“You mean my mother’s death. We know what happened. Murphy was investigating my father. My mother and uncle were going to testify. Pocher hired Roger, my serial killer mentor, to kill them. It’s all sounds so stupid.”
“Unrealistic, don’t you think? It’s bothered me since it became the story, Lilah. I didn’t accept it.”
I know immediately what he means, but until now I haven’t allowed myself to think it. “Why would a serial killer, who likes to get bloody, agree to kill without getting bloody? He didn’t mess with people’s airplanes. He cut them open.”
“Exactly.”
And he’s right about more than that, I think. I normally would have pushed him for answers, or at least for more than he gave me, which wasn’t much. But I didn’t. And I hate fucking emotions. I hate that I feel them bristle about in my belly right now. My lashes lower. “Tell me.”
He captures my hand. “Come sit.”
My eyes pop open. “I do not want to sit.”
He studies me a moment, his fingers sliding from mine before he walks to the other side of his desk, and then to the massive painting behind it. He pulls the side of the frame off the wall, exposing his safe, and then opening it. Once he retrieves an envelope from inside, he motions to the couch in a sitting area to the right of his desk, and orders, “Sit, Lilah.”
I curl my fingers into my palms, the urge to resist a command innate to me, but I fight it, and meet him at the couch, perching on a cushion. Kane sits next to me and lays the envelope in his hand on the coffee table, angling toward me. “Back to when Murphy became Murphy.”
“When?”
“Five years ago. Your mother died five years ago.”
“Okay,” I say, and I feel like I might throw up. “So he wasn’t Murphy until right about the time he met her. Almost as if it was created for her. Who was he before he was Murphy?”
“I don’t know. I’ve tried everything to find out and you know I have considerable resources.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“You weren’t ready to know, or you’d know.”
“You should have made me hear you. I’ve been working for this man.”
“I would never leave you without protection. I’ve been monitoring him.”
“Then you knew he was coming today?”
“He made this trip suddenly, and without notice. When you told me, my people hadn’t told me yet. I’m working on trying to find out what triggered the abruptness of the decision.”
“I’ll work on that myself, too, but what have you learned about him through your observations?”
“He seems to be who he says he is. Nothing seems off about who he is now.”
“Just who he was then?”
“Yes. Exactly. I don’t who that was and I don’t like it, but he’s also in a high-ranking leadership role in the FBI. He didn’t suddenly appear five years ago and become Director. He was known to them, even before he became the man you know as Director Murphy.”
“Logically, I agree. It’s how I dismissed this as a problem, but there’s more. I see it in your face. Because you knew all of this before two weeks ago when you held whatever new information back.”
“I told you I kept digging. And my problem is this: I don’t know when this supposed affair was he had with your mother. I have proof she was seeing someone else for a long time.”
I know immediately who it is. “My uncle.”
“Yes.” He taps the folder. “There’s a local PI who was hired by someone to follow your mother. He never knew who. Everything was anonymous. He documented an affair between your mother and Lucas' father that stretched at least two years, and those years lead up to her death.”
“And he was with her when she died,” I say, stating the obvious which translated to murder. “What else?”
His jaw flexes, his expression grim. “The night she died, Murphy was in the Hamptons.”
“We knew he was here in New York, trying to take down Pocher.”
“Yes, but the strange part is this.” He opens the folder and pulls out a photo he hands me. An emotional flood follows, my chest pinching at the sight of my mother. She’s sitting at a table in a restaurant with my uncle, but over her shoulder, at a table behind her, is a man who resembles Director Murphy. And it’s not that it’s Murphy because we knew he was trying to get them to testify against my father, or so he says. It’s the look of absolute anger and disgust on his face.
“The PI has no idea what he captured,” Kane explains. “He gave one of my guys everything he had. This one is dated the night your mother died.” He flips over the photo and shows me the time and date stamp. “I can’t prove Murphy had an affair with your mother. Maybe he did or maybe he didn’t, but that’s the look of a jealous man.”