The Off Season (26 page)

“But she—I don’t understand this. It’s impossible. It can’t be real. I need—I need my—”

From downstairs, Christina heard knocking—at the front door, from the sounds of it.

“I have to go,” he told them. And then to Annie, “Please don’t call anyone just yet.”

Striding out, he closed the door behind them. Closed all four inside a bedroom in a house of desecrated memories . . . a house that could never again feel anything like home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Around three a.m., Harris went to tell Annie they’d cleared the upstairs in case she still wanted to run that bath to help warm up Christina. Instead, he found the sisters and Lilly, all three nestled with their arms interlaced, as if they’d been comforting one another until they’d succumbed to exhaustion—and their desperate need to escape the unthinkable in the only way possible.

With a bar of light from the hallway slanting across Christina’s face, he saw her eyes jerking back and forth beneath the lids and her mouth twitching downward. Suspecting she was caught up in a nightmare, he ached to go to her, to pull her close enough to remind her and himself of what they’d shared—had it been only hours ago?

But Harris didn’t move. He couldn’t, unable to bear the thought of waking her to face an even uglier reality. A reality that he knew from his own struggles with traumatic memories would spin up bad dreams like waterspouts for years to come.

He knew, too, that it was possible she’d associate this shock and horror, her unbearable pain, with the pleasure they’d found together earlier. That every time she looked at him, she would taste bile and feel the cold of her mother’s frozen flesh beneath her hands. That she would see the ice-filmed eyes, the face so cruelly distorted—

He swore under his breath, wishing to hell that he could gift Christina with amnesia, even if it meant her forgetting him forever. He’d give her up, would give up any chance of happiness forever, if he could only make this right for her, could make it right for all of them.

He sighed, partly from fatigue and partly from the knowledge that there was nothing he could do to return Elizabeth Wallace to her family. And nothing that could make up for his failure to have stopped these crimes in time to save her.

The greyhound rose yawning from the braided rug where he’d been curled and walked over to lick Harris’s hand. Taking the hint, he scratched Max behind the ears and whispered, “You keep an eye on them, big boy. Keep her safe and warm as long as you can.”
For me.

Closing the door softly behind him, Harris left the four where they were, knowing that the morning would come all too soon, along with the news that Annie and Christina’s mother had apparently been killed in the house’s kitchen. Murdered, though someone had clearly done his best to wipe down every surface and cover any lingering grout stains with some of the contractor’s plastic sheeting. But the killer or killers hadn’t done the job well enough to escape Marco Del Vecchio’s sharp eye for stray spatter, or the reagents he’d brought in his CSI kit.

“Can you move that light a little to the left?” Del Vecchio pointed out the side of a dark cabinet to Zarzycki, whom he’d asked—big surprise there—to help him with the evidence collection.

When she’d complied, Del Vecchio continued, gesturing to the line of fine spray at eye level that Harris could now make out. “I’m thinking this could be cast off from whatever blunt object was used to beat her. Killer focused on cleaning up the blood from her wounds and didn’t think to check anything at this height.”

“Good work,” Harris told them, wondering why the killer or killers would have stuck around to clean up anything instead of leaving the scene as it was, and why, indeed, the body had been wrapped in a piece of plastic sheeting and hidden under the back steps. Clearly, Harris thought, the killing hadn’t been intended to send another message to Christina. Instead, it seemed more similar to Walt Gunderson’s brutal assault after he’d stumbled onto an ill-timed break-in.

Had the same thing happened here? Only in this case, the victim had died, causing the person or persons who’d inflicted the injuries to panic and flee without taking anything—that he knew of—from the house. Maybe they’d figured that the more time that elapsed before the discovery of the body, the less forensic evidence would be left behind.

Unfortunately for the killers, though, the cold had kept the body well preserved—assuming Elizabeth Wallace had died on or around the date Harris had found marked on the desk calendar he’d found in the nook she’d used for an office. A day she’d clearly long looked forward to, marked as it was with the underlined word
Europe
and three fat exclamation points.

