Dark Sky

by Carla Neggers

  Juliet touched her niece’s shoulder, stiff with tension and hurt feelings. “Your dad said he’d drive down and meet you in Katonah tomorrow. That’s a cute village in Westchester. You can take Metro North, a commuter line—it’ll be an adventure.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “It’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive back to Vermont from Katonah. Maybe you and your dad can sort out a few things—”

  “Like what? He thinks I came here without telling him, when I left a note.”

  “You didn’t ask his permission.”

  Wendy rolled her eyes. “I never asked him his permission when I went on trips with my mom.”

  Juliet was sure Wendy knew that traipsing off to New York on her own was different—she was just being stubborn. A Longstreet trait. On the other hand, as the youngest of the six Longstreet kids and the only female, Juliet could commiserate with Wendy about going up against the prevailing wisdom of the Longstreet side of her family.

  Her niece was frowning at her. “Aunt Juliet! Haven’t you picked out a truffle yet?”

  Juliet grinned. “I did. I just haven’t eaten it yet.”

  Wendy selected another, and they each ate their truffles and talked for an hour, before making up the futon together. Wendy crawled in, pulling the blanket up to her chin, looking so small and young. “Thanks, Aunt Juliet,” she said. “I’m sorry if I’ve been difficult. My dad—I don’t mean to cause a hard time for him.”

  “Don’t worry about your dad. Worry about yourself and what you want and making the best decisions you can.”

  “Coming to New York today probably wasn’t a good decision, was it?”

  “I don’t know, Wendy, you’ve always been the good kid—maybe it’s about time you rebelled a little. We’d all worry if you were too perfect.”

  Juliet saw the spark in her niece’s eyes, and the start of a smile at her comment. Wendy no doubt knew what she’d done was over the top but she had a hunch Wendy wouldn’t be taking off again anytime soon. Juliet wished her good-night. But she took the envelope with Tatro’s picture of her into her bedroom with her. If Wendy had sneaked off to NewYork, she wouldn’t necessarily be above peeking inside the envelope. Then she’d tell her father, and Juliet would have all her brothers wanting specifics. It was enough for them to know—and Wendy would surely tell them—that she had an ex-con on her case.

  Seven

  Wendy fought back tears, ignoring the pain in her arms and back from the muscle strain of carrying her overloaded backpack and tote bag. She wished she was as strong as her aunt. But she had to keep going—she couldn’t stop now.

  She’d jumped off the Metro North train at 125th Street and was walking the block to the subway station. Another passenger had given her directions. She needed to go back to Juliet’s apartment. She had no choice—she’d left Teddy’s ashes under the futon couch. She hadn’t wanted her aunt to see them and had hidden them there, feeling his spirit as she’d slept, dreaming about him running through the apple orchard.

  She couldn’t believe she was so stupid as to have left his remains behind in New York. If Juliet found the tin, she might think his ashes were dirt or some whole-grain organic flour or something, and dump them in the trash.

  Wendy couldn’t bring herself to call and ask her aunt to mail the ashes to her in Vermont. It was too embarrassing—she didn’t want to admit she’d carried her dog’s remains all the way to New York—and too risky. Ashes by mail?

  When she spotted a subway car at the station, Wendy ran, squeezing her way between the closing doors. She found a seat right away and decided her luck was changing. The man who’d given her directions had told her she could get off at Eighty-first Street without having to go all the way down to Grand Central. Once she recovered Teddy’s ashes, she could take the subway back to 125th Street and wait for another Metro North train.

  But she knew when she didn’t show up on time in Katonah, her father would go nuts. She could imagine him calling Juliet and getting the marshals involved. He was always overreacting. It would never occur to him that she might know what she was doing. She vowed to call him as soon as she got aboveground.

  The Eighty-first Street station was the Museum of Natural History stop—its walls were decorated with reliefs and mosaics of dinosaurs and whales. On a different day, Wendy thought, she’d have been mesmerized. Today, she charged to the exit like most of the seasoned New Yorkers around her.

