by Stuart Woods
“I’ll want to hear that from them,” Stone said.
“Of course,” she replied, then went back to staring at her food.
“I think you should look sooner, rather than later,” Stone said. “I’ve looked at the Yale website, and starting in May, housing begins to disappear fast.”
“We could take the train up there one day and have a look around,” Peter said.
“You forget,” Ben interjected, “I have a driver’s license.”
“All right,” Dino said, “you can take my car. If you were seen on campus in that tank of Stone’s, you’d ruin your reputations. I think you should stay overnight in a hotel, too. Hattie can have her own room and you and Peter can bunk together.”
“Sounds good,” Peter said.
“Yes, fine,” Hattie echoed. Everybody stopped talking again.
“When do you want to go up there?” Stone asked.
“I don’t know,” Peter said, “maybe in two or three weeks?”
More silence. Stone gave up.
Peter took Hattie home in a cab. “Tomorrow, after school,” he said.
“Right,” she replied. “We can play hooky one day for the procedure.”
They kissed, and she went inside.
Stone heard Peter come in, and he went to the boy’s room and sat down. “How are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess,” Peter replied. “How about you?”
“I think we’re both still pretty shaken up,” Stone said.
“I think you’re right,” Peter said. “I never expected anything like this to happen. I thought you and Mom would grow old together.”
“We thought so, too,” Stone said.
“Have they caught the architect guy yet?”
“Not yet,” Stone said. He told Peter about the call from the sheriff. “They’ll get him, don’t worry.”
“Then there’ll be a trial, right?”
“Yes, there will.”
“And you and I and Hattie will have to testify?”
“Maybe not all of us; maybe I can do it alone. That will depend on the district attorney’s case.”
“Nobody actually saw him there, did they?” Peter asked.
“No.”
“And his fingerprints weren’t on the shotgun.”
“No.”
“So what evidence do they have against him?”
“It sounds as though it would be circumstantial.”
“Does that mean there’s less of a chance of conviction?”
“Not necessarily. The man did run, after all, and took all his money with him. That’s damning. If he did it, he won’t have an alibi, unless someone is willing to lie for him.”
“Would someone do that?”
“It sometimes happens,” Stone said.
David Rutledge got home from work and found Kelli sitting at the dining table, tapping away on her laptop. She had been living with him since they got back from Virginia.
“How’s your piece going?” he asked, kissing the top of her head.
“It’s practically writing itself,” she said.
“Drink?”
“Please. Scotch.”
David went to the built-in bar and poured them both one. He brought the drinks back to the table and set them down. “Good news. We had to pull a piece, so we’re running the Virginia spread in the next issue.”
“The one that closed today?”
“Yep.”
“That’s wonderful!”
The phone rang. David walked into the living area and picked up the extension on the coffee table. “Hello?”
“Listen carefully,” a familiar voice said. “Are you alone?”
“No,” David replied.
“I’m around the corner from your apartment in a bar. You know the place?”
David identified the voice now. “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to come in. Be there in ten.” He hung up.
“Be where?” Kelli asked.
“At the office. I forgot to check some pages before I left, and we have to go to press tonight. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“You want me to cook dinner?” she asked.
“Can you actually do that?” he asked back. She never had before.
“I can make very respectable spaghetti Bolognese,” she said.
“Okay, I’m game,” he said, putting his coat on. “I’ll pick up some Alka-Seltzer on the way home.”
She threw a pencil at him.
“You need anything else?”
“You can pick up a head of romaine lettuce and some bread,” she said.
“Okay.” He closed the door behind him and got on the big freight elevator.
David walked into the bar and spotted the back of his cousin’s head immediately, in a booth at the rear. He shucked off his coat, hung it on a hook, and sat down. “Hello, Tim,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m doing here?”
A waitress came, and David ordered a scotch. “You’re running, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t do it,” Tim said.
David said nothing.
“They’re trying to hang it on me, though.”
“Who’s trying?”
“The sheriff, the university—everybody.”
“If you didn’t do it, why did you run?”
“I didn’t have a chance. I got a call from somebody who told me she was dead. It was the first I knew of it.”
“Who called you?”
“You don’t want to know that,” Tim replied. “It’s better if you don’t.”
“All right.”
“Will you help me, David? You’re all I’ve got.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Can you put me up for a few days, until things cool down and I can move around more freely?”
“I can’t, Tim; my girlfriend has moved in with me, and she works for the New York Post.”
“Oh, Jesus, don’t tell her anything, then.”
“I don’t know anything,” David said. “Do you need money?”
“No, I’m okay there.”
“Then I suggest you move into a hotel. Not near here, please; uptown somewhere.”
“Can you suggest a place?”
“No, I’m not going to suggest anything, Tim. I won’t go to jail for you.”
“I just got into town; I haven’t found a place yet. Do you know a hotel called—”
David stopped him with an upraised hand. “I don’t want to know the name,” he said.
