Authors: Richard Hawke
“Hold on.” Ross put the car in reverse and flung his arm over the back of the seat to look behind him.
Tracy was alarmed. “What are you doing? Are you backing up?”
No, I’m doing the fucking Charleston.
That’s it, Ross thought as he maneuvered partway onto the shoulder in order to squeeze past a pickup truck, I’m having nothing more to do with this simpleton. She’s been nothing but trouble ever since I first heard her goddamn name. His eyes went to the backseat, where he’d laid his overcoat. The edge of the crowbar that he’d fetched from the trunk when they were in the airport parking lot was showing. Ross stretched back farther and flipped an arm of the overcoat over the metal bar. The car swerved dangerously close to the far shoulder of the road, but he pulled the wheel in time to avoid the ditch.
Tracy asked, “Are you going to try another road?”
Ross kept his voice level. “That’s right. The exit’s about half a mile back. It’s bound to be slower. But if we sit here, we’re dead in the water.”
He stole a glance at the woman. She was sitting straight up, eyes wide, jerking her head to look in all directions at once. Poor, stupid, silly thing. She didn’t know it yet, but she was already dead in the water.
THE SKY WAS dark gray and growing murkier by the minute when Ross finally pulled into the driveway. He had a moment of panic, fearing that the car might not make it through the unplowed snow. The last thing he needed was for his car to be hanging out for anyone passing by to notice. There’d been another accident, this one on Route 27A. Nowhere near as large as the tangle on the LIE. This one had involved only three cars, but it had still brought traffic to a standstill for nearly forty minutes. Ross had not enjoyed a single one of them.
The automatic door rumbled as it opened, and Ross pulled the car in to the garage, next to his prized cream ’68 Caddy. Ross turned off the car and lowered his hands to his thighs.
Stillness.
Tracy let her head fall back onto the headrest. “Gosh, it seems like we’ve been driving for days. You did great.”
Ross remained silent. He sat stone-still, gazing through the darkened windshield at the images flashing in his brain:
Cynthia Blair bumping into him as she emerged from Marshall’s building.
The Rossman girl, so fatally gullible, getting into his car.
That unfortunate young woman’s huge Christmas tree.
“Alan?” Tracy twisted to look out the back window at the darkening day. “Um, where is everyone? When’s the party supposed to start?”
Now.
Ross leaned his shoulder into the driver’s-side door. “They’ll be here. We’ve got to set things up. The caterer should be here any minute. Come on. There’s something I want to show you. It’s going to be the big surprise.”
He got out of the car and pulled open the back door, fetching his coat as well as the crowbar hidden in its folds. As Tracy got out, Ross put on the coat and dug his left hand into the pocket, slipping the crowbar under the coat so that he could hold it in place under his arm.
Tracy met him at the back of the car. She was shrugging into her stylish blazer. “What’s the surprise?”
“It’s out in the boathouse.”
Tracy hugged herself and performed a parody of shivering. “Maybe we should go inside first and get me a sweater or something.”
Ross brought his right arm around her shoulder and hugged her to him. She responded with a small giggle. “Ah, you’re a tough kid,” Ross said. “I’ll keep you warm. Come on. It won’t take long.”
The two left the garage, Ross activating the automatic door to close it behind them. They started around the side of the huge house. What with the snow and the fast fading of the day’s remaining light, the water was only vaguely visible. The boathouse, newly painted the summer before, was the sole piece of color visible as the two made their way across the large backyard.
“Alan, my shoes are already completely soaked. They’re going to get ruined. Let’s just go inside. I’m sure Gloria’s got some boots or something I can use.”
It wasn’t an unreasonable request. Quick detour into the house and then head straight back out. But Ross was tired. Now that he was no longer behind the wheel, the full weight of his fatigue was coming down on him. He wanted to sleep. He wanted a peaceful sleep. It didn’t matter if it was only a five-minute detour, enough was enough already. He scoffed at the notion that he’d even considered enjoying himself with this girl before wrapping things up.
“Alan?” Tracy lowered her shoulder and attempted to squirm out from under his arm, but Ross was quicker, and he held on to her. “Alan. Let go! Stop it.”
She tried again, this time shoving her hand against his chest. She managed to roll away from his arm, but Ross reached out and caught her arm before she could get away.
