Some Gave All (3 page)

“First things first, Mr. Riley,” she replied, although yes, she wanted to cut to the chase. She was itching to meet up with Tess at the crime scene. Instead she was standing there on idle and she was not a patient person. She wanted to fix things as soon as she knew they were broken. That was why she had become a cop—to solve her mother’s murder, yes, but to fight for justice for other victims as well.

Catherine and Vincent took off their coats, caps, and gloves and laid them on the arm of Mr. Riley’s sofa. Mr. Riley cleared his throat.

“We missed this part,” he said to Vincent. “We missed all of it. But I guess you know that. That’s why you’re doing it.”

“That’s right, sir.” Vincent helped Mr. Riley sit down on the sofa. Then former specialist Vincent Keller knelt on one knee and opened the box, lifting out a triangular-shaped wooden frame with a glass face. It encased a reverently folded American flag, stars up. He offered the flag to the dying man, in a traditional ritual that had been performed for over a hundred and fifty years at American military funerals.

“Sir,” Vincent said, “on behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Army and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.

“This flag flew over the firehouse where my brothers worked as firefighters before they died in the Twin Towers.”

The man choked back tears as he received the archived flag, holding it against his chest as the tears came. At a military funeral with honors—such as Lafferty had been given—the flag in the box would have been the one that had draped the fallen warrior’s casket, and would have been folded graveside by soldiers as “Taps” was played. Then it would have been presented on bended knee to Lafferty’s next of kin. But Roxanne’s mother had been too distraught to attend the service, and Mr. Riley had stayed home with her. When the time came for them to receive Lafferty’s flag through the mail, it had never arrived. Mr. Riley had mentioned that fact to Cat on the phone, and Vincent had been so incensed that he had decided to give Mr. Riley one of his most treasured possessions. The flag had been given to Vincent’s family at the funeral for his brothers, and Vincent had accepted it. J.T. Forbes had kept the flag safe after Vincent had enlisted in the army and left for the war.

Left for his destiny.

The man saluted, and Vincent stood and sharply saluted back. Vincent was no longer in the army, nor did he have any love for the military that had betrayed him, but Cat knew that he was returning the salute for Mr. Riley’s sake.

And for Roxanne Lafferty’s.

“Please,” Mr. Riley said, and he handed each of them a shot glass filled to the brim with amber liquid from a ceramic red, white, and blue tray. Cat smelled whiskey. She was on duty, but like Vincent, she honored the moment, throwing back with the two men, then turning her glass upside down on the tray.

They shared one more silent moment, and then Mr. Riley said, “The letter.”

Catherine reached into the pocket of her coat for a small pack of evidence gloves. She drew out a pair and slipped them on. The atmosphere in the room grew tense. Mr. Riley held out the letter, and Catherine delicately took it from him with both hands. He had read the words to her over the phone, but they still chilled her:

Dear Mr. Riley
,

We are a small group of concerned patriots who have banded together to fight a terrible conspiracy at the highest levels of government. One of us knew your daughter, Roxanne Lafferty, in Afghanistan. We know that you were told she died in the line of duty.

That is a lie.

The government pumped her full of poison and turned her into something unspeakable—a monster. She was last seen in the infirmary shackled to her bed, completely out of her mind with pain and fury. One of us, known as “Private X,” attempted a rescue but failed.

We know that she never saw combat again, even though you were informed that she died in a firefight.

We would have contacted you as soon as this happened, but we had no access to her records to find her next of kin, and so there was no way of connecting “Maurice Riley” to “Roxanne Lafferty.” We realized that she was your stepdaughter when the article about you ran in last Tuesday’s
New York Post,
and it mentioned her by name.

We talked it over for a long time before we decided to contact you. There have been six murders in New York in the last six weeks where the injuries look similar to atrocities Private X witnessed in Afghanistan. We think someone got out of there—someone who has been mutilated like your daughter—and is out of control, like your daughter was. We think you may be in great danger—if not from this abomination, then from the government that created it. One of the six murdered people—Karl Tiptree—was one of the scientists who participated in the manufacture of the “serum” that destroyed your daughter’s life. We have been investigating the histories of the other five in an attempt to link them to this travesty. We are confident that we will succeed.

