She raises the gun and slides her thumb to cock the weapon, but it won’t settle the way it should. It’s jerking all over the place, even though she learned to shoot ten years ago at a range where she took aim at targets, pretending they were the doctor’s head.
Through the roar in her ears, she hears the gun cock, and now she can pull the trigger if she can just find it and squeeze.
She finds it.
Squ—
After finishing their food, Barnes and Stef used a pay phone at the Plantation to check with local law enforcement. They’re tied up, shorthanded, and can’t get here anytime soon. Barnes and Stef are going to check out the Sandy Oyster on their own, and call for backup if they need it, which isn’t looking likely.
“I meant to take a leak before we left the restaurant,” Stef says as they pick their way across the gravel lot toward the cottage development. “But you got me all worked up with your story about the kid, kid.”
Barnes shakes his head. “You can’t call me a kid when I’ve got one.”
Telling his partner about the baby may not have been a warm and fuzzy experience, but it’s better that way. Stef was his gruff self, so there was no need for Barnes to scour raw emotions. He’s the last person who’d pass judgment on the fact that Barnes hadn’t even gotten past a one-night stand with the child’s mother. Having stuck around for his kids long after he’d stopped loving his wife, he wasn’t going to tell Barnes to get married, or run away, or even do the right thing.
“Listen, one last thing about this, and then we can drop it. I’m not going to give you advice, because you and me don’t have much in common. I don’t know what you need to do or how you need to do it. But if I can help you, I will. That’s it.”
“I appreciate that. I . . .” Stupid emotions. Barnes attempts to cover them with a joke. “I’ll take a million in cash. Big bills are fine.”
“If I had it to spare—or at all—I’d give it to you, kid.” Stef gives him an awkward little punch on the arm, then gestures at the small office, where a television screen is flickering. “Guessing there’s no restroom in there. Go find our clerk. Her name is Mandy. I’ll be right in.” Stef heads toward an overgrown area with a swing set, unzipping his fly.
Barnes steps inside. A drab, pudgy man in a stained Patriots sweatshirt looks up from a tabletop television. The room smells of BO and the Doritos he’s eating from a jumbo-sized bag.
Showing his badge, Barnes tells him he’s looking for Mandy.
“Me, too. She’s not here.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Called in sick tonight. She in trouble with the law?”
“No, I just need to ask her a few questions about a case. Are you the manager?”
He’s the owner, and informs Barnes that he was supposed to be at a sports bar on the mainland today to watch Game Six with his buddies. Instead, he’s stuck out here overnight with this dinky set, which gets bad reception even with the rabbit ears. To make matters worse, he’s a Cardinals fan.
“There’s always tomorrow,” Barnes tells him, wondering where Stef is as he pulls out the photos of Perry Wayland and Gypsy Colt. “Have you seen either of these people?”
“Seen them where?”
“Here? Or . . . anywhere on the island?”
“No.”
“How many guests do you have here tonight?”
“A few.”
“Mind if I take a look at the records and see who’s staying here?”
“I wouldn’t mind, if I could find the records.” He gestures around the cluttered office.
“Why don’t we look for them?”
Barnes does most of the looking. Five minutes later, there’s still no sign of the registration book, or Stef.
“Thanks for the look,” Barnes says. “I’m going to go outside and talk to my partner.”
Looking happy to be rid of him, the owner settles back at the table, adjusts the antenna, and reaches into the bag of chips.
Barnes steps out. There’s Stef, looking anxious, over by what can only be the playground and picnic grove.
“I was just coming in to get you, kid.”
“Get me for what?”
“We can go. I used that phone over there to call the precinct. Figured I’d better tell the captain the locals didn’t show and we’re on our own. Turns out Mandy isn’t coming.”
“No kidding. She called in sick.”
“She’s sick, all right. She called the tip line to say she made it all up.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Said she never saw Wayland. It was a scam. She sent us chasing out here for no reason.”
His words don’t ring true. Barnes peers at him. His face is masked in shadows. “Are you sure about that?”
“Positive. Call the precinct yourself. They’ll tell you.”
On a day like this, it’s not surprising that Barnes’s instincts are off. He shrugs. “I don’t need to call anyone. Let’s get out of here before we’re stranded.”
Someone screams, and Amelia whirls to see Jessie at the foot of the stairs, barefoot and looking like a little girl who awakened from a nightmare . . . to a nightmare.
“Who is that? Oh, my God! Did you stab her?”
She looks down again, at the unconscious woman on the floor. A steak knife protrudes from her arm. It’s the one Amelia had used earlier to cut into her chicken marsala. The one Jessie had forgotten to clear from the coffee table. The one Amelia had somehow found the courage to grab, and use, when she realized the lunatic was about to shoot her.
“Is she dead?”
“No! Please, Jessie. Please, call for help.” Amelia sinks to the floor, staring at the gun that dropped from the woman’s hand when she lunged at her with the knife.
“I’m calling Si.” Jessie is panting, hall phone in hand, dialing.
“No, call the police, and an ambulance.”
