“How do you know it’s the same guy?”
“How many people you know with a name like Smithback? Look, Larry, gotta go.”
“Gee, how awful for him. Now about lunch—”
“Screw lunch.” She nudged the phone closed with her chin, let it drop to her lap, and fired up the engine. Lettuce, tomato, green peppers, and scrambled egg went flying as she popped the clutch and scooted out into traffic.
It was the work of five minutes to get to West End Avenue and 92nd. Caitlyn was an expert at urban driving, and her Toyota had just enough dings and scrapes to warn off anyone who might think that one more wouldn’t matter. She nudged the car into a spot in front of a fire hydrant—with any luck, she’d get her story and be gone before a traffic cop spotted the infraction. And if not, well, screw it, she owed more in tickets on the car than it was worth.
She walked quickly down the block, pulling a digital recorder from her pocket. A bunch of vehicles were double-parked outside 666 West End Avenue: two patrol cars, an unmarked Crown Vic, and an ambulance. A morgue wagon was just pulling away. Two uniformed cops were standing on the top step of the building’s entrance, limiting access to residents only, but a knot of people huddled below on the sidewalk, talking in tense whispers. Their faces were uniformly pinched and drawn, almost—Kidd observed wryly—as if they’d all seen a ghost.
With practiced efficiency, she inserted herself into the restless, muttering group, listening to half a dozen conversations at once, deftly filtering out extraneous chatter and homing in on those who seemed to know something. She turned to one, a bald, heavyset man with a face the color of pomegranate skin. Despite the fall chill in the air, he was sweating profusely.
“Pardon me,” she said, coming up to him. “Caitlyn Kidd, press. Is it true William Smithback was killed?”
He nodded.
“The reporter?”
The man nodded again. “Tragedy. He was a nice guy, used to bring me free newspapers. You a colleague?”
“I work the crime desk for the West Sider. So you knew him well?”
“Lived down the hall. I saw him just yesterday.” He shook his head.
This was just what she needed. “What happened, exactly?”
“It was late last night. Guy with a knife cut him up real bad. I heard the whole thing. Awful.”
“And the murderer?”
“Saw him, recognized him, guy who lives in the building. Colin Fearing.”
“Colin Fearing.” Kidd repeated it slowly, for the recorder.
The man’s expression changed to something she couldn’t readily identify. “See, there’s a problem there, though.”
Kidd leapt at this. “Yes?”
“It seems Fearing died almost two weeks ago.”
“Oh yeah? How so?”
“Found his body floating up near Spuyten Duyvil. Identified, autopsied, everything.”
“You sure about this?”
“The police told the doorman all about it. Then he told us.”
“I don’t understand,” Kidd said.
The man shook his head. “Neither do I.”
“But you’re sure the man you saw last night was also Colin Fearing?”
“Not a doubt in my mind. Ask Heidi here, she recognized him as well.” And the man gestured at a bookish, frightened-looking woman standing beside him. “The doorman, he saw him, too. Struggled with him. There he is now, coming out of the building.” And he gestured toward the door where a short, dapper Hispanic man was emerging.
Quickly, Caitlyn got their names and a few other relevant details. She could only imagine what the headline guy back at the West Sider would do with this one.
Other reporters were arriving now, descending like buzzards, arguing with the cops who had roused themselves and were beginning to shoo the residents back into the building. Reaching her car, she found a ticket tucked under one wiper.
She couldn’t have cared less. She had her big scoop.
5 >
Nora Kelly opened her eyes. It was night and all was quiet. A faint city breeze came through the window of her hospital room and rustled the modesty curtains drawn around the empty bed next to her.
The fog of painkillers was gone, and when she realized sleep would not return she lay very still, trying to hold back the tide of horror and sorrow threatening to overwhelm her. The world was cruel and capricious, and the very act of drawing breath seemed pointless. Even so, she tried to master her grief, to focus on the faint throbbing of her bandaged head, the sounds of the great hospital around her. Slowly, the shaking of her limbs subsided.
Bill—her husband, her lover, her friend—was dead. It wasn’t just that she’d seen it; she could feel it in her bones. There was an absence, an emptiness. He was gone from the earth.
The shock and horror of the tragedy only seemed to grow with each passing hour, and the clarity of her thoughts was agonizing. How could this have happened? It was a nightmare, the brutal act of a pitiless God. Just last night they had been celebrating the first anniversary of their marriage. And now… now…
Once again she struggled to push back the wave of unbearable pain. Her hand reached for the call button and another dose of morphine, but she stopped herself. That was not the answer. She forced her eyes closed again, hoping for the grateful embrace of sleep but knowing it would not come. Perhaps it would never come.
She heard a noise, and a fleeting sense of déjà vu told her this same noise was what had woken her up. Her eyes flew open. It was the sound of a grunt, and it had come from the next bed in the double room. The sudden stab of panic subsided; someone must have been put into the bed while she was sleeping.
