Scared to Death (22 page)

 

After the first killing, it got easier.

That's how it is.

The first time, even while it's happening, you don't know quite what to expect when it's over. You don't know how you'll feel, or what you'll do, or where you'll hide the corpse, or even if you should bother. You don't know whether you're actually capable of taking a human life, though it feels good—
so damned good
—to try.

To succeed is just…well, it's a gust of pure, exhilarating supremacy, and you know, in that moment, that you can accomplish anything. Anything at all.

Eventually, though, the feeling subsides.

And you feel a pang when you realize it'll never return, unless…

You have to kill again.

The more often you experience the addictive rush of power, the harder it is to hold off until you get to feel it again.

You don't want to get sloppy, though. You don't want to start doing it just for the hell of it. You have to have a plan; it has to be a means to an end. Otherwise, it's wrong: killing for the sake of killing.

This isn't like that. This is about vengeance, and about love.

Like the lyrics of that old song…

It was by The Who. What was it?

“Behind Blue Eyes.” Right.

And the lyrics, all of them, are true. So true. No one knows what it's like.

No one but Jeremy…

The sudden ringing of a telephone curtails that line of thinking. The ringtone is unfamiliar. It can only be Elsa Cavalon's phone—the one she so carelessly left on the countertop in her mother's apartment.

Too bad. It's mine now.

Is she calling it herself, aware she lost it?

Or is someone else trying to reach her: her husband, perhaps, or her mother in France? It sure as hell isn't Mike Fantoni—or, for that matter, Roxanne the social worker. Ha.

One look at the caller ID window provides the shock of a lifetime.

Of all the names that might have come up, this is by far the least expected—and the most intriguing.

 

“Hi, you've reached Elsa. I can't take your call right now, but if you leave a message I'll get right back to you.”

Marin takes a deep breath. “Elsa, this is Marin Quinn. I'm…”

Oh please. She knows who you are
.

“I need to talk to you. Over the phone or in person, whatever…”

She can hear the quaking in her voice, and knows she'd better hang up before she bursts into tears—which would pretty much ensure that Elsa Cavalon won't be calling her back.

Do you really think she's going to do that anyway?

“I, um, understand if you'd rather not talk to me after…after all this. But I hope you will.”

Marin pauses.

Is there anything more to say? This might be her only chance.

“I'm sorry,” she blurts, and hangs up.

 

Out on Broadway, it's still raining. The mass weekend exodus is well under way; the streets are jammed with traffic, the sidewalks crowded with people and umbrellas.

Spotting a cop issuing a traffic ticket over on the corner, Elsa considers—for a fleeting moment—pouring out the whole story and asking him for help.

But what proof do you even have that anyone was even after you?

What if he thinks you're crazy?

There will be an official report. That much is certain.

And having taken Renny across state lines without permission will be the least of her worries when the agency gets hold of it.

Right now, her priority is to find a safe haven for herself and Renny—then figure out what the hell is going on.

“Where are we going?” Renny asks.

“Home,” Elsa tells her resolutely. “We're going home.”

 

“…can't locate next of kin…touch and go…maybe we should…”

Snatches of far-off voices reach Mike's ears, bewildering him.

Where is he?

Not at home. If he were at home, he'd be alone. There are people here; he can feel movement all around him;
can hear, in addition to the murmuring voices, some kind of steady electronic beep.

With tremendous effort, he opens his eyes.

At least, that's what he thought he just did.

But still he can see nothing at all. He's surrounded not by the darkness of a night room, but a solid pitch black that scares the shit out of him. What the hell is going on? Has he gone blind?

He opens his mouth to ask someone, but he can't seem to move his jaw. He can't move anything, he realizes, not even his fingers.

As terror cloaks Mike like a straitjacket, he struggles to stay conscious, desperate to piece together what might have happened to him.

The last thing he remembers is standing on the street…

He was talking to Joe…

“You going somewhere, Mikey?”

Yeah. That's right…he
was
going somewhere. He had luggage. But where…?

Oh no. Oh Christ.

In a flash, it comes back to him: the Cavalons' visit, his suspicion that Jeremy might be alive, deciding to go to Mumbai…and the speeding car that gunned right toward him.

