by Tim Green
“Six million? That’s insane,” Wells said. His face turned red. “You can just stay and rot on the vine.”
Jack sensed a bluff. He was a blight on the otherwise unblemished face of a very old, very dignified, very profitable law firm. A blight could be removed, but it cost money and it was worth money. To terminate Jack without cause would guarantee embroilment in a lengthy suit that the firm would most likely lose. Even so, Jack knew they would never give him six million. But when Wells, after huffing and fuming, said he could sell the partnership on three million just to make the whole thing go away, Jack knew the number was really four. He said so.
“You sign that,” Wells said. “I’ll go to accounting right now. I want this over with.”
Jack signed the resignation without looking at it. He fished through his desk for some other small things, putting them into his briefcase as well. When Wells returned, he picked the paper off Jack’s desk and studied it. Then he handed Jack another check. Jack took it and went to shake the managing partner’s hand. Wells put his hand at his side and took a step back. Jack felt his face grow hot.
There was a police car on the street next to his driveway. Otherwise only the tape and the trampled grass remained. Jack shut the door and looked at the cop car to see if they were coming for him. They weren’t. He checked his messages. Wells, irate. His lawyer. No police. No Beth.
Jack went upstairs and packed his clothes.
CHAPTER 56
Amanda drove through the barbed-wire gates of the Hempstead Correctional Facility with McGrew by her side. He was fidgeting again with the tuft of beard beneath his lip and looking hard at the approaching guardhouse. As Amanda pulled to a stop, McGrew leaned across the wheel and thrust their papers out the open window at the young guard—a blimp of a man with blond eyebrows and a thatch of short unruly hair. He scowled importantly at them after perusing the court order and asking to see their identification before he would wave them on.
Tupp was waiting for them in a small holding cell. He wore an ill-fitting green jumpsuit. The muddy color of his eyes seemed to have leaked into their whites, contaminating them like smoke stains. His kinky russet hair had receded halfway to the crown of his head, and the pink furrowed expanse was highlighted by an absence of eyebrows.
Even sitting, she could see that Tupp was at least six feet tall. Although his torso was short and pear-shaped, his legs were disproportionately long. He had them straight out in front of him, crossed. His hands were jammed down deep in his pockets. Amanda’s eyes went to their motion. Tupp didn’t bother to hide what he was doing. In fact, by the subtle expression on his face, he seemed to like that she had noticed. There was a strange smell in the air. Amanda wanted to vomit.
She and McGrew sat down in two chairs facing him. She wished there were something between them, a table, anything. His hands fluttered. McGrew began to speak, impervious, introducing the two of them. After briefly praising his uncle’s political clout, he proposed the deal. Tupp would live in a small saltbox cottage in the country out on the end of Long Island for the remainder of his sentence. He’d be under house arrest. He’d have to wear a bracelet. But he’d have the run of the place.
“Some people don’t like the food here,” Tupp said. He wore a coy smile. His voice was high pitched, lilting, and squeaky. A fat blue fly buzzed off the ceiling and landed on his shoulder. His eyes flicked between them. “But they have vanilla ice cream, and that’s my favorite . . . Besides, I’ve only got three more months.”
Amanda heard a scream inside her head to just get the hell out of there.
“Your sentence is four years,” Amanda said, trying to sound gruff.
“But I’ve been good,” he said. His eyes had glowed when she spoke to him. “I’m a good boy and I know how it works.”
McGrew was chuckling like the whole thing was good for a laugh. He looked mirthfully at Amanda, then turned to Tupp. McGrew’s face dropped. So did his voice.
“Listen, fuckshit,” he said. “Didn’t you listen to me about who my uncle is? They can find a bag of cocaine in your cell by four o’clock, then you can eat vanilla ice cream out of your cellmate’s ass for the next ten years.”
Tupp swallowed and shook the fly off his shoulder. He took his hands out of his pockets and crossed them in front of his chest. His head drooped.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t,” he said.
