Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness (17 page)

The engine rumbled to life.
We're moving.
Soon, all Grace could hear was the beating of her own heart. She said a silent prayer:

Please God, don't let them check all the boxes.

 

T
HE THUD WAS SO LOUD, THE
driver heard it through his blaring Bruce Springsteen CD. One of the crates must have come loose.

“What the fuck?” Slamming on the brakes, he climbed out of the
cab.
Dumb-ass fucking dykes. How hard is it to stack a bunch of boxes? All they had to do was put 'em one on top of another.

Grace heard the rear door open. Rays from a flashlight seeped through the crack above her head, where Cora had left the lid loose. She held her breath

“Goddamn it.”

Crates scraped noisily across the metal floor of the truck. The next thing Grace knew, her own box was moving.
Oh God
,
no! He'll see me.
But the driver didn't see her. Instead, pulling Grace's crate forward, he noticed the loose lid and banged it shut with his fist. Then he lifted another box and piled it on top of Grace's. The rear door slammed. Grace felt the lurch of the truck as it pulled away.

Cold beads of sweat broke out all over Grace's body.

She had no air.

I'm going to suffocate.

W
ARDEN
M
C
I
NTOSH STORMED INTO THE CHILDREN'S CENTER.
All the kids had gone home. A lone inmate was clearing away the last of the toys.

“You alone here?”

“Yes, sir. I'm waiting for Sister Agnes to come back and lock up.”

“There was a pickup scheduled for four
P.M.
today. Did that happen?”

“I think so, sir. Cora Budds was in the storeroom.”

“What about Grace Brookstein? Have you seen her in here this afternoon?”

“No, sir. Cora tol' me she's in lockdown.”

Warden McIntosh relaxed.
Lisa Halliday had gotten it wrong. Grapevine information was often unreliable at Bedford.
Still, protocols had to be followed. He picked up the phone on Sister Agnes's desk.

 

I
'M GOING TO DIE
!

Grace was already hyperventilating. As she felt the truck stop, her hopes soared. They must be at the checkpoint. She tried to scream.

“Help! Somebody help me!”

For weeks, she had dreaded this moment, terrified that the guards
would discover her. Now she was terrified that they wouldn't. Without air, she would die in this box long before the truck reached the depot.

“Help!” She was yelling as loudly as she could, but her lungs didn't seem to be working properly. The words came out soft and breathy, muffled by the crates above and to the side of her. The guards heard nothing.

“What's this lot, then?”

The driver handed over his paperwork. “Modeling clay. About two tons of the stuff.”

“All right. Let's take a look.”

The two guards began opening the first row of boxes.

Please! I'm here!

Grace knew in that moment that she didn't want to die. Not yet. Not like this.

I have to find Lenny's murderer first. I have to make them pay.

She started to feel dizzy. Aware she was beginning to lose consciousness, she called out again.

One of the guards stopped. “Did you hear anything?”

His companion shook his head. “Only my teeth chattering. It's friggin' cold out here, man. Come on, man, let's get this over with.” Pulling forward another crate, he dumped it on the ground, opened it and checked inside. He did the same with another. Then another. As he was opening the fourth, the driver pleaded, “Come on, you guys, give me a break, wouldya? You know how long this shit took to load? I got a six-hour drive ahead a me and I'm freezing my ass off.”

The guards looked at each other. They could hear the distant ringing of a telephone, back inside their warm, comfortable surveillance tower.

“Okay. You're good to go.” They signed the driver's papers and handed them back to him. “Drive safe.”

Sixty seconds later, the truck was cruising out through the prison gates.

Grace Brookstein was still inside.

 

G
RACE AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF
the engine gaining speed. Relief overwhelmed her.

I can breathe! I'm alive.

One of the guards must have loosened the lid of her crate!
Why didn't they find me? It's a miracle. Someone up there must be looking out for me. Maybe it's Lenny
,
come back as my guardian angel?

For a few seconds she felt euphoric.
I made it out of Bedford. I did it!
But reality soon reasserted itself. She was a long way from being home free. Uncurling herself slowly and painfully like an arthritic jack-in-the-box, Grace pushed up the lid and climbed out of her cramped hiding place. The rear of the truck was freezing and pitch-dark. It took a minute for the circulation to return to her legs. As soon as she felt strong enough, she began to stumble forward, hands stretched out in front of her like a zombie, feeling for the truck's rear door. After what felt like an eternity, her fingers stumbled upon a handle. It was stiff. She couldn't move it. Just as she was wondering whether the driver had double-locked the doors from the outside so she wouldn't be able to open them, the handle suddenly shifted.

