Voices Carry Read online

  When in Rome. . .

  He giggled again. Mary Alice Tunney hung her hat in a house on Egan’s Lane in Rome, New York.

  It was just all too perfect.

  It was all, obviously, God’s will.

  With the click of the mouse, he brought up the file containing the entire list. He typed the address and phone number next to the name of the unsuspecting Mary Alice, then scanned the list to see how many more he needed to find.

  The list was amazingly complete.

  Of course, the last name on the list already had the address filled in, there’d been no problem finding her.

  Oh, no. He’d known right where to look, even after all these years.

  But he had to wait, though there were times when the waiting nearly drove him crazy. He had to take them in order. That was very important. After all, if you’re going to do something, for heaven’s sake, do it right. Isn’t that what Mother always said?

  Sticking to the plan was important. It was the right way to do it.

  It was just so hard sometimes to look at her and to let the game play out.

  Five more.

  There were only five more before he could finally have her.

  He’d simply have to wait.

  And remind himself once again of the pleasures to be found in saving the best for last.

  11

  He is one ugly son of a gun, Genna thought as she flipped through the stack of surveillance pictures of Allen LeVane that she’d received via e-mail and printed out just minutes earlier. Just looking at his face made her skin crawl. The closely set dark eyes. The fleshy nose. The thin lips stretched over too-perfect-to-be-real teeth in a genial smile, a chilling touch considering the loathsome business in which he was engaged.

  He’d been picked up at ten that morning as he left a town house in a fairly upscale neighborhood outside of Trenton. He’d arrived with a child of perhaps six or seven. He’d left alone. Only the patience and tenacity of the local police combined with the skills and the resources of the Bureau had prevented the child from being subjected to the unspeakable. Genna had stood across the street and watched as three adults were led out of the house in handcuffs, the child in the arms of an officer specially trained to work with juvenile victims. It had taken five police officers all day to load up the photographic equipment and the boxes of video tapes from the three floors of the house.

  Good riddance to bad rubbish, Patsy would have said. Yet Genna knew that unless the judge set the bail at an unusually high number, by the next morning LeVane would be back at home in his luxurious penthouse in one of New York’s finest hotels.

  But he was on the hot seat now, and the little boy who’d been lured from his mother’s side in a mall in Cleveland the previous week had been returned to his anxious family, not, unfortunately, before LeVane had taken a personal interest in the child. It would take years for the boy to recover from less than two weeks in LeVane’s company.

  Genna closed out the computer file after sending the photos via e-mail to the Cleveland police. She’d had enough for one day. Hell, she’d had enough for the month. She snapped off her computer and stood up to stretch. A few hours at the gym would be greatly appreciated right about now. She gathered her belongings and left the office, cautious, as she’d become over the past week, and more attentive to her surroundings. But her “spidey sense,” as John called it, was quiet as she walked to her car, and she drove directly to the gym she’d joined months before but rarely had time to attend. Tonight she’d run a few miles on the track. Ride a stationary bicycle. Maybe lift a few weights. Then finish up with a swim followed by a hot shower. She’d been working like a demon on this case, and she was due a little downtime.

  As she methodically followed the indoor course around the elliptical-shaped track, Genna wondered what she’d be working on this time next week. There was no break between one case and the next. There was only the next squeaky wheel. There were a number of them already sitting on her desk. Between now and Monday morning, any one of them could blow up.

  Best to get in a good workout while one could.

  The disappearance of the wife of the president of a West Virginia college dominated the news on the television that hung over the juice bar where Genna stopped on her way out of the gym.

  Hadn’t she seen a phone message that John called Decker that morning from Beckley, West Virginia?

  Damn.

  It would only be a matter of time before someone started to add up the number of missing women. How many had there been? Eight? Nine? How much longer did the Bureau think they could keep this under wraps? And of course, the certain notoriety would only make John’s job that much more complicated.

  The exercise and the swim should have relaxed her, but it seemed it would take more than a workout to relieve the tension of the past few days. Maybe, she told herself wryly, she should try aromatherapy. Or yoga. She’d had a roommate back at the Academy who swore that yoga was the only thing that kept her inner self balanced.

  Genna suspected that it would take more than yoga to balance out her inner self right now, and was thinking about signing up for an aerobics class as she made the turn into the parking lot at her apartment building. Someone must be having a party, she thought, as up one row and down the next, she searched for an available spot.

  Must be one hell of a party. She frowned as she spotted a vacant place near the end of the third row.

  Music drifted from one of the end apartments and floated over the parking lot.

  Wonder how long before someone calls the manager, she mused as the volume was turned up on a particularly spirited song dating from the seventies.

  Don’t let ‘em tell you disco’s dead. Genna smiled to herself, walking in time to the music across the dimly lit lot toward her building.

  She was almost to the walkway when the prickling sensation began to creep along her spine.

  Whether a snap of a twig or the rustling of last fall’s forgotten leaves, something drew her attention to the darkened area off to her left. Slipping her hand into her bag, she sought the reassuring cold metal of the Glock. She slowed her pace as her fingers closed around the handle, and her eyes searched the shadows for a shape that shouldn’t be there.

