I cannot be wrong again.
Damn it. Not wrong again. Just wrong.
The music blared; the crowd sang along, some locking arms, gleeful, almost marching in place. If I hear “Yankee Doodle Dandy” one more time … And there she was. Kenna. Almost close enough to—
“Kenna!” Jane yelled, and felt her voice get swallowed by the din.
The woman kept heading for the stage. Not so fast, sister.
Jane took two quick steps forward, found an open space, powered ahead. She reached out and touched Kenna on the shoulder. “Hey!”
Kenna whirled, turned to face her. She was, as Gina said, totally gorgeous. Luminous eyes, high cheekbones, all lip gloss and big lashes. A pear-shaped diamond nestled at her throat. She looked at Jane, skeptical, a flash of annoyance darkening her porcelain features. Then it disappeared, replaced by a blazing smile.
“Jane? Jane Ryland?” she said. She moved toward Jane as if coming in for a close-up. “From TV? I can’t believe you’re actually here. How perfect!”
Well, well, Jane thought. She recognizes me. And if she thinks I’m still on TV, fine.
“Yes.” Big smile. “I’m Jane Ryland. How lovely of you to recognize me. Are you Kenna Wil—?”
The woman leaned closer, her mouth almost touching Jane’s ear.
Jane’s nose wrinkled at her dense perfume, Opium, maybe, or Angel.
“Isn’t Owen Lassiter wonderful? I mean, wonderful? I’ve seen him a million times. Look at him, oh, now he’s way over there! I can’t wait to vote for him. I wish I could vote for him a million times.”
I wish I had my notebook out, Jane thought. And my camera. But there’s time. This girl’s all mine now.
“Well, that’s so interesting, because—” Jane took a step back from her, assessing. She’d expected some level of pursuit, not to have the elusive Kenna latch on to her like some local news groupie. But that could be useful.
“Are you covering the rally? Where’s your photographer? Do you need a sound bite?” Kenna actually fluffed her hair, and though her glistening lipstick was flawless, she swirled her tongue over her upper teeth. Suddenly she paused, mid-preen. She blinked a few times. “Um, Jane? Wait. Were you looking for me?” She tapped her own chest with a pink fingernail. “Why?”
“Why was I looking for you?” Okay, then. Jane was going to have to face this sooner rather than later. “Well, I— Ow!”
“Here he comes, here he comes!” Some guy with a sweat mustache jabbed Jane in the back, gesturing and pointing as he yelled. She turned. So did Kenna. So did everyone else.
All eyes focused on Owen Lassiter. His elegant face was flushed with heat but radiating confidence, one hand raised, the other manhandled by voters needing one more handshake or one more autograph. The swirl of people ebbed and flowed around him as the pod of security, candidate in the middle, crabbed across the floor. The crowd seemed to change shape and density, swelling and pushing, cheering and noise and outstretched arms, heat rising from the pack. Bodies jockeyed for position, for access. Jane stood her ground, ignoring the shoves and the shoulders and the jostling.
The candidate was heading right for them. What would he do when he got to Kenna? How would he greet her? This was about to be a real moment.
No way could they keep some look from their eyes, no matter how they tried to fake it. Monica Lewinsky. You could tell from that photo, the one with the beret and the rope line, she had a secret. They had a secret. You could tell how excited she was, touching her fantasy man in front of a crowd with the whole world watching. Only the two of them knowing what was really going on.
Exactly what was about to happen now. A charade.
Jane felt for her camera—where was it?—keeping close watch on Kenna. This was a shot she could not miss.
Kenna whirled, raising her hand in the air, waving. “Governor!” she called out. She looked at Jane, eyes shining, color high on her cheekbones. “He’s coming this way, Jane! Isn’t it perfect?”
With a quick motion, the woman unzipped a black patent leather shoulder bag. And pulled out a silver camera. She clicked a button on the top, checked a reading, then held the camera out to Jane. “Will you take our picture?”
“Take your—?”
“Now!” Kenna said. She pushed the camera at Jane, then grabbed Lassiter’s arm, tucking her hand through the crook of his elbow. Looked up at him, all eyelashes and adoration. The security guards didn’t seem to mind. Probably knew all about her.
