Courting Trouble raa-9

by Lisa Scottoline

  The man was Kevin Satorno. And it was time for Anne’s own personal Declaration of Independence.

  29

  B oom! A white chrysanthemum burst into bloom and faded to a sparking skeleton as the first fireworks went off in the night sky over the Art Museum, and the crowd oohed, aahed, and clapped. The explosion reverberated in Anne’s heart but she kept her eye on Kevin, so she wouldn’t lose him. His shaved head turned toward the hoagie tent. He was looking for her.

  Anne suppressed a shudder and slid her hand into her pocket. Her fingers found the Beretta’s grip, now warm with the heat of her body. She willed herself not to be afraid and edged out of the line, going to her right, so that the line lay between her and Kevin. Everyone was looking up at the fireworks, except for him. She could see him as he faced the line. She would have to come up from behind him.

  Fireworks shot hissing into the air, their launching convulsive, soaring to the heavens, where they exploded into glittery red, white, and blue sprays. They left searing white lights suspended in the air like incendiary fairies and detonated with a thunder that sent little kids covering their ears.

  Anne was on the move. She walked behind the line slowly, so she didn’t lose Kevin or draw his attention in her white dress. It stood out at night. Thank God she had found him first. Ca-shoosh! Ca-shoosh! Fireworks went off with cacophonous screeching. Howling curlicues of red, green, and blue spiraled into the firmament. The colors tinged the faces around her, then they’d fall again into darkness.

  Anne reached the tent and continued around the back. People stood still, transfixed by the show in the sky. Kevin was turning his head, scanning the line for her. His eyes narrowed to slits. His mouth flattened to a grim line of purpose. She felt her heart pounding.

  She checked the cops’ position. They stood stationed at the cash barrel to her left. She thought about running to them right now and pointing Kevin out, but she wasn’t sure she could convince them fast enough, before he ran off, or maybe hurt somebody. She had a better idea. She’d come up from behind, stick the gun in Kevin’s back, then move him toward the police and away from the crowd, so nobody would get hurt. As soon as she had flanked him successfully, she’d yell for help. General George Washington, riding his bronze horse not fifty feet away, would have been proud.

  Ca-shoosh! The air smelled of smoke. Cinders fell like blackened snowflakes. Anne snuck around the tent and got a bead on the back of Kevin’s head. She had him now. She was directly behind him, with only the rapt crowd in between. She picked up speed and moved through the crowd. Closing in at thirty feet. Then twenty. Ten.

  Anne’s blood drummed in her ears. She gripped the Beretta’s handle so tightly its hatchmarks imprinted on her palm. Her hand was shaking but she ignored it. Boom! Firework palm trees in green glitter waved in the air, and the crowd laughed. She was so close to Kevin she could count the bumps on his scalp. A group of rowdy teenagers partied between them, wearing blue football jerseys and waving Heinekens and show-off cigars.

  Bang! Bang! Fireworks like red pompoms flamed overhead and their red glitter dissolved to hearts glowing in the sky. The teenagers cheered, raising green bottles of beer, and Anne threaded her way through them. Their cigar smoke blew toward Kevin, wreathing his head.

  Her stomach steeled. Her heart seemed to stop. She felt oddly like someone else, someone braver than herself. She inched the Beretta from her pocket.

  Pow! Pow! A wolf pack of white lights detonated in a frenzy that got the teenagers hooting in her ears. Anne had almost passed them when Kevin moved away and started walking toward the tent. Even better. She’d have him where she wanted him, closer to the cops. The two uniforms remained at the cash barrel, their blue caps silhouetted in the light from the tent. It was time. Go. She drew her Beretta and held it at her hip.

  “Hey, gorgeous, where you going so fast?” asked one of the football players. He sidestepped into her path, blocking her view of Kevin.

  “Move, please!” Anne started to go around him, but he grabbed her arm and spun her around so quickly she almost dropped the gun.

  “What’s your hurry, honey? Dontcha wanna watch the fireworks with me?”

  “Leave me alone!” Anne wrenched her arm free and rushed frantic around him.

  But Kevin wasn’t standing where he’d been a moment ago. She looked around wildly. He had disappeared. Only the crowd was facing her; men, women, and children looking up at the fireworks. Had she lost him? No!

