by Tim Stevens
It was Torvald. He appeared to be alone.
Mykels drew a deep breath. Then he grasped the door handle and pulled it open and stood back and to one side, the gun raised.
Torvald stepped into the room. His eyes dropped to the gun.
“Come now, Louis,” he said softly. “There’s no need for that.”
Mykels glanced out into the corridor. There was nobody else there.
He closed the door and locked it and turned the gun on Torvald and said: “Sit down on the couch.”
Torvald didn’t look flustered, but just mildly annoyed. He sat.
Mykels said: “The cops saw you come in. They’re on their way up.”
“Then we’d better make this quick, hadn’t we?” said Torvald.
Mykels circled his hand in an impatient keep rolling gesture.
“The cops are closing in,” said Torvald. “Those anonymous calls we got came from that detective, Venn. I’m sure of it. He’s on to us. So he knows we’re connected. And my guess is he’s close to figuring out how.”
“So what do you suggest?” said Mykels. His ears were straining for any sound of approaching footsteps out in the corridor.
“Here’s the deal. You admit to what happened back in college. You confess about Epsilon. But you leave me out of it. You were solely responsible.”
Mykels stared at Torvald. “You’re out of your –”
“In return,” said Torvald, “I provide you with a cast-iron alibi for the night Martha was murdered. The night you murdered her.”
*
Mykels felt the words hit him like a physical blow.
No, not a blow, quite. They were more like a sliver of ice, inserted straight into his heart.
He said, “I didn’t murder her.”
Torvald threw back his head in a silent laugh. “Of course you did.” He stared levelly at Mykels. “She shook you down at the fundraiser. The way she shook me down. I saw her talking to you. Saw the look on your face.”
Mykels returned his stare. He’d almost forgotten the gun in his hand, but now he raised it. Not to point at Torvald, quite, but just enough to remind them both of its presence.
“It was the first time she’d approached you, Louis, wasn’t it?” Torvald spoke quietly but urgently, as if as aware as Mykels was that they didn’t have much time. “But she’d contacted me a couple of weeks earlier. How much was she asking? It was a cool five million she wanted from me. I’d imagine her demands on you were a little less extravagant. I mean, you’re wealthy and all, but not in the same league as me. One mil? Was that it?”
Mykels said nothing.
But he’d suspected Torvald was in the same position as he was. That Martha Ignatowski had approached Torvald, too, with demands. Even after all these years.
“So, to repeat, Louis,” said Torvald. “My offer is this. You take the fall for what happened back in college. I wasn’t there. Martha wasn’t there. Only you. It’ll mean possible prosecution. But you may be able to spin it. Convince the DA that it was a tragic accident. And the publicity probably won’t do you any harm. It might even add an element of danger to your image. Who knows? You could even benefit from it.”
“I can’t -”
Torvald held up a hand. The kind of gesture, Mykels imagined, that he displayed in board meetings. One which brooked no interruption.
“Hear me out,” said Torvald sharply. “You take the rap. You step up, and confess. The cops have likely almost worked it all out anyhow. And in return, as I said, I give you an alibi for last Friday night. I can persuade a whole bunch of people to swear in a court of law that you were at my place at the time Martha was killed. And you’ll be off, scot-free.”
Torvald leaned forward on the couch.
“Because make no mistake, my friend. If Venn finds evidence to tie you to Martha’s home that night - and he will, even if he has to interrogate you to within an inch of your life - you’re finished. The college episode is long enough ago that you can finesse it. But the murder of Martha Ignatowski... if you’re convicted of that, you’re going away for ever. Trust me.”
Mykels heard Torvald as if from far away. As if his words were being transmitted down an infinitely long tunnel. The man himself appeared distant, a tiny figure viewed through the wrong end of a telescope.
He raised the gun.
Sighted down it so that Torvald’s forehead was just above the barrel.
Three seconds later, everything changed.
But in those few brief instants of time, before the world erupted into chaos, Mykels saw the events of almost thirty years ago as clearly as if they were occurring for the first time.
Chapter 37
It started out as a game.
Alison had had a crush on Louis, he knew, ever since they’d first met at a sorority Christmas party ten weeks earlier. He’d remained aloof from most of the social events of campus life, because his commitment to his art, and to making it in the art world, was ferocious. That was how he’d gotten his scholarship to Harvard in the first place.
But he knew a number of his tutors were attending the sorority bash, and he thought it would be a good opportunity to get to know them better on a personal level.
Alison Schecter was what Louis regarded as a cookie-cutter Midwestern girl. Blonde, with dewy blue eyes and a wide, corn-fed smile, she was pretty without being beautiful, sexy without being aware of it. She’d made eye contact with Louis soon after he arrived at the party, and from the shy way she dropped her gaze, he knew she was smitten.
At some point in the evening, she’d given him her number.
He hadn’t reciprocated – he made it a rule not to – and had forgotten about her. But, at the beginning of March, Epsilon Phi Kappa, his fraternity, had thrown a major bash. An epic one, which every member of the fraternity was expected to attend.
