Shadowkiller

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  The locals-frequented restaurant—described on a travel Web site as “great food, if you can get past the no-frills atmosphere”—appears to be little more than an open-air hut beside a cluster of picnic tables on the sand, set off by bare bulbs strung between palm trees. No-frills is an understatement. Beneath the hut’s tin roof, a hefty island woman with thick coils of braids wreathing her round dark face stirs a bubbling cast-iron pot over an open flame. A couple of children squat near her bare feet, peeling huge shrimp and tossing them into a dented metal pail.

  The woman greets LaJuanda with a wave and an unintelligible but cheerful phrase that was most likely an invitation to seat herself. She does, settling on the bench closest to the water, with her back to the sea so that she can keep an eye on the path, waiting for Jonas.

  A bottled beer seems the safest beverage choice, and she orders one from the oldest child, who, in lieu of handing her a menu, gestures at a handwritten whiteboard propped against the trunk of a coconut palm.

  She’s keeping one eye on the path while reading through the choices—most of which consist of fresh fish and jerked meat—when a shadow falls across her table. Turning, she sees a tall man whose head is completely shaved, with skin the color of undiluted coffee.

  “Are you Jonas?” she asks, wondering how he managed to come up behind her when the crescent of beach is secluded by dense jungle and rock formations. Then she sees the small boat anchored just off the shore.

  He doesn’t answer her query, just sits across from her. Immediately, the boy who brought LaJuanda’s beer materializes with a plastic cup filled with ice and amber liquid. He hands it silently to the man, who nods, sips, and motions for the boy to go away.

  Opting not to pull out her pad and pen, LaJuanda gets right down to business. “What can you tell me about Jane Deere?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  She weighs the wisdom of telling him about her suspicions, and decides she has nothing to lose. “I’m investigating a murder, and I think she was involved.”

  Jonas doesn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. “And so you know that is not her real name.”

  “Jane Deere?” Of course she’d figured as much. “What was her real name?”

  He shrugs, and she realizes she’ll have to try another tactic. She’s prepared to offer to pay him for information—the Temples have set up a fairly modest fund to be used toward her efforts—but something tells her that might not be necessary if she takes the right approach. The fact that he’s here at all makes her think he might have his own reasons for wanting to see this so-called Jane Deere dragged out of the shadows.

  “Do you know her real name?” LaJuanda asks.

  “I know many things about her. Much more than you know.”

  Yeah—no kidding.

  Then he adds, “Much more than she wanted anyone to know.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, LaJuanda thinks. “When did you meet her, Mr. Jonas?”

  “Before she even arrived on Saint Antony. I was the one who brought her here.”

  Startled, she can’t keep the questions from flying out. “What? How? From where?”

  “Florida. By boat.”

  There are countless other questions she wants to ask in response to that bit of information. Seeing the wariness in his black eyes, she settles on the one that seems least likely to shutter them. “Why did she come here?”

  “Why do most people come here? To get away from it all.” He is clearly parodying the trite phrase used on so many of the island’s resort brochures.

  “She wanted to hide here. Okay. When was this?”

  “September 15, 2001.”

  LaJuanda does raise an eyebrow. “You know the exact date?”

  “Of course.”

  She angles her head, and then it hits her. September 2001. Just a few days after . . .

  “Was she involved in terrorism?” LaJuanda asks, wondering if she just stumbled across something that had global implications.

  “No. Not at all. Not that.”

  “Are you sure? How do you know? What do you know about her?”

  “I know that she worked in the World Trade Center and that she made it out. I know that she left New York that day and came to Florida.”

  New York. September 2001. LaJuanda’s thoughts are spinning. “She told you all that?”

  “She told me lies. I found the truth later.”

  “How?”

  “I saw her picture in the newspaper. Hundreds of pictures . . . thousands. Almost three thousand.”

  Almost three thousand people had died on September 11 in New York.

  “All those faces. I looked for hers because I guessed it would be there, and sure enough, it was.”

  “Do you mean . . .” LaJuanda clears her throat. “Was she listed as one of the victims in the World Trade Center attack?”

  Jonas nods.

  “Why didn’t she tell anyone she’d lived?”

  “Because she didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “What was her real name?”

  It’s precisely the same question she asked him just minutes ago.

  Only this time, he answers it.

  “Carrie Robinson MacKenna.”

  The Cornhusker Hotel is every bit as elegant as Allison imagined when she was a girl, and the king-sized bed in the suite couldn’t be more inviting—even with the girls jumping on it in their summer pajamas.

  “Hey, guys, you’re sleeping on the pullout couch, remember?” Mack catches Maddy in mid-bounce and she giggles.

  He sets her on the floor, does the same with her sister, and turns to Allison with outstretched arms. “I’ll take him so you can go get ready.”

  “It’s okay.” She rests her cheek against J.J.’s silky head. “I don’t have to leave for at least another hour.”

  “I wish you weren’t going out alone so late.”

  “Nine o’clock isn’t late, Mack.”

  “In a strange city—”

  “It’s Lincoln, Nebraska!”

  “It’s still a strange city, and you’re a woman out there all alone at night. I don’t like it.”