That was no accident—the car hitting him.

Again, he struggles to speak; again, he can't move a muscle.

He can hear two women talking nearby, and a rattling sound, as though someone is pushing a cart around.

“I don't know…I probably shouldn't…”

“Come on, they have two-for-one happy hour margaritas.”

“Yeah, but I'm on the early shift tomorrow.”

Listening to their mundane chatter, Mike is help-
less. Don't they realize he's trapped in here? Don't they care that someone tried to kill him?

Someone tried to kill him. Someone almost succeeded. Or maybe they did. Maybe he's dying.

He's always wondered what it would be like. Is this it? Is he living his last moments?

Or has it already happened? Is he dead?

Something comes back to him then—a thought so disturbing that Mike is certain he's still alive, because everyone knows that when you're dead, there's no pain. And this is painful.

Not physically. There is no physical pain, only immobility.

But remembering how he glimpsed, for a split second through the windshield, the person who was behind the wheel of that car—the person who was gunning right for him—he realizes he'd been wrong about something crucial to the Cavalon case.

Mike Fantoni doesn't like to be wrong. He prides himself on the fact that he rarely ever is. He's built a reputation on it. His clients count on it.

His clients…

Mike Fantoni's last thought before he drifts back to the peaceful silence is that someone needs to warn Brett and Elsa.

L
ocated almost midway between New York and Boston on the busy I–95 corridor, New Haven, Connecticut, is a prime location for drug dealers and the addicts and prostitutes who go with the territory. As a longtime vice detective with the NHPD, Bill Ellsworth has seen it all—and then some—particularly here in the neighborhood of Fair Haven on the banks of the Quinnipiac River.

A light rain is falling as he strides toward the overgrown vacant lot in a seedy stretch just off Chapel Street. It isn't the first time he's been summoned to this area, a favorite haunt of hookers and their johns, many of whom are from the surrounding shore towns. It isn't even the first time he's seen a woman lying facedown here amid the broken glass and syringes.

But it's the first time this particular area is cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape, and the woman on the ground isn't passed out cold from last night's crack binge.

She's dead.

Not an OD, though. She got her throat slit. And she's been here at least a day or two, judging by the insects nesting in her flesh.

Jim Novak, the first officer on the scene, had been summoned by a couple of twelve-year-olds who found her while cutting through the lot. Spotting Bill, Novak turns away from his animated conversation with a uniformed rookie.

“Look who's here. When'd you get back?”

“Late last night,” Bill tells him, fighting a yawn. More like early this morning, by the time he and his wife had gotten their luggage and driven home from the airport.

“Where'd you go this time?”

“The Caribbean.”

“Nice.”

Bill nods.
Nice
doesn't begin to cover it.

If there's anything he's learned on this job, it's that life is short and unpredictable. You'd better do everything you want to do and see everything you want to see while you have the chance, because you never know whether you're going to be around tomorrow.

He and Tina won't retire young or rich; they've spent every vacation day and every dime they have on travel, mostly by ship. At ports of call all over the world, they've seen ancient ruins and exotic wildlife, cathedrals and pyramids, volcanoes and caverns, and, on this last trip, the most breathtaking beaches on the planet.

And now, back to reality.

Bill surveys the corpse. “Any ID on her?”

“What, are you kidding me?”

“You never know.”

“That'd make life too simple, Ellsworth.” Novak goes back to the rookie, shooting the shit about the Red Sox.

Pulling on a pair of plastic gloves, Bill steps past Dave Rivera, the police photographer, who's snapping his bubble gum as he shoots the scene from every angle.

“How's it going, Bill?”

“TGIF,” Bill mutters dryly, studying the victim.

He can't see her face, but she's skinny and pale with jet black hair, wearing a black skirt, black top, and—oddly—black platform-soled boots with studded buckles. Not exactly typical footwear for a working girl around here.

There's dried blood matted in her hair and on her shoulders beneath the wounds on either side of her neck. Her right arm is bent up near her head, as if she'd tried to shield herself from the attack.

“Such a shame to see a nice religious kid like her killed right down the street from St. Rose's, huh?” Rivera comments, leaning in to get a close-up of what Bill had assumed, at a glance, was a bruise on her arm above a leather-studded bracelet.

