“And it’s working?” Alex was saying.
“We’re still in the first phase,” Peter replied. “Very preliminary.”
Randall turned from the man across the room, trying to ignore the pain that was starting to gain strength. “Let’s just say we’re encouraged by the results we’ve seen so far. We really can’t speak about it in detail, though. I’m afraid Peter has already told you more than he should have.”
Felix fished a business card out of his breast pocket. “It sounds like what you’re doing could be a game changer. My god, the lives you’d be saving. The people you’d prevent from becoming victims. If it’s as significant as it sounds, gentlemen, my interest is piqued. I have lots of people who can open doors for you. Or perhaps, if funding is needed in the future, you’ll look me up. I’d love to learn more when the time is right.”
Randall took the card. “Of course.”
“Honey, you can’t hide in the corner all night. This is a celebration!”
The men surrounding Randall and Peter parted as Amanda approached them. She looked stunning in her long black gown with silver sequins that sparkled in the light. Her dark hair hung at her shoulders. Her brown eyes were big, round, always present. She had an athlete’s body, toned and firm. Every piece of her was done up with purpose. Makeup, hair, nails, jewelry—it was all so tasteful and elegant. She slipped her arm around Randall’s back and pulled him into a half hug.
“I take it Peter and my husband are captivating you with their scientific brilliance?” Amanda asked, acknowledging the other men with a smile.
“Indeed they are,” Felix replied. “He and Dr. Reems were telling us about their latest experiment.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s absolutely fascinating.”
“It appears some men just can’t keep a secret.” She kissed Randall on his cheek. “I hope you had these guys sign an NDA. I wouldn’t trust a single one of them with exclusive information.”
The group laughed, and Amanda’s cell phone rang. She’d been holding it, and she looked at the screen, quickly refusing the call.
“Who’s that?” Randall asked.
“No one. A donor. I’ve been fielding congratulation calls all night. It’s one after the other.”
Randall caught movement out of the corner of his eye. When he looked, he saw several waiters carrying empty platters back toward the kitchen. They passed, and he noticed the man from across the room again. He was closer now, standing against a wall near the restrooms, staring at Randall, unmoving. He was dressed in a tuxedo like the others, drink in hand, but he wasn’t talking to anyone. And that stare. It was penetrating.
“Hey, who is that?” Randall asked, pulling Amanda closer so she could see.
“Who?”
More waiters passed in front of them. When they were clear again, the man was gone.
“Who, honey?”
Randall looked around, that dull throb in his head surfacing. “Now I don’t see him. He kept staring at me. First he was by the bar, and just now he was near the restrooms. It was unnerving.”
Amanda craned her neck to try and see through the crowd. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. Just some guy.”
“Tall? Short? Hair color? Anything? I’m sure I know him. I can introduce you.”
“It was just some guy. Never saw him before. Average height, I guess. Dirty-blond hair? He was wearing a tux, so it’s not like he was sticking out, but the way he was staring at me. I didn’t like it.”
Amanda frowned. “Did he seem hostile? Should I get security?”
Randall shook his head. “No, nothing like that. Forget it. We certainly don’t need security. It’s nothing.”
Amanda looked around again. Her brow furrowed, and she suddenly appeared nervous. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. It’s fine. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“You look pale.”
“I think I might have a migraine coming on.”
Three loud thumps came from the speakers that surrounded the room. The crowd turned toward the stage, where an older man stood in front of a microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank you all for joining us,” he began. “Tonight we honor Amanda Brock, who, through her Glass Hearts Foundation, has positively impacted the lives of thousands of people who have largely been forgotten by our society. Her countless hours of commitment and her unwavering support have shown us all that kindness, selflessness, and compassion still exist. Tonight we honor Amanda, but we celebrate the lives she has changed for the better.”
The crowd erupted in applause. Amanda tapped Randall on his chest, kissed her hand, and placed it on his cheek. “I gotta go,” she said. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Of course.”
“Get an aspirin or something from the waitstaff. I don’t want you on those mountain roads if you’re suffering from a migraine.”
“I’ll be fine,” Randall replied. “Now go get what’s coming to you.”
Her phone rang again. She fumbled to shut it off before it could ring a second time.
“You want me to hold that while you’re giving your speech?”
“No, I got it.”
“Maybe you should put it on mute, then.”
“Aspirin. Go.”
Amanda smiled and walked away, palming her phone as she navigated the cheering crowd. He thought he could see a tinge of panic in her smile and wondered who was calling. He really should’ve gotten an aspirin before his headache got worse, but instead he followed her toward the stage, where she would be presented with her award and give a speech she’d been writing, revising, and stressing over for the last month. As he fell in with the others, he looked around once more for the man who had been staring at him, but there was no one present except for the people who supported his wife and her charities. They were Amanda’s extended family, and they were all rooting for her. They loved her as much as he did. And still, even wrapped in that room of camaraderie and support, he couldn’t help but think about what Jerry Osbourne had said.