  “Should I not go?” she asks, almost hoping he’ll say that she shouldn’t. If he does, she’ll agree, and when nine o’clock rolls around, she’ll be sound asleep beside him in that big soft bed instead of making stilted small talk with a friend she hasn’t seen in twenty years.

  “Are you kidding? You should definitely go.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Look, you should go. If nothing else, it’ll be a good warm-up for seeing Brett tomorrow, right?”

  “I guess.” But if this doesn’t go well, how is she ever going to deal with that?

  “Don’t worry, Al. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so. I just wish she’d hurry up and send me her address so that I at least know where I’m going.” Allison had sent Tammy a text, as requested, as soon as they’d checked into the hotel, but so far, she hadn’t heard back.

  “You said she’s at work until nine, right? Maybe she’s busy. What does she do?”

  “I have no idea. I probably should have asked.”

  “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to catch up when you see her. Here, hand over J.J. so that I can change him, and you go take a nice long bubble bath and relax.”

  “I love you, Mack.” The last shred of this morning’s lingering irritation at her husband melts away and she smiles at him, then leans down to kiss their son good night. J.J. jerks in her arms, head-butting her so hard she instantly tastes salty blood in her mouth.

  Hearing her cry out, the girls are beside her instantly.

  “J.J.! You hurt Mommy!” Hudson scolds. “She’s bleeding!”

  “It’s okay, he didn’t mean it.” Allison gently sets him down on the bed and sees Maddy watching with big, scared eyes as Mack hands over a white washcloth he’d hurriedly grab
bed from the bathroom.

  “You’re going to have a nice big fat lip when you meet your friend if you don’t get some ice on that right away,” he tells her, reaching for the bucket sitting on a polished desktop. “I’ll go down the hall and grab some.”

  Left alone with her children, Allison blots the blood from her mouth, creating scarlet blotches on the plush white terrycloth.

  “I bet the hotel is going to be mad that you stained their nice washcloth, Mommy.”

  “Hudson! Don’t say that to Mommy. They can just wash it!”

  “It’s blood. Bloodstains don’t come out. Do they, Mommy?”

  “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, but either way, it’s all right. I just hope . . .”

  “What? What do you just hope?” Hudson presses when she trails off, never one to let something go.

  “I just hope they have stain remover in the hotel laundry room,” Allison tells her daughters with a forced smile.

  And I hope this isn’t some kind of ominous warning about the kind of night I have in store.

  In one quick motion, Rocky Manzillo strikes a match and tosses it into the bed of lighter-fluid-laced charcoal.

  “Now we’re cooking,” he says with a grin as it goes up in flames.

  “Now you’re cooking,” his oldest and dearest friend Vic Shattuck amends, standing beside him holding two open beers. “I’m just the audience—and a skeptical audience at that.”

  “What, you don’t believe I can barbecue a couple of steaks?”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it with my own eyes.”

  “Well, you’re about to. But not until this grill is good and hot, because with steak, you have to sear it really good, and then—”

  “I don’t need your recipes, Rock. I’ve got plenty of my own.”

  “Since when?”

  “Shut up and drink your beer.” Vic hands one of the bottles to Rocky and lifts his own in a toast. “Salute.”

  “Salute.” As they clink their bottles together, Rocky asks, “What are we drinking to? The Fourth of July?”

  “That’s not until the day after tomorrow. How about to the miracle that you’re cooking dinner?”

  “I do this every night. How about that our wives are letting us eat red meat tonight?”

  “Let’s just drink to retirement.”

  “We drank to that last night.”

  “We should drink to it every night, Rock. Feels good, doesn’t it?” Vic settles into a webbed lawn chair on the small patch of grass behind the house Rocky and Ange have shared for over thirty-five years, in the same Bronx neighborhood where they all grew up, the three of them: Rocky, Ange, and Vic.

  “You’re the one who didn’t even want to retire in the first place,” Rocky points out.

  “No choice there.” An FBI profiler, Vic had grudgingly accepted his mandatory retirement a few years ago, taking up golf, joining the lecture circuit, and becoming a best-selling author.

  By contrast, Rocky had been glad to leave the NYPD Homicide Squad just months ago, though he, too, loved his work. He could have retired a decade ago with full benefits, but he’d planned to stay on as long as he was physically able.

  He changed his mind about that after Ange suffered a debilitating brain aneurysm last August. Almost losing the love of his life was enough to make him change his mind about everything: how long he would continue to work a demanding career, what he ate for breakfast, whether he exercised—everything. Except, of course, his love for Ange. That’s one thing that will never change.

  His wife of thirty-nine years has been on a long, painstaking road back from the brink of death. She went from comatose to blinking to grunting to single words to full sentences; from twitching her toes to making several halting steps using a walker. One day soon, the nurses at the rehabilitation hospital promised Rocky, she’ll be up and around again. For now, she’s in a wheelchair.

  She was released from the rehab hospital just in time for a Memorial Day visit from all three of their sons, including their youngest, Donny, with his girlfriend Kellie and their three-month-old daughter, Angelina. Rocky had been hoping Donny and Kellie would be married by now—or at least engaged—but this is a different world from the one he and Ange inhabited at that age.

  He tried to talk some sense into his son. Tried to tell him that if you love someone enough to have a child with her, then you should be willing to stay by her side for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health . . .

  Those were the vows Rocky and Ange had taken thirty-nine years ago.

  For better and for worse . . .

  Now it’s time for better.

  Ange returned to a newly retired husband and a house that’s been newly fitted with a wheelchair ramp, a stair lift, and bathtub bars. When she’s up to cooking again—and she assures Rocky that she will be—he’s going to install new lower countertops and accessible appliances.

  But for now, he does all the cooking. Mostly on the grill. Mostly chicken and fish. After all those years of Ange nagging him about his unhealthy diet, he’s lost thirty pounds and is shooting for ten more. On the cusp of his sixty-first birthday, he feels better than he has in twenty, maybe thirty years.

  Watching Ange fight her way back to life has been all the inspiration he needs. If she’s that determined to stick around, then so is he. Growing old together with Ange is the only thing he ever really expected out of life, and he never thought it would come so close to being an elusive dream.

  Today, with Vic and his wife, Kitty, visiting from their home in Vermont, Rocky skipped his daily thirty minutes on the treadmill. And he’s planning to indulge heartily in porterhouse, Budweiser, and Carvel—with a flag-bedecked ice cream cake stashed in the freezer.

  Life is good, Rocky thinks, sipping cold beer and slapping mosquitoes beside his best friend as the orange sun sinks below the roofline. There’s still no hint of the massive storms that are supposed to roll in from the west later tonight. Charcoal smoke from his grill mingles with the pungent scent of sizzling meat wafting from neighbors’ yards. Up and down the block, illegal firecrackers snap and whistle, kids cool off in open hydrants, a car alarm chirps and wails—and somewhere nearby, beyond a screened window, a telephone rings.

  Moments later, Ange rolls over to the back door in her wheelchair. “Rocco! You got a call!”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, did you ask?”

  She doesn’t reply, having rolled back into the kitchen again.

  “What does it matter?” Vic asks him as he stands up, grumbling. “As long as it’s not the desk sergeant with a case.”

  “You got that right.” Rocky sets his beer on the step and goes in to answer the call.

  Ange hands over the phone. As she rolls back over to the table where she and Kitty are shucking fresh corn, she asks, “How long before the steaks go on?”

  “The grill should be good and hot now. I’ll be off the phone in a minute and then I’ll throw them on.”

  But a minute later, the steaks are the last thing on his mind.

  Carrie Robinson MacKenna.

  It’s been a long time since Rocky’s heard that name. Now a private detective—a female one, with a slight Hispanic accent—is calling him from an airport in the Caribbean, about to board a flight to New York, where she wants to meet with Rocky.

  Her flight lands at JFK just before midnight. “I can take a cab from there to meet you. Just tell me where you’ll be.”

  Where will he be at midnight? Right here at home, in bed with his wife, with a stomach full of steak and ice cream and beer and the permanent peace of mind that had come with retirement from the homicide force.

  That’s what he wants to tell LaJuanda Estrada.

  Instead, he hears himself agree to meet her at an all-night diner in Manhattan to discuss a woman who supposedly died over a decade ago in the World Trade Center. A woman whose supposedly widowed husband had been wrongly accused of murder just
last fall, in one of the final cases of Rocky’s career.

  “That’s how I found you,” LaJuanda tells Rocky, her voice hurried as a boarding announcement is audible in the background. “Your name was in the press about that case and the first round of murders that Allison MacKenna witnessed right after September 11.”

  The Nightwatcher—that was what the New York tabloids dubbed the serial killer who preyed on lower Manhattan in the days just after the terrorist attacks reduced the twin towers to burning rubble.

  Startled, Rocky asks, “Do you think Carrie had something to do with those murders, too?”

  “No. From what I can tell, they happened after she’d left New York, heading to Florida. But I think she’s responsible for at least half a dozen deaths here on Saint Antony, and it looks like she might be back in the States already. She’s dangerous, Detective Manzillo, and—”

  “I’m retired,” he cuts in. “A retired detective. I’m not on the force anymore.”

  “Neither am I. That means there are a hell of a lot less rules for us to follow when we go after this woman, right?”

  Before Rocky can agree—or disagree—she goes on hurriedly, above the crackling of another intercom announcement on her end, “That’s my final boarding call. Give me your e-mail address, and I’ll send you a link to an article about the explosion at the bar and another one about Molly Temple. Just please don’t tell anyone about this until I get there. On second thought . . . are you still in touch with James MacKenna and his wife, Allison, by any chance?”

  “Why?”

  “Their number is unlisted, but I guessed you might have it. Am I right?”

  “Yeah, you are.”

  “That’s why I’m a great detective,” she returns, and he can’t help but like her, even if he is still wondering whether she’s some batshit crazy prankster. “Listen, you need to call and tell them that Carrie is still alive. And I need to hang up now. See you in a few hours.”

  A few minutes later, with Vic outside dutifully manning the grill, Rocky heads upstairs to what had once been his youngest son’s bedroom. Now it serves as both his home office and gym, with a treadmill wedged into one corner and a desk in another.