Kiss Her Goodbye (A Thriller)

by Robert Gregory Browne

  When a woman named Carla Devito came forward with some illuminating information, Agent Jack Donovan became the prime suspect.

  Sheriff’s investigators concluded that a distraught Donovan had followed Nemo to the motel and, after a particularly brutal interrogation into the whereabouts of his missing daughter, had executed all three men. The removal of Nemo’s body was, they explained, a pathetic attempt to stage the event as a murder-suicide.

  Unfortunately, they had a couple of things going against them: no murder weapon and a fairly unimpeachable alibi.

  Jack Donovan’s registered firearm, a Glock 19, was, according to all accounts, lying somewhere at the bottom of the Chicago River. No mention was ever made—by Al Cleveland or anyone else—that Donovan had been given a replacement, and a search of his apartment and locker proved to be a complete waste of time and manpower.

  The alibi came from Sidney Waxman, who claimed to have been with Donovan for the major part of his surveillance, leaving him only in the wee hours of the morning, shortly after they’d lost Nemo in the rain. Donovan hadn’t asked Sidney to lie for him, and Sidney never explained why he did.

  He was, Donovan realized, a better friend than he deserved.

  When it turned out that the motel’s owner/manager, one Charles Arthur Kruger, was a registered sex offender known for his fondness for nine-year-old girls, the investigation quickly fell apart due to lack of interest in the law enforcement community.

  No prosecutor, particularly one from a nearly bankrupt municipality, was willing to test the reputation of a top-flight ATF agent against that of a stripper and three known, now deceased, felons. Especially when the Feds had made it perfectly clear that they’d rather the whole thing just go away.

  Thankfully, the news played up the happier aspects of the case. Father and daughter blissfully reunited as the world watched. Mother and stepfather rushing home from the Caymans to be with their little girl.

  As for Donovan, Waxman, and Franky Garcia, their stunt with Bobby Nemo did not sit well with the Treasury Department brass. All three were suspended from duty pending departmental hearings into the matter.

  Garcia quit and moved to Hollywood. Waxman suggested to Donovan that they take Garcia’s cue and start their own security consultant firm, a business that would surely be more lucrative than a government job.

  But while Donovan didn’t dismiss the idea, he didn’t jump at it either. Right now, all he wanted was time. Time alone with Jessie. And Rachel.

  Over the next few weeks, as both Jessie and Donovan struggled to regain their strength, they spent many a night watching The Simpsons together. Jessie was, Donovan discovered, an incredibly brave young woman—certainly scarred by the experience, but not overwhelmed by it. And with her and Rachel’s help, he managed to overcome the guilt he’d carried with him for so long.

  Guilt about Jessie. The divorce.

  And about his sister’s suicide.

  Lead with your heart, Jack.

  Glass half full.

  57

  I’M GOING TO bed,” Jessie said.

  It was nearly two months since the rescue and Jessie was staying for the weekend. She and Rachel had just finished a game of gin rummy, Rachel the victor. Jessie rose from the sofa, stretching her arms and yawning.

  Donovan, who sat in his favorite armchair working a crossword puzzle—one he fully intended to finish—looked up at her.

  Her therapist had told him she was making good progress, but, to Donovan, she still looked frail. Vulnerable.

  “It’s kinda early,” he said. “You feeling okay?”

  Jessie heaved an exasperated sigh. “I’m fine, Dad. Rachel, will you please tell soon-to-be-ex-agent Donovan here to stop worrying about me all the time?”

  “A lot of good it’ll do,” Rachel said, gathering up the cards. “You go on to bed. I’ll keep him occupied.” She reached across and stroked Donovan’s knee.

  “Gross,” Jessie said, then leaned down and gave Donovan a hug. “Love you, Dad.”

  The words were like a song. He smiled. “Me, too, kiddo.”

  Watching her head toward her room, he thought about what they’d been through and how deeply he loved her.

  She was fine. She’d be okay. There was nothing to worry about.

  A year from now, that prom photo he’d wondered about as he stood inside Grandma Luke’s apartment would adorn his mantel. And many more would follow.

  The nightmare was over.

  Finally over.

  58

  JESSIE LAY IN bed, unable to sleep, wondering if she should tell her father about the headaches. They’d become more frequent lately, and stronger. And after all that had happened, all that she’d survived, she wondered if fate was playing the irony card, giving her a big fat tumor.

  She could see the headline now: RESCUED GIRL SUCCUMBS TO BRAIN CANCER.

  Get a grip, Jess. You’re overreacting.

  The headaches were merely the result of tension and anxiety. Nothing more.

  But she hadn’t told her therapist about them either.

  Despite her brave front, Jessie wasn’t nearly as strong as she pretended to be. Or as happy, for that matter. When she could sleep, she often dreamed of her time on the other side, of the few moments she’d spent there before the paramedics had brought her back. Most of it was lost in a haze, but she couldn’t help wondering if the headaches were somehow related.

  Massaging her skull, she tried wishing the pain away, but it did no good. It was bound to get worse before it got better.

