NIKKI ROSSMAN SLID down farther in the tub, to the point where the water was just touching her chin. She lifted her right foot and gently eased her big toe into the faucet so that it was snug and secure. She took a shallow breath and held it. She wanted to still the water completely. Her body appeared rubbery beneath the water, like something manufactured in a factory. Nikki recalled a movie she had seen a few years back, a high-tech Pinocchio-like story that had included a large workroom featuring thousands of white rubber torsos hooked on a seemingly endless hanging conveyor belt. The marble-white torsos had produced an inexplicably erotic feeling in Nikki. They were genderless. Breasts would later be added to some; to others, subtle six-pack stomachs and a solid rubber package where the legs came together. Nikki had wondered at the time why it was she found the torsos so disturbing and compelling. She had imagined lifting one of them off its hook and pressing it against her own body, embracing it with all her strength. In her imagination, the artificial torso had proved malleable, a pliant rubber that, in response to her own body’s warmth, would begin to conform to her contours, molding itself around her as she squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.
Nikki looked at her pale body rippling under the water. She was still amazed at the marvels of modern science. Or was it modern medicine? Both. Under the water, her slender legs zigzagged like some sort of cubist rendering. Her tiny waist appeared magnified and liquid. Her flat tummy undulated. Calories burned, calories avoided, a love affair with her gym, plus the lucky draw of petite genes. Now, still feeling so new after nearly six months, the beautiful, perfect swell of these fantastic marble-white breasts.
She touched one of them. Pliant. Just as promised. She pinched it, and then she stroked it and cupped it. Then again. Pinch, stroke, cup. Her lustrous hair floated on the surface of the water like an island of golden sand. With her other hand, she reached lower. The toe was snug in the faucet hole. It felt almost stuck there; she could imagine that it was. She lifted her free foot and set it against the tiled wall, as far up as she could manage. She flexed her toes as forcefully as she dared, backing off when she sensed the low flinch of her calf muscle wanting to cramp. The toe in the faucet really did feel stuck now.
He likes it when I can’t move. He likes it a lot.
Arching her back, she tilted her head to the point where the water lapped at the V of her hairline. Her torso rose while her hand stirred and wandered. Bathwater slapped rhythmically against the sides of the tub.
Half an hour later, Nikki got out of the tub. Rain was splattering against her window. She dried herself off and smoothed lotion over her arms, her thighs, her breasts. She removed the tags from the new plaid skirt and fastened it with the oversize safety pin around her waist. She modeled the purchase in the mirror, folding her arms over her breasts and swiveling this way and that, making the thin wool pleats swish. Do schoolgirls still wear these? she wondered. When he had asked her to buy it-giving specific details and insisting on giving her the money-he had told her precisely what he had in mind for the next time they got together.
And he had told her not to forget a change of clothes.
Nikki folded a loose cotton skirt into her bag. She chose the black V-neck pullover that she had decided not to throw out after the augmentation.
It had been one of her favorites. The nurse at the clinic had clued her in: “Don’t throw away the old stuff just yet, honey. It might find an all-new life.”
The nurse had been right. The black V-neck pullover was nice and tight. Even more of a favorite than before.
“Wicked,” she said to the mirror. Then she expertly applied her makeup, ruffled her damp hair-she was going to let it dry on its own into a tangled mane-and fastened the chain with the special pendant around her neck.
“Wicked,” she said again.
And off she went to die.
MEGAN LAMB SLAPPED a two-pound cut of flank steak onto her cutting board and went at it with her large knife. She recalled the old anti-drug campaign: This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.
As she hacked at the meat with her too-dull knife, she reworked the slogan: This is your brain. This is Brian McKinney’s brain…on my cutting board!
A cord of bluish gristle required some sawing before Megan was able to sever the beef into two pieces. With a modified Psycho swing, she planted the knife into one of the pieces and let it remain there. She placed the other piece in a metal bowl of mustard and teriyaki marinade. The simple move triggered an image from several months before, not one that Megan welcomed. The image was that of Albert Stenborg’s brain being lifted from its skull casing and settled onto a metal pan to be weighed. Joe Gallo, among others (Josh, to be sure), had urged Megan not to attend the Swede’s autopsy, but she had ignored the pleas. She’d needed-or so she’d felt-to see the monster disassembled. She had hoped for some catharsis in hearing firsthand the medical examiner’s dispassionate litany of damages wrought by the hail of bullets from Megan’s service weapon. When the time came to extract the brain, Megan had inched closer to the table, determined to take a hard look. Only several hours later, seated in the dark corner of Klube’s, had she realized that the answers to why Albert Stenborg had been the man he’d been and done the things he’d done weren’t located in the spongy grayish pulp weighing three pounds, five ounces. For answers to those questions, the issue was more a matter of the monster’s heart and what it was about his life that had damaged that tender organ so horrifically. These were answers that would never come.
Megan glanced out her small kitchen window at the wedge of a river view her place afforded. The call was for heavy evening rain-a classic April dousing-but nothing had started yet. The low clouds gathered over the river were gray and milky, belly-lit from Manhattan ’s excessive wattage. Across the Hudson, a series of silent lightning flashes was illuminating the scant skyline of Hoboken. Staccato blasts making it look as if the small city were suffering through a bombardment.
MEGAN OPENED a bottle of pinot grigio and poured half a glass. As early as a month ago, she would have poured a second glass and set it on the coffee table in front of where Helen usually sat. Megan had had no clue she was in possession of such a maudlin streak, but life is about discovery, isn’t it? Sweet Helen. Megan went into the living room and looked at the framed photo on the bookshelf. It was the last photo that had been taken. Helen holding forth in this same room on New Year’s Eve, waving her champagne glass as she presented her laundry list of resolutions, angling for “the perfect year.” After Helen’s murder at the hands of Albert Stenborg, Megan had put the picture in the frame and tried out dozens of different locations around the apartment. None had satisfied her, and she had seriously considered taking it to the photo shop on Greenwich and having them make multiple copies so she could display Helen’s infectious laugh throughout the apartment. The shrink the department was sending her to didn’t think that was such a good idea. Megan had made the mistake-she thought of it as a mistake-of telling the shrink about her practice of pouring the extra glass of wine and placing it where Helen usually sat. The shrink hadn’t thought that was a good idea, either.
Today would have been Helen’s birthday. Tonight. Now. Josh had promised to come directly from the airport, even though Megan had insisted she’d be fine. But he’d called several hours ago from the tarmac in Memphis. His phone breaking up. Heavy rains. Delays. Not sure. Will call back.
The rain began during Megan’s second glass of wine. This time a full glass. The book on Cynthia Blair’s murder was on the coffee table. Woefully thin for a ten-day-old murder. Cynthia Blair had last been seen alive at approximately four-thirty on the afternoon of April 15 by the Korean woman where Cynthia took her laundry to be done. Cynthia had returned to her apartment with two bundles of folded laundry in a Crate & Barrel shopping bag; she’d opened one of the bundles, rifling through it while leaving the other untouched. Details. Megan had ordered a chemical check on the clothes that Cynthia Blair was wearing when she was murdered, to determine which piece of newly laundered clothing she had opted to don before heading out later in the evening. Was it the pants? The blouse? The underwear? Socks? Or-least likely-was it the scarf that had been used to tie off her windpipe for the several minutes required to guarantee her death? It had proved to be the blue-and-white-striped underwear. Conclusion to be drawn? Nothing. Zero. Or at least nothing that Megan could come up with. She felt dulled, as though her instincts were numb. Her mind felt clumsy, and she wished Joe Gallo had never assigned her this homicide. Cynthia Blair was now a week in her grave, and her murder book was still thin.
And Brian McKinney was an asshole.
