15 Seconds

by Andrew Gross

  I shot up in bed, as a pretty, down-home anchorwoman told the world how on March 2, only three weeks ago, I had bought a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun, apparently the same gun that killed both Martinez and Mike, from a local dealer at a gun show in North Carolina.

  I leaped out of the bed and put my face close to the screen.

  What I saw was a supposed bill of sale from an outfit called Bud’s Guns, in Mount Holly. The report claimed that the weapon had been paid for in cash at the Mid-Carolina Gun Fair almost three weeks earlier, which, it explained, avoided the requirement for a more detailed background check and ID.

  My heart almost came up my throat. I’d never been to a gun show in my life! And I’d only been to North Carolina once in the past several years, to Duke University, for a conference on rebuilding facial bone structure.

  But there it was. My name on the invoice. My address in Palm Beach. Having paid cash, as if I was trying to avoid detection. Three weeks ago. Before the murders. For the entire world to see!

  If there was even a sliver of hope that someone might believe me that I wasn’t guilty, that was now dashed. My mind flashed to Carrie Holmes. It had taken everything just to convince her that the Amherst incident had been twisted maliciously.

  What would she be thinking now?

  I reached over to the night table and found one of my disposable phones.

  This was part of the setup! It had to be. How could someone have my name and address on a bill of sale, buying the identical gun used in the killings, three weeks before the crime? How would anyone have known I’d be in Jacksonville? How would anyone have planted me there?

  Suddenly the truth settled into me and my eyes went wide.

  The sonovabitch who had been orchestrating this whole thing, who had Hallie . . . he’d been planning it for weeks.

  How? . . . Why?

  I turned off the TV and sat back in a daze, mentally rewinding through everything that had happened since the moment I’d arrived in Jacksonville two days before.

  Martinez pulling me over; ordering me out of my car; telling me I was going to jail. All those questions, as if I’d committed some serious crime. As if they were hunting someone.

  And Mike. How would anyone have known about him? Or put us together? That that was where I’d head in a panic? My head was throbbing. Who? Why? Were Martinez and Mike killed merely to make it appear that I was a murderer?

  But then I suddenly realized, the bastard had gone one step too far.

  I took the phone and punched in the number for the sheriff’s office. Carrie had told me not to call her. But I had to. By now, I was damn sure she thought I was guiltier than ever. Everyone would. My heart began to race as I waited for the call to go through. Finally, a receptionist answered.

  “Carrie Holmes . . .” I said.

  A fear kicked up that she was probably waiting for me. They probably had a trace set up as soon as they heard my call. It might even be a trap. A plant. Knowing I’d call in. I couldn’t blame her now.

  And I didn’t care. I didn’t care if the cops barged in here right now and took me away. I just wanted one fucking person in this world to believe me. As long as I had one person to help me clear my name . . .

  “Community Outreach. Carrie Hol—”

  “I didn’t do it, Carrie!” I didn’t give her a second to interrupt. “I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care how it makes me seem. I didn’t buy that gun. I’ve never been to a gun show. Someone is setting me up, Carrie. That’s what I couldn’t tell you the other day. Why I couldn’t turn myself in.

  “But this time I’m pretty sure I can prove it!”

  Chapter Thirty

  Raef had been put to bed a half hour ago, and Carrie sat with her father over a beer on the screened-in sunporch.

  She thought of her dad as a canny old codger. Actually, not old at all. At seventy-two, Nate still maintained a fit and trim physique—an ex–navy fighter pilot and a small-town police chief in New Hampshire for twenty-two years. And out of everyone else she knew, he was usually the wisest, and the one whose perspective always mattered the most. In her gym shorts and flip-flops, Carrie curled a leg up on the wicker rocking chair and faced him, gently shifting the subject from his dim view of Florida’s football chances this year. The June bugs were buzzing all around the modest, three-bedroom ranch that looked out over an islet, a couple of blocks off the beach.

  “Dad, there’s something I have to go over with you . . . Don’t answer till I finish. Okay? Then say what you want.”

  He put down his beer and nodded, knowing this was her way of broaching a serious subject. “Okay . . .”

  She told him everything. Her doubts about Henry Steadman’s guilt from the start. How nothing quite added up. No motive. No weapon. How he had called 911. That she knew there was some crucial piece of information that he was withholding. The way he begged her to help him. Only her.

  She waited to gauge his reaction.

  “Finished?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  She told him how Steadman had called her a second time yesterday. How she’d had some misgivings, and then doubts about her misgivings, which made her father, the ex–police chief, wince, and his eyes registered the seriousness of her involvement.

  Then she let out a deep breath herself and admitted how she had tracked down the suspicious blue car Steadman was so obsessed with. The one she could now prove was at both crime scenes.

  That was when her dad’s nonjudging eyes widened.

  Then she told him about the gun receipt in North Carolina, and that it didn’t sway her either.

  “He claims he wasn’t anywhere near North Carolina that day. And that he can prove it. Look, Dad, I know how this all sounds. I know I’ve broken a few rules. But someone’s setting him up. Someone’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to pin these crimes on him, and put him in the middle of something. Nobody wants to hear it, and I’m not sure what to do. Everyone’s already got him convicted, and the news about the gun purchase only solidified their view.”

