CHAPTER 5
Archer ran a comb through her hair. The sun was shining after the morning rain and her illicit tour of Connor McCall’s tent. She glanced in the mirror at the door, grabbed her car keys, and headed out. Hadley trotted around the side of the cabin and jumped into the back of the old Jeep. Archer buckled up and cranked the engine.
She headed down the driveway, steering clear of the deepest ruts. Fully three-quarters of a mile long, that driveway had been one of the cabin’s main attractions when, four years ago, she was looking for a place to call home.
She had known that the suburbs no longer suited her. The thought was laughable—the grieving assassin next door. Oh, going out of town again, Archer? Want us to walk Hadley? Take in the paper? Watch over your arsenal? No, the cabin was perfect: no questions, no neighbors—a place just to park herself until . . . well, whatever.
The Jeep lurched through a rut near the end of the driveway, jolting her back to the present. Hadley swayed on the seat and lost her footing but scrambled back up easily. At the end of the driveway, Archer got out and opened the locked iron gate, hopped back in and edged toward the road just far enough to clear the gate, then hopped out again, relocked the gate, and pulled into the traffic.
She hummed as she drove to the local Stop & Shop. To her surprise, she had found that she liked to cook. In her old life, meals were brief, no-frills affairs or they were takeout—there was just no time between her practice and Annie’s schedule. Now, though, she had some fifty cookbooks arranged in alphabetical order in the bookcases lining the kitchen walls. She now had time to burn. She cooked meals daily, setting the table with the “good silver,” as her mother called it, a starched linen tablecloth, and taper candles, all for a party of one.
Her last dinner in an elegant restaurant with tablecloths and candles had been in Washington, D.C., when she and Adam were awaiting the trial of Annie’s killer, the day the bombshell was dropped on them: the DA’s office was not going to prosecute.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Loh, Mr. MacKenzie. We’re just not going to be able to prosecute this one. I’m really sorry,” the prosecuting attorney had said, eyes downcast, mouth drawn tight, his words hanging in the air like a bad smell. He’d been the picture of confidence a few weeks ago. Now he looked defeated, slumping in his leather chair, looking small and ineffectual.
Archer stared, mute, waiting for him to take the words back, to say he was thinking of another case, but he didn’t. Everything in her tightened. Her hands closed into fists; her jaw clenched; her eyes squeezed shut in denial. She leaned into Adam, dizzy, unable to right herself under her own power. She knew that the killer had hired the top criminal defense lawyer in D.C., but even so, they had evidence. They had an eyewitness. What happened?
She hadn’t waited to hear the maddening, incomprehensible details. Everything she’d done for nine months—her assemblage of a parallel evidence folder, her analysis of the inconsistencies in defense witness statements, her notations on the medical examiner’s report—my God, he was saying it was all of no use. It was all a fraud. There would be no trial, no justice, no satisfaction of even the meanest sort. Stop! she had told herself then. Stop thinking about that.
But she couldn’t. Then it happened, as she sat rocking on a graffiti-covered oak bench outside the district attorney’s office, wringing a handkerchief, wadding it up, then releasing it, her eyes rimmed red. Adam was still in with the lawyers, trying to make sense of it. She’d run out, choking down the rising bile, unable to bear the sudden, sickening realization of their impotence. Archer already knew it was over. Adam was still arguing the point, but she could see it clearly enough. It was all over but the crying.
Archer had raised her hand to her mouth and clamped down hard to stifle a howl of protest at the injustice of it all. Annie—her Annie—meant nothing to these people. It was just another case that had been botched. It happens, she knew they would say among themselves. It happens sometimes. Things get fucked up. We’re only human. What can you do? Then they’d shake their heads and leave the office for a drink at the pub next door.
As she sat stunned, nails digging into the palms of her hands, arms hugging her body, one of the assistant DAs, who had sat in on several of their meetings, passed her. About thirty-five, she was pretty, her long blond hair held back in a barrette, low at the nape of her neck. She wore a chocolate wool pantsuit. She paused, pivoted back, then perched lightly on the bench next to Archer. She placed a smooth, finely manicured hand on her shoulder.
