Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [460]
Maggie shook her head. She didn’t have time to psychoanalyze Garrison, nor was she certain she would if she had the time. There was something odd about a man who could be so fascinated by ancient cultures and their people and yet stand back and watch young women be attacked in a public park. Or did Garrison consider everyone to be simply a photographic subject and nothing more?
At the police station, when she questioned him about the incident in Boston Common, he had said something strange about her having no idea what it took to stop or to make news happen. Yet, wasn’t that exactly what he had been doing with Everett? His photos had broken the story about the church’s members and their possible connection to the murder of the senator’s daughter and the murder in Boston. But it went further than that. It was his photographs that caused Everett to initially even become a suspect. In a sense Garrison’s photos had led them directly to Everett. He had made news happen.
Something skittered across the floor behind her. Maggie spun around. Three huge cockroaches escaped into a crack half their size under the kitchen counter.
Damn it!
She tried to settle her nerves. Cockroaches. Why did it not surprise her that Garrison would be surrounded by them?
But the landlady was correct in that Garrison’s apartment did not match the spotless hall and the staircase, nor the rest of the aging but clean building. Discarded clothes trailed to the bedroom and bathroom. Crusty dishes and empty beer bottles littered the kitchen counter. Stacks of magazines and newspapers created leaning roach hotels in almost every corner. No, she shouldn’t be surprised to see Garrison’s roommates were cockroaches.
She wandered through the rooms, finding nothing interesting in his clutter. Although she wasn’t sure what she expected to find. Suddenly, she stepped on a book that lay in the middle of the floor, as if someone had dropped it. The leather binding was clean and smooth. It was definitely not something he usually kept on the floor. On closer inspection she realized it was a journal, the pages filled with a lovely, slanted penmanship that sometimes took on a frantic urgency, easily visible by the dramatic changes in jagged lines and curves.
She picked it up and it opened to a page bookmarked with what looked to be an old unused airline ticket, the corners worn and creased. Destination was Uganda, Africa, though it certainly was long expired. The entry it marked was also dog-eared, the only page with its gold-trim creased.
“Dear son,” the entry began, “this is something I could never tell you. If you’re reading it now, it’s only after my death, and I apologize that this is the manner in which I have resorted to tell you. A coward’s manner—it would certainly embarrass any Zulu tribe member. Please forgive me for that. But how could I possibly look into your sad and already angry eyes and tell you that your father had brutally raped me? Yes, that’s right. Raped me. I was only nineteen. It was my first year in college. I had a brilliant career I was preparing for.”
Maggie stopped and flipped to the beginning of the journal, looking for a name, a reference to the owner, and finding none. But she didn’t need a name. She already knew whose journal it was. It certainly couldn’t be a coincidence. But how had Garrison come across the book? Where in the world had he found it? Among Everett’s personal belongings, perhaps?