Like most people, Baca kept a predictable routine. Each morning around seven, he appeared on his back patio, wrapped in a blue robe, to smoke and drink coffee from a red ceramic mug. He was tall and muscular, with curly, black hair and a black, full mustache. He would sit for at least an hour, smoking, reading the newspaper left at the front porch, and talking on a cell phone.
Around eleven, Baca’s house became a hive of activity. Cars would pull up, usually with two people, one of whom would get out and knock on the door. Baca would open the door with a smile, wave the visitor in, glance around, and close the door. In a few minutes, the passenger would return to the car, and the car drove away. This went on until around four in the afternoon.
Around seven in the evening, Baca left home on foot, in a clean shirt and cutoff jeans, for a café a block away. He had dinner alone, drinking three glasses of red wine with a plate of pasta, and ending each meal with a glass of sambuca and an espresso. He always paid in cash and was home by nine. He watched television until eleven, when he went outside for a last cigar of the day. He would sit on the patio in the dark, the end of his cigar brightening with each puff. That was the moment, the vulnerability.
With her gear stowed in a new canvas duffel, she sat back on the couch. She thought about Maricela and her daughter, Lucero. Had Maricela, during those last moments of life, thought about Lucero, about the hopes and plans she had for her little girl?
Archer remembered when she and Adam had learned they were having a daughter.
When they debated whether to ask for the ultrasound results showing gender, she had said to Adam, “Hey, I want to know, what’s the point of all these scientific advances if not to get the big surprise early? It’s still a surprise, just sooner.” Adam was persuaded.
“It’s a girl,” the doctor had pronounced. “Get ready for sleepless nights until she’s, oh, about twenty-five.”
A girl. Her spirits soared. Boys were a wonderful mystery to her, but girls . . . she knew girls. And for days after learning the news, she had hummed stupid girl songs—“Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” “Brown-Eyed Girl,” “It’s You, Girl”—until Adam started doing it, too.
“We’re becoming insufferable, you know,” Archer said, beaming as she handed him a strip of pink and yellow flowered wallpaper for the baby’s room border.
“I know, I know. Maybe we’re gonna be one of those couples who can’t talk about anything but their kid. You know, someone says, ‘What did you think of that Supreme Court decision?’ and we say, ‘Oh, I don’t know but my daughter used the potty today.’ Scary, Arch, really scary,” Adam said, laughing as he smoothed a strip of paper onto the wall.
“So did we settle on a name then?” Archer asked.
“Hannah, wasn’t it? Hannah MacKenzie sounds nice.”
“Hannah.” She paused, sat back on her heels, and relaxed against the wall. As a test run, she called, “Hannah, time for dinner. . . Hannah, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times . . .”
Adam laughed. “Hey, if you slop any more glue on that wallpaper, I’m gonna need a squeegee.”
Archer closed her eyes. Had Maricela thought about her little Lucero there at the end?
* * *
She ate the apple and an orange from her suitcase and glanced at her watch. It was time.
She donned fresh clothes from her suitcase: black cotton pants, T-shirt, and sneakers. Then the beige skullcap and the Michelle Danaher wig. She put on the latex gloves and wiped down the motel room and luggage for good measure. Compulsively, she checked to be sure nothing in her luggage pointed to her real identity, in case she didn’t make it back. Then, after cinching the duffel with her killing tools and equipment, she peeled off the gloves and stuffed them in her pant pocket, and slipped out of the room.
She walked a block south, turned left, then right, bringing her to a street parallel to the street where Baca lived. She looked like any fit young woman going to the gym for an evening workout, athletic bag slung over her shoulder.
The street was dark but for a streetlamp on the corner. Most houses had few lights on. Archer walked in the dark to a vacant house backing up diagonally to Baca’s duplex.
Archer had made this happy discovery on her first trip to the area. Crawling through an easily jimmied basement window, she had sighted in the shot to Baca’s patio from the second-floor window: urban shot in low light—piece of cake. The alternative would be a confrontation in Baca’s house, using a revolver at close range. She preferred the rifle shot, mostly because it multiplied exponentially the confusion for investigators. Moreover, there was no chance of leaving forensic evidence at the scene.
Archer slipped on the latex gloves from her pocket and slid feetfirst through the basement window, for once appreciating her small size. She dropped four feet to the concrete floor, reached out the window, and pulled the duffel in. The basement was dank and smelled musty, but it was empty. Pulling out a small flashlight, she climbed two flights of stairs to the second floor and hunkered down by an upstairs bedroom in back. She opened the window, removed the screen, and sighted in the patio through her scope. She had a few minutes before her quarry arrived.
Still on her knees, Archer mounted the barrel to the Armalite’s plastic stock, then took the silencer from the open gym bag and spun it onto the barrel. She stood up, raised the rifle to her eye, and aimed it out the open window. Her heart was pounding, and her scalp was sweaty and itched under the wig. Focus, she reminded herself. Breathe. . .
The glass door slid open, and there he stood on the patio. Settling into the chair, he lit his cigar and puffed two, three times, the picture of contentment. Thank God for creatures of habit.
