“She did it for the same reason,” I said. “She didn’t want to be identified.”
“I could have saved her,” he said numbly.
“Yes,” I said. “You could have.”
Eyes calculating, he savagely chewed his lower lip.
“Would you take money?” he said. “You’re what, a four-hundred-dollar-a-week reporter?”
“I’m underpaid,” I said, “but not that underpaid.”
“What about your future?” he demanded. “You expect to chase fire engines until you’re sixty-five years old?”
“I have to leave now,” I said quietly.
He sighed despairingly. “Too late. There’s Mr. Marsh to consider. No,” he said sorrowfully, “you can’t leave.”
“Don’t make it worse than it already is.”
“Come on.” He reached for me. “We’re taking a walk.”
“Where?” I stepped back, heart thudding.
“It can work,” he said, as though thinking aloud. “No one saw me come up. Marsh found you attractive, he told me that. You and he had some sort of a relationship, then quarreled, struggled, and you both fell.”
“No.” I tried not to panic or look at the windows, the dark sky and sea beyond. “I didn’t even like the man. He’s a news source. Everybody knew that.”
“More reason for him to lose control when you resisted.”
“He was in a wheelchair, for God’s sake,” I said, my voice thin with fear. “This is insane. You’ll never pull it off.”
“Why not? The man was an MS victim. He had good days and bad ones. He was stronger than I expected.”
I sprang toward the cordless phone on the glass table. Even quicker, he caught my wrist. The phone clattered to the floor, spiraling across the shiny tile, out of reach.
We grappled, as he forced me toward the bedroom. I kicked, screamed, and shoved him back into the three-legged telescope. He was caught off balance as it toppled and crashed to the floor. Wrenching away, I dashed through the still-open door to the outer room. I expected him right behind me, but glanced back and saw him at the wheelchair instead. He removed something from the pocket. The remote.
Skidding on the polished tile, I nearly crashed into the front door. Locked. Twisting the knob, I wrenched it both ways in a frantic search for a button, a lever, some sort of release. It wouldn’t open. “Fire! Fire!” I screamed, pounding on the heavy wooden panels, praying for someone in the corridor. “Fire! Fire!”
Tall and moving lightly on the balls of his feet, Broussard came toward me, the remote in his hand. “Shut up!” he said. “Don’t make this more difficult.”
“Stay away from me!” Huddled against the door, I watched our macabre dance reflected in the mirrored wall.
He pointed the remote at me like a gunfighter leveling a weapon. He flicked a finger and the door behind me snapped briskly, the lock disengaged. As I reached for the knob he tapped the button again and it locked. He hit another button and the sound of music, sweepingly sentimental strings and piano, instantly filled the room.
I screamed as loud as I could, did an end run around him, and fled back toward the room we had left. The door stood open. I could reach the phone, dial for help; then he wouldn’t dare…I was only inches away when the door slammed and locked.
He smiled grimly.
“Let me out of here!” I demanded furiously, shouting over Dean Martin crooning, When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie… “Or you’ll wind up on death row yourself!”
His jawline tightened.
There was so little furniture. I looked wildly about for something I could use to break windows.
He attempted to cut me off, sidestepping and parrying, as I darted to a door at the far left, hoping it wasn’t a closet. The knob turned and it opened. A short hall led to the kitchen. Low counters and sinks. A wall phone, mounted waist high, to accommodate Marsh in his wheelchair. I whipped a knife out of a wooden cutlery block on the nearest counter and wheeled to face him. Broussard, right behind me, cursed and slipped on the floor.
He caught his balance as I backed toward the phone, brandishing the knife. Its long blade glinted in the dim light. “I’ll kill you!” I warned. “Come near me and I swear—”
In a single swift motion he snatched a heavy copper-bottomed pot off the stove by its handle and swung it at my head like a baseball bat. It connected with the sound of a church bell pealing.
