Killer (6 page)

To what purpose?

Katherine imagined him, pacing around the grave. She could see from the angle of the footprints that he was looking down at her—all of the footprints pointed toward the grave, with a slightly deeper indentation at the front of the foot, suggesting his head was tilted down. It seemed to have the feeling of ritual. There was something almost elegiac about it.

Or was he simply gloating? Admiring his work.

A warm Santa Ana wind blew Katherine’s short brown hair across her face. She thought of Grace Beverly in her final moments when he took the knife to her—and the projection of sheer terror made Katherine stop her mind instantly, as she had been trained. She tucked her hair behind her ear and knelt carefully at the gravesite and examined each footprint closely, focusing on the job to chase away the Darkness that was palpable in places like this. Since her training began she had been on site at eleven separate murder scenes. They could drag out a million floodlights and the Darkness would still be there, hovering around the place of death. Katherine didn’t believe in ghosts, but she believed in monsters. Because she had seen firsthand what monsters do.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dawn is breaking over New York City as we make our approach at Newark. I have finished
Killer,
reading a few passages several times. I close my eyes, exhaustion catching up with me.

There was nothing in the book about the hair clip or the olive tree. I remember why now. In my first draft Killer put Grace Beverly’s head and hands in the tree, with her hands in a praying position. But Judith Price, my editor, had scratched the sequence out with her blue pencil. “Too much information!” she had scrawled in the margins. It gave her the creeps. I told her that was the point, but I didn’t put up much of a fight. It was, after all, my first book, and it was far too long. I had to cut something. So I took it out.

The wheels bump on the runway and I am propelled forward as the pilot deploys the thrust reversers. I feel tired and drained by fear and confusion.

The passage about Katherine Kendall’s visit to the crime scene at Temescal Canyon was hauntingly exact, but there were a few odd discrepancies. The parking lot was gravel, not paved, the cinderblock meeting house was on the other side of the creek, and the grave was much higher up on the ridge. Like Beverly Grace’s name, which I simply reversed to Grace Beverly, there was a strange kind of reversal to certain things. They were flipped, as though reflected in a mirror.

I sit staring ahead, my mind and body numb. I am hungry and tired and I can’t think. I get up and follow my fellow passengers off the plane as everyone takes out their cell phones and calls the office, calls home, calls their ride, calls someone.

I come out of the gate and into the airport and I go to the window and stare out at the morning over the city. It’s clear and cold here. I could feel sharp drafts of frigid air from the gaps between the jet way and the body of the plane when I got off. I turn away from the window and find a monitor listing my connection to Burlington. It’s on time. I have an hour.

It’s not possible. Unless someone read the manuscript and…

But who?

I can’t think and I can’t
stop
thinking. I take out my cell phone and dial.

“It’s Jack Rhodes for Joel.” I wait a moment, then I hear Joel Fisher, my lawyer, in his car.

“Jack? Where are you?”

“Just arrived at Newark.”

“You don’t sound good. How’d it go in L.A?”

“Badly,” I say. “I have to talk to you right away. I was on my way back to Vermont but I just changed my mind. I’m coming to your office right now.”

“Okay…” I hear him try to hide the surprise in his voice. “Can it wait until lunch? My morning is kind of crazy--”

“Joel,” I interrupt. “I’m in trouble.”

CHAPTER NINE

Fisher, Bloom & Caruthers occupies the top two floors of a sleek mid-century building in Midtown. The lobby of the firm has been redone to exacting minimalist standards: a large, open space with a polished concrete floor, dark wood reception desk, and hospital white walls featuring artless paintings of extraordinary value.

I sit on the hard black leather couch across from the reception desk, waiting for Joel. I can’t stop thinking about the book. Beyond the panic, despite the worry and fear about my situation, my writer’s ego is alive and well. I was pulled into the book right away. And although I occasionally winced at a cliché or a metaphor that was stretched beyond usefulness, I was proud of how far my characters had come in my recent books, in contrast to their wooden antecedents.

