He turned to OLIVIA FISHER. “You had your whole life ahead of you. Just finishing up school, ready to fly on your own. Whoever did this to you, he didn’t just take you away from me. He killed your mother, too. It just took longer where she was concerned. It was a broken heart that caused her cancer. I know it. And I guess, if a broken heart can kill ya, he’ll get me eventually, too. Of course, it wasn’t just him that broke my heart. There’s plenty of blame to go around. Truth is, I’m guessing it won’t be all that long before I’m joining you. Soon we’ll all be together again, and you know, it takes away the fear of dying. It really does. I’m almost to the point where I can get up in the morning and say, If it happens today, that’s okay. I’m ready.”
Walden Fisher put both hands on his raised knee, pushed himself back into a standing position.
“I’m gonna keep coming to visit,” he told them. “Long as I’m still breathin’, I’ll be up here.”
He put the tips of his fingers to his lips, then touched his wife’s headstone. Repeated the process for his daughter.
Walden turned and walked slowly back to his van.
FIFTY-ONE
SEEING no cars in the distance in either direction, and confident that there would be none for the next couple of minutes, Jack Sturgess and Bill Gaynor dragged Marshall Kemper’s body out of his van and into the forest. He weighed about two hundred pounds, but he felt like a lot more than that to the two men, who were, at this stage of their lives, unaccustomed to what amounted to manual labor.
“My hands are killing me,” Gaynor said. “I haven’t dug a hole since I was in my teens.”
“You should have brought gloves,” Sturgess said.
“I would have, if you’d told me before we left what it was you had planned for me to do.”
“Maybe when I asked you to bring a shovel, that should have been a clue.”
Once they had Kemper into the woods, and out of sight in case anyone drove by, they dropped him and caught their breath. The grave Gaynor had dug was another twenty yards in.
“I want to know who this son of a bitch is,” Sturgess said, and knelt down, careful not to touch the knees of his pants to the forest floor, and worked the dead man’s wallet out of his back pocket. “It said Kemper on the ownership. But if that isn’t his van, he could have been lying.”
He examined a driver’s license. “Okay, that’s good. Marshall Kemper. Address matches the ownership. You ever heard of this guy?”
“What was the first name again?”
“Marshall.”
Gaynor thought a moment. “I think I may have heard Sarita talk about him. To Rose. A boyfriend or something.”
For the third time since Sturgess had stuck the needle into the man’s neck, the dead man’s cell phone rang. Sturgess dug into his pocket, found the device, studied it.
“Stemple,” he said.
“What?” said Gaynor.
“That’s who’s trying to call him. Stemple.”
“It could be Sarita,” Gaynor said. “She doesn’t own a cell phone. She uses other people’s phones.”
The phone continued to ring in Sturgess’s hand. “Maybe I should answer it, ask her if she’s where Kemper said she is.”
“I guess you could. . . .”
“A joke,” Sturgess said.
“I don’t see much very funny about this.”
Sturgess powered the phone off, tucked it into his own pocket. “We don’t want anyone doing any triangulating,” he said. “I’ll turn it back on later, far from here, then ditch it.”
“With the van?” Gaynor asked.
That had been why Sturgess needed someone else along. He couldn’t have done this alone. He needed another driver, so Kemper’s van wouldn’t be left sitting here and lead the police to his body.
“Whose property is this?” Gaynor asked. “Who’s Boone?”
“Patient of mine,” he said. “Taylor Boone. Rich old guy, got a nice house way up that lane, up top of a hill. Beautiful view.”
“How the hell do you know he’s not going to turn in that drive any second now?”
“I picked this spot because I know Taylor’s off in Europe right now, and because this is as good a place as any to get rid of him.”
Gaynor looked down at the dead man. “What the hell did you inject him with?”
“Are you writing a report?” Sturgess said. “It did the job. Come on; we have to get this done, then go find your nanny.”
“I’m gonna be sick,” he said. And then he was, violently.
“That’s great,” Sturgess said. “Litter the scene with your DNA. Cover that mess up with some dirt.”
“I don’t know if I can do this. I just don’t know.”
“You need me to remind you what we’d have been facing if everything came out? Disgrace would be the least of it. Jail time, more than likely. And now, well, we’d hardly get off with a slap on the wrist now, would we?”
“I’m not the one who gave him a fatal injection.”
“That’s right,” Sturgess said. “You’re an innocent bystander. Grab his legs.”
The doctor got Kemper under the arms. The man was heavy, and they couldn’t help dragging his butt across the forest floor. When they reached the hole, they heaved the body in. A shovel was sticking out of the dirt pile next to it.
“Okay, fill it in,” Sturgess said.
“You,” he said. “I told you, my hands are raw.”
Sturgess took two handkerchiefs from his suit jacket, wrapped them around his hands, and took a turn with the shovel.
“We can’t do this to Sarita,” said Gaynor.
“No one said we had to,” Sturgess said. “I’m sure we can talk some sense into her.”
“Like you tried with this guy?”
“He was blackmailing you. Some people can’t be reasoned with.”