The woman hesitated, then said, “There is a way to get justice. Wait a week. Then call this number.” She handed Archer a small pink square of paper. Archer took it mechanically, then stared dully at the woman. The woman smiled sadly, squeezed Archer’s arm in a gesture of solidarity, got up, and left. The statement barely registered, but she thrust the scrap of paper into her jacket pocket.
The next week, as she prowled her West Hartford home, unable to eat or sleep, Archer had gone into the kitchen closet and yanked the jacket off its hanger. She dug into the jacket pocket, pulled out the pink piece of paper, stared at it, then put it back in the pocket, and hung the jacket back up.
The next day she pulled it out again. The numbers seemed fainter today than yesterday. Disappearing ink? Jesus, Loh, get a grip. She stared, but this time she dialed the numbers. She was transferred twice via automated voice mail until she heard the voice of a real person.
“Can I help you?” asked a brisk male voice.
“I . . . I was given this number to call for help,” stammered Archer.
“And what kind of help do you need, ma’am?” asked the voice, formal but not unkindly.
“My daughter was murdered and they let him go. They just let him go,” she said. “I don’t know how you can help, but . . . but I can’t live . . . I can’t go on. I just . . . This can’t be right. It can’t be right,” she said, shaking her head though no one could see.
“Ah, I see,” he said. “I need your name, address, courthouse and docket number, Social Security number, child’s name and birth date, and phone number. Someone will be in touch if your information checks out.”
While the man waited, Archer jerked open desk drawers, quickly assembling it. Most of it was in just one file. The man hung up after taking her particulars. Archer shook her head, expecting nothing. Was this what it was like? Like ordering a fleece jacket from L.L. Bean?
But she did hear something. About two weeks later, on a sunny day in June, just over a year after Annie’s death and just after Adam left for his office, there was a knock on her front door. Archer peered out the sidelight window. There on the stoop was a handsome, slender young man in a business suit and sunglasses, and beside him an even younger woman with long dark hair, in tight jeans and a T-shirt decorated with Mick Jagger’s smirking open mouth. Archer opened the door.
“Hello. May I help you?” she asked through the locked screen door.
“Archer Loh?” the man asked, looking down at a sheet of paper he had just taken out of his inner jacket pocket.
“Yes.”
“Mother of Hannah MacKenzie?”
“Well, yes. What is it? Has there been a development?” asked Archer, eyes eager, thinking that perhaps the district attorney had changed his mind. But she realized instantly, he would have called on the phone if that were the case; he wouldn’t have sent two members of the Mod Squad to inform her. The young man didn’t give his name or the name of the woman with him.
“We’re here from a private group that tries to see that justice is done when the legal system fails. We take action only if you request it. We got your call and felt, after a review of your case, that our involvement is appropriate—if you want it, that is. We do need to know now, however,” he added, and Jagger Girl nodded.
The man spoke with authority. He appeared calm, but there was also a warmth about him. He smiled, and his eyes did, too.
“We know. We understand, but this is your choice.”
“We
ll, what exactly do you do? And what does it cost?” Archer asked.
“No cost. We do an eye for an eye,” he said simply.
Archer made her decision immediately. “Yes—absolutely yes.”
The young man nodded. “Okay, then. For Hannah.”
It was her first meeting with Gavin Kennelly. Although Gavin did not personally do the hit, he saw to it that their top urban sharpshooter took out Annie’s murderer three weeks later. The man was leaving a D.C. movie theater by himself at 11:05 p.m. No one was ever charged. One consequence of the meeting was that Gavin and Archer became fast friends, ultimately leading to Archer’s becoming the forty-second member of the Group.
Adam had gotten a call the following week from the district attorney’s office, noting the coincidence. He told Archer that night. She stared at him a moment, then said, “Well, what goes around comes around.” They never discussed it again.
