by Lisa Gardner
“Fuck!” He flung her from him so hard, she hit the wall and fell to the floor. Even then she staggered up and aimed a kick toward his groin.
Fight, fight, fight. She fought.
And Jim Beckett rose in front of her as an enraged beast. He threw aside the shotgun. He grabbed her shoulder and yanked her toward him. She hit his clavicle with the heel of her hand. He grunted with pain.
Then he wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed.
She fell to her knees. She struck out futilely. She thought she heard groaning downstairs and she struggled to buy time. She didn’t want to die. White lights appeared in front of her gaze, but she refused to give in.
She’d fought too hard, come too far to fall to Jim now. She would win, goddammit. She would win.
Jim smiled cruelly. His hands tightened their grip.
J.T.’s chest was on fire. When he drew in a deep breath, his insides burned beneath his Kevlar vest. He was pretty sure he was dying. The stars looked too bright above him and the pavement was too cold beneath him.
He kept thinking he was supposed to ask for Merry Berry, then memory hit him hard.
He struggled upright. He heard the smack of flesh hitting flesh. He hated that sound. Tess …
Furious, he staggered to the shattered doorway, his left hand barely holding his ribs together. He grabbed the doorway for support, and wooden slivers drove into his palm.
He used the pain to anchor him.
The colonel had raised a son who could walk two miles on a broken ankle. That’s a man. Be a man. Fight like a man.
He found the hunting knife strapped inside his cast and advanced for the stairs.
Sirens wailed behind him. Men were still screaming. Someone was yelling about the front door.
Let them all come. Let them all fucking come.
Beckett saw someone out of the corner of his eye. He dropped Tess and reached for the shotgun. He didn’t see the knife hurtle through the air, until it drove through his shoulder.
He stared at it without comprehension. J.T. had arrived on the landing.
With a roar he charged.
He caught Beckett around the middle, and they went down with a crash. Something warm filled J.T.’s mouth. He opened his lips, and blood spilled down his cheek. The rusty flavor made him angrier.
Beckett fisted his hands and drove them into the small of J.T.’s back. J.T. got a fresh mouthful of bloody bile. He reared back and caught Beckett beneath the chin with his head. Then he reached up for the handle of his knife and gave it a twist.
Beckett staggered back with a sharp cry of pain. Vaguely J.T. was aware of the thick shadows beneath the man’s eyes, the gaunt lines of his chin. Beckett had lost twenty pounds since his prison break, and he looked it.
He didn’t feel it though. He felt only the heady thrum of adrenaline in his ears. The sirens, the screams, the noise. It fueled him.
He grabbed the baton he’d strapped inside his arm and started swinging.
J.T. leapt out of the way the first time. He rolled the second. The third swing cracked him on his already cracked ribs. The pain rocketed through him beyond description or color. He fell to his knees.
Above him the baton rose again. He could hear the whistle. Feel the draft.
He commanded his body to roll. One more time, closer to the stairs. His muscles took a long time responding.
The baton whistled down.
And the shotgun blast sent Beckett halfway across the second-story landing. Tess stood with the gun in her hands and the powder staining her cheeks. She pumped in another cartridge.
A low, wet groan escaped Jim’s lips. As J.T. lay there, his eyes barely able to focus, he watched her walk over to him. There were no tears on her cheeks. No emotion in her eyes. Her face was pale, her face was calm. He thought of Marion as Tess pointed the shotgun at Jim’s fallen body and pulled the trigger.
Through the haze of dissipating smoke, her brown eyes met his.
“It’s over,” she whispered hoarsely, shotgun against her shoulder. “Massachusetts might not believe in the death penalty, but I do.”
Jim didn’t move again. Tess let the gun slide to the floor. She cradled J.T.’s bloody head on her lap and waited for the police to make it up the stairs.
Just south of Lenox, the cop turned his wailing car into a gas station. A backup patrol car came to a screaming halt behind him.
The woman who was about to pay for her gas stared at them. The man who was unscrewing the gas cap of his Mercedes stopped. The two young kids who were out looking for a good time hunched down lower and wondered if they’d hidden the marijuana far enough beneath the seat.
The cops searched for the pay phone.
An older woman with a somber face and liver-spotted hands appeared from around the side. A little blond girl clung to her neck. She looked at the policemen somberly.
“Edith?” one of the officers asked.
She nodded and he approached the pair slowly, since the girl was obviously scared. The girl perfectly matched the posters all over the war room. He knew. For the last few nights, the officer had gone to bed so tense, he’d dreamed of that face.
“I want my mommy,” she whispered in a tiny voice.
“I know, sweetheart. You’re Samantha Beckett, aren’t you?”
She nodded slowly, her grip still tight around Edith’s neck.
He gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. We’re gonna take you to your mommy, Sam. We’re gonna take you home.”
EPILOGUE
The new arrival caused a bit of a stir. She stood in the doorway of the Nogales bar with the long, slender lines of a beautiful woman. Male heads turned instantly, some ancient instinct coming alert. Cue sticks halted before cue balls. Beer mugs paused before parted lips. Predatory gazes cut through the thick miasma of cigarette smoke and lingered on the simple white cotton dress that brushed down her figure and flirted with the tops of her knees.
She stepped into the bar.
Her steps did not invite interruption. She had a target and headed straight for it. Observant gazes plotted the trajectory and ran ahead of her to see who the lucky man was. The minute they figured it out, the gazes quickly hurried away.
If she could tame him, she was welcome to him. The rest of them had already learned to get out of his way—and they’d each learned that lesson the hard way.
He was hunched over a tumbler of amber liquid. His blue cotton shirt was rumpled and hung over faded jeans. His black hair had gone a long time without being cut. His lean cheeks were thick with unshaved whiskers.
Some of the women had found him handsome. He hadn’t appeared to find them to be anything at all.
He came day in and day out. He drank. He played pool. Then he drank some more.
Now the mystery woman arrived beside him. She slid onto the ripped vinyl stool. She gazed at him quietly. He didn’t look up.
She said matter-of-factly, “I love you.”
He raised bleary eyes. They were bloodshot and shadowed enough to indicate he hadn’t slept in weeks. It had been a month since she’d last seen him. The police had brought her Sam. Beckett had been carted off to the hospital and pronounced DOA. J.T. and Quincy had been hospitalized for broken ribs, and in J.T.’s case a punctured lung. She’d visited the hospital every day for a week. He’d lie there silently the whole time, not responding to her voice or her presence. He’d looked half dead, and at times she wondered if he wished that he were.
Then one day she’d shown up and he was gone. He’d dressed himself in his bloody clothes and walked out the front door. There had been nothing the hospital staff could do to stop him, and nobody had seen him since.
Difford’s body was recovered from the rooftop, where Jim had placed it as a decoy after he’d killed the sniper. A store mannequin’s head had been attached to Difford’s neck. Tess had attended the memorial service for the lieutenant and the sniper. Following Difford’s wishes, his body was cremated and his ashes scattered over
the Atlanta Braves spring training field in Florida.
Two days later Tess had attended Marion’s funeral, where Marion was laid to rest next to her father in Arlington. J.T. still hadn’t shown up. It was as if he’d fallen off the face of the earth. That’s when Tess had known he’d returned to Nogales.
“What are you doing here?” His voice sounded hoarse, either from whiskey or tobacco or disuse. Maybe all three. His fingers picked up a cigarette case. He didn’t open it, he just twirled it between his fingers. It was the cigarette case that had belonged to Marion.
“You shouldn’t be down here,” she said.
His gaze slid down her body, then dismissed her. “Too virginal. I’m not interested.”
“I’m not in the sinning business.”
“Well, I am.”
“Come home, J.T.” She touched his cheek lightly. His beard was so long, it was silky. She reacquainted herself with the line and feel of his jaw, the fullness of his lips. She ached for him. She looked at him and she hurt. “Tell me how to help you.”
“Go away.”
“I can’t.”
“Women are always trying to change a man. You think there’s something more inside us, and frankly it’s just not true. I am what I am.” He jerked his hand around the bar. “Honey, this is me.”
“You are who you are. But this isn’t it. This is you drunk. I’ve seen you sober. I care for that man an awful lot. I think that man is one of the best men I know.”
His gaze fell to the table and the tumbler full of amber liquid. Shame stained his cheeks.
“I’m haunted,” he said abruptly. “Like an old house. I close my eyes and I see Rachel and Marion again and again. Sometimes they’re happy. Sometimes they’re sad. There’s nothing I can do about it. I reach out my hand to them and poof, they’re gone.” He opened his palm on the counter and flung the emptiness into the air.
Tess didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t an expert on how to heal. She did the best she could. She kissed him. And he didn’t taste of whiskey or cigarettes. He tasted suspiciously of apples.
Her gaze went from him to his glass to him. He sat stiffly while she sniffed the contents.
“Apple juice?”
“Yeah.” Shame infused his cheeks again. “I tried whiskey. I truly, truly did. And every time I raised the glass, I just saw Marion shaking her head at me. Christ”—he hung his head—“I’m a teetotaler!”
“It’s okay,” she assured him, stroking his hair. “It’ll get easier. It will.”
He didn’t look convinced. Her fingers traced the beard on his cheeks, the purple puffiness beneath his eyes, the fullness of his lips. “J.T., I love you.”
