by Tim Green
The time codes on phone calls, faxes, and e-mails were evidence that juries found just as compelling as fingerprints on a bloody murder weapon. And—as Jack knew only too well—if a piece of evidence could be used effectively in a prosecution, the counterpart to that evidence could be used just as effectively in a criminal defense. Jack set up his computer and built a bank of bogus e-mails. He plugged his computer into a simple timer device so it would be sending e-mails at the time he might be killing Tupp. Alone, it wasn’t enough to exonerate him, but it could help.
That done, he changed into a fresh set of jet-black clothes. By midnight he had driven three times past Fire Lane 22 on Long Town Road and seen nothing to make him suspicious. He parked the Saab a quarter mile away in some pine trees. He was exhausted. His stomach was twisted into writhing knots. But he was also determined to end it all. With the smell of death on him, he loaded up his new weapon and melted into the dark wet night.
CHAPTER 60
The sound of rain pattering against the hood of her poncho lulled Amanda toward sleep. She snapped her head from side to side abruptly, fighting off the fatigue. She got up off her foldaway canvas chair and began to move around. Slow and quiet, she patrolled the rear perimeter just inside the trees that encircled the back of the gray saltbox cottage. The shifting blue light of the television in the front living room could be seen through the kitchen window in the back of the small dwelling.
McGrew was watching the front.
Amanda shifted under the poncho. Rain swept down on the back of a gusty wind. Despite the poncho’s hood, her face and hair were soaked. The rest of her was warm, anyway, and that kept her comfortable enough that she had to fight the sleep. The thought of Jack Ruskin venturing out on a night like tonight seemed absurd.
Amanda stopped and leaned against the rough trunk of a massive spruce. She retracted her head down inside her poncho amid a pattering of rain and pressed the light on her watch. It read just after two A.M. Two more hours to go, and they would be the toughest, but she agreed with McGrew. If Ruskin attacked, it would be in the dark. It might be crazy, but it also might work. It was only two weeks, and if it did work . . . well, she could just see Hanover’s face.
Amanda sighed heavily. She didn’t know if she could really go two weeks straight on this thing. Part of her felt she’d burst if she didn’t get home sometime to see her family. If she were gone more than two weeks straight, even the souvenirs would have a tough time thawing out the kids. She couldn’t even think about Parker. On the other hand, she knew McGrew wasn’t going to take it well if she took off, but he’d have to understand. She felt that nagging voice inside her head, telling her she couldn’t do two things and do them both well.
She was tired. That was the real problem. It would be easier the second day. Night stakeouts always were. She thought about calling McGrew on the handheld radio. But listening to him ramble would make her even sleepier.
After a few minutes, her mind began to drift. She found her chair and sat down. They’d sent the e-mail just yesterday. Ruskin wouldn’t be here tonight. As she floated off, she was comforted by that thought. Tonight was just a formality. Her chin slumped down against her chest. She was completely unaware of the shape, darker than the night itself, moving stealthily from tree to tree through the woods. At regular intervals, the form would stop and peer intently at her spot in the trees. It was the shape of a man. He was coming her way.
CHAPTER 61
Jack stepped softly over broken branches, taking great care with every move he made. He was no woodsman, but the rain-soaked earth made it easy to be quiet as long as he was careful. When something did break, the sound was muffled by the hiss of rain teeming down on the pine woods. His eyes were wide from adrenaline and his painstaking concentration in the darkness. Cupped in his hand was a small penlight, which provided just a bit of light for him to see his way. Now that he was almost through the woods, the cool glow from the cottage shed just enough light for him to make out the dark silhouettes of the trees. That’s when he saw something unusual propped up against one of the trunks. It was a person beneath a dark green poncho. Someone watching. Someone waiting.
He froze. The figure didn’t move, either, and he wondered as he crept closer if the watcher wasn’t asleep. He circled the motionless form with plenty of cover between the two of them until he could just make out the profile of her face in the dim light. It was her. A trap.
