“That’s why I needed to meet you. To try to make you feel what I know. So you can know Justin like I know Justin. He didn’t do it. Justin isn’t a monster. It’s all lies. All of it. Justin was my best child, my nicest boy. His brother was the mean one. His brother would tussle with him. But Justin would never strike him back. He’s incapable of hurting anyone.”
“Ms. Bloom is going to do everything she can, Mrs. Harris. Now she really has a plane to catch,” Carl Fouhy said gently.
“Wait, please,” Mrs. Harris said, without taking her eyes off me. “Do you have a child, Ms. Bloom?”
“A daughter,” I said.
“What’s her name?” she said with a smile.
“Emma,” I said, smiling back.
“What would you do if people had Emma and were about to kill her?”
“Everything I could,” I answered immediately.
Mrs. Harris let out a loud breath. “Good,” she said. She nodded. “Justin is in good hands. My prayers have been answered. My baby is safe now.”
I tried to hand back Justin’s medal. Mrs. Harris shook her head.
“No. You hold on to that,” she said as a tear, a single tear, slid over the soft brown curve of her cheek. “Don’t lose it, now.”
I stared at the medal, then at Fouhy. I could see why he’d wanted me to come. The son of a bitch wanted me motivated, emotionally involved, not just going through the motions. He wanted me to see that Mrs. Harris was flesh and blood, a good, warm person and a desperate, loving mother who would do anything not to lose her child.
Mission accomplished, I thought, my own eyes wet as I walked away.
Chapter 64
IT WAS FIVE TO NINE when Peter Fournier walked out the tunnel-like NBC studio exit onto West 50th Street beside Rockefeller Center.
“Baby, you did so good!” his wife, Vicki, cooed when he opened his ringing cell. “I still can’t believe it. It’s like I’m dreaming. You having a chat with Al Roker, like he’s your best buddy. I would have passed out. Let me put the boys on.”
“Dad, you rocked!” Scott said.
“Yes. That’s right. My dad is Mr. Cool!” Mike yelled in the background.
“Thanks, guys. I love you, too. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back to the hotel,” Peter said.
Peter smiled as he closed his cell. He had done well. He thought he might be nervous about going on live national TV, but once the red camera light came on, he’d felt perfectly fine, like himself, calm, in charge. He’d always suspected that he’d be good on TV. Now he knew. In another life, he could have been an actor, a talk show host. He had the looks, the charm.
Was it narcissistic if you knew you actually were the biggest swinging dick in the room? he wondered. Any room? Every room?
Flying under the radar was his usual game plan, but in this case he’d taken a calculated risk because there was business involved.
One of the victims’ group members, Arty Tivolli, was an elderly multimillionaire hotel chain owner from Palm Beach. After befriending the silver-haired gent with bottomless pockets, Peter had persuaded him to take a serious look at bidding on Key West’s only run-down golf course and turning it into a massive luxury resort.
For the last year, he’d been working with Arty’s company, the Tivolli Group, introducing them around to the “right” city council and zoning board members. If all went as planned, Peter’s slice of the proceedings would be massive, a seven-figure windfall. It would be the most money he’d ever made in his life. Well, at least legally.
So in actuality, his Today show appearance had exactly squat to do with his desire to steal Matt Lauer’s job or to mourn his dearly departed other half, Jeanine. His victim group activism and nationally televised righteous indignation at Justin Harris were all for Arty, who had lost his only daughter to the Jump Killer in 1991.
Peter, still jazzed, looked out at midtown Manhattan’s swirling chaos of delivery trucks backing up and double-parked taxis honking. It was morning rush now, and rock concert–sized crowds of businesspeople and hard hats hustled past him up and down the cavernous side street.
What absolute suckers, he thought. Get to work, you ball-less serfs. Step to it!
Though his cell phone camera stunk, he decided to take some pictures with it anyway to show the kids. He snapped a shot of the famous television studio’s door, a passing mounted cop, a bike messenger across the street smoking a cigarette.
He was about to take a shot of a pigeon pecking at a doughnut in the gutter when a blond woman flashed out from the east corner of the building by Rockefeller Center. There was something so New York about the tall head turner: her creamy thigh, her get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way pace, her just-so salon-colored platinum hair.
Then she turned to her right to check the approaching traffic, and Peter’s serene smile faded as he lowered the phone.
All he could do was watch in silence as his dead wife, Jeanine, stepped across the street.
Chapter 65
“DAMMIT,” I said, checking the time on my iPhone as I cornered onto Fifth Avenue. I needed to be on my way to the airport already. My driver, waiting at my office, was going to have to floor it and maybe eat some red lights on our way out to JFK if I was going to make my flight.
I thought about calling and having him come back around onto Fifth to pick me up, but then I decided against it. Midtown morning rush hour was so insanely gridlocked and unpredictable, it was actually quicker for me to go to him on foot.
I was picking up the pace, crossing to the east side of the street, when my iPhone jingled its incoming text alert.
I glanced at the screen, fearing another delay, but then let out a breath when I saw that the message was from Em.
Who else? I could almost see her there on her early free period in the Brearley library illegally texting. Her books open in front of her, her phone under the table.
I thumbed the View button on the touchscreen.
“Willlllsonnnnnn!!” her text read.
Despite my full-blown hurry, I smiled. Then I laughed out loud. It was a reference to the stupidest and our hands-down-favorite part of the movie Cast Away, in which Tom Hanks, a plane crash survivor, nonsensically befriends a Wilson volleyball.
It was also our way of saying hi. All day long, Emma and I texted each other silly inside jokes like that.
There was another jingle as another text came in.
“Worst 80s band?” Em wanted to know. “REO Speedwagon?”
Since I’d actually been there, I had to disagree: “Close,” I texted back as I walked. It was a glacial process for someone over the age of sixteen. “Culture Club. Their hit song was ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.’ The answer was yes. Google ‘Boy George’ if you don’t believe me.”
“Fine,” Em texted back in a finger snap. “Movie quote throwdown! Toy Story. ‘That’s not flying. That’s falling with style.’ ”
“What does a space ranger actually do?” I texted her back pretty quickly this time. Em would be proud.
Then I pocketed my phone as a sudden lump caught in my throat. After a moment, I started crying. As I walked, I started sobbing uncontrollably right there in front of Fifth Avenue’s tourist shops and luggage stores and overpriced pizzerias.
Because I suddenly realized, Em actually wouldn’t be proud of me.
What would Em think of me when everything came out? I wondered, snorting into the lapel of my faux Burberry coat. When she found out that I’d been lying to her ever since she could walk? That I was an impostor? That someone had died because of me?