Blood, he realized, dazed, wondering how the stick could have sliced through the fabric, how it could have been sharp enough to hurt this badly.
He saw metal glinting in the moonlight as he turned, and then he felt the cold blade against his bare neck, slicing into his neck . . .
We’re being mugged, he realized as he fell, eyes squeezed shut in agony. His mother had been right. The park was dangerous after dark, and now he and Sue had been attacked by . . .
He hit the ground hard, on his back, and his eyes snapped open. In shocked horror, he saw Sue standing over him, a long knife clutched in both her gloved hands, poised high over her head. The hood on her parka was up now, tied tightly around her face, but enough of it was visible that he noticed her expression. It was pure ecstasy, just as he’d fantasized about her moments before, but this wasn’t—this was—dear God, she was about to strike again.
Ralph tried to scream, but managed only a bloody gurgle as he braced himself, closing his eyes for the last time.
He registered just one word she hurtled at him, and it made no more sense than anything else.
“Daddy,” he heard, in a guttural voice, and then the world went silent.
The phone started ringing seconds after Carrie walked into her apartment, before she even had time to turn on a light or pull the door closed behind her. Her pulse—which had finally slowed to a bearable rate as she covered the last ten blocks on foot—picked right up again.
She stood there in the dark, listening to it ring.
What if it was the police?
You idiot! The police don’t dial your phone number if they think you’ve killed someone. They show up at your door and arrest you.
Carrie quickly reached back to close the door and lock it.
She’d better not answer the phone.
No, wait . . . she’d better answer it.
That way, if anyone asked questions later, she’d have an alibi—whoever was calling would be able to confirm that she’d been here tonight, in the apartment. When the body was found, the investigators wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the exact time of death—just a window, right? And within that window, she’d have answered her own phone, right here at home.
Not stopping to turn on a light, she lurched toward it and snatched up the cordless receiver.
“Hello?”
“Carrie?”
“Yes?” She tried not to sound breathless.
“This is Mack.”
“Mack. Hi. Sorry it took me a few minutes to answer, I was just getting out of the tub.”
“Oh, that’s . . . I thought for a second it might be too late, and I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“What time is it?” she asked, wanting him to make note of it, so that he’d remember.
“Ten twenty-eight. Listen, I won’t keep you . . .”
No, don’t keep me. I need to get off the phone and get into the tub. I need to wash away every trace of blood.
The parka had gotten most of it, just as she’d planned.
She’d dashed over to Loehmann’s on her lunch hour this afternoon to buy it, along with the rain boots and gloves, using cash. When they had served their purpose, she’d quickly stripped them off and traded them for her good coat, leather pumps, and leather gloves, all of which had been stashed in the tote bag, along with the knife. She’d thought of everything—even had a big black Hefty bag ready for the last—and perhaps most brilliant—part of the plan.
Yes. She’d done her homework, as always, allowing her to execute the execution, as it were.
Daddy would have appreciated that. He’d always loved a good play on words.
No plan was without risk, however. Carrie’s biggest one came when she emerged back onto the path from the thicket where she’d left the body. At that point, she looked like a Wall Street businesswoman again; no one would expect to see someone like her, dressed as she was, coming out of the bushes this deep in Central Park late at night.
But luck was with her again; there wasn’t a soul around. Minutes later, as she made her way back toward the West Side, she passed a jogger and then a couple walking a dog. No one gave her a second glance.
Just before she reached the end of the path and was about to emerge onto Central Park West, she saw exactly what she was looking for. A homeless person lay sleeping on a bench, beside a wire cart loaded with his—or her—worldly possessions, all of it stashed in black garbage bags.
It was a common sight around the city—less common, she knew from her homework, now that Mayor Giuliani had succeeded in his famous campaign to clean up the streets, but there were still homeless people, and they could be counted on to have shopping carts filled with black bags they shuttled from place to place and guarded with their lives—when they weren’t passed out cold.
Again making sure there was no one in the vicinity, Carrie quickly unfolded the garbage bag she’d brought and stashed the entire tote inside, with its bloody cargo: coat, boots, and gloves—plus Ralph’s wallet, to make identifying the body that much more difficult when he was found.
She gingerly lifted the top garbage bag from the bum’s cart, stashed her own garbage bag beneath it, and was on her way.
Only the knife stayed with her, wrapped in a plastic deli bag from her lunch, but not for long. At Seventy-second Street, she descended to the subway and boarded a southbound B train, going in the opposite direction from where she lived. She got off at Times Square—arguably the busiest station in the city—and took an elaborate detour past a garbage can on a far-flung, yet predictably crowded, platform, where she didn’t even break her stride as she dropped the deli bag inside.
If the police happened to find it there—and that was a big if—they’d assume that the killer, having made the southbound trip from the park, lived or worked or had business in this neighborhood, or had transferred here to go farther downtown, or across town, or to one of the boroughs.
Instead, Carrie had cleverly made her way to an uptown platform, boarding a northbound express train to her apartment here in Washington Heights at the very top of Manhattan.
