“About the book I’ve been writing,” she said. “The follow-up to Godchild. The true story behind Charlie’s death.”
“What story?” I said, spinning my right hand around and around, as if to coax her into telling me more.
“Mr. Marconi,” she said, her hands set in her lap, the cigarette held between two fingers on her right hand. “Would you believe me if I told you my son’s death was not an accident?”
I walked over to the small desk at the far end of the room.
I looked at Renata’s image reflected in the mirror. Her pale face seemed swelled now, her eyes filled with more tears.
“Tell me about it,” I said, into the mirror.
“Richard!” she screamed. So suddenly, I felt the shock of her voice shoot up and down the length of my spine. Like a French knife. Only sharper.
I turned, looked her in the eye. “Richard what?” I said.
“Richard is the key to the whole thing. The answer to all your questions.”
She was openly crying now.
Sobbing.
“What key, Renata?” I shouted, slamming my fist against the desktop. “What! Key!?”
She let her head drop, chin against chest.
“I.…am … so … tired,” she said.
The cigarette between her fingers had burned all the way down. But it didn’t seem to matter to her when she raised her head, slowly, and whispered, “The son of a bitch. He killed Charlie.”
Chapter 46
She sees him now, in her sleep.
He is kneeling on the floor of the bathroom, the water splashing against his clothes, as he holds the child down with outstretched arms.
But then, suddenly, he senses someone coming up behind him.
She knows he must feel her presence.
Because he turns fast and spots her. His wife.
Just before she smashes him in the head with the claw hammer.
Chapter 47
After a time Renata stopped crying.
I tried to talk her into room service. Burgers maybe, or a pizza from the joint across the street. Anything. She looked like a bag of rags and bones in that jumper. But she refused (“How the hell can I eat?” were her exact words).
She smoked another one of my cigarettes, then curled herself up and went back to sleep.
An hour later, Renata was awake and sitting on the bed staring into the TV at CNN Headline News. Rather than risk leaving the room, I had found a nearby deli that delivered. I laid out a couple of rare roast beef sandwiches with Russian and horseradish and deli pickles, a can of Diet Coke for her and a bottle of Bud for me.
When we were finished I went to the window and checked the parking lot. The lot was full of cars I didn’t recognize. But that didn’t mean Tony or any of his Guinea Pigs weren’t watching us right at that moment.
I lit a cigarette from the pack on the small desk and leaned back against it.
“Tell me more about this new book,” I said.
Renata leaned back against the headboard of the bed. Only the wall-mounted fixture above her head had been turned on, basking the room in a dim half light. Maybe it was my imagination, but she looked better since she’d eaten. A little color had returned to her face.
“There’s not much to tell other than what I’ve already said. Richard killed him and that’s what I’ve planned on writing about.”
“Why keep it from the police for so long?”
She inhaled and then let the air out. “For a long time I wouldn’t accept the truth, that my husband was capable of doing what he did to our little boy. The only way I could actually deal with it, on a personal level, was to write Godchild.”
I smoked a little and drank some beer.
“I actually saw myself as a fictional character,” she went on. “A woman who accidentally drowns her child.” She breathed again, her face flushed. “Don’t you see? I was blaming myself in the place of Richard. Because I allowed him to get away with murder.”
We were quiet for a time.
Then I said, “Can you tell me how it really happened, and why?”
She twisted her head. “Not now,” she said, lighting up another one of my smokes. “It’s why I’ve been writing it down. It’s how I deal.”
“You can reveal the truth by writing it,” I said. “But you can’t get yourself to talk about it.”
“Something like that, Mr. Marconi.”
“Keeper,” I offered.
She nodded.
“But if your husband were to find this book, Renata,” I said, “if he were aware of its existence, he would want it destroyed and you along with it.”
She nodded once more and stamped out the half-smoked cigarette in the little Days Inn ashtray.
“But he couldn’t possibly know about it,” she said. “I never told him.”
“Where’s the manuscript now?”
“It’s at my home.”
“The home you share with Richard in Loudonville.” A question I already knew the answer to.
Another nod.
“A hell of a place to keep it,” I said.
“It’s not like you think, Mr. Marconi…Keeper,” she said. “I have a place in the house where it is safely hidden. A place he doesn’t know about.”
“Is the book backed up on computer, something he’d have access to?”
“No. I wrote it on a manual, for just that reason.”
“Carbons?”
“No.”
She got up off the bed and went into the bathroom.
“Renata,” I said, through the door. “Are you certain you haven’t told anyone about this book? Not your friends, not your publisher, not anyone?”
“I’m certain,” she said, her voice barely audible above the sound of running water.
“Is it possible that your husband simply suspects you are writing this book? That his intuition tells him you’re ready to tell the truth to the world?”
She said nothing. Or if she did I couldn’t hear her.
I stepped away from the desk, knocked on the bathroom door, asked if she was okay.
