by Lisa Gardner
I ordered him to roll over on his stomach, hands behind his back. I had a pocketful of zip ties from Shane’s supplies. I did Purcell’s wrists first, then his ankles, though moving his injured left leg made him moan in pain.
I should feel something, I thought idly. Triumph, remorse, something. I felt nothing at all.
Best not to think about it.
Purcell was injured and restrained. Still, never underestimate the enemy. I patted down his pockets, discovering a pocketknife, a pager, and a dozen loose cartridges he’d stuck in his pants for emergency reloading. I removed all items and stuck them in my pockets instead.
Then, ignoring his grimace, I used my left arm to drag him several feet through the snow to the back stoop of his house, where I used a fresh zip tie to bind his arms to an outside faucet. With enough time and effort, he might be able to free himself, even break off the metal faucet, but I wasn’t planning on leaving him that long. Besides, with his arms and legs bound and his hamstring severed, he wasn’t making it that far, that fast.
My shoulder burned. I could feel blood pouring down my arm, inside my shirt. It was an uncomfortable sensation, like getting water down your sleeve. I had a vague impression that I wasn’t giving my injury proper significance. That probably, I hurt a great deal. That probably, losing this much blood was worse than a bit of water down a sleeve.
I felt curiously flat. Beyond emotion and the inconvenience of physical pain.
Best not to think about it.
I entered the house cautiously, knife returned to its sheath, leading with the shotgun. I had to cradle the barrel against my left forearm. Given my condition, my aim would be questionable. Then again, it was a shotgun.
Purcell hadn’t turned on any lights. Made sense, actually. When preparing to dash out into the dark, turning on interior lights would only ruin your night vision.
I entered a heavily shadowed kitchen that smelled of garlic, basil, and olive oil. Apparently, Purcell liked to cook. From the kitchen, I passed into a family room bearing two hulking recliners and a giant TV. From that room, into a smaller den with a desk and lots of shelves. A small bathroom. Then, a long hallway that led to three open doorways.
I forced myself to breathe, walking as stealthily as possible toward the first doorway. I was just easing the door open wider when my pants began to chime. I ducked in immediately, sweeping the room with the shotgun, prepared to open fire on any lunging shapes, then flattening my back against the wall and bracing for the counterattack.
No shadows attacked. I dug my right hand frantically into my pocket and pulled out Purcell’s pager, fumbling for the Off button.
At the last second, I glanced at the screen. It read. Lyons DOA. BOLO Leoni.
Shane Lyons was dead. Be on the lookout for Tessa Leoni.
“Too little, too late,” I murmured. I jammed the pager back in my pocket and finished clearing the house.
Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
By all appearances, Purcell lived a bachelor life with a big screen TV, an extra bedroom, and a den. Then I saw the door to the basement.
Heart spiking again. Feeling the world tilt dizzily as I took the first step toward the closed door.
Blood loss. Getting weak. Should stop, tend the wound.
My hand on the knob, turning.
Sophie. All these days, all these miles.
I pulled open the door, stared down into the gloom.
39
By the time D.D. and Bobby arrived at Tessa Leoni’s father’s garage, they found the back door open, and the man in question slumped over a scarred workbench. D.D. and Bobby burst into the space, D.D. making a beeline for Mr. Leoni, while Bobby provided cover.
D.D. raised Leoni’s face, inspecting him frantically for signs of injury, then recoiled from the stench of whiskey.
“Holy crap!” She let his head collapse back against his chest. His whole body slid left, off the stool, and would’ve hit the floor if Bobby hadn’t appeared in time to catch him. Bobby eased the big man down, then rolled Leoni onto his side, to reduce the odds of the drunk drowning in his own vomit.
“Take his car keys,” D.D. muttered in disgust. “We’ll ask a patrol officer to come over and make sure he gets home safely.”
Bobby was already going through Leoni’s pockets. He found a wallet, but no keys. Then D.D. spied the Peg-Board with its collection of brass.
“Customers’ keys?” she mused out loud.
