Hades w-4

by Russell Andrews

  He's not unhappy, Justin thought. Now everyone will know what he did. Everyone will know the scam he almost pulled off. He's happy to be caught.

  And that's when he heard the noise. From the woods to the right of the driveway. A twig snapping, maybe. A footstep.

  Justin turned. Saw a shadow, a massive shadow, but that's all he saw. The blow came quick and hard and Justin went down to his knees. The second blow caught him behind his left ear and things went fuzzy. He wasn't out completely, wasn't out for long. Maybe a few minutes. But his world was a blur for those minutes. While he was down, he heard a pop, quieter than the snapping twig, but closer. He couldn't get his eyes open to see what was happening. And by the time he was able to clear his head, to stagger up to his hands and knees despite the brutal pain radiating behind his eyes and at the top of his skull, it was too late.

  Justin sighed and quietly said, "Oh shit," when he saw that Evan Harmon was lying on the driveway right next to him, a small hole in the back of his head, blood still pouring out of the wound.

  Justin managed to turn his head but there was no sign of anyone else around. There were footprints in the dirt next to the gravel of the driveway. A man's footprints. Justin saw that the prints were embedded into the dirt and crushed twigs. The man was not petite. He was large and heavy.

  Justin closed his eyes, but that was a mistake because he was overcome with dizziness, so he opened them, forced himself to forget about the nausea and the pain, and he picked up Evan Harmon's dead body, carried it down the driveway to the car, put it in the backseat, and drove back to East End Harbor.

  37

  The morning of Evan Harmon's funeral, Long Island District Attorney Larry Silverbush resigned his post. He publicly apologized to David Kelley, and both New York tabloids had a front page photograph of Kelley and Silverbush shaking hands outside the Riverhead jail.

  Lincoln Berdon did not attend the funeral. The day before, Special Agent Zach Fletcher went to bring Berdon in for official questioning. He was told that Berdon had left the country. When records were checked at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, the FBI was told that Berdon's private Challenger had gone to London. The plane never landed at Heathrow, however, and by the time of the funeral, Berdon's whereabouts were still unknown.

  H. R. Harmon did appear at his son's service at the T. J. Klein Mortuary. Local police and the FBI were working with the New York City district attorney's office to determine if they had a viable case against Harmon. The initial determination was that they did not.

  Attendance at the service was sparse. There were more paparazzi than mourners. No one from Ascension showed up. Nor did anyone from Rockworth and Williams.

  H. R. sat next to Abigail Harmon. Abby wore a short black summer dress and her legs were bare. The day was way too hot and steamy for stockings. Justin, who sat with Reggie Bokkenheuser two rows behind and across the aisle from H. R. and Abby, noted that the widow Harmon always looked her best in black.

  When the service was over, Justin stepped into the aisle just as Abby passed him by. H. R. ignored him, refused to even glance in his direction, but when Justin touched Abby's elbow, she turned and flashed him the faintest of smiles. She slowed enough to let him draw even with her and he said, quietly, "When did you know?"

  She didn't say a word until they were outside on the street, and then she said, "The day before I called you."

  "Not from the beginning?" he asked.

  Abby shook her head. "No. I didn't know until Lincoln and H. R. told me. They came to my apartment, told me that Evan was alive. When I saw him… when I saw the body in our bedroom, I thought… well, I didn't know until they told me."

  "And what did you do?" he asked.

  "I did what I told you people like me always do."

  "You made a deal," he said.

  "I did what was easiest," Abby Harmon said.

  She leaned over, kissed Justin gently on the cheek, said, "Good-bye, Jay," then she disappeared into her father-in-law's waiting limo.

  That afternoon, he flew up to Providence. He met with his parents, told them as much as he thought they would want to know. He thought that, somehow, they both were dealing with him differently than they'd dealt with him over the past decade or so. He didn't know if they were more respectful or just softer, but there was something about the way they spoke to him and listened that touched him. When he kissed them both good-bye-maybe the first time in thirty-five years that he'd kissed his father-he said he would see them soon. And he meant it. And he was glad to mean it.

