Old questions. New questions. We’d been working our theories about why Tito picked the museum as the canvas for his garish message to Tom. Now it looked as if this new killer had deliberately put Tito into his own blueprint.
If this was another message for us, what exactly did it say?
Besides, “Be more anxious, Allie Harper.”
Lieutenant Olivia Wood, attired in all the waterproofing a sensible wardrobe could provide, plus big rubber boots, splashed over to us. I pictured my mad-spiked Louboutins hiding at home under the bed, dialing 911.
Otis had a question for her. “Lieutenant Wood, do you know where the shot was fired from?”
“Exactly what we were asking ourselves this morning, Otis. We believe we may have a sniper, right? So, first light, before we even got close to the body, we were calculating the shot might have come from the tall building across the street from the park. High up. Maybe the penthouse. There are at least two on the twenty-fourth floor. Balconies, naturally. We sent people up there, right off the bat. But in retrospect—”
“Up where?” I was uncomfortably sure I knew. “Show me?”
“Sure. Walk with me. Tom? You come too.”
We trailed her across the piazza toward the water’s edge. The rain was easing off. I was trying to ignore it. Staring where she pointed. Across the end of the lagoon. Up. Into the graceful contour of a big, new, gray building, and a penthouse glittering in the rain. Party going on.
Atelier 24. “Where Life Meets Art.”
How perfect.
Lieutenant Wood was disrupting my symmetry, however.
“I was wrong. No sniper there when they checked. Some kind of fancy brunch setting up in the one penthouse. Other one was interesting, though. Emptied out. Nothing but furniture and odds and ends. My team said the apartment looked like it was deep-cleaned by one of those “if you’ve had a fire, you need us” outfits. Recently. Scrubbed down. Carpet still damp. Another interesting development? Atelier’s security video was wiped. Suggests somebody covering their tracks. Or crappy security, maybe.”
She gazed back to the building. “Was he ever there? Can’t say a hundred percent, but I’m not apologizing. We were all in the mood for a sniper, so I looked up. Excellent line of sight from up there. We assumed too quick, but it was not a complete goose chase. Looks good to be a connection. Maybe. Just not to where the shooter was standing. We’ll keep after it.
“Closer inspection, however, it’s obvious Tito Ricci was shot almost point blank, Allie. Tom. Handgun. Suppressed, I’d expect. So much for our assumptions. Killing Tito at the bench was easier. Less complicated. ‘Hey, Tito?’ Pow! Outta there.
“Instant access to the hands too. Dude is efficient. Meticulous. Definitely not another Tito. Makes no difference to us right now. The shooter’s in the wind.”
She gave me a wry grin. “Do you have any idea how often we get a criminal mastermind in Cleveland? And now they’re killing each other? You all are a goldmine of challenging opportunities. Landslide.”
I’d heard this before.
“We have time of death between six and seven. Conditions make timing iffy. It helps that he was warmly dressed and the snow was light. Crime scene folks got some photos from before the snow turned all the way over to rain. Evidence too. There should be a lot more than at Kip’s scene because the killer was right here. And the hands would have taken extra time. More room for error. I’m not going to speculate about his motive for doing that. But he must have thought he had a good reason.
“Ricci wasn’t found until dawn. Woman walking dog. Came from Atelier. Dog’s name is Van Gogh. Said nobody can decide how to pronounce it, so she calls him Vannie. I hope the original Van Gogh is not anywhere he can hear about any of that.”
Olivia and I were on the same page about a lot of things.
She pulled out her phone again and, before I had time to brace myself, showed me photos she’d taken of the scene. I was grossed out but flattered.
Tito had been knocked off balance by the impact. Fallen backwards off the bench and ended up lying on his side behind it. There was a lot of blood on him everywhere. From the wrists. I swallowed. His heart was still beating when—
Olivia said the bullet wasn’t anywhere. “Skilled.”
The wrists were cringe-worthy but I could stand it. The ground was snowy in the pictures, except where blood had seeped through. Big areas were dissolved in it. There were footprints but melted and muddled. Photos of what was left.
