Authors: Richard Hawke
Rosemary tossed her cigarette aside and stepped forward onto the dusting of snow on the edge of the patio. It crunched beneath her feet like pulverized glass. No one could see her. The snow was a dense white curtain. Unknotting her sash, she pulled her robe open, holding it out to her sides like a pair of green satin wings. The snow fell on her bare skin, melting on contact. It felt good, like a soft shower of whispers, or thousands of tiny attendants kissing, kissing, kissing…
MEGAN LOADED HER CLIP and slapped it into place. She adjusted her goggles and her protective ear covers. She felt as if she were still very much in her morning dream, operating in a haze. The muffled sounds from the half dozen other shooters were oddly pacifying.
It was a private shooting range, located in the basement of a midsize building on West Twentieth Street. A place to blow off steam and lead in equal measure. Megan assumed the shooting stance, clamped her left arm onto her right forearm, and sighted along the barrel. Like a lot of cops, she was fond of the old-fashioned target, the black-and-white drawing of the beefy antagonist hunched over his snubby. Gus. At least that’s the name she’d picked up for the target along the way. Sweat was pouring down Megan’s face. Her goggles had fogged somewhat, but she didn’t care. She didn’t need to see the target clearly. In fact, all the better if Gus remained cloudy. She could apply any face to the target she chose. Even her own.
Megan logged a half hour at the range. She slaughtered Gus over and over and over. He kept coming back for more. Fresh and crouched and ready. Megan’s entire body was drenched in sweat by the time she left. She caught the subway back down to the Village and showered and dressed for work. Before she left, she threw a plate at the kitchen wall. By the time she headed uptown, she was sweating all over again.
THE SNOW EDGED around Rosemary’s pink toes. Her eyes were still closed. She was making some decisions.
She thought again of Vail. She thought of Santorini. She thought of Tuscany, where the Turk had told her he had a place on a small hill surrounded by olive groves. She imagined a patio, not frosty like this one, but baked warm by the Tuscan sun. The sea of soft green rows. The burnt-sienna horizon.
What the hell was she still doing
here
?
Rosemary reknotted the sash on her robe. She felt remarkably new. Cleansed. Fresh. Most amazing, really. Now she just had to get rid of her ape. Wrap up that business. Pray he wouldn’t make a scene. The story of Rosemary’s life, it seemed. They always made a scene. Big, strapping men, and in the end they acted just like babies. She wondered if she should even bother with the Turk. She was just so damn tired of scenes.
Rosemary went back into the apartment. More than anything, she wanted to be alone. Right now. She wanted to plan out her next moves, and she didn’t want a large hairy presence moving about the apartment as she did so. He’d been getting more possessive these past few weeks, she’d noticed. Insisting more often on remaining the entire night. Hanging around as if he owned the joint. As if he owned
her
, which was a great big ha!
Do it quickly, she told herself as she entered the bedroom. He doesn’t know from nuance anyway, so just spell it out and be done with it. It’s been a good run, it’s been a crazy run, it’s been a dangerous run. The smart thing is to end it. Stick it in the memory books, lover, and be glad we got away with as much as we did.
He was awake, frowning as she approached, almost as if he knew what she was about to do. Good, she thought. That will make it all the easier.
She didn’t even sit down on the edge of the bed but remained standing, her arms crossed tightly, signaling him that the goods were off-limits now.
“I want you out of here. This has gone on too long, and we both know it. Let’s not make a big deal out of it, okay?”
He argued. Rosemary had figured he would. He didn’t have much to argue about, and she tried to tell him so. The next thing she knew, she was on the floor. She’d barely seen him lurch up from the bed. Rosemary slashed at him with her fingernails, but she knew full well the extent of his strength. Ants against elephants. She tried to wriggle backward away from him, but he got her by the hair and jerked her head back with all his strength. She couldn’t find the breath to cry out. His fingers tore at her robe, and she realized what he was intent on. She found her breath.
“No!”
Rosemary wasn’t accustomed to hearing fear coming from her own mouth. Her cry was followed by a fist to her mouth. She thought her lip had exploded. She felt the blood spilling onto her chin. She attempted to get at his eyes, but he reared back and she thrashed at empty space. Her legs were being shoved apart.