They separated a year later, civilly but sadly. Archer recalled it all and sighed deeply, tears filling her eyes. Regrets enough to go around, Archer thought, biting her lip and willing herself to think only “blue-sky thoughts,” as her group therapy leader called them. Not the memories that take you to the “bad place.” Ugh. She hated group therapy. Within the space of six years, the Group—and not the therapy group—had become her family, her friends, her career, her religion.
The Group comprised forty-five people from seventeen countries, allied by grief and horror, each a survivor of personal tragedy and of paralyzing impotence at the hands of the justice system. With each member contributing as his or her resources permitted, they were an impressive collective of strengths. One was a physics professor at an Ivy League university, with an encyclopedic knowledge of explosives and how to trigger them; another, an English heiress who committed her personal fortune to the cause; and the newest member, a technology genius who had masterminded cutting-edge encryption technologies used by various Fortune 500 companies to secure their e-mail communications. Taking the technology three steps further for his own use, member forty-five guaranteed the impenetrability of the Group’s infrequent communiqués.
The Group’s rules of engagement were simple: It took on cases with at least one reliable eyewitness or, better yet, conclusive DNA findings, where the damage was irremediable and the accused had gotten off for other than substantive reasons. If the justice system worked, wonderful, but if it failed, they stepped in—though only with an invitation. Although assignments were routinely handed out in reverse order of geographic convenience to minimize the chances of an operative’s connection to the hit, Archer’s last job, the man in the parking garage, was an exception—the Group had such loyal and long-standing ties in New York City that there was less need to go through the customary subterfuge of using an operative from across the country.
Apprehension and arrest were always possible, but being in the Group made the possibility remote. Given its staunch sympathizers in every major U.S., European, and Asian city, its serious financial backing, and the steadfast cooperation of key members of big-city police forces and certain district attorneys, the Group had had only one arrest in its fifty-six-year history. And even then, the charges had been dropped within two weeks after seven pillars of the New Orleans community swore that the accused was at a black-tie dinner with them on the night in question. Photos were produced commemorating the event, and further inquiry ended.
Archer shook her head and moved back to the here and now. She wheeled her cart past the dairy case. Enough woolgathering—there was dinner to fix. At the seafood counter, she pointed to pink shrimp and fresh clams in the glass display case, then added a box of linguine, a big bulb of garlic, virgin olive oil, arugula. Oh, and some apples for tarte tatin.
* * *
She pulled into her driveway a half hour later, just far enough for the Jeep to clear the road, then went through her ritual with the gate. Anxious to get the shrimp scampi going, Archer speeded up the steep driveway, trees lining both sides, wheels flinging up bits of mud behind her until she pulled up by the house and hopped out. Lifting the back of the Jeep, she looked up and saw a redtail hawk wheeling high overhead.
“Look, Haddie, Gus is back!” she said, hoisting the two bags of groceries in her arms.
Hadley barked in reply and bounded ahead as Archer trotted to the front porch, but in her haste, she caught her toe on a root. She fell fully onto the bags and immediately wailed in frustration. Pain shot up from her ankle.
“Damn, damn, damn!” she moaned. “Great, just great.”
She pushed up onto her knees and, leaning on the porch step rail, tried to weight the leg. She winced and sat back down. She rolled up her pant leg, probing the ankle with her fingers and palm. Ugh. Just a sprain, but a bad one. Still, it hurt like hell, and it was her right ankle, damn it, her driving leg.
As Archer mentally calculated how long it would be before she could resume her routine, she heard whistling, then approaching footsteps. Connor McCall turned the corner of her cabin, stopped, stared, and sized up the damage at a glance. Archer looked up at him. From the ground, he seemed really tall.
“I . . . I just tripped. I was looking at Gus, our hawk, and didn’t see the root,” she stammered, craning her neck to look up at him.