That kind of dark makes the shadows even thicker, you know? And it makes the places that do have light seem safe. But that safety in a darkness like that is fake, and you can’t trust nothing fake. When it’s dark like that, the light is just a trap.
4
The morning sun hadn’t risen enough to lighten the sky. It was still dark but for the headlights that shot up and out from the depths of the rocky valley that connected the side of the cliff to the Hudson River. It had taken the fire department over an hour to navigate the terrain and set up the three spotlights that now flooded the scene. The team had been working since the moment they’d arrived, flashlights in hand, some mounted on helmets as if they were miners digging for coal. The cold was biting, and with the wind coming off the river, the air stabbed at their exposed skin, stiffening the joints in their hands as they worked to investigate the accident and extract the body.
State Police Investigator Susan Adler made her way up and around the boulders, slipping on the icy surfaces where the spray from the river had settled and frozen. She wore a pair of black ski pants she’d taken from the trunk of her car and had two layers of sweaters under her New York State Trooper field jacket. Her thick gloves kept her hands warm but made her motor skills clumsy. It took steady concentration to get a good grip on a rock and pull herself forward in the dark, not quite knowing what her next step would be.
She’d gotten the call when she was at her desk finishing up her report from an earlier arrest. She was supposed to be rotated down on the case list, but since she’d been physically at the barracks when the call had come in, the watch commander asked her to respond as a senior on scene.
The car had been a silver Mercedes sedan. That much she could tell. Beyond that—model, number of doors, year—was a mystery. There was simply too much damage. From a cursory look at the vehicle, it appeared as if it had run off the road some two hundred feet abo
ve where she stood and hit the jagged mountainside as it somersaulted down, snapping off tree branches until it had eventually come to rest wedged between two large boulders at the bottom of the canyon. Its headlights—one still on and functioning—faced the sky.
Now that she was within the sphere of the mounted spotlights, Susan could begin to see details. There was blood splattered on the interior of the car and across the hood. The windshield was gone, as were the side windows. The roof was crushed all the way down to the headrests on the seats. Somewhere in that carnage was a body, but this would not be a rescue. It was a wonder the driver hadn’t been ejected at some point during the fall.
A younger man dressed in jeans and a state police windbreaker broke free from the Collision Reconstruction Unit and climbed his way over to Susan. “Investigator Adler?”
“That’s me.”
The man smiled and extended his hand. “Tommy Corolla. Nice to meet you, although I wish it was under better circumstances.”
Susan shook his hand. “You’re the new guy?”
“Yup.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “You’re supposed to report to the barracks later on this morning.”
Tommy shrugged and gestured toward the wreck. “Technically it is the morning, and when dispatch called and asked if I wanted in on your rotation, I told him I’d meet you here. Hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. Just figured you’d rather sleep on your first day.”
“No, I’d rather get in on this.”
“It’s just a car accident.”
“Better than forms from HR.”
She could see him a little better in the light. He looked to be in his thirties. He was cute enough. Wavy hair was combed and kept neatly in place with a gel of some kind. Brown eyes surveyed the scene, taking it all in. He was clean shaven and tried to appear calm, but she could tell he was nervous.
“You know what we’re looking at yet?” she asked.
“Looks like the car ran off the road up there, plowed through the protective fencing, and landed in these rocks. Driver is DOA. Fire and rescue is trying to cut the body out, but it’s wedged in there pretty good.”
“Who called it in? Do we have an eyewitness?”
“No. A captain from a tug that was coming down the river from Albany called it. He thought the way the lights were angled looked suspicious and contacted the Coast Guard, who came to have a look; then the Guard contacted us. We have a team from the parks department over at Bear Mountain ready to do a rope climb to see if we can collect anything that might’ve been ejected, but it’s too dark right now.”
“Anyone run the plates for an ID?”
“Can’t. Front plate came off somewhere during the fall, and the rear plate, if it’s still intact, is buried between those two boulders. No checking the registration on the windshield either. There is no windshield. We’ll get more when the sun comes up. The CRU team did what they could with the light they have. They gave the okay to get the victim out.”
Susan looked up into the night sky at the rock face looming over them. Route 202, known as the Goat Trail, was a twisting road that cut its way up the outside of Bear Mountain, then on through Rockland County and into New Jersey. This section of the trail, about a quarter mile south of the Bear Mountain Bridge, was the most dangerous. It was a road that ran both north and south, its twists and curves the tightest at this point.
“Looks like it could be a two-hundred-foot drop,” she said.
Tommy followed her gaze. “Yeah, something like that. Enough to kill you. That’s for sure.”
“They’re renovating the barrier wall up on that section, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what some of the guys on scene were saying. They got reinforced fencing up there.”
“I thought that fencing was supposed to be as strong as the wall they’re fixing.”
