Son of Stone sb-21

by Stuart Woods

  Tim nodded. “I’ll do that in a few days,” he said. “There’s something else I have to do first, then I’ll go back to Charlottesville.”

  “What do you have to do here?” David asked, curious in spite of himself.

  “It’s better you don’t know,” Tim said, setting down his glass. “I’ll leave first; finish your drink before you go home.” He put a twenty on the table, got up, got into his coat, and left.

  David took ten minutes to finish his scotch, then got into his coat and went to the neighborhood deli for the lettuce and bread.

  God, David thought as he walked home, I wish he hadn’t called.

  57

  K elli Keane arrived at work and immediately went to see Prunella Wheaton. She placed her manuscript and copies of the photos she wanted to use on her desk, then plopped herself down.

  Prunie handed her a cup of coffee. “First draft?” she asked.

  “Final draft, before I send it,” Kelli replied.

  Prunie picked up the piece and began to read. Kelli finished her coffee and tiptoed around the desk for another cup, not wishing to disturb her mentor. She hadn’t expected Prunie to read the whole thing at once.

  Prunie finished, and restacked the sheets on her desk.

  Kelli waited, holding her breath.

  “Comprehensive,” Prunie said.

  Kelli flinched. That was it? She had worked her ass off on that piece.

  “Concise, highly readable-in fact, unputdownable. Excellent.”

  Kelli let out her breath. “What a relief!” she said.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t like it?”

  “I hoped you would.”

  “You’ve done an outstanding job. It covers all the bases, doesn’t criticize anybody, and, I assume, it’s accurate.”

  “I can back up every statement in it.”

  “I like the photographs, too, particularly the one of the corpse in the hall with a foot sticking out from under the blanket.”

  “That was as close as I could get,” Kelli said.

  “You didn’t quote Barrington on anything.”

  “He wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “And the shot of the boy and girl consoling each other was perfect. You didn’t use her name in the piece.”

  “I don’t know her name,” Kelli lied, “but I’m not sure I would have run it anyway. She’s a high school kid, and I don’t think anyone will recognize her from that shot.”

  “That’s very sensitive of you,” Prunie said.

  “Who should I send it to at Vanity Fair? Graydon Carter?”

  “No, don’t jump the line. Let me send it to a senior editor I know, and if she likes it she’ll send it to the executive literary editor, and if he likes it, he’ll send it to Graydon. That way, everybody gets credit for liking it.”

  “That sounds smart.”

  “I assume you have another copy?”

  “In my computer.”

  Prunie typed a letter to the Vanity Fair editor on her personal stationery, then wrote a name and address on a slip of paper and handed it to Kelli. “Messenger it over, and don’t use a Post messenger. There’s a service downstairs in the building, and keep a receipt. I assume you didn’t write any of this at your desk here?”

  “No, I did it all at home, and on my personal computer. And I gave the initial story about the killing to the paper.”

  “Good. Now get going.”

  Kelli downed the rest of her coffee, went back to her desk, found a non- Post envelope, took the package downstairs, and shipped it.

  Tim Rutledge checked out of the New Jersey motel where he had stayed the night and drove into Manhattan. He dropped his luggage, except for one bag, at a small hotel on West Forty-fourth Street, parked his car in the Hippodrome Garage, then walked the block back to the hotel, carrying his largest duffel.

  He checked into the hotel, having earlier phoned a reservation, and a bellman took him upstairs to his room. It was of a decent size, decently furnished, with a flat-screen TV, a comfortable bed, and chair. He unpacked his clothes, then opened the large duffel.

  He removed and put away the clothes in that bag, then put on a pair of latex gloves from a box he had bought at a drugstore, then finally took from the duffel an elongated package, wrapped in sturdy brown paper and packing tape. Using his pocketknife, he cut away the paper at one end, then shook the contents out onto his bed.

  The contents consisted of a used, 12-gauge Remington police riot gun, with a truncated, eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel. He had bought it from an individual at a gun show in Virginia, before he had driven north out of the state. He found the box of double-ought shells he had bought. And loaded the weapon, leaving the chamber empty. He wouldn’t need more than one or two rounds, he figured.

  He took some tissues and wiped the shotgun clean of any stray prints that might have found their way to it, then returned the loaded weapon to its paper wrapping, now a sheath, from which he would fire it. Therefore, there would be no gunpowder residue on his hands or clothing, and, of course, no fingerprints on the shotgun or the shells. When he had completed his mission, he would dispose of the weapon in a dumpster at some construction site and it would vanish into a landfill somewhere.

  Should the shotgun ever be found, it could not be traced to him. His mission satisfactorily completed, he would then drive his car to California. He had always wanted to drive across the United States, and, with his new and quite legal passport and Virginia driver’s license, obtained a few weeks ago, he would be safe from an unexpected arrest. He had already begun to grow a beard, and it was looking quite attractive, he thought.

