A Face at the Window (34 page)

Bob looked at Helen, at the knife, and then at Helen once more. She could practically see him thinking with his cop mind: who Helen was, who her friends were, where they went and what they did there. The parties they all went to at night in summer, for instance, at the gravel pit or…out on the cliffs.

"Knife. The Knife Edge," he said.

"You know, Jacobia,
when I look back on it I have to admit that almost all of it was really about your father."

"Get to the point." Astonishing, she thought, that she could
summon the breath to speak, now when the terror she felt made all other fears fade. The stone bridge out over the rocks and water had cracked all the way through, and any instant now it could…

Oh, screw it. Just…
She got up and took a step.

Act as if,
Sam's AA pals told him. Fake it till you make it. Pretend you've beat the bottle, that you don't want a drink. That you're fine. That you're not, as he would've suggested, flat-out shared skitless.

Another step, and then another. Campbell stood only six feet away, now, Lee still trapped under his left arm. She'd stopped struggling, and from the look on her face she was thinking about something, turning the pros and cons of it over in her head.

"He was a lot smarter than me, your dad," Campbell went on. "Better looking, too. Better all the way around. He had a home, a wife and a kid."

He shook his head ruefully. "Just…better." Behind him the water spread brilliant blue, with the long strip of green that was the island of Campobello dividing it from the sky.

"Not that he ever made me feel that way deliberately. He was too good for that, too."

Sour twist on the word
good.
A sailboat motored tranquilly out past the Cherry Island Light. Fixing her gaze on the horizon made Jake feel better, but then a breeze riffled her hair, set her heart hammering again inside the fragile cage of her ribs.

"Did you know they never spent a penny on themselves?" he asked. "Your mom and dad? On you, the things you needed, sure."

He laughed for some reason only he knew, sparking a long-ago vivid memory of his voice from a nearby room where her parents sat happily with him, eating a meal and drinking wine, while she lay warm in her bed drowsily listening to grown-up
laughter. A laugh from another life. "Otherwise they gave fifty here, a hundred there," he recalled. "Anonymous, gave it to people in the neighborhood who they knew needed it."

Because everyone there had known everything about everyone, just like here. She put her foot forward again. "What's that got to do with me?"

Back then, he'd been a young man with thick hair, a wolfish grin that both delighted and terrified her, bright white teeth and gleaming eyes…Even to the child she had been, Ozzie Campbell had been a handsome man. But now he looked like what he was, some guy from New Jersey who used to work construction and owned a bar and was in trouble with the law. If she'd passed him on the street today, she wouldn't have recognized him.

"I just wanted you to know," he said. "Why I loved her. Both of them, really. He was my friend, and she—"

"Fine, I get that. Cut to the chase, though, will you? Tell me exactly what you need me to change in that statement. I'll do it, no problem. Just give me the kid."

He blinked in surprise. "But… I thought you knew. The DA's guy didn't tell you? That Sandy guy, he works for—"

"Told me what? They haven't said anything."
If,
she added impatiently to herself,
there was anything to tell.
Campbell was desperate about something, or he wouldn't have done all this. But guys who walked into shopping malls and began firing at random were desperate, too; just not about anything coherent.

He spoke again. "There's new forensic evidence."

She stopped dead. "What?" Sandy O’Neill had mentioned it, that all the evidence from the original crime scene still existed and was being examined again, in case it might turn up something new. And his message last night…

Call me. There've been developments. A change in plans.

Campbell's ravaged face took on a dreamy expression. "The dress she wore, remember that flowered, silky one she had on? I didn't. But you described it perfectly in your victim's impact statement. And that black velvet ribbon in her hair. The soft shoes she always wore, like ballet slippers…"

He met her gaze. "They found them; even back then they were good enough to find things like that. Traces of them, what was left after the fire."