But the most striking thing was the character of Katherine Kendall. I was shocked to see what a completely transparent cipher she was for Sara. Katherine’s character brought fusillades of deep, forgotten memories of Sara back to me—her morning routine; showering, blowing her hair dry vigorously, standing in front of her closet in her bare feet, grabbing clothes and pulling them on, then applying a minimum of makeup, all of it done as quickly as possible, with open impatience. Like Sara, Katherine resented the fact that her appearance
mattered
as much as it did. She knew she was attractive, and she knew that any attention she paid to her appearance would have an unfairly meaningful effect on her professional life. And yet, despite their practical approach to the feminine rituals of beauty, both Sara and Katherine were keenly aware of their need to be attractive to men, and their feelings about that were infinitely complex and ambivalent. Like anyone, they needed to feel wanted, and to be loved.

The more I read, the more it became apparent that I had fallen in love with Katherine for the same reasons I had fallen in love with Sara—so much so that I had to take breaks during the reading or I knew I would begin to cry in my window seat on the plane. I had no idea when I was writing that I was simply conjuring Sara in the guise of Katherine. It’s obvious to me now—embarrassing, even. How
couldn’t
people have seen it? How could
I
not have seen it? I remember feeling that writing the book was an escape—a diversion into an utterly different world, with people of my own creation; the private fantasy I could retreat to and obsess over to remove my focus from my own pain. But it wasn’t removed at all. It was all
about
the pain.

“Jack?” Joel striding across the lobby, his hand extended. I get up and shake his hand and see sudden concern in his eyes. I realize I must look like hell.

“Jesus,” he says softly. “Come on back.”

I follow him back to his office and he lets me in and closes the door. I collapse on his couch, an overstuffed velvet piece of furniture in a warm, paneled room. Good old Joel; late fifties, wife and kids in picture frames on his oak desk. I have only been here a few times, all of them good times—signing deals, occasionally meeting to talk about a negotiation. Joel was useful as the hammer to bring in when Arnie’s loyalties between client and publisher had reached their understandable limits. Joel had been good to me, and I to him. But this time everything is different.

I look at Joel: he is a product of serious weightlifting. Big and thick, with a receding hairline that he mitigates by keeping his dark hair extremely short. Joel is an imposing figure, and I know he cultivates that image—bullying anyone who decides to play rough, and rattled by nothing. He presses a button on his phone.

“Dara, bring us coffee and water and… What do you want to eat, Jack?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.”

“Some fruit from D&D, right away, okay?”

He clicks off and comes over and sits in the Morris chair across from me.

“I asked an associate to join us. Nicki Feldman. She was with the Manhattan DA’s office for four years. You’ll like her, she’s a tough cookie,” Joel smiles.

“I didn’t know you guys had a criminal attorney here.”

Joel’s smile broadens and he shrugs. “Our clients get into trouble once in a while, like anyone else. Nicki has the advantage of having been on the other side. She had a ninety-nine percent conviction rate as a prosecutor.”

“What’s her record as a defense attorney?” I ask.

“Even better,” Joel says. “So far, not one of our clients has ever set foot in a criminal court.”

There is a quick knock and Joel’s door is opened by a woman who ducks her head in.

“Hi,” she says.

Joel and I get up.

“Jack, this is Nicki Feldman, I was just telling you about her.”

Nicki Feldman comes in and shakes my hand. She is pretty, with wide, bright blue eyes and short, tousled blonde hair, dressed in a tailored black jacket and skirt.

“It’s nice to meet you, I’m a big fan of your work,” she says, smiling. I thank her, but guess that her compliment is more courtesy than anything else. We all sit down.

“So,” Joel says again.

“So,” I say. And then I tell them the story, from the beginning. Everything. I never understood people who lie to their lawyers or their doctors. What’s the point of lying when the meter’s running and they can never tell?

It takes a surprisingly long time to tell it all. Joel shifts in his chair a little but Nicki Feldman sits absolutely still, her eyes wide and unblinking. Finally, I get to the end of it.

“Wow,” Joel says, and runs his hand through his short hair.

