by David Kazzie
Pasquale knew that he was now being held for ransom, to the tune of $415 million. He almost smiled at the thought of it. His father had once told him that if you were going to be something, be the best at it. Don't mess around. Well, it sure seemed like he was being held for the largest ransom in the history of kidnapping. Maybe he would make the cover of Kidnapping Weekly. His father would have been proud of him.
Pasquale wondered whether the guy had checked if Pasquale himself had the ticket. He supposed that the man could've searched his pockets and the apartment while Pasquale was unconscious. Yeah, that was possible. But he'd come directly to Samantha's apartment. So he knew that she had it, he knew that much. How would he know?
As the vehicle continued bouncing down the road, Pasquale went over what he knew. A janitor in Samantha's building had bought the winning ticket and gone to her for help. Her boss and his brother-in-law had come up with a scheme to steal the ticket from the janitor, and all three had wound up dead. Pasquale thought about this for a moment. Samantha had assumed they were all dead. Maybe someone had survived and come hunting for the ticket. He dismissed the janitor outright – Samantha mentioned him taking a bullet to the head. She last saw the brother-in-law with a fireplace poker sticking out of his chest, so he was an unlikely candidate.
Carter Pierce, though. Pasquale wondered about Carter Pierce. Samantha claimed that he had taken a bullet as he charged after Matheson. Pasquale had met him a few times, during Christmas parties and firm barbecues. Thought he was a gigantic prick. Who else would know where Samantha lived? Who else would know that she would even end up with the ticket, given the fact that she had not been the one who purchased it? What if he wasn't dead at all?
He was careful not to dismiss the possibility that some unknown third party had entered the equation, someone who had tracked down the ticket like a phantom bloodhound. This prospect terrified him more than anything. Anyone who had managed to hunt them down in the span of just a couple days was a formidable opponent indeed. Sort of like a Terminator sent from the future to destroy mankind. Yeah, sort of like that. He wondered if it was a sign of insanity to analyze his current situation through the prism of a science-fiction movie.
He had to get out of here. He couldn't take a chance that whoever was driving would get close to Samantha. No way would he let them live. Quite frankly, Pasquale was surprised that he was still alive. Why hadn't the guy just killed him and waited in the apartment for Samantha? Possibly because the apartment was an uncontrolled environment. No way to tell who might be coming and going, who had access to the apartment. Someone might notice something amiss, call the police. Plus, there was the possibility that she was never coming back.
The important thing was that whatever value his life had was already sluicing away like sand through an hourglass, regardless of who was sitting behind the wheel. Carter Pierce already had his hands bloody with two murders, and there was no reason to think he would stop there to save himself. Moreover, Carter might not have been the one who snatched him. Pasquale decided it would be prudent to assume Mr. Mystery Guest, if there was one, posed just as much of a threat as Carter Pierce. Possibly more.
* * *
Samantha found a pack of cigarettes in a kitchen drawer and was lighting her fifth one of the morning. Her ears were stopped up with fluid now, which made for an interesting sensation as she dragged in the carcinogenic smoke. The nicotine seemed to perk her up, despite her medical situation. If she had just been here, she thought, blowing out the match, she could have given up the ticket and it would have been over. Images of Pasquale being tortured and killed or a psychopath wiping out her whole family in a never-ending quest for the fortune of a lifetime ran roughshod through her mind.
After plugging her phone into the wall to charge, she had wandered aimlessly from room to room, like a refugee after a storm. The loft, which had always seemed empty and lifeless, seemed especially so since she'd found Pasquale missing. She couldn't deny that his return had electrified her, a feeling she wanted desperately to deny. It wasn't that she couldn't make it in this dog-eat-dog world without a man to lead the way. That version of her had never existed. She'd spent her whole life proving that a woman didn't need a man. She'd seen enough of the traditional Lebanese culture to know, deep down, what her family expected of her.
Yes, yes, it's all fine and dandy to get an education and a job and all that. But when you find the right fella, Samantha, or, if need be because you're thirty-five and single, when we find him for you, it'll be time to jump in the stirrups and start pushing out babies.
Her mother had done it, she'd watched her sisters do it, and she'd be damned if she was going to do it before she was ready. That had been the beauty of Pasquale. He didn't push her. He always expected her to be an equal partner in the relationship. He told her once that if they ever had kids and she wanted to keep working, he'd stay home with them. To this day, she didn't even know if he'd been serious, or more importantly, if she could actually go through such a circus. She had wondered then how that would have gone over with the folks in the old country.
Oh, he stays home?
She works?
This is not a man Samantha has married.
The old-timers would have mocked him. She saw the bitterness in her mother's eyes, brewing acidity from a lifetime of sitting on the sidelines while her father directed the family's future. She knew her father was a difficult man who loved his family on his own rigid terms.
Had it been this singular focus that had driven Pasquale away in his hour of need? She wasn't going to let herself believe that it was her desire to be independent that had led to the destruction of their relationship. After all, he'd been the one who'd stripped down to his boxers during a deposition, right? But then she recalled her reaction when she found out about the incident late that morning.