Another knock.
Nothing.
I tried to open it. The door was locked.
“Renata,” I shouted again.
Just running water.
I rammed my left shoulder against the door, plowed it open. She’d opened the bathroom window and managed to squeeze her torso through the narrow slider.
I grabbed her by the legs, pulled her back in.
No resistance.
She sat down on the toilet lid and cried.
“Nice try,” I said, slamming the slider closed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. An apology not directed at me but herself.
I was breathing hard. “Just promise me you won’t do that again,” I said. I put my hand on her shoulder. “Listen to me for a second,” I said. “This is what it all comes down to. This is the reality of it all. Your husband has somehow gotten wind of your new book project. Because of it, he wants you dead, and naturally he wants to destroy any evidence of the manuscript. I suspect it’s been his plan all along to blame your murder on me. But I’ll tell you what, I’ve been accused of murder before and I don’t plan to go through it a second time, understand? So please tell me you don’t plan on running off again.”
“Then what is it you want from me?” she asked, through the tears.
“I want you to help me take your husband down before he gets another chance to take me down. Us down.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
I took a step back, pressed my back against the bathroom wall. “You’ve already done it for me,” I said, “by writing that book.”
“It’s not done,” she said.
“How much is done?”
“About half.…a little more than half, maybe.”
“How much time do you need to complete it?”
She shook her head. “You can’t really estimate a thing like that—”
“ —
If you work nonstop.”
“Five days, maybe a week. But it won’t read very well.”
“I’m not looking for a masterpiece,” I said. “I’m looking for information, the true story. An accusation strong enough to shift the burden of proof onto your husband.”
“What about you?” she said. “What are you supposed to get out of all this?”
“First of all,” I said, “I want the money Richard owes me. Second, I want him to admit he set me up, used me as a patsy. But I’ll explain more during the ride.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Home,” I said.
Chapter 48
By ten-thirty we were sitting in the front seat of the Ford Explorer, just outside Renata’s Loudonville home. The half dozen or so lamp lights that spanned the perimeter of the long driveway had been turned off. As were the lights in and around the massive center-hall Colonial. No sign of Richard anywhere. No cars outside the three-bay garage, no nothing.
“What are you going to do?” she said, as I stepped out of the Explorer.
“Break in,” I said.
“I know where everything is. I should go.”
“Richard sees you, he’ll kill you,” I said. “I can’t take that chance.” I felt the cold wind blowing against my neck.
“There’s an alarm.”
“Give me the code.”
She did. I repeated the four-digit code in my head until I had it memorized.
“I don’t suppose you have a key,” I said.
“No key,” she said.
I went to close the door. But before all that I reached inside, in the direction of the steering column, to pull the keys from the ignition, stuff them in the pocket of my jeans. Why take unnecessary chances? Why give her the opportunity to just drive away?
But then I looked at Renata and she looked at me.
Although we never said word one about it, I knew what she was thinking.
Can he trust me?
I took my hand away.
“Just give me a few minutes,” I said.
“Whatever it takes,” she said.
And then I closed the door.
Maybe it was a stupid move leaving the keys like that.
But in the end, I knew it would be the perfect test.
I walked over the snow-crusted lawn to the back of the house, over the ice-covered patio to the back door. I brought my fingers to my mouth, blew warm breath on them, and punched the code into the electronic pad. The little red light above the keypad switched to green.
I took off my leather jacket, wrapped it around my right fist, punched out the bottom glass on the six-pane door. Then I put the jacket back on, reached in through the opening, and unlocked the dead bolt.
A second later, I was in.
The layout of the house matched Renata’s description exactly, with the kitchen to my left, the family room just off the French doors leading out onto the back patio. Colt in hand, I made my way through the kitchen to the center hall and up the stairs, the stairwell so dark I could hardly make out the pistol in front of my face. But the night-light in the bathroom at the top of the stairs shined brightly enough for me to make out the long hall and the three or four bedrooms it accessed. I immediately made my way down the corridor.
Renata told me to look for the manuscript in a writing room she had set up in what would have been Charlie’s bedroom, had he survived, on the second floor of the house —the room directly across from Richard’s home office. A square of wood floor lifted out from under the bed. I would find the manuscript there. All I had to do was get in, get the manuscript, get the hell out. Easy. The famous last word.
Renata’s writing room.
I went down on my knees, felt around the floor for the edges of the cutout square. When I found it, I dug my nails into the crack and pried out the small piece of flooring. Laying the piece aside, I reached into the opening, felt the manuscript with my hand, and lifted it out. I replaced the flooring and got back on my feet.
