“It’s me. I’m with Dr. Max. How soon can you get here?”
“Um.” She checked her watch, “Twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes? Why?”
“See you then.” A dead line was his gentlemanly farewell.
Your phone skills are depreciating, Nappa.
Megan gazed down at her mother, appreciative for the lucid moment they shared. She got off the bed, making use of her mother’s toiletries to freshen up, ignoring the truth facing her: this was probably the last time she’d ever have such a conversation with her mother. The sadness was too much on her sobering system. She needed to leave as soon as possible.
Buck up, baby girl.
“I will, Momma.” She ran her fingers over Rose’s hair.
_____
Megan knocked before entering Dr. Max Sutherland’s office, but her arrival was obviously expected based on their lackluster response.
“Shut the door.” Dr. Max sat down behind his desk and pulled no punches. “It’s your killer.”
The term “your killer” sent a chill through Megan.
“Very little in terms of stomach contents: orange juice, a small amount of oatmeal. Her eye socket was fractured. She was struck on the side of the trachea, skull beaten in on the right side. No signs of sexual abuse.”
Megan glanced over to Nappa. “Why do you think he was so rough with this victim?”
Sutherland interrupted, “This victim was a good twenty pounds heavier than the last. That may account for something.”
“She put up more of a fight,” Nappa concluded.
“I can say the killer is definitely right-handed based on the bruising around the neck. Time of death I estimate to be—”
Megan, reminded of the text, said, “I know when she was killed. Why am I here?” Megan knew there was something both men were hesitant to disclose. Formalities went out the window in moments such as these.
Sutherland handed her the small plastic Ziploc. “You need to see this.”
Megan displayed an expression neither man had ever seen on her before. Her hands began to tremble.
“McGinn?” Nappa pulled a chair closer to her.
“This … is my necklace.” Megan sat down, staring at her jewelry. “He put this in …” The thought of it turned her stomach. Sutherland finished the sentence for her.
“Yes. The piece was sutured inside her vaginal canal.”
“Oh my God,” she muttered.
“Are you sure it’s yours? How would he get your necklace?” Nappa squeezed Megan’s shoulder.
“I went to the gym to swim laps. I took it off. When I was done, I went back to get my towel, and it was gone. I thought it fell through a heating vent.”
Nappa inspected the piece.
“Look at the back,” Megan said. Inscribed in the back of the cross in tiny letters were Megan’s initials.
“Jesus Christ.” Nappa handed it back to Sutherland.
Megan walked out of the office shell-shocked, her stomach feeling as if a battering ram had plunged at her gut. “Wait a sec.” She ran into the ladies’ room and vomited out what little was in her stomach. “Oh my God!” She sat on the floor rubbing her temples. “You motherfucker. You motherfucker.”
Nappa knocked on the door. “McGinn, you okay?”
She got up to splash water on her face. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be out in a minute,” she called.
Megan sat a few minutes remembering what Fintan said to her, It’s all a game. It’s all a game.
Megan pulled out the business card from her back pocket for Detective Gold, the upstate New York detective who came to the precinct with a connection to what was possibly the first kill.
forty-four
The buzzer sounded and Megan spoke into the intercom, “Yeah.”
“Detective Nappa here for you, Miss McGinn.” The doorman sounded more official than usual, perhaps because her apartment had been broken into and he needed to, at the very least, appear more professional.
“Send him up.” She unlatched the door, though not without first checking her weapon, a precaution that was a part of her life more than ever now. She continued to fold clothes, stuffing them into a small suitcase.
Nappa’s voice was scratchy and raw, emphasizing his exhaustion. “Going away?”
“I thought you didn’t want to know my plans.”
He sat down on the couch determined not to be defeated. “You’re my partner.”
She shook her head. “I’m not even doing a good job at being that at the moment.”
“Here.” Nappa threw her a cell phone. “It’s private, paid for, charged, and I’ve logged the number into my phone as ‘Pain in the ass’, ” he said with a smile.
“You are such a douche bag.”
He laughed. “Only you would use such vulgarity, McGinn. I’m meeting with Matthew Garrison’s contacts tomorrow; it’s a visiting nurse service. They hired people to work at the camp McAllister volunteered at. On your way to Elmira?” He’d noticed Detective Gold’s card on her coffee table.
“Yeah, I need to see where this all started. I think it started there, don’t you?”
“I should be going with you.” Nappa stood up and stretched, back cracking. Less than a week on this case had taken a toll on all involved trying to find the perp. “Here.” He threw her a box. “I’m heading back to the precinct; we’re expecting more news regarding the security video. Some tech wizard is playing around with it, trying to impress the powers that be. Some college kid on his semester internship.” Nappa laughed. “Whatever it takes, right?”
Megan caught the box. “I’ll call tomorrow.”
Nappa stopped at the door after half opening it and then turned back. “Get home safe, McGinn.”
“You bet.” When Nappa shut the door, Megan locked it and checked it twice. She sat and stared at the poorly wrapped box before opening it. A delicate silver cross lay on a miniature burgundy pillow. Megan’s August birthstone, a peridot, was mounted in the center. Attached was a note in Nappa’s handwriting: Now is not the time to lose faith.
