Secrets in Death (In Death 45)

“Yes, I understand that.”

“I have a file, and I’ll give you a copy of everything. I always knew I’d be here. Not that she’d be dead, but that I’d be talking to the police about all of it. I knew, no matter how I tried to pretend otherwise, Bic was right all along.”

“What did she have on you?”

> “Okay.” Annie closed her eyes a moment. “Okay. My mother was a prostitute. Not my mother of record, not the woman who’ll always be my mother. That’s technically my aunt. But I’m going to call her my mother, and call her sister Carly. My mother took me in, made me hers, when I was barely two weeks old and Carly left me with her. She was only twenty-two years old, my mother, had worked her way through college, had just started a job teaching kindergarten in her hometown in Missouri. I found all this out years later, you understand. She’d raised me as her own, given me everything that mattered. To protect me, she’d moved to St. Louis, taken a job there. Moved away from her friends, her family. My grandparents were and are good people. Carly … was what she was.”

She shifted, took Bic’s hand again. “When I was thirteen, Carly showed up. It all came out, and this woman, this junkie, this prostitute, who’d only given birth to me because she’d been too stupid to even realize she was pregnant, and too afraid of terminating the pregnancy once she did. And calculated my grandparents would buy me from her. She was right about that—I learned that, too. They gave her ten thousand dollars when she threatened to take me away again, and just dump me in a ditch.

“I was thirteen, and I learned everything about my life was a lie. I was so angry, so shocked, so young, it’s all I could see. Instead of embracing my mother, my real mother, not Carly, I rejected her, I attacked her, and while she was trying to explain to me, to reason with me, scrambling to scrape up the money Carly wanted, I locked myself in my room. Later, I snuck out, and I went to the address Carly left with her. A part of the city my mom would never, never have let me go to. She was on the street, soliciting. She wasn’t licensed, you understand—this was before licensing—and the clientele she served wasn’t interested in licenses anyway. Junkies and whores and dealers, a brew of the worst, and I walked right into it.”

Knight shook back the hair that tumbled into her face, a quick, impatient move.

“She was high. I’m not sure I fully understood that, as I’d been so sheltered. I was going to get answers, I was going to get the truth. Not from the woman who’d lied to me every day of my life, but from her. God, thirteen.”

She paused, drank again, slower now, thoughtfully. “It can be such a pissy, know-it-all age. Both fierce and fragile. She laughed at me, put her arm around me, and said how I had plenty of sass, just like her. This man came up—he was high, too—and he said he’d pay her a hundred for a two-fer. I didn’t even know what he meant. She said, ‘Double that, handsome.’ I remember those exact words. She kept that arm around me, so tight, and I was still demanding she tell me the truth, too wrapped up in my own world to see the world around me. They pulled me into the alley. I didn’t even scream, I didn’t know what was happening until he shoved me against the wall, ground against me. I tried to fight, and I can hear her laughing. ‘Not so rough now, handsome, let me warm her up. God, let me warm her up.’”

Blindly, she reached out and Bic gripped her hand in both of his.

“It’s all right. You’re all right.”

“He hit her,” Knight continued, “backslapped her away. Her nose started bleeding, and she hit him. He had a knife, he waved the knife, and they were cursing at each other. So high, just flying high. Him waving the knife, and it cut my hand a little. I grabbed the knife from him, full of fear and rage and shock, and I stabbed him. In the throat. I know it was in the throat. The blood was gushing, and she was laughing again. I dropped the knife, and when he turned on her, I ran. That part’s a blur. Running, getting on a bus again, getting back, running home. I told Mom, told her everything. I’d barely been gone an hour.”

Knight breathed deep. “A lifetime can only take an hour. She bagged my clothes. We’d go to the police. She made sure I wasn’t hurt, I wasn’t hurt. Just some scrapes and bruises, that shallow cut on my hand. She held me all night, rocked me like a baby all night. We’d go to the police in the morning, she told me, and not to worry. But in the morning, there was a media report about a man and a woman found dead in an alley. Multiple stab wounds on both. They showed the photos—the ID photos. Carly and the man.”

Now Knight’s eyes swam. “The truth, the absolute truth? I don’t know if I killed him or if she did. I don’t know if he killed her before he bled to death from where I’d stabbed him with her knife. The media said it appeared they’d fought, both of them high on illegals, and they’d succumbed to their injuries. My mother burned the clothes I’d been wearing. She said we’d let the dead bury the dead, and there was no need to put me through what going to the police would put me through. It wouldn’t change anything. She said it wasn’t my fault. She said she loved me from the first instant, but she hadn’t been honest with me, so it was her fault.”

Her eyes, dark and wet, met Eve’s, pleaded.

“But it wasn’t her fault, and I can’t blame a scared and angry child. It was Carly’s fault. Carly Ellison, and his fault, Wayne Sarvino. We moved back home, and put it behind us. When I was sixteen, Mom married Abe Knight, and we both took his name. She told him everything, all of it. They gave me a good life, they built a good life. I have a brother and a sister. They’re good people with good families of their own. So when Larinda threatened to expose all of this, I paid. I kept it from them, as Mom had kept things from me. I was going to go home this weekend and tell them, and talk to the police in St. Louis. I was going to take that weapon out of Larinda’s hand.”

Eve said nothing, let it all play out until Knight finished. “How did she find out?”

“She never told me, wouldn’t. Just said she had lots of clever birds and they loved to chirp. My mother registered my birth—an at-home birth—with her as mother, and father unknown. But if anyone really wanted to dig down, it wouldn’t be hard to find our connection to Carly Ellison—my mom changed her last name to her mother’s maiden when she moved to St. Louis. But it wouldn’t be hard to dig down and find Carly, then how she died, where Mom and I lived.”

“All right.” Eve rose.

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“I’m going to talk to St. Louis, I’m going to review the facts, the evidence, and the investigative steps in the two deaths. I want your files, and I want a copy of your home-security feed for the night in question. If after we’ve studied and evaluated all the above and determine an arrest is in order, you’ll have your twenty-four.”

“All right.”

“Who else knows this story?”

“Nobody. Well, Bob Turnbill now, as of last night. Otherwise, my mom and dad, my grandparents.”

“Who else knew about the extortion?”

“No one. I didn’t tell my family. Only Bic, and now Bob.”

“Your PA?”

“Bill? No. He’s loyal and protective—maybe overly—and all-around terrific, but no. This is personal business.”

“Okay. We need the file and the feed.”

“They’re both at home. I have to be on set in—God, twenty minutes.”