Thicker Than Water

He was about to leave her in the dust.

People’s dirt, he knew from experience, turned up in people’s garbage. So he used his cell phone and directory assistance to get the exact address, minus the apartment number, and he drove to Harry’s building. He parked his car where it seemed relatively safe and took what he needed from the glove compartment. The Dumpster Diving Kit, he called it. He always carried one. He’d thought once or twice that he ought to patent it and sell it to journalists the world over.

Harry had lived in a good neighborhood; he had to give the guy that much, Sean thought as he locked his car and walked casually toward the alley beside the building. The building was a century-old brick structure that had been in pretty decent shape up until the city’s recent downtown restoration efforts. Now it was like new again, sound, clean and safe, even while keeping its original look.

He used a small penlight to guide his feet. No rats scurried out of its beam, and there were no homeless old men to trip over. Yep, a nice neighborhood. Toward the far end of the alley, he found what he needed. The Dumpster. The lid was raised, and the garbage chute angled into it from the side of the building.

Digging through garbage was never a pleasant job but almost always a profitable one. Sean opened the gallon-size zipper-seal freezer bag and took out a pair of yellow rubber gloves. He had found some of his very best material in the garbage. He’d learned of extramarital affairs, celebrity pregnancies, addictions, nose jobs and political corruption from various piles of refuse. Occasionally he found stuff that was too lowbrow even for his radio show. Stuff that would be considered beneath him, though granted, according to most of the respected press, that was a very narrow area. When he found stuff like that, he never used it for his show. He had to preserve what little journalistic integrity he had. So he would simply sell it to the tabloids, which were always more than willing to keep his name out of it. It was a tidy little side business. Hell, it had paid for his Porsche.

At worst, this Dumpster should provide something kinky enough to bring a good price at the tabloids. At best, it would provide a motive for Harry Blackwood’s murder and enough leverage to move him up a few rungs on the journalistic ladder.

He pulled on the yellow rubber gloves, then took out the white surgical face mask and tied it around his head. Then he found a small broken crate lying on the ground, and he flipped it upside down beside the Dumpster to use as a makeshift stepladder. It was dark. He put his penlight in his mouth and peered down into the depths of trash.

Most of the garbage was bagged. People were neater these days than they’d been ten years ago. He reached for a plastic trash bag, picked it up by its knotted top and let it dangle and turn in slow-mo, shining his light and peering through the transparent sides until he spotted a name on a discarded envelope or sheet of paper. He repeated this process over and over, tossing the bags aside when he found any name other than Harold R. Blackwood. Harry had lived alone, as far as Sean knew. He wouldn’t likely have anything addressed to anyone else. There! Harold Blackwood. Apartment 624.

He tossed the bag to the ground to be examined later and kept on digging for more, stopping only when headlights spilled into the alley from the street beyond and he heard a car pulling to a stop out in front of the building. The engine shut off. The lights went out.

He glanced at his watch. 2:00 a.m.

Okay, it was probably nothing, but he had a little nerve at the base of his skull that tingled when there was a story nearby, and it was tingling now. Maybe he’d better check it out, just in case….

He jumped down from the crate and picked up the bag he’d retrieved, peeled off his gloves and face mask, tossing them into the trash, and then he walked back up the alley to the street.

A powder-blue Jeep Wrangler had stopped there, and the woman who got out of it was…He had to blink and look again. There was no mistake. She was none other than Julie Jones.

“Well, I’ll be,” he muttered. Licking his lips, he set his trash bag down and pressed himself closer to the wall so he could peer around it and watch her without being seen. “What the hell is she up to now?”

She walked up the broad stone steps of Harry’s building, then paused at the front door, biting her lip and squinting at the security panel. Finally she pushed a button. She was only three yards away from Sean. She kept her finger on the button until a groggy, angry voice came over the intercom in reply. “Who the hell is this?” it demanded. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, but I forgot my key. Could you just buzz me in?”

“Fuck off, lady,” the man said.

She waited a couple seconds, then hit the same button again. The voice returned. “You want me to call a cop?”