No way
! She knew where she had to hit him, but before she could manage, the ape rattled her head so hard against the floor she thought her skull was going to crack. She felt all her strength waver, and then it was too late. He had the nerve to try to kiss her as he did it, but she was able to twist her head sideways. Small victory.
It ended. He rolled off her, getting up first onto all fours, looking more than ever like the brute creature he was, then rising up slowly to his feet. She remained on the ground. The taste of her own blood was disgusting. Rich and gooey, where just minutes before, light sparkles of snow had melted there so effortlessly. Her body was beginning to shake, which for Rosemary was the largest embarrassment of all. She didn’t want him to see her quiver.
He ran an arm across his mouth, as if he required the enormity of the entire limb in order to wipe clear whatever was there. From where Rosemary lay on the floor, he looked a thousand feet tall. He wiped a second time, then looked down at her with sullen eyes. “Has anyone ever told you how ugly you are?”
MEGAN LAMB POKED her head in to Joe Gallo’s office. The homicide lieutenant was seated at his desk, scissoring the blinds to look out at the snow.
“Rosemary Fox,” Megan said. “She’s at the Cornell Medical Center with a sprained neck, facial abrasions and signs of possible rape.”
Gallo released the blinds. “Then what are you doing here?”
“I’LL GET YOU a platter,” the doctor said to Megan. “You’ll want something to put your head on when she hands it to you.”
“You didn’t tell her you phoned the police, I hope.”
“The patient did not make the request. So, technically speaking, no. But given the circumstances—”
“Don’t worry,” Megan said. “How about we say I just happened to be in the neighborhood on other business and spotted Mrs. Fox being taken out of the ambulance?”
“Taxi,” the doctor corrected. “Apparently, she got a cab at her building and went right into shock. The cabbie brought her here.”
“Was she carried or walking under her own power?”
“The cabbie helped her. So did an orderly.”
“Right. I remember now. Cabbie and an orderly. So what’s the damage?”
“I’ve seen worse. Facial lacerations. Severe neck trauma. There’s definite vaginal tearing. It looks ugly to me, but she’s swearing she had consensual sex. I know this can be a rough town, but I think she’s lying.”
“Covering up for someone?”
“I’ll leave it for you to draw the conclusions.” As Megan started for the door, the doctor added, “You might want to consider a chair and a whip.”
“Thanks. I’ll take my chances.”
Rosemary had been outfitted with a neck brace. As Megan entered the room, Rosemary’s eyes moved first, then her head. The eyes darkened. Her lower lip was twice its normal considerable size, and it sported a pair of nasty stitches. A large circle on Rosemary’s cheek looked as if she had gone seriously overboard with her rouge. A white rectangular bandage was in place just above her left eyebrow.
“What are
you
doing here? I didn’t ask for the police.”
“I saw you being brought in,” Megan said.
“Is that so? Why don’t I believe you?”
“What happened, Mrs. Fox?”
Rosemary tried to sneer, but her cuts and stitched lips rendered the attempt pathetic. “Nothing happened. I fell down a flight of stairs.”
“The doctor says there are no other injuries indicating a fall. Are we to assume you bounced all the way down on your head?”
“Assume what you wish.”
Megan turned a rolling chair backward and dropped into it. “And the sexual assault. That occurred where? Midway down the stairs?”
Rosemary’s natural imperiousness was made a parody by her neck brace. Megan noticed that Rosemary had arranged her long thick hair to conceal the restrictive device as best as possible. “Sexual assault, as you put it, is the fantasy of that lecherous doctor.”
“You’re saying you weren’t sexually assaulted?”
“If anyone will listen, yes.”
“But you have had sex recently. This morning sometime. The lecherous doctor isn’t wrong about that, is he?”
Rosemary felt the shaking coming on again, and by a force of will, she stilled it. She’d be damned if she was going to allow this incident to turn into a horror show. It was already surreal enough, all of it.
“I don’t discuss my personal life with strangers.”
Megan asked, “Does your husband know that you’re seeing someone while he’s in prison?”
“Who says I’m ‘seeing’ anyone?”
“It’s just a hunch. You’re protecting somebody. I’m guessing it’s someone who is more than just a one-night stand.”
“Oh, please. Stop it already.”
“You’ve managed the loyal-wife thing wonderfully, Mrs. Fox,” Megan said. “You had most of us fooled.”