The fly buzzed toward McGrew. He snatched it out of the air, shook it, and threw it down on the concrete floor with a little splat.
“Good,” he said. He was grinning at Amanda.
CHAPTER 57
A cold rain whipped Long Island. McGrew had a fire going in the massive grate of the pink granite fireplace in the great room of the beachfront mansion. The wood popped and hissed, tossing embers up against an ornate brass screen. McGrew was hunched over the surface of a teak Oriental desk, delicately tapping the keys of his computer.
Amanda sat on a broad crushed-velvet couch, resisting the temptation to sink back into the luxurious layers of pillows and upholstery. Instead she leaned into the room with her hands on the edge of her seat and her knees pressed tightly together.
They weren’t far from the small inland cottage where Tupp sat watching his own TV, wearing his electronic bracelet. McGrew had recommended the site because of its remote location. Tucked in a grass clearing bordered by pines, the two-bedroom dwelling was accessible by only a single stony drive. There were no neighboring homes in sight, and its isolation would enable them to easily keep watch on the perimeter if Ruskin made his move.
Tupp was the hook. Now McGrew wanted her to help with the bait.
“There!” he said, pushing himself back from the desk and staring pointedly at Amanda. “Now you tell me this isn’t just the way a woman would write it.”
Amanda rose from her seat and peered over his shoulder.
“It’s not,” she said. Her hands were on her hips.
“How can you say that?”
“You say ‘sex offender.’ A woman wouldn’t say that,” she said, pointing at the screen. “Not someone who’d been through something like that.”
McGrew moved off the chair and Amanda sat down and started typing. A little while later she pushed back her chair.
“There,” she said, tapping the screen with the back of her fingernails. “Look.”
Dear Mr. Ruskin,
I can’t tell you who I am, but I share the pain I know you, your daughter, and your entire family have felt. I was also the victim of a terrible crime. I now work in the district attorney’s office in Suffolk County. I don’t want to add to your misery, but I have to make you aware of something that makes me sick.
Eugene Tupp is being set free.
This was brought to my attention by a coworker who has no idea what happened to me or how I feel. Apparently, our so-called system of justice has seen fit to let him out at the earliest possible moment because of “good behavior” in jail. When I asked where someone that dangerous was going to be living, I was told Fire Lane 22 off Long Town Road outside Quogue, but that I shouldn’t worry, they knew he was leaving the country for South America, where his mother was from.
This is true. I have attached a copy of the one-way American Airlines itinerary for Eugene Tupp. I know that your life is in shambles right now, but I also knew you’d want this information.
Mr. Ruskin, please believe me that every person who has ever been the victim of a crime like this thanks you from the bottom of her heart. I only wish there were more people like you.
“I like it,” McGrew said, stroking the triangle of hair beneath his lip. “I really like it.”
“I just don’t know,” Amanda said. She crossed her arms in front of her. “It smells.”
“Ruskin is a psycho,” McGrew said. “He’s going to see this and blow a gasket. Think about everything he’s done. Shit, he’s blowing away perverts he doesn’t even know. What do you think he’s going to do when he thinks about Tupp getting out and disappearin
g for good?”
“He might,” she said. She unfolded her arms.
“We don’t have anything to lose,” McGrew said. “My bank with my uncle is empty after this. My captain told me, FBI or not, I’ve got clearance to run a twenty-four-hour stakeout for two weeks and no more. After that I’m back in the ranks.”
“That’ll be the end for me, too, then,” she said. She frowned. “I’m only in this because of your—because of you.”
“You can say my uncle,” McGrew said. He gave her that crooked smile. “I use him like I use everything. I won’t stop, you can bet on that. But I’ll be working this thing during off-duty hours.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
McGrew shrugged. “Yeah. That’s what I do. I’m a homicide cop to the bone, one-third tough, another third cunning, and one-half crazy . . .”
“Is that from some movie?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Just my movie.”
“Oh.”
“Hey,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “I was thinking that you and me should take the night shift. That’s when he’ll do it, at night. We’ll have to go nocturnal for a couple weeks. You ever go nocturnal?”
