Tommy merged onto Interstate 684. Traffic was heavy but flowing. He turned on the radio.
The revelation of William’s guilt had morphed into an addiction that had no cure. Tommy found himself hunting every piece of detail he could about William Feder, the supposed third hostage. He called in favors the way favors could be called in, cop to cop, and got his hands on William’s sealed file from when he was in therapy as a kid. He learned about his little brother, Sam, and the drowning and how the doctor deemed it suspicious, although no further action was taken because nothing could be proven. He got ahold of William’s medical records and learned about the dissociative identity disorder William had suffered with as a child, how it resurfaced during his time in Gary’s basement. And how it could be triggered.
Then one day, William Feder was gone. He simply disappeared, leaving no trace. Tommy scoured the internet for any piece of information that could tell him where the doctor had fled to, but there was nothing. Calls to other departments across the country and favors from a few FBI agents he’d befriended also went nowhere. William had vanished and taken his secrets with him.
But then, five years later, Tommy’s father called. He’d seen William in the paper. A small article about Amanda Brock getting married in a Central Park ceremony. William was going by the name Randall Brock now, and he’d had some plastic surgery done, but Martin Corolla was a good detective. No matter how different someone might look aesthetically, it was the eyes that never changed. And the haunted look behind Randall Brock’s eyes was all Martin needed to know. William Feder had returned.
Tommy felt a new sense of purpose when his father showed him the picture from the paper. A plan began to emerge. He would rid himself of the guilt that was crushing him, avenge Lily’s death, and show Randall Brock what it felt like to lose things. He’d start with Randall’s new wife, move on to his sanity, and end by taking either his freedom or his life. He had to show the world that Randall Brock was William Feder and that William was a man absolutely capable of the things he did to Rose and Lily. The public had treated William like a victim, but he was an accessory. He was a killer. Tommy’s vengeance couldn’t come in the form of a bullet in the back of the head or a rope around Randall’s neck. That would be too quick. Too merciful. He had to show the world the man Randall really was. This was the only way. Everyone needed to look behind the curtain.
At first, Tommy didn’t think he’d have the nerve to kill someone, but he used all of the hate and anguish he’d been feeling and molded it into a single ball of fury that was like a tumor needing to be excised. He learned of Amanda Brock’s affair after tailing her while on leave from the barracks upstate. That was a welcome surprise. He’d been planning to use that to gain Randall’s trust, but then he found her safe-deposit box key while searching the house and bribed a teller to let him look inside. The fact that Amanda was planning to leave Randall and cut him out of the will was simply icing on the cake. The motive was right there, folded in thirds, tucked away for safekeeping.
He was there at Amanda’s award dinner and watched Randall leave early. He waited until just before the ceremony ended, then called the inn hosting the event and asked to speak with Amanda. When she got on the phone, he identified himself as a police officer and asked her to come up to the Quarim campus, explaining that her husband had been stopped for a DUI. She came right away, and as he walked her toward the psychiatry building, he hit her in the back of the head with a field hockey stick he’d taken from the university’s team equipment shed. He swung hard, knowing exactly where to make contact at the base of her skull. She was dead before her body hit the ground.
He put her in the trunk of her Mercedes and drove the car back to an old abandoned garage on Route 9 in Garrison, where he removed the car’s computer, placed her in the front seat, and drove the car onto the Goat Trail. Once he was there, he aimed the car toward the fencing he’d cut, got out, placed a small boulder on the gas petal, and put the car in drive. Game over.
Now, as Tommy made his way along Interstate 684, he encountered more holiday traffic than he’d expected. The highway was even more congested than the Taconic, and he had to slow down. He arched his back and stretched, thinking about everything he’d gone through, wondering if there was anything he was forgetting.
His original plan had been to visit Randall as Sam and exploit Randall’s sadness, driving him toward an inevitable relapse. He used his little brother’s name both to trigger a memory that Randall was never really able to suppress and to let him know Tommy knew about his past. The thought of the truth coming out to others was enough of a leash to make Randall obey Tommy’s every command. The rest had been easy enough. He let himself into Randall’s garage with a remote he’d taken from Amanda’s car and simply appeared to Randall, making himself seem otherworldly or supernatural. And it worked. He began to see the cracks in Randall’s psyche.
One thing he hadn’t counted on was Susan tagging the case as a homicide so quickly, but as an investigator, Tommy was able to play both sides. He continuously pushed Susan toward the possibility of Randall being the killer, while at the same time ensuring that Randall never saw him as anyone other than Sam. He watched Susan’s interrogation from the squad room. He remained in the backyard when they dug up the evidence he knew would be there, and he was careful not to be around when they arrested Randall and marched him out of his house. Control was the key to all of it.
I-684 turned into the Hutchinson River Parkway, and the traffic lightened after White Plains. He was moving again, the radio playing a string of hard rock.
Hooper Landsky had been the one disappointment. He’d planned to get both Randall and Hooper to the Andersons’ basement and make Randall kill Amanda’s lover. Susan had stumbled on Hooper too soon, but Tommy had improvised. And in the end it had all worked out. Mostly.
