The aroma of fried rice and onions from Ru Yee’s followed Sky along the carpeted hallway and down the stairs. She locked the outer door and zippered her keys. According to the clock above Kildare’s Pub, it was 3AM. There would still be time to catch a few hours of sleep when she got back.
Sky started running south on Adams, through falling snow. The muffled rumble of a car engine came from a few blocks away, otherwise, the street was quiet. The light was on in Magni’s panetteria and Sky caught the fragrant scent of baking bread. A dusting of snow on the trees and bushes transformed the Lake into a Nordic postcard, even Esposito’s Gym and the laundromat glittered. The gaunt verdigris angel atop the easternmost spire of Our Lady’s looked down with watchful eyes as Sky approached the intersection.
She crossed Washington and left the Lake behind, jogging up the winding sidewalk and over the Mass Pike. Beneath the bridge, low beams from sparse, east-flowing traffic threw the falling snow in high relief.
Sky was starting to warm up, get her rhythm. She allowed herself to think about Jake’s cell phone message. Theresa Piranesi’s taunting tone gave evidence that Jake was moving on. Why couldn’t Sky do the same?
What was love, anyway? Just one big dopamine squirt.
Sky followed the perimeter of Cabot Park, past the tennis courts and bocce ball lane, past the field where Jake coached boys’ softball in the summer, rimed now with frost. The low rumble of a car echoed across the park and Sky’s head jerked at the sound. She’d heard it outside her Lake office a few minutes ago. Kyle was right, she decided. It was simple paranoia. She needed to work on that.
Visible from nearly a block away was the stone sculpture of Humpty Dumpty, perched on Cabot Elementary’s brick wall. The giant egg-shaped head was illuminated from beneath, Humpty stared into the snow with a wicked grin.
She turned onto Pulsifer. The lane wound upward in a gentle slope and Sky reached Molly’s address, a white Cape with green shutters and a steep pitched roof. The little house sat back from the street on a skinny ribbon of turf, squeezed between two much grander properties: a massive crimson Victorian to the left and a mushroom colored McMansion to the right.
The cottage looked old – it had probably functioned as servants’ quarters for the Victorian, years ago. But the house seemed to be holding its own among the flanking behemoths. Sky spotted a tiny bike with training wheels on the large round millstone that served as the cottage’s front step. The bike seemed to say ‘Don’t mind the snow, spring is here’. The windows were dark, the house was silent. Sky took comfort from the idea of Molly safe inside, sleeping.
Pulsifer wound round in a half arc and Sky turned south. It was an uphill slog and her legs began to tire. She hadn’t eaten much and the panic attack had left her feeling shaky. She reached the intersection of Walnut and Commonwealth, where the Johnny Kelley statues stood, hand-in-hand, facing eastward toward Heartbreak Hill. Young Johnny with a full head of wavy hair, a four-leaf clover pinned next to his number and a medal signifying his first marathon win at the age of twenty-six. Old Johnny, with a baseball cap in his free hand and a medal commemorating his 61st Boston Marathon. Sky touched Johnny’s four-leaf clover for luck, as she imagined Nicolette might have done, and jogged across Walnut to Bullough’s Pond.
Midway around the pond she came to the boathouse and stopped to look around. This is where Molly and Noah were fishing. Sky followed a small asphalt drive to the water’s edge. It wasn’t snowing now. The pond water was still.
Sky backed up the drive toward the street, as Molly had reported doing – to get bait from the tackle box, she’d said.
Sky stopped near a small sycamore tree and tried to imagine the child’s movements. Molly must have been standing in this very spot when she heard Nicolette’s laugh, saw Nicolette and the running man.
The shrill whine of a car engine interrupted and Sky tried to locate the source. It came from the south and it was growing louder. This wasn’t the same low rumble she’d heard in the park, this engine had a piercing squeal. She looked toward Commonwealth just as the nose of the Lamborghini snaked out from behind a curve. It was heading toward the boathouse.
Sky’s heart lurched at the sight of Manville’s sports car. Digging into the coat pocket with her right hand, she slipped the brass knuckles on and started sprinting north on Dexter.
