The Masked Truth (32 page)

He sputters a laugh. “No. That’s rather brilliant, but no.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re not the type.”

“Not a romantic hero?”

“Not a
bad
romantic hero.”

That gets a grin. “So I’m a good—”

“Enough. Your ego may have taken a blow with your diagnosis, but in some areas I suspect it doesn’t need bolstering.”

“It can
always
use—”

“No. So cut the bullshit, Max. If you want to kiss me, kiss me. You’re good at it, though I probably shouldn’t admit that. But I’m not complaining, and I’m not expecting anything more out of it, because you aren’t the only one dealing with a lot these days.”

His smile fades. “Of course. Sorry. That was rather self-centered of me.”

“Forgiven. Point is, kiss me or don’t. Just stop apologizing if you do, and don’t you dare tell me
I
should be the one to stop you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now, back to the important stuff.”

“Kissing isn’t important?”

“Focus, Max.”

“I can’t. It’s a symptom.”

“It’s an excuse. Focus. Or I’ll leave you behind.”

“Mmm, no, you can’t,” he says “I have a condition that makes it unwise to abandon me in public places.”

“Bullshit. But if you feel that way, I can make sure you’re well taken care of … with one call to 911.”

“You don’t have your mobile.”

“Pay phone.”

“They still have those?” he says. “All right. I’ll focus. Lorenzo was an innocent victim. Aimee was the inside connection. Or that is our working theory, and to substantiate it, we ought to pay a visit to her residence. We’ll need to locate the address.”

“I have it.”

He smiles. “Of course you do. Tallyho, then.”

I slide off the bike rack. “By the way, that’s a fox-hunting term, possibly derived from a French word used to work up hounds on a hunt. In fox hunting, it means that the target is in sight. NASA astronauts use it when they spot something in space.” I glance over. “I looked it up.”

“Of course you did.” He twists for a quick kiss on my cheek. “Because you’re brilliant.”

I sigh. “Less kissing, more keeping-your-ass-out-of-jail, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Lorenzo and his wife lived in a decent apartment in a decent part of town. That is, I suppose, what one would expect for a thirty-year-old counselor and his schoolteacher wife. Aimee was younger than Lorenzo, and she can’t have been making significantly more money, but she has a nice Victorian house in the kind of neighborhood young professionals aspire to. It’s possible that Aimee came from money, but when I look at this neighborhood, it only supports my conclusions.

I’d hoped there was more to it. Yes, there is no excuse for helping to murder any innocent person. Yet I wanted, if not to exonerate Aimee, at least to understand how this person I trusted—this person I liked—could do such a thing. I wanted to learn that she had a child I didn’t know about and these ruthless killers kidnapped him and forced her to help them, and all along she’d been planning ways to save us, but then everything went to hell and she couldn’t.

Which is bullshit. She led us on a wild goose chase for the cell phone and meds. Even after everything went wrong, she stuck to her role. I cannot understand that. I can’t even begin to try.

As we walk down her street, no one suspiciously peers out of a window or slows to eye us from their car. We’re just
a clean-cut teenage couple, cutting through their peaceful neighborhood. Even with the tied-back hair, Doc Martens and motorcycle jacket, if Max reached into his pocket, you’d expect him to whip out a sketch pad, not a semi-automatic.

Aimee’s house is the second from the corner. We scout the landscape and decide the yards are wooded enough to attempt a back-way entry through the neighboring one.

Yes, we plan to break in, despite the fact that neither of us has any experience with it. I’m relying on my extensive knowledge of fictional representations of breaking and entering. Max is relying on … me. This should go well. Climbing the first fence reminds me how much more recovery time I require. I manage it, though, with Max’s help.

While Max stands guard, I creep to the back door. I send up a Hail Mary, on the very slim chance of divine intervention, because I’m going to need it. I hope that Aimee left her back door open or a window ajar. If necessary, though, I will break one of those windows. I’m already mentally planning how to do it—seeing one on the basement level, sizing up whether I can fit through, spotting a rock in the garden that will work, wondering if I dare ask Max if I can borrow what is likely an expensive and rare jacket to wrap the rock in so it’ll make less noise when I break the glass.

