The Widow File (6 page)

Fay’s wide eyes stared up at nothing, her beautiful silk blouse torn and blackened by the close-range shooting. Dani was sorry to see that she’d lost two fingernails on her left hand, probably from hauling the rack from the wall. Somehow that seemed to be the worst part of the whole scene. Fay had beautiful hands and had always taken pride in her impeccable manicures. Dani wanted to cover up her hands, to wrap them up in a towel to protect them from further damage. She didn’t want anyone to see Fay with missing nails. She didn’t want anyone to see any of this. She didn’t want to see any of this.

Swallowing hard, Dani fought against the cloud of shock and denial she knew was descending upon her. If Fay was alive, she told herself, she’d smack the crap out of you for just standing here. Get away.

That became her mantra. Get away.

Make someone pay for what they did here. Make sure the world knew about the killers with guns who dared break her friend’s beautiful fingernails and soak blood into her favorite pink scarf. Dani heard the words low in her throat. Get away. Get away. The sound vibrated through her throat, centering her. More important, it kept the scream she knew lurked somewhere below it from erupting.

Dropping her chin to her chest, feeling bile rise in her throat as dizziness washed over her, Dani realized she had stepped on the sleeve of a thin
windbreaker. The toe of her boot brushed against a tan hand and her early chant morphed into a low moan.

Look at him, she said to herself. It’s Choo-Choo and you need to look at him. He was your friend. He was killed. The thought that the killer might have been looking over his shoulder as he watched Dani running up the driveway made her stomach flip in pain and rage. “Choo-Choo,” she whispered, crouching down to see below the console, bracing herself to see the damage done to his beautiful face.

She saw black hair. She thought maybe it was blood blackening the tech’s Nordic hair but the surprise of the sight startled her into a weird clarity. Choo-Choo would never wear a windbreaker, not even the high-quality navy blue Lauren one she stood on. Again, unbidden, the fact checker in her brain kicked into gear, recognizing and categorizing the clothes before her by style and price and quality and use. Phelps. Phelps wore Lauren when he golfed. This was Phelps lying at her feet. She didn’t need to roll him over to see his face. Judging from the blood spatters and exit wound, she doubted there would be much to convince her.

Why was Phelps here? He was supposed to be at the Greenbrier golfing with the client. Choo-Choo had said so, had said he wasn’t coming in. Mrs. O’Donnell would have notified Phelps by phone, would have called the job for him while he was out. She probably would have let him enjoy a round of golf at the luxurious resort on the client’s dime.

Dani spun from the console, careful not to step into the ribbons and puddles of blood. Climbing onto one of the console chairs, she balanced herself and rose, trying to see the entire room from a higher vantage point. A high rack of receivers rose like a chimney in the middle of the room and behind it she could see one foot sprawled out from beneath a workstation. One white calf peeked out from beneath a rucked-up leg of pale blue twill pants. Eddie. Eddie, who had been transferred to the Miami office. Why had he come back?

Fay, Phelps, and Eddie. Hickman downstairs. Where was Choo-Choo? She didn’t have long until the killers realized they’d missed her, that their rabbit wasn’t in the hole it had promised to hide in. Grieving would come later. If Choo-Choo lay dead somewhere in this or any other room, she
would have to process that at another time. Now she had to get out of the house.

Part of her wanted to hide again, hide someplace brilliant and unfindable, but she knew such a place did not exist. If they were willing to kill a houseful of people, they were probably willing to take the time to dismantle every nook and cranny to be sure the job was done thoroughly. But with the front and back exits of the compound blocked, where could she go?

She had heard radios crackle in the stairwell. She couldn’t go down that way. The back stairs would be watched as well. One peek out the high windows made short work of any farfetched ideas of jumping to safety. She stepped carefully from the wheeled chair onto the console, thinking somehow the higher vantage point would give her an idea.

Plus Phelps’ blood was running across the floor toward her.

