Peter Decker 3-Book Thriller Collection: False Prophet, Grievous Sin, Sanctuary

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Faye Kellerman

Год написания книги

2019

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“Did either one of them talk to you?”

“No.”

“Not even at the beginning?”

“I … I’m sorry. Everything is such a blur. One of them might have said, ‘I have a gun.’ But I really don’t remember.”

“Do you know which one raped you?”

“I could describe his face, yes.”

“Did you see a gun, Lilah?”

“He … at … I think I felt the gun at my head. I felt on my temple … you know. He must have been holding it. I was … it hurt. I thought I was … going to die.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Do you want to take a break?” Decker asked.

“I’m … all right.”

“It’s no problem to stop.”

“No … not yet.”

“Okay. You think you were beaten before you were raped.”

“Yes.”

“You’re doing a great job, Lilah. Holding up really well. Which one beat you?”

“Both … I think.”

“Okay, they’re hitting you. Then they stopped.”

“Yes …” Her eyes focused on her lap. “Finally.”

“Are you all right?”

She whispered, “It’s … go on. I’m all right.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded.

“Okay. But don’t hesitate to stop if you need to. What happened after they stopped beating you?”

“One man raped me … the other …” She dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “He must have gone to the safe.”

“One man raped you while the other went to the safe.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what happened after the man came out of the safe?”

“I think … maybe they broke more things …” She looked at him with urgency. “He found what he wanted in the safe. I don’t know why he destroyed the room.”

“Could he have been looking for something else?”

“Impossible.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“He found what he wanted in the safe.”

“Yes.”

“What did he want, Lilah?”

“I wish all your questions were that easy to answer. It’s obvious that they were after my father’s memoirs.”

There was a moment of silence. Decker said, “They attacked you and trashed your bedroom for your father’s memoirs?”

Lilah bristled. “You don’t know who my father was?”

“He was a director—”

“Not just any director! He was the director. Hermann Brecht! As in the Brecht School of Performing Arts at Heidelberg. As in the Brecht Chair at Bonn University! He was not just a genius. He was the genius. His unsurpassed brilliance in film direction has and will be studied for years. The premier director of this century—fifteen masterpieces and all before he reached his untimely demise at twenty-eight!”

“Your father died at twenty-eight?”

“Yes.” Lilah’s eyes became shiny pools. “I was just a little girl so I don’t remember him too clearly. That’s why the memoirs are so important to me. They’re my history!”

“Lilah, I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but why would they be important to anyone else?”

Her face turned stony. “My father was a visionary of unsurpassed magnitude. About a year ago, dear Freddy let it slip out that Father had written his recollections and had willed them to me. Up until that time only he and I knew about them. Once Freddy let the cat out of the bag, I was suddenly deluged with calls and letters from universities asking me if I’d care to donate them. Donate! Can you imagine such gall!

“When it became clear I wouldn’t donate them, they tried to buy them away. Three thousand, thirty thousand, three hundred thousand. I wouldn’t have let them go for three million. Not for thirty million. But apparently someone else wanted them and was willing to do whatever was necessary to obtain them.”

“What’s in your father’s papers that makes them so coveted?”

She regarded him with disgust, then softened her look. “My father never granted interviews. The memoirs are the only living record of him lecturing about his films—his art—in his own words. And now, I may never know …” She exploded into tears.

Decker felt a headache coming on. She wasn’t making a lot of sense. Could it be a subtle sign of brain injury due to the beating? He’d ask Dr. Kessler. After she stopped crying, he said, “Why do you say you may never know? You haven’t read your father’s memoirs?”

“Oh, dear, why is life so complicated?”