by Lee Doty
Music alerted them to Coach Cummings’ location. He was singing random snatches of a song in his office. They stepped back into the shadow and waited. When he appeared, thank God he was wearing headphones and his back was to them. The sight of his boogey-walking would have been hilarious had she not been so afraid. It wasn’t long before he returned to his office.
“Where do we go now, Miss Laney?” Mr. Singh again tightened his grip so she had to twist her body to avoid a broken wrist. “Where have you hidden the letter?”
She said nothing. What was there to say? She had no plan for reaching the invisible door. It was only about fifty yards away, but it may as well have been fifty miles. She’d stalled as long as she could.
In that moment she experienced what she’d only read about, resignation in the face of death. She wasn’t fearful, nor did her whole life pass before her eyes. She was engulfed by sorrow, already in mourning for all the things she’d never do or say or feel. She turned to face Mr. Singh. “I can’t—”
“GO SHARKS GO! GO SHARKS GO!” A thunderous noise exploded from all sides of the gym, like thousands of soldiers charging into the stands, their battle cry echoing from the rafters. Stomp-clap-stomp. Stomp-clap-stomp. “GO SHARKS GO! STRIKE THE BLOW! BEAT THE FOE! GO SHARKS GO!” Laney knew what was happening, but surprise loosened Mr. Singh’s grip on her arm. Strobe lights flashed from a descending globe. She took her chance and bolted for the invisible door, got in and slid the door shut. Not once did she look back or even wonder why Coach Cummings had turned on the half-time cheer sequence. Behind the closed door, she struggled to breathe normally. Her breath seemed louder in that confined space than the roar of loyal fans.
Footsteps were getting closer. Was that the cheer sequence or Mr. Singh banging against the sliding doors? Someone was trying to find the opening. Gunfire? Yes. Scared beyond measure, Laney crawled deeper into the service space. The cheer sequence ended. Nothing. Then balls bouncing? Yes, a cascade of balls bouncing across the gym floor. Someone was getting pounded. Mr. Singh?
“Laney. Come out! It’s me. Isabella.”
36
Gin lay on her side, blood streaming from her bullet wound and spreading out beneath her clothes. She would have been surprised by its flow, a rill burbling over small stones. The look on her face was neither fearful, as might have been expected, nor peaceful, as might have been hoped. For once in her life she wore a look of purpose, determination, and courage. But the confusion all around her left no one free to observe how Gin Sager looked as she died.
“Stay down!” Coigne shoved Norma back. He fired again and retreated.
Coigne wasn’t sure he’d gotten the driver. With a knee on Norma’s back, he listened for movement, then whispered, “When I say go, you head through the woods the way you came. Get back to the car.”
“I swear—”
“Do as I say or I’ll kill you myself.”
I may kill her either way. He scrambled crab-like to the driver’s side of the car and listened, then looked in. Gruffly he called to Norma, “Go!” When he was sure Norma was far away he felt for Gin’s pulse, then the driver’s. He left them and ran toward the road. Thank God something was going right. Katepoo had arrived with his gun drawn.
The cruiser was unlocked and Norma got in. Despite rubbing her arms and rocking, she still shivered uncontrollably. As if banked for this occasion, she cried the tears of a lifetime. Her throat ached and her sweaty top clung to her skin. In her fury and dismay she slapped her tears away. What she’d done, thinking she should lead the rescue, perhaps getting Laney killed, putting Coigne’s life at risk, was beyond forgiveness.
Coigne opened his cruiser door. Still rocking and crying, Norma hadn’t heard him at first, but when she did she lunged and hugged him. “I’m so sorry.”
“What’s this? I can’t understand you. You’re sputtering.”
“Laney. Is she all right? You could have been killed.”
“Norma, Laney was—”
“No. No. No.” She buried her face in his neck.
Coigne pulled her hands away and made her look at him. “Laney-was-not-in-the-car. It was Lancelot Varn and Laney’s mother.” He hesitated. “They are both dead.”
