[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

compared with the other, it had a CPI of over three thousand.
 What does that mean?
 The two donors, she said,  were father and son.
45
Z
he stood in Father LeGrand s humble living room, still
Sclutching the phone a full minute after the call had ended,
mind racing.
Danny had been killed by his own father. There was no other
reasonable way to interpret the evidence. Sure, maybe in some
alternate universe it was possible that the man s blood and vomit
just happened to show up in the very room where his son had
been beaten to death, but the second Ginny took the idea out
for a spin it struck her as ridiculous.
Danny s biological father had murdered him. He left some of
his own blood behind in the struggle. And when he saw what
he d done, he threw up: the vomit that Ginny so blithely as-
cribed to the local cops had come from the killer himself.
That spoke of remorse, didn t it? Of conflicted motives, of
something less than evil?
Brain still whirring, she forced herself to finish what she d
started; even if Father LeGrand was still refusing bail, it would
T he M or ti ci an s D aughter 265
be just her luck to have someone walk in on her while she was
tossing his place. Mechanically, she did a thorough search of the
tiny cottage. If there was anything useful, she didn t find it.
On a whim she gathered up all his paperwork on the
desk, in an in-box on the bookcase, in the filing cabinet and
shoved it into a plastic grocery bag for later inspection. She
walked over to Jimmy s shop and found him sitting at his of-
fice computer, scowling at a spreadsheet program. He smiled
at her, but one look told him that something was fantastically
wrong. She filled him in about the phone call from Sylvia and
about her own hardening certainty that Danny s life had been
taken away by one of the people who d given it to him in the
first place.
 How can you be so sure? Jimmy asked when she was done.
 The blood just means his father was there, doesn t it? It
doesn t 
 I ve been a cop for a long time, she said,  and Danny s au-
topsy photos almost made me lose my lunch.
 I still 
Ginny slammed a fist into her palm.  It was like the killer
was trying to erase Danny s face. That s what the guy who em-
balmed him said. I thought it was just plain old rage, but now I
get it. This was as personal as it gets a father trying to erase his
own son.
 But I thought nobody even knew who Danny s father was.
Even his own mother always said she didn t know. Do you really
think Danny somehow figured it out? And his father killed him
over it?
Ginny thought about it. She d been so blown away by the
DNA results that she hadn t even started to consider what the
motive might be.
 And hold on, Jimmy said.  I thought you were operating
on the assumption that Danny was killed to keep him from find-
266 E li zabeth B loom
ing out what really happened to his mother. So are you saying
the same person killed them both Father LeGrand?
She sat down in the other chair, rubbing the space between
her eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger.  He told me he
only took up with Paula after Danny was born, and I believe
him. Besides, I can t see any resemblance between the two of
them. Can you?
Jimmy shook his head.  What about Lance Pecor?
 There s no resemblance there, either. And there was some-
thing about the way he said Paula would never give him a tum-
ble I m pretty sure he was telling the truth. She kept
massaging her forehead, as though the stimulation could make
her brain work faster.  Maybe I ve been on the wrong track all
along. Maybe Danny s murder isn t really connected to Paula s.
Unless 
She cut herself off, staring mindlessly at the glowing com-
puter screen.
 What?
 Unless, she said,  Father LeGrand is lying.
 Why would he do that? You said yourself you knew a guilty
person when you saw one.
 I know he feels guilty, she said.  But that doesn t necessar-
ily mean he is guilty. Somebody who beats himself bloody with
a whip is hardly in his right mind.
He looked at her like she was even loonier than the priest
like he had some rampaging creature in his office, and him with-
out his tranquilizer gun.  Are you saying LeGrand didn t sleep
with Paula, after all?
She ignored him, grabbing the plastic bag she d dropped on
the floor and heading for the door.
 Where are you going?
 Sonya s. I haven t heard from her since she found out about
Paula and Pete. I m starting to get worried.
T he M or ti ci an s D aughter 267
 What does that have to do with 
 Don t you get it? Pete slept with Paula. He could be Danny s
father as much as anybody, and God knows they weren t getting
along. And Sonya told me he d done business with Dulaine.
What if it wasn t Father LeGrand he was covering for? What
if 
 You gotta be out of your mind, he said.  You honestly
think Pete s behind all this? He killed his own son? And now he s
done something to his wife?
She blew out of his office without answering Jimmy s ad-
monishments not to go off half-cocked ringing in her ears as
she ran out of the store and down the sidewalk to Danny s
truck. It was only through blind luck that she avoided getting
ticketed by one of Rolly s minions as she gunned the engine
down Main Street and up the hill.
Sonya s apartment was empty, nothing touched since Ginny
had been there last. What was going on? Starting to itch with
worry, Ginny broke down and called Pete s parents. But they had
no idea where their son was, or his wife, either.
She searched the apartment for evidence of violence, a sur-
real experience if there ever was one. Was she serious? Could
Pete have really hurt his wife Pete, that big galoot Sonya had
been in love with since she was a kid?
Then Ginny remembered something Sonya had said: that
when she found out who had murdered Danny, she d kill him
herself. Maybe Sonya wasn t the one Ginny should be worrying
about.
Nothing in the house was awry; that, at least, was a relief. She
tried both of their cell phones for the umpteenth time and got
no answer. She called the construction company again; Pete still
hadn t checked in.
Frustrated, desperate for something else to occupy her, she
spread the papers from Father LeGrand s office on the kitchen
268 E li zabeth B loom
floor. She was flailing, swapping crime theories like they were
baseball cards. But even if the priest hadn t been Paula s killer, or
even the father of her child, her gut told her he was nowhere
near innocent. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]