Iris Johansen - Stalemate

"On edge? I hardly noticed. Of course, I've been bleeding from a hundred little cuts and I might be too faint to feel them anymore." He smiled slightly. "And I don't expect it to stop. You're hurting and you're a man who instinctively hits out when hurt. I happen to be the closest target. I'll magnanimously forgive you in the name of Eve."

"I don't believe 'magnanimous' is the word I'd use about your acceptance of my apology," Joe said dryly. "But I'll try not to use you as a punching bag."

"In the name of Eve?"

He looked back down at the jungle below. "In the name of Eve."

It was midafternoon when Eve finished the report and sat back in her chair. Stop crying. Stop shaking. You have to go down to see Montalvo and you can't let him see this weakness.

Screw it. Give herself a little time. Accept the pain now while she was alone. Let the tears come. She closed her eyes and the tears flowed down her cheeks.

Bonnie.

Fifteen minutes later she got up, went into the bathroom, and washed her face with cold water. Her eyes were still a little puffy but she couldn't help that. She patted her face dry, grabbed the report, and strode out of the bedroom.

She almost ran into Miguel, who was leaning against the wall across the hall.

He straightened quickly. "You're ready to see him?"

"What were you doing camped on my doorstep?"

"He told me to stay here and bring you to him. He didn't want you to have to search for him. Are you ready?"

"Oh, yes." She went past him toward the stairs. "Where is he?"

"The library." Miguel caught up with her. "I'll show you. It's in the south wing downstairs." He went ahead of her down the staircase. "It upset you. I'm sorry. I asked him if it was necessary."

"You know what was in the report?"

"Yes, he talks to me sometimes. Not often. Not about things that are close to him. But he needed to talk to someone this time." He turned right at the bottom of the staircase. "It was my privilege."

"If you can call it that."

"I can." He opened a door on the left and smiled gently. "To share anything with the Colonel is a privilege." He stepped aside. "If I can help you, call me. That would also be a privilege."

"Come in, Eve," Montalvo called from across the library. "Miguel, see that we aren't disturbed."

"By all means," Eve said as she went into the room and strode toward the desk. She slammed the binder down on the desk in front of Montalvo and dropped into the visitor's chair. "We definitely have a few things to discuss."

"Coffee?" He poured steaming black liquid into a cup from a carafe on the desk. "You look as if you can use it."

"Not now."

He set the cup of coffee in front of her. "Because your hand would shake if you took the cup? I wouldn't regard that as a sign of weakness. Not in you."

"Not now," she repeated. She moistened her lips. "That was quite a report. Did it need to be that thorough? It started from the time Bonnie disappeared in that park and went into detail about every aspect of the investigation. Every sexual offender, every child molester the police interviewed, every word taken or written about the investigation. Every graphic description of the other little girls' bodies they found that they thought might be Bonnie. You did a complete background on Ralph Andrew Fraser, the man who was executed for the murders of those other children and assumed to have killed Bonnie."

"He didn't kill her," Montalvo said. "I think you thought that all along. That's why when another suspect appeared some years later, you were ready to believe he did it. Only her body wasn't where he told you it was going to be. That must have been a heartbreaker for you."

"Yes." She blinked back the tears. "A heartbreaker."

"But it didn't stop you. You never gave up hope."

"You talk as if it were some kind of virtue. Hope never gave me up. I couldn't do anything about it. Why did you go into such detail? It wasn't necessary."

"And it brought everything back and hurt you. I considered editing the report before I gave it to you but I couldn't do it. You had to know what I'd found out about the case. How deeply I'd probed to get answers."

"I'd have been satisfied with Section Three." She flipped open the report to the place she'd tabbed. "Where your investigators started to try to find Bonnie's murderer."

"They were amazing, weren't they? They were highly motivated. I offered them the million dollars you refused to dig deep and fast. They didn't manage to isolate a single suspect, but they narrowed it down to three."

She glanced at the three names on the list. "How? You said something about leaks from prison inmates?"

"They interviewed prisoners who were in jail at the same time and facility as Fraser. No one knows what's going on in the underbelly like prisoners do. They talk a lot and most of them have no use for child molesters. There was a lot of talk on the prison grapevine about Bonnie's case. More speculation. Some actually claimed to have known the killer well enough for him to brag about it to them."

"Why didn't they come forward if they knew something? They could have cut a deal."

"Not without evidence. The state was very happy with the man they had on death row. The public had been clamoring for an arrest. They would have ignored the possibility of it being anyone else."

"My God." It was a moment before she got a grip on her emotions. "Paul Black, Thomas Kistle, Kevin Jelak. Are they still alive?"

"Yes. We've located Kistle. The others have disappeared from the radar, but we'll find them. I promised I'd do that for you, Eve."

"You could be lying about all this."

"I could. I'm not."

"Why did you give this report to me after I told you that I wasn't going to go through with the deal?"

"Hope."

She leaned back in her chair and rubbed her temple. "You're manipulating me."

"If you let me. It's all up to you. I'm at your mercy."

She snorted. "Not likely."

He smiled. "Or I thought I'd try a diversion to take your mind off my little deception."

"Little?"

"Not so little deception," he corrected. "And I thought you might believe what I told you and be willing to reconsider your decision."

She stared at him. He was smooth. He was complicated. He was silver-tongued. He was no doubt a very dangerous man. Yet she sensed in him a driving force she had seldom seen before.

I looked at you and saw myself.

And looking at him she could see qualities she knew she possessed. The same drive, the same energy, the same passion.

But passion for what?

"You said that I wouldn't be violating my principles if I did this job for you. Why not? I don't rob graves."

He relaxed with a sigh. "You're thinking about it."

"Why not?" she repeated.

"You wouldn't rob graves in the usual course of things. But what if your Bonnie were in that grave? Wouldn't you go after her?"

"I'd get a writ and have her exhumed. I wouldn't go slinking around in the dark."

"What if you couldn't get the writ? What if you knew she was there, but there was no other way?"

She didn't speak for a moment. "I'd go after her if I had to go to hell itself."

"And so would I," he said simply. "And that's what I'm doing. Going to hell itself."

"Stop being obscure. Spell it out for me."

"The cemetery is in the farm country controlled by Diaz. He's been searching for this grave for the last five years. And watching me to make sure I don't find it first. That's why Aquila showed up here. He was trying to bribe my men for any information he could get."

"So you killed him."

"Yes, I didn't know how much information he might have gathered. I was getting close to bringing you here. I only hope that he didn't get word back to Diaz before I took him out."