The whole thing had taken half an hour, maybe forty minutes. And now she was home, and Mack was on the phone, and if—by some wild chance—she should ever need someone to vouch for her whereabouts tonight, he would be able to.
Some wild chance . . .
Yeah. Right.
No one—no one—was ever going to connect an executive assistant to the murdered corpse of that loser in the park.
Just as no one would have ever connected her to—
No. Don’t think about that. Not now.
You’ll get upset, and it’ll show up in your voice, and you need to sound as normal as possible. He likes you because you don’t talk. You listen. So listen.
“I just wanted to ask you a quick question.”
“Sure,” she said. “What is it?”
She reached out and flipped the light switch beside the door. The room flooded with light, and she felt exposed. Instinctively, she flipped it off again.
Better. Much better.
Strange—after all those early childhood years of feeling afraid of the dark, now she preferred it. The shadows seemed to wrap protective arms around her, hiding her, keeping her safe.
“You know how we have a date for Friday night?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I said I’d take you out to a nice dinner—you know, to make up for McSorley’s, and—”
“I liked McSorley’s.”
You cut him off! What are you doing? You’re not acting like yourself. He’s going to notice!
Dammit. She really needed him to stop beating around the bush and ask his question so that she could answer it and get off the phone. The longer they talked, the more room there was for error, and if she slipped and gave anything away, she’d have to—
No. I could never just get rid of Mack the way I got rid of Ralph.
That had been different. She’d known that once she made the first cut, the
re would be no going back. She wanted to get it over with quickly, but at the same time . . . she wanted to do it. All night. She looked at him across the table and she couldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait.
Finally, when it was time, she aimed for his neck, but he was a moving target and she wound up hitting his shoulder. The second quick cut found its mark and took him down. It was then, seeing the satisfying look of terror in his eyes, and realizing that his life—what was left of it—was in her hands, that euphoria swept over her. She didn’t remember the third time she stabbed him, or the fourth, or much of anything, really, until she found herself stripping off her bloody outerwear.
But disposing of Mack wouldn’t be as easy, or as pleasurable. Not like that. Not by any means.
“When we made our plans for Friday,” he was saying, “I completely forgot that it was Saint Patrick’s Day.”
She waited for him to go on, willed him to go on. Hurry up, Mack. Get off the phone, and don’t make me talk to you, because . . . because I don’t want any regrets when it comes to you.
“That’s a big deal in my family,” he said, “and I need to be out in Jersey that night, so—”
“We can get together a different time. It’s okay.”
There was a pause. “Would you rather just . . . forget it?”
“No,” she said quickly, hoping she hadn’t made him suspicious. “I want to see you, but if that night isn’t good, we can do it a different night.”
“No, I want to stick with seeing you that night. Would you like to come with me?”
“To New Jersey?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure.”
“Really?”
“Yes. That would be fine.”
“You know my parents will be there, and my sister, and—”
“Great.” She cut in again, despite her resolve to let him do the talking. Anything to avoid prolonging this conversation. Anything to keep Mack from figuring out that she hadn’t been home all night, that she hadn’t just gotten out of the bathtub, that she had just killed a man in cold blood.
“I’m really glad you’re coming, Carrie. It’ll be fun, I promise. Maybe a little crazy, but fun.”
“Sounds good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I know it’s late, so I’ll let you go.”
Yes. Let me go, Mack . . . and then I’ll be able to let you go.
She hung up the phone and in the dark, made her way into the bathroom. There, she turned on the tub faucet, and then the light. Blinking in its glare, she caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sink and was surprised to see that she looked the same as she always did.
Leaning closer, she searched for a stray speck of blood on her face; anything that might have given her away to the people she’d encountered during her journey home from the park, had anyone given her more than a passing glance.
There was nothing at all. Her face, bare of makeup, was perhaps more pale than usual; certainly much plainer. She knew how to enhance her features with eyeliner, mascara, lipstick . . . with them, and without this drab wig she was wearing, she looked like a different woman.
She’d sat facing the wall while she and Ralph were having drinks, but even if someone had spotted them together, no one would recognize her—the real her.
Whoever that even was.
Steam was rising from the bathtub behind her. She reached up and yanked the wig off her head, tossing it into the garbage can. Then, thinking better of it, she retrieved it. She still had Chelsea to contend with.
She stripped off her clothes and turned off the faucet, then the light. Sinking into the hot water, enveloped in darkness, she smiled, remembering what it had felt like to kill him again, after all these years.
But later, when she had dried herself off and slipped into bed, she missed him again. She wanted him there beside her; wanted him to tell her that the dream catcher would keep the nightmares away; wanted his voice to soothe her off to sleep the way it did when she was young and silly enough to believe that he’d always be there.
“Read me a story, Daddy,” she whispered. “Please?”
All she heard was the traffic flying up the West Side Highway, and distant sirens—always sirens, here in the city. Always noise.
But after a few moments, she heard instead the wind stirring prairie grasses, and the cicadas whirring their night song, and her father’s voice.