Bobby came over to investigate. “Saw a bunch of old clunkers parked in the back,” he murmured. “Bet he restores them for resell.”
“Meaning, if Tessa wanted quick access to a vehicle …”
“Resourceful,” Bobby commented.
D.D. looked down at Tessa’s passed-out father, shook her head again. “He could’ve at least put up a fight, for God’s sake.”
“Maybe she brought him the Jack,” Bobby said with a shrug, pointing to the empty bottle. He was an alcoholic; he knew these things.
“So she definitely has a vehicle. Description would be nice, but somehow I don’t think Papa Leoni’s talking anytime soon.”
“Assuming this isn’t a chop shop, Leoni should have papers on everything. Let’s check it out.”
Bobby gestured to the open door of a small back office. Inside, they found a tiny desk and a battered gray filing cabinet. In the back of the top file was a manila folder marked “Title Work.”
D.D. pulled it and together they walked out of the garage, leaving the snoring drunk behind them. They identified three vehicles sequestered behind a chain link fence. The file held titles for four. By process of elimination, they determined that a 1993 dark blue Ford pickup truck was missing. Title listed it as having over two hundred thousand and eight miles.
“An oldie but a goodie,” Bobby remarked, as D.D. got on the radio and called it in.
“License plate?” D.D. asked.
Bobby shook his head. “None of them have any.”
D.D. looked at him. “Check the front street,” she said.
He got what she meant, and jogged a quick tour around the block. Sure enough, half a block down, on the other side of the street, a car was missing both plates. Tessa had obviously pilfered from it to outfit her own ride.
Resourceful, he thought again, but also sloppy. She was racing against the clock, meaning she’d grabbed the nearest plates, instead of burning time with the safer option of snatching plates from a vehicle blocks away.
Meaning she was starting to leave a trail and they could use it to find her.
Bobby should feel good about that, but he felt mostly tired. He couldn’t stop thinking what it must’ve been like, returning home from duty, walking through the front door, to discover a man holding her daughter hostage. Give us your gun, no one will get hurt.
Then the same man, shooting Brian Darby three times before disappearing with Tessa’s little girl.
If Bobby had ever walked through the door, found someone with a gun at Annabelle’s head, threatening his wife and child …
Tessa must’ve felt half-crazed with desperation and fear. She would’ve agreed to anything they wanted, while maintaining a cop’s inherent mistrust. Knowing her cooperation would never be enough, of course they’d betray her first chance they got.
So she desperately needed to get one step ahead. Cover up her own husband’s death to buy time. Plant a corpse with baby teeth and homemade explosives as a macabre backup plan.
Shane had originally stated Tessa had called him Sunday morning and requested that he beat her up. Except now they knew Shane had most likely been part of the problem. Made sense—a friend “helping” another friend would just smack her around a little, not deliver a concussion requiring an overnight hospital stay.
Meaning it had been Shane’s idea to beat Tessa. How would that play out? Let’s drag your husband’s dead body up from the garage to defrost. Then, I’m going to pound the shit out of you for kicks and giggles. Then, you’ll call the police and claim you sho
t your dirtbag husband because he was going to kill you?
They’d known she’d get arrested. Shane, at the very least, should’ve figured out how thin her story would sound, especially with Sophie missing and Brian’s body having been artificially maintained on ice.
They’d wanted her arrested. They’d needed her behind bars.
It all came down to the money, Bobby thought again. Quarter mil missing from the troopers’ union. Who’d stolen it? Shane Lyons? Someone higher in the food chain?
Someone smart enough to realize that sooner or later they’d have to supply a suspect before internal affairs grew too close.
Someone who realized that another discredited officer, a female, as seen on the bank security cameras—say, Tessa Leoni—would make the perfect sacrificial lamb. Plus, her husband had a known gambling problem, making her an even better candidate.
