The Deepest Cut (3 page)

She saw evil as a parasite on good. Without good, evil would not exist. Without her, what would he be?

She’d had a nice life before he’d burst into it. Once he was dead— his violent death was the only suitable end she’d envisioned for him— she could resume her life. Couldn’t she?

She wished Kissick were here right now. Wanted his strong, calm presence near her. They were work partners and, recently, much more. She looked at the clock on the microwave oven and wondered what was taking him so long.

The mother of Emily’s school friend was also coming by, to pick up Emily for the night, giving Em a reprieve from this house of horrors. Giving Vining a reprieve from her daughter’s questions, for which she had few good answers.

Emily clutched herself tighter. “So T B. Mann was here, right?” She was a younger version of Vining, nearly as tall, and shared her lanky form, dark hair, pale skin, and deep-set, green-gray eyes.

“I doubt it, sweet pea.” Vining ran her fingers through her straight, nearly black hair, which fell past her shoulders. She dug a rubber band out of the odds-and-ends drawer. Using the glass door of the microwave as a mirror, she fashioned her hair into a ponytail. She gave herself a hard look. She was only thirty-four, but she thought she’d aged considerably over the past year. She rubbed the back of her long neck, which was moist with perspiration.

The windows were open, the air-conditioning was off, and the night air was cool. She and Em had been enjoying a quiet evening at home before T B. Mann had again upended their lives.

“I don’t think he would take such a risk, showing up here.” Vining was fibbing again. She thought it was exactly the sort of thing he’d do. If T B. Mann himself hadn’t brought the shirt onto her property, maybe he’d sent Nitro, the silent, mysterious, pale, gangly young creep who had literally streaked into their lives a few weeks ago. Vining had temporarily ensnared him in the Big G’s psych ward, but he had slipped away and disappeared.

“Why now?”

Vining raised a shoulder and shook her head.

“Mom, something’s happening and you’re not telling me.” Emily’s eyes welled with tears. Lately she was quick to become emotional. A surge of hormones was stealing away Vining’s sweet baby girl.

Vining reached toward her daughter. “Em—”

“You’ve been acting strange, Mom. I know you’re hiding something. You used to tell me everything.”

“Yes, and that was a mistake.” After she’d been injured, Vining had confided in her daughter about her hopes and fears, and her theories about T. B. Mann. She’d been weak to latch on to Em, who was not only the person closest to her, but also the purest soul. While she would never do anything to put her daughter in danger, she’d since put Emily on a need-to-know basis.

“If everything’s okay, why do you want me to stay at Aubrey’s house tonight?” Emily’s gaze burned with indignation. “You always said that T. B. Mann wouldn’t come around here. Now everything’s changed. I have a right to know, Mom.”

Vining closed her eyes. “Em, please …”

They heard a car pull up in front, followed by a toot of its horn.

AFTER VINING HAD LOADED EMILY INTO THE CAR AND EXCHANGED PLEASANTRIES
with Aubrey and her mom, she returned to the kitchen.

The house was silent.

She took out tongs from a drawer and used them to take the shirt from the bag. She held it in front of her. There was a lot of blood on it, but she’d left much more on the floor of the kitchen in the house at 835 El Alisal Road.

She had deconstructed the events of her ambush until it was robbed of nearly all its emotional power. One component, the diamond core of rage, had resisted the hammer and chisel. Some things refused to be pounded into oblivion by sheer will.

The veneer of control she’d clung to while Emily was there dropped away. Throwing down the tongs, she grabbed a knife with a
six-inch blade— the same size as the one he’d used to stab her. Her rage gained speed, like a runaway train. She grabbed the shirt and marched from the kitchen, through the TV room, and into the living room. Adrenaline made her legs tremble. She flung open the sliding glass door with a bang, sending it shaking in its frame.

Her better angel warned her to calm down. Giving in to her rage was not productive. She was being careless with important evidence. Plus, revealing herself to him like this only played into his sick fantasies. The Magic Eight Ball of her conscience warned:
If you’re not careful, he’ll win.

Her dark angel did not heed the warning. This scenario was being played out with greater frequency. Part of her felt she was on the road to ruin. Part of her didn’t care.

