River's End

by Nora Roberts

  was belligerent, looking for trouble. How did they know what I was looking for when I didn’t?”

  “Witnesses stated you were looking for Lucas Manning, got into a shoving match with security at one of the clubs, knocked over a tray of drinks at another.”

  “Must have.” Sam moved his shoulder casually, but his hand continued its hard, steady rhythm. “It’s a blur. Bright lights, bright colors, faces, bodies. I did another line in the car. Maybe two before I drove to our house. I’d been drinking, too. I had all this energy and anger and all I could think of was Julie. We’d settle this, goddamn it. Once and for all.”

  He sat back, closed his eyes. His hand stilled, then began to claw at his knee. “I remember the way the trees stood out against the sky, like a painting. And the headlights of other cars were like suns, burning against my eyes. I could hear the sound of my heartbeat in my head. Then it goes two ways.”

  He opened his eyes, blue and intense, and stared into Noah’s. “The gate’s locked. I know he’s in there with her. The son of a bitch. When she comes on the intercom I tell her to open the gate, I need to talk to her. I’m careful, really careful, to keep my tone calm. I know she won’t let me in if she knows I’ve been using. She won’t let me in if she knows I’m primed. She tells me it’s late, but I persist, I persuade. She gives in. I drive back to the house. The moonlight’s so bright it hurts my eyes. And she’s standing in the door, the light behind her. She’s wearing the white silk nightgown I’d bought her for our last anniversary. Her hair’s down around her shoulders, her feet are bare. She’s so beautiful. And cold, her face is cold, like something carved out of marble. She tells me to make it quick, she’s tired, and walks into the parlor.

  “There’s a glass of wine on the table, and the magazines. The scissors. They’re silver and long-bladed sitting on the glass top. She picks up her wine. She knows I’m high now, so she’s angry. ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’ she asks me. ‘Why are you doing this to me, to Livvy?’ ”

  Sam lifted a hand to his lips, rubbed them, back and forth, back and forth. “I tell her it’s her fault, hers because she let Manning put his hands on her, because she put her career ahead of our marriage. It’s an old argument, old ground, but this time it takes a different turn. She says she’s through with me, there’s no chance for us, and she wants me out of her life. I make her sick, I disgust her.”

  Still the actor, he punched the words, used pauses and passion. “She doesn’t raise her voice, but I can see the words coming out of her mouth. I see them as dark red smoke, and they choke me. She tells me she’s never been happier since she kicked me out and has no intention of weighing herself down with a has-been with a drug problem. Manning isn’t just a better actor, he’s a better lover. And I was right all along, she’s tired of denying it. He gives her everything I can’t.”

  Noah watched Sam’s eyes go glassy and narrowed his own.

  “She turned away from me as if I was nothing,” Sam muttered, then lifted his voice to a half shout. “As if everything we’d had together was nothing. The red smoke from her words is covering my face, it’s burning in my throat. The scissors with the long silver blades are in my hands. I want to stab them through her, deep inside her. She screams, the glass flies out of her hand, shatters. Blood pours out of her back. Like I’d pulled a cork out of a bottle of perfect red wine. She stumbles, there’s a crash. I can’t see through the smoke, just keep hacking with the scissors. The blood’s hot on my hands, on my face. We’re on the floor, she’s crawling, the scissors are like part of my hand. I can’t stop them. I can’t stop.”

  His eyelids shuttered closed now, and the hands on his knees were bone-white fists. “I see Livvy in the doorway, staring at me with her mother’s eyes.”

  His hand shook as he picked up his coffee. He sipped, long and deep like a man gulping for liquid after wandering the desert. “That’s one way I remember it. Can I have something cold now? Some water?”

  “All right.” Noah switched off the recorder, rose, went inside to the kitchen. Then he laid his palms on the counter. Icy sweat shivered over his skin. The images of the murder were bad enough. He’d read the transcripts, studied the reports. He’d known what to expect. But it had been the perfect artistry of Sam’s narrative that knotted his stomach. That, and the thought of Olivia crawling out of her child’s bed and into a nightmare.

  How many times had she relived it? he wondered.

  He poured two glasses of mineral water over ice, braced himself to go back out and continue.

  “You’re wondering if you can still be objective,” Sam said when Noah stepped out again. “You’re wondering how you can stand to sit here with me and breathe the same air.”

  “No.” Noah passed him the water, sat. “That’s part of my job. I’m wondering how you live with yourself. What you see when you look in the mirror every morning.”

  “They kept me on suicide watch for two years. They were right. But after a while, you learn to go from one day to the next. I loved Julie, and that love was the best part of my life. It still wasn’t enough to make me a man.”

  “And twenty years in prison did?”

  “Twenty years in prison made me sorry I’d destroyed everything I’d been given. Cancer made me decide to take what was left.”

  “What’s left, Sam?”