He hitched Lee tighter up under his arm. "They're in the new report. It's all there. Everything but…"

She understood. "The earring," she finished for him. The one he was wearing now, the one he'd always said Jake's mom had given to him, days before she died…

But on that night Jake had seen both of them. "I described it, didn't I? Seeing the two earrings, not just one—"

Dangling before her as she lay under the quilt, her mother leaning over to murmur loving words, kiss her good night. The ruby earrings, flashing by the light of the scented candles her mother had enjoyed, and later by the larger fire's savage brilliance…"That must've been how the fire got started," she said. "The candles must've overturned."
In the struggle,
she didn't add; it would've been pointless.

But it was so. "Maybe," he said, even now admitting nothing. "But here's the thing," he went on, his voice suddenly brisk with purpose. "The new forensics tests confirm your whole description of her that night. Clothes, shoes, hair ribbon—all accurate in every detail. So…"

At his words, what Sam would've called a knowledge-bomb went off in her head. "So because I'm proven right about the rest," she said slowly, "a jury will believe me about the earrings, too?"

She couldn't keep the triumph out of her voice. "They will, won't they? That she wore both of them that night so she couldn't have given one of them to you, days earlier. Before…"

Her whole body trembled as her understanding of what this meant went on expanding. "They'll know you lied. She didn't give it to you, not for love or any other reason. She never would've. And there's no other motive for you to have lied, is there?"

Her throat closed convulsively. "They'll know you must have gotten it while you were…"

While you were strangling her.
And with that, she realized, she wasn't just a long-ago murder victim's survivor anymore, her story no longer a heartrending but ultimately irrelevant tale of childhood tragedy. Instead, she was what she'd yearned to be:

The prosecution's slam-dunk. Campbell nodded, confirming it. "Sandy O’Neill's boss Larry Trotta is revising his trial strategy as we speak, I would imagine. With you as the star witness and him as the political scene's brand-new golden boy."

That, she realized, was what Sandy's last message must have been about: He and Larry Trotta had already decided what to do. Now they were letting her in on their plan. Which Ozzie Campbell and
his
attorney would have figured out, also.…

"But you couldn't just kill me," she said, still staring at him, "to shut me up. Because if anything happened to me, you'd be the obvious suspect. So first, you sent people to watch me."

He'd saved her, she realized abruptly. She didn't remember, but that's how she'd wound up on the beach. Campbell must have gone out, hand over hand on that steel cable to the rocks near where she'd floundered, and dragged her ashore before she drowned. Because he needed her to live.…

Lee looked up and smiled purposefully, as if she, too, had
come to some realization. Jake stepped out to the midpoint of the promontory, and past it. The height, the wind…they still buffeted her, still scared her.

Just not like before. Inside her head, everything had gone calm. "You wanted to know where I went, what I did. You wanted to learn what I cared for the most. Who," she finished, "I loved."

His face said she'd gotten it almost right. Her Achilles’ heel, her weakest point, where he could best attack her. But—

"That's why I felt followed and watched, not because I was being paranoid but because you really did have someone here."

Though even now she couldn't have said who. "And then…"

He shook his head. "Not someone. Me. Hanging around, playing the tourist. Oh, don't look so surprised," he added. "You barely recognize me now. And people here," he went on, "are friendly. So
chatty,"
he pronounced scornfully. "If you approach them right."

Not if you behaved like the thugs had in Wadsworth's, asking a lot of nosy questions right off the bat. But if your curiosity stayed low-key and you never got too pushy or intrusive…

"Anyway," he said, "I found you and I wanted to make a deal. But if I'd asked, would you have met with me? Of course not," he answered before she could. "Why would you?"

She faced him wordlessly. "That's why I fixed it so you'd have to agree to see me," he went on, "to hear what I had to say whether you liked it or not. Lured you, teased you. And now…"

He smiled beatifically as the day brightened around him, all the water and sky filling steadily with the rich, golden light of a Maine island summer. "And now here you are."

"They'll never believe me," she objected. "If I just change my story for no good reason—"

"You don't have to change it. Just say…you're not so sure anymore. About the clothes and so on, fine. But not the earring. Hey," he added, "it's not like eyewitnesses don't go sour on the prosecution all the time. Don't worry, you won't be the first."

