“He may have written the combination down somewhere,” I said, rifling through the papers and Post-its on top of the desk. Maybe if I found the combination first, I could pocket it without Nicholas noticing.
Nicholas shook his head. “He would have picked something he could remember. Something with some kind of significance.”
Nicholas continued entering different combinations with serene patience. Whenever he pulled on the lever and it didn’t budge, he just moved on to a different set of numbers. Eventually, I got bored of watching and started to explore the rest of the apartment. I read the spines of the books on his shelves in the living room, mostly reference books and other lawyerly things but with a fair number of spy thrillers mixed in. There were lots of framed pictures of the family on the bookshelves as well. Mia blowing out candles on a birthday cake. Lex lying on a beach with Nicholas and Mia playing in the background. Nicholas and Jessica standing in front of what looked like a cathedral in some European city. A kind eyed man with two small children, which had to be Patrick and Lex with their father Ben McConnell. A teenage Lex with pink streaks in her hair, blowing a kiss at the camera.
No pictures of Danny.
I stuck my head back into the office. “How’s it going?”
“I’m gonna get it,” Nicholas said.
“It’s getting late.”
“We’ve got time.”
I wandered into Patrick’s bedroom. If the rest of the apartment felt neglected, this room was downright spartan. The only nod toward decoration was a couple of throw pillows that were piled in a corner where I’m betting they always stayed. The walls were a light gray. The bedspread was dark gray. There was a television on the wall, a lamp on the bedside table, and nothing else except for a silver picture frame that looked oddly out of place in such a stripped-down space. I turned the frame toward me to see what was inside.
It was a picture of Lex, lying with her cheek in the grass.
“Got it!” Nicholas cried from the other room.
Damn.
I replaced the photo and rushed into the office, where he was combing through the contents of the now open safe.
“What was it?” I asked.
“Lex’s birthday.” He handed me a folder. “Look familiar?”
It was a filing folder like the ones Robert had on all the kids. The handwritten label said PATRICK—LEGAL.
Damn damn damn.
There wasn’t much inside. Nothing like the stacks of papers that had been in Mia’s medical folder or Lex’s addiction folder. There was just one collection of a few sheets stapled together, verifying that the juvenile arrest records of Patrick Calvin McConnell had been sealed and expunged, along with a list of said arrests.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
“What?” Nicholas leaned over my shoulder to read.
July 11, 2007—Possession of a controlled substance
February 4, 2008—Possession of a controlled substance
January 25, 2009—Criminal vandalism
November 2, 2009—Possession of a controlled substance
November 11, 2009—Assault and battery
December 23, 2009—Assault and battery
January 14, 2010—Trafficking of narcotics
March 18, 2010—Assault and battery
“Trafficking?” Nicholas said.
“And three assault arrests,” I said. I felt a little better. This would give Nicholas plenty of new things to investigate, all of them leading him away from the truth.
“We don’t know what that means though,” he said. “I mean, just touching someone is technically assault, right? Maybe there was—”
“There’s three of them,” I said, remembering the way Patrick had slapped Jessica. It had seemed so out of character at the time, but apparently it wasn’t. “This is exactly the kind of thing you wanted to look for here.”
Nicholas raked a hand through his hair. “I know. Shit. It’s one thing to want to know the truth and another thing . . .”
This looked bad for Patrick. If I hadn’t already known Jessica was the one responsible for Danny’s death, he would have gone straight to the top of my list of suspects. It was more than I could have hoped for.
“Maybe Patrick was up to something—doing drugs, dealing—and Danny found out,” I said. “Maybe he tried to blackmail him the same way he did you.”
Nicholas swallowed. “He did have a bad temper when he was younger. And he was a big guy, even at eighteen, and—and Danny was so small . . .”
I remembered the half-hysterical way Lex had insisted that Patrick wasn’t violent and would never hurt any of us the night he’d slapped Jessica, and Kai had told me Patrick used to get him pot. If Jessica hadn’t confessed, I’d buy this theory.
? ? ?
It’s funny how naive a person can be when they want to believe the lie they’re being fed. Even a liar like me, who should really know better.
Nicholas took pictures of all the documents in Patrick’s file and locked it back in the safe, and then we headed home to Hidden Hills. We were both quiet. We usually were, but the texture of it felt different this time. We were quiet because we were both too busy thinking, not because he didn’t want to talk to me. An hour later we arrived home, and Patrick’s car was in the driveway.
“Dammit,” Nicholas said. “What’s he doing here?”
We entered the house on tiptoe, and Nicholas immediately went for the stairs. Before he was halfway up though, Lex poked her head into the foyer.
“Hey, guys!” she said. “How was the library?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Well, come in here. Patrick skipped out on work to come over,” she said. “We’re just about to start dinner.”
Nicholas’s hand tightened around the banister. “I’m not really hungry—”
“Don’t be silly. We got your favorite.”
Nicholas shot me a look, and I shrugged faintly. He couldn’t hide forever, and trying to would only make them suspicious.
The two of us followed Lex into the dining room, where Mia, Patrick, and Jessica were already seated with containers of Thai takeout in the center of the table. The whole family.
Maybe Nicholas had had the right idea after all.
It wasn’t unprecedented for Jessica to join us for a meal, but it was rare. Our eyes met, and I forced myself to give her a small smile. If I wanted her on my side, I needed her to understand that I was here to protect her and her children, not threaten them. She looked away.