“Unless they just want Matt to look guilty for this, too.”
Dylan sighed and rolled his eyes. “Come on Jez. Let’s get real, here.”
“You saw the van,” she almost shouted. “What were they doing there? What’s The New Day’s connection to Clifford Stern?”
“Maybe it was a coincidence,” he said with a shrug.
She looked at him, incredulous. “A coincidence?”
“Yeah,” he said weakly. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility, is it? That the van was parked there for some other reason not relating to Clifford Stern?”
She shook her head. “Just drive East on Sixty-Sixth Street.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
He put the car into gear and made a left on Sixty-Sixth Street.
“He could be anywhere by now. It’s not like we’re going to find him strolling up the street, taking in some air.”
Jesamyn knew he was right but it made her feel better to be doing something. She scanned the few figures on the street, walking quickly, huddled against the cold. Matt or someone who looked like him would be easy to spot. Speaking of coincidences, she couldn’t help but wonder how they wound up here for this. She thought about how they just happened to get there, minutes before the shooting, just in time to call 911. She looked at Dylan, who had his eyes on the road.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“What? I told you. So you could see the van.” He glanced at her quickly, then put his eyes back on the road.
“How did you know it would still be here?”
“I didn’t.”
She didn’t say anything, just scanned the streets, peering between buildings, glancing up on the el platform. Maybe she was getting paranoid. After all, what was she thinking? She’d asked him to help her and that’s what he was doing, in his own self-serving way. Her head felt foggy; she was overtired, overwhelmed, and confused. She rested her head against the cool window, never taking her eyes off the street. Was it possible that Mount had killed Clifford Stern? She tried it on, toyed with accepting the idea. That he was terrified or had lost his mind, had shot the man out of some kind of desperation or temporary insanity. She shook her head. It just didn’t fit; there was no way. But he might as well have shot Stern; a man matching Mount’s description was seen leaving the scene after shots were fired. There weren’t that many people who looked like Mount and he was already accused of another murder in which Stern was the witness. His fate was more or less sealed, wasn’t it? Except that she had seen The New Day van parked outside the apartment.
“Go back,” she said.
“Where?
“To Stern’s street,” she said. “I want to make sure that van doesn’t go anywhere.”
He nodded and made a U-turn, headed back toward Fourteenth Avenue.
There was a sea of police vehicles in front of the Stern residence. They arrived as the Medical Examiners van and the CSI team were approaching the row house. She saw Ray Bloom through the bay window over the porch as they parked the car and approached the corner where they’d heard the gunfire. She turned to see the van. But, of course, it was gone. A beat-up red Saturn had already taken its place.
“Shit,” she said. “Shit.” She put her head in her hands. She almost cried right there on the street.
Dylan put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go talk to Bloom,” he said softly. “Let’s tell him what we saw. He’s a smart guy; he’ll know we’re telling the truth.”
She nodded. They had no choice. If they didn’t, Mount didn’t have a chance.
Matt sat against the concrete wall in the alley, barely noticing the stench of urine and garbage. His heart had just slowed to a normal rhythm but his lungs still ached from the exertion of effort and terror. He’d run nearly ten blocks through back alleys. His hands and thighs were still shaking. He put his head down in his hands and felt the warm, viscous liquid against his forehead.
“Oh, Christ,” he said, surprised at the shaking fear he heard in his own voice. He drew his hands back and they were dark with blood. He thought of the backdoor handle where he’d exited the house, the fence that he’d grabbed and pulled himself over. He stood and stripped off his leather jacket, then the sweater he wore beneath it. If the police caught up with him, he didn’t want to be wearing clothes soaked with Clifford Stern’s blood. He threw the sweater in the Dumpster beside him. He inspected the leather jacket for blood in the dim glow of the streetlight and saw that it was clean; he put it back on and zipped it up to his throat. He leaned over and vomited, his whole body wracked with it.
A squad car raced past the alleyway, lights flashing but siren off. He jumped and crouched behind the Dumpster, hitting his head on its metal side. He was shivering now from fear and from the cold and from pain. He could barely believe that his life had come to this, that he was squatting in an alley hiding from the police. He tried to think of the moment, the pivot on which his life had turned. He could pinpoint it exactly: when he’d threatened Trevor Rhames and The New Day. But no. Maybe it was earlier than that. Maybe it was the day he fell in love with Lily Samuels, a girl he’d never seen in the flesh until tonight. If the girl he’d seen had been her at all. If he’d even seen a girl. He couldn’t be sure now; the memory of her felt foggy and indistinct.
He tried to think about his options but the pain in his head was so bad he thought he might be having a stroke. He wished he were having a stroke, that he would drop dead right there-then at least he wouldn’t have to deal with the disaster his life had become. What was he supposed to do now?
He’d just wanted to talk to Clifford Stern, wanted to understand why this stranger had implicated him in a crime he didn’t commit. He’d believed he could convince the guy to go to the police with the truth: that The New Day had paid him or threatened him to be an eyewitness. There was no other explanation. But he should have known not to go there, should have known that they’d be waiting. Now the abyss he’d fallen into was deeper and darker than it had been hours earlier, and it had been pretty fucking deep and dark.
He had five hundred dollars in cash in his pocket and a five-shot Smith & Wesson. He was a fugitive, wanted now for two murders. Within hours, his face was going to be all over the television, in post offices, airports, bus and train stations. He looked at the cell phone in his pocket. Who could he call? Theo? Jesamyn? Lydia Strong? No. The first thing Bloom would do was subpoena his cell phone records; anyone he called could be accused of aiding and abetting. It struck him strangely, hard to the gut, that he was alone now. He’d been lonely before, maybe for most of his life; he was used to that. But he’d never been alone like this, never felt like every connection he had to his life had snapped and he was lofting away into the sky. He could feel himself getting farther and farther away from Earth.
He took a deep shuddering breath, stood. He figured there was only one thing left to do.
Twenty-Four
Basically, Grimm wanted to use them. Lydia had pretty much figured this the moment he pulled up a chair. Otherwise, rather than sitting and having a friendly little chat about Trevor Rhames and The New Day, he probably would have arrested them. He could easily do that and hold them for as long as he wanted under the Patriot Act.
“We can’t go in there,” Grimm told them. “They’ve got lawyers and political connections up the yin-yang. We’ve been in there before and found nothing.”
“After Rusty Klautz escaped,” said Lydia.
“That’s right.”
“So what makes you think there’s anything there now?” asked Jeffrey.
“These satellite photos,” he said, pointing to Jeffrey’s laptop screen, “which I’m not even going to ask how you got your hands on, reveal buildings that don’t exist on the property survey.”