Megan fastened it around her neck and decided she would never, ever, be the one responsible for removing it.
forty-five
Megan had been on the road for nearly three hours. It had started raining two hours into the drive. The windshield wipers smacked back and forth, making a rubbing noise against the windshield. She had less than an hour to go until she reached exit 56, Elmira, College Avenue. Her racing thoughts took up all the space the mindless car radio music attempted to distract her from. There were brief moments when she felt she was fleeing, but she convinced herself otherwise. Because it was otherwise. She needed to go back to the beginning, what she thought was the first kill: Erin Quinlan. She’d phoned Detective Gold earlier and he was very accommodating, even borderline excited that this case may be put to rest.
This wasn’t the first trip Megan had made to the Finger Lakes region; the fact that she’d be only thirty miles away from her own long-ago attacker weighed heavily on her mind, as her nightmare always reminded her. Like the one that recently woke her on her bathroom floor when she’d entertained the stockbroker, the nightmare never went away. Even though it was daytime, with every mile she drove closer to her friend’s college town, the memory of that night edged its way to the front of her thoughts.
Megan was just a kid, a teenager thinking she was an adult, as they all do. Being grabbed had never entered her mind before it happened. She remembered the taste of sweat on his hand covering her mouth so she couldn’t yell. His strength. Her fear.
How could I have been so stupid? she’d catch herself thinking. A cop’s daughter, a New York City resident.
Dumb as a box of rocks.
When he dragged her into the vacant house, she was sure she’d be killed. What happened next was always foggy in her mind’s eye. Maybe
adrenaline kicked in and she freed herself, or the feeling of the blade invading her skin brought out her fight-or-flight response. Whatever the cause, it didn’t matter. Somehow that night she’d gotten out. She’d have the scar above her breast for life, but Megan managed to do what Erin Quinlan, Shannon McAllister, and Caroline Dacey were unable to do: live.
She passed a car with the bumper sticker Let Go, Let God. When the most unspeakable thing has happened to you, it’s time to help God out, because he was obviously busy when it happened. No blame, no shame, it was just a reminder that prayer is for the person you’re aiming the barrel of a gun at. And Megan was registered and carrying two.
Godspeed, motherfucker.
Minutes later she got off at the downtown Elmira exit. The billboard had some familiar faces and some not so familiar: Mark Twain, Ernie Davis, Brian Williams, astronaut Eileen Collins, Tommy Hilfiger. There were a few others that didn’t register but who were apparently important enough to be on the town’s billboard.
Megan pulled into the Holiday Inn on Water Street, registered, and went to her room to throw her things on the bed. The manager gave her a message. It was from Detective Gold wanting her to call when she was settled in.
Megan checked the cell Nappa gave her and wondered how he was making out with the nursing service.
_____
Nappa arrived at the address for the Visiting Nurses’ Society in midtown. He’d anticipated the location would be a hospital, but the building was a generic corporate high-rise. The company occupied half of the thirtieth floor. The other half was a law firm. He got off the elevator and greeted the young receptionist. “I’m Detective Nappa. I’d like to speak with a supervisor.”
The young woman became flustered, not due to Nappa’s request but his looks. Even with sleep circles under his eyes and a five o’clock shadow, Nappa still resembled a scruffy Prince Charming.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Warren is in a meeting right now.”
“I’m afraid you’ll need to pull him out of that meeting.” He added a grin that could have had her on her back with heels pointed to Jesus in record time.
The receptionist picked up the phone and whispered something to the person on the other end. Her hand was shaking as she put the phone receiver back on its cradle. “He’ll be right out,” she said, trying not to make eye contact.
Mr. Warren soon came barreling into the lobby. He looked relieved to be pulled out of whatever meeting he’d been in. He was a big man, in his late forties. Looked like the type who enjoyed his beer and eighteen holes of golf every weekend—probably both at the same time, given the size of his gut.
“Detective?” He smiled, shaking Nappa’s hand.
“Mr. Warren, thank you for taking time away from your meeting. I’m Detective Nappa.”
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I just have questions for a few of your nurses.”
He motioned Nappa to follow him, and they walked down the hall and into a conference room.
“Is someone in trouble?”
“Oh, no sir. Just routine questions, for the nurses who volunteered at a Camp Sparta over the summer.”
He nodded. “Oh, sure. I know the camp you’re talking about. I assigned the nurses myself.”
“Great. I’ll need their names and contact information.”
“Not a problem,” he said matter-of-factly. “Let’s see, if memory serves there were three.” He used his fat fingers to count. “Gary, Linda, and …” He scratched his forehead. “There might have been a fourth. I’ll go get the file.” Before he exited the conference room, he swung back in, “Breton, that’s the third, but there’s one more I’m not thinking of. I’ll be right back.”
The smitten receptionist popped her head into the conference room. “Can I get you anything, Detective? Coffee? Tea?”
“No, thank you,” Nappa smiled and then checked his watch, wondering if Megan had arrived in upstate New York.
forty-six
I thoroughly disapprove of duels … If a man should
challenge me now, I would take him kindly
and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a
quiet retired spot, and kill him.
