And he knew it. He was many things but not stupid.
If Mario was killing witnesses to his crimes, she had to be number one on his hit list.
At this, she went all light-headed.
“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?” she asked when she could trust herself to speak.
“I didn’t see any point in worrying you. I was there, and I knew you were safe. Today’s a different story.”
Oh, yeah. Definitely. She tried to keep her physical reactions invisible, tried not to let him see the sudden need she had to breathe deeply, or the acceleration of her pulse, or the pounding of her heart.
When she didn’t respond, he gave her a quick, hard look and continued.
“Look, I called in some favors with some first-rate people I know. By the time you get home tonight, your locks will be changed and you’ll have a security system installed. But you know, nothing’s foolproof. If there’s something going on with you that’s putting you in danger, you need to tell me before you—and maybe Ben with you—wind up dead.”
Oh, God. It was her worst fear, and now that he’d put it into words, she reeled inwardly at the terror it invoked. If Mario came for her, and if Ben was around, would he leave Ben alone? She didn’t even have to think about it: not likely.
Should she tell Tom everything, and thereby at least make sure Ben would be physically safe?
Physically safe but with his mother in custody and his life destroyed?
Or should she try to come up with another, alternative, solution? Like abandoning her job and grabbing Ben and running for it, maybe? But she had six dollars to last till Monday—no, wait, that was gone with her briefcase; except for what was in the change jar in the house, she was broke. So wait until she got paid, and then run? That small amount of money wouldn’t last long. It wouldn’t be enough to find a place to live and keep them until she could get another job.
Anyway, Mario might come after her or have someone come after her. In fact, given the magnitude of what she knew about him, the odds were good that he would. He wouldn’t feel safe while she lived. She would be forever scared, forever looking over her shoulder.
Forever at risk.
How about making sure Ben was kept safe while she tried to deal with Mario on her own?
Tom glanced at her again, waiting for her reply.
“I keep telling you,” Kate said. “There’s nothing.”
“You keep telling me,” Tom agreed. Like he didn’t believe her. Well, she didn’t have the heart to try to convince him otherwise. She was getting sick of telling lies.
They were across the bridge now, cutting through the densely populated, kitschy-for-the-tourists area that was Chinatown. Looking out at the crowded streets without really seeing anything, Kate came to a decision.
If this was a game she and Mario were playing, the rules had changed: It had just turned into winner-take-all.
And for Ben’s sake, she meant to win.
The first thing she had to do was make sure nothing happened to Ben while she made further plans. Although Tom posed his own particular brand of danger to them, keeping him as their protector until she could get Ben out of harm’s way was only smart.
“You know, you’re scaring me to death here.” She slewed around a little in her seat to look at him. “Do you really think Ben and I are in danger?”
He turned left onto Juniper. They were almost there. The skyscrapers formed a canyon closing them in on two sides. The iconic statue of Billy Penn that sat high atop City Hall was just visible through an opening between the buildings.
“My guess is that you know the answer to that better than I do.”
“Just for the record, your suspicious mind is getting old. But I don’t want to argue with you. I . . . I have a favor to ask.”
“What?”
“Do you think you could spend the night with us again tonight?”
His lips compressed. The glance he sent her way was unreadable.
“Yeah.”
“But no . . . no . . .” Stupid as it was, she still couldn’t put it into words.
“Kissing?” His mouth twisted. “You don’t have to worry, I won’t touch you again. That was a mistake, anyway, which I think we both agree on. But I’ll spend the night just to make sure you and Ben stay safe until we catch these guys.”
She was surprised to discover that it stung to hear him describe kissing her as a mistake. Even though it had been.
“Thanks. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you understanding that it isn’t you. I just can’t get involved with anyone right now.”
“Not a problem.” His voice was dry.
By the time Tom let her out in front of her office, a plan was already taking shape inside her head. The first thing to do was to make arrangements for Ben to spend Friday night at the Perrys’. The second was to tell Tom they were going out of town. Then, with her son safely out of the way and Tom no longer hovering protectively, she was going to confront Mario. It had occurred to her that Mario had her cell phone, which gave her a way to get in touch with him. She would set up a meeting at her house to supposedly talk things over, and if Mario showed up—and she felt there was a strong possibility he would, because clearly he still wanted something from her—she would shoot him and claim he was a burglar. Given the way the law was written, if he was inside her house when she pulled the trigger, she wouldn’t even be charged with a crime.
Problem solved.
It was a terrible solution, and one that the respectable mother and lawyer she had become shuddered at. But now that she realized she was truly fighting for her and Ben’s lives, she could feel the tough inner core of her that had helped her survive her hellacious childhood reemerging.
In this time of extremis, she was prepared to do whatever she had to do.