  Anne plunged into the crowd around the tent. She couldn’t lose Kevin, not now. She searched the mob but he wasn’t there. Had he gone on the other side of the line, like she had? She let the Beretta slip back into her pocket.

  Ka-BOOM! Ka-BOOM! Silvery streams sprayed all over the sky, as if heaven itself had sprung a huge leak, as the fireworks segued into the finale. Ka-BOOM! Ka-BOOM! The sky erupted into rapid-fire explosions, like a war zone. Ka-BOOM! Ka-BOOM!

  Anne hurried to the tent, looking everywhere for Kevin. His shaven head, his black T-shirt. People stood riveted, cheering. No Kevin. She wanted to scream with frustration. She thought fast. Time for Plan B. She had lost sight of Kevin, but she would not lose him. She turned and looked for the cops, to tell them. They’d call for backup; he couldn’t be far.

  Suddenly Anne was grabbed from behind and her right arm wrenched up behind her. Something sharp cut deep into her back. She was about to scream when she heard a hot voice at her ear, against her cheek.

  “Don’t scream or I’ll drive a hunting knife through your heart.” It was Kevin.

  Anne froze with fear. Her shoulder seared with pain. The knife dug into her back. She wanted to scream but he’d stab her on the spot. She couldn’t reach her gun with her left hand. Even if she could, she couldn’t shoot in this crowd. She didn’t know what to do. Her heels left the ground as Kevin lifted her up by her arm and propelled her forward, away from the tent and the police. The knife sliced between her ribs. Anne struggled to think through her terror.

  Kevin cranked her arm up farther. “You’re coming with me. You won’t get away from me this time. You’re mine, now. Finally.”

  Tears of fright sprang to her eyes. He was breaking her arm at the shoulder. The fireworks erupted into their high-decibel finale. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The sky was a canopy of white lights, smoke, and thunder. Anne prayed to God it wasn’t the last sight she’d see.

  Kevin put his cheek close to hers, driving her forward with the knife. “You bitch, I dreamed of you every night. I looked at your picture every minute. I wrote to you, called you, bought you gifts. Flowers, jewelry, poems, candy. I gave you everything I had. I was devoted to you, dedicated to you. “

  Anne tried to make sense of what was happening. She had to survive. The knifepoint drilled into her back, now hot and warm with blood. Her blood.

  She tried not to panic as Kevin hurried her through the crowd to the street, shoving her toward the apartment buildings and the grove of trees and bushes at the dark edge of the park. Nobody was around. Trees blocked them from view. Maybe she could reach her gun. Get off a shot without hurting anybody else.

  Kevin’s breath grew heated. “I loved your face. I loved your body. I loved every inch of you. I would have done anything for you. Anything, Anne.”

  Ka-BOOM! Ka-BOOM! Kevin was taking her past the bushes. Heading around the back of an apartment building toward the Expressway. Anne could feel the weight of the Beretta in her pocket. It banged into her thigh. Could she wrap her hand across her body?

  “You played me, you fucking bitch!” Kevin’s voice shook with pent-up rage, unleashed. “You threw me away! You sent me to prison! You know what that’s like? You know what I went through in there? Because of you, you fucking bitch! I hate you! I hate your fucking guts!”

  Anne blocked out his words; they paralyzed her. She had saved herself from him once before. She could do it again. She forced herself to wait for the right moment. It would come. She would get the gun.

  Ka-BOOM! Ka-BOOM! Red, white, and
blue lashed through the leaves of the trees.

  “I’ll love killing you, Anne. Love every single fucking minute of it. I’ll make it last forever. It’ll be the best sex of your life.”

  Anne felt a bolt of sheer terror. Kevin was forcing her toward a deserted stretch by the Expressway, strewn with trash and litter. They were almost at the back of the building. Nobody to see them here. Her eyes filled with tears. Her gut told her this would be her last moment on the planet. She had nothing to lose. No one here to get hurt but her. She reached for her pocket but Kevin pressed the knife into her flesh, stabbing her with the tip. She let out a desperate cry no one could hear. “Help!”

  Ka-BOOM! Ka-BOOM! Ka-BOOM!

  “Anne? Anne! Is that you?” shouted someone, not far behind them.

