Nothing like a takedown to give you a jolt of adrenaline. Jake watched the collapse of Robyn Wilhoite’s charade with some satisfaction, the reality emerging, absurdly, in the ridiculous towel-lined supply room. Apparently Angie Bartoneri had wrapped up her doctor’s appointment and returned just in time to work the big event with DeLuca. As always, Jane had asked just the right question. With Gracie’s coup de grâce answer, the woman’s story began to unravel. And now was pouring out of her.
As Jake had predicted, it was all about the money. The child support that Daniel Fasullo had paid all these years. The money he had sent to support a child who, Robyn had finally admitted, was not his biological daughter.
“You can’t understand what it was like. What was I supposed to do? It might have been Daniel’s, you know? He believed it was, and he—did the right thing.”
“Even though you didn’t,” Jake said.
“Does Daniel know?” Jane asked. “Does Gracie?”
With the wedding on the way, and Gracie about to be taken from them, Lewis had lost it, Robyn said. Insisted she should tell the truth. Threatened to spill all to Daniel and Melissa in hopes of keeping Gracie at home.
“I told him, I told him,” Robyn wailed. “Gracie was happy, we were happy, he wasn’t working, for God’s sake. I should never have told him in the first place! We needed the money and—”
“So you just made it all up? A phony abduction?” Jake asked. What a freaking piece of work. “So you could pretend to kill him in self-defense?”
He pointed to DeLuca and Angie, motioning them into action. “Robyn Wilhoite, you’re under arrest for the attempted murder of Lewis Wilhoite. You have the night to remain silent…”
Robyn struggled against D and Angie as they put her in cuffs, talking over Jake as he finished her rights.
“It was all for Gracie,” she insisted. “I want a lawyer.”
“Good call,” Jane said.
“Your husband will live, by the way,” Jake said. “So you know.”
* * *
Lewis would live, Jake had said. Jane thought of the man she’d seen only in photos. Lewis with his sandy hair, his glasses. Just like Gracie’s.
Almost afraid to ask, Jane looked at Jake, then back at the woman in custody. Jake couldn’t ask any more questions, she knew, since Robyn had demanded a lawyer. But Jane could. “Robyn? Is Lewis Gracie’s biological father?”
“Lawyer,” Robyn said.
“Good one,” DeLuca said.
“We’re done here,” Jake said.
DeLuca and the woman detective cuffed Robyn, who continued to mutter under her breath. Jake opened the supply room door, motioned for the team to take their prisoner away.
“Jake,” Jane said.
He turned to her as the others went into the corridor, and she signaled with two thumbs—text me. He signaled back—drink? She pointed to her chest—my house.
Love you, he mouthed the words. And turned away.
“Love you, too,” she said, silently, because Jake was already gone.
* * *
Back downstairs, Jake saw that the hotel lobby had fully come back to life. Fountain. Muzak. Tourists. Again, Jane had asked the killer question. A DNA test—and Lewis’s testimony—would provide the final answers.
With a thank-you and adios to the cops still monitoring the hotel’s front door, Jake headed for City Hall.
Now Catherine Siskel wanted “to talk.” Well, yeah. He did, too.
Curley Park was in full rush-hour hubbub, as if nothing had happened here—he looked at his watch—about thirty-six hours ago. But he’d gotten past being tired. Closing a case, at least being close to closing, always helped.
He punched the Walk button at the intersection, impatient. In one second, he was going to jaywalk.
Robyn Wilhoite. Piece of freaking work. She’d arranged a prewedding father-daughter outing—leaving father and daughter in the dark about her true motive. She’d found another Lewis Wilhoite and planted the phony identification to set her husband up as a diabolical con artist. Pretended to talk to Lewis on the phone, dramatically and calculatedly escalating her “panic” to Melissa and Jane. If Lewis had died, it might have worked.
Domestic violence. Jake hated that term. It was simply violence. He wished these stories could have happy endings, no kids affected, no one hurt, only adults working out their stupid differences while their kids’ lives stayed untouched. But in real life, tragedy damaged everyone involved. After all these years, Jake knew there were more victims than the ones who wound up in hospitals and morgues.
Like every cop who dealt with the aftermath of violence, Jake could do no more than hope that Gracie would be okay.
Jake pushed through the heavy revolving glass door into the first floor of City Hall and flashed his badge at the rent-a-guard.
Now to Catherine Siskel. Who had promised to tell him the truth about her husband. When Jake called her back, she’d haltingly admitted Greg Siskel was not missing, but murdered.
That she knew it because she’d seen it on the video that did indeed exist. She’d told him about a girl named Brileen and a mysterious middleman. And about a five-minute clip of unauthorized surveillance. Who was on it and how she’d obtained it.
The Siskels and the Wilhoites. There were no happy families in Jake’s line of work.