“You called him your ex-husband just now,” he said.
“Did I? I suppose that’s how I think of him. We’re not divorced.”
“When did you last see him, Mrs. Amiel?”
“I’ve told you, the day before I moved up here, back in April.”
“Never since?”
She considered him for a moment. “My husband had no idea where I was. No one did. I broke all contact with…with that life when I moved up here.”
“We have information that your husband was in Sohegan the day Priscilla was murdered.”
“Impossible.”
She looked as if she needed to believe that.
“Why did you leave Manhattan so suddenly?”
She hesitated just a second. “Barry was cruel to my son,” she said softly. “Physically cruel. I had to get Jimmy away from him as quickly as possible.”
She gazed directly at his face, her blue eyes asking nothing of him, expecting nothing.
“Well, your son is safe now,” he said, and immediately regretted how callous that must have sounded. Regretted the dishonesty, too; the boy was far from safe.
“Any new information on who broke into my house?”
She sounded anxious. He shook his head. The truth was, he hadn’t spent much time on that angle. Once the murderer was found, the pranks would stop.
“Don Reeves, the FBI man, will be wanting to talk with you, probably tomorrow.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, her eyes fixed on her son. He nodded anyway and headed back to his car.
Gwen managed to remain calm all morning. She called Andrew’s mother to arrange a play date, drove Jimmy to his house, withstood Martha Hillman’s frosty reception. She fully expected to fall apart once she was safely alone; indeed she was almost looking forward to doing so. But as she drove away from the Hillman house she found herself more bewildered than upset. She pulled over to the side of a residential street and turned off the car.
The father of her son, her husband, for God’s sake, was dead, murdered. Shouldn’t that…distress her?
But it didn’t. Somehow, she could only dwell on practical matters, not the loss itself. When should she tell Jimmy the news, and how? What did Barry’s death mean in terms of her financial situation—did it wipe out their joint debts? Maybe now, with Barry safely gone, they could move back to the city. But did she want to? And then there was the question that loomed above all others.
What had Barry been doing in Sohegan?
She shut her eyes and tried to picture Barry, tried to summon some emotion. She focused on the man she’d married, not the man he’d become: the ready smile, the lively blue eyes, the extravagant compliments that never felt like flattery. But all she could muster was a flashing image of him pouring his cheap Polish vodka down—
She opened her eyes, blinked at the early afternoon sunshine, and started the car. She wouldn’t waste an ounce of grief on Barry Amiel. He wasn’t worth it.
She found Nick in the living room at Penaquoit, playing the Pathetique Sonata, and for the first time ever she interrupted his playing. He turned at the sound of his name, anger distorting his face.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I needed to speak to you.”
He turned to the piano, waited a few seconds, then looked back at her, handsome again.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, “and on a Sunday, no less.”
“They think I’m involved in your…in Priscilla’s murder.” The words tumbled from her lips. Nick just shook his head with an amused smile.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “They have someone, someone who saw Barry up here in Sohegan.”
“Of course it’s not funny. Tell me everything.” He slid over on the piano bench, motioning for her to join him.
“Tess…”
“Is napping,” he said. “The Piacevics are at church.”
She sat next to him on the bench and told him everything she knew.
“I’ve been to that warehouse,” she said. “Back when I had the store I picked up furniture there from Europe. Why would someone kill him there, of all places? Why kill him at all?”
“He was garbage. I’m sure he had a lot of enemies.”
“The FBI want to question me again,” she said, glancing around the room, unable to focus on any one thing. “They found Tess at my house, don’t forget. They think my husband was up here the day of the murder, and now they find him with a bullet through his head in a warehouse I used to visit. What’s next? Five million dollars under my bed, or hidden away in—”
“Gwen, stop it.” He covered her mouth with his hand. “Listen to me. You didn’t do anything wrong, so you have nothing to fear. Do you understand that?”
She waited a beat, then nodded. He removed his hand.
“Don’t you ever…” She shook her head and turned away.
