Stormy Weather (Storm Donovan Book 1) (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

Donovan woke up in the middle of the night. There was a scream in the house. A prolonged scream. He immediately felt around the bed. He sighed when his hand rested on Frankie Saunders's breast. He reached into the nightstand and pulled out his old Sig Sauer nine millimeter. He checked the magazine and threw back the sheets. He looked around on the floor for a moment, looking for his pants. He put his boxers back on and quietly walked to the door. There was no sound now. He opened the door a crack and looked out. There was no one there.

He went back to the bed and took his phone from the nightstand.

“Again? Fuck off!” Albert's sleepy voice answered.

“There was a scream. Somewhere in the house.”

“Not Frankie Saunders pretending to be in ecstasy? Or was it that Walsh woman?”

“Serious. Get the fuck over here.”

“Still have your gun?”

“Yeah. We'll be fine, but I'm not moving away from here.”

“Yeah, stay in the bedroom. I assume that's where you are.” There was a moment of silence on the line. “Anyone there with you?”

“Frankie.”

“Keep her safe. We're lucky these murders have escaped the press so far. Frankie Saunders being mutilated by a lunatic serial killer would really make the shit hit the fan. And I doubt your business would benefit from it. I'll be over in a few.”

The line went dead. Albert must be getting dressed.

Donovan sat down on the bed and shook Frankie's shoulder. She shot awake. “What...?” she asked him sleepily. Donovan placed a finger on her lips. “There's someone in the house. I've got help coming.”

She lay back in the bed and looked at him. Her hands ran over the front of his boxers. He shook his head, lifting the gun. “I don't know what's going on out there, best keep alert.”

Donovan watched the clock's hands move a very slow half an hour before Albert called to gain access to the property. He opened the gate with his phone and a few minutes later Albert ran up the stairs. “You alright?” he demanded, popping his head into the bedroom on the top floor. “Miss Saunders.”

Frankie gave him a polite nod.

“You stay here; I have a few people searching the house.”

He disappeared, but showed up again almost immediately. “Put some damned clothes on and follow me.”

It was the housekeeper, Miss Graeme. Her blood stained the white carpet on the floor of her own parlor. The butler had been off for the night and had spent the night with his cousins in the Bronx. There had been no one else in the house. The cook was gone for the evening and of course, Donovan and Frankie had been upstairs.

Albert sighed and rubbed his face. “What time is it?”

Donovan looked at the clock. “Four o'clock.”

Albert yawned. “You think they're up on the East Coast?”

“Why?” Donovan asked him.

“Going to check up on your theory.”

Albert spent the next half hour on the phone. He switched between English and pidgin French. When he was done, he said nothing and then went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. Another half hour passed in silence as he meditatively drank his coffee. Donovan and Frankie sat down together on a couch in the living room. Then Albert's phone rang again and he answered it in poor French. He listened carefully for a minute and then thanked the person on the other end of the line and hung up. “That was the RCMP in Québec. A girl, by the name of Aoibhe Lang, Alpha Oscar India Bravo Hotel Echo, disappeared from that boarding school. Weird thing that family has with Gaelic names. But she disappeared and a family named L'Aigle in rural Québec reported fishing a girl from the St. Lawrence River. She had no memory and no ID. Only knew her first name. Family took the girl in. After two years, she ran away again and about that time a girl that looked exactly like her showed up calling herself Justine Aoibhe Maria Lavoie in Montréal. Disney Corp signed the girl after one of their talent scouts saw her performing in a bar in the city.”

“L'Aigle...” Donovan muttered. “The Eagle...”

Albert nodded. “It fits. Think we might have to go talk to Miss Lavoie.”

Justine Lavoie had not returned home. Naomh Walsh was missing too. Albert talked to her husband, but he had not seen her since the party. She had kissed him goodbye before he drove off in his car and then she had gotten into the limousine with Justine Lavoie. The security man had not seen the limousine return to the penthouse, nor had the neighbors.

“Where the hell could she be?” Donovan asked Albert. “And what the hell happened to Naomh?”

Albert shrugged and walked along the pavement to Toby’s, the coffee shop he liked on N 6
th
Street. “No idea. And no idea. I just know I need a cup of coffee after you woke me twice during the night.”

