Vendetta (16 page)

“Next time, union rep,” Tess said.

“That’s just it.” Cat looked around to make sure no one could hear them. “He kept threatening to take me off the DeMarco case. And that wouldn’t have bothered me at all until we discovered a link to the Windsors. So… does
Hendricks
know that? Is someone feeding IA information about
Vincent?
”

Tess caught the side of her lower lip and wrinkled her nose. “Okay, see, back when I knew you were hiding something and I wanted to stop being your partner? I miss those simpler days.” She laughed ruefully. “We’ll get J.T. on this and meanwhile, our warrant hasn’t come through and I thought we could drive out to the cemetery and wander around. Maybe there’s a row of headstones or, y’know, a bunch of DeMarcos stacked up in a tomb.”

“Maybe it’s the anniversary of the death of a famous guitarist,” Cat said, grateful for the distraction of a puzzle to solve. Her insides were quivering.

“
Elvis.
He played the guitar. Didn’t he?”

“He’s buried in Memphis,” Cat told her.

“Or…
is
he?” Tess whipped out her trilling phone. “Hey, yeah, how’s my favorite deputized computer hacker? Yes, it’s that time again.” She lowered her voice and said huskily, “
Rikers.
”

Cat could hear J.T. sputtering as Tess held out her phone. She felt ten times better. She told Tess the approximate date she had met her C.I. and Tess relayed that to J.T.

“I’ll scan it in for you,” Tess said into the phone. “Just use the fancy software. That’s what it was created for. I deputized you.”

She disconnected. “J.T. fears a raid from Homeland Security.”

“At this point, I don’t blame him.”

Tess put the photo in the scanner’s bed and hit send. “Off it goes to hot smart guy.”

“I hope he figures something out.” Cat turned to her computer and scrolled down to the bottom of the page she was on, to the section that listed signers on the bank account:
Angelo Antonio DeMarco
. As would be expected. But there was a second signer, and Cat stared at the name for a couple of seconds before she found her voice.

“Hey, Tess.” She pointed.

The second signer on the account was
Tori Lynne Windsor.

“Wait,
what?
” Tess said. She leaned forward until her eyelashes were practically brushing the screen. “
Tori
?” She looked up at Cat. “He knew Tori?”

Cat didn’t respond. She was scared. This was too connected. Fake footage, DeMarcos, Windsors, Vincent. Her fingers lifted off the keyboard as if by their own accord as she drew in a slow breath and held it.

“Okay, listen,” Tess said. “You stay on this. I’ll try to get the florist or the cemetery to tell me who he sent flowers to, and if I can’t find out I’ll drive there myself.” Cat didn’t respond, and Tess put a hand on her shoulder. “Cat, we’ll figure this out.”

Wordlessly, Cat opened up a grave-finding search engine and clicked to Woodlawn. She typed in Tori’s name and death date.
No match found
, the computer reported. She opted out of specifying a burial place and tried again.

No match found.

“Tess,” she rasped. “What’s happening?”

“We’ll find out,” Tess said again. She raised Cat from out of her chair and gave her a hug. Cat couldn’t feel Tess’s arms around her. She was numb from head to toe. “C’mon.” Tess gave her a gentle shake. “You’re stronger than this.
We’re
stronger. And we are smart, too. We’re Vargas and Chandler! We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

And then Cat was back. She jerked and sucked in a deep breath as if someone had just shocked her heart. Exhaling, she nodded at Tess. “I’m okay.”

“I’ve never seen you freeze like that,” Tess said. “Ever.”

“I think it was because I could. I wasn’t standing in an alley with an armed suspect, or facing down IA. I’ve carried around such fear for him for so long. And I hate that you’ve been sucked into this.”

“I sucked myself in,” Tess replied, and she made a face. “That sounds very wrong. But you know what I mean. I wouldn’t let it go. I pushed until I found out everything. And I am going to push on this, too. And so are you. It’s what we do, and we are good at it. And we need to do it. Fast.”

“Yes.”

“So let me work on the cemetery. You continue with our forensic accounting. J.T. will work on the Rikers footage. Vincent needs a job.”