He groaned like a trapped beast. His eyes closed. “Why can’t you just go away? Why can’t you just leave me alone? You killed him, you survived, isn’t that enough for you?”
“I don’t want to live in the past.”
“I can’t escape it.”
“You can, it’s just going to take a while.” She gave up sitting beside him and slid onto his lap. In this bar few people noticed. His thighs were hard and masculine beneath her, the denim of his jeans soft and worn. She kissed his lips, then his cheek, and then the scar on his chest.
She rested her head against his shoulder, and after a heartbeat she felt his arms slide around her waist. He buried his face in her hair.
And after a ponderous moment his broad shoulders began to shake.
“Tell me,” she commanded softly.
“I love you. Christ, I love you.”
And he was dying and there was nothing for him anymore. No place he could go where he didn’t see Marion lying in the dirt, no room to sit in where he didn’t see Rachel waving to him and blowing a kiss as she got into her car, and Teddy’s little arm waving in the backseat. He wanted to find them each again. He wanted to hold them in his arms and whisper, Please, please be happy. I love you, I just wanted you to be happy. I love you.
Remember me young, for both of us.
He raised his head. There were tear tracks on his cheeks. He didn’t care anymore.
“Make me whole. I want to be whole.”
She pressed his face against her throat and stroked his hair. She smelled of roses. He inhaled deeply and felt the scent finally soothe his shattered senses.
“Come on. It’s time to go home and meet my daughter.”
He kissed her. He held her close.
And he let her take him home.
Later, almost twelve months after that bloody night, he had the dream for the first time. Marion and Rachel were in a field of wildflowers, wearing white dresses and whimsical summer hats. Teddy picked daisies at their feet, his chubby hand filled with the flowers. They were talking and laughing, enjoying the day.
J.T. stood at the edge of the field, invisible to them and unable to touch. They spread out in the field and opened their arms to the sun.
It was a ridiculous dream, he thought upon waking. But he held it in his mind anyway.
He liked to remember them laughing, he liked to remember them happy. In the end maybe that was the most any of us can do—remember the ones we loved the way we loved them.
He rolled over and curled his arm around his wife’s supple waist.
“Bad dreams?” she murmured sleepily.
“No.”
“Okay. Stop hogging the covers.”
She drifted back to sleep. He pulled the covers over her shoulders, then settled her against him. She whispered his name and even in her sleep returned his embrace.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writers have a tendency to view their craft as a solitary occupation. In fact, it takes many people to create a book and I’m indebted to quite a few. I would like to express my deep appreciation and gratitude to all the people who helped me in this process, including:
Jack Stapelton, Bristol County assistant district attorney, who generously and patiently answered a multitude of questions about crossjurisdictional investigations and arrests.
Steve Belanger, corrections officer, who shared with me enough details about life in a maximum security prison to convince me never to commit a crime.
Chris Fuss, college buddy and dear friend, who not only provided his experience in orienteering and the Revolutionary War reenactment, but also let me play with the rifles.
Aaron Kechley and Valerie Weber, two Williams alumni, who told me so much about quaint, beautiful Williamstown, I just had to use it for murder.
And to the remaining police officers, FBI agents, and other corrections officers who kindly agreed to answer my questions but asked that their names be withheld.
These people gave me their knowledge. In some cases, I did take artistic license. Any mistakes, of course, are mine alone.
Finally, special thanks to my agent, Damaris Rowland, for believing in my talent even more than I did; to Nita Taublib for being willing to take a risk on this book; to Beth de Guzman, whose razor-sharp editing made this manuscript come alive; to my family and my friends Heather, Dolly, Michele, Terry, Lori, and Betsy for their support and endless supplies of chocolate; and to my fiancé, Anthony Ruddy, for sharing it all with me and showing me a beautiful future. Words aren’t enough.
THE THIRD VICTIM
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam mass market edition published February 2001
Bantam reissue edition / October 2004
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2001 by Lisa Baumgartner
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopyi
ng, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.
Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Published simultaneously in Canada
eISBN: 978-0-553-90088-0
v3.0_r4
Contents
Master Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
ONE
Tuesday, May 15, 1:25 P.M.
Officer Lorraine Conner was sitting in a red vinyl booth at Martha’s Diner, picking at her tuna salad and listening to Frank and Doug gossip, when the call first came in. She was sitting alone in the booth, eating salad because she’d just turned thirty-one and was beginning to notice that the pounds didn’t magically melt away the way they had when she was twenty-one, or hell, even twenty-seven. She could still run a six-minute mile and slip into a size 8, but thirty-one was fundamentally different from thirty. She spent more time arranging her long chestnut hair to earn those second glances. And for lunches, she traded in cheeseburgers for tuna salad, five days a week.