15 Seconds (5 page)

Chapter Six

I
waited until the cabbie drove off before crossing the street. The homes here were sprawling and upscale—Tudors and colonials with well-manicured lawns and pretty landscaping.

I knew Mike had done well. He had worked on some big land deals in the past few years. Just being here made me feel a bit more hopeful. Mike would hear my story. He'd be able to negotiate something with the local authorities. In spite of how everything looked, it would be clear: the lack of any motive; the impossibility of how I could have gotten my hands on a weapon; how I'd only ducked into Martinez's car to check how badly he'd been hurt. Even why I'd fled the scene . . .

It would be clear I wasn't the killer.

A mail truck drove around the circle, stopping at each house, and I waited, one resident stepping out in her bathrobe to take in her mail, until it headed back down the block. Then I found Mike's house, a stylish, mustard-colored Mediterranean.

I began to wonder if my identity had been released.
Dr. Henry Steadman. Prominent cosmetic surgeon from Palm Beach. Wanted for murder. He fled the scene in a white Cadillac STS. . .

By now Mike must've heard.

Cautiously, I went up the driveway, praying that I wouldn't run into Gail, his wife, first and have to explain this all to her. She would probably freak. I knew Gail had her own real estate agency in town. She and Mike had two kids—one away at college. The younger one, I figured, would already be at school.

One of the three wood-paneled garage bays was open, and I recognized Mike's silver Jag there.

I let out a sigh of relief.

I hurried up to the house and rang the front doorbell, expecting Mike to open the door instantly, but no one did. I rang again, one of those formal-sounding, church-bell chimes.

Again, no one answered.

I was about to try one more time when I pushed on the latch and the front door opened.

I stepped tentatively into the large, high-ceilinged house, facing a kind of spacious living room with a lot of art on the walls, a huge mirror, and an arched Palladian window.

“Mike . . . !”

Through the window, I saw a large, fenced-in backyard with a good-size pool and a pool house in the same architectural style as the main house. I waited for him to come out and called out again,
“Mike . . . where are you?”

Suddenly a tremor shot through me. Surely he'd heard by now. Maybe he hadn't believed me as much as I thought. I mean, we were old friends, but not exactly
close
friends. I started thinking, What if he'd left, or even worse, notified the police.
What if—

No.
I stopped myself.
Jesus, Henry, you're acting crazy
.
You've known the guy since college
.
You're just being paranoid,
which was kind of easy right now.

I couldn't say I liked the idea of sneaking around someone's house with half the police in Jacksonville searching for me. Someone could just blow me away with a gun—and it would be entirely legal! I stepped into the foyer, trying to recall the layout, feeling a little edgy.

“Mike?
”

I turned right and found myself in the kitchen. Some plates on the counter, recently used. A half-picked-over muffin. A jar of almond butter—which made me smile, remembering Mike was always kind of a health nut.

Suddenly things began to feel a little odd to me.
“Mike, where the hell are you . . . ?”

I went back through the living room. The family room was just as I'd remembered, with pictures of the kids all over and a large Tarkay watercolor of a Parisian sidewalk café.

Mike's office was just down a hallway. He had taken me in there on my one visit and showed off his collection of sports memorabilia, his pride and joy.

The door was half open. Reflexively I knocked and called out again. “
Mike?
You in there, guy . . . ?”

To my relief, I saw him sitting in a high-backed, leather chair at his desk, glasses raised on his forehead as if he was looking over a report, wearing a red golf shirt—which accounted for why I didn't see it at first.

My first reaction was to blow out my cheeks and go, “Jesus, buddy, am I glad to see you . . .”

Then I stopped.

He
was
sitting there, except that he hadn't moved or made even the slightest sign of recognition. His eyes were wide and glassy and staring through me.

Two dark blotches were on his chest.

“Oh my God
,
Mike . . . !”
My legs grew rubbery and I suddenly felt my stomach lurch up my throat.
“Oh, no, no, no, no . . .”

I ran over. You didn't need a medical degree to know that he was dead. His pulse was nonexistent; his body temperature was already getting cold.

“Oh, Mike, Mike
. . .” I said, tears forcing their way into my eyes, and I basically sank, numb and not understanding, into a leather chair.

I'd known Mike for more than twenty years. Since we were freshmen at Amherst. He was on the golf team. He was one of those glass-half-full kind of guys, who'd give you the shirt off his back. Which was basically what he was doing for me now.

Or had been about to do.

I sat there with my head in my hands, looking at him, trying to figure out how this could possibly have happened. My friend was dead! How could anyone have possibly known that I would come here? Or even put the two of us together. How—

Suddenly it was clear.

I realized with mounting alarm that two people were now dead.
Two people.
And that I was the only connection between them!

I felt the sweats come over me and my insides slowly clawed their way up my throat.
Oh my God, Henry . . .

Someone was targeting me.

It seemed crazy, impossible. Who
?
And why? What could I have done? Just an hour ago I'd been driving into town, thinking that this was going to be one of the best days of my life.
Now . . .
Now two people were dead. Brutally murdered.

