The Witness (34 page)

“I’ll admit I’d enjoy having a boat.”

“See? The idea is already growing on you.”

“Have they set a date for the wedding yet?”

Marie picked up the phone and walked out of the studio and into the kitchen to get herself something to drink. “They’re talking about April, I think. Tracey likes the thought of having her anniversaries in the decades to come during that month.” She eyed the closed garbage sack that reminded her it was garbage pickup in the morning, and she didn’t plan to have the flopped tuna salad she’d thrown away stinking up the house for another day. “Let’s talk more about a boat tomorrow. I think you should do that with me.”

“You’ve got a deal.”

“I’m going to go do chores and think about Connor maybe calling me later. You should stop working now.”

“I’ll admit to feeling stiff enough it’s time to take a break from sitting at this table. I’ll finish this box and call it a night. It was good talking with you while I worked; the time passed quickly.”

“I think so too. Good night, Daniel.”

“Night, Marie.”

She closed the phone and thought not for the first time that he was a really nice man. Not so easy to get to know, but nice. She picked up the trash bag and slid her keys into her pocket.

The security cameras showed all was quiet out on the street, and the rain had thankfully eased off. Marie walked outside and put the trash into the Dumpster behind the building and went back into the gallery, turning on the low-track lighting and walking through to her office. Bryce was around—he was always around—but she was beginning to find that presence a background comfort rather than an intrusion.

Her office was neat but the trash overflowed, and she gathered it together along with the trash from the front checkout desk. The new display of paintings looked sharp together, she thought with pleasure, doing a walk around to see what else could be dealt with tonight. The front window needed to be wiped down inside again; it collected dust from the overhead heating more than most of the other windows, and she liked it to sparkle. Another month and this gallery would have new heating and lighting and a brand-new drop ceiling. Peter had promised a showcase, and he had ideas to make the architecture of the place itself become a beautiful thing.

She unlocked the door and took the last trash out. Maybe while Peter was working in the gallery she’d see if it was possible to refurbish the interior brick on the building and make it a rich, rough background for some of the more interesting pieces of art where the color contrast would be an asset. There was only so much that could be done with a white display wall.

An arm grabbed tight around her throat, her hair tangled by a hand and yanked back, bringing her face to the sky, and something cold touched her skin. “Don’t move.” She felt a knife blade against her throat and didn’t try to even breathe. “They should have paid me; you’ll mention that to them. They should have paid me.”

She felt something hot and wet swung into her hands, and he was gone. She struggled to blink away choking tears and looked down.

The guy had eviscerated a cat.

She dropped it. She didn’t throw up or stagger or faint. The rushing in her ears removed the present from her thoughts, and the next time she blinked Bryce was standing in front of her.

“Saw him, couldn’t stop you, couldn’t reach him.” She could hear the anger in his quiet words and the tenseness in the man as he became the only thing in her world. The man had big hands, tough hands, and they were wiping junk off hers without appearing to be brisk about it, but the blood was going away. He was using his shirttails, she vaguely realized.

“Take a breath.”

The words settled inside deep enough she did so.

“That’s the way.” His face looked like a boxer’s might about the time his eyes narrowed and he punched straight into your face, but he still smiled at her. Not angry with her, incredibly, not angry with her for walking into this mess.

“Sorry, Bryce. Taking the trash out was stupid,” she tried to whisper, only to find her voice hoarse.

He ignored the words and finished with the basics of his task. “Good enough to get you under a hot tap to take care of the rest.” His arm settled around her waist before he let her try to take a step. “Remember the stairs.”

“Yeah.”

She wasn’t fully ready to be out of that shock, she realized as she misjudged the doorway and hit the doorpost.

Bryce was punching in security codes behind her on the pad and then walking her toward the downstairs restroom. “Towels?”

“The narrow closet, where we keep the cleaning supplies.”

She didn’t look toward a mirror, nudging it open so as not to be able to see an image of herself afraid, nor did she look at her hands under a stream of hot water turning red with remaining traces of the cat. She just closed her eyes and used the soap.

“Good. Use this.” Bryce pushed a washcloth into her hands, and while she soaped it, his rough hands pushed back her hair and wiped at traces of the tears. “Hold still, Marie. This will sting a bit.” He wiped something across her face that came as a cold shock and then a bitter smell.

“What?”

“All done.”

The guy hadn’t cut her, she was sure of it, but something had been on his coat sleeve pressed in tight to her face. “Thanks.”

“Connor’s coming.”

She thought herself too shaky to want that attention but nodded. “Okay.”

She wrapped her hands in another dry towel and tried to smile at Bryce. “I’m going to go change and drink some coffee and forget that just happened.”

“You won’t, but it’s a good first few steps. You want me to come up?”

“Better to know you’re down here making sure no one else does.”

“I’m coding the doors so you can’t step outside on me again without an alarm blaring at you to rethink it.”

“A good plan.”

He knew. He knew something had been said. He knew a lot more had happened in those seconds than she had said. He knew but wasn’t even nibbling to find out; he’d just called Connor. She squeezed his arm and went toward the narrow stairway, glad now that it took hands against both walls as she walked upstairs.

“Let me see.”

Marie turned her hand for Connor to see the bruise spreading across the side. She’d broken two fingernails. She’d gouged the man, she thought, in the first-instinct move as the arm came around her neck. She’d reached up to grab him and didn’t remember doing it.

Connor, sitting on the footstool in front of her chair, looked all cop as he held her hand and inspected the bruise. His expression had changed in those first few moments when he had seen her from an intense emotion to the pulled-back care he was taking now. She was relieved, part of her, that she wasn’t being asked to swim in his heavy emotion right now too. She couldn’t absorb any more.