Without disturbing the body, he could clearly see that she’d been bludgeoned with some heavy object, just as Gunderson had been. Repeatedly, from the looks of the numerous deep contusions, including defensive wounds on the upper arms, and at least one visible depression in the skull. There might well be other injuries he couldn’t see, but Harris and his officers had been careful not to touch her, leaving the team from the regional medical examiner’s office to their grim but essential work.

After leaving his most senior officer in charge and two others to help Del Vecchio with the evidence collection, Harris pulled Zarzycki aside. Keeping his voice low, he told her, “We need to round up Eric Edgewood right now, before word leaks out and any evidence he might have kept around goes missing. Or
he
does.”

One of her sleek, dark brows rose. “I haven’t mentioned seeing his name in that e-mail to Fiorelli. Not to anybody, I swear.”

“Good,” he said, zipping his jacket as they headed out the front door. “My Tahoe. We’ll ride together.”

He didn’t say another word until they were safely inside his SUV, the engine sputtering a moment before it rumbled to life. “You know,” he said then, “just because you didn’t let the word out doesn’t mean Fiorelli didn’t. He could’ve clued his nephew in, given him a come-to-Jesus talk or maybe even told his daddy on him, thinking to scare the kid straight. Before Frank ended up dead.”

She jerked a stricken look in his direction. “You aren’t thinking Eric might’ve killed his own uncle? Over a few burglaries and some property damage?”

“Kid’s failed at college, a couple jobs—he’s a long way from his glory days in high school. And here he is, back in his hometown, every person he grew up with seeing him screw up once again. Could be, he couldn’t stomach the thought of doing jail time.”

“Or one of his buddies might’ve done the killing,” she suggested, her seat belt latching as he took off. “No telling what kind of thugs he’s gotten tangled up with. Because he didn’t break in to all those houses on his own. Not with all that damage and the heavy stuff pulled out. For all we know, he may have kept his hands clean, just passing on the info on which houses were unprotected.”

“I’m sure that’s what his attorney’s going to tell us.”

“How quick you think he’ll lawyer up?”

“Twenty bucks says Daddy Edge’ll be calling his guy before we leave the house. Especially when he figures out I’m trying to link him with this body . . . and maybe Fiorelli’s, too.”

It wasn’t a lawyer Reg Edge called first, but the mayor, to scream about Harris’s
obvious vendetta
against his family. Wearing a heavy, steel-gray robe, with his mussed hair revealing a normally hidden bald spot, he stood in a high, domed entryway, his anger echoing off the marble as a long-haired orange cat arched its back and rubbed against his legs.

“He told me he just wanted to ask my son a few questions,” Edgewood went on as Harris and Zarzycki walked his struggling son between them, “and next thing I know, they’re handcuffing Eric for no reason, frog-marching him to the door like a couple of goddamn storm troopers.”

Unimpressed, the cat looked up at him and meowed plaintively.
For food,
thought Harris, amused by how unimpressed the animal, which didn’t look like it missed many meals, seemed by any other household concerns.

“My poor boy,” Edgewood’s wife, Molly, cried out, the pink silk of her own robe flapping around thick ankles. She was a dark-haired woman in her mid-forties, attractive enough, apart from the swelling, that it was hard to believe she was Frank Fiorelli’s sister. “Please,” she implored them. “This is all a misunderstanding. It has to be.”

“You got this?” Harris asked Zarzycki. He wanted to have a word with both of the parents before they headed to the station with their son.

“Yup,” she said, despite her left eye, which was already swelling closed after the struggle put up by Edgewood’s sainted son. “You’re going to behave for me now, aren’t you, Eric? Because if not, I’ve got this shiny new stun gun on my belt I’ve been dying to try out.”

One look at the expression on her face, and the kid—if one could call a heavily tattooed, shirtless twenty-three-year-old a kid—stopped struggling. “I’m okay,” he said, his shoulder-length black hair swinging as he looked to his distraught mother. “I’ll be fine, Mom. Please don’t cry. They only startled me. I thought they’d broken in.”

“Not another word,” his father bellowed, holding the phone away from his mouth. “Not one until you’ve spoken to our lawyer.”

The cat meowed at him once more, turning up the volume.

