meet Margaret Seymour, just as Cavetti and the FBI had claimed. And that photo of the two men underneath the gate. The chilling name, overhead—MERCADO. That other man in the snapshot was before her now. His brother. Now it all made sense. Her eyes stole to the broken pendant—the gold half suns.
“It holds secrets, Kate,” Sharon had said when she placed the pendant around Kate’s neck. “One day I’ll tell them to you.”
Her mother knew!
“Your mother gave me this,” Mercado said. “She knew one day it would be me to tell you, not him. You must realize now”—the man smiled—“what happened to her, it was not me.”
“No!” A wall rose up inside Kate. Her hands trembled, but her voice was firm. “You’re saying he killed his own wife. That can’t be. He loved her. I saw them. For over twenty years. That was no lie.”
“I am telling you, Kate, this bond, it is stronger than what you know as love. All these years inside the program, I’ve never once divulged what I’ve just said to you. I never betrayed him.”
“Why are you telling me this? Why did you show yourself? What is it you want me to do?”
“I want you to help me find him, Kate.”
“Why? So you can kill him. So that he doesn’t kill you. Whatever’s happened, he’s still my father. Until he looks me in the eye and tells me he did these things. From him, not you.… You’re saying that everything I’ve trusted in my whole life has been a lie.”
“Not a lie. A protection. For your own—”
“A lie!”
Oscar Mercado took her by the wrist and gently opened her palm. He picked up the two pendants of the broken Aztec sun and reached over and placed them around her neck. The two halves dangled momentarily, then came to rest against her chest in a way that made them appear as one. A single golden sun.
“You want the truth, Kate, here it is. Here is your chance. The gate is open, Kate. Do you want to walk through?”
Phil Cavetti parked his car across from the blocked-off blue-shingled ranch in Orchard Park, New York, which was ablaze in flashing lights. He dropped his shield in front of a local cop guarding the taped-off walkway leading up to the front door. The cop waved Cavetti through. There was a doggie bed on the landing, and a little plaque nearby that read HOME OF CHOWDER. WORLD’S FAVORITE CANINE.
The door was open.
Stepping into the house, the first thing Cavetti saw was the outline on the floor of the first victim, Pamela Birnmeyer. She’d been an agent with the U.S. Marshals Service, out of the Warrants and Bonds Division, for six years. He’d met her once. She had a husband who taught computer science at a local college and a two-year-old at home. Probably why she’d put in for hazardous duty. Extra cash.
Cavetti swallowed a rush of bile. He hadn’t been to a fresh crime scene in years.
He followed the commotion into the kitchen. He had to avoid a couple of FBI crime-scene specialists who were kneeling, trying to lift shoe prints off the floor. The body of the second victim had been removed, but a bright scarlet smear was still visible on the white fridge where her body had crumpled to the floor.
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