Cainsville: Visions Part 40

He smiled, pleased. "Yes, that would be it. I regret the plea bargains, but sometimes acquittal is too much to hope for." The smile faded as he lifted the pages. "As for why Morgan is giving you this..." He flipped to the first page. "Ah."

"James thought he'd provide a little background information on Ricky. Except it's not on Ricky. It's on the Saints."

"Because there's nothing he could dig up on Ricky other than his a.s.sociation with the club. He's never been charged with an offense. He's had a couple of traffic violations, but I was able to successfully argue that they were based purely on the fact that he was driving a Harley and wearing a club patch. Ricky knows the value of a clean record."

"So what's in this other..." I flipped open the thicker file and saw the cover sheet. "Oh."

Gabriel didn't even seem to bend down to read it. "Yes, that would be mine. It appears Morgan had a little more luck there."

I closed the folder and handed it up to him. "Shred it. And if you want to retaliate with the McNeil business you mentioned, go ahead."

That same pleased smile he'd given when I complimented his defense record.

"Did you think I'd read it?" I said.

"Perhaps, but I didn't expect you to suggest retaliation." He pulled his chair over and sat with the folder on his lap. "I want to ignore him. He's making that increasingly difficult, though."

"Sorry."

Gabriel opened the file. "As for this..." He skimmed the top sheet. "True." He set it on the desk and checked the next. "Not true." He started a second pile and checked the third. "Not entirely true-there is a basis in fact, but the primary accusation is wrong."

He began another pile, in between the two. He continued through the stack. When he finished, the three piles were about equal. He leaned back in his chair.

"There. Go ahead. Take a look."

I shook my head. "Will Evans tried the same thing."

"And as long as you a.s.sociate with me, there will be someone who thinks it's his duty to tell you exactly how horrible I am. Whoever Morgan hired to investigate me was certainly thorough. Every charge I've ever heard is here. I will rest easier if we get this over with. Clear away the rumors. Render the ammunition useless."

I looked at him, pulled over the first pile, and began reading.

What did I find in those piles? Nothing worse than I'd heard. Nothing worse than I suspected. I knew Gabriel had a juvenile record for pickpocketing. I also suspected he'd continued picking pockets, along with other methods of theft, through his teen years, to support himself. He just got better at hiding it.

There were accusations of a.s.sault. Some true; most not. Again, what I'd expect. I'd seen Gabriel use his fists, but he was more comfortable intimidating with his size, as he'd done with James. There was an accusation of murder. He scoffed at that.

"Killing a business rival?" he said. "It suggests I need to eliminate an opponent to defeat him."

"Terribly insulting," I said.

"It is." He paused. "Also, untrue."

A large chunk of the file concerned his activities during college. How he paid for his degree. The rumors were that he'd dealt drugs or run an illegal gambling ring.

"I'm going with gambling," I said. I checked the piles. "Ooh, I win. Wait. Bookmaking and usury, too? So you ran the gambling ring, took bets, and lent money?"

"You know I hate hiring help."

I laughed. The drug dealing accusations were in the "lies and d.a.m.n lies" pile. As I expected.

The biggest part of the file dealt with Gabriel's business activities. Accusations of blackmail, extortion, bribery, intimidation ... The list went on. The only one that he denied was judicial bribery. As for the rest ...

"If I did those things as often as they claim, I'd never have time to actually practice law."

"That's why you hired me."

A faint smile. "Perhaps." He waved at the guilty-as-charged pile. "I've done them all. Just not nearly in the quant.i.ty suggested."

That left traffic violations-guilty-and a paternity suit. The latter was in the d.a.m.n-lies pile.

"It was a setup," he said. "I was defending one of two men charged with a series of bank robberies. They'd turned on each other. The opposing lawyer sent a young woman to seduce me in hopes of getting my files."

"Ah. Honey trap. Let me guess. She couldn't get the files, so the other lawyer tried blackmail instead, claiming you'd gotten the girl pregnant."

He glanced at me.