  Nate nodded, leaning forward, forearms on his thighs. “Is there more? Can I take a sip of beer now?”

  “Yeah, take a sip of beer.” Carrie sighed. “There is more, but I don’t want to completely ruin my case right from the start.”

  Nate curled a smile, but only slightly. “So what is it you want to know? What I would do if I found out someone on my staff who wasn’t even part of my investigative team was having discussions on her own with the suspect and withholding evidence on the case?”

  Carrie’s stomach shifted. Probably fire her, she figured he would say.

  He continued to look at her. “Or what I think of your assessment of Steadman’s case?”

  “I think the first part doesn’t need to be gone into too much.” Carrie shrugged with a contrite smile.

  “Or maybe why you’d be putting your job at risk, what with Raef in there in need of care?”

  “Just for the record, I could be out of a job next month because of a budget cutback. Even next week,” Carrie said. She sat back and pressed the cold beer bottle against her cheeks.

  “Look, I can see you believe him, PK . . .” “PK” had been his nickname for her ever since she ski-raced as a kid back in New Hampshire, a twisting of the name of her idol, Picabo Street. “But the way you went about it . . .”

  “I know.” She averted her eyes. Then she raised them back to him. “But the truth has to count for something, doesn’t it, Dad?”

  “It does . . . The truth does account for something, honey. It’s just that—”

  “Look”—she swung around and leaned close to him—“everything that happened from the time this guy set foot in town seems meant to pin Steadman for those murders. Why would he beg me to look for those plates? What possible gain would there be for him in that? And then the plates checked out. Why would he risk calling me, believing we’d have a trace on him? He doesn’t know me from
Adam, Dad . . .”

  “Eve,” her father said, smiling. “He wouldn’t know you from Eve . . .”

  Carrie let out a breath, which relaxed her. “Okay, Eve . . .”

  “You run this by anyone at the office?”

  “I tried to.” Carrie sighed. “Akers. I tried to show him what I had, but the mood’s pretty tense there, politically, and everyone’s worked up over Martinez, and it was all falling on deaf ears. It’s pretty clear they don’t want to deal with any possibility except Steadman. Especially now that this thing about the gun show has come up. It’s damning. So what do I do? Drop my file off on Akers’s desk as I’m signing my own termination papers and go, ‘Oh, by the way, Steadman isn’t your man’ . . . ?”

  “Or . . . ?” Nate asked, looking at her judiciously.

  “Or . . . I don’t know . . .” Carrie said. “Prove it.”

  Her dad cradled his beer again, rotating the bottle. “You know you’ve been through a lot, Carrie. You’ve had things taken from you that none of us should ever have to deal with. You’ve always been a tough little gal, and we’ve all been proud of you . . . Whatever you’ve done. But are you sure you’re not finding some way to feel”—he hesitated a second as he chose the word—“important again in some way. Not important . . .” He frowned at himself. “Maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe I mean attached to something. Or simply alive.”

  “I feel plenty alive, Dad,” Carrie said. She looked toward Raef’s bedroom. “I feel about as alive as I need to feel right now.”

  “Then you’re boxing yourself into a dangerous place, honey . . . Between what your conscience says, and what the rest of us would say.”

  There was a long-drawn-out silence. He was saying what Carrie pretty much expected him to say. What anyone rational would say. Of course, “rational” wasn’t exactly the operative word in her life lately. And maybe her dad was right—maybe there was just a little need to feel vital again after what had happened to her, and it was this that had opened her a little to Steadman’s pleas.

  Then you’ll understand what I’m saying, Carrie. I swear, on my daughter . . .

  But that didn’t change what she now was certain had to be the truth.

  “So you’re sure?” Nate brought her back, looking her in the eyes. “You’re one hundred percent sure, Carrie, it was the same car at both scenes?”

  “You want to see the photos?” Carrie looked back at him just as firmly.

  “No,” he answered, leaning back. “I don’t need to see the photos. Not if you say so, girl. It’s just that . . . this isn’t gonna go so well for you, as you say, politically, no matter which way it works out.”

  “Which way . . .” Carrie cocked her head quizzically.

  “Whether you drop it off on Akers’s desk. Or whether you do what you have to do. To find the truth.”

  She stared at him.

  Her father winked. “Never let it be said Nate Walsh stood in the way of the truth. Or of his little girl, when she’s got a mind to do something. You’ve got the plate number . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t think it would be too hard to find a name behind it. I think we both know a federal agent in Atlanta who just might get you an ID on it pretty quick.”

  Carrie looked at her father and smiled at him gratefully, the blood rushing back into her face.

  “And you damn well better hope they’re not stolen . . .” He rolled his eyes. “Which they probably are. ’Cause where the hell would that set your case?”

  “I know.” Carrie grinned and nodded. “I know.”

  “So come on . . .” He stood up. He reached a hand for her. “Let’s go help your mom clean up . . .”