The generals tied up loose ends in Afghanistan… with bullets. Private X barely got out alive and has stayed all these years under the radar. But he is ready to tell you everything he knows. We want justice for your daughter, and we want to stop this thing from butchering more people, even the guilty. Please join us, Mr. Riley.

On behalf of the people of the United States, you have our sympathy, and our respect. We’re waiting to hear from you.

Sincerely
,

FFNY—The Freedom Fighters of New York

At the bottom of the letter was a phone number with a 212 area code.

Vincent had been reading over Cat’s shoulder, and she felt him trembling. She turned her head and looked up at him. His face had gone chalk white, and when she raised a brow, he averted his gaze and moved to the mantel. He stared up at Roxanne Lafferty’s portrait, perhaps unaware that his shoulders were square and his spine was ramrod straight. He was standing at attention. All that was missing was another salute.

“I’m assuming you called the number,” Cat said to Mr. Riley.

He scratched his forehead with skeletal fingers. Cat wondered if the rings under his eyes were from illness or anxiety, maybe both.

“I’ve called it a hundred times. There’s never been any answer. No voicemail. I checked with the phone company and they say it’s not a valid number.”

We’ll see about that
, Cat thought. The NYPD had resources that were unavailable to private citizens.

“What
New York Post
article are they talking about?” she asked Mr. Riley.

He sighed and picked up a newspaper off a coffee table that was cluttered with prescription bottles. It was folded to a small square of text that included a photograph of Mr. Riley standing beside a thin little dark-skinned girl dressed in a fuzzy pink sweater and lavender snow pants. She was holding a small, colorful piece of paper.

FATHER OF ARMY WOMAN K.I.A. FULFILLS PROMISE TO DAUGHTER OF “LITTLE SISTER”

Last Tuesday, Mr. Maurice Riley, a resident of the Bronx, presented Aliyah Patel, 8, also of the Bronx, with a gift certificate to Palmieri’s, her favorite ice cream parlor, good for fifty-two ice cream cones—one every week for a year. Riley’s daughter, Private First Class Roxanne Lafferty, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2002, was the “Big Sister” of Aliyah’s mother, Gheeta Patel, in the “Big Sister Little Sister” mentoring program. Lafferty promised Gheeta Patel that if she read fifty-two books before she graduated from high school, she would buy Gheeta an ice cream cone every week for one year. They wrote out a contract and both signed it. Sadly, Gheeta Patel passed away in 2010, leaving behind her daughter, Aliyah.

Riley recently discovered the contract while he was cleaning out his garage. With the help of social worker Angela Alcina, he was able to contact Aliyah’s aunt, Indira Patel, who is her guardian, and present the gift certificate to Aliyah on behalf of her mother.

“Her favorite flavor is chocolate-chip cookie dough,” Mr. Riley said.

“This was so kind, Mr. Riley.” Cat was moved.

He made a face. “Not as sweet as it looks. That aunt of Aliyah’s is a piece of work—the poor kid was covered in bruises. I called social services on her. And Miss Alcina, too. They all said they’d investigate but every time I call I go straight to voicemail. Last time I called—yesterday—Miss Alcina’s message mailbox was full.”

Cat took note. Theoretically, she would never have enough time to follow up on that—it wasn’t relevant to her investigation, and it was out of her jurisdiction—but she knew that before the end of the day, she’d be making a few calls.

“What about Karl Tiptree?” she asked. “Have you learned anything about him?”

“I read his obituary on my computer,” he said. “It didn’t say anything about a serum. It said he was a ‘consultant.’”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Vincent muttered.

Mr. Riley’s eyes traveled to Lafferty’s portrait. Then he picked up one of the shot glasses and passed it from palm to frail palm. “Do you know what they’re talking about? That
my
little girl was turned into a
monster
? What does
that
mean?” He swayed as he walked. He was so agitated that Cat worried about his blood pressure; she reminded herself that Vincent was a doctor, and he would intervene if he thought it was necessary.