Norma tried to stop her teeth from chattering. “Laney?”
“We think she’s in the high school with Rahul Singh. Trooper Katepoo’s here and I’ve got more troopers coming.” He checked his watch. “We’ve got a few minutes.” He pressed the all-door lock on his armrest.
Norma knew she had to say something about what she’d done. Coigne deserved to hear her admit to her own reckless, no, her outrageous behavior. But when she opened her mouth, no words would come.
Coigne stared ahead. Then, awkwardly, he leaned over and pulled her head onto his shoulder. “Okay. We’ll get her back.”
37
Barricades of vans, cruisers, and empty school buses surrounded the front and rear entrances to the school. Local police were stationed along the school’s outer perimeter to redirect traffic. State troopers stood behind the front barricade, armed and padded so heavily they moved like robots.
Anne waited with Norma behind the barricades. Coigne had already told her Gin was dead. She knew she should be grieving. It was expected. But until she had Laney back she had no capacity for emotion. Her heart and mind were in lockdown.
Coigne explained he had remote access to the school intercom system and through it he would establish contact with Singh and negotiate for Laney’s release. Anne almost expected Norma to criticize the extensive preparations before contact was to be made, but Norma only stared at the front entrance to the school.
Anne did the same. She knew she was probably imbalanced, thinking if they visualized the girl with enough detail and clarity, she would materialize. Nonetheless, with greater concentration than she’d ever mustered, she closed her eyes and summoned a picture of Laney, that shy smile, a vestige of her year with braces, those too-long, tanned legs, and that endearing, chest-hiding posture.
When Anne opened her eyes, Laney was standing at the entrance. Her face was bruised and caked with dried blood. Anne held her breath, not certain what she was seeing was real or imagined. Norma grabbed her hand and said, “She’s standing. She’s all right.”
Beside Laney was a girl about her own age and a man in a Go Sharks! T-shirt. They looked disoriented, like they’d just been beamed down from a spaceship.
Coigne’s voice blasted through his megaphone. “Stand down! Everyone stand down!” He walked slowly toward the school. The girls were arm in arm. When Coigne reached them, the odd group came together. When he turned around again, searching beyond the barricades, he gave Anne and Norma a thumbs-up.
38
That evening, Anne and Norma took turns sitting with Laney. She was taking the news of her mother’s death harder than Anne had expected. She’d hoped to spare her granddaughter learning her mother had been shot to death, at least for that day. The girl had experienced enough trauma for a lifetime. But Laney’s urgent pleas to see her mother and make sure she was safe were rising toward hysteria, and Anne couldn’t lie to her.
Such agony over a mother who, for most of Laney’s life, had shown little more than indifference, was beyond Anne’s understanding. Maybe this was because her own sense of loss over Gin’s death felt somehow muted. She’d prepared for Gin’s premature death long ago and now was unable to experience heartbreak. The phrase that came to mind was “mourning lite,” but Anne immediately regretted her flip play on words.
She stroked Laney’s hair and whispered soothing sounds. It was sad that Gin wouldn’t get a chance to make better choices for her life, but in her heart Anne doubted she would have done so had she lived. And just maybe the mourning lite idea had occurred to her because Gin’s death might bring a new dawn for Laney.
Lieutenant Coigne was generous to provide her the details about Gin’s final act of courage before Varn shot her. She’d attacked her captor with her fingernails, lacerating his r
etina and preventing him from getting a good shot off at Norma and the Lieutenant. Norma was riven with guilt for her indirect role in Gin’s death, but in the end, it was better for Laney to see her mother in a heroic light than see her in jail. Anne believed that.
Dr. Zastinchek arrived that evening, coming all the way from Skaket to examine Laney in her own room. A kindness unusual even for a pediatrician, Anne thought. With her long blond hair held back by an early Hillary hair band, the young doctor looked more like Alice in Wonderland than a busy clinician. She left Laney’s side only after completing her examination, prescribing counseling, and administering a mild sedative. She left a separate prescription for Anne. Within moments of closing her eyes, Laney slept, her breathing deep and steady.
