Move to Strike (41 page)

Deirdre McCall concentrated – a task that seemed even harder than usual. Sinatra's voice was still there, but now she heard other noises too – the beep of a machine, the distant sounds of footsteps, more voices somewhere beyond. Slowly she prised her eyelids apart, the first slit of light shocking her pupils into contraction. She shut her eyes again and then tried once more, this time preparing herself for the force of the overhead fluorescents.

She was in a hospital – that much she knew. But not like before, when they had her whole body in traction. She lifted her hand to her forehead,
dragging the drip with it. She felt the wad of bandages – thick, tight. Something had happened, something new, with her head or whatever was left of it.

And then an image shot across her consciousness, a blinding, powerful vision that wrenched her cruelly from the past. She could see the setting sun, the dust-covered street, Mrs Abercrombie watering her lawn just across the way. She was walking, slowly, wanting the journey home to last those extra few minutes. She lifted her arm to Mrs Abercrombie who smiled and yelled something about the heat and then she saw them –
no
, she
heard
them first. Not them. Their car. The screech. And her nose contracted at the smell of burning rubber. A now frowning Mrs Abercrombie moved across her lawn to get a better look. Deirdre turned, and squinted, and lifted her left hand to act as a visor against the sun. And then the car – the big, long, red sedan carrying four, maybe more, dark-haired young men – swerved right, straight towards her and she jumped back, off the pavement and onto a patch of grass. But then the young man in the back seat had his arm out the window – a long, slender arm with a thick silver hand. But it wasn't his hand. It was a gun. She knew this because she had seen many of them before. And even though it wasn't him it
was
. It was Jason. Jason was going to shoot her and follow through on his threats after all these years. She saw the spark. And she smelt the burning. She lowered her hand and saw that it was covered in blood. And then . . . then she heard Sinatra.

Run.

Run
. The thought raced through her head like a tornado. It was ridiculous of course; she could barely focus, let alone run.

But, run she had to. This much she knew. She had survived her son's attempts to kill her twice, but something told her the third time she would not be so lucky.

She yanked the cannula from her hand, ignoring the blood that followed, and removed the sticky pads from her chest. She kicked the blanket from her legs and forced herself to a sitting position before waiting for the dizziness to subside. She registered the small cupboard in the corner which held a soft cotton dress she had owned for as long as she could remember.

Tracey has been here
, she thought, and smiled.
She must have left the
Sinatra tape playing in the cassette player by my bed. She brought the dress, just in case I
. . .

But the very same thought now made her panic. If her young friend returned, she would surely prevent her from
running
.

In that moment, just as Ol' Blue Eyes took a breather before slipping into a smooth and easy version of ‘I've Got You Under My Skin', she knew that running was only
part
of the solution. If she was going to survive, she had to work out a way to stop her son for good. She would have to do what she
should
have done all those years ago, when she could have gone to the authorities and had him committed – perhaps even treated – for whatever made him like he was.

And so, as she unwrapped the still bloodied bandages from her now pounding brow, and assessed the damage in the scratched cupboard door mirror before her, she decided, then and there, that she would finally fulfil her maternal obligations, as unspeakable as they may be. It may be too late for ‘treatment', but it was not too late, she decided, to put an end to her son's path of carnage, once and for all.

‘S
ara,' said David, clasping his cell phone hard against his ear. He was on his way back from Plymouth, a sour-faced Harrison doing ten over the speed limit beside him – obviously determined to get back to Boston and ‘wash' himself of this whole bloody mess as quickly as was humanly possible.

‘David,' she said.

He felt comfort in the sound of her voice, and a dire need to tell her what he had learned. ‘I called the office and Nora said you were still at home. Are you okay? What did Doctor Taylor say?'

‘I'm fine,' she replied, but her voice was flat – and David felt incredibly guilty for not calling earlier. ‘It is just a stomach virus. Doctor Taylor said I am overdoing it – that I need to rest if the baby is to go to term.'