  Justin drove to Victoria LaSalle's house after that. There were other people there when he pulled up. Justin didn't know any of them and, when he was ushered into the living room, he wasn't introduced to any of them. Victoria excused herself, took Justin into a den and closed the door. She didn't say anything, just waited for him to talk. All he said was "You were married to a very good man."

  He told her what he knew, sparing her any ugly details of his investigation, focusing on her husband and his role. He told her that he had died through no fault of his own. And he told her that Ronald had been trying to do the right thing. The moral thing.

  Vicky waited until he was finished. She said, "Goddamn him. He was a goddamn fool and damn him to hell." Then she started to cry. Justin didn't move an inch toward her. He just waited for the crying to stop. She used her sleeve to dry her eyes. She said, "Who killed Evan Harmon?"

  Justin said he didn't know.

  Victoria nodded at him and went back to the living room. She didn't thank him. She didn't say anything else to him.

  He showed himself out.

  Justin had told Victoria LaSalle that he didn't know who killed Evan Harmon. Even though he did.

  Evan was killed by a man whose job it was to kill people. Whose job it was to kill Evan. Evan had stolen from the wrong people and when he was about to get caught, he'd run for his life. But the man he was running from was good at finding people. He'd used Justin to help him find Evan, even though Justin hadn't realized it. And he could have killed Justin at the same time he killed Evan. He probably should have. But he didn't. Which is why Justin knew who'd pulled the trigger in the driveway.

  Justin had told Reggie that he didn't exactly put Bruno in the friend category. He didn't know exactly what category Bruno did belong in.

  This didn't exactly clarify the situation.

  Two days after he'd left Vicky's house and Providence, an envelope was delivered to Justin's home in East End. Inside were a key and a hand-drawn map. There was also a note that said: You deserve a vacation. Enjoy my aunt's villa. Now I owe you one.

  There was no signature.

  No signature was needed.

  Three days after that, Justin Westwood and Reggie Bokkenheuser were on the island of Favignana.

  The villa they were staying in was actually a fairly small house, but lovely and simple. Built out of ancient tufa with stone floors and thick walls. Even in the nearly hundred-degree heat, the house was cool and perfect. There were two bedrooms, a living room, and a small kitchen on the main floor. There was also a basement that was accessible only from outside the house. It was dark and even cooler down there. Upstairs the decor was bare and plain; beige and earth colors dominated. Downstairs everything was quilted with colorful, lush fabric. There was one oddity to the house, but perhaps not so odd they decided, considering who the owner's nephew was. In the smaller bedroom of the main house, there was a wall of antique weapons: guns, knives, and swords. Justin, out of habit, checked several of the guns. He told Reggie he didn't know if they would even fire, but they were loaded. She said she didn't care. She just wanted to know if he was ready to fire, and he said he was, and they made love.

  Every day for a week, Justin and Reggie made love downstairs during the day and upstairs at night. They made love as often as possible and talked about everything they could think of. They drank ice-cold beer and Sicilian red wine and ate fresh tuna and lots of pasta with tuna roe. The third night, after a b
ottle of chilled Sicilian rose, they made love on the very private patio. There was no one around to see them when they were outside. The house was a good seventy-five feet from the road in front, and it rested atop a cliff. There was a waist-high stone wall around the back of the patio. It was all that separated them from a three-hundred-foot plunge into the sparkling blue sea.

  They were on the patio now, in the late afternoon, both of them already brown from the sun. Reggie was reading a Dean Koontz novel about a husband whose wife was kidnapped. Justin was content to lie next to her, bask in the sun, and think about the fish they might eat for dinner, his hand lightly rubbing against her bare leg. At some point she put her book down and said, "I've been thinking."

  He smiled and said, "Big mistake." But then he said, "Okay, what are you thinking about?"

  Reggie said, "I'm wondering if you're going to go back to the East End PD."