The thought that skittered through my mind, as I stared at Dead Tito again, was “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.” But, basically, I would.
Lieutenant Wood put her phone away. “We were lucky we got the canopy in place before the snow changed completely over to rain. Sloppy, but I’ve seen worse. Lucky it’s a Saturday so not much traffic at that hour. Lucky the view from the street down to here is chopped up by shrubs and trees. Tracks indicated that the woman with the dog was first on the scene. She didn’t blunder all the way in, kept her dog in check, and called 911 like a good, smart citizen—Tom do you have anything to add?”
Tom was Lieutenant Wood’s new secret weapon, for sure. I assumed he’d been following our conversation. Silent, giving his full attention to every word. He closed his eyes for a moment. Listening. Breathing.
He hadn’t worn his dark glasses since he’d tossed them onto the table at the museum. As far as I knew, he’d left them lying there. I’d wanted to ask him about that, but I hesitated. I felt closer to him when he wasn’t wearing them. Like he was trusting me, maybe everybody, more. Or maybe it was resignation, a familiar refuge he’d given up as a pointless habit.
I hoped he’d never replace them. I loved being able to see all of Tom’s face all the time, but at that moment it was starting to worry me. He hadn’t answered Olivia and now I saw he’d gone pale. Worse than pale. Blanched. Gray. Even his lips were ashen. I’d been with Tom when he was scared, shocked, worried, tired, angry—I’d seen every emotion I could think of on his face. This was different.
One of the stone benches was behind us. Tom dropped onto it, apparently unaware that it was cold and wet. His breath came quick and shallow.
Olivia noticed too. “Tom. What’s happened? What’s wrong?” You look very—Are you—? Do you need—”
Tom’s voice was as bleached his face.
“Lieutenant Wood. How did he do it? The sniper? How did he cut—How—”
Both of us got there in the same instant. We both sat down on the bench with Tom. Me on one side. Olivia on the other. I had no idea what to do. Olivia had a decade’s worth of hard conversations on me. She started by talking.
“Tom. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. This has to be very upsetting for you.”
“You don’t have a clue.” His voice was thin. Distant.
I put my hand on Tom’s arm. He flinched. Pulled away. Olivia Wood reached out and took both of his hands in hers and held them firmly. Her grip was gentle but resolute. He didn’t resist.
“What do you need to know, Tom?”
A breath. “I need to know how. Olivia. Exactly. How.”
“I understand. Okay. I’ll tell you what I was told. You can stop me anytime. Just say stop. Okay?”
“Yes.” Barely a whisper.
Slowly, carefully, she placed his left hand on his knee. Took the right one and held it, palm up, in her left. Touched it lightly with the fingers of her right.
“This is what I understand about how that was done, Tom. The bones of the arm and the hand are not directly connected. They come closest together here and here.” She touched his wrist, first at the base of his thumb, and then where palm and wrist joined on the other side. “Little knobs. Can you feel that?”
He put his left hand on the spot. “Yes.”
Sweet Jesus. This has to stop. I took a deep breath to say so, and Otis t
ouched my shoulder. A gentle squeeze that said, Not your decision. Trust her. Trust him.
“The bones of the wrist and the bones of the hand are joined by tendons. Very tough, very strong and flexible. The person who did this to Tito had a sharp knife that slipped, fairly easily, between the bones. The cut was clean. Surgical.
“He was already dead, Tom. Or very close. The sniper would not have wanted him to—to scream. Or struggle. Sorry. Sometimes it helps to know these things.”
Tom’s breath was slower, steadier now. His color was slightly better. He took his hands back from Olivia and rubbed them together, slowly, like a meditation. Like he’d never had hands before.
“Thank you, Olivia. I needed it to be specific.” A shake of his head. “Not a cloud of a thousand fears. I’m not happy. And I’m still scared. Disheartened, I guess. Undone. But that helped.” He turned to me and took my clammy hand in both of his, and smiled over my shoulder toward Otis.
“Thank you too.”
