The Fifth Angel

by Tim Green

  CHAPTER 52

  They were headed for a private airfield no more than fifteen minutes from Jack’s home. The jackass named McGrew couldn’t sit still. The skin on his scrawny neck burned red below his hairline. He was excited. The woman kept her eyes on the road and her mouth closed. They said almost nothing between them. It was the man who spoke when Jack finally collected himself enough to ask where he was being taken.

  “We’ve got a couple of witnesses in Bennington who are gonna ID you for that Pollard guy you wasted,” McGrew said, but only after turning around to face him.

  Jack felt suddenly naked and it must have showed.

  “Yeah,” McGrew said, “we know about Pollard and all the rest. Let’s see, there was Dayton and Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and Racquet Lake . . . but the one you did out in Suffolk County, Lawrence Brice? That was your big fuckup. See, that was when you came into McGrew’s backyard and McGrew hasn’t come across a homicide yet that he hasn’t solved.

  “Did I tell you that about me, Amanda?” he asked the FBI agent.

  She merely glanced at him.

  “You’re probably gonna get the death penalty,” McGrew said. His manner was cheery.

  Jack said no more, but it took all of his training to do so. Years ago he had marveled at the information criminal suspects would volunteer to police, even after they’d been given their Miranda warning stating not only that they had the right to remain silent, but that anything they did say would be used against them. Now, for the first time, he understood why more times than not those suspects spilled their guts. He felt for himself the inexorable compulsion to talk.

  Jack was still contemplating that when they turned off the road and through a gate in the chain-link fence that protected the private airfield. A helicopter sat idly on the tarmac surrounded by a bevy of news trucks and a handful of cars. People with lights, cameras, and microphones sprang to life at the sight of the unmarked car.

  “Just stop right here,” McGrew said. He directed the FBI agent to a spot on the tarmac that would force them to walk through the throng of cameras on their way to the helicopter.

  “What the hell is this?” Amanda asked.

  “Oh, a little welcoming committee,” McGrew said, his face dropping all signs of emotion.

  “McGrew,” she said, “what the hell?”

  “I just thought . . .”

  Jack saw Amanda’s stare. She parked the car where he had indicated but followed at a distance as McGrew tugged Jack through the swarm. Jack buried his face in his arm under the glare of the lights. McGrew took him to the helicopter and loaded him in. Amanda followed and sat across from Jack with a straight face while McGrew went back out to address the crowd.

  After a murmur of questions, Jack heard McGrew say, “Right now he is merely being detained and transported under order of a federal judge. I’m sorry, but that’s all the questions for now. Thank you.”

  Jack felt his stomach lurch as the helicopter rose and swung about before setting off.

  CHAPTER 53

  With an air of importance that belied his stature, the rotund officer assembled all of them in a line. Jack was second to last. His gut was knotted and he felt the urge to vomit as the line began to snake through a side door and into another room. He followed the others out onto a small stage and stopped. A small bank of lights shone brightly down on them from the ceiling. In front of the stage was a broad rectangular piece of glass.

  Jack squinted but could only make out the vague shapes beyond the smoky glass. Five or six people sat there looking at him. They were all adults. Jack remembered the nurse and the doctor from the medical center. It could be either one. If he had to venture a guess, he would say the doctor. As a former prosecutor, he knew people didn’t like to be witnesses to lineups. Most people didn’t want to get involved. Many were afraid that a convicted violent criminal might want revenge.

  McGrew’s voice suddenly exploded from a speaker in the wall. It had a canned quality to it, but the arrogant bravado was unmistakable.

  “Number five! Step forward and turn to the right.”

  Jack was numb. He looked down at his feet at the large number painted in red beneath his feet. He was number five. He did as he was told, forcing his eyes to stay straight ahead despite the desperate need to peer out through the glass.

  “Turn to the left.”

  Jack did.

  “Now turn and face the glass and please say ‘she’s not breathing’ in a loud voice.”

