Stone Eater (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 2) Read online

  “And something else.”

  Finch studied her face, the look of dread behind her stoic veneer.

  “They found semen in her vagina.” Her lips narrowed, a half-smile that hinted at a bleak joke. “Funny thing, though. The semen DNA shows two separate identities.”

  Finch blinked and looked at the floor. A sinking feeling slipped through his stomach.

  “I thought so.”

  He turned his eyes back to her. “You thought what?”

  She edged forward slightly and dropped her voice. “I thought that if someone matches one of the semen samples to you, it would end your career. In two seconds.” She snapped her fingers, a sound that filled the glass room. “The bias in your reporting, the TV interviews, the first-person feature stories you wrote. A DNA match would destroy your credibility. Instantly.” She let this notion settle in and then continued, “Not just on the Whitelaw story. But with every sentence you ever write again. Am I right?”

  He let out a short laugh. “You’re delusional.”

  “I don’t think so.” She reached into her purse and set a paper coffee cup on the table. “Let’s say this is the coffee cup you were drinking from when we met a few days ago. It isn’t, of course — I stored the actual cup and your DNA profile in a place you’ll never find — but if it was, I’m willing to bet your future career that your saliva DNA on the rim of the cup will match one of the two semen samples found in Gianna.” She paused to study his face as he absorbed these punches. “Am I right?”

  Finch’s eyes blinked shut. He felt as if he’d plunged into a cold, swirling river. “Don’t be ridiculous. Semen is lifeless within three days,” he said when he could breathe again. “The last time I saw Gianna was — ”

  “Two days before her murder. The ME conducted the autopsy the following day.” She raised an eyebrow. “Besides, non-motile sperm can survive up to six days in the cervix. Which can be sampled and digital records preserved indefinitely. Which is exactly what I requested.”

  His hands twisted together and he glanced away in despair.

  “Look,” she continued, “I’ve seen her do the same thing with dozens of men.” A hint of sympathy crossed her face and she reached out and touched Finch’s wrist. “Don’t take it personally. Gianna simply needed physical contact. She couldn’t help herself.”

  He drew his hand away. “So, this is … what? You’re blackmailing me?”

  “No. I don’t do that. But if we’re going to work together — and I know we will — I need an insurance policy.”

  “You think that’s what my DNA gives you?” He looked away and then turned back to her, a fierce intensity in his eyes. “So what’s my indemnification?”

  She turned her chin to one side, took her purse in one hand and opened the glass door. “You seem pretty resourceful. I’ll let you sort that out.”

  He stared through the glass wall, along the library corridor. The ache in his broken tooth pulsed and then subsided. “Trumped by your own stupidity.” He could almost hear the words from his father echoing through the decades.

  “I’ll get in touch tomorrow. I’ve got a few things to go over before we begin.”

  Eve left the room without looking back at him. She walked past two homeless men hunched beside their backpacks and sleeping on the floor. His eyes trailed along behind her until she turned into a stairwell and disappeared.

  He drew his phone from his pocket and began a Google search: How long does DNA last in semen? A string of responses flashed onto his screen. Within five minutes he read the top three hits from the more reputable medical and forensic sites. As he slipped the phone back into his pocket he frowned. Eve had done her homework, all right. Three to six days. The fact that Gianna had been immersed in the ocean for five or six hours might shift the statistics slightly in his favor. But still….

  He shook his head and gathered his bag and jacket in his arms. This is crazy talk, he shouted to himself. How can you think about your odds, when Gianna’s been murdered. And less than two weeks after you held her in your arms?

  What a mess, he thought as he strode down the library hallway. He hated worrying like this. Hated the self-loathing and shame. And the worst of it all was this: Why — why? — did Eve Noon have to be so good looking?

  ※

  When he returned to the office, he found a voice message from Bryce Weeland waiting on his desk phone.

  “Will, Bryce here. Good news: Mother Russia wants you in her empire. Also my gig in Bangalore’s been pushed forward a week. And I need to go back to New York to spend some time with my parents before I move to India. Bottom line: you can move in day after tomorrow. The rent, as we discussed, is thirty-five hundred a month. Call me if you want it.”