I’m turning the knob, my sweater sleeve pulled over my hand to keep it fingerprint-free. My mind has already moved on to the window-smashing plan, because there’s no way this door will be open. But it’s not only open—it
opens
. It jerks wide, someone on the other side pulling as I’m pushing, and I leap back thinking,
You idiot! Just because she lives alone doesn’t mean her house will be empty!
And then I see River Ruskin. Standing there, holding the knob in his gloved hand as he stares at me.

His other hand slams out, and I think I’m a goner. There will be a knife in that hand, maybe even a gun, and I was
stupid, so damned stupid, thinking I could investigate murder—
mass
murder. Me. A seventeen-year-old high school kid whose only claims to any expertise are a detective father and a penchant for crime novels. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And now dead.

Only there isn’t a weapon in his hand. All he does is shove me aside and run past, and that’s when he sees Max—a bigger guy, in combat boots and a leather jacket, charging straight at him. River reaches for whatever weapon he has in his pocket. I grab the first thing—the only thing—I see, and I swing it at his head. And damn, that hurts. Hurts so much that it feels as if he stabbed me. He didn’t—it’s just the fact that I’m swinging a garden shovel as hard as I can, forty-eight hours after I
was
stabbed. The pain is bad enough that I don’t even see the shovel connect. Everything goes black, and I start to fall.

My arms shoot out wildly in the dark. I hit something. It’s soft. It gives a not-so-soft
oomph
. The darkness clears, and I see Max grabbing me. I ward him off with, “River!” and he pauses, frowning, as he wonders why the hell I’m talking about bodies of water at a moment like this. Then there’s a flash of dismay, as he thinks this incongruity proves he’s having trouble with his reality settings. Before I can open my mouth again, his lips form an “Oh!” of comprehension and he turns sharply … and looks down.

River lies motionless on the ground.

“Huh,” Max says. “You really hit him.”

I scramble over, and Max says, “You didn’t kill him, Riley. It was a garden spade.”

We both kneel beside River, checking vitals. He’s fine. Just unconscious.

“We should get him into the house and question him,” I say.

Max’s lips twitch.

“What? Do you have a better idea?”

“I do not. I’m simply reflecting on the fact that you are a very remarkable girl, Riley Vasquez.”

“You’re not going to kiss me again, are you?”

“Do you want me to? You can ask, if you do. No need to be shy.”

“If I wanted it, I’m quite capable of initiating it.”

He smiles. “Even better.”

“Focus …”

“Completely focused.”

“On him.” I point at River.

“I don’t want to kiss him. I’m sure he’s a nice bloke—”

“We need to get him in the house.”

“Right.” He shucks his jacket. “I’ll do that.”

“Can you lift him?”

“I’m not thin; I’m wiry. It’s all muscle. Go on inside, prepare the way and ignore any humiliating grunts of exertion you hear from the yard.”

Despite his self-deprecating commentary, Max doesn’t seem to have much trouble hauling River in. I pull butcher’s twine off a shelf, bind River and then gag him with a dishcloth. Max is impressed, which of course he lets me know, with a steady stream of banter and flattery and flirting.

I’m trying to save his ass from jail, and he’s flirting. I could give him shit for that, but he knows how much trouble he’s in. He’s helping me, and he’s watching out for me, and he’s doing everything he should. It’s just … I don’t know how to describe it. There’s almost a giddiness to his goofing around, a relief. It’s not gallows humor. He seems, in a weird way, genuinely happy.

We’re not running for our lives anymore. We’re just solving a crime, and yes, his freedom may be at stake, but there’s a sense—a profoundly unsettling sense—that this is
what he expects. That naturally he’ll be blamed for the murders. So he’ll leave the outrage to me, in an almost amused way, pleased that I care enough to be outraged on his behalf.

He certainly
hopes
we’ll find the answers he needs. Yet the overall situation is what he expects, as a guy with schizophrenia, so he might as well relax and enjoy himself.

While Max is prepared to do whatever I need, the one thing I won’t ask of him is violence. Rather than shake or slap River awake, I get ice water from the fridge and dump it on his head. He wakes with a start, realizes he’s bound and gagged, and fights madly … until he sees who captured him. Then he stops, his eyes narrowing.

“I’m going to remove the gag,” I say. “But if you scream, I’ll put it back in.”

His eyes narrow more, offended at the suggestion he’d scream.