When I opened my eyes, he was straddling me on the cold floor. My ears rang, my head throbbed, and my elbows hurt, as though they had hit the tile floor before I did. The taste of blood in my mouth, I groped feebly for the knife and saw it in his hand.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Nauseated and dizzy, as though seeing strangers, I watched in the huge mirror as he half dragged me back through the apartment. The door to Marsh’s study sprang open and we faced ourselves on the big screen, life-size and in living color. The fear in my eyes terrified me more than the blood on my face or the blade at my throat. He saw the image too, tightened his grip, and waggled the knife under my chin. I dragged my heels, resisting every step, as he wrestled me into the bedroom. Sliding glass doors stood open to the wraparound terrace. Sheer white drapes swayed and billowed like angels’ wings in the wind off the sea.
He forced me through them, hand clamped over my mouth, then cursed as we stumbled over something. It was Zachary, curled in a fetal position, arms across his narrow chest, as though trying to protect himself. His face was blue.
I ripped Broussard’s hand from my mouth, gagging. “Think of your daughters,” I gasped. “If they could see—”
“I am thinking of my daughters.” One hand under my armpit, he reached down with the other, gripped me between the legs, then lifted me off my feet and over his head. In that dizzying instant, my cries lost in the wind, I glimpsed the fenced-in pool sixteen floors below and remembered the jumpers I had seen, skulls shattered like eggs, the contents spilled around them. My free hand clawed furiously for his face, to mark him, so that Rychek or somebody would know how I died.
The night air whooshed around me as he hurled me, still struggling, over the railing. My fingers scrabbled frantically against an unyielding surface, then caught the narrow ledge on the sky side of the stone balusters. I clung there for a heart-stopping moment, legs flailing in empty space. He tried to kick my fingers away, wedging his foot between the balusters, but they were too closely spaced. He cursed, threw one leg over the railing, and leaned down to push me away.
My legs swung forward, as my fingers slowly lost their grip and I fell. Cut off in mid-scream, I slammed with a painful crash onto the identical terrace of the apartment one floor below. Stunned, I rolled to my hands and knees, crawled painfully to a small patio table and two chairs, dragged myself to my feet, and beat on the sliding glass door.
“Help me! Open the door! Please!” I pleaded. No answer. The interior remained dark.
Overhead, Broussard’s legs swung over the balcony as he came after me. I staggered to yet another sliding door around the corner. I fumbled desperately with the latch but it, too, was locked. Sobbing and shaking, I shouted, pounded, and kicked at the door, then peered inside. I saw ghostly shrouds, sheet-covered furniture, and the silhouettes of a ladder and paint cans. My face left bloody smudges on the tinted glass—only a hint of what was to come. I moaned at a sound behind me. Broussard had lowered himself and was clinging to the ledge, ready to swing onto the terrace after me.
“Get away!” I screamed.
With no place to hide, I snatched up a patio chair, brandishing it as one might to fend off a wild beast.
His long legs swung toward me, knees flexed, feet together. Taller by six or seven inches, he had to lift them to clear the railing. Screaming, I charged as though wielding a battering ram. The legs of the chair caught him just below the belt.
His expression, mouth open wide, was one of total surprise. He clawed at thin air for a moment, then fell away. The chair clattered
after him, bouncing off the building.
His scream faded, but I did not hear the dreaded impact. Lost on the wind, I thought, as I crumpled to the floor, limp and weeping. I sat for a time, trying not to think, focused only on breathing. Finally I dragged myself to my feet, fighting back nausea as I gripped the railing with both hands and forced myself to look down. No crowd gathering below as I had expected. No cops. Preston Broussard had not slammed into the paved pool deck. Instead, he stared up at me, suspended face-up in space, six feet off the ground, impaled on the spear-sharp supports of the wrought-iron security gate that separates the pool area from the street.
22
Numb and shivering, I sat with my spine pressed to the cold outside wall of the empty apartment and waited for sirens. But all I heard was the wind.