  Good news indeed. Will stretched his back against the length of his chair and imagined himself splayed across the queen bed in Bryce’s apartment. Looking through the French doors onto the Mediterranean-style courtyard. The sunlight filtered through the glass curtains.

  The daydream evaporated when Fiona Page slipped along the aisle and tapped his shoulder.

  “Sleepy?” she asked.

  “I’m okay,” he said and studied her a moment. He hadn’t seen her since his return from Astoria. She had the knack of looking different every time he encountered her. What was it? He realized that she’d restyled her hair, colored it a glossy jet-black and tapered the ends into multiple jagged spear tips. The look suggested up-market goth. He suspected she had secret tattoos. Hidden piercings.

  Despite his fascination, he wondered if he could trust her. On Wally’s orders she’d interviewed him and he’d told her most of what had happened during his trip to Oregon. About the way Gruman had pistol-whipped him and then shot off the tip of his earlobe. The firing squad lined up against the sheriff and the single shot that took him out. He’d revealed all that to her over the phone. But all the while she’d withheld the vital news that Gianna was dead. Fiona had devised that clever manipulation on her own. The way she’d handled it left him wondering.

  “Let’s see your ear.”

  He turned his head toward her, and then away. “It’s nothing.”

  “Really?” She sat in the guest chair.

  “My tooth still aches a little, but most of that’s passed, too.”

  “Well, you got a hell of a story from it. CNN, PBS, CBS. People are still talking.”

  He waved a hand as if he was swatting at a pesky mosquito. “Any break-throughs with Gianna’s death?” He wanted to say Gianna’s murder, but that was still a point of contention with Wally and Fiona. Soon, someone (likely Fiona) would ferret out Gianna’s sexual history and her psychological depression following Raymond Toeplitz’s death. It wouldn’t take Sigmund Freud to diagnose manic-depression, with a depressive side so severe that it led to her demonstrative suicide — a swan dive from the Golden Gate Bridge — the final, ghastly protest against her broken family and distant father.

  “There won’t be a funeral.”

  “Pretty typical when people claim the death is a suicide.”

  “I guess.” She looked away, then back at Finch. “Turns out she has a history.”

  “Don’t we all?” He tapped a pen on his desk blotter in an impatient, broken rhythm.

  “Nothing like Gianna’s. I’m going to put a profile together this afternoon.”

  “All right. Show me what you’ve got later.” He drummed out a final rhythm with the pen and waved his hand again.

  “Okay.” She stood and wrapped her arms across her chest. “I hope the tooth feels better.”

  He nodded, picked up his desk phone and called Bryce Weeland. When the answering service cut in he inflected his voice to emulate warm enthusiasm, the best he could muster given his circumstances. “Bryce. Excellent news. Tell the comrades I can move in ASAP. We can sort out the money part and any loose ends when we meet. Call my cell phone to set up a time.”

  He set the phone down and turned his attention to his email. The subject lines from twenty,
maybe thirty messages poured into his in-box. The idea of answering them made him shudder. As he scanned the screen, the last message caught his attention: “I am Gianna’s mother.”

  ※

  “Mrs. Pecorelli, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Will Finch.”

  “Please. Call me Sophia. I hope my message didn’t confuse you. I reverted to my maiden name” — she hesitated as she pushed a strand of gray hair into place — “some time ago.”

  She led him into the living room of her condominium, the top floor in a three-story Victorian building in Russian Hill. The bay windows faced north and offered a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge just visible below a band of fog. He studied the vista for a moment and realized that Gianna lived only a few blocks away.

  “Your daughter must have found it convenient to visit you here.”

  “Yes. She came by about once a week. More often if I needed anything.”

  She waved him away from the window and they sat in two cushioned antique chairs. An ornate coffee table separated them. On top of the table stood tea service for two: a teapot, matching china cups and saucers, an oblong platter holding a variety of cookies. All very delicate.

  “So you knew where Gianna lived?”

