by David Carnoy
Richie leans back in his seat, leaving his hands in his lap front of him
“Bummer.”
McGregor turns his head left, his eyes looking out the windshield toward the intersection. He stares straight at the spot where the woman died.
“Their car came out of nowhere,” he says. “I opened my eyes and there it was in front of me. It just fucking appeared. There was nothing I could do. I could see it was bad right away. We’d gone right into them. That Cadillac was a tank. And then I looked over and saw you lying there. And I said, ‘Richie. Richie.’ And you didn’t answer. And then I shook you. And nothing. You were fucking limp. And I went to feel for a pulse and I didn’t get one. I didn’t think you were breathing; I thought you were dead. And that’s when I panicked. I thought, ‘Shit, I killed this guy right before he’s going to get married. I’m never going to live this down.’ And that’s when I decided to switch seats. I climbed over you and unhitched your belt and slid you over into the driver’s seat. I had time to wipe down the steering wheel with my jacket and then I took you by the back of the shirt and slammed you up against the wheel as hard as I could to make it look like you hit the thing on impact. And I remember you slumped over to the left and all of sudden you coughed and woke up. I saw you take a breath and make a sound, and I was like, What the fuck? But by then it was too late. I heard the sirens and I just focused on making sure it looked like I was in the passenger seat. I put your hands on the wheel and you actually took it. You held on to it.”
“That’s your little secret,” Richie says when he’s through. “That’s what you brought me here to tell me? That you thought you’d killed me but you then accidentally saved my life?”
“That’s it,” McGregor says.
“And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“You can believe what you want. That’s what I’m telling you happened. That’s the fucking truth.”
And then they hear the sirens. At first they seem to be coming up Sand Hill in front of them. Then it sounds like they’re coming from behind. And then Richie realizes they’re coming from both directions at once.
“Why didn’t you tell the cops that? Why didn’t you just fucking tell the truth back then?”
“I always told you, man, when you do something you’ve gotta be committed. Totally committed. I made a choice. And you know, it was more important for me to go on. It was more important for the shareholders. I had a lot of people depending on me. I couldn’t go to prison. No, strike that. I wasn’t going to prison. It just wasn’t happening. And it isn’t happening now either.”
“But it was okay if I did? And it was okay for you to take Beth.”
“I didn’t take her. She took me. Make no mistake about that.”
“But you thought it was okay nevertheless.”
“You never had enough spine, Forman. You were never cutthroat enough. But you sure as shit could sing. I’ll give you that. You did a mean Sinatra, even back then.”
The cops are upon them now. The first vehicle to reach them is an SUV that looks familiar. It makes a left in front of them, its tires squealing, and screeches to a halt in the intersection right in front of them. A second vehicle, this one a sedan, follows in its wake and pulls in behind the SUV, forming a roadblock.
Richie looks in the rearview mirror and sees another squad car coming in behind them—it’s probably highway patrol—and a car, a regular passenger vehicle, a Mercedes, coming to a stop next to them, not able to pass through the intersection. One of the cops—he thinks it’s Carlyle—has his gun out and is shouting for them to get out of the car.
“What now, Mark?” he asks. “What’s your exit plan?”
He’s ready for McGregor to shoot him but instead he lowers the gun and sets it in his lap and smiles.
“What now?” he says. “Now you get to be in the driver’s seat forever. Sorry, kid. Gotta go. It’s wheels up for me.”
And then McGregor lifts the gun, bringing it up to his chin as Richie slams the accelerator all the way down to the footboard, sending the car lurching forward. Richie hears the gun discharge but he can’t see anything. He’s slid down in his seat, his hands in front of his face. He braces for impact and wham, the car crashes into Carlyle’s SUV.
When Richie opens his eyes, Carlyle has his gun pointed at him through the windshield and there’s all kinds of shouting. Richie looks over and sees Carlyle yanking McGregor out of the car and dragging him to the ground. Another cop pulls Richie out and slams him up against the back of car, pushing his face down to the trunk. The cop pulls out a set of wrist ties, somehow missing the fact that Richie’s already handcuffed.