  And there, close up to the side of the building, she found it. Someone crouched between the shrubs.

  Dropping her gym bag to the ground, Genna drew the gun and called, “Come out with your hands up. Now.”

  For a long moment, the figure remained motionless.

  “You’ve got to five.” Genna took several steps toward the landscaped area. “One. . . two. . .”

  The figure stood slowly, and arms raised, began to pick its way through the shrubbery.

  “Keep your arms up. Out here, into the light where I can see you.” Genna motioned with the Glock in her right hand.

  “I didn’t expect you to welcome me with open arms, but really, Genna, pulling a gun might be a wee bit extreme. Even under the circumstances.”

  Genna froze, every muscle in her body tensing. Even after all the years that had passed, she knew the voice that drifted out of the darkness.

  The figure moved into the light, arms no longer held overhead, but out in front as if to show they were empty.

  “Crystal?” Genna’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. “Chrissie?”

  “Hello, Genevieve.”

  The young woman stopped almost ten feet away from where Genna stood, and while Genna’s eyes and ears told her that Crystal Jean Snow, her older sister, was the woman who stood before her, her brain was having a hard time believing it.

  “A ‘hello, Crystal’ might be a nice start.” The woman’s arms dropped to her sides.

  “Chrissie. . .” Genna appeared stunned. “How. . . ?”

  “How did I find you?” She laughed softly. “You have to be kidding. You’re famous. Genna Snow, intrepid FBI agent. I saw you on television last year, there was a news special about that magazine heiress who was being stalked up in New
England by some crazy who had killed her sister. It took me a while to get up the courage to come looking for you, but it wasn’t hard to find you, once I made up my mind.”

  Genna wished there was a place to sit down. Her knees had begun to knock together.

  “I can’t believe this. After all this time. . .”

  “Eighteen years, Genna.”

  “I should invite you in.” Genna said as if to herself.

  “It’s okay if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t blame you. I only wanted to see you, Gen. I just wanted to see if you were as pretty in person as you were on television. I wanted to see just how tall you’d grown over the years—just look at how much taller than me!—and what color brown your hair had finally settled on.” The woman dug her hands into the pockets of her light jacket. “And I wanted you to know that they’re gone.”

  “Gone?” It didn’t occur to Genna to ask who. She knew. “When?”

  “About three months ago.”

  “How did it happen?” Genna asked.

  “Car accident. They were run off the road, so the witness says. But who knows? All we know for sure is that the car went down an embankment and flipped over once or twice.”

  “Why’d you wait so long to let me know?”

  “For one thing, I wasn’t sure you’d care. And for another, I’ve been. . . away. . . for a while.” Her voice dropped.

  “Away?”

  “I had a breakdown a few years ago—that’s what they called it, a breakdown. It’s taken me a good while to get back on my feet, though God knows I still feel a little broken. Anyway, after I got out, I was in a group home, a halfway house of sorts. Then I found out about them and went back for a time.” The touch of the old South crept steadily back into Crystal’s speech. “I was cleaning out the house. . . they spent the last few years in that little house out back of Grandma Petersen’s, remember? That little three-room place that sat out by the apple orchard?”

  “I remember,” Genna whispered.

  “Well, I was cleaning it out—hoping I’d find something of enough value to sell, to be honest with you. It’s been a while since I’ve worked.” A nervous hand found its way to her neck. “Anyway, I was pulling stuff out of there and Dwight—you remember cousin Dwight—he was bringing his truck out to take the furniture down to the secondhand store. He was helping me take the mattress off the bed. I found these, tucked under the mattress.” She took something from her pocket, and held them out to Genna. “You can probably put the gun away. I swear I’m not armed.”

  Surprised to realize she was still holding the Glock, Genna opened the top flap of her bag and, after making sure the safety was on, slipped the gun back in.

  “What is it?”

  “Take a look.”

  Genna reached for the envelope, and taking it, walked toward the light that illuminated the very front of the building. One by one, she studied the photographs.

  Pictures of Genna and her mother.

  Pictures of Genna and Crystal. Of Genna and Crystal and their mother.

  Pictures from Easter Sundays, the Snow girls dressed in their best dresses, their hair in tight braids. Chasing the ducks on the pond behind Grandma’s house. Sitting with her mother on the porch swing at Aunt Mary Claire’s house that summer she and Crystal had gotten poison ivy so badly they could barely open their eyes. Their mother had sung to them, read to them. Rocked them in her arms when the itching had gotten so bad they couldn’t sleep.

  Genna couldn’t bear the memories. They hurt and confused her and took her breath away. She’d never been able to reconcile the mother who had been so caring with the woman who had walked away from her without a backward glance.

  It was too much to deal with at one time. Genna put the photos back into the envelope with shaking hands.

  “I could offer you some coffee or something,” she said weakly.

  “Only if you want to, Genna. I’d understand if you didn’t.”

  “I think I want to.” Genna walked back to where she’d dropped her gym bag and fished the keys out of the pocket. “I think there’s still some iced tea left from yesterday, if you’d rather have that. . .”

