No Way Back

by Andrew Gross

  I called Bellevue Hospital and nervously asked the operator for an update on his condition. She asked if I was family, and I answered yes. I was transferred to another line; it took forever to connect, which began to get me a little edgy.

  “May I help you?” a man’s voice finally answered. “You’re inquiring about Joseph Esterhaus?”

  Suddenly it ran through me that they might be thinking I would call in and were tracing me as I spoke.

  “Hello? Private Patient Information. May I help you? Hello?”

  I hung up. My hands were shaking. I didn’t know how to do any of this! I was ashamed to be so cowardly. Joe had put everything on the line for me. Joe, please, just make it through. I closed my eyes. I’m praying for you, Joe. Please …

  I’d never felt so alone or isolated. I just needed to feel close to someone. Anyone. I thought of my stepson. He’d probably be at his uncle’s. I thought it was worth the risk.

  I punched Neil’s number into my new phone. After what had come out, I wasn’t sure if he would even want to talk to me.

  It rang—once, twice, three times. I anxiously waited to hear his voice. Come on, Neil, please!

  I just wanted to hear my stepson’s voice. To tell him I loved him. He’d just lost his dad. I only imagined the anguish he must be experiencing. And feeling … not knowing the truth. Thinking I had done it … By the fourth ring I was dying. Please, Neil, pick up.

  Then I caught myself. I had no idea if he had been to the police. They might have his phone under observation too. Was it possible that they could trace incoming calls? Even a quick one, from an unregistered number?

  I didn’t know.

  I cut off the call.

  I put down the phone, my heart as aching as it had ever been. I missed Dave so much. And I was missing my dad. If he were alive, he’d be the first one I would go to. I had never felt so overwhelmed or so alone in my life.

  The hell with it, said a voice that leapt up inside me. They’re my family! I’ve lost my husband too! I rifled through my bag and took out my iPhone. I remembered reading somewhere that a text message couldn’t be traced. That that was how Wall Street honchos looking to avoid a paper trail were communicating with each other these days. I scrolled under Contacts to my son’s.

  What would I even say?

  I began to write:

  I know what you must think. But don’t believe it, honey. I didn’t kill your dad. I swear! I miss him terribly, just like you must now.

  I wish I could tell it to you myself, baby. You have to trust me.

  I wish I could tell it to you all.

  I closed the phone and let my head go back against my seat, the blood draining from me.

  I heard a loud beep and a car lock go on. I jumped. A couple got into their car directly next to me, sending my heart clawing up my throat. I sank down, hiding myself in my seat.

  And I began to cry.

  Knowing I was so alone and in such trouble. Knowing anyone who knew me probably thought I was a murderer. Or a lunatic.

  Knowing my husband was dead. Because of me. That people wanted to kill me, and I didn’t even know why.

  Now Joe …

  Suddenly my phone vibrated on the car seat. My heart leaped up. I grabbed the phone and checked the screen. For a moment, I was excited, almost giddy.

  It was Neil.

  With a lifted heart I checked out his reply. But what I read sent a shiver down my spine.

  Don’t write me again.

  How could you have done this, Wendy?

  How?

  He had it all wrong. Just like I thought he would. Like the world would. I was about to tell him to just hear me out when another text came through.

  I don’t want to hear from you again. Just turn yourself in, Wendy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I was sitting in a stolen car, on the run, inside a dank and freezing garage, but Neil’s answer left me colder and more alone than ever. I found an old blanket in the back that Jim and Cindy must have used as a ski warmer and wrapped myself in it.

  I was scared to be out here on my own, even more scared at the thought of turning myself in. I knew the only way to prove my innocence was to find proof that the agent who’d shot Curtis in that hotel room was engaged in some kind of nasty business that resulted in both of their deaths.

  I just didn’t know how.