“I can’t believe Sarita put him up to this. She’s a decent person.”
Sturgess stopped shoveling to catch his breath. “Really? And look at the shitstorm she’s brought down on you. On us.”
“We don’t know for sure it was her,” Gaynor said.
“Who else could it be? Who else could have known? More than once, when you and I were having a conversation at your house, I’d come out a door and there she was. She’s all ears, that woman. She’s a sneak.”
Sturgess shook his head tiredly, and tossed the shovel at Gaynor, who fumbled the catch. The tool landed in the dirt. Sturgess offered the two handkerchiefs.
“These’ll help.”
Gaynor wrapped them around his palms. “How does a guy like you become a doctor?”
“I help people,” he said. “I’ve always helped people. I helped you and Rosemary. I’ve dedicated my life to helping people.”
Gaynor continued to throw dirt onto Marshall Kemper. Once the body was fully covered, he patted down the earth with the back of the shovel. Sturgess walked across the grave, compressing the dirt.
“We need to pull some brush over this, too,” he said.
Both of them worked at that.
Gaynor suddenly stopped, raised his head, like a deer sensing an approaching hunter. “Wait, I think I heard something.”
Sturgess held his breath, listened. In the distance, the sound of a baby crying.
“It’s Matthew,” Gaynor said. “He must have woke up.”
They’d driven out here in Gaynor’s Audi. Since he still had no one to look after his son, he’d brought him along, and Sturgess didn’t have a child safety seat in the back of his Cadillac. The car was parked a hundred feet farther up the driveway, where it bore left and disappeared behind the trees.
“He’s probably hungry,” the father said.
Sturgess sighed. “Go—go look after your boy. Take the shovel, throw it in the trunk. I’ll catch up.”
It had crossed his mind earlier to take the shovel himself and hit Gaynor across the head with it. He could have tossed him into the grave along with Kemper. But then he’d have had the problem of how to get the Audi, and the van, away from here.
Not to mention the problem of what to do with the baby.
That goddamn baby.
He would have to watch Bill Gaynor closely. See if he came to present the same level of risk that this dead-and-buried asshole had. Yes, they’d been friends a very long time, but when it came to saving your own neck, you did what you had to do.
And it wasn’t just his neck, either.
But the more immediate problem was Sarita. Once she’d been dealt with, Sturgess could decide what to do about the poor grieving husband.
FIFTY-TWO
David
AS I drove away from Sam’s place, I decided to try again to find Marshall Kemper or, even better, Sarita Gomez. Maybe someone would come to the door of his place this time.
On the way, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened, about what I might be getting myself into. I didn’t need my life to be any more complicated, and Sam Worthington was definitely a complication.
Any other man who’d just had impulsive, spontaneous sex with a woman he barely knew—and at her kitchen table, no less—might be feeling pretty full of himself. Ain’t I somethin’? And who knew? Maybe this was the start of something. Maybe this rough, animalistic act was the beginning of an actual relationship. Maybe, out of this what some might call sordid encounter, something pretty decent might emerge. Granted, it might not be the sort of story you’d share with your grandkids one day, but hey, it was the kind of memory, when you called it up, someone might ask why you had that stupid grin all over your face.
Except it wasn’t in my nature to see the glass as half-full. Not after the kinds of things I’d been through in recent years. I had more than enough to deal with at the moment: raising Ethan on my own, starting a new job, living with my parents. I was hoping that working for Finley, even if it didn’t last forever—God forbid—would allow me to rent a place for Ethan and myself. It’d be an interim step to finding us another house.
The one thing I didn’t need to bring into the mix was a relationship. Especially not one with a woman who had as many problems going on in her life as I did. Arguably more.
And yet, sometimes we do stupid things. Some needs blind us to reason.
Maybe Sam had been thinking the same thing. As I was leaving, she’d said, “That was nice. We might do that again sometime.”
Not, Call me. Not, What are you doing this weekend? Not, Would you like to come over for dinner tonight?
Maybe she figured getting involved with me would screw up her life, too. I was reminded of what my father had said. What, exactly, did I have to offer, anyway?
And yet, as I headed for Kemper’s address, I found myself wondering when the wifi at Sam’s house might kick out again.
I decided this time not to park right out front. I pulled over and stopped the car three houses this side of Kemper’s apartment. I had a good view, although I couldn’t see in the windows to tell whether anyone was walking around in there.
There was still no other car parked out front, so Kemper was probably out somewhere. I could sit here in my mother’s Taurus awhile and hope he showed up.
Do some thinking.
It had been half a decade since Jan had died, and yet there wasn’t a day I did not think about her. To say my emotions were mixed was to put it lightly. I’d loved Jan once. A love so great it ached. But those aches had eventually mutated into something very different, something bordering on poisonous. Jan had never been who she claimed to be, and it made everything I’d once felt for her false in retrospect.
I was a different man now. More cautious, less foolish. Or so I’d thought. Maybe the way to handle things with Sam was—
I’d have to put that thought on hold.
A door was opening. But wait, it wasn’t Kemper’s apartment; it was the place where the old woman lived.