It was hard to think about how close he’d come to catastrophe. He’d goaded Randall into killing Peter, but he hadn’t expected that Randall would want to eliminate everyone who knew about his disorder. The fact that Susan had to go through what she went through made him sick. The kids could’ve been hurt. Beatrice could’ve died. It had been his one big mistake, and Susan almost paid the price. He’d never forgive himself for that and could only be thankful that everyone was safe.
Tommy pulled into his parents’ driveway and shut off the engine. His father stepped out of the front door and waved. Tommy walked around the car and popped the trunk. He grabbed a duffel bag from inside and swung it over his shoulder.
“You made good time,” Martin said.
“Everyone’s already in for the night. Traffic wasn’t too bad. Where’s Mom?”
“Taking a bath. She just got back yesterday. She said Florida was nice, but she missed the cold. Come on—I got the firepit going.”
Tommy followed his father around to the rear of the house. They walked through a gate that opened into the yard, which was expansive and somewhat private. In the center of the patio, just under the deck above them, was a giant wood-burning firepit he’d helped build a few years earlier.
“It’s been going for a few hours now,” Martin said, pointing at the flames that reached up into the night sky.
“You think it’s hot enough?”
“Oh yeah. It’s plenty hot. Plus we have this to help.”
Martin grabbed a canister of gasoline and spat some onto the fire. The flames erupted, then calmed, continuing a steady burn.
Martin had been crushed by Lily’s death too. Tommy knew he’d loved her like a daughter. He’d failed to see the warning signs of an abusive husband in Gary. He’d failed to see how things might escalate within the Anderson house. And as a cop, he’d failed to listen to his gut when it had told him something wasn’t right about Gary. When the original scene in the Andersons’ basement had turned out to be so horrific that no cop had wanted to work the case, Martin had volunteered, seeing it as his penance.
But like Tommy, Martin, too, had felt that William Feder shoul
d have been held responsible. Should have sacrificed himself rather than harm those women. Helping Tommy was his way of making amends with Rose and Lily.
Tommy unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out the black coat with its oversized hood. He threw them onto the fire, then poured the gasoline over the flames.
Martin’s face glowed orange and red. “Miss Adler can ask all she wants about the coat and hood now,” he said. “She’ll never find them.”
“Yup.”
“Come on—let’s go inside and have a drink. I think we’ve earned it. And your mother wants to see you.”
“Hold on,” a voice said from behind them. “Miss Adler actually has a few follow-up questions.”
64
Susan walked into Martin Corolla’s backyard. Her weapon was at her side, her finger on the trigger. She appeared calm, but she could feel her heart beating rapidly in her chest. The two men looked at her, their expressions of surprise apparent in the glow of the fire behind them. Neither of them moved.
“Step away from each other,” she commanded. “One step to the side. Do it.”
Martin and Tommy did as they were instructed, their eyes fixed on her.
“What’re you doing here?” Tommy asked.
“Solving my case,” Susan replied. She could hear her voice cracking. It wasn’t the nerves. It was anger. “I guess you’re not too observant about being tailed when I’m not driving my mom’s Versa, huh?”
“This doesn’t concern you,” Martin growled. “Get back in your car and go home.”
“You’re wrong. This does concern me. Concerns my family. My kids.” She took a few more steps toward the men, nodding at Tommy. “I knew you had something to do with this. There’s just no way you could have a past with Randall or William or whoever the hell he was and not be involved somehow. Like I said before, it fit too perfectly.”
Tommy was quiet.
“It was too big a coincidence that you transferred here at the same time our suspect’s wife was killed and he started having a breakdown and you knew everyone involved. But I admit it took me a while to be sure. What size shoe are you, Tommy? I’d say size twelve or thirteen. About the size of the prints I took from the woods at the Christmas tree lot. Same as the prints in the snow around my house, and the same as the boot print you just left on the floor of the hospital. I checked Randall’s autopsy report for that exact thing. Told the ME specifically to measure so I could compare. I’d been so convinced that he was the hooded Sam. But no. His feet were only ten inches. Size eight.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tommy said. “A boot print in the snow or a boot print in your mom’s hospital room doesn’t prove anything.”
Susan nodded toward the pit. “That coat and hood on the fire do.”
“That coat will be burned into ash by the time we’re done talking,” Martin sneered. “Sorry, miss. You got nothing but speculation and guesses. That’s not a case. And even if you took those boot prints and snatched that coat off the fire, it’d still be circumstantial at best. No DA would press charges on what you got. Wouldn’t be worth the risk. Not with a cop involved. Not with one of their own. Maybe Tommy found the coat. Maybe it was already burned up when he discovered it at Randall’s house.”
“Maybe,” Susan said. It was hard to contain the adrenaline pumping through her. She looked at Tommy. “But the other day at the campus fire at Quarim, you asked me to grab your recorder from the glove box in your car. It didn’t register at the time, but later it clicked. I pushed past a garage door opener to get the recorder. And guess what? You don’t have a garage at your house. Neither does your father.”