  From the car, I googled Curtis on my iPhone. What came back was that he had written articles for publications like The Atlantic and The New Yorker and some online magazines like Mother Jones and The Daily Beast on topics such as the financial meltdown and the war in Afghanistan, with titles that seemed to focus on some form of government or corporate corruption. I had to know what he was working on when he was killed. Did I dare call these publications? I knew that would be insane. What could I possibly say? That I was a reporter looking into Curtis’s death? Should I try to find his agent or maybe a friend? The first call I made, I was certain the police would be all over me in minutes.

  I scrolled through his phone again, through his e-mails and photographs. I stopped again at the one of the pretty Latina-looking woman in the hospital gown. There were other photos of Curtis with his friends, seemingly in party mode. Further along, I found several in a mountainous terrain, which now I figured was Afghanistan. In several of them Curtis was decked out in combat gear with soldiers and villagers. I also found a shot of him and a younger woman who looked like she might be his sister around a table with an older couple who I guessed were his mom and dad.

  A shudder of emotion came over me. A mother’s emotion, as I looked at Curtis’s mom, surrounded by her children. Proud, happy eyes that reflected what would have been in my own, only days ago.

  It suddenly occurred to me that that might be a way. She might be able to help me. If it were me, if I had lost my son, I would want to know—I’d have to know—the truth about what really happened up there. Not just what the news was saying.

  The truth—how my son died.

  At the bar, Curtis told me he hailed from Boston. I went through his contacts until I came up with a number marked Home. A 607 area code. It was after 9:00 P.M. I didn’t know where his parents would be right now. In Boston, or even in New York, maybe, claiming the body? It was just a few days ago that they had lost their son.

  I figured it was worth a try.

  I clicked on the number and waited with trepidation until the fourth ring, when a woman finally answered. “Hello?”

  I felt paralyzed. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how she might take me. As some crazy accomplice in their son’s death? Someone wanted by the FBI? Or just a panicked, promiscuous woman?

  “Mrs. Kitchner?” I uttered haltingly.

  The woman hesitated. “This is Elaine Kitchner. Who is this?”

  “Mrs. Kitchner, I’m sorry to bother you. I know this is a difficult time. I realize you just lost your son.” I heard a man’s voice in the background, asking, “Who is it, Elaine?”

  I sucked in a breath and said the only thing that came to my mind. “This is Wendy Gould. I don’t know if you know my name. I just thought you might want to know what happened up there. In that hotel room.”

  I was met with silence. And who could blame her? Her son had been shot at point-blank range under mysterious circumstances. It was being portrayed in the press as if he’d shot it out with a government agent. And that I was there.

  “Is this a joke?” she asked, her tone stiffening.

  “It’s not a joke, Mrs. Kitchner. And please, please don’t hang up. I was in that room with your son when he was killed. I was there.”

  I waited; the silence grew stonier the longer it went on. She was probably trying to decide if this was some kind of crank, or just some freak who wanted to cause her pain. I knew she might hang up on me at any second.

  “Please, Mrs. Kitchner, the last thing in the world I’m trying to do is cause you any pain. I’ve lost someone myself. I just need to talk with you. It’s vi
tally important.” I was almost in tears.

  “How did you possibly get this number?” she finally replied.

  “Please don’t hang up! I know what this must seem. But I’m not some psycho. I’m a mother too, and a mother who, right now, watched her husband get killed and can’t even talk to my own son. I can’t even call the police. I can only imagine you would want to know what happened to Curtis. Because it’s not like what anyone’s saying … and I lost the person I loved most in the world last night too. So my life’s been taken from me as well …”

  I heard her husband in the background, trying to take the line from her.

  “You were with him?” she asked expectantly.

  “Yes, I was.” The words flew out of me, jumbled and rambling. “Your son wasn’t in a shoot-out, Mrs. Kitchner, like it’s been portrayed. He was murdered. In cold blood. By an agent from the Department of Homeland Security. I saw it happen! I know. I was up there with him, and I know that doesn’t make me look particularly good, or reliable, and for that I’m truly ashamed, though in truth, that doesn’t really matter much right now. But an agent of the U.S. government found his way into his hotel room and shot your son at point-blank range. He tried to plant a gun on him, to make it appear that Curtis had a gun too, which he was about to fire. Which he did not. There wasn’t any fight. Curtis barely even touched it. He was murdered. The agent went to kill me too. The only reason I got out alive was because the gun he tried to plant on Curtis fell across the bed to me, and I shot him in self-defense.”