The Lamborghini engine cut out as she ran. She heard a car door slam shut.
Thoughts ricocheted through her mind. Monk’s warning: never run alone, never run at night. Sky pumped her arms, brought her knees up high, if she could only make it to the woods, take cover in the trees.
Footsteps scratched the street behind her.
“Get down!” The order had a frenzied edge but Sky recognized Manville’s voice. She glanced over her left shoulder as she rounded the corner of the pond and saw Manville slip comically to the ground.
Good. That would buy her a few seconds.
A gunshot sounded.
Sky tried to run faster but her lungs were burning and her knees felt rubbery.
A Spanish Colonial came up on her right and she considered pounding on the door.
She was too late. Manville moved up behind her. She heard the clip of hard-soled shoes on the street, labored male breathing.
“Get down!” Manville’s voice bellowed a second time and Sky felt pressure on her left shoulder.
She stumbled awkwardly and pushed back hard with her right elbow but he was too close. Swinging her right arm up along her ear and back, Sky made contact with the brass knuckles.
Manville grunted in pain but he hung on. Sky braced herself to keep from falling. She struggled forward, but his hand was pushing her down.
A red dot danced on the tree just ahead of Sky. In the same instant, she smashed to the ground and an explosion sounded, brief and intense.
She hit hard pavement. A searing shock of white flashed through her skull.
The last thing Sky registered before she passed out was the semi-automatic in Porter Manville’s hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sky opened her eyes.
She was in a tiny room, in a narrow bed with rails. Covered with a flannel sheet.
Voices murmured through a blue curtain. Beside the bed, Jake sprawled in a chair with his eyes closed. He wore faded jeans and the leather baseball jacket. Lines of exhaustion creased his face and he needed a shave.
Sky focused on the contour of his wide shoulders, the gun holster beneath the open jacket, the black hair that fell into his eyes. She reached her hand out, she wanted to brush the hair back from his face, but he was so far away.
Jake’s eyes opened. He jumped to his feet and started running his hands lightly over her body, up and down her arms, along her legs, as though he needed physical proof that she was really there, really okay.
“You’ve been out for nearly an hour.” Jake took Sky’s face in his hands and kissed her eyes, her lips, her forehead. His mouth was warm, and she felt his fingers tremble.
Why were Jake’s fingers trembling?
A confusing flurry of sounds and images darted through Sky’s mind. Manville’s skeletal mask, running beside Bullough’s Pond in the snow, Theresa Piranesi’s taunting voice. The recorded message came back to Sky, she tried to pull Jake’s hands from her face, but it was a feeble effort. She felt so sleepy, and a wicked headache pounded in her skull. Her eyes drifted shut.
“Stay awake, babe.” Jake patted her cheek. “The doctor’s worried about a concussion.”
Sky blinked with scratchy eyelids. An oxygen monitor hung off her left index finger. She probed her skull gingerly with her right hand and found a tender bulge a few inches above her left ear, just as the smell of whiskey and cigars hit her.
“I’m not your babe.” Sky tried to sound tough but she was fighting an overwhelming desire to sleep. “Where am I?”
“Emergency room. Newton-Wellesley. I need your statement.” Jake pulled a document from the inside pocket of the Red Sox jacket and studi
ed it. “O’Toole and Axelrod walked you from Kildare’s to your outside office door.” Jake was in professional cop mode. “What happened after that?”
Sky pushed herself upright in the hospital bed and gave Jake a halting account.
She skipped over a few details, like the meeting with Teddy Felson and the humiliating panic attack. “How did I get here?”
“Porter Manville drove you to the ER.”
“Is he here?” Sky glanced anxiously around the room. “Did you arrest him?”
“Arrest him? Hardly. It appears he saved your life.”
“He hurt me, Jake.”
“Listen to me for one minute. Manville claims he was near your office –”
“My office?” Sky broke in. “What was he doing there?”
“Manville says he was checking out the neighborhood on his way home from the Four Seasons. Said he planned to hand-deliver some chess set to you tomorrow. Some shit about the evening ending badly, said he wanted to make amends.”
