Page 60 of Girl, Remembered

Goddammit to hell.

Her skin went cold everywhere at once, then hot, like her body couldn’t decide which to commit to.

She believed it before she wanted to. Every loose piece she’d been holding for the last hour slid into a profile that made sense on the first try, and she hated it for that.

Ripley had gone very still at the table. ‘Dark. I’ve said this once today already, but…’

‘But Dever is right.’

‘Edis isn’t adjacent to your career. He is your career. He’s the big one.’

Vernon sprang into action. ‘We need to get eyes on him. Ripley, you know where he lives?’

‘Yeah, but Edis has a bunch of places. He’s a real estate mogul.’

Everyone knew about William Edis’s expansive collection of homes. Before they’d identified Doyle, Edis had used his places as safe houses for people in Ella’s circle who could have been targets. ‘Then we need to check every single one.’

Ripley was half listening, half on the phone. She hung up and said, ‘His cell went to voicemail. I’ll keep trying him, but Dark’s right, and we need to be quick. I’ll drive to his main place right now, and then to the place he lent to me, but those are the only ones I know of.’

Dever said, ‘He has one behind Constitution Gardens. Blake Avenue, the house made of yellow stone. I dropped something off there for him once.’

‘Blake Avenue,’ Ella said. ‘That house would back onto the ponds in Constitution Gardens.’

‘Yes it would.’

Ella rushed toward the door. She couldn’t waste another second, because if Doyle hurt William Edis, she’d hunt that woman to the ends of the earth. Edis had been the closest thing she’d had to a father, even if he did ask her to risk her life every week. ‘I’m going there myself. Mia, call me from the road.’

Ripley’s response was to rush past Ella in a blur. She was out of the door, and Ella heard her footsteps clatter down the hallway.

Vernon said, ‘I’ll try and find some more of Edis’s places. There’ll be people here who know.’

‘Do that. Call him. Call his wife. Do whatever you can.’ Ella turned to leave, then stopped. She looked back at Dever. ‘Terrance, one question.’

‘Yes?’

‘How did you know all that stuff? About Edis taking a chance on me?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘No.’

‘I was standing behind you in the cake shop. Now go.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Retirement, as far as William Edis was concerned, was criminally easy. He’d handed in his credentials on a Monday and by the Friday his biggest concern was remembering to vacuum the stairs before Lisa got home. When introspecting, William Edis had always viewed his life on a cinema screen, but now he visualized things on a small, grainy TV, and that which he’d previously deemed important had begun to feel reassuringly insignificant.

Within a month of retiring, his old comrades had come calling. They’d offered him consulting jobs in the MOD and Supreme Court, and Edis had briefly considered them on paper. But discussing the options with Lisa had made them real, and that reality brought on a wave of exhaustion that he couldn’t ignore. At that moment, William Edis decided that he couldn’t endure any more government politics. The best politicians never overstayed their welcome.

Shortly after that, the publishers had contacted him. A major one offered him easy money to write his memoirs, or at least dictate his memoirs to a ghostwriter. All he had to do was spend a few weeks reciting his life story and someone would spin it into a convenient, readable narrative. The end result would be six figures in his bank account, and surely anyone would be a fool to turn down such an easy job.

Politicians shouldn’t be for sale, he always thought, nor should their life stories. Public servants were compensated well enough, and further cashing in on his time in office felt distasteful. Many of his war stories involved people who weren’t around anymore, and getting paid to talk about them wasn’t the way a cop-at-heart should honor the fallen.

Edis, then, cemented his status as a fool.

He told the publisher he wasn’t interested – and bought a bar instead.

The two instances were not related, despite them happening in the same week. Edis’s justification for the uncharacteristic purchase was – why not? He had two pensions coming in. One from the Chicago PD, one from the Bureau. One pension was enough for a man to live on, but two pensions was enough for a man to take risks.