Inspector Rames

Chapter 65

My thoughts circled our mysteries as we walked. Ethan and Danielle, the coffee shop meeting with Jade, the letter in the shoebox; Ethan and Danielle, the coffee shop meeting with Jade, the letter in the shoebox...

"TS," I said. "What does it stand for?"

Alex frowned. "'TS, I want you to have some...'"

"Something from me?" I suggested.

He thought about that. Silence settled between us as we approached the entrance to Danielle's block.

TS, I repeated to myself when we entered the building. As the opening of the letter, surely it had to stand for someone's initials.

And then it hit me.

I stopped at the end of the lobby, melting to the spot in realisation. Alex opened the lift doors and looked back. "What?"

"Oh, no." I jerked into motion, flying inside the car and taking him with me. "Make it go up, quickly!"

Alex slammed his hand into the control panel. "What is it?"

"Thomas, Danielle, Jade -- everything is about them!" 

When the lift stopped moving, I ran down the hallway to Danielle's front door. I hit the bell. "This is the police. Open the door, now!"

In the second before I'd shouted, there had been a snatch of noise -- the bump of something heavy as it had been laid down. Now there was a sudden stillness.

"Open the door, Danielle!"

Nothing.

Alex produced his lock picks. I nodded at him, and he got to work.

When the door clicked open, I drew my gun and shielded it behind my thigh. "We're coming in, Danielle!"

I went first, moving slowly. The hallway was empty. The living room was the first doorway on the left, and I looked in.

Danielle was kneeling on the rug, staring at the doorway. Benjamin was at her side, his hands wrapped around the big cardboard box in front of them. Toys were scattered across the floor. More boxes were piled up in the corner of the room.

I stepped over the threshold slowly. "Going somewhere?"

Then I saw the knife.

My gun flew up. Benjamin screamed.

"Oh, for God's sake!" Danielle got to her feet, the letter opener glinting in her hands. "Put that down!"

"Drop the knife," Alex said, his pistol raised over my shoulder.

"What?" She looked at her hands, and her eyes widened. "I was cutting some tape!"

I could see the tape now, brown like the rug it was lying on, almost camouflaged. "Just drop it."

She did. The letter opener tumbled onto the rug.

"Now step away from Benjamin."

Her face turned white. "You can't think -- I would never hurt my son!"

I heard the desperation in her voice, and I knew that she was pleading not for me to see something, but to turn a blind eye to something else.

"That's the crux of the matter, Danielle," I said. "Benjamin isn't your son."

Silence fell over the flat. Danielle dropped to her knees.

"'I want you to have something to remember me by,'" I continued. "That's what Jade really wrote. I'd bet on it."