“He knows my office address?”
Jake nodded. “Said he got it from somebody named Claude at the hotel. Easy enough to verify.”
“Klaus,” Sky corrected Jake. Manville probably had little trouble charming Sky’s address out of the hotel manager. Why would Klaus have any reason not to give it? Still, the thought of Manville hovering around her office was disconcerting.
“Manville says it never occurred to him that you’d actually be at your office,” Jake said. “Makes sense. Why would a Winthrop be staying in some Lake dive?”
The reference to Sky’s blue blood hung in the air. Theresa Piranesi was a Lake kid, Jake probably felt more comfortable with that. Who wouldn’t?
“Manville claims he saw you take off running.” Jake gestured down some invisible street with a hand. “By the way, babe. What’s with the running? In the middle of the night?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Sky knew her behavior had been careless. She didn’t need Jake to point out the obvious. “It’s none of your fucking business what I do. Or when I do it.”
“You’re part of my homicide team. That makes you my business.”
Jake was right, Sky couldn’t defend herself. So she said the first stupid thing that popped into her head.
“I heard a rumor.”
“What rumor?”
“About you and Theresa.”
Jake ignored the bait. “Manville saw a truck follow you down Adams. He says it was going too slow and he got suspicious. He followed the truck, saw the driver jump out and disappear into the trees along the south side of Bullough’s Pond. Manville claims he gunned the Lamborghini to the boathouse, said it was a lucky guess, he wasn’t sure where you were at that point. When he saw you, he grabbed his revolver and got out of the car.” Jake searched Sky’s face as he spoke. “Any of this ring a bell?”
“He chased me,” Sky said. “He pushed me down.”
“Manville saw a red dot move across your back, figured the best he could do was get you to the ground. A shot fired, the bullet grazed his arm. He fired back. Says it was a blind shoot, he never did see anybody. He brought you to the ER and called the station. They called me.” Jake paused. “Jesus, Sky. Somebody shot at you. Does any of this make sense?”
“Where’s the guy in the truck?” she said.
“Manville heard the truck drive away, figured he’d scared off whoever it was. We don’t have shit on the truck, Manville never got close enough to see the license plate.”
“Manville carries a gun.” Sky was thinking out loud. “Why does he carry a gun?”
“I asked him the same thing. Said he was still a Texas boy at heart. Keeps one in the car. He’s licensed to carry.” Jake’s eyes moved to Sky’s body. “He pushed you down hard, the impact must have knocked you out. But you’re alive.”
“Find the bullets, get a match.” Sky was searching for some kind of alternative explanation in which Manville was the bad guy. “Maybe he shot himself, made it seem like a hit.” Another thought occurred to her. “Does he have the chess set? He should have that chess set in his car, right?”
“Good point. I’ll check on it.” Jake ducked out of the room.
A few minutes later the blue curtain flew open and Jake entered, followed by Kyle and Manville, who were still in their tuxes. Manville’s left sleeve was rolled up, his arm bandaged from wrist to elbow. He carried the battered wooden box that held Whip’s chess set.
Jake and Kyle flanked to the left side of the bed, Manville to the right. Sky flinched involuntarily and pulled away from him, closer to the detectives.
“How’s the patient?” Manville said.
“Alive and kicking.” Jake reached across the bed and gripped Manville’s hand in a solid shake. “We owe you, Mr. Manville.”
“Call me Porter, Detective. Magnus does.” Manville spoke the Chief’s name with galling familiarity and Sky looked to Jake for some kind of acknowledgement, the ploy was so transparent.
Jake’s face registered only gratitude. Kyle was even worse, standing there with an idiotic grin.
“What the fuck?” Sky croaked. “Get out.”
A look passed among the men.
“She’s had quite a shock,” Manville said, placing the chess set in Sky’s arms. “She’ll be up and around in no time. I have an instinct about these things.” He put a hand on the wooden box. “A remarkable set, Doctor Stone. If you hadn’t been so intent on this beauty I might have bid on it myself.”
