Holly went over to the driver’s side, clicked her remote key to open the doors and nodded for Jerry to get in. In the car, she kept looking over at Jerry, still mostly dumbstruck, as if Jerry had really come back from the dead.
“You look fantastic, Jerry,” she said. “It’s— it’s amazing. Y– you lost a ton of weight.” She gave him a closer look.
Jerry smiled. The compliment seemed genuine, and he shrugged, blushed. But his mood soured a moment later as he considered asking, “Better than Jeff?” But he kept quiet. He was happy, yes happy, just to be sitting next to her again, presently the sole object of her attention.
“Jeff said it was you that set us up.” She frowned. “Did you?”
That destroyed the mood. “What else could I do?” he said. “You were planning to kill me.”
Holly looked down to her lap and started to cry. Jerry was suddenly torn between his feelings of affection, lust, love or whatever it was, and loathing and disgust. And although his conflict was great, he thought better of reaching over and pulling her into his arms. Instead, he sat there and watched her sob for a time, until she finally calmed down, drew a breath and looked over at him.
“It was Jeff,” she said, averting her eyes. “He’s a cruel, selfish bastard.”
Jerry followed the line of her sight to her feet, and he became fully aware that they were encased in sexy black high heels.
“If he hadn’t taken over, taken control of, of this, of everything . . .” She sighed, unable really to offer a justifiable excuse. “I just panicked.”
“It was going to happen no matter what,” Jerry said, pissed off now that she was making excuses, trying to blame Jeff for everything, and avoiding the truth, as he had heard it that night in the master bedroom closet. Not to mention, she had started having an affair with Jeff even before that.
“Just tell me one thing,” Jerry said.
With red, swollen eyes, telling him she was crying real tears, Holly looked up. But Jerry remembered that she had majored in theater in college and that she had often read scripts to him requiring her to break down in tears, fake tears.
“How many times did you fuck him before we faked my death?”
She squinted hard, still wondering perhaps why he had come out of the shadows, what this visit could be about. Had he come back merely to taunt her, or win her back?
“How many days or weeks or months had you been screwing him?”
“None of it started until after that day,” she said. “The day we faked your death. There was some part of me that thought it had really happened. That you had really died.”
Of course, Jerry had no way of verifying this claim. And the way she was carrying on seemed slightly contrived, as if she was acting.
“Sure, we had flirted before that,” Holly went on after another sniffle. “You knew that. You saw it. I think you even mentioned it once or twice that Jeff seemed to be coming on to me. But it never amounted to anything. Not back then. It was only when we had really gone through with it and faked your death, and you had left for Binghamton. When you were gone.”
Jerry's thoughts suddenly turned to Jade. He wondered what she was doing right then. Probably laying on a wet blanket on the pool deck at the back of the house, soaking the sun, letting her lithe, ultra-tan body get even browner. Jerry wondered if he should reveal her existence to Holly, throw it in her face right then.
“So what is this about, Jerry?” Holly asked. “What do you want?”
“I want to tell you what to do,” he said. “Sell you on a way out of the mess you’re in.”
She gave him a funny, helpless look.
“That DA is going to burn both of you,” Jerry said. “Jeff and you.”
“You think?” she said. “That’s not what Jeff says, not what his lawyer says.”
“That Stauber guy?” Jerry laughed. “He’s a fool. You saw him bumbling around today. That DA, McGraw, ran circles around him. You already lost.”
When Holly put her hands to her face, close to tears again, Jerry found himself pulling her into his chest and putting his arms around her. He started patting her soft, blonde hair, sniffing it and drawing in a whiff, a long, lovely whiff of Holly’s scent, the way it always had been, a lovely, intoxicating, sexy fragrance, sophisticated and so unlike the childish bubblegum aroma of Jade’s perfume.
“You gotta take a plea, Holly,” Jerry whispered into her right ear. He even nibbled at it, completely letting himself go. “You have to sell Jeff out. Betray him. Betray him like you betrayed me.”