Someone was stepping outside. Maybe the old woman was coming out for a breath of fresh air.
Except it wasn’t her.
It was a much younger woman. Late twenties, early thirties, I guessed. Slim, about five-four, with black hair. Dressed in jeans and a green pullover top. A friend of the old woman’s, I figured. A care worker of some kind, maybe.
I thought she’d start walking down to the road, but instead she took a few steps over to the door of Marshall Kemper’s apartment. She used a key to open it and disappeared inside.
I’d never seen a picture of Sarita Gomez, but I was betting I’d found her.
I had my hand on the door handle, preparing to get out, when a cab drove past me and stopped out front of Kemper’s place. Seconds later, the apartment door opened and Sarita reappeared, pulling behind her a medium-size suitcase on wheels. The cabdriver popped the trunk, put the bag in for her, but let Sarita handle the rear passenger door herself. The man got back behind the wheel, and the tires kicked up gravel as he sped off.
“Shit,” I said, and turned the key.
The cab was heading back into downtown Promise Falls and came to a stop outside the bus terminal. I pulled to the curb and watched as Sarita got out, handed the driver some cash, then waited for him to haul her bag out of the trunk. Dragging it behind her, she entered the terminal.
I got out of the car and ran.
The Promise Falls bus terminal is hardly Grand Central. Inside, it’s about the size of a school classroom, with two ticket windows at one end and an electronic schedule board overhead. The rest is filled with the kind of chairs you’d find in a hospital emergency room.
The woman I’d followed was at the ticket booth. I went and stood behind her, looking like the next in line, close enough to hear the conversation.
“I want to buy a ticket to New York,” she said.
The man behind the glass said she could buy the entire ticket now, but she would have to change buses in Albany.
“Okay,” she said. “When does the bus leave for Albany?”
The man glanced at a computer monitor angled off to one side. “Thirty-five minutes,” he told her.
She handed over some more cash, took her ticket. When she turned around she jumped, evidently unaware someone was behind her.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said. I let her wheel her bag past my toes, then stepped up to the window.
“Help ya?” the ticket agent said.
I paused, then said, “Never mind.”
I turned around and spotted the woman, sitting in the far corner of the room, as if trying to make herself invisible, which was not easy, since there were only half a dozen people here waiting to catch a bus.
I walked over and took a seat two over from her, leaving the one between us empty. I took out my phone, leaned over, my elbows rested on my knees, and opened up an app at random.
Without looking in her direction, I said, “You must be Sarita.”
I sensed her stir suddenly. “What did you say?”
This time I turned, sitting up at the same time. I could see fear in her eyes. “I said, you must be Sarita. Sarita Gomez.”
Her eyes darted about the room. I could guess what she was thinking. Who was I? Was I alone? Was I a cop? Should she try to run?
I said, “I’m not with the police. My name’s David. David Harwood.”
“You are wrong,” she said. “I am not whoever you said. My name is Carla.”
“I don’t think so. I think you’re Sarita. I think you worked for the Gaynors. And I think you’ve been hiding out with Marshall Kemper the last couple of days, and are now looking to get out of Dodge.”
“Dodge?” she said.
“You want to disappear.”
“I told y
ou, I am not that person.”
“I’m Marla Pickens’s cousin. I don’t know if that name means anything to you, but the Gaynors’ baby was left on her doorstep two days ago. The police think she stole the baby, and probably killed Rosemary Gaynor in the process.”
“She did it before,” the woman whispered.
I leaned in. “She never killed anyone.”
“But she took a baby,” she said quietly. “At the hospital.”
“You know about that.”
The woman nodded. She was glancing at the door.
“You are Sarita.”
Her eyes landed on mine. “I am Sarita,” she said.
“Would you like to tell me what you know, or would you like me to call the police?”
“Please do not call the police. They’ll either send me home, or find a reason to put me in jail.”
“Then why don’t we talk,” I said. “I’ve got a feeling you may be able to explain a lot of things.”
“Quickly,” she said. “I will tell you quickly, so I do not miss my bus.”
I shook my head sadly. “You’re not making that bus, Sarita. It’s just not going to happen.”
FIFTY-THREE
ARLENE Harwood had decided on pork chops for dinner and wondered whether Don would like rice or mashed potatoes with them. She even had some sweet potatoes in the fridge, which Don was not all that crazy about, but would tolerate once in a while, just so long as she put enough butter on them, and maybe even a sprinkling of brown sugar. She was pretty sure Ethan didn’t like sweet potatoes, but she could do up a baked potato for him, or throw some frozen french fries into the oven.
It was nice having all these men around. She knew David wanted to move out as soon as he could, and take Ethan with him, of course. It was the right thing to do. But she was enjoying having them here in the meantime.
She went into the living room, thinking her husband might have fallen asleep in the recliner, but he wasn’t there. Her leg was really hurting today after her stumble on the stairs the day before, so she didn’t want to have to trek up to the second floor to search for him. So she went to the foot of the stairs and shouted his name, speculating that he was in the bathroom, extending his stay because he’d found something interesting to read in National Geographic.
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