“I hear your vic put on fresh panties before she died,” McKinney had needled that morning, pressing his hands on her desk as if keeping it from floating off. “Good work, Meg. Have you tracked down where she bought said panties? Might crack this whole case open in no time.”
They say that everybody has somebody who loves them, but to Megan this merely meant that in McKinney ’s case, somebody was loving an asshole. She knew at least some of the reasons he was such a jerk to her. But he was such a jerk, she figured there had to be even more reasons than just the obvious ones. This time he had gone too far. Megan had been tipped off. Tomorrow’s Post was going to have a scoop under Jimmy Puck’s byline. Unnamed sources confirm that Ms. Blair was in her third month of pregnancy at the time of her murder.
Great. Just fine. One more cat out of the bag. Rusty bucket. Leaky bag. Oh, what the hell. Megan finished her wine and poured another glass. She supposed she should be grateful for getting a full ten days into her investigation with the information of Cynthia Blair’s pregnancy remaining under wraps. Cynthia Blair wasn’t McKinney ’s case, he didn’t have anything to lose in handing a goodie like Cynthia’s hitherto unreported pregnancy over to Jimmy Stupid Name Fat Butt Puck. Megan knew that the smirk would be firmly in place on McKinney ’s face when she walked into the station the next morning. And she knew what Joe Gallo would tell her: Don’t take it personally.
But she wasn’t taking it personally. Not this time. It was Cynthia Blair’s parents Megan was thinking about. They’d be the ones taking it personally. Megan had been in Joe’s office when the Blairs had arrived directly from the airport, the two nearly drained of the ability to speak, imploring Joseph Gallo with tear-reddened eyes to end the bad dream right now and present their daughter to them, alive and vibrant. The Blairs took the news of their daughter’s pregnancy as if they had just been told she was composed entirely of green jelly beans. They couldn’t take it in, and they had made Gallo repeat the information three times. Four times, actually, though at that point Joe had turned the chore over to Megan. Maybe it would be better coming from a woman. Megan had felt her skin begin to crawl as she detected the Blairs latching on to her. She was only a year older than Cynthia, and at least to the naked eye, she was a competent, capable young woman in a high-stress environment in the overwhelming city of New York. Just like Cynthia. Only she was still alive. Megan thought that Mrs. Blair in particular was more than ready to go quietly unhinged, take Megan by the hand and tell her, “Pack your things, honey, we’re going home now.” Megan had led the questioning-pro forma, she knew it from the get-go-about Cynthia’s personal life, and did the Blairs have any indication from their daughter that she was seeing anyone in particular? Both Megan and Gallo knew that the questioning was a hollow exercise. People who knew Cynthia much better than the pale couple from Tucson and Cynthia’s close friends and recent work colleagues had all responded to similar questions and offered up nothing except that they’d all thought Cynthia Blair had been too ambitious to have a personal life. That was the general rap. Her life had been her career. Or vice versa. The Blairs offered nothing beyond their full-scale wonder, consternation, and inability to process how the both of them had entered into this surreal dream together and how in the world they would find a way out of it. Joe Gallo had promised them that the information about Cynthia’s pregnancy would remain private. “It’s part of the investigation. But beyond that, it’s nobody’s business but yours.”
The Blairs had shared a look. It was Cynthia’s mother who voiced the thought. “I don’t guess it’s any of our business, either. Cindy didn’t seem to think so.”
THE MEAT IN THE MARINADE remained on the kitchen counter. An intrepid cockroach, having traveled from its favored nesting area within the electrical outlet behind the refrigerator, up the side of the cabinet and across the large open plain of the countertop, lay on its back in the marinade, its infinitesimal feet kicking uselessly, the armor of its skin no protection against the saturating juices. It would be dead by midnight.
The rain was falling steadily, a dim roar, a soft, ceaseless shoosh. Droplets bounced off the sill of Megan’s open window, hitting the side of the toaster oven in a fanlike splatter. Crumbs moved erratically in the growing puddle. A rumble of thunder, and the lights in the apartment flickered, then went off altogether, then flickered back on under a minute later. The clocks in the apartment-the clock radio in the kitchen and the bedside clock radio-kicked to their default, blinking 12:00…12:00…12:00…
OUT AT THE HUDSON PIER, Megan was sitting on one of the stone benches, hugging her knees to her chest. Rain dripped off the brim of her NYPD baseball cap onto the backs of her small hands. She was drenched, wearing only a windbreaker and her thick gray sweats, her feet bone-cold in a pair of saturated Converse low-tops. Her head was bent forward, and she was singing softly into the dry space. She hated the song. Insipid, stupid, ridiculous song. Devoid of all meaning, infantile, banal. Vaguely insulting, even. But the tune had her. She was helpless. It sucked the words out of her as if it were a parasite.
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you…
IT HAD BEEN one of those rumors that go around. In the age of instant communication, it spread like a galloping virus.
Marshall Fox trolls the Internet.
The buzz was that, like millions of his fellow citizens, Marshall Fox liked to cloak his identity and go out there and talk dirty. Very dirty. Entire sites had cropped up devoted to alleged “sightings,” lists of anonymous e-mail addresses that may or may not have been those of the popular late-night celebrity. Exchanges between the “willing” and the “alleged” were posted. Some of the postings had the ring of, if not truth, at least possibility. They sounded like Marshall Fox. They employed his jokes, his manner of speaking, key phrases that were associated with him. Of course, anyone with the ability to type and talent for mimicry could handle that. Most people knew well enough that it was largely considered a game. A celebrity impersonation. Cyberchat with a cyber wax figure. Cybersex with a personable fraud.
For a while it had been all the rage. The term “Fox-Trotter” had been coined to refer to the Fox pretenders. Fox himself encouraged the fad. Several nights a week, he would fashion a comic bit around some of the more outrageous postings attributed to him. As he sifted through handfuls of e-mail messages, his eyebrows would rise in mock amazement, the mischievous grin stretching across his face.
“So, apparently, I was in touch last night with an Ingrid and an Olga. Seems they were determined to tell me everything I wanted to know but was afraid to ask about Swedish meatballs.” He milked the laugh and brandished another of the messages. “Look. Here’s one from some fellow named Sven.” Then, in a falsetto voice and a butchered Swedish accent, “De-yer Mr. Fox. Whatever yew dew? Stey awey from Innnngrid and Oooolga?”
NIKKI ROSSMAN LOVED the Internet. She had once heard it referred to as the portal to instant depravity, and she agreed completely. The Internet had opened up for Nikki an entirely new section of the day. Not really day but morning, though for Nikki, it was just an extension of the night before. Nikki lived in Tribeca, lower Manhattan, an area with no shortage of clubs and bars, and she loved to dance. She especially loved to get stoned and dance. She was an excellent dancer; her bones disappeared and she was all fluid movements, either fast and furious in all directions at once or slow, dreamy, undulating. She loved the glow of perspiration. She loved noise, the more deafening the music, the better. In a jam-packed club with the music pounding, a person can let loose with the sort of full-throttle screams and shrieks that at any other place in the city would give someone cause to snatch up the phone and punch 911. Nikki loved to shriek on the dance floor. It was a self-prescribed turn-on. She’d read something somewhere once about chakras; it hadn’t made sense to her except the part that said loosening one could clear the way for loosening the others. Nikki took to the dance floor with a hopped-up vengeance, whooping and shrieking at the top of her tiny lungs, and in time she could feel the release taking place deep below. It made her hungry for sex-not ever much of a problem in most of the clubs. There were places. Dark corners. Bathrooms. If the night was nearly played out anyway and the guy was cute, there was her place, his place, someplace to go for it. The only risk was that the sex might not hit the spot she wanted it to hit; after the music and the dancing and the chakra-shaking shrieking, the guy had better close the fucking deal, that’s all she could say. She even had a name for the kind of sex she wanted it to be. Cataclysmic. It could be hit-or-miss, she knew that. But baby, when it hit-when it was cataclysmic…
A man she once met at the Cat Club had referred to her as “a tight little package.” Nikki loved that description. She thought of it every night as she readied herself to go out, worming her way into her panties, zipping up her baby-doll skirt. Tight little package. Open me first. She’d touch her wrists, the sides of her neck and her cleavage with any of the dozens of scents she lifted regularly from her job at Bloomie’s, imagining that the heat generated on the dance floor would activate the scent and send it out in all directions. Warm blood for the wolves.