  She took his hand, and when she got to her feet, she looked into her father’s eyes, his deep, gray, shouldering eyes, and he put his arms around her and she put her head against his chest.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered. “Thank you for believing in me.”

  “As long as you know the real reason you’re taking this on, PK? Why you’re putting everything at risk, everything that only a few months back seemed like the world to you. Your position. Your reputation. It’s one thing to keep a secret from the job, something else to keep it from yourself.”

  “Because it wasn’t everything, Daddy.” She lifted her head off his chest and looked him in the eyes. She knew exactly why she would do it, though the answer had never come so clearly, nor quite this way. “Rick was! And he would do it. He wouldn’t just let it go. He’d dig for the truth, right? Wouldn’t he, Dad? And right now . . .” Her eyes glazed up a bit and a tear rolled down her cheek and landed on his golf shirt. “Right now what I want more than anything in the world is to make him proud.”

  “He would be proud, honey,” her father said, squeezing her. “He’d have to stand in line to say it, but I promise you, he would be proud.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Maryanne . . . ?”

  I knew I was taking a chance. I could feel my assistant trying to decide whether to answer. And with all that had come out, I couldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

  Finally, she said hesitantly, “Dr. Steadman . . . ?”

  “Yeah, Maryanne, it’s me. But please—before you say a word, I don’t want anyone else to know I’m calling. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, of course. Doctor . . .” She lowered her voice. “We’re just all so confused about what’s going on. But I want you to know, no one here believes a word of it. We all know you couldn’t have done those things. We just want to help you prove yourself . . .”

  It was like a warm breeze hearing her say that. To know that the people who actually knew me, who worked with me, didn’t blindly believe what was being said. Maryanne Kunin had been my assistant for fifteen years. I’d been there for her when her husband lost his contracting company and then a condo they owned in Destin went down below their mortgage.

  Now she would be there for me.

  “Maryanne, listen, I need something from you. It’s important! It’s just that no one else can know. That’s vital. But there’s nothing anyone can do for me right now that can help me more. Can I count on you?”

  “Of course, Doctor,” she replied almost as quickly as I had asked her.

  “Thank you.” I felt a lump catch in my throat. My voice cracked a little with emotion. “You just have to know, Maryanne, I didn’t do those things they said. Any of them. I—”

  “You don’t have to say that to me, Dr. Steadman. Just tell me what you need.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the operator answered. “Atlanta Office.”

  “Jack Walsh, please . . .”

  Carrie took in a breath. She had to admit that she felt some doubts about calling her brother. One side of her hoped he would be out in the field and unable to take her call. Another side told her she was doing the right thing. There had been a Steadman sighting the night before at a motel somewhere in northern Georgia. The night clerk had realized that he’d been there only when she saw the morning news after he had gone. Now the woman was all over the news. Carrie was pretty sure she herself knew where he was heading.

  Anyway, she decided, the damage was done already.

  The real damage was done the moment she withheld that call.

  “Special Agent Walsh.” Her brother picked up the phone.

  “Jack . . .” Carrie said. “Here’s one for you: the CIA, FBI, and LAPD are all trying to prove they’re the best at apprehending dangerous criminals. President Obama devises a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and tells each of them to catch it.”

  She and her brother always started things off with a joke. He said, “Okay . . .”

  “So the CIA goes in, and they embed animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and animal witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations, they conclude that rabbits do not exist.”

  Jack chuckled.

  “The FBI goes in next. After two weeks with no leads, they
burn the forest down, killing everything in it, including the rabbit. And they make no apologies. They say the rabbit had it coming!”

  He chuckled again.

  “Finally, it’s the LAPD’s turn. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling crazily: ‘Okay, okay . . . I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!’ ”

  This time her brother laughed.

  “It’s making the rounds here,” Carrie said. “Thought you’d get a laugh.”

  “Hey, Car, I was just thinking of you.”

  She and her brother didn’t talk as much as they used to. Mostly they just traded e-mails a couple of times a week on family matters. Jack was two years older; he and his wife, Polly, had two young kids of their own, and half the time he was off on assignment somewhere. So they took a minute now to catch up, about how she was feeling back on the job. And about Raef.

  “Pop says he’s about ready to get back to school again?”

  “Definitely after the summer. He’s really doing great, Jack. Listen . . .” She switched from the small talk. “There’s a reason why I called . . .”

  “I knew that,” her brother said. “The joke wasn’t that good!”

  “I need a favor, Jack.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to ask me about it. About why I need it. I just need you to do it for me. I need you to track down a license-plate number for me.”

  “Plate number? You guys don’t have people down there who do that kind of thing?” His tone was both jocular and a bit suspicious.

  “What can I say, dude, budget cutbacks.” Carrie sighed, playing along. They always had the kind of relationship where they shared everything with each other. Though Jack was always the great pontificator. Captain of the wrestling team in high school. Debate team. Villanova Law. But this time she wasn’t volunteering anything more. But Jack was no dummy. He knew they could get that kind of information in thirty seconds down in Jacksonville. Why would she be asking him to trace the plates other than some reason to keep it out of the office? No doubt his next call would probably be to their father.