Edge of Midnight by Shannon McKenna (23)

Chapter 23

“Run it all by me one more time,” Sean said, tapping his fingers against the armrest console in a frantic staccato rhythm. “Pay attention. Don’t make me repeat myself like a fucking idiot,” Davy growled. “And stop the finger drumming thing. Drives me nuts.”

“He had a fight with his girlfriend,” Miles said laconically.

“He must have gone without sex for more than twelve hours,” Con said. “Didn’t she take Tam’s advice and show you her muff last night?”

Sean’s hand shot out, fastened over Con’s throat, bonking his brother’s head back against the car window, hard. “Ow! Jesus, Sean!”

“Talk about her like that, and I’ll break your bad leg. Again.”

Con blinked, wide eyed. “You’d do that to a pathetic crip who spent the night driving all over Seattle looking for Erin’s goofy sister?”

“Try me,” Sean said, pitiless.

He took his hand away, ignoring as his brothers whistled and exchanged glances. He rubbed his sore neck, stiff from a night on a cheap motel mattress, to say nothing of the bruises and contusions.

“Sorry,” Con said, sounding anything but. “It’s just a shock. You never minded me going off about your babe du jour before, so I—”

“She’s not my babe du jour. I don’t want to discuss my woman problems. I want to talk about this investigation. If you don’t mind.”

“Huh. You’re starting to sound like Dad. Humor-challenged.”

“Bite your tongue,” Sean said. “Tell me about Charles Parrish.”

Miles spoke up. “All I could find out last night was that he rose in the ranks of Flaxon Industries for a few years, then left and formed the Helix Group. Pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, nanotechnology, what have you.”

“Corporate headquarters are in Olympia. We squeeze Beck, and then drive down there,” Davy said. “We have an appointment at noon.”

“An appointment?” Sean was startled. “You silver-tongued son of a bitch. Who are we today? Zillionaires with scads of money to invest?”

Davy grinned. “I’m the zillionaire. You guys are just henchmen. We have to pretty up after we go to Beck’s. I had Miles go to your condo and pick some pimp suits out of your closet for you guys.”

“Which reminds me,” Miles piped up. “Somebody’s been through your place. They took your hard drive.”

Davy swiveled back, glanced at him. “Did you have a password?”

“Uh…yeah,” Sean said.

Davy’s eyes narrowed at his tone. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. It was something stupid and obvious. Like Olivia, right?”

Sean didn’t answer, abashed. Miles answered for him. “Right.”

“Whatever. It’s the least of our worries right now,” Connor said.

“Speaking of worries, who’s guarding the ladies?” Sean asked.

“Seth’s on it,” Davy said. “He’s driving them all over Seattle today, and feeling very sorry for himself.”

“They should be up at Stone Island,” Sean said, scowling.

“Yeah, but Cindy’s run off, and Erin didn’t want to leave town without her,” Con said. “Plus, Margot had to drop off a big proposal, and Raine had a meeting with the board of directors for Lazar.”

“Here it is,” Davy said, pulling over on the posh, treelined avenue.

They got out of the car, gazed at the house.

“What a godawful eyesore,” Con commented.

“Must have cost a shitload of money,” Davy said. “Who would have thought that academia was so profitable?”

The uniformed Latina lady who answered the door gave them a suspicious frown. “Can I help you?”

“We’d like to speak to Professor Beck,” Sean said.

Her dark eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

Davy opened his mouth to reply. Sean cut in, on impulse. “A ghost from his past,” he said. “Tell him that.”

The door slammed. Davy and Con and Miles stared at him, open-mouthed. “That’s no way to get in the door,” Davy pointed out.

Sean looked at the ornate, carved monstrosity of a door. “Oh, I’ll get in there,” he said softly. “If I have to shoot off the hinges.”

Con gave him a quelling look. “It’s early in the day for you to be having one of your meltdowns. Keep it together.”

The door opened just a crack, the security chain fastened across it, and the lady’s face peeked through. “I’m sorry, but the professor doesn’t have no interest in talking to ghosts. Have a good day.”