Great fun.
Then along came the Internet. It was nothing cataclysmic; it couldn’t be. Hit the mute button and it was quiet as death. No pounding rhythms. No strobing lights. No pulsing sweat machines moving together around a cramped dance floor. It was a whole different thing. Tamer, no question about it. And a lot of the time, pathetically puerile.
Still, it was there, and it was constant. A portal to instant depravity. Four A.M. Ears buzzing. Chakras only partially satisfied. Turning the key and coming into her apartment alone. Nikki found it uncanny, all these freaks sitting out there God knows where, ready at the click of a mouse to climb into her virtual pants. What a riot! Thousands of them. Unseen by the human eye, cyberspace literally crawling with spunk-that was the only way she could put it. What a freak show. She loved it. Yes, you had to wade your way through the lamebrains-or, as her friend Tina called them, “numb nuts”-but like with anything else, a little practice, a little savvy, you could find what worked for you. They were there, the dudes with the moves. Or maybe some of them were chicks in disguise, but what did she really care? You weren’t going to get any safer sex than this. It was a lark, a harmless way to spend some tawdry minutes before climbing into bed alone and kissing the world good night. And some of these guys were good. Nikki liked to think that she was good, too, that she could give as good as she got. Like in the so-called real world. Lord only knows if 90 percent of the people she chatted up would have registered as big fat zeros on her radar if she’d run across them in person. But in her apartment, lit only by the white glow of her computer screen, what difference did it make? None. Nikki’s prompt was always the same: I’m typing with one finger. Tell me what to do with the other nine.
Very silly. Very immature. But get a clever respondent on the line, someone who had the touch, so to speak, and it wasn’t a bad way to top off the evening before brushing the teeth and giving a quick run of the cold cream.
And sometimes, of course, she took it offline.
NIKKI HAD CHECKED OUT some of the so-called Marshall Fox sites. She never for a minute felt that she was actually in touch with the real Marshall Fox, but still, it was fun. Some of the pretenders were exceedingly creative and funny, and not a few showed an impressive flair for the erotic, which Nikki enjoyed.
One morning she had been online with two of the fakers. One of the fakers was far superior to the other. He had the stuff. He wasn’t quite as clever as the real Marshall Fox, but come on, that guy had a whole bank of writers feeding him lines. But this guy was doing all right. He was pretty funny.
The other one? She wished he’d go away. She wondered if he might not be a twelve-year-old kid just getting his rocks off. Her friend Tina actually enjoyed fooling around with young boys online, but Nikki thought it was creepy. She wasn’t into that kind of thing. This guy had just sent her a typo-ridden posting including a long-winded joke that Nikki had already read online the week before. It was about a talking dog and a beauty pageant contestant and…it was stupid. She wished the other fake Marshall Fox would send something. It had been ten minutes since he had sent her anything. He’d probably gotten offline. That’s where I should be, Nikki told herself. Her elbow hit the mouse as she twisted in her chair to see if dawn’s early light was beginning to show. Not yet. Thank God.
Nikki scanned the talking-dog joke. Her orange fingernails clattered on her keyboard.
Dogs know when I have just had sex.
What the hell. She hit send. A minute later, a message appeared on her screen. It wasn’t from the kid, or whatever he was. It was from the other fake Marshall Fox. The good one. Nikki realized what she must have done. When her elbow hit the mouse, she must have clicked back to the other guy’s last message.
Lucky dogs.
She typed, I’m glad you think so.
The screen was still for nearly a minute. Nikki thought maybe she had lost him. Then:
I want to be a lucky dog.
Nikki giggled out loud as she typed back: The lucky dog who knows I have just had sex or the lucky dog who just had it with me? Oh God. I’ve got to stop this and get some sleep. She hit send.
The answer came back immediately.
Both.
THE CYBER-FLIRTATION HAD gone on for close to two months. He adopted a new identity, just for her. Lucky Dog. For him, Nikki dropped Love Bar and countered with Bitch. He wrote back that she was clever.
Why, I bet you can even do tricks.
He also preferred four in the morning for his online dalliances. He wrote that he was always awake at that hour and enjoyed corresponding with her while the rest of the world slept. Nikki deduced from the comment that he must be located somewhere on the East Coast. When she put the question to him, he responded: I’m Marshall Fox, remember? Where else would I be writing from?
Right. Of course.
They got into a rhythm. At four on the nose, Nikki would shoot out a one-word command.
Speak.
Within seconds came the response.
Woof.
And off they went. Lucky Dog was a riot. So long as they were just bantering back and forth, he kept his postings short. He knew how to make her laugh. He was quick. He picked up on little things she’d mentioned and shot them back to her with his particular skew. They could have been talking in a bar. More than once she found herself wishing that they were.
He was good. It was almost creepy how good he was, almost as if he were crouched behind her as she sat at her computer, whispering into her ear, deftly guiding her hands, guiding her thoughts. Sometimes that was precisely what he wrote:
I’m there with you. I’m in the kitchen at the moment, fetching a glass of warm water. Hang tight, I’ll be right back in. I want to hold it up against your neck.
And a few seconds later:
Okay, I’m back. You can feel it, can’t you? It’s not too hot, just a little warm, right? Good. Why don’t you take my other hand and give that lovely breast of yours a soft touch. You know where. That place we both like.
And damned if she couldn’t feel it. The slight warmth on the back of her neck, almost like a breath. And somebody’s fingers running very lightly over her…
SHE WANTED TO meet him. Yes, it was probably a stupid idea. It would probably ruin everything, but what the hell? She wanted it. Maybe it could be fun. God forbid, maybe it could be cataclysmic.
She broached the subject.
Does Lucky Dog want to come out and play?
It had been a frustrating evening. Nikki and Tina had gone clubbing and ended up in an argument. Over a boy, no less. A hard-bodied Honduran named Victor. They met him at the Vault. Correction. Nikki met him at the Vault. The two were already on the dance floor when Tina came back into the club. She’d gone outside to make a phone call. Victor was hot. Awesome moves, he had Nikki spinning like a top. He lifted her clear off the floor, a rock-solid arm around her small waist. He had dark lashes, cocoa skin, an almost feminine mouth. He’d been into Nikki, she could tell. But something screwed up somewhere. Nikki skipped off to the bathroom to sharpen her makeup, and when she came back, Tina and Victor were practically screwing right on the dance floor. Twenty minutes later, they were practically screwing in the dark hallway on the way to the bathrooms. Nikki purposefully hip-checked Tina as she passed by the two of them, and Tina followed her into the bathroom and nearly tore her eyes out. Nikki had left the club and ended up at Sugar. The cute bartender was there. So was his girlfriend. It looked to Nikki like the breakup wasn’t a whole lot in evidence. The bartender set a Cosmo in front of her. “Six dollars.” She left the drink on the bar.
Lucky Dog didn’t respond for nearly five minutes. Great, Nikki thought. Three strikes and I’m out, now I’ve chased him away. She was just about to send a follow-up telling him she hadn’t meant it, when up popped his response:
Do I have this right? You want to take me out for a walk?
Her heart skipped its next beat. She typed: Only if you promise to heel.
