Sisterhood (35 page)

In the early morning hours of October 11 Cooper was making his second pass through the largely deserted streets of his patrol. From time to time he stopped the cruiser to shine his light in the window of a store or restaurant where he sensed something out of the ordinary. Each time he identified the source of his uneasiness—a new product display or repositioned table—and moved on.

The purple Fiat, parked inconspicuously by a dumpster in one of the back alleys, had not been there on his earlier swing through the area. Cooper blocked the alley with the patrol car, flashed his spot on the license plate and radioed the dispatcher.

“This is Alpha Nine Twenty-one,” he said, “requesting stolen check and listing on a purple Fiat, Massachusetts license number three-five-three, Mike, Whiskey, Quebec. Any backup units available?

“Negative, Alpha Nine Twenty-one. Repeat license, please.”

Cooper repeated the number and waited. The car was hot—he felt certain of that. In fact, he was surprised there hadn’t been other redistributed vehicles on the first night of decent weather in over a week. If it were stolen, it was kids, not the pros. Had it been the pros, the little Fiat would have already been painted, supplied with new numbers, and on its way to fill an order in Springfield or Fall River or someplace.

The delay seemed longer than usual. Cooper drummed impatiently on the wheel. He flipped on his walkie-talkie and was stepping out of the car when the radio crackled to life.

“Alpha Nine Twenty-one, I have information on nineteen seventy-nine Fiat sedan, Massachusetts license three-five-three, Mike, Whiskey, Quebec.” The woman’s voice, sensuous and tantalizing, was one Cooper recognized as belonging to a hundred-and-seventy-pound mustachioed mother of five.

“This is Alpha Nine, Gladys,” he said. “What have you got?”

“So far the car is clean as your whistle, Alpha Nine—no wants, no warrants. Registered to Joseph Rosetti, twenty-one Damon Street, Apartment C.”

“Alpha Nine out,” Cooper said. As he entered the alley, he instinctively unsnapped the flap of his service revolver.

The driver’s side door of the Fiat was open. Cooper shined his flashlight on the seats, then the floor. Nothing. Suddenly he tensed. The thick, nauseating scent of blood—the perfume of death—filled his nostrils. Wedged behind the seats, covered by a scruffy tan blanket, was a body. He took a quick breath and pulled the blanket aside. At that moment all the toughness, all the gruesome battles in the rice paddies and the jungles and the city streets did not help at all.

Marion Anderson Cooper spun away from the car and puked on the pavement.

Joey’s hands and feet were bound. He had been stabbed dozens of times before he died. Arranged neatly on his chest were one of his ears and parts of three fingers. The morning papers would dismiss his grisly death as “a probable gangland slaying.”

Twenty miles north of the city, the real reason, a crudely sketched blood-smeared map, extracted after an hour of torture, rested on the passenger seat of Leonard Vincent’s sedan.

M
oving soundlessly, Christine set her suitcase by the front door and returned to the bedroom. Through eyes reddened by nearly an hour of crying, she peered across the pale early morning light at David. He was sleeping peacefully, his bushy hair partly buried in the pillow clutched to his face. With a painful glance at the letter wedged alongside the dresser mirror, she tiptoed out of the house.

The morning was chilly and still. Her breath, faintly visible, hung in the air. Far below, a thick mantle of silver covered the ocean as far as she could see. With movements as dreamlike as the world around her she took the key from the jeep, dropped it in an envelope, and walked slowly to her own car. Any moment she expected to hear his voice calling to her from the deck. The sight of him, she knew, would snap her resolve like a dry twig.

Without a backward look, she slid onto the driver’s seat of the Mustang and rolled it down the drive before starting the engine. At the end of the turnoff to Rocky Point, a quarter of a mile from the house, she stopped and set the envelope with the key in a small pile of
rocks. A final check to be certain David would have no trouble spotting it, then she turned left onto the winding ocean road, heading south to Boston.

The thoughts and feelings whirling inside her made it impossible to concentrate. She took no notice of the dark sedan that cruised past her in the other direction, nor of the huge, featureless man behind the wheel. No notice, that is, until the car suddenly appeared in her rearview mirror only a few yards behind.

Leonard Vincent maneuvered his car close to the smaller Mustang. Christine’s momentary anger at being tailgated changed to terror as their bumpers made contact. At first, it was just a scrape, then a crunch. Suddenly Vincent sped inside her on the right and began forcing her across the road. Christine’s knuckles whitened on the wheel as she strained to keep from spinning out of control. She searched to her left for an escape route and instantly broke into a terrified, icy sweat.

Not ten feet away was the edge of a drop-off—the high slope of rocks and trees where a thirty-six-hour lifetime ago she had stood and gazed for the first time at Rocky Point. Several hundred feet below stretched the Atlantic.

Another crunch, louder than before. Christine’s head spun to the right. The front of Vincent’s car was even with her passenger door. Beyond him, a shallow gully, then a sheer wall of sandstone. The Mustang vibrated mercilessly as its
tires
bounced sideways. Christine slammed on the brake. The acrid smell of burning rubber filled the car.

Leonard Vincent’s expression looked bland, almost peaceful as he forced her closer and closer to the dropoff. Less than five feet remained between the Mustang and the edge of the road when Christine released the brake and floored the accelerator. Her car shot forward. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the sedan slip away. Then the bumpers of the two cars locked.