Was this going to ruin graduation?
At a time he had needed her most, she had turned her back on him. That didn't have anything to do with being a good woman, whether Lebanese, American or Martian. That was just simple manners. No wonder he had left.
The scent of burnt paper snapped her back to reality. The cigarette in her hand had burned down to the filter, leaving a cylinder of ash perching precariously on the precipice. Carefully, she deposited the ash into an empty water glass on the table and dropped the cigarette into the dribble of water at the bottom. It died an unceremonious death with a sizzle.
She couldn't sit in the apartment anymore. Left alone with her thoughts, she felt panic morphing into insanity. The ticket, which was still tucked in her pocket, seemed radioactive, poisoning her from the inside out. She couldn't believe only a couple of days had elapsed since she'd gotten the call from Smyth's secretary. Her mind continued to examine the fallout from her taking custody of the ticket. Her family. She wanted to be near her family. She didn't know what was going to happen when the call came. She didn't know if she would live or die. She didn't know if her family was in danger. All she knew was that in one spasm of greed, she had jeopardized all she had held dear. There was only one way to make this right.
Quickly, she packed an overnight bag and left the apartment, this time remembering her fully charged cell phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sunday, December 23
3:05 p.m.
Flagg clicked his tongue while he searched Samantha's empty apartment, deeply disappointed with this turn of events. The whole Olivia affair had really unsettled him. He was more than ready to recover the ticket, do away with these lawyers and go down and have Christmas dinner with Olivia, whether she liked it or not. Instead, he found an empty apartment and no toothbrush in the bathroom. That was just going to extend the assignment, and he was really in the middle of a personal crisis here. His frustration bubbled over, and he fired two bullets into the couch.
He turned toward the front door when something on the floor by the kitchen bar caught his eye. It was more like a discoloration on the shiny hardwood floors. He knelt
down for a closer look. It looked like blood, not flake dry, but well on its way. Flagg had seen enough blood spilled to recognize that this little bit of biohazard had been circulating through its owner's veins no more than a few hours ago.
He imagined some kind of struggle had erupted here over the ticket. Perhaps between the two lawyers. Briefly, he again marveled at Professor Darwin's work. Natural selection was at work here. Only the strong would survive. Only the strong could adapt to the inherent dangers the ticket presented. Certainly, the ticket would draw out its hunters, the way young zebras attracted lions on the safari. Natural selection, however, would shake out the weaker hunters, leaving them hungry. It would not surprise Flagg to learn that the ticket had already led to the death of four people, not counting the ones that had he had dispatched.
Whoever had walked away from this battle with the ticket was not coming back. He thought about what the average person would do in this situation. Both Pierce and Khouri had family in the area; the ticketholder might try to find safe haven with loved ones while waiting to cash the ticket. He was careful not to underestimate either one, but he thought the odds favored Pierce in having recovered the ticket. Like it or not, it was still a macho world out there. It always would be. Maybe Samantha Khouri was a black belt in jujitsu, and maybe she had kicked Carter Pierce's ass all over this apartment. If so, he would adjust accordingly. But he had to play the odds. He had to start somewhere.
He would start with Carter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sunday, December 23
6:15 p.m.
There was no way that Ashley Matheson Pierce was going to let this happen. No fucking way. For tits' sake, she was a Matheson! She still held the NCAA record in the 200-meter individual medley! And now, her legacy would be as the jilted wife of a tiny-dicked lawyer who had managed to knock up some teenage whore? No, sir. There was going to be a different ending to the story, one that Ashley was going to write herself. Actually, it was a story that Ashley already had written.
They were in the formal living room, which was just off the foyer. It was a beautiful room, furnished with antiques and uncomfortable high-backed sofas. Ashley paced back and forth at the threshold of the room. Carter found himself seated on one of these sofas with nowhere to go. He had nowhere to go because Ashley was pointing a .38-caliber revolver at his head.
An hour earlier, Ashley had received a telephone call from Dawn the paralegal, who Ashley knew had been moonlighting as her husband's sperm Dumpster. For some reason, Dawn had been overwhelmed with the urge to confess her sins. Ashley laughed at her and told her she knew, but she stopped laughing upon hearing the news that Dawn was pregnant. She hung up the phone and wandered around the empty house in shock.
With the twins spending the night at a friend's house, there was no buffer to soften the blow of the news. The funny part was that she was surprised she was so surprised. She knew that Carter had been cheating on her for years; the idea that he would impregnate someone was not all that far-fetched. Lousy as he was in bed, he was capable of reproduction. She had become pregnant with the girls the minute she had stopped taking her birth control pills.
When he pulled into the driveway fifteen minutes ago with a very special package in the trunk, she'd been waiting in the foyer with a well-worn bottle of scotch and his gun.
"So, you planning on running away with her?" she asked. "Was that it?"
Carter didn't answer, focusing instead on the second gun that had ever been pointed at him. Given the events of the last forty-eight hours, he'd concluded that the framers of the Constitution had not written the Second Amendment to create a private right to own a gun. The tiny 'o' of the barrel mouth seemed to express the same surprise he had felt since she had first cornered him with it ten minutes ago.