“It’s so hot, isn’t it?” Kenna’s voice turned innocent-sounding, as if she were merely commenting on the stifling room. “Do you have time for just one picture, Governor? This is Jane Ryland taking it!”
Wow. They’re good at this. Hot? Puh-leeze.
“Hello again, Governor,” Jane said. “This is quite a—”
A security guard, pushed too hard by Lassiter’s sea of admirers, lurched forward, pushing Kenna into the candidate’s arms. They both laughed, tipping into each other, clambering for balance.
Jane clicked the shutter.
And clicked it again. Got it.
Then she swore. Damn. This was Kenna’s camera. She jabbed it into her blazer pocket, yanked open her bag, grabbed her own camera. Hurry.
Kenna regained her equilibrium, still clinging to the governor’s arm. Looking up at him. Lassiter was smiling, indulgent, patting her arm. Jane aimed and clicked. And one more time. It would be something, at least. And maybe she could get Kenna to e-mail her a copy of the laughing picture. Kenna seemed to like the spotlight well enough.
Jane watched, fascinated, as Kenna uncurled herself from the candidate. Did she whisper something, too low for Jane to hear? Did she slip something into his pocket? Is this how they communicated, maybe? How they arranged their next rendezvous?
The entourage moved on, leaving Kenna, face flushed and lifting the mass of curls off her neck, watching after Lassiter and crew as they paraded through the rest of the room.
“Jane!” she said. She let her hair down, held out a hand, moving closer. Urgent. “Did you get a good picture of us? You did, right? You have my camera, right? I need to get one more shot.”
“Sure, Kenna,” Jane said, holding it toward her. Yeesh. This girl was kind of—out there. Jane struggled to keep the amusement from her face, though Kenna, riveted on the entourage, would never have noticed. “But could you—?”
Kenna grabbed the camera, locked on Lassiter, and began to move across the floor toward him. Jane zigzagged after her, determined. She needed to talk to this gal, and she was not going to let her get away again.
And then, she couldn’t see her at all. Or anything. Someone screamed, back of the room, and so did everyone, everyone, as the sweltering room went pitch black. A Klaxon, something, wailed, some alarm, shrieking, earsplitting. Insistent. Jane blinked, blinked again, terror rising in her throat. The crowd, spooked, stampeding, pushing her forward in the dark. She stumbled ahead, trying to keep her balance. Why weren’t the lights—? The music was still blaring, how could that be? The entrance doors must be closed, because there was no light. Shouldn’t they be open? Should she try to get out? Or stand her ground? What were you supposed to do? What if it were worse outside than inside?
The screams, high-pitched, terrified, sounded louder than the music, louder than the alarms. “Call nine-one-one!” someone yelled. “Doesn’t work!” someone else shouted. “We gotta get out of here!”
She couldn’t see anything. Not anything.
Was there another way out? Maitland had said something about the back entrance—Jane, whirled, squinted in the darkness, tried to get her bearings. Nothing.
“Governor, Governor, this way, this way…” A new voice called out, insistent, commanding, “Everyone, stay calm! It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s just the lights.…”
This is a story. Possibly a big story. Jane held up her camera, clicked and clicked the flash. For a split second each time, she could see terrified faces, people shoving and pushing. She
clicked again, caught a woman crying, people with cell phones out, their greenish glows giving a weird phosphorescent light. And why wasn’t anyone—? Didn’t the TV cameras have battery lights? Why were they still off? She looked both ways, as if there were both ways, but nothing existed except a chaos of arms and hands and bodies, and heat and screaming and darkness.
30
Jake made a show of turning on his BlackBerry, languidly scrolling through a page or two. Olive, hands still clamped over her mouth, hadn’t budged. Vick, arms crossed in front of his chest, Psych 101, hadn’t budged. DeLuca turned the pages of a broadsheet of colorful supermarket coupons as if fascinated by the latest grocery bargains.
“So, checking my notes,” Jake drew out his words, contemplative, all the time in the world. He scrolled some more. It was just the Register’s online edition, but Jerk would never know that. “According to your wife, oh, wait, excuse me, her name is…”
He looked up from the screen, smiling. “Bear with me here.”
“Call my lawyer,” Vick said.
Jake couldn’t hear him. “According to your wife, ah, Patricia, it says here, correct?”
