She ran her gloved fingers over the wide bowhead, barbed like a miniature harpoon. It could bring down a deer. It would have sunk deep between her shoulder blades, killing her instantly if she was lucky, or not so instantly if his aim was not quite true.
The window was open just enough to let in some air without admitting too much of the rain that had fallen throughout the night. She wanted it shut. Even a silenced gunshot would produce some noise.
She lowered the window. It squealed in its frame, and Kurt Land stirred.
Bonnie pivoted toward him, the Beretta ready. He wasn’t quite awake yet, but he was coming around.
Quickly she groped under his pillow, then patted down the sheets until she was satisfied he had no hidden weapon within reach. Then she waited for him to wake up.
He had grown a beard and dyed his hair darker, but the face was the same one that had stared up at her from the snowy ground in January. His eyes, when they opened, were the same shade of hazel. She remembered thinking that the eyes of the dead lost their color. Maybe it was that thought that had stopped her then.
It wouldn’t stop her now.
He registered her presence with slow comprehension, his vision coming into focus along with his mind. He saw the gun in her hand, and the black gloves, and she wondered if he was reminded, if only for a moment, of Pascal.
“Oh, fuck,” he whispered.
She smiled. “Hey, Kurt. How’s it hangin’?”
He didn’t answer. Presumably he knew the question was purely rhetorical.
“You know, you’re like a bad meal, buddy boy. You keep coming back on me.”
“Fuck,” he said again. A shudder moved through him, and he kicked off the covers with a convulsive movement of his legs.
“Once I figured out it was you on the phone, you really should’ve vamoosed. You had to know I’d find you before long.”
He made a low whimpering sound. She’d never heard a man whimper before—like an animal, like a beaten dog.
“But maybe you had no place to go, huh? You look like a guy who’s pretty much run out of options. Cash all gone?”
He chewed his lip and didn’t answer. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.
“Rent in Brighton Cove’s pretty steep,” she said, “even for a glorified broom closet like this. I’m guessing you had some extra cash squirreled away.”
“A few thousand. You can have it. What’s left of it. Just take it.”
“I didn’t come here to rob you, Kurt. You and me—we got other business.”
She raised the gun just slightly, for emphasis. She saw him flinch as if struck, saw the muscles of his face twitch in panic, and she knew how Pascal had felt when he administered shock after shock.
“Where was your stash, anyhow?” she asked. “It wasn’t in your townhouse. I would’ve found it when I tossed the place. You knew I’d been there, right?”
He managed a shaky nod. Tears glimmered in his eyes.
“Sure, you knew,” she went on, “because your safe deposit key was gone. The only other people who had a reason to search your townhouse were the police—you being a missing person and all. But if the police had looked inside the safe deposit box, they would’ve found the photos, and Jacob Hart would have been charged with corrupting a minor, statutory rape, whatever. And there was nothing in the news about that.”
“Right …”
“So where’d you keep the cash?”
“With a friend.”
“Yeah, I don’t believe you, buddy boy. I don’t think you have any friends.”
“He used to be a friend. He always kept cash around …”
“You ripped him off, is that it? Broke in and lifted his wad from its secret hiding place?”
“I was desperate.”
“Hey, no need to justify yourself. You were in a bad way, I know. Bet those bullet wounds messed you up pretty good, huh?”
“It took three surgeries.”
“And you still can’t walk right. I heard you clomping around like Peg-leg Pete in the pavilion.”
“I don’t know … what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do. You were Pascal’s little helper. You tried to set me up.”
The room filled with a sudden ammonia smell. She looked down at his briefs and saw a widening yellow stain.
“And when the going got rough,” she said, “you ran off like a scared little girl.”
He tried to speak, but his voice seemed stuck in his throat, trapped by panic. She had never seen anyone so nakedly afraid.
“He’s dead, by the way,” she added. “Pascal, I mean.”
He made a retching sound. She thought he was pretty close to throwing up on himself.
“You hear me, asshole? Pascal’s dead.”