  “The truth, and facing it.” He took another sip of water. “I remember that night another way, too. It starts off the same, toking up, cruising, letting the drug feed the rage. But this time the gates are open when I get there. Boy, that pisses me off. What the hell is she thinking? We’re going to have a little talk about that. If Manning’s inside . . . I know damn well he’s in there. I can see him pumping himself into my wife. I think about killing him, with my bare hands, while she watches. The door of the house is wide open. Light’s spilling out. This really gets me. I walk in, looking for a fight. I start to go upstairs, sure I’ll catch them in bed, but I hear the music from the parlor. They must be fucking in there, with the music on, the door open and my daughter upstairs. Then I . . .”

  He stopped, took a long drink, then set the glass aside. “There’s blood everywhere. I didn’t even recognize it for what it was at first. It’s too much to be real. There’s broken glass, smashed. The lamp we’d bought on our honeymoon is shattered on the floor. My head’s buzzed from coke and vodka, but I’m thinking Jesus, Jesus, there’s been a break-in. And I see her. Oh God, I see her on the floor.”

  His voice broke, wavered, quavered, just as perfectly delivered as the stream of violence in his first version. “I’m kneeling beside her, saying her name, trying to pick her up. Blood, there’s blood all over her. I know she’s dead, but I tell her to wake up, she has to wake up. I pulled the scissors out of her back. If I took them out, they couldn’t hurt her. And there was Livvy, staring at me.”

  He took a cigarette from the pack on the table and struck a match, and the flame shivered as if in a brisk wind. “The police didn’t buy that one.” He blew out smoke. “Neither did the jury. After a while, I stopped buying it, too.”

  “I’m not here to buy anything, Sam.”

  “No.” He nodded but it was a sly look, a con’s look. “But you’ll wonder, won’t you?”

  “According to Manning, he and Julie never had an affair. Not for lack of trying on his part, he was up-front about that.” Noah stood with his father outside the youth center while a group of kids fought through a pickup game on the newly blacktopped basketball court. “He was in love with her—or infatuated, spent a lot of time with her—but she considered him a friend.”

  “That’s the way he played it during the investigation.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  Frank sighed, shook his head as he watched one of his boys bobble a pass. “He was convincing. The housekeeper’s testimony backed him up. She swore no man had ever spent the night in that house but the man her mistress had been married to. She was fiercely loyal to Julie and could have been co
vering. But we never shook her on it. The only evidence to the contrary was Sam Tanner’s belief and the usual gossip. As far as the case went, it didn’t matter one way or the other. Tanner believed in the affair, so to him it was real and part of the motive.”

  “Don’t you find it odd that Manning and Lydia Loring ended up as lovers even for only a few months?”

  “That’s why they call it Holly-Weird, pal.”

  “Just hypothetically, if you hadn’t had Tanner cold, where else would you have looked?”

  “We had him cold, and we still looked. We interviewed Manning, Lydia, the housekeeper, the agent, the family. Particularly the Melbournes, as they both worked for Julie. Actually, we took a long look at Jamie Melbourne. She inherited a considerable sum upon her sister’s death. We went through Julie’s fan mail, culled out the loonies and took a look at them in case an obsessed fan had managed to get in through the security. The fact is, Tanner was there. His prints were all over the murder weapon. He had motive, means and opportunity. And his own daughter saw him.”

  Frank shifted. “I had some trouble with the case during the first few days. It didn’t hold as solid as I wanted it to.”

  “What do you mean, it didn’t hold?”

  “Just that the way Tanner behaved, the way he mixed up two different nights—two different altercations with Julie in his head—or pretended to . . . It didn’t sit at first. Then he lawyered and went hard. I realized he’d been playing me. Don’t let him play you, Noah.”

  “I’m not.” But he jammed his hands into his pockets, paced away, paced back. “Just hear me out. A few days ago he told me two versions of that night. The first jibes with your findings, almost a perfect match. He’s into the part when he’s describing it. He could’ve been replaying a murder scene in a brutal movie. Then he tells me the other way, the way he got there and found her. His hands shake, and he goes pale. His voice races up and down like a roller coaster.”

  “Which did you believe?”

  “Both.”

  Frank nodded. “And he told you last the way that makes him innocent. Let that impression dig the deepest.”

  Noah hissed out a breath. “Yeah, I thought of that.”

  “Maybe he still wishes it was the second way. One thing I believed, Noah, is that after, he wished she hadn’t opened the door that night. And you can’t ever forget that one vital point,” Frank added. “He’s an actor and knows how to sell himself.”

  “I’m not forgetting,” Noah murmured. But he was wondering.

  He decided to swing by and see his mother. He planned on heading to Washington the following day. This time he’d fly up, then rent a car. He didn’t want to waste time on the road.

  Celia was sitting on their little side deck, going through the mail and sipping a tall glass of herbal sun tea. She lifted her cheek for Noah to kiss, then wagged a form letter at him. “Have you seen this? They’re threatening to cut the funding for the preservation of the northern elephant seal.”

  “Must’ve missed that one.”

  “It’s disgraceful. Congress votes itself a raise, spends millions of taxpayer dollars on studies to study studies of studies, but they’ll sit back and let another of the species on our planet become extinct.”