  “Whatever is the least trouble for you, Gen. I know you weren’t expecting me, and I don’t want to put you out.”

  Crystal followed her up the steps and into the lobby, across the dark green and navy plaid carpet to the elevator. Genna hit the up button and stood aside when the doors opened and Crystal stepped in. She hesitated slightly, prompting Crystal to quip, “It’s okay, Genna. I won’t hurt you. I promise. Besides, you’re still the one who has the gun, remember?”

  “I’m sorry,” Genna told her. “I’m just so stunned. I never thought I’d see you again. I don’t know how to react.”

  She reached out and hit the button for the fourth floor. They rode in silence until the doors slid open and Genna stepped out.

  “It’s the door at the end.” Genna said.

  They walked the length of the hallway, and it wasn’t until they had stepped into the cool of Genna’s apartment and she’d turned on the lights that Genna took a good look at her sister for the first time in eighteen years.

  Crystal was shorter than Genna, and her dark hair bore traces of a strand of gray here and there. The lines in her face made her seem older than her thirty years, but all in all, Genna thought she’d probably have recognized her anywhere.

  “Are you glad to see me?” Crystal asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, there’s something that hasn’t changed over the years. You’re still painfully honest.” Crystal tried to smile. “Honest to the core, our Genna. At whatever the cost.”

  Genna turned from her and walked into the kitchen and snapped on the light. “Would you like something cold to drink? I have soda, iced tea. . .”

  “Whatever. Anything is fine. Ice water is fine.” Crystal stood in the doorway. “I think that since I’m here we should get it out of the way early, Genna.”

  “I don’t. . .”

  “. . . want to talk about it? Any shrink will tell you that’s a very unhealthy attitude. There’s something that’s been standing between us for more than half our lives, Gen. I need to get it off my chest.”

  “If you’re talking about the fact that I didn’t hear from you all that time, about the fact that you never made any attempt to contact me all these years. . .” Genna’s control was forced, the words shooting out of her mouth beyond her control.

  “I was a kid too, remember.” Crystal’s hands shook as she accepted the glass of iced tea that Genna held out to her. “I didn’t have the means or the opportunity to come and find you. And I didn’t have the guts, either.”

  Genna reached past Crystal to grab her own glass from the counter.

  “I never had your sense of right, your sense of justice. I never had your strength, Gen.” Crystal sipped at her drink. “I wish I had. But I never did, even when I wanted to so badly. Even when I knew I should, knew how important it was for me to. . .”

  Genna stepped past her and turned off the light, gesturing for Crystal to follow her into the living room. At that moment, she wasn’t sure of just how much she wanted to hear, and she moved like a cornered animal, wary and watchful and suspicious.

  Crystal stood in the doorway, watching as Genna hit the message button on her answering machine. There were four messages. Crystal stood patiently waiting for them to end.

  Genna sat back on the sofa and put her feet up on the coffee table.

  “You can sit down,” she said, without her characteristic grace.

  “This isn’t easy for me.” Crystal perched on the edge of the dark green hassock and studied her sister’s face.

  “Well, it was your idea, Chrissie. You must have thought it out.”

  “I thought out what I’d say to you. I couldn’t think out how I’d feel.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Worse than I expected to. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all. May
be I should leave.”

  Genna withdrew the envelope holding the photos and tossed them on the table. Several escaped and fell onto the floor. “You can take those with you.”

  “I just thought you’d like to see. . .”

  “See what? The best moments of my early childhood? The smiling, loving face of my mother, who let that wacko, crazy, abusive man who fathered us, control her life, control her emotions, turn her against her own flesh and blood? That loving mother who abandoned her own child for the crime of telling the truth?” Genna grabbed one of the toss pillows that graced the corners of the sofa, and pressed it to her stomach as if to press away the pain that shot through her. “Do you really think I need photographs to remind me of what I lost, Crystal?”

  “I’m sorry, Genna. I thought maybe you’d want them.” Crystal stood up. “I thought maybe it would be good for both of us. I was very wrong.”

  Crystal picked up the pictures that had slipped onto the floor and tucked them back into her pocket, her face red with embarrassment.

  “This was clearly a disaster,” Crystal said as she picked up her bag with trembling fingers. “Just another example of how bad my judgment is. I just wish. . .”

  Genna looked up at her with eyes darkened with emotions she’d spent years denying, but did not trust herself to speak.

  “Well, I just wish you could have been just a little happy to see me.” Crystal crossed the carpet toward the door.

  “I’d have been a lot happier if you hadn’t waited all these years to show up,” Genna said curtly.

  “That door swings both ways, Gen. Your resources are much more sophisticated than mine.” For the first time since she’d arrived, a touch of anger rose in Crystal’s voice and she stopped at the door, her hand on the doorknob. “How much of an effort did you make to find me?”

  “I was the chick who was pushed out of the nest, remember?”

  “I wasn’t the one who was doing the pushing. And for the record, you just don’t know how lucky you were.” Crystal opened the door and let herself out, closing it quietly behind her.