Which was why on Friday she was alone in the rented Civic as she pulled into her driveway. Tom thought she was picking up Ben at the Perrys’ and then going on to a hotel for the night near Longwood Gardens, the former du Pont estate in the Brandywine Valley that was a huge tourist attraction this time of year. What she planned to tell him, if Mario showed up and everything went as planned, was that she had changed her mind about going, deciding instead that she just wanted to be alone for the night to decompress. Tom might have his suspicions—that was nothing new—but with Mario dead, there would be no way for him, or anyone else, to uncover anything that could hurt her or Ben.
They would be safe forevermore. They could go on with their lives as if this whole nightmare had never happened.
All she had to do was kill a man first.
Despite her grim determination to see the task through, the thought made her queasy.
Yesterday, she had called her cell phone and left a message: Call me. If ever her phone fell into the hands of the police, she had devised a simple explanation for the call. She was hoping to persuade whoever answered to return her things. But when, as she had hoped, Mario had called back, she told him she wanted to talk and asked him to meet her at her house at midnight Friday. He had agreed.
Even as she had disconnected, the knowledge that she was trying to set Mario up so she could kill him made her want to vomit. But at that point, as she saw it, it was pretty much his life—or hers and Ben’s.
Ben tipped the balance.
Since she had no reason to rush home after work Friday, it was almost seven by the time she stopped in her driveway. The remote to the garage had been lost along with everything else in her car, but, courtesy of Tom’s connections, she had a new one, along with a whole new garage-door operating system complete with an automatic light. So far she hadn’t seen the bill, and it was something that she preferred not to think about until she had to. Anyway, paying for the stuff that had been done to her house was the least of her problems at the moment.
It was full night as she pressed the button to open the garage door, but the silvery moon hanging low on the horizon kept it from being totally dark. A brisk wind blew in from
the east, and the trees cast dancing shadows over the house and yard. A lamp was on in the living room—she’d deliberately left it on that morning—and the soft glow visible through the curtains should have been comforting.
It wasn’t. She was too nervous.
I’m going to kill a man tonight.
Her stomach churned.
Maybe Mario won’t show. It was a sneaking, hopeful thought, followed by the depressing corollary, If he doesn’t, then I’ll just be living in fear until he does.
Which was worse?
That was a question for which she had no answer. What she did have was her gun, safe on the passenger seat beside her. In case there were any surprises, like Mario jumping her unexpectedly, she meant to be ready.
But there had been no sign of him for nearly two days.
Still, her heart was thudding as the garage door finally opened all the way. Given the new locks and the new security system, it was unlikely that Mario could already be inside the house waiting. But she had felt hideously vulnerable sitting in her driveway, and she felt hideously vulnerable now as she drove inside the garage and sat waiting in her locked car for the door to close again before she got out. Once it did, she figured she was relatively safe. She should have plenty of time to get inside and get ready. Get her courage up.
If Mario even came.
She was so busy watching anxiously out the rearview mirror in case anyone—read: Mario—should duck under the door as she waited for the thing to close that she almost missed it.
Or, rather, him.
Mario. He was already there, in her garage.
Chapter 23
KATE GASPED as her gaze found him and stopped, riveted. Her eyes went wide with shock. Her hands tightened on the wheel. Her heart threatened to leap out of her chest. Mario was in the front left corner of the garage, partially hidden by some boxes of dishes and things she hadn’t yet unpacked. She could see him only from the midchest up and from the knees down, but from what she could tell he sat on the concrete floor with his legs splayed out in front of him and his head slumped toward his shoulder.
And unless her eyes were playing tricks on her, there was a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.
Whatever, she was almost one hundred percent certain he was dead.
Murdered.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.
Terror sluiced like ice water through her veins as, all at the same time, it occurred to her that if Mario had been murdered, someone had to have done it, and they had to have been in her garage, and they might very well still be somewhere nearby. Gasping with fear, heart galloping, pulse racing, she looked wildly around, making sure the car doors were still locked and that no one was hidden in the shadows. At the same time, she jabbed at the garage door opener so that the damned door would open back up and she could get the hell out of there, and cringed in hideous anticipation of a bullet finding her at any second.
Mario’s eyes were open. His mouth was, too. His face was slack. The hole was dime-sized and black and oozing just a trickle of blood. All this she saw in a series of horrified glances as, with glacial slowness and enough noise to wake the dead, the garage door ponderously rose.
Call 911. Call Tom.
She had just replaced her cell phone the day before, and she thanked God for it as she grabbed it. Tom’s number—what was it? She didn’t know, but thank God it was programmed into her phone.
Punching the button, she listened to the call connecting and at the same time shifted into reverse with one hand while she waited for the garage door to reach a height sufficient for the Civic to scoot beneath it. But as the door continued to rise and the phone finally began to ring at the other end, and she listened to both and glanced in horror at Mario and kept looking desperately around, she could see how vulnerable she was. Stuck in the garage, she was as exposed as an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Until the opening was wide enough, she couldn’t get out. Anyone could get in.
Her skin crawled at the thought.
“Tom Braga.”
Tom’s voice in her ear was the most welcome sound she had ever heard.