  Jack did as he was told and was rewarded with nearly four minutes of silence. The other men shifted restlessly behind him, and behind the glass he could see the heads of the people conferring with one another.

  “Number five, you can go back into the lineup.”

  Jack returned and stood sick on his feet while three other men in the lineup were put through different variations of his own performance. Then they came back to him. He was told to step forward and repeat his cry for help on the night he saved the girl.

  “Louder than the last time, number five.”

  Jack was called back one more time before they were finally led back into the waiting room. He looked boldly around him now, disdainful of the suspicious looks that the men cast about among one another. He was determined not to look or act guilty. Even though he knew it wouldn’t matter in a court of law whether he had appeared to be innocent or guilty, it mattered to him.

  Twenty minutes later they were regrouped and led back into the lineup room. This time the assemblage behind the glass included a smaller shape. Jack felt the knot in his stomach give a violent twist. It had to be the girl. He recalled McGrew’s boast of an eyewitness, but until now, he hadn’t made the connection between the detective’s words and the girl. It was unthinkable.

  His sickness was suddenly replaced by sheer outrage. How could she do this? And more important, how could the parents of the child he saved allow her to do this? If only someone had done for him what he had done for the people behind that glass. He wanted to shout that at them, now, while they could hear him. He felt the words boiling in his chest, ready to burst out in a torrent of indignation.

  Time took on a strange quality for Jack. In one way it seemed to stand still, and yet when he was led back to the waiting room and then finally to the interrogation room it seemed only a matter of seconds before the door opened again. Jack lifted his head up off the narrow table at which he sat. It was the woman named Amanda, but instead of being the preamble to a dramatic entrance for her partner, she merely turned and shut the door behind her.

  “We appreciate your cooperation, Mr. Ruskin,” she said. Her voice was soft and steady. “You can go home now.”

  Jack thought he would burst.

  “What?” he asked, then added quickly, “—happened? What happened?”

  Then he forced his brow into a scowl and said, “This whole thing is an outrage.”

  He knew he sounded ridiculous, but his lawyer’s instincts had kicked in.

  Amanda looked at him from behind a red strand of hair with her piercing blue eyes. She wore the weary expression of an athlete after a hard loss.

  “We both know better than that, Mr. Ruskin,” she said, raising her chin. “But the witnesses were unable to identify you . . . or so they said.”

  Jack had to bite down hard on his tongue to keep his face from flooding with relief.

  CHAPTER 54

  Amanda and McGrew sat at an old plank table by the window. They were nestled with two other couples in the front room of a small Victorian house that had been turned into a restaurant. On the inside wall, sticks of apple wood snapped in the white marble fireplace.

  “It’s not even close to being over,” McGrew said. He emptied the rest of his Budweiser into his glass. Beer foamed up and over the rim, then ran down the seam of the plank and dripped on Amanda’s leg.

  She shifted in her seat and looked at him through the smoke. What he said didn’t even merit a response. She was stuck in Vermont with an idiot who smoke
d. She wanted to pay the check, get on her jogging clothes, and burn every bit of crap she’d heard today out of her mind.

  “He’ll do it again,’’ she said, putting down the fork and waving the smoke from her eyes. “It’s his nature. He wants these people so bad that it burns his heart. And we’ll be watching.’’

  McGrew smirked at her. She felt her face flush.

  “What is that thing, anyway, McGrew?” she asked.

  “What thing?” he said, taken aback, his eyebrows raised.

  “That, that thing right here,” she said, flicking her finger at the patch of skin beneath her own lip but meaning his.

  “This?” he said, stroking the little triangle of facial hair beneath his lower lip. “A lot of guys have these.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “But Ruskin’s smart,’’ she said. “He’ll wait.”

  “By then, we’ll either be doing this as a hobby or working another case.” McGrew examined the patch of hair in the mirror behind Amanda’s head. She stifled a giggle. She’d gotten to him.

