Georges jutted his chin toward the garage across the street. “She killed Gilda.”
The man glanced over his shoulder, then back to Georges. “Yeah, well, you guys stole her baby.” He looked at his wounded finger. “You trying to give me tetanus? Cause that was a piss-poor toss.”
Georges spat at him. “May you die in agony.”
The man waved his pistol at Georges’s legs. “Doesn’t look like you’ll be picking up your boss tonight.”
Georges felt as if he’d been slapped. How could he know that? It could only mean he wasn’t here by accident. Who was he?
“No worry,” the man said. “I’ll sub for you. What airline?”
“Fuck you.”
He looked at his finger. “Well, whatta ya know?” He thrust it toward Georges. “All better.”
It was true-the cut had already stopped bleeding.
“Just like your master. We’re old buddies. So tell me: What airline?”
“Fuck your mother!”
The man looked at the sky, then back to Georges.
“I haven’t got time for this.”
He pointed the Glock at Georges’s chest.
“No!”
9
Jack double-tapped Georges’s heart and put one through his forehead for insurance.
Then he heard his phone ringing back in the car. He holstered the Glock and went to retrieve it. The same number as before. He thumbed
“Weezy?”
“I’ve been calling Dawn but she doesn’t answer.”
Jack glanced back toward the Volvo. “Yeah… well…”
“What? What, Jack?”
He was on a cell, the signal going who knew where.
“Remember that movie with Bruce Willis?”
“ Die Hard? Listen, Jack, I don’t want to play movie trivia. Dawn-”
“Remember what Haley Joel Osment’s character could see?”
“Ohmigod! You mean-?”
“I’m seeing three… and a really ugly baby.”
“Dawn? Is she-oh, God, no!”
“Pull it together, okay? I- we need you to stay together. We’ve got big trouble. What street are you on?”
“Ju-just off twenty-seven.”
“Any landmarky place nearby?”
“I can see a farmer’s market across the street but it’s closed.”
“I think I saw the place on the way in. Forget the car and get over there and wait. I’ll pick you up ASAP.”
He cut the call before she could say anything else and looked around. Had to get these bodies out of sight. He wasn’t worried about anyone hearing the shots in this wind and weather. What few people were within earshot were inside.
He emptied Georges’s pockets and found nothing but a cell phone and the Volvo keys. He grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him around to the far side of the car where he loaded him into the passenger seat. Heavy son of a bitch. Then he moved to the rear compartment to deal with Dawn.
Poor kid. If she’d just done what he’d told her she’d still be alive. He tried to imagine what had happened since he’d left. She’d been with Weezy, and Weezy had walked down to the car… and then what?
He leaned in and went to grab her shoulders to pull her farther into the car when the baby’s deafening screech stopped him. He looked at the child-the Marty Allen hair and the scrunched-in features gave him a troll-doll look without any of the cuteness. Fury lit his beady little black eyes and Jack thought he was angry for taking his mother from him.
“Don’t worry, little guy. I’m not gonna-”
But then he saw the red smears on his face.
As he watched, the kid dipped his fingers into the blood welled in Dawn’s shoulder wound and then stuck them in his mouth, sucking greedily.
10
They had a litany going…
“We can’t just leave her there,” Weezy said for what seemed like the thousandth time.
And each time Jack gave the same reply: “We don’t have a choice.”
They stood inside the door to the O’Donnell house, looking out on Dawn’s Volvo, collecting snow as it sat in the yard.
After Weezy’s call from the garage, Jack had moved Dawn and Georges into the O’Donnell garage, where they joined Gilda on the floor. He’d arranged them along its west wall, Dawn supine, covered by a sheet from the house, the other two facedown. Then he’d eased the Crown Vic in beside them-a tight fit even if the garage had been empty-and closed the damaged doors. Their hinges had been loosened and twisted a bit, and the latch was broken, but he’d managed to jury-rig them so they stayed closed.
Then he’d taken the Volvo and its little passenger into Amagansett to pick up Weezy. Snow had begun to accumulate on the asphalt, but the Volvo handled nicely.
He’d tensed himself during the ride, waiting for one of those screeches, but it never came. A glance in the rearview mirror showed the kid asleep. Good thing, too. He’d pitched a fit when Jack had taken his mother away, screeching like the proverbial banshee. Jack hadn’t known whether it was maternal attachment or removal of his snack. He’d been chowing down on Dawn’s blood with lip-smacking gusto. Jack had wiped the blood off the dashboard before heading for Weezy, and now realized he should have cleaned up the baby’s face as well. But he’d had more important things on his mind.
Like how to salvage this clusterfuck.
He’d found a snow-dappled Weezy rubbing her hands and stamping her feet in front of the empty produce stand.
“Sorry to take so long,” he said, turning up the heat as she got in. “Cleanup took longer than I expected.”
Shivering, she slid into the passenger seat and held her hands over the dashboard vents.
“’S-s-s’all right.”
She glanced at the baby in the backseat and grimaced.
“Was I right?” he said.
“Not so bad.”
She had to be kidding. Then again, this baby belonged to Dawn, her surrogate daughter, and so maybe Weezy was seeing the child with different eyes.
She looked at him again. “Does he really have…?”
“Tentacles? I didn’t check.”
Time had been tight and he was in no great hurry to find out. Plenty of time for an anatomy check later.
She gave him a quick rundown of seeing the tow truck flashers and running out to stop it.
“How did anyone find it?”
“The guy at the garage told me it was reported to the police and the police called them to pick up an abandoned vehicle. That’s all he knows.”
Jack shook his head. “Murphy’s law rules the goddamn universe.”
“The multi verse,” Weezy said.
Unasked questions about Dawn layered the air within the car. Finally Weezy took a deep breath and looked at Jack.
“Dawn… she’s really…?”
He nodded.
Her features twisted as tears began to roll down her cheeks. “How?”
Jack described the scene as he’d found it, then, “The best I can come up with is somehow she got hold of the baby, Gilda came after her with a knife, wounded her, but Dawn fought back and killed Gilda. Then Georges killed Dawn.”
Weezy buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God. It’s all my fault!”
He sighed. “Somehow I knew you’d say that.”
“Well, it is. I never should have left her.”
“You saw the flashers. I’d have hauled ass down there too.”
“But if I’d stayed-”
“This never would have happened? Okay, probably not. But just because you could have stopped her if you were there doesn’t make you responsible for her bad decisions. And she made a whole series of them, one right after another: leaving the house, going to the mansion, entering the mansion, taking the baby. At any point along the way she could have made the opposite choice, but she didn’t.”
She raised her head and looked at him. “That’s awfully cold.”
Yeah, it was, wasn’t it. But anger was leaving him feeling pretty damn cold at the moment.
“Sorry, but that’s the way I see it.”
“She was a young mother, her baby had been taken from her, she wasn’t thinking.”
“Exactly. This wasn’t all about her. There’s a bigger picture. We explained that. But in the end none of that mattered to her. Dawn-Dawn-Dawn-that was it.”