The discordant tone of the e-mail rang out clear in his mind. He’d been too upset to listen to it before, but it had been there. They knew he killed the others, just as Beth knew, but they had no proof. Now they were trying to get their proof.
The sight of the female FBI agent enraged him. How could a woman be part of a scheme like this? They were helping set Eugene Tupp free. Didn’t they know it was only a matter of time before he destroyed another young girl? Another family? The answer was that they did know. Apparently they didn’t care.
He could understand the egomaniacal homicide cop. But the woman? A woman who went along with something this contemptible ought to be . . . Jack slipped the sling of the short-barreled shotgun off his shoulder. Directing the deadly weapon at Amanda’s inert form, a wild thought from some dark corner of his mind goaded him into feeling for the trigger.
He was struck dumb by the image of the hollowpoint slug ripping through the poncho in a dark spray of blood. He could hear the eruption of hot powder and lead. Jack’s head, dizzy from exhaustion, stress, and a slew of raw emotions began to swim. The gun blast would flush out whoever else was waiting for him.
His sixth sense told him that McGrew was somewhere close by. A gun blast would bring him out, along with whoever else was there. If there was anyone else. Maybe McGrew and the woman were it. He could dispose of them both in this dark lonely place. They set Tupp free. Then it would be just him and Tupp . . . and for Tupp Jack had something special.
He clenched his chattering teeth and squeezed the cold smooth curve of the gun’s trigger. He winced in anticipation of the gunshot and felt the hot rush of angry tears coursing inexplicably down his face.
CHAPTER 62
Jack stifled a gagging sound in his throat and released the pressure on the trigger, gasping in horror at what he had almost done. He tried to console himself. He’d never taken the safety off. But the feel of the trigger and the wave of deadly destruction that had rushed over him was like the feeling he had when he had once peered over the edge of the rail atop the Empire State Building. It was that insanely urgent desire to jump. It was dizzying.
He staggered back in among the trees. He had to think. He couldn’t lose control. It was a puzzle that was all, a mind-bending riddle. There had to be a way. He was an intelligent man, not brilliant, but smarter than most, and if he bent his will to it he believed he could find a way without collateral damage or being totally self-destructive. He looked up at the flickering light that bled through the back of the cottage. His mind locked up.
Besides a bloody shootout that left everyone dead, a missing murder weapon, and a sufficient alibi, Jack had no notion of how he could kill Tupp and also escape. His wild idea to kill Amanda and whoever else was hiding around the cabin’s perimeter wasn’t all that absurd. It was wrong, but from the point of pure execution, it was probably as sound as any plan there was.
But Jack would never do that.
He began to move through the darkness again, deeper into the trees and then circling toward the front of the cabin. A more thorough reconnoitering might give him a better idea. A crazy idea might not be the right one, but it could give rise to something practical. He had to get in and get out. He didn’t want anyone to die except Tupp, but he didn’t want to get caught. What he needed was something that would lure the police away.
Cautiously, Jack prowled through the damp woods. He smelled McGrew’s cigarette even before he saw the tiny orange ember glowing like a secret beacon in the dark rain. He gave him wide berth, keeping a careful eye on the detective. He came to th
e darkened driveway and dashed across the open space. On the other side he found McGrew’s car.
It appeared to be just the two of them. Jack stalked through the woods to the edge of the clearing, plotting in his mind just where it was he’d seen Amanda and locating McGrew by the faint glow of his cigarette. He looked at the house. It was a good two hundred feet away from the edge of the woods.
Through the picture window in the front of the cottage, he could see the back of Tupp’s head, planted in an easy chair, watching the television. At the sight of his wild tufts of hair, Jack felt an insatiable urge to bolt across the lawn that separated the cottage from the trees and empty his gun in through the window. For a moment it seemed like a feasible plan. But after the first nervous surge of adrenaline, he realized that it was just as likely he might fail. He would almost certainly be caught. He needed something better, at the very least a better means of escape.