As Tom’s fear ramped down, mine boiled up. Terror. Sorrow. Loss. Jostling around inside me. Competing for room in my overcrowded chest. I supposed Olivia knew what she was doing. She’d grounded Tom in a reality more manageable than the dread he’d been grappling with since—I realized now—Otis said, “No hands. So no prints.” Back when we’d thought the dead guy was D.B. I blessed her for the way her down-to-earth wisdom and kindness was helping Tom.
Only now she’d transferred his cloud over to me.
Tom’s hands drew me into his world. Brought him into mine. Without his touch on my skin—without my body under Tom’s hands, the current of tenderness and passion that was us, since the night we met—Before we even knew each other, there’d been love and honesty enough for both of us in Tom’s hands. Who would Tom be—who would we be—without his hands?
I shoved those fears down, as far as I could. Sat there as if Olivia had raised me up too, and now I could deal.
Tom was Olivia’s secret weapon again. A beat. A deep breath. He squared his shoulders and he was back. “Now. Lieutenant Wood. You asked me if I had something to add.
“It’s colder today. Rain was steadier, longer, on Wednesday. The smells are different here, closer to the water. Algae in the lake. Not as much as in warmer weather, I’m sure, but it’s there. Somebody is smoking, not close. Car exhaust, coming across from the street on the far side. Tito’s aftershave.”
OMG. I’d missed it. Now it spiked into my solar plexus. It was here. He was here. For the last time ever, I fervently hoped.
Tom moved on. “I wasn’t nearby this time, thank God, so I don’t have sounds the way I did for Kip. But, Olivia, I would say shooting Tito would be harder, more complex. Kip was blind. Tito was sighted.”
He grimaced. “In spite of what I said yesterday, Allie, about how pointless it is to try to hide, a sighted person has vision to alert him to danger. Hiding is not something I can do effectively. I’d have an advantage in a cave or a totally dark place. Otherwise—” He shrugged. “If I wanted to shoot a blind person out of nowhere, I could be fairly sure he wasn’t looking around for me. Wondering where I was. Ducking. Tito would have seen this guy coming. Maybe knew him too. You with me, Olivia?
“Yes, Tom. Kip was easier. Especially for a sniper.”
Tom’s tone bared its edge. “Yeah, Lieutenant. Kip was a piece of cake.”
He kept going, though. “Tito’s a totally different target. He knew this guy. Knew better than anyone what he was capable of. And Tito for sure was paranoid. The set-up, the ruse to get him to sit there and get shot would be different than with Kip, who politely presented himself to be murdered Wednesday night at a quarter till eight.
“We believe the sniper pulled both triggers, but this murder is different. Not only because of the gun and”—I felt him tense—“the hands. Tito was angry and driven by a wild need to punish us. Hot. The sniper is unemotional, unreadable, formidable. Cold.
“I’m over my head now, but here’s what I’d hypothesize. Tito trusted the shooter as a faithful employee. Or—and I’m tending to prefer this idea—he deferred to him in another way. Not from the perspective of an employer. And Tito last week was different from Tito last July. Less a kingpin, more a partner in crime with the sniper. He thought they were in this together.
“Now the threat has changed. Tito’s out. New devil. New game.”
He sat motionless, his face composed, his palms pressed together, fingers laced. “It would be unwise for us to deny that Tito’s hands are this man’s message for me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
3:30 p.m.
Our replacement devil gave us an hour and a half before he dropped in, figuratively speaking, to say hello.
His calling card was a bullet.
As is customary for a long-distance projectile, encased in copper and crafted for speed and accuracy, this one in arrived in pure silence—out of the proverbial nowhere—to shatter our illusions and the cupola of our cozy greenhouse by breaking all hell loose. No warning.
The sound of Armageddon blowing up the breakfast nook.
Tom and I were in the kitchen, listening to Otis explain the possibilities of the leftovers he’d saved up in the fridge, so none of us was caught in the deluge of glass down into the room.
The ceiling fan hung on its wiring for a couple of seconds, before it let go and landed with a stunning, disjointed sky-is-falling clatter on the glass coffee table. Which shattered too. I know that part in retrospect because I saw the wreckage afterwards. The fan/coffee table explosion was delayed, like an aftershock, so it stands out in my memory like the last straw of sanity.
