Nowhere to Run

by Mary Jane Clark

  She was running too fast, trying to do too much, and she knew it. That’s when your family life suffered because your husband and children were neglected. That’s when your professional life became unhinged. That’s when you made mistakes.

  Annabelle took the elevator to go back upstairs. One floor up, the car stopped and Gavin Winston got on beside her.

  “Watch out, Annabelle. Big Brother’s watching,” the gray-haired correspondent grumbled. “Yelena is scouring our e-mails.”

  “No way,” Annabelle gasped, unbelieving. The invasion of privacy was too disgusting to digest. “What are you talking about, Gavin?”

  “I don’t want to get into the specifics,” he said shortly, “but be forewarned. Your e-mails aren’t private.”

  If Gavin was right, KEY News wasn’t the place she hoped it was. As she got off the elevator, Annabelle tried to remember if she had sent any e-mails that she wouldn’t want others to read. She must have.

  Chapter 127

  As she scanned the inside of the blue van, Annabelle was disappointed but not surprised. While most of the seats were occupied, the riders were almost all people she recognized as cafeteria or maintenance workers. The only other news staffers who were bothering to attend Edgar’s service were Constance and Yelena. The three of them sat together in seats at the front.

  The van turned from Fifty-seventh Street onto the ramp for the West Side Highway and inched along in the rush-hour traffic going north toward the George Washington Bridge. While their destination was only ten miles away, as the crow flies, they’d need most of the allotted hour for travel time.

  The conversation turned to the latest anthrax developments. Annabelle recounted her visit to Maplewood and confided the information she had gotten from the baby-sitter.

  “Well, that’s something that really might help the police,” Yelena said, her eyebrow arching.

  Annabelle nodded. “I went down to tell Joe Connelly, but I missed him. Don’t worry, though. I’ll make sure I get the information to him.”

  The velvet-padded pews of Calvary Baptist Church were packed for Edgar Rivers’s Going Home Celebration, a testimony to the life and faith of a hardworking, hard-praying man.

  Women dressed in white uniforms and caps, looking more like nurses than ushers, stood at the back of the church and escorted mourners up the right aisle to view the open casket, which was positioned directly below the pulpit. Annabelle said a silent prayer as she gazed down at Edgar, his face serene now, his still hands folded across his chest. As she turned and walked past the front pew, Annabelle recognized the woman and the two little boys who had come to visit Edgar in the cafeteria the morning that turned out to be the last day of Edgar Rivers’s life. Was that only Friday? It seemed like such a long time ago. The woman looked up and smiled with sadness as her red-rimmed eyes met Annabelle’s.

  “Please be seated. The service is about to begin,” whispered one of the ushers. Annabelle, Constance, and Yelena were directed down the left aisle to a half-full pew near the back of the church. As she took her seat, Annabelle heard a disturbing cranking sound; the pillow that propped up Edgar’s head was being lowered and the coffin being closed.

  The organist began to play. Annabelle counted the twenty-six choir members, dressed in blue-and-white robes, who stood in three tiers at the right front of the church, their beautiful voices raised in song. Readings from scripture were interspersed with spirited choral salutes. The black-robed minister mounted the pulpit, high above the congregation at the center of attention.

  “Edgar Rivers was a good man, a kind man, a giving man, devoted to his sister, Ruby, and her boys, Freddie and Willie. Let me hear an Amen,” the preacher encouraged.

  “Amen,” came the shouts from the pews.

  “Brother Edgar was a hardworking man, a churchgoing man, a God-loving man.”

  “That’s right,” one of the choristers agreed. “Alleluia.”

  Perspiring in November, the minister wiped his brow with a black terry washcloth as he poured his heart and soul into the sermon. The eulogy continued in a rising synergy, the minister and the congregation each energized by the other.

  As the service concluded, Annabelle listened to the soloist who stepped forward to sing the verse of a song she’d never heard before. The chorus and the congregation, their bodies swaying left and right, and hands clapping to the beat, answered with the uplifting, promising response of “He’s an On Time God.”

  Annabelle couldn’t help but wonder where God had been when Edgar met his end. He must have been running behind schedule. Come to think of it, where had God been lately? Jerome’s death, anthrax, September 11, Mike’s depression. Annabelle wanted to believe that God would be there “right on time,” but that was a tough sell right now.

  Edgar’s sister and her sons were standing in the church vestibule, greeting people and accepting condolences. Annabelle introduced herself.

  “Yes, I remember you. You’re the nice lady from the cafeteria. Edgar told me that morning that you were one of the few people who gave him the time of day.”

  Feeling embarrassed and wanting to put a better face on her colleagues, Annabelle hastily continued with introductions. “This is Constance Young,” she said, as Ruby extended her hand to the KTA host.

  “Oh yes. I recognize you.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Constance answered. “We’ll miss Edgar. He was a very nice person to have around every day.”

  Ruby’s dark eyes glistened. “Don’t I know that. I don’t know what my boys and I are going to do without him.”

  There was an uneasy pause.

  Annabelle stepped in to fill the gap. “And this is Yelena Gregory, the president of KEY News. She had a van chartered to bring the people up here from the Broadcast Center today.”