“The clothes you changed out of?”

“On the towel in the bathroom. It registered enough that you might want them so I didn’t throw them away.” Her voice sounded tired, she thought, listening to herself, and a bit too calm, like it had happened last year instead of less than half an hour ago.

Connor brushed back the hair that kept sliding forward to cover her face and held her gaze with his. “You’ve got to start at the beginning and tell me every sound and smell and movement you remember. Everything matters, Marie. No matter how far-fetched the thought you had.”

“It was fast and without hesitation. He had every move planned, I think. A thick heavy coat, not those new lightweight-fabric thermal coats, but an old heavy fabric, bulky. He had an arm around my neck and a handful of my hair pulling my head back, and I could still feel all that fabric smothering me.”

“A sense of the coat’s color?”

“Dark, I’d suppose, because I had no sensation someone was even there before he was already behind me. The Dumpster lid kind of echoes in that brick alley and maybe I didn’t hear what I should have, but the movement—I didn’t see him coming, didn’t sense him. He was just there.”

“Taller than you?”

“No more than an inch or two, he was pulling my head back and into him, so his shoulders were right behind mine. Kind of tall, thin, I think, under that coat, and strong in the arms, young. I remember smelling what I thought of as metal and something bitter and maybe grit. The knife he held had to be already covered in the cat’s blood, I guess. My eyes burned when he let me go, irritated, like there was grit in them. It was fast, Connor. Bryce was already there before I was even blinking and seeing again.”

“Young in his voice, his build?”

“Just an impression from all the energy, the speed of it, and maybe the voice.”

“He said something.”

She struggled to keep her gaze on his. “I didn’t understand it.”

“Tell me anyway. Word for word if you can.”

“I won’t be forgetting it. He was angry as he said it. He said don’t move and then he said—” she took a breath and quoted—“‘they should have paid me; you’ll mention that to them. They should have paid me.’”

Connor paled, she realized in the part of her mind that was watching him watch her, and she pushed away the memory of the alley to focus again fully on him. “That means something to you.”

“Yes. It does.” His hand raised to brush swiftly along her cheek. “Thanks for the quote; that will help. Do you have any other impression of him, of his voice, of how he moved or carried himself?”

“Just that he seemed tense and angry and maybe very revved up. His voice was hard.…” She bit her lip.

“What, Marie?”

“I’m not going to say I’ve heard it before, but it was familiar to me—you know what I mean? Like I had heard it before and felt mad before too. Not a memory of the voice but an emotional reaction to it.”

“Recently?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry; that’s probably scrambled brains talking right now. I’m not sure what it is I need to convey about the voice. But I remember reacting to it and not just the words. Who was supposed to pay him, Connor? The cops? Daniel? Who am I supposed to tell?”

“Marie …”

“You promised to tell me what was going on.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t, not about this, even now. Not without risking other people.”

“The guy who is after Mandy wants to be paid; that’s what this is all about.”

“I’m seriously sorry, but I can’t answer that.” He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around her, bringing her toward the edge of the seat. “You need to go soak in a hot tub awhile—you’re still cold, and I need to make some calls. Then you and I are going to go out for a long drive and push this back a ways.”

Her hands tightened hard around his. “You can’t tell Mandy. Connor, if you tell her someone got through to touch me, she’ll disappear and I’ll never see her again. You know she will; she’ll run to try and take the trouble with her. You know that is what she’s going to do.”

“Easy. Amy’s not going to run.”

“Please. Spin it any way you have to, but you can’t tell Mandy what really happened. A robbery attempt, anything else. Silence about this is the only thing that I can offer to help her right now.”

“I’ll talk to the chief,” Connor reassured. “That’s the best I can promise.”

She bit her lip again and nodded. “I am awfully cold. If you’ll take those clothes away and the towel, I’ll take a hot shower. I want to wash my hair again.”

“I’ll go do that now.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, Marie. That I wasn’t here. That we didn’t stop it.”

She leaned against him and hugged him back. “I’m okay.”

When he had dealt with the clothes she had left for him, she stepped under the hottest shower she thought she could handle and let herself cry.

Connor paced Marie’s kitchen, waiting for Marsh to find some privacy. He wasn’t about to let Tracey overhear this conversation.

“I’m alone.”

“He sent his message through Marie, angry, ticked—he grabbed her in the back alley and put a knife to her throat.”

“Where are you, at the hospital?” Marsh asked sharply.

“Her place. Bryce was on it within seconds, and Marie walked away from it badly shaken. She’d stepped outside to take out the trash of all things.” Connor felt his words breaking at the anger of that.

“Don’t bash your hand against one of those brick walls right now; remember she’s in one piece. Start talking. I need the details.”

Connor took a deep breath and nodded. He read the quote from his notes to get the message exact. “Marie said a little taller than herself, thin, and young. She’s pretty certain about the fact he was young. This isn’t our New York hitter; she didn’t describe a fifty-year-old guy with an accent. Marsh, what was your working idea?”

“That there was a third kid out there of Henry Benton, a son.”

Connor sat down on the nearest chair.

“This trouble comes rolling in coincident to the will, and who would know about a boy Henry fathered but the chauffeur who probably drove him to where he was seeing the mother and the bookkeeper who probably paid off the lady just like Henry did with Marie and Tracey’s mom. The killings could be that of a very angry man who didn’t get recognized in that will and wants his cut of the money too.”

“What triggered the idea?”

“Your comment that stabbings are very personal crimes. The message claiming a family secret. If the guy is young, impulsive, very angry—I could see a knife attack on the two retired guys who knew the truth and never came forward to state the fact a son also existed.”