It all happened in an instant. The rear door flew open with such force Grace was pulled along with it. Suddenly she was outside, clinging on for dear life, her shins banging agonizingly against the bumper as she dangled one-handed above the ground. They were on an empty, unlit road, moving at incredible speed
. How fast? Fifty miles an hour? Sixty?
Grace tried to calculate her chances of survival if she fell. Before she came up with an answer, the road forked into a hairpin turn. The driver swung a sharp left. Grace felt the door handle slip from her grasp, as if someone had dipped it in butter. Next thing she knew, she was flying through the air like a rag doll, hurtling toward the trees. The last thing she heard was the thud of her own skull hitting the ground.

Then nothing.

 

W
ARDEN
M
C
I
NTOSH YELLED AT
H
ANNAH
D
ENZEL.

“Why the hell did you send her back to the center? Who gave you the authority?”

Denny bristled. If Grace Brookstein really
had
escaped, she was damned if she was going to take the blame. This was the warden's problem. “I
have
the authority, sir. Work details on A Wing are my responsibility. The delegation had left, and Grace had unfinished work.
Who gave the Sisters authority to have A-Wing inmates supervise pickups?”

The two guards from the North Gate checkpoint were also in the warden's office. Warden McIntosh quizzed them. “You're certain Grace Brookstein wasn't on that truck? You checked every crate?”

From the look on McIntosh's face, the guards figured honesty was probably not the best policy. “Every crate. The truck was clean.”

Warden McIntosh's head was throbbing.
Then where the hell is she?
He turned back to Hannah Denzel. “I want Cora Budds and Karen Willis in here right now. In the meantime, alert all police units. I want that truck found, stopped and searched.” He looked at the two guards ominously. “If you guys have fucked up, I'll have both your heads on a plate.”

“Yes, sir.” But everyone in the room knew that the first head to roll would be the warden's.

 

G
RACE OPENED HER EYES SLOWLY
. B
ENEATH
her was a blanket of deep undergrowth. Springy and prickly like an old straw mattress, it must have broken her fall. Her head was filled with a loud whirring.

No. It's not in my head. It's overhead. Choppers.

They're looking for me.

She had no idea how long she'd been unconscious. Minutes? Hours? What she did know was that she was freezing cold, so cold that it was hard to move. She also knew that she was in grave danger. In the short time she'd been inside the truck, they could not have gotten more than a few miles away from Bedford Hills. She had to put some distance between herself and the prison.

Gingerly, Grace got to her feet. By some miracle, nothing seemed to be broken. Gradually her eyes acclimated to the darkness and she could make out the shadows around her. She was standing in woodland just a few feet from a quiet country road.
Not quiet. Silent.
A single twig cracking beneath her feet sounded as loud as a thunderclap.

I have to get out of here.

Her left side was bruised and stiff, but she found she could walk without too much trouble. To her right, the tree line jutted up into a
steep escarpment. From the top of the hill, Grace heard the dim rumble of traffic.

The police will be patrolling the main road. If I go up there
,
I triple my chances of being caught.

If I don't go up there
,
I won't get a ride out of here.

She started to climb.

 

A
T THE TOP OF THE HILL
someone had planted a row of poplar trees, presumably as a sound barrier. Grace squatted low behind them, trying to get her breath. The climb had exhausted her. The road was busy, almost as if it was rush hour. Grace wondered again how late it was, but there was no time to dwell on that now. Brushing the icy leaves off her skirt, she stepped out onto the side of the road and stuck out her thumb, the way she'd seen people do on TV.

I wonder how long it'll take for someone to stop. If I don't get inside soon, I could die of hypothermia.

A squad car screamed out of the darkness, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring. Instinctively Grace leaped back for the cover of the trees, twisting her ankle on the icy hard ground. It was agony but she didn't dare cry out, holding her breath in the darkness, waiting for the police car to slow or pull over. It didn't. After a few seconds the dying wail of the sirens faded to nothing. Grace crawled back out to the roadside.

