Sweat was dripping from every pore in his body and he could wring water out of his hair, but he needed to keep lashing out, to hammer at something. So it was
whap
, a solid body blow. And another.
Ssssttt
. A slicing jab to the top of the head. And yet another. And one more. This one sent a wave of pain up his right arm. He smiled and grunted. And struck at the bag as if it were possessed by demons, as if every wrong in the world could be righted if only he hit hard enough.
Carl was breathing hard now, had been for a good twenty minutes. But he hadn’t yet accomplished what he needed to. He hadn’t gotten the night’s work out of his system. He had not gotten his brain to stop working, which was what he wanted more than anything.
He wanted to stop thinking about Gideon.
Needed
to stop. And the only way he knew how to do that was to move and hit and sweat until his muscles ached and his body collapsed.
It wasn’t just the pleasure or the exertion of writing so quickly. Sure, that was draining. But there was something wrong with this whole thing. Something that was starting to bother him, gnaw away at him. Gnaw, hell. He might as well admit it. Something was starting to eat him up inside.
The story he was writing had started out innocently enough, but it had quickly turned dark and deadly. According to the diaries, notes, and documents he had been fed, someone had, as a young boy, murdered a small child. Not only that, he had gotten away with it. But by the very nature of Maggie Peterson’s endeavor, that someone was obviously vulnerable today because of it. The question was who. Who was the boy who had done it, and who was the man he had grown up to be?
And who the hell was Gideon?
Thwappp!
He winced as the jolt of that shot traveled all the way up to his elbow. He shook it off, moving his feet, bobbed and weaved.
Just keep moving
, he told himself,
and no one’ll lay a hand on you
.
Maggie had said the source was in Washington. Did that mean the real-life Danny had grown up to be a politician? If so, an elected official or a member of the cabinet? How high up did this thing go.”
Bam!
Or maybe it was a power broker. A member of the media. The owner of a newspaper or a television anchor. Or someone from the religious right who’d built up an influential following.
It was impossible to tell from what he’d seen so far. But what he
could
tell was that this book was not merely a commercial enterprise. It was not a thinly veiled kiss-and-tell, meant to titillate gossip.
Gideon
was not meant to be just a potential best-seller; it was going to be used to destroy someone’s career. Perhaps his very life.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Thwappp!
For the book, Carl had made up the names of those involved. The real names had been carefully covered over in every document he’d received, and Harry Wagner never gave him enough time to try to get to the truth. Without the truth, he had begun to think of these people by the names he’d ascribed to them. And slowly, as he added personalities and feelings and emotions to go with those names, they had begun to come alive for him. They had become flesh and blood. Christ, they
were
flesh and blood. And the more he wrote, the more he need to find out what had really happened to them, the more he needed to know how the lives he was creating on paper had turned out in real life.
He knew he was becoming obsessed. How could he
not
be obsessed? Especially after what he’d read and learned that day. He had stopped writing at two A.M., but he hadn’t stopped thinking. There was more material, more information he’d gotten from Harry Wagner. And he’d read it all.
The woman he knew as Rayette had come home late the night of the murder. Thinking about her, Carl could visualize her handwriting. A sloppy, thin scrawl, somehow harsh yet strangely elegant and sad. Like the woman herself, he thought. He could see her, picture her stepping through the front door. Danny had already returned from his concert. He was sitting in the living room when she walked in, and from the silence in the house she immediately knew something was wrong. Mother and son had stared at each other. Then she went to see the infant. Rayette was used to looking at the child in quick glances. She could not bear to stare at him for any length of time. But now she stared for long minutes. And when she was finished staring, she went back to the living room, back to her living son.
And she smiled.
They buried the baby that night under the cover of darkness. Danny dug a grave to the right of the ramshackle barn that stood behind the house. Rayette carried the baby out, wrapped in a blanket, then settled him into a small wooden box, a vegetable crate, and placed him in the ground. Danny shoveled the dirt back in and tamped it down as best he could. They said no goodbyes, spoke no prayers, held no ceremony. The whole thing took less than fifteen minutes. That was all the time needed to erase any traces that Rayette had ever had a second son and Danny had ever had a brother.
The next day they left town.
For the next several years, mother and son rarely stayed in one place for long. They moved all through the south, Rayette working as a waitress and an occasional whore. Danny became a good student. An excellent student, in fact—Carl had seen the report cards and the glowing comments from teachers.
Rayette married three more times, and she hit gold the last time. Well, if not exactly gold, a semiprecious stone. Her last husband was a decent man. He not only treated his family well, but when he died, he left them some money. Not a fortune, but enough so Rayette could buy a better brand of bourbon and spend her days at the racetrack. Enough so Danny could go to a good college up north, could get out of the South and …
And what?
That was the question that was in Carl Granville’s mind when he hit the bag for the last time. The punch lacked any power. And his legs were gone. He’d had it. Without even taking off his sweat-streaked T-shirt or his briefs, Carl sprawled out on his bed and was asleep within seconds after his head hit the pillow. It was a deep sleep, but one filled with dreams and disturbing images. Images of a poor dead child. Images of wicked people and wicked deeds in a past that only he was privy to.
And dreams of a troubling future.
A future unknown but certain to be feared.
The Closer waited patiently for the Target to arrive.
The Target was running late, and that was not a good thing. The schedule was very tight. There was no margin for error. None. But the Closer remained focused and prepared and patient, as always.
The walking helped. A steady, deliberate pace, up and down the block, always keeping the building within view. It was a warm evening. The air was heavy and still. It was one of those nights when the city holds on to the heat and won’t let go. The Closer liked the heat, liked the feeling it brought that everything was closing in, like the sense that it could, eventually, smother whatever it came in contact with. The Closer particularly enjoyed being in costume.
