Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 01 - Last Call (28 page)

“Just tell me then,” she said.

“Do you remember Doug writing a story about illegal adoptions?”

She flicked the cigarette at my face. The lit end singed my eyebrow. I swatted the cigarette away like a bug and stood.

Autumn glared at me, nostrils flaring. “Don’t.”

“You’re not going to like it.” I gripped her by the shoulders. “But you’re going to have to deal. You’re going to have to hear it.”

She tried to wrench out of my grip, but I wouldn’t let her. I swung her around and pinned her against the wall to one side of the balcony’s sliding glass door.

“I won’t listen to this,” she said. “I’m not going to listen to you trash my father anymore.”

“Trash him? He’s lucky I don’t fucking kill him.” I shook her, trying to get her to stop struggling. “Listen to me, damn it. It all fits together. Doug started writing a follow up to that first story. He got too close to the shit your father was involved with.”

Autumn spit in my face.

I let the spittle crawl down along the side of my nose, not letting her go. “Come on, Autumn. The man’s had you on a leash for as long as I’ve known you. Remember all that sneaking around we had to do? Remember what he did to you when he found out you were pregnant?”

“I deserved it.” Her eyes changed. Maybe it was my imagination, but everything went dark when I looked into those eyes.

“I betrayed him,” she said.

She stopped struggling. I could feel the muscles in her arms turn soft. A second later, her legs gave out. I held onto her, pulling her over to the plastic chair and easing her into it.

Her head lolled to one side. I forced my hand to stay gentle when I lifted her chin to look in her eyes.

“I’m all right,” she said, though her voice sounded sleepy.

I crouched down in front of her. “Betrayed him how?”

She pressed the heel of one palm against her cheek and wiped away some tears. “Has it really come to this?”

With no idea what she was talking about, I kept quiet.

“I’m losing my mind, Ridley. All of this… I’m losing it for sure.”

“You’re not losing your mind.” But I knew how she felt. At least, I thought I did. “Take it one step at a time. There’s a lot to deal with.”

“You don’t know. You have no idea.”

“Then tell me.”

She laughed, a hollow, throaty guffaw that—I had to admit—sounded borderline insane.

“I’m sick,” she said. “So sick.”

I could sit there and debate every one of her self-criticisms.
I’m crazy. No you’re not. I’m sick. No you’re not.
The back and forth wouldn’t do any good. Again, I backed off to give her time.

“I knew the baby was yours because I remembered the time at your parents’ house, we didn’t use a condom. That one time. That’s how I knew it was yours.”

I kept my mouth clamped shut, afraid to try decoding what she was saying. A humid breeze fluttered into the balcony’s cubby. Every inch of my sweaty skin felt tight.

“He didn’t think so,” Autumn said. A vein bulged on her forehead. “Daddy thought it was his.”

Daddy?
My gut split open. “Enough,” I shouted. I couldn’t take any more. Not one more twisted bit.

“I’m sorry,” Autumn repeated over and over, her voice trailing away to an incomprehensible hiss.

I stared out at the night. I’d always resented Lincoln for turning me away when I’d tried to contact Autumn. His face had always stood as a symbol for what I lost when Autumn shut herself away—only it wasn’t her at all. All along, it had been him.

He deserved more than my resentment. He deserved a hardcore beating that involved a lot of
his
blood on
my
clothes.

“Do you see what he’s done?”

Her head jerked. She kept whispering “I’m sorry” like a mantra.

I crouched, trying to get her to look at me. “The man is a monster. Stand up to him.”

She cupped her face in her hands, but her incessant whispering stopped.

“You can help me get back at him for all he’s done to us, to our daughter. As fucked up as he is, everything he’s done he thinks of as protecting you. We can use that against him.”

Her hands slid down her face until only her fingertips remained touching her chin. She stared at her lap, breathing in short puffs. I could see the struggle in her eyes, her trying to stay in control.

“Help me, Autumn.” I rested my hands on her knees. The contact made me squirm inside as I thought about how her father might have touched her in a similar way. “Help me put that bastard down.”

Autumn lowered her hands over my own.

I fought the urge to pull away. Parts of me felt like they were coming loose, like I might crumble right there on the balcony.

“What can I do?” she asked.