My mind wandered. Would I see my mother again or be doomed to this high tomb forever? The dead moaned around me, or was that the wind? In my mind’s eye, or was it ancient memory, I saw a distant time in a far place when I stood alone on a towering cliff high above the raging sea, the wind wild in my hair. Stars shone above, doom waited below.
Eventually, I was roused by bright flashes of color bouncing in eerie patterns off the south side of the building: the spiraling lights of emergency vehicles. I stood up slowly and waved stiffly, trying to shout from my open air prison in the sky.
It seemed to take hours before the flashlight beams of two uniformed cops pierced the dark interior of the apartment behind me.
They found the light switch and unlocked the sliding glass door, and I stumbled toward them. “You know anything about that guy down there?” one asked, steadying my arm.
“Everything. There’s another one upstairs,” I mumbled, and burst into tears. “Call Rychek,” I said, as my knees gave way.
“How did you get out there?” The cop frowned as he bent over me.
“Fell,” I rasped, my throat raw from screaming. “He threw me off,” I said, “from up there.” I tried to point, but a dark-eyed medic in a blue jumpsuit refused to free my arm. He was taking my pulse.
I hadn’t seen the medics arrive. They asked how I felt. Tearfully I displayed my bloodied and broken fingernails.
They exchanged glances, fastened a brace around my neck, and lifted me onto a backboard. “I’m not a victim,” I insisted. “I’m okay.” They wanted to wheel me out. I said I wanted to walk—in a minute or two. Until then it felt good to lie down. The blanket was soft and warm and I closed my eyes for a moment. I opened them after my teeth stopped chattering and saw an IV in my arm.
I had to wait for Rychek, to explain everything, I said. The medics insisted I go to the hospital instead. They won.
The stiff collar around my neck made it difficult to talk or turn my head. I told the medic with the brown eyes I didn’t need it and that Billy Boots had worn one like it after his surgery.
“What did he have done?” he asked, humoring me as I was wheeled onto the elevator.
“Neutered,” I said vaguely. “Maybe that’s why he eats toothbrushes.”
“Makes sense to me.” He raised an eyebrow at his partner.
I frowned, trying to focus. “Listen. It’s important,” I pleaded, then forgot what I wanted to say. “I’m a member of the Stork Club,” I mumbled instead.
In the emergency room, they discussed shock, a hematoma, and possible cervical injuries. I tried to see who they were talking about. All I needed was to go home for a good night’s sleep, I insisted. They wanted CAT scans. I lost.
Rychek and Fitzgerald appeared somewhere between X-ray and the MRI.
“Broussard is dead. Marsh, too,” I greeted them, thinking more clearly now despite a throbbing headache.
They knew. They had been to the Casa Milagro. Rychek took notes as I told them almost everything. Fitzgerald held my hand and stroked my hair.
No one else saw Broussard fall, Rychek said. He was discovered when a honeymoon couple returning from a romantic stroll on the beach followed a rapidly running river of blood to the iron gate and looked up.
“The fire department and a crew from the M.E. office are having a hell of a time getting ’im down from there,” Rychek said. “They’re using an acetylene torch on the gate. Too bad he’s dead, we coulda charged him with breaking the law of gravity.”
“No way,” Fitzgerald argued. “He proved the law of gravity.”
I was lucky. No broken bones, no permanent physical damage. My cuts and bruises would heal. Treated for shock and a concussion, I went home after twenty-four hours. They wanted me to stay for forty-eight, but I insisted. My mother, Lottie, Onnie, Mrs. Goldstein, and Dennis Fitzgerald all took good care of me. Even Kendall McDonald called. I was fine, I said, in good hands.
Janowitz wrote the deadline story on the deaths. My in-depth piece followed two days later.
I left someone out, the same person I left out of my statement to police. Danny Sinclair.
I left him out one more time.
“I know why you called,” R. J. said, referring to the urgent message I left him so long ago, before driving to Boca to find Danny. “You found out I was right. Kaithlin couldn’t forget me. She still cared. That’s why she came back.”
“Right,” I lied. “She cared.”
“I’m glad that son-of-a-bitch is dead,” he said. “He murdered my wife.”