“Lawyer,” Vick said.
“You’re not under arrest, Mr. Vick,” Jake said.
DeLuca looked up, right on cue. “Yet,” he added, then went back to his circular.
“So according to your wife, Patricia,” Jake continued, “on the night of the murder of Amaryllis Roldan, you both were—”
Olive made a little sound, like a squeak.
Vick glared at the girl. “I told you, go.”
She made it just half a step. Her once-white sneaker barely crossing the threshold to freedom.
“I told you, no,” Jake said. No more Mr. Nice Guy. He turned to the girl. “Please give Officer DeLuca your contact information. And please don’t walk to your car alone. Or go anywhere alone. Understand?”
Olive squeaked again.
“Is all this necessary, Detective?” Vick turned back the cuffs of his shirt, revealing a watch that was probably Olive’s salary for a year. Manicured fingers. “It’s late, it’s Saturday night, I still have work to do before I can leave. Can’t this wait until business hours? Call my secretary and I’m sure we can—”
“We’re talking now,” Jake said. “And we’ll be talking for a much briefer time if you simply answer my questions.”
Vick’s face went to ice, then stone. “Here’s how I’ll answer your questions,” he said. He thrust a hand into a pocket of his dark slacks.
DeLuca’s head came up. Jake’s hand went to his side.
Vick smiled, but only out of one side of his mouth. Change jingled inside his pocket. “Lawyer. That’s my answer.”
“One more question,” Jake said. Lawyer, shmoyer. What an asshole. “If you’re not interested in helping, why’d you agree to meet with us?”
Vick barked out a laugh. “Huh. Why? Just curious, Officer. Just wanted to see the faces of the gentlemen who think I’m the Bridge Killer. One word about me in the papers? You’re toast. Both of you. And I’ll sue the city-a-Boston, too. I don’t like it when people lie about me. I’ve got a business to run.”
“Don’t leave town, Mr. Vick,” DeLuca said. Supremely polite. “You either, Miss Parisella.”
“I’m going to ask you to leave now, Officers.” Vick gestured toward the door. “This is my territory. You are now officially trespassing. Do I make myself clear?”
“Like I said.” DeLuca took the circular, crumpled it, and made a two-point toss into a metal wastebasket. “Don’t leave town.”
“Just one more…” Jake looked at the screen of his BlackBerry, which had flickered, refreshed, then changed. For a moment, what he read didn’t compute. Then it did. Suddenly, Jake couldn’t wait to leave.
“We’ll be in touch,” Jake said.
Out the door, into the parking lot. Headed for the car.
“You know that French guy? In the foreign flicks?” DeLuca sauntered toward the cruiser, in no hurry. “The one the chicks love, but who always did it?”
“Something’s happening in Springfield—it’s on the Register Web site.” Jake panicked through his BlackBerry screens, scanning for info. “Get on the radio, D. See what’s going down.”
“Springfield what?” DeLuca clicked open the passenger door, slid into the front seat. “What are you talking about?”
“The Lassiter rally,” Jake said. He turned his entire focus to his keys, turn the key in the ignition, get the car started, get going. Springfield was impossibly far away. What if Jane wasn’t okay? “Just call in. See what they know at HQ. See if Springfield has people at the scene.”
“Scene of what?” DeLuca yanked down his seat belt, turned to check for oncoming traffic as Jake gunned the blue and white cruiser out of the parking lot. “The Lassiter rally? This about—Jane?”
Jake glared at him but didn’t bother to deny it. He paused, fraction of a second, at the exit. Hit the accelerator. “Yeah,” he said. “Jane.”
* * *
Kenna Wilkes crossed her legs, luxuriating in the plush upholstered sofa in the ninth-floor presidential suite. She touched the pile of glossy Lassiter brochures stacked beside her. After all, that’s what she’d said she came here for.
She looked at her watch, wondering how it was going at the rally. It would be hot, and crowded, and Owen would be occupied with his campaign routine. She felt the beginnings of a smile, composing her face for the coming performance. She’d tell him he was wonderful, brilliant, compelling. Best ever. He’d believe her.
Her cell phone buzzed. Showtime.