“Don’t I ever what?” he asked.
“Wonder. About me?”
He cupped her chin with his fingertips and gently turned her head to face him. Slowly, very slowly he leaned toward her and kissed her, his tongue circling the inside of her lips. When he pulled away she whispered, “Thank you” and gently caressed his cheek.
“I’m scared, Nick.”
“But you’re free,” he said. “Barry is gone.”
“But what if—” He covered her mouth again with his hand.
“Nothing bad will happen,” he said softly, staring directly at her eyes. “Understood?”
This time she couldn’t quite nod her agreement. He sighed, his hand still covering her mouth.
“I’ll be there with you, every step of the way,” he said. “You have my word.” He met her gaze without flinching. “I won’t let you down, Gwen,” he said, and she nodded, finally, and put her arms around him.
Chapter 33
“Hawkins, Don Reeves. I’ve got an errand for you.”
Dwight Hawkins took his feet off his desk and sat up. It was eight-thirty, Monday morning. He knew what was coming.
“Go ahead.”
“The handwriting on that note we found in Barry Amiel’s room? We had an expert evaluate it. Perfect match with Gwen Amiel.”
A small knot clenched in his stomach. “What did you say was written on that note—directions to Penaquoit?”
“Correct. The Browning is registered to Gwen Amiel. Tracings line up with the bullet that killed Priscilla Lawrence. And we just got the phone records from the flophouse in Brooklyn. Seven calls to the Lawrence place, all made during the hours when Gwen Amiel was on duty there. Five of them longer than ten minutes.”
“Sounds like they worked it out together, she and her husband. You still want to question her?”
“I want you to arrest her. Felony murder. I’m on my way up there, but I don’t want to risk her running. You get her in custody, I’ll be there by ten, ten-thirty at the latest.”
What about the boy? he wanted to ask. But he kept quiet; local cops were held in low enough regard by the FBI. He’d call Frank and Clare Pearson, arrange for them to take Jimmy.
“You hold her until I get there; then we’ll transfer her to Whitesville. Don’t forget to Miranda her.”
Miranda Who? he almost said, just to aggravate the arrogant bastard. But he did in fact take out the plastic-covered crib sheet from his top drawer. Miranda didn’t get a lot of play in Sohegan.
He hung up and phoned Frank Pearson, then shouted for Pat Sykes, who was in the outer room having breakfast at his desk.
“We got a job,” he said as he stood up and crossed the room. “Come with me. And lose the uniform. You can borrow my extra sports jacket if you need one. It’s hanging behind my door.”
The Amiel boy didn’t need to see a cop in uniform coming to get his mother. Things were going to be shitty enough for him.
“What’s going on?” Sykes wanted to know.
“I’ll tell you on the way, just hurry up.” Reeves’s arrogance was catching.
It had been twenty-four ho
urs and still Gwen couldn’t get used to the idea that Barry was gone for good. Perhaps she was unwilling to admit how unburdened she felt, the complete absence of grief. Maybe that’s why Barry’s death hit her like fresh news every ten minutes or so.
Or perhaps it was the fact that she hadn’t told Jimmy yet, the one person in her current life who had known Barry. Maybe his reaction, whatever it might be, would make Barry’s death a reality for her.
She sipped coffee in the kitchen and decided she’d tell Jimmy that morning. He deserved to know, might even feel safer. Death fascinated him, anyway, and he was a firm believer in heaven. “God drops down a rope and pulls you up to him when you die,” he’d told her just before they’d left Manhattan, a theory he’d picked up last year from a friend’s Trinidadian baby-sitter. Well, there’d be no rope dropped for Barry Amiel.
She had just resolved to go upstairs and have a talk when she heard him charging down the front stairs, shouting. The panic in his voice set her heart racing. A moment later the doorbell rang. When she saw Dwight Hawkins’s face on the front stoop she felt more annoyed than alarmed. More questions, more goddamn questions. But when she noticed a second cop standing next to him, and when she saw both Pearsons out front, grim-faced, she knew it meant more than questions.