She picked her way over headphones and keyboards, careful not to knock over Choo-Choo’s army of Mountain Dew cans. She moved quickly, her small feet finding room on the crowded surface until she got to the second window of the row. Even this close, Dani could barely make out the thin line between the window and the frame. She hoped she’d be able to open it without having to touch any of the blood.

None of the windows in Audio were supposed to open; they’d been painted shut years before. They weren’t wired for security so as not to interfere with the many sensitive surveillance devices and none of the lower gables came close enough to offer any real point of entry from the ground. The only thing close to them was an architectural flourish beneath the windows, just a narrow ledge of brick.

But Choo-Choo was a smoker and hated to walk all the way downstairs to light up. He’d given Dani one of his “poor me” sad-eyes and she’d been helpless to resist. It had taken her three hours, a packet of razor blades (plus a roll of gauze and tape to treat a nasty cut when a blade had slipped), four shades of paint, and a can of WD-40, but finally she had gotten the window open. More important, she’d layered and stained the paint around the edges such that nobody would be able to see the change. Choo-Choo had tears in his eyes when the window had slid open silently that first time.

Dani placed her fingertips carefully to avoid the arc of blood spray against the glass and gave a sharp push. The window slid up with expected ease. She took one last look onto the killing floor of Audio and whispered, “I hope they have cigarettes wherever you are, Choo-Choo.” Then she slung her purse and Rasmund pouch over her shoulder and hoisted herself up through the frame.

A quick peek down to the estate below assured her that nobody was watching the upper levels and she folded herself enough to get one leg, then another, through the frame. It took most of her upper-body strength to lower herself down to the ledge that had looked a lot bigger in her memory. She slid the window back into place as she heard heavy footsteps pounding down the hallway.

She didn’t think it was possible for her body to produce any more adrenaline, but pressed back against the rough brick of the building three stories up, Dani’s throat tightened and a new shower of sweat ran down from her hairline. Only the sound of voices coming closer prompted her to take that first inching step away from the window. She thought she might be short enough to not be seen through the glass, but she had neither the nerve nor the room to turn her head to check. All she could do was slide her left foot and then her right foot, over and over again, until she put distance between herself and the bank of windows.

Perspective really is everything, she thought as she looked down the ledge at the nearest gable of a jutting dormer window. It had looked a lot closer when she’d seen it from the ground. But if she could get atop that, at least she wouldn’t be exposed as she was now. Dani hoped like she’d never hoped before that she would be strong enough to get up there.

Behind her, Dani heard furniture being overturned and shouting voices. She had no time to worry about what they’d discovered in the basement. If she fell from the ledge all the way to the flagstone path beneath her, a bullet to the skull would be a kindness. All the fact checkers and calm talkers in her brain had grown horribly silent and Dani dug her nails into the rough brick to focus her nerves.

She focused on the gable, measured the distance to it. “Five steps,” she rasped, more from the tightness in her throat than from the urge to remain quiet. “One after the other, Dani. Just one after the other.”

A bundle of cables were clamped and bolted into the brick beside the gable and she noticed with a whisper of elation that the closer she got to them the sturdier they appeared.

Finally, with something concrete to focus on, the mechanical part of her brain kicked in, calculating just how she was going to get one foot then the other onto those brackets and hoist herself onto the gable’s roof. She felt that familiar separation in her mind—one part problem solving, one part trying not to scream.

The chattering of sparrows made her jump, slamming her head against the brick and nearly overbalancing herself right off the ledge. She adjusted, leaning to the side and grabbing the bundle of cables. Seconds before she made contact, the thought that they might be electrified flitted through her mind but at that moment it seemed a small risk to take, all things considered. Her fingers raked between the brick and the dirty wires and she cried out when she couldn’t pull the cables free from the brackets. Having something solid, something more reliable than her balance to count on, made her let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Before she could think, she spun on the ledge, gripping the bolted bundle with both hands, resting her forehead against a sun-warmed steel bracket.

“Think, Dani. Think.”

