Trophies (41 page)

There was an autopsy report, plus surgeons'
reports covering the two survivors' injuries. All three victims had
been shot at close range, probably less than ten feet according to
the blood spatter evidence, and I read no more of those ugly
documents.

There was a report on the carpet samples
taken from Aunt Edith's car and those taken from her house and my
flat, signed by Vanessa Illegible, the red-haired technician. The
samples from the car were DuPont acrylic, a longish shag about
forty years old, golden-brown in color, and matching nothing found
in any of the suspects' residences or autos as of the date of the
report.

There was a fingerprint report from Aunt
Edith's BMW. The only ones found were her own, some latent ones of
mine, and some smudged spots that looked as if someone wearing
gloves had fooled about with the passenger-side front door.

And then there was the ballistics report.
Aunt Edith, Trés, and the security guard had been shot by an old
7.65mm European pistol, probably a 1929 Browning FN Model 1910
judging by the lands and grooves sliced into the recovered bullets.
The ammunition was considerably more modern and almost certainly
manufactured in one of the former Soviet bloc but now independent
factories in Central Europe.

I opened the folder's brads, pulled out all
the papers above the ballistics report, then folded it and slipped
it inside my black fatigue shirt pocket. It was evidence, after
all; we needed to keep it handy just in case, and besides, if
Wingate realized it was missing he could get another copy.

I determinedly kept the word "trophy" out of
my thoughts.

I replaced the papers in the file, refolded
the brads, and returned the file to the desk, then locked the desk,
opened the window, hooked back onto the rappelling lines, and
climbed out into space. At the last moment I remembered to grab
that pane of glass. From the outside I closed and locked the
window, replaced the pane, and caulked it into place. Then I
unhooked the jumper wire, wrapped electric tape around the bare
area of the burglar alarm wiring, and stuffed a good dollop of
caulking into the hole I'd made in the outer wall.

As I scrambled back up the nylon line,
Sherlock, on the sidewalk below, muttered something horribly rude,
in front of Lindsay, no less. Good. For once I'd managed to shake
him while my stupid little grin just got bigger with the elation of
a job well done.

Caren waited for me on the roof above. Her
greeting was much nicer. Together we unhooked the nylon line,
stowed it and the karabiner back onto my web belt, and slipped down
the fire escape. Sherlock hustled us all into the Camaro and
started the drive back.

"Well?" he finally asked when we were on the
Longfellow Bridge.

There was no way I would admit I'd nearly
been caught, nor that I'd nearly wet my pants. Instead I reported
on the contents of the file and finished by reading the ballistics
report aloud.

"Let me see that," Lindsay said when I
finished.

I handed her the report, then wished I
hadn't. At least I still wore those black kid-leather gloves, so
thin and flexible they were almost like wearing nothing; she'd get
her fingerprints all over the bloody papers and again I knew it was
only a matter of time before William buried me. Right now I might
be in better physical shape, but if his precious daughter got into
trouble with the Boston P.D. — say, if her fingerprints were found
on a stolen ballistics report — then he'd be motivated for revenge,
to say the least.

Sherlock, of course, didn't care. "You know
what this means?"

"Yes," I said. "I know what it means."

Neither of us spoke further in front of Caren
and Lindsay and for once neither of them asked for details. It was
just as well. Sherlock and I now knew who'd killed Aunt Edith and
by unspoken agreement we didn't want to discuss it further — at
least not until we tested our hypothesis.

current time

It was three in the morning when we arrived
back at the house. I was too keyed up to sleep, so I volunteered
for last-shift guard duty. No one argued. Bonnie and Patricia had
been keeping each other awake and scooted off to bed. Lindsay fell
asleep in the car halfway home, so Caren and Sherlock shooed her
off, too, and I saw Sherlock pop some ibuprofen before retiring to
my old bedroom. I wondered how much he really hurt, and whether it
was a headache from driving or sore muscles from saving my life two
days before.

I wasn't, of course, about to ask. Instead I
poured myself the last of the coffee and took a moment to open the
hat box, pulling out bits of Aunt Edith's ugly old stuff, turning
the scent flask beneath the fluorescent lighting and finding
sparkly spots. Then I settled down in Uncle Hubert's old study in
the leather wing chair to think, setting the old P-38 and the PPK
on the desktop.

