Deadly Obsession (30 page)

* * * *

Gabe Morris turned from the sergeant working the case. The night wind cut through his coat. He wanted to be at home, warm and relaxing.

Instead, he’d spent the last ten minutes convincing Sergeant Mifflin that he wasn’t going to try and take over the case. Gabe knew, knew the stalking and sexual assault case were linked to this one. No doubt in his mind. But Mr. I-Wanna-Impress-My-Captain, did not believe any such thing.

However, the guy finally agreed to share whatever his findings were. Since the sergeant was acting all territorial, Gabe didn’t feel the need to share his information that he knew what the probable bomber looked like.

Gabe turned to see what that insurance salesman was doing. Claimer--what the hell were those guys called? Probably had some neat little title, but as far as he was concerned, insurance salesman covered it.

The man was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t be done already.

Gabe scanned the crowd again looking for the brown hair, and goatee.

A familiar face stood out.

Looking quickly away, he felt his heart slam in his chest.

Criminals could be so damn stupid.

"Emma!"

His partner hurried over to him. "What?"

"Suspect, three o’clock. Blue coat, toboggan cap."

"Got him," she said, nodding to him and walking away.

He saw her unclip her gun as she made her way around the crowd and toward the back of it.

Gabe headed straight for the guy.

Ivan Ristovolich was perhaps five-feet-eleven-inches of muscle, graying hair, wide set cheekbones, and a blade of a nose. The man turned to look to his right, his profile harsh.

Hurrying forwards, while the man’s attention was diverted, Gabe stopped right beside him, his hand on his gun, when he said, "Mr. Ristovolich?"

Ivan turned, his eyes rounding, then he darted through the crowd, shoving people out of the way.

"Stop, police!" Gabe shouted.

Ivan ran, finally clearing the crowd.

Gabe saw the top of Emma’s head. Then Ivan fell to the sidewalk.

When he got there, Ivan was cussing in another language. Well, maybe not, but the man sounded like he was cussing.

"Need some help?" Gabe asked his partner.

Her look said the question was insulting. One brow cocked. "I brought him down." Then she leaned over and said, "Mr. Ristovolich, we just wanted to talk to you." Emma straddled the guy, cuffing him.

For a little lady, Gabe knew she could handle herself.

"What do you want?" Ivan asked, his accent heavy.

"We just wanna talk to you," Gabe reached down and hauled the guy to his feet.

"I don’t have to talk to you."

Gabe sighed as he led the guy to their car. "No, you don’t. But then it would be easier on you and Josephine seems to think that you might actually help her." At the car door, he stopped and looked Mr.

Ristovolich in the eye. Gabe shrugged. "I think she’s wrong."

For one long moment they stared at each other. Like the guy would say a word. Mumbling to himself, he put his hand to the top of Ivan’s head as the guy got in the car.

Slamming the door, he wondered if Ivan would cooperate. Like life would be that easy.

* * * *

Brayden could no more stop asking her if she was all right, than he could quit breathing.

"Brayden, I’m fine. Just a bit sore is all." They were on the way into the police station.

She stopped, stood on her toes, and kissed him. "I’m fine."

He kissed her back, ran his hands down her arms, her chenille sweater soft as down under his fingers.

Aside from the knot on the back of her head and little cuts on her face, she looked fine, just as she said.

Sighing deeply, he laced his fingers through hers and followed her up the stairs of the noisy cop shop.

A cop leading a handcuffed man down the steps staggered toward him as his prisoner shifted and tried to run.

Brayden jerked Christian back out of the way.

"Schupit, pigs. Don’t know shit," the dirty, probably homeless, drunk said.

Leaning up, he whispered in her ear, "Why did you want to do this here?"

"Because I don’t want this filth in our home any more than it already is." She straightened and walked up the rest of the stairs. At the top she waited.

She licked her lips. "When we do this..."

"Yes?"

"I need you here, but please don’t ... don’t...."

"What?" he asked her, cupping her face.

"I’m afraid you’re going to be mad at me."

He laughed. "Hell woman, I’m pissed at you half the time. If you’re worried that anything you say will change how I feel about you, that will piss me off." He studied her eyes. "That wasn’t what you were thinking was it?"

"I don’t know. I don’t know. Just today with the explosion, and then...." She stopped.

"And then?"

"You’ll find out soon enough."

Brayden sighed. "What, Christian, tell me now."

"Your dad. He had a bad time of it on the way here and couldn’t find his pills. I think ... I think...."

"Dad’s fine. I know about that. I talked to Mom while you were getting ready." He threw his arm around her, seeing Gabe coming down the hallway. "Let’s get this over with so I can take you home, okay?"

She took a deep breath and let it out on a huff. "Okay."