  When she reached the street, she got out her cell phone and dialed her father’s cell phone, getting his voice mail. Thank God he didn’t answer. “Hi, Dad, it’s me, Wendy. I’m going to be late, I think just an hour or so. I’ll call you when I know for sure what time I’m getting to Katonah. See you!”

  She shut off her cell phone. She didn’t want him calling and telling her what to do. She had a plan—she knew what to do. But when she looked up at her surroundings, she didn’t recognize where she was and felt a jolt of panic. What if she couldn’t even remember Juliet’s address? And her arms and legs—they couldn’t hold up while she tramped all over, lost, with her heavy backpack and tote bag.

  But she turned, saw the museum and relaxed. She’d found her way to her aunt’s once. She could do it again. Taking a few seconds to get her bearings, Wendy reminded herself that she was doing the right thing. She’d thought it all through on the train after she’d realized she’d left Teddy’s ashes behind. She was convinced he’d died just before her mother left for Nova Scotia because he’d sensed she was renting their house for six months and wanted her to feel free of him.

  And her father. Always so practical. “Most dogs don’t live to sixteen. He had a good run.”

  Although she was seventeen and knew sixteen was very old for a golden retriever, Wendy still had wanted Teddy to live forever.

  When she reached her aunt’s building, Juan, the doorman, ran down the steps and took her bags from her. Wendy smiled, her arms and legs screaming. “Thank you, thank you! I don’t think I could make it up the stairs with them. I shouldn’t have packed so much.”

  “I thought you left—”

  “I forgot something.”

  He carried her bags into the lobby and offered to hold them for her, but she didn’t want him to see her with a cracker tin and have to explain its contents. She shook her head, thanking him for his offer. “But can you let me into my aunt’s apartment? She’s at work. I don’t want to bug her. I’ll only be a minute. If you have the key—”

  “No problem.”

  He went into a small room behind the stairs and returned with a set of keys. “Just bring them back when you’re finished.”

  “I will. Thanks!”

  Juan carried her bags back to the elevator and pressed the up button for her.

  Once inside the elevator, Wendy leaned against the shiny brass wall and let her backpack and tote bag sink to the floor. She was so spent! She thought she was in good shape, but tramping around New York was killing her.

  The fourth-floor hallway was quiet and steamy warm, much warmer than Juliet’s apartment. Wendy dragged her bags to her aunt’s door and set them in front of it as she tried to figure out which of the two keys to use, in which lock.

  This one…top lock.

  Getting it right the first time, she gave a little cry of victory and pushed open the heavy door.

  She heard a noise. Not the elevator—someone in the hallway. Footsteps, breathing. She paid no attention, concentrating on moving her bags inside the door.

  She started to reach for her tote bag when a man materialized behind her. “Don’t scream, little Wendy. I won’t hurt you.”

  He grabbed her wrist, forcing her to drop the backpack, and she looked up, unable to grasp what was happening.

  Dark curls, black running shoes. Good-looking.

  The man from the diner.

  He had on a zip-front jacket and cargo pants. He didn’t look scary, but he was scary, and Wendy got out half a blood-curdling yell before he shoved her into the a
partment. The door caught on her backpack as it swung shut, and she went flying, landing on her butt on the hardwood floor, nearly toppling over one of her aunt’s fish tanks.

  Gulping for air, she screamed for help as loud as she could.

  “Well, well,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you, Wendy.”

  She shrank backward toward the fish tank.

  Her dad was a state trooper…maybe he’d gotten her message and was so furious with her now that he was on his way to New York, and he’d come to the apartment and save her.

  “Wendy. That’s the name of the girl in Peter Pan.” The man who looked like Johnny Depp but wasn’t stepped toward her. “I always thought she was a pain in the ass.”

  Wendy tried to scream again, but no sound would come out.

  The intruder was slightly red in the face and out of breath. Had he taken the stairs instead of the elevator? How did he get past Juan in the lobby?