And I was the only link between them!

No, no, this was crazy . . .
It couldn't be.

My thoughts raced wildly. I stared at my friend's lifeless body while tears of grief and utter disbelief made their way down my cheeks. I realized now that I couldn't explain myself. Not any longer. I'd be looked at as a suspect here as well. In
two
murders now. The first maybe I could explain . . . But
this
one, completely unrelated, my friend, at the place I had chosen to flee to . . . All they'd have to do was check my phone records to see that I'd just called him. My prints and DNA were probably everywhere.

Even on his body.

“Who's doing this to me?”

I heard a car drive by, and suddenly I knew I had to get out of there.
Now!
A housekeeper might show up at any second. Or Gail could come home. My name was already all over the airwaves as a person wanted in connection to a murder.

How could I possibly explain this one now?

I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a cloth and started wiping down anything I could remember I had touched.

The doors. The coffee mug. Around Mike's office.

Him.

Then I didn't know if I should have done that. It only made me look as if I was covering up. Made me look guiltier.

I saw Mike's cell phone on his desk. I knew it was crazy, but by now mine was probably being monitored by the police and I had to make a few calls. The first one to Liz. She had to know.
Oh God, how would I possibly explain this?
I felt completely nauseous.

“Mike . . .”
I said, swallowing, placing my hand on his shoulder. “I'm so sorry, dude. I know you were only trying to help. I know you—”

I clasped his lifeless hand. What else was there to say?

I went out through the garage. Mike's silver Jag was just sitting there. His Callaways leaning against the trunk. Crazy as it was, I had no other way to get out of there.

And I couldn't possibly make myself look any guiltier than I already had.

I found the key on the front divider, and the engine started up.

I drove out, closing the garage door behind me. Tears stung in my eyes. I wanted to call Gail and let her know what horror awaited her back at home. But how could I? Until I figured it out.

I knew, once she heard the news, she'd automatically assume it was me.

I drove out the driveway and backtracked along the same route I had taken earlier, toward the highway. I had no idea where I was going, or whom I could turn to now.

In a few minutes I hit I-10 again. I knew I was safe in Mike's car, at least for a while. But that was going to cave in fast.

I looked in the rearview mirror, just to make sure there weren't any cops behind me, and, for the first time, actually focused on the Jag's rear window.

Suddenly my eyes tripled in size.

The window had a decal on it—an image I was sure I had seen before.
What the hell is happening, Henry . . . ?

I pulled over to the side of the highway and spun around, frozen in shock.

It was the identical image I'd seen on the back plate of the blue car as it pulled away.

Not a dragon, as I had originally thought. But a kind of bird. With a sharp beak and bright red wings. A long tail.

A gamecock.

A mascot. From the University of South Carolina.

I remembered, Mike's oldest son was a sophomore there.

Chapter Seven

T
he squat, stub-necked man stepped up to the officer behind the glass, his pink face framed by a felt of orange hair around the sides of his balding head.

“Amanda Hofer,” he said, and pushed his ID through the opening while the officer took a good look at him. “I'm her father.”

The duty guard at the Lowndes County Jail inspected it and pushed it back to him. “You can head down to Booth Two.”

Vance Hofer put his license back in the thick, tattered wallet and stepped through a security checkpoint, taking out his keys and loose change. Then he continued down to the visiting room. It had been a long time, he thought to himself, a very long time since he'd felt at home in a place like this. A lot of things had happened and not many of them good. He eased himself into a chair in the small booth and stared at his reflection in the glass.

He'd lost Joycie to cancer about a year and a half ago. Lost his job at the mill a year before that. Medical insurance too. Then he'd fallen behind on the house. Not to mention how he'd been forced to come up here in the first place, thrown to the wolves down south on trumped-up charges he couldn't defend.

Life was bleeding him, Vance reflected, one cut at a time.

But this last one—what had happened to Amanda. Well, that was one more cut than he could bear.

They brought her out in an orange jumpsuit, hands cuffed in front of her. She looked a little overwhelmed and scared. Who wouldn't be? Maybe a little afraid of seeing him too. Her hair was all straggly and unkempt. Cheeks sunken and pale. And when she saw him, who it was who had come to visit, she had this cautious look that he took as both worried and even a little ashamed. Like a proud animal not used to being caged. She sat down across from him with a wary smile and shrugged her shoulders slightly.

“How ya doin', Daddy?”

He nodded back, not knowing what to say. “Amanda.”

Truth be told, Vance hadn't known what to say to his daughter in years. He saw her as little more than a whining, pathetic child who never owned up to anything she'd done. Who'd always blamed every bit of what went wrong in her life on someone or something else. Which made Vance sick to his soul, since, if he stood on one thing, it was that each of us had to be accountable for what we had done in life.

No matter how bad.

Still, she was his daughter. He'd tried to raise her as best he could, knowing he had always had a paucity in the way of softness or understanding, until things started to go downhill in the past year. And he hated that—that he'd let things get away from him. That someone with as clear a ledger when it came to right from wrong had to look through the glass and see his own seed, his wife's baby, and say, in a corner of his bruised, unforgiving heart,
That's
my daughter there.