“Step back from the door, ma’am,” Sean said.

The whip crack in his voice sent her darting back. Sean spun around and flung up his leg in a vicious back kick that broke the chain and sent the door flying open to crash against the wall.

The lady shrieked and cowered against the opposite wall. Davy and Con gave each other despairing glances, and followed him on in.

“What is the meaning of this?” A portly, balding man appeared at the end of the foyer, his face red with fury.

Sean walked towards him, arms out as if he were going to give the man a bear hug. “Hey, Professor. Remember me?”

The man staggered back, put his hand to his throat. His face went an ashy gray. Sweat popped out on his brow. “How…who…”

“What?” Sean put on a mock wounded expression. “Don’t you like visits from the Great Beyond? Aren’t you happy to see me?”

Beck made a choking sound. Put his hand to the wall for support.

“Shut up, Sean,” Davy muttered. “We won’t learn anything if the guy croaks from fright.”

Beck’s eyes darted back and forth between them. He sagged with relief. “Sean? Oh.”

“Yes,” Sean said. “Kev’s identical twin. Kev’s very pissed off, very fed-up identical twin. Good to meet you, Beck.”

“Professor, I call the police for you.” The Latina lady’s voice rang out. She clutched the phone in one hand, a fireplace poker in the other.

Wow. That was one tough lady. Beck didn’t deserve her.

He turned to Beck. “I suggest you stop her. Or I’ll be forced to tell them everything I know about the murder of Kevin McCloud, and the Midnight Project. And you will go down, Professor. In flames.”

It was a wild gamble, but Sidney Beck’s eyes darted around. He moistened his trembling lips with his tongue. “Ah, don’t make that call, Emiliana. These gentlemen and I just need to have a talk.”

She scowled, not buying it. “I call the police anyhow.”

“No! I don’t want to waste the police department’s valuable time, and really, it’s fine. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? At double time and a half wages. My apology for the unpleasantness.”

Emiliana muttered under her breath in Spanish, yanked open a wall closet, grabbed out a large patent leather purse and a sweater.

She elbowed her way out between Miles and Con, not gently, and pulled the door shut behind her with a resounding slam.

Beck crossed his arms across his chest, still blinking quickly. “So who’s been telling you lies about this so-called Midnight Project?”

“Nobody,” Sean said quietly. “We didn’t have any proof at all that you were involved. Until now, that is. It was just a bluff. Worked, huh?”

Beck blinked frantically.

Sean took a step closer. “Let’s cut right to it. Tell us everything.”

“About, ah, what?” Beck sidled back against the wall.

Davy blocked him. “Kev, the Midnight Project, the Colfax Building, drug experiments. Flaxon. Charles Parrish. Helix. Missing college kids. Body bags.”

Beck shook his head. “I don’t know. About any of it. I swear.”

“No? Then why didn’t you let Emiliana call the cops?” Sean leaned closer and sniffed, smelling fresh alcohol on the man’s breath. “You’ve been at the hard stuff, bright and early. Trying to calm the demons?”

Beck’s eyes watered. “I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about. Please, keep your distance.”

Thud, rattle, the letter slot emitted a slice of sunlight. A wad of envelopes was shoved through. They scattered around Miles’s feet. Miles picked up a handful of envelopes, sorted through them. “You guys.” His voice vibrated with excitement. “This is from the Helix Group.”

Davy twitched it out of Miles’s hand and ripped it open.

“Hey! That’s my private correspondence!” Beck squawked.

Davy leafed through the papers. “From a guy who knows nothing about Helix, you own a lot of stock in it.”

“My financial affairs are none of your business!” Beck blustered.

“Is that where you got the money? From Helix?” Con wandered down the corridor, peering into the next room. “Wow. Check out this solarium, guys. That’s a thirty-foot plate glass window. Pricey.”

“Yeah. How about that money? We’re curious, Beck,” Sean said. “Do you have family money? Or is this Helix money?”