‘Oh God, Sara, I am so sorry. This is my fault. I should have insisted you stop work earlier.'

‘No,' she said, now with a trace of irritation. ‘I have actually felt really calm the last few months. Work hasn't been too bad – since we stopped working on the . . .'

She was about to say ‘Logan case' and David knew it. And now he had thrown them back in.
But these were exceptional circumstances
, he argued with himself.
This was not a case but a responsibility – a life or death commitment to a brave old friend
.

‘Where have you been?' she asked, interrupting his thoughts.

‘In Plymouth,' he answered.

‘
What?
'

‘Sara,' he began, now unable to hold back. He loved her so much and knew that she would be the one person who understood just what an opportunity this was to save these kids,
to bring Logan down
. ‘You won't believe what happened. I was picked up – or more to the point abducted – by a guy from Tony's office.' He glanced sideways at Harrison, not giving a damn if the pole-up-his-ass lawyer could hear. ‘He took me to Plymouth – to see Tony and J.T. and . . . then Amanda Carmichael turned up.'

‘You spent the day with the ADA?' bit Sara.

‘Yes . . . I mean, no. She had Chelsea with her. The kids are going to withdraw their statements against us. And Carmichael is going to get the judge to withdraw the APO.'

‘And why the hell would she do that?'

‘Because she wants us back in.'

‘Us?' asked Sara.

‘Yes. She wants to come up against me.'

‘She wants to come up against you,' repeated Sara.

‘Yes. In court. It's what she has wanted from the very beginning, and lucky for us that woman never lets go of what she wants.'

There was silence.

‘Sara?'

‘I'm here,' she said.

‘The kids told me the truth, Sara – everything from beginning to end. They implicated their father. They told me how it went down. And I know we are short on time, and I know we still don't have any concrete proof,' he took a breath, ‘but I also know we can find it. If we look hard enough, if we follow Stephanie's leads and . . .'

‘How short?' she asked then.

‘Sorry?'

‘On time – how short are we?'

He hesitated, knowing there was no easy way to tell her. ‘Two weeks,' he said.

‘
The trial starts in two weeks?'
she said.

‘It was Amanda's condition – on helping us lift the APO.'

Silence.

‘Sara?'

More silence.

‘Sara?'

But Sara said nothing – before hanging up the phone.

The following day

W
hirrr . . . whirrr . . . whirr . . . It was the only sound in the room – the Mannix family dishwasher playing its own rhythmic, hypnotic tune.

Marie and the four Mannix boys had just left – Joe's wife running against the clock to get them to their respective summer camps on time. The breakfast table was now spotlessly clean despite having, just moments ago, been covered by a myriad of breakfast cereals and beverages. And the room still smelt of traces of coffee and toast and honey, as David sat anxiously waiting for Mannix to read the two children's statements which had been faxed to David by Tony Bishop late last night.

‘Jesus,' said Joe, as he finished Chelsea's statement and placed it on the scratched red formica table before him.

‘I know,' said David. ‘They have taken it all back, Joe – they have let me in.'

David told Joe everything – from Logan using Chelsea's computer to change his wife's life insurance to his use of the autocue in that telling home video. From his schooling the kids on how the murder would go down, to his constant threats to kill them all if they refused to play by his rules.
David relayed J.T.'s version of the events of that night in detail – telling Joe about J.T.'s protests, Logan's use of the handkerchief and his eventual storming into the kitchen so that he might use his son as a ‘shield' while he forced his finger onto the trigger. He spoke of the aftermath – of the disposal of the handkerchief, the further threats and the calls to 911 and Katherine de Castro, before telling Joe how he ‘safeguarded' his own plan by offering the police a confession.

Joe sat silent, taking it all in, not once interrupting until David had finally finished – until he told him of Stephanie's instructions to her daughter that she borrow a classmate's cell phone to call her mother's lawyers and change her will, and how this and other clues suggested that Stephanie had been awaiting her own murder for months.