“Surely it’s obvious, Lieutenant Coigne. Rahul Singh killed Buddy Todd and Ken Crawford and if you catch Singh, case closed.” Anne paused. “How in the world did he get away? And can we sit down? I’m so tired.”
The effort of pulling out the piano bench and shifting it to face Coigne while he filled her in on the next steps in the investigation felt monumental, but the perch allowed Anne to hear if she was needed upstairs. Even with such proximity, she was glad Norma was up there with Laney.
“We’ll be getting more details from Laney about the sequence of events inside the school, but until she’s rested we’ll have to piece together ourselves how Rahul Singh got away, Ms. Sager. As you could see, he wasn’t with Laney, Miss Miller, and Coach Cummings when they came out of the building and none of them saw him leave.”
“That means a killer is still on the loose and,” she lowered her voice, “Laney could still be at risk.”
Coigne did not to respond directly to the implication that his police work was faulty. “As for who killed Buddy Todd and Ken Crawford, we don’t have proof Singh killed either one of them, although it’s likely he killed Crawford. We’ve pieced together some background from Laney’s story about the letter Singh was so desperate for, as well as Crawford’s emails and texts. As co-owners of Red River Resort, Singh and Crawford were business partners, but behind each other’s backs they were working against each other. Singh wanted that letter found and destroyed, but Crawford wanted to hold on to it. We believe Singh felt threatened by Crawford, who could potentially control the property through his marriage to Gin and her custody of Laney. Even if Laney’s claim to the property wouldn’t ultimately hold up, so long as Crawford could threaten to pursue it on Laney’s behalf, he’d have effective control of the resort at a time when its net worth was about to skyrocket.” Coigne explained to her the resort’s development plans.
“I follow,” Anne said.
“Laney’s account supports this theory. She says her mother thought Singh killed Crawford and would kill them too if they couldn’t come up with the letter. Gin was expecting to be rewarded by Singh if she helped him rather than her fiancé find the missing letter.”
“That sounds about right,” Anne said. “Gin must have figured cash in hand from Singh was easier than marriage, a custody battle, and maybe custody itself.
Coigne nodded, “We’ll never know. But I can’t see why Singh would kill Buddy Todd. Laney says Singh was hell-bent on finding the letter. What motive would he have to bump off the most direct link to the discovery of that letter, Buddy Todd?”
“Hm.” Anne’s hands began to move across her lap as though practicing chords and scales. “You may be right, but isn’t it more likely Singh got fed up trying to get the location of the letter out of an uneducated, drug-saturated, ex-con—forgive me— and decided to try his luck with the beneficiary herself? A child is more malleable, more easily frightened into saying things. So he leapfrogged over Buddy Todd and went after Laney.”
“By ‘leapfrogged’ you mean he murdered Buddy Todd. I think you’re underestimating Rahul Singh, Ms. Sager. If he’s anything, he’s patient and calculating. It’s how he built up his syndicate, victim by victim, industry segment by industry segment. Unless Rahul killed Buddy Todd by accident, and again, accidents don’t fit Singh’s profile, it was someone else. The clincher is that Singh’s got an alibi. According to the medical examiner, Todd was drugged, then killed, about twenty-four hours before Laney found him. Singh only arrived at Logan from Heathrow the morning Laney found Buddy Todd. His sidekick, Lancelot, was with a prostitute for the time in question.”
“I vote for Gin,” Norma said, walking into the living room. “I’m sorry to say it, Anne, and I’m the last one who should say it, but if Gin knew about the letter from Crawford or Singh, take your pick, she’d want Buddy out of the picture, wouldn’t she? Out of the competition for the spoils, something like that?”
“Come on, Norma.” Anne shook her head. “Gin might well have thought about killing Buddy, but carry it out? I don’t think she’d even know where to buy duct tape, much less wrap the man in it.”
Coigne agreed. “To be willing to kill him, Gin would have to think Buddy didn’t have the letter. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Guess I better try to find out.” He stood. “You coming?”
“That’s kind of you to ask,” Norma said.
Anne could see that something had changed between Lieutenant Coigne and Norma. The ego-busting bombs Norma usually dropped on Coigne were still in their hold. Admittedly, Norma was shaken up by her ordeal at the high school, but still, Coigne had the reputation as a dirty cop. Norma had said so. If anyone was going to be subjected to Norma’s withering attacks, it would be a guy who’d betrayed the public trust. So why did Norma suddenly sound like Emily Post?
Anne would have been gratified to learn that her best friend was at that moment asking herself the same question. Norma was having trouble reconciling the twaddle she’d picked up around town with what she’d learned about Coigne from her own experience with him. It wasn’t his courage during the shoot-out that convinced her she might have made a mistake about him, although she had to admit the way he’d taken down Lancelot Varn, shooting the sonofabitch in the face through the open window, was impressive. He’d controlled his rage when he got back in his cruiser, resisted blasting her head off for risking everything, and even went so far as to reassure her about Laney. Was that the behavior of someone happy to take bribes from criminals? She needed some distance to get the question answered.
“You go ahead, Coigne. I’ll stick with Anne. I want to be here when Laney wakes up. Would you get in touch if something happens?”
“Of course.” On the verge of leaving, Coigne said, “I almost forgot. Our office tracked down Bradford Todd, Sr.’s will. It’s fifteen years old, so Laney wasn’t even born when he wrote it. It left everything he owned in trust for his first grandchild until he or she reached twenty-one, but only on the condition that the child was raised by his son and his son was, in so many words, clean, or raised by the child’s natural mother under the same health conditions. If those conditions weren’t met, any assets would go to his church.”
“Okay,” Norma said, taking a seat. “So what did he own when he died?”
“So far as we can tell, nothing.”
Anne said, “Your theory, Lieutenant Coigne, must be that Todd, Sr. learns he has a granddaughter, probably from his son, and writes a letter to Buddy about the property he’s leaving to Laney. Buddy doesn’t get the letter or understand the letter while he’s still in rehab or on the streets. Then he gets out of rehab and finds the letter.”
Coigne nodded. “Go on.”
“But why is the letter so important?” Anne asked. “If he died not owning anything, the letter would be moot. Isn’t that the term, Norma?”
“By the time he died, he didn’t have the property,” Norma said, distracted.
“You all right, Norma?”
“Sorry, Coigne. A crazy thought occurred to me, but it’s too soon to go public with it.”
“What I can’t figure out,” Coigne continued, “is why Todd, Sr. sold the land to Red River Resort if he wanted his grandchild to inherit it. And by the way, where did the pr
oceeds from the sale go?”
“Where indeed?” Norma said.
39
Lieutenant Coigne and Trooper Barbara Ferguson, new to the Cape and with a husband on duty in the Middle East, interviewed Laney at the Barracks with her grandmother present. Later they questioned Isabella Miller, accompanied by her father. In neither case was Coigne getting much to move the investigation forward and help him find Singh.
“Not surprising,” Norma said when he called. “For most people the Barracks isn’t conducive to vivid recall. And who speaks up in front of their parents anyway?” She thought a moment. “I have an oddball idea. Why don’t you meet them at Postal I Scream? Laney will let you know if that venue makes her uncomfortable, since that’s where her troubles began, but I have a feeling returning there might even start the healing process. Anyway, just a thought.”
He might not be able to rely in court on anything that came out of an interview without parents present at a fast food joint, but that didn’t worry him. He had enough from the Barracks interviews to tie up Rahul Singh for years to come. But he had to catch him first.
Side by side at Postal I Scream, the girls were striking in their youthful attractiveness and the differences between them. Where Laney was hazel-eyed and fair, Isabella’s chestnut mane was tinged in copper. Where Laney was slender, all arms and legs, Isabella already had curves. Where Laney looked smart, but worried, Isabella looked bright and impish. If he knew anything about the world, these two would not wait long for a prom date.