Standing there, thumb out, stamping her feet against the subzero temperature, Grace started to sway. She'd barely eaten all day, and the fall from the truck had left her weak and dizzy. Lights from the cars' headlamps began to merge into one solid orange glow. In Grace's frozen, confused state, it looked warm and welcoming. Half conscious, she staggered toward it. The deafening blare of a truck horn brought her back to her senses.

“Are you outta your mind, lady?”

A man had stopped. Pulled over onto the hard shoulder, he was talking to Grace out of the driver's-side window. Middle-aged, with a thick black mustache and dark eyes that sat flat on his face, he looked like he might be part Asian, but it was tough to be sure in the darkness. He was
driving a light blue van with
TOMMY'S YARD SERVICES
written on the side in bold black lettering.

“Don't you have a coat?”

Grace shook her head. Pretty soon her whole body was shaking, racked with cold and exhaustion. The man reached over and opened the passenger door.

“Get in.”

D
ETECTIVE
M
ITCH
C
ONNORS RETURNED TO HIS
desk in a pensive mood.

Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?

Tall, blond, athletic and altogether too big for his glass-walled office, Mitch Connors looked more like a football pro than a cop. Sinking into his uncomfortable chair (Helen had bought him the damn thing two years ago, for his back pain. It had won a bunch of design awards, apparently, and cost a small fortune, so he couldn't throw it away, but Mitch had always hated it), he stretched out his legs and tried to think.

Do I really want this case?

On the one hand, his boss had just handed him what would, in a few short hours, become the biggest, most high-profile investigation in the country. Late last night, Grace Brookstein had pulled off a dramatic escape from a maximum-security prison. It would be Mitch Connors's job to find her, apprehend her and haul her thieving, designer-clad ass back to jail.

His boss said, “You're the best, Mitch. I wouldn't put you on this if you weren't.” And Mitch had felt a warm glow. But now he felt something else. Something bad. For the life of him, Mitch couldn't figure out what it was.

He blamed the chair. It was so torturous, no wonder he couldn't con
centrate.
Ergonomic, my ass. I figure Helen bought it on purpose to torment me. To pay me back for all the shit I put her through.
Then he thought,
That's bullshit, Connors, and you know it.

Helen wasn't like that. She was an angel. Saint Helen of Pittsburgh, patron saint of tolerance.

And you drove her away.

 

M
ITCH
C
ONNORS HAD GROWN UP IN
P
ITTSBURGH.
He was born in the well-to-do suburb of Monroeville, where his mom was a local beauty queen. She married Mitch's dad, an inventor, when she was nineteen. Mitch arrived a year later and the couple's happiness was complete.

For about six months.

Mitch's father was a brilliant inventor…by night. By day, he was a traveling encyclopedia salesman. Mitch used to go on trips with him. The little boy would watch in awe as his dad scammed one housewife after another.

“Do you know the average cost of a college education, ma'am?”

Pete Connors was standing on the front steps of a dilapidated house in Genette, Pennsylvania, wearing a suit and tie and shiny black shoes, his trilby hat held respectfully in one hand. He was a handsome man. Mitch thought he looked like Frank Sinatra. The woman standing at the door in a stained housecoat was fat, depressed and defeated. Hungry kids ran around her feet like rats.

“No, sir. Can't say I do.”

The door was closing. Pete Connors stepped forward. “Let me tell you. It's fifteen hundred dollars. Fifteen
hundred
dollars. Can you imagine that?”

She couldn't imagine.

“But what if I were to tell you that for as little as one dollar a week—that's right,
one
dollar—you can give your child the gift of that same education right here at home?”

“I never really thought about—”

“Of course you didn't! You're a busy woman. You have bills, responsibilities. You don't have time to sit down and read studies like this one.” At a given signal, Mitch would run forward and hand his father a laminated
sheaf of papers with the words
Educational Research
printed on the front. “Studies that prove that kids who have an encyclopedia in the house are more than
six times
more likely to go into white-collar jobs?”

“Well, I—”

“How'd you like for this little guy here to grow up and be a lawyer, huh?” Pete Connors slipped one of the dirty-faced children a boiled candy. “For as little as one dollar a day, you can make that happen, ma'am.”

