Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,143
. . . do it,” I heard myself whisper.
“Your face?”
“Your cousin.”
He froze. His expression changed, and with it, so did his demeanor. Professional, composed Paul Donabedian was gone. Like a chameleon morphing, Charlie Sgarzi took over his place, his eyes suddenly hooded, faintly menacing. All these years later, still most comfortable in his role of neighborhood thug.
“Don’t talk to me about Donnie,” he growled.
“You killed him.”
He glared at me.
“Accident? He wanted . . . you to stop.”
“We were wrestling. Just wrestling!”
“Shana found you. Bending over him. Knee on his chest? Hands around his throat?”
“Shut up!”
“You . . . killed him. But she . . . went crazy. Grabbed the switchblade. You ran. She fell on Donnie instead.”
“She hacked off his ear!”
“She . . . covered . . . your crime.”
“Girl was fucking nuts.”
“Psychotic episode. You broke her. And no one . . .” My lungs finally expanded. A short tease of fresh air, wafting across my nose. I nearly sighed with pleasure. “No one was there . . . to put her . . . together again.”
“What’s done is done. I learned my lesson. Got out of Dodge. Went to New York and made something out of myself.”
“Charlie,” I murmured.
“Fuck off!”
“I used to study people . . . trying to understand how they experienced pain. But you must study them for . . . everything. Any kind of emotion. You . . . have none of your own.”
“Well, let’s hope I can fake success well enough, because by tomorrow morning, every news show is gonna want to interview me. How I survived my mother’s murder at the hands of the recently discovered Rose Killer. How your family, for the record, basically cost me everything. But those who taketh can also giveth back. I’m the foremost expert on Harry Day, not to mention the Rose Killer. First thing tomorrow, I’m getting in front of those cameras and I’m owning this case. Book deals, TV appearance fees, film rights. Mine. All mine. No more pretending for me. I’ll have it all, once and for all.”
“Your mother . . .”
“She was dying!” Charlie roared. “Did you see what the cancer had done to her? Did you? Worst fucking killer there is. I drugged her tea. She went to sleep. Thank God for small mercies.”
More air, creeping in, slowly but steadily. Could it reach down the short hallway into the master bath? Would it find my sister?
Charlie ripped off his mask, apparently confident in the air quality now, as well as impatient to get on with the main event. “Hair samples. Tuck ’em down your pants. Do it.”
I kept my bleary gaze on his. “She loved you.”
He frowned at me. “Course. I was a good son. I took care of her.”
“After killing her nephew . . . destroying her sister.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Long hair. Did you have long hair?”
“What?” He startled, blinking at me. I inhaled another deep breath.
“Did you . . . have long hair?”
“I had a mullet. It was the eighties. Why?”
I smiled. “You looked like a girl . . . from behind. That’s what Shana saw. Our mother bending over our father. I knew it.”
“You’re as nuts as she is.”
A new voice sounded. Quiet. Menacing. Pure Shana. “But not nearly so dangerous.”
• • •
CHARLIE WENT FOR HIS DUFFEL BAG. The scalpel most likely. But then his hand found the small bottle of chloroform. Without a second thought, he smashed it into the waiting rag, then grabbed the whole pile and slammed his fist toward Shana’s head.
He caught her in the side. The carbon monoxide still poisoning her system had dulled her reflexes. She staggered, went down on one knee. He seized the opportunity to grind the glass- and chloroform-drenched rag into her face.
His ferocity surprised me. I could tell from Shana’s face, his sure-footed attack had caught her off guard as well. Maybe once upon a time Charlie had been an aspiring thug, but sometime in the past thirty years he’d transitioned to the real deal.
I worked on rolling to my knees. Time to get up, time to help out.
But I’d gone down in the bedroom, closer to the tampered-with electrical unit, where no doubt the density of carbon monoxide was higher. I couldn’t seem to get my feet beneath me, to rise to standing.
I looked over in time to watch my sister grab Charlie’s crotch with her right hand. She twisted. He howled, releasing the rag with one hand, as he instinctively cupped himself with his other. One knee down. Then