Brian died because his out-of-control habit made him a threat to everyone. And Tessa was packaged up with a bow and handed over to the powers that be as their own get-out-of-jail-free card. We’ll say she stole the money, her husband gambled it away, and all will be accounted for. Investigation will be closed and we can ride off into the sunset, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer and no one the wiser.
Brian dead, Tessa behind bars, and Sophie …
Bobby wasn’t ready to think about that. Sophie was a liability. Maybe kept alive in the short term, in case Tessa didn’t go along with the plan. But in the long term …
Tessa was right to be on the warpath. She’d already lost one day to planning, one day to hospitalization, and one day to incarceration. Meaning this was it. She was running out of time. In the next few hours, she’d find her daughter, or die trying.
A lone trooper, going up against mobsters who thought nothing of breaking into police officers’ homes and shooting their spouses.
Who would have the balls to do such a thing? And the access?
Russian mafia had sunk huge tentacles into the Boston area. They were widely acknowledged to be six times more ruthless than their Italian counterparts, and were swiftly becoming the lead players in all things corrupt, drug-fueled, and money-laundered. But a quarter mil defrauded from the state troopers’ union sounded too small time in Bobby’s mind.
The Russians preferred high risk, high payoff. Quarter mil was a rounding error in most of their undertakings. Plus, to steal from the state police, to actively summon the wrath of a powerful law enforcement agency upon your head …
It sounded more personal to Bobby. Mobsters wouldn’t seek to embezzle from a troopers’ union. They might, however, apply pressure to an insider who then determined that was the best way to produce the necessary funds. An insider with access to the money, but also with the knowledge and foresight to cover his own trail …
All of a sudden, Bobby knew. It horrified him. Chilled him to the bone. And made complete sense.
He raised his elbow and drove it through the passenger-side window of the parked car. Window shattered. Car alarm sounded. Bobby ignored both sounds. He reached inside, popped the glove compartment, and helped himself to the vehicle registration info, which included record of the license plate now adorning Tessa Leoni’s truck.
Then he trotted back to D.D. and the garage, armed with new information as well as their final target.
40
People were brought down here to die.
I knew that from the smell alone. The deep, rusty scent of blood, so deeply soaked into the concrete floor, no amount of bleach or lime would ever make it go away. Some people had workshops in the basements of their homes. Apparently, John Stephen Purcell had a torture chamber.
I needed overhead light. It would destroy my night vision, but also disorient any gangsters waiting to pounce.
Standing on the top step, my hand on the left-hand wall switch, I hesitated. I didn’t know if I wanted light in the basement. I didn’t know if I wanted to see.
After hours of blessed numbness, my composure was starting to crack. The smell. My daughter. The smell. Sophie.
They wouldn’t torture a little girl. What would they have to gain? What could Sophie possibly tell them?
I closed my eyes. Flipped up the switch. Then, I stood in the deep quiet that falls after midnight, and waited to hear the first whimper of my daughter waiting to be saved, or the rush of an attacker about to ambush.
I heard nothing at all.
I unpeeled my right eye, counted to five, then opened the left. The glare from the bare bulb didn’t hurt as much as I’d feared. I kept the shotgun cradled in my arms, and dripping blood from my wounded right shoulder, I started to descend.
Purcell maintained a clutter-free basement. No stored lawn furniture or miscellaneous boxes of junk or bins of Christmas decorations for a man in his line of work.
The open space held a washer, dryer, utility sink, and massive stainless steel table. The table was rimmed with a trough, just like the ones found in morgues. The trough led to a tray at the bottom of the table, where one could attach a hose to drain the contents into the nearby utility sink.
Apparently, when breaking kneecaps and slicing off fingertips, Purcell liked to be tidy. Judging by the large pink blush staining the floor, however, it was impossible to be totally spill-proof about these things.
Next to the stainless steel table was a battered TV tray bearing various instruments, laid out like a doctor’s operating station. Each stainless steel piece was freshly cleaned, with an overhead light winking off the freshly sharpened blades.
I bet Purcell spent a lot of time staging his equipment just so. I bet he enjoyed letting his subjects take in the full array of instruments, their terrified minds already leaping ahead and doing half of his work for him. Then he would strap them to the table.
