by William Baer
Outside in the parking lot and a few key spots in the surrounding area, other local cops were sitting in unmarked cars, wired into the restaurant, on surveillance detail.
No one, of course, was really expecting Rita to drive up to the front door and walk inside with a Glock in each hand. But we couldn’t just ignore Rita’s demand, so it was a matter of wait-and-see.
As for the real target, she and her father were nearby and safe, waiting at the Cape May Police Station on Washington Street. This afternoon, when I was leaving Beach Haven, I told Miss Rikki, with absolutely no qualification, to “Stay put. Right where you are.”
But two hours later, she called me with the bad news.
“I’m in Cape May, Jack. I rented a car and drove myself down.”
“Why don’t women ever do what I tell them to do?”
“Maybe you lack the necessary authority.”
I was angry, but what could I do about it?
She made an attempt to justify herself.
“She’s threatened my father, Jack.”
“Yeah, so she could shoot you in the head, dumbbell.”
It didn’t make a dent.
“I need to be with my father.”
I thought it over.
“All right, get your ass over to the police station, and I’ll tell your father to meet you there.”
“All right.”
But she was curious.
“You setting up things at Antonio’s?”
“I’m trying, but now I’ve got to worry about my bozo beach girl.”
“Is that what I am? Am I your ‘bozo beach girl,’ Colt?”
What can I say? I love it when pretty women tease me and bust my chops.
“You’re my pain in the ass.”
“How enchantingly romantic.”
“Just stay at the station until you hear from me later tonight. After nothing happens at Antonio’s.”
“Your wish is my command.”
I hung up.
It always felt good to hang up on Ms. Sarcastic.
I finished my dessert, a house-specialty tiramisu, keeping a close eye on the front door and deftly fending off, as politely as possible, Officer Ryerson’s over-eager questions about the “Little Girl Killer” case.
Which was another bloody mess I’d found myself sunk in the middle of about eight weeks ago, which seemed a lifetime ago, which I was trying to forget.
The ear bud got active.
“Male, maybe thirty, approaching from the parking lot.”
Fine. Probably just a late-night customer. Or maybe someone coming to pick up one of the staff.
I put down my spoon and watched as Tommy Garrison walked through the front door and looked around the dining room. He was dressed casually in white jeans and a navy sweater, but he seemed agitated, and I didn’t like it.
He saw me.
Then he saw the fake Rikki.
Then he walked across the room in our direction.
There was something hateful in his eyes, so I took hold of my Python, which had been lying, ready and waiting, on the empty chair at my right.
“Gun!”
It was Luca.
Who was now standing up with his weapon pulled.
Tommy paid no attention. He seemed, oddly enough, focused on me.
Not on the fake Rikki.
“You bastard!” he said.
I really didn’t want to shoot the guy, but I figured that I’d have to. As he started to lift his weapon, I was ready with mine.
“Don’t do it, Tommy,” I warned him, but he paid no attention.
A shot rang out.
Luca’s slug came through his right shoulder and stuck in the back wall of the restaurant. Tommy slowly slumped to the floor, staring down, incomprehensively, at the blood gushing out of his wound. Officer Ryerson kicked his weapon away.
He looked like a stunned little child.
I bent over and pressed his wound with one of Antonio’s bright-white linen napkins.
He was in too much shock to feel his pain.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, even though I had a good idea.
He didn’t answer.
Then Dawson came over and took charge.
As we waited for the ambulance, Dawson got him talking. It was pretty much what I expected.
Rita had called him and somehow convinced him that I was Billy Kelly, and that I was the one who’d killed Nikki. As absurd as it sounded, I wasn’t completely surprised. This poor dumb sap had spent the past ten years of his life wondering why his girlfriend had dumped him for some college kid she barely knew, dreaming all the time about killing the kid for killing the love of his life.
A sad story.
Like so many other stories.
But where did it leave me with Rita?
Luca was wondering the same thing.
“What’s the bitch up to?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
We all knew the “meeting” at Antonio’s was a diversion of some kind, but to what end?
My cell vibrated.
It felt uncomfortable.
“Yeah?”
It was the judge.
“She’s gone.”
He was terrified.
“What do you mean, ‘she’s gone’?”
“Ronnie called the station, and Rikki talked to her for a minute or so, and then she vanished.”
I was too incredulous to respond, so he offered his lame excuse, both for himself and for all the cops at the station.
“She said she needed the ladies room.”
As Dawson and the EMTs were prepping Tommy for his trip to the hospital, I told Luca to go to the police station, talk to the father, and see what he could figure out.
It was obvious that Rita had somehow lured Rikki away.
To somewhere.
But where?
I had an idea.
44
Sunset Pavilion
Monday, March 30th
35°
Could this be the place?
