Page 62 of Devil's Due

“Did they find anything else?”

She frowned;Violations.“No. No, nothing.”

He let out a slow breath. “Good.” He smiled, heavy on the irony. “Good as it is to see you, I hope you didn’t risk your life to come out here to visit me.”

She had, mostly. But it wouldn’t sound precisely smart to admit it. “I need to talk to Susannah,” she said.

He nodded and, without a word, turned around and walked into the bedroom.

Lucia got up from the couch and moved to sit on a battered wooden chair. It looked less likely to harbor fleas than the grimy plaid cushions. It took a few minutes, but McCarthy reappeared, bringing with him a sleep-creased woman whom Lucia barely recognized as Susannah Davis. She looked considerably better. The swelling in her face had gone down, and the bruises were fading to blotches. She’d be pretty when she recovered, if not beautiful.

The scared expression in her eyes had faded, too. She looked different now. Desperation had made her seem honest, but the truth was emerging, and it wasn’t entirely reassuring.

“Susannah,” Lucia said. “How have you been?”

“All right,” she answered, and slid into the chair opposite, across the battered kitchen table. She yawned and pushed her sleep-disordered hair back from her face. “I heard you were missing or something.”

“Or something.” Lucia let that sit for a few seconds to close the topic. “Someone tried to kill you, I hear.”

Susannah looked down at her hands. She was picking at her cuticles. “Well, it damn sure wasn’t Leonard.” Cold, Lucia thought. Very cold.

“Maybe Leonard’s business associates,” Lucia said. “Right? You told us in the beginning that you knew things about his business dealings. Maybe they don’t want you telling anyone what you know?”

She didn’t reply. Her nervous picking continued. She’d had a good manicure once, but it had grown out, and the polish was halfway up her nails. Seashell-pink. When she’d had that manicure done—three weeks ago, at a guess—she’d also had a haircut. The shape was still there, even if she’d done nothing to style it. The clothes Susannah had on weren’t her own, but the shoes were, and they were good ones. Not a woman who did her shopping at discount stores, but one who’d taken pride in herself, up until recently.

“Susannah,” Lucia said, and drew her eyes in a direct gaze. “You know something. You knew Leonard would come after you, and you were afraid he’d kill you. He or his associates.”

Susannah nodded and looked down again, picking furiously at the offending cuticle. She tore off a strip of skin. A bright bead of red appeared in the corner, next to the nail bed.

“You need to tell someone,” Lucia repeated softly. “Why not McCarthy?”

The woman gave a mute shake of her head. Lucia made an intuitive leap, and didn’t like where it took her. McCarthy was in the other room, but she couldn’t tell if he could hear. She had to assume he could. “Maybe you just don’t like him,” she said. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

Susannah’s head shake this time was almost a shiver. She knew something about McCarthy. Nothing that would require her to scream bloody murder over being left alone with him, but something. Maybe she’d picked it up at KCPD; plenty of cops might have said things there. A detective willing to take bribes might be the last person she could trust.

“Will you tell me?”

Susannah’s fingers stopped moving. Lucia didn’t speak; she knew Susannah was arguing with herself, and adding her voice would only hurt.

“He—” Susannah’s voice failed, briefly, then came back stronger. “Leonard was working for these people. They had some kind of plan or something—I don’t know what it was all about. But he would get these messages, and he would do things for them. The last one … he bought a lot of chemicals. Alot.He rented a building somewhere. He said he was starting up a lab.”

Ah. “A meth lab,” Lucia said.

Susannah gave her an irritated look. “No, it wasn’t a meth lab. I know the chemicals for a meth lab, and this wasn’t—look, it was different. There were two things they were delivering there. Sodium cyanide and hydrochloric acid.”

The skin tightened on the back of Lucia’s neck. “Were they opening an electroplating lab? Those are chemicals used—”

“Electroplating? You’ve got to be kidding! When I say I know what chemicals you use for a meth lab, how do you think I know that? I’m not a damn saint, and he wasn’t opening any damn legitimate business. This was something else. Maybe the paperwork says electroplating, I don’t know, but it’s a lie. Can’t you use that crap for something else, too?”

“Possibly.” Noncommittal was the best strategy. If Susannah got frightened—more frightened—there was no telling what she might do. “I can check it out if you want. Where’s the lab?”

“In SubTropolis,” Susannah said.

Lucia frowned. “I don’t—”

McCarthy, sure enough, was within earshot. He came to the bedroom doorway, leaned against the frame and said, “Underground business complex. It’s huge. You’re going to need more than that. A business name, a unit number …”

“I don’t know, okay? He didn’t tell me anything. When I asked, he got mad.” Susannah pointed at her face. “I didn’t ask any more questions.”

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