I imagined most of them started babbling before he picked up the first pair of pliers. And I bet talking didn’t save them.
I passed the table, the sink, the washer and dryer. Behind the stairs I found a door leading to the utility room. I stood to one side, reaching around with my hand to pop the door open, with my back still pressed to the wall.
No one burst out. No child cried a greeting.
Still jittery from nerves, fatigue, and a low throbbing sense of dread, I crouched down, bringing up the shotgun to shoulder level, then darting into the gloom.
I encountered an oil tank, a water heater, the utility box, and a couple of plastic shelves weighed down with various cleaning products, zip ties, and coiled rope. And a thick coiled hose, perfect for spraying down the last of the mess.
I rose slowly to my feet, then surprised myself by swaying and nearly passing out.
The floor was wet. I looked down, vaguely surprised to see a pool of my own blood. Pouring down my arm now.
Needed help. Should go to the ER. Should …
What, call the cavalry?
The bitterness of my thoughts pulled me back together. I left the basement, returning to the gloom upstairs, except this time I snapped on every light in the house.
As I suspected, I found a small battery of first-aid supplies in Purcell’s bathroom. Guy in his line of work no doubt expected injuries he couldn’t report, and had outfitted his medicine cabinet accordingly.
I couldn’t pull my black turtleneck over my head. Instead, I used surgical shears to cut it off. Then, leaning over the sink, I poured the hydrogen peroxide straight into the bloody hole.
I gasped in shocked pain, then bit down hard on my lower lip.
If I were a true tough guy—say, Rambo—I would dig out the bullet with chopsticks, then stitch up the hole with dental floss. I didn’t know how to do any of those things, so I shoved white gauze into the wound, then taped the bloody bundle with white strips of medical adhesive.
I washed down three ibuprofen with water, then helped myself to a dark blue flannel shirt from Purcell’s closet. The shirt was two sizes too big and smelled of fabric softener and male cologne. The hem fell to midthigh and I had to roll up the cuffs awkw
ardly to free my hands.
I’d never worn the shirt of a man I was going to kill. It struck me as oddly intimate, like sprawling in bed in your lover’s button-up Oxford after the first time you’d had sex.
I have gone too far, I thought, lost some piece of myself. I was looking for my daughter, but discovering an abyss I’d never known existed inside of me. Would finding Sophie ease the pain? Would the light of her love chase the darkness back again?
Did it even matter? From the moment she was born, I would’ve given my life for my child. What’s a little sanity instead?
I picked up the shotgun, and retreated outside, where Purcell remained slumped against the house, eyes closed. I thought he’d passed out, but when my feet crunched through the snow, his eyes opened.
His face was pale. Sweat dotted his upper lip, despite the freezing temperature. He’d lost a lot of blood. He was probably dying and seemed to know it, though it didn’t appear to surprise him.
Purcell was old school. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
That would make my next job tougher.
I squatted down beside him.
“I could take you down to the basement,” I said.
He shrugged.
“Let you sample a taste of your own medicine.”
He shrugged again.
“You’re right: I’ll bring the equipment up here. Save me the trouble of lugging your sorry ass around.”
Another shrug. I wished suddenly that Purcell had a wife and kid. What would I do if he did? I didn’t know, but I wanted to hurt him as much as he’d hurt me.
I placed the shotgun behind me, out of Purcell’s reach. Then I slid out the KA-BAR knife, hefting it lightly in the palm of my left hand.
Purcell’s gaze flickered to the blade. Still, he said nothing.
“You’re going to die by a woman’s hand,” I told him, and finally had the satisfaction of seeing his nostrils flare. Ego. Of course. Nothing hurt a man quite as much as being one-upped by a woman.
“Do you remember what you told me that morning in the kitchen?” I whispered. “You told me as long as I cooperated no one would get hurt. You told me as long as I handed over my service weapon, you’d let my family go. Then you turned and murdered my husband.”