She was shaking in his arms.
“But, but then I’ll go to prison,” she said. “Maybe for years. Be slobbered over by dike inmates and dike cops. I can’t do that, Jerry, I can't.”
“No,” he said. The idea of what to do had been ruminating in his mind in the days leading up to coming down here to observe the trial. A way to save Holly. And a way to get Jeff.
“Whatever deal you work will include jail, sure,” Jerry went on, “and you’ll certainly have to testify against Jeff because they need to put someone behind bars for life for my murder. But before you’re ever sentenced, you leave town. With me. You become a fugitive under my cover. I become your anonymous man. Just like in my comic book.”
“But this isn’t a comic book, Jerry,” she said. “This is real life.”
“But I am anonymous, aren’t I?” Jerry said. “They think I’m dead. So I can hide you however long it takes for the dust to clear. For them to stop looking for you. With Jeff in jail, who they consider the real culprit in all this, they’ll forget about you. They’ll move on to other things.”
“Even that Fox guy?” Holly asked, and in truth, for Jerry, Fox was the one wild card.
“Let me worry about Fox,” said Jerry.
Holly sighed and sunk back into the driver’s seat.
“So that’s it,” she said and looked over at Jerry, “I plead guilty to a lesser crime.”
“It won’t matter anyway, since after you testify against Jeff, you are leaving town. You’ll never spend a day in jail. That’s the other thing, the plea has to be conditioned on no increase in bail. So you remain free until your sentencing.”
Holly nodded, seeming to get all this, letting it sink in.
“Why weren’t you this way before?” she asked and gave him a long, hopeful look. “Strong for both of us.”
He didn't know for sure, but he meant to stay this way. Just like the quiet hero of his comic book, The Anonymous Man, helping other people change their lives for the better by drifting out of the bad one they had made for themselves into a new life with freedom, promise. People who needed to run away from bad marriages, failed businesses, the mob. Whatever. the Anonymous Man was there to save the day.
He had already freed Jade from her bad life, hadn’t he? So why not Holly? Help her escape from the evil that Jeff had wrought. He had all that money in the LLC accounts, still over a million dollars. That should tide them over—including Jade, of course—for a considerable time, maybe a lifetime if they handled it right. He could have both of the women he loved in his life.
“Alright,” Holly whispered. “I’ll do it.”
Then she slumped completely against him. She looked up into his eyes and Jerry kissed her long and deep, so in love with her again.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Fox was flat on his back on the bed in his hotel room with his cell phone to his ear, speaking with Chief Reynolds back in Philadelphia.
“Looks like she’s gonna cop a plea,” he told Reynolds.
“No shit.”
“Yep, just like that.”
“What’s the deal?”
“She rats Flaherty out, tells the jury it was his plan, that he did the dirty deed while she was in the shower,” Fox said. “Burned our insured alive. Also, that she never really believed he was serious, but admits that she played along, didn’t stop him like she should have. Even took part of the money, a few thousand, although she says Flaherty took cont
rol over all the rest of it, and that she has no idea where the rest of it is now.”
“Well, that’s no good,” said the Chief.
“And about the emails,” continued Fox, “she agrees they are solid proof of what they had done, but they only show that she had joined in after Jerry Shaw was already dead. There was no turning back, she was in too deep by then.”
“Hm,” said the Chief, pondering this change of events. “So what’s the deal?”
“For taking a plea and testifying against Flaherty, she gets seven to fifteen in some minimum secure facility downstate. With good behavior, she gets out in something like four and a half, five years.”
“Not too bad for murdering a guy,” remarked Chief Reynolds. “Her own husband. And the judge, he agreed to that?”
“Yeah,” said Fox half-heartedly. “Her lawyer floated some bullshit about Jerry Shaw being a wife beater, but the Judge didn’t want to hear it.”
“Good for him,” said Reynolds. “When did this all come down?”
