“He was recommended by an impeccable source, my financial advisor Elliott Wallace.”
“Thank you, Mr. Olsen. Have a good day.”
“You ruined most of it for me. I’ll be tired all day.” Derek Olsen slammed down the receiver. But not all of it, he thought as he envisioned the wrecking ball striking a bull’s-eye on his piggy bank.
At the other end of the phone, Barrott, unable to conceal his exultation, said, “Elliott Wallace recommended him for the job.”
“It ties in with Lucas Reeves’s theory,” Ahearn agreed. “But we have to go easy. Wallace is a big shot on Wall Street.”
“Yes, but he wouldn’t be the first executor who dipped into his client’s funds, if that’s the way it plays,” Barrott said. “Any result on the fingerprints?”
“Not yet. We can’t be sure the ones we lifted from the outer door of Howard’s apartment are absolutely his, but we’re running them anyway. I’d swear that guy has a prior record,” Gaylor said.
Barrott checked his watch. “The security guard at Wallace’s building said he normally gets in at eight thirty. We’ll be waiting for him.”
72
Once again, Carolyn was not answering her cell phone. Nick phoned her at eight o’clock on Thursday morning with the idea of taking her out for breakfast. He wanted to see her. I need to see her, he thought. On the late news, he had watched the clip of her on television, passionately defending Mack.
He wanted to know how she had made out on the visit to her mother. He knew how hurt she had been by her mother’s refusal to see her.
At least her cell phone was on. It was ringing. It had been turned off Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday. A gnawing sense that something was wrong made Nick decide to stop at Sutton Place, and make sure that she was home.
The morning concierge had just come on duty. “I don’t think she’s back yet,” he said, when Nick asked for Carolyn. “I understand she had an emergency message at about three A.M. and went rushing out. Whoever handed the note to her doorman said it was a matter of life or death. I hope everything is all right.”
Everything isn’t all right, Nick thought frantically. He began to dial the now familiar number of Detective Barrott.
73
Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Wallace,” Barrott said politely.
“That’s all right. Is there any news of Mack?” Elliott asked.
“No, I’m afraid there isn’t but we do have a few matters you can help us clear up.”
“Of course.” He gestured for the detectives to take a seat.
“You know Howard Altman?”
“Yes, I do. He is the employee of my client Derek Olsen.”
“Didn’t you actually recommend Altman to Mr. Olsen ten years ago?”
“I believe I did.”
“How did you happen to know Mr. Altman?”
“I’m not really sure. As I recall, a former client had sold some real estate and was looking to place him.” Elliott’s expression was blank.
“Who was that client?”
“I’m not even sure I can remember. I dealt with him only briefly. But it was one of those coincidences. Olsen had been in and mentioned he was having a terrible time getting good help, and I passed Altman’s name along to him.”
“I see. We’d certainly appreciate having that client’s name, and I’m sure you’d want to find him. Altman may be a suspect in the abduction of Leesey Andrews, which of course would clear the name of Mack MacKenzie.”
“Anything that would clear Mack’s name would be priceless to me,” Elliott told Barrott, his voice shaking with emotion.
Barrott studied him, taking in the beautifully tailored suit, the crisp white shirt, the handsome blue and red tie. He watched as Wallace took off his glasses, polished them, then put them back on. What is it about this guy that I’m seeing, he asked himself. It’s the eyes and the forehead. They looked familiar. Then he wondered: Is it possible? My God, he resembles Altman. He signaled to Gaylor to take over the questioning.
“Mr. Wallace, isn’t it a fact that you are the executor of Mack MacKenzie’s estate?”
“I am the executor of all the MacKenzie family trusts.”
“The sole executor?”
“Yes.”
“What are the terms of Mack’s trust?”
“It was set up by his grandfather. He was not to receive income from it until he reached the age of forty.”
“In the meantime, of course, it continues to grow.”
“Certainly. It has been carefully invested.”
“What would happen if Mack died?”