A minute later: Pull hard enough on the leash, baby, I’ll do whatever you want.
Nikki stared at the screen for a long minute. The cursor blinked urgently. He was waiting. She tried to imagine him, but no image came to mind. She had never put even a fantasy face on Lucky Dog. He was a cipher, something strictly in the ether. If she shut down her computer right now, she could keep it that way. They could still play online. They could keep doing their silly things to each other. His hands could still get to her only via her hands. She could remain in complete control. In her darkened apartment. Alone.
She thought of Tina and Victor. The cute bartender and his girlfriend. She ran a hand across her flat, firm tummy.
Well, screw this.
She typed: Your town or mine?
Lucky Dog responded: I’m already here, sweetheart.
In New York?
That’s a fact.
Get out. I don’t believe you.
Would you like me to prove it?
Yes. Prove it.
A minute passed, and then he wrote back, asking what part of the city she lived in.
Tribeca.
What time do you leave for work in the morning?
Around ten.
Perfect. E-mail me right before you leave. I’ll tell you what to do.
Getting bossy, aren’t we?
Pause: You ain’t seen nothing yet.
In the morning, she did as he had requested. He instructed her to go to the drama section of Ruby’s Books on Chambers Street and look through the copies of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. She followed the instructions. Ruby’s was only a couple of blocks past her subway stop. Nikki felt considerably self-conscious the entire time, trying not to be too obvious about looking over her shoulder as she approached the store and made her way to the drama section. He must be watching. But where is he? There were only three other customers in the store, an old lady and two gay guys, and none of them was paying any attention to her. There were four copies of the play on the shelf. The first copy of the play she leafed through had nothing in it that she could see. When she pulled the second copy off the shelf, a small envelope fell from it. Inside was a note and something small wrapped in tissue paper. The note read: And how exactly do you like it?
The tissue contained a slender chain to which was attached an aluminum dog tag. The word BITCH was inscribed on it. Nikki clutched it to her breast and burst into laughter.
She kept the dog tag in the pocket of the white coat she had to wear on the job. Her fingers ran over it so much she was afraid she might wear down the word. At four the following morning, Nikki hopped online.
Okay. Where?
He wrote back: Tribeca Animal Hospital on Lispenard Street .
What???!!!
Ten o’clock tonight.
Are you nuts?
Wait and see.
She gave it one more thought, then typed her response. She lifted her index finger, gave it a kiss and hit send.
MARSHALL FUCKING FOX.
At five minutes past ten, a tan Lincoln Town Car pulled to the curb in front of the Tribeca Soho Animal Hospital. The back door opened, and for Christ’s sake, Marshall Fox-the real Marshall Fox-was sitting there, prairie-wide grin and all. Nikki was speechless. What were the chances? Who in the world was ever going to believe a coincidence like this? Tina would freak. Or wait. Was someone putting her on? Was this all an elaborate hoax? She looked closer. Maybe it wasn’t really Marshall Fox at all. Maybe it was just someone who looked a ton like him.
“Come here,” he said, and he waved her over.
She finally found her voice. “You’re Marshall Fox.”
“Do you know what else I am? I am one lucky little dog.” He reached his hand out. “Now come on over here. I’m not going to bite.”
Three hours later, he’d be proving himself a liar on that count.
Fox and Nikki rode aimlessly around Manhattan, drinking champagne and snorting lines of what Fox promised was the highest-quality pure cocaine. He was, if this was possible, even more charming and funny and sexy in person than he was on television. Nikki was amazed. He sounded like Lucky Dog. He really did sound the way he had in his e-mails. His e-mails. Marshall Fox. The real Marshall Fox.
“I’m going to spend the entire night pinching myself,” she declared as he filled her glass with more bubbly. “ Marshall fucking goddamn Lucky Dog Fox!” For the tenth time that night, she placed her fingers against his cheek. “You’re still real. I am blown away.”
At midnight, he had her between his legs. He watched Columbus Circle go by outside the tinted car windows as he hummed to himself, one hand lazily stirring the woman’s blond hair. Yessir. Lucky, lucky dog.
She had to know. She insisted on knowing. What in the world was going on here?
He explained. No, it had never crossed his mind to go dipping into the anonymous world of cyber-flirting and cybersex, not until the purported Marshall Fox Internet exchanges had erupted to become all the rage. He had found it amusing; witness his use of the craze on his show for a while there.
“Did you notice about when I stopped doing those bits?” he asked.
Nikki told him that the show was usually over by the time she got home. “I mean, I love it and all. I just don’t get to see it all the time.”
“We phased out a couple of months ago. I’d finally gotten curious and gone online. I knew most of the sites. My staff had been monitoring them all. I pulled the plug on the bits soon after you and I started going back and forth. I told my producer it was time to let it drop.”
The Town Car was cruising slowly up Central Park West. Nikki knew that the celebrity was separated from his wife and that he was living in one of these buildings here somewhere. She eyed him with suspicion. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you? Hooked up with someone like this.”
He raised his right hand. “I swear. Never. This is the very first time.”
She smoothed her skirt. “What if I really had been a dog? I mean, you know.”
“I knew you weren’t, sugar. I checked you out.”
She thought a moment. “Ruby’s.”
“I was parked outside. I got me a nice long look as you came up the block. Did you feel the binoculars on you?”
She giggled. “You’re a freak.”
“I liked.”
“Well, still, I could be a certified psycho. You know how this town is.”
Fox proceeded to tell her her full name, where she was born, her current address, where she worked, where she went to college, her Social Security number, even the date of her breast implant surgery and the name of the clinic that had performed the procedure.
Nikki’s jaw dropped. “Explain.”
Fox pressed a button on his armrest. “Danny? Miss Rossman thinks you are a shit for snooping into her life the way you did. I think she’s right. Though she does have to admit, you did great work on such short notice.”
The driver twisted around and gave a thumbs-up through the thick glass pane. Nikki saw his eyes drop down to her legs before they returned to the road.
Fox explained, “Danny followed you after you left the bookstore. I couldn’t exactly do it.” He laughed. “Jesus. We’re really talking cloak-and-dagger here, aren’t we? Anyway, he got hold of your name at Bloomingdale’s and then hustled to get all the rest of it. The man is good. No better assistant in the world. I’m sorry about the invasion of privacy. But hey, all’s well that ends well, as Billy Shakes likes to say.”
Fox’s apartment was in the San Remo on Central Park West. He directed Danny to take the two of them there, and Nikki stayed the night.
“We can do this straight or we can do this wild,” Fox said as he walked her through the spacious living room. “I’m not going to force anything on you. You’re very sweet, and God knows you’re very sexy, and I really do want to gobble up your sweet little ass. But I’m not going to push anything. I’m just happy that you’re here. You, me and no paparazzi. You can’t imagine how good it feels to have a secret. You’re gold to me, lady.”
Nikki remained silent as Fox began unbuttoning his shirt. He stepped closer to her. “Give me your hand, sweetie. I think we’re going to be fine.”
SEVEN NIGHTS SCATTERED throughout three weeks. Seven insane nights. Marshall Fox was a bad, bad boy, no question about it. Bad, bad, and good, good. Fox had a lot of ideas about how to spice things up in the bedroom-or, on one occasion, on the building’s rooftop garden. He was a fantastic lover, even without the toys he liked to bring in on the action. It could get rough sometimes before it was all over, sometimes more than Nikki might have preferred. But look who it was. He was famous. And he was choosing to do all this stuff with her.
And besides, the sex was-yep-cataclysmic.
He’d asked her that first night not to tell anyone what they were up to. “I need one damn thing to call my own, sweetie. Let’s make that you.”
