Taken in Death (In Death #37.5)(4)

“We’ll check on that, and we’ll have your security disc analyzed. Until that time . . .”

Eve trailed off as Tosha had gone very still, and the tears glazing her eyes seemed to freeze. “Ross.” She groped out for his hand. “Maj.”

“No. No, it can’t be. It’s all just some horrible mistake.”

“Who is Maj?” Eve demanded.

“My sister.” Tosha shuddered when she said it. “My twin.”

BECAUSE SHE WANTED THEM BOTH CONTAINED, AND wanted to move quickly, Eve took them through the small gate, across their own rear courtyard, and in through the kitchen.

“Check the alibi,” she told Peabody.

“I think, damn math, I think it’s maybe the middle of the night there. Or tomorrow. Either way, I’ll wake somebody up, get it started.”

The MacDermits huddled together, hands locked, in a sunny nook where Eve imagined the family typically had breakfast.

She slid in across from them.

“There’s no data on a sibling, Ms. MacDermit, much less a twin on your official information.”

“No, there wouldn’t be. I . . . You can contact Wanda Sykes. She was my legal representative when I came here, here to New York. And, and Markus Norby. He’s police in Sweden. Paul Stouffer, who was with Child Protective Services there. And, ah, Dr. Otto Ryden, he was the psychologist assigned.”

“Assigned to what?”

“The case. I was legally permitted to omit Maj from my data, to legally change my maiden name—Borgstrom—after . . . after Maj killed our father. She killed Papa like she killed Darcia. She tried to kill me. We were twelve. I haven’t seen or spoken to Maj in over twenty years.”

“You’re identical twins.”

“Nearly. She has a birthmark. Here.” Tosha touched her fingers between her left breast and shoulder. It trembled there. “It looks like a pentagram. A sign of witchcraft. I know how that sounds,” she went on when Eve said nothing. “I can only tell you she’s evil. She has a darkness in her, more than a sickness. They said she was sick, but . . .”

She lowered her hand, once again gripped her husband’s like a lifeline. “I think she hated me even when we were in the womb, for being part of her, for preventing her from being the only. The One, she would say. There can only be one. Now she has my children. You have to find our children.”

“We already have the alert out. Where do you keep your car, your four-door black sedan?”

“In a private garage on Fifty-seventh,” Ross told her. “What difference does it make? What difference? We have to find Henry and Gala.”

“We’re looking. The alerts are out, and we’re already looking. Everything you tell me, everything we learn, is going to help. You say you haven’t seen or spoken to your sister in more than twenty years, yet she arrived here, in your vehicle.”

“I can only tell you she’s very smart and full of hate. Still, we shared a bond, as twins can. We would know what the other was thinking or feeling. She would hurt me whenever she could, so I learned to know when she meant to, and hide from her. And to keep my mind very, very still so she couldn’t find me. She’ll hurt our babies. She’ll hurt what’s mine. Please.”

Tosha reached across the table to grab Eve’s hands. “Please, find her before she hurts them. They’re only seven years old.”

“We’re going to set up a tap. She may contact you, may demand a ransom.”

“It’s not money she wants. She wants to bring me pain.”

“If she hurts Henry and Gala, I’ll kill her.”

Tosha turned her face into her husband’s shoulder at his fierce and quiet words. “I never thought she’d find me, us. I should never have left the children. I should never have left them.”

Peabody came back in, gave Eve a nod to indicate the alibi checked. “Is it all right if I make coffee?”

She spoke directly to Ross, got a momentary blank stare. “Yeah, sure. Ah.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“One minute,” Eve said, and rose to have a quick word with Peabody.

“You said she killed your father,” Eve began when she sat again. “Where’s your mother?”

“She died giving birth to us. It was a very difficult birthing, complications, unexpected complications. Maj blamed me. If we had been one instead of two, our mother would have lived, she would say to me. I came second, and so I killed our mother. I should never have been born.”

“What happened to Maj after your father’s death?”

“What does it matter?” Ross exploded. “Sitting here isn’t finding Henry and Gala.”

“Right now, there’s a full, global alert out on both children, and another on Maj. We have the vehicle she was driving, and every cop in the city will be looking for it. We’ll arrange the wire so that if she tries to contact either of you, we’ll know. But the more I know about the person who took your kids, the more ammunition I have to find her. What happened to her?”

“She was committed to the Borj Institute for the Criminally Insane in Stockholm,” Tosha told Eve. “I testified against her, and I told what happened to the police, to the psychiatrists, to everyone.”

“What did happen?”