Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(79)

“That he shot himself. That all these years later, I still wasn’t enough.”

“What was on the computer, Evie? What was Conrad looking at when he died?”

“Pictures.” I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to see them again. It was so much easier to forget, pretend it never happened. Maybe I am my mother, after all.

“What was on the computer?”

“Girls. Photos. Terrible photos. They look thin and horrified. Beaten. Young. Why would he be looking at something like that?” I shake my head. “He’s the father of my child. And even knowing he had secrets … couldn’t it have just been another woman? Maybe a gay lover? Even knowing something was wrong, even knowing I would regret digging, I never suspected what was on his computer.” My voice is hoarse, hard to hear. I finally look at them. “I loved him. How could I love a man like that?”

“What did you do next, Evie?”

“I closed up the laptop. But the police were there. Already banging at the front door. There wasn’t enough time to clear the hard drive, not properly. I couldn’t … He’s the father of my child,” I say again.

“Protect the legacy.” D.D. nods, as if she understands. Maybe, being the one who was here sixteen years ago, she does.

“I destroyed the laptop. Kept shooting until there were no bullets left.”

“That was some good shooting.”

I nod. “My father taught me.”

“And you’re not afraid of guns, are you, Evie, because you didn’t shoot your father?”

“I didn’t shoot my father. Or Conrad. I just … loved them both.” I feel it now. The horrible weight of it all. To love so much, and it still wasn’t enough. Was never enough. Seeing those images on the computer screen. Horror was not a strong enough word. It was like a knife to the heart. Not just because of what it said about him and how well he’d played me for ten years, but because of what it said about me, who’d had doubts, had known he was hiding things, and had stayed anyway.

“I knew he was a loser.” A voice spoke up. My mother, standing in the arched entranceway, where she’d clearly been eavesdropping for a while. Her words were slurred. I stare at her dully.

“I know you hated him, Mom,” I say tiredly. “I just assumed it was because he was stupid enough to want me.”

“Window salesman,” she grunts.

“Good news. Turns out he was a bit more than that.”

She has her vodka; I have my bitterness. Maybe we deserve each other.

“You should know something,” Flora says quietly.

She’s still kneeling on the floor, clearly not the type to take a seat on a silk-covered settee. It makes me feel bad, to have a woman who’s been through so much feel uncomfortable in my home. That this is that kind of place. That myself, my family, we are those kinds of people.

“When Conrad was at the bar, he tried to signal me. Using Morse code. Unfortunately, I didn’t catch on and never answered him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was asking if I was okay. Tapping it out on the bar top.”

I shake my head slightly, very confused now. “Why? I don’t … Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”

“When was this?”

“Probably seven years ago.”

“Conrad and I were together. He went on his business trips. But that’s all I knew. Often, I wasn’t even sure where.”

“Do you remember anything about the website he had pulled up on his computer? URL, anything?” D.D.’s turn.

“It was weird. Not a dot-com or dot-net, but dot-onion. I didn’t know what that meant; I had to look it up. Apparently, it’s a site on the Onion Browser; the dark web.” My voice cracks slightly. I hear myself say, as if understanding for the first time: “My husband was surfing the dark web.”

Flora and D.D. exchange a look.

“You never saw any other records bearing the names from his fake IDs? Just that one financial statement from the printer?” D.D. asks.

I shake my head.

“I don’t suppose you kept a copy of that statement?”

“No. I didn’t have to.”

“What do you mean?”

I shrug. “I’m a numbers person. I don’t need a statement in front of me. I can write out the account number off the top of my head. Including bank, address, and at that time, its balance of two hundred and forty-three thousand dollars and twenty-two cents.”

D.D. whirls to my drunken mom in the doorway. “Get a pen,” she orders sharply.

And I finally get to feel good about myself for the first time in days.





CHAPTER 26


    D.D.


“ALL RIGHT. IT’S LATE, IT’S nearly the holidays, and I still have shopping to do. Let’s get this done.” D.D. had assembled her team back at BPD headquarters. Boxes of pizza sat in the middle of the table, surrounded by pots of coffee. At this time of night, comfort food and caffeine were two of the best investigative tools available.

Seated at the conference room table was the three-person detective squad who’d landed the initial shooting case: Phil, Neil, and their newest partner, Carol. In addition, D.D. was proud owner of one feebie, SSA Kimberly Quincy, and two wildcards, Flora Dane and—heaven help her—Keith Edgar, who had a laptop fired up and was clacking away wildly.