* * * *

Christian sat in the chair and held the cup of water between her hands. Brayden’s arm around her shoulders anchored her.

"I don’t know where to start. It all began so long ago." She looked down at the scarred wooden tabletop. At least she wasn’t in some interrogation room. And Gabe had apparently sensed this was not going to be easy so he found them someone’s meeting room or something. At least it was private.

Taking a deep breath, she said, "It began in New Orleans, when a thirteen-year-old daughter sang her father a birthday song...."

She went on from there, telling him how a man in the audience heard her and simply wanted. There was her father’s death shortly thereafter--killed in a mugging supposedly gone bad.

She told him everything she told Brayden, and then some.

"He swore he’d never let me go, and I was too scared after no one believed me the first time to try and say anything again." The room smelled of cigarette smoke. "That’s not exactly true. One cop and his partner believed me, but...." She shook her head. "I’m getting ahead of myself."

"First off, I did try and report what was going on, but it didn’t matter, he just bought them off. One day, a friend of mine, and I didn’t have many, noticed a bruise on my wrist." Danny Williamson....

"For some stupid reason that I still can’t fathom, I didn’t deny it when Danny asked me right off if it was my stepfather who gave me the bruise." If she had.... That didn’t matter.

Christian ran a hand through her hair.

"Anyway, Danny apparently lost control of his motorcycle about a mile from the house."

"He’s dead?" Gabe asked.

She could only nod. "Seventeen." A wasted life, all because he’d wanted to do the right thing. "At first I tried to believe it was an accident." Richard’s voice slithered through her memory.

"Such a sad thing, accidents. They silence people forever, don’t they, Josephine? You should have kept our little secret. Though I must give the boy credit for courage if nothing else," he’d laughed.

"Who’s Josephine?" Brayden asked, speaking for the first time.

"What?"

"You said, Josephine. Who did he mean?"

She’d spoken aloud. Licking her lips, she stared at the table top. "Me." She took a deep breath, then turned to look at Brayden. "My name is Josephine Christian Clara Montreaux. My father was Phillip Montreaux of New Orleans, Louisiana. We own banks. Or my brother does, now."

That was the first time she’d said those words in years. Montreaux. Brayden’s eyes narrowed, but the hand on her shoulder gently caressed.

"So this man killed your friend?" Emma asked.

"He said he did, but he’s never dirtied his hands with anything other than the times he beat me. He always had Ivan do his dirty work."

"How do you know this?" Gabe asked, the corners of his mouth tight.

"Because he told me, and he wrote it all down." She shrugged.

"Wrote it all down?"

She thought about what to say. "Yes, he wrote it all down. Did he kill Danny Williamson? Probably. All because Danny knew the truth and wouldn’t listen to my stepfather’s lies. All because he tried to help me."

Poor Danny.

She jumped ahead. "He raped me in July when I was fifteen. Though he was so drunk.... That’s the San Francisco case."

"But it was filed...." Gave checked his notes.

"Buddy Michaels filed it, though he may have used another name. He was a cop, maybe he still is. His partner was Frank Smith, my friend, Susan’s father."

"Was?" Emma and Gabe asked.

She nodded. "When I turned sixteen, he raped me again. On the night of my birthday. That had been the plan all along. Make me a woman on my sixteenth birthday. He’d just ‘lost control’ before. But once done it can’t be undone and it’s easier to ‘lose control’ again after that. But after the party he was so angry because I had talked to my brother. Joshua had wanted me to spend the night at the hotel with him and God, I wanted to go," she finished on a broken whisper.

Taking a fortifying breath, she squeezed Brayden’s hand that at some point laced with hers, "They didn’t let me go. Joshua didn’t want to cause problems, so he didn’t push it. But I’d made a big enough deal that.... That night when he.... It wasn’t.... He was angry," she finished. Tears welled in her eyes, stupid as that was. They didn’t do any good now. Brayden’s arm tightened around her and she took strength from him. "The next day I could barely move. Someone, Maria, our maid, I think, called my friend, or it could have been Ivan. Susan and her mom came and got me out of that house and into their car. I do remember Ivan carrying me. Then Frank, Susan’s father, rode a bus or train with me. I can’t remember for sure. I woke up in the hospital with a letter from him not to tell anyone where I was, not to call home.

He left me some money. It was November."

She remembered the relief at escape, a tidal wave of gratitude for the Smiths’ help, and fear. Always the fear that Richard would find her. Licking her lips she said, "I was in San Antonio, Texas I think, when I learned they’d all died Christmas morning."

"They?"

"The entire family."

She went through it all. How Frank helped her, how the house must have had a gas leak. The fact that Frank was a cop bothered the hell out of Gabe, which he told her.