His hand lingered on the chess set. Sky studied the clubbed thumb with its fleshy tip, and the crooked middle finger. Her skin crawled at the thought of Manville touching her body as she lay unconscious at the pond.
That’s when it dawned on her.
Manville was different.
The charismatic voice was no longer directed toward her. He’d slipped into neutral, treating Sky as an acquaintance. Concerned, but not too concerned. Jake and Kyle had become the targets of Porter Manville’s considerable charm. Sky could only imagine what they were thinking. Here was a man’s man, even knew how to use a gun. Strong, yet deferential to the detectives. The bandage on Manville’s arm completed the image: a guy who took a bullet for the team.
His performance was flawless.
Kyle had been uncharacteristically quiet up to this point. Now he peered at Sky over his wire rims. “Mea culpa, darling. Guess somebody was following you at the hotel.” He scratched his cropped gray head and cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You were right, I was wrong.”
“You knew someone was following you?” Manville registered genuine surprise. “You really ought to carry a firearm, Doctor.”
“Sky doesn’t like guns,” Jake said.
Kyle nodded in agreement. “I can barely get her to the range once a year.”
Sky ignored them. “Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”
“It only took a minute to get you here,” Manville said. “Seemed silly to wait for an ambulance.”
“Porter saved your life, darling. A thank you is in order, don’t you think?” Kyle gave Sky an expectant look.
“Why were you lurking around my office?”
“It was the chess set. Yours was the high bid of the evening, Doctor Stone. Fifty thousand dollars. That will feed a lot of hungry kids. Seemed only fitting to deliver the set in person. Tuffy and I were in complete agreement on that point. I was going to bring it to you tomorrow,” he added. “But I was feeling a little restless. Didn’t expect to get Humanitarian of the Year.” He offered a self-effacing grin. “I was on my way home and thought I’d check out the neighborhood. I’m not familiar with that part of Newton. I knew your office was somewhere on Adams so I parked behind the bank. I was going to take a walk. Such a beautiful night.”
“You hid your car behind the bank?” Sky prodded. Surely the detectives would find that suspicious.
“Habit, I guess.” Manville shrugged. “I drive a rather high-maintenance sports car. Don’t care for street parking. Too easy to get hit. The repai
r bills are brutal.”
“Lamborghini,” Kyle nodded. “I’d do the same.”
“You’re welcome to take her for a spin, Detective O’Toole.” Manville slipped this in parenthetically, as though it were an afterthought.
Sky felt her mouth drop open in disbelief. Was this some kind of male bonding ritual? She glared at Kyle but the detective just smiled and gave her a patronizing pat on the arm. Sky suspected Kyle was already picturing himself behind the wheel of the Lamborghini.
“It’s late,” Manville said. “Time for me to be going.”
Sky watched the men bid each other goodbye like they’d just finished a friendly game of basketball.
Manville shook Jake’s hand a second time. “I’ll be at the station tomorrow, Detective.” The pale eyes narrowed. “That poor research fellow. So young. Her whole life ahead of her. I just hope I can give you something useful. I didn’t know her well.” He disappeared through the blue curtain.
“You heard him.” Kyle inclined his bony head toward Sky. “Porter Manville is ready to give us that interview. Isn’t that what we wanted?”
“Yes, but …” Sky heard the confusion in her voice. Of course she wanted to interview Manville. But things had gone horribly haywire. The Porter Manville she’d just seen was not the same man she’d left sitting at the chess table, back at the Four Seasons. Manville had managed to turn himself into some kind of hero in record time.
“He’s not what he seems,” she insisted.
“Very true.” Jake wore an exasperated look. “He saved your life.”
“Humanitarian of the Year,” Kyle chimed in.
Sky was too confused and tired to argue. Manville’s description of events seemed to fit with her own memories, the car engine Sky had heard at her office, and again at the park. If somebody had tried to kill her, it probably wasn’t Manville. But that wasn’t the point.
Sky traced a scar on the wooden chess box with her finger and avoided Jake’s eyes. “Kyle, I need to check on Tiffany. Can you run me to my office?”
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