Buried bones were found under a tree in the deepest, densest part of Central Park off the Bridle Path. Horses went on the Bridle Path, not dogs, not runners, not policemen. It had rained for days, and the bones became unseated in the muddy earth. A man and his dog stumbled upon them when the dog ran off into the woods and the man followed, uncovering the gray shapes against the dirt and dead leaves. With the bones were found a jogging suit, a bra, sneakers—and a pair of diamond earrings.
It took forensics eight hours to identify the dental records positively as Amy McFadden’s.
Her mother cried as if Amy had died yesterday and not sixteen months ago.
The 57/57 Bar was up the wide marble staircase off the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel. The bar itself was ultra mod, with crème marble floors and walls that stretched up forty marble feet into the marble ceiling of the lobby. The patron tables were light oak tops on brushed chrome legs, and the flower centerpieces were white roses and white lilies. At the farthest corner next to a narrow window with his back to the bar, sat Andrew in a chrome chair, with a full drink by his side. Across from him sat his wife. When the waiter came to ask if she wanted a drink, she shook
her head but didn’t speak. Andrew and Miera did not speak. She was dressed in a gray gabardine suit, and her neatly brushed hair had not been colored. She fidgeted with her purse. From his demeanor, one might have thought Andrew didn’t know she was there, until he said, “How are the girls?”
“Fine.”
“Have there been any problems?”
“No, everything’s been fine. He is not going to show up, Andrew. He is a derelict and a heroin addict who has no money. How could he take a train to Port Jefferson?”
“Somehow he’ll manage. Never leave the house unprotected.” He glanced at the detail standing by the bar watching them.
“We live under a Praetorian guard,” said Miera, slowly. “And in any case, why would he come there”—she paused—“when you’re here?”
Andrew nodded. “You’re right. I’m hoping to deflect him.”
“Not just deflect. You’ve been gone from the house a month,” she said. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
It was a long while of waiters and bar-clanking and smoke before Andrew answered. “No, Miera.”
“Andrew…”
“Mi, please. Please. I can’t do it. Not now. I just can’t.”
She made to get up, as if she were done, then abruptly sat back down. The waiter came by to ask—“No!” she said. “Nothing, thanks.”
She wasn’t done with Andrew. She moved close to get his attention. “You’re not coming back? Fine, then. So do you want me to call our lawyer? Draw up some papers?”
“That’ll be fine,” he replied, in a voice that said,
yes, I’d like an olive in my martini. Whatever.
“I can’t believe you’ve resigned from Congress.”
“Yes, well.”
Miera fussed with her purse, with the buttons of her suit jacket, with her hair. Andrew sat in profile to her; he did not turn to her once.
She said, “That girl’s been found.”
He was mute.
“Andrew…” she lowered her voice.
“Don’t.”
“I have to ask you, I have to. I haven’t talked to anyone about this. And once I turn and go, it will all be over between us, I won’t ask you anything again—” She forced herself to go on. “I don’t want anything anymore from you, Andrew. I just want you to answer me. Over a year ago, one Friday night, for some reason I couldn’t sleep, so I came downstairs to find you and I heard you in your office. When I opened the door to look in, you didn’t hear me, your back was to the door and to me, much the same way it is now. I saw you sitting in your chair, and your shoulders were quaking…you were crying so hard, I became afraid that something terrible had happened to a member of your family. I said your name, but you didn’t hear, and then suddenly…I felt that I was intruding on something you didn’t want me to see. I don’t know why I got that feeling, but I did, and so I tiptoed out and shut the door, and thought that you would tell me the next day, morning, night. But you never told me.” Miera fell quiet.
Andrew was quiet. He gave no response.
Miera said, “Do you want to tell me now?”
“Tell you what?”
“As the last thing you do for me in our marriage.” She clutched her purse.
“I was crying for her, Miera,” said Andrew.
“It was the night of May 14, 1999, Andrew, wasn’t it?” Miera’s voice was nearly inaudible. “The day they said the girl disappeared.” And then she left, stumbling slightly in her three-inch leather pumps on the slippery marble floor. One Treasury agent went with her. Two remained behind with Andrew.