She had to get onto the gable. The problem was that the cables felt so solid, so dependable, every survival instinct in her body screamed at her to stay there, to cling and wait and stop taking so many ridiculous chances with her safety. She knew that if she let those voices take a vote, she’d wind up clinging to the side of the house all night or until she lost feeling in her hands or dozed off or got dizzy and plunged to her death. But those options seemed so far in the future compared to the very likely event of her not having the strength or coordination to finagle the climb.

She studied the brackets containing the cables. A hand span wide and maybe three inches thick, the brackets were attached to the rough brick with screw bolts as thick as her middle finger. Dani glanced down to the bracket near the ledge, prodding the bolt with the toe of her boot. They weren’t long enough to work as reliable toeholds. She risked getting on tiptoe to better see the bracket above her head.

The gap was small, not much more than half a fingertip’s width, but it might be enough. It was certainly more than she had just standing there clinging to cables waiting to learn to fly.

Dani carefully lifted the Rasmund pouch strap from her right shoulder. The rough strap scratched her nose as she lifted the bag over her head. Forcing herself to focus and relax, Dani pinned the pouch between her chest and the wall, taking the bulk of the weight off of her exhausted arms. Working only by touch, she pushed and twisted the strap of the pouch into the gap between the brackets and the brick, forcing the thick canvas into the small space. When the strap no longer felt free to move, she risked tilting her head back to see her handiwork.

The canvas strap pressed against the cables, wedged behind the brackets. She tugged gently at first, more to force the fabric down than to test the strength. When the bag didn’t budge and the brick didn’t crumble and the bracket didn’t wiggle, she tugged harder, going so far as to yank the bag away from the facade. Still nothing budged.

This is a miserable escape plan, she thought. She comforted herself with the grim fact that if it didn’t work, she wouldn’t have long to worry about it.

Like the distance between the windows and the gable, the gap between having a plan and executing it yawned before her. Dani’s hands shook hard enough that it looked like she was drumming on the brick when she let go of the cable, alternating hands to restore her grip.

Reaching as high up as she could, she gripped the cables overhead and pressed off her right toes. The bolt cut into her sole and she didn’t have much leverage but it was enough to lift herself high enough to wrangle her left knee onto the top of the pouch. The fabric bent beneath her, the straps straining closer together, as she shifted her weight to her left leg, using the pouch like a stirrup.

She scraped her forehead against the brick, every inch of her trembling as she lifted her right foot from the stability of the narrow ledge. If the ledge had felt dangerous, this felt suicidal, and she knew she had to work quickly or her nerves and her muscles would fail her.

With the pouch bending nearly in two beneath her weight, she started to panic when she couldn’t get her right foot into the narrow space
between the straps. She kicked at the canvas and finally her toe found the gap and she felt herself shift with a nauseating lurch as her right foot pressed down on the bag. She tried not to listen to her high-pitched panting as she pulled herself up to a standing position, her entire body weight relying on a canvas pouch, two metal bolts, and a steel bracket.

It might have been a minute, it felt like a week, but Dani clung to the cables and found her balance on the straining canvas of the Rasmund pouch. The thought of taking even one more step did things to her stomach she could never express. She was going to have to move almost a foot to the right into open space with nothing to grab onto.

“It could be worse,” she whispered to herself, fighting back tears. “It could be raining.”

At that moment, it wouldn’t have surprised her to feel the heavens open over her. Instead, she felt a pattering of fine dust and gravel bouncing over her cheeks and lips. She didn’t dare look up and risk getting grit in her eyes, much less seeing the brackets pulling loose from the building. She had to move immediately. Leaning as far to the right as she could, she let the pouch swing out to the left so she lay almost horizontally above the ledge. Her right hand clutched at the rough shingles and she felt a wiggle of hope move through her that she might actually be able to keep her grip.

Digging in with her nails and pulling her body with her abdominal muscles, Dani shifted her balance toward the roof. Her body and her mind flew through weight and balance calculations and Dani knew she had to act. She had to grip the roof as tightly as possible, push off with her feet, and throw as much of her torso as she could onto the sloped surface. If luck was on her side, her feet would find something to kick off from beneath the gable and she’d be able to haul herself onto the surface.