15 Seconds

by Andrew Gross

  Chapter Eighteen

  He got them. Names.

  Though it took longer than he’d liked—Wayne thrashing and screaming how these were bad people and they’d come and kill him, which seemed to suggest he didn’t fully appreciate what was happening to him right now.

  The lad was passed out now. Still. The whimpering had stopped, though his feet smelled like meat on a spit and were puffed up bloody ugly, swollen, and blistered and blue.

  Hell, they wouldn’t be much good to him now anyway.

  Vance lowered him from the beam, the ropes still horse-collared around Wayne’s neck. He surely could have saved the kid a lot of pain and aggravation. But he had to pay—that was clear. Just like that girl and her baby had paid.

  Just like Amanda had paid. Forfeited half her life just for being young and foolish.

  Now Wayne had to pay too.

  Vance hoisted up the body by the armpits. He figured as long as he had the apparatus all rigged up, he might as well put it to some use, and cinched the rope tightly around the kid’s neck, placing the noose under his chin. Then he began to squeeze.

  Squeeze. With all the strength he had from those years of running that lathe.

  All those years on the force and the way they’d pushed him aside without much of a thought to him.

  Squeeze.

  Wayne jerked awake, his eyes bulging. He made a gurgling noise and twisted to see what was happening. Strangled whimpers emanating from his throat as Vance tightened the noose, the boy suddenly understanding what was going on, his arms thrashing around behind him. Vance telling him in a soft voice, “No point in struggling, son. I told you plainly, you had to pay for what you’ve done.”

  Wayne, grasping at Vance’s sides, jerking his head back and forth in some desperate, futile effort to say, “No, please, no . . .” But that just made Vance squeeze even tighter, spittle seeping out of the young man’s mouth and onto his chin. His fists striking with diminishing force against Vance’s thighs. His words barely even intelligible . . . His eyes stretched to the back of his head.

  Please.

  Vance didn’t let up. Not until there was no more fight in the boy. Or gasping for air. Not until he fell back on the floor in a curled-up heap.

  He’d told him it had to be done.

  Then he loosened the noose from Wayne’s blotched neck and undid the makeshift winch and pulley and set them aside. He wrapped the long rope over his arm into neat circles, unscrewed the propane tank from the welding torch, and put them carefully back into his bag.

  Not much blood, he thought, pleased with his work. Just a few drops of spittle on the floor, which he wiped with a cloth and disinfectant. Then he put his arms under the dead boy’s armpits and lifted him up over his shoulders. Young Wayne was a sizable lad, though Vance had expected more of a fight out of him. Vance carried him outside and into the woods to the spot he had prepared. He’d already dug the hole, about forty yards in, amid a thicket of brush and brambles no one would ever find. Sweat picked up on Vance’s back as he carted the heavy weight in the humid night.

  When he got to the hole, he was wheezing a bit. He dropped Wayne faceup, and puffed his cheeks so as to catch his breath.

  He thought, Maybe I ought to say something, staring down at the young face. You probably weren’t a totally useless fool, though my daughter liked you, so who knows . . . Still, events don’t happen of themselves. They have a cause, and you were part of that cause, son. So here you lie . . .

  He rolled Wayne’s torso inside the ditch and then kicked in his legs, which didn’t seem to want to go in. Then he started to fill up the hole with the shovel he had hidden here in the bushes.

  When he was finished, he smoothed things out as best he could, but no one would ever find him here. No one but that tramp Brandee would even miss him likely.

  Wheat from chaff, he said to himself, leaning on the shovel. The lowest rung on a tall ladder.

  But he would do what he had to do and find his way to the top.

  Vance took the shovel and headed back.

  He had names.

  Part II

  Chapter Nineteen

  Carrie drove to her parents’ house in Atlantic Beach after work that day. Raef had just come back from the physical therapist.

