Tell No One (21 page)

He handed Stone the printout. Stone scanned down and found it. “Stephen Beck?”

“David Beck’s father.”

“He died, right?”

“Right.”

Stone handed it back to him. “So his son probably inherited the weapon,” he said. “It was Beck’s gun.”

“So why would his wife keep it locked in a safety-deposit box with those photographs?”

Stone considered that one a minute. “Maybe she feared he’d use it on her.”

Carlson frowned some more. “We’re missing something.”

“Look, Nick, let’s not make this more complicated than we have to. We got Beck nailed good on the
Schayes murder. It’ll be a righteous collar. Let’s just forget about Elizabeth Beck, okay?”

Carlson looked at him. “Forget about her?”

Stone cleared his throat and spread his hands. “face it. Nailing Beck on Schayes, that’ll be a piece of pie. But his wife—Christ, that case is eight years old. We got some scraps, okay, but we’re not going to get him for it. It’s too late. Maybe”—he gave too dramatic a shrug—“maybe it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Stone moved closer and beckoned Carlson to bend down. “Some people at the Bureau would rather we didn’t dig this all up.”

“Who doesn’t want us digging what up?”

“It’s not important, Nick. We’re all on the same side, right? If we find out KillRoy didn’t kill Elizabeth Beck, it just opens a can of worms, right? His lawyer will probably ask for a new trial—”

“They never tried him for Elizabeth Beck.”

“But we wrote her off as KillRoy’s handiwork. It would add doubt, that’s all. It’s neater this way.”

“I don’t want neat,” Carlson said. “I want the truth.”

“We all want that, Nick. But we want justice even more, right? Beck will get a life sentence for Rebecca Schayes. KillRoy will stay in jail. That’s how it should be.”

“There are holes, Tom.”

“You keep saying that, but I don’t see any. You were the one who first came up with Beck being good for his wife’s murder.”

“Exactly,” Carlson said. “For his wife’s murder. Not Rebecca Schayes’s.”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“The Schayes murder doesn’t fit.”

“You kidding me? It makes it more solid. Schayes knew something. We started closing in. Beck had to shut her up.”

Carlson frowned again.

“What?” Stone continued. “You think Beck’s visit to her studio yesterday—right after we pressured him—was just a coincidence?”

“No,” Carlson said.

“Then what, Nick? Don’t you see? Schayes’s murder fits in beautifully.”

“A little too beautifully,” Carlson said.

“Ah, don’t start with that crap.”

“Let me ask you something, Tom. How well did Beck plan and execute his wife’s murder?”

“Pretty damn well.”

“Exactly. He killed every witness. He got rid of the bodies. If it wasn’t for the rainfall and that bear, we’d have nothing. And let’s face it. Even with that, we still don’t have enough to indict, much less convict.”

“So?”

“So why is Beck suddenly so stupid? He knows we’re after him. He knows that Schayes’s assistant will be able to testify that he saw Rebecca Schayes the day of the murder. So why would he be stupid enough to keep the gun in his garage? Why would he be stupid enough to leave those gloves in his own trash can?”

“Easy,” Stone said. “He rushed this time. With his wife, he had plenty of time to plan.”

“Did you see this?”

He handed Stone the surveillance report.

“Beck visited the medical examiner this morning,” Carlson said. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to know if there was anything incriminating in the autopsy file.”

Carlson frowned yet again. His hands were itching for another wash. “We’re missing something, Tom.”

“I don’t see what, but hey, either way, we got to get him into custody. Then we can sort it out, okay?”

Stone headed over to Fein. Carlson let the doubts sink in. He thought again about Beck’s visit to the medical examiner’s office. He took out his phone, wiped it down with a handkerchief, and pressed the digits. When someone answered, he said, “Get me the Sussex County medical examiner.”

I
n the old days—ten years ago anyway—she had friends living at the Chelsea Hotel on West Twenty-third Street. The hotel was half tourist, half residential, all-around kooky. Artists, writers, students, methadone addicts of every stripe and persuasion. Black fingernails, goth-white face paint, bloodred lipstick, hair without a trace of curl—all in the days before it was mainstream.