“Once. The first time you were crushing your wife.”

“Not true,” Albert grinned. “She was on top.”

“Right...” Donovan did not want to go any deeper into the subject. “So what do we do?”

“We have coffee and then we look at where they might have gone. And if Justine Lavoie is the missing Lang sister, we still don't have the answer to our questions. It might explain the eagle thing, but nothing else. Like what set her off.”

“I don't know.”

Albert ordered his coffee and paid. He looked pensive and hardly acknowledged the cashier as he did so. “You know what I'm thinking. This behavior of hers, just doing drugs would not do that. The extreme sex thing and all. Got an explanation for that?”

“Project MK Ultra?” Donovan suggested.

Albert shook his head. “Serious now. Unless you're suggesting she was programmed to do exactly that and someone activated her for that reason and made her kill. Seems very far-fetched.”

Donovan sat down on a concrete window seat outside the coffee shop and sighed. Suddenly a thought came to him. “Her sister...” He jumped up. “I have to go.”

“Oh, no!” Albert shouted at him. He ran after Donovan, but Donovan was too fast for him.

Donovan ran all the way back to his house. He took all the short cuts and back streets he knew, not wanting Albert to follow him. There was a secret room underneath the living room where he kept files on a lot of things he had been involved in as an FBI agent and as an attorney. It was the room full of files that interested him. The cases he wanted to remember for some reason. One of them was labeled Mara Lang.

It was the only file he had kept on the Lang family. Not because he wanted to remember, but because he had to. He looked through the file and found a picture. It was taken high up on the hills. He had never realized where it was, but now he did. He took the picture and left the file.

When he swung the secret door to the living room open, he heard the door.

“Storm Donovan! Come the fuck out! You need to tell me what's going on!” Albert's voice rang through the building.

Donovan pulled the door shut again and went back down. He did not want to talk to Albert right now. He opened a door to a tunnel that lead to the garage. It was the only passage he had installed himself. He had it done when he had built the garage. In the passage, just before the door to the garage, there was a small vault. He opened it and pulled a gun from it. He had used a Sig Sauer nine millimeter in his FBI days and he kept a couple around the house. He had left the other one in his nightstand again, as he did not want to walk around armed, but he felt he needed to have a weapon on him now.

He opened the final door and ended up in a storage hold in the garage. He pushed past the cleaning utensils and stepped out. He ran for the Jag and opened the garage door and the gate. When they opened, he gunned it, tearing out into the streets of DUMBO.

Inside the building Albert heard the roar of the engine of the E-type and he ran out. “Donovan!” he shouted as he crossed the step. He swore and shook his fist at his friend. He ran down the driveway a few paces, but Donovan's car disappeared rapidly. Swearing still, he reached for his phone.

“Keith! I need one of your guys to work some of their magic. Get into the car insurance databases and track a car for me. No, I don't have a fucking warrant, just do it! Just track Storm Donovan's Jaguar!”

Donovan raced into the countryside above the city. He knew now where he could find Justine Lavoie, and he reckoned he would find Naomh Walsh there too. He just hoped he would be in time.

The traffic was hellish, of course. Whenever you needed to get somewhere pronto, the traffic seemed to be worse than ever. Donovan kept his foot down and swerved in and out of the traffic as he drove along the Hudson River side. He even used the sidewalk to bypass some of the jams. It took forever to get out of Manhattan, but when he did, the road was suddenly clear. He flew up the interstate as fast as he could, racing to the top of the hill he had recognized from the photograph.

At the top of the hill there was a parking place. Kids often drove up there to make out in the evenings and during the days, people went there to enjoy the city lights. He had been there a few times for those very reasons and he had recognized it this time as he went through the picture. When the link was made to Mara Lang, he knew what had caused Justine Lavoie's deranged behavior; he remembered the picture in the file and now he knew where she was heading.

He pulled up next to the limousine and jumped out of the Jag. Then he saw them, on the grass just beyond the railing. There was blood in Naomh Walsh's thick curly hair where she had been struck and Justine Lavoie was giggling as she raised a knife above the woman's back.