The southmost end of Second Avenue was dark and deserted. There was no one on the jet-black beach, no one inside the Sunset Pavilion.
I checked “around” the pavilion. All four sides.
Underneath.
Nothing.
No one.
Maybe I was wrong.
I was counting on Rita being Rita.
She always seemed determined to find a demonstrable order within her disordered life. Some kind of symmetry. Wouldn’t she believe that it was perfectly appropriate to kill the one sister where she’d once killed the other sister?
Maybe I was thinking too much.
Maybe I was hunching too much.
I looked down the beach toward the ocean. The beach was coal-black under the faint moonlight, and the ocean was even blacker.
The jetty was the blackest of all.
Maybe I should check the jetty?
Nikki had died there, in the waters just off the southernmost edge.
Not on the beach.
Not on the pavilion.
I looked at Second Avenue again.
Nothing.
Dead silence.
Then I started across the beach towards the ocean.
I wasn’t looking forward to it. No one wants sand in his shoes, especially me, a Paterson city boy. But it was March, and it was cool, and the sand was harder than usual, and I didn’t sink as deep as I would have in the middle of the summer.
Regardless, I hated it.
I made my way along the north side of the jetty, looking back at the pavilion every few minutes, seeing nothing.
No movement of any kind.
There wa
s also nothing at the water’s edge. Very carefully, I stepped on top of the jetty’s slick black rocks to look over at the other side, dreading whatever I might find.
Nothing.
Just the waves, the wind, some sea foam.
When I looked back at Second Avenue, I saw her coming. She was carrying a gun in her right hand, passing the pavilion, and heading towards me.
It was Rikki.
Not Rita.
I have to admit, I was astonished.
What the hell was going on?
Carefully, I stepped off the ocean-sprayed rocks of the jetty.
When I looked back at Rikki, I could see another dark figure emerging from the side of the pavilion right behind her. Silently. It was Rita. She must have been watching me all the time, then taken her position when I went out to the jetty.
She was carrying a knife.
By the way, did I mention that I’m pretty much a dead shot? If I did, please forgive the repetition, but, whatever my copious faults in this world, I’m pretty damned good with a handgun, especially a Colt Python, the most accurate handgun in the world.
I lifted my weapon, and Rikki stopped in her tracks.
She was still unaware that someone was right behind her.
Did she really think that I was planning to shoot her?
I had no idea.
When Rita lifted her knife, she was still mostly hidden behind Rikki. I didn’t have a shot.
So I tried something else.
“She’s your sister!”
I called it out to the night, to the swirling sounds of the New Jersey shore, to the sounds of the splashing waves and the ocean breezes.
They both heard it.
They both hesitated, but I still didn’t have a shot.
When her hesitation was over, Rita again lifted up her blade.
I fired.
Shooting Rikki in the left thigh.
She immediately slumped forward to her knees.
I fired again.
Shooting Rita in the left shoulder.
I suppose the world would have been a better place if I’d killed her on the spot, but I still had some questions and I still wanted some answers.
Rita fell in the sand behind Rikki, who turned around, saw Rita, and sized up the situation. Despite her own wound, Rikki, still down on her knees, moved over to Rita, tossed away her gun, tossed away Rita’s knife, and began putting pressure on her would-be assassin’s shoulder.
An EMT to the last.
When I got there, I called 911 and looked down at Rikki’s leg.
“You’re bleeding,” I said rather stupidly.
She looked up for a moment.
“Yeah, some idiot shot me in the leg.”
“It’ll heal,” I said.
Then she went back to work on Rita, who lay out on her back, seemingly catatonic, on the sin-black sand beneath the mitigating lights of the moon.
Rita’s eyes suddenly came alive for a moment, and she looked up past Rikki, directly at me.
“I hate you, Jack Colt.”
“I know,” I said.
What else could I say under the circumstances?
Then she looked up at her half-sister.
“I hate you too, bitch.”
Rikki didn’t bother to say, “I know,” because we all knew that she knew.
Rita’s eyes shut. She went unconscious.
“Is she all right?” I wondered.
“It’ll take more than a shoulder shot to kill this little psycho bitch.”
45
Appendix IV
Denouement:
I’m sitting in a rented car on Second Avenue waiting for Rikki.
[Drinks from a large white cup.]
I know she’s coming.
I’ve got Ronnie in the trunk.
Actually, it was pretty easy getting her into the trunk. It was even easier than getting that dope Tommy Garrison to go to Antonio’s tonight.
“It’s the detective, Tommy.”
“Colt?”
He was amazed, apparently too stupid to be skeptical.
“Yes, he’s the one who once went to Johns Hopkins. He’s the ‘Billy’ who killed Nikki ten years ago. Which is why, when Edward Colt started stirring up things, he returned to Cape May to cover his tracks.”
“By killing Edward?”
“Of course.”
