And, selfishly, Barnes is looking forward to finally getting some sleep without Delia keeping him awake or haunting his dreams.
“It’s Stockton Barnes,” he says when Regina picks up. “I’m sorry to call so late, but I just wanted to update you on some information I’ve received.”
He tells her about Delia Montague’s death in 1990. She murmurs that it’s a shame, but takes the news in stride. He asks if she knows how he can get in touch with Bobby and is told he’s working the night shift.
“I left a message for him. If you see him, though, let him know what happened.”
“He always said Delia was dead. He won’t be surprised. What about Alma and Brandy?”
He clears his throat. “Ma’am?”
“You said you were investigating the murder. Do you have any updates on that?”
“Oh . . . no, not yet,” he says, with a bit of remorse that finding out who killed their loved ones is no longer a top priority for him. But Sumaira El Idrissi is a top-notch investigator. She’ll solve it . . .
Or not. Probably not. Eventually, without leads or suspects, it won’t be a priority for Homicide, either.
“What about Charisse?”
“Charisse?”
“You were looking for her. Now that Delia is dead . . . are you still looking for her daughter?”
“Delia’s been dead a long time, Regina, and Charisse is an adult.”
“You were all fired up to find her last time we talked.”
“Well, I’ve been hitting dead ends,” he tells Regina. “It’s not easy to find someone who disappeared thirty years ago when you’ve got nothing to go on.”
“I’m sure it isn’t. But if she were your daughter, Detective Barnes, you’d still be looking.”
It’s not the first time a family member has made a comment like that when he’s searching for their lost loved one. But it’s always in an abstract “put yourself in my shoes” way. Regina Harrison’s tone strikes him as pointed. As if she knows.
Does she? He and Amelia had sensed that the Harrisons might have been withholding details. But not that. Regina can’t know that.
Anyway, he wouldn’t have made any more progress uncovering her current identity if he still believed she’s his own flesh and blood.
You just keep telling yourself that . . . Gloss.
“I’m still looking,” he assures her, and hangs up with a promise to keep her posted.
Ten minutes later, he’s in his apartment, shivering out of his clothes and into layers of thermal and fleece after finally, finally calling the super about fixing the heat.
“Can it wait till tomorrow morning?”
Even more bone-tired than he is bone-chilled, Barnes tells him that it can, and the super tells him to make sure he’s home between ten and noon.
He texts Amelia that he’s going to bed and they can talk in the morning. Then he texts Kurtis to see if he can get together over the weekend and talk, saying he’d like to try to help him.
Brushing his teeth in the frigid bathroom, he continues to think about the case, reconsidering it from an outsider’s perspective. Take away any personal connection, everything he’d ever known or assumed about Charisse, Perry Wayland and Gypsy Colt, and the victims . . .
What does pure logic tell him?
Alma and Brandy lived in a dangerous part of the city. They weren’t insulated from the neighborhood’s criminal activity and violent characters. Anything could have happened. He’d jumped to illogical conclusions based on what?
Guilt, over the money from Wayland?
That, yes, and gut instinct.
But it isn’t foolproof. Especially when emotion comes into play.
Had Barnes been trying too hard to make sense of the past, haunted by the threats Wayland had made about his daughter on that Baracoa beach?
Barnes never even had a daughter.
If Wash were here, he’d advise him to stop licking his own wounds and start focusing on the unsolved murder.
Not my case. I’m Missing Persons, not Homicide.
Just because there was a vase of flowers at the scene . . .
Lilies, to most people, don’t symbolize Cuba.
Brandy had used the pseudonym Lily Tucker when she visited Amelia with the baby ring. Maybe lilies are her favorite flower, and her new boyfriend knew that.
The fact that he was wealthy doesn’t mean that he was Perry Wayland. Maybe he was a legitimate businessman. Maybe the murder had nothing to do with the boyfriend at all. Or maybe it did, and he’s in a gang or a drug dealer or involved in organized crime . . .
There are countless reasons why getting involved with the wrong man could have led to a professional hit on the Harrison women.
But Sumaira and her team aren’t investigating a possible connection, however unlikely, to Perry Wayland and Gypsy Colt.
He had looked into Wayland and Colt’s whereabouts. He’d found no evidence that they’d survived the catastrophic storm in Baracoa, and no evidence that they did not. Certainly no evidence that they’re in New York City.
“You’re getting colder, son . . .”
Damn. It’s time to confess the whole story, including the bribe money he’d accepted from Stef. Time to deal with the consequences, whatever they are. It’s the right thing to do.
Now, before he loses his resolve. In person. He returns to the bedroom to get dressed again, turns on the light, and spots something he’d missed earlier in his haste to change into warm clothing.
An envelope is propped on the pillows. It bears a printed label addressed Detective Barnes.
He stares at it long and hard before looking around, heart pumping.
What the hell?
Barnes conducts a quick search of the apartment. No sign of forced entry. He grabs his gloves and a letter opener, returns to the bedroom, and uses his cell phone to snap photos of the envelope. Then he puts on the gloves, picks it up, and slits it open.
It contains a note folded around a four-by-six photo. It’s grainy, snapped at night, showing a woman silhouetted in a backlit window.
The note is on printer paper, all in caps.
I WARNED YOU NOT TO SNOOP INTO MY PAST. NOW I’VE SNOOPED INTO YOURS. FINDERS KEEPERS.
Westport
Hearing a snowplow rumbling up the street, Liliana peers out the window, checking for headlights following along in the cleared swath behind the truck. But it passes, leaving the street deserted, snow swirling in the streetlights’ glow. No sign of Bryant yet, and no sign of the shadowy figure she’d glimpsed a few times before.
Now, knowing what she knows, her theory seems ludicrous. To think that for weeks now, she’s been imagining a stalker out there, watching her.
Not just a stalker, but her birth father, the volatile, violent man she remembers, the one with the scar by his mouth, the one who didn’t want her. He’d been popping up in her nightmares again lately, triggered by the colored Christmas lights. No wonder she’d imagined that he was lurking during her waking hours.
Liliana turns away from the window and returns to the couch, where Briana had roused herself, expecting her master’s return. “Not yet.” She sits beside the dog and resumes petting her. “Soon, though.”
Bryant had texted at around eight o’clock to say his client meeting in Norwalk was running late, and it would be a slow drive home afterward in the snow. He told her to eat without him, and she remembered she’d promised to make a homemade meal since she was working from home today.