Using the last tatters of my self-control, I outlined my plan—or most of it at least.

Autumn never once looked me in the eye.

Chapter 24

The next morning I woke up before dawn, yet felt better rested than I had in days, which wasn’t saying much. I still jerked awake three times during the night from some nightmare or another. I only remembered one image from those dreams—my hand holding a gun to the head of Lincoln Rice.

I went through my usual morning routine, except that this morning I attempted to warm a frozen bagel in the toaster oven. The bagel ended up a little crispy on the outside, a little still-frozen on the inside. I ate it anyway over the kitchen sink, then took my coffee out to the back porch and sat in the dark while I waited for Autumn to call.

The sun had yet to touch the sky when my phone rang.

“He’s agreed to meet at the park,” Autumn said. “But he isn’t happy about it.”

“Do we care?”

“I guess not.”

I hung up and dumped my coffee into a nearby potted plant, or what used to be a plant before neglect had turned it into a brown husk. First thing tomorrow, I decided, I would hire a gardener—assuming I survived the morning.

I peeked out the front door, looked both ways, and spotted the unmarked car with a single shadow inside, Palmer working this alone now. I had to wonder if he’d been out there all night. I hadn’t seen him on my way in the night before.

I tucked my Smith & Wesson into its trusty spot at the small of my back, slipped a mini tape recorder into my jacket pocket. Two minutes later, I pulled out of the garage in the Rolls Royce. I had never operated any machinery so expensive before in my life. It felt kind of cool.

As I drove away from the house, I checked my rearview. The unmarked remained parked at the curb.

I took the most direct route to Garfield park, and did the speed limit the whole way.

Lincoln’s Lexus was already in the lot when I pulled in. He and Autumn stood outside the car, both looking impatient. The expression on Lincoln’s face when I parked next to his car in my Rolls had Kodak written all over it.

I cut the engine, and Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” went silent.

“Why on Earth are you driving that?” Lincoln asked when I got out.

I gave the Rolls an appreciative once over. “Ain’t it sweet?”

Autumn hung back on the other side of the Lexus, face cast down. Lincoln made a show of noticing the morning twilight. “There better be a good reason you’ve dragged me out here so early.”

“Ms. Granthum told me you were an early riser.”

That shut him up.

“Were you followed here?” I asked.

“No. I took care, as you suggested. Can we get on with this? I have some business matters with people overseas, and this is prime time to contact them.”

What kind of business did he have across the ocean? More baby selling? Sex slave trade? I pushed the speculation aside. I had already learned more than enough about this asshole to keep me nauseated for a decade.

“All right. Let’s go.”

“Go? Where are we going?”

Autumn watched a trio of seagulls bicker over some found morsel.

I pointed to a stand of trees on the other side of the park’s main clearing. Nearby, a paved trail cut through those trees and led to the park’s other side. “Right over there.”

“If you meant to have us meet on the far side of the park, why did you have us park on this side?”

I gave him the are-you-dense look. “You want those cops looking for Autumn to find out I’m helping you? I’m taking precautions.”

His mouth formed a line. He seemed to think about it, come to some decision, then nodded once. “Fine. Lead the way.”

I tugged my jacket down to make sure it concealed my gun before trudging out ahead of them. Autumn took up the rear and watched her feet most the way.

Lincoln kept close to me, but a little behind. I had a hard time keeping an eye on him, as if he meant to stay in my blind spot. A knot twisted in my stomach. This set-up had more holes than a wheel of Alpine Swiss, but there was more at stake here than getting a killer to admit his deeds. Lincoln was my last connection to my daughter’s whereabouts. I needed him to tell me how to find her.

By the time we crossed the clearing, dawn bled some of the darkness from the sky, and the first hint of light deepened the shadows cast by the trees. The three of us stood facing one another in the shadows, forming a triangle. When I reached into my pocket to turn on the tape recorder, Autumn’s gaze jerked toward the movement as if she’d been waiting for it.

I said to Lincoln, “The reason I brought you out here was because of something I found.” I glanced at Autumn. “I now know for a fact that Autumn killed Doug.”

Here was the plan, or most of it at least: Give Lincoln a choice—his daughter or himself. Autumn was the only person besides himself that Lincoln seemed to care about. I thought if I could use that against him, he might sacrifice himself to save his daughter.