“What are you doing? Let go, Alan! It isn’t funny.”
From a distance it might have looked like a dance. Astaire and Rogers. The man in the long coat leaning back slightly to hold the weight of the woman at the end of his arm, the two of them arching backward like a pair of wings opening up. But there was nothing graceful in the sudden appearance of the black iron rod. Or in the way that it came down on the woman’s head over and over and over.
Nothing graceful at all.
MEGAN WAS UNABLE to get a signal. The last she’d spoken with Malone, he was still stuck in the snarl of vehicles around the accident. Megan had taken Route 27A to avoid the mess. Even there, she had passed several tow trucks on either side of the road, securing a pair of cars on their beds.
She pulled to a stop in front of Alan Ross’s driveway. She could make out tire tracks in the snow leading up to the garage. The garage door was closed. Megan decided to keep her car where it was and approach the house by foot. The wind was gusting hard, and when Megan opened the car door, a blast of whipping snow stung her in the face.
There were no lights on in the house that Megan could see. She knelt down to inspect the tire tracks. They seemed fairly fresh, the tread marks still quite distinct, not covered with any appreciable snowfall. The car that had made them could not have been here for long.
Approaching the garage, Megan made out two sets of footprints leading around the side of the house. She followed them through a wooden gate, where they led into the spacious backyard. As Megan moved forward, crouching somewhat so she could follow alongside the two pairs of footprints, she was unable to clear from her mind the evening—just over a year before—when she had located the Swede on his houseboat at the marina in Sheepshead Bay. Walking stealthily down the pier in the dark, placing her feet with the silence of a cat, her heart thumping hard in her chest, just like it was doing now. She tried to will the memory to recede, but it refused to budge.
Through the blowing snow, Megan could make out a small dark structure. The footsteps appeared to head in that direction. A boathouse. As she moved forward, a light appeared briefly in one of the windows. A brief, buttery flash and then it was gone. Then it happened again. A flashlight. Someone was waving a flashlight around.
Some hundred feet from the boathouse, Megan froze. The footprints in the snow stopped being parallel pairs and the snow became a scramble, like a cluster of failed snow angels. Several feet beyond, there was something dark on the snow. Megan knelt down and scooped up a handful of the dark snow. She touched the fingers of her other hand to the snow, and they came away darkened.
Megan wiped the bloody snow off against her coat and blew into her cupped hands, then reached to her hip holster and unfastened the safety strap. Her pistol felt heavy. She felt like she was palming a lead brick. Megan’s heart was no longer simply slamming in her chest; it seemed to have expanded to fill her entire torso. No need to step softly, as the snow would muffle her footsteps. She plunged forward. The darkness on the snow ran in smears, alongside a wide track, the imprint of a body being dragged. Megan ran her arm across her eyes to clear the blowing snow. She heard a voice letting out a fearful whisper. It could only be her own.
Helen.
ROSS WAS GOING to take the Boston Whaler. He’d have preferred the Chaparral, especially in this sort of weather, but the sleek runabout wasn’t wise for his purposes. Though not without effort, he’d be able to paddle the Whaler out into the ocean some distance before turning over the engine. That was one consideration. The other, frankly, was cleanup. What he had to do was going to be messy. The Chaparral had white leather seats, cream-colored cushioning, the padded dashboard. Much easier to mop down the Whaler.
Ross couldn’t wait until this whole stupid episode was over. All he wanted was to get the mess over with and go inside and crawl into his bed. Grabbing the prone body of Tracy Jacobs by the arm and dragging her along the dock beside the Whaler, Ross glanced up through one of the boathouse’s windows, where he could see the rear of his house, see his bedroom window. He was shocked to see that a light was on. For an instant, panic flooded his system. Slow, he told himself. It’s probably just a timer. Focus. One thing at a time, you know how this has to be done.
He thought of Cynthia. That one hadn’t been planned. There’d been no time for the sort of organization that he prided himself on. After it was concluded, yes, sure. A quick minute to think things through. The bit with the hand over the heart. A smart move. The others had been more to his liking. Problem. Plan. Execution. In Ross’s view, a smart person could accomplish anything he set out to accomplish. Anything. You just had to be the one in control of the situation. Plan. Execute. And make sure your ass was covered. Life was so simple, really, it was laughable.