From this point on, everything happened fast. Sitting on one buttock, one knee up, left hand resting on the windowsill, she breathed in and, on the exhale, squeezed the trigger twice, and heard the zip, zip of the muted rounds. For a moment, Baca still sat up in his chair. Archer scowled in disbelief. Could she possibly have missed? Then, she saw the cigar tumble and spark on the concrete patio, and Baca crumpled and fell forward off the chair. Archer knew he was dead. Her aim was true, and the hollow-point rounds would have found their mark at this distance and pureed a large portion of his chest cavity.
Archer glanced around the bedroom, collected the two spent cartridge casings, and made sure she had left nothing on the floor. The shoes would be discarded. She had touched nothing but the insides of the gloves, which she would also discard, and the wig and cap had kept her hair tucked away. She turned and closed the window. It was time to go.
Archer hurried down the stairs and crawled out the basement window. Baca would not likely be found until morning. Resisting the urge to run, she crept along the edge of the property, then out to the street, crossed over the road, and strolled back to her motel room in the rear of the building. She unlocked her door, closed it behind her, and leaned against it, breathing heavily. Walking over to the bed, she slumped onto it, shaking, and took three deep breaths. She still had work to do.
With a fresh pair of gloves on, she disassembled the weapon, wiping it down, then crushed the plastic silencer into bits with a hard shoe heel and put the pieces into six separate plastic bags, sealed with twist ties. She cut up the latex gloves with the scissors and put the pieces in six other small plastic bags. Then she took off the black T-shirt and pants and black running shoes and the Michelle Danaher wig, putting these in a plastic trash bag and knotting it. By the time she finished, it was two a.m. Archer lay on top of the made bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling sick.
* * *
She pulled out of the motel at six a.m. On her way to the airport, she pulled into the back of a convenience store ten miles out of town and tossed the large trash bag with the clothes and wig into the Dumpster. The timing worked well—too late to run into the four a.m. delivery trucks and too early for the regular staff to be sneaking out back for a smoke. She then stopped at four other strip malls, dropping the smaller plastic bag
s in various trash bins at each stop, never putting two in the same bin.
Archer glanced at her map and, at the next stop light, turned right onto a twisting wooded road. Every few miles, she stopped and walked deep into brush, discarding a piece of the AR-7. She made six stops in all.
Before reaching the airport, she pulled into a rest area to wipe the car free of prints, then donned a pair of leather gloves for the rest of the drive. What was it Peter Bennett had said about her? That she looked wholesome, that she was unlikely to draw unwanted attention wandering around an airport. She hoped to hell he was right.
Archer drove into the airport rental lot and returned the car with no drama at the automatic drop-off. She took her bag from the trunk and headed for the ladies’ room, to emerge ten minutes later as Miriam Hayes of Chicago, flying to Boston to visit her old college roomie.
Archer looked around. Businessmen were hustling past her to catch their connections, cell phones to their ears. Families were shuffling forward with too many bags, trying to escape to the cool breezes of Camden, Maine, or the temperate shores of Lake Michigan. She headed to a coffee shop for an espresso to jolt her awake for the flight home. First, though, she had to make a call. She stopped and sat down on her travel bag and dialed a number on her cell phone. A man picked up on the first ring.
“Good morning.”
“This is Miriam. I’m heading home. It was a successful trip.”
“Well done, Miriam.”
The bad dream ended, and then it started all over again.
CHAPTER 12
“So,” Connor said, rinsing a dish off in the sink, “I have to ask, and you don’t have to answer—how did Annie die?”
Yes, how did Annie die? Archer thought to herself, wondering if she could embark on that memory without falling apart.
They were cleaning up after a dinner of burgers, salad, and potato chips. The weather had started to cool, but tonight was almost balmy—unusual for early October.
Archer savored the breeze that drifted through the front screen door. Without answering Connor, she dried the last plate and set it in the open cupboard. Then she folded the dish towel, went over to the cabinet, and took down the Maker’s Mark. She got out a glass and poured. “You want one?” she said, holding the glass out to him.
“Sure.”
She gave it to him, then poured a double for herself, took it to the sofa, sat, and gulped down almost half. How did Annie die? As they said in court, that was the question pending.
“I’m surprised you never asked before, and it’s not something I bring up,” she said, grasping her glass with both hands.
“I . . . didn’t know if you could tell it, and I didn’t want to make you sad, I guess.”
She nodded, then shook her head, and said, “I think I can tell it—to you, anyway.”
Taking another slug, she began. “Annie was twelve. Her actual name was Hannah, but we always called her Annie. She had just turned twelve on May fifteenth. We lived in West Hartford then. It’s a really nice town—safe, upper-middle class. You know, tree-lined streets with nice neighbors, sidewalks, Starbucks. Annie was used to being friendly. She thought everyone was like the people she saw every day.” Archer hesitated, staring at her hands, then continued.