A few hours after Miera left, Spencer walked up the same marble staircase to the lounge bar, in his clean dark blue nondescript
suit and his black dress shoes, and Spencer didn’t slip and he didn’t have a purse to fidget with, nor was fidgeting his habit. He didn’t know why he didn’t bring Gabe with him. He didn’t know why he wanted to talk to Andrew Quinn alone.
This from Elizabeth Monroe from three weeks ago that he had been carrying around in his jacket pocket: “
Internal Affairs have conducted a thorough and concrete investigation into the allegations against Spencer Patrick O’Malley and apart from vague circumstantial information found no sufficient evidence of abuse of his badge or his profession or of any other crime being committed on his behalf either in civilian or professional capacity to sustain the complaint against him of serious misconduct. Matter is summarily dismissed with prejudice.
”
One of the federal agents by the bar, there for the purposes of protecting the former congressman, told Spencer that “the guy has sat like a block all day at that table—almost as if he’s waiting for someone.”
“Thanks. I’ll go talk to him now.”
“Do you want a drink, detective?”
“Yes, a Coke,” said Spencer. And with his “drink” in hand, he went and sat down at the table across from Andrew, who turned his head slightly to Spencer.
“I was wondering when I’d see you,” Andrew said. “I’m surprised it took you this long.”
Spencer took a sip and said nothing. His hands went around the tumbler. Coke in the hands.
“Do you want a drink?” Spencer asked.
“No, thank you, I’ve had plenty,” replied Andrew. “How is my sister?”
“The same.”
Andrew sighed painfully.
“I’ve been thinking,” Spencer said, “of certain things, of things we talked about, things I know, things I’m guessing at, the pieces I try to put together, and I always feel that I’m missing some pieces, here, there.”
“Yes. And what has all this thinking led you to?”
“Certain things you said to me that I remember now that go with the things I’ve learned since we last spoke. For example, when I asked you if you knew Amy back in 1992, you replied that you did not know of her then. I hear the emphasis now which I didn’t hear then. ‘I did not know of
her
then,’ is what you said to me.” Spencer didn’t take his eyes off Andrew. “As if you knew that she knew of
you
then.”
“I was running for Congress. Of course she knew of me.” Andrew was clipped.
Spencer cleared his throat. “Did Bill Bryant ever call you? Tell you Lily and I spoke to his wife?”
“He did, gave me a heads up. One of the reasons I’ve moved out of my house. I’ve been waiting for you ever since. Figured I’d see you soon.”
“Your sister hasn’t been well. I’ve been busy.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you might be interested in some of the coroner’s findings. He is going to do an inquest in ten days and make a formal deposition, but do you want to hear the prelim?”
“Go ahead.” This said in a dead voice.
“At the back of her skull the coroner found some blunt trauma, as if she had been knocked out, perhaps after being violently pushed against a solid object, perhaps the tree under which she was buried. There were no other injuries. Perhaps she was suffocated. Her upper vertebrae, her neck, remained intact. Her skull, aside from a three-inch fracture in the blunt trauma area, remained intact. Her otherwise unharmed bones were found together.” Spencer fell quiet, as if to give Andrew a chance to speak, but by the shut in, closed-up look of him, he might never speak, so Spencer continued. “Since there is no flesh left to examine for tell-tale signs of morbidity, the coroner supposes any number of things could have killed her. Do you know what’s most distressing? He does not dismiss the possibility that she was knocked out and
not killed
but buried unconscious in the soft
muddy ground under the oak tree. There is no way to know. But he does not dismiss the possibility that Amy McFadden was buried alive.”
Andrew’s shoulders rose in an effort to square, and shook in an effort at self-control. “She couldn’t have been buried alive.”
“No?” said Spencer, ever so casual, taking another sip of his Coke.
“Detective…”
“Congressman—”
“No more,” Andrew said. “Just Mr. Quinn. Or Andrew.”
“Andrew,” said Spencer. “Why did you make up an alibi? You have a good friend in the councilman. All of us should have good friends like that. But why did you need an alibi for these hours? You met with her, didn’t you?”