‘Unbelievable,' said Joe.

‘I know.'

‘It explains it all – including J.T.'s ear problems but the lack of shoulder pain or bruising.'

David nodded. ‘Logan got himself in and under J.T.'s oversized T-shirt. He bent down and rested the rifle on his own shoulder while he forced his son to be the one to fire.'

‘We should have checked Logan's shoulder on the night,' said Joe, blaming himself.

‘He had a quick physical at Suffolk County, Joe,' countered David. ‘The rifle didn't burn his shirt because it was under J.T.'s clothing. Logan may have been in pain, but there was no way he was going to rat himself out.'

Joe nodded. ‘So in a way,' he went on, ‘Logan's biggest mistake to date was to have both children arrested – because as soon as Chelsea was “safe” behind bars at Brockton, J.T. was no longer afraid to speak.'

‘And vice versa,' agreed David. ‘But Logan is going for broke, Joe. He wants both of his children sent away for good. And as for the kids, well, despite their new places of residence they are still terrified, Joe. They have lived their entire lives watching him manipulate their futures. The man never loses, and even now I can tell they still think he will find a way to destroy them.'

‘Which is understandable, considering he has done a pretty good job to date,' said Joe.

David nodded.

‘The one thing I can't get,' said Joe after a pause, ‘is why the hell Stephanie didn't run. I mean, if she knew this was going to happen, why didn't she get those kids out of there. Why didn't she . . . ?'

‘I don't know, Joe,' said David. ‘I guess maybe she was terrified – scared to the bone – of the repercussions of defying him, of him taking her two children's lives.'

‘So she just sits there, waiting to die?'

Truth be told, David found this one thing difficult to swallow too. The Stephanie he knew was a fighter. But then again, as it had been stressed so often of late, that was the Stephanie he
knew
– not the one she had been forced to become.

‘She gave her life for her kids, Joe.'

‘And in doing so she left them with that maniac.'

‘What choice did she have?'

‘She should have gone to the police.'

‘And risk her husband shooting her kids?'

‘There had to be another way, David.'

‘Yeah, well maybe under the circumstances we can forgive her for not being able to find it.'

Joe nodded once again, before lifting his eyes from the table. ‘You have a problem,' he said.

‘You think?'

‘No – what I mean to say is, you have a shitload of problems but one huge one which at least at this point appears kind of insurmountable.'

‘We don't have any proof that what the kids tell me is true,' said David, reading his mind.

‘Exactly,' said Joe. ‘There is no way Carmichael would have put you lot together if she thought there was any chance of you actually being able to win this thing. The forensics still point singularly at the boy. The kids go implicating their father and she will paint them as maniacal little psychopaths – two greedy Machiavellian geniuses who murdered their mother and then pointed their finger at their famous do-gooder dad so that they might get their hands on that seriously substantial inheritance.'

‘You think Carmichael will use greed as a motive?'

‘I think she can take her pick – greed, rebellion, anger at their mother's abusiveness, anger at their dad's failure to get them out.'

‘But the video . . .' David began.

‘. . . is a gift for the prosecution and you know it,' finished Joe. ‘That green light/gun in the gravy boat bullshit will get you nowhere. It's the kids' word against their father's and if I was an average Joe, forgive the pun, I'd be backing America's most loved TV hero every time.'

Joe punctuated this point by reaching behind him to grab two copies of
Vanity Fair
magazine off the kitchen counter, before taking the one on top, and sliding it across the table to his friend.

‘Jesus,' said David, glancing at the cover for the very first time – his eyes taking in that powerful shot of the seafaring Jeffrey Logan before glancing down towards the accompanying cover line which read ‘
Jeffrey Logan – a father's fight for justice'
.

He shook his head. ‘There has to be something I can do, Joe. I am running out of time.' David realised then that he had forgotten to tell Joe about his two-week deadline – Amanda Carmichael's parting ‘condition' in return for her help in reversing that APO.