From her hillside home, the twinkling lights of the hindquarters of Los Angeles were splayed out off her right shoulder, stretching like a giant river to the distant ocean. Wind chimes hanging from a rod above the sliding glass door began to ring vigorously in the still air.

She didn’t turn to see what was disturbing them. She knew she was being sent a message from the friendly ghost of murdered LAPD vice officer Frances “Frankie” Lynde. Vining had more than just solved Frankie’s murder, she’d meted out justice, yet Frankie’s spirit still did not rest. Vining interpreted the pealing wind chimes as a warning. She ignored it.

Grabbing the shirt, she held it in front of her and struggled to stab the fabric with the knife. She couldn’t do it. She set the shirt on the railing, pulled the fabric tight with one hand, and stabbed it with the other. She pulled up the shirt, pierced by the knife, and held it like a flag, putting it on display for the illuminated city.

“Do you see me?” she yelled.

Her mind felt bubbly, like her brains had been replaced with champagne.

“Do you hear me?”

Dogs started barking. Lights went on in nearby houses.

She raged on. “See me
now.
Hear me
now.
You’re going down.
You are going down!
”

She stabbed the knife with the shirt attached into the wooden railing. The knife wobbled with the force.

Giving a final, fierce look at the nearby dark hills and the lights of the metropolis in the distance, she went inside.

The silence was broken by the tinkling of the terrace wind chimes. The air was still, yet the chimes vigorously rang.

THREE

J
IM KISSICK HELD UP THE BLOODY SHIRT BY THE SHOULDERS. HIS
expression was grim as he fingered the hole in it. “This goes all the way through, like someone stabbed it or something.”

“I did.” Vining realized she’d left the knife on the terrace. “Well, I put a knife through it.”

He looked at her with those steady hazel eyes and nodded as if it all made perfectly good sense. After a moment, he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

She saw him let out a breath, measuring his next comment.

He changed the subject. “You keep your garage door closed, right?”

“Yes,” she said. “I watch when it opens and closes to make sure no one comes in. Something I started after the incident.” She and Emily had taken to calling T. B. Mann’s assault an “incident.” Other words were fraught with emotion. “He’s good at getting in and out of places without being seen. Em and I were gone for a couple of hours, running errands. I asked the neighbors if anyone saw anything. No one did. He could have worn a uniform, like from the gas company, or even posed as a cop. He wore a disguise at the El Alisal house to look like Dale David, the realtor who was selling the house. He had on a black wig and I’m convinced he wore brown contact lenses. His Brooks
Brothers polo shirt was even the same kind that Dale David often wears.”

Kissick dropped the gruesome shirt into a brown paper evidence bag he’d brought with him. “Forensics can send it to the county crime lab tomorrow.” Setting the bag on a kitchen counter, he walked to the door that led into the garage and went out, clicking on the light switch.

Vining pulled a chair from the dinette set, dropped onto it, and held her head in her hands. She was embarrassed by her outburst on the terrace. She prayed none of her neighbors had heard her. What had gotten into her? Was she losing her mind?

She listened to Kissick’s familiar footsteps in his favorite well-worn loafers as his long legs made quick work of the two-car garage. He opened and closed the door of her ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee.

When she heard him return, she wiped away tears of anger and frustration. She tried to calm down, but couldn’t grab hold of her emotions. “He was here, Jim. Either him or his buddy, Nitro.”

He stood near, not saying anything. She liked his quiet strength, the way his eyes spoke volumes while he remained silent. His thick, wavy, sandy brown hair was mussed on one side, revealing a shadow of the boy obscured by the man.

She had made it on her own for a long time, needing no one, especially a man. Particularly a man. But now
this
man was in her life. He had been in her work life for several years as her partner. They had been lovers for a brief period two years ago, and now, very recently, were again. She felt she wanted him wholesale, but could not allow herself to give in. She kept him at arm’s length for his own protection. She had to protect him from her.

