83
Vicky
Gavin walks me halfway down the alley and pushes me into a gangway, dark and empty. He shoves me up against a fence next to a dumpster that shields us from view.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” he says, pressing the gun under my chin, just like I did to Christian.
I close my eyes, shake my head.
“Yes, you do. Tell me or we say goodbye right here. Another streetwalking skank murdered in the city.” He brings his face close to mine. “Fucking tell me.”
“You’re . . . Gavin Finley,” I say through a clenched jaw.
“And Christian?” he demands.
“Nick Caracci.”
“Okay, so you did your homework, Vicky Lanier. Vicky Lanier from Fairmont, West Virginia, right? Ran away from home back in 2003?”
I don’t say anything.
“Which is weird,” he goes on, “because a couple months ago, they found the skeleton of a girl by that name buried in some mountain in West Virginia.”
He knows. He looked me up. But . . . that means Nick knew and didn’t—
“Nick researched you but didn’t update it,” he says. “Me, I just learned your name, so I did my due diligence and read all about the recent discovery of Vicky Lanier from Fairmont, West Virginia, who disappeared in 2003. Maybe I should’ve told him, but Nick, he was so hell-bent on his plan, I figured it was worth a shot. But I thought you might fuck him over, too. And look at that, you did.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t know what to say. Ever since the real Vicky Lanier’s body was found, I worried this day might come.
I have to get away from Gavin. Just get out of here alive—
“You’re a smart lady, Vicky,” he says in a harsh whisper. “Nick’s dead, Simon’s going to be under investigation for the murder of Lauren Betancourt, probably sitting in jail without bond for murder, and when the moment is right, you’re going to run off with all the money. Am I right?”
He knows about the trust. He knows about Simon. He knows everything.
Well, not everything.
I didn’t close the blinds upstairs before I killed Nick. I meant to. My nerves got the better of me. Gavin must have been watching across the street, whatever he was able to see through the open blinds. He knows I killed his friend.
Don’t answer him. Don’t say anything. Just—
He shoves the gun harder under my chin, pushing the top of my head into the wired fence. “Am I right?” he repeats.
“Yes, you’re right,” I say. Pulse pounding, thinking fast, coming up with nothing but Get away from him.
“I wonder how Simon would take all this,” he says. “He thinks he married someone named Vicky Lanier, with a nice, clean background. I’m guessing you had some reason to use a fake name. A criminal record, maybe? Prostitution? Maybe something worse? A wealthy guy like Simon’s not gonna go for some street whore like you. So you cleaned yourself up and gave yourself a nice, new identity with a spotless background.”
“Yes,” I say, because my head can’t be pushed any harder into this wired fence.
There’s nothing I can do. I don’t have any leverage to fight back, try to break away, while pinned against this fence with a gun under my chin. Anything I try will probably make that gun go off.
“Tell me your real name, Vicky,” he says.
Oh, thank God—he doesn’t know my real name. He didn’t get that far. He doesn’t have my fingerprints.
I can’t let that happen. I can’t ever let Gavin know my real identity. I’ll die right here before I let that happen.
“Tell me, you stupid twat.” He removes the gun from under my chin and smacks me across the cheek with his other hand. Then he pushes me back against the fence and presses the gun against my forehead. “Tell me right now or you’re—”
“Never,” I say. “Shoot me if you want.”
He watches me a moment, considers that. But he doesn’t pull the trigger. He’s not here to kill me. If he was, he’d have already done it.
“Well, now, that’s interesting,” he says. “But you know what? I don’t care what your real name is. Let’s just cut to the chase, Vicky. Your marriage is a fraud. You got married under a stolen identity. And if that little nugget of information were to come out, you don’t get a dime of that money.”
My legs start to give out.
“So I want half,” he says. “Or you get nothing. November third. That’s the date you get your hands on the money, right?”
I can’t speak. I try to nod, but the gun is basically imprinted on my forehead.
“November third,” he says. “I come to you. And you transfer half to me. Ten million dollars. We’ll keep it a nice, round number.”
“How—how?” I whisper.
“Don’t worry about how. I’ll handle how. So between now and November third, Vicky, you be awfully nice to that husband of yours. That’s just two days. Keep him happy. Spread your legs nice and wide for him. You have a lot of practice doing that, right?”
He shoves me hard, the fence contracting with my weight. I fall to the ground, on my hands and knees, next to some old moving box and a bag of fast food.
“If you run, Vicky, or fuck with me in any way, I’ll tell Simon everything. All those ten years you’ve worked for this money will be down the toilet. And don’t even think about doing to me what you did to Nick. Nick didn’t see you coming. I do.”
“It’ll look . . . suspicious,” I say. “Three days after she’s dead, I transfer ten million dollars to an anonymous account.”
He kicks me in the ribs. I buckle under the pain, landing face-first into the dingy alley.
“I don’t give a fuck what looks suspicious,” he says. “That’s your problem. You can decide, Vicky. What do you prefer, a little suspicion? Or never seeing one nickel of that money? That’s not a hard choice. You’ll think of something. Oh,” he says as he walks away, “and Happy Halloween.”
84
Simon
I step around the shattered bowl of Halloween candy, move around Lauren’s dead body, and take the stairs up to the second story of Lauren’s home, making sure to stomp my feet and make the boot impressions as I go up. It’s a bit awkward, wearing this long robe. Hell, it’s been awkward all night, walking around with size thirteen boots on my size eleven feet.
I reach the second story. There is blood on the floor, not far from where the rope is tied around the whirls and shapes making up this ornate wrought iron bannister. Is this bannister going to hold, with Lauren hanging from it? Probably so. It looks well-made. Not that I care either way.
I can’t waste time. Every second counts. Maybe someone did call the cops, and maybe they are on their way, but if I get my work done in just a minute or so, maybe I can get out of here before they arrive.
Start with the most important thing, the pink phone. If nothing else, the pink phone.
The blood on the floor is where the struggle occurred. Whatever happened, however it happened, it happened here. I imagine it. Yes, I imagine the struggle, her terror, her pain.
There’s a small brown table with curved legs here in the hallway. On top is a vase of fresh flowers and a framed photo of Lauren and her husband, Conrad.
There is a shelf below the top of the table.
If I leave the phone just sitting out, the cops will wonder why the killer didn’t take it with him. It needs to be out of sight.
It needs to have slid away during the struggle. And Christian, panicked, not thinking straight, either never thought to look for it or didn’t want to spend the time.