"You're the biggest pussy I've ever met," she said. "And you suck in bed. Not one orgasm, our entire marriage. You believe that? How could you be so bad at it?"
Carter remained silent, concerned that the wrong thing out of his mouth would result in his immediate execution. So far, he was keeping quiet and he was still alive. Maybe one didn't have anything to do with the other, but you never knew. He also decided that now would not be a good time to tell her about her brother's untimely demise out at the cabin. He was no psychiatrist, but he suspected that might push her over the edge.
He really didn't know if Ashley was capable of pulling the trigger, but it wasn't the sort of thing he was ready to gamble his life on. Maybe this flurry of insults would take the wind out of her sails, and she would just kick him out. That would be OK with him. He was pretty much tired of women anyway. Man, this was turning out to be an especially shitty Christmas. He thought about the ticket again, which motivated him to focus on the crisis at hand. All he had to do was find Samantha, and he had what he needed to accomplish that. Well, first, he had to get away from his homicidal and presumably soon-to-be-ex-wife. Then he could find Samantha.
* * *
Sadly for Carter, Ashley had no intention of letting Carter walk away from his indiscretion unscathed. She shuddered at the thought of the news getting out that this para-whore was carrying her husband's baby. Assumptions about her ability to satisfy her husband would be made. Junior League meetings would be awkward. She would always wonder whether her doubles tennis partner was talking about her behind her back. And, of course, she would be.
No, she had to take care of this on her own terms. She had it all planned out. She had her story ready. It was a hard thing to admit, but she'd been planning this day for years. Tonight, when she had hung up the phone after her enlightening discussion with Dawn, the story had rotated around to the forefront of her subconscious, the way a forgotten DVD in a multi-disc changer spun into play after you had forgotten it was there.
She had built a paper trail like a contractor poured a foundation. Over the past two years, she had called 911 on six separate occasions to report a domestic dispute. She was appropriately weepy and breathy with the 911 operator, who would follow standard procedure and quickly dispatch a police cruiser to the home. When officers arrived, she met them at the door with a cigarette dangling from her lips and eyes puffy from crying. She reported that she'd gotten into a terrible argument with her husband, and she was afraid he was going to do something crazy.
Did he hit you, ma'am?
No, not really, she would say. Maybe a little shoving. I can't remember.
Equivocation was the name of the game. Draw enough attention to establish a history, but never in a way that would have them look into the matter any further. The incident would be memorialized in an Incident & Crime Report, tucked away in Criminal Records and called upon if ever needed.
Carter didn't know about these little late night visits from police because he had never been there for one. He had never even been present for any of the supposed domestic disputes that his wife had called in. When asked about his whereabouts, she always told the police that he had stormed out so he could cool down. Each time, the officer would say, "that was probably a good idea, ma'am." She wondered if they taught them that line at the police academy. They would always ask if she wanted to swear out a warrant against him, and each time she would thank them politely and decline.
All these calls would serve to prove that she had been a battered woman, once protecting her abusive husband but unable to take it anymore. And when the time came to blow his brains out, her story of self-defense would be rock solid. She had the story memorized. The key was never, ever wavering from her statement. That was how criminals got into trouble. She watched Law & Order. It wasn't rocket science.
She had been very careful not to run ridiculous Internet searches like "how to kill your husband." She didn't change her spending habits. She didn't make strange telephone calls. There were no trips to the Caribbean booked. And finally, she had started tonight's festivities with a bit of screaming and yelling. She hoped someone next door would hear them. A bit of verisimilitude tossed in to tie everything together, wh
ich would come in handy when police started questioning the neighbors.
The piece de resistance would be the bullet to her foot, safely removed from any major arteries. This second gunshot would occur immediately after she had shot Carter in the chest, nice and messy and very self-defense-like. Maybe she would break a bone, maybe she would suffer a little nerve damage, but police would definitely arrive to find a terrified housewife, covered in blood, thankful that she was alive. That was how it was going to break down. It was perfect.
The day had finally arrived.
* * *
"Jesus, you're such an asshole!" she said, pushing the gas down on the volume.
Why was she yelling? he wondered. Carter was really starting to worry. He'd never seen her go off the rails like this. Maybe he should tell her about the ticket. They could split up, go their separate ways, never see each other again. Then she did something that made him realize that he really needed to tell her about the money. She cocked the gun.
"Wait, wait, wait!" he squealed, rolling off the couch onto the floor. She fired once, but the bullet flew wide and buried itself in the back of the couch. Very much like a scorned wife who's made up her mind to take care of her little problem, she moved in for a better shot.
"I won the lottery!" he yelled.
It broke his heart to tell her, but with the scent of gunpowder hanging in the air, wondering whether she actually planned to kill him now seemed more of an academic discussion. He figured his life was worth the $80 million or so it was going to cost him to save it.
This caught her off guard, and she stopped.
"What?"
"The big one!" he said. "I won it all."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I won a bunch of money! I mean, a lot of money! The lottery the other night!"