It went back-and-forth like that for a while. He was easy to convince. He was still in love with Nikki, and he wanted to be convinced.
“You’re sure, right?”
“Positive.”
He believed me.
“He’ll be at Antonio’s tonight.”
He’d made up his mind.
“Bring a gun,” I suggested.
He hung up.
It was almost too easy.
Excuse me a minute.
[Drinks from her large white cup, then smiles.]
Hell, it’s not half-bad.
Well, since this is the wrap, I suppose I should clarify a few things.
Specifically the first murder.
The one involving Nikki O’Brien.
One of my best friends.
Of course, ten years ago, I hadn’t told my mother about the trip to Baltimore, so I asked Billy not to mention it to my pals in Cape May.
We were talking on the phone.
“Sure, no problem, Rita.”
“We can act like we don’t know each other.”
“Sure, whatever you want.”
Three days later, on a warm April afternoon, I was sitting on a bench at the beach with Nikki, Ronnie, and Izzy when two college boys strolled up the promenade, and I said, “Hello,” and Billy came over with his friend trailing behind.
Billy wore tight new jeans, navy deck shoes, a Hopkins sweatshirt, and his Rebel Without a Cause windbreaker.
He looked perfectly perfect, and my lusting/loving heart slammed around in my chest. Happily.
For a few moments.
Then everything went wrong.
He smiled at me, nodding politely.
Then he looked at Nikki, with a look that made me sick to my stomach.
I was nauseous, instantly. Terrified and stupefied.
I honestly don’t remember the rest of it too well. Just a bunch of fun kids fooling around on the beach, bowling a few games at Shoreline Lanes, and palling around on the Hawk Watch near the lighthouse.
At one point, Billy and Sonny went down to the beach so they could stand at what they figured was the “southernmost” spot in New Jersey. While they were gone, Nikki got a text, and I knew who it was from, and what it was about, even though she read it in silence and didn’t say a word.
They were very discreet.
They were never obvious about the obvious attraction between them, and I was never obvious about the raging chaos within my heart, within my soul. For five years, I’d never told anyone about the all-consuming all-possessing love in my heart for someone whom I’d only met twice in my life, five years apart. I’m very good at self-possession, at an outward show of equanimity, at keeping my deepest thoughts and deepest feelings hidden from the outside world.
So I pretended to have a good time, saying goodbye to the boys just like all the rest of the girls when they hopped in Sonny’s jacked-up red Camaro, but I knew it wasn’t over.
I’m not sure how I knew, but I knew.
It was, I guess, the “look.”
Billy’s first look at Nikki, which was a bit like five years earlier, when I’d looked at Billy for the first time, as he stood on the sidelines with his football helmet in his hand.
The boys took off, heading for “North Jersey,” and Ronnie, who was the oldest of the girls, dropped us off, one by one. Me being the la
st. I lived six short blocks from the O’Brien’s house, and as soon as Ronnie drove away, I ran all the way to Beach Avenue, just in time to see the yellow Mustang pull out of the driveway and drive south alongside the ocean.
Billy was driving.
Nikki was sitting beside him.
I won’t attempt to describe what I was feeling, because the pain was so completely numbing that I was barely conscious of what I was doing. Even to this day, I retain very little conscious memory of those terrible hours.
Twenty-eight long, black, interminable hours.
I found a hidden spot beneath a secluded tree on the O’Brien’s front lawn, and I waited. All night. All the-next-day. Watching the judge and Rikki leave in the morning, then returning in the evening. I don’t believe I left the spot once. Maybe I relieved myself. Maybe I walked around a bit. Maybe I even slept a bit, despite the April chill. Surely, I had nothing to eat. Somehow I must have texted my mother and told her that I was spending the night, then the next day, and then the next night, at Ronnie’s house.
I suppose I was lucky that my mother was completely burned out, on a twenty-four-hour shift at the hospital.
I sat there in a kind of suspended animation. I suppose I was flush with hate, with fear, with self-pity, with bewilderment. I really don’t know. But I do remember having absolutely no plan. None. Which was not at all like me. I always have a plan, objectives, strategies.
Not then.
Which made things worse.
Then she was back.
It was late on the second night, deep into the next morning, when I saw the yellow Mustang coming up Beach Avenue. This time Nikki was alone, which meant that she was driving the car, which was illegal, since she only had a driver’s permit at the time, and the twins never did anything like that. They never did anything even slightly wrong, let alone break the law.
I met her in the driveway.
I must have looked terrible.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I assured her that I was.
Despite her initial concerns about me, she was perfectly buoyant, almost exuberant, and I knew why, and I wondered if they’d slept together, and the thought made me want to kill her on the spot. Strangle her to death.
But she seemed glad to see me, and, for some reason, she seemed hesitant about going inside her house.
