Peter? Here? Now? How was that possible?
I didn’t know. I was having trouble breathing, let alone thinking.
When I wasn’t looking out over Lexington Avenue, I had my head craned around at the shop’s side window and side door, which opened onto the train station’s corridor. If Peter came in, my plan was to run screaming through the door back into the train station’s main concourse and try to flag down one of the many antiterror cops. I shivered like a cornered rabbit.
I hadn’t even gotten down to Key West, and already I was playing a game of hide-and-seek, with my life as the prize.
Maybe I was just being paranoid, I thought, scanning the passing faces beyond the plateglass window. Couldn’t it have been somebody who just looked like Peter? I was heading down to Key West now, after all. Peter was certainly at the forefront of my mind, not to mention embedded in my subconscious. Maybe my overstressed brain had jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Then again, maybe not!
I needed to act. I looked across Lexington. I could actually see my town car, idling outside my office building. I quickly fumbled open my bag. I took out the card that the driver, a very pleasant West Indian man who called himself Mr. Ken, had given me.
“Hi, um, Mr. Ken?” I said. “This is Nina Bloom. Were you able to get my package from my office?”
“It’s right here in the front seat beside me,” he said.
“Great. Do you see the Starbucks on the west side of Lex in front of you? I’m right here by the window. Would you come over and get me?”
“On my way,” he said.
“Thanks, Mr. Ken,” I said to him in person when I bolted across the sidewalk and dove into the car ten seconds later. And thank God for cell phones, I thought.
I locked the door before I scrunched down low in the seat.
Mr. Ken raised an eyebrow at me in the rearview mirror.
“Did you forget your coffee, Ms. Bloom?” he said in his lilting accent.
“Oh, I already drank it, thanks,” I lied, glancing out the window, panicked. “If we could head out to JFK now, Mr. Ken, that would be really great.”
I scrunched down even farther in the seat. I didn’t breathe again until Mr. Ken hit the gas.
Chapter 70
ON THE CORNER of 42nd Street and Lexington, Peter stood scanning faces. He looked frantically up the unbelievably crowded street in front of Grand Central. Nothing. No ivory jacket. Not across the street or anywhere. He’d screwed up. His rat had found her hole.
What a bust! He’d had her, and then he’d lost her again.
As he stood there fuming, a memory bubbled up. It was of his first and only bow hunting trip with his dad in New Hampshire when he was seven. He was in the forest taking a leak when an enormous black bear appeared ten feet in front of him. Before he could yell out, there was a thwap from his dad’s compound bow, and the shaft of an arrow popped out of one of the bear’s eyes. The animal dropped like a tipped-over piece of furniture.
His father climbed down from the blind and knelt over the fallen monster, inhaling loudly as he wafted the blood aroma into his face like a chef over a pot. Peter had almost wet himself when his dad suddenly grabbed him and shoved his face down toward the blood-splattered bear until they were nose to black-and-bloody nose.
“This life, you either get the bear,” the crazy drunken bastard had said in his French Canadian accent, “or the bear gets you. Your choice, yes?”
Exactly, Peter thought.
At least he knew Jeanine lived in New York City, knew that she worked somewhere around here. Hell, knowing that she was still alive was enough. Catching up with her wasn’t an if anymore, it was a when.
His phone rang. He glanced at the screen. His wife, Vicki.
Horns honked as he stared up at the endless windows, his rage cooling now, replaced by his hunter’s natural, cold patience.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to get that bear somehow, Pop,” Peter said as he lifted his phone. “Always have. Always will.”
Book Four
THE PRODIGAL WIFE RETURNS
Chapter 71
I DIDN’T KNOW what time it was when I woke with a start, spilling Justin Harris’s court transcripts.
The plane that I was now on was a tiny fifty-seater. I’d had an hour layover in Atlanta before getting on the disconcertingly small aircraft.
After I put Harris’s folder away, I looked out the tiny window, wondering how close we were. There was nothing but water underneath us now, as silver and bright as tinfoil under the harsh Southern sunlight.