  “Self-defense? You said this was a government agent, Ms. Gould?”

  “He was, but whatever he was doing up there, he clearly wasn’t up to any good.”

  I knew I wasn’t making complete sense. I also knew I couldn’t back up a thing that I was saying. And that the accounts that were filtering out completely contradicted me. Elaine Kitchner muttered something to her husband, and then she actually pulled back the phone from him, going, “Desmond, please … Why are you calling us, Ms. Gould? These are things you should be telling to the FBI, not me.”

  “I can’t tell the FBI! I tried to turn myself over to the police yesterday in New York, and I’m sure you saw what took place. I didn’t try to run. People were trying to kill me. I know it seems as if I’m just some crazy woman who’s out of control, but it’s just not true. I need to know some things. It’s the only way I can prove my innocence. I need to know what Curtis might have been working on and why a federal agent would want to kill him.”

  “You expect us to share this kind of information with you? All I know is you’re implicated in my son’s murder.”

  “If you want the truth about your son to come out, there’s no other way!”

  “You’re wanted in connection with multiple murders, Ms. Gould. Your own husband’s murder! I’m sorry, but if I were you, I would think about turning yourself in.”

  “I can’t!” I said again, my voice cracking. “Don’t you understand, I saw what happened up there and they don’t want any witnesses.” I realized how I was sounding. “I didn’t kill my husband … They killed him. Why do you think it wasn’t the police who showed up at my house? Why was it the same government agent who tried to kill me at the hotel? Please. Mrs. Kitchner, I’m not some lunatic! I don’t know what Curtis was into that he had to die. The person who shot him mentioned a name, Gillian. I don’t know if that name means anything to you?” She didn’t say anything. “But whatever it was, my husband ended up being killed for it as well. I’m not able to see his body. I can’t even touch his cheek a last time and tell him I loved him or how sorry I am. I don’t even have a fucking clue where I’m going to go once I hang up this phone! But we still have one thing in common, Mrs. Kitchner, whether you like it or not. Today we’re both mourning people we loved.”

  I was crying. Not just for Dave. From the realization that I would never see him again. And that I might have lost my family too.

  But because of what I’d just said. That Dave was dead, maybe Joe as well, and I didn’t know what my next step was, or where to turn. I was desperate. I was out of options, the moment she hung up.

  “He was a good young man,” Elaine Kitchner said. “He put himself on the line. He cared about things …”

  I sniffed back my tears. “I could see that. This probably sounds silly, but he was a gentleman to me.”

  She said, “When he went up against these people … I told him, this time it was different. This wasn’t like the war. Afghanistan …”

  “Went up against what people?”

  “He said he knew what he was doing. He said he was working on something important.”

  “Please, what people, Mrs. Kitchner?” I pressed her again.

  There was a pause. I had no idea what I was expecting. She could simply say good-bye. She could just hang up on me. And then I’d be nowhere. I had nowhere to turn next.

  “Do you know Boston?” Elaine Kitchner finally asked.

  “A little. I went to BC.”

  “Do you know the island that divides Commonwealth Avenue? It’s known as the Mall.”

  “Yeah, I know it,” I replied, hopeful.

  “Between Dartmouth and Clarendon. It’s across from our house. I’ll be on a bench that faces east. Can you be there at noon?”

  “How do I know you just won’t turn me in?” I asked her. “How do I know the police won’t be there too?”

  “I guess you don’t,” Elaine Kitchner said. “Other than like you said, tonight we’re both mourning people we loved.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  It may not have been the smartest thing I’ve ever done, going up there on a hunch. Meeting a grieving mother who thought I was connected to the murder of her son. Who reminded me I was wanted by the police.

