“And what? He's been setting her up? How would he even know she was in L.A.?”
“I don't know everything yet. Maybe she looked him up when she got there; maybe they corresponded. If he wanted her story it would have been worth something. I think he did want it, just not for a movie.”
“You think it was a cover, maybe to kill his own wife? That's a big-ass coverup, Alex.”
“Sure is. It's an incredible story too. Page, are you getting this?”
“Got it. And I like it. Finally something makes some sense to me.”
“Good. Then do a direct cross-reference - Michael Bell and anyone else connected to this case. I wonder if he had a bigger agenda than just his wife. Find out anything you can, surfer boy All we need for now is enough to justify holding him once LAPD gets him into custody. ”Jeanne, listen, please. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I say figure it out later and get a cruiser over to Michael Bell's house. Now And,Jeanne."
“What?”
“Don't go over there by yourself. I'm pretty sure that Bell is our killer.”
Mary, Mary
Chapter 116
SUDDENLY THE WHOLE CASE was on fire again.
About ten miles from the hospital, I pulled over at the first gas station I saw an ancient Texaco with a flying A over the roof. A Ford F-150 pulled in after me, but the only other building in sight was a darkened sugarhouse in a field directly across the road. I could see a couple of Holsteins grazing in the field.
I called Karl Page again from another pay phone. I needed to hear what he'd found out about Michael Bell.
At this late hour, catching a flight out of Burlington seemed unlikely; I wanted to stay updated all the same, and was concerned for Page and Jeanne Galletta. 'Who knew what Bell was up to in L.A.
“What have you got so far?” I asked him.
“Amazing what you find when you look in the right place,” he said. “Before she died, Marti Lowenstein-Bell had just sold her own show to HBO. She was hotter than a fifty- dollar pistol. On the other hand, Michael Bell's last three solo projects went nowhere. His only big successes had been with her, and it looked like she was checking out. She was divorcing him, Alex. They hadn't yet filed, but a friend of hers knew it was coming.”
“What did you say to me once? Cha-ching?”
“Yeah, and the hits keep coming. LAPD checked Bell's alibis all right, but they all revolved around his being seen at work, or occasionally at home. Alex, the alibis aren't going to hold up. And listen to this, Arnold Griner seriously trashed more than one of Bell's movies when he wrote for Variety. Griner actually called him 'Michael Bomb' in one column, that kind of thing. Of course, in Griner's case it might be justifiable homicide. Antonia Schifman? She backed out of a project that Bell was financing himself last year. Apparently after she gave him a verbal promise, which seems to mean next to nothing out here. The whole thing fell apart, and he lost a half million in development.”
I could hear the adrenaline in Page's voice. He was like a greyhound at the gate. “I'll bet anything there's more,“ he said. ”Belts career was headed down the crapper, and he was going to bring everyone down with him.”
“Keep digging,” I said. “Great work, too. Any more word from LAPD? Jeanne?”
“A cruiser went by the Bell house. No answer.”
“Did they go inside?”
“No. But they were pretty sure nobody was home. The house is under surveillance.”
“All right. I'll call when I stop again. Probably out near the airport. Unfortunately, I think I'm stuck here for the night.”
I didn't want to spend the night in Vermont, especially now, but it didn't look as though I had much of a choice. I thought about stopping into the small store at the gas station, buying something awful like chocolate cupcakes, or M&M's with peanuts, but I mustered all of my willpower against it. God, I am impressive occasionally I turned toward the rented car and started to walk with my head down against the wind. It was getting nippy up here. A few feet away from the car, I looked up and stopped dead in my tracks.
I had company James Iruscott was sitting in the car's passenger seat.
not at first anyway What Obviously, he'd followed
Mary, Mary
Chapter 117
THIS MADE NO SENSE TO ME, the hell was Truscott doing here? me again. But why?
I was seeing red as I yanked open the car door on his side. My mouth was open to start to yell, but nothing came out, not a word.
Truscott wasn't here to cause me any trouble - at least not now The writer was dead, propped up in the front seat like a statue.
“Just get in the car,” said a voice from behind me.
“Don't cause a scene out here. Because then I'll have to go in and shoot the nice old biddy who runs the country store, too. I really wouldn't mind, y'know.”
I turned and saw Michael Bell.
Bell appeared haggard and disturbed, and he'd lost a lot of weight since I'd last seen him at his house. He looked like hell, actually His light-blue eyes were badly bloodshot; with his ragged, bushy beard, he looked like a local woodsman.
“How long have you been following me?” I asked, trying to engage him if I could, feel him out, gain some kind of leverage.
“Just get in the car and drive, will you? Don't talk to me. I see through you.”
We both got in, Bell in the back, and he pointed out to the road, the direction heading away from the interstate. I started the car and drove where he wanted me to, my mind racing backward and forward. My gun was in the trunk. How could I get to the trunk? Or how could I get inside his head in a hurry?
“What's the plan, Michael?”
“The plan was for you to go back to Washington, and for everyone to go on with their pitiful lives. But that didn't work out so well, did it? You should thank me for taking out the reporter, no? He begged and sobbed for his life, by the way Great performance. I believed him. What a wimp he turned out to be.”