THREE WEEKS AFTER their first date, the body of Cynthia Blair turned up dead in Central Park. She had been strangled and her body had been left at the base of Cleopatra’s Needle just behind the Metropolitan Museum. Nikki didn’t have a phone number where she could call Marshall. Even if she had, she wasn’t sure it would have been the right thing to do. But he wasn’t responding to her messages on his Lucky Dog e-dress. She felt like she was a million miles away from him.
Nikki watched Fox on television and she cried. He looked so lost. It was absurd to even try to do the show, she thought. Look at him. She wanted to hold him and comfort him. Poor baby, he was in such pain. She thought about just showing up at his building but decided that might be wrong. She’d just have to wait and hope that he still wanted to see her. At his request, she’d gone out after their last date and purchased that plaid wool skirt he’d jabbered on about. He’d wanted it for one of his games. Call me, she implored the television set. I’m here, honey. I’ll do anything you need me to do for you. Anything. You’re the boss. I’ll make you forget everything. I can do it.
Nine days after Cynthia Blair’s murder, he contacted her. E-mail. He wanted to see her. That night.
I need normal. Well, okay, you know me better than that. What I don’t need is all the crap that’s been going on this week. I need a break. I need a lucky break. You’re the one, babe. No one else in the whole damn world.
She wrote back immediately: Yes!
Excellent. Danny’ll fetch you at ten. And let’s go with the schoolgirl look. A little virgin sacrifice is good for the soul.
FRESHLY BATHED, Nikki headed down the steps at 9:50. Mrs. Campanella on the third floor was taking a bag of kitchen trash downstairs.
“Look at you, all dolled up. It’s my bedtime, and here you are going out dancing.”
Nikki offered to take the trash from her neighbor and throw it in the can outside the building’s front door. The woman waved her off.
“This is my exercise for the entire day, honey. The doctor says I need to keep active. I might still be climbing back up these stairs by the time you get back from your date.”
Nikki remembered that she had forgotten a sympathy card that she had bought for Cynthia Blair’s family. She wasn’t certain if it was right to ask Marshall to deliver it for her. She had signed it with her initials, followed by “Someone Who Cares,” but she wondered if what she was really doing was trying to score points with Fox. Still, she did feel horrible about what had happened to the woman. Nikki climbed the stairs back to her apartment and fetched the card. It was in a pale blue envelope. Mrs. Campanella was nearing the first floor by the time Nikki made it to the bottom.
“Have a good night, honey. You’d better take an umbrella. They’re calling for rain.”
Danny was leaning up against the Town Car when Nikki emerged from the building. He took her in with an approving look. “Boss man’s going to be one happy camper to see you. He’s been a real pain in the ass the whole week.”
Nikki found Fox in a black mood when she arrived. No surprise. He looked haggard. She handed him the sympathy card. “Maybe it’s stupid.” Fox didn’t say a word about it. He set the card on a small table in the hallway. He seemed distracted, but he tried to pretend that he was fine.
He made them martinis, and they took them out on the balcony. There was a slight rain falling. They remained under the overhang of the balcony above. From up this high-the apartment was on the twenty-sixth floor-the shadowy silhouette of Cleopatra’s Needle was just visible. Fox said nothing but stood sipping his martini, looking out across the tops of the trees toward the stone obelisk. Nikki wanted to touch him, to set her fingers on his arm, but she didn’t dare. His face was impassive, a granite frown. After nearly a minute, he spoke.
“Believe it or not, it’s not Cynthia that’s got me all cranked out. It’s my wife. It’s Rosemary.” He drained his martini. Nikki took the empty glass from his hand. Fox’s gaze stayed aimed toward the far side of the park. “I spent the afternoon with her before heading off to the studio. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a pretty afternoon. That woman…I should give her that dog tag of yours. You’ve got no idea.”
Nikki’s hand went to her memento. “She’ll have to fight me for it. It’s mine.”
Fox’s expression loosened. “Listen. Whatever you do, don’t ever challenge Rosemary. I’m serious. You’re a sweet kid. Rosemary’d rip you to pieces.”
Nikki remained on the balcony while Fox went back in to put together another martini. She couldn’t imagine how he must feel. He’d never said anything to her before about his former producer, though she knew from some stuff she’d read somewhere that the professional relationship had ended on a kind of ugly note. That has to hurt, she thought. You work closely with someone, things end badly, and then she’s killed. No chance to patch things up. She looked out across the park again, over toward where the body of Cynthia Blair had been discovered nine days before. A shudder went through her as she imagined the woman vainly battling off her attacker. Did she see it coming? Did she have time to call for help, to let out a scream? Jesus, Nikki thought. In the middle of the night, this part of the city can get pretty quiet. She thought of Marshall lying in his bed asleep. Or no-awake. Lying awake and hearing a faint distant scream coming in on the night air. You hear that kind of thing all the time and don’t really think anything about it. City noise. You don’t think that someone you know is making the last sound they’re ever going to make or that-
“Hey.”
A splash from her drink ploinked onto her wrist. Fox stepped up behind her. Nikki turned around and looked up at him. Backlit from the living room, Fox’s face was in shadow, his eyes black and absent in their deep sockets.
“That’s a nice skirt, little girl.” There was something absent as well from his voice. His tone was low. Robotic.
Nikki tried a curtsy. “You like it?”
Fox lifted the glass from her hand and finished off the drink, then casually tossed the glass aside. It shattered on impact.
“Little girl like jewelry?”
He pulled something shiny from his pocket and held it up. Light from the apartment glinted off its surface.
Nikki took the handcuffs from him and gave him a coy smile. “Aw. You shouldn’t have.”
Minutes later, Nikki was lying on the bed, faceup, with both wrists handcuffed to the bars of the antique wire headboard. Her V-neck sweater was bunched on the floor. The dog tag rested just between her perfect breasts. Fox was pulling off his shirt.
“That skirt’s got to go, little girl. We’ve got to get that thing off you.”
He picked up something shiny from beside the alarm clock as he climbed onto the bed. A pair of scissors. When he came down on top of her, Nikki imagined the warmth of her own torso melting him. Melting them both. Like hard rubber going soft. She imagined the two of them as warm melting liquid. That was it. Nothing but liquid. Everywhere. Warm liquid all over the damn place. Crazy with liquid.
“Cut it,” she murmured into his ear, giving it a sharp bite. “Go ahead. Cut it.”
MEGAN STOOD in the drizzle at the base of the Obelisk and read the translation of the inscribed plaques.
Ramesses, Beloved-of-Amun, who came forth
from the womb in order to receive the crowns
of Ra, who created him to be sole lord the
Lord of the Two Lands…
Okay, she thought. So we’re looking for Ramesses, beloved of Amun. This’ll be a piece of cake.
The roof of the museum was visible beyond the trees. Megan’s dulled mind whirred. The rooftop garden. Mount an infrared camera. Bastard tries for number three, we nail him. She looked over at the sheet-covered body, and the bile rose in her throat. The canopy had been set up to protect the immediate crime scene from any additional rain intrusion. The scene’s likeness to a funeral was unavoidable. The body, the canopy, the world’s tallest gravestone. Megan’s new partner, Ryan Pope-a decent stand-in for the priest-was standing near the edge of the canopy, looking up at the tip of the Needle.
Megan wanted to crawl into a hole and gather the loose dirt in behind her.
A uniformed cop made his way to her. Raindrops beaded like balls of mercury on the protective plastic of his cap. “Found something you’ll want to see.”
“Show me.”
She followed the policeman down the slight slope north of the monument. A copse of cherry trees stood at the base of the slope, some twenty feet from the roadway. Another uniformed cop was crouched in an area where the branches of several trees created a low canopy.
“We found tracks,” the cop said.
“Tire tracks?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Megan gave the officer a sharp look. Old women were ma’ams. Old women and southerners. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Tell me about your tire tracks.”