  A knife…oh, God! He had a knife in his hand. How could she have not noticed? She’d been around cops long enough to recognize it as an assault-type knife.

  Something was on the blade.

  Her stomach twisted. She heard herself whimper.

  Blood.

  “Don’t move. Understand?”

  Wendy nodded without making a sound.

  With a sudden movement, he shot over to the couch and ripped its futon mattress off the frame. “Your fucking aunt. I knew the minute I laid eyes on her she was corrupt. I fucking hate corrupt cops.” He turned around and pointed the knife at Wendy. “She tell you how she found me in that Wal-Mart parking lot, huh?”

  Wendy began to piece together the puzzle. This man was the fugitive—the man Juliet had put in prison—and who wanted revenge.

  “She thinks I don’t know,” he said. “I know. She cheated. That’s how she found me. She fucking turned my own family against me.”

  Wendy didn’t say anything. She saw the cracker tin of Teddy’s ashes on the floor, pictured her beautiful old golden retriever running through freshly fallen leaves on a sunny autumn day at home. But he was gone now. Dead. Those were his ashes in the tin. His spirit was somewhere else.

  Dad’s not coming to save me.

  No one was.

  She’d have to save herself.

  Juliet shut the door to Mike Rivera’s office and sat on one of the two plastic chairs in front of his superneat desk. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Damn right, you do.” He paused, narrowing his dark eyes on her. “Ethan Brooker—what did he want with you? I had a report he was outside the building yesterday when you went after your niece. I got your message that she’s okay, but what’s Brooker—”

  She smiled at him. “You’ve been stewing on that one all night, Chief?”

  “Longstreet, that mouth of yours—”

  “He brought me a present.”

  She dug the envelope Ethan had given her out of her jacket pocket and handed it across Rivera’s desk to him. He opened it, pulled out the picture and sighed. “Not Brooker’s artwork, I take it. He may be a shit magnet, but he’s not a whack job. Besides, I think he kind of likes you.”

  “Ethan says he found the picture during a highly classified rescue mission. Apparently it was left behind by an ex-con named Bobby Tatro.” She tried to keep her tone clinical, professional. No emotion. “Tatro was a fugitive I picked up four years ago in Syracuse. He didn’t believe I just happened upon him. I didn’t—I had a source I didn’t want him to know about. He threatened me.”

  “Threatened you how?”

  “He said my pretty blond ass was his when he got out.”

  “When did he get out?”

  “Late August.”

  “And you’re just telling me this now?”

  She shrugged. “I guess I am.”

  “You haven’t heard from him—”

  “No. I’d have told you.”

  “Damn right you’d have told me.” He sighed, staring again at the offensive picture. “This is in front of your apartment building, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Your niece?”

  “On her way back to Vermont.”

  He nodded with satisfaction. “Good. All right, fast-forward to Brooker. What’s his role in all of this?”

  Juliet told Rivera what she knew, which wasn’t much.

  When she finished, Rivera leaned back, his chair giving an annoying squeak. “Where’s Brooker now?”

  “He didn’t say. I have his cell-phone number—”

  “Good. Call him. Get him in here.”

  “He’s solid, Mike.”

  “Maybe.” He glanced down at the picture on his desk, but his face remained expressionless. “I don’t like putting Bobby Tatro and Ethan Brooker together and coming up with you as the common denominator.”

  Juliet got to her feet. “Neither do I.”

  “And let’s get looking for this Tatro character.”

  Tony Cipriani poked his head in through the door. “Sorry to interrupt. Juliet, I’ve got a Vermont state trooper on the phone. He says it’s important. Something about your niece.”

  Juliet jumped to her feet, and Rivera waved her toward the outer office. When she picked up the phone at her desk, Joshua, seething, told her about the cheerful, cryptic message his daughter had left on his voice mail. “It’s been over an hour. She said she’d be just an hour or so late and there’s no sign of her. Juliet—”

  “I haven’t heard from her.”

  “Damn it.”