“Please,” said the boy’s mother, looking from Zarzycki to Harris. “Just let me grab his slippers and a shirt. It’s cold out there, and he—he’s always had a weak chest—”

“You do that, ma’am,” said Harris, not wanting to upset the woman any more than necessary.

Rather than attempting to comfort his wife, Edgewood shoved aside the cat with his foot when it yowled at him again. “Move it, you pain in the ass. Not you, ma’am,” he said into the phone. “The damn cat.” He then continued his complaints to the mayor about Harris’s
gestapo tactics
, speaking so loudly that he didn’t hear his son’s next, quiet words.

“Thanks for humoring my mom,” Eric told them both. A handsome young man with dark eyes, he favored her, rather than his father. “She hasn’t been well. Her heart.”

Harris nodded. “So I’ve heard. And by the way, I’m sorry about your uncle. We’re very close to making an arrest.” He kept his voice carefully neutral as he said it, not wanting to tip his hand that Eric himself had moved into the suspects’ column. That he was, at present, at the top of the list.

“That’s great,” Eric said, sounding as if he meant it. “Uncle Frank might’ve been kind of a crank, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve what happened. My mom’s sick about it.”

Harris nodded. “You know he’d kick your ass if he was here, assaulting an officer when we just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

With a stricken look, Eric turned and looked up at Zarzycki’s darkening eye. “I really didn’t mean it. I—I’ve done some dumb shit in my life, as my father reminds me on a daily basis. But I’ve never hit a woman. Never would have if I hadn’t been startled out of a dead sleep.”

“Eric, I told you. Shut your damn mouth,” Edgewood ordered, the cat flattening its ears and growling at him when he took a step nearer. “You have the right to remain silent. Have brains enough to use it.”

Eric glared at his father before telling Zarzycki, “I’m really sorry, Officer. I hope it doesn’t hurt much.”

“I’ll be okay,” she said. “But don’t think that’s going to keep me from giving that Taser a little extra juice if you decide to throw another elbow. Got it?”

Eric nodded as Molly Edgewood reappeared, her arms full of a sweatshirt and jacket to cover her son’s bare chest, and a pair of hard-soled slippers for his feet.

“I’m going to unlock the cuffs so you can get dressed,” Harris told him, having already searched Eric to make sure the kid wasn’t hiding any weapons. “Don’t make either one of us regret it.”

“You don’t have to put them on him, do you?” Eric’s mother asked Harris when her son finished and then put his hands back behind him to be recuffed. “He’ll behave now, won’t you Eric? And the neighbors—if any of them are awake and looking out their windows . . .”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Edgewood,” Harris said as he snapped the cuffs once more. “It’s protocol, for everybody’s safety.”

“It’s all right, Mom,” said Eric. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you in a few hours, as soon as Dad bails me out.”

“Who says I’m gonna bail you out?” his father asked.

“The same son who picked you up after your last drunk-driving arrest.”

Reg Edge’s face turned redder than a sunburned tourist.

When she nodded, Eric went quietly with Zarzycki, looking nothing like the kind of man who might well have recently beaten to death someone else’s mother, let alone stabbed a blood relation. Harris had noticed, too, that Eric Edgewood, for all his arm and back ink—designs including Vikings, swords, and a dragon skull vomiting out flames—had no scars on his knuckles or any signs of recent injuries.

Had he used a weapon to bludgeon Christina’s mother? Or had a more violent conspirator done the actual dirty work?

“Mayor Bradford wants to speak to you,” crowed Reg Edge. Covering the mouthpiece, he added, “And she
doesn’t
sound happy.”

Harris took the phone and turned his back to him.

“Stella,” Harris said by way of greeting, “sorry you’ve had a second rude awakening tonight.” Earlier, he’d called her to report the murder of Christina’s mother, knowing the mayor took serious crimes in what she called
her city
personally—as well she might, after four consecutive terms.

“Never mind that,” she said, fatigue making her sound older than her sixty-plus years. “Just explain to me why I’ve had that insufferable jackass yelling in my ear at this hour. Tell me his son’s not a suspect in either of our murders.”