He pointed toward the roadway. “They come in over the curb. Looks like they stop where my partner is.”
Megan nodded. “You mean where your partner is tromping all over the wet ground?”
“No, ma’am. John’s the one who spotted the tracks right where he’s squatting. He hasn’t moved.”
She looked at the cop again to make sure he wasn’t being a wise guy. “Tell your partner to stay where he is. I’ll send down the photographer. Make sure he gets everything.”
“If we’re lucky, we might get some footprints leading up to the body.”
“If we’re lucky, I’ll buy your partner a cigar.”
“John doesn’t smoke, ma’am.”
Megan started to respond, then changed her mind. She retraced her steps up the slope and directed the crime-scene photographer to go shoot the tracks. Pope asked her, “What’ve you got?”
“Possibility our package was delivered by car. There’s a clump of trees down there just off the road. At night you could pull in there, your car’d be fairly hidden.”
“No evidence last time of a car.”
“The last time he also didn’t have a hammer and nail ready, either. Not to mention the knife to cut open her throat.”
“He’s refining his method.”
Megan shrugged. “Using more hardware. That’s not necessarily refining.”
The ambulance had arrived to transport the body to the medical examiner’s office. Megan asked that the area beneath the canopy be cleared. At a signal from her, Ryan Pope pulled the sheet back from the victim’s face, paused, then removed it altogether. He stepped back as Megan came forward for a final look.
The body was splayed on the ground on her back. The woman was petite. Maybe five-one. Long blond hair, clumps of which were saturated with blood. Her slender neck was a mess, the blood in the wound more black than red. Like a mass of insects, Megan thought. The victim appeared to have suffered several blows to the left side of her head, just above her ear. Her right arm was stretched out above her head, a pair of handcuffs attached to the wrist. Her left hand was resting on her chest, held in place by what looked to be a nail, hammered dead center.
“Who’d you piss off, cutie?”
Megan’s words were so soft they were barely discernible to Pope. She squatted next to the victim’s head and forced herself to gaze at the face. Perfect skin. White as wax. The large brown eyes were open, staring up at the underside of the canopy. Mascara ran from them like dark, blurred tears. A dozen sentiments crowded onto Megan’s tongue, but she forced them all to retreat. The revolving light of the silent ambulance was playing off the victim’s face, lending the illusion that there was some slight movement there. Megan closed her eyes and uttered a silent prayer. Not so Pope could see, her hand dropped and she let her fingers trail lightly along the victim’s wrist.
IT WAS LESS than an hour after getting back from the park that Megan overheard Brian McKinney starting in on Nicole Rossman. He was cracking a can of Pepsi at the door of the so-called lounge.
“I hear we’ve got someone slashing blow-up dolls out in the park.”
He was talking to Ryan Pope, but his comment was aimed for as large an audience as could hear him, Megan being the prime target. To say nothing in response was to hand him a simple victory. To bother responding was doing the same thing. Lose, lose. Story of her life these days.
Megan said, “Better go check your locker, Brian. See if your doll is missing.”
McKinney gave a deliberately slow reaction, a world-class lousy show of surprise. “Why, it is missing, Detective. But I thought you said you were going to return it last night after you were finished with it.”
Calm, Megan thought. Inhale, exhale. McKinney went on, “I hear you caught yourself a real silicone special over at the Needle. Jackson ’s promised to share some of the shots he took on the scene. Bodacious. He swears he saw a pair just like them at Hooters the other night.”
“Does your mother know you’re this cute?”
McKinney leveled a finger at her. “Hey now, Lamby. Don’t go bringing my dear mother into this.”
“The victim was somebody’s daughter, Brian. It might not hurt to keep that in mind.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Thank you for reminding me, sir.”
Pope shot Megan a sympathetic look. She nodded tersely at the both of them and headed down the corridor toward Gallo’s office. As she rounded the corner, she heard McKinney ’s deliberate stage whisper: “Shake it now, Lamby chops.”
Gallo was at his desk, reading the medical examiner’s preliminary report. He looked up as Megan entered his office. “I’m looking at a number here, Megan. You want to give me a name?”
Megan dropped into the chair in front of Gallo’s desk. “Nicole Vanessa Rossman. Friends called her Nikki. Twenty-four. Single. Employed at the Tigress fragrance counter at Bloomingdale’s. Lived in a rental in Tribeca.”
“Says here there’s evidence of recent sexual activity. Quote, not gentle, unquote. Do we think she was raped?”
“Nothing at the scene takes us in either direction. If it was rape, the panties went back on before the gentleman moved on to his next order of business.”
“Cynthia Blair wasn’t raped.”
“That’s correct. However, both women were left at the base of a fairly obvious phallic symbol.”
Gallo’s eyebrows raised. “I hadn’t thought of that. They didn’t have cigars in their hands, too, by any chance, did they?”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Sorry. It’s just not something I’d have thought of right away.”
“Blame it on my therapy.”
Gallo ran his hand lightly over his hair. “Okay. First thing’s obvious.”
“Who was she seeing?”
“Right. Boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Wanna-be boyfriend. Next-door neighbor with a peephole drilled into the wall.”
“It should be so easy.”
“And the other thing,” Gallo said. “Probably more important. The connection between Rossman and Blair. Were they friends? Did they frequent the same restaurants or bars or clubs? Maybe the same health club. What was it you said Nikki Rossman did? Sold perfume at Bloomingdale’s? See if Cynthia Blair had any of that perfume at her place. Somebody knew the two of them. That’s the triangulation we’ve got to make. We know we’re not talking about a copycat here. We haven’t released the information about Cynthia Blair’s hand being affixed to her chest.”
“And so far, Jimmy Puck doesn’t seem to have gotten the word.”
Gallo took a beat. “We both knew that Blair’s pregnancy was bound to come out sooner or later.”
“It would have been nice if it had come from us. I mean officially.”
“There’s a message for either of us to call Cynthia’s mother in Tucson,” Gallo said. “If it doesn’t make any difference to you, I’m going to make the call.”
“ McKinney should make the fucking call,” Megan said pointedly.
“You wouldn’t do that to the Blairs.”
“No, I guess you’re right. You know, he’s already started, Joe. Just now I had to do a little dance with him about Nicole. For Christ’s sake, she’s practically still warm.”
“No one ever accused McKinney of bucking for the Mr. Sensitivity merit badge.”
“Let’s forget him,” Megan said. “I’m sorry I brought him up.”
“Look, maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe the word on Cynthia being pregnant will bring someone forward. Contacting every obstetrician in the city to see if they were seeing Blair hasn’t exactly been the lean-and-mean approach. It could prove to be a decent leak.”
“Do you want to pin a badge on Jimmy Puck and make it official? This is our case. How about we control the flow of information? Well, forget it. It’s done. Cynthia’s going to be background noise anyway, now that there’s fresh blood. Nicole Rossman was a pretty little sexpot, to put it bluntly. I’m sure you know there’s already a pool on how many days in a row her photo will make front page of the Post.”
“We need a connection between the two, and quick,” Gallo said. “If this is just random women…Well, how many random women do we have in Manhattan alone?” Gallo’s phone rang. He grabbed it. “Yeah? Okay. Tell them I’ll be right out.” He hung up the phone and straightened his tie. “Nicole Rossman’s parents are here.”
Megan groaned. “Take a look through all those papers on your desk, Joe. I know my resignation is in there somewhere.”
MEGAN CALLED a Thai restaurant for takeout. When the delivery guy showed up, she had to walk down the narrow steep stairs of her building to the first floor. One day the buzzer would work again, she just knew it. Josh had offered to fix it, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted the landlord to fix it, like he was supposed to do. Of all the battles a person might choose, Megan knew that this one was among the most ridiculous. She couldn’t explain clearly why she allowed her slovenly landlord to get under her skin. She could have opted to avoid him more often, work around him, call a truce, go on a charm offensive, ignore her apartment’s problems, any of a dozen options.