“Easy, easy,” Carlyle shouts. “He’s okay. This is the guy. I got him.” Then, turning his head toward the microphone on his shoulder. “We got him, Hank,” he says. “We fucking got him. And you’re not going to believe where.”
Richie comes to the front of the car and sees Carlyle standing there with his boot on top of McGregor’s head, pointing his gun down at him. McGregor’s groaning. He’s still alive. The bullet missed.
Richie takes a step forward, leans down, and kneels. He then moves close to McGregor’s face and says in a quiet voice that only McGregor can hear:
“We’re not even close to even, asshole. Not even fucking close.”
41/ ESCAPE CLAUSE
COGAN’S THE ONE WHO ENDS UP TALKING TO BETH FIRST. SHE’S called Carolyn’s cell phone, and Cogan, who’s holding onto it for her, picks up when he sees her caller ID info pop up on the screen.
Richie listens as Cogan tells her that Carolyn’s at Stanford Hospital in very serious condition. She’s been stabilized but she has the worst kind of open fracture. She’s gone into surgery, it’s being performed by a friend of his, the chief of orthopedic surgery, and several other surgeons are attending. So she’s in good hands, but the surgery is going to take awhile.
“I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you,” he says, and hands the phone to Richie.
“Hey, Beth.”
“Richie?”
“Where are you?” he asks.
She says she was in a class at the gym. She came out and looked up at one of the screens by the treadmills and saw a picture of Carolyn being carried out of a house by a firefighter and Madden by their side. She couldn’t believe it. Then she saw his and Mark’s picture up on the screen. She didn’t have any headphones on and couldn’t hear anything. She called Carolyn immediately.
“What the hell’s going on, Richie?”
“You better get down here. We’re at the hospital. I’ve got some things to tell you.”
Fifteen minutes later she shows up, still in her gym outfit.
“I’m sorry for my appearance,” she says to the group in the surgical waiting room, a little surprised by how many they are. “I didn’t shower. I came right over.”
Lowenstein’s there, sitting next to Ashley, who’s been playing it tough, insisting she’s okay. Physically she is, but every so often Richie sees one of her legs start shaking and she puts her hands under her armpits and hugs herself. Richie himself has come over from the emergency room, where he received ten stitches and now has a small bandage on the right side of his head. He’s been diagnosed with a Grade I concussion that has Grade II aspirations. When the doctor told him he should take it easy for the next couple of days and not drive, he agreed.
Between the two of them and Cogan, who uncharacteristically tears up at one point, it’s a motley-looking bunch, so when Beth, typically stunning, apologizes for her appearance, no one’s quite sure what she’s talking about. Richie gets up and takes her aside, leading her out of the waiting room. They go down the hall a bit, near the elevators.
“There isn’t going to be a funeral, Beth.”
“There isn’t?”
“You’re going to need a divorce after all.”
She looks at him, confused.
“Mark’s alive,” he says. “He’s always been alive.”
“What?”
“Where is he?” she says.
“In custody.”
He then recounts the day’s events, getting interrupted a few times whenever a nurse or doctor or visitor arrives in the elevator. He tells Beth how Ashley went to investigate a tip she had on Anderson’s whereabouts and how he and Carolyn had gone to look for her and ended up stumbling into a much more hazardous situation than they’d anticipated. After killing Anderson, Mark took Anderson’s identity, living in his house. He tells her about getting bonked on the head, then being trapped in a laundry room upstairs while Ashley and Carolyn were locked up in the basement, Carolyn with a broken leg, which he’d only heard about well after the fact. Mark had then set the house on fire with the two women in it and taken him hostage in the car.
“He had a gun,” he says. “He had me drive him back to the scene of the accident. He was going to kill himself.”
With each new detail, Beth seems more astonished. She feels terribly for Carolyn. Is she going to be all right? He tells her the surgeons are concerned about her developing a fat embolism, which is a frequent occurrence with such injuries. And a little of the bone had poked out through the skin, which meant they had to watch out for infection; they were pumping her full of antibiotics.
“She’s looking at a very long rehabilitation, but it could have been worse,” he says. “She could be charcoal. And who knows, maybe her ex-boyfriend in there will marry her. He seems pretty broken up.”