She grabbed the brochures, tucked a little notepad labeled PRESIDENTIAL SUITE into her purse, patted the couch cushions flat, opened the suite’s front door, gave the room one last appraisal. She clicked off the lights and stepped into the hallway. Looked left, looked right, no one there. Trotted down the corridor and into the ninth-floor stairwell.
Leaning for a beat against the cool gray concrete blocks of the stairwell wall, she clutched the slick campaign brochures to her silk blouse and closed her eyes briefly, calculating. So far, so good.
* * *
“I’m walking down the steps, Alex. Fast as I can. In the stairwell of the hotel. I’m on floor—” Jane glanced at the painted concrete bricks beside her, saw a green-stenciled number. “—floor six.”
Jane’s heart was still beating too fast. One hand holding the railing, the other her cell phone, she tried to hurry down the stairs and talk at the same time. She pushed closer to the wall, letting a pack of still-buzzing rally-goers elbow by her. “Yeah, it’s nuts here. The stairwells are packed with people trying to get out. They’ve stopped the elevators, even though everyone keeps insisting there’s nothing majorly wrong.”
“So what the hell—Jane, are you okay?” Alex’s voice buzzed over the iffy connection, but the concern in his voice came through. “Is Lassiter okay? The wires said the lights just went out. In the room where the rally was? Or all over the hotel? Why? What’s the story?”
Floor five. “Yeah, well, Alex, I have no idea yet. Sorry, sorry.” Jane stepped out of the way as another group of people, all wearing Lassiter buttons, shoved by her. “No, not you, Alex, people on the steps. Anyway, I don’t know. All the Lassiter people were gone by the time the stupid TV types realized they could click on their battery lights—gosh, it must have been, like, a minute? It seemed like an hour. Terrifying. I mean, people went crazy. I’ve got to admit, it was pretty scary. Everything goes through your mind, you know?”
“Yeah, I bet. So is Lassiter going to have a statement? A news conference or something? Can you get to him, get reactions? And the hotel’s? What did Lassiter do, anyway? Calm everyone down, be a hero?”
Floor four. Jane thought back. “Hardly. I mean, who knows. It was pitch dark. He was in the middle of the ballroom floor, doing his meet and greet thing, rent-a-cops around him, people pushing to get close and—damn.” Kenna Wilkes. Gone again.
“W
hat?” Alex said. “Jane, you sure you’re okay? You’ll be able to get us info and file a story, right? There’s no one else there to cover it.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Jane said. Kenna Wilkes is still in this hotel. She can’t just disappear. “I’m fine. Thanks. I’m—listen. Do me a favor. Look up the name Kenna Wilkes, okay? K-e-n-n-a. Wilkes with an e. There can’t be many people with that name. She’d be like, age twenty-five-ish. Curly hair, blue eyes. Just see.”
“Speaking of look up,” Alex said. “Nothing on that Amaryllis name. Who is that, anyway? Tuck is freaking.”
Ah, problem. Jake. Dead girls. Arthur Vick. “Alex? Later, okay? Let me do this first. I’ve gotta track down the Lassiter people.”
“Great. Call me when you’re ready to file,” Alex said. “I’ll check that name for you. Who’s Kenna Wilkes, anyway?”
Third floor. As Jane swung around the corner to the concrete landing, the stairwell door flew open. She jumped back, barely missed getting slammed by the metal door and run over by the man racing through.
It was Trevor. Trevor Kiernan. He’d know exactly what happened.
“Trevor? Hang on, Alex. Hang on, okay?” Jane recognized the dark-rimmed glasses, the tousled hair, the clipboard. She caught up to him, grabbing his shoulder. “Trevor! It’s Jane Ryland.”
Trevor turned, looking up at her on the step above him. His tie was loose, the collar of his jacket askew, a smudge of what looked like black ink stained his white shirt.
“Jane?” he said. “Jane. Holy crap. You were there?” He paused, adjusting his glasses. Took another step down. “Do you know what happened?”
“Do I? Know what happened?” Jane pointed to herself, taken aback. “That’s what I’m supposed to ask you.”
Trevor shook his head, mournful, staring down at the concrete steps.
“Trevor? You okay?” Jane put the cell phone back to her cheek. “Hang on, Alex. Trevor? Is Lassiter okay?”
The Other Woman Page 14