“Well, nice to see you again. I was coming over to see if your cell phone was charged up. My battery’s almost dead, and I need to call my ranch by the end of business today. I can charge up in my truck, but you’re closer, so . . .” He eyed the mess. “Yeah, I can see you tripped on something. Too bad about the shrimp,” he said, surveying the torn packet, the garlic cloves strewn next to it, and a box of pasta, apparently intact. “I do love shrimp scampi over pasta,” he sighed.
Connor looked at Archer again and paused a second, as if wondering how to fix things. Then, in one graceful movement, he bent down, scooped her up, and carried her up the front steps onto the porch. Automatically, her arms went around his neck. Balancing Archer on one bent knee, he pushed the wooden door open, walked across the room, and eased her down onto her sofa, the end near the fireplace.
“I could have walked with a little help,” Archer muttered.
“No big deal. You’re no harder to carry than one of my small ewes, and you weren’t exactly hopping up. Sorry if I offended. Anyway, can I wrap that ankle or something? I have first aid stuff at my camp.”
“No, no, it’ll be okay. I’ve twisted it more times than I care to remember. A little ice, and it’ll be great in a week or so.”
Connor walked into the kitchen, opened the freezer compartment, and removed a handful of ice cubes. He placed the cubes in a towel lying on the counter and folded the corners. He walked back to Archer and gave her the ice pack.
“For the ankle.”
“Thanks.”
Archer pulled up the leg of her jeans and peeled back the navy blue sock. It was already swelling. She snugged the ice pack around it and, in spite of herself, sighed with relief.
As Archer examined her foot, Connor gathered up the scattered groceries. On the second trip in, he brought the rebundled shrimp packet and the box of linguine while, unaccountably, whistling “Winchester Cathedral.” Without asking for direction, he put everything away.
As he finished putting some lemons in the basket on the counter, Archer recalled that she owed him a favor. “Uh, my cell phone’s always charged up. It’s on the kitchen counter. You can use it if you want.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Connor turned to the counter and picked up the phone, fiddled with it for a few moments to see how it worked, then managed to punch in a number. A pause, and he spoke, apparently to an answering machine.
“Uh, Felix, it’s me, Connor. Just calling to see if things are going okay. It’s payday tomorrow for the summer guys, so just have Jim Betts sign the checks, and be sure the guys get paid before the banks close on Friday or there’ll be hell to pay. Say hi to Susie and tell her she’s still my favorite. Okay, that’s it. Talk to you soon.”<
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Connor found the Off button. An awkward silence settled.
“So . . . then, is Susie that lucky girl back home who’s waiting for you?” Archer asked in a half-sincere effort to be sociable.
Connor cocked his head and studied her for a moment as if weighing whether he could joke with her. He jingled a few coins in his pocket, then shook his head. “Not really. Susie’s my foundation ewe, and although sheep are not the smartest animals, Susie knows me and, I think, knows that she’s key to the whole operation.” He grinned. “You might say Susie made me what I am today.”
More silence.
“Ah,” said Archer, unable to think of anything else to add.
“You know, I realize you aren’t exactly rarin’ to be friendly, and God knows I’m not much good at it myself, but do you need any help till you can get around better?” he asked, arms folded on his chest.
“Oh, no, thanks. We’re fine, really.”
There was a moment of silence while he looked at her.
“No,” he finally said, shaking his head, “I don’t think you’re fine, at least not for a few days. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but this isn’t exactly the neighborhood for ordering takeout. I’ll be back with Alice to make you dinner. I think I can salvage that shrimp scampi; nothing actually hit the ground, and I snatched it up pretty quick. I’m a good cook, by the way—did I already tell you that?”
Not waiting for an answer, he checked the ice pack, then nodded and left by the front door. She heard him go down the front steps, and his melodic whistling receded into the woods.
CHAPTER 6
Looking back, Archer always thought of the year after graduating from Smith as “the lost year.” Planned as a year of work in the real world before starting Columbia Law School, the “tween year” for her and Adam was to be altruistic by design, probably low-paying as a result, and fun, if at all possible.
Tell Me When It Hurts Page 3