“You want me to keep my finger on this button until they get here?”

“All right, all right. Jesus.”

The guy buzzed her in. Sean heard the deep drone of the buzzer and the door lock disengaging, and shook his head in amazement, both at her brass and at the fact that her ploy had actually worked. Jones opened the door and walked through. Swearing under his breath, Sean lunged out of his spot, running in three long strides to the stairs. The door was already swinging closed and Jones was striding toward the elevators, her back to him. He flung himself bodily, landing chest first on the stairs, arms stretching doorward. He just managed to thrust his fingertips into the opening before the door slammed on them.

Clenching his teeth and swearing under his breath, he pulled himself forward, grabbed the door with his free hand and pulled it open. Then he got to his feet and stepped inside. His fingers throbbed. Shit. He rubbed them and shook his hand as the door fell closed behind him. Then he heard the elevator ping and looked ahead to see its doors closing, as well.

Crossing into the lobby, he dug through his memory for the number he’d seen on that envelope—624, that was it. Sixth floor. There was only one elevator, and he didn’t want Jones getting too goddamn far ahead of him. Nor did he relish the thought of being caught there in plain sight should the irate neighbor Jones had bothered with the buzzer decide to call the cops after all.

He looked around, found the stair door and took that way up. Five flights. He hurried, because he didn’t want Jones out of his sight long enough to do anything he would regret not seeing. He figured it took him a minute or so before he made it to the sixth floor landing, opened the stair door and stepped quietly into the hall. Or as quietly as he could manage while panting for breath. His heart was pounding hard enough to wake the residents of the entire floor, and he told himself he was too old for this kind of cloak-and-dagger bullshit.

Then he shook his head. Getting too old, maybe. But he wasn’t there yet—he’d managed to catch up to her. Jones was walking down the hall, peering at the numbers on the doors of the condos on this floor. He walked forward, stepping just as softly as he could manage. She was wearing jeans now. Her hair was a mess, and her sweatshirt was baggy. This was not a Julie Jones too many people would recognize.

Then she stopped suddenly and just stood there, staring at one of the doors. And when he got a little closer, Sean realized why. It was Harry’s apartment door, and it was standing wide-open.

Someone had been there first, and even as he wondered whether they might still be around, Julie Jones walked inside.

Swearing under his breath, Sean rushed ahead and paused momentarily outside the door to look in at Jones as she tiptoed through the apartment like some kind of goddamn cat burglar. He knew it was freaking insane, but he had to find out what she was up to. My God, he didn’t have dreams this good. Oh, he’d fantasized lots of scenarios involving Julie Jones over the years, getting the best of her being his second favorite. But this was better than anything he could have made up. So he crept in after her.

Harry’s living room looked like some dated idea of a playboy’s love nest. Black leather furniture, white shag carpet, wall-size stereo system, wet bar. Jones moved through it into a hallway and went through a door about halfway down. God, he hoped she wasn’t heading for the bedroom. He could only imagine what that would look like.

She wasn’t. He moved quietly to the door she’d entered. She’d left it open, so he could look inside. It was a study or library. Desk, chair, file cabinet and a big-screen TV that would have seemed out of place if not for the wall of videos.

He thought they were books at first, in the muted light. But no. VHS tapes. One entire wall housed a built-in cabinet that must have been full of them. Right now, its doors were flung open wide, and video cassettes lay toppled on the shelves and strewn over the floor. The file cabinet nearby was open wide, too. File folders and papers were thrown everywhere.

Jones stood there, looking at the mess, shaking her head from side to side as if the sight rendered her unable to move or speak. She pressed her hands to either side of her head, fingers digging in her own hair. “Oh, Jesus, look at all this,” she whispered.

“Jones.”

She whirled when Sean said her name, one hand clenched in a fist and the other pressing to her chest as if to keep her heart from busting out.

“Easy, easy, it’s just me.”

“MacKenzie. What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?”

“Hell, no. I was getting some background for my story.”

She tipped her head to one side and lowered the fist. “How?”

