Eve - Iris Johansen [82]
“Because he told you he didn’t? Queen thinks he’s a split personality.”
“From what I’ve heard about him, Queen may be a monster himself.”
“I won’t disagree with you. But he’s one of the monsters I deal with every day. Gallo is apparently a different breed.” Catherine picked up her cup. “Maybe I’ll chance this stuff. It doesn’t seem to have hurt you.”
“I was the official food taster?”
She grinned. “Well, you were going to do it anyway.” She sipped the coffee. “And maybe the dope is in the store-bought doughnuts.”
Eve smiled back at her. “Then we’ll skip them.” Lord, she was glad that Catherine had come with Joe. She needed her to lighten the tension gripping her as she waited for the confrontation with Joe. “John didn’t kill her, Catherine. I know it.”
“You couldn’t know it unless he’d prove it. Did he?”
A wild story about a little girl who sang songs to him in prison. “All the Pretty Little Horses.” A wild story she believed with all her heart. “No, he didn’t prove anything.”
“You were very emotionally attached to him as a teenager. Could that have influenced you?”
“I keep telling you, it was no love affair.” But it had turned into a love story for both of them. Though not for each other. A love story about Bonnie. “He didn’t do it.” She finished her coffee. “He’s trying to find out who did kill her.”
Catherine stared at her. “He told you that? Queen said he was very clever. Eve, he’d realize that was the most persuasive thing he could say that would make you believe he wasn’t her killer. You’d identify with him immediately.”
And Eve knew that was true. It didn’t make any difference. “I believe him.”
Catherine shook her head. “Look at it objectively from my point of view, Joe’s point of view. Gallo finds out that we’re on his trail. He has a choice of going deeper undercover, killing you and everyone connected with you, or convincing you that he’s not really the bad guy as you’ve been told. The first two choices are messy and would interfere with this nice life he’s built for himself. So he looks for a way to get you away to himself and go for option three.”
“He didn’t kill her.” Eve saw the impatience on Catherine’s face, and added, “I know you think I’m being unreasonable. You’re right. Reason has nothing to do with this. But he loved Bonnie, and he would never murder her.”
“He couldn’t have loved her. He didn’t know her.”
Eve couldn’t explain without seeming even more irrational than Catherine thought her to be. She could only repeat. “He didn’t kill her. If it will make you feel better, I’m not going to let him off with just accepting that as fact. There are so many things about this I don’t understand, but I think he’s way ahead of me in the search for Bonnie’s murderer. I believe he knows who did kill her, and I’m going after him and make him tell me who it is.”
“Or make him confess that he did it himself.” She was frowning down at the coffee in her cup. “I don’t like the setup, Eve. He swoops down and takes you away and hypnotizes you into thinking you have some kind of joint mission. The odds of his being able to do that are damn slim. He has to be a spellbinder. I knew when I was talking to Queen that Gallo was bigger than life. Yeah, I was feeling sorry that he was a victim, but I don’t feel sorry for him now.”
“I’m not going to try to convince you.” She stood up. “I’m going after Joe. I’m getting worried. He should have been back by now.”
“Wait. I’ll go with you.”
“Finish your coffee.” Eve was already at the door. “Judy said there was no way he could catch up with Gallo.”
“She doesn’t know Joe.” She joined Eve as she reached the hall. “I wouldn’t want him after me. He’s a driven—” She broke off as Judy opened the basement door.
Joe was not with her.
Eve stiffened. “You didn’t find him down there, Judy?”
She shook her head. “He found a hatchet among the tools down there and broke the lock on the exit door. There’s a passage that leads underneath the courtyard and down the mountain. John always left a vehicle in the trees about a quarter mile