"Ouch," I said. "I think I just got frostbite from that look."

"I am hardly foolish enough to fall for seduction in the first place."

"Hey, I never said you fell for anything. It's a freebie. No reason not to take advantage."

"Not unless I have a shred of dignity. I'm not that desperate, Olivia."

"And again, I didn't say that. But okay, so you didn't sleep with her, and she still claimed paternity. I'm guessing it didn't get far."

"It did not. It was merely an attempt to embarra.s.s me professionally. I spoke to my opponent-the one who sent the girl-and suggested it would be very embarra.s.sing if I persuaded his wife to have the baby's DNA tested against his. He convinced the young woman to withdraw the suit."

"I'm amused by the fact you were more offended by that accusation than the murder one."

"I'm not disallowing the possibility that I could commit murder, under extreme circ.u.mstances. But falling into a honey trap? Unknowingly fathering a child? Absolutely not."

"Noted. That's it, then. All your sins laid bare." I leaned back. "I can reciprocate if you like. I stole a Dr Pepper when I was twelve."

His brows shot up in mock horror.

"It was an accident," I said. "I was distracted and thought I'd paid. I still felt bad."

He shook his head. "I suppose you smoked a cigarette once, too."

"Twice. I had a wild youth, but I've overcome it. The only things I've done recently are lying to witnesses, trespa.s.sing, breaking and entering, and shooting people. All in the last six weeks, roughly coinciding with when I met you."

"A coincidence."

"Indeed."

He reached for his now-cold coffee. He was still calm, at ease, the wall down, blue eyes as warm as they'd been earlier. James's stunt hadn't changed his mood. If anything, he seemed happier to have cleared the air.

Lydia buzzed, and Gabriel wrinkled his nose, not exactly resenting the intrusion but not appreciating it, either.

"That would be my ten o'clock appointment," he said.

"Do you want me to move into the-?"

"Stay. Keep working on Cainsville. I'll check in when I'm done."

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE.

Last night before bed, I'd jotted notes on my chat with Patrick. Now I wrote them out, adding questions as I went.

The first question: What is he?

It was hard to even acknowledge the need to ask that. What was Patrick? A young writer who lived in Cainsville and made the diner his office. Yet I knew that wasn't the whole truth. I was also d.a.m.ned sure I couldn't find my answers by plugging search terms into a browser.

I thought Patrick was the man Gabriel had spoken to as a child. More significantly, I thought I knew why he'd sought out Gabriel, and why that had upset Seanna. To confirm my suspicion, I'd need to confront him. Once I had ammunition.

If Patrick was the man Gabriel had spoken to twenty years ago, then he could not be human. And so the questions circled in on themselves, threatening to tangle me in impossibilities. I had to pluck out this single thread and follow it to the end.

I knew Patrick's pen name. Patricia Rees. Yes, he used a woman's name, not surprising considering he wrote paranormal romance. Given what I suspected about him, his chosen genre was all kinds of ironic. I'm sure he was well aware of that. Even his pseudonymous surname came with a nudge and a wink. It's Welsh, derived from ris, meaning "ardor."

Patrick told me he'd published six books. That was not entirely true. Patricia Rees was credited with six in paranormal romance-and another four in gothic romance before that.

Gabriel remembered Patrick being a young man when Gabriel returned to Cainsville before college. I had a.s.sumed he was misremembering. Seeing Patrick's publication history, I knew he was at least as old as Gabriel thought. Yet that still meant he could not have been the man Gabriel remembered speaking to as a boy. It was noon before I had my answer.

Patrice Rhys. Novelist in the seventies. Author of a dozen best-selling novels of "gothic horror." Patrick Rice. Novelist in the fifties. Author of twenty novels-noir thrillers "with a gothic touch." The connection came through a master's thesis written five years ago-one of the many pieces of flotsam and jetsam that wash up on the Internet. The student had been writing on the evolution of gothic romance and had compared the works of Patrick, Patrice, and Patricia. She'd found enough thematic and stylistic similarities to decide that Patrice and Patricia had been heavily influenced by Patrick, down to using a variation on his name for their pseudonyms.