R. J. allowed Myrna Lewis to bury Kaithlin at Woodlawn. He even offered to pay the bill. When the woman, who barely survives in her shabby apartment, refused his money, he was surprised. I wasn’t.
The two of us paid her a visit. My mother drove because my head still ached. We drank tea in her kitchen and talked about Danny.
“Do you think he should be told?” I asked.
“Would you want to know,” my mother asked, “if they were your parents?”
“He sounds like a wonderful boy,” Myrna said wistfully.
“They weren’t rich or well-known and they had their share of bad luck, but Reva did a good job choosing his parents,” I said. “She’d be happy at how her grandson is turning out.”
I smiled at them both. Some truths are better left untold.
Relieved that her boss hadn’t killed anybody, at least not anybody we knew about, Frances Haehle finally confided why she’d been so afraid of going to jail if he was arrested. Her sister had died three years earlier. While she was still grief-stricken and vulnerable, Kagan had asked her for the dead woman’s date of birth and social security number. When she gave it to him, he had put her dead sister on his payroll, a phantom employee to beef up his business expenses and cheat on his taxes.
Kagan saw me right away when I dropped by his law office.
“Didn’t I tell ya?” he crowed, jubilant at being cleared in Kaithlin’s murder. “And you were looking at me like I was responsible.”
“Indirectly, you were,” I said. “You were no innocent bystander.”
“You look all banged up.” His expression was arrogant.
“Yeah. I look like I ran into one of your swell clients in the alley. Look,” I said. “I want you and Rothman to forget about Kaithlin’s son.”
His ferret eyes glittered. “Sure, sure,” he agreed. “No problem.”
“Good,” I said. “Now shred her file, the one you took out of that drawer last time I was here. Do it now.”
He licked his lips and smirked. “Now, why would I do that?”
“Because,” I said, “the cops know exactly how much money Kaithlin sent you. They won’t go to the trouble of reporting it to the IRS, but I will. I’ll go right to their office from here. I know a few agents who’d be delighted to have the information. Who knows what they’ll find when they start examining your returns for the past seven years.” I smiled.
“I’ll deep-six the file,” Kagan said. “Take my word for it.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t. Take it out now, call in your secretary, and we’ll watch her shred it.”
He took out the file, then slammed the drawer hard.
&n
bsp; “Get in here!” he bellowed.
Frances stepped into the office, avoiding my eyes. I checked through the file, then watched at her elbow as the machine reduced it to confetti.
The last item fed into the blades was a Rothman surveillance photo. Kaithlin, coffee mug in one hand, a leash in the other, laughing at the big dog as he romped around the two little girls in riding gear as they left their Seattle home.
The haunting irony is that she successfully escaped the violent husband she feared, only to be murdered by the mild-mannered second husband she loved.
Love is so fragile and so often fatal. I am amazed when people are brave enough to risk it.
The wedding was beautiful, sweet and simple, like fortunate lives. Fitzgerald drove down from Daytona to be my date. The big event took place in the little church on Lincoln Road. The radiant bride wore spring flowers in her hair and a long off-white dress.
The ring bearer, Harry, age five, took his mission so seriously that he briefly refused to relinquish the matching wedding bands when the moment came.
Misty, eleven, looked lovely, her blond hair long with silky bangs that brushed her eyebrows. Lottie wore her red hair piled elegantly atop her head. I liked the swishing sound of our salmon-pink gowns as we slow-stepped down the red-carpeted aisle to the march from Wagner’s Lohengrin. Perhaps I just loved life and all it brings on that day so bright with promise.
The twins dropped rose petals, and little Beppo escaped his seat with the others next to Angel’s mother, who held the baby, and scampered up to join the bridal party at the altar. No one objected when Rooney swept him up and held him in his arms while he and Angel exchanged vows.
“I think I’m going to faint,” the bride whispered as the soloist sang.
“No, you’re not,” the minister firmly corrected.
He was right.
You Only Die Twice Page 27