Little had changed. It was a good place to remain anonymous.

After grabbing a slice of pizza across the street, she’d checked in and had not ventured out of her room. New York. She’d once called this city home, but this was only her second visit in the past eight years.

She missed it.

With too practiced a hand, she tucked her hair under the wig. Today’s color would be blond with dark roots. She put on a pair of wire-rim glasses and
jammed the implants into her mouth. They changed the shape of her face.

Her hands were shaking.

Two airplane tickets sat on the kitchen table. Tonight, they would take British Airways Flight 174 from JFK to London’s Heathrow Airport, where her contact would meet them with new identities. Then they would take the train to Gatwick and take the afternoon flight to Nairobi, Kenya. A jeep would take them near the foothills of Mount Meru in Tanzania, and a three-day hike would follow.

Once they were there—in one of the few spots on this planet with no radio, no television, no electricity—they would be free.

The names on the tickets were Lisa Sherman. And David Beck.

She gave her wig one more tug and stared at her reflection. Her eyes blurred, and for a moment, she was back at the lake. Hope ignited in her chest, and for once she did nothing to extinguish it. She managed a smile and turned away.

She took the elevator to the lobby and made a right on Twenty-third Street.

Washington Square Park was a nice walk from here.

Tyrese and Brutus dropped me on the corner of West Fourth and Lafayette streets, about four blocks east of the park. I knew the area well enough. Elizabeth and Rebecca had shared an apartment on Washington Square, feeling deliciously avant garde in their West Village digs—the photographer and the social-working attorney, striving for Bohemia as they mingled with their
fellow suburban-raised wanna-bes and trust-fund revolutionaries. Frankly I never quite bought it, but that was okay.

I was attending Columbia Medical School at the time, and technically, I lived uptown on Haven Avenue near the hospital now known as New York Presbyterian. But naturally I spent a lot of time down here.

Those were good years.

Half an hour until the meet time.

I headed down West Fourth Street past the Tower Records and into a region of the city heavily occupied by New York University. NYU wanted you to know this. They staked claim to this land with garish purple NYU-logo flags everywhere. Ugly as hell, this garish purple set against Greenwich Village’s subdued brick. Very possessive and territorial too, thought I, for such a liberal enclave. But there you go.

My heart pounded on my chest wall as though it wanted to break free.

Would she be there already?

I didn’t run. I kept cool and tried to distract myself from what the next hour or so could bring. The wounds from my recent ordeal were in that state between burn and itch. I caught my reflection in a building window and couldn’t help but notice that I looked utterly ridiculous in my borrowed garb. Gangsta Prep. Yo, word.

My pants kept sliding down. I hitched them up with one hand and tried to keep pace.

Elizabeth might be at the park.

I could see the square now. The southeast corner was only a block away. There seemed to be a rustle in the air, the onset of a storm maybe, but that was probably my imagination shifting into high gear. I kept my
head lowered. Had my picture reached the television yet? Had the anchors broken in with a be-on-the-lookout announcement? I doubted it. But my eyes still stayed on the pavement.

I hurried my step. Washington Square had always been too intense for me during the summer months. It was trying too hard—too much happening with just a little too much desperation. Manufactured edge, I called it. My favorite spot was the large clutter of humanity near the cement game tables. I played chess there sometimes. I was pretty good, but in this park, chess was the great equalizer. Rich, poor, white, black, homeless, high-rised, rental, co-oped—all harmonized over the age-old black and white figurines. The best player I’d ever seen down here was a black man who spent most of his pre-Giuliani afternoons harassing motorists for change with his squeegee.

Elizabeth wasn’t there yet.

I took a seat on a bench.

Fifteen more minutes.

The tightness in my chest increased fourfold. I had never been so scared in my entire life. I thought about Shauna’s technological demonstration. A hoax? I wondered again. What if this was all a hoax? What if Elizabeth was indeed dead? What would I do then?

Useless speculation, I told myself. A waste of energy.