  “Help!” Anne screamed again, just as she felt Kevin’s body torque toward the sound. She seized the opportunity and twisted enough to reach her left pocket. She grabbed the Beretta. Kevin was too distracted to notice.

  Anne struggled in his grasp, holding the Beretta against her leg, waiting. She was a good shot, but not good enough to shoot over her shoulder. She disengaged the safety with her thumb, pressing it down. She couldn’t hear the solid tik she knew it made. The Beretta was loaded and ready to fire.

  The man’s voice called again, right behind them. “Anne! Anne, are you okay?!” It was Gil! He must have come from the bar, looking for her.

  Ka-BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Fireworks detonated like bombs.

  “Gil!” she screamed, but Kevin was already turning toward him, relaxing his grip. Anne felt the knifepoint ease from her back, wet with blood. She seized the chance to leap from Kevin’s hold, spin around on her heel, and aim the gun at him. “Hold it right there!” she screamed. “I’ll use it, I swear.”

  But Kevin was already lunging at Gil with the jagged hunting knife. Gil caught Kevin by the wrist, pressing him backward. The two men struggled back and forth. Anne aimed for Kevin, but he was moving too much for her to fire. She couldn’t take the chance and shoot Gil. Fighting men were different from a paper target.

  “Anne, shoot him!” Gil shouted, but the men kept struggling, turning this way and that. She stepped closer to the fight to get a better shot, but suddenly Gil reached out with a desperate hand and grabbed the gun from her. Kevin came at him, brandishing the knife, and reached Gil just as the gun went off, a flame of red-orange firing from the snub barrel, the report lost in the fireworks. Then another, and another, from the semi-automatic.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

  Anne screamed. Kevin’s neck exploded in blood. He dropped backward onto the ground, crumpling like a straw man. She hurried to Kevin. He lay sprawled on the ground, his legs bent crazily, his body motionless. His mouth hung agape, his eyes stared open but unseeing. Blood squirted red from where his Adam’s apple used to be, spurting into the air with his pulse, falling back on his face like a grisly fountain. His throat emitted a hideous, gurgling sound.

  “No!” Anne heard herself scream without knowing why. Hot blood spattered her dress and drenched her hands and arms. It was no use calling 911. One look at Kevin told her he was dead.

  “It’s all right now,” Gil was saying, over and over, his hand on her shoulder.

  But Anne heard him only as if he were far away, and tears she couldn’t begin to explain poured down her cheeks.

  30

  At the interview room of the Roundhouse, fluorescent lights on the ceiling cast harsh shadows that hollowed out the faces of those assembled. Having given her statement, Anne sat numbly in a bare side chair, her white dress puckering with drying blood in gruesome polka dots. Her back stung where she had taken five stitches over the knife wound, but she’d been so disoriented at the hospital that she hadn’t even washed her hands. They lay apart in her lap, bloodstained and recoiling from each other.

  She was relieved that her nightmare with Kevin was finally over, but she couldn’t help wishing it hadn’t ended with such an awful death. Her shoulder slumped with exhaustion; she felt drained and spent. Her head hurt so much she couldn’t begin to parse her complex knot of emotions. She knew she’d be doing that for the next few days, if not years.

  Judy and Mary stood behind Anne’s chair like a hastily dressed girl army, their faces drawn and saddened even by a war won. A bruised Matt hovered near Anne, with an arm on her shoulder, as they all listened to Gil finish giving his statement to a grave Detective Rafferty. The heavyset Detective Hunt-and-Peck did the typing, and everyone pretended that Deputy Commissioner Parker, who leaned against the wall in a crisp uniform with his dark arms folded, always attended such occasions.

  “I saw that he had Anne,” Gil was saying, seated in the steel chair bolted to the floor. “He had his hand in her back. I thought he might have a gun, or a knife.” Bennie stood behind him, her head cocked as she listened. She was representing Gil in the investigation, since Anne wasn’t permitted to, as a witness to the shooting.

  SAW THAT HE, typed the detective, and Detective Rafferty leaned forward, his elbows resting on his legs. He was still dressed in a suit, but his tie was loose and the knot hung off-center. “And you knew it was Satorno, how?”