Small comfort. And slinging that kind of thing past Sandy O’Neill and Larry Trotta wouldn't be any cakewalk, either. Still, it could be done; better no witness than a poor one, the two of them would be thinking. If they couldn't use her, they couldn't. Whether
they
liked it or not.

"But how do you know I won't cheat?"

Because he must have thought of it, too, that his deal made no sense. Once she got Lee back, it didn't matter what she'd told him; there was no way for him to guarantee she'd keep her word to him. But he had an answer for that, also.

"I already told you." He waved his free arm; she caught her breath as he teetered, caught his balance again. "It's why I had to get you way up here, do it all the way I did. So you'll know, so you'll
believe…
"

He looked gloatingly down at Lee. "… that I'll do anything. And…that I
can."

His plan, conceived and executed in only a few weeks, had been from the start a shaky, Rube Goldberg-like contraption of tight scheduling and obsessive preparation, so detailed and full of opportunities for failure that only a madman would attempt it.

But it had succeeded. He'd done it. She was here.

"I'm not going to jail," he said flatly "After all I've been through…I'm just not, that's all, no matter what. So either you promise to change your statement or I'll drop this kid right now. Break your promise later, though," he added, "and…"

He extended his arm, dangling Lee over the precipice. "I'll come back. She'll never be safe—I swear," he finished obscenely, "on your mother's grave."

There was no grave. The fire, and the resulting explosion, had made sure of that. "You'd be in jail," she responded dully.

"You're sure? So confident that even with your testimony they wouldn't convict me on lesser charges, or even not at all?"

Again correct: In a jury trial, anything could happen. And even if he did go to jail, or if he died…he'd hired thugs once. He could hire more, even from the grave. She felt her old money-management know-how kicking in, ticking off the steps: set up a trust, fund it, leave instructions with a crooked lawyer…

Probably Ozzie Campbell would have no trouble finding one of those. "All right," she gave in. "I promise. Bring her in now."

"No. I told you before, you come out here."

"But—" The drop from the Knife Edge yawned emptily at her.

"Don't argue with me," he snapped. "Your mother…she'd have come with me, you know," he added slyly, trying to goad her.

Or maybe he couldn't help himself; maybe he believed it. Maybe that was what he'd been telling himself all this time. "She loved me; she'd have left him for me. She just wouldn't leave
you
."
‘

That was it; he really did believe it. The sheer narcissism of it took her breath away—that he blamed
her.
"She would never have left my dad," Jake said before she could stop herself.

His eyes narrowed; after all, she'd just contradicted what
he
wanted to believe…but then his focus returned. "Come and get her," he repeated. "Or I'll drop her just to get this over with."

Lee gazed around mildly, unaware of her peril. But
Campbell could still lose his grip on her at any moment. Or he might just let go deliberately—
to torture me, Jake
realized.

Because the way she'd felt about Campbell was how he'd felt about her, too, she understood now. Blame, bitterness, fantasies of revenge…

Unsteadily, she steeled herself; once she got all the way out to where he stood, maybe she
could
grab Lee, make it back off the cliff before it crumbled or she fell.

Maybe.
"That's right," he crooned avidly. In the distance a siren howled, rising and falling, but nothing anyone else did now was going to help her.

Nobody but me.
Another chunk of old granite broke off and fell away. Lee blinked sleepily as if waking from a nap, frowned as she turned her head.

Campbell's grin widened loathsomely. Abruptly, he hoisted Lee up against his shoulder. The child looked around as if seeing her chance for something, her bright gaze lighting suddenly on—

Uh-oh,
Jake thought. But it was already too late. The little blond girl with the Dutch-boy haircut opened her mouth very wide, then snapped it shut again.

On Campbell's ear.

"Lee, no!" Jake cried as he howled, staggering. Gripping the child's body in both hands he shoved frantically at her, but she'd clamped down on him like a bear trap; he stumbled on the shale still crumbling from beneath him.

"Jump toward me," Jake urged him as more rock broke off and plummeted. But he wouldn't or couldn't, and the gap fast opening between them now was already a good two feet wide, whole sections of it splitting off and vanishing while Lee's jaws went on making angry chewing motions.