  “You’re the one who said it wasn’t close to being over,” she said.

  “It’s not,” he said. “It’s not because I say it’s not. McGrew has connections and if you can’t bring McGrew to the mountain, you just bring the mountain to McGrew.”

  Amanda looked at him.

  “Do you always talk about yourself in the third person?”

  “The what?”

  “Third person. You know, first person is I. Second person is you. You talk about yourself as if it’s not yourself. It’s just very odd. I only thought athletes with subnormal IQs did that.’’

  McGrew nodded, felt for the patch beneath his lip, stopping in midstride. He smiled. “McGrew understands.’’

  “Well, tell McGrew it’s getting late,’’ she said. She stood up and took her coat off the back of her chair, then slapped a fifty down on the table. “I need to take a run.’’

  “Wait,” McGrew said. “Just listen.”

  Amanda was halfway to their hotel before she heard McGrew’s huffing and puffing and frantic footsteps behind her on the sidewalk.

  “Wait up,” he said.

  Amanda looked back at him.

  “I’m going for a run, McGrew,” she said, her breath filling the dark night between them with a silvery cloud that disappeared into the glow of the streetlight above.

  “I know,” he said, catching up. “I’ll walk with you and tell you my plan. You’ll love it and it’ll cheer you up.

  “You’re right. Ruskin is smart,” McGrew said, digging into his coat pockets. “And he won’t do anything, unless we make him do something.”

  McGrew took a strong mint from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. Its cold clean smell filled the air.

  “We make him do something,” he said. “We can tempt him with the one thing he can’t resist.”

  CHAPTER 55

  When Jack got home, Beth’s car was gone. He’d grown used to her black Jetta in his driveway. At first the small car looked strange in the big space vacated by his ex-wife’s Mercedes sedan. He swallowed and tried to make himself go into the kitchen. The place felt empty. He dashed upstairs to the bedroom. His ex-wife’s closet door was ajar. Gradually over the last several weeks Beth had begun to use it for her own things. It was now empty.

  He turned on the television near the bed and knew why. His face was all over the nightly news. They had a blue-and-white graphic of all the places he’d traveled to, all the people he’d killed. They could never prove it. There was no blood, no fingerprints, no ballistics. He’d been too careful. He’d even dumped his Glock when he’d gotten Beth’s call after his visit to the beach.

  But Beth would know. She would have remembered Steffenhausers’.

  The television caught his attention, but the news wasn’t about him anymore. A local sports reporter was doing a feature: A girl, a high school senior who was one of Janet’s teammates a few years ago, was being presented with a huge trophy: Long Island Athlete of the Week. Nice. Jack stared. That could have been his daughter. But Janet wasn’t playing soccer. She wasn’t getting ready to apply to college. She wasn’t worried about her date for the homecoming dance.

  His little girl was a shell with scars on her body and holes punched in her veins to feed her drugs. Jack smashed the button on the remote. It wouldn’t turn off. He burst from his seat on the bed and threw the TV down off the shelf. The tube exploded with a heavy pop. Smoky gray glass was everywhere. Jack closed his eyes.

  It was late. He went downstairs to the fridge and started drinking beer. The sky outside was already beginning to lighten by the time he fell asleep.

  At ten-thirty a car horn did what the sunlight couldn’t. Jack rolled off the couch and got some aspirin. Someone was knocking on his door.

  Jack could hear the din before he opened it. He was still shocked at what he saw. It was like a little circus of crazies. In his driveway and on his lawn was a crowd of people, arguing. A big troll of a woman in a dark wool coat and a lime-green watch cap—the one who rang the bell—was berating him from his own front step.

  “You’re a murderer,” she said. “You’re a killer!”

  A man in a suit with no tie pointed at Jack and yelled in the woman’s ear, “He’s a hero.”

  There were TV trucks on the street. Cameramen and reporters moved through the small crowd like popcorn vendors. Jack shut the door. He called the police. When he told the female sergeant who he was, her voice got funny. She said they’d send someone over.