In the low light of the desktop lamp, the
spines of Uncle Hubert's books gleamed. I didn't even have to close
my eyes to see him standing at the shelf, some heavy tome open in
his hands, so engrossed he didn't realize he hadn't bothered to sit
down. When I arrived in Boston, he did everything in his power to
help me feel at home and adopted me as the son he'd never had. What
a kind man he'd been, and at that thought I did close my eyes,
until the lump in my throat and the burning behind my eyelids
eased. Too little sleep, of course. I slugged more coffee. I hadn't
even cried for him.

I'd only known Uncle Hubert for two years
before someone — Rainwater, perhaps — stole him from me. He'd been
a steadying influence in my life when I desperately needed one,
before I truly turned to a life of crime. If he'd lived longer,
what might I have become? A university professor, following in his
footsteps?

How utterly boring.

I'd learned under Aunt Edith's influence for
much longer, of course. She led me gleefully just-so-far astray
while Uncle Hubert held me kindly on course, and between them they
created a thief who couldn't steal for money. Without her
restraining and encouraging influence, what else might I have
become? A progressively more delinquent juvenile, until I graduated
into the adult prison system?

I sighed and finished the coffee, setting the
mug on the hearth. That wasn't much of a solution, either. Aunt
Edith, it seemed, had realized that, for when she found she could
no longer restrain me she convinced me to join the Army, where I'd
learned self-discipline and finally found a home amongst Sherlock's
gang.

Too many people had been stolen from me:
Uncle Hubert, my mum, Aunt Edith. That wrenching pain, that loss,
was something I'd feel for too long. I didn't want anyone else to
be taken from me, not Caren, not Patricia — not even my father.

My father really hadn't been stolen from me,
of course; until I turned eleven, he held himself aloof, busy with
his cases and believing that, because I hadn't made trouble in the
past, I wouldn't do so in the future. Perhaps he hadn't realized
that the spare child requires attention just as much as the heir. I
had to believe he loved me; if he didn't, then why did this
reconciliation seem to matter so much to him?

What I could no longer hide from myself was
the depth of my own need for him. Until I'd experienced my father's
attention, I hadn't realized how much I craved it, as if my heart
hadn't learned a thing from my exile. As Sherlock said, emotions
existed one simply didn't outgrow.

Yes, I was angry; yes, I was bitter; but if I
didn't care, then I wouldn't care. I could no longer pretend that I
didn't.

And before I'd let my father be stolen from
me, like all those other people I'd lost, instead I'd let him go.
Perhaps if I could limit the amount of love in my life, I thought
in that insane pre-dawn hour, perhaps I could limit the amount of
pain therein, as well.

"Here you are," Caren said from the doorway,
"in my favorite room."

She'd changed from jeans and tee-shirt into
denim shorts and a cute, flimsy, button-up blouse. Judging from the
motion beneath the cloth she'd dispensed with restraints, which
could be symbolic. Whatever; the morning was definitely looking
up.

She settled one hip on the armrest, on my
right side. Since she had to pass by my left, sore side to get
there, I figured that was deliberate and therefore felt no
compunction against slipping my arm around her and drawing her
closer. She didn't resist.

"Can't sleep?" I swiveled in the chair.

Her breasts were at eye level. She snuggled
even closer. I got a good look at the movement, the small points
beneath the thin cloth. I was right. Her bra, and therefore my kid
gloves, were off.

"Mmm." She sighed and leaned on my shoulder.
"There's just something about this room."

I glanced higher, along the curve of her
neck. Her pulse raced, fluttering in her neck, almost matching
mine, and my breathing quickened in response. She smelled of
lavender and faintly of sweat, and I never smelled anything quite
so attractive in my life.

"The room, is it?"

She leaned down and kissed me, and this time
was different from all the times before. This was deeper, stronger,
more intense. Her fingers stroked through my hair, lightly, then
cupped my face as her mouth opened. She tasted vaguely of schnapps,
and I couldn't help but wonder how much she'd drunk and why.
Whatever her reasons, it tasted good against the remnant of
coffee.