She had to be alive. There was no other choice.

I sat back and waited.

“He’s here,” Eric Wu said into his cell phone.

Larry Gandle looked out the van’s tinted window. David Beck was indeed where he was supposed to be,
dressed like a street punk. His face was covered with scrapes and flowering bruises.

Gandle shook his head. “How the hell did he pull it off?”

“Well,” Eric Wu said in that singsong voice, “we can always ask him.”

“We need this to go smoothly, Eric.”

“Yes indeed.”

“Is everybody in place?”

“Of course.”

Gandle checked his watch. “She should be here any minute now.”

Located between Sullivan and Thompson streets, Washington Square’s most striking edifice was a high tower of washed-brown brick on the south side of the park. Most believed that the tower was still part of the Judson Memorial Church. It wasn’t. For the past two decades, the tower held NYU student dorm rooms and offices. The top of the tower was easily accessible to anyone who looked as though she knew where she was going.

From up here, she could look down at the whole park. And when she did, she started to cry.

Beck had come. He wore the most bizarre disguise, but then again, the email had warned him that he might be followed. She could see him sitting on that bench, all alone, waiting, his right leg shaking up and down. His leg always did that when he was nervous.

“Ah, Beck …”

She could hear the pain, the bitter agony, in her own voice. She kept staring at him.

What had she done?

So stupid.

She forced herself to turn away. Her legs folded and she slid with her back against the wall until she reached the floor. Beck had come for her.

But so had they.

She was sure of it. She had spotted three of them, at the very least. Probably more. She had also spotted the B&T Paint van. She’d dialed the number on the van’s sign, but it was out of service. She checked with directory assistance. There was no B&T Paint.

They’d found them. Despite all her precautions, they were here.

She closed her eyes. Stupid. So stupid. To think that she could pull this off. How could she have allowed it to happen? Yearning had clouded her judgment. She knew that now. Somehow, she had fooled herself into believing that she could turn a devastating catastrophe—the two bodies being discovered near the lake—into some sort of divine windfall.

Stupid.

She sat up and risked another look at Beck. Her heart plummeted like a stone down a well. He looked so alone down there, so small and fragile and helpless. Had Beck adjusted to her death? Probably. Had he fought through what happened and made a life for himself? Again probably. Had he recovered from the blow only to have her stupidity whack him over the head again?

Definitely.

The tears returned.

She took out the two airplane tickets. Preparation. That had always been the key to her survival. Prepare for every eventuality. That was why she had planned the meet here, at a public park she knew so well,
where she would have this advantage. She hadn’t admitted it to herself, but she’d known that this possibility—no, this likelihood—existed.

It was over.

The small opening, if there had ever been one, had been slammed shut.

Time to go. By herself. And this time for good.

She wondered how he’d react to her not showing up. Would he keep scouring his computer for emails that would never come? Would he search the faces of strangers and imagine he saw hers? Would he just forget and go on—and, when she really mined her true feelings, did she want him to?

No matter. Survival first. His anyway. She had no choice. She had to go.

With great effort, she tore her gaze away and hurried down the stairs. There was a back exit that led out to West Third Street, so she’d never even had to enter the park. She pushed the heavy metal door and stepped outside. Down Sullivan Street, she found a taxi on the corner of Bleecker.

She leaned back and closed her eyes.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“JFK Airport,” she said.

T
oo much time passed.

I stayed on the bench and waited. In the distance I could see the park’s famed marble arch. Stanford White, the famous turn-of-the-century architect who was murdered by a man in a jealous fit over a young woman, had purportedly “designed” it. I didn’t get that. How do you design something that is a replica of someone else’s work? The fact that the Washington Arch was a direct rip-off of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was no secret. New Yorkers got excited over what was in effect a facsimile. I had no idea why.

You couldn’t touch the arch anymore. A chain-link fence, not unlike the ones I’d just seen in the South Bronx, encircled it so as to discourage “graffiti artists.” The park was big on fences. Almost all grassy areas were lined with loose fencing—double fencing in most places.