She raised clenched fists. Her rage took flight, like a kite catching the wind. “Jim, he was
here,
on my property. First, he sent Nitro to torment me, but that wasn’t enough. He had to get closer. He came
here,
close to Emily. Letting her find that …
thing.
He saved that shirt, the asshole. Who knows what else he did with it. And that note he wrote about Emily … If he wants to come after me, then come after me. Leave Em out of it. If his goal is to scare me, he’s doing a good job, I’ll give him that.”

“Let’s put a patrol car on your house.”

“Yeah, maybe, though I don’t think he’s stupid enough to come back. He wanted to make a point and he made it.”

“He was stupid enough to put that shirt in your garage.” Kissick squatted down in front of her.

She looked at his good, strong face, which she had only lately allowed herself to love again. “You know what the worst part is? The lying. I tell lies because of him. I lied to Emily about the shirt. She doesn’t even know about Nitro, finding him in Old Pasadena with his disgusting drawings. And I’ve lied to you …”

She reached to smooth his errant patch of hair. “It’s like he’s split me into two people: the old Nan, and someone else whose morals are compromised. Someone like him.”

Her face grew pinched with the confession. Kissick had discovered one of her lies by accident, but there was more he didn’t know and that she didn’t want him to know. Revealing all her secrets would transfer the blackness onto him. She could be fired from the Pasadena Police Department for the things she’d done. Nan didn’t want to put Kissick in the position of having to choose between her and the career that he loved so much. Since they’d resumed their relationship, he’d not mentioned pursuing a promotion to sergeant, something he used to talk about a lot. She was already standing in his way.

She went on. “I try to keep my life compartmentalized. I just want to protect the people I love from this monster that’s shadowing me, that’s changing me in ways I don’t like.”

She took in a shuddering breath. “I’ve changed, Jim. I don’t like what I’m becoming.” Tears again welled in her eyes. She blinked, frowning at the floor.

He raised her chin with his hand. “We’ll get through this.”

A tear snaked from the corner of her eye. “I can get pumped up and believe that, but there are times when I’m not so sure. I don’t know if I’m sure about anything anymore.”

He wiped her tear with his fingertip.

She saw the love and concern in his eyes. She had to kiss him. She cupped his cheeks between her palms and he leaned in to meet her.
They kissed tenderly. They drew apart, but not completely. He stroked her nose with his.

Anger and despair had already quickened the pace of her breath. Now a different kind of passion roiled her, and him. Their lips again found each other, their kiss more urgent. He moved to his knees. Still sitting in the chair, she let her thighs drop open to accommodate him.

As they kissed, he rubbed his hands down her neck and across her shoulders, easily pulling away the spaghetti straps of the summer dress she’d thrown on. She shrugged her arms from the straps and he pulled the dress to her waist. As he took her breasts into his hands and mouth, she worked the buttons of his shirt. The clothing quickly morphed from a tease to an impediment. She gave up on his shirt and stood, yanking the dress over her head and tossing it aside while he did the same with his shirt, not bothering with the rest of the buttons.

His mouth tore at her silky bikini panties and he started to get to his feet when she pushed him back down.

“Don’t you want to go to the bedroom?” he panted.

“No. Here.” She hooked her thumbs into the panties’ waistband. They were soon off and tossed away.

“Here?” he asked.

She worked at his belt buckle and he didn’t protest further.

He kicked off his shoes, struggled out of his khaki pants, and lowered himself to the floor. She followed him there, her hands on his shoulders. She was nude and he wore only brown socks. She straddled him, letting loose a gasp of pleasure, then moans of ecstasy, which were supplanted by a yelp of pain when her knees could no longer take the linoleum floor.

Keeping her astride him, he moved until he was sitting. She wrapped her legs around his back.

Through her slit eyes, she saw the evidence bag with its grisly artifact. She closed her eyes. Arching her back, she became aware only of herself and Kissick and their rising passion.

She heard a phone ringing somewhere, maybe through the open window of a neighbor’s house. He gave no indication he heard or cared about a ringing phone. Her excitement mounted. Everything was
erased from her mind except the moment. She’d wanted something to restore her concentration. She’d found it. The sublime present that seemed to go on forever reached a brilliant, exhilarating high point, then melted into a rosy glow.