  It was a small, three-bedroom ranch backing onto a public golf course near the beach, but it was near the Wolfson Children’s Hospital, where Raef went every day to the rehabilitation center. He’d gotten most of his major muscle movement back, along with the majority of his speech. The therapists were still working on the fine-motor movements, such as writing and catching a ball; running was yet to fully come. But it was all improving. The doctors thought that in a couple of weeks’ time Raef would be able to move back in with her and, after the summer, be back in school.

  They were hopeful that one day he wouldn’t even show the slightest sign that his brain had been deprived of oxygen for almost two and a half minutes.

  “Hi, Mommy!” He ran up to her like any happy nine-year-old, maybe showing just a little weakness on his right side.

  “Hey, Tiger!” Carrie exclaimed, lifting him in the air. “Ooof, you are getting to be a real handful. You know that, guy!”

  “Roberta said I was very good today.” Roberta was one of his therapists at Wolfson. “We played catch. Look . . .” He picked up a blue-and-red, soft-cushion baseball, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his right hand, his lagging one. Papa and I have been practicing!”

  “Pretty soon we’ll see him pitching for the Marlins.” Nate, Carrie’s dad, the ex–New Hampshire police chief, walked in. Then his face became more serious. “So how’d it go, baby? Some first day back. We saw the news.”

  “I’ll tell you about it,” Carrie said, with a roll of her eyes. “I’ve got quite the story. But first . . . I want to see my Number One Dude here in action. See if he can handle my best heater.” She took the cushiony ball and pretended to rub it up like a real pitcher. “What do you say, A-Rod . . . ?”

  “If you throw it slow, Mommy.”

  “Slow it is. Just the right hand, Raef.” She went into a windup and tossed it to him underhanded from around four feet away. Raef plucked it out of the air.

  “Whoa!” Carrie said, eyes wide. “Awesome job!” She turned to her dad, who was nodding with a glow of grandfatherly pride. “You’re not joking. I think he might well be filling out that pitching rotation pretty soon.”

  Raef grinned proudly. Every time Carrie looked at his freckled face, she saw Rick’s smile. He surely did have her husband’s will and determination. He never once felt sorry for himself. Most of the tears he shed were when he was trying to comfort her. Even now, her thoughts roamed to the incident that had taken Rick, and as always, the memory seemed to come to her against her will.

  She was down in St. John’s County. At the opening of a JSO-sponsored youth center there. She got the call from Rick. Trying his best to appear calm—that was his way, after two tours in Iraq—but it was impossible not to hear the worry in his voice. “Carrie, I don’t want you to panic, but something’s happened . . .” The ensuing pause became the dividing line in her life. “To Raef!”

  She remembered how every nerve in her body seemed to go dead.

  He’d fallen on the soccer field at school and never got up. No one was really sure what precisely had happened yet, but “his right arm started shaking and then he said his leg felt numb and then he just fell . . .”

  Carrie knew from her husband’s tone that he was trying to hold it together as well. This was bad.

  “He’s not conscious, honey,” Rick said, sucking in a bolstering breath. “But the EMTs are there. They’re taking him to Memorial Hospital.”

  Oh my God! That was close to a two-hour drive from where she was. With traffic. Only about ten minutes for Rick. “I’ll meet you there,” he said. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Carrie answered shakily.

  “And, Carrie, baby . . .”

  “Yes,” she
said, her eyes already overrun with tears and her heartbeat racing.

  “He’s gonna make it, Carrie. I promise he will. He’s gonna come through this—you know that, don’t you?”

  “I know that, Rick,” she answered weakly.

  She knew it because he was saying it. Because nothing could happen to Rick. He was part of the first Marine platoon to arrive in Iraq, and he did two rotations as a field commander, ending up with the rank of captain. He had come through the war fine. Everything always came easy for him. He played third base at U of F and probably could have been drafted as a pro. He had a 3.8 GPA as a history major. He was on the short list for a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, but instead decided to enlist. He was the most capable man she knew.

  Raef had to be okay if Rick was saying it.

  “I’m on my way,” she said, already heading toward her Prius. “I’ll see you there.”

  “You drive safely,” he told her. “I love you, baby.”