That was the plan.

But Lincoln Rice only smirked at my bluff and said, “Is that so?”

Not the reaction I was looking for.

Autumn stared at the ground. “I’m so sorry.”

Lincoln pulled a gun.

Chapter 25

I gave Autumn a pointed look. “Guess you proved to be Daddy’s little girl after all.”

“Quiet,” Lincoln demanded.

“Can I convince you to tell me all the details before you kill me,” I said while trying to judge if I could reach back and pull my gun before Lincoln pulled his trigger. “Isn’t that traditional?”

Lincoln nodded at Autumn. “Go on.”

Autumn came over to me, head hung. “I’m sorry.” She snaked a hand under my jacket and relieved me of my gun. Then she reached into my pocket and withdrew the tape recorder. She handed the tape recorder to her father, but kept my gun for herself.

Autumn turned to her father. “Okay, Daddy. Tell him.”

Lincoln pressed the stop button on the tape recorder. He worked his mouth as if he had a bad taste on his tongue. “My daughter wishes to give you the opportunity to live.”

“How nice of her.”

“I wouldn’t begrudge her. Did you honestly think you could turn her against her own father?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “She does have a habit of betraying the men she sleeps with.”

Autumn made a tiny sound, almost like a sneeze.

Lincoln’s jaw set. “You can say whatever you want about our lifestyle. No man has ever cared more for Autumn than I have.”

“Lifestyle? Is that what you call it? Most people call it incest.”

He straightened his gun arm, closing the distance between the gun barrel and my chest.

“Daddy!”

He eased the gun back to a more casual position, but never let it point away. Autumn, on the other hand, had my gun aimed at the ground in a limp grip, as if the weapon was too heavy for her.

To me, Autumn said, “Stop taunting him. He’s going to help us find our daughter.”

“You’re damn right he is.”

“I have to admit,” Lincoln said. “I was relieved when Autumn told me the child was yours. She could have saved us both a little worry if she’d told me at the beginning.”

“That’s why you sold her? Consequences of your ‘lifestyle’ too much to deal with?”

“I had no intention of seeing my daughter’s future ruined because of an indiscretion. It makes no difference whose child it was. I would have done nothing different.”

“Sounds like a lot of big words to cover up one fact—you sold your own granddaughter like a piece of real estate.”

Lincoln laughed. “That’s hardly how it works. There are girls out there unfit to be mothers. How do these children benefit being raised by whores and junkies?”

“You calling Autumn a whore?”

He ignored the barb. “I find the children homes where they are wanted. Some people are so desperate to have a child, they are willing to pay a great deal of money. What I do might not be legal, but I don’t see how it can be wrong.”

“Until you sell a kid to someone who wants more than just a son or daughter.” A hot streak blazed down the back of my neck. “Someone like you.”

His grip tightened on the gun. “Did you want me to shoot you?”

“If what you do is so noble, how come you had to kill Doug? Couldn’t you have rallied him to your cause?”

Autumn took a step toward me. “Ridley, please.”

“I did try,” Lincoln said. “He was nearly as stubborn as you. Determined to write his story.”

“So you killed him and wiped his hard drive. Meanwhile, Autumn’s at yoga, only she isn’t, but you didn’t know that until it was too late. Now you’ve implicated your own daughter.”

“Get it off your chest if you must.”

I glanced toward the paved trail leading into a shadowy cave of trees. My heartbeat doubled. This wasn’t going at all like I’d planned.

“You have your minion, Kelly Simple, set that bomb to kill me because you worried I knew more than I did when I asked about your relationship with Doug. Dixie’s a little different. That part doesn’t make sense. Why would you try to kill her?”

“Try?”

“Your girl killed the wrong person twice,” I said. “Dixie had a sex change, which I never bothered to mention when I told you where he was. Kelly, thinking she was going there to kill a woman, killed Dixie’s girlfriend instead.”

Autumn inexplicably raised my gun, finally aiming it at me.

Glancing back and forth between the two guns pointed in my direction, I continued, “Was it just to tie off a loose end? You thought with Dixie dead, I couldn’t find out that he had nothing to do with the explosion at the
High Note
?”