“What happened to your daughter?” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like her own. “What happened to Brandy-Nicole?”
Harliss clasped his hands. He might have been praying, except for the whiteness of his knuckles. Gemma knew he must be squeezing so hard it hurt. “It was pretty bad in those days,” he said quietly. “Me and Aimee was always at each other’s throats. Money, mostly. We never had any. We burned through it. We were both getting high every night. Poor Brandy-Nicole wasn’t even three yet. . . .” His voice broke. “One time I woke up and she’d wet herself, made a mess all over in the middle of the night. Had to lie in it for hours. I was passed out cold all night, and Aimee hadn’t even bothered coming home. That’s when we split up for good.”
Shockingly, Gemma had the urge to comfort him, to tell him it was all right. But of course it wasn’t.
“I needed money bad.” His voice was barely a whisper. She wondered whether he had ever told this story before. At the door, Pete was still standing there. Frozen. Horrified. “I was still doing work for your dad. All that money everywhere . . .” His eyes slid away from Gemma’s. Guilty. “At first I just pocketed a few things. Stuff no one would notice. Pawned it off direct. I know it was wrong, but you got to understand. I wasn’t thinking straight—”
Gemma shook her head to say, It doesn’t matter.
Harliss licked his lips. “But then I started thinking about a bigger payday. You know, something hefty. I thought your dad must have something he didn’t want other people to know—there’s always dirt, especially for guys like him—” Again his eyes skated nervously to Gemma’s, but she didn’t correct him. She wouldn’t defend her father ever again.
“You’re talking blackmail,” Pete said. His voice sounded very loud.
Harliss nodded. “That was the idea, yeah.” He looked like he was about to apologize again. Gemma cut him off.
“What happened?”
He took a deep breath. “I went digging around your dad’s office, through his emails.” He squirmed. “Like I said, I was out of my mind—”
“Go on,” Gemma said. She felt weirdly breathless, as if a giant hand were squeezing her lungs.
“I couldn’t figure a way into his work files. Too much security. But I was looking for dirt closer to home, anyway. I got into his personal account. Trouble. That was the subject header of one of the very first emails. Trouble.”
The air in the motel was very still. Gemma had the sense that even the dust motes were hanging motionless in the air, suspended and breathless.
“I didn’t understand any of it. Not then. It was all about some kind of investment your father had made. Your dad was pulling out. Said he’d given plenty of money already and wanted nothing to do with it anymore, said he’d figured out it was wrong. And this man, Mark Saperstein, wanted more money out of him. He said with Haven going in a new direction, it was going to make them all rich in the end if only your dad would get Fine and Ives on board. I remember one phrase exact: They die early anyway. That was at the end of Saperstein’s message.”
Gemma felt the space between her heartbeats as long moments of blank nonexistence. What had they learned in biology about clones? Imperfect science. Cancers, tumors that grew like flower buds in manufactured lungs and hearts and livers. It was as if the growth of their cells, unnaturally jump-started, couldn’t afterward be stopped.
She wondered how old she would be when her cells began to double and triple and worse.
“Your dad caught me. Not then, but another time, in his office. High as a kite. He was pissed. After all he’d done for me, giving me another chance. Don’t blame him. Cops found some of your parents’ stuff back at our place, too. A watch and other stuff. I’d been too fucked up to offload it all. Getting careless. They booked me for theft and possession, too, since they found a few bags around my place. This time I got sent away for longer, because it wasn’t the first time. But first I spent a couple of weeks in a detox unit.
“Detox nearly killed me. I was so sick. I prayed that I would die. But I didn’t.” His hand moved again to the cross on his neck. “Afterward I swore I’d never touch none of that shit again. And I haven’t. That was fourteen years ago. I haven’t even taken a sip of beer and I won’t, never again.” Those eyes, surprisingly warm, surprisingly attractive, buried in that damaged face: Gemma could hardly stand to look at him. “It’s my fault Brandy-Nicole got taken. If I hadn’t been high, if I hadn’t got sent away, she’d still be here. With me. My baby . . .” His voice broke again and he looked away, pressing the heel of a hand into each of his eyes in turn. “Aimee said she’d been snatched from a grocery store.” He shook his head. “Didn’t make any sense from the start. That woman never went to a grocery store in her life. Only a corner store for more cigarettes and beer. Besides, why’d she wait two days to call the police? She kept changing her story, too. First Bran was snatched from a cart. Then from the back of the car. She came to visit, all hopped up, told me crackpot stories, couldn’t even bring herself to cry.” Harliss stared down at his hands, now clasped again. Gemma wondered how you could have faith after a loss like that. How you could pray.
“At first I thought Aimee might have just dumped her somewhere. Maybe even hurt her. The cops looked into it but not for long. They thought I was just mad, you know. The ex and all that. Aimee had a new guy, or at least it seemed like she did. She had a lot of money all of a sudden. New clothes, better car, and she was partying hard and heavy. Well.” For the first time, he smiled. But it was a horrible smile, thin and sharp and mean, like it had been cut there by a razor. “She got hers, I guess. OD’d just a few months later. All that dirty money. It’s true what the Bible says. You reap what you sow.”