Tim took a cell phone from his pocket and pushed it across the table. “I bought two of these,” he said. “They’re untraceable.” He handed David a card. “Here’s my number.”
David looked at the phone for a long moment, then he put it and the card into a pocket.
“It’s set on vibrate, and the voice mail is already set up, so we can leave messages.”
“Do you know a lawyer in Virginia, Tim? A criminal lawyer?”
“No. I mean, I have an attorney, but he doesn’t have a criminal practice.”
“Call him on your new cell phone and ask him to recommend one, then go back to Virginia and let him turn you in to the sheriff. That’s your best move, Tim, believe me.”
Tim nodded. “I’ll do that in a few days,” he said. “There’s something else I have to do first, then I’ll go back to Charlottesville.”
“What do you have to do here?” David asked, curious in spite of himself.
“It’s better you don’t know,” Tim said, setting down his glass. “I’ll leave first; finish your drink before you go home.” He put a twenty on the table, got up, got into his coat, and left.
David took ten minutes to finish his scotch, then got into his coat and went to the neighborhood deli for the lettuce and bread.
God, David thought as he walked home, I wish he hadn’t called.
57
Kelli Keane arrived at work and immediately went to see Prunella Wheaton.
She placed her manuscript and copies of the photos she wanted to use on her desk, then plopped herself down.
Prunie handed her a cup of coffee. “First draft?” she asked.
“Final draft, before I send it,” Kelli replied.
Prunie picked up the piece and began to read. Kelli finished her coffee and tiptoed around the desk for another cup, not wishing to disturb her mentor. She hadn’t expected Prunie to read the whole thing at once.
Prunie finished, and restacked the sheets on her desk.
Kelli waited, holding her breath.
“Comprehensive,” Prunie said.
Kelli flinched. That was it? She had worked her ass off on that piece.
“Concise, highly readable—in fact, unputdownable. Excellent.”
Kelli let out her breath. “What a relief!” she said.
“Did you think I wouldn’t like it?”
“I hoped you would.”
“You’ve done an outstanding job. It covers all the bases, doesn’t criticize anybody, and, I assume, it’s accurate.”
“I can back up every statement in it.”
“I like the photographs, too, particularly the one of the corpse in the hall with a foot sticking out from under the blanket.”
“That was as close as I could get,” Kelli said.
“You didn’t quote Barrington on anything.”
“He wouldn’t talk to me.”
“And the shot of the boy and girl consoling each other was perfect. You didn’t use her name in the piece.”
“I don’t know her name,” Kelli lied, “but I’m not sure I would have run it anyway. She’s a high school kid, and I don’t think anyone will recognize her from that shot.”
“That’s very sensitive of you,” Prunie said.
“Who should I send it to at Vanity Fair? Graydon Carter?”
“No, don’t jump the line. Let me send it to a senior editor I know, and if she likes it she’ll send it to the executive literary editor, and if he likes it, he’ll send it to Graydon. That way, everybody gets credit for liking it.”
“That sounds smart.”
“I assume you have another copy?”
“In my computer.”
Prunie typed a letter to the Vanity Fair editor on her personal stationery, then wrote a name and address on a slip of paper and handed it to Kelli. “Messenger it over, and don’t use a Post messenger. There’s a service downstairs in the building, and keep a receipt. I assume you didn’t write any of this at your desk here?”
“No, I did it all at home, and on my personal computer. And I gave the initial story about the killing to the paper.”
“Good. Now get going.”
Kelli downed the rest of her coffee, went back to her desk, found a non-Post envelope, took the package downstairs, and shipped it.
Tim Rutledge checked out of the New Jersey motel where he had stayed the night and drove into Manhattan. He dropped his luggage, except for one bag, at a small hotel on West Forty-fourth Street, parked his car in the Hippodrome Garage, then walked the block back to the hotel, carrying his largest duffel.
He checked into the hotel, having earlier phoned a reservation, and a bellman took him upstairs to his room. It was of a decent size, decently furnished, with a flat-screen TV, a comfortable bed, and chair. He unpacked his clothes, then opened the large duffel.
He removed and put away the clothes in that bag, then put on a pair of latex gloves from a box he had bought at a drugstore, then finally took from the duffel an elongated package, wrapped in sturdy brown paper and packing tape. Using his pocketknife, he cut away the paper at one end, then shook the contents out onto his bed.
The contents consisted of a used, 12-gauge Remington police riot gun, with a truncated, eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel. He had bought it from an individual at a gun show in Virginia, before he had driven north out of the state. He found the box of double-ought shells he had bought. And loaded the weapon, leaving the chamber empty. He wouldn’t need more than one or two rounds, he figured.
He took some tissues and wiped the shotgun clean of any stray prints that might have found their way to it, then returned the loaded weapon to its paper wrapping, now a sheath, from which he would fire it. Therefore, there would be no gunpowder residue on his hands or clothing, and, of course, no fingerprints on the shotgun or the shells. When he had completed his mission, he would dispose of the weapon in a dumpster at some construction site and it would vanish into a landfill somewhere.