“It’s for a garage I rent in Peekskill,” Tommy replied. He sounded less confident now.
Susan shook her head. “I had Crosby call in a favor on the drive here. You gotta have some serious friends in high places to get a search warrant on Christmas Eve.” She dug into her coat pocket and came away with a plastic evidence bag. The garage door opener was inside. “I was planning on having your car towed and processed, but you left it unlocked. I’m guessing this is going to open Amanda Brock’s garage. I mean, it has their address on the back of it.”
“That son of a bitch got what was coming to him,” Martin roared, his voice carrying out into the otherwise-quiet night. “He tortured those women, and he liked it. I don’t care what anyone says about Gary Anderson making him do it. William Feder liked it. Something had to be done. Someone had to avenge those women.”
“By killing another innocent woman? And almost killing her lover? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Collateral damage.”
“Dad, shut up,” Tommy said. “You have nothing to do with this.”
“Wrong again,” Susan said. “Your dad is a part of this. He was your partner. He was driving the Subaru Legacy when I found Hooper in Gary Anderson’s basement. He obviously wasn’t expecting me to be there, so he took off in a rush. When I hopped on the hood of the car, I couldn’t see the driver’s face, but I did see that giant West Point class ring he wears on his middle finger gripping the steering wheel. You had him checking on Hooper since he was local. Makes sense. Hell, I didn’t realize what I’d seen until you left those boot prints at the hospital. As soon as I saw them, it clicked, and just like that, everything fell into place.”
Tommy’s eyes widened as he looked at Susan. He was dazed and tried to smile. “Okay, but this is just us out here talking now. You may be right. Maybe not. But I know you care about me, and I care about you. I care about your entire family. The kids. Your mom.”
“Don’t bring my family into this.”
“I also know you’re a good cop and that you’re not going to bring down other cops in a situation like this. My dad’s right. Even if we did something like what you’re saying, Rose and Lily needed to be avenged. I’m not saying it’s right. But I am saying that it needed to be done. Now I’m asking you, cop to cop, put down your gun, let us walk into the house, and you go home and be with your beautiful family. They need you, Susan. It’s Christmas. You don’t need to be out here. Go be with them.”
Susan tightened her grip on her Beretta. “Your plan almost killed my family. You set Randall loose on them.”
“I’m so sorry about that. Honestly. It wasn’t what I intended. But you took care of it because you’re a good cop. Hell, you’re here because you’re a good cop. Now I need you to let us go back inside, and when I come in tomorrow, I’ll put in for a transfer, and you’ll never have to see me again. This can stay between us. No one else has to know what you think you discovered, and we’ll all move on with our lives. You think you can do that?”
Susan shook her head slowly. Taking a fellow officer down for the greater good was one of the hardest things she’d ever have to do on the job. “You know I can’t. I can’t look the other way.”
“Yes you can.”
“No. Not on a murder.”
“We care about each other. Show me you care. Walk away.”
“You killed innocent people.”
“I did what I had to do. Please. Go.”
“I can’t,” Susan said, her gun aimed at both men. “And even if I could, he couldn’t.”
Susan watched as both Tommy and Martin looked past her, their expressions shifting from ones of hope to ones of panic and despair. It was over, and now they knew it.
Crosby walked into the yard, followed by a handful of NYPD officers.
“Make it quick,” he commanded. “We don’t need a perp walk here. Get them in custody and in the cars ASAP. The neighbors don’t need a show. I’ll talk to the wife.”
Susan holstered her weapon and walked up to Tommy as he was being cuffed by one of the officers. “We caught you on a neighbor’s security system in Randall’s complex. You were coming out of the woods with Randall, and you were putting him in Hooper’s Subaru. The wind blew your hood down, and there you were. You gotta be careful in neighborhoods like that. Everyone has some kind of camera these days.�
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EPILOGUE
Susan sat in the waiting area of Jefferson Hospital’s psychiatric unit stroking Tim’s hair as he lay on her lap flipping through a pop-up book. The north end of the Philadelphia skyline could be seen out the window on the far end of the floor. Casey was in the corner playing with a dollhouse that Susan would normally deem too dirty to handle, but under the circumstances, she really didn’t mind. She’d learned to pick her battles as of late, and prioritizing her life had become her new calling. There was no doubt she loved the job and the high that came from investigating a case, but she loved her family more and had promised herself she wouldn’t sacrifice her time with them because the job demanded it. Her kids were just too precious to take a back seat to anything.
It had been two months since Tommy and Martin were taken into custody. They had been arraigned and were currently awaiting trial at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, about a half hour north of Manhattan. The judge had considered them a flight risk and denied bail. That had been her first victory. She was looking forward to a few more.
Beatrice was back on her feet but got around slower than she used to. Her body was healing at its own pace, and there could be no rushing such a thing at her age. That suited Susan just fine. It was nice having her mother around since moving her into the house, but they hadn’t been anticipating what a project it would be to create a bedroom on the bottom floor. They were still getting their arms around the construction that was to come.
“Mommy, I need a new book.”
I Know Everything Page 27