“Just a few minutes ago,” said Fox. “Just got the call from Inspector Miller. She’ll enter the plea tomorrow morning. Once that happens, they’ll break the news to Flaherty’s lawyer. There’ll be a mistrial. They’ll have to start again with the trial involving only him, now, that is, if Flaherty doesn’t cop a plea of his own. But he’s not in the best bargaining position. The DA is going to want to get his pound of flesh.”
“Yes, I would think so,” Reynolds said, almost grunting.
Fox knew Reynolds wasn’t one hundred percent happy with the news. It was just after nine and Fox imagined his old friend sitting in his dark living room slurping down some scotch and rolling it around with the ice clinking against the sides of his thick, short glass. His wife Meredith, or “Merry-width” as Reynolds fondly called her, was probably upstairs in her robe and slippers already in bed reading one of her Hollywood magazines.
“How much did we recover from them?” Reynolds asked.
“Only about a hundred grand,” said Fox. “What was left in a local bank account.”
“A hundred grand! That’s it?” Reynolds sighed. “Jesus.
Any idea what happened to the rest of it?”
“Stashed somewhere, no doubt. We’re tracing it. Like I said, the widow Shaw claims Flaherty was in charge of it. I already complained to the DA’s office that her plea should be conditioned on her telling us where the money went, but her lawyer insists she doesn’t know. And the ADA, McGraw, told me that he’d only push for something if and when Flaherty starting talking plea which, as we know, is quite doubtful. That would definitely be a condition and, in truth, it’s really the only bargaining chip Flaherty has right now.”
Reynolds grunted, took a sip of his scotch. Fox could hear the ice cubes clink up against the crystal of his glass.
“Any idea why she flipped?” he asked.
“I think she’s already got another boyfriend,” Fox said.
“What?”
“I followed her after court let out this afternoon. She met him in the parking garage across from the courthouse. They talked in her car. It got cozy for a few minutes. Then she went back to her place while the guy drove out to some cheap motel near the football stadium where the Bills play.”
“No shit,” Chief Reynolds said then downed what was left of his Scotch. “You have any idea who the guy is?”
“Not yet, but I will. He may be her link to the outside world and where she intends to safeguard her end of our money while she does her time. Unless she’s telling the truth and doesn’t know where any of it is.”
Reynolds grunted again, scoffing at the credibility of that. “Know what, Foxy?”
“What, Chief?”
“Crime does pay.”
“Yeah, Chief,” he said. “I learned that a long time ago.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
At nine o’clock sharp the next morning, Holly entered the courtroom with her attorney, Paul Blake. He looked ashen and sullen and was probably a little hung over while Holly kept her head down.
Moments later, after the massive, ornate door to the courtroom closed with a thud, Jerry walked in and took the same seat along the aisle he had occupied the day before. After Holly and Blake had taken their respective seats, McGraw strode in, nodded and smiled at them, and sat. Moments later, Judge Pratt entered from his chambers behind the bench and the overweight sheriff deputy who was assigned as the court’s bailiff barked, “All rise!”
Judge Pratt sat down and looked over at McGraw.
“Mister McGraw,” he said, all business. “You may proceed.” McGraw stood and informed the Judge that Holly was changing her not guilty plea to guilty to a charge of Voluntary Manslaughter. That information got a rise out of everyone in the courtroom. Judge Pratt banged his gavel and the gallery became silent and stayed that way for the next several moments. Holly glanced back at Jerry and nodded briefly as if to let him know that their connection had truly been re-established.
Fox took a note of that. He glanced over his shoulder at Jerry and also took note that he was the same guy he had seen in the car with Holly yesterday afternoon. Her new lover or boyfriend or whatever who may have convinced her to do this. There was something familiar about the guy nagging at Fox, but he could not quite place it. Judge Pratt turned to the defense table.
“That your understanding, Mister Blake? Your client is entering a plea of guilty to the lesser charge, Voluntary Manslaughter?”
Blake stood. “Yes, your Honor.”