Should the shotgun ever be found, it could not be traced to him. His mission satisfactorily completed, he would then drive his car to California. He had always wanted to drive across the United States, and, with his new and quite legal passport and Virginia driver’s license, obtained a few weeks ago, he would be safe from an unexpected arrest. He had already begun to grow a beard, and it was looking quite attractive, he thought.
After a look at California he would drive across the border to Tijuana, and thence down to Baja, where he would, eventually, move the funds he had mailed to a bank in the Cayman Islands to a neighborhood Mexican bank, then buy a little house.
He would then begin his new career as a novelist, the mysterious E. Gifford, and he just knew he would be successful at it.
Kelli had just left the Post building for the day when her cell phone buzzed. “Hello?”
“Kelli Keane?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“This is Karen Kohler at Vanity Fair. Prunie Wheaton sent me your manuscript this morning.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Everybody here loves it,” she said. “I walked it through the office, and nobody could put it down. We just had to cancel a piece in the next issue that couldn’t pass fact-checking, so we can slip it right in, instead of waiting for the usual two or three months.”
“Wonderful!”
“Do you have an agent?”
Kelli gave her the name and phone number.
“Well, assuming we can make a deal, and if the piece gets through fact-checking with no major changes, you’ll see it in the next issue.”
“That’s great news, Karen,” Kelli said.
“There’s one more thing we need, though.”
“What’s that?”
“A decent photograph of this suspect, Tim Rutledge. A head shot will do, but get the best one you can.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Kelli said.
“I’ll call you in a day or two to come over here so we can go through the fact-checking and my notes. Can you bring your laptop and make any changes on the spot?”
“Sure, I can.”
“I’ll be in touch, then.” The woman hung up.
Kelli flung herself in front of a taxi and headed for home. She couldn’t wait to tell David.
58
Peter met Hattie after school, and they walked down to Second Avenue and got a cab uptown. He took her hand. “Are you still sure this is what you want to do?”
“Are you against it?” she asked, looking alarmed.
“No. If it’s what you want, I’m all for it. I just want to be sure you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” she said.
They got out at the corner nearest the clinic and walked upstairs. There was a friendly-looking waiting room with landscapes on the walls and current magazines, not all of them for women. Hattie gave the assumed name she was using to the receptionist and came and sat next to Peter.
“I’ve got the titles finished and in the movie,” he said. “It’s as good as it’s ever going to be now.” He told her this to keep her mind off where she was.
“That’s wonderful. What are you going to do with it?”
“Nothing, just yet. Dad thinks I should wait a couple of years before submitting it to anyone.”
“Why?”
“He thinks the publicity it might produce wouldn’t be a good thing for me right now.”
“I’m not sure he’s right,” Hattie said. “The Sundance festival is soon, and I think your film o
ught to be in it. If you wait a couple of years, someone else might do a similar film, and that would take away from yours.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Peter said.
“Anyway, you’ll be at Yale by the time the film gets released, and that’s a kind of insulation.”
“You could be right,” Peter said. “I’ll talk to Dad about it.”
“Miss Springer?” a woman’s voice said.
Hattie didn’t react until Peter squeezed her hand.
“Oh, yes,” she said, standing up.
“Please follow me.”
Hattie kissed Peter on the forehead and followed the woman from the room.
Peter sat and thought about what Hattie had said, and he realized that sending the completed film to Centurion would be an enormous relief to him. It was the natural thing to do after completing the work. He began to think about the details of doing that.
Kelli Keane arrived at the Condé Nast building and found the floor for Vanity Fair. Karen Kohler appeared in reception, shook her hand, gave her a broad smile, and took her to her office in the editorial department.
“Now,” Karen said, sitting behind her desk and waving Kelli to a seat, “here are my notes.” She handed Kelli a neatly typed sheet of paper.
Kelli read them. “I’ve no problem with any of these,” she said. “I can fix them in ten minutes.”
“Good. Now, there’s one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“There seems to be a discrepancy in the age of Arrington’s son, Peter. She and Vance Calder were married about seventeen years ago. How could they have an eighteen-year-old son? They hadn’t even met until she did the New Yorker profile on Vance.”
“I believe the boy is Stone Barrington’s son. They were seeing each other before she met Vance. I have a copy of the boy’s birth certificate from L.A., showing him to be eighteen, and Barrington is listed as the father.”
“Both Arrington and Stone were New Yorkers,” Karen said. “Why would she have her child in L.A.?”
“I haven’t been able to nail that down,” Kelli replied, “and believe me, I pulled out all the stops. I’d like that part of the piece to remain the same, because it reflects the information I have confirmed, not what I’m guessing. Also, I don’t want to embarrass an eighteen-year-old boy by discussing his parentage in a national magazine. To be clear, I’ll put it this way: I won’t give you the piece, if that’s what you want to do.”