Finally she sat back, pushing against my hold
around her waist, and looked at me with a huntress' eyes.

"I guess I like watching you climb down the
side of police headquarters." Her voice was deeper, her words
faster. She eased backward off the chair arm, drawing me with her
to the floor.

Even as we kissed again, I felt like a fool.
It never occurred to me this deeply moral woman might be turned on
by a bad boy, not even after she fiddled with my holster the last
time I held her. There were some concepts, it seemed, that simply
couldn't force their way through my thick skull.

Like limiting the amount of love in my
life.

"I will never rearrange the furniture in this
room."

"Can you reach the light?"

I popped the chain on the desk lamp and
tugged the drapes back, letting a touch of moonlight show on the
study floor. She straddled the light, her knees spreading as she
drew me down beside her. We kissed again and for a long time that
was enough, just our breathing and the growing warmth in my blood.
I wasn't going to push, not even now. The next move still had to be
hers.

Finally she took my hand and guided it to
that long row of little buttons. I shuddered, dropped my mouth to
her neck, and tasted the tinge of salt on her skin. She wrapped her
arms around my head. It took both hands to open her shirt and all
the willpower I possessed not to rip the flimsy little thing off.
Beneath was bare skin, soft as a baby's and a perfect handful each
side. Her arms tightened. My teeth closed.

The back door opened.

For one insane moment I thought I'd flashed
back to my break-in at Wingate's office. Then I realized Caren was
frozen, too, staring at me with huge eyes. That meant we'd both
heard it, which meant it wasn't a flashback, which meant someone
was breaking into the house.

Now. Right now.

"So much for the magic of the moment," I
whispered into her ear. "My cell phone's on my belt. Call Sherlock,
would you?"

She grabbed my phone with one hand, that row
of buttons with the other, and crawled off to the far corner of the
room. On my hands and knees, I ghosted my hand across the top of
the desk and closed on the old P-38. I slid into the hallway,
slipping like a snake from the hardwood floor to the entry's blue
Persian rug. While still in the shadows I stopped, before entering
the light coming in through the front door's panes or the window at
the hall's far end.

I didn't hear the cell phone ring upstairs.
Sherlock often set his to vibrate and kept it against his skin as
he slept.

Except for Caren's murmurs into the phone,
the house was silent. But I knew we hadn't imagined that snick of
opening door. It felt as if the entire house was frozen, holding
its breath, awaiting the next move. And it felt like the next move
took forever, while the heat in my blood cooled then heated in an
entirely different manner, transforming me from the sexual animal
to a combat-ready soldier. The difference wasn't that vast.

Finally: another gentle snick. Someone closed
the back door.

Caren appeared soundlessly beside me. I
leaned over and breathed in her ear. "Close the drapes."

She vanished again. Then the wash of light in
the study faded and was gone. The shadows around me deepened. I
snaked to my belly, to a prone firing position, and squared the
kitchen doorway in my sights, chest high.

As quiet as the intruder at the back door had
been, as silent as Caren had been, Sherlock was more so. I never
heard the bedroom door open nor a floorboard creak. But suddenly
from the top of the stairs I saw the glint of stray moonlight on
gun metal and knew my backup was in place.

It was time.

"Glendower!" My voice fell into the silence
like a mortar round set to explode.

Then, from upstairs, Sherlock swore. Combat
instincts and training took over. Without needing to think, I
rolled, smashed back-first into the doorjamb, twisted into the
study. A gun fired from the rear of the house as I moved, one flat
crack like a whiplash. Suddenly a bullet hole appeared in the
Persian carpet — the expensive Persian carpet — in front of me.
Cordite wafted through the house.

"Charles!" Caren screamed.

From upstairs Sherlock fired toward the
kitchen. I fired, too, a split second later, the roar of his Colt
.45 drowning out the crack of the P-38. The pistol kicked in my
right hand, snapping my wrist up, but I knew that weapon from long
practice and experience. I recoiled with it and was ready to fire
again within the second.