“Open the door, Jimmy,” she said.
He obeyed. Hawkins took off his cap. The misery on his face told the whole story. She took Jimmy to the kitchen and shut the door.
“Gwen Amiel?” Hawkins said when she returned.
“You know who I am,” she said quietly.
Hawkins coughed to clear his throat. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Priscilla Lawrence.”
Part III
Chapter 34
The room was a windowless rectangle with a large, battered wood table in the center under three long fluorescent bulbs, one of which was flickering. The interrogation room, Gwen decided, swallowing hard to hold down a rush of fear.
Dwight Hawkins had driven her the fifteen miles to Whitesville, the county seat, and led her through the 1950s vintage police headquarters. She noticed little as she walked, Hawkins’s hand tight on her elbow. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jimmy being restrained by the Pearsons as she was led to the police car. Until then she’d thought learning about what Barry had done to him was the hardest thing she’d ever have to bear.
Don Reeves of the FBI was already in the room when they arrived.
“You’ve heard your rights?” he asked after she was seated. He was as monochromatic as the room, with his dark suit, dark tie, and white shirt. His complexion was pale, almost translucent. She’d have to work hard to keep that detached, pitiless face from getting to her.
“I called for a lawyer,” Dwight Hawkins said. “Public defender, a local guy, he’ll be here any minute.”
“You want to wait for him?” Reeves said in a vaguely challenging tone.
She did, but she also knew the arrest was a blunder, a joke, really, and that the sooner she talked, the sooner she’d be back with Jimmy.
“I didn’t do anything.”
Reeves pressed a button on a small tape recorder in front of him.
“When was the last time you saw your husband, Mrs. Amiel?” he asked.
“April twelfth, a Tuesday.”
“Are you positive?”
“Yes.”
“You never saw him in Sohegan?”
“And I haven’t been back in the city, either, since I moved up here.”
Reeves stared at her, his right index finger lightly stroking the red record button.
“When did you last talk to him?”
“April 12th. And yes, I’m positive.”
“And yet we have phone records, Mrs. Amiel, from your husband’s residence in Brooklyn. To Penaquoit.”
“What?”
“Calls made just days before the kidnapping and murder.”
She turned to Hawkins, thinking he must be in on the joke. He looked grim.
“When we searched your husband’s things we found directions, in your handwriting,” Reeves said. “Directions to Penaquoit.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Priscilla Lawrence was killed with your gun. That’s a fact.” He spit the word at her, his lips curling to a lopsided sneer.
“I left the gun in Manhattan.” With Barry…How the hell had it turned up at the Devil’s Ravine?
“You were at the scene of the murder,” Reeves said. He had the flat voice of someone reading from a teleprompter. “The child was found at your house.”
She wiped her wet palms on her blue jeans. “If I had kidnapped Tess, why would I bring her back to my own house?”
“I don’t know,” Reeves said. “Why don’t you tell us?”
“I want my attorney.”
“Why don’t I outline it for you, then, Mrs. Amiel? You and your late husband planned this together. You were the advance man, so to speak, inside Penaquoit. You arranged the entire thing, including giving your husband directions to the estate. Barry did the actual legwork—grabbing the child, retrieving the money. If Nick Lawrence hadn’t spotted you at the scene, you—”
“Spotted me? I heard Tess crying and tried to help her. I wasn’t hiding at that point.”
“That’s not the way Nick Lawrence and Russell Cunningham recall it. According to them, you were hiding about fifty yards from the exchange spot. Only when Mr. Lawrence spotted you did you emerge from your hiding place.”
Something turned over in her stomach. “Nick—Mr. Lawrence is mistaken,” she said slowly. “That’s not how it happened.”
“How did it happen?”
“I went there because I was worried about Tess. I heard her cry and I wanted to help her.”
“But Tess was never at the Devil’s Ravine. And neither of the two men recall hearing her cry.”