Nausea greased her stomach. "I never thought it was an accident. They’d helped me, you see. And somehow he must have known. If you find Ivan and crack him, he’ll roll on my stepfather. Then, you can get a search warrant maybe?"

"Couldn’t you get one now?" Brayden asked, the edge in his voice sharp.

"Probably."

Christian shook her head. "No, he’d stop you. He’d find a way to. He was the district attorney and the state’s attorney general." She leaned up on her elbows. "My stepfather had something on Ivan. And I overheard Ivan once talking to the maid that he wrote everything down. Something about not spending blood money. I think Mr. Rhistovolich didn’t really like what he did. I’ve often believed he was just waiting for the right time to escape. If you don’t get Ivan, it’ll only be my word against my stepfather’s, and he’ll find a way to stop the search warrant. He’ll have to."

"Why?"

"Well, if you searched wherever he lives here, you probably wouldn’t find anything, though you might.

But if you searched his home back in Oregon, you’d find all sorts of...." Christian trailed off.

"Of?"

She took a deep breath. "Things. He liked to brag. He’s rather egotistical. There’s a room...." God, her hands were shaking. "Or there was, and probably still is.... There’s a room up-up in the attic. The right sconce on the back wall turns, and a door that looks like a wall opens. And behind it is-is a-a room."

Christian swallowed.

"What’s in it?" Gabe asked softly.

Shoving back, she stood and walked to the window. The day was dying. Shadows stretched across the streets and buildings. Christian gripped her elbows. "There’s a bed, or there was. Pictures all over the walls...."

"Of?"

The sharp image cut through her haze, of things she tried to forget.

He couldn’t hurt her now. She was strong. She was strong.

Clearing her throat, she continued. "He’d drug me and I’d wake up in that stupid room. I hate that room.

The rape was the worst in many ways. Yet, he’d led up to it for so long.... It was almost a relief he’d finally gotten it out of the way so he couldn’t taunt me with it anymore." She took another deep breath.

"After a while you try to-try to go away, try to forget what he’s doing, the things he’s trying to teach you." Tears fell, and the words felt like they were ripped from some dark hole, deep, deep inside her.

"That’s when he put pictures up. So that even staring at the wall, you couldn’t go away. You couldn’t get away. There was simply no place to go."

No place to go.

No, that was before. This was now. She pulled free of the talons that threatened to pull her back down into the despairing fear.

With a sniff, she realized she was crying. "They were pictures of me. Mostly like the ones you got from the house on Christmas. I think that’s how he made the border, or frame or whatever on that painting.

There’s also other paintings in that room."

Silence greeted her, but she didn’t turn around.

"There’s also a desk in there. He liked diversity after all. But that’s neither here nor there. In the desk is a journal. A journal of everything. How he paid people off, how keeping me was his main goal even if he had to kill to do it, his plots and plans and schemes."

"Is that where he raped you?" Laurence asked softly.

Christian sighed and nodded. "The first time, yes. The times after. That was ‘our’ room. It’s what he always called it. There are lots of things a man can do without actually ... without...." She swallowed. "It was where he tried to teach me ... to teach me...." She couldn’t get the words out. She heard a chair scrape across the floor and then Brayden’s arms were around her.

His heart hammered against her ear. She couldn’t break now, she couldn’t. Biting down past the swirling emotions, she pulled back and gave him a watery smile.

Finally, she turned to face the two policemen sitting at the table. Emma’s brows were pulled in a frown.

Gabe had no expression whatsoever on his face.

"What?" she asked. "You don’t believe me?"

His eyes sharpened. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because no one else ever did and if they did, he just paid them off or scared them so bad they moved."

"Like Buddy," he checked his notes, "Michaels?"

She nodded.

"Well, I don’t scare easy and I can’t be bought off, so that’s covered."

A muscle bunched in his jaw. She figured she should probably tell him what else he’d find.

"In the desk--there’s also a file on me."

There went that sardonic brow of his. "And what is in this file?"

"A doctor’s file. Telling how unstable I was. Still in denial over Papa dying, drugs, sex. Any and everything to paint me as the rebellious teenage slut in case he ever needed it. Dr. Stevens." She answered the question she saw in his eyes. "And no, I’ve never met the man. Though the file will document that I met with him twice a week."

She sat back down in her chair and took a drink of water. It didn’t calm the nauseous storm rioting in her stomach.

"Where were you during this time? It wouldn’t do to say you had appointments if people saw you,"

Emma said.

The cup turned smoothly between her palms. "Good point. No, I had appointments, just not with a Dr.

Stevens in his office."

"Then where were you?" Gabe asked.

She looked up and into Brayden’s raging eyes. "I was detained in a hidden room by one, now, U.S.