“Stop!” he roared, pulling the Sig from his belt and aiming it at Justine Lavoie's head.

The girl giggled again. “Oh hi, pretty boy! Glad you're here. I'm just making her look pretty.” She brought the knife down and drew it through the flesh at the back of Naomh's shoulders. The sudden pain brought her back to consciousness with a scream.

Donovan pulled the trigger twice. He saw Justine Lavoie's arm snap and the blood spray from the flesh. She dropped the knife and jumped up.

A black SUV pulled up with screaming tires. From the corner of his eye, Donovan saw Albert get out.

Justine Lavoie twirled in a little dance step. He was surprised she was able to ignore the pain she must have in her arm. He saw her bend down to pick up the knife again and reach down to continue what she started. But her blood had sprayed the grass a wet red. As she stepped onto the red patch, she slipped. Her reactions were slow and she could not recover her balance. It seemed like an image from a dream to Donovan. Everything seemed to slow down. She fell backwards in slow motion and toppled over the edge of the small cliff. He felt himself rushing forward, but he could not reach her. He saw her tumble down and could all but hear her body break on the road below.

Chapter Twelve

“What the fuck are you keeping from me?” Albert asked Donovan as he handed him a cup of the hospital machine coffee. “How the fuck did you know she'd be there?”

Donovan looked up at him. “How the fuck did you know where I was?”

“Buddy at the NSA. Insurance database, GPS, blah blah blah. Boring story. My question is more interesting. How did you know?”

Donovan sighed. “Mara Lang. I kept a file on her. She and her brothers went there before Quinn was locked up. There was a picture. It was the day before she died.”

Albert looked at him, then he looked at the operating theatre below them. A surgeon was stitching up Naomh's back. She was sedated. She would be alright, but would have a very nasty scar for the rest of her life. He wanted to ask him what had caused him to think of that, but another question was more obvious. “Why did you keep a file on Mara Lang?”

Donovan sighed. “You know it was my car that hit her?”

Albert nodded. “But that's not all, is it?”

Donovan shook his head. “I was the prosecuting attorney in the smuggling case Quinn Lang was convicted in. Mara Lang came over from Québec for the trial. She wanted to be there for her brothers. But something else happened. Not sure why, but she became obsessed with me.”

“Obsessed with you?”

Donovan nodded. “That's how she ended up under my car. She tried to stop me from driving away from the courthouse. Wanted to talk to me, tried to seduce me. When I turned her away and drove off, she got in front of my car and I drove over her. The cops did not put that bit on record, knowing it would ruin their case against Quinn Lang. Any suggestion of me being involved with his sister, a minor at that, would break their case apart.”

“So that was all hidden from the public eye. But how does that involve Justine? Or Aoibhe?”

“I guess her sister sent her letters and pictures of me. Told her how much she was in love with me. The girls were nearly inseparable. When she died, Aoibhe lost it and she ran away from the boarding school. She wasn't thinking straight. Her brothers would have brought her out to New York if she'd just waited, but she probably tried to make it back here on her own. On her way something happened and she ended up in the water. Then the L'Aigle family pulled her out. She must have banged her head or something, or the trauma of being in the river and the psychological shock combined messed with her memory.

“She did not remember a thing, but it must have kept playing in her subconscious. Not sure what happened after, what set off the murders, but I can guess.”

“Let me guess,” Albert put in. “Quinn recognized the girl on the television and when he got out of jail, he looked her up. Her memory began to return, but meanwhile she's messed up even worse than before because of the constant pressure, brainwashing and in the end, the drugs she was on. She didn’t recognize him at first, but somewhere in her brain she connected him to the death of someone she had loved. She also had the eagle image in her brain, her more recent memories trying to overrule those traumas. That's when she got the tattoo on her back.

“But she could not suppress the old traumas and she decided to deal with the cause of that pain as she saw it at that moment. By killing Quinn Lang. She also remembered who had killed her sister and she remembered hearing how great you were. So she went after you too, but could not kill you because she was convinced she loved you.

“Along the line, she remembered the warehouse and went to check it out. She saw Denny Lang and thought she was seeing Quinn Lang, so she killed him.”