She turned her head toward it, trying to make out the person on the other side of the curtains. There was a faint sound of breathing now, ragged, stertorous. The curtains swayed and she realized it wasn’t from the movement of air in the room after all, but rather from the shifting of the person in the bed. A sigh, a rustle of starched sheets. The semi-translucent curtains were backlit by the window, and she could just make out a dark silhouette. As she stared, it slowly rose up with another sigh and a wheezing grunt of effort.
A hand reached out and touched the curtains lightly from within.
Nora could see the faint shadow of a hand stroking and sliding along the gauzy folds, setting the curtains swaying. The hand found an opening, slipped through, and grasped the edge of the curtain.
Nora stared. The hand was dirty. It was mottled with dark, wet streaks—almost like blood. The longer she stared in the faint light, the more certain she became that it was blood. Perhaps this was someone just back from the OR, or whose stitches had opened. Someone very ill.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice loud and hoarse in the silence.
Another grunt. The hand began drawing back the curtain very slowly. There was something horrible about the deliberation with which the steel loops of the curtain slid back along the runner. They rattled with a cold, palsied cadence. Once again, Nora fumbled along the rail of her bed for the call button.
As the curtain drew back, it revealed a dark figure, draped in ragged clothing and covered with dark splotches. Sticky, matted hair stood up from its head. Nora held her breath. As she stared, the figure slowly turned its head to look at her. The mouth opened and a guttural sound came out, like water being sucked down a drain.
Nora found the button and began pressing it, frantically.
The figure slid its feet to the floor, waited a moment as if to recover, and then stood unsteadily. For a minute, it swayed back and forth in the dim light. Then it took a small, almost experimental step toward her. As it did so, the face came into a shaft of pale light from the door transom, and Nora had the briefest glimpse of muddied, lumpen features, puffy and moist. Something about the features, about the shambling movements, brought a dreadful feeling of familiarity to her. Another unsteady step forward, the shaking arm now reaching up for her…
Nora screamed, flailing desperately
at the figure, scrambling back to get away from it, her feet tangling in the bedsheets. Crying out, stabbing at the call button, she struggled to free herself from the linens. What was taking the nurses so long? She freed herself with a brutal tug, swung out of bed, knocking over the IV stand with a crash, and tumbled to the floor in a daze of horror and panic…
After a long moment of fog and confusion, she heard running feet, voices. The lights came on and a nurse was bending over her, gently raising her from the floor, speaking soothingly into her ear.
“Relax,” came the voice. “You’ve just had a nightmare—”
“It was there!” she cried, struggling. “Right there!” She tried to lift her arm to point but the nurse had her arms around her, gently but firmly restraining her.
“Let’s get you back into bed,” the nurse said. “Nightmares are very common after a concussion.”
“No! It was real, I swear!”
“Of course it seemed real. But you’re all right now.” The nurse eased her back into the bed and drew up the covers.
“Look! Behind the curtain!” Her head was pounding, and she could hardly think.
Another nurse came running in, hypodermic at the ready.
“I know, I know. But you’re safe now…” The nurse gently dabbed at her forehead with a cool cloth. Nora felt a brief needle sting in her upper arm. A third nurse arrived, righting the IV stand.
“… Behind the curtain… in the bed…” Despite her best efforts, Nora could feel her whole body relaxing.
“In here?” the nurse asked, rising. She drew back the curtain with one hand, revealing a neatly made bed, as tight as a drum. “You see? Just a dream.”
Nora lay back, her limbs growing heavy. It hadn’t been real, after all.
The nurse leaned over her and smoothed down the covers, tucking her in more firmly. Vaguely, Nora could see the second nurse hanging a new bottle of saline and reattaching the line. Everything seemed to be going very far away. Nora felt tired, so tired. Of course it was a dream. She found herself not caring anymore and thinking how wonderful it was not to care…
6
Vincent D’Agosta paused at the open door of the hospital room, giving a timid knock. The morning sun streamed down the hall, gilding the shiny hospital equipment arrayed against the tiled walls.
He didn’t expect the strength of voice that answered. “Come in.”
He entered, feeling awkward, put his hat down on the only seat, then had to pick it up again to sit down. He was never good at this. He glanced at her a little hesitantly and was surprised by what he saw. Instead of the injured, distraught, grieving widow he expected, he found a woman who looked remarkably composed. Her eyes were red but bright and determined. A bandage covering part of her head and a faint shadow of blackening under the right eye were the only marks of the attack two nights before.
“Nora, I’m so sorry, so damn sorry…” His voice faltered.
“Bill considered you a good friend,” she replied. She chose her words slowly, carefully, as if somehow knowing what needed to be said without really understanding any of it.
A pause. “How are you doing?” he asked, knowing even as he said it how lame it must sound.
Nora’s response was simply to shake her head and return the question. “How are you doing?”
D’Agosta answered honestly. “Shitty.”
“He would be glad you were handling… this.”
D’Agosta nodded.
“The doctor will see me at noon, and if all is well I’ll be out of here soon thereafter.”
“Nora, there’s something I want you to know right up front. We’re going to find the bastard. We’re going to find him and lock him up and throw away the key.”
Nora gave no response.
D’Agosta rubbed his hand over his bald spot. “To do that, I’m going to have to ask you some more questions.”
