Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(59)

“I’m sorry, vato,” Ralph said. “What I said earlier, about you being afraid of me and Ana . . . that was out of line.”

“Forget it,” I told him. I didn’t add that he’d probably been right. The comments he’d made were still stinging a little too much.

I knelt next to the hole, waiting for Ralph to speak again.

Then I heard voices outside my bedroom door—the guard and someone else.

I slid the baseball bat under the bed and threw the wall hanging back over the hole. I swung around just as Madeleine White came in the room.

She’d been drinking. I could tell that because I’m a trained detective. Plus she had a half-empty bottle of champagne in her hand, her red dress was slipping off one shoulder and her eyes were half closed.

“You f**king idiot,” she told me.

“Sure, come right in.”

Behind her, my personal doorman protested, “Miss White—”

“Get lost, Virgil.”

“But—”

She wheeled at him. “Get—the f**k—lost.”

Virgil did the smart thing. He got lost.

Madeleine slammed the door. She stared in my direction as if I was in several different places at once. “What is your friend’s problem, letting that f**ker Roe escape?”

“Three f**ks since you walked in,” I said. “Even by my standards, that’s impressive.”

She scowled. “What?”

“If you want to know something about Ralph,” I said, “you’re in the wrong room.”

“Don’t wanna talk to him.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause I got the call for you, didn’t I?”

She set her champagne bottle on the nightstand, fished around in her purse, brought out my cell phone.

I tried to take it.

She pulled it away. “You and Arguello—what are you really after?”

“What was the call, Madeleine?”

“First explain why he let Titus go. Then I’ll decide whether to tell you or my father.”

“Ralph didn’t want to shoot an innocent man.”

“Innocent? Bullshit.”

“You saw Roe. You really think he killed your brother?”

She sat down hard on the bed.

The straps of her evening dress fell around her arms. Her newly curled hair was coming undone.

She reminded me of one of those elaborate trick knots—the kind that look seaworthy but come apart when a single end is pulled.

“I don’t care whether Roe did it or not,” she said. “I just don’t want my father pissed.”

There was fear in her voice—the terror of somebody facing down an old phobia, staring into the dark closet that scared her as a child.

“If you mean he’ll take it out on you,” I said, “then I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She was still holding my phone. I resisted the urge to grab it.

“Madeleine . . . why did Frankie kill those women?”

She made a fist in the quilt, pulled it over her lap. “You know why. My dad did the same thing when he was young. He liked having power over them. With Frankie . . . it just went too far.”

“No,” I said. “That’s your father’s excuse, but it wasn’t about power for Frankie. Frankie strangled his victims. It was about hatred.”

Madeleine said nothing. She rubbed her arms, as if she could still feel the bruises that used to be there when she was ten years old.

“Frankie hated your father,” I said. “Your father drove your mom to an early grave. Frankie couldn’t take out his anger on his dad, so he took it out on everyone else. Teachers and police. You. Finally, the women along Mission Road, the same area where your father once preyed. Frankie couldn’t hold your father accountable. He didn’t have the courage or strength for that. So he killed those women instead. It was the best he could do.”

Madeleine stared at the letter jacket on the security camera. “I hate this room.”

“Your father put you in that treatment facility partly for your own protection,” I guessed. “He was worried what Frankie might do to you.”

She didn’t answer.

“Don’t try to please your dad,” I told her. “Don’t try to follow in his footsteps.”

“Who says I am?”

“Walk away. Move. Go out of state. Wouldn’t he let you?”

Madeleine smoothed the quilt over her lap. “You moved to California for a while, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did that work for you—just leaving?”

Direct hit.

“Alex is jockeying to take over the operation,” I said. “Once your dad dies, he’ll either force you to marry him or kill you. He’ll have to.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“He as much as admitted it,” I said.

Madeleine stood, steadied herself on the bedpost. “Your friend’s wife, the cop lady—she’s getting better.”

I had to make an effort not to look at the hole in the wall. “Is that what the call was about?”

“The call? No. Her condition is a secret. My dad has strings he can pull. Even with doctors. Well . . . especially with doctors, these days. They’re keeping her sedated to keep an eye on her heart rate, but they’ll probably try to bring her around late tomorrow, maybe Monday.”