  He stayed silent for a moment. "I don't know yet. I haven't decided."

  She said, "Well, what I'm thinking is that, if you do, you never filled the opening you had from last year. You're still a person short in the department."

  "I never found the right person," he told her.

  "Maybe I'm the right person," she said.

  He looked at her, shielding his eyes from the sun, and smiled. "You want a beer?" he said. And when she nodded, he stood up and went inside.

  He was standing by the open refrigerator when he heard Reggie call his name.

  "Jay?" she said. "Could you come out here?"

  She sounded funny, there was the slightest quiver to her voice, and he called back, "I'll be right there. You want a glass or just the bottle?"

  "Doesn't matter," she said, "but come out. I have to show you something."

  "In a sec," he said. "Well, maybe two seconds."

  It was actually a minute or two before he emerged, and when he did he was holding two bottles of beer in his left hand. His right hand was covered by two large white linen napkins he'd found in the kitchen. He looked over at Reggie's lounge chair, saw that it was empty. Then he looked toward the edge of the patio. She was standing in front of the brick wall. He could see the sea, deep blue and shiny, behind her. Standing next to her was a beautiful Chinese woman. The woman he'd seen near Wanda's car. The woman the FBI had been looking for. The woman who, right now, was standing next to Reggie, holding Reggie's hair pulled tight in one fist. In the other hand, the woman had a long, thin knife she was holding against Reggie's throat.

  "I am Li Ling," the woman said. She let go of Reggie's hair. But the knife did not move away from her throat.

  "Yes" was all Justin said.

  "I have wanted to meet you," Li Ling said. "I have wanted to meet the man who killed Togo."

  "You've met him," Justin told her.

  "You are a good player," Ling said.

  "Player?" Justin asked.

  "Yes. Togo was excellent player. But you are better."

  "I'm not playing," he said. "This isn't some game."

  "Yes," Ling said. "It is game. I want to play with you." She nodded at Reggie. "I kill girl, as you kill Togo. Then we see who is better player."

  Justin smiled calmly at her. "I don't think I'll play."

  "You play," Ling said. "I fuck you. I kill you. It will be good game."

  "When you put it like that," Justin said, "that does sound good. Okay."

  And as he said okay, he dropped the two bottles of beer. Ling's eyes shifted downward when the glass shattered on the stone-she couldn't help herself. When she realized what was happening, it was too late. Justin's other hand, the one covered by the napkins, was coming up fast. The napkins fell off to the side, revealing an antique pistol, forty, maybe fifty years old, and without hesitating he fired.

  It sounded like a cannon roar in the tranquil silence of the beach, and a large hole appeared in Ling's otherwise flawless forehead.

  Reggie leaped sideways, falling to her knees on the stone patio, and just in time. Ling's hand, the one with the knife, swiped backward exactly where Reggie's throat had been.

  Li Ling stood for just a moment, staring in disbelief at Justin, then her legs wobbled and the knife dropped from her hand, and she started to topple over backward. The brick wall held her momentarily but not for long. She bent at the waist and then went over. She did not scream. She couldn't. She was dead long before her body hit the rocks in the shallow water, several hundred feet below.

  Reggie stood slowly. She felt a sting in her elbow, which had banged against the patio floor, and she glanced down at her scraped knees. She went to Justin, who slowly lowered his arm. She took the gun out of his hand and set it on the small patio table.

  "I told you something once," he said. "And I lied to you."

  "What was that?" she said softly.

  "I told you that I didn't think about the people I'd killed. I told you that they didn't keep me awake at night."

  "It's all right," Reggie said.

  "I think about them all the time. And I think about all of them, not just the ones I've killed. I think about all the murders, all the deaths. I think about them day and night. I think about them when I'm awake and when I'm dreaming. I can never stop thinking about them," Justin said.

  Reggie put her arms around him and drew him to her.

  "I know you can't," she said.

  And then she said, "It's time to go home."

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