That she chose to keep him as an object of her anger might have been amusing if it weren’t so pathetic. Josh had been the one to suggest that maybe it was because Helen had always been the one to square off against the landlord and that, in her absence, Megan was taking up the battle. When Josh had floated the theory, it had sounded too pat to Megan’s ear. Typical Josh-think. But as she reflected on it, she had seen the logic. She didn’t want to see it, but it was there and hard to deny.
She paid for her pad thai, giving the delivery guy a good tip. On her way back up the steps, her toe caught a frayed pocket of the runner and she stumbled, almost falling to her knees. The blood rushed into her face. I’ll trip and fall down the steps and I’ll paralyze myself and I’ll sue that fat prick for every fucking cent he’s got.
While eating her noodles in the small kitchen, Megan went through the two sets of crime-scene photographs. She laid them out on the tiled floor, Cynthia Blair on the left, Nicole Rossman on the right. The photographs covered nearly the entire floor. Forensics had determined that Cynthia Blair’s attack had taken place essentially where the body had been discovered, on the west side of the Obelisk, the side facing away from the park roadway. Apparently, Nikki’s attack had taken place elsewhere and she was transported to the site, presumably dead already. Tests were being run on the tire tracks that had been lifted from the wet ground. Megan had sent a team of investigators moving out in widening arcs from the Egyptian monument in search of more evidence of Nikki or her attacker, but by nightfall nothing of consequence had turned up. The teams were going to resume work tomorrow. However, the farther from the Obelisk the teams moved, the less certain Megan was that they would be turning up anything. Still, even notwithstanding the lack of the actual murder site and any evidence that might be gleaned from it, it was significant that whoever had carried out the attack on Nikki had moved the body so that it would be found exactly where Cynthia Blair had been found. Significant of what, Megan didn’t yet know.
The photographs told her nothing she didn’t already know. One a choking with the victim’s own scarf, the other a bashed skull and a knife to the throat. Megan sat with her elbows planted on the kitchen table, scissoring the pad thai with the red lacquered chopsticks she had given Helen for some occasion she could no longer recall. Her eyes trolled back and forth along the sets of photographs. As she seared the photographs into her brain, Megan found value in trying to imagine the killer in the moment before he quit the scene. The crime-scene photographer had taken shots from nearly every angle. At least one of these angles had to approximate the view of the killer as he looked down on his handiwork. Megan rose from her chair and stood over the photographs, casting her own shadow on them.
I’m the killer, she thought. I’m taking one last look at what I’ve done.
She stepped carefully around the photographs of the two slain women, sampling the different angles. Clutching the chopsticks in her right fist, she assumed a sense of being heavier than she was. Taller. With her free hand, she pushed her hair off her face and held it there, clutching it tightly, using the hair to pull her head back, exposing her neck. She looked at a close-up of Nikki’s left hand. Two of her sculpted nails were broken off. Megan placed her own short fingernails against her neck and pressed. She imagined a heavy guttural breathing, sharp grunts as the knife worked its way from one side to the other. She lowered herself to her knees and stared at the open eyes of Nikki Rossman. Then it came to her. The utter loathing for the person who had done this, the person whose actions she was aping in the privacy of her small kitchen. Megan caught her breath. She placed the tips of the chopsticks against her abdomen and pressed them there. Softly at first but then harder. The chopsticks were pressing into her skin. They were hurting. Hurt him, she thought. Let him feel what it’s like. And not a quick slashing cut, either, but something slower and deliberate. Something meaningful. Her hand was beginning to tremble with the effort, and Megan closed her eyes, trying to picture the killer. Faceless. A face in shadow.
Suddenly, as if a fork of lightning had ripped through her imagination, a face did appear. The Swede. Of course. The goddamn Swede. The broad brow. The large dull mouth. Him. She pressed the chopsticks even harder as she imagined Albert Stenborg and his large, oafish smile. She wanted to see blood seeping its way out of the Swede’s mouth. She wanted to see his heavy blue eyes freeze in sudden bewilderment, followed by the awareness. Hands-on this time. Not from a distance. Not with a handgun. So much more meaningful this way. Megan imagined she could move as close to his face as she wished. Close enough to feel his foul breath. Close enough this time to see her own reflection in his eyes, and to see in them the last thing on earth the murderous bastard was ever going to see.
Her.
The chopsticks snapped. The broken ends fell lightly to the floor, landing on the photograph showing a close-up of Nikki Rossman’s hand. The one nailed into her heart. Megan opened her eyes and looked down at her own belly. A tiny pink strip. A quarter-inch cut. In the scheme of things, nothing. On her hands and knees, she gathered up the photographs of the two murder victims, squared off the pile and placed it reverently on the kitchen table. There was enough pad thai in the container for two people. Or for a second meal. Megan finished it off. She took a shower, got into her faded robe and took the photographs into the front room, where she spread them out again on the floor, this time in front of the couch. She poured herself a small glass of bourbon and got onto the couch.
At twelve-thirty, Megan tried getting into bed. She made certain to drink several full glasses of water before she got under the sheets. There was a slight buzzing in her temples. She picked up the remote and turned on the television. Ever since Cynthia Blair’s murder, Megan had made it a habit to watch Midnight with Marshall Fox. She had never been a particularly huge fan of Fox, which she knew put her in the minority. She found his show oddly uneven. This one was a rerun. Megan realized that this was what she had tuned in tonight to find out. Was Marshall Fox going to stand up and make jokes in front of the entire country on the day when another young woman had been found murdered in nearly identical circumstances as his former producer? Megan was glad to see that the answer was no.
Megan watched the rerun for about twenty minutes, then turned it off. She shut off the light, wondering if this would finally be the night. Praying it might. Immediately, Nikki Rossman and Cynthia Blair climbed into bed with her. Next came Brian McKinney. He was followed by Marshall Fox. Megan flipped the light back on. Not tonight, then, dammit.
She got out of bed and went into the bathroom, where she stared at her reflection for over a minute. After this many months, Megan hoped she’d have started to get accustomed to those eyes. But they were every bit as foreign to her as they were the first time she’d seen them, right after she killed the Swede. But maybe that was actually a good thing, she thought, the fact that she wasn’t acclimating to them. She didn’t like looking at them, but she felt she had no choice. She had to face them. They were the only real truth she knew these days, even if it was not a particularly pleasant truth. Helen was dead. Truth. Cold, hard truth. So was the Swede. But the one wasn’t making up for the other. Not like it was supposed to. The math was off. She had dispatched the Swede, but the pain was still there. If anything, it was still growing, not shrinking away into the past like it was supposed to do. And some nights it hurt so horrifically that Megan didn’t know what to do with it. Stay home, she told herself. This was all she knew, her single piece of advice to herself. It was no solution for the pain, but she did know it was the right thing to do. Those several months of crawling into the darkness after taking her leave of absence from the department had not been the solution, not by a long shot. They had hurt. They’d been dangerously harmful. She might have curled up and remained there in the dark places if not for Josh. Thank God for Josh.
Megan shut her eyes and instantly saw Helen’s still and battered form, curled at the feet of Albert Stenborg. Megan felt like a knife was slashing at her lungs. At that precise moment, she knew that she should step down from the investigations. Something unhealthy was at play here. Some murky math. Helen’s killer was dead and in the ground, but apparently that wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Not one cheap life for one beautiful one. The evil of that bastard was still out there, even if the man himself wasn’t. That was the problem. That was what Megan hadn’t succeeded in obliterating-the evil. It slipped from person to person. It had slipped up on Cynthia Blair and on Nikki Rossman. Megan had killed the Swede but not the evil. Albert Stenborg was simply evil’s discarded skin. Irrelevant. It was still out there, on the hunt, reaching from the shadows and plucking victims whenever it pleased.