  Realizing this was going to be another long night, that she’d never get to sleep, she climbed out of bed and went to the dresser. Pulling open the top drawer, she dug past a few layers of panties and pulled out her secret stash: a can of air freshener and a pack of Marlboros.

  Maybe she’d go for lung cancer instead.

  Shaking one out, she lit up the cigarette and inhaled deeply, instantly feeling her headache subside.

  Ahh. Just what she’d needed.

  Exhaling, she spritzed the air with freshener and studied her reflection in the dresser mirror, noting with mild surprise how dark and lifeless her eyes looked.

  It was almost as if they belonged to someone else.

  Taking another deep drag, she exhaled, spritzed the air again, then slowly smiled at herself and said:

  “Give us a kiss.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not exist if it hadn’t been for the encouragement and unwavering support of my friend and fellow author Kathy Mackel. She suggested I take the plunge and knew this day was coming long before I did. Thank you, Kathy.

  Thanks also go to:

  Peggy White and Rob and Beth Flumignan, who helped my geography-challenged mind, and Nick Davison, for advice on oxygen tanks, leakage, and rate of intake. Any mistakes are definitely my own;

  Marion Rosenberg, my longtime screen rep, who believed in me well after I had any right to ask her to and knew exactly whom to call;

  Scott Miller of Trident Media Group, agent extraordinaire, whose excellent story sense helped me get the manuscript into shape for the marketplace;

  and, finally, Ben Sevier and Stefanie Bierwerth, my wonderful editors, whose keen minds and ability to focus on minute story and character details have taken this book to a new level.

  Every author should be so blessed.

  LIVING THE DREAM

  An afterword by

  Robert Gregory Browne

  THEY STUCK THE girl in a wooden box and put her in the ground. I know because I was there. I saw the whole thing.

  But don’t worry, I wasn’t witness to some horrible crime, although it was a little disconcerting to many of the people there. The woman sitting next to me started to squirm in her seat a bit, and looked genuinely concerned about the girl’s safety.

  “I don’t like this,” she said solemnly.

  I didn’t really blame her.

  The girl in the box was a mere teenager. Beautiful by all accou
nts. Young. Vulnerable. And looking very alone as they put a pair of goggles on her face and lowered the lid over her, closing her inside. A moment later, they were throwing dirt on the lid, then three men climbed down into the hole grabbed their shovels, and waited for the assistant director to shout, “Action!”

  When the call came, they began scraping their shovels across the wood, then one of them—Dylan Walsh, the one playing Jack Donovan—dropped to his knees and began pulling desperately at the lid, breaking away parts of it to expose the pale hands of the teenage girl inside, which were bound together with rope.

  As soon as those hands were revealed, the director shouted “Cut!”

  And everyone let out a breath.

  WHEN I WROTE the novel version of Kiss Her Goodbye, it came at the end of a decade and a half of trying to get my screenplays produced in Hollywood.

  I’d spent fifteen years struggling in the motion picture rat race, getting nibbles and bites, a solid sale, sitting through dozens of lunches and pitch meetings, and a few years working as a story editor and script writer for cartoon shows.

  It was a difficult existence, with few emotional payoffs. I made money, to be sure, and a few good friends in the process—but I was never creatively satisfied, especially after winding up in the animation ghetto, putting words into the mouths of Spider-Man and Diabolik.

  It was a living, but not particularly fun.

  When the animation gigs finally dried up, I knew I was due for a change. I clearly wasn’t writing what was true to my heart. I had been putting words to someone else’s vision. Someone else’s ideas. And while I certainly did the best job I could—and took pride in that—the emotional investment in the work was, needless to say, lacking.

  So I decided it was time to write something for myself. I had an idea that I liked and once again attempted a spec screenplay that went through various titles.

  The first one was Blackout. The second was Absence of Light. There were probably more that I don't remember now, but I finally settled on A Measure of Darkness.

  The idea was one that had come to me in a bit of a flash. An ATF agent whose daughter is kidnapped and buried alive, and before he and his team can find her, her kidnapper is killed.

  So what's a father to do?

  The screenplay went through several drafts, the first of which was vastly different than what I eventually wound up with. In that draft, Donovan, the father, is approached by scientists who think they have a way to put him in communication with the dead kidnapper. It was a pure science fiction approach that I eventually abandoned. There were major plot problems and it just wasn't working for me.

  I eventually found the basic story you've read in novel form (assuming you've read this book before joining me here), and put my heart and soul into writing what I thought was a pretty good screenplay. I sent it to my agent and my manager, who both loved it, but I also sent it to a novelist/screenwriter friend, Kathy Mackel, who emailed me saying, This reads like a novel. Why don't you write it as one?

  I had always wanted to write a novel. I have thousands of books in my home and would often stare at my bookshelves thinking, one day I'd like to see my own book up there. But her suggestion, as intriguing as it might have been, seemed a bit too daunting. Screenplays by their nature are short and spare, and the thought of doing anything longer pretty much terrified me.

  I'm not sure I can sustain four hundred pages of prose, I wrote her.

  But she suggested that I at least try to write three or four chapters, send them to her, and she'd let me know what she thought.

  So, using my script as an outline, I sat down and wrote what are now the first four chapters of Kiss Her Goodbye.