  After a look at California he would drive across the border to Tijuana, and thence down to Baja, where he would, eventually, move the funds he had mailed to a bank in the Cayman Islands to a neighborhood Mexican bank, then buy a little house.

  He would then begin his new career as a novelist, the mysterious E. Gifford, and he just knew he would be successful at it.

  Kelli had just left the Post building for the day when her cell phone buzzed. “Hello?”

  “Kelli Keane?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “This is Karen Kohler at Vanity Fair. Prunie Wheaton sent me your manuscript this morning.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Everybody here loves it,” she said. “I walked it through the office, and nobody could put it down. We just had to cancel a piece in the next issue that couldn’t pass fact-checking, so we can slip it right in, instead of waiting for the usual two or three months.”

  “Wonderful!”

  “Do you have an agent?”

  Kelli gave her the name and phone number.

  “Well, assuming we can make a deal, and if the piece gets through fact-checking with no major changes, you’ll see it in the next issue.”

  “That’s great news, Karen,” Kelli said.

  “There’s one more thing we need, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A decent photograph of this suspect, Tim Rutledge. A head shot will do, but get the best one you can.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Kelli said.

  “I’ll call you in a day or two to come over here so we can go through the fact-checking and my notes. Can you bring your laptop and make any changes on the spot?”

  “Sure, I can.”

  “I’ll be in touch, then.” The woman hung up.

  Kelli flung herself in front of a taxi and headed for home. She couldn’t wait to tell David.

  58

  P eter met Hattie after school, and they walked down to Second Avenue and got a cab uptown. He took her hand. “Are you still sure this is what you want to do?”

  “Are you against it?” she asked, looking alarmed.

  “No. If it’s what you want, I’m all for it. I just want to be sure you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  They got out at the corner nearest the clinic and walked upstairs. There was a friendly-looking waiti
ng room with landscapes on the walls and current magazines, not all of them for women. Hattie gave the assumed name she was using to the receptionist and came and sat next to Peter.

  “I’ve got the titles finished and in the movie,” he said. “It’s as good as it’s ever going to be now.” He told her this to keep her mind off where she was.

  “That’s wonderful. What are you going to do with it?”

  “Nothing, just yet. Dad thinks I should wait a couple of years before submitting it to anyone.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks the publicity it might produce wouldn’t be a good thing for me right now.”

  “I’m not sure he’s right,” Hattie said. “The Sundance festival is soon, and I think your film ought to be in it. If you wait a couple of years, someone else might do a similar film, and that would take away from yours.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Peter said.

  “Anyway, you’ll be at Yale by the time the film gets released, and that’s a kind of insulation.”

  “You could be right,” Peter said. “I’ll talk to Dad about it.”

  “Miss Springer?” a woman’s voice said.

  Hattie didn’t react until Peter squeezed her hand.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, standing up.

  “Please follow me.”

  Hattie kissed Peter on the forehead and followed the woman from the room.

  Peter sat and thought about what Hattie had said, and he realized that sending the completed film to Centurion would be an enormous relief to him. It was the natural thing to do after completing the work. He began to think about the details of doing that.

  Kelli Keane arrived at the Conde Nast building and found the floor for Vanity Fair. Karen Kohler appeared in reception, shook her hand, gave her a broad smile, and took her to her office in the editorial department.

  “Now,” Karen said, sitting behind her desk and waving Kelli to a seat, “here are my notes.” She handed Kelli a neatly typed sheet of paper.

  Kelli read them. “I’ve no problem with any of these,” she said. “I can fix them in ten minutes.”

  “Good. Now, there’s one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There seems to be a discrepancy in the age of Arrington’s son, Peter. She and Vance Calder were married about seventeen years ago. How could they have an eighteen-year-old son? They hadn’t even met until she did the New Yorker profile on Vance.”

  “I believe the boy is Stone Barrington’s son. They were seeing each other before she met Vance. I have a copy of the boy’s birth certificate from L.A., showing him to be eighteen, and Barrington is listed as the father.”

  “Both Arrington and Stone were New Yorkers,” Karen said. “Why would she have her child in L.A.?”

  “I haven’t been able to nail that down,” Kelli replied, “and believe me, I pulled out all the stops. I’d like that part of the piece to remain the same, because it reflects the information I have confirmed, not what I’m guessing. Also, I don’t want to embarrass an eighteen-year-old boy by discussing his parentage in a national magazine. To be clear, I’ll put it this way: I won’t give you the piece, if that’s what you want to do.”

  Karen held up a calming hand. “Take it easy. If you feel strongly about it, we’ll leave it as it is. Knowing our readership, we may get some letters to the editor about the matter, but we can deal with that when it happens.”

  “Thank you,” Kelli said, opening her laptop. “If I can use the edge of your desk, I’ll make your corrections now.”

  “Great. We’re going to press tonight.”

  Kelli opened her laptop and went to work.

  Peter was staring blankly at a magazine when Hattie came through a door and sat beside him.