Cat hesitated. Then she said, “Take him with you to the cemetery. If Angelo sent flowers to Tori… he’ll be able to help.”

Tess blanched. “Seriously.” When Cat nodded, she made her bad-coffee face and said, “Okay. You want to set that up? I’m going to call the florist again, maybe save myself a trip. I don’t know why we’re not getting that warrant. Unless our judge is someone else’s judge.”

They traded dour looks. Then Cat pulled out the bottom drawer of her desk, where she kept her purse, slipped out her burner phone and stepped out of the bullpen. In a stairwell, she called Vincent’s new number and he answered on the first ring.

She told him everything, and in the telling, every part of her that had been frightened was angry instead. She tried to stay on an even keel so they could move forward, and she couldn’t tell how he was taking all the news because he was so quiet.

“So I need you to meet Tess at the cemetery,” she said.

“To look for Tori’s grave.” His voice cracked.

To scent her dead body.
That was what she wasn’t saying. He could do that. He had known that her mother wasn’t buried in the grave Cat had brought calla lilies to every anniversary of her death. And he had been able to confirm that she was buried in a lonely grave behind an old abandoned farmhouse. But this was a vast field of four hundred acres of graves. Hundreds of thousands of internments.

What was she thinking? What would that be like for him? And how could he find Tori?

By sticking to the newer graves. By beasting.

“Wait,” she said.

“Forget it.”

“It’s all right.”

“No. We’ll find it some other way. We’re developing information.”

“I’ll do it. Tell Tess to meet me.”

He hung up.

Cat went back to tell Tess the plan. Tess had a funny look on her face.

“Hey, remember that picture?” she said. “The one in the guitar. I just put it into our imagining system and aged it up.”

She moved away from the monitor so Cat could have a look. The face of the young woman who stared back at her was unmistakably Tori Windsor.

“Go. Quickly,” Cat said.

“Gone,” Tess replied.

A
s soon as Gabe and Celeste left Long Island, Gabe drove his car to a parking garage and exchanged his car for the plainest, most boring sedan on the planet. He hadn’t rented it; he’d phoned ahead and asked to borrow it “for a couple days” from Shannon, one of the secretaries in the DA’s office. Gabe could tell that Shannon thought it was a little odd but he knew she had a crush on him and would be happy to help. She had cleared out all her belongings and made plans to carpool.

Celeste looked impressed that he’d taken this action and loaded her weapons in the trunk. Gabe was feeling a bit caught up in this manhunt, which was not at all what he had expected when he’d driven to the Ellison compound. He managed to switch a few things around at the office, and as everyone was still flush from the victory of the Zilpho conviction, the DA was happy to give Gabe some personal time.

Celeste had tried her father’s phone at least a dozen times. All calls continued to be blocked. Her thirteenth call was to Bruce Fox, informing him that she was going to be gone overnight. When he began protesting, she hung up on him. Then she turned to Gabe and said, “Even if we come up empty, we’ll be gone so long it may as well be overnight.”

He detected a hint of interest in him and wondered what kind of woman would be able to contemplate spending the night with a companion on a search for her missing father and his potential connection to an escaped convict. Then he figured he was being a little hard on her; under stress, people’s minds wandered through all kinds of strange fields. He remembered one time when he was locked in the safe room of his adoptive parents’ house, clawing at the walls and roaring, he had wondered if they made Spider-man footie pajamas.

He knew he shouldn’t react to her perhaps-unconscious invitation; he was certain she was unaware that he’d read her. He was trying to figure out how to approach her. After getting decked by her and seeing the weapons arsenal at her disposal, he knew there was more to her than met the eye.

“Do you know why your father might be at the lake house?” he asked her.

“There are so many reasons, Mr. Lowan. As you might imagine, he has lots of enemies.” She waited a beat and then she said, “Powerful people usually do.”

He felt her eyes on him. He inclined his head. “That’s true.”

“How did you know that pin belonged to my father?”

He cocked his head as they began to maneuver out of the city. It was snowing, lending the day a gloomy air as they passed boarded-up windows, reminders of the blackout. It suddenly hit him how tired he was.

