Bombshell Part 52

"And you, Agent-"

"Parrish, Agent Anna Parrish."

"Are you proud to see my brother shot? Proud that you betrayed his trust and betrayed me and Stanislaus?"

"I was doing my job, sir. It was you who invited him here to Stanislaus."

"Yes, that's right, but what has that to do with drugs? Rafael plays the cla.s.sical guitar, for heaven's sake. He doesn't peddle drugs on street corners." Both Anna and Griffin saw the lie in his eyes, the pain and grief of betrayal confirmed.

Griffin said, "You suspected he was involved with drugs, though, didn't you, Dr. Hayman? And you knew, of course, he spent many summers in El Salvador with the Lozano family."

"I have no intention of answering your ridiculous questions, Agent Hammersmith. Why should I?"

Griffin knew he had to push harder to see the truth. "Because you are also a member of the Lozano family. It is a short step to you from your brother, to you from the family business in El Salvador-drugs, extortion, prost.i.tution, guns-and now to the Lozano organization expanding to the United States. The reality is that your brother came to Stanislaus to a position that would put him above suspicion. He arranged to purchase the land around Winkel's Cave and coordinated the distribution of cocaine, marijuana, and guns with a violent gang with ties to El Salvador called MS-13. Perhaps you've heard of this gang?"

They both saw the horror on his face, heard it in his voice. "Mara Salvatrucha." He raised blind eyes to their faces. "My brother was working with those animals? This is a fabrication. Why are you blackening my brother's name, my mother's name?"

If Anna hadn't been certain Dr. Hayman was not involved in any of this, she was certain now. But he'd guessed what his mother's family was involved in and hated it; his disgust was honest and gut-felt. But how could a man accept that his twin brother was one of the monsters? She said, "Professor Salazar was with them in the cave, sir. We believe he had them trash his house so he could claim they had abducted him. When he offered to confess it all to us, one of the gang members shot him."

Dr. Hayman looked pale, the confident, self-a.s.sured academic gone as well as his rage, leaving him looking pinched and confused. "I know nothing of this, nothing."

He began pacing, still in his lovely gray cashmere winter coat. He looked like someone had punched him in the face. "So they've managed to ruin me at last, ruin me utterly, my brother and Maria Rosa, who took him away to Spain with her when we were children and left me here with my drunken criminal of a father. She wanted to save herself from being beaten to death. She did not care that she was leaving me in his care, d.a.m.n her to h.e.l.l.

"Of course, she couldn't leave me out of it. There were hints, I'm not stupid, but I chose to ignore them as I did not tell her my father never struck me as he had her, that indeed, he was proud of me.

"Yes, I chose to think we were all civilized. When Maria Rosa mentioned Rafael would very much like to come to Stanislaus as a visiting professor for a year, I did not suspect there was anything more to it, none of this drug business, surely not those violent gangs from El Salvador." He paused, stared blindly at nothing in particular, and said more to himself than to them, "Of course I cannot keep my directorship at Stanislaus; I will not even be able to teach anywhere. The government will hound me, try to implicate me in all this, even though I am innocent." He focused on Anna now. "You know I am innocent, don't you?"

"I imagine you are." Anna also wanted to say, But you knew, you had to know he was here for another purpose, you had to, but she only stood quietly, watching him. It was out of her hands now.

"Ah, but what kind of man am I, worrying about myself while Rafael may be dying? I must call Maria Rosa in Spain and tell her what has happened. She will blame me, of course. It is like her. Will she admit to me what she has done? Will she admit she told Rafael to get himself kidnapped to cause confusion and distraction until she could rescue him? She never tells me anything, so why should she begin now?"

He walked back to the elevator, not looking back.

Ward Place, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

Tuesday afternoon

The falling snow helped mask the lousy upkeep at Melissa Ivy's red-brick apartment building. They walked past the triple row of black mailboxes up to the third floor and down the battered wooden hallway to apartment 3B.

Melissa opened the door immediately, since Savich had called her ten minutes before.

She'd changed since the morning into more comfortable clothes, her midriff and navel not on display, perhaps in deference to Peter's death. Instead she was decked out in loose dark blue sweats, her pink UGGs back on her small feet. Her hair in a single thick braid that fell over her shoulder.

"I've already looked for videos that aren't mine, but I haven't found any."

Savich smiled at her. "Tell you what, Agent Sherlock will look around while we talk, how's that?" He didn't wait for an answer, simply nodded to Sherlock and walked to the sofa.

He heard Sherlock moving around in the kitchen. If there were any videos or compact disks Peter had secreted away here in Melissa's apartment, Sherlock would find them.

"Tell me, Ms. Ivy, did you notice if Tommy and Peter had any more money than usual lately?"

She blinked her marvelously thick darkened lashes at him. "More money?"

"Yeah, more cash. On display, for you to see."

She pursed her pink lips. "Well, Tommy took me to buy my Christmas present and said I could have whatever I wanted, that I didn't even have to look at prices. Of course, that was a crazy thing to say at Tiffany, so I looked for something I thought he could afford, and asked for these earrings. He did pay cash, I remember, because I saw him pull the bills out of his wallet, all hundreds. I asked him if he was trying to impress me with that stash, but he only smiled and told me I was beautiful and I deserved it. You mean like that?"

Savich nodded. "That's exactly what I mean. When was this?"

"A week before Christmas, I remember, because Tiffany was really crowded. It was so fun, actually buying something expensive in there with all the rich people."

She sounded like an orphan, and he wondered if she wasn't laying it on a bit thick. Probably.

"Did Tommy usually have lots of cash with him?"

"No, that's the first time I ever saw so much. He usually paid with a credit card, but after that we went to a couple of really expensive restaurants, and he paid cash there, too. Why, Agent Savich?"

He only smiled and asked her, "Then why did you leave him, Melissa, for Peter? Sounds like Tommy treated you well, gave you an expensive Christmas present, bought you whatever you wanted." He pointed to the pearl earrings in her perfect ears. "I'd say he was head over heels in love with you."

She searched his face, as if suspecting him of sarcasm, and seeing none, she shrugged. "His grandparents hated me. His Aunt Marian hated me, too. His sisters, though, thought I was beautiful and wanted me to do their makeup. Tommy told me not to worry about it, said we didn't need his family, but I knew he did, and that I'd never fit in with them. Then Peter was there and he wanted me, too, and his parents were really nice to me."

He heard Sherlock move into Melissa's bedroom.

"What about Peter? Did he have a lot of cash?"

"Peter always seemed to, even before we went together. He paid for nearly everything in cash. I asked him once if he wasn't afraid of being mugged and having all that money stolen. He laughed, said cash was better than having The Man know everything he paid for, whatever that meant."

He looked toward the pile of compact disks next to her stereo. "All music?"

"Yes. When you said you wanted to look for a video, I looked through them all first. I listened to the ones I wasn't sure about. They're all music, I'm positive."

He and Sherlock left Melissa's apartment an hour later with nothing to show for the effort.

Then Sherlock mentioned the SUV Delsey had seen in their neighborhood, and Savich remembered. "I've asked Davis Sullivan over tonight for spaghetti. After dinner we've got work to do."

"I'll make you a deal," she said. "You make the spaghetti sauce, and I'll let Sean help me make an apple pie. What have you got in mind for our after-dinner work?"

He grinned at her as he gunned the Porsche's engine. Ah, sweet music to his ears. "We're gonna rock 'n' roll."