I was surprised he knew I was from D.C., and also about Truscott. But then, he was a watcher, a plotter. There was probably a lot that Bell knew.
“So what now?” I asked.
“What do you think? You're supposed to be the expert, right? So, what happens now?”
“It doesn't have to go like this.” I was just talking; saying anything that came into my mind.
“You gotta be kidding. What other way do you think it can go? Let me hear all of the choices. I can't wait.”
Meantime, he had burrowed the barrel of his my neck. I leaned away, but only so far. I thought if I knew exactly where his gun was. I wondered if ecuting a plan now, or if he was improvising at Mary Smith had been known to do both.
And this was Mary Smith, wasn't it? I'd finally met the real killer.
We drove for a few miles on an unlit secondary highway “This looks good here,” he said suddenly “Go that way Make a left. Do it.”
I turned off the pavement onto a bumpy dirt road. It sloped upward, winding away into the woods. Eventually, the fir trees closed around the car like a tunnel. I was running out of time, and it didn't look as if there was any way for me to escape. Mary Smith had me, just the way she'd gotten all the others and killed them without fail.
“Where are we going, Bell?”
“Somewhere they won't find you right away Or your pen pal, either.”
“You know, they're already looking for you in L.A. I made a call.”
“Yeah, well, good luck to them. I'm not exactly in L.A., am I?”
“What about your girls, Michael? What about them?”
He pushed the gun barrel harder into my neck. “Not my fucking girls. Marti was a cheap little whore before I married her. Before I made her into something. I was a good father to those ungrateful kids, all for Marti. She was a runaround when I met her, and she stayed a runaround. Okay pull over. This is good.”
pistol into it was best he was exthis point. This was definitely not good. The car headlights showed where the road dropped off to a wo
oded slope on the right. I had to be real careful not to go over the edge.
Then all at once, I thought the opposite. If I could force myself to do it - but I knew I had to. So I mashed the accelerator down and spun the steering wheel as sharply to the right as I could.
Bell screeched. “What the fuck are you doing? Stop the car. Stop!”
Three things happened, all at about the same time. Michael Bell's gun went off; I felt a universe of pain explode in my right shoulder; and the car started to plummet - almost straight downhill.
Mary, Mary
Chapter 118
SUDDENLY THE PAIN SEEMED TO BE EVERYWHERE in my body, and it was nothing if not extreme. I was only semiconscious of thick fir trees and underbrush giving way to the car as it rocked and rolled and caromed out of control, threatening to flip.
We probably fell for only four or five seconds. Still, the eventual impact was enough to jam my chest with incredible force against the steering wheel. The seat belt probably saved me from going through the windshield. I knew Bell hadn't been wearing his, and could only hope that he was badly hurt. If I was lucky, maybe he was unconscious, or dead, in the backseat.
I already had my hand on the door handle, and I rolled out of the car as best and fast as I could manage.
My whole body throbbed with a numbing ache that made it hard to move quickly My right arm hung useless at my side.
I saw James Truscott's body, facedown and spread-eagle in the dirt. Apparently he'd been thrown loose in the crash.
Then Michael Bell moaned in the backseat. He was alive inside. Too bad. With a great mustering of resources, I managed to get up on one knee. Suddenly my shoulder screamed with pain; I knew it had to be broken.
I took a halting step forward, expecting Hat ground - but there was an almost invisible bank of tangled brush.
I went down, landing in half a foot of water. I'd been totally unaware of the stream until now It was shallow here, but the water stretched out farther across than I could see in the dark.
The icy water sent an electric current of shock right through me.
I hadn't thought the pain could get worse, but I saw a wash of white before my sight partially returned.
Again, I started to push myself up, only to be knocked back down. This time, it was Bell.
He pushed down on my neck and head, and he was strong as hell. Then I felt his foot pressing down on my back. Water rushed up into my nose and mouth.
“Where the flick do you think -”he was yelling.
I didn't give him a chance to finish. I scissored my legs hard against his ankle, and it took most of the rest of my strength just to do that. It caught him off guard though, and he fell backward off of me. I heard two splashes, and hoped one was his gun.
Half in, half out of the water, leaning hard on my good left hand, I raised myself up enough to launch at him. I managed a ground tackle, and then a left hook before he could respond. He reached up and laid a heavy grip on my face, digging in with his fingers.
Michael Bell was about my height, but a super heavyweight; despite his weight loss in the past few weeks, he had at least thirty pounds on me.
I got a hand on his throat, dug in, and pushed as hard as I could. He gagged some, but didn't let go.
Leverage was the only thing I might be able to increase, but when I moved my foot, it hit a slick of algae.
The sudden shift of weight sent me lurching with an agonizing twist of my body, and I landed back in the freezing cold water.
God, it was cold - but I almost didn't care.
Michael Bell stood up faster than I did this time. Not a good sign. He had a second wind.
The dead weight of my aching right arm slowed me down.
I saw him in vague silhouette, picking up what looked like a flat rock about the size of an encyclopedia. He raised the rock high in both hands as he came toward me again.