At first I walked out of the room thinking that I had accomplished what I set out to do. But then I couldn’t stop myself from drifting into Barnes’s home office, directly across from Renata’s. I suppose it was stupid. But I turned on the overhead light anyway and nearly fell flat on my back when I saw the three decapitated heads set on top of the wooden bookshelf mounted to the far wall. One head that appeared to have been hacked away by a hatchet with the eyes still wide, the tongue sticking out red and purple, the face and wild hair spattered with blood. Then another head, this the head of a woman, with long blond hair and a delicate mouth, her eyes closed as though asleep. And one last head that obviously served as an exact replica of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Of course, the heads were nothing more than very well done special effects, the hauntingly real Cuomo head in particular most likely coming from the 1995 and ’96 slash-and-burn campaign Barnes had orchestrated for the Republican challenger.
I stood there, eyes closed, breathing hard and deep.
Turning away from the heads, I tried my best to survey the rest of the office without taking a second look. I caught my breath, tried like hell not to be reminded of Fran.
The decapitation.
The place was clean and neat. Too neat, as though it had never been used for an office at all. There was a long wood desk and a file cabinet and some floor lamps. There was a green leather couch and matching club chair and a coffee table. I walked around the desk, tried the drawer. It was locked. I tried the file cabinet. Also locked.
Toward the back of the rectangular-shaped room was a large-screen television that took up the majority of the wall space. Mounted to the floor, about a half dozen or so feet in front of the television, a chair with a heavy retractable bottom and thick cushions, like movie theater seating.
The locked cabinet sat there in front of me.
I thought about shooting away the lock, going through the video library.
But time was getting tight.
I turned the light off in the room.
I felt a dryness in my mouth. There was a buzzing in my head. I had to leave this house. Renata had to get to work on the manuscript. She claimed it would take five days to finish it off. I could give her three days, no more.
I walked out of Richard’s office, went back into Renata’s room. I picked up her portable typewriter, cradled it in my arms. Like a mother and her godchild.
Chapter 49
She sits in the passenger seat of the Explorer.
The car is still warm from the heater. But now that it is turned off, she knows it’s only a matter of time until the cold sneaks its way back in.
She is staring at the set of keys dangling from the ignition.
As soon as Keeper is out of sight, around the back of the house, she finds herself opening the door. Without even thinking about it, she has her hand on the door handle so that she can get out and get back in. Only this time, in the driver’s seat. All she has to do to get out of this mess is start the engine, pull out, and head south. Or west. Or north.
What difference does it make so long as she’s far away from this place?
She almost goes through with it.
But then something stops her.
Something makes her take her hand off the door opener.
She doesn’t know if it’s this man who rescued her—this raggedy, salt-and-pepper man who calls himself Keeper— who claims he is being set up right along with her. This man who insists she knows some Bald Man who just happened to attend Charlie’s funeral.
She’s never met any Bald Man.
She does not know any Bald Man.
What she does know is that somehow Richard has gotten wind of her new book. And because he knows, he will stop at nothing until he sees her dead. He can make it look like an accident too. Richard Barnes, advertising extraordinaire, has that kind of power. That kind of connection to the right people.
Or is it the wrong people?
Maybe that’s why she takes her ha
nd off the door handle. Maybe that’s why she only stares at the car keys, never bothering to so much as place a fingertip to them.
This is not about her, or Richard, or this raggedy man who is after the truth.
This isn’t about her life or anyone else’s life, other than Charlie’s.
About telling his life and death story.
And if Keeper Marconi is willing to keep her safe so that she can write the story —if he’s willing to help put Richard away for what he did in the bathroom of their apartment— then she’d be dead wrong to stop him or to run away from him.
What she needs to do is stay with him. Work with him.
Not for her sake.
But for Charlie’s.
PART FOUR
NO ANSWERS YET IN SUSPECTED DEATH OF FORMER WARDEN
ALBANY (AP)-DNA tests failed to reveal the true identity of the body recently recovered inside the charred wreckage of a 1996 Toyota 4-Runner belonging to former Green Haven warden turned private detective Jack “Keeper” Marconi.
Marconi is best remembered as having been falsely brought up on charges in 1997 in the shooting death of Eduard Vasquez, the convicted New York City cop-killer who escaped Green Haven Prison. But it wasn’t until going on the run to produce the proof necessary to acquit himself and convict the true murderer —former DOCS Commissioner Washington Pelton —that Marconi was able to vindicate himself.
Marconi has not returned to public service since but has chosen instead to operate as a private consultant. Pelton had been serving a life sentence at Clinton Correctional Facility for the murder of Vasquez when he died of stomach cancer in August of last year.
Marconi, who for two years waged a campaign to locate the man accused of killing his former wife, Frances, in a 1996 hit-and-run, never showed up for his wedding last Saturday to Albany native Valerie An-tonelli. After having been spotted at Bill’s Bar and Grill on Watervliet Avenue, he disappeared. His badly burned 4-Runner was recovered from the Hudson River a day later, riddled with .9-millimeter bullet holes. The body discovered inside the wreckage had been burned beyond recognition, prompting a series of DNA tests that, thus far, have proven inconclusive.
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