“Si will do it. I can’t! It’s ringing.” She rakes a hand through her hair. It sticks up, a natural center part rising from a point high on her forehead. “God, Mimi, how did this . . . What happened?”
“I don’t know! I woke up, and she was here, trying to kill me.”
“But why? Who is she?”
“I think . . . oh, Jessie, I think she might be your mother.”
“Stockton.”
Barnes looks over at Stef, behind the wheel. He never calls him by his first name.
“Yeah?”
Stef says nothing, staring hard at the highway beyond the windshield wipers.
Rain started falling as Dewey guided the boat back across the choppy sound back to Montauk. Now it’s sleet, and the salt trucks are out, rumbling up and down the Long Island Expressway.
Stef takes a deep breath like he’s going to say something, but doesn’t.
“What?”
His partner takes one hand off the steering wheel, reaches into the pocket of his suit coat, takes out a bulky envelope, and passes it to Barnes.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.”
“But—”
“Just do it.”
Barnes does. “What . . . what is this?”
“Cash. All in hundreds. Not a million bucks, but a lot. Enough, I think.”
“For what?”
“Your daughter.”
Barnes stares at the money for a long time. “You got this from Perry Wayland. He was there?”
Stef nods.
“But—”
“I said I was going to help you.”
“I didn’t ask you to!”
“Did you ask me to save your life a few weeks ago? You’re not stupid, kid. You know it’s what we do.”
Barnes stares at the envelope. “I don’t understand. You asked Wayland for money to help your partner’s sick baby, and he did?”
“It didn’t go like that.”
“How did it go?”
“I didn’t ask. He offered. And it wasn’t all for you. I’m not stupid, either.”
>
So he kept some. Terrific.
“You lied.”
“I didn’t lie. I didn’t know he was there. I saw him out back when I went to take a leak, and he saw me. Knew right away I was a cop.”
“But . . . I thought you said Mandy lied.”
“I said she said she lied, when she called the precinct. She really did call.”
“But not because she was trying to pull a scam?”
“No. When Mandy called the hotline, she’d really seen him. I guess she took back her story when she realized she could do better than Biff’s reward by going straight to Wayland.”
“Why did he leave his family?”
“Why do most people leave? He’s sick of his life. He just wants to chill out and—”
“Chill out?”
“That’s how he put it. Look, kid, things are complicated when you’re married. You don’t know. You don’t want to know. You said it yourself. But you have a daughter—”
“This is not,” Barnes bites out, “about my daughter.”
After a long silence, Stef says, “He’s with his old girlfriend. Gypsy Colt. Miss White. Same person. You were right about her. Good instincts, kid.”
Barnes closes his eyes and tilts his head back, listening to the rest.
About how Perry was unhappily married, and still in love with his old sweetheart. He gave her an engagement ring. They’re leaving the country by boat before dawn, going where no one will ever find them. Everyone will be better off. His wife is set for life, and so are his daughters. They won’t have to worry about a thing, financially.
Head still back, eyes still closed, jaw still set, Barnes makes up his mind. He puts the money in his pocket.
Neither will mine.
Why, Amelia wonders, don’t hospitals have comfortable benches?
This one, in the waiting area outside the ER, is worse than the one she and Calvin shared at Morningside Memorial back in March, after Bettina died.
Maybe they want you to get used to suffering while you’re here, because that’s what you’ll do when you go back to your life. A hospital visit never leads to anything good.
Unless you’re at the maternity ward.
Not a thought Amelia is emotionally equipped to entertain right now.
Jessie is beside her, half leaning, maybe dozing. At least she stopped crying.
Too stunned to cry, too shell-shocked to sleep, Amelia goes over and over what happened. Waking up to see the stranger with a hideous, disfigured face. Grabbing the knife. Trying to save Jessie.
“Si!” Jessie sits up abruptly.
So she wasn’t asleep. She’s looking at Silas, walking toward them. He’s wearing the cardigan sweater he’d thrown on over blue flannel pajama bottoms and slippers when he rushed next door earlier, hearing the sirens.
When he reaches the bench, he wastes no time in telling them what’s going on. “She didn’t make it.”
Amelia gasps. “Did I—”
“You didn’t kill her, Amelia. That wound was superficial. They said she had a heart attack.”
“But—that’s not—how old was she? Forty?”
“No. Only twenty-seven.”
Amelia closes her eyes, seeing the scar. She asks Silas if the police told him how she got it.
“No, but . . . it sounds like she had a hard life. Terrible things happened to her, and . . . she did some terrible things.”
“If she was twenty-seven . . .” Jessie says in a small, un-Jessie-like voice.
Amelia turns to look at her, the light dawning.
“You’re eighteen! She couldn’t be your mother.”
“Absolutely not.” Silas pats Jessie’s shoulder. “You might never find your mom, but that person . . . that wasn’t her.”
She’s crying again. “I don’t need to find my mom. I think Amelia was right. I already know where she is.”
Amelia hugs her, wishing she could say the same thing. Through her own tears, she sees Silas looking at her. He gives a little nod, as if to remind her of what he said earlier.
It’s not going to happen overnight.
It might never happen.
