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“Yes,” he repeated, then said, “They went inside, but Marcus and Chandra weren’t there yet.”
Savvy blinked at him. “What?”
“They got there first. The pretty lady and the devil.” He leaned even closer. “I had to hide. Couldn’t make my fire while they were there, because they would know I was there, you know?”
“You saw Marcus and Chandra Donatella come later, to join them?”
“The devil killed them. Bang, bang!” His sudden yell made Savvy jump.
After a moment, while she waited for her heart rate to stop thundering, she asked carefully, “You heard the shots when the Donatellas were executed?”
“Bang, bang,” he said again, much softer. “And then the pretty lady came out again, but you can’t run from the devil.” He turned away, his lips quivering. “‘Jesus loves me! This I know, cuz the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong. They are weak, but He is strong. . . .’”
Savannah couldn’t take it in. Kristina was on-site when the Donatellas were murdered? She hadn’t fully believed Owen DeWitt. She’d ignored Nadine Gretz’s comments about Kristina, as well. But something had gone on between Kristina and another man. Something that maybe was connected to the Donatella murders? Who was this mysterious other man?
Declan Jr.
“I’m sorry about your sister. She was very pretty. I saw her on the television.”
“Thank you,” Savvy said distractedly.
“Where’s your baby? What happened to your baby!”
“I had the baby. The baby’s fine. He’s at his father’s house, doing just fine.”
“Keep baby Jesus safe,” he advised.
Steeling herself, Savvy asked, “What were they doing, my sister and the devil?”
“Fucking.”
Mickey’s matter-of-fact tone felt like a hard slap. “Does the devil look like a man? Someone you might recognize?”
“It’s a disguise.”
“But if you could describe him, what would you say? Look behind the disguise.”
“Oh, the devil is her husband. That’s who he is. He took her to his mansion and made her his. . . .”
CHAPTER 25
Savvy ran through the rain to her rented SUV and scrolled through the list of numbers on her cell phone, looking for Owen DeWitt’s. She didn’t have it, she realized. Damn. She had the list she’d been given of all the Bancroft employees and former employees, and she had almost all their contact numbers, but she hadn’t gotten DeWitt’s when she met him Saturday at the Rib-I. She’d only given him hers.
But she had Clark Russo’s, so she quickly phoned him. He answered just before the call went to voice mail, and she quickly told him what she needed.
“Let’s see,” he said, taking a moment to look up the number on his own phone. “I’m really sorry about your sister, Detective Dunbar. I always liked her.”
“Thank you.”
Savvy visualized the handsome project manager, remembering that Sylvie Strahan from Hale’s office had recommended him for the job when Paulie Williamson, whom both Russo and Vledich had jumped in and denigrated, quit and moved to Tucson. She’d been interrupted before calling Williamson by Geena Cho, and then everything had gotten crazy. She sure as hell wasn’t going to wait for Lang to call DeWitt, not after what Mickey had said.
“I talked to Hale,” he added. “He sounds pretty broken up.”
She sensed he was fishing for information, but she wasn’t going to go there. Mickey’s screwed-up but scary report on Kristina and her trysts—plural, apparently—filled her head. She absolutely didn’t believe he was right about Hale. But she needed to nail down who Charlie was. “Beelzebub,” DeWitt had said. On that he and Mickey agreed. Both of them thought Kristina’s lover was the devil.
Russo gave her DeWitt’s cell number and said casually, “Thought Woodworth steered you toward the Rib-I to find DeWitt. He wasn’t there?”
“I just need to talk to him again.”