“It is.” Tommy pointed to the mangled sedan. “The guys I was talking to said that fence is the real deal. Reinforced chain link, made out of steel that gives just a bit, but not enough to break. The driver must’ve been hauling ass to bust through it like he did.”
Susan could make out the edge of the cliff with the help of a faint red glow from one of the cruisers that had been stationed up top where the fence had been breached. That had been one hell of a fall. She’d driven that road too many times to count. Her kids liked to look over the edge to try and spot hawks flying below. She knew how tight those turns were.
“Got something!”
Susan and Tommy turned around to see a young trooper emerging from the bushes, sidestepping his way down a steep incline adjacent to where the spotlights had been erected. He held his flashlight out in front of him, carefully balancing his way over to where they stood.
“We found this about fifty yards up the west end,” the trooper said as he handed over a black leather pocketbook. “Must’ve gotten thrown out on the way down.”
Tommy grabbed the pocketbook and rubbed dirt off the leather casing. “So I guess our driver is a female.”
Susan took the bag and unzipped the top. Tommy shined his flashlight inside while she rifled around, eventually coming away with a matching leather wallet. She opened it and held it up to the light.
“Okay,” she said as she studied the driver’s license. “Looks like we can ID our victim after all.” She leaned in to see more clearly. “Driver is Amanda Brock. North Salem, New York.”
5
Randall knew that the effects of stress on memory could impact a person’s ability to evoke the details of certain events. During times of stress, the body reacted by secreting stress hormones into the bloodstream. An excess of these hormones could impair the ability of the hippocampus to recall memories. Randall knew this because he’d read it in the Journal of Neuroscience decades earlier during one of his first internships. It was ironic that he could remember the factoid, even cite the work he’d taken it from, but couldn’t recall the exact events leading up to him sitting in the county morgue.
The scenes came to him in flashing images. The knock on the office door. The look in Peter’s eyes as he stuck his head in. The woman in the navy suit who came in behind Peter. The ride in the back of a black Ford Taurus. The scraping concrete sound the door to the morgue made when it opened. The silence of the tiny room they’d placed him in. The ticking of the clock on the wall, counting the seconds.
You have been alone for one . . . two . . . three . . .
He knew the woman was sitting behind him, against the wall, but he refused to turn around. Inspector something. Investigator something. He knew she’d shown him her badge back at the office, but he couldn’t remember her name or exact title. She was just as quiet as he was. They were waiting, but for what, he wasn’t entirely sure.
Your life is changing in one . . . two . . . three . . .
The small, windowless room was tucked somewhere inside the morgue. The door finally opened, and a middle-aged woman came in carrying a folder. She had a white lab coat on, and round glasses magnified her eyes.
“Dr. Brock,” she said quietly. “I’m the county medical examiner. Dr. Nestor.”
Randall nodded.
She’s going to deliver some really bad news in one . . . two . . . three . . .
Dr. Nestor sat down in a chair across from him. “As you’ve been made aware, we believe your wife has been in a fatal car accident, and we need you to identify the body that was recovered at the scene. I know this comes as a shock, and I’m so sorry you have to go through this. I want to let you know that the identification of a loved one is not like you see in movies or read in books. There’s no big reveal, and you don’t have to see the actual body to confirm.” She placed the folder onto the table and slid it toward him. “There is a picture of the deceased in this folder. All you have to do is open it and let us know if it’s your wife. Can you do that?”
You’re going to be a widower in one . . . two . . . three . . .
“Yes.”
&
nbsp; “Good. The picture you’ll see is only of the deceased’s face. Other than her face, she’s covered in white linens. There’s some bruising, and a small laceration, but nothing graphic.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to take my hand off the folder, and you can open it when you’re ready. It doesn’t matter how long you want to wait. You take all the time you need. I’ll stay here with you until you’re ready.”
Your life will become unrecognizable in one . . . two . . . three . . .
Dr. Nestor let go of the folder and sat back in her seat. Randall pulled it closer toward him, staring at it, rubbing the top of it gently with the tips of his fingers.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” he said as tears began to fill his eyes.
“I understand. You take however long you need.”
“I mean, if I open it and it’s her, then that makes it real, you know? If I don’t open it, I can hang on to the chance that you’re wrong, and Amanda’s not dead. Maybe she was just running late after the ceremony and didn’t get home yet. Maybe she went out to celebrate with friends, and the battery on her phone ran out. As long as I don’t open this folder, I can hang on to those thoughts, as silly as they might be. But if I open it, and it’s her, it becomes real.”
The room fell silent again. Randall concentrated on his breathing. It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t be Amanda. But he wasn’t a fool. They wouldn’t have him here if they had any real doubt. They’d found her car. They’d found her purse. It was her. His wife was dead. The clock on the wall continued to mark the seconds.
Everything changes in one . . . two . . . three . . .
He opened the folder, and a sound escaped his throat that he’d never heard himself make. It was a combination of a sigh and a howl. It sounded animalistic, inhuman. It was the sound of his heart breaking.
I Know Everything Page 3