  “Go get ’em, Mom.”

  She huffed, put the letter aside and opened another. “Your father’s at the youth center.”

  “I know, I was just there. I thought I’d come by and see you before I headed to Washington tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad you did. Why don’t you stay for dinner? I’ve got a new recipe for artichoke bottoms I want to try out.”

  “Gee, that sounds . . . tempting, but I have to pack.”

  “Liar,” she said with a laugh. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Depends.”

  “Is the book giving you trouble?”

  “Some, nothing major.”

  “What then?”

  “I’ve got a little hang-up going.” He picked up her tea, sipped. Winced. She refused to add even a grain of sugar. “A personal-level hang-up. On Olivia MacBride.”

  “Really?” Celia drew out the word, giving it several syllables, and grinned like a contented cat. “Isn’t that nice?”

  “I don’t know how nice it is or why you’d be so pleased about it. You haven’t seen her since she was a kid.”

  “I’ve read her letters to your father. She appears to me a smart, sensible young woman, which is a far cry from your usual choice, particularly that creature Caryn. She still hasn’t turned up, by the way.”

  “Fine. Let her stay in whatever hole she dug for herself.”

  “I suppose I have to agree. And to backtrack, I like hearing you say you’re interested in someone. You never tell me you’re interested in a woman. Just that you’re seeing one.”

  “I’ve been interested in Liv for years.”

  “Really? How? She was, what, twelve, when you last saw her.”

  “Eighteen. I went up to see her six years ago, when she was in college.”

  Surprised, Celia stopped opening mail. “You went to see her? You never mentioned it.”

  “No, mostly because I wasn’t too happy with the way it worked out.” He blew out a breath. “Okay, condensed version. I wanted to write the book, even then. I went to see her to talk her into cooperating. Then I saw her, and . . . Man, it just blasted through me. I couldn’t think, with all the stuff going on inside me just looking at her, I didn’t think.”

  “Noah.” Celia closed a hand over his. “I had no idea you’d ever felt that way, with anyone.”

  “I’ve felt that way with her, and I ruined it. When she found out why I was there, it hurt her. She wouldn’t listen to apologies or explanations. She just closed the door.”

  “Has she opened it again?”

  “I think she’s pulled back a couple of the locks.”

  “You weren’t honest with her before, and it ended badly. That should tell you something.”

  “It does. But first I have to wear her down.” Because he felt better having just said it all out loud, he smiled. “She’s a hell of a lot tougher than she was at eighteen.”

  “You’ll think more of her if she makes you work.” She patted his hand, then went back to the mail. “I know you, Noah. When you want something, you go after it. Maybe not all at once, but you keep at it until you have it.”

  “Well, it feels like I’ve been going after Olivia MacBride most of my life. Meanwhile . . . Mom? What is it?” She’d gone deadly pale, had him leaping up fearing a heart attack.

  “Noah. Oh God.” She gripped the hand he’d pressed to her face. “Look. Look.”

  He pulled the paper out of her hand, ignoring it while he struggled to keep them both calm. “Take it easy. Just sit still. Catch your breath. I’ll call the doctor.”

  “No, for God’s sake, look!” She took his wrist, yanked the paper he held back down.

  He saw it then. The photocopy was fuzzy, poorly reproduced, but he recognized the work of the police photographer documenting the body of Julie MacBride at the scene of the murder.

  He had a copy of the picture in his own files, and though he’d looked at it countless times, the stark black and white was freshly appalling.

  No, not a photocopy, he realized. Computer-scanned, just as the bold letters beneath the picture were computer-generated.

  IT CAN HAPPEN AGAIN.

  IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU.

  Rage, cold and controlled, coated him as he looked into his mother’s horrified, baffled eyes. “He flicked the wrong switch this time,” Noah murmured.

  He waited until his father came racing home. But no amount of arguing or pleading could make him wait until the police arrived.

  The son of a bitch had played him all right and had nearly sucked him in. Now he’d threatened his family. Revenge, Noah supposed as he slammed out of his car and strode down Sunset. Revenge against the cop who’d helped lock him away. Go after the family. Lure the son in, dangle the story, t
ake the money, then terrorize the wife.

  Noah pushed through the front entrance of the apartment unit, flicked a glance at the elevator and chose the stairs. The mighty had fallen here, he thought. The paint was peeling, the treads grimy, and he caught the sweet whiff of pot still clinging to the air.

  But he hadn’t fallen far enough.

  The bastard liked women as his victims. Noah pounded a fist on the door of the second-floor apartment. Women and little girls. They’d just see how well he handled it when he had a man to deal with.

  He pounded again and seriously considered kicking the door in. The cold edge of his rage had flashed to a burn.

  “If you’re looking for the old man, he split.”

  Noah glanced around, saw the woman—hell, the hooker, he corrected.

  “Split where?”

  “Hey, I don’t keep tabs on the neighbors, honey. You a cop?”

  “No, I’ve got business with him, that’s all.”

  “Look a little like a cop,” she decided after an expert