Or they could be the same person.

I found a photograph of Patrick Rice from the fifties in an archived interview. Otherwise, Rice was something of a recluse, as were Patrice and Patricia, none of them touring or giving interviews. But for Patrick, there was that one photo. And I had only to look at it to know, beyond a doubt, that Patrick Rice was Patrick from Cainsville.

I was printing the photograph when Gabriel swung into the office with "Lunch?"

I handed him the picture. "Meet Patrick Rice. Noir author from the fifties."

Gabriel's brows lifted in a flash of surprise before his expression settled into a pensive frown.

"Yes, I know," I said. "We could argue it's his grandfather or some relative who looks exactly like him-and shares his first name and occupation."

As Gabriel studied the photo, I could see that compulsion sliding in, insidious and overwhelming, manifesting in the undeniable urge to say, It's a coincidence.

"That's him," he said finally. "I don't understand how, but that is undeniably Patrick. You found it on the Internet?"

I nodded.

"Then it could have been planted or-" He stopped so abruptly his teeth clicked shut. "I'm sorry. Yes, that's him."

"And I have checked the source. It's from the archives of a Chicago magazine. I found a secondary reference, too, in a biographical sketch that references the article. Patrick has become much more careful about interviews, but in the fifties no one would have guessed that one day we could locate that photo from the comfort of our homes."

"It's still risky, though. Living in the same place, staying the same age. We're mistaken. We must be-" Another emphatic stop. "Why can I not stop doing that?"

"Part of it is simple logic. We're reasonably intelligent, educated people. If we saw a man biting a woman's neck in an alley, we'd presume kinky s.e.x, not vampirism."

"Please don't tell me you think vampirism is the explanation here."

I shuddered. "G.o.d, I hope not."

"We do see Patrick during the day," Gabriel said.

"Bram Stoker's Dracula went out in the daytime."

"You aren't helping."

"Sorry." I wanted to tell him what I suspected, but I couldn't bring myself to, not until I had more. "The specific answer isn't as important as the general one, which is that Patrick isn't human. That something is going on in Cainsville, and we're caught up in it, and Macy Shaw seems to be caught up in it, too. So we need to talk to her."

"Give me two minutes."

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR.

Macy Shaw lived in Bridgeport. In Chicago's distant past, the Irish ruled the neighborhood. It's a lot more diverse now, but you can still see its roots, including unmarked pubs that you'd best not enter unless you know a regular.

Bridgeport is working-cla.s.s. There are signs of gentrification, but that's common everywhere people see cheap property and think they can change the landscape to better suit their tastes. Bridgeport is a strong enough community to hold out, and I'm glad to see it. The city is for everyone.

There are, however, areas where ... well, a little gentrification wouldn't be a bad thing, if it meant architectural preservation. Pockets where the beautiful old homes and buildings are in sore need of a little support-financial and structural. Macy's street was marked by neglect. While the residents couldn't afford the ma.s.sive renovations needed to return their homes to their former glory, you got the feeling most wouldn't see the point anyway. The long gra.s.s and weeds in the yards hid some, but not all, of the trash littered there. People sat on dilapidated front porches, eyes narrowing as we went by, more like junk-yard dogs than proud home owners.

We pa.s.sed one house with three men on the porch. All had the build of retired construction workers: wide shoulders, brawny biceps, and potbellies. None was over thirty, though. The porch was the most decrepit one on the street, so run-down that it made me nervous to see one guy leaning against the railing.

As we pa.s.sed, Gabriel murmured, "Move to my other side, please."

His gaze was fixed on the road ahead, with no sign that he'd even seen the men, but he said again, "Olivia? My other side. Please."

By the time I figured out what he meant, the three were on their feet, coming off the porch, and I wasn't about to scurry behind Gabriel then. He still tried to move in front of me, but I put out my arm to stop him.

He took off his shades and fixed his gaze on them, his eyes chilling further with every step they took.