  But what choice did I have?

  I guess I thought, what would Elaine Kitchner gain by seeing me in prison? I hadn’t killed her son. And if she did call the police on me, maybe I thought better the Boston police or even the local FBI than the ones who were trying to kill me.

  It took around three hours the next morning to drive up to Boston. I hadn’t been there in years. I wound through the Back Bay and found a parking space just off Newbury, a few blocks from where she told me to meet her.

  Commonwealth Avenue was upscale and residential in between Dartmouth and Clarendon, attractive brownstones lining both sides of the divided street. From a few blocks away I watched joggers running by, people out walking their dogs. By noon, mothers had come out with baby strollers. The skyscrapers from Copley Square and the Financial Center rose above the townhouses.

  I suddenly saw a police car speeding up ahead. Its lights were flashing and its siren was on, and as it came closer, my heart started to grow twice its size, and I was thinking, You’re a fool, Wendy, a fool to have trusted her. I started to climb the stairs to a brownstone, sure that the car would screech to a stop directly in front and cops with their guns drawn would jump out.

  That it was over.

  But it zoomed on by.

  I think the breath I let out could be heard all the way in Copley Square.

  I didn’t see anyone else who looked like a cop or an FBI agent milling around, but of course, it wouldn’t have taken much to wait until I’d made contact with her and then sweep in. Not to mention I was hardly an expert at this. I waited until precisely noon, then I circled around the block to where Elaine had said she’d be. A woman in a green down coat was sitting on a bench holding a book in her lap. As I got closer, I saw she had silver-colored hair.

  The woman I saw in Curtis’s phone.

  I said to myself, You can just leave, Wendy. You can just bag this. Stock it up to intuition, but what she’d said to me the night before made me feel I could trust her.

  Hopefully, she was thinking the same thing about me.

  I walked up, my scarf wrapped tightly around my neck, a late-October chill coming off the bay. “Mrs. Kitchner?”

  She looked up. She was a stately, attract
ive woman. She had warm brown eyes and sharp, defined cheekbones, though she looked peaked and gaunt from what she’d been through. I saw Curtis in her handsome face.

  She said, “My husband thinks I’m a fool to even be talking with you. He said we should call the police.”

  I shrugged and gave her a half smile. “It crossed my mind that this isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done either.”

  She forced a begrudging smile too.

  She said, “Maybe there are mothers who loved their son as much as I did …” Her brown eyes lit up just a little. “But no one could have possibly loved theirs more. I need for you to tell me what happened.”

  I sat down next to her. At this point, whatever fears I had about walking into a trap had disappeared. “Curtis fought him.” I shrugged, not sure just how much detail she was looking for. “He didn’t give in.”

  She shook her head. “I mean it all, Ms. Gould.”

  So I told her. Everything. From the beginning. How I’d met him in the bar. How we talked a bit, and how I listened to him play. How magical that was. Which made her smile.

  “I know I should have never gone up to that room with him. It was my doing, as much as his. Not that that matters much now.”

  “If you’re looking for a sympathetic ear, Ms. Gould, you don’t win many points from me having met my son at a bar and not an hour later you end up in bed with him.”

  “We never did.” I shook my head. “I was about to leave when the man came in. I couldn’t go through with it.”

  Her eyes grew wide.

  “It’s not how everyone is saying … I’m not some floozy, Mrs. Kitchner. I’ve been married almost ten years. I’d never done anything like this before in my life. Your son could have been angry with me, but we both …” I smiled. “We both kind of found the humor in it. You can’t believe how much I appreciated him for that. I was in the bathroom preparing to leave when the man came in.”

  I told her how he’d tried to force a second gun into Curtis’s hand, to make it appear like he was drawing a weapon.

  “The gun fell across the bed when he and Curtis struggled. Then he shot him. Twice. Point-blank. When your son wouldn’t pick it up. He said this was about Gillian. Do you know that name?”