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53
Greenbrier Resort
SUNDAY NIGHT
Kirra waited. Would Griffin tell her it was out of his hands, that she, Eliot Ness, would be arrested?
Griffin searched her set face, her fierce eyes, her seamed lips. She was angry, and she was afraid. He would be, too, in her place. He’d known she might tell him the truth, suspected Savich knew it, too. At least his brain was functioning again. He said matter-of-factly, “You’ve done the world a great service, Kirra. You thought it through and made the decision to hunt down a criminal who’d been free for far too long. Because of you Grissom should go to jail for the rest of his life.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “What’s even better, Hailstock’s no longer involved.”
Her voice was stony. “You didn’t answer my question.”
He looked her straight in the eye. “I know enough to know that short of perjuring themselves, Savich and Pepper won’t tell anyone you’re Eliot Ness—especially not that lame boss of yours, Hailstock, although given his philosophy, he would probably only give you a slap on the hand. Literally. The same goes for Jeter, and you know that better than I do. You’re safe, Kirra. My only proviso is Eliot Ness has to toss her shotgun, hang up her spurs, and ride off into the sunset. No, not even go after Oliveras. When we leave here, Eliot Ness has to retire. Forever.”
Kirra said slowly, “Of course the four of you discussed this?”
Of course.He said only, “I’m asking you to trust us, to trust all of us.”
“So Jeter knew all along?”
“Yes. He told me after you nearly died on Friday he barely managed to play along with you, nearly blurted out he knew. He wondered if he should have.” He paused a moment, reached out his hand.
She didn’t move. “You wanted me to be the one to tell you.”
“Yes.”
“Melissa Kay could easily have mentioned my name. And if she had, you’d believe I told you because she outed me.”
“The truth? Either way, it wouldn’t have mattered to me. I would lie to the others about it if you asked me to. I need to know, why did you put Grissom first on Eliot Ness’s list? You didn’t know about Melissa Kay and Ryman then.”
Kirra wrapped the sheet around her, tucked it tight over her breasts, and paced from the bed to the bedroom door and back again, the tail of the sheet dragging behind her like a wedding train. Her fists clenched and unclenched. She seemed to be arguing with herself. Arguments for him and against him? Let her work it out. He kept quiet and watched her.
Finally, she stopped, and hung her head, her hair curtaining her face. When she looked up, she said slowly, “I’ve been keeping it all to myself for so long, thinking I had to—but I want you to know all of it now.” She drew a deep breath, spit it out. “I went after Elson Grissom first because fourteen years ago, my father painted a yacht named Valadia from the shore of the Potomac. He always took photos of the scenes of the people and boats he was going to paint in case he couldn’t finish them in one session or the light changed. That day he snapped photos of the Valadia with Grissom, Ryman, and another man in full sight on deck. I’m assuming when he looked closely at the photos later, he saw a tattoo on the man’s arm, an MS-13 tattoo. Even my unworldly father knew the man was in a drug cartel. You know my mother was ill and there was no insurance and no money to get her the treatment she needed. I believe my father tried to sell the photos and the painting to Grissom, and that’s why he and my mother were murdered, why they tried to murder me. They were looking for the painting and the photos, but they couldn’t find them, so they burned down the house.”
“How did you know about the painting?”
“Because I found it myself, only a few weeks ago, in an old shed behind the house, bubble wrapped. They probably didn’t even notice the shed when they burned the house down. And there the painting was, photos fastened to the back, showing the three men on the deck. When I realized what those photos meant, I spent hours researching everything I could find on Grissom’s activities over the years, which led nowhere. He was really good at covering his tracks and his lawyers were top-notch.”
“And there was Josh Atwood. You knew Grissom ordered his murder too.”
“Yes. Josh’s murder was the trigger, I guess you could call it. After he and his mother were both dead, both murdered, I believed, I knew I had to do something other than wasting time researching Grissom or I couldn’t live with myself. I decided it was up to me, up to Eliot Ness. I spied on Grissom, recorded him whenever I could from outside his house. My goal was to put him in prison for the rest of his miserable life. I figured the chief of police in Bellison was on Grissom’s payroll and he destroyed the email Josh was writing to Agent Savich. So I made plans and figured out how to nail Grissom so even Hailstock couldn’t sit on it.” Kirra paused, sighed. “I only wish I could have proved he ordered my parents’ murder.”
“But you knew one of the two people sent by Grissom to kill your parents had to be Ryman Grissom. It only makes sense. But the other killer? You remembered what the other killer said.”
“Yes, but that was all. Thank you, Griffin, for getting me to Dr. Hicks. And now I know it was Melissa Kay’s voice I heard that night. Of course she and Ryman did it together. Will you help me, Griffin? Even if I am Eliot Ness?”
He paused a moment, smiled. “I imagine I’ll help you do most anything you want from now on.”
She turned to stare at him and cocked her head to one side, sending her hair to cascade over her shoulder. He wanted his hands and his mouth in her hair, but he only smiled at her, patted the side of the bed. “You must be wiped. Come over here and let’s get some sleep. If Melissa Kay says anything else, we can hear it in the morning.”
Kirra eyed him, eyed the bed. She pulled pajamas out of her travel bag and went into the bathroom. When she came out, he had to grin. Her pj’s were red with grinning pink cats. She turned off the light and eased in beside him, leaving a good two feet between them.
He turned on his side to face her. “You want me to sing you a lullaby?” What he really wanted to do was make love to her again, but he knew it wasn’t the time.
“A lullaby would be nice, but I’d rather listen to Melissa Kay right now. She might already have said something important to Talix. I want to hear it, even if a jury can’t.”
He picked up his cell phone, tapped the app. It came alive when he pressed the recorder.
It was Talix’s voice. “You can’t mean that. Why would Ryman want you to leave early?”