“How did you know I was right?”

She looked out the window as if at the blustering white. She tapped her fingers against the face of the phone and sighed.

“I haven’t trusted Bruce Fox for quite some time. I’m not sure what he’s up to, but he’s been acting sketchy for a while. I don’t know if he had anything to do with my father’s disappearance, but he didn’t like you.” She smiled faintly. “That was an endorsement, in my book.”

The fact that she didn’t answer his question was an answer. He was certain that she had recognized the pin.

She said, “Gabe, yes. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was his. He showed it to me once and he told me that he belonged to a group like the Freemasons. He said they all had pins but that his was special. There’s a band of gold around the edge. That’s because he’s the president.”

Gabe’s lips parted in surprise. A band of gold? He hadn’t even noticed. Was that how Sam Landon had known it was Cavanaugh Ellison’s pin, and not because of the circuitry?

He wanted to take it out and look at it but he was afraid that if he did, she might push harder for him to give it back. He didn’t know what she would do if he refused. They were in a car loaded with weapons and she was lethal. He was certain she could take him out with a single blow.

“Why did you pretend not to recognize it?”

“I’m an Ellison. We thrive on lies and secrecy.” She crossed her arms. “And I think you do too.”
Well
, he thought.
She’s perceptive.
And the thought skittered across his mind that she was probably good in bed. And that maybe he’d be in a position to find out.

“How much longer until we get there?” he asked her.

“Five hours.”

He took a deep breath.
What the hell. Nothing ventured and all that.

“Do you know about a group called Muirfield?”

There were a lot of boarded-up storefronts on the drive into the Bronx and an almost equal number of trucks from glass replacement businesses parked in front of them. A few stores were offering “Blackout Savings!” and Vincent was glad they still had things to sell. The dollar value of the merchandise stolen during the blackout was shocking.

Then Vincent was walking among centuries-old headstones and tombs topped with weeping angels, holding a printout of internments that had taken place within the last year. His stomach clenched and he balled his fists. The smell of death was not new to him. He had been a soldier and a doctor. And he had scented out death for Catherine before. He had known that her mother was not buried in the grave Catherine had visited on the anniversary of her death every year. Now she knew it too.

And now I’m looking for the grave of someone who gave up her life for me.

“There are too many graves,” Tess said as she loped up beside him. “This is hopeless.”

They walked slowly together. He said, “How’s she holding up?”

Tess slid a glance at him. “She’s scared. For you.”

“Maybe it’s time I went to look for Reynolds.”

“Didn’t she ask you not to? Then don’t. Help us find Angelo.”

Before he could speak, she turned and faced him.

“I’m serious, Vincent. Cat is scared that she’s going to wind up coming to a place like this to stand at
your
grave.”

“Then I should do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen. Which means finding Reynolds.”

Tess stuffed her hands in the pockets of her coat and huffed. He backed down. He had already agreed to make Angelo DeMarco his priority. It was just that he felt so terrible looking for Tori. She had lived in fear because of men preoccupied with hunting—and creating—beasts.

“This place is going to close soon,” he said. “Maybe you could take another row.” He was uncomfortable doing what he had to do around her.

“Right.” She moved away.

Then fresh anger surged through him, and he was worried he was going to beast. Nervously he scanned for visitors to the cemetery; he should not be seen. But he was becoming so
angry…

Then his phone rang. It could only be J.T. or Catherine. He stilled the beast, and answered the phone. To slake off energy, he kept walking past the graves. Faster. Faster still.

“Hey.” It was Catherine. “Vincent, I discovered something. Angelo’s birthday is in two weeks. He’ll be twenty-one. He’s going to inherit a lot of money from a trust fund. Millions of dollars. He’s going to be incredibly wealthy.”

He kept moving, using up the adrenaline. He stayed quiet. He knew there was more. He could tell by the strain in her voice.

“The money coming to him is from Tori’s mother’s estate.”

Suddenly he stopped. He was standing in front of a grave decorated with a large bouquet of yellow roses. Tori’s favorite flower.

The white marble headstone was very plain, the inscription simple: