Shadowkiller

by Wendy Corsi Staub

“Even if it was . . . Didn’t you see the surveillance camera footage? He was no fancy gentleman.”

  The killer, clad in a hooded sweatshirt, sneakers, and baggy jeans, had been careful to keep his head down, shielding what might have been visible of his face from the cameras. He looked like your run-of-the-mill street vagrant—perhaps a junkie looking for some quick cash—but that might not be the case.

  Especially, Rocky thought, considering the violent hack job he’d done on the victim’s face. And now there was the green carnation that could very well have been deliberately left at the scene as part of the killer’s signature.

  Although, if that were the case, you’d expect the carnation to have been prominently placed, perhaps on or near the body.

  This appeared to have been dropped, perhaps accidentally kicked into the corner.

  “Can we lift any prints from this thing?” Rocky asked Perez, hoping the green carnation wasn’t some twisted calling card that was going to pop up somewhere else in the near future.

  “Sure can,” was the answer. “Now all you have to do is hope you get a match when you enter it into the database.”

  Never again, Carrie told herself, walking briskly down Broadway—just walking, as though she had someplace to go.

  She didn’t. But she couldn’t stand being cooped up in her apartment, feeling as though any second, she’d hear a knock on the door.

  Police, they would say. Open up.

  And then . . . what?

  Would she try to escape?

  Open the door and surrender?

  There was no way of knowing how she might react until it actually happened, and of course, it wasn’t going to happen. They hadn’t connected her with Ralph, and they wouldn’t connect her with Chelsea.

  Never again.

  Never, ever again would she lose control the way she had with Chelsea, and before that, with Ralph.

  She had too much to lose now . . .

  Now that she’d found Mack.

  You can’t screw this up. It’s your one chance to have a normal life . . . and that’s one chance more than you ever thought you’d have.

  Even finding Allison had taken on less urgency.

  She wouldn’t give up trying to find her—but it was no longer her only purpose here. And if she ever did find her . . .

  I’ll be a lot more careful. I won’t let myself get carried away. I’ll never do anything like this.

  Never. Never again . . .

  PART III

  The Present

  We all live on the past, and through the past are destroyed.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Chapter Ten

  Westchester County, New York

  Saturday, June 16

  “Wait a minute . . . Allison, did you just say you guys are driving to Nebraska?” Randi Weber’s eyebrows disappear beneath the new bangs she had her hairstylist cut to hide the wrinkles on her forehead—a necessity now that her husband made her lay off the Botox just in time for her thirty-year high school reunion last weekend.

  Ben, she told Allison, didn’t like the preternatural Barbie that resulted from the injections. “I guess he wants me to look like an old lady.”

  “You? Never!” Allison told the petite, striking brunette, who has a big ego and a bigger heart.

  “Look at me, Allie. I’m almost fifty.”

  “You are not! Not for another couple of years. And when you do turn fifty, you’ll probably look exactly the same as you do right now—which is exactly the same as when I met you.”

  “This is why I’ve always loved you, Allison. You tell me just what I need to hear,” was Randi’s response.

  As the wife of Mack’s best friend, she had embraced Allison from the moment they first met ten years ago, and not just because Allison complimented her on what she was wearing.

  “I was worried you were going to be like her,” she’d said—her, meaning Carrie, Mack’s late wife.

  Randi had made no secret of the fact that she couldn’t stand her, and neither could Ben.

  “You, we love,” she told Allison early on, and the feeling was mutual.

  The Webers were the reason Allison and Mack moved from the city to Glenhaven Park, where they shared a neighborhood until Ben’s promotion elevated the Webers to the estate side of town. They don’t see each other as much as they did when they could walk from house to house with the kids in strollers, but it’s not for lack of trying.

  That’s why this rare Saturday night dinner out at a new local bistro is such a treat—and also why Randi had no idea until now that Allison and Mack had decided to drive to Nebraska in two weeks instead of fly.

  “You’re driving five thousand miles with three small children? Are you people crazy?” Randi sets her glass of pinot grigio on the polished bar and turns to her husband.

  Ben and Mack have been leaning against the bar talking sports and business as Randi told her about the high school reunion on Long Island last weekend.

  “Some of these friends, I haven’t seen since I was eighteen,” she told Allison, “but it’s crazy—it’s like we picked up right where we left off. Even this guy I dated senior year, Mike Travers—I remembered him as being a complete jerk, but he isn’t. He’s a sweetheart. I guess that’s what happens after you break up, right? You hate the person so much your memory is clouded.”

  The only person Allison ever broke up with was Justin, a biologist with whom she’d fallen madly in love when she was in her early twenties and new in the city. The relationship lasted a year, and the end was so bitter that even now, looking back, she thinks of Justin as a jerk.

  But she has no interest in finding out whether that’s really the case. It’s complicated enough to deal with the rest of her baggage.

  “You have no idea how good it felt to reconnect with all those people,” Randi told her, “and laugh about old times.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  Familiar with Allison’s past, Randi said gently, “It might be good for you to look up some old friends when you go back to Nebraska. You might be surprised at how they’ve changed—or you might find out that they feel bad about how they treated you. You never know, Allison. It might be a healing experience.”

  “I can’t imagine how it could be. Anyway, we’re not going back to my hometown. By the time we get to Nebraska we’ll have been driving for three straight days.”

  “What?”

  Now, Randi clutches her husband’s arm. “Ben, did you hear this?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That we’re crazy,” Allison tells him with a grin.

  “You and Randi? Crazy? Well, that’s half true.”

  “Hey!” His wife swats him. “I was talking about the two of them.”

  “Yes, but again—she’s only half right.” Allison playfully links her arm through her husband’s. “Go ahead, babe. Tell them it was all your idea to drive five thousand miles with three small children.”

  “Actually, it’s less than two thousand.”

  “Who’s even counting after the first few hours?” Randi shakes her head at Mack. “You’ll be delirious by the time you get to the Cross-Westchester Expressway. Last weekend was wall-to-wall traffic on the LIE when we went to my reunion, and that was just me and Ben. If the kids had been with us, it would have been a nightmare.” Her shiny red fingernails flash through the air as she gestures to emphasize the last word, which in her Long Island accent comes out night-may-uh.

  “Well, we’re planning on leaving really early on Saturday morning to avoid the traffic, and hopefully the kids will sleep for a while in the car.”

  “All three of them at once? Don’t bet on it,” Randi tells Allison. “We only have two and I keep hoping my great-aunt Rhoda will hang in there for a few more months—not because I ever liked the old battle-axe, but because I dread the thought of driving a hundred and fifty miles round-trip to Massapequa with the kids for her funeral.”

  “How blessed is she to have a loving niece
like you?” Mack asks dryly. “Here’s to Great-Aunt Rhoda—may she live forever.”

  He lifts his bourbon, and they all clink glasses.

  “And here’s to your big road trip. I hope you survive it.”

  “Come on, Randi, don’t knock adventure.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it, Mack? Allison? Are you on board with this adventure?”

  “Why not? He’s had worse ideas.”

  “Name one,” Mack says. “Wait—never mind.”

  She grins, enjoying the banter and welcoming the chance to take a lighthearted approach to the upcoming road trip. Ever since she agreed to the idea a month ago, she’s been trying to wrap her head around it in a positive way.

  Only now, over a glass of wine with close friends, does the thought of seeing her brother and his family again seem a little less daunting.

  After all, even if she and Brett—and their spouses and children—don’t hit it off after all these years, it’s not the end of the world. Lots of people have people from the past whom they prefer to keep at arm’s length. Particularly relatives. Randi’s class reunion with old friends might have been a smash success, but look at her relationship with Great-Aunt Rhoda.

  “It definitely sounds like an adventure,” Ben says, “but I have to ask—why not fly?”

  “You of all people should understand that,” Mack tells Ben, who also works in the high-pressure advertising industry. “Last July I had to cut short our vacation down the shore because of a last-minute client crisis, remember? All we need is to buy almost three thousand dollars’ worth of plane tickets and have the same thing happen.”

  “Three grand to fly to Nebraska?” Ben shakes his head. “No way.”

  “Not per person. Total. And not quite that much. A few hundred less.”

  “Still.”

  “What can I say?” Mack shrugs. “It’s a hot ticket.”

  “You could fly to Rome for that. How could it be that much?” Randi’s Five Towns accent is thicker than ever, as it always is when she drinks wine.

  “Believe me, I’ve been looking all over the Internet for cheaper fares or at least nonstops to Omaha to make it less torturous,” Allison says. “But they’re all sold out, and there are five of us, so it adds up.”

  “You could always do four seats and hold the baby.”

  “J.J.? You’re kidding, right?”

  Randi, all too familiar with their perpetually squirmy toddler’s antics, grins and shakes her head. “You’re right. What was I thinking? Not holding J.J. for four hours is worth at least three grand. I just still can’t believe fares are that expensive.”

  “Maybe they weren’t a few months ago, but this is kind of a last-minute trip—we’re leaving two weeks from today.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Through the fifteenth.”

  “That’s forever! It’s half of July! You’re going to miss your birthday.”

  “I’m not going to miss it. You are.” Allison smiles. “I’ll be celebrating it in Nebraska.”

  “Well, you’re going to miss our Friday the Thirteenth party.” Randi loves to entertain, and she’s always looking for an excuse to invite a crowd over. Years ago, she and Ben started throwing TGIF–13 parties, a tradition that continues every time one pops up on the calendar.

  “Didn’t you already have a Friday the Thirteenth party this year?” Mack asks.

  “We’ve had two. One in January, one in April. But there’s a third one coming up in July—I think that’s a record—and after that, there won’t be another one for over a year. I can’t believe you’re going to miss it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Allison says, “if it doesn’t work out with my brother, we’ll turn around and be back home in time.”

  Randi, who knows most of the details concerning Allison’s past, squeezes her arm. “I’m sure it’ll be a happy reunion. Look at what it was like for me last weekend—and those were just classmates. This is your own brother.”

  “Exactly. My own brother and I haven’t seen each other since I was a kid. Talk about pressure.”

  “Listen, you’ll deal. It’s only two weeks.”

  “Didn’t you just say that was forever?” Allison asks wryly.

  “It all depends on how you look at it. You have to keep a positive attitude.”

  “All right, Miss Friday the Thirteenth,” Allison says, and her brother’s voice suddenly echoes in her head.

  All right, Miss Big Apple.

  Miss Big Apple . . .

  Brett called her that for a while. Not as kids, though. They’d barely spoken as kids.

  Well of course not as kids, she reminds herself. He only would have called her Miss Big Apple after she moved to New York.

  But then, until very recently, they’d barely spoken as adults, either. A couple of cursory phone calls a year—that was the extent of it.

  Her recollections of interacting with her brother are incredibly vague—deliberately so. She’s spent so many years trying to forget anything and anyone associated with her childhood—how is she going to switch gears now? Does she really want to trigger all those memories? Any of them?

  Suddenly, she’s glad they’re not flying to Nebraska. She needs as much time as possible to prepare for coming face-to-face with her brother again. And if they’re on the road, it will be that much easier to back out if at some point she realizes she can’t go through with it after all. They can make a U-turn and head back home, or to the beach . . .

  Why aren’t we just going back down to the shore in the first place? she finds herself wondering, just for a split second, conveniently forgetting what happened last fall at the beach house.

  No. That’s out of the question. She herself can’t bear the thought of going back to Salt Breeze Pointe this year—how can she even consider changing gears and putting the girls through that?

  J.J. is too young to remember what happened there, but Hudson and Madison have been seeing a child psychiatrist weekly since December. Dr. Rogel told Allison during the last parent consult session, in April, that they’ve been coping remarkably well.

  “Your daughters are survivors, Mrs. MacKenna. They’re blessed with extraordinary strength—as is their mother.” His hands were steepled beneath his white beard and he looked intently at her as though he were seeing straight into her own traumatic past.

  He knew, of course, that her father had abandoned the family and that her mother had killed herself. She hadn’t relished sharing the information during the initial consult—without the girls present, of course—but it wasn’t something that should be withheld from a psychiatrist who would be treating your children for emotional trauma.

  She wasn’t there to talk about herself, though. Not in the beginning, and not at any point in her contact with Dr. Rogel. It was strictly about her daughters.

  Uncomfortable with his probing gaze that day, she shifted gears. “The girls have been asking about our summer vacation. We’ve always gone to the beach house, but . . .”

  “I think a change of scenery is a good idea this year,” he said, explaining that it was probably too soon to take the girls back to the shore. “Not yet. Someday, further along in the healing process, they might ask again to go back. Down the road, if that happens, we can revisit the idea, because it might help them to resolve some things. Some people need to return to the scene of the crime in order to move on.”

  Is that what I’m doing now? Allison wonders, absently sipping her wine and listening as Mack, Randi, and Ben chatter on. Is it any healthier for me to drag my kids along to the scene of the crime in my own past?

  But of course, that isn’t really the case. There was no crime. Nothing like what happened to her own children last November.

  Abandonment by a Deadbeat Dad, Suicidal Junkie Mom . . .

  Yes, it had all been very dramatic and traumatic at the time, but she, too, is a survivor. Extraordinary strength . . .

  Anyway, they’re only going to visit her brother. Retu
rning to Centerfield isn’t part of the plan.

  Allison has assured Mack that she isn’t interested in that, and said the same to Cindy-Lou when she asked. It surprised her that even Brett seemed to think she might like to visit their old hometown.

  “I’ll go with you if you want,” her brother offered, not very enthusiastically, and was audibly relieved when she vetoed that idea.

  The plan is for Allison, Mack, and the kids to bypass Centerfield on their way to the dairy farm, which is almost two hundred miles west. They’re going to spend the whole vacation getting to know Brett, Cindy-Lou, Samantha, and Jeff. Period.

  Building family ties is a positive step in everyone’s healing process. The girls will love the farm, and the county fair, and all that fresh air and space . . .

  “Mr. Weber?” The host appears to touch Ben on the shoulder. Your table is ready. Please follow me.”

  As they head for the main dining room, Mack takes Allison’s hand and gives it a squeeze. “Stop worrying. It’s going to be great.”

  “Dinner?”

  “You know what I mean. Nebraska.”

  Going back there after seventeen years isn’t going to be anywhere near great. She’ll settle for tolerable.

  “Glenhaven Park is next,” the Metro-North conductor announces, walking through the car. “All doors will open at Glenhaven Park.”

  From Saint Antony to Florida to New York to Glenhaven Park.

  It’s about damned time.

  Carrie rises with the small duffel she’s been holding on her lap since she boarded the train an hour ago at Grand Central Terminal. She wouldn’t dare let it out of her grasp, let alone her sight. The bag contains her laptop, the all-important manila envelope, the key to her safe deposit box at a busy midtown bank—and the tens of thousands of dollars in cash and the small pistol she retrieved from the box when she opened it yesterday.

  She places the duffel strap securely over her shoulder before reaching for a couple of large paper shopping bags she placed on the rack above her seat. The clothes they contain are her own, purchased weeks ago at a Super Wal-Mart somewhere in Georgia. But she’s counting on the shopping bags’ familiar Bloomingdale’s insignia to provide mute testimony to just what a lone middle-aged woman might have been doing in the city on a Saturday afternoon, should anyone glance her way and wonder.