Beth doesn’t respond. Her eyes drift away, her thoughts elsewhere.
“Why’d he do it, Richie? It’s just insane. It doesn’t make sense.”
He tells her Mark had bank accounts with over thirteen million dollars in them that he had access to. He was all set to leave the country but ran into a small problem: Anderson had lied to him and told him his passport was current when it wasn’t. He still could have gotten out of town and figured out a way to get a new passport quickly, but he just decided he’d lay low for a few days. He seemed to take some perverse pleasure in hiding in plain sight. It was a bit of hubris, Mark told him. Things were looking pretty good from where he was sitting and he figured he’d sit back and have a cocktail or two and enjoy the show. Shit, once they cremated his body, as he’d requested in his will, he’d be home free. He joked that he might even catch some of the funeral on Saturday. It had always been a fantasy of his, since he was a kid, to watch his own funeral.
“He didn’t seem to have a concrete plan for what he was going to do afterwards,” he says. “He said Central and South America were the next big frontiers for the Internet. He was looking at Nicaragua. But it just didn’t seem like he’d put that much thought into it. He just figured he’d somehow reinvent himself.”
“So he did it for the money? I don’t understand. He had the company. They were just about to launch. The product was good. I saw it.”
Yeah, but he didn’t think he’d ever have a shot at the big exit. Just wasn’t in the cards, he told Richie. So this was it. This was his big exit. This would show everybody.
However, it wasn’t just about the money, Richie says, mentioning Mark’s comment about a “confluence of factors.” He wanted to set her up, implicate her in the murder. While he was trying to goad her into reaching out to Richie to create some innuendo, things changed when she decided to meet with him down here in Menlo Park. He decided to modify his plan. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. And it turned out better than he thought it would.
“My arrest was a bonus,” Richie says. “You were the real target.”
It ended up being a mistake, though. Mark told him he regretted involving him to the degree he did. He said he was sitting there watching the news and Marty Lowenstein suddenly appeared out of the blue. He said to himself, Shit, Marty Lowenstein, how the fuck did that happen? Where did he come from?
“That’s just crazy,” she says for what seems like the tenth time. “But I don’t understand, who was trying to blackmail him?”
“He was blackmailing himself.”
Her jaw drops again. “You’re kidding me?”
“Just a diversion,” Richie says. “One of many. I’ve gotta ask you something, Beth. One thing’s been bothering me.”
“Just one?”
“Well, a lot of things. But there’s one thing I’ve been thinking about a lot. Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“It wasn’t him. I mean, how could you …”
As his voice trails off, she looks at him and lets out a long sigh, then looks away, down at the floor. It’s unclear whether she’s trying to recollect something or is carefully considering her answer.
Finally, she says, “The truth is that when I first saw him there in the garage, my initial thought was that it wasn’t him. I didn’t know whether it was just the shock of seeing him lying there or whether it was something in my subconscious. It wasn’t anything in particular. It looked like Mark. He was dressed how he dressed. He was the same size. Same hair. And I saw his watch. But this little thing in the back of my mind said it wasn’t him. But I let it go. If I had any doubt about it, it went away after they said his thumbprint matched and they found the tattoo I told them about. And I think they even had his dental records, didn’t they?”
Richie nods. He tells her how Mark switched them. And then he told her about the tattoo.
“My God,” she says.
“I know. But you didn’t say anything? You didn’t express any doubt? When you ID’d the body, why didn’t you say anything?”
She shakes her head.
“They asked me whether it was him. And I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ I mean, it was horrible. You can’t imagine. What Mark did to that poor person was horrible. I thought you really had to hate someone to do what he did. I thought—”
And then he knows. “You thought it was me, didn’t you? You thought I killed him?”
She lowers her eyes, not able to look at him.
“I did,” she says after a moment, lifting her eyes. “I thought you’d done it. This time I thought you’d done it.”
“Why?”
“Because I still loved you. And I thought you still loved me.” A brief pause, then, her eyes looking at him beseechingly: “You do, don’t you?”