“Helix has nothing to do with your brother.” Beck’s voice shook. “Helix has only existed for ten years, and it’s only become a prominent player in the last eight. Poor Kevin has been gone for, how long now?”

“Fifteen years, five days and approximately six hours,” Sean said.

Beck’s mouth worked. “Ah. Just so. I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. McCloud, but I think that you should be talking to a qualified psychotherapist about these issues, not to me. I’m sorry I can’t help—”

“Where did the money come from, Beck?” Connor repeated. He strolled back from the solarium. “This is a five million dollar home.”

“I hardly think that is an appropriate—mmph!”

Sean gripped the guy’s throat, shoving him against the wall. Not hard enough to throttle him, but hard enough to shut him up.

“Appropriate?” he hissed. “Nah. Hit men, secret drug experiments, bloated, self-interested slugs sitting on top of piles of money, my twin brother’s charred body—things like that make me mad. So talk to us. Give us names, dates, addresses. Or else…” He squeezed, and Beck let out a strangled squeak. “I move on. To Plan B.”

Beck’s mouth worked, soundlessly. Sean eased up. “That better?”

Beck coughed. Tears leaked out of his eyes. “I just know…a name. It might not even be his real name. And it may have nothing to do with this.”

“Spit it out, Beck.”

“I gave his number to Kevin,” Beck babbled. “He needed intelligent research subjects. There was a fee involved. I knew Kevin needed cash, so I passed on the name. That’s all. I swear, that’s all I ever did.”

“Except for keeping your mouth shut when people started dying?” Sean snarled. “Except for raking in the dough for decades afterwards? You’re nothing but a turd with arms and legs, Beck. You make me sick.”

“The name, Beck,” Connor reminded him.

Beck started to sob. “O-O-Osterman,” he stammered.

“Where does he operate?” Davy asked.

Beck shook his head in frantic denial. “As God is my witness, I have no idea. It’s been fifteen years since I spoke to him, and I—”

“Bullshit. You talked to him the day before yesterday, to sic a hit man on my wife’s sister. Give us the number you called,” Con said.

Beck kept shaking his head. His body shook with sobs. A puddle of urine pooled around one of his shoes on the gleaming blond parquet.

Sean sighed, and dropped him. The guy fell to the floor with a heavy plop, like an overripe fruit. He wept noisily, covering his face.

“This one’s played out,” Sean said wearily. “Let’s go.”

Davy got the SUV in gear and accelerated away from that place.

“Christ, that was depressing,” Connor muttered.

Davy shot a furious glance back at Sean. “You pushed him too hard. You need to use a lighter touch. Unless you’re practicing up for when you get tossed into a maximum security prison, of course.”

Sean was too lost in thought to respond. “Drunk off his ass, at nine AM,” he mused. “He smelled like fear. I scared him bad, but he still held back. Which means that this Osterman guy scares him worse.”

Miles swiveled around, his eyes big. “What was Plan B?”

Sean looked at him blankly. “Huh?”

“You told Beck that if he didn’t give you a name, you were moving on to Plan B. What were you going to do to him?”

Sean grimaced. Hard-core intimidation was tense, nasty work. He didn’t really have the stomach for it. “Fucked if I know,” he grumbled. “I don’t even have a Plan A, let alone B. Let’s get gussied up for Parrish.”

Cindy gulped her coffee, and tried again to plow through an article about general plane wave solutions to sound wave equations in Sound Spectrum Journal, an egghead rag if she’d ever saw one. She’d even bought some intellectual horn-rimmed glasses, but she longed for a Marie Claire. An article on the cover had caught her eye. When He Just Can’t Forgive: Real Life Stories of Women Who Commited the Unforgivable Sin. Hah. Bet those real life women had nothing on her.

She was nervous, scared, and buzzed out of her mind on caffeine, but if she bagged now, she’d ruin all of Miles’s careful social engineering for nothing. This stunt might be monstrously stupid, but she wanted it to count for something. Especially if she was risking her life.