“I—I don’t know any Pascal …” He might have wanted to say more, but he choked up again. Chewing, chewing at that lip. Drawing blood.
“Save it. It’s a little late for bullshit.”
He dipped his head, acknowledging defeat. Saliva dribbled out of his mouth, spotting his chin. “You … you really got Pascal?”
“It was him or me. Turns out, it was him.”
His throat jerked, and a mouthful of undigested beer spilled out of him in a viscid stream, spattering the sheets. He stared down at the mess in dumb incomprehension.
She ignored the mess. “I take it you were watching my office the night Jacob Hart dropped by for a visit. Don’t deny it, okay? You’ll just piss me off.”
“I saw it. Had a … ringside seat.” He looked up, and his mouth tugged itself into a sickly smile. “I really thought he was going to get you.”
“He took his shot—literally.” She nodded at the crossbow. “Looks like you were about to take yours.”
He shook his head and went on shaking it. “No, it wasn’t like that.”
“Sure it was. You were all set to use that bow the next time I showed up in my office. On the phone you pretty much said my days were numbered.”
“That was just talk, just—I was drunk, I didn’t know what the fuck I was saying …”
“You knew. It took you long enough, but you’d finally worked up the nerve to do it.”
“I’m not—I couldn’t …”
“Maybe if I hadn’t gone fishing yesterday, you’d have taken me out already.”
He chuffed ragged bursts of breath. His shirt was pasted to his skin. “You can’t prove that.”
“Kurt, Kurt, Kurt … I don’t have to prove a goddamn thing. You see a jury here? It’s just you and me, buddy boy.” She tightened her grip on the Beretta. “And soon, it’ll be just me.”
“You can’t do it!” Crying shamelessly, all dignity lost. “You couldn’t do it before, in the woods. And you can’t do it now.”
“I made a mistake before.” She took a step closer to him. “But here’s the thing, Kurt. I learn from my mistakes.”
He pushed himself away. His head bumped against the wall, and he glanced around frantically, as if suddenly aware that there was nowhere to run.
“Don’t,” he said. The plea was squeezed out from between bloodless lips. “Just … don’t.”
Tears streaked his face. He clasped his hands in supplication.
“Don’t,” he said again.
She fired once into his temple at point-blank range.
His head snapped to the side. His eyes were wide and startled. A thick ooze of blood ran slowly down his face from the hole in his skull.
It had been easy, even face to face. She didn’t know why she had hesitated in the Barrens.
There must have been a reason, but she could no longer remember what it was.
CHAPTER 40
Though Pascal’s silencer was degraded after repeated use, the shot still hadn’t been loud enough to wake the neighbors, especially with no one next door. Most of the spatter had gone on the wall, but there was some blood on her poncho. It was no big deal.
She unfolded the garbage bag from
her fanny pack and filled it with the crossbow, arrow, and binoculars. She retrieved the Beretta’s expended shell casing, though it carried no prints, simply because it was the kind of precaution a pro would take.
The hallway remained empty. She descended to ground level and left via the rear entrance, then hopped the low wall to the alley and climbed back into her Jeep. She took care to obey all traffic laws as she drove away.
A mile from the scene she parked behind a Rite Aid, not yet open for business. She peeled off the gloves and added them to the garbage bag, then ditched the bag in a trash bin, taking care to bury it under other refuse. She smashed Kurt Land’s cell phone to pieces and tossed the pieces into the bin, after removing the SIM card.
In another dump bin, this one behind an A&P, she disposed of the bloodstained poncho and the SIM card, having first crushed the card under her tires.
All that was left was Pascal’s Beretta. She wiped it clean, then drove to the lake where she’d gone fishing yesterday. Screened from the road by trees, she flung the pistol far out over the lake. It vanished with a plop, disturbing some sleepy ducks.
By now it was after eight o’clock, and the rain had stopped. She headed over to Atlantic Avenue, parking down the street from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Wright. At eight fifteen, their daughter Sienna bicycled down the driveway, racing west toward the highway, where she had a job at the Donut Hutch.