As I was staring at the light, the butterflies in my stomach woke up and got right back to work.
It was Florida light. Key West light.
Was I safe now? Hadn’t I left Peter back in New York? I didn’t know.
I looked up as the cabin speaker tolled out a musical bong, and the stewardess announced that we were about fifteen minutes out. Across the aisle, a decent-looking, fair-skinned man of about fifty smiled at me. He wore Bermuda shorts and a gray NYU gym shirt and had wavy strawberry blond hair.
He was Australian and quite drunk. I knew these things because he’d tried to hit on me by the gate in Atlanta. Under other circumstances, I probably would have let him. I certainly could have used a drink.
“To paradise,” Crocodile Dundee said with a goofy theatrical flourish as he raised his plastic cup to me. I smiled politely before looking away.
More like Paradise Lost for me, I thought, staring back out the window. I made out the line of a large structure beneath us.
I closed my eyes, my stomach suddenly seizing up, my teeth and ears aching with tension. Clammy sweat stuck my shirt to my back as the coffin wall of the fifty-seater plane suddenly felt like it was bearing down on me, burying me alive.
The structure I’d spotted was the Overseas Highway. The same Overseas Highway where the Jump Killer had almost murdered me nearly two decades before. As if that weren’t heart attack–inducing enough, as the plane descended, the white hot Florida light began sparking off fishing boat after fishing boat, each one a carbon copy of the Stingray Peter sailed.
I shouldn’t have come here, I thought, instantly overcome with terror. This was stupid. I was stupid. I’d escaped from hell. Why was I going back?
“Oh, I’m so sorry, honey,” a Southern voice cooed in my ear. It was the stewardess, a short, sturdy blond woman in her early fifties. She held my hand. “I can see it in your face. Don’t worry. Everybody gets airsick sometimes. Even me. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Turn the plane around, I felt like telling her. But was that even safe? Did I have anywhere to hide now?
As she snapped open a vomit bag, I heard the landing gear hum down. I felt its jolt beneath my feet as it locked into place.
Then black stars lit across the inside of my closed eyelids as I threw up. With an embarrassingly loud and drawn-out retching sound, I returned the airline’s complimentary honey-roasted peanuts and Diet Coke. When I glanced across the aisle again, my Aussie buddy was intently studying his in-flight magazine.
Terrific, I thought, wiping my mouth with a napkin.
Way to hit the ground running.
Chapter 72
HAVING SPLASHED SOME WATER on my face, I felt slightly better as I came down the rolling stairs of the tiny jet onto the airport tarmac. The small Key West airport looked the same as it always had: namely, as laid-back and weathered as its baggage handlers. You could actually see the crystal blue water sparkling beyond the runway’s chain-link fence, lulling and beautiful and beckoning.
I tore my eyes off it as I followed the line of smiling, ready-to-party young businesspeople. This wasn’t a vacation for me. It was more like a suicide mission. Get in and get the heck out, I told myself.
“Miss?” said an NBA-sized black guy in aviator shades and a green tennis visor, tapping me on the elbow on the airport’s sidewalk.
Christ, did he recognize me? I thought. “What?” I snapped at him.
/>
“Do you need a taxi to your hotel?” he said warily as he pointed at the car behind him.
We stopped at the Hyatt five minutes later. After I paid and tipped the driver, I hurried into the lobby as if the parking lot were a sniper zone.
The large black female concierge gave me an easy smile when I came in. “Nina Bloom?” she said when I showed her my credit card. “Oh, yes. I just got off the phone with someone about you.”
What?!
“Your firm just upgraded your room,” she said. “They must like you. You’ve been transferred to one of our penthouse suites.”
The first time I felt that I’d breathed all day was after I’d tipped the bellboy and had the door securely locked behind me. It really was a beautiful suite. South Beach chic. White leather furniture, black quartz countertops, neon bright modern art. Outside the sliding glass doors, a queen-sized white chaise with my name on it lay on a private, Mexican-tiled roof deck.
There was also a huge gift basket on the countertop. Tropical flowers, Godiva boxes. Even an orange and green magnum of Veuve Clicquot champagne.