But maybe someday . . .
“Can we get out of here?” Jessie asks Silas.
“Not yet. The police have more questions, and reports to fill out.” Seeing her expression, he adds, “Don’t worry, it’s routine. They spend hours on paperwork after something like this.”
“Hours? Can I call my parents first?” Jessie asks.
“I already did. Reached them at their hotel in New Haven. They’re on their way home. But Amelia, I think you should call your dad.”
Her dad? And say what?
She forces a small smile, a nod . . .
And a lie.
“I already did.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sunday, October 25
Block Island
Kim carries the coffeepot toward the booth in the back, wondering about the woman who’s been sitting there for hours. She’s nothing special at a glance, but close-up, she looks like Elizabeth Taylor. Younger, with big violet eyes and strands of dark hair falling beneath a fashionable fedora. Every guy in the place would be all over her if she hadn’t disguised her beauty in that getup and sat with her back to them all, facing the wall, her pretty face hidden even from the two guys in the next booth.
They weren’t locals, nor were they tourists. Detectives, maybe, wearing suits. The handsome young black one seemed caught up in some drama of his own, and the dumpy old guy kept complaining about not being able to see the TV, slurped his soup, and dribbled it down his shirt without noticing. She wished she’d doctored it up a little in the kitchen after she saw the tip he’d left her.
The jolly Twins fans had stuck around to celebrate long after the game ended. The woman stayed, too. Earlier, she’d told Kim she’s spending the weekend on the island with her boyfriend, and he’s getting on her nerves.
“I just need a place to chill out. Do you mind if I hang out, take one of those booths for a while?”
“Not if you don’t mind that it won’t have a view of the game.”
“Game?”
“World Series. Game Six. Guess you’re not a sports fan.”
“Not baseball. But I used to be into horses.”
“Riding?”
“Riding, jumping, racing, being,” she said with a sly smile, and Kim felt like she’d missed a joke. She was too busy then to figure it out.
She still can’t, though things have slowed down now that the regulars have shuffled off to their beds.
“Can I get you a warm-up, hon?”
The woman doesn’t seem to hear her, staring at the pitiful scarecrow lassoed to the pillar like a bad guy in a spaghetti Western. He’s slumping forward, as though even he is ashamed of his decrepit state.
Kim notices a huge, expensive-looking engagement ring on the woman’s left hand. Wow. She should have been friendlier, tried to sell her some pie. She might have gotten a nice tip to make up for the cheapskate cop.
“Hon? Can I get you some more coffee?”
This time, she blinks and looks up. “No. Thanks.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. Do you know what time it is?”
“Just past midnight. My little one will be up bouncing around before daybreak.”
“You have a child?”
“Yes. A little girl.”
“I bet you’ll do anything for her, right?”
“Anything in the world.”
The woman nods, as if that’s what she expected.
“Do you have kids?” Kim asks.
“Me? God, no. Never. That’s not my scene. I’ll take the check, please. I have to be someplace.”
“Everything around here’s closed at this hour.”
“I’m going boating.”
“Night fishing?”
The woman nods, as if that suggestion will do. Maybe she’s stoned or something.
“Coastal storm in the
forecast. You’re not going out on the water alone, are you, hon? Because that would be dangerous.”
“No, with my boyfriend.”
“You mean, fiancé?” Kim gestures at the ring.
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Not getting on your nerves anymore?”
“Now that I’ve had a chance to chill out, I’m over it.”
“That’s good.” Kim goes to fetch the check, totaling a dollar. She’ll be lucky to get a quarter tip.
The beautiful woman evaporates into the night while Kim’s back is turned. But she left a crisp fifty-dollar bill on the table.
Brooklyn
Back at the precinct, Barnes had allowed Stef to fill out the case paperwork with the glaring omission. He called the hospital and made sure his daughter is stable. Then he went through the motions of completing work duties, thinking about Wayland’s choices and his own, Andrea’s words ringing ominously in his ears.
“Sometimes, a fortune comes with more baggage than you’re capable of carrying for the rest of your life.”
But not having money to save someone you love comes with even more.
He did feel a small sense of closure upon learning that Enid Skaggs had died up in Ithaca. At least the strange, scarred woman can’t hurt anyone else. That part is over, though the case will continue to be unraveled in the days ahead.
It’s not clear why she was fixated on the Brooklyn Butcher case, though as Stef pointed out, she’s hardly the only one. He believes her attempt to connect Perry Wayland to the killing spree was opportunistic. That she heard about the missing millionaire and fixated on that, as well.
“It didn’t hit the papers till Saturday,” Barnes pointed out. “The Sheerans were killed Friday night.”
“He went missing Thursday. She lives in New York. She heard about it, or she had some connection to him. Who the hell knows? Maybe she ran into him somewhere. Maybe she cleans his office building.”
“How’d she get the cufflink?”
“We’ll find out. Maybe she stole it. Or he lost it, and she found it.”
Like the little gold ring engraved with a blue C.
They’re back out in the storm now, Stef navigating the slick roadways in Brooklyn. He’s dropping Barnes at the hospital on his way home.
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