It was while he trudged back through the woods to his car that Jack solved the puzzle. It was simple, but it would work.
CHAPTER 63
By midmorning the wet weather had moved up the Atlantic coast, leaving a pale innocent sky in its wake. Sunlight poured through the cold windowpane into Jack’s bedroom, warming it beyond comfort and waking him. At dawn, he’d taken a sleeping pill. It was well past noon. He got up and rubbed the drug-induced sleep from his eyes then looked outside, squinting at the brightness.
He took a fast shower and sat down to quickly compose another series of alibi e-mails for the night. That done, he dressed for the day in dark clothes, a black Yankees cap, and black shoes with flat rubber soles. He stuffed a ski mask into his coat pocket along with a pair of gloves before laying them all inside his trunk. He also packed a duffel bag with the shotgun, two sets of fresh clothes and shoes, an empty mesh bag, and a ten-pound dumbbell that he would use to sink his bloody clothes to the bottom of an ocean inlet.
Less than two hours later, with the help of a map, he began to scour the roads in the area surrounding Tupp’s cottage. Inland from the beachfront homes it was a rural area. He had to find a place where he could abandon one vehicle and exchange it for another. If he was going to be successful, the vehicle he used couldn’t be traced back to him. That kind of evidence could convict him, even if his face was covered by a dark ski mask.
He was looking for a shopping center that was open all night, or a main street that would have late-night traffic, people coming and going from the bars. Nothing looked quite right. There was a movie theater next to some shops with a small parking garage, but it was nearly twelve miles away in Riverhead, too far for what Jack needed. Driving from one small town to another, he came across a nature center that wasn’t more than three miles from Tupp’s cottage. On a hunch he pulled into the long paved driveway, which led to a visitor center overlooking a marsh. Despite the brightness of the day, it was cool enough so that only a handful of other cars were there.
Inside the dark brown hexagonal center, Jack found some maps in a rack by the door. Most of the trails wandered through the marsh on their way to the nearby bay, but there was also a set of trails that looped through an adjacent woods. The border of those woods butted up to what looked like a power line. Jack’s blood began to rise. That might be the place. He set off on foot down the path to where only a small row of pine trees separated the loop from the power line. Jack broke through the trees and out into the open. As he’d guessed, there was a gravel access road that ran along the edge of the metal towers. He marked the spot in his mind and returned to the center.
Back on the main road he passed an unmarked police cruiser heading the other way, in the direction of Tupp’s cottage. He slumped down in the front seat and quickly angled his head so that the brim of his hat obscured his face. The cops, two stone-faced men staring straight ahead, paid him no attention. Nevertheless, Jack decided to abandon any further reconnaissance and make do with what he’d already found. He quickly located the gravel access road of the power line and pulled in. It was a rough ride to the spot where the nature trail met the edge of the woods, but even with last night’s rain, the stony road was dry enough that Jack never felt like he might get stuck.
Jack tucked his car into some brush in the woods on the opposite side of the power line from the nature trail. He got out and took off his jacket. From his trunk he removed a dark nylon sweat suit and pulled it over his wool pants and sweater before setting off. When he was finished, he would shed them both; that way, if he succeeded, not a single fiber found in the car he was going to steal would match those in his own vehicle.
He stopped and looked around, wondering if he could find his way back to the car in the middle of the night. When he reached the pine trees by the nature trail he turned, looked back, and then pushed the alarm on his key chain. The Saab gave a yelp from its hiding spot and its headlights flashed on and off three times. Easy. He looked up at the metal towers that stood like robotic sentries along the line of the woods as far as the eye could see. He could hear the low hum of power as it surged through the drooping wires above. A low-flying flock of geese honked suddenly overhead in the cobalt sky, startling Jack. He puckered up his mouth and set off into the lengthening shadows of the woods.