“McGrew,” she said, pushing the strand of hair from her eyes, “I’ve got two kids.”
She said it kindly.
“But right now,” she said, getting up from her chair, “I could use a little sleep.”
“How about a drink?” he said.
“I just had two Saratoga waters,” she said making her way into the front hall. “That’s my limit.”
McGrew shot up out of his chair and grinned. “Not what I was talking about. Come on, just a small one. We don’t have to start the real work until tomorrow night. Show me you’re human.”
Amanda was putting on her coat. “McGrew, I’m going to my hotel.”
“You want to eat something?” he asked, following her to the front door. “You’ve got to eat.”
“Room service,” she said, stepping out onto the front step. “Look McGrew. I’m tired. You’re doing a really good job with this thing. Send the e-mail and get some sleep yourself.”
“I think I’ll . . . this place has like a massive marble Jacuzzi,” he said. He laughed and rubbed the back of his head. “I can barely sleep unless I have a Jacuzzi and a couple beers. So you think of me when you get back to that Holiday Inn, just living here like a billionaire.”
“You’re living right, McGrew,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “see you tomorrow. Tomorrow it all begins. Tomorrow could be the big scene.”
“Good night, McGrew.”
CHAPTER 58
Jack stopped for the second time along Route 80. He was outside Des Moines, Iowa. He didn’t want to get all the way across the country before he contacted Beth. She’d been on his mind a lot. He knew that some people might not understand what he’d done, but that’s not what he was going to ask of her. He was going to ask her to forgive him. Part of him felt like he could stop it all, if she would come back. Part of him didn’t know if he could ever stop.
Either way, he had to try, so he pulled off the road that would take him all the way from New York to San Francisco, where he planned to go as far up the 101 as he had to in order to find the right place. What that place was he wasn’t quite sure. He knew he needed to get away from New York, far away. He’d fly back to visit Janet. Maybe one day she could come to him. Maybe one day she’d be all better.
There was a Red Roof Inn just off the exit and that was good enough for Jack. Mark Kane was the name on the fake driver’s license he still had from when he presented himself to Tidwell in Pittsburgh. He used it now. The young woman at the front desk was pretty with long brown hair. She wore a gray suit and a white blouse. He pushed a hundred-dollar bill across the desk and she looked up at him. Jack held his breath.
When she didn’t avert her eyes, or show any sign of recognition, he exhaled. Maybe it was the name, or the baseball cap, or the beard, even though it had only been three days since his last shave. Or maybe he was already far enough away. He took the keycard from her and returned her smile, then found room 112. He tossed his overnight bag on the bed closest to the door and set up his computer at the desk.
He was going to e-mail Beth. He was going to ask her to come back. He needed to see her, or at least talk to her. They had come too far for her not to let him plead his case. She hadn’t answered her phone, and when he went by her apartment, her car was gone. She might be home, an upstate dairy farm. Wherever she was, she would get her e-mail.
He had to be careful, though. He had to avoid saying anything that could be used against him. A prosecutor would love to get his hands on an e-mail where Jack made any reference at all to the killings. He would have to be vague, but at the same time let her know that things would be different. He felt he could do that. If she could forgive him, then he could meet her halfway. He could change. At least he felt that way right now.
He had AOL for personal use at home and with his junk-mail filter, it didn’t surprise him to see only three e-mails waiting for him. None was from Beth, but one jumped out at him. The sender was from Anonymity.com, the same service he had used to send word to Arthur Campion, the father of Tom Conner’s victim.
Jack felt his heart begin to race. Beth wouldn’t bother to use Anonymity. There would be no reason. He opened the e-mail and read about Tupp.
Light-headed, he staggered into the bathroom and filled the sink with cold water. He dipped his face into it and splashed the water up over the back of his neck. His hands shook and his chest heaved with short frantic breaths. He blew a spray of water against the mirror and looked at himself, then dipped his face again.