“How's Benji, Daddy?” Amanda asked. Her stupid cat. Not even her cat, just a mangy, scrawny stray who lived in the woods outside and only came around 'cause Amanda was stupid enough to feed it. “Are you leaving a little something out for him? He likes a little raw chop meat maybe. Or maybe some tuna fish.”

“He's doing just fine, Amanda, just fine,” Vance said, though he was plainly lying. He'd heard a couple of hopeful purrs a few days back, but now the critter must have wised up and was no longer coming around. “He stops by every couple of nights or so. Been asking for you, 'Manda.”

That made her smile.

“I talked to my lawyer,” she said, the momentary lightness in her soft eyes darkening. “They want me to plead, Daddy, to what they're calling ‘aggravated vehicular manslaughter.' Otherwise he says they're going to go for second-degree murder.”

Vance nodded.

The whole thing had been played out all over the news, so much that he couldn't even watch TV anymore. Such a nice, young thing that gal had been, and married to someone serving our country, a Marine in Afghanistan. Not to mention that baby . . . Only eight weeks old. The poor guy hadn't even seen his son yet. The D.A. wouldn't let up. Not with Amanda so juiced up and not even knowing what she had done and all. It was clear he was pushing for the max. Vance couldn't even blame him.

It was an election year.

“Sounds like something you ought to weigh carefully, honey.”

“Aggravated manslaughter's punishable by twenty years, Daddy!” Her eyes grew scared and wide. “I didn't mean to hurt no one. I didn't mean for this to happen. I wasn't myself.
Those things
 
. . .”
She wiped her eyes and pushed back her hair. “We're talking my whole life, Daddy! I don't deserve this. I'm scared. You have to help me. You do . . .”

“I know you're scared, Amanda,” Vance said, looking at her. “But you're gonna have to take responsibility for what you've done. You killed a woman, honey. And her baby . . .”

And after, how she'd just walked around in a big daze crying how she was hurt too. Those animals . . . Her so-called friends. Look what they'd done to her. Vance had fought for right from wrong his whole life, and this was what it had left him. “No one can make that go away, darlin'. There just ain't much I can do.”

“
Twenty years, Daddy!
That's my whole life! You know people. I know you can help me.” She was crying, his little girl. Thick, childlike tears. But crying for whom? Herself.
“You have to!”

“I can't help you, honey.” Vance lowered his head. “At least, not in that way.”

“Then how
?
” Amanda stared back at him. “How can you help me, Daddy? You were a cop, all those years . . .” Her tone was helpless and desperate, fragile as thin glass, but also with that edge that dug into him with recollections he didn't want to hear. “You were a cop! That has to mean something.”

A fire began to light up in Vance's belly. First, like a match to kindling. Then catching, fueled by the anger he always carried, and his shame. The people demanded justice. She'd killed two perfectly innocent people. He understood that better than anyone. His daughter had to pay the price. They'd been bleeding him, one cut at a time, over the years,
one at a time . . .
And deeper . . .

“How you gonna help me, Daddy?”

It got to the point you couldn't take no more . . .

Someone had to pay.

Vance leaned forward and said in barely more than a whisper, “Who gave you the pills, 'Manda?”

“No one gave me the pills, Daddy. You don't understand. You just get them, that's all. I needed them.”

“Someone gave 'em to you, honey.
So you tell me who?
I'm pretty sure I know who.” His eyes fixed on hers. “You think, if the situation was reversed, that boy'd be protecting you?”

She snorted back, angry. “You're wrong, Daddy. You've always been wrong.”

“Who gave 'em to you, honey?” Vance put his beefy palm on the glass partition, hoping she'd do the same, but she just sat there. “For once, do the right thing, hon. Please. Who took my little girl from me?”

“No . . .”
For a moment she looked back at him and shook her head, and then there was anger in her eyes. “That's your answer, Daddy? That's how you're gonna help me? I'm sitting here, looking at my whole life taken away, and all you want to know is who took your little girl?” She screwed up her eyes and gave him a cajoling laugh, daggers in them. “
You
done it, Daddy. You took her. You took that little girl. You know what I'm talking about. You want to know so bad? Well, take a long, hard look at the truth, Daddy. It wasn't the drugs. It wasn't Wayne. It was
you
. Take a good look at what you see”—she pushed herself back and lifted her jangling hands—“ 'cause you're the one who's responsible!
You
.”

She stared at him, her once-soft, brown, little-girl eyes ablaze. “You think you're gonna help me . . . ?” She nodded to the guard and stood up, brushing the stringy hair out of her eyes. “What're you gonna do, Daddy, hurt them all? Everyone who took your little dream away?” She took a step away from him, crushing his heart, though he didn't know quite how to say it.

Then she turned and faced him one more time. A smile crept onto her lips, a cruel one. “You may not be in this prison,” Amanda said, like she was stepping on a dying insect to put it out of its pain, “but that don't mean you're any freer than me now, does it, Daddy?”