Not only that, but every member was required to bring along at least four girls.
Louis invited his current girlfriend, of course, and immediately thought of two other women. But the fourth confounded him.
Then he found Alison’s number in his wallet.
He remembered her only vaguely, but called her up. And of course she agreed to come. Eagerly. Too eagerly.
Louis and Carl Torvald had been friends for six months, having met at the fraternity where Carl was a senior member. Carl was several years older than Louis, and in his final year studying business. Although their fields of interest were vastly different, Louis had found himself drawn to this brash, cocksure fellow, whose confidence was revealed in an arrogance that was worlds apart from Louis’ own quiet charm. They hit it off from the word go, riffing off one another’s quips and jibes like a comedy double act.
Torvald was at the March party. As was Martha Cobb, the Girl Who Was Going Places, as they both dubbed her.
The details of the early part of that evening spooled through Mykels’ mind, like a movie on fast-forward.
They’d found themselves up in one of the rooms of the frat house – to this day, Mykels wasn’t sure whose it was. He, Carl and Alison. Mykels’ girlfriend had long since taken herself home.
There were drugs. Lots of them. Uppers, downers, hallucinogenics of various kinds. And booze.
The game they were playing was simple, and a familiar one. Truth or Dare. Except in their version, you took a snort or a tablet first, and then chose a truth or a dare.
In the beginning, there was a lot of truth-telling. But gradually, as they got higher and higher, the dares started creeping in.
It was Carl who dared Alison to take all of her clothes off.
If he hadn’t put it so bluntly, Louis thought, she probably would have eventually done so anyway. She was attracted to both of them, that was obvious, and she’d shown no coyness about coming up to the room with the two men.
But Louis saw the sudden look of doubt in her bloodshot eyes. It was more than doubt. It was fear.
Louis had been less wasted than her. Perhaps the least wasted of the three of
them. He’d understood that they were close to a line, and that it was time to pull back.
“Okay,” he’d said. “That’s enough.”
But Carl had stared at Alison.
“It’s your turn,” he said. “We’ve got to keep going. Your dare is: take all your clothes off.”
They were all sitting or sprawling on a big double bed. Alison had sat up and drawn her knees up under her chin. She looked suddenly like a frightened little girl, not a nineteen-year-old woman.
Louis gave his easy smile, the one that he knew had the ability to raise the temperature in a room several degrees.
“Hey,” he said. “How about we check out what’s going on downstairs?”
Carl ignored him. He crawled across the bed until his face was inches from Alison’s. She cowered away against the wall.
“I’m not kidding,” he said. His voice was quiet. Cold. “Take your goddamn clothes off.”
Louis gazed at Carl. Then at Alison.
He saw her terrified, tear-streaked face. Her hair straggling down her cheek where it had come loose.
He noticed the way her knees, pressed up against her chest, caused the side of one of her breasts to swell against the thin sweater she was wearing.
And he suddenly felt aroused. More aroused than he could ever remember feeling in his life.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse, guttural. “You heard him, babe. Take you clothes off.”
Her eyes, wide with horror, swung to him.
For an instant, he felt a flicker of conscience.
Then the desire flooded in, drowning out the flicker.
It wasn’t even so much her body underneath her clothes.
It was the power he held. He and Carl.
With power, you could do anything.
The terror in her eyes changed suddenly to something more primal.
She lunged for the space between the two men. Carl reached out an arm, but the drugs slowed him down, impeded his coordination.
She made it off the bed and stumbled on the floor.
Louis moved fast, faster than he would have believed possible in the circumstances. In two strides, he reached the door of the bedroom and flattened himself against it.
Alison crouched midway between him and the bed, that hunted look even more intense in her eyes.
Behind her, Carl laughed.
And Louis found himself laughing too.
Carl made a playful grab for her and she dodged away, backing toward the window. He glanced at Louis, his look both rueful and conspiratorial.
“Come on, honey,” murmured Louis. “You want it. We want it. What’s the problem? It’ll be fun.”
She was against the window now. The sash had been lifted a few inches despite the coolness of the March night, because their three bodies had been generating a lot of heat in the room.
Keeping her eyes on each of the two men in turn, the girl groped behind her and clumsily forced the window upward.
“Uh-uh,” said Carl, his voice low and threatening. “Don’t scream.”
He moved toward her.
She turned quickly and pushed her head and shoulders through the gap.
Carl reached her.
Her leg lashed out backward. She got lucky. Her bare foot connected with Carl’s groin.
He gave a snarl of pain and staggered backward.
And she was through the window, past the tipping point.
At the very last instant, Louis understood what was happening.
He stepped away from the door, no longer able to move fast, feeling as if he were wading through concrete mix.
Silently, without even a whimper, still less a scream, Alison’s leg’s disappeared over the sill.
Louis made it to the window. He leaned out and looked down.
The sheer drop caused his addled head to spin, his stomach to lurch. For a moment he was convinced he was going to throw up.
This side of the building overlooked a narrow yard. There were raucous noises from the garden round the corner, but there was nobody down on the strip of lawn below.
