At some point he realized he was crying. That was strange. The speedometer had passed sixty, and if he needed to slam on the brakes for any reason, he was probably toast.
And then what would happen to Tim?
He started to ease up then, and his truck slowed, bringing him back to himself. His heart thumped loudly and he exhaled, then breathed deeply and took account of his surroundings. He’d driven far out without knowing it, but the road he’d turned onto was familiar. It was Nathan’s. He kept driving. The last he’d heard, Nathan’s agent had listed the property for sale, but Sam had no idea whether the house had been purchased yet. A partially obscured realty sign still marked the property boundary at the base of the long driveway. Murder probably made the place a hard sell for most people.
Sam turned up the driveway and parked in view of the house. The snow and darkness did little to improve the scene. The place looked desolate and abandoned with its darkened windows. Not at all like the familiar house and land he’d gotten to know over the past few years. What the hell was he doing out here?
But before he turned around to head back into town, he noticed something on the ground, illuminated by his headlights. He stared hard and thought he made out footprints in the snow. Fresh, from the look of them.
His pulse accelerated. Maybe Nathan had been released? But no. Sam would have heard something. More likely, Nathan had asked a neighbor to collect his mail or check on the house in his absence. Sam killed the engine and headlights anyway and zipped his coat.
Small bits of ice mixed with the flakes and pinged on the ground like tiny insects hitting a car windshield. Sam knelt down and noticed the footprints were larger than his own, but only slightly, and made by heavy-duty boots. He pressed his palm into one, and the cold snow bit his skin. Difficult as it was to see in the darkness, they appeared to originate from the seldom-used road that ran parallel to the house—the old orchard road that led from the barn to the groves beyond and then looped around the property to connect with the main road about a mile away. Soon the snow and ice would obliterate all traces.
A harsh gust whipped sleet against his face. Something about the scene unsettled him, and then he realized what it was. There was only one set of footprints. Whoever they belonged to had either gone back another way, or still lurked somewhere nearby.
Adrenaline spiked in Sam’s veins. He approached the front door cautiously, aware whoever was inside the house would have noticed his arrival minutes before. For once, he wished he’d taken the damn gun when Nathan offered it instead of stubbornly refusing.
Sam thought he saw an arc of light flash beyond the curtains in the living room, but it disappeared as soon as he registered it. Maybe the electricity had gone out. Or maybe, as seemed increasingly likely, someone had broken into Nathan’s house. The perp returning to the scene of the crime?
He found the door slightly ajar, with the key stuck in the lock. Jesus. Had Nathan escaped from jail? Sam pushed the door open and peered inside, only to be met by silence and the darkness of the front hall. A chill that had nothing to do with the cold winter wind made goose bumps break out on his skin. He had the uncanny feeling he was being watched.
His flight instinct clashed with curiosity and suspicion. He paused on the threshold of the house, unsure whether to go or stay. Ultimately, though, there was never any choice, not when he could be on the verge of a discovery that might shed light on the crazy developments of the past few months. He clenched his freezing hands into fists and stepped inside.
The feeling of unease increased, making the tiny hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He strained to hear anything beyond the wind and snow and his own hammering heart. And then Rich Petersen stepped out of the shadows.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Sam demanded, the words leaving his mouth before he had time to think about what business Rich Petersen might have in Nathan’s home. At night. In a snowstorm. Dressed in black clothes.
“I should be asking you the same thing. This is a crime scene.”
Petersen crossed his arms, and his stance assumed a kind of genuine formidability that Sam never suspected his old school rival possessed.
“Not anymore it’s not, so why are you at Nathan’s house?”
“Police business.”
“In the dark? Hmm.” Sam flipped the hall switch, and the house flooded with comforting light. “There. That’s better. Now you can see what you’re doing. I always find it helpful to work with the lights on.”
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”
“I’m smart enough to know you don’t have a warrant.”
“Of course I have a warrant.”
“Let’s see it, then.”
Petersen’s fleshy mouth tightened into a line. He glanced over Sam’s shoulder into the night beyond. “I don’t have to show you anything. This isn’t even your house.” Sam didn’t doubt Petersen wanted him to think he had a legitimate reason for being here, yet everything about the circumstances seemed suspicious.
Sam grinned. “I know. And it’s definitely not your house, unless you bought it from Nathan?”
“Shut up, Flynn.”
Maybe it would have ended like that. Sam, after all, didn’t have anything besides his misgivings to go on. But in the next moment, another set of footsteps thumped up the stairs and Petersen’s eyes widened with surprise.
Sam spun around to come face-to-face with a figure in the doorway, a man he’d never seen before in his life. He was older than Sam, maybe around forty, and tall, with a deep divot in his square chin. He carried a gun in one black-gloved hand.
“Richard, what are you doing with the lights on?” he asked, only then seeming to register they weren’t alone. He blinked at Sam. “Who is this?”
Sam’s brain whirred from third gear to fourth. The voice was familiar. The accent, the intonation. He’d heard it before, and recently, but where?
Sheldon’s office. The nausea came on strong as a Pavlovian response. Oh shit, this was the guy, the hit man who’d confessed to killing Emma. Sam tried to keep his expression neutral, a difficult task since the guy apparently liked to wave his Glock for emphasis. The hit man frowned. “Who is this?” he demanded again.