I’ll do something even better for you. I’ll teach you how to read. That way, when I’m not here with you, you can read your own bedtime stories. How about that?
No. I want you to be here instead. I want you to read to me every night forever and ever. Even when I’m a grown-up lady. I don’t want to learn to read.
That’s a stupid thing for a smart girl to say. Now go ahead, pick out a story . . .
Carrie sat up, reached over, and turned on the bedside lamp. She was surprised, momentarily, to see that she wasn’t in her girlhood bedroom. But when she saw the stack of books on the nightstand, their familiar titles stamped on well-creased bindings, she nodded.
Hurry up. Pick out a good one.
They’re all too hard.
Not if you can read, and I’m going to teach you how. Then no matter what happens, on nights when I’m not here with you, you’ll read yourself to sleep.
Carrie perused the stack. Charlotte’s Web . . .
No! Not spiders! Nothing about spiders!
Tikki Tikki Tembo . . .
No! Not that one, either! It was about a well!
Wells and spiders reminded her . . .
She shuddered and grabbed the book off the top of the pile, Mercer Mayer’s I Was So Mad.
She had been thirteen when the book was published—too old for a picture book, really. That was why she was so surprised when she found it in a Barnes & Noble shopping bag pushed way back under the passenger’s seat in his car.
“What is this, Daddy?”
“That? Oh . . . that—that’s for you. I forgot to give it to you. I bought it a long time ago.”
Thinking maybe he meant years ago, she pulled the receipt from the bottom of the bag and saw that it had been purchased just a few weeks earlier, in Omaha. Why would he buy a children’s book for a teenager?
“You have a terrible temper,” he told her, not for the first time—and not without reason. Everyone said that: her mother, her teachers, her friends, even Arthur, the kindly old farmhand who looked after the place while her father was away.
Arthur looked after Carrie, too. He wasn’t as smart as Daddy—not book smart, anyway—but he taught her things, too. Like how to fish and how to shoot and even how to drive, even though that was something she’d always expected her father to do. By the time she was old enough, Daddy was gone more and more often, for longer stretches of time.
When he was around, he was more critical than ever.
“You fly off the handle much too easily,” Daddy said the day she found the Mercer Mayer book, “and that’s what this story is about. Learning to control your anger. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do that?”
She agreed that it would be nice. A lot of things would be nice. That didn’t mean they were going to happen. But she didn’t say that to her father, because what would be the use?
Now, Carrie opened the book with hands that had been scrubbed clean of blood. Sure enough, as she began to read aloud, she felt the last bit of anger melt away.
“See? I told you. I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, Daddy. You were right.”
Chapter Eight
Friday, March 17, 2000
When Justin the biologist had called her midweek to reschedule their blind date for tonight, Allison said yes, hoping an evening out would take her mind off things.
Well, one thing in particular: her father.
All these years, she’d thought that if she really wanted to find him, she’d be able to. Now that she knew she couldn’t, she felt as though she’d lost him all over again. Grief—not, this time, for what h
ad been, but for what could never be—snaked its way into her days and nights, even into her dreams. Whenever she finally managed to drift to sleep, she saw her father’s face. But it wasn’t as she remembered it. There were wrinkles around his eyes now, and his dark hair had gone gray.
“I’m so sorry,” he said in every dream, holding his arms out to hug her. “I never meant to hurt you. Please, Allison, please . . .”
But she refused to accept his apology. She saw her dream self backing away from him, heard herself shouting, “No! I’ll never forgive you for what you did!”
Then she’d wake up, shaken, with tears streaming down her face. Depending on what time it was, she’d either lie there making a futile effort to get back to sleep for another hour or two, or she’d drag herself out of bed and numbly go through the motions of another exhausting day.
Now, at last, the workweek was over. If she’d had her way tonight, she’d have taken the subway home, crawled into bed, and slept until Monday morning’s alarm clock. In fact, first thing this morning, she’d promised herself she’d do exactly that.
But she hadn’t gotten around to canceling on Justin, and she couldn’t just stand him up. So here she was, sitting across from him at a small Mexican restaurant in the Village. Between them was a big bowl of guacamole—half price, the waitress had told them, and the margaritas they were sipping were two for one. Everything green was on special tonight, in honor of Saint Patrick’s Day.
“I forgot that was today,” Justin said as they perused their menus. “I guess I could have taken you to an Irish restaurant. I’m sure there must be some in New York.”
“There are definitely plenty of Irish pubs.”
“You don’t take a girl to a pub on a first date.”
She smiled. “I wouldn’t have minded. Especially on Saint Patrick’s Day. Especially if you’re Irish.”
“But I’m not. Are you?”
“No.”
“Really? A blue-eyed blond—you look like you could be.”
She wasn’t about to tell him that her blond hair wasn’t natural—or that for all she knew, she might very well have some Irish blood somewhere in her lineage. Her mother had always referred to herself as a WASP, but her father—well, who knew? By the time she was old enough to wonder, he was gone. And his branch of the family tree wasn’t something her mother would have been willing to discuss.
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