20
Jack pulled up in front of Christy's house and parked. The traffic had put him on edge—this trip had taken twice as long as it should have, and hours spent sitting in traffic were hours he'd never get back. Christy's refusal to answer her phone hadn't helped. What was it with this woman?
He sat a moment. He'd had plenty of time to prep himself, but still he hesitated. This was going to be rough.
Finally he forced himself out the door and up the walk to her front step. He knocked, he rang… nothing. He tried the door—locked.
Well, the lights were on. Wasn't anybody home? She had to be. She was expecting him. Why would she leave?
The nape of his neck tingled as he hurried around the garage to its rear window. He shone the little flashlight through the glass. Christy's Mercedes sat to the right.
He moved to the back door and knocked. Still no answer, so he tried it: open. He stepped inside.
"Christy? Christy?"
No response.
She had to be here.
With his gut steadily tightening, he did a quick check of the first floor and found a glass containing a remnant of what looked like cola, but nothing else. He hurried upstairs.
"Christy?"
He froze in the doorway to the master bathroom. He saw red-red water, saw the upper half of a woman's head. Jack had an inane flashback to the scene from The Tingler when a hand rose slowly from a blood-filled bathtub.
A lump formed in his throat as he stepped forward. He knew who it was, recognized the ash-blond shade of hair, but had to be sure. He saw her half-open blue eyes staring across the top of the water; her mouth and nose hidden beneath.
Beneath the shock and dismay lurked a growing sense of deja vu—Gerhard dead in his tub.
He knelt beside her. No way Christy could be alive, but just to be 110 percent sure he touched her eye. No blink.
Her hands had floated to the surface. He lifted one by an index finger and saw the two-inch-long, lengthwise incision over the artery. She'd known what she was doing.
Or at least someone had.
Had she done it? He couldn't believe that—not now, not when she was waiting to hear what he'd learned. Later, after she knew the awful truth, it might have been in the realm of possibility. But not now.
He released her finger and stepped back to survey the scene, looking for signs of foul play, a struggle. But no… everything looked neat and in place. She'd filled the tub and made the cuts beneath the surface, preventing the arterial spray from splattering the walls. Perfectly in keeping with Christy's orderly personality.
But he still didn't buy it. It reeked of Bolton.
Okay… if Jack was going to create a scene like this, how would he go about it?
His mind ranged over the possibilities, and came up with only two: Force Christy to kill herself under the threat of death or worse to someone she loved more than life; or drug her into oblivion and fake it.
Jack couldn't see how there had been time enough for the first, so that left the second…
And, remembering the glass downstairs, what was the one thing Christy could be counted on to drink?
He stared at her a moment longer, feeling again the lump in his throat as he fought a sense of failure. He hadn't failed her in a true sense. She hadn't hired him for protection, only to gather information, and he'd gathered that—in spades. Yet still he felt he'd failed her. How could he not? She'd been alive when she'd come to him and now she was dead, by either her own hand or someone else's. In neither case could he be held responsible, so why this sense of guilt?
Because.
Sometimes that was reason enough.
He had to know what happened here. To find out, he needed to learn if Christy had been drugged.
He went downstairs. Using a paper towel to avoid leaving prints, he bagged Christy's Diet Pepsi bottle and almost-empty glass. He wiped off the doorknobs as he left.
Back in his car, he got moving and called the local police to tell them that if they went to a certain address they'd find the owner dead. He closed with, "Be sure to run drug and tox screens."
He didn't know if they could. He didn't know if she had any blood left in her for testing, or if the blood in the bathwater would be of any use. What he did know was that his call would raise the official index of suspicion and have them treat Christy's house as a crime scene.
Maybe they'd turn up something, maybe they wouldn't. Either way, Jack intended to pursue his own course. For that he'd need Levy's help.
And Levy would help—whether he wanted to or not.