“We’ve got some company.”
“We cannot afford company, you stupid man. Did you find it?”
“Shut up,” Petersen said through gritted teeth. The man turned toward Sam, coming close enough for Sam to notice he reeked of cigarettes. His large body suggested a brutish, blunt strength.
“Did you follow us here?” he demanded, ignoring Petersen. “Who sent you?”
“No one sent me,” Sam said. “I’m here to pick up the mail.”
If neither of them knew Sam had heard the taped confession, maybe he had a shot of getting out in one piece. He kept his expression innocent, glancing between the two of them.
“So he does not know,” the man said to Petersen.
Petersen rolled his eyes. “He obviously knows something now.”
Dread curdled in Sam’s stomach as he glanced toward the open door and tried to calculate the likelihood of making a run for it without being shot. The hit man seemed to sense his thoughts. He smiled a deadly smile. “But he’s not going anywhere, are you, errand boy?”
That was the last thing Sam heard before everything went black.
He came to sometime later, expecting to be in the trunk of a car, or worse, and was surprised and relieved to find they were still at Nathan’s house. His head throbbed with a pulsing ache where the hit man had clocked him. He appeared to be in the dining room, or what was left of it. All the packed boxes had been torn apart, their contents scattered. He could hear the voices of the other men coming from the living room, but he couldn’t move his hands or feet. Groggily, he realized he’d been hogtied to a chair.
“Where is it, you idiot?” It was the hit man. “We need to get out of here before we are trapped in this blizzard.”
“It has to be here. She said
it was.”
“Well, how do you know she did not lie to you?”
Sam couldn’t tell who they were talking about, but the female pronoun suggested either Emma or Patricia.
“She didn’t. I know she didn’t. You didn’t see her face.” Petersen’s voice cracked. “She said her husband had a record of everything, and she’d given it to Emma. She said we… we’d all get what was coming to us. She said it was only a matter of time.”
So, Patricia, then. Petersen must be talking about the night on the bridge. Sam stayed completely still, afraid if he breathed, he’d miss something.
“How do you know she was not, how do you say, bluffing?” The hit man scoffed. “Stupid woman tries to get under your skin, and then she kill herself. She knows you cannot hurt her at this point. And we all know the little Jew was afraid of his wife. He would not have told her anything.” The hit man cackled as if he’d told a hilarious joke.
Petersen seemed less amused. “Nothing else makes any sense. Emma was a good cop, but she had to get her information somewhere. It has to be here,” he said again, and then again, repeating the phrase like a bizarre mantra.
“No. She would have told me during interrogation. Everyone always tells me the truth in the end. Before they beg for mercy.” From the twisted cadence of pleasure in his words, the hit man was obviously experienced in methods of torture. Bile rose in Sam’s throat, and he blinked back tears of hatred and remorse as he envisioned the scene, even as his mind tried to blot out the images. Emma had been strangled, and likely over an extended period of time. He could almost hear her pleas. “I searched everywhere,” said the hit man. “There was nothing.”
“And then you killed her.”
“I could not leave her alive.”
“If something is here, and we don’t find it, Walker and his people will.” Petersen’s voice trembled, and Sam despised him even more. He had always been a bully and a coward, but never more so than now, when he was afraid of being caught for his complicity in the worst crime imaginable.
“Do not worry about Walker. He is finished.” The hit man was more certain.
Everything from the night after Patricia’s death flooded back, especially the look on Petersen’s face in the jail. Sam had interpreted his sickness at the time, perhaps benevolently, as distress over what he’d seen on the bridge. But then at the bar, Petersen had flipped when Sam asked if Patricia said anything to him before she jumped. Not because he was actually worried about Sam writing a blog post about it, but because she had said something. Something that had scared Petersen enough to make him lose his dinner. Something that had scared him enough to send him out on a stormy night to find whatever it was. Emma’s evidence was somewhere in the house. Perhaps.
But if what the hit man said was true, this particular evidence would not only incriminate them, it would help Nathan—maybe even exonerate him. A desperate hope rose in Sam’s chest until curses and crashing from the other room derailed his train of thought.
If Sam hadn’t been tied to a chair and in fear for his life, he might have laughed. He’d always known Petersen was an idiot, but the hit man, twisted and murderous as he was, had proven himself just as bumbling. They were quite the pair, with hardly enough brains between them to realize they’d given away key evidence in close vicinity of a witness. As far as they were concerned, Sam wouldn’t be a problem for long. But still. Sam had no idea how they’d explain away the disaster they’d made of Nathan’s house.
“The chief will have my head for this,” said Petersen mournfully. “I’m as good as dead.”
“He is not the only one you should worry about, friend. We had a sweet deal going here until you had to ruin everything.”
“Me? It’s not my fault!”
They began bickering like an old married couple, but Sam couldn’t make out any more accusations in the rising cadence of their angry words. Besides, he’d heard what he needed to.