  “I love you too.”

  The drive should have taken close to two hours, but she made it in an hour and a half. A patrol car escorted her, flashing lights and all. When she got to the hospital, she ran through the sliding-glass doors of the emergency entrance, her heart out of control. “My son! He’s being operated on,” she blurted to the attendant at the desk. “Raef Holmes. He’s in the OR . . .”

  “Second floor to the right,” the attendant said. “I’ll call up. You can take the elevator . . .”

  Carrie bolted up the stairs. She pushed through the OR doors, searching frantically for Rick. She didn’t see him anywhere. He must have stepped out for a second to make a call. Instead a nurse introduced her to the surgeon. “My son’s in there. Raef Holmes . . .”

  “Your boy’s had what we call an AVM,” said the surgeon, a young-looking Asian in green scrubs. “An arteriovenous malformation. It’s a tangle of abnormal arteries and veins in the temporal lobe of the brain. We operated on him to relieve some of the pressure. He’s a strong kid, but I’d be lying if I told you anything other than that it’s touch and go right now. We’ve got him sedated in the ICU. We placed him in a coma—”

  “A coma!” Carrie put a hand to her mouth. My poor baby . . .

  “To control the swelling. The next forty-eight hours will be key. But, Ms. Holmes . . .” The surgeon took her by the arm and walked her over to a bench. “I’m afraid there’s more . . .”

  More. Carrie remembered saying to herself, What could possibly be more?

  Then she focused back on Rick. Why he wasn’t here. “Where’s my husband?” she asked, suddenly seeing something in the surgeon’s eyes, something held back, that raised her anxiety level even more.

  “He collapsed,” the surgeon said, easing her down onto the bench. “In the waiting room. While we were working on your son. It looks like a dissected aorta. He’s in the OR now. We’ve got our top cardiac team working on him now. It could have happened anytime . . .” He went through a rough explanation. It was lurking and likely been there for years. Probably congenital. “It just blew.”

  “Blew . . .” Carrie muttered back to him, eyes flooding. Oh, Rick. Rick . . .

  It just blew.

  They let her look in at him. For the next six hours, she had a husband in the OR and her son in the ICU. Both of them fighting for their lives as she raced back and forth, afraid to leave either one for any time. She didn’t know who needed her more.

  “I love you mountains and oceans,” she said to Raef as she sat by his bed, squeezing his small, unresponsive hand. She remembered Rick’s vow: “He’s going to be all right, Carrie. You know that, don’t you?”

  Yes, she had said, I know that, Rick. Because you said so.

  “You’re going to make it, Raef,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re going to be healthy again, and do all the things young boys do. You know that, right? You know how we love you, don’t you?” Her eyes filled with tears. “You know that nothing could happen to you . . .”

  She remembered closing her eyes and praying. “If you save my boy’s life . . .” She was never the religious type, but right now . . . “You can take anything from me. Anything. I swear to you . . .”

  Not long after that, a nurse touched her shoulder. Carrie turned. “Ms. Holmes, they need you down in the OR . . .”

  She looked at the nurse’s face for a sign that it was okay.

  Rick died on the table. He had a stroke caused by an aortic rupture, and they couldn’t stem the flow of blood or get oxygen to the brain. It had probably been there from birth, the doctors said. Through college. Through Iraq. Through law school. Maybe it was the stress of what happened to Raef that caused it to finally rupture, the doctors speculated. Trying to be strong for all of them. The doctors did everything they could.

  Now every time she looked in her son’s resilient eyes, she saw him.

  Rick.

  “So what do I always say to you?” Carrie said, pulling Raef close to her. “C’mere . . .” The stress of her first day back on the job returned. Losing Martinez. Fielding the call from Steadman. “I need a really big hug.”

  “I love you mountains and oceans, right, Mommy?” Her arms nestled around him, tears of joy filling her eyes.

  “Right. Oh, that’s pretty big!” Carrie said with a halting breath, lifting him off the ground.

