49

THE SKY WAS dark gray and growing murkier by the minute when Ross finally pulled into the driveway. He had a moment of panic, fearing that the car might not make it through the unplowed snow. The last thing he needed was for his car to be hanging out for anyone passing by to notice. There’d been another accident, this one on Route 27A. Nowhere near as large as the tangle on the LIE. This one had involved only three cars, but it had still brought traffic to a standstill for nearly forty minutes. Ross had not enjoyed a single one of them.

The automatic door rumbled as it opened, and Ross pulled the car in to the garage, next to his prized cream ’68 Caddy. Ross turned off the car and lowered his hands to his thighs.

Stillness.

Tracy let her head fall back onto the headrest. “Gosh, it seems like we’ve been driving for days. You did great.”

Ross remained silent. He sat stone-still, gazing through the darkened windshield at the images flashing in his brain:

Cynthia Blair bumping into him as she emerged from Marshall’s building.

The Rossman girl, so fatally gullible, getting into his car.

That unfortunate young woman’s huge Christmas tree.

“Alan?” Tracy twisted to look out the back window at the darkening day. “Um, where is everyone? When’s the party supposed to start?”

Now.

Ross leaned his shoulder into the driver’s-side door. “They’ll be here. We’ve got to set things up. The caterer should be here any minute. Come on. There’s something I want to show you. It’s going to be the big surprise.”

He got out of the car and pulled open the back door, fetching his coat as well as the crowbar hidden in its folds. As Tracy got out, Ross put on the coat and dug his left hand into the pocket, slipping the crowbar under the coat so that he could hold it in place under his arm.

Tracy met him at the back of the car. She was shrugging into her stylish blazer. “What’s the surprise?”

“It’s out in the boathouse.”

Tracy hugged herself and performed a parody of shivering. “Maybe we should go inside first and get me a sweater or something.”

Ross brought his right arm around her shoulder and hugged her to him. She responded with a small giggle. “Ah, you’re a tough kid,” Ross said. “I’ll keep you warm. Come on. It won’t take long.”

The two left the garage, Ross activating the automatic door to close it behind them. They started around the side of the huge house. What with the snow and the fast fading of the day’s remaining light, the water was only vaguely visible. The boathouse, newly painted the summer before, was the sole piece of color visible as the two made their way across the large backyard.

“Alan, my shoes are already completely soaked. They’re going to get ruined. Let’s just go inside. I’m sure Gloria’s got some boots or something I can use.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable request. Quick detour into the house and then head straight back out. But Ross was tired. Now that he was no longer behind the wheel, the full weight of his fatigue was coming down on him. He wanted to sleep. He wanted a peaceful sleep. It didn’t matter if it was only a five-minute detour, enough was enough already. He scoffed at the notion that he’d even considered enjoying himself with this girl before wrapping things up.

“Alan?” Tracy lowered her shoulder and attempted to squirm out from under his arm, but Ross was quicker, and he held on to her. “Alan. Let go! Stop it.”

She tried again, this time shoving her hand against his chest. She managed to roll away from his arm, but Ross reached out and caught her arm before she could get away.

“What are you doing? Let go, Alan! It isn’t funny.”

From a distance it might have looked like a dance. Astaire and Rogers. The man in the long coat leaning back slightly to hold the weight of the woman at the end of his arm, the two of them arching backward like a pair of wings opening up. But there was nothing graceful in the sudden appearance of the black iron rod. Or in the way that it came down on the woman’s head over and over and over.

Nothing graceful at all.

50

MEGAN WAS UNABLE to get a signal. The last she’d spoken with Malone, he was still stuck in the snarl of vehicles around the accident. Megan had taken Route 27A to avoid the mess. Even there, she had passed several tow trucks on either side of the road, securing a pair of cars on their beds.

She pulled to a stop in front of Alan Ross’s driveway. She could make out tire tracks in the snow leading up to the garage. The garage door was closed. Megan decided to keep her car where it was and approach the house by foot. The wind was gusting hard, and when Megan opened the car door, a blast of whipping snow stung her in the face.

There were no lights on in the house that Megan could see. She knelt down to inspect the tire tracks. They seemed fairly fresh, the tread marks still quite distinct, not covered with any appreciable snowfall. The car that had made them could not have been here for long.

Approaching the garage, Megan made out two sets of footprints leading around the side of the house. She followed them through a wooden gate, where they led into the spacious backyard. As Megan moved forward, crouching somewhat so she could follow alongside the two pairs of footprints, she was unable to clear from her mind the evening-just over a year before-when she had located the Swede on his houseboat at the marina in Sheepshead Bay. Walking stealthily down the pier in the dark, placing her feet with the silence of a cat, her heart thumping hard in her chest, just like it was doing now. She tried to will the memory to recede, but it refused to budge.

Through the blowing snow, Megan could make out a small dark structure. The footsteps appeared to head in that direction. A boathouse. As she moved forward, a light appeared briefly in one of the windows. A brief, buttery flash and then it was gone. Then it happened again. A flashlight. Someone was waving a flashlight around.

Some hundred feet from the boathouse, Megan froze. The footprints in the snow stopped being parallel pairs and the snow became a scramble, like a cluster of failed snow angels. Several feet beyond, there was something dark on the snow. Megan knelt down and scooped up a handful of the dark snow. She touched the fingers of her other hand to the snow, and they came away darkened.

Megan wiped the bloody snow off against her coat and blew into her cupped hands, then reached to her hip holster and unfastened the safety strap. Her pistol felt heavy. She felt like she was palming a lead brick. Megan’s heart was no longer simply slamming in her chest; it seemed to have expanded to fill her entire torso. No need to step softly, as the snow would muffle her footsteps. She plunged forward. The darkness on the snow ran in smears, alongside a wide track, the imprint of a body being dragged. Megan ran her arm across her eyes to clear the blowing snow. She heard a voice letting out a fearful whisper. It could only be her own.

Helen.

ROSS WAS GOING to take the Boston Whaler. He’d have preferred the Chaparral, especially in this sort of weather, but the sleek runabout wasn’t wise for his purposes. Though not without effort, he’d be able to paddle the Whaler out into the ocean some distance before turning over the engine. That was one consideration. The other, frankly, was cleanup. What he had to do was going to be messy. The Chaparral had white leather seats, cream-colored cushioning, the padded dashboard. Much easier to mop down the Whaler.

Ross couldn’t wait until this whole stupid episode was over. All he wanted was to get the mess over with and go inside and crawl into his bed. Grabbing the prone body of Tracy Jacobs by the arm and dragging her along the dock beside the Whaler, Ross glanced up through one of the boathouse’s windows, where he could see the rear of his house, see his bedroom window. He was shocked to see that a light was on. For an instant, panic flooded his system. Slow, he told himself. It’s probably just a timer. Focus. One thing at a time, you know how this has to be done.