  “We went over this,” Gil said, tired. His seersucker sports jacket had been torn, the lapels stained by Kevin’s blood. Anne was fairly sure that the police wouldn’t charge Gil with anything, even involuntary manslaughter, not with Bennie on defense. But it wasn’t a certainty. Anne didn’t want to see Gil indicted for saving his own life, and hers.

  Bennie tapped her client’s shoulder. “You should probably repeat your answer.”

  “Okay, I’ll say it again. I knew it was Satorno because I’d seen his photo on the TV and in the newspapers.”

  “You remembered the way he looked from the mug shot?”

  “Of course. I took an interest. He tried to kill my lawyer, my friend. When they ran his photo, I checked his features. I did the same thing with the Unabomber, didn’t you?”

  “I see.” Rafferty rubbed his chin, grizzled now. “And how is it that you happened to be there at the time, Mr. Martin?”

  “Be where?”

  “At the hoagie tent.”

  “Well, I was at a bar farther down the Parkway. East, I should say. Chase’s Taverna, okay? Celebrating the holiday.”

  “You were alone?”

  “Yes,” Gil replied. “My family was at home.”

  Anne noted that he wasn’t volunteering any background about Jamie throwing him out, but that wasn’t police business anyway.

  “Talk to anybody at the bar who’d remember you, Mr. Martin?”

  “Not really. A blonde drinking Cosmopolitans, but I don’t know her name.”

  “Try to pick her up?”

  “Does it matter?” Gil shot back, drawing a disapproving look from Bennie.

  “Maybe,” Rafferty answered.

  “Okay, yes. I tried to pick her up.” Gil offered his wrists. “Cuff me.”

  Off to the side, Anne was starting to wonder about Gil. Picking up a blonde right after Jamie threw him out? Trying to hit on Anne? The affair with Beth? At some point, she’d advise Gil to get some counseling, but that would be after Chipster.

  “How about the bartender?” Rafferty was asking.

  “I didn’t try to pick her up.”

  Rafferty didn’t laugh. “I didn’t know she was a woman. I meant, would the bartender remember you?”

  “Yes. Her name’s Jill. Jill and Gil, that’s how I remember. Yeah, we talked. She would remember. We laughed about the name thing.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Then I saw Anne on the TV over the bar, and she said where she’d be, at the hoagie tent around nine o’clock. So I went there. When I got there it was so crowded, I knew it was too crazy to even bother, so I left. When I was heading back to Center City, I just happened to see her. Her dress was white and it caught my eye. Then I saw what was going on.”

  JILL AND GILL, typed the heavyset detective, and Rafferty gave a si
gh that had a final ring to it, then glanced at Bennie. “Ms. Rosato, of course I’ll have to discuss it with my superiors, but I doubt that we’ll be charging Mr. Martin with any crime.”

  “That’s the right result, Detective,” Bennie said. If she’d been worried, it didn’t show. She put a hand on Gil’s chair. “Mr. Martin understands the dangers of ordinary citizens trying to save lives, however well-intentioned their efforts may be. He won’t be doing it again.” Bennie acknowledged Deputy Commissioner Parker. “Sir, again, you’ve handled this matter with professionalism and sensitivity, and we’ll be happy to appear at the press conference tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. You’ll be escorted past the feeding frenzy outside. My driver and the commissioner’s driver will take you all home. The conference is at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, here. The inspector will be back by then.”

  “I’ll be there.” Bennie glanced toward Anne. “Ms. Murphy can’t be, she has a court date.”

  “I know, I read the newspapers,” the deputy commissioner said, with a sympathetic grin at Anne. “Ms. Murphy, if you need a doctor’s note for that judge, you got one from me.”

  “Thanks.” Anne managed a smile and rose from her chair on surprisingly wobbly knees, and Detective Rafferty met her eye.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something, Ms. Murphy?” he asked, and after a second, Anne realized what he meant. He was holding his hand out, palm up. “It’s not as if you have a carry permit.”

  “Oops.” Anne reached into her pocket, pulled out the Beretta, and surrendered it to the detective. She guessed she wouldn’t be needing it anymore, but she felt funny without it.

  Rafferty raised an eyebrow. “When did girls start carrying Berettas in their dresses?”

  “When they leave their purses at home,” Anne said, which coaxed the first smile she’d seen from the detective. “Does this mean no weapons charges? You’re cutting me a break?”