Donovan nodded and rubbed his hands over his face. “It would seem so.” He sighed and sank back in the chair. “Messed up girl was messed up even more by the entertainment industry. Brilliant thing to happen, eh?”

Donovan felt numb when he got home. He had wanted to go and see Naomh Walsh when she woke up, but as he got to her room he saw her husband sitting by her side. He did not know what to do, so he left. He had gotten back in his car and driven home in a zombie state. The house was empty. The butler was still out, and he roamed around the house. He stepped into the living room, but left it immediately. He could not spend time in that room just now. He could not look at the large bloodstain on the white carpet. Instead, he roamed around the house aimlessly.

He went outside, into the gardens. He sat down in the shadow of a tree and closed his eyes. Suddenly he was back there. He was in his car outside the courthouse. He saw the face of Mara Lang again, slammed against his windscreen. He remembered every detail of that day, and then his mind raced on. He saw everything that had happened in the last few weeks. He still felt like vomiting as he recalled the bodies with the eagles drawn on their backs.

A voice stopped his musings. He got up and looked at the surveillance imaging on the street outside his loft. There was a van there. In front of the van was a woman, waving at him. He looked out the front and smiled when he recognized the woman. It was Frankie Saunders.

“Figured you'd need a new carpet,” she said, pointing to the van.

Donovan smiled and used his cell to let the van pass into his private parking bay. She walked in before the van. She kissed him as soon as she could place her lips on his. “It's on me.”

Donovan pulled away from her. “You want to give me more freebies?”

Frankie nodded. “It might shake the image of poor Ms. Graeme from my mind.”

“I don't think I will ever be able to shake that image.”

“Is it true it was Justine Lavoie?”

Donovan nodded. “Don't tell anyone, though. The press is all over it already.”

“You can always persuade me not to tell?”

Donovan smiled. “I can, but I'm not sure I want to.”

Frankie frowned. “How do you mean?”

Donovan looked around. He did not know how to say it, but he had to. “Frankie. A woman I like just ended up seriously hurt, another two went completely berserk and ended up dead. You're engaged, you're one of the most talked about people in this city.”

She nodded, stroked his cheek and walked away. “Call me when you need me again, Storm.”

“I will.” Donovan watched her walk down the narrow street toward the C train. “Thanks for the carpet.”

She turned around and winked. “You're welcome to my carpet.”

Donovan went back in and went to the smoking room. He picked up a cigar from the humidor and lit it. Then he picked up the guitar and began picking at the strings. He just played. Somehow he ended up playing Justine Lavoie's latest hit, but it barely registered that he did. When he finally noticed it, he knew that this was something that would never make it into his file room. There did not need to be a file in that room. Every detail of it would be etched into his mind forever.

Epilogue

Donovan sat in his office. There were emails to answer, there was research to do, there were clients to call, but he could not bring himself to do any of it. He kept thinking about the moment on the hill. He felt the pressure of the trigger against his finger. He felt the shock of his Sig's recoil. He saw little Aoibhe Lang, or Justine Lavoie, slip and fall down. He saw her broken body on the road down below. And he saw the deep cut and the heavily bleeding back of Naomh Walsh.

He had not spoken to her since the incident. He did not want to be too close to her as it was. Her husband would be taking care of her as she recovered and he had no part to play in that.

For days now he had kept to himself. He had stayed in his house, playing his guitar and his piano like a depressed kid. He realized he behaved like one as well. He recalled a scene from a New Zealand cartoon in which Jesus spent Easter playing sad rock songs in his room, blaming his Father for what he did and is remembered around the world each Easter. He felt a bit like that. He saw the horrifically mutilated bodies, the bleeding Naomh Walsh and the broken girl on the asphalt. And every day, he walked around his office and his house he remembered everything that had happened. He could not shake it off.

He was not being self-pitying and he was not suffering from post-traumatic stress over the incident. He had shot people before, but somehow this had been different. This had been something connected to him. It had been about him. It had been a client of his who had committed these atrocities. Someone who had walked through his office, who had sat in his chair. And he simply did not know how to deal with that reality.