“What do you mean?”

“Her ink. She's got a nice fancy cross there, see it?”

Bill waves off a fly and bends over to take a closer look at the corpse.

“First of all, she wasn't killed in this spot. There's not enough blood. Someone dumped her here. The other thing is…that's no cross,” he informs Rivera, pointing at the tattoo. “It's a hieroglyphic symbol.”

“What makes you think that?”

Bill levels a look at him. “I don't think it—I know it. I've been to Egypt. And by the way—it's called an ankh.”

 

This was the longest stretch Marin's been away from home in months. Maybe that's why the apartment feels oddly empty as she crosses the threshold.

“Hello…girls, I'm back!”

She can't help but compare the sterile entry hall to the Walshes', with its pleasant clutter of personal
belongings. Here, everything is perfectly staged for the real estate sale; a reminder that soon the place will belong to somebody else.

Why does it already seem as though it does?

But it's not just the absence of stray shoes and books and framed photos on the walls and knickknacks on the shelves.

The apartment is still.
Too
still.

And dark. This might be one of the longest days of the year, but the dreary weather calls for lamplight. She tosses her keys on the bare surface of the hall table and flips a wall switch. There—that's a little better.

“Anybody home?”

No reply. She kicks off her shoes as she walks, wincing.

It's hard to believe her feet were once accustomed to wearing heels morning, noon, and night. Today, they merely carried her a block and a half from the parking garage back to the building, and they're killing her.

Since she usually doesn't bother to wear shoes around the house—and around the house is pretty much the only place she's been lately—she's out of practice.

With shoes, and driving.

But you did it
, she reminds herself.
You made it up to Westchester and back all by yourself—no pills, no tears, no…panic attacks.

Remembering what Lauren said about her episodes, and about finding a shrink, she wishes she'd never mentioned anything about it. True, she went up there to find some moral support, thinking Lauren might be the one person who might understand what she's going through…

But even
she
can't quite relate. Lauren's never lost a child. Not like Marin. Not like…

Elsa.

Will Jeremy's adoptive mother call back when she gets Marin's message?

Why wouldn't she?

Why
would
she?

Marin's head is throbbing again.

“Girls!” she calls, walking down the hallway toward their rooms. They're probably both plugged into headphones, as usual.

Annie's door is ajar. Marin sticks her head in. No Annie.

Caroline's door is closed. Are they in there?

Together?

An image flashes through her head: two little girls sitting side by side, heads close together—one blond, one brunette—over an open storybook across their laps, the older sister reading to the younger.

Oh please. That would never happen.

It never did, even when they were younger. Her girls were never close.

There's no way they're both cozily occupied in Caroline's room, yet she knocks anyway. “Caroline? Annie?”

No answer.

“Caroline!” Uneasy, she tries the knob. Sometimes, her daughter locks it when she's inside.

Not today.

The door isn't locked, but Caroline's not inside.

Marin surveys the empty room, wondering where she is.

And where, she wonders, her pulse beginning to race, is Annie?

 

Brett is sitting at the kitchen table in front of an open laptop, scrolling through the online listing for local therapists when the phone rings. He jumps on it, cer
tain it's going to be Elsa. He's been nervous ever since he tried her earlier and she didn't pick up.

He keeps reminding himself that her battery might be dead, and she might not have thought to pack her charger.

But when he tried calling the regular line to her mother's apartment, no one answered there, either.

Maybe, not thinking it would be for her, Elsa didn't bother.

Or maybe she took Renny out to eat and couldn't hear the phone in a crowded restaurant…

Or maybe they went to a movie, and she had to turn it off…

Come on—would she really do that under these circumstances?

She might. She might have been trying hard to distract Renny.

Really, there are any number of scenarios that might explain why Elsa's cell went straight into voice mail—and has continued to, several times—but Brett can't quite accept any of them.

Now, he eagerly checks the incoming call. His heart sinks.

It isn't Elsa.

He doesn't recognize the number on the caller ID screen, nor, for a moment, the voice that greets him when he picks up.

“Hi, sorry to bother you again…”

Who…?

Oh. Joe. Mike's friend.

“Is Mike…?”

“No change.”

