aren’t family.”

“No, and it would be foolish to pretend there’s ever been any affection between us. You’ve never bothered to disguise your contempt for me.”

“I don’t believe in veneers, especially over feelings. Kathleen should never have married you.”

“On that we agree completely. Kathleen should never have married anyone. She was a barely adequate mother and a poor excuse for a wife.”

“How dare you? How dare you stand here, now, and speak that way? You humiliated her, you flaunted your affairs in her face.”

“Better if I had had them behind her back?” With a half laugh, he looked beyond her to an elm that had been planted when the church’s cornerstone had been laid. “Do you think she cared? You’re more of a fool than I believed you to be.”

“She loved you.” Her voice was furious now. Because it
hurt, hurt more than she’d ever conceived of to stand here on the steps where she’d stood so often before with her sister. In the May Procession in frilly white dresses, on Easter Sunday in yellow bonnets and Mary Janes. They’d walked up and down those same steps so many times together as children, and now she stood alone. The organ music came low and mournful through the cracks of the doors. “You and Kevin were her whole life.”

“You’re very much mistaken, Grace. I’ll tell you about your sister. She cared about no one. She had no passion, no capability for it. Not just physical, but emotional passion. She never turned a hair over my affairs, as long as they were discreet, as long as they didn’t interfere with the one thing she really prized. Being a Breezewood.”

“Stop it.”

“No, you’ll listen now.” He caught her before she could run back into the church. “It wasn’t just sex she was ambivalent about, it was anything that didn’t fit into her plans. She’d wanted a son, a Breezewood, and once she had Kevin, she considered her duty ended. He was a symbol more than a child to her.”

It hit home, too close to where her own thoughts had drifted over the years. And it made her ashamed. “That’s not true. She loved Kevin.”

“As much as she was capable. You tell me, Grace, did you ever see one spontaneous act of affection from her, to yourself, to your parents?”

“Kathy wasn’t demonstrative. That doesn’t mean she didn’t feel.”

“She was cold.” Grace jerked her head back as if she’d been slapped. It wasn’t a surprise to hear it; it was a surprise to realize she’d harbored the same secret opinion all of her life. “And the worst of it is, I don’t think she could help it. For most of our marriage we went our own ways because it was convenient for both of us.”

It made her worse than ashamed. It made her sick.
Because she’d known it, she’d seen it, but she’d refused to believe it. She saw the way he smoothed his hair when the light breeze disturbed it. It was the casual gesture of a man who preferred no imperfections. Kathleen might have been at fault, but she hadn’t been alone.

“Then it stopped being convenient for you.”

“That’s correct. When I asked her for a divorce she showed the first emotion I’d seen from her in years. She refused, she threatened, even pleaded. But it wasn’t me she was afraid of losing, it was the position she’d grown comfortable in. When she saw I was resolute, she left. She refused a settlement of any kind. She’d been gone three months before she contacted me and asked for Kevin. For three months she hadn’t seen or spoken to her son.”

“She was suffering.”

“Perhaps she was. I no longer cared. I told her she was not going to uproot Kevin, but that we would make arrangements for her to have him for a time during his school vacation.”

“She was going to fight you for him. She was afraid of you and your family, but she was going to fight for Kevin.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“You knew,” Grace said slowly. “You knew what she was doing?”

“I knew she’d hired a lawyer and a detective.”

“And what would you have done to keep her from winning custody?”

“Whatever became necessary.” Again, he glanced at his watch. “It appears we’re holding up the service.”

He opened the door to the vestibule and stepped inside.

B
EN PULLED A GLAZED
doughnut out of a white paper bag as he stopped at a red light. It had warmed enough to have the windows at half mast so that the tunes
from the easy listening station on the radio of the car beside him drifted over his own choice of B. B. King.

“How can anybody listen to that crap?” He glanced over, saw the car was a Volvo, and rolled his eyes. “I figure it’s a Soviet conspiracy. They’ve taken over the airwaves, filled them with inane orchestrated pap, and are going to keep playing it until the minds of average Americans turn to Jell-O. Meanwhile, waiting for us to fall over in a Manilow coma, they’re listening to the Stones.” He took another bite of doughnut before turning King up another notch. “And we’re worried about midrange missiles in Europe.”

“You ought to write the Pentagon,” Ed suggested.

“Too late.” Ben drove through the intersection and turned right at the next corner. “Probably already piping in Carpenters ballads. They’re mellowing us out, Ed, mellowing us out and just waiting for us to mold.”

When his partner didn’t comment, Ben switched the radio down again. If he wasn’t going to be able to take Ed’s mind off it, he might as well shoot straight on.

“The funeral’s today, isn’t it?”