Ross didn’t know whether the young woman was alive or dead. It didn’t matter. She was out cold, that was the important thing. It was her own fault, those several extra hits with the crowbar. She’d just been so fucking
irritating
. And not just now but in general. All he’d done for her. He’d given her a
life
, for Christ’s sake. If only she’d remained on her side of the country.
Ross paused and looked at the battered head at his feet. He thought he might throw up. He hadn’t needed to hit her
that
hard. It was Fox, dammit. He was the person to blame for all this. Marshall and his insatiable ego. And Cynthia, of course. The both of them. What Ross still marveled at was how in the world those two had managed to pull off their affair without Ross knowing. The secrecy, and especially the betrayal, that’s what was so infuriating. How many times had Ross made a complete ass of himself in front of Cynthia Blair, begging her,
begging
her to take his feelings for her seriously? She had no idea how urgently she had mesmerized him. No idea at all. She never listened properly. She never
heard
. Cynthia had said she was “flattered.” Who the hell cared about flattery? Alan Ross flattered people every day of the week; he could flatter a cement wall if he had to. Cynthia didn’t understand. He
had
to have her. This wasn’t a negotiation, it was a requirement. It was a
need
. Ross had groomed Cynthia at the network. He’d watched her grow and develop. He’d helped train her, helped her to sharpen her skills, to put the bite into her work. And hadn’t it paid off when he brought Marshall onto the scene? His two creations?
His
creations. Cynthia owed him. Big-time. Ross treasured the dynamic he and Gloria had established in the industry. They’d become a true power team. But that was Act One. Ross wanted the intoxication again, this time with Cynthia. He needed it. He needed to do it all over again, with fresh supple blood. If Cynthia played her cards right, she was definitely going places. Ross planned on going there with her, as simple as that. And if patience was what it required, he was prepared to remain patient. Power comes from action; it can also come from patience.
What Ross hadn’t been prepared for was running into Cynthia leaving Marshall’s building in tears one night the previous April. He had not been prepared for their walk through Central Park and her confession of her affair with Marshall. She’d allowed Ross to hold her, to keep his arm around her as she told him the squalid details. The words had moved about in Ross’s head at precarious angles, crashing into one another.
Marshall. Lovers. Affair
. Cynthia had allowed Ross a closeness like never before. She had told him she trusted him more than anybody else in her life, that his coming along at that precise moment was a miracle. The two had traveled arm in arm along the southern portion of the park, past the boat pond, pausing at the Alice in Wonderland statue, so creepy in the moonlight. Especially the Mad Hatter, with his large bony nose and his bad teeth. They’d moved on, traveling north, pausing at the base of Cleopatra’s Needle, where Cynthia had said she had something else she needed to tell Alan. Something more important to her than anything else in the world and that he had to promise not to breathe a word to anyone. This was something she would be handling in her own way. She had already made her decision, she said, and she was ready to live with the consequences. In fact, she was overjoyed with her decision. Taking hold of Ross’s hands, Cynthia had placed them on her stomach and held them there. Her touch sent an electrical current jolting through Ross’s system. He dared to massage her belly, ever so lightly. His fingertips kneading her pliant flesh. Then she smiled at him. Ross had never seen Cynthia smile like this before. Angelic.
“It’s so perfect, Alan. I mean, that you’re the first to know. It couldn’t be better. Because really, if you think about it, without you, none of this could have happened. Seriously. This is all because of you.”
She squeezed one of his hands, helping it to massage her belly a little harder as she told him her wonderful news.
TRACY JACOBS LET OUT a groan. Small and gurgling. Ross nudged her with the toe of his shoe. Oops, he thought. DNA all over my Lazzeris. So she was alive. Barely, he was sure. It didn’t matter. Maybe some duct tape on her ankles and wrists, to be safe. Certainly on her mouth. Ross aimed his flashlight beam at the wall, where several tools were hanging. There was the duct tape, just where he knew it would be. He wrapped the woman’s ankles together, then her wrists. He scraped the bloody hair back from her mouth and allowed her to complete her next groan before securing a large piece of tape on her mouth. He decided that the kind thing was to stick some duct tape over her eyes as well. She really didn’t need to see what was coming next.