But Nick had told her he’d heard Tess.
“She was there, I heard her cry. So did Nick.”
“He claims otherwise,” Reeves said. “In any case, how did you know they’d be at the Ravine?”
“I heard Russell Cunningham and Priscilla and Nick talking about it on the monitor.”
“The baby monitor.”
“Yes.”
“And yet they weren’t in the nursery, where the transmitting end of the monitor is customarily kept. They were in the master bedroom.”
“Then someone must have brought the monitor into the master bedroom.”
“Why would someone do that?” Reeves said.
“I want my attorney.”
“You never heard them talking over the monitor, did you, Mrs. Amiel? You didn’t need to, because you’d planned the entire operation.”
“No, I heard them on the monitor, I was in the—”
Three loud raps on the door interrupted her. It opened to reveal a short, heavyset man carrying a huge black briefcase.
“Kevin Gargano,” he said as he hoisted the briefcase onto the table. “You must be Gwen Amiel. I’m your new attorney, if you’ll have me.”
He extended a thick hand that, when she shook it, engulfed her own in soft, damp flesh. He looked about fifty, with only a few strands of black hair on top of his head, a jowly face, and very small dark eyes. His suit needed pressing, his tie was probably beyond cleaning, and the handkerchief he used to mop his glistening brow was the color of old newsprint. But his voice was unexpectedly reassuring, even relaxed, as if nothing ever fazed him. He introduced himself to Don Reeves, clapped Dwight Hawkins on the shoulder, and dropped into the chair next to her with a contented “aaah.”
“Is that a tape recorder?” he said.
“We notified Miss Amiel of her rights,” Hawkins said quickly.
“Of course you did. And now I’d like you to turn that thing off and give me some time with my client. Alone. Any objections?” He smiled, but his slivery eyes invited no argument. After a moment’s hesitation, Reeves turned off the recorder, picked it up, and headed for the door.
“We�
��ll be in the hall,” he said through his teeth. Hawkins followed him out.
“Now, tell me everything,” Gargano said, turning his chair to face her. “I love a good story.”
When she finished she felt almost giddy, as if she’d told a fabulous untruth and, inexplicably, been believed. But her attorney looked anything but amused.
“Not exactly a rock-solid case, but it’s enough,” Gargano said.
“Enough for what?”
“To arraign you. Set bail.” Kevin Gargano’s matter-of-fact attitude, which had seemed so reassuring less than twenty minutes ago, was beginning to unnerve her.
“Bail?” She couldn’t spend the night away from Jimmy, not a single night. “Look, someone has been threatening me. They broke into my house, for Christ’s sake, they…” She took a deep breath and told him what had happened at the ravine. “Someone’s out there doing these things!”
“Sounds like that person thinks you’re guilty, and he’s pretty pissed off about it.”
She simmered quietly for a few moments. “Anyway, I don’t have money for bail.”
“The Feds will argue that you have five million dollars. Enough to fly the coop.” He placed his hands on both arms of his chair and pressed slowly to a standing position, grunting. “I’m going to try to get the bail hearing scheduled for this afternoon, here in Whitesville. Kidnapping’s a federal offense; they might want to move you downstate. I’ll argue for a local hearing, and soon—I’ll mention your son and all. Don’t talk to anyone until I get back.”
When he shut the door behind him she was alone for the first time in hours. She glanced around—at the pitted acoustical tile on the ceiling, at the puke-colored carpet on the floor—shaking her head each time the word jail jumped to mind, trying to convince herself that when the door opened Reeves or Hawkins would walk in and, avoiding her eyes in their humiliation, their shame, inform her that the arrest had been a mistake, a miscarriage, that they hoped she’d understand. Sign here and you’re free, Mrs. Amiel. Can we offer you a lift home?
But when the door opened after ten long minutes and Reeves and Hawkins entered, they both met her gaze unabashedly. Kevin Gargano followed them into the room.
Disillusions Page 24