“The trust would go to his children, and if he had none, to his sister, Carolyn.”
“Could Mack have asked for an advance from his trust for what you as executor deemed to be a responsible reason?”
“It would have to be extremely responsible. His grandfather wanted no playboy heirs.”
“How about the fact that he was about to get married; that his future wife was pregnant with his child; that he no longer wanted his parents to pay his way; that he would put himself through college and would want to pay for his wife to go to medical school? Would all that be good and sufficient reason to dip into the trust?”
“It might be, but that situation did not occur.” Elliott Wallace stood up. “As you can understand, I have a busy calendar and—”
Barrott’s cell phone rang. It was Nick DeMarco. Barrott listened, determined to keep an inscrutable look on his face. Carolyn MacKenzie was missing. The new victim, he thought.
Wallace, holding an arm out, was attempting to usher them out of his office. Lucas Reeves is right, Barrott thought. It all fits into place. He decided to trick Wallace with false information.
“Not so fast, Mr. Wallace,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere. We have Howard Altman in custody. He’s bragging about the abductions. He’s bragging about working for you.” He paused for a moment. “You didn’t tell us you were related to him.”
Finally, Wallace’s unruffled exterior showed signs of strain. “Oh, poor Howie,” he sighed. With one hand he leaned on his desk, and with the other he reached into the top drawer. “He’s totally delusional, of course.”
“No, he isn’t,” Barrott snapped.
Elliott Wallace sighed again. “My psychopathic nephew promised to die in a breathtaking fashion and take Carolyn and Leesey with him. He couldn’t even handle that well.”
In a single, quick motion, Elliott Wallace removed a small pistol from his desk drawer and held it to his forehead. “As Cousin Franklin would have put it, ‘My fellow Americans, farewell,’ ” he said, and pulled the trigger.
74
Larry Ahearn was in the squad room when the call came in from Barrott. “Larry, we were right about Wallace. He just blew his brains out. Before he did, he told us that Altman is his nephew. He said that Altman has Carolyn and Leesey and he’s going to kill them and then kill himself. But he didn’t tell us where they are.”
With icy calm, Ahearn absorbed the stunning information. “As of the last few hours, neither trace we have on those phones is giving us anything,” he said. “Either the phones are turned off or they’re in an area where we can’t get reception. What about Altman? He must have a cell phone. I’ll call his boss, Olsen, on another line. Hang on.”
75
Derek Olsen, camp chair in hand, was about to go out and walk down the block to see the wrecking ball destroy his old town house. Irritated at the second phone call from the detectives, he was even more irritated at the reason for it. “Sure Howie has a cell phone. Who doesn’t? Sure I know his number. It’s 917-555-6262. But I’m telling you something. That’s the one I pay for. I get the bill. I watch it like a hawk. Business only. I guess he has another. How should I know? I’m on my way out for some excitement. Good-bye.”
* * *
As Barrott waited on the line for Ahearn to check with Olsen, Detective Gaylor moved swiftly to secure the premises. With one hand he locked the door
of Wallace’s office and with the other dialed 911 on his cell phone.
Then he heard Barrott explode as he reacted to what Ahearn was telling him. “The business cell phone that Olsen gave you for Altman is turned off! But wait a minute. Wallace would never have been stupid enough to call Altman on that line anyway. There must have been another number that he used to reach him. Hold on, Larry.”
In two strides Barrott was across the room and kneeling beside Wallace’s body, rummaging through his pockets. “Here it is!” He yanked out a small state-of-the-art cell phone, opened it, and scrolled through the directory. This has got to be it, he thought, as he spotted the initials “H.A.” He pushed 5 and then the send button and, breathing a prayer, held the phone to his ear.
It rang twice and then was answered. “Uncle Elliott,” an edgy, high-pitched voice said, “we did our good-byes last night. I don’t want to talk anymore. There’s only a few minutes left.”