He was like a whirlwind. A force of nature. Some women he would bulldoze. Others he would charm and cajole. Others still he would take upstairs to perform some “secret” sales technique that Mitch was never allowed to see. It always took around fifteen minutes, and it always worked. “Those Pennsylvania women!” Mitch's dad would joke afterward. “They're hungry for knowledge, all right. You ain't never
seen
a woman hungrier for knowledge than that one, Mitchy!”

After every sale, they would drive to the nearest small town or rest stop and Pete Connors would buy his son an enormous ice-cream sundae. Mitch would return home to his mother full of excitement and wonder, chocolate sauce smeared all over his face.
“Dad was amazing. You shoulda seen what Dad did! Guess how many we sold
,
Mom. Go on
,
guess!”

Mitch could never understand why his mother never wanted to guess. Why she looked at his dad with such bitterness and disappointment. Later—too late—he understood. She could have borne the infidelity. It was the recklessness she couldn't forgive. Pete Connors was a natural salesman, but he was also a dreamer, who regularly blew his earnings investing in one crackpot invention after another. Mitch remembered some of them. There was the vacuum cleaner you didn't have to push. That was going to make them millions. Then there was the mini-refrigerator for your car. The running shoes that massaged the ball of your foot. The clothes rack that got out creases. Mitch would watch his father work on each new design during weekends and late into the night. Whenever he finished a prototype, he would “unveil” it in the living room in front of Mitch's mom.

“Whaddaya think, Lucy?” he'd ask hopefully, his face alight with pride and anticipation, like a little boy's. The tragedy was, Pete Connors loved his wife. He needed her approval so badly. If she'd given it, just
once, perhaps things would've turned out differently. But her response was always the same.

“How much d'you blow this time?”

“Jeez, Lucy. Give me a break, would you? I'm an idea man. You knew that when you married me.”

“Yeah? Well, here's an idea for you, Pete. How about we make our mortgage this month?”

Mitch's mom used to say that the only thing his father could ever economize on was the truth.

By Mitch's sixth birthday, they'd moved out of the Monroeville house. The new place was a condo in Murraysville. Next it was Millvale, an area full of old millworkers' tenements. By the time Mitch was twelve, they were in the Hill District, Pittsburgh's Harlem, a boarded-up, drug-riddled hell bordering the prosperous downtown. Too poor to divorce, his parents “separated.” Within a month, his mom had a new boyfriend. Eventually they moved to Florida, to a nice house with palm trees in the front yard. Mitch decided to stay with his dad.

Pete Connors was excited. “This is great, Mitchy! It'll be like old times, just the two of us. We'll have poker nights. Sleep late on Sundays. Get some pretty girls over here, huh? Shake things up a bit!”

There were girls. Some of them were even pretty, but those ones were paid for. Pete Connors's Frank Sinatra days were long gone. He looked like what he was, a tired old roué long past his sell-by date. It broke Mitch's heart. As Mitch grew older, his father began to get jealous of his son's good looks. At seventeen, Mitch had his mother's blond hair and blue eyes and his father's long legs and strong, masculine features. He'd also inherited Pete's gift of gab.

“I'm just home for the summer, helping out my old man. I'm off to biz school in the fall…

“My car? Oh, yeah, I sold it. My little cousin got sick. Leukemia. She's only six, poor kid. I wanted to help out with her medical bills.”

Women lapped it up.

Helen Brunner was different. She was twenty-five years old, a redheaded, green-eyed goddess, and she worked for a veterans' charity that provided impoverished ex-servicemen with meals and helped them out at home. Mitch never knew how his father had convinced Helen's charity
that he'd been in the navy. Pete Connors couldn't even swim. Pictures of boats made him nauseous. In any event, Helen started showing up at the apartment three times a week. Pete was crazy about her.

“I bet she's a virgin. You can tell. Just thinking about that untouched ginger bush makes me horny.”

Mitch hated it when his dad spoke that way. About any woman, but especially about Helen. It was embarrassing.

“Twenty bucks says I fuck her before you do.”

“
Dad!
Don't be stupid. Neither of us is going to fuck her.”

“Speak for yourself, kiddo. She wants it. Take it from someone who knows. They all want it.”

Helen Brunner didn't want it. At least, not from a drunken alleged ex-midshipman old enough to be her father. Mitch, on the other hand…now, he was something else. Helen had been raised a Christian. She believed in abstinence. But Mitch Connors was testing her faith to the limits.