“Go ahead. Talking… talking actually helps.”
“Okay.” He hesitated. “Are you sure it was Colin Fearing?”
She gazed at him levelly. “As sure as I’m here, right now, in this bed. It was Fearing, all right.”
“How well did you know him?”
“He used to leer at me in the lobby. Once asked me for a date—even though he knew I was married.” She shuddered. “A real pig.”
“Did he give any sign of mental instability?”
“No.”
“Tell me about the time he, ah, asked you on a date.”
“We happened to get on the elevator together. He turned to me, hands in his pockets, and he asked—with that smarmy British accent of his—if I wanted to come to his digs and see his etchings.”
“He really said that? Etchings?”
“I guess he thought he was being ironic.”
D’Agosta shook his head. “Had you seen him around in, say, the last two weeks?”
Nora did not reply right away. She seemed to be making an effort to remember, and D’Agosta’s heart went out to her. “No. Why do you ask?”
D’Agosta wasn’t ready to go there yet. “Did he have a girlfriend?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Ever meet his sister?”
“Didn’t even know he had a sister.”
“Did Fearing have any close friends? Other relatives?”
“I don’t know him well enough to say. He seemed a bit of a loner. He kept strange hours—an actor type, you know, worked in theater.”
D’Agosta referred to his notepad, where he’d scribbled some routine questions. “Just a few more formalities, for the record. How long have you and Bill been married?” He couldn’t bring himself to put the question in the past tense.
“That was our first anniversary.”
D’Agosta tried to keep his voice calm, neutral. There seemed to be an obstruction in his throat, and he swallowed. “How long has he been employed at the Times?”
“Four years. Before that he was with the Post. And before that he was a freelancer, writing books about the museum and the Boston Aquarium. I’ll send you a copy of his résumé—” Here her voice went very low. “If you want.”
“Thank you, that would be helpful.” D’Agosta made a notation. Then he glanced up at her again. “Nora, I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Do you have any idea why Fearing did this?”
Nora shook her head.
“No run-ins? Bad blood?”
“Not that I know of. Fearing was just someone who lived in the building.”
“I know these questions are difficult, and I appreciate—”
“What’s difficult, Lieutenant, is knowing that Fearing is still free. You ask what you need to know.”
“Okay. Do you think his intention was to molest you?”
“It’s possible. Although his timing was bad. He came into the apartment right after I left.” She hesitated. “Can I ask you a question, Lieutenant?”
“Of course.”
“At that time of night, he would have expected us both to be home, right? But all he had was a knife.”
“That’s right, just a knife.”
“You don’t break into someone’s apartment with a knife if you expect to confront two people. Anyone can get a gun these days.”
“Quite right.”
“So what do you think?”
D’Agosta had been thinking about that quite a lot. “It’s a good question. And you’re sure it was him?”
“That’s the second time you’ve asked me that question.”
D’Agosta shook his head. “Just making sure, that’s all.”
“You are looking for him, aren’t you?”
“Damn right we are.” Yeah, like in his grave. They had already started the paperwork for an exhumation. “Just a few more questions. Did Bill have any enemies?”
For the first and only time, Nora laughed. But there was no humor in it; just a low, mirthless snort. “A New York Times reporter? Of course he did.”
“Anyone in particular?”
She thoug
ht a moment. “Lucas Kline.”
“Who?”
“He runs a software development company here in the city. Likes to shag his secretaries, then intimidate them into keeping their mouths shut. Bill wrote an exposé on him.”
“So what makes him stand out?”
“He sent Bill a letter. A threatening letter.”
“I’d like to see it, please.”
“No problem. Kline isn’t the only one, though. There were these animal rights pieces he was working on, for example. I’ve been making a list in my head. And there were those strange packages…”
“What strange packages?”
“He’d gotten two in the last month. Little boxes with strange things in them. Tiny dolls sewed out of flannel. Animal bones, moss, sequins. When I go home…” Her voice broke, but she cleared her throat and resumed doggedly. “When I get home, I’ll go through his clips and collect all the recent stories that might have angered someone. You should talk to his assignment editor at the Times to find out what he was working on.”
“That’s already on my list.”
She went quiet for a minute, looking at him with those red, determined eyes. “Lieutenant, doesn’t it strike you that this was a particularly inept crime? Fearing walked in and out without any regard for witnesses, with no attempt to disguise himself or avoid the security camera.”
This was another point that D’Agosta had been mulling over: was Fearing really that stupid? Assuming it was him to begin with. “There’s still a lot to clear up.”
She held his gaze a moment longer. Then her eyes dropped to the bedcovers. “Is the apartment still sealed?”
“No. Not as of ten o’clock this morning.”
She hesitated. “I’m being released this afternoon and I… I want to get back in as soon as possible.”
D’Agosta understood. “I’m already having the—having it prepared for your return. There’s a company that does this sort of thing at short notice.”
Nora nodded, turning her head away.
This was his cue to leave, and D’Agosta rose. “Thank you, Nora. I’ll keep you informed of our progress. If you think of anything more, will you let me know? You’ll keep me in the loop?”
Cemetery Dance Page 3