“You broke into Aimee Carr’s house,” I begin. “You aren’t carrying anything, so you didn’t find what you were looking for. What was it?”

I pull out the dishcloth so he can speak, and he says, “I didn’t break in. I came to see her family. To say I was sorry about what happened.”

“Great. Where are they, then?” I wave around the empty house. “No, let me guess … You offered your condolences, and then you got tired, so they let you sleep on the couch while they left to make funeral arrangements.”

It’s only when Max snorts that River realizes I’m being sarcastic. Up to then he seemed relieved, as if I’d given him an excuse he could use.

“I could ask you the same,” he says after a moment’s thought. “You were breaking in when I was leaving.”

“No, I was coming to do exactly what you claim you were: offer condolences.”

“By just walking in?”

“I was about to knock when you pulled open the door.”

He hesitates, and he’s trying to reimagine the scene, to prove I’m lying, but I suspect in the shock of seeing me there he didn’t notice my hand was on the knob.

I continue, “You broke in. I want to know—”

“The door was open,” he says. “I walked in, and I called to see if someone was here.”

“He’s not going to give you a proper answer, Riley,” Max says.

When Max speaks, River jumps. He twists to stare at him. “You’re … You’re …”

“A random mate who just came along for the ride?” Max says. “I’m quite certain my photograph is in the paper, but that would require
reading
the news. A little beyond you, perhaps?”

“I know who you are,” River says.

Max sighs. “That was, I believe, the gist of what I was saying. You figured out who I was when I opened my mouth. What gave it away? The sudden stream of crazed ranting?”

“It was the accent,” River says, the sarcasm soaring over his head again.

Max rolls his eyes. “Yes, I’m the bloke who allegedly attempted to murder your sister. I could defend myself against the charge, but perhaps if you believe I’m guilty, you’ll answer Riley’s questions a tad more readily.”

River stares like he’s talking in a foreign language.

Max speaks slower. “Answer Riley or she’ll walk out and leave you with the schizophrenic and a kitchen full of sharp implements.”

River studies him as if he suspects this is not quite the terrifying prospect it should be. Then he squares his shoulders. “I was coming to speak to the family—”

“I know you were there when the Porters were killed,” I cut in.

Max’s chin shoots up, and he shakes his head hard, telling me I don’t want to go there. I focus on River, who has gone very, very still.

“I saw you that afternoon,” I say. “Just before the murders. I was in the front room upstairs and I looked down and saw you. I didn’t think anything of it. You were just some kid hanging around. Then I met you at the hospital with Brienne, and I knew there’s no way I just happened to be in a hostage situation with the sister of the guy who was randomly hanging out at the site of the
last
shooting I witnessed. You were the lookout.”

At this point, he should quiz me to be sure I’m telling the truth. Where was he standing that day? What was he doing? But he’s not bright enough for that, and only says, “You’re wrong. Maybe you saw some guy who looked like me, but—”

“Fine. Play it that way. You don’t want to talk to me, you can give your alibi to the police.”

He goes even more still than before, if that’s possible. He’s breathing hard, struggling against a surge of panic.

“She found out, didn’t she?” I say. “Brienne. Somehow she learned you were involved, and she threatened to tell someone, and you somehow got her to that therapy session. She was supposed to die there with me.”

“What? No. I’d never— My
sister? No
. All she was supposed to do—” He stops short as he realizes what he’s saying.

“Cat’s out of the bag,” Max says. “Can’t stuff it back in now. If you try, we’ll be making that call to the police. What was Brienne supposed to do for you?”

“Talk to you,” he blurts to me. “Find out what you know. Yes, Brienne overheard something, and worse,
they
found out, because I was on the phone and she said something, and they heard her. They made me send her. Either she went to that therapy thing or I was in deep shit.”

“Sounds like you were in it already,” I say.

“It was a stupid,
stupid
thing. I promised some guys I’d get their product from the supplier. I was the delivery boy, that’s it. But I got caught, and it was enough dope that I was looking at twenty years. These guys promised to get me out of that. In return, I owed them this favor—standing guard while they pulled a hit. That’s all I did: stand guard. Just like I only carried the damned dope. But it just keeps getting worse, one thing leads to another, and now my sister’s in the hospital and—”