“You stupid fuck!” he yelled. “I'll kill you! That's my plan, all right. That's how the story ends. This is how it ends!”
I scrabbled back and away from Bell as best I could, but I knew it wasn't enough. My hand landed on something hard in the shallow water. Not rock, at least I didn't think so.
Metal?
“You die!” Bell yelled at me. “How that for a plan? How's that for an ending?”
The metal object. I knew what it had to be. I yanked Bell's gun out of the water and fumbled with the trigger. “Bell, no!”
I screamed. He kept on coming with the enormous rock held over his head. “Die!”
So I fired.
I couldn't tell exactly what happened in the moonlit woods. I had no idea where he was hit, but he grunted noisily and stopped for a second.
Then he charged forward again. I fired a second time. And a third. Both upper-chest shots, at least I thought so.
The heavy rock he was holding fell back into the water. Suspended for a moment by some invisible force, Bell staggered away two or three drunken steps. Then he fell over face first into the water, making a loud splash.
Then nothing. Silence in the woods.
Trembling badly, uncontrollably, I kept the gun trained on Bell with my good hand. It took incredible effort just to get over the slick rocks to where he lay.
By the time I reached him, there was no movement. I took his arm, held it up. I checked, but he had no pulse. I checked it again - nothing, nothing but the silence of the woods, and the awful cold.
Michael Bell was dead, and so was Mary Smith. And very soon, in these freezing wet clothes, I would be, too.
Mary, Mary
Chapter 119
MY SLOW CLIMB UP and out of the gully from the crash site was hellish, nothing but excruciating pain, dizziness, and nausea. The only blessing was that I barely remembered any of it.
Somehow, I managed to get out to the main road - where an alarmed college student in a Subaru picked me up. I never even got his name. I guess I passed out in the backseat of his cat By the next morning, Michael Bell's body had been recovered from the stream, and I was resting in a bed at Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington. Resting is probably the wrong word, though. Local police came and went from my room continually I spent hours on the phone with my office in Washington, the L.A. Bureau office, and Jeanne Galletta, trying to piece together everything that had happened from the start of the murder spree.
Bell's plan had been a feat of convolution and madness, but his cover was ultimately simple - diversion. And he'd succeeded until the very end. As Jeanne pointed out to me, Michael Bell wrote and produced stories for a living. Plot was his thing. I wouldn't be surprised if this one ended up as a screenplay, written by someone else. The writer would probably change everything, though, until the movie carried the fishy title “based on a true story”
“Who's going to play you?” Jeanne kidded me over the phone.
“I don't know. I don't much care. Pee-wee Herman.”
As for Mary Constantine, I wasn't sure how to feel about her. The cop in me had one response, but the shrink had another. I was glad she'd be getting back into the kind of treatment and care she needed. If Dr. Shapiro was right, maybe Mary was ultimately headed toward some kind of recovery. That was how I wanted to think about it for right now Around four o'clock, the door to my room creaked open, and none other than Nana Mama poked her head inside.
“There's a sight for bed-sore eyes,” I said, and started to grin. “Hello, Nana. What brings you to Vermont?”
“Maple syrup,” she cracked.
She came in timidly, especially for her, and winced when she saw the truss around my shoulder.
“Oh, Alex, Alex.”
“Looks worse than it is. Well, maybe not,” I said. “Did you have any trouble getting a flight?”
“No trouble at all. You go to the airport. You pay money”
She reached out to put a cool hand on my cheek. It felt familiar and so comforting. What would I do without this ornery old woman? I couldn't help thinking. What will I do?
“Th
ey said you're going to be fine, Alex. I suppose that's a relative concept, though, isn't it?”
I'd been shot before. It's traumatic - there's no way around that - but not irreversible, at least not so fat “I'll be fine,” I told Nana. “Body and soul.”
“I told the children to wait outside. I want to say something to you, and then put it behind us.”
“Uh-oh. I'm in trouble again, aren't I? Back in the doghouse.”
She didn't return my smile, but she did take my hand in both of hers.
“I thank God for you every single day of my life, Alex, and I thank him for letting me raise you, and see you turn into the man you did. But I want you to think about why you came to me in the first place, what was going on between your poor parents before they died. Simply put, Jannie and Damon and Ali deserve better than you had.”
Nana stopped to make room for what was coming next. “Don't make them orphans, Alex.”
Mary, Mary
Chapter 120
I STARTED TO SPEAK my piece, but Nana Mama went on, gently raising her voice.
“I'm the first of us to go. Don't you dare argue with me.”
Finally, I just shrugged, which hurt my shoulder and neck.
“What can I say?”
“Nothing. You say nothing. You just listen to my wisdom, wisdom of the ages. You listen, and maybe one day you'll finally learn something.”
We shared a long look into each other's eyes. A lump rose in my throat, although what I felt wasn't sadness. It was more like gratitude, and the most incredible love for this small, amazingly powerful woman - who was, indeed, wise beyond her years, and certainly mine.
“Believe it or not, I always listen to you,” I said.
“Yes, and then you go and do whatever you were going to do in the first place.”
Sounds from the hospital corridor came into the room as the door opened halfway I looked over to see Damon's eager face, and my heart did a little hop.
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