Bonnie watched her go. She looked like any ordinary fifteen-year-old girl. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, and her lean, athletic legs pumped the pedals. She was probably happy.
Jacob Hart was dead, but Bonnie continued to keep watch over Sienna Wright, just to be sure there was no backsliding into another bad situation. She didn’t need Des to analyze her motives. She’d been fourteen when she was traumatized by the murder of her parents, and she’d spent much of the next year hunting the killers and taking them out. There had been no normal upbringing for her. This girl still had a chance.
She sat at the curb until the bike was out of sight. Then she put the Jeep into gear and headed back toward the ocean.
She had one more stop to make.
***
The housekeeper at the Hart residence actually flinched when Bonnie opened the door.
Bonnie smiled. “Yeah, me again.”
“She not see you.”
“You haven’t even asked her.”
“She already tells me, she not see you ever.”
“Well, now, that’s just rude.”
The door started to close. Bonnie elbowed it open and stepped inside, bypassing the housekeeper with a quick sidestep. She was tired, and she wasn’t taking any crap.
“You cannot come,” the housekeeper said.
“Try and stop me.”
The woman thrust out her lower lip and hunched her shoulders, and for a moment it looked as if actual fisticuffs were about to commence.
“It’s all right, Nilda.” The voice was Gillian Hart’s, and it came from the top of the stairs. “I’ll take care of it.”
Nilda retreated, sulking.
Gillian descended the stairs in silky slow motion, lean and elegant, like that old-time movie actress, the one who got it on with Bogart. What the hell was her name?
“Lauren Bacall,” Bonnie said, remembering.
“What did you say?” Gillian reached the bottom of the staircase. She stood there in a pink nightgown and fuzzy slippers that somehow managed not to look comical.
“Nothing. Did I get you up?” Sammy’s display screen read 9:02.
“I’ve been up for some time. I rise with the sun and take breakfast in my room.”
“Really? I rise with the morning zoo crew and take breakfast over the kitchen sink.”
“I assume you have some purpose in coming here again.”
“You and me have some catching up to do.”
“We caught up yesterday.”
“A lot has happened since then.”
Gillian looked her over. “I’ll say it has. You look like you’ve been put through the wringer.”
Bonnie wasn’t exactly sure what a wringer was, but she doubted the expression was intended as a compliment. “Yeah, whatever. Is this really where you want to talk?”
Gillian hesitated, doubtless aware that Nilda was listening somewhere nearby, then turned to her left and started walking. “Come into my parlor.”
Said the spider to the fly.
Bonnie followed, noting that the fuzzy slippers made absolutely no noise even on hardwood floors. Burglars ought to wear the damn things.
The parlor was an oak-paneled room decorated with historical photos of Brighton Cove and an impressive collection of scotches.
Gillian shut the door for privacy. “Well?”
“The first thing you need to know is that there’s about to be a break in the Jacob Hart case. Your husband’s shooting will be solved in the next few days.”
Gillian smiled. “Then it appears you’re in trouble. After all, you told me yourself that you did it.”
“Me? You must’ve heard me wrong. Kurt Land did it. Turns out he wasn’t as dead as I thought.”
“Is that so?”
“He planned it all out. Made himself disappear because otherwise he’d be an obvious suspect, given his known animosity to your husband. He rented a room in downtown Brighton Cove. It just happened to be across the alley from my office. Pure coincidence. It’s a small town, you know.”
“So he had no connection with you?”
“Nah, I never even heard of the guy. Anyway, he lured Jacob to the alley and shot him with a thirty-eight. The same thirty-eight that’s now stashed in his room, just waiting to be found, along with his dead body. Really dead this time.”
“You know none of that is true.”
“Doesn’t matter what I know.” Bonnie lit a cigarette. Gillian was sufficiently distracted not to object. “What matters is what Officer Friendly of our neighborhood police department knows. The story I just told you is how it’s going to look to him.”
“You’re saying Kurt Land actually was alive all this time?”
“Yup.”