  “Yes. But I never visited her. I only met her once. In Oregon.” He studied Mrs. Pecorelli’s black dress, stockings and shoes; mourning attire in the classic Italian tradition. Her face, lined with a cross-hatching of worry and anxiety, wobbled above her swan neck. He guessed that she was about sixty-five years old. Perhaps Gianna’s death had added an extra decade of grief to her age.

  “Yes. She mentioned that.”

  “She did?”

  A nod.

  “I’m surprised.”

  “Pour us some tea, Mr. Finch.”

  He smiled and poured the tea as delicately as he could, certain that he’d miss some essential element of the ritual. He passed a cup to her and took one in his hand.

  “Have a cookie. The pesche are my favorite. And the pignoli.”

  He considered the platter and passed it to her.

  “Thank you Mr. Finch. Pleasant to meet someone with a hint of good manners.” She took a nibble of the pesche, set the biscuit on her saucer and drank a sip of tea. “My first taste of food in days.”

  “Mrs. Pecorelli, please let me say how sorry I am for your loss. I didn’t know Gianna well. But what I did know of her —"

  “Please. Call me Sophia.”

  He struggled a moment, tried to find a balance between her crisp formality and social affability. “All right. But only if you call me Will.”

  She set her teacup and saucer on the table and gripped the arms of her chair. “Gianna was an impetuous girl. Bright, pretty, but impulsive. I could see it from her childhood on. At two she got into such mischief. At fifteen she got into all the adolescent trouble she could find. But none of it was ill-willed. She loved life, but hated the rules that go with it. She believed the two were incompatible and she decided to choose living instead of managing liabilities.”

  Finch sipped his tea and let his eyes wander the room while she spoke. The condo exuded an old-world aura of comfort and endurance. He couldn’t imagine Gianna inhabiting a house decorated with tea sets, vintage upholstery, European vases. The first decision Gianna had made was to live life on her own terms. Perhaps her best decision, too.

  “I know what you do, Mr. Finch. I know it’s your job to probe into Gianna’s past and report it in your paper. Such as it is.” She took another sip of tea. “And I also know what you’ll discover. Before you publish your findings, I want you to consider what good, or harm, it may cause.” She paused to examine him, held his eyes and waited for him to respond.

  “We look at every story from all angles. And because I knew Gianna, I’ll ensure we provide complete respect —"

  “Don’t give me that scat!” She drew a breath and settled herself. “I want to tell you something. Gianna did not kill herself.” She looked away. “After our last meal, she sat in that chair that same day” — her hand swept toward Will, an arthritic finger stabbing toward him — “and told me what she was going to do.”

  “Which was what, Sophia?”

  She narrowed her eyes as if she had to calculate how much to reveal. “Now that Raymond was gone, she’d decided to expose everything he’d discovered no matter what the cost to her father and uncle. She told me that was why she met with you. For Raymond’s sake.” Her tongue flicked around her lips. “He was the only man who accepted her,” she added.

  “And do you know what he discovered?”

  “No. I never understood it. Something to do with money, of course. That’s where Raymond’s genius lay. Numbers, mathematics, money.”

  Finch gathered his thoughts. Gianna’s mother had come to a point where the facts merged with mystery. Where her daughter’s death became a stream of speculation and unanswered remorse.

  “Sophia, who do you think killed Gianna?”

  Her chin dipped and she looked away. “I don’t know who actually…. But I know who paid to have it done.”

  “Yes?”

  “Not her father. Despite his deviance, he wouldn’t do that.”

  Her voice dropped with a hint of an intimacy to come and Finch leaned forward in his chair.

  “Then who?”

  “His step-brother, Dean.”

  “Dean Whitelaw?”

  She nodded. “The gossip always focuses on Gianna’s father. The senator. The playboy. The serial husband. Despite the scandals, all he ever has to do to get past each episode is to confess. Unfortunately our country loves to embrace a sinner. Especially one with looks and charm. The church teaches us to love them. To love their contrition, anyway.” Her head swiveled to one side and back with a slight ticking motion.

  “But the business empire is Dean’s creation,” she continued. “If Whitelaw, Whitelaw & Joss were in jeopardy — and it was until the fraud case finally collapsed — Dean would kill to ensure its survival.”