There was hardly anyone on the street. This was a neighborhood where people went to bed early, either because they worked hard or because they were old. The Closer could hear the hum of their bedroom window air conditioners. Feel the condensation as it sprinkled down onto the sidewalk below. There were doormen at one end of the block. They nodded and got a nod in return. The Closer smiled now, despite the lateness of the hour and the tight schedule, sauntering up and down the block, comfortable in the summerweight uniform, soundless in the rubber-soled black brogans. Smiling, sometimes even laughing quietly. Noticed by no one.
Except for one middle-aged couple in a Range Rover. They stopped to roll down their window and ask if the Closer happened to know where the nearest twenty-four-hour parking garage was. The Closer suggested they make a right turn, go three blocks, and try the high-rise apartment building that was on the far corner, right-hand side of the street.
The Closer was always very polite and helpful.
The black limousine finally eased up the block. It stopped in front of the Target’s building and idled there. The Closer waited in the shadows across the street, three buildings down, watching. Two people were in the backseat. One was the client. The other was the Target. The two of them talked for a moment, the limousine continuing to idle. Then the drive got out and hustled around to the rear passenger-side door, opening it. The Target got out but still lingered. The Closer heard the brays of laughter, the kind that comes when people are saying nasty things about other people they are supposed to be nice to. Then the Target stepped back and the limo drive shut the door. The driver got back into the long black car and the Close watched it drive away.
The Target headed toward the building, keys jangling.
The time frame was still workable.
The Closer proceeded across the street.
“Excuse me, ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you at this late hour, but I tried you earlier and you weren’t home.”
The Target looked the Closer up and down. “What seems to be the problem, Officer?”
“There was a break-in upstairs earlier this evening, ma’am. The top-floor apartment.”
“Again?” She cursed under her breath. “I hate this city. I really do.”
“Yes, ma’am. I can’t say I blame you.”
“What did the fuckers take?”
“Small things. Jewelry. Silver. A laptop computer. They were very professional—in and out, no muss, no fuss. They even locked up behind themselves.”
“So what do you want with me?”
“We just want to make sure that nothing in your place was disturbed. You do have the garden apartment?”
“I sure as hell do. And sometimes it scares the shit out of me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Closer watched the Target shake her head and curse again. Then she said, “Come on in. Let’s have a look.”
The Target pulled out a key and headed toward her own entrance to the building, an iron gate that was at ground level directly underneath the raised front stoop. This would have been the servants’ entrance back in the days when the town house belonged to a single family. Another key opened her front door. She paused in the doorway, smiling tightly. “By the way, I’m impressed. This is very thorough of you.”
“We do what we can, ma’am.”
The Target grunted in response, went inside, and started turning on lights.
The Closer followed her in and shut the door, simultaneously reaching for the standard-issue billy club that hung from the standard-issue belt.
“Doesn’t look like anyone was here,” the Target said. “It looks like I lucked out.”
The Target was wrong. She had not lucked out. Because the Closer moved swiftly and surely now, striking the Target directly behind the right ear with a blow of tremendous force. The sound of polished hickory shattering her skull was like no other sound on earth. For the Closer, it was a most satisfying sound. The sound of completion. Still, the Closer left no room for doubt. As the Target lay on the floor in the entry hall, one shoe half off, blood oozing from the back of her head, the billy club was raised and lowered three more times. Each time the sound of wood striking bone was as loud as the crack of a baseball bat connecting with a ninety-five-mile-per-hour fastball. By the third strike, the Target’s skull was crushed. her face was a misshapen lump, resembling nothing so much as a smashed melon left on the ground to rot.
The Closer stood in the foyer and listened. No sounds now.
There were no witnesses.
And there was no more time.
The Closer left the apartment door open an inch and the front gate open wide. The sidewalk outside was clear.
The Closer stepped out into the night air.
There was still much to prepare.
There was still more work to be done.
The sound of the telephone sliced into Carl Granville’s brain, and he sat up with a start. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. His dreams had kept him in Rayette and Danny’s world during the night, and when he forced his eyes open, he was surprised to find himself in his own bed. When the phone had begun ringing, Carl was dreaming that he had been buried in the dirt alongside Rayette’s baby. He woke up gasping for air.
He let the phone ring several times more, focusing now. He groaned and squinted at the alarm clock on his night-stand. Nearly ten o’clock. He looked around at the apartment, surprised that Harry Wagner was not there. He was getting used to their routine. And the superb gourmet breakfasts.
Strange. It wasn’t like Harry to be late. Especially with their deadline drawing ever nearer.
He answered the phone on the fifth ring. He cleared his throat and managed to squawk out a hoarse hello.
“Hi.”
Well, well. The second surprise of the morning.
“Amanda,” Carl said into the phone.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Because the two of you … I mean, it looked as if the two of you were going to become … well, I don’t know what. But I know how hard this must be for you.”
Carl rubbed his tongue around his teeth and realized he was feeling a little annoyed that Harry wasn’t there to give him a cup of steaming-hot coffee. “How hard
what
must be?”
Amanda was silent on the other end of the phone. “You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Maggie Peterson was murdered last night. It was on the wire when I got in. I’m sure it’s all over the New York tabs.”
His first thought was,
No, impossible, Maggie is indestructible
. But then heard the concern in Amanda’s voice, and Amanda never got her facts wrong. Never. His next thoughts came in a jumbled rush:
Why? And who?
Then, briefly, selfishly,
How does this affect me?
A thought he shook away instantly, replacing it with,
This isn’t about me. This isn’t about a job or a book. This is about death. My God, this is about murder.
When he finally spoke, the words felt as if they were ripping his throat apart. “Where … how …?”
“In her apartment. Someone found her this morning. Her head was beaten in.”