  And I have to say that, during that time, sitting down at the computer every day was pure bliss. I was writing my own vision. My own idea. And I was no longer restricted by the rules of screenwriting. I could get inside the heads of my characters and tell the readers what the people I’d created were thinking and feeling and experiencing.

  The task was liberating.

  After that frenzy of writing, I sent the chapters off to Kathy and she responded with three simple words:

  Finish this book.

  It took me over four years to do it. During those four years I quit Hollywood (or maybe it quit me), got a day job working in an office, and did a heck of a lot of procrastinating. I kept telling my family and co-workers that I was writing a novel and when it was done I was sure it would sell. And they, of course, quietly rolled their eyes thinking, Oh you poor deluded bastard.

  Hell, I probably would have thought the same thing if it had been one of them. But I didn't let it discourage me. I kept writing on and off for those four years and finally, thankfully, was able to write the words THE END on the last of about 420 pages.

  Major sigh of relief.

  Three months or so later, A Measure of Darkness sold, along with an idea for a second book (Which eventually became Whisper in the Dark), in a two-book deal to St. Martin's Press. Since that first book, which was retitled Kiss Her Goodbye, I've written five more books under my own name, five under a pen name, and had short stories in anthologies edited by Lee Child and Sandra Brown.

  In other words, I've been living the dream.

  All thanks to my friend Kathy's email and a bit of hard work.

  But, of course, things in this world always seem to come full circle, so I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when, several months ago, my literary agent was contacted by a young television producer who had read Kiss Her Goodbye and loved it, and wanted to know if the rights were available.

  They were, and we optioned them to him. But even though I knew this young producer had a great track record and had just gotten a new show on the air called Justified—based on an Elmore Leonard story—I didn’t really expect anything from this. Properties are optioned all the time in Hollywood, and most of those options lapse.

  But a few months later, I was surprised by a call from my agent. The book had been sold to CBS as the basis of a TV series and the producers had gotten the go ahead to write a pilot script. This was fantastic news, of course. But scripts are written all the time in Hollywood, and as I knew from my own experience, very few ever actually make it to production.

  So again, I wasn’t expecting much—even though the guy who would be writing the script had an amazing track record. I just figured this was the last I’d hear of the project.

  Oh, boy, was I wrong.

  OVER THE LAST several years, I’ve noticed a change in both television and movies.

  In the old days, television always played second banana to the feature world. If you were in television you weren’t part of “the big show” and the work you did was often considered substandard. And there was certainly some truth to that. With a few exceptions, much of what was on TV in those days paled in comparison to the movies. Television shows were badly lit (shadows barely existed), often poorly acted, and looked as flat as can be.

  Think Brady Bunch. Or Gilligan’s Island. Or any of the cookie cutter cop shows. All of which have warm places in many of our hearts, but let’s face it, the writing quality and production values were not equal to what you’d see in the movies.

  Yes, there were wonderful, well-written shows at the time (Rockford Files comes to mind), and we could all sit around arguing about which ones were the best, but even the greatest TV series at the time was no match for “the big show.”

  This is no longer true, I think. In fact, over the past decade, television has become one of the most consistent producers of quality episodic entertainment. I believe that the best writers, producers and directors are currently working for the small screen and I could point to shows like Breaking Bad, Justified, Dexter, and Southland, just to name a very small handful.

  Week after week we’re treated to not only amazing writing, but to top notch production values and some of the best acting in any medium. Movie actors are no longer ashamed to appear on TV shows, or even headline them, and TV actor
s can now find a home in movies.

  Movies themselves, however, have begun a long, downward spiral punctuated only by flashes of brilliance. Most of the mainstream features being promoted today are unfunny comedies, overwrought dramas or juvenile action pictures that are all bang and no substance. The target audience is decidedly not adult, unless you venture into the independent world.

  Again there are exceptions. There always will be. But I take the position that movies and television are completely the opposite of what they were a decade or so ago. Movies now pale in comparison to many TV shows.

  So you can imagine that I was pretty thrilled when I got a phone call telling me that CBS had loved the script based on Kiss Her Goodbye and had given the green light to produce a pilot.

  For those of you who don’t know what a pilot is, it’s a “test” episode that the network watches to help them decide whether or not to go to series. It’s usually the first episode you see if a show is picked up for the Fall.

  The producers sent me a copy of the script and I sat down to read it with a feeling of giddy anticipation and outright dread. What if I didn’t like it? What if they had completely destroyed my story? Even though I knew that the person behind the script—Michael Dinner—consistently produced quality work, this was my baby we were talking about here. And I was hoping like hell he’d done it right.

  He had. It’s hard for me to describe what it felt like to read that script. All of my set pieces were there. My characters. Much of my dialogue. Even some of my narrative had been used in the narrative of the script—the part that no one but the actors or production crew ever read. This to me, was the ultimate compliment to my work. It was as though Dinner had kept all of the things he felt were great about the book and saw no reason to change them.

  What he did change, in order to get the story to make sense as a continuing series—and to cut it down to episode size—actually improved the story, and I have to admit that, about halfway through, I started getting tears in my eyes.