Sheldon had been involved all along. The confession he had played Sam must have been a fabrication. The hit man was a willing murderer, not a helpless victim of Nathan’s manipulation. And Emma had been killed because she had evidence about Feldman’s death, evidence linking the men in this house—and likely Sheldon—to the crime.
The man who’d looked out for him, who’d known and loved his father…. How could that be possible?
Sam blinked back angry tears as he struggled against the ropes incapacitating his hands. He only succeeded in cutting his wrists with the sharp, strong nylon. His ankles were crossed and tied to the back of the chair, and the contraption looped around his wrists so he couldn’t move his feet without pulling on his hands. The more he moved, the tighter it seemed to get, cutting off the circulation until it didn’t even hurt anymore. Finally he gave up and relaxed against his bonds, panting.
More crashing came from the other room, and an impotent rage bubbled in Sam’s throat. They were destroying Nathan’s things. Emma’s things.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” the hit man said. “This is not doing any good.”
“What are we going to do about him?” Petersen asked in a harsh whisper.
“We kill him, of course.”
“But his truck. He could have told anyone he was coming. They’ll be looking for him.”
“I will take care of it. No one will come until after the storm. And by then… well, it is very possible that he had an accident driving in the snow, yes?”
Sam’s heart stopped. They were going to kill him and make it look like a car accident, but they were too dumb to recognize the irony.
Heavy footsteps heading in the direction of the dining room only seconds later gave him little time to react. Pretending to be unconscious wouldn’t make any difference at this point, but his head kept lolling to the side anyway. He was so sleepy.
“Wake up.” Petersen smacked him across the face. Sam groaned as blood filled his mouth. He spat and blinked at the figures towering over him. “It’s time to go.”
Chapter 16
“GO WHERE?” Sam’s tongue felt heavy, thick in his mouth. “I was just starting to get comfortable.”
Another smack, this one right under his eye. Burning pain blossomed and radiated out from the point of impact, and Sam saw stars.
“You keep your smart mouth shut.” Sam grimaced as Petersen cut the bonds around his ankles. The hit man pointed his gun in Sam’s direction, and Sam had the distinct impression he might have peed his pants. Neither made any move to untie his hands, though, and his arms remained trapped behind his back.
“Stand up,” the hit man demanded.
“I can’t.”
With a brutal shove to his shoulder, Sam lurched out of the chair, only stopped from face-planting by Petersen, who grabbed him by the back of his jacket. Sam stumbled to regain his balance, even as his mind scrambled for something—anything.
“Walk.”
“Wait a second. I know where the evidence is.” Sam started to sweat under the weight of his coat and the glare of the two men. It was a last-ditch attempt, but even so, he had to take the risk. He had nothing to lose.
The hit man scowled. “What do you mean, you know?”
“I was the last one to talk to Emma. She told me she’d hidden it in the house… in the attic.”
The hit man looked to Petersen. “Is that true?”
“It’s true he was the last one to talk to her.”
“There is nothing in the attic,” the hit man said. “I looked myself.”
Sam shook his head. “Because Nathan packed everything up. She said she’d hidden it in… an antique clock.” Yeah, pulled that one out of his ass.
The hit man didn’t seem convinced. “Why would you not come look for it sooner?”
“Because I was scared. I thought I’d be killed.”
It seemed feasible enough. Maybe. Sam hoped the two of them were desperate enough to believe.
Petersen looked at him with disgust. “That night at the bar when you ca
me and talked to me, I should have known you were up to something, asking me what the Feldman bitch said. You and Emma, always so buddy-buddy. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
Sam tried not to show his fear. He wouldn’t give Petersen the satisfaction. How he resisted spitting in the man’s face, he had no idea. “If you kill me now, you’ll never find it. I’m the only one who knows.”
The hit man seemed to be losing his patience. “I think you are only saying this to us because you’re going to try something funny, like escaping. Yes? You find this clock, we’ll let you die quickly. Not like your friend, Emma. She did not like to cooperate, you see, so I took my time.”
If Sam had use of his hands, he probably would have done something stupid, like lunge at the guy. “Who hired you?”
A smirk. “You think I am a stupid man?”
Sam’s vision swam and his gorge rose again. It all made such twisted sense. This scumbag had murdered Emma. When Petersen and McCormick found her, they had the chance to clean up or destroy any relevant evidence. Maybe they even helped. No wonder it had been such an open and shut investigation, a case of home burglary gone wrong—until Nathan started poking around, making himself a target in the process. Unless Sam had it all wrong and Nathan really was involved. Maybe they’d all been working together until Sheldon decided Nathan should take the fall.
“I can’t help you with my hands tied,” Sam said, injecting a bit of real desperation into his voice. He didn’t need to act scared shitless. “Let me go, and I’ll find it, I swear.”
Petersen and the hit man exchanged a glance and seemed to agree. The next thing Sam knew, he’d been cut free. Feeling gradually started to return to his hands and feet with pinpricking needles. Wincing, he massaged his wrists where the flesh had been rubbed raw.
Now the hit man spoke up. His accent seemed to get thicker the angrier he got. “Remember what I said. No funny business.”
Sam knew he was living on borrowed time, but at least he had reason to hope Nathan was innocent after all. It shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was.
Double Indemnity Page 17