“Thank God.” Brett closes his eyes briefly.

“Listen, you asked me if I knew where he was going. You know, on vacation?”

His eyes snap open. “Yes.”

“When the nurses gave me his phone, they gave me his other stuff, too. You know—to hang on to. After I talked to you I got to thinking…I know it probably wasn't right, but I looked through Mikey's stuff. He had the printout of the e-mail with the confirmation number for his flight. It was in his pocket.”

Brett holds his breath, waiting.

“Funny thing is, the confirmation e-mail had a time on it—and it was from early this morning, so I guess it was some kind of last-minute trip.”

“Where was he going?”

“That's the funny thing. It's a hell of a place for a vacation—even at the last minute.”

“Where?”

At the reply, Brett lowers himself into the nearest chair, stunned.

Mumbai
: the city where Jeremy was killed.

 

Creeping up the rain-slicked West Side Highway in Friday night congestion, Elsa keeps a close eye on the headlights and changing traffic patterns in the rearview mirror.

Breathing easily—or perhaps, just
breathing
—for the first time since they left the Ansonia, she's fairly certain they've managed to shake whoever was dogging them there.

They definitely weren't trailed as they walked over to the car rental place on West End Avenue. They made several turns—more than were necessary—and she made sure they eventually lost all the pedestrians who'd been behind them from the start.

It was surprisingly simple to rent a car—complete with a booster seat—on short notice. Or maybe not so surprising. Maybe people do it all the time in Manhattan, where so few residents own cars. Maybe that's
why the man behind the counter didn't give her a second glance as he ran her credit card and handed her the keys.

Renny pretty much dropped off to sleep within minutes after they pulled out of the rental agency garage. Poor kid has been dragged from Boston to Groton to New York and now back again; from car to train to cab to car; up and down steps, into a dreaded elevator, along the streets in the rain…

For a fleeing moment, Elsa wonders what kind of a mother would put a child through all that.

Maybe she isn't fit to—

Wait a minute. What are you thinking? Stop that right now!

She's the best mother Renny could ever have because she loves her with all her heart. She's gone to such extremes today for one reason alone: to keep Renny safe. No one in this world is going to do a better job at that.

Less than two hours to go, and they'll be home. Then at last she'll be able to tell Brett what's been going on—but not while they're inside the house. It must be bugged, like their phones. She'll have to take him outside to talk—or write it down on paper. She'll figure it out when she gets there.

All she wants is to get there.

Home…home…home…home…

The windshield wipers beat in time to the refrain in her head.

Taillights blur into red splotches in front of her, and she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She can't cry now. She can't cry at all. There's no reason to. Renny is fine, and she's going to stay that way.

Please…please…please…please…

 

Caroline's cell phone rings just as she's telling Jake one of her best stories: the one about her top falling off while she was surfing on Long Island last summer. It's a particularly good story because it makes her seem adventurous and sexy and funny all at the same time. Plus he must surf, too, so he'll realize how much they really do have in common.

“Aren't you going to get that?” he cuts into the story when she ignores the phone.

“Nah.”

It rings three more times, then bounces into voice mail.

“You know,” Jake says thoughtfully, “I've been kicking myself since yesterday that I didn't stick around to get your phone number—but maybe that's not the best way to get in touch with you?”

“Oh, I'd answer it if it was
you
. But obviously, it's not, because you're right here, so…”

“So why don't you give me your number now?” Grinning, he reaches for his backpack.

“Right this second? You mean, before a disgusting rodent comes crawling out of
your
bag?”

“No rodents.” He pulls out a pen and pats the bag. “Not yet, anyway.” He writes her number on a napkin, and she does the same with his.

As she tucks it into her pocket, her phone rings again.

Again, she ignores it.

Again, it goes into voice mail.

Less than a minute later, it starts ringing again.

“You should probably get it,” Jake advises. “Maybe it's me.”

She laughs, then reluctantly pulls out her phone and glances at the caller ID. “It's my mother.”

“Go ahead. Pick it up.”

She rolls her eyes. “Hello?”

“Caroline!”

Her mother practically screams her name. Caroline winces and holds the phone away from her ear.

“Where are you girls?”

“I'm
at Starbucks. Annie's home.”