Without turning to Spencer, Andrew said, “She wasn’t buried alive. Did you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“She called me on Thursday, May 13. I hadn’t spoken to her or seen her in four weeks. She called to ask me to meet her. Not here, like always, but in Central Park, in the woods off the Bridle Path. I had been out of my mind without her. I went to the Bridle Path like a man who’d discovered his life again.” He was not looking at Spencer. “I was so happy to see her. I asked her why she wanted to meet here and not in our hotel, and she said because she was about to tell me some things that might make me upset and she didn’t want me getting upset in public. And you know what I said? Nothing you can tell me will make me upset, Amy. I’m so happy you called me. I’m so happy to see you. I’ve missed you more than you’ll ever know.
“It was there, in those woods, that Amy told me she had voted against me in 1992. It was in those woods she told me about herself and Benjamin Abrams, about herself and Milo. Oh, the things she told me. She had been in love with him. The only reason she came into my life was to help him kill me. And do you know what my reaction was?” Andrew quickly
continued before Spencer could supply an answer. “I didn’t believe her! That was my reaction. You’re being absurd, Amy. If this is a ploy to get me away from you, it’s not going to work. But she said it wasn’t a ploy. She said she was never going to tell me, but Milo had been released from prison, and was now fomenting and pushing her towards something she said she could no longer do. She told me she was telling me this to warn me, that Milo had said he was going to stop at nothing until he got to me again.” Andrew took a deep breath and stopped speaking.
“Do you know what the word was, detective, that struck out at me just a little bit,” Andrew said at last, “just enough to stop disbelieving her? It was the word
again.
What do you mean,
again
, I said.
“And she told me Milo was the one who shot out the windows in my SUV a couple of years earlier, nearly killing my wife and my daughters. We were all in the truck. It was the intention of harming of my family that I reacted to. Amy knew where we were going to be—because
I
told her where we were going to be. I told her and she told Milo. That’s when it dawned on me—she was telling the truth.”
When Spencer remained mute, Andrew continued. “Detective, my whole family was in danger, living under their poison microscope. The things I had shared with her! I told her the most private things about my wife, my children, my sister. For years stalked by them. I screamed Amy, Amy, don’t you know how much I love you? She said she knew. That was why she was here, warning me about Milo…I lost my mind. All right, I said, I understand about me, but what about them, what about my family, my wife, my children, Lily, what were they, incidental, accidental victims? I asked. And do you know what she said?
Not even that. All just tools against you, Andrew. Ben’s mother is dead, Milo is the living dead; but your wife, your children, Lily, they’re still alive.
” Andrew’s head was down. “I must have grabbed her. I no longer remember it clearly. I must have grabbed
her. My reason left me.” He didn’t look up. “I broke her skull, I think, on the tree behind her, I bashed her against the tree, I took her and pummeled her against the trunk, and when she crumpled to the ground, I covered her with the leaves, and left. I didn’t bury her, I didn’t check to see if she was breathing. She simply fell, and I threw—heaved—dirt and stones and leaves on her and left, and that was all. I washed my hands in the Central Park Lake, I brushed the dust off me, pried the wet leaves off my shoes. It had been raining for days, the ground was wet. My shoes were muddy. I washed the soles off in the lake, and then walked back on dry pavement to 57th street and sat here in the bar for four hours and then I went home.”
Spencer’s Coke was long gone. How he craved another drink.
“What she had told me was diabolical. While I was dreaming of her, she was dreaming of killing my children, to bring me suffering for something I had no direct hand in. Oh, there was some ideological bullshit. She turned a face to me that was funny and kind. I betrayed my wife for that face, and all the while, she was betraying me. She said she had changed, her heart had changed, but everything was shattered now that I knew the duplicity and malice of that beloved face.”
Spencer ordered and finished another Coke. He and Andrew sat side by side at the same table. He fingered his handcuffs in the pocket of his suit, he felt for his gun, felt for his whirring tape recorder.
For a very long time, Spencer sat with Andrew at the little round table in the 57/57 Bar. Evening fell. The tape had long finished.
Finally Spencer stood up from the table. “The inquest is in ten days,” he said. “The coroner is ruling this death an aggravated homicide because of the skull trauma. Someone else might have questions for you. Probably will have questions for you.”