He opened his mouth, closed it again.

“Well, you sure as hell couldn’t be interviewing neighbors at this hour. What were you doing, digging through the trash?”

It was supposed to be a sarcastic little barb, and he would be damned before he admitted that it was dead-on target. There was nothing wrong with digging through the trash. “You’re the one breaking and entering,” he reminded her.

“The door was open.”

Arguing in whispers was an interesting concept, he thought. Each of them tried to whisper more forcefully than the other.

“It was,” she said, apparently mistaking his silence for doubt.

“I know, I know, I saw.” He took her arm. “Let’s get out of here before both our asses wind up behind bars.”

She tugged her arm free. “You go on. I have to look around some more.” Her eyes were on the scattered files, scanning them as if trying to read the labels.

“Jones, someone broke in here tonight.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, has it occurred to you that it might have been the killer?”

“Gee, no, I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“He might still be around here somewhere, Jones. Did you think of that?”

That brought her head up. Her eyes leveled on his, widening a little. Her body went so still that he didn’t think she was breathing for a second. The idea of someone else in the apartment frightened her. Good. She should be frightened. But after a second, she seemed to decide her reasons for being there outweighed her fear.

“Maybe you should go check out the rest of the place,” she suggested. “Make sure no one else is around.” Then she turned away from him, dropping to her knees to scan the file folders littering the floor.

“Right, and leave you here alone to abscond with whatever evidence you find.” He knelt right beside her, checking the videocassettes. Some were commercially made, with printed labels, films that sounded like porn, with titles like Mistress Mary’s Discipline and Dungeon Lover. Others had white labels on them with handwritten titles. Sean pulled out his penlight for a better look, because the handwritten ones were harder to read in the dark. He flicked the light on and read them aloud in a whisper. “Vanessa. Marianne. Barb & Sally.” He looked at Jones. She was still pawing frantically through the files that carpeted the floor. “Just what is it you’re looking for?”

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just looking.” She took his light from his hand, shining it on papers with an air of impatience, then stopping the beam on something that lay on the floor, something that reflected the light with its glossy surface. Photographs, Sean thought, but as soon as he thought it, she dropped an empty folder on top of them.

“What was that? Was that something?”

“No. Nothing.” She shone the light elsewhere; then, getting to her feet, she scanned the few files still in the open drawers.

“What is it you expect to find in the files, Jones?” He got up, too, brushing off his pantlegs, waiting for a chance to see what it was she had covered up.

“How would I know?”

“Then why do I get the feeling you’re looking for one that says Julie Jones on it?” Then he lifted his brows. “Or should I be looking for a tape with that label instead?”

She turned toward him, probably about to tear him a new one, he thought, but then she went still at the sound of a bell—just one single ping. “What’s that?”

“The elevator.” He grabbed the light from her, shut it off and ran back through the apartment to the still-open door. He peered out into the hall. She came up behind him a couple of seconds later. “Is it…?”

Lieutenant Jax was striding down the hall toward them, flanked by the same two cops from the hotel room. Sean ducked back inside. “Police,” he whispered. “Come on.”

The two of them ran through the apartment, ducked back into the study and closed the door behind them. Sean went to the window and parted the curtains, looking for a balcony. What he found was even better. Thank God this was an old building. He yanked open the window, turned and held out a hand to Jones. “Come here.”

“What the hell are you doing?” she whisper-shouted at him.

“Fire escape. Come on. Hurry.” Taking her hand in one of his, holding the curtains for her with the other, he helped her out first, then climbed out after her. As he did, he glanced back into the room, at the floor. And, yes, it was dark, and his light was in his pocket now—but he didn’t see the file folder covering up the photographs anymore. It had been kicked aside, and he didn’t see the photos at all. Maybe they’d been kicked aside, too, but he didn’t think so.

He had an inkling that those photos were in Jones’s pocket by now. Sighing, he closed the window behind them and turned to where she stood on the black metal landing, looking down at the skeletal flights of iron stairs and the street below. “You all right?”