Her flop sweat was a clammy strip down her back. She was a pretty good liar, but how long could it take for that guy to figure out that she did not have Miles’s brain in her head?

She thought about how angry Miles would be if he knew where she was. She wished she’d managed to seduce him. At least once, before…well, before whatever was going to happen happened.

Things looked really poignant when a girl was going undercover to hunt down a killer—with no backup, no safety net, nothing in her purse but a cell phone, a deactivated radio transmitter and lip gloss.

A guy walked into the Starbucks, and looked around like he was supposed to meet someone. She gave him a sideways once-over.

Nice looking, in a bland sort of way. His nose was too small and pointy for her tastes. She preferred nice, big, hooked honkers. Same with his brown hair. Too short. He had an OK body, for a nerd.

His face looked nice enough, but then again, so had Ted Bundy’s.

His eyes slid towards her. She redirected her gaze at the magazine. He was coming her way. Oh, shit. It was him. She was on.

She missed Daddy so bad, she could have bawled. Daddy would have stopped her from doing such a stupid, butthead thing. She’d be sulking in her room at home right now, if Daddy hadn’t screwed up and gotten himself incarcerated. She tried to breathe. She felt dizzy.

“Mina?” the guy asked.

She looked up, into guileless hazel eyes. No blaze of festering hatred in them. No skin-creeping vibe. No bloodstains under his fingernails. Just a guy in a buttoned down blue cotton shirt and jeans. He could have been a manager in a stereo store. “Jared?” she asked.

The guy smiled. A nice smile, not a maniacal Green Goblin grin.

He slid into the seat opposite, and peeked at the cover of Sound Spectrum. He chuckled. “Picked up a little light reading, huh? I get that one sometimes, too, just for kicks. It’s good for the bathroom.”

Cindy tried to laugh. Black spots danced in front of her face.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, her voice hollow. “It’s a real hoot.”

Liv leaned over from her cross-legged position on the rug in front of one of Tam’s big windows, stretching sore muscles. Banging her head against a wall, was how Davy had described it. Good metaphor.

She’d never liked puzzles. Her opinion was that communication between human beings was already difficult under the best of circumstances.

Of course, in this case, Kev had had a good reason.

The quiet was oppressive. Tam had gotten bored with “your boyfriend’s tedious little project” long ago and had retreated to her tower workroom, leaving Liv to wring her lonesome, stressed out brain alone and unassisted. Liv could hardly blame her. This was hell.

She wanted to make a significant contribution to this godawful puzzle. To be something other than a dead weight slung around Sean’s neck, or alternately, his sexual plaything. And as far as that went, she still couldn’t get used to herself cast in the role of a sexual plaything.

She wasn’t the type. She was a serious, independent, hardworking woman who favored baggy dresses, cotton leggings and flat shoes. Here she was, legs shaved, made up, dressed up, lotioned and perfumed. Wearing a frilly green bra and underwear set. Getting all hot and bothered imagining what Sean would do if he saw her in it. Whew.

Eyes on the prize, she lectured herself. Concentrate.

She studied the key Sean had scrawled for her. A no-brainer, he’d explained. Kev had used the code they’d cut their teeth on as babbling babes. He’d written out the alphabet, and working back to front starting with Z, had written under it the names of the McCloud family with no letter repetitions. Jeannie, Davy, Connor, Kevin, Sean McCloud. That yielded JEANIDVYCORKSMLU, which left ten unused letters to insert into the key in back to front alphabetical order. Thus, her own name was written KLFIFZ QSTFWKVV. Numbers remained unchanged.

Clear as day. Easy as pie. Go for it. Knock yourself out, babe.

Bwah-hah-hah. Those McClouds could take their damn babbling baby code and stick it where the sun didn’t shine.

Proof on the tapes in EFPV. HC behind count birds B63.

Damn those difficult, convoluted McCloud men. EF had to be Endicott Falls, but PV? She didn’t have a clue. The urgency in the faded, coded scrawl made her uneasy and sad.