—mark twain
_____
I remember as a teenager sitting at Samuel Clemens’s grave, a stone’s throw away from my house on Davis Street, thinking of this quote, never knowing anyone to challenge me, but always remembering I’d be nothing but kind and forgiving leading up to the moment of their surrender.
_____
Megan sat on the edge of the bed in the hotel room fidgeting with her new bracelet, turning the Saint Bridget’s cross to the front of her wrist while re-reading the copy of the file on Erin Quinlan. The final report listed where she was buried, eerily the same name of the place where Megan had just buried her father: Woodlawn Cemetery. There were brochures next to the mini coffeemaker mentioning Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira. She skimmed through the information. Mark Twain was buried there. Megan read that Twain’s wife, Olivia Langdon, was born and raised in Elmira.
Megan had certainly had her share of cemeteries of late, but she felt the need to pay her respects to Erin Quinlan’s final resting place.
Driving up Davis Street, she passed Elmira College. The purple and gold college colors dominated the students’ attire as they walked between classes. While waiting for a car to turn ahead of her, Megan couldn’t help but notice a burned-out house among the middle-American porch-styled homes. The charred structure was intact, but all the windows and doors were protected with plywood.
She drove into Woodlawn Cemetery and pulled alongside two workers making space for a new “resident.” She asked if they knew where Erin Quinlan’s plot was and the one worker directed Megan. He told her she couldn’t miss it. It was always covered in flowers, notes, the occasional candle. A few minutes later, she saw that they were right: Megan wouldn’t have missed it. She parked to one side and walked around to the front of the headstone. She added a single white rose to the countless arrangements surrounding it. Megan noted sadly that she and Erin shared the same birthday. August 30th.
Megan didn’t know Erin from Adam, but she whispered a promise to the dead stranger, “I’ll get him. I’ll get him.”
A black lab ran up behind Megan just then, jumping and barking. “Hey, sweetie. Where did you come from?”
A woman in a red parka followed yards away. “Abigail!” for some odd reason, the lady was carrying a piece of cheese in a wrapper. “Abby! Get back here!”
Megan rubbed the dog’s ears, but Abby turned over on her back; apparently she preferred a belly massage. “You’re a sweetheart. Aren’t ya girl?”
The woman approached, laughing at her dog’s antics. “She acts as though she’s not the spoiled rescue that she is.”
The way Megan was crouched down displayed her gun, and she could tell the woman was a little uneasy. “I’m a detective,” she explained, “from Manhattan.”
“I noticed you were over at the Quinlans’. ” She tilted her head in the direction of Erin’s headstone. “She was a nice girl.”
“You knew her?”
“One of my classmates from Saint Jo’s, she was her granddaughter.”
“Saint Joseph’s nursing school?”
The woman took off one of her gloves to give her dog a piece of the wrapped cheese, and Megan noticed her hand. She wore a ring identical to the one found sutured in Erin Quinlan.
“That’s right.” She patted the dog’s head. “Come on, Abigail, it’s time to get back to Davis Street.”
“I just drove up that street, and I noticed a house not too far away. Was there a bad fire there?”
The woman nodded. “Very bad, in fact I live next door. A sweet, sweet woman lived there, a real rock for our neighborhood.”
“She died in the fire?”
; “No.” The woman gave her dog the remaining cheese. “Bridget died later that night from complications. I’m sure it was due to the fire. She wasn’t in the best of health to begin with.” The woman continued talking about the fire that engulfed the house that night, but there was only one word that stopped Megan’s heart: Bridget.
Motherfucker.
Megan thought, You were right again, Dad. Angels come in many forms.
forty-seven
“Detective Nappa?” Mr. Warren walked into the conference room with paperwork. “I have the information on the nurses who worked at the camp this past summer.”
“Thank you. Also, I have a few questions for you before I go.”
“Whatever I can do to help.”
“I’m investigating the McAllister murder and I’m sure you know she was a volunteer at the camp. Have any of your staff commented on her death?”
“We all were stunned when we found out.” He put his hand to chest. “I don’t want to seem indelicate, Detective, but we in the medical field deal with death, sometimes on a day-to-day basis. One of our nurses specializes in oncology services, so it’s a part of the job, so to speak.” He shrugged. “I will say this, Shannon was a sweet person. What an awful, awful thing to happen.”
Nappa raised a suspicious eyebrow. “You knew her?”
Mr. Warren nervously laughed, “Well, no, not really. I went to the camp over a holiday weekend to help out. I didn’t know her, so to speak.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“At a blood drive we held. She was handing out juice and cookies to the donors. I think two of the nurses on that list were there as well.”
Nappa took a page from Megan’s Make-Friends-and-Influence-People booklet and left in a hurry. “I’ll be in touch.”
forty-eight
Megan met Detective Gold at Light’s Bakery. Permed hair and blue mascara dominated the waitresses’ fashion, but for less than five dollars you received a sandwich with a side of coleslaw, a pickle, and coffee—with refills.
Never Alone Page 25