  And as she held him, the oddest thought wormed into her brain.

  What Steadman had said on the phone. As if only to her. “I swear on my daughter’s life, Carrie. You’ll know what I mean . . .”

  Yes, I do know what that means, she thought now. She gripped her sweet-smelling boy a little tighter.

  “Whatever it looks like, whatever anyone believes, it wasn’t me!”

  That’s why the words had hit home the way they did. There was a space in her heart that seemed to open for those very words.

  “I swear!” Those words meant everything to her.

  Yes, she said to herself, hugging Raef. I know exactly what that means.

  Chapter Twenty

  I spent that first night in the Lexus in the empty lot of a large office park.

  I also did what that bastard told me to do. I stopped in an Office Max and picked up a couple of disposable phones. I texted the number to Hallie’s phone.

  Then I waited. I waited until I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore.

  No reply.

  Earlier, I’d found a tool set in the car’s emergency kit and drove around a movie complex until I came across a Honda with Tennessee plates and switched the front plate onto mine. With luck, the owners might not even know it was missing for a while, and even if they did, a stolen, out-of-state plate wasn’t exactly the biggest story of the day with everything else going on. And Lexus SUVs were a dime a dozen on the roads.

  I hoped this would buy me some time.

  I had my first meal of the day from a Wendy’s take-out window, chomping down the double burger in maybe three large bites along with a box of chicken tenders and a Coke. I normally watched what I ate and would rather die than stuff down a meal like that, but the day’s events had left me empty and ravenous, and, showing up at Ruth’s Chris going, “Table for one, please!” wasn’t exactly an option tonight.

  The only plan I had was to assert my innocence and focus on that blue car.

  My thoughts drifted back to Hallie and Mike. I tried to think of every possible way he and Martinez might somehow have been connected. Mike was a prominent real estate attorney in town. He would have known police. Then there was the gamecock thing. South Carolina.

  But the only real connection between them was me.

  I turned on the news, basically just to keep me company, until my eyes finally got heavy and I started drifting off to sleep.

  What I heard almost sent my heart through my chest.

  “The Jacksonville Murder Spree suspect,” the commentator said. “This is not the first time. He’s done it before.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The news report said that a
television station in New England was claiming that as a student at Amherst, I’d been involved in a fraternity hazing accident in which someone had mysteriously drowned.

  “No,” I shot up in the car and shouted. “No, no, no, no. . . .”

  I pulled out my iPad and clicked on Google news until I found the link. It was from the website of a WNME in Portland, Maine.

  How did they know what had happened back then?

  The article read, The Palm Beach surgeon wanted in connection with the murders today of a Jacksonville Florida policeman and a successful businessman has apparently done it before.

  My eyes almost bugged out of my head.

  A college classmate of Dr. Henry Steadman, a person of interest sought in connection with the cold-blooded killings today, claims that while a student at Amherst College in the 1980s, Steadman and a fraternity brother were involved in the unexplained drowning of a fellow student in a fraternity hazing ritual gone tragically wrong.

  Thomas E. Boothby of Bangor, Maine, claims he was a member of a student judiciary board at Amherst called to investigate Steadman’s role in the mishap, which occurred at a local swimming hole known as the Quarry.

  As Boothby recounted, a freshman pledge at the Chi Psi fraternity, Terrence Gifford, plunged into the lake from a fifty-foot height in the dead of night, struggled in the icy water, with Steadman near him, and drowned. The incident was ultimately deemed to be “accidental,” and while Boothby claims, “No one can be sure what actually happened in the waters that night,” no charges were ever filed.

  “This poor freshman from Minnesota was dragged out at night and ordered to jump into the freezing pond,” Boothby, an EPA administrator in Bangor recalled, “which was about fifty feet down. All anyone knew is that three students went up there and only two came back. While there was never any firm evidence to warrant an arrest or expulsion, there was significant drinking going on; other people nearby heard arguing and thrashing in the water.” He recalled that although Steadman was ultimately dismissed from the fraternity, he was not asked to leave school.