About a week after the death of Justine Lavoie, with the papers and the television still buzzing about it, a well-shaped woman with lush, curly hair walked into the office. She walked strangely, keeping her back as straight and rigid as possible. She asked one of the junior partners in the firm where his office was and then made her way to his door. He did not recognize her at first. Her face was a mask of pain which hid her usual vivacity.

He got to his feet when he did recognize her. “Ms. Walsh.”

She smiled. “Hi, Donovan.” She stood just inside his door for a moment, quite indecisively. “I, um... I never did thank you for saving my life.”

“Yeah, no worries,” Donovan muttered, looking down. He did not quite know what to say, which was rare.

“You're not going to offer me coffee or something?” Naomh smiled at him.

“Yeah, yeah sure.” He lead the way to the kitchen and set about making some lattés. Giving her one of the large cups, he still did not know what to say. “How've you been?” he eventually asked, knowing it was a crappy question to ask.

“Fine,” she answered, stirring some sugar into her coffee. “In pain. My stitches keep tearing out. I've been wearing a corset for the last two days now; it has stopped me moving about so much, so there is less strain on them.”

Donovan nodded. “Not been busy? I didn’t see anything on the news about your client having been on a killing spree.”

Naomh shook her head. “There is a big corporation behind her... there was... they thought it better to keep it out of the news. Cecilia, that's Cecilia O'Hourihane, my business partner, has been working around the clock on it. She knows what happened, but it has been a nightmare trying to contain it.”

“I can imagine...”

“Still, that’s why we get paid the big bucks, exactly this.”

Donovan nodded, still unsure what to say. Naomh knew she had to say something.

“Look, Donovan...” she began. “If it were different, if Max weren't in the picture...” Her voice trailed off.

It took Donovan a moment to realize Max was her husband, but he knew what she was trying to say. “You don't need to say anything. I had a great time getting to know you. And that's worth more than anything.”

She smiled, finished her coffee and got up. She ran a hand along his cheek and kissed him tenderly. “Goodbye, Donovan. It was fun. And if you ever need some help with public relations....”

“I'll know where to find you.”

There was an issue resolved, he reckoned as he drove the racing-car-green Jaguar home, but it hardly served to make him feel any better. Back home, he sat down in his smoking room, again, with a whiskey and a Cohiba Cuban cigar and picked up his guitar. It was the usual routine. Next he would go to the dining room for his dinner. He found some things were different around the house. His new housekeeper was still learning the ropes. The new janitor, too, was making some mistakes; there were 40 watt bulbs in his office now and a light scratch on the wooden floor in the humidor. But he was young and Johnson, thank goodness for him, had high standards and was keeping his eye on both of them.

That evening, his musings and his musical meditation were interrupted by a call. A cheerful, chirpy voice sounded through his phone and he had Johnson let the person in. Frankie Saunders sat down in the chair opposite his moments later. She crossed her legs and her arms as she waited for Donovan to put his guitar down. “You need to take a chill pill,” she said as he just sat there strumming his guitar in a depressed manner. “None of this was your fault and you need to let it go.”

Donovan frowned and stopped picking the strings. “I know all of that,” He sighed. “I don't know why I can't shake it off.” He was silent for a moment and played a single chord. “Why are you here, Frankie?”

Frankie sighed and leaned forward. “I don't like the guy I'm engaged to, but you know that already. Good guy, but I don't want him.”

“Ah,” was Donovan's only answer. He had a feeling about what was about to come.

“There's only one guy I want, and anyone else is second best. I'll settle for second best if I have to, but I don't want to.”

“Still doesn't explain why you're here, Frankie.”

Frankie Saunders sighed. “This thing with the mayor... he cares too much. I couldn't let him and Michael meet, so I had to avoid both of them. I can't keep doing that. Given the way this world here works, I'll have to settle down, get married and all. And soon...”

“But you don't want to settle for second best?” Donovan guessed.

“I only want my first choice, but I need to know soon.”

“How soon is soon?” Donovan frowned.

“We moved the wedding up. It'll be next week in California. I'm flying over tomorrow morning.” For the first time Frankie fidgeted. “I'd hoped to get an answer from the guy tonight.”