“Who gave you a fresh start?”
“What do you mean, who? God, fate, my guardian angel, I don’t know. I had two men fighting over which one would eventually kill me. And suddenly they were both gone.”
“Like you were saved,” Erin said, as much to herself as the witness on the phone.
“Yes. I moved away. I changed my name. I own a clothing store. It’s not much, but it’s all mine. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do.”
“And now, what, Ricky is going to get out? Please, Detective, please don’t let him know where I am.”
Erin pondered what she was hearing. This situation again fit a certain profile that had been emerging in connection with the missing men-that is, most of these men were not exactly model citizens. Several of the wives or girlfriends had been equally up front, begging Erin not to find their missing partners.
“He won’t find you, but I need to ask: Do you have any idea who may have done this?”
“Killed Ross, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Other than Ricky, no.”
Erin’s cell phone sounded. It was Broome. She thanked Jaime Hemsley and told her that she’d call her if she needed anything else. She also promised to let her know if Ricky Mannion was released from prison.
After they both hung up, Erin picked up the cell. “Hello?”
“They’re dead, Erin,” Broome said in the strangest monotone. “They’re all dead.”
Erin felt a cold stone form in her chest. “What are you talking about?”
He told her about the photograph of the hand truck, the trip back to the ruins, the bodies in the well. Erin sat unmoving.
When Broome finished, Erin said, “So that’s it? It’s over?”
“For us, I guess. The feds will find the guy. But there are parts that still don’t fit.”
“No case is a perfect fit, Broome. You know that.”
“Yeah, okay, and but here’s the thing. I just got a call from an investigator up in Essex County. Megan Pierce was attacked tonight by a young blond woman who matched her description of the woman who was in Harry Sutton’s office.”
“Is she okay?”
“Megan? She has some injuries but she’ll live. But she killed her assailant. Stabbed her in the gut.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Definitely self-defense?”
“That’s what the county cop told me.”
“Do they have an ID on the blond woman?”
“Not yet.”
“So how do you think it fits?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s unrelated.”
Erin didn’t think so. Neither, she knew, did Broome. “So what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Not much we can do about the Megan Pierce situation. When the local cops come back with an ID on this blond attacker, maybe we can go from there.”
“Agreed.”
“I also think we still need to figure out how exactly this Ross Gunther’s murder is tied into all this.”
“I just talked to Stacy Paris.”
“And?”
Erin filled him in on her conversation.
“That doesn’t help much,” he said.
“Other than it fits a loose pattern.”
“Abusive men.”
“Right.”
“So look harder at that angle. Abusive boyfriends or spouses or whatever. Mardi Gras is linked into this somehow. That day set this whole thing off. So widen the scope a little, see if there are any other Mardi Gras cases we missed.”
“Okay.”
“More important, though, the feds are up at the ruins right now gathering the bodies. They’re going to need your help with the IDs.”
Erin had figured as much. “No problem. Let me work up the details and get the names to them. What about you?”
“I’m going to stop by Ray Levine’s, but then I have to talk to Sarah before the media contacts her.”
“That’s going to suck,” Erin said.
“Maybe not. Maybe she’ll welcome the closure.”
“You think?”
“Nope.”
Silence.
Erin knew him well enough. She moved the phone from one ear to the other and said, “You okay, Broome?”
“Fine.”
Liar. “You want to come by when you’re done?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. Then: “Erin?”
“Yes?”
“Remember our honeymoon in Italy?”
It was a curious question, totally out of the blue, but something about it, even in the midst of all this death, made Erin smile. “Of course.”
“Thank you for that.”
“For what?”
But he’d already hung up.
35
Lucy The Elephant was closed for the night. Ray waited for the last guard to leave. Ventura’s Greenhouse, a rather happening restaurant and bar, was in full swing across the street from Lucy. It made entering from that side particularly difficult. Ray circled around to the usual spot by the gift shop and hopped over it.
Years ago, when Cassie had lifted a key off an ex-boyfriend, she had made him a copy. He had kept it all these years. He already knew that it didn’t work anymore, but that didn’t worry him much. Lucy had doors in both thick hind legs. The visitors used one. The other had a simple padlock on it. Ray picked up a heavy rock and broke the lock with one swing.
Using his key ring flashlight to guide him, Ray headed up the spiral staircases and into the belly of the mammoth beast. The “innards” were a vaulted chamber that gave off the feel of a small church. The walls had been painted a strange shade of pink that was purported to be the anatomically correct hue for an elephant’s gastrointestinal tract. Ray would take their word for that.
In the day, he and Cassie had hidden a sleeping bag in the bottom of the closet. It looked like the closet had been taken out during a renovation. Ray wondered if someone had stumbled across the old sleeping bag and what they’d made of that and what they ended up doing with it-and then he wondered why, when the world was caving in on him again, he was thinking of something so asinine.
Silly to come back here.
He hadn’t been inside this six-story pachyderm in seventeen years, but if this stomach lining could talk… He let the smile hit his face. Why not? Why the hell not? He had tortured himself long enough. That horrible night was all coming back now. There was no way to stop it. He was about to face some really bad times, so why not remember the glorious nights? As his father had always reminded him, you can’t have an up without a down, a left without a right-and you can’t have good times without expecting bad.
Here he was, in the belly of the beast, waiting for the only woman he’d ever truly loved, and he realized that there had been virtually no good times in the past seventeen years. Just the bad. Pathetic. Pathetic and stupid.
What would his father have thought?
One mistake. One mistake made seventeen years ago and he-the intrepid photojournalist who had no issue with working the frontlines during firestorms-had let that mistake cripple him. But that was how life worked, wasn’t it? Timing. Decisions. Luck.
Crying over spilled milk. How attractive.
Ray took the spiral staircase up to the canopy/observatory on Lucy’s back. The night air was brisk now, the wind coming in hard off the ocean. It smelled wonderfully of salt and sand. The sky was clear, and the stars glistened off the Atlantic tonight.
The sight, Ray thought, was breathtaking. He took out his camera and started snapping pictures. It was amazing, he thought, what you could live with and what you could live without.
When he finished with that, Ray sat out in the cold and waited and wondered-another what-if-how telling Megan the truth would change things all over again.
When the doctor put the bandage on Megan’s arm he muttered something about working for a butcher in his youth and wrapping ground chuck. Megan got it. The arm was, to put it kindly, a mess.
“But it’ll heal,” the doctor said.