He stares back at her, not answering. Then he reaches up with his hand and takes her chin gently between his fingers.
“Love is love,” he says, and just then the elevator dings, the doors open, and Bender and Madden step out.
“Just the man I wanted to see,” Bender says. “Did you see the post? I made this fucking guy into a hero,” he says, pointing to Madden, who’s carrying a small Big 5 Sporting Goods bag in his hand. “Did you read it?”
“You didn’t make me into a hero,” Madden says. “You made yourself into a hero.”
Richie had seen the article. Lowenstein had showed it to him. The title was, “How I Solved the McGregor Murder: The Inside Story.”
“Well, that too,” Bender says. “But that’s true. That’s a fact. We did it, huh, buddy?” he says to Richie. “We got him! I can’t fucking believe it. I’ll give you a little time. I’m sorry, did I walk in on something? Oh, hello, Ms. Hill. I’ll give you two a little time and then you and me will sit down and I want the whole story. I want all the details. I get the first interview, understand? You’re still mine for another twenty-four hours.”
“No, he isn’t,” Lowenstein says, coming out from the waiting room with Ashley in tow. “Didn’t you read the little line in the contract about what happens in the event that the charges against my client are dropped?”
Bender doesn’t miss little details like that. He takes pride in not missing those kinds of things. And from the look on his f
ace it’s clear that he hasn’t missed it this time either. Rather, he’s dismissed it.
“Are you going to tell everyone the good news, Detective?” Lowenstein says.
“The DA’s scheduled a press conference forty-five minutes from now. He’s going to announce the charges against McGregor and drop the charges against Richie.”
“Shit,” Bender says. “What were the fucking odds of that happening?”
“Come on,” Madden says to Bender. “I’m going to say hello to my old friend Cogan in there, see how he’s doing. But afterwards, I’ll give you a ride over to the press conference and give you an exclusive. I’m retiring.”
Bender thinks about it a moment, then nods, mainly to himself. “All right. That’s not bad. I can work with that. Let’s do it.”
Madden then hands Lowenstein the Big 5 bag.
“Thanks,” Lowenstein asks.
“My pleasure.”
Then he walks off into the waiting room, leaving the four of them standing there.
“This is for you, Richie—as promised,” Lowenstein says, passing along the bag, which Richie can see has a mitt inside. “What do you say we go outside and play a little catch? I’ve got my mitt in the car. We’ll come back later and see how she’s doing.”
“I like that idea,” Richie says, pressing the button for the elevator. When it arrives, he lets Ashley in first, then Lowenstein. Then he gets in. Beth hangs back outside the elevator, looking at them.
“You coming, Beth?” Lowenstein asks.
Beth looks at Richie, not knowing what do.
“Sure she is,” Richie says, taking her by the arm and pulling her in.
Once the door closes, Lowenstein says, “I know you’re a Wilson man, but I think it’s time you gave it up.”
Richie opens the bag and looks inside. It’s a tan-colored mitt and it has a ball inside the web. He thinks it’s going to be a Rawlings, but it isn’t.
It’s a MacGregor.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FIRST, A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY AGENT JOHN SILBERSACK AND ESTEEMED publisher Peter Mayer for bringing this novel to fruition, tolerating my views on ebooks and publishing, and even being willing to take my advice. While this is a work of fiction I have a number of people to thank for helping me keep it in the realm of reality. A shout out to Sergeant Tony Dixon of the Menlo Park Police Department, who graciously let me ride around with him on the mean streets of the hamlet I grew up in. Also thanks to Jim Simpson, Detective Sergeant (Ret) of the Menlo Park Police Department, for taking the time to let me bounce my scenarios off him and answer my questions. For legal counsel I turned to my friend Don Rollock, former Nassau County ADA turned criminal defense attorney, who I’d hire if I got into any trouble. And then there are the countless tech entrepreneurs who met with me over the years as part of my day job and shared their experiences. And finally, I had several folks mark up early and late versions of this work in an effort to make it better: Jerry Gross, John Falcone, Adrienne Friedberg, Mark Bloom, my father Martin, and editors Stephanie Gorton and Dan Crissman. Thanks for your time.