Lead me not into temptation.
Watching Mitch move around the cramped apartment, feeling his eyes surreptitiously sweep over her body as she did the dishes or made the beds, it seemed to Helen that the Lord had led her
right
into temptation. Mitch felt the same way. He started to make lists.

Reasons not to sleep with Helen:

1. She's a nice girl.
   
2. You'll probably get struck by a thunderbolt halfway through.
   
3. If God doesn't smite you dead
   ,
   Dad will.
   

Then one day Helen walked into the laundry room to find Mitch standing in his boxer shorts.

Helen said a silent prayer.
Deliver me from evil.

So did Mitch.
Forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin.

The sex was incredible. They did it on top of the washing machine, in the shower, on the floor in the living room and, finally, in Pete Connors's bed. Afterward, Mitch lay slumped back on the pillows, replete with happiness. He tried to feel guilty but he couldn't. He was in love.

Helen sat bolt upright.

“Don't tell me you want it
again
?” Mitch groaned.

“No. I heard something. I think it's your father!”

Helen was in her clothes in a flash. Rushing into the kitchen, she started scrubbing pots. Mitch, whose lower body suddenly seemed to have developed advanced Parkinson's, stumbled around the bedroom in blind panic. The front door opened.

“Mitch?”

Shit.
There was nothing else for it. Stark naked, Mitch dived into the built-in closet, pulling the door closed behind him. At the back of the closet, against the wall, was a trapdoor leading into a crawl space in the roof. Mitch had barely managed to squeeze his six-foot frame through it when he heard Pete Connors's footsteps in the bedroom.

“MITCH!” It was a roar. The old man wasn't stupid. The combination of Helen's flushed, guilty face and the rumpled sheets must have given them away. Mitch heard the front door open and close. Helen, sensibly, had made a run for it. How Mitch wished he were with her!

The closet door opened. A shaft of light appeared under the trapdoor to the crawl space. Mitch held his breath. There was a pause. Shirts being ruffled on hangers. Then the closet door closed.

Thank you
,
God. I swear I will never screw a woman in my father's bed ever again.

Pete Connors's footsteps receded. Then, suddenly, they stopped. Mitch's heart did the same.
Hey
,
c'mon, God! We had a deal!

The closet door opened again. Then the door to the crawl space. As Pete Connors looked down at his naked son, an unmistakably fishy waft of sex hit him in the face.

“Hey, Dad. I don't suppose you know where I could find a towel?”

Two minutes later, Mitch was out on the street. He never saw his father alive again.

 

“I
WANT TO GET MARRIED
, M
ITCH
.”

Helen and Mitch had been living together for three years. Now almost twenty-one, Mitch was making good money tending bar. Helen had cut back on her charity work to do three days a week as a trainee librarian, but her heart wasn't in it. She was pushing thirty and she wanted to have a child.

“Why?”

“
Why?
Is that a serious question? Because we're living in mortal sin, that's why.”

Mitch grinned. “I know. Hasn't it been fun so far?”

“Mitchell! I'm not kidding around. I want to have a baby. I want to make a commitment, to start a family, to do this right. Isn't that what you want, too?”

“Sure it is, baby.”

But the truth was, Mitch didn't know what he wanted. Growing up watching his parents rip each other apart had put him off the idea of marriage for life. He loved Helen, that wasn't the problem. Or maybe it
was
the problem. Being with someone so good, so perfect, made him feel uneasy. He had too much of his father in him. A natural-born scammer, flirting was in Mitch's blood.
Sooner or later I'll let her down. She'll learn to hate me
,
to despise me for my weakness.
Helen was the mother ship, but Mitch needed lifeboats: other girls who he could keep as backup should Helen see the light and realize she could do a whole lot better than a barman from Pittsburgh.

“Next year,” he told her. “Once Dad's come around to the idea.” He said the same thing the following year, and the year after that. Then, in the space of a month, two seismic events took place that were to change Mitch's life forever.

First, Helen left him.

Then his father was murdered.

 

T
WO WEEKS AFTER
H
ELEN
B
RUNNER WALKED
out on Mitch, Pete Connors was stabbed to death outside his apartment. He lost his life for a fake Rolex watch, a cheap, nine-karat gold wedding ring and twenty-three dollars in cash. Mitch's mom flew in for the funeral. Lucy Connors looked glamorous and suntanned and not remotely grief-stricken. Then again, why should she?