  “Have you reported any of this to the police?”

  “The police?” She spat the words from her mouth. “You actually imagine that Dean and Franklin haven’t closed that door? I’m surprised you even ask.”

  Finch tipped the fingers of both hands together and pressed them to his chin. “For what it’s worth, Sophia, I agree with you. I think she was murdered, too.”

  “You do?”

  “I’m sure of it.” He stood up and looked through the bay window. The Golden Gate Bridge now lay invisible under a thin sheet of fog creeping into the bay.

  “Well, that’s something,” she sighed. “It’s a start.”

  He nodded. Maybe, he thought.

  “Gianna asked that I give something to you.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes. ‘In case I can’t give it to him, myself,’ she said.” Sophia pulled herself from her chair and stepped across the room. “It’s why I asked you to visit.”

  Will followed her into the hallway where Sophia unlocked a side drawer in an antique roll-top desk. She extracted a leather-bound book and held it to her chest.

  “In two days Gianna will be commemorated in a private service. As I said before, I want you to let my daughter rest in peace. But I also want you to find her killer. Bear that in mind when I give you this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Her diary, Mr. Finch. Here’s the key.” She passed the book to him and pressed a small key into his palm. “I haven’t read it. If there’s anything you think I should know, you can tell me. Otherwise, I want to remember her in my own way.”

  ※

  The day after he moved into Mother Russia, Finch sat on the four-poster queen bed in Bryce Weeland’s condo somewhat dazed by the amenities surrounding him. No question about it, Mother Russia was well endowed. He pointed a clicker at the big screen TV mounted on the wall opposite his bed and began to explore the digital options at hand. The screen could provide access to the internet, his files at the eXpress, his
bank account, an array of video channels and streaming audio programs. Certainly many more options lay buried in the on-screen menus and sub-menus, almost endless in variety and genre. He clicked off the screen and walked over to the windows that overlooked the ornate garden below. He pulled down the upper frame on the double-hung window and drew in a long breath to taste the aroma in the air. When had he last paused to do this? To actually smell the flowers.

  He moved from the bedroom to the “great room” (as Bryce called it) an all-in-one space, maybe six hundred square feet, that included a living room, kitchen, dining room and study; each nook defined by furniture arrangements and shifting color tones. He plopped into the chaise lounge and closed his eyes.

  “Sometimes luck will strike,” he said aloud. “In this case, good luck.”

  Certainly he’d had a run of bad luck over the past few years. Cecily’s death from cancer. Bethany Hutt and her alcoholic fury. And then, Buddy. Gone forever because he’d allowed Bethany into his world. There seemed no way to start over once Buddy died. He’d vacated his apartment, written off his car — left everything behind as a way to sever his life from the past — and told Bethany never to contact him again. But she did, of course. Messages, text, email. They came in batches, several each day. When he checked into Eden Veil Center for Recovery to begin his convalescence, he saw none of them until he returned to work. By then her mania had dwindled to a trickle of text messages, once every day or two. Now there was no sign of her at all. Like him, she’d given up.

  All he had left was a job, two suitcases of clothes and personal items, his medal from Iraq, a stack of about fifty books, a laptop computer, a new cellphone, pictures of Cecily, Buddy, his parents. The pictures he set on the top shelf of the vast closet in the bedroom where he’d created a sort of shrine to the people he loved, a hidden place that he could visit and remember. He tried to maintain a stoic perspective on his spare existence. He had so few possessions, so little to show for his thirty-five years in this world. There was something zen-like about it. But something pathetic, too.

  Tired of this self-indulgence, he pulled himself away from the chaise lounge and picked up Gianna’s diary. He moved over to the sofa and propped his legs on the cushions, pulled a light blanket up to his waist and unlocked the little brass hasp on the diary and flicked through the pages. He pressed his nose into the book and inhaled. Ah, Gianna. He could still smell her wonderful fragrance where she’d pressed her fingers to the thin, vellum pages. Her fingers, her hands. He could tell by the way she made love that she’d been with many men. But he bore no jealousy. She’d given herself to him freely, without any conditions, as if there could be no past, no future.