“Tom. You need to come.” Even as she gasped the words out, she was reminding herself that she didn’t know who this man in her garage was. To her, supposedly, he was a dead stranger. Not Mario.
“Kate? What’s wrong?”
“There’s a dead man in my garage. Please hurry.”
“What? Jesus fucking Christ. Is anyone else there? Are you in danger?” His tone was sharp, urgent.
“I . . . don’t think so.” The garage door was finally high enough so that the Civic would fit. Taking her foot off the brake, she hit the gas and zoomed backward, flying out beneath the door and down the driveway toward the street. Darkness swallowed the Civic like a giant mouth. “I don’t know. Okay, I’m out of the garage.”
He was swearing a blue streak. He said something in reply to something that was said to him by whomever he was with, but she was breathing so hard and her pulse was pounding so loudly in her ears that she didn’t really catch what it was he said. The Civic careened into the street just as another car went past that she nearly hit, but it swerved and honked and went on its way, so she shifted into forward and took off, heading back the way she had come.
She was shaking from head to toe, she discovered. The one thought in her head was to get as far away as she could from the scene.
“Kate!” From the sound of his voice, Tom had called her name more than once without getting an answer.
“I’m here.”
“There’s a patrol car close by. It’ll be at your house in a few minutes. I’m on my way.”
“Okay.” Kate was at the top of the street, braking for the stop sign, when she heard a siren approaching. She could see the flashing lights coming toward her fast. “I see it.”
“That’s good.” He said something indistinguishable, presumably to whoever was with him, and then the patrol car was in full view, speeding toward her, and the shaking was going away and her heart was slowing down and her pulse was quieting a little because it was starting to seem like she was safe now.
If Mario was dead . . .
The thought remained unfinished as Tom spoke again. “I can hear the siren over the phone. Are you okay?”
She was still at the stop sign, waiting, watching the patrol car racing toward her. It bore down on her street, and she knew that when it passed an innocent person would follow it back to her house, open the garage door for the officers, let them see Mario, answer their questions . . .
Then it hit her. She was an innocent person. At least about this. She hadn’t killed Mario.
“Kate?” Tom’s voice was more urgent. “Are you okay? What about Ben?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. And Ben’s not with me. I just got home and . . . there this guy was. I think somebody shot him in the head. Oh, my God.”
The patrol car turned in front of her, heading down her street, heading toward her house. In the distance she saw more flashing lights coming her way.
“I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes,” Tom said to her, and then there was a pause. She could hear someone talking in the background. “We got a call coming through dispatch from the officers who are pulling up in front of your house. Are you there?”
“I’m at the end of the street.” She was actually pulling into a neighbor’s driveway and backing out so that she could head home again. Small rectangles of light that she knew were front doors opening were appearing up and down the street as neighbors stepped outside to see what was going on. “I can see them. Tell them I’m coming.”
She could hear him talking to somebody else again. The patrol car was stopped in her driveway now, and officers were getting out. Kate pulled in behind it, narrowing her eyes against the stroboscopic light as another patrol car turned in at the top of the street and raced toward them.
“That’s you in the driveway behind them, right?” Tom said. “They told dispatch a woman in a red car ju
st pulled in.”
“Yes, it’s me,” Kate said, taking a deep breath as she watched the uniformed officers walking toward her. Her mind was already moving at about a million miles a second as she explored the ins and outs of what she was going to say. “I’m going to hang up now and talk to them. Hurry, please.”
Then she disconnected, turned off the engine, and got out of the car to talk to the waiting officers.
THE INVESTIGATION hadn’t been assigned to him and Fish, which suited Tom perfectly. He knew Kate way too well now to be satisfied with her responses if it had been, although he was keeping his opinions to himself and letting the detectives on the case, Jeff Kirchoff and Tim Stone, both relative newcomers to the Homicide Division, take the lead. He propped a shoulder against the wall in her living room and stayed out of the way, watching and listening as Kirchoff, who was young and easily dazzled, gently led Kate through her discovery of the body one more time.
Still wearing the conservative navy blue skirt suit she’d worn to work—he knew because he’d been there when she’d left, and had followed her to the office—she sat on the couch with her slender knees and calves pressed tightly together, her feet in a pair of nude high heels that made her legs look a mile long, her hands clasped tightly in her lap as she leaned toward Kirchoff. With her hair pulled back into a loose bun so that her beautiful bone structure was on full display and her big, blue eyes wide on Kirchoff’s face, she looked sexy and fragile and the very picture of innocence. Kirchoff didn’t stand a chance. Nodding sympathetically, he was drinking in every word that fell from her soft, pink lips. His notebook lay in his lap, forgotten. He was so convinced that he was dealing with an innocent victim of circumstances that he wasn’t even bothering to write things down, or to check her story against things she’d already said.
Tom, on the other hand, was drawing an entirely different conclusion.
Those flickering lashes, the quick downward glances, the tight clasping of her hands—he’d seen them all before.
His smokin’ little prosecutor was lying through her pretty white teeth again.
Guilty Page 27