  But she heard the concern in his voice. As out of patience as he was with Wendy, he didn’t want anything to happen to her. “Maybe she forgot something at my apartment. I’ll run up there and check, okay? You’re still in Katonah?”

  “I’ll stay here until I hear from you.”

  Juliet tried to grin. “Don’t bite the steering wheel in two.”

  When she hung up, Tony Cipriani and Mike Rivera both were frowning at her. She rubbed the back of her neck, awkward at having family complications interfere with her workday. What was Wendy up to this time? Juliet quickly explained the situation. Cip, for whom teenagers were still a mystery, offered to go with her, but she shook her head. The last thing she wanted was a fellow deputy mixed up in a family matter.

  Rivera cut her loose to go find her niece. “The kid probably got a wild hair to see the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan,” he said. “Teenagers and impulse control, you know?”

  “I’m beginning to,” Juliet said.

  “Take the time you need. Escort Miss Wendy back to her father if you have to.”

  When she arrived at her building, Juliet forced herself not to charge inside like some kind of wild woman. She’d had to fight off her own guilt. She’d believed her niece capable of getting to her father on her own. She’d put her on the train at Grand Central and waved her goodbye. She’d trusted Wendy not to get off until Katonah.

  Muttering to herself about the difference between independence and responsibility and courtesy, Juliet pushed open the glass door to the lobby, faintly surprised that Juan hadn’t beaten her to it.

  She slowed her pace once through the door. He didn’t seem to be around at all. If Wendy had forgotten something, she’d have had to get the keys from him. “Juan?” Juliet walked back behind the stairs to the tiny room he used as an office and a place to lock up bags, hold packages for people.

  She knocked on the door, calling him again. When there was no answer, she tried the knob—the door was unlocked. Maybe he’d just run to the bathroom. He should have locked the office, but Juliet wasn’t about to rat him out. She pushed open the door, just to make sure he wasn’t in there with headphones on or passed out drunk or ill, although he’d so far proved himself ultra-responsible and in good health.

  The door struck something—his foot—and Juliet immediately saw that he was sprawled facedown on the floor. “Juan!” But she took in the blood pooling on the polished floor, the unnatural angle of his neck, and even as she grimaced at
the certainty that this friendly man was dead, murdered, she drew her Glock.

  Tatro.

  In all likelihood, Juan—she didn’t even know his last name—was dead because of her.

  Knowing she couldn’t think about that now, Juliet got her cell phone out of her jacket with her free hand and hit the automatic dial for Tony Cipriani’s direct line.

  “Cip—it’s Juliet. I’m in the lobby of my apartment building. My doorman’s had his throat slit.” She pushed back her emotion and focused on what she had to do. “It can’t have happened that long ago.”

  “I’m on my way. I’ll notify NYPD.”

  “Rivera—”

  “He’s standing right here. I’m handing him the phone. I’ll use another line.”

  No matter how long she stayed in law enforcement, Juliet doubted she’d ever get used to what horrors some people inflicted on their fellow human beings for profit, revenge, fun—or the plain old hell of it.

  She glanced at the elevator and saw the light above it indicating it was on her floor.

  Not moving.

  “Wendy. Oh, God.”

  “Longstreet?” It was Rivera’s voice.

  “I can’t wait for Cip or NYPD, Mike. I think Tatro’s in the building. He could be in my apartment. If my niece is up there—”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Go. Keep the line open.”

  Juliet dropped the phone into her pocket and left poor Juan where he was. She took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, then ducked through a fire door. No more open, elegant stairs. They were metal now, functional. She moved quickly, quietly, not wanting to draw any attention to herself, have neighbors poking their heads out of their doors or calling down to Juan to find out what was going on.

  When she reached her floor, she let the fire door shut soundlessly behind her. The hall was empty. She headed for her apartment, passing the elevator, which was jammed open, keeping it on her floor. The killer’s escape route, she thought. He’d take the elevator down to the lobby or the basement or up to the roof, depending on how much time he had—whether the body in the lobby had been discovered and the police were there or on the way.