“Thanks for doing the right thing, kid. Go get ’em!” my boss had written in the message.
Well, at least I was making someone happy.
I read in one of the hotel magazines about the upcoming Conch Republic (as Key West jokingly called itself) Independence Celebration. There was a bed race down Duval Street and, of course, lots of drinking. Maybe that was a good thing. Hopefully, the whole police department, including Peter, would be more than busy with the greater influx of tourists than normal.
I plopped down on a low, white leather couch and called Emma.
“I made it,” I said. “I’m so tired.”
“Sure you are, Mom,” Emma said. “I feel for you. Enjoy your business trip to Key West. Try not to throw your back out limbo-ing the night away.”
I shook my head. She didn’t understand. She had no idea how much I wanted out of this place, how much I wanted to go straight to the airport and head home.
“You better not do any partying with that Gabby, either, Miss Wiseacre. I love you, Wilson. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
After I hung up, I put in a call to Harris’s attorney, Charles Baylor, whose office I would be visiting tomorrow. No answer. What else was new? I was going to take a shower, but then I saw the sky. The sun was going down, and the sky was turning a ridiculously intense electric blue.
I shook my head again as I remembered partying in Mallory Square that last sunset on spring break. Dancing and singing to Bob Marley, I’d actually thought I could be happy and carefree forever.
I’d thought wrong.
Despite the memory, and my usual policy of not mixing business with pleasure, I decided to bring the bubbly bottle out onto the roof deck with a water glass. Because if anyone on earth needed a drink at that moment, it was me.
On second thought, I left the water glass inside and headed for the white chaise, the champagne bottle’s foil trailing behind me.
Chapter 73
CHARLES BAYLOR’S OFFICE was on Terry Lane, a block south of Hemingway’s house in Old Town. Nine a.m. sharp on Friday morning, holding a box of Dunkin’ Donuts in one hand and a box of coffee in the other, I rang his bell with my elbow.
As I waited, I heard a screaming saw at the rear of the house. On the porch, a rusty bicycle sat next to some beat-up diving tanks. What the hell kind of law office was this? When the saw stopped, I put down the coffee and whammed on the door with my fist.
A bleary-eyed, tan, shirtless guy wearing a green bandanna, goggles, and an air mask opened the door a minute later. He wiped his hands on his sole visible item of clothing, his cutoff jeans.
“Yeah?” he said.
“I’m looking for Charles Baylor. The attorney?” I said.
“He’s not here at the moment,” the guy said, grinning like an idiot as he pulled down the mask. “I’m Charlie Baylor, the carpenter. Maybe I can help you out?”
I restrained myself from rolling my eyes. Nice to meet you, too, wiseass, I thought. “I’m Nina Bloom from Scott, Maxwell and Bond. They put me on to assist in the Justin Harris case. I left you about a dozen messages.”
“Well, bless my banjo,” Baylor said in an exaggerated hick accent. “You must be Miss New York City here to learn the hillbilly beach bum some lawrin’. I got every one of yours and the righteous Mission Exonerate’s calls, all right. You didn’t get my e-mail? ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ My client is in competent hands. You should check your BlackBerry. My message heading, I believe, was ‘Go Find a Tree to Hug.’ Guess you’ll have to drink all that coffee yourself. Shame. See you around.”
Could this guy be a bigger prick? I thought, as he started to close the door in my face. I drop-kicked the doughnut box into the gap to stop it.
I’d come down here for a lot of reasons. Messing around wasn’t one of them.
“ ‘Competent hands,’ huh?” I yelled as he looked down at the crushed doughnuts in pained shock. “What are you building back there, Mr. Baylor? Harris’s coffin?”
He pulled off his bandanna and ran a hand through his sandy hair. He looked to be in his early forties, but his lean, brown, weather-beaten face was still boyish somehow. He looked more like a landscaper than a lawyer. One with eyes the color of the sky I’d seen from my balcony last night, but that was beside the point.