At the pay phone outside the center Jack called a cab from Hampton Bays. He explained that his car had broken down. He needed a ride back to the western end of the island. The dispatcher told him it would be thirty minutes before she could get someone there. Jack looked at his watch. The sun was already an orange ball ready to dip into the horizon. He used the time to retrace the steps he would take that night and memorize the paths that would get him to his car in the dark.
There were two possible routes. One he would take if there was no one in sight—a direct route to the power lines. The other was a more circuitous route that led into the marsh, but circled back to the woods. That he would use if someone was following him close enough to see him running. He hoped then that they would presume he was heading for the bay to escape by means of a well-placed canoe or rowboat.
By the time his half hour was up, dusk had fallen and Jack felt confident in his plan.
CHAPTER 64
A battered white station wagon with an orange taxi light pulled into the center just as a family was loading up their car with cameras and bicycles. Jack watched from the shadows under the eaves of the building, waiting until the cab had pulled slowly past him and the people. It was important for him not to be identified. He emerged from his spot, skirted the glare of a lamp pole, and slid into the gloom of the cab with his face obscured by the brim of his hat. Immediately he launched into the brief story of a tow truck that had come and gone and a driver who refused to allow him to ride along back to the garage. He lowered his voice and did his best at a British accent.
The cab driver, an aging heavyset man with a fishing cap, said, “Some people are just assholes.”
Jack sank back into the seat.
“I’m going to shut my eyes for a few minutes,” he said, trying to sound weary. “My wife’s coming in on a seven-thirty flight. I’m meeting her at the shopping center in Port Washington, The Miracle Mile. You know where it is?”
“Yeah, my sister-in-law goes to that place.”
“You can just take me there. Wake me when we get close, will you?” Jack asked.
“No problem,” the driver said.
“Thanks.” Jack pulled down his hat even farther and tilted his head toward the floor. As they drove he went over his plan, his mind spinning like a gyroscope on a string. He fought the nausea that had returned and silently cursed himself for forgetting his Maalox. At the shopping center he thrust a hundred-dollar bill into the front seat and hopped out of the car. “Keep the change,” he said.
He heard the driver’s appreciative thanks as he shut the door and disappeared into the stream of people coming and going. A block away on the other side of the street was La Maison, the restaurant where he and Beth had bucked the snooty maître d’ months before. It was during his d
rive home in the early-morning hours from Tupp’s cottage that Jack had come up with his idea for obtaining a vehicle that would not link him to the crime he was about to commit.
He had remembered the young valet who’d left the keys to his car above the visor. It was quite likely the standard procedure. The lot where the cars were kept was sealed off except for a chain blocking a driveway leading into the delivery area behind the shopping center. Even if the valets didn’t leave the keys above the visors of the cars they parked, Jack knew he was likely to have a chance to nab a set of keys from the valet station sometime during the confusion of a busy Saturday night.
Five minutes later he was tucked in a dark corner of the valet lot. The next car that got parked told him he was right about the keys. The kid stuck them right up in the visor and ran off. Near the chained-off driveway in the back of the lot was a crimson Land Cruiser, perfect for what Jack needed.
There were three kids working as valets. It was a busy night. Jack took the ski mask from his pocket and pulled it carefully down over his head, knowing that the DNA from even a single hair left behind in the SUV could ruin everything. He slipped on his leather gloves and waited until two of the kids were jogging back to the front of the restaurant while the third was pulling out with someone’s car.
Jack jumped into the Land Cruiser, grabbed the keys, and fired up the engine. He glanced around quickly, backed out, got up a head of steam, and rammed through the chained-off exit. The snap and tear of metal as the chain broke and then whipped against the side of the SUV sent a bolt of panic through him, but he never slowed down. The Land Cruiser careened through the back of the shopping center, streaking past empty loading docks and massive silent Dumpsters. He screeched out from behind the shopping center on the other side and quickly melted into the busy traffic. Driving as calmly as he could, Jack got to the expressway and headed back out to the eastern end of the island for the third time in less than twenty-four hours. He would arrive just past midnight. This time the reconnaissance was over.