“I haven’t slept since I got this note. I don’t know what to think. The world is full of crazies, you know? But if it’s true… if someone
did
something to her…” He trailed off. “Do you think they’re trying to tell me that she’s still alive and
she’s
doing these things?”

Cat slid a glance at Vincent. He was clearly conflicted, yet he kept his silence. She understood his reticence, but she had a thousand questions of her own. When they had first connected, he had told her that he was the only surviving genetically modified supersoldier of the army’s Delta Company. But over time they had learned that there’d been others. Cat’s biological father had a list of them, and he programmed Vincent to kill them one by one. Now this. “FFNY” was wise to fear for Mr. Riley. However, they were also putting him in danger by linking him to the tragic events in Afghanistan.

She reread the note and tried to remember if Vincent had actually told her that he had seen Lafferty die.

What if she
has
evolved into this new beast that’s tearing New York apart?

Mr. Riley shuddered. “I can’t go to my grave without knowing what happened to my girl. I’ve been her daddy since before she was born. I was on the older side, but I kept up with my little tomboy as best I could. Her real father was Hector Lafferty; a good man, a cop, shot in the line of duty. We had Roxie keep his last name to honor him, and I thought that was proper. But she was mine. My daughter.” He heaved a sob. “When our girl died, my wife, Amanda, just faded away. She kept saying she was going to look for Roxie in heaven. That our angel still needed us…” Agony stretched his vocal cords like violin strings. He seemed to shrink before Cat’s very eyes, fear and worry pressing down hard.

As Vincent turned around, a muscle jumped in his cheek, a vein pulsed in his forehead, and the merest hint of a yellow glow flickered in his eyes. The rising tension in the room was affecting him, too. But where Mr. Riley shrank before potential danger, Vincent responded with the first signs of beast aggression. Cat tried to subtly clear her throat as a warning for him to calm down. Mr. Riley was lobbing emotional grenades at a sorely misused veteran with a deep connection to him. Even a normal human would react to that.

“I’ll find out the truth,” Vincent said in a low, fierce voice.

“But did
you
see anything like that?” Mr. Riley blurted. “Her chained to a bed? In
pain
? This guy, this Private X, would you have known him? Or the other one, Karl Tiptree?”

The man’s despair was hard to take. When he burst into tears and sank back onto the sofa, Cat sat down beside him and took his hand. Vincent turned away again.

“We’ll find out,” she assured him.

“Find out quick,” Mr. Riley pleaded. “I don’t have much time. I can’t die like this. Wondering.” He gestured toward the portrait. “They told me her death was quick. That she didn’t feel a thing. There was no body to bury. But there’s a headstone with her name on it in Arlington National Cemetery. Military honors. Killed in action. I’ve been there every single year on the day that I got the visit from the army with the notice. June twenty-first, two thousand and two. My roses… she always loved them so. I’ve let the house go, can’t manage, but you should see my rose bushes in the spring. I put them on her grave. Her
empty
grave.”

Just like I put calla lilies on my mother’s empty grave
, Cat thought. For over ten years, she hadn’t known that her mother had been moved, her new plot marked with a headstone bearing only her first name out in a field behind an abandoned Muirfield safe house. Cat suspected that her biological father, former FBI agent Bob Reynolds, had done it, but she hadn’t asked, and she was loath to have any contact with him whatsoever. His team had begun this nightmare, and he had made Vincent’s life a living hell.

And Roxanne Lafferty’s as well, if she was still alive.

“We’ll help you, Mr. Riley,” Cat promised. She glanced up at Vincent, who still kept his back carefully turned, so she couldn’t see if the glow in his eyes was intensifying. She had to get him out of there.

“We need to go,” she gently told the old man. “I have to take this letter for a while.” Analysis for DNA and other forensic data would be strictly off the books, of course. And as soon as they left, she and Vincent would start looking for the FFNY, and digging into Tiptree’s past.

“I made a copy of the letter,” he said. “For me. I can’t stop reading it. Staring at those words.” Another tear rolled down his cheek and he gave his head a quick, angry shake. “Being sick has made me weak.” He turned to Vincent one more time. “Son, you need to tell me what you saw. What happened there.” His chest shook with the effort to inhale. “Why you had ‘amnesia’ for ten years.”