The wind blew none too gently, and it carried a bite of autumn chill with it. She nodded but didn’t speak. She kept looking down, and he thought maybe heights were not her favorite thing in the world. He had no idea why, but he squeezed past her, so he was in front, then reached behind him and caught her wrist in his hands.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Relax, Jones. This is strictly business.” He pulled her hand up, pressed it onto his shoulder. “Just hold on to me, okay?” And then he started down the fire escape’s zigzagging stairs.

She stayed right behind him, her hand closing tight on his shoulder, the second one quickly following suit on the other side. The fire escape was a good one, as fire escapes went, but even the best of them tended to sway and jiggle. Every time this one did, her nails dug into his flesh, right through his clothes. He moved slowly, carefully, because the thing was noisy. He figured he had maybe five minutes, maximum, before the cops noticed the window unlocked and came outside to check. It might be far sooner. Jax was sharp; she didn’t miss much. If he’d been alone, he could have taken it twice as fast and been gone by now, despite the noise.

He told himself he ought to do it and leave Jones to face the music. But instead he kept to the slow pace all the way to the bottom, where the fire escape ended with a good ten feet left between it and the ground.

“Put the ladder down,” Jones whispered, pointing urgently at the folded up ladder that would extend almost to the ground, when released.

“No way. You think Jax would miss something like that?”

“Then how are we—”

“We jump.”

She shook her head side to side, backing up a step.

“Come on, Jones, it’s not that far.”

She met his eyes. “You go first.”

If he did, he thought, she wouldn’t go at all. And for some reason, the idea of her getting caught wasn’t one he relished as much as he thought he should. “We’ll go together.” He slid his arm around her waist, pulled her to the edge. She resisted, but he said, “Trust me, Jones. I won’t let you get hurt.”

She looked up at him—surprised, maybe—but just when she opened her mouth to argue, he tightened his grip on her waist and jumped. She clutched him as they fell, even though it was only a second until they hit the ground, falling apart. He got to his feet first, reaching down to help her up. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Told you so.”

She released his hand and brushed herself off. Sean could barely believe they’d made it undetected. He took Jones by the arm and led her around the building, via the alley he’d been in earlier. His bag of rescued garbage still sat right where he’d left it, near the front corner of the building. Her Jeep was just beyond it, parked by the curb. There were plenty of other vehicles parked the same way up and down the street, so he figured the cops wouldn’t have had any reason to note her plate number. He looked at some of the cars more closely. The dark sedan in front of the building hadn’t been there before he’d gone inside. It was, he assumed, what the cops had driven here, and it was empty. He strained his eyes for a closer look. Yep. Crown Victoria.

Quickly he led Jones to the Jeep, opened the driver’s door. Hell, she hadn’t even locked it, and the keys were dangling from the switch.

He glanced back at her. “Go on, get in and get the hell out of here.”

She nodded, but she didn’t get in. She gripped his eyes with hers instead. Big, brown and scared right now. It almost knocked the wind out of him. He had never seen Julie Jones look like that. Never.

“You’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you?” she asked him.

Shit, for a second he thought she was going to thank him for helping her out. He was an idiot. “Not until I know what’s going on, Jones. But believe me, I will find out.”

“Don’t,” she whispered. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“But it does have something to do with you, doesn’t it?”

She pursed her lips, then turned away and got into her Jeep. He closed the door as she started it up. Then he yanked the door open again. “Put on your seat belt, Jones.”

Pursing her lips, she pulled the belt around her, yanked her door closed and popped the clutch. The Jeep jerked, nearly stalled, but managed to take off. He heard her grinding gears and winced. Poor freaking car. If the transmission survived long enough for the kid to get her license, it would be a miracle.

When her taillights were out of sight, Sean jogged into the alley, grabbed his bag of garbage and then ran a block to where he’d left his car. He didn’t relax until he got home, safe and sound. And even then, the questions kept going round and round in his mind. What was Julie Jones hiding? And what did she have to do with the murder of Harry Blackwood?