“And now you killed him?”
“Didn’t say I killed him. Who knows how it happened? But what it looks like is a professional shooter from Latin America was hired to snatch Kurt Land and torture a confession out of him. Somehow Kurt got away, but the bad guy tracked him to his room and finished him there. The bullet in Kurt’s head will match another bullet fired at the motel where the torture took place, which ties everything together quite neatly, don’t you think?”
“Nobody will believe such nonsense.”
“Wrong-o.” She took a deep breath of smoke. “Everyone who matters will believe it. It explains not only your husband’s demise but a whole bunch of other things. And it puts me in the clear. You, though … not so much.”
Gillian narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean by that?”
“Think it through, Mrs. H. Who would hire a pro to avenge your hubby’s death? Whose business has a ton of Latin American connections—all those authentic south-of-the-border fixin’s you import? The authorities will be taking a good long look at you.”
“You expect me to be charged for your crime?”
“I don’t expect you to be charged with anything. First, because there won’t be any proof, and second, because people like you don’t do time for murder. No charges, nothing formal. Just a lot of whispering and innuendo. Oops, there goes that good name of yours—you know, the one you were always so anxious to protect.” She took another hit off the cig and found it good.
“And what’s to stop me from … from …”
“From pointing the figure at yours truly? Come on, ask me a hard one. You can’t tell what you know without implicating yourself in a murder-for-hire plot. Do you enjoy irony, Mrs. H? ’Cause there’s a buttload of irony here. You’re gonna be widely suspected of hiring an assassin to kill Kurt Land. And you can’t say a word in your own defense without admi
tting that, on a prior occasion, you—wait for it—hired an assassin to kill Kurt Land. That’s what some people might call poetic justice.”
Gillian looked suddenly unsteady. She sank into the nearest chair, her face unnaturally rigid. “And you’re doing all this just because my husband ambushed you? I had nothing to do with that.”
“Fair point. But that’s not why I’m doing it.”
“Why, then?”
“Because you set me up, Gillian,” she said, using the woman’s first name for once.
“I …?”
“Yeah, you. You had a meeting with Alan Kirby, aka Jeffrey Walker, yesterday evening. He knew you through his nonprofit work in New York. He’d come to you once before, when he was in trouble. You bankrolled his family’s change of identity and helped them relocate here. You were their guardian angel. Which was nice of you. The Kirbys probably couldn’t have swung it on their own.”
“You don’t know what you’re—”
“Save it. Yesterday he came to you again, and as usual he was in a sweat. His friend Amy was dead, and the killer had just checked into the Coach House, which meant he was breathing down Alan’s neck. Poor Alan didn’t know what the hell to do. You told him to hire me.”
“What if I did? Is that so wrong? You should be grateful for the work.”
Bonnie took another drag and coughed out a laugh. “Oh yeah. My thank-you note’s in the mail. You weren’t doing me any favors, girlfriend. You wanted me to go up against a seasoned hitter who, for all you knew, had been sent by the Colombian government. Maybe I’d get lucky and take out the bad guy. But I think you were counting on it to go the other way. And if that meant things didn’t work out so well for Alan and his family—well, I think you hate me way more than you like them.”
“That’s crazy. You’re paranoid. Delusional.”
“I don’t think so. You pretty much gave the game away with that little good-bye speech you delivered. Remember? How one of these days I’d come up against somebody better than Jacob. And then you’d be visiting my grave.”
Gillian said nothing.
“That wreath you bought—you might have meant it for your dear departed, but I’m thinking you came up with another use for it around the time I dropped by.”
“You damned bitch,” Gillian whispered.
“Sticks and stones, Mrs. H. You fucked with the wrong gal, and now you wind up on the receiving end of all those pointing fingers. Get used to it. Your family name will never be the same. Me, on the other hand—I’m coming outta this mess just fine. I might even get an apology from Dan Maguire, though I’m not holding my breath. The cops will take me off their list of persons of interest and put you on it. They’ll know you’re dirty, and as for me—I’ll be clean.”