Count the birds. The first sketch was a lake, with nine wild geese flying over it. Then two eagles, perched on a branch. Then a waterfall, no birds, but she’d decided that the lack of birds signified zero. A mountain crag, no birds. Seven swans. Nine gulls on a beach. Seven ducks in a pond. Nine two zero zero seven nine seven. OK, she’d counted them. So? Anyone? And what the hell was HC? Or B63?

Some crucial bit of info had to be missing. It made her crazy.

She got to her feet with an angry sigh, pacing the rug til she found herself in front of the picture window, looking down at the waves as they washed creamy foam over the sand. The clouds were high, the sky a brilliant white. She put the paper flat against the glass, smoothing the torn edge she’d ripped so long ago, so as to shove only half a sheet of thick folded paper into her bra.

The window illuminated a paler border where a strip of the fibrous paper had been torn away. The border of thinner paper extended higher than she’d thought, all the way up to the line of code. She took it off the window, examined it from above. It looked like normal paper again.

She spread it on the glass. Her stomach tightened as she stared at that paler stripe. She rummaged for the folder, and pulled out the waterstained cover of Kev’s sketchbook. Inside those two pieces of battered cardboard was the other half of the sheet of paper Kev had written his fateful note upon. The one she’d ripped in two.

She pried it out, smoothing out the fibers at the extreme edge, longing for a magnifiying glass. But there was no need, she realized, when she put the pieces together. She could see with the naked eye that some loose, fluttery fibers were stained with ink. Her heart thudded.

She’d done paper restoration work in libraries in eastern Europe on her studies abroad. She had a good eye, and a delicate touch.

She placed the two pieces together, smoothing down the feathery curling layer over the bottom sheet, into what she hoped was their original conformation. The smudges of ink corresponded to the last character in the last word. QPRI, which, decoded, had become EFPV.

There was a faint, broken line on the bottom of that I. It was, in fact, not an I at all. It was an L. She had ripped off the bottom of Kev’s L, fifteen years ago. She almost wanted to scream as she groped for Sean’s key. The code L, coincidentally, corresponded to the L in the alphabet. So it was not EFPV. It was EFPL.

That was an acronym she knew. It tickled her brain, maddening her. It was stamped on the insides of her eyelids. She could see it, floating there. She could smell ink, paper. Hear the ka-chunk sound of a date stamp, coming down on a card with a lot of other dates on it.

The kind of card that got stuck in a library book. Kev had flagged her down outside the library. The Endicott Falls Public Library. The EFPL. Oh, God.

She put her hands over her mouth and burst into tears.

Count the birds. She had, with endless speculation as to what that seven digit number could refer to: an address, a telephone number, a safe deposit box? But if EFPL was the library, Kev must be talking about a call number. 920.0797. HC had to be Historic Collection. Which meant it was an old book, from Augustus Endicott’s original library, which had been donated to the town upon his death. Which made perfect sense, since B63 was the book’s old Cutter number. Of course.

Oh, God, how simple, how banal. How wonderful and awful. All these years, all this pain, for a few lost paper fibers. How could she not have recognized the configuration? How could it have escaped her?

She was as embarrassed as she was elated.

She clapped her hands over her mouth, muffling shrieks of triumph into crazy keening squeaks. She grabbed the phone Sean had left her, and dialed Sean’s number. Out of area. She could have howled.

All jacked up, full to bursting, and no one to share this exalted, euphoric moment with. She paced the room, still squeaking, jumping up and down. Clutching the phone, trying to breathe. She wished she had the kind of family she could share a giddy triumph like this with.

Which reminded her. Three days had gone by without any report to her parents. That was a bit harsh. And she felt much more kindly disposed to the world on the wake of her triumphant breakthrough.

She braced herself for a screaming lecture as she dialed.

“Endicott House,” her mother’s voice responded.

“Hello, Mother? It’s me,” she said. “I wanted to let you know—”

“Oh, Livvy. I thought you’d never call.” Her mother’s voice disintegrated into hitching sobs.