Nobody except Alison.
He could barely make her out in the darkness. She was just a crumpled shape, formless, a pile of rags.
She wasn’t moving.
Louis realised his mouth was open, but no sound was coming out.
Instead, the screaming was in his head.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit
Louis became aware of another presence in the room. He turned, jerkily.
Saw Carl slumped against the wall, his face a mask of pain, his hands clasped over his crotch.
And Martha Cobb, standing in the doorway.
She was staring straight at Louis. Her gaze wasn’t one of horror, or of disbelief.
Rather, there was something... calculating there.
She stepped into the room and closed the door.
Walked over to the window – Louis stood aside for her automatically – and looked down.
She straightened and gazed at each man for a long moment.
Then she said: “All right. Listen up.”
*
And so it was that Louis Q. Mykels, Carl Torvald, and Martha Cobb, who would later become Martha Ignatowski, became bound to each other for the next three decades.
They agreed on the story quickly. Martha had wandered into the room, found it empty but the window open, had looked down... and had seen the body in the yard below. She only discovered it close to an hour later, which gave Louis and Carl plenty of time to get the hell out of there and mix with the other partygoers.
Neither Louis nor Carl openly asked Martha why she’d helped them. Both of them secretly expected her to ask for a favour in return at some point afterward. But it never came.
The three kept in loose contact, taking an interest in each other’s careers and life trajectories. Each of them achieved his or her goal. Carl became the banking tycoon, Louis the celebrated avant garde painter and darling of the New York arts scene. And Martha, of course, married into wealth.
The fundraiser at Torvald’s place was the first time Mykels had actually seen Martha in almost a year.
She’d been as he’d remembered her, charm personified. They’d fallen into conversation as if they’d seen each other only the day before. They’d even flirted a little with one another, in that easy way they were accustomed to.
And then she’d hit him with the demand.
Five hundred thousand dollars in cash, to be paid within the week.
Half a million for her to keep her mouth shut about what had happened on that early spring night in March, almost thirty years ago.
At first, Mykels thought she was kidding. He said so. When he saw she was deadly serious, he asked: “Why?”
“Never you mind why, Louis,” she said.
He’d pondered it through the afternoon. Several times he’d tried to catch her attention again, to be alone with her, but with so many people clamoring to be near her, she’d managed easily to avoid him.
That night, he’d driven to her home.
Had he intended to kill her? He told himself no. He’d wanted to reason with her, that was all.
But the voice of honesty, deep down inside him, told him that he’d known all along this could only be resolved with her death.
After the act, Mykels had stood over Martha’s twisted body in her bedroom, the bedside lamp he’d hit her with still clutched in his hand.
He’d felt nothing but a cold numbness.
Taking the lamp with him, he’d fled.
And that was when he saw the guy up on the wall of the property, and everything had started to unravel.
*
Now, Mykels stood looking down at Torvald on the couch.
Part of him thought: the hell with all of this. Wait for the cops to come. Then tell them everything. About what really happened to Alison Schecter in 1986. About what you did to Martha.
Stop running. Stop lying. Let what must be, be.
But anothe
r, stronger voice crowded that one out. The voice of power. Of self-preservation.
He said to Torvald: “It’s a deal.”
That was when the gunfire began to erupt.
Chapter 38
Venn said, “Stairs,” and they veered away from the elevator bank and toward the steps.
Behind them, someone at the reception desk began to yell.
Venn had done a quick survey of the lobby as he and Harmony and the two patrolmen had run through it. Four people, two of them sitting reading newspapers, the others at the desk checking in or out. None of them looked like they posed a threat. None of them was Torvald.
They bounded up the stairs, Venn in the lead with Harmony close behind, taking the steps two at a time. Mykels’ suite was on the fourth floor. The elevator might have gotten them there quicker, but this way they could check out each floor as they passed it.
Halfway up to the second floor, Venn heard the commotion from below.
It sounded like a horde of rowdy sports fans had arrived.
A woman screamed.
Venn stopped, wracked by indecision.
What the hell?
Harmony said, “I’ll check it out. You go on up.”
He nodded, saw her double back down the stairs. Venn beckoned to one of the uniformed cops to follow him. To the other, he said: “Go with her.”
They reached the fourth floor. At the same moment, along the corridor, the elevator doors opened and a figure lurched out.
Venn dropped to one knee, leveled the Beretta, shouted: “Freeze. Police.”
The man turned to gaze at him, his movements unsteady.
It was Lance Lovett. He looked dazed, his eyes unfocussed, one hand clamped to the back of his head.
“Got cold-cocked,” Lovett muttered. “Bastard must have been waiting round the corner when I was waiting for the elevator. Hit me from behind.”
“You functional?”
“Yeah.” Lovett still looked woozy, but more than that he looked royally pissed. In his other hand, the one that wasn’t nursing the back of his head, he held a Glock.
The sound of gunfire exploded up the stairs. Venn, Lovett and the patrolman turned as if one.
The shots continued, handgun fire from several weapons, the echoes reverberating up the stairwell.