The rest is screaming.
Tom on the far side of the island, was crying out “Allie. I can’t hear you. Allie. I can’t hear you. Allie. I can’t hear you.” Pure terror.
“Tom!” I scuttled around, hands and knees, and found him—curled up, head down, arms clutching his knees—reliving the devastating blast of last year’s case. I grabbed onto him. Held him tight, both of us alive. He was shaking. Me too. “Tom. Tom. I’m here. You can hear me. You can hear me.”
“No. I can’t. I—oh.” He exhaled. Almost a laugh. Came back to me. “Oh, Allie. I can. I can hear you. Otis. Where’s Otis?”
“I can see Otis, Tom. We’re all fine. Listen. You can hear him too. He’s swearing like Margo. She would be so proud.”
Otis had been trained for combat and had walked a beat in the City of Cleveland, so he was the first to seize control, putting a stop to his flurry of swearing.
“Take a breath, you guys. Nobody’s hurt.” He was on the floor with us though. Leaning up against the island. Still holding the sandwich he’d just made. It wasn’t a sandwich anymore. He hadn’t noticed.
“Nobody was supposed to get hurt. This was a warning.” He considered what he’d said. “More like ‘Hello.’”
The two guys from the garage were standing in the doorway now, putting their guns away. Another minute and the guy with the dog appeared. From the look of his uniform, he’d been flat on the ground out there. In mud. I exchanged glances with the dog. Got a minimal wag.
Whispered, “Who’s a good boy?”
The three of us hauled ourselves up off the floor.
Otis had the conn. “Okay. Everyone here is fine. You guys go back to your positions. I’ll phone this in so Bratenahl can send somebody to probably not find a damn thing of any use to anybody. And then we’re going to need somebody to clean up the breakfast nook and put a tarp over that damn roof before it starts raining again.”
For a man of formidable experience and skill, Otis could be very practical about mundane details. It was one of the things that made him formidable.
He welcomed the officers. They took our information, examined the glassy inside of the nook and paced off the sloppy outside. Found the bullet, based on an informed guess. Put it in a bag. Showed it to O
tis. They picked up a few other small items that might have been evidence, or sticks, and took them away. Shook their heads. Didn’t share anything except the news of finding the bullet and the head shakes. Told us we could go ahead, sweep up, mop up, and fix the roof. They had no suggestions at all about the fan and the coffee table. They’d see if they could discover where the shot was fired from and look for casings.
“Don’t hold your breath.”
Otis dispatched one of his men to The Home Depot for the tarp and a ladder and tasked another with the clean-up of the nook.
“Otis. You can’t send somebody up on a ladder with a sniper out there. That’s—“
He shut me down. “Allie, remember what we all agreed about snipers? I know he’s put your confidence to the test here—mine, too, tell you the truth—but trust me, the sniper is not out there anymore. Guaranteed. One thing snipers for sure do is leave.
“Bratenahl’ll see if they can figure out where the shot came from. Haystack. Might be a help if they locate that. But, seriously, can you picture this dude with the ‘silvery eyes’ and the ‘hair like Swedish children’”—He made his quote marks in the air. Twice. “Not cleaning up after himself? He’s a pro. I’m guessing military.”
“Otis is right, Allie. He’s gone now.”
Tom was getting control again too. At least that’s what he was pretending. In the vibration of his touch, I could feel he was as wired up as me. Same frequency as me too. The day he’d already had—even before the ceiling crashed down—would have put me under the covers and incoherent for a month. Seeing him in the ratty, stretched out sweatshirt he’d been wearing first thing this morning when Otis got the call—before he’d even had a chance to shave—was like a glimpse into another epoch. His jaw was tight but in spite of the shock and anger on his face, his voice was calm. Reasonable. His hands on my shoulders were—God.
So hot.
If half the world hadn’t been passing through, I’d have been rubbing my fingertips over the roughness of Tom’s cheek, slipping them up under the front of that well-worn shirt—Huh. That thing about near-death experiences was true. They did heighten all your senses like I’d always heard. Lee Ann thought so anyhow.
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