  “All done?” he asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not. They’ve examined me and told me I can have the procedure in ten minutes. Apparently, another girl had second thoughts and canceled her appointment. If I don’t do it now, I’ll have to wait another two weeks before they have an opening, and I don’t want to do that.”

  Peter thought about it for a few seconds. “That’s fine. Just call your mother and tell them you want to do dinner and a double feature with me, and you’ll be home by eleven.”

  “All right,” she said. “With the rest period, this will take about four hours. Why don’t you go to a movie or something, then come back for me?”

  “All right,” he replied.

  “Wish me luck.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  They kissed, and she went back through the door.

  Peter sat, a little breathless, and planned how they were going to do this. He checked his watch, then he left and walked down to the multiplex cinema on East Eighty-sixth Street. He had half an hour’s wait before the movie he wanted to see started, so he had a snack nearby, then returned for the film.

  When Peter came out of the movie it was dark, and he still had another hour before Hattie could leave the clinic, so he walked slowly back in that direction, window-shopping, taking his time.

  When he arrived at the clinic he sat down in the waiting room. A woman opened a glass partition. “You’re Ms. Springer’s friend, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “I’m afraid there’s been a complication, and she’s been taken to the emergency room.”

  Peter’s heart jumped into his throat. “Where?”

  “She’s at Lenox Hill Hospital,” the woman replied.

  Peter ran down the stairs and looked desperately for a cab. It had started to rain, and there were none.

  He began to run. Lenox Hill was in the upper Seventies, he wasn’t sure which street. He alternately sprinted, jogged, and walked, and the sweat was coming through his clothes.

  He asked a cop for directions and got them, then he stood and caught his breath for a minute and called home.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Peter? Where are you? I was expecting you home from school.”

  “Hattie and I went to a movie, and we want to go to a double feature now, so I’ll grab a bite between movies.”

  “Is that all right with her parents?”

  “Yes, she’s already talked to them.”

  “All right, I’ll see you later.”

  Peter ended the call and began to run again. He still had two blocks to go.

  59

  T im Rutledge stood in the rain across the street from Stone Barrington’s house and huddled under the flimsy umbrella he had paid a street vendor ten dollars for. As he watched, the light in a street-level window went off, and a woman emerged from the adjacent door and locked it. She put up her umbrella and hurried up the block toward Third Avenue.

  Rutledge waited for her to disappear around the corner, then he crossed the street, went down a couple of steps, and peered through the window where the light had gone off. There were two or three pieces of office equipment with small screens that gave off enough of a glow for him to make out a desk, filing cabinets, and a pair of chairs. The woman must be Barrington’s secretary, because his residence and office addresses were the same, with an A added to the office street number. He tried the door, but it was securely locked.

  Rutledge looked up the block and saw a police car coming, so he ducked under the steps to the upstairs residence until it had passed. On the other side of the steps was a garage door that, apparently, belonged to the house. He stepped back to the sidewalk and looked at the first-floor windows. Lights were on somewhere to the rear of the house, but he saw no sign of life. A light burned over the front door.

  Turtle Bay, he knew, had a common garden, surrounded on two sides by rows of houses. The Second Avenue side was made up of a row of shops, and the Third Avenue side was taken up by an office building.

  Rutledge walked around the block until he stood at a point even with the rear of Barrington’s house. Some of these common gardens had an entrance opening to the street, and he walked down the b
lock slowly, looking for one. He found a heavy, wrought-iron gate and could see a corner of the gardens through that, but it was locked, and he knew nothing about picking locks. He walked down to Second Avenue, then up Barrington’s street again. He was going to have to catch him entering or leaving his house, but he had no way of knowing when that might be.

  He finally gave up and went down to Second Avenue to find someplace to eat.

  Peter found the emergency room entrance to the hospital and went inside. The waiting area was packed with people waiting for treatment, many of them wet. He went to the admitting desk, and a woman in scrubs looked up from her desk. “May I help you?”

  “Yes, please. I’m looking for a young woman who was brought in by ambulance.”

  “Name?”

  “Springer.”

  The woman consulted her computer screen. “I’m sorry, we don’t have a patient named Springer.”

  “Try Patrick.”

  The woman looked at him oddly. “She has two names?”

  “She might have used either.”

  The woman checked her computer again. “First name?”

  “Hattie.”

  “Yes, she came in about two hours ago and is being seen by a doctor.”

  “May I see her?”

  “Not until she’s admitted,” the woman replied.

  “Will she be admitted? Will she have to stay overnight?”

  “I won’t know that until the doctor who is seeing her makes his report on her condition.”

  “May I visit her before she’s admitted?”

  “You’ll have to wait until I get her chart back and see if there’s an admitting order. Have a seat, and I’ll call you. What’s your name?”

  “Peter,” he said.

  “Last name?”

  “Just Peter.” He went and found an empty seat, one that allowed him to look down a hallway. He had been there for five minutes when a large double door opened, and two ambulance drivers wheeled in a patient on a gurney, pushing it down the hallway and taking a right turn.