He dried off and tried to regulate his breathing, forcing himself to inhale deeply, exhale slow. When he could think straight, he shut down his computer without writing his e-mail to Beth. He left his keycard at the desk without bothering to ask the girl for his money back. He couldn’t get back in his car soon enough. He drove into the night, checking his rearview mirror. A nondescript car had pulled out of the hotel parking lot after he did and gone his way. Someone might easily be following him. Sometime after three thirty-seven, he fell asleep behind the wheel. The Saab careened off the road.
CHAPTER 59
The horrible vibrating sound of pavement grooves blasted him awake. He swerved back onto the road and almost lost control. He pulled off at the next exit and shut off the car in the parking lot of an all-night gas station. The seat went back far enough for him to feel some comfort and he dropped off with thoughts of a shotgun spinning in his head.
It was just past eight when the air horn of a tractor-trailer sounded outside his car.
“Asshole,” Jack said, rubbing his eyes and looking for the reason the big purple truck had sounded its horn. There was a camper blocking the diesel pump. Jack filled up, used the bathroom, and got a large coffee before getting back on the road. He had plenty of time to think, so when he hit Route 81 south of Scranton and headed north, it was for good reason.
The small city of Binghamton was just over the New York State line. He wanted to buy a gun well away from New York City, at a place where shotguns weren’t uncommon. With the Mark Kane New York driver’s license, he knew he could buy such a gun without many hassles. He had no idea what would happen in Pennsylvania, and the diversion would have taken less than two hours if it hadn’t begun to snow. The farther north he got, though, the thicker it was.
Just before he hit Binghamton there was a Wal-Mart close enough to the highway that Jack could even see it through the snow. In his rearview mirror there was no one. He wasn’t going to be careless, but the absence of anyone behind him in this heavy snow made him think that his early suspicions about being followed were pure paranoia. He got off at the exit and found his way to the store. The parking lot was nearly empty, and the cars that were there already wore a thick layer of snow.
Jack stuffed his wallet into his jacket pocket and
tramped across the lot. He slipped inside unnoticed. There would only be one person who could remember him. She turned out to be a disinterested middle-aged woman, a poorly bleached blonde with a small tattoo on her neck. She was wreathed in the stench of stale cigarette smoke.
The woman fiddled with her own key chain and gazed at her cheap watch while Jack perused the glass cabinet of guns behind her on the wall. He cleared his throat and pointed to a short-barreled stainless-steel twelve-gauge that had a black synthetic pistol grip instead of the usual shoulder stock. He hefted the gun and slid the pump action back and forth with a slick metallic sound.
“Home defense,” he muttered as he pointed to a box of hollowpoint slugs. “I’ll take six of those boxes.”
The woman seemed not to care what he wanted. She examined some crud that had lodged itself beneath a fingernail while she waited for a response on the FBI hot line as to whether a man named Mark Kane had ever committed a felony. The answer came back negative. Buying a shotgun didn’t require anything more than that and cold cash. Jack filled out a simple form in the name of Kane, then counted out five hundred-dollar bills to pay for the weapon. He couldn’t have asked for a better person to sell him the gun. She wouldn’t be able to choose him out of a lineup of Sumo wrestlers. That would be if someone ever found her in the first place, which was seriously doubtful.
Jack felt the awful sickness begin to return as he walked through the empty aisles to the front of the store. Outside, the snowy wind moaned in pain. He found Route 17 and went east. At Roscoe the snow began to turn wet. By the time Jack reached the George Washington Bridge, he was speeding along amid a caravan of lit-up tractor-trailers through a steady rain.
By ten-thirty he was back in his own home. He was going to strike and he was going to strike fast. This had to be perfect, more perfect than all the rest. He would be a suspect, a prime suspect, the prime suspect when Eugene Tupp was found dead. It meant that unlike any other murder he had committed, Jack would need an alibi, anything, even if it wasn’t a very good one. His mind jumped fifteen years back in time when he was an assistant D.A. Even the biggest cases turned on the smallest details.