Julie pounded the steering wheel with a fist. She hadn’t found the documents. There hadn’t been anything there with her name on it, but that didn’t mean a thing. Any one of those dozens of folders and reams of papers could have been the one she was looking for, but she hadn’t had time to check them out.

What if the police found the truth in that mess? What if they found out about Dawn?

God, if it hadn’t been for that bastard MacKenzie showing up, she could have scooped them all up, thrown them into a trash bag from Harry’s kitchen and carried them home.

If it hadn’t been for MacKenzie showing up, I’d have been caught there, red-handed, an inner voice whispered. I never would have found that fire escape in time to avoid the police, much less had the gumption to go down it in the dark.

Oh, God, the police. She imagined them—the two officers, and that bitch Detective Jackson—were gathering up the papers and documents and videotapes one by one, even now. They would probably sit in a roomful of cops and go over all of them. If they found out the truth, her life would be destroyed. They would take Dawn away from her. Track down her birth mother’s relatives—the very same people Lizzie had been compelled to run away from all those years ago—and hand her over to them.

Dawn.

Shivering all over, Julie kept steering the Jeep with one hand, dipping into her jacket pocket with the other. She pulled out the two photographs she had found on the floor, both of them taken in a place so jarringly familiar that the sight of them had almost floored her. They’d been taken at Young Believers’ compound.

She looked at them now, tried to make out the faces in the group shots. And finally she realized why one of those faces seemed so familiar. The young man with the three-piece suit and the automatic rifle was Harry Blackwood.

“He was there,” she whispered. Not as one of the inmates, though. Those who lived at the place didn’t wear suits but plain, functional clothes more suited to working in the greenhouses and gardens. No, Harry must have been one of Mordecai’s visiting dignitaries. The men who brought large sums of money in exchange for some of Mordecai’s crops.

Julie lowered the photos toward her pocket, glanced up at the road and saw the glowing orange eyes and red-brown coat in her headlights’ beam. Startled, the deer froze in the middle of the road. Equally startled, Julie jerked the wheel hard to the left and jammed her foot on the brake. The Jeep’s rear end skidded right, so she jerked the wheel right, overcorrected, and sent it skidding the other way. Her body jerked hard against the car’s motions, but the seat belt kept her from being whipped across the seat. She thought she was going into the brush at the side of the road for sure, but somehow she pulled out of the skid, and the back end’s fishtailing slowed and finally stopped. She forgot about the clutch, and the car bucked and then stalled.

She sat there, the car at a cockeyed angle on the shoulder, watching the deer bound merrily away into the woods, and she thought how right her daughter was about her driving skills. Damn deer anyway. Thank God she hadn’t wrecked Dawnie’s sixteenth-birthday present or she would never have heard the end of it, even though her insurance would have covered the damage.

She told herself it didn’t matter. She hadn’t wrecked the Jeep, or hit the deer or anything else. She hadn’t been hurt, and she supposed that might have turned out differently if Sean hadn’t reminded her to buckle up. Though she would be damned before she admitted that to him.

Pulling herself together, she pushed down the clutch, restarted the engine, pulled back onto the pavement and drove slowly the rest of the way home, her full attention on the road the entire time. She pulled the Jeep into the garage, closed the door and crept into the house as quietly as she could. She checked all the locks, shut off all the lights. God, it was 3:30 a.m. She had to get up again in a little more than three hours.

She tiptoed up the stairs and paused outside her daughter’s bedroom door to peek inside. Dawn was lying in the bed, exactly the way she had been before. She hadn’t so much as moved in her sleep.

What had at first seemed reassuring changed in an instant as Julie stared in at the bed and realized what she was seeing.

She pushed the door open further and stepped inside. “Dawn?”

Dawn said nothing. Julie moved closer to the bed, reached down to touch Dawn’s shoulder. “Dawnie?”

Still nothing. She pulled the covers back.

Pillows lay beneath them, lined up to resemble the form of a sleeping sixteen-year-old covered in blankets. Lifting her head, Julie saw the curtains floating on a breeze coming in through the open window.