“Harris’s coffin?” he said with a grin. “That’s cold, woman. Damned if I’m not starting to like you. Please call me Charlie. When are they changing your firm’s name to Scott, Maxwell and Soulless Bitch?”
I held eye contact with him, then smiled for the first time myself. “Invite me in, and we can go over it, Charlie.”
Chapter 74
HALF OF THE LAWYER’S HOUSE was beautiful: golden, varnished Dade pine floors; a completely refurbished curving banister and stairway; a white-on-white marble cook’s kitchen out of Architectural Digest. The other, gutted half, with its shattered plaster walls and garbage-brimming joint compound buckets, had a striking resemblance to a crack house.
Luckily, I was quickly escorted through the construction site into an artfully finished oak-paneled office behind the kitchen.
Charlie dropped the salvaged doughnut box onto his immaculate desk and took a Heineken keg can from a minifridge.
“Out of orange juice?” I said, making a show of checking my watch.
“In Key West, this is orange juice,” Charlie said, popping the beer can’s top and taking a slug.
I almost passed out when I noticed the framed Harvard Law diploma on the wall, a little magna cum laude banner bridged across its lower right-hand corner.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” he said, rocking back and forth in his chair. “I missed summa by like point-oh-six or some such. I really wanted to go to Yale, but their rugby team flat out blew that year.” He took a long sip, burped, and helped himself to a crushed Boston Kreme.
“What are you doing down here?” I said.
“Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame,” he sang with his mouth full. “But I know—”
“Please shut up,” I said.
“Fine,” he said, chewing. “Like everybody else, I guess things went south until there was no more south left to go. This is actually my granddaddy’s place. He was a Texas oilman. He actually won it in a poker game at the age of seventy. Family legend has it he came down, took one look around, and telegraphed back, ‘If all works out, I’ll never be sober again.’ ”
“Touching story,” I said.
“Anyway,” Charlie said. “A few years ago, I inherited it and his dusty toolbox. After I bring this baby back to its former glory, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I got a friend who works for HGTV, said I’d be a shoo-in for one of those hunky carpenter dudes. How much money they make, you think?”
“You’re too old,” I said.
He finished his doughnut with another slug of beer and made a growling sound. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m als
o actually taking a stab at being the next John Grisham or Ernest Hemingway. You been to Papa’s house yet? Did you know some of the cats there have six toes?”
“Did you know Hemingway blew his head off with a shotgun?” I said quickly. “This is a lot of fun and everything, but we need to go over Harris’s case. I got the brief, but I’d like to hear in your own words, in a nutshell, where it went wrong.”
“In a nutshell,” Charlie said. “OK, let’s see. It all went wrong probably right around the time the cops said, ‘Hey, Harris, you have the right to an attorney,’ and Harris didn’t say, ‘Where’s the phone?’ ”
He leaned back in his swivel chair, balancing the can on his bare chest.
“Harris was his own worst nightmare. First he tells the cops he didn’t know Foster. Lie numero uno. Then, faced with the DNA results, he claims he remembers having consensual sex with her at the prison where he worked and she was a volunteer. He said the coed scholarship musician was ‘quite the little freak,’ quote unquote. That she liked to slap and scratch him and for him to cuff her up before they did it in the janitor’s closet.
“Which is exactly what he said happened when she came in to volunteer that morning before she went missing. He claimed after he went off shift that day, he was with another woman, his fiancée, the whole day at the Miami Seaquarium. But when police questioned his alibi, the fiancée completely denied it.”
“Crap,” I said.
“On a pointy stick,” he said. “That’s why my white-shoe firm handed the case to me when his first lawyer was disbarred for bilking his real estate clients. See, like you, I was once moronic enough to believe in Harris, too. Enough at least to take it to trial.”
“What happened in court?”
“It came down to the jury not buying that a poor black prison guard could possibly have consensual sex with an angelic white college student who volunteered there. Foster’s mother sat in the front row, and she cringed and cried whenever the notion of her daughter and Harris being together came up. The jury wasn’t too hot on the idea either. Slam dunk. Capital murder.”