Rosemary remained cool. “Marshall needs my support. You might have noticed that his reputation is a bit tainted. I hardly think I gain anything by running off on him or ganging up on him.”
“Let’s get back to your assault.”
“I told you, that is my business.”
“From the look of things, somebody was pretty angry with you.”
Rosemary snapped, “Well, I’m pretty fucking angry with him, too.”
Good, Megan thought. Bonding. “Just a word of advice, Mrs. Fox. You’re going to need a better story than I-fell-down-a-flight-of-steps.”
“Who says I’m going to need a story at all?”
“You’re a public commodity. People are going to insist on hearing what happened to your beautiful face.”
“Since you ask, I’ve been thinking of taking my beautiful face away somewhere for a while. It’s a big world, Detective. I know how to hide in it when I have to.”
“I thought you just said you gained nothing in running away from your husband.”
“Who says I’m running away? My lawyer tells me that the judge is about to declare a mistrial. Marshall might be released on bail soon. I wouldn’t be running away. Perhaps I’d be preparing a place where my husband could get some long-needed privacy.”
“I’m afraid that even if your husband is allowed out on bail, he’s going to be required to keep very much in plain sight. I can assure you, he is not going to be given a leash so long that he can fly off and join you somewhere halfway around the world. It just doesn’t work that way. Perhaps it would be wiser if you were to stay close to home as well.”
Rosemary’s eyes narrowed. “I can go anywhere I damn well please.”
Megan backed off. Her mind was racing. She needed to get it in control. She needed to layer her thoughts calmly, one atop the other. “I suppose your personal life is none of my business, Mrs. Fox,” she said, rolling back in her chair away from the woman. “If you want an assault and rape to go unreported, I guess that’s your affair. We can’t force a wife to testify in court against her husband, and I guess we can’t force a woman to prosecute her abusive lover.”
“Former lover, Detective, if that makes you feel any better.”
“Former? So what am I looking at? Was this your boyfriend’s idea of a swan song?”
“It’s my fault for letting it drag on so long,” Rosemary said. “Lesson learned.”
Drag on so long
. Megan was dying to know just how long it had dragged on. Months? A year? Just how long after her husband was put behind bars had Rosemary taken her mystery lover? For that matter, had Rosemary perhaps been cheating on Fox even prior to the murders?
“Would you like me to drive you back to your home?” Even before Rosemary could begin to answer, a second thought came to Megan. “Wait. That’s not such a good idea, is it? I’m sure there are photographers hanging around your building. One look at you in this condition…Is there someone you can call who’d come get you and take you somewhere more private? At least for the day? I’m sure you don’t need the aggravation.”
Rosemary gave the idea some thought. She liked it. In fact, she knew exactly where she’d like to go. The Hamptons. In the dead of winter it was like a morgue out there. She could give Gloria a call and have a car sent. In a matter of hours, Rosemary could be sitting in front of a fire in that big ugly empty house, glass of wine in hand, looking out the glass doors at the misty ocean. Nobody around to take pieces of her. It sounded nice. She could do her thinking there, start to get her exit strategy sorted out. No way was she going to abide sitting around through a whole new trial. She knew that much. Sorry, Marshall, but the time had come. She could begin to plan the next phase of her life in earnest. Getting banged around might have been the best thing that could have happened to her.
Rosemary looked over at the detective and gave her what, on any other day, would have been her killer smile. “Lady, I like the way you think.”
MEGAN MOVED right past her car. She waited until she was a block away from the hospital before she pulled out her phone. It wasn’t as if she was afraid that Rosemary Fox could hear through walls; what Megan needed was the trudge up York through the snow to think things through. Before she could punch in the number, her phone went off. It was Joe Gallo.
“Got him!”
“Who? Got who?”
“Who do you think? Spicer. You’ll never guess where we grabbed him. Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. He managed to spend the night there, then went off into the wrong restroom this morning. A nun came into the women’s room, and there he was in one of the stalls, screaming fire and brimstone over his phone to Jimmy Puck. The nun fetched a pair of cops from out in front of the church. We just got him in the box a few minutes ago. He says he doesn’t want a lawyer. I’m putting him on a low boil until you can get back here. What’s up on your end, anyway? Do we know who beat up Mrs. Fox?”