The connection broke. Within seconds, Barrott was back on his own phone, giving Howard Altman’s number to Ahearn, who was frantically waiting to pass it on to the phone technicians who would trace it.
76
He came down to the basement three times during that long night. As I lay next to Leesey on that clammy dirt floor, pain vibrating from my leg, my face crusted with dried blood, my fingers entwined in Leesey’s, he alternately cried and laughed and moaned and giggled. I dreaded the sound of steps on the stairs, not knowing if this would be the time he would decide to kill us.
“Remember the Zodiac Killer?” he sobbed the first time he came down. “He didn’t want to keep going. Neither do I. He wrote a letter to a newspaper that he knew could be traced to him. I wrote one, too, but I tore it up. I am tortured, but I don’t want to go to prison. The first girl was when I was sixteen. I had put that behind me. Then it happened again. I was the caretaker on an estate, and the housekeeper’s daughter was so pretty. When they found her body, they suspected me. My mother sent me to New York to be with her dear older brother, my uncle, Elliott Wallace . . .”
Elliott Wallace! Uncle Elliott! But that’s impossible, I thought, that can’t be.
I felt his breath on my cheek. “You don’t believe me, do you? You should. My mother told him he had to help me or she’d expose him for the fraud that he was. But even before I met him, it happened again, right after I got to New York, the first girl in the nightclub. I weighed her body down and threw it in the river. Then I met Uncle Elliott, and I told him about it and said I was sorry, and he had to get me a job or I’d go to the police and turn myself in and tell the newspapers he was a phony.”
Altman’s voice became sarcastic. “Of course, he said he’d find me a job.” His lips touched my forehead. “You believe me now, don’t you, Carolyn?”
Leesey’s breath had become a soft, terrified whimper. I squeezed her hand. “I believe you,” I said. “I know you’re telling the truth.”
“Do you know that I’m sorry?”
“Yes. Yes. I know that.”
“That’s good.”
It was so dark I couldn’t see him but sensed that he had moved away from us. Then I heard him going up the stairs again. How long would it be before he came back? I asked myself frantically. I had been so foolish. No one knew where I had gone. It might be hours before someone looked for me. Nick, I thought, Nick, be worried. Know that something’s wrong. Look for me. Look for us.
I think a couple of hours passed, and then I screamed. He had been so quiet that I had not heard him come back. His hand covered my mouth.
“It doesn’t do any good to scream, Carolyn,” he said. “Leesey screamed in the beginning. I’d come down here and tell her about her picture being in the newspapers. She didn’t want to record those messages for her father, but I told her that if she did, I might let her go. But I didn’t mean it. Now don’t scream again. If you do, I will kill you.”
He was gone again. My head was pounding. The pain in my leg was unbearable. Would Lucas Reeves or Detective Barrott try to reach me? Would they and Nick realize that something was wrong?
The last time he returned, I had the sense that it was morning. I could see his shadow on the stairs. “I was never going to commit another crime, Carolyn,” he said. “I really did like managing those buildings, and I loved the friends I made on the Internet. I still thought I could stop. I really tried. Then Uncle Elliott said that now I owed him a favor. He needed me to get rid of your brother. Mack went to Elliott. He wanted to tap into his trust fund. His girlfriend was pregnant, and Mack wanted to get married and pay for his own education and hers, too. But Uncle Elliott had cleaned out most of the income from both of your trust funds. He’d invested tons of money in something that fell apart. He tried to put Mack off, but he knew that Mack was suspicious. I had to kill him.”
I had to kill him. I had to kill him. Mack is dead, I thought bitterly. They murdered him.
“Elliott had to keep everyone thinking Mack was alive so that the trust funds wouldn’t be examined. I made Mack say the words that you heard on the first Mother’s Day phone call before I shot him. Then a year later Elliott made me kill the teacher and steal the tapes she had of Mack so he could make new Mother’s Day calls. Elliott is a technical genius. For years he mixed what Mack had said on those tapes for the calls. Your brother’s buried right here with the other girls. Look, Carolyn.”