In an instant they were both out of control, spinning in a wild death dance across the road. Christine fought the wheel with all her strength, but it ripped from her hands. Her right arm slammed down against the gear shift and shattered just above the wrist. At the moment the white-hot pain registered, Christine’s car hit the sandstone wall. Her head shot forward, smashing into the windshield just above her left ear. The glass exploded and instantly her world went black.

She did not hear the scream of tearing metal as the two cars separated. She did not see the wide-eyed terror in Leonard Vincent’s face as his car snapped free of hers like a whip, then catapulted toward the ocean, hitting nose down on the steep slope and bouncing off trees and boulders over and over again until it disappeared in the thick fog. She did not see her own car ricochet off the rock face, spin full circle, then roll toward the drop-off.

She was unconscious on the seat when the rear wheels of the Mustang dropped over the embankment. The car stopped, its chassis teetering on the soft dirt. Then it slid over the edge.

David felt the emptiness even before he was fully awake. He opened his eyes a slit, then closed them tightly, trying to will what he knew was true not to be so. She’s in the living room, sitting quietly, looking out at the ocean. A dollar says she’s in the living room. He held his breath. The silence in the house was more than the simple absence of sound. It was a void, a nothingness. There was no movement of air, no sense of energy, no life.

She’s gone for a walk, he reasoned desperately. A little morning walk and immediately the great surgeon panics. He rolled toward the window, blinking at the sunless glare. The sky was a thin sheet of pearl—the sort of overcast that would miraculously disappear by
midmorning, opening like a curtain on the extravaganza of a new day. A morning walk, that’s all.

He pushed himself to one elbow and scanned the room. The realization that her clothes were gone sank in only moments before he saw the envelope wedged alongside the mirror. It was the scene from countless grade B movies, only this time inexorably real. Sadness as flat as the morning sky swept over him.

“Shit,” was his first word of the day. Then his second and third. He pulled himself out of bed and walked purposefully past the dresser into the bathroom. He peed, then washed, then shaved. He limped to the kitchen and put on water for coffee. The ankle was stiff and slow, but almost free of pain. His nurse had done her job well.

He tidied the living room and waited for the water to boil. In one final jet of hope he checked the driveway. The Mustang was gone. Christine was gone. Mexico and any chance for a new, unencumbered life together were gone.

Numbly, he shuffled back to the bedroom.

His name was printed in the center of the plain white envelope. He watched his hands tear it open. Another note. The second one in less than a week. This time, though, he felt the anguish in every word—as it was written and as it was read.

P.S
.
The key to the jeep will be at the end of the turn off for Rocky Point. It’s in an envelope like this one
.

The jeep. David laughed in spite of himself. From an even start it was doubtful the jeep could stay with Christine’s Mustang for more than a few yards. She was certainly determined not to be dissuaded. Well, he
would not be dissuaded either. He could not change the situation, so he would simply change his expectations. Whatever she had to face he would face with her, as long as she wanted him there.

David dressed, playing through in his mind the situations the two of them might encounter in the days and weeks ahead. He noticed the bulky sweater he had worn on the ride to Rocky Point. Christine had placed it, neatly folded, on a chair by the bureau. David grinned. Perhaps he could return it to Joey as a contribution toward the wardrobe of the next man chased into the Charles River. As he picked it up, Rolsetti’s heavy revolver fell out. David had completely forgotten about it. He hefted the revolver in one hand and felt the queasy tension that he had come to expect when handling guns of any kind. He tried to recall when Christine said Joey would call again. Last night? This morning? A moment of reflection and he went to the phone. Rosetti’s Boston number was printed on a small card taped to the receiver.

The woman’s voice that answered his call was older than Terry’s.

“Hello, is this the Rosettis’ residence?” he asked.

“Yes. Can I help you?”

“Well, could I speak with Mr. or Mrs. Rosetti, please?” For a time there was silence on the other end.

“Who is this, please?” the woman asked finally. Her voice was ice.

David began to shift nervously from one foot to the other. “My name is David Shelton. I’m a friend of Joey and Terry’s, and I’m stay—”

“I know who you are, Dr. Shelton,” the woman said flatly. Again there was silence. David felt an awful sinking in his gut. “This is Mrs. D’Ambrosio. Terry’s mother. Terry can’t come to the phone. The doctor’s given her some medicine and …” Suddenly the woman began to cry. “Joey’s dead … murdered,” she sobbed.
David dropped to the couch and stared unseeing across the room. “Terry hasn’t been able to talk to the police, but she talked to me, and she said it’s because Joey helped you that he’s dead.” She broke down completely, any pretext of anger at him lost in her grief.

“But that’s … impossible,” he mumbled, his mind whirling. It was Leonard Vincent. It had to have been. He pressed his eyes, trying to stop the spinning. First Ben, now Joey … and Christine out there somewhere. “When did this happen?” His voice was lifeless.

“Early this morning. They found him in his car, stabbed and cut and … Dr. Shelton, I just don’t want to talk to you anymore. Joey’s funeral is Tuesday. You can speak with my daughter after that.”

“But wait …” The woman hung up.

For several minutes David sat motionless, oblivious to the bleating of the receiver in his lap. Then he grabbed the sweater and the revolver, along with his crutches, and raced from the house. Hoping against hope, he checked the jeep. There was no key. He threw the gun on the seat and pushed himself down the road in long, swinging arcs. Still, by the time he returned, nearly half an hour had passed. He was soaked with perspiration, gasping for air. His ribs, battered by the unpadded arm supports, screamed as he pulled himself up behind the wheel. Then he stopped.