“You understand, Mrs. Shaw,” said Judge Pratt, “that I am promising nothing in terms of a sentence. And you understand that you could be sentenced to up to fifteen years for the crime to which you are apparently willing to enter a plea of guilty.”
Holly looked at Blake who flashed a tight smile and brief nod. Then, she looked back at the Judge.
“Yes, Judge,” she said, “I understand.”
“Very well.”
Holly was asked to stand and admitted to the Judge that she was guilty of helping Jeff kill Jerry. When she was finished, and had professed that she had enough time to consult with her attorney about what she was doing, and knew full well what rights she was giving up, that, more or less, she was of sound mind and knew what she was doing, the Judge accepted her guilty plea without further comment, and scheduled her sentencing for two months from that day.
“What about bail, counselors?” the Judge asked, looking at McGraw.
“The People do not request a change in bail terms.”
The Judge frowned. “You have no quarrel with that I take it, Mister Blake? She’s out on bail, presently free on bond, right?”
“No quarrel whatsoever, your Honor,” Blake said.
Holly and Blake were excused from the courtroom and the Judge immediately called in Jeff and his lawyer, Stauber. Jerry remained behind with glad anticipation as to what was about to transpire.
Jeff looked around the courtroom for a time, wondering what had happened to Holly, worrying that she had betrayed him. Judge Pratt told Jeff and Stauber what they already suspected, that Holly had entered a plea of guilty in exchange for her cooperation and testimony against Jeff, and because of that, he had to rule a mistrial in the proceedings conducted to date. Jerry wasn’t quite sure what that meant at the time, and worried that somehow Jeff had gotten a free ride on double jeopardy or something. The Judge called the jury in and told them they were dismissed, that one of the defendants had pled guilty and the trial had to be called off until a future date.
Jerry’s concern was eased when, after the last jury member, an elderly white-haired woman with an arthritic gait who had to be escorted from the courtroom by one of the overweight bailiffs, the Judge scheduled Jeff’s trial for a month from that day.
“Anything else, counselors?”
That’s when McGraw got to his feet and asked that higher bail be set in light of the change of circumstances.
Stauber went ballistic. Regardless, Judge Pratt, without
a word of explanation, promptly raised Jeff’s bail to $250,000 cash, or property bond, and remanded him to the county lock-up until it was paid. Jeff had a shocked look when a couple of bailiffs grabbed him and slapped on handcuffs. They then escorted him out of the courtroom via a side door.
Jerry chuckled to himself, almost unable to restrain his glee.
His revenge was now complete.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jerry couldn’t resist sneaking off to see Holly that night. Arriving at just after eight, he had no way of knowing that Jack Fox was sitting in an inconspicuous dark green sedan, parked in the shadow of some trees a few houses down from 320 Northview Lane.
Jerry rang the doorbell and soon enough Holly was peeking at him through the curtains that ran the length of the long, slit windows. Seeing Jerry, she quickly opened the door.
“Jerry,” she said, “I thought you might come.”
But then, Holly looked past him down Northview and sighed. “Hope that goddamn Fox isn’t watching the house.”
“So?” he asked. “I’m dead. He’ll never find me.”
Holly stepped aside and let Jerry into his own house. And Jerry wanted her bad right then. The idea of tasting her treachery excited him beyond all else. He lifted Holly up into his arms and carried her upstairs to what used to be, and now would be again, their bedroom.
Once there, Jerry literally tore off her clothes. He popped off the buttons of her blouse, separated it from her back and tossed it to the floor. He slashed open the zipper of her pants and pulled them down to her ankles and off her feet before throwing himself on top of her on the bed. As they smothered themselves in wet kisses, Jerry removed her bra and ripped off her panties. He stood up then, staring down at her on the bed, naked and completely in his control. If only Jeff Flaherty could see the fat man now.
Holly gazed up at him, her lips quivering, panting, wanting more, wanting him, desperate for him to fuck her. She had never seen him looking this good, and together with his Florida tan, Jerry was every bit as desirable as Jeff Flaherty ever was.
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