He directed the thin beam of a flashlight across the basement floor. I raised my head.
“See where the crosses are? Your brother and the other girls are buried there next to each other.”
Mack had been dead all these years that we had been hoping and praying for him to come back to us. The reality that Mack was buried here in this miserable, filthy basement filled me with an overwhelming grief. Somehow I had always believed I would find him. Mack. Mack. Mack.
Altman was laughing, a high-pitched giggly sound. “Sure, Elliott was born in England. His mother is from Kansas. She was a maid with an American family that was transferred to England. She got pregnant in London and was sent home after the baby was born. She helped him make up all those stories about being a relative of President Roosevelt. They made them up together. She helped him get that swanky English accent. He’s good with voices. The last three years he’s even been doing Mack’s voice himself. He knows you already had compared Mack’s real voice with home movies. Had you fooled, didn’t he?”
Altman’s voice was becoming more and more shrill. “We only have fifteen minutes before it’s all over. They’re going to demolish this building. But I want to tell you. I dropped that note in the collection basket. Uncle Elliott was worried that you were going to start looking for Mack. Elliott had me leave it there. Lil Kramer saw me in church. I saw her look at me a couple of times. But then she thought I was Mack because you told her he’d been at that Mass. Good-bye, Carolyn. Good-bye, Leesey.”
For the last time, I heard his steps retreating. Fifteen minutes. This building was going to be demolished in fifteen minutes. I am going to die, I thought, and Mom is going to marry Elliott . . .
Leesey was trembling. I was sure she understood what he had said. I kept holding her hand and moistening her lips, talking to her, begging her to hang on, that everyone was looking for us. But now I did not believe what I was saying. I believed that Leesey and I would be the final victims of this madman and Elliott Wallace. In that moment I thought that at least I would soon be with Mack and Daddy.
77
We’ve got him. He’s on 104th and Riverside Drive,” Larry Ahearn yelled.
An alarm went out to all the squad cars in the vicinity. Sirens wailing, they rushed to the scene.
The wrecking ball was in place. A delighted Derek Olsen saw that his business rival Doug Twining was inside the cockpit of the crane.
“One.” Derek jumped up and began to count.
“Two.” Then his triumphant cheer died on his lips. Someone was pushing open the boarded window on the second floor of the old town house. Someone was swinging
his legs over the sill and waving. Altman. It was Howie Altman.
The wrecking ball was swinging toward the house. At the last instant, Twining spotted Altman and swung the controls so that the ball missed the house by inches.
Squad cars, tires screeching, were rounding the corner.
“Come back! Come back!” A screaming Howie Altman was running along the roof of the porch, waving his arms at the crane. As he began to jump up and down, the rotted wood caved in and the house began to crumble, floor by floor toppling into each other. Seeing what was happening, Altman dove back through the window in time to have tons of debris crash down on him.
Police poured out of the squad cars. “The basement,” one of them yelled, “the basement. If they’re there, it’s their only chance.”
78
The ceiling was falling around us. I pulled myself up and tried to throw my body over Leesey, who was now barely breathing. I felt a chunk of plaster hit my shoulder and then my head and arm. Too late, too late, I thought. Like Mack and those other girls, Leesey and I were doomed to end our lives here.
Then I heard the sound of the outside basement door being pulled open, and shouting voices approaching me from above. That was when I let myself drift off and escape from the pain. I guess they sedated me pretty heavily, because it was two days before I really woke up. Mother was sitting on a chair by the window of the hospital room, watching over me as she had done on 9/11. As we had that day, we cried together in each other’s arms, this time for Mack, the honorable young man, son and brother, who had died because he wanted to accept his responsibilities.
Epilogue
One year later
When the books were checked, we learned that Elliott had robbed us of a fortune. It was clear, as Altman had ranted, that Mack had realized something was wrong with his trust fund, and the realization had cost him his life.
Where Are You Now? Page 24