“Anyway, there was a class trip to Washington, D.C., for the seventh grade. It was June, the end of the school year. Everyone was going; it wasn’t even a question. The kids were leaving by bus from the school on a Thursday morning and returning home on Sunday. Routine. Adam took Annie to the bus that morning. I had an early court case, so I was already gone when they left the house. Annie had her little travel bag—she’d packed it herself the night before and was really excited. It was her first real trip away from home except for some nights with grandparents or sleepovers with one of her girlfriends. She was sharing a room with her best friend, Sophie. I was going to pick the girls up from the school on Sunday afternoon around five—all very normal, you know.”
She took another gulp of the bourbon. “I guess everything was fine until Saturday night. I mean, most of what I know came from Sophie or from Mrs. Dennis, the class chaperone. The class was going to see a live performance of Grease downtown. They had just finished dinner at a Mexican restaurant and were going to get back on the bus. Annie went to the back of the restaurant to use the ladies’ room. When she came out, everyone apparently had already left to get on the bus. Annie went out front to get on the bus, too, but it wasn’t there, and none of the kids were there, either. She probably got a little bit scared. At least, that’s what Sophie thinks happened.
“Then, we think, Annie went over to one of the side streets, thinking maybe the bus was parked there. This guy came up to her—a well-dressed man—and asked if something was wrong. She said she was looking for her school bus, and he said, oh, he knew where it was. Just follow him; he had just seen it. He knew a shortcut to the other side of the building—she’d better follow him or it might leave without her. That’s what a local cabbie who had been waiting nearby for his fare said he overheard. He said he never gave it a second thought, just thought the guy was associated with the school kids somehow.”
Connor nodded as Archer began to cry—not big, heaving sobs, just quiet tears. Connor got up and grabbed a tissue from the bathroom and handed it to her. Archer took it and dabbed at her eyes.
“They found her a few hours later, raped and strangled in that little dirty alley. They realized Annie was missing as soon as the kids filled the bus. Sophie told them, and they all started to search, but they started inside the restaurant, and by the time they got to the streets around it, it was too late.”
Archer felt dazed; her voice was flat with little inflection, as if this was a story she had thought about too many times. She just kept shaking her head, oblivious of the tears running down her face. “She was only twelve . . . just twelve years old. The bus was on a side street, just the other side of the one that Annie went to. Jesus . . . Jesus . . . she was just a kid.” She began to sob now, shoulders trembling, head in her hands.
* * *
Connor sat dead still, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. “God, Archer. I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I’m so sorry I made you tell it. I thought it was some illness, or an accident or something. I didn’t know it was some hideous, monstrous thing. I’m so sorry.” It was all he could say. He moved to her on the sofa and wrapped his arms around her.
She cried quietly into his shoulder. “They didn’t call me. Nobody called me. I got to the school to pick up Annie and Sophie, and then they took me aside and told me. Nobody called us. I could have been there.”
“Oh, Archer, I am so sorry. So sorry. My God . . .” He released her, and she sat back on the sofa. He shook his head, eyes stinging. “Did they ever get the guy?”
“Oh, yeah, they got the guy. An accountant for the Justice Department. How’s that for irony? And there was even an eyewitness to the actual attack—an old woman who lived in a rooming house that overlooked the alley—and they had DNA matches. They had his clothes from that night, with Annie’s blood and hair all over them. But when the trial came up, the old lady couldn’t be found, and the police had no search warrant when they seized the guy’s clothing, so all that evidence was worthless. The monster’s wife had signed a consent to search the house while he was at work, but the house was in his name and he hadn’t consented to the search. The wife thought there was just some big mistake, and a search would clear her husband, but when the detectives got to the laundry room, they found what they were looking for—his clothes from that night.
“Adam and I lived in D.C. for almost two months after it happened. I went down a few times every month after that, following every move, every lead. Then, when they had us in and said there had been a screw-up, that the appellate court said the search was illegal, that they couldn’t believe the wife’s consent hadn’t held up, that they had to let him go, that they couldn’t hold him any longer, it was too much.
“Adam tried to understand. He tried to be patient; he really did. I know he did. He’s a good man, and he hurt as much as I did, but we handled all of it differently. He needed to get back to work, back to a routine, or he would have gone crazy. That helped him not think about it twenty-four hours a day. For me, I guess I would have gone mad getting back to a routine. I mean, what routine? Without Annie, I was lost. I became obsessed with getting the guy. I plotted all day; I went over the evidence all night; I stopped seeing family, friends. While I wasn’t exactly fired from my firm, it was suggested I might want to take a leave of absence. That was no sacrifice, since I hadn’t been to the office in nine months.”
Archer paused to rub her eyes with the damp tissue, tossed it on the table, and continued. “Daddy was the only one who really seemed to understand me in those days. He could always find something to say that I could accept or that helped, at least a little. I think he stayed strong for me. We had always been close, and I felt terrible burdening him with this. He was almost seventy years old when it happened, and he was getting frailer each year. But we sagged—he and I—almost in unison after they let the guy go. We were diminished by . . . well, we were just diminished.
“Adam and I tried to keep the marriage together—you know, sometimes a tragedy brings people closer. Maybe if we’d had other kids . . . but for us, every time we looked at each other, there was no Annie.
Tell Me When It Hurts Page 9