Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,85

in on my fuchsia top, and I suffered my first moment of uncertainty.

My sister didn’t appear anything like I’d expected.

Her face was gaunt; if anything, even paler than yesterday, with deep bruises under her eyes. As if she had yet to sleep, her shoulders bunched with tension.

I’d imagined a gloating Shana, smug in her newfound powers that enabled her to meet with police officers and myself at the snap of her fingers. Her prediction had come true, and now here I was, answering her summons, while waiting for her to dictate her terms.

Instead, if I didn’t know better, I would say my sister appeared deeply stressed. Her gaze went from my cardigan to the one-way viewing glass.

“Who’s there?” she asked sharply.

I hesitated. “Superintendent McKinnon.”

“What about Detective Phil?”

“Did you want to speak with him?”

“No. Just you.”

I nodded, crossed to the tiny Formica table, took a seat.

“I suppose you’ve heard that the Rose Killer murdered another woman last night?”

Shana didn’t say a word.

“Flayed one hundred and fifty-three strips of skin from her cancer-ravaged body. Must’ve been hard to do. Some of those treatments leave a person’s skin so thin and translucent, it’s like the skin of an onion. Difficult to remove without tearing.”

She didn’t say a word.

“How are you doing it?” I asked at last.

She looked away from me, lips pressed firmly into a thin line, eyes locked on the wall behind my head.

“One hundred and fifty-three,” I said lightly. “The number of pieces of skin our father collected forty years ago. The number of strips the Rose Killer leaves behind now. Proof that you really are exchanging notes with a killer? Feeding him information about our father? Does it feel the same, Shana, to kill long-distance? Or is it not as good as you imagined? You’re still the one sitting here, and your puppet is the one out there, actually gripping the blade, smelling the blood.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she muttered at last.

“Really? I’m wearing your favorite-color sweater.”

A muscle flexed in her jaw. She glared at me, and I could see for the first time just how enraged she truly was. But she’d stopped speaking again.

I leaned back. Rested my hands on my lap. Studied the woman who was my sister.

Prison-orange scrubs today. A color that jaundiced her complexion, further washed out her skin. Her hair still appeared lank and unwashed. Or maybe it was simply the best she could do given the notoriously low water pressure in the prison showers.

A hard woman. With a thin, sinewy build like our father. I bet she worked out in her cell. Push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, plank exercises. Plenty of ways to keep strong in an eight-by-eleven-foot space. It showed in the harsh lines of her face, the gaunt hollows of her cheeks. All these years later, she’d not allowed herself to go soft or fatten up on processed prison food.

All these years later, she was still waiting.

Somehow, someway, for this very day.

“No,” I said.

“No what?”

“No to whatever it is you’re asking for. No to any deals, negotiations or exchanges of information. If you are in communication with the Rose Killer, if you have knowledge that would help catch a murderer, then volunteer it. That’s what people do. It’s called being a member of the human race.”

Shana finally looked at me. Her brown eyes were hooded, hard to read.

“You didn’t come all the way down here to tell me no,” she said flatly. “No is a phone call, not a personal visit. And you’ve never been one to waste your time, Adeline.”

“I came because I have a question for you.”

“So now you’re the one who’s going to negotiate?”

“No. I’m going to ask. Answer or don’t answer as you’d like. When did Daddy first cut you?”

“I don’t remember.” Her words were too automatic. I already didn’t believe her.

“When did he first cut me?”

Now she smirked. “Didn’t. You were just a baby.”

“Liar.”

She frowned, blinked her eyes.

“He did. I know he did. And I didn’t cry, did I? Or flinch or pull away. I just stared at him. I stared and that scared the shit out of him, didn’t it? That’s why I lived in the closet. Not to keep me safe. Not because our mother magically loved me more, and not because I was just the baby. I was stuck in that goddamn closet because he didn’t want me looking at him like that.”

“Seriously?” my sister drawled. “That’s what you’re angry about? Being stuck in a closet? Because take it from me, I got