“Mother, I’m fine,” Liv assured her. “I told you, the last time, that I’m just lying low while we—”

“It’s your father, Livvy,” her mother said brokenly.

An icy cold slice of fear cut her in half. She sank down onto the couch, her knees rubbery. “What about Daddy?”

“He had a massive heart attack, the day after you disappeared.” Her mother stopped, to drag in a long, jerky sobbing breath. “The shock…it was just too much for him. You know all those episodes he’s been having. That was the straw, Livvy. The last straw.”

“How is Daddy now?” she demanded. “Is he conscious?”

“I’ve been with him, night and day,” her mother said faintly. “I haven’t eaten, haven’t slept. I came home to see if you’d called.”

“Mom?” she said more sharply. “Daddy. Tell me. How is he now?”

“Blair’s with him now,” she said, her voice taking on more strength. “Blair’s been a rock for me. An absolute rock.”

“What’s Daddy’s condition now?” she repeated desperately.

“Come home. Please, Livvy.” Her mother’s voice choked. “I’m begging you. He drifts in and out, but he keeps asking for you.”

Liv leaned forward, doubling over. “OK,” she whispered. “I will. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it today, but—”

“Then you’ll be too late. I understand that…person is more important to you than your own family, but Daddy is dying, Livvy.”

Liv’s mind raced in circles. “I’ll get there,” she promised rashly. “As soon as possible. Where is he?”

“He’s in the critical care unit of the Chamberlain Clinic. North wing, second floor. When can you be there, Livvy? So I can tell Daddy.”

“Not less than maybe four hours. Mother, listen carefully. There are people after me, people who are trying to kill me. Sean’s been helping me figure out who and why, and we’re making progress, but—”

“Livvy. Listen to yourself. I cannot believe that at a time like this, all you can think about is yourself. It’s just me, me, me, and meanwhile, Daddy is hooked up to life support, gasping his last.”

“Please, Mother,” she said, with forced patience. “Stay with me, here. I will get myself to the clinic, but I need for you to arrange for a police escort to meet me there. Please, take this seriously. Please.”

Her mother harrumphed. “Shouldn’t be hard to convince them to come,” she said acidly. “They’re extremely interested in talking to you.”

“Got to go, Mother. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Livvy! Wait! At least tell me where you—”

She hung up, and sat rocking back and forth. A plan, a plan.

Tam was absorbed in her work, and might not notice if she slipped away. Assuming Liv could disarm the security system and open the garage, that Sean had left the keys in the ignition, that he’d left a full tank of gas, or even a half tank. That she could scrounge up some cash. That was a whole lot of hopeful assumptions.

Her license, IDs, credit cards, bank card, gas card, checkbook, were all lost. Comical, that she was wearing over a thousand dollars’ worth of clothes on her body, and she didn’t have a cent to her name.

Amazing, how helpless a person was without her wallet.

She stumbled up to the tower, tear-blinded. Good old gruff, benevolent, closed-minded, pig-headed, tender-hearted Daddy. He’d been using his clutch-the-chest trick for a decade. For a while, it had worked, but she’d gotten wise, hardened herself against his wiles.

She’d hardened too much. She felt like crap for dismissing all his “episodes.” If he died before she could say goodbye—

No. She wasn’t going to deal with that ’til she absolutely had to.

She rummaged around. Found thirty dollars in Sean’s muddy cargo pants. If the gas tank was full, she just might make it. She wound her hair up, tugged on the blond wig, perched sunglasses on her nose.

Now for Sean. She poked out a text message on the cell phone.

Telling Sean about her father was pointless. He’d be frantic at the idea of her going alone. She felt like she was betraying him by running away from the haven he’d found for her, but that was too bad.

Saying goodbye to Daddy was worth the risk.

It shouldn’t even be that much of a risk. She was in a car no one knew she had. On a road no one knew she was using. Arriving at a public building in broad daylight, met by a police escort, surrounded by her family. She was in sexy designer clothes. Blond, for God’s sake.

Her own mother wouldn’t know her.