  Jack went upstairs to watch from his window. He put on the TV and found CNN. Within minutes they were talking about him. Jack let the curtain drop. He watched for a while, too numb to be horrified or even ashamed. He took a shower. When he got out, the police had arrived. They were putting up tape between the trees down by the sidewalk, pushing people off his grass.

  Jack put on his best suit. He could only imagine what was going on in his office. He eased the car out of his garage, wary. Halfway down his driveway an egg struck his windshield. As if on cue, the TV cameramen ducked under the tape and began running toward him. A scuffle broke out. Jack sped up and broke out into the street, tearing around the corner, finding the highway and his breath.

  He put on the radio. Howard Stern was talking about him.

  “It’s about time someone killed those perverts,” Stern said. “They should all be killed. But don’t mess with lesbians. They might abuse me.”

  Jack turned it off.

  When he parked in the garage beneath his office, he noticed that the attendants were looking at him. He thought one of them pointed. Jack put his head down and picked up his pace. The people in the elevator didn’t pay him any mind. Maybe he’d imagined the parking attendants’ reaction. When he got off the elevator in his office, though, he knew by the receptionist’s face that he hadn’t. She grabbed the phone and brought it fumbling to her ear. Her eyes went down.

  Jack plowed through the halls, briefcase clutched to his chest, eyes on the carpet until he was safe within his own office. Pat, his secretary, straightened her neck, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open. Jack shut the door and sat down. His fingers were trembling. The Maalox came out of his briefcase and he took a good slug. He tried to log onto his computer. A small bell chimed. Access denied.

  “What the fuck?” he said.

  Pat was knocking at his door.

  “Come in,” he said.

  She did, but only just inside the door. She made a couple of attempts to look at him. He stared back at her, searching. Finally she gave up and looked at the floor.

  “Mr. Wells wants to see you,” she said.

  “Tell him I’m right here,” Jack said.

  Pat hesitated. No one said that to Arthur Wells.

  “Tell him that,” Jack said.

  Pat nodded and left. Jack started putting some pictures in his briefcase, one of him and Janet at Disney World, one of her alone, hands in the air after scoring a goal. Wells di
dn’t knock. He shut the door behind him and sat down scowling. In his hand was a manila folder.

  “Why in hell haven’t you returned my calls?” Wells asked.

  “I thought it best to talk in person, Arthur,” he said.

  “The partners are very concerned.”

  Jack pressed his lips tight and nodded. “I can’t get into my computer,” he said.

  “Everything any of us does belongs to the firm.”

  “You remember anything about law school, Arthur?” Jack asked.

  “What?”

  “Law school,” Jack said, “you know, books and study groups and legal memos. Yale.”

  Wells looked at him like he was crazy.

  “Ever take criminal law?” Jack said. “We all took that. Remember ‘innocent until proven guilty’? That’s a funny concept, isn’t it?”

  “The partners of this firm have a fiduciary responsibility,” Wells said.

  “Oh, fiduciary. Just fuck up a man’s life.”

  “You did that on your own,” Wells said. His chin was up. He was sitting on the edge of the chair. He took an envelope out of his breast pocket and slapped it down on the desk between them.

  “That’s a check for two million dollars,” he said. He took a sheet of paper out of the folder and put that on the desk, too, along with his own gold pen. “This is your resignation from the firm.”

  Jack looked at him with disgust. He did a quick calculation in his mind. Last year he had earned nearly twice as much as he ever had before, $670,000 with his bonuses. This year it would be closer to a million. As the chair of a thriving and lucrative practice group, he could expect the same kind of money for the rest of his days as an attorney, so long as he continued to perform. Even if this scandal cost him some business down the road, in the position he was in, $750,000 would be a layup. Based on that theory, one could make a cogent argument that Jack’s partnership was worth at least six million dollars.