First Daughter - Eric van Lustbader [124]
"Emma said his name was Ronnie Kray."
Until this moment Jack had thought the phrase "made his blood run cold" was merely a literary one. Now he experienced it literally. Emma had met with a serial killer, the man who had abducted Alli. Did Alli know that? He judged that now, as she was just beginning to open up, was not the time to tell her.
"But she suspected from the get-go Ronnie Kray might not be his real name," Alli said.
Every strangely wired synapse in Jack's brain was singing now. "Why would she question that?"
"Emma had done a lot of reading on the pathology of being an Outsider. In fact, she'd practically memorized a book called The Outsider, by Colin Wilson. That's where she got the term, that's how she knew she was one. She also read another book of Wilson's called A Criminal History of Mankind, I think. Anyway, she'd heard that name Ronnie Kray and looked it up. He was one of a pair of murderous twins in the East End of London. Their pathology fascinated her, and I think that was one of the reasons she even listened to this guy in the first place."
"They shared E-Two's point of view."
She nodded.
Jack felt the tug of his daughter. This important history had happened while he was obliviously going about his job. His daughter's life had slipped through his fingers like grains of sand. "Didn't she understand the potential for danger?"
"Of course she did," Alli said. "That was the lure, that was why she wouldn't back off. Then she began to suspect that Ronnie Kray was keeping secrets, so she set out to discover what they were."
"I can't believe this," Jack said, because he truly couldn't.
"Why not?" Alli said. "It sounds just like what you'd do."
There was no point mentioning that he was an adult with years of training. "I knew she didn't follow Kray blindly."
"Emma never did anything blindly."
"Not even drugs?"
"Especially not drugs. For Emma, taking them was a kind of, I don't know, social experiment."
"How d'you mean?"
"She wondered whether being stoned would allow her to approach another level of being an Outsider. To touch—I don't know—the infinite."
"And did it?"
"Uh-uh. It disappointed her. She was so sure there was something just out of reach, but so far out there, it was beyond our comprehension."
"I've had the exact same feeling," Jack said.
Alli nodded. "So have I."
He had a thought. "So did she really want to join E-Two or did she want to find out more about Ronnie Kray?"
Alli shrugged. "Emma's motives were never simple. One thing I do know: She was far too smart simply to follow the pied piper. Her bullshit alarm was totally scary."
Jack thought of the times she'd busted him on his screaming matches with Sharon, how he'd let her words go in one ear and out the other. Why had he done that? Why had he devalued her opinion? Or was the truth of what she was saying too difficult to face?
"There's something else," Alli said. "I got the feeling that because she knew how dangerous her being with Kray was, she kept a journal."
This interested Jack immensely. "I searched everything after her accident," he said. "I couldn't find anything."
Alli's fear returned full force. "Maybe I'm wrong. It's only a hunch. I mean she never said anything to me directly."
Still, it was something to ponder, Jack thought. Maybe he'd overlooked something.
"C'mon, let's go," he said, getting out of the car. When she'd joined him, he took her down the alleyway and around behind the buildings on Kansas Avenue. They had to be careful as they approached the rear of the FASR building, as it was lit up like an airport runway, crisscrossed by federal agents in flak jackets, riot helmets, and assault rifles loaded with rubber