One minute till two o'clock.
He shoved the two loaded magazines in the pockets of his jeans, put the loaded pistol in the bag with the money, twisted the top of the bag but didn't knot it, and drove to the Turnbridge place.
A long chain-link construction fence fitted with privacy panels of green plastic fabric separated the street from the big Turnbridge property. The nearby residents who had put up with this ugliness for years must wish the entrepreneur hadn't killed himself if only so they could now torment him with lawyers and neighborly invective.
The gate was closed, draped with chain. As Jimmy Null promised, it wasn't locked.
Mitch drove onto the property and parked with the back of the SUV facing the house. He got out and opened all five doors, hoping by this gesture to express his desire to fulfill the terms of the agreement to the best of his ability.
He closed the construction gate and draped the chain in place once more.
Carrying the trash bag, he walked to a spot between the Escalade and the house, stopped and waited.
The day was warm, not hot, but the sun was hard. The light cut at his eyes, and the wind.
Anson's cell phone rang.
He took the call. "This is Mitch."
Jimmy Null said, "It's a minute past two. Oh, now it's two past. You're late."
Chapter 65
The unfinished house appeared as large as a hotel. Jimmy Null could have been watching Mitch from any of scores of windows.
"You were supposed to come in your Honda," he said.
"It broke down."
"Where'd you get the Escalade?"
"Stole it."
"No shit."
"None."
"Park it parallel to the house, so I can see straight through the front and back seats."
Mitch did as told, leaving the doors open as he repositioned the vehicle. He stepped away from the SUV and waited with the trash bag, the phone to his ear.
He wondered if Null would shoot him dead from a distance and come take the money. He wondered why he wouldn't do that.
"I'm disturbed you didn't come in the Honda."
"I told you, it broke down."
"What happened?"
"Flat tire. You brought the swap forward an hour, so I didn't have time to change it."
"A stolen car — the cops could have chased your ass here."
"No one saw me take it."
"Where'd you learn to hot-wire a car?"
"The keys were in the ignition."
Null considered in silence. Then: "Enter the house by the front door. Stay on the phone."
Mitch saw that the door had been shot open. He went inside.
The entry hall was immense. Although no finish work had been done, even Julian Campbell would have been impressed.
After leaving Mitch to stew for a minute, Jimmy Null said, "Pass through the colonnade into the living room directly ahead of you."
Mitch went into the living room, where the west windows extended floor to ceiling. Even through dusty glass, the view was so stunning that he could understand why Turnbridge had wanted to die with it.
"All right. I'm here."
"Turn left and cross the room," Null directed. "A wide doorway leads into a secondary drawing room."
None of the doors were hung. Those separating these two rooms would have to be nine feet tall to fill the opening.
When Mitch reached the drawing room, which offered an equally spectacular view, Null said, "You'll see another wide doorway across from the one you're standing in, and a single door to your left."
"Yes."
"The single leads to a hallway. The hall passes other rooms and leads to the kitchen. She's in the kitchen. But don't go near her."
Moving across the drawing room toward the specified doorway, Mitch said, "Why not?"
"Because I'm still making the rules. She's chained to a pipe. I have the key. You stop just inside the kitchen."
The hallway seemed to recede from him the farther he followed it, but he knew the telescoping effect had to be psychological. He was frantic to see Holly.
He didn't look in any of the rooms he passed. Null might have been in one of them. It didn't matter.
When Mitch entered the kitchen, he saw her at once, and his heart swelled, and his mouth went dry. Everything that he had been through, every pain that he had suffered, every terrible thing that he had done was in that instant all worthwhile.
Chapter 66
Because the creep arrives in the kitchen to stand beside her during the last of his phone conversation, Holly hears him give the final directions.
She holds her breath, listening for footsteps. When she hears Mitch approaching, hot tears threaten, but she blinks them back.
A moment later Mitch enters the room. He says her name so tenderly. Her husband.
She has stood with her arms crossed over her breasts, her hands fisted in her armpits. Now she lowers her arms and stands with her hands fisted at her sides.
The creep, who has drawn a wicked-looking pistol, is intently focused on Mitch. "Arms straight out like a bird."
Mitch obeys, a white trash bag dangling from his right hand.
His clothes are filthy. His hair is windblown. His face has lost all color. He is beautiful.
The killer says, "Come slowly forward."
As instructed, Mitch approaches, and the creep tells him to stop fifteen feet away.
As Mitch halts, the killer says, "Put the bag on the floor."
Mitch lowers the bag to the dusty limestone. It settles but does not flop open.
Covering Mitch with the pistol, the killer says, "I want to see the money. Kneel in front of the bag."
Holly doesn't like to see Mitch kneeling. This is the position that executioners instruct their victims to take before the coup de grace.
She must act, but the time feels not quite right. If she makes her move too soon, the scheme might fail. Instinct tells her to wait, though waiting with Mitch on his knees is so hard.
"Show me the money," the killer says, and he has a two-hand grip on the pistol, finger tightened on the trigger.
Mitch opens the neck of the bag and withdraws a plastic-wrapped brick of cash. He tears off one end of the plastic, and riffles the hundred-dollar bills with his thumb.
"The bearer bonds?" the killer asks.
Mitch drops the cash into the sack.
The creep tenses, thrusting the pistol forward as Mitch reaches into the bag again, and he does not relax even when Mitch produces only a large envelope.
From the envelope, Mitch extracts half a dozen official-looking certificates. He holds one forward for the killer to read.
"All right. Put them back in the envelope."
Mitch obeys, still on his knees.
The creep says, "Mitch, if your wife had a chance for previously undreamed-of personal fulfillment, the opportunity for enlightenment, for transcendence, surely you would want her to follow that better destiny."
Bewildered by this turn, Mitch does not know what to say, but Holly does. The time has come.
She says, "I've been sent a sign, my future is New Mexico."
Raising her hands from her sides, opening her fists, she reveals her bloody wounds.
An involuntary cry escapes Mitch, the killer glances at Holly, and her stigmata drip for his astonishment.
The nail holes are not superficial, though they don't go all the way through her hands. She stabbed herself and worked the wounds with brutal determination.
The worst had been having to bite back every cry of pain. If he had heard her agony expressed, the killer would have come to see what she was doing.
At once, the wounds had bled too much. She had packed them with powdered plaster to stop the bleeding. Before the plaster worked, blood had dripped on the floor, but she had covered it with a quick redistribution of the thick dust.