  “Thank you for coming. That was very nice of you,” Ruby responded, turning to Yelena. “With all those budget cuts Edgar was always talking about, it was very nice of you to do that. And thank you for sending the flowers.”

  “It was the least we could do,” said Yelena.

  As the KEY newswomen began to move away, Ruby turned to Annabelle. “Will you be able to come to the graveside service tomorrow morning?” she asked.

  Annabelle hadn’t been planning on it. “At what time?” she asked politely.

  “Nine o’clock, right here in the cemetery behind the church.”

  “I’m so sorry, but I don’t think so. I have to be at work then. I hope you understand. It’s hard to get away in the mornings.”

  “Sure, I understand,” said Ruby, looking disappointed. “It’s hard to get away.”

  Chapter 128

  By the time the van had dropped everyone back at the Broadcast Center and Annabelle splurged on a cab to take her down to the Village, stopping to get the pumpkin pie the twins needed for the class Thanksgiving party, it was after nine o’clock. When she walked in the front door, the apartment was quiet. The kids were already in bed, and Mike was sleeping on the couch in the living room.

  Annabelle hung her beaver jacket on the back of the kitchen chair, kicked off her shoes, and opened the refrigerator. The sparsely occupied shelves were a reminder that she had to get to the market tomorrow and do some real shopping. The day before Thanksgiving would be a zoo at the grocery store.

  Deciding to scramble some eggs, she pulled the frying pan from the drawer. The clatter of pans woke Mike, who walked into the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “How was the funeral?”

  Annabelle whisked the eggs in a mixing bowl. “Actually, very nice as those things go. It had lots of spirit to it.” She poured the yellow mixture into the pan. “How was your day?”

  “Okay, but I’m beat for some reason. I couldn’t even muster the energy to give the kids a bath tonight.”

  Annabelle looked at her husband with concern.

  “You should take it easy, Mike. You don’t want to over
do it.” She kissed him on the cheek. “And don’t worry about the baths. The kids can live for one night without them.”

  “I’ll be right behind you, sweetheart,” said Annabelle as she set the frying pan in the sink to soak. “I’m just going to wipe up around here and then I’m turning in early too.”

  She watched as Mike walked to the bedroom, hoping he wasn’t slipping backwards again. With all that had been happening at work, maybe she had been putting too much pressure on him, thrusting the child care on him too quickly. Tomorrow would be better, she resolved. She would come right home after work and a quick-as-possible trip to the supermarket.

  The kitchen straightened, Annabelle switched off the overhead fixture and headed toward the twins’ room. As she stood in the doorway, the light from the hallway cast a soft glow on their peaceful faces. For the umpteenth time, her heart filled with the love and wonder of having them and ached at the fact that she hadn’t even spoken to her children today. They’d been asleep when she left in the morning, and they were asleep now.

  She tiptoed inside and kissed Tara on the forehead, tucking the covers around her little body. Thomas was sucking his thumb again, Annabelle observed with resignation, as she gently pulled his soft hand away from his mouth.

  Annabelle didn’t see the other hand, warm beneath the covers, or the small black lesion that grew on the tip of one of Thomas’s fingers.

  Chapter 129

  He liked working the night shift, and he liked having his master key. He could snoop around to his heart’s content. Sometimes there were prizes ripe for the picking. He rationalized that the office supplies he filched supplemented the measly salary he was earning for the unpleasant job of cleaning up after other people’s messes. At least KEY was paying for the notebooks and pens and folders that his kids used at school.

  He pushed his garbage container down the long ramp, stopping at a closet he hadn’t tried before. He unlocked the heavy door and felt for the light switch.

  “Hey, look at all this old Olympic stuff.”

  The custodian dug through the pile of baseball caps and T-shirts in the cartons strewn around the floor. A rack held ski parkas emblazoned with the snow flower emblem of the 1998 Olympics held in Nagano, Japan. He searched until he found one marked XXL and folded it up. That would fit him just fine. Maybe he should pick one up for his brother too.

  As he pushed back the jackets, the gleam of reflected glass caught his eye.

  What were test tubes doing in here?

  “High winds and driving rains will be reaching our area in a few hours.”

  The weather segment on the local eleven o’clock news was wrapping up when Joe Connelly’s home phone rang.

  One of the cleaning crew had opened a little-used supply closet in the basement of the Broadcast Center and found a box of protective gloves and a junior chemistry set.

  “Keep the door shut and don’t let anyone near that closet,” Joe ordered. “I’m coming in. And don’t let that custodian go home.”

  Perspiration glistened on the janitor’s brow.

  “I thought I should let Security know, Mr. Connelly. With all the anthrax stuff that has been happening around here and all.”

  “You did the right thing, Mickey. But if you took anything from that closet, I suggest you hand it over,” Joe said knowingly. “No questions asked. You wouldn’t want to risk anything happening to you, would you?”

  Joe called his connection at the local police precinct. It would be important to maintain the chain of evidence.