Nicki is staring at me, eyes wide, her brow furrowed. I don’t think she has blinked for ten minutes. She sits forward and speaks to me.

“The hair clip,” she says. “It wasn’t in the book?”

“No,” I say. “That’s why I’m here. I have to tell them about it….”

“Tell who?”

“The police. It’s evidence.”

“Is it?”

“Of course,” I say. “Isn’t it a crime to withhold evidence?”

“Yes,” she says. “But what makes you think the hair clip is evidence?”

“Are you serious?” I say. “I knew it was there.”

“How?” she asks.

“I told you, I don’t
know
how.”

“Did you know this woman? Beverly Grace?”

“No.”

“And your discovery of this hair clip was based on what?”

“I just knew it would be there. I—wrote it that way.”

“So you have no actual knowledge of the crime, you just had a vague feeling based on something you imagined years ago and then wrote in a book.”

I don’t have an answer. A tiny smile comes to her; she knows she is winning the argument. The smile softens her sharp blue eyes—a disarming technique that must serve her well with clients and witnesses. It also makes me want to know more about her. I look down and notice there are bits of sagebrush still clinging to my khakis and my gray socks, the tiny taupe buds covered with fine, silvery hairs.

“That’s all true, but shouldn’t the police be told about what I found?” I say.

“Yes. But you also have the right not to incriminate yourself. The truth is, you don’t know
how
you know about the hair clip, you don’t know anything material about the circumstances of the actual homicide, and you’re willing to believe you’re guilty of anything at this point,” she says.

“I told you what I know.”

“I understand how upset and confused you are. This is very unusual, to say the least. But we need to know more before we start calling the police about hair clips right this second. We’ll tell them. But I want to know a few things first. Especially about the chain of custody of your manuscript, and some more details about the case. Is it alright if I call this Detective Marsh, and your agent?”

“Sure. Anything. This whole thing has me...” I shake my head, unable to complete the thought. I rub my eyes. I am too tired to think clearly.

“Mr. Rhodes, have you ever heard the story of the guilty man and the innocent man in jail overnight for the same crime?”

“No.”

“Two men are arrested for the same murder,” she says. “One of them sleeps soundly in jail after he is arrested, the other one is up pacing and worrying all night. Which one is guilty? The sleeper or the worrier?” she asks.

“I give up,” I say.

“The sleeper is the guilty one. He’s tired of running. He can relax now, he’s been caught. The game is up, the nightmare is over. The innocent man is the one who’s up all night, worrying and pacing, because for him the nightmare of being an innocent man charged with murder is just beginning.”

“So what’s the moral of the story, Ms. Feldman?” I ask politely.

“The point is, you look like a guy who’s been up all night worrying. You look like you haven’t slept for a week. In fact, you look like shit.” She smiles again, more warmly.

“Thank you,” I say, returning the smile.

“You’re welcome. And you can call me Nicki.”

CHAPTER TEN

Joel arranges for a car to take me to the airport while I make small talk with Nicki. At the same time, Joel’s assistant books me on an evening flight to Burlington and packs a lunch for me. They send me home like a sick schoolboy and by the time the sun is setting I am taking off on a commuter jet for Vermont.

At the Burlington airport I find my truck in the parking lot where I left it. I get in and head southeast to my place. Flakes of dry snow swirl around in the truck’s headlights, and I catch glimpses of snow on the north sides of the trees and in the hollows of the hard ground. It’s a two hour drive to my place and I pull into my rutted driveway just as I am about to lose my battle to stay awake.

I unlock my front door and enter the cabin, which is dark and freezing. I drop my things inside the door and turn on the lights and turn up the thermostat and hear the pilot light flick to life and the gas begin to hiss. A moment later I feel the rush of dry heat on the back of my neck. I undress and shower and pull on a pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt and go to the polished pine counter that separates the kitchen from the living room. I stand at the counter and eat the lunch Joel’s assistant prepared for me. I turn on the little TV on the counter to distract myself but I am quickly bored by the repetition of the news channels and I turn it off. Despite Nicki’s assurances, my nerves are still jangling from the trip.