Standing in the Shadows (McClouds & Friends #2)(94)

Erin got up and left the kitchen. Barbara and Connor stared at each other over the kitchen table as they listened to her light footsteps creaking on the stairs.

"My life is falling apart," she said, in a conversational tone.

"I know exactly how that feels," he said.

"You are the very last person I would have wanted to witness it."

He shrugged. "Don't know what to tell you, ma'am."

"Don't you 'ma'am' me." Her voice was frosty.

He wanted very badly to say that it wasn't his fault, but that was debatable from several different points of view, so he kept his big mouth shut for once. Erin came back into the kitchen and spread out a bunch of photographs on the table. Connor leaned over and took a look.

Baby pictures, family shots, graduation portraits. All with the eyes and mouths gouged out.

Barbara lifted her hand to her mouth. She leaped to her feet and scrambled for the door that led off the kitchen. He glimpsed a utility sink, the corner of a washing machine, and heard a toilet lid flip up. Retching sounds came from the room. Erin moved to follow her, but Connor held up his hand.

"Give her a minute," he said quietly.

The toilet flushed. Water ran in the sink. Barbara Riggs appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, dabbing at her face with a hand towel. "Not me," she said. Her eyes darted wildly between Connor and Erin. "I did not do that. There are no circumstances under which I would deface a picture of my own children. I don't know what is going on here, but it was not me. I swear it."

Erin picked up a photograph of herself in elementary school, holding the toddler Cindy on her lap. Her hands were trembling. "Well, Mom. If you aren't doing it, someone else is. Any ideas?"

Seconds ticked by, stretched into minutes of awful silence. Barbara Riggs covered her mouth with the towel and shook her head.

Erin shoved her chair back. "I organized our negatives by year in the filing cabinet upstairs," she said. "I'm getting the negatives of these photos, and we'll get reprints made today. Every damn one of them."

"That's not going to solve our problem," Connor said.

"I don't care. It's something to do, and I'll make me feel better. Excuse me, please. I'll be right back."

And she left him all alone with her mother. Again. Dear God, what had he done to deserve this? It was like being roasted on a spit.

They eyed each other like boxers circling in the ring. "You've, uh, noticed no signs of forced entry?" he asked her.

She shook her head.

"And the alarm works? You always set it? You test it regularly?"

She nodded. "Of course. I always check the locks and set the alarm. Religiously. Sometimes I check them over and over."

"Who else knows the code?"

"My daughters and myself," Barbara said. "I had the codes changed after Eddie… left. And the locks, as well."

"Hmm."

"You must think I'm crazy." she said.

It was a statement, not a question, but he took it at face value and slipped into net-and-fish mode to consider it. He cast out the net and threw everything that was happening to the whole family into it.

Barbara's face swam in his gaze while he tried to feel the shape of the ugly pattern that was forming. There was something shifty and corrupt, but the source of it was not the woman sitting across the table from him. The words came out with total conviction. "No, I don't."

She looked almost offended. "Pardon?"

"I don't think you're crazy" he said.

There was a flash in her eyes, almost like hope. Her throat bobbed several times. "You don't?" she asked warily.

"No," he said. "I've dealt with crazy people before. I don't get that feeling from you. You strike me as stressed out, depressed, and afraid. At the end of your rope, maybe. But not crazy."

"Not yet, anyway," she said.

His mouth twitched. "Not yet," he agreed. "But if you're not, that means that somebody with a lot of resources is messing with you."

She pressed her hand against her mouth. "Novak?"

"He's my first choice," Connor said.

"But he was incarcerated until just a few days ago!"

"He's still my first choice. He has an obscene amount of money, a very long reach, a grudge against your husband. And he's crazy. This thing stinks of crazy."

"So somebody is trying to make me think that I'm insane?"

He shook his head. "No. I think somebody is trying to drive you genuinely insane. Like the porno video trick. That could be rigged, and controlled from the outside. It's crazy and improbable, but it's possible."

Her mouth tightened. "So Erin told you about that?"

"I'm not a techie, so I can't take apart your TV and tell you what they did to it," he went on. "But my friend Seth is an expert. I'll have him take a look, if you like."

"But it sounds so bizarre. Like aliens from outer space, or who killed JFK. Like a big… paranoid conspiracy theory."

"Yeah," he said. "I think that's the whole point."

She hesitated, eyes narrowed. "You must be paranoid yourself to even entertain these notions."