  “The chemistry set and protective gloves are evidence, to my mind, that whoever killed Jerome Henning may have been cooking things up in that closet. I have a wireless camera we can install here and see what we catch.”

  Joe was going to keep KEY out of it this time. They didn’t need any more panic at the Broadcast Center. He could take care of the problem on his own.

  You couldn’t trust people to keep their mouths shut.

  Surveillance cameras came in all shapes and sizes. They could be hidden almost anywhere, in pencil sharpeners or smoke detectors or sprinkler heads. Joe selected a miniature camera and personally escorted the technician down to the basement to set it up.

  “What kind of field of view do you want?” the tech asked. “Wide-angle to pick up as much as you can, or narrow to pick up the details?”

  Joe thought a minute before responding.

  “Go with the narrow, Milt,” he decided. “We want to see the face of whoever comes to this closet.”

  Wednesday

  November 26

  Chapter 130

  Annabelle awoke to the sound of wind and rain rattling against the window glass. She reached over to switch off the alarm, hoping to spare Mike another early wake-up. Managing to pick out her clothes in the dark, she crept from the bedroom as her husband slept.

  The hot shower felt good until the water hit the cut on her knee. She gingerly held the washcloth in her damaged hands, instant reminders of the bus accident. She turned off the showerhead and toweled off carefully, dressing quickly in the unlit living room.

  As she waited for water to boil for the container of tea she would take with her on the cab ride, Annabelle looked out the window to Perry Street. In the light of the streetlamps, she could see blustering rain pounding on the pavement below. Garbage cans were tipped over, spilling their contents onto the slick sidewalk. There were no birds sitting on the fire escapes this morning.

  The nor’easter was really blowing in. It had been a good call to do the broadcast in the studio today.

  Chapter 131

  It had to be done early, before the building filled with people for the day shift, while there was still a chance to go and clean out the storage closet undetected. The KTA staffers were straggling in already. There was no time to waste.

  The chemistry set and the gloves could prove to be links to Jerome Henning’s and Clara Romanski’s deaths. If someone discovered them hidden at the back of the closet, the police would soon be alerted. Law enforcement, with all its sophisticated testing abilities, would surely pick up something. Traces of anthrax, a strand of hair, a fingerprint left behind.

  There was no one in the hallway that led to the basement ramp.

  Chapter 132

  After grabbing a few hours’ sleep in the dressing room, Joe arose, freshened up, and headed downstairs to the security office. As he checked the monitor for the camera trained on the basement storage closet, he felt the anger rise within him.

  Damn it. The camera wasn’t working.

  “Didn’t anyone notice this?” he growled. The tired overnight guards looked at the screen, their expressions as blank as the monitor.

  Joe grabbed the telephone to call the technician.

  “I’ll meet you down there myself,” he declared. “Pronto.”

  Chapter 133

  Someone had been in here since the last time. The coats were pushed back on the rack, the cartons on the floor rearranged. But the chemistry set still sat on the abandoned typewriter table, the box of nitrile gloves beside it.

  The evidence was dropped into a thick plastic bag as noises were heard coming from the other side of the door.

  The aluminum ladder scraped against the concrete floor as the technician positioned it under the ceiling fire sprinkler opposite the storage closet.

  “We better get it right this time, Milt,” the security chief ordered. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

  “I don’t know what happened, Joe,” apologized the technician as he climbed the ladder. “This is a wireless camera, though, and you know the problems we have with these things.”

  Joe craned his neck to watch the tinkering. “Well, I hope we won’t have to depend on it for too long but, in the meantime, make sure the damn thing works.”

  An ear was pressed against the closet door, listening to the conversation out in the hall.

  Be quiet. Be very quiet. Just wait and listen. Don’t panic.

  After a few minutes,
something scraped against the floor again.

  “That should do it, Joe,” said one of the voices.

  “Thanks, Milt” was the response. “Now let’s see what we catch.”

  The sound of the footsteps grew fainter until there was silence.

  If a camera was pointed at the door, it would give it all away. If escape was possible, it had to be done quickly and anonymously.

  Grabbing the plastic bag and a large ski parka from the rack, the killer slipped on the jacket and pulled up the hood, holding the edges close to cover the face.

  “Look at that, will ya?” cried the guard as he watched the monitor in the security command post.

  He jumped from his chair and ran to the door, bumping into the returning Joe Connelly. “What’s going on?” the security chief asked.

  “Somebody just came out of that closet, Joe.”

  “All right. That’s good. We have it on tape.”

  “No. We won’t be able to tell who it is. The face was covered.”

  When the men ran together to the basement, they found a discarded Olympics ski jacket at the bottom of the ramp.

  Chapter 134

  The editor had done an excellent job with the “Terror in Maplewood” piece. Annabelle screened the video package and grudgingly admitted to herself that Lauren looked and sounded great in her on-camera bridge. The woman had a certain quality that left Annabelle with little doubt Lauren could go far in broadcast journalism.

  As Annabelle slid the tape from the video deck, she hoped that Linus wasn’t in yet and that Dominick would be the one to give final approval on the piece. That way she would be sure to get an honest opinion of the work. Linus’s view was biased when it came to Lauren.