Megan went into the living room and fetched the photograph of Helen from the bookshelf. She took it to the coffee table and set it there, facing the couch. She lay down on the couch, pulling the thin blanket off the back of the couch and spreading it over her. Not for the first time-not by a long shot-she told herself that if this kept up, she might as well just sell the stupid goddamn bed, for all the good it was doing her.
NIKKI ROSSMAN HAD LAST BEEN reported seen by a neighbor in her building. A widow named Rose Campanella told the police that she had seen Nikki carrying a shoulder bag, climbing into a “big fancy car” on the night before her body was discovered. Mrs. Campanella’s various descriptions of the driver essentially neutralized one another. The driver remained behind the wheel; he got out and opened the door for Nikki. He wore a chauffeur’s cap and outfit; he was “dressed regular.” The driver’s height, weight, hair color-Megan Lamb calculated that the witness had created a minimum of four completely different people who purportedly spirited Nikki Rossman away from her Tribeca apartment some four to eight hours before her murder.
Megan walked Mrs. Campanella through her story close to a dozen times. Fact and fiction were so intertwined in the rendering that the detective despaired of culling anything at all useful. Megan conducted the interview in the elderly woman’s apartment, two flights down from where Nikki had lived. She could not identify the pungent odor that permeated the apartment; an uneasy blend of peppermint, vinegar and mildew was the best she could come up with. The Lord Our Savior Jesus Christ was heavily represented on the walls, the bookcases, the tchotchke shelves. The furniture was covered in flower-print fabrics. The lamp shades were the color of nicotine and gave off a sepia glow. Midway through the interview, a pillow on the couch where Mrs. Campanella was seated suddenly stood up and stretched. Not vinegar, Megan said to herself. Cat piss. By God, am I a detective or am I a detective?
Megan was ready to toss in the towel when Mrs. Campanella mentioned that Nikki had offered to throw away her trash for her. Megan pounced.
“Trash? You didn’t mention anything about trash before.”
“I don’t think you asked.”
“Your building’s trash cans are caged out front, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“So what do you mean, throw your trash away? Do you mean she offered to lift the lid so you could toss the trash in?”
“No, no, my legs give me trouble. You see how I walk? It will take me an hour to go where you can go in a minute. I am so slow. The sweet pretty girl. She says she will take my trash downstairs for me and throw it out.”
“Take the trash downstairs?”
“Yes.”
“From where? Where was she when she said this?”
“Outside my apartment. In the hallway.”
Megan dug her nails into her palms. To Mrs. Campanella, she continued to show a patient, friendly face. “So then this conversation didn’t take place in front of your building. This wasn’t right before you saw Ms. Rossman get into the fancy car.” To herself, she added: with the tall, short, blond, brunet driver who was and wasn’t wearing a chauffeur’s outfit.
“Yes. It didn’t. This is right here. The girl is coming down the stairs.”
“But Mrs. Campanella. If you encountered Ms. Rossman right outside your door, on the third floor, how could you then see her getting into the car in front of your building? I’m assuming Ms. Rossman walked faster than you do.”
“A newborn baby walks faster than I do, honey. When I was younger, I could dance, I could stay on my feet all day and night if I wanted. You have no-”
“Mrs. Campanella. If you saw Nikki outside your door and she headed downstairs, how did you also see her downstairs getting into a car? Are there windows in the stairwell?”
“No window.”
“Did Nikki accompany you down the stairs?”
“No. That is not what happened. She is dressed to go out and have fun. Not to waste her time with an old woman like me.”
Megan silently implored the blue-eyed Jesus on the wall behind the woman. Help me. “So okay. Nikki would have reached the ground floor well before you got there. And there was no window in the stairs. Was the car not yet there and waiting for her? Is that it? Was Ms. Rossman still waiting for it when you got downstairs?”
“No. Not that. She says she is forgetting something. When she sees me on the stairs, she says she is forgetting something, and she goes back up to her apartment.”
“She goes back upstairs,” Megan said evenly. “You forgot to mention that the other times.”
“Did I? Well, I am nervous. This pretty girl in my building, you saw what happened to her. It is horrible. How can I feel safe?”
“Of course. I’m not criticizing you. You’re doing fine. Let’s just get this straight. Ms. Rossman went back upstairs to her apartment to get something she forgot. Did she mention what it was?”
“No.”
“You proceeded downstairs with your trash?”
“Yes.”
“And when Ms. Rossman appeared downstairs-”
“She had it.”
Megan leaned forward, twining her fingers into a single fist. “It.”
“The envelope.”
Megan hoped her smile didn’t look as weary as she felt. “I don’t think I’ve heard anything about an envelope, Mrs. Campanella.”
“A blue envelope. A square blue envelope.”
“You mean like a birthday card?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not asking if it necessarily was a birthday card, Mrs. Campanella. But that kind of card? The kind of card you buy for someone’s birthday?”
“I don’t know what kind of card it is. It is an envelope. Blue. Like the sky.”
“She didn’t happen to mention that she was going to a birthday party or some other sort of celebration?”
“Not to me she doesn’t.”
“But you think this is what Ms. Rossman went back up to her apartment to fetch? This sky-blue envelope?”
The woman made a clucking noise. “You are the detective, not me.”
Megan jotted down in her notebook: Card. Blue. Occasion?
“Thank you, Mrs. Campanella. You’ve been very helpful.”
Megan climbed the stairs to Nikki’s apartment. Ryan Pope was sitting at the kitchen table, eating an apple. In his other hand was a small circular plastic case.
“Are you on the pill?” Megan asked.
“Somebody was.” He offered the case. Megan took it from him and opened it. “Night before last. We can assume she was meaning to come home.”
There were footsteps on the stairs, then a knock on the doorjamb. “Dead lady live here?”
It was Rodrigo, one of the department IT guys. Rodrigo came into the apartment carrying a slender metal attaché case, and Megan directed him to a table in the front room. A computer was sitting on the table. The chair in front of it was a miniature armchair. It had one of those beanbag pillows on it, the kind you sometimes see people bringing with them on airplanes. This one was hot pink. The chair looked to Megan like the kind a person would settle into, spend some time in. Megan was curious about the computer.
“I want everything in it,” she said to Rodrigo.
“I’ll vacuum that puppy.”
“No crumbs. Get it all.”
“Do you want to dust the keyboard first?”
Megan thought for a moment. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
Rodrigo perched on the edge of the chair, flipped open his attaché case and got to work. Megan stepped into the bedroom. It was fairly neat. A bra on the floor, along with about eight shoes that looked like they’d decided to get up and walk around on their own. The bed was made. Nikki’s bedside reading was a stack of Marie Claire magazines, People, an old Time. On the dresser Megan found a merchandise tag from a boutique called Liana: WOOL â„ PLD SIZE 4. When she was found in the park, Nikki had been wearing a black sweater under a red crepe jacket and a thin black cotton skirt. Nothing plaid. Megan pulled open the dresser drawers and rifled quickly through the clothes. She did the same thing in Nikki’s closet. Curious, she went into the bathroom, where she found a light blue duffel filled partway with dirty clothes. Ryan Pope stepped to the door as Megan was dumping the dirty clothes out onto the floor.
“I’ve seen Kathy do this before,” Pope said. “You’ll want to sort out the colors from the whites.”
“It’s not here.”
“What’s not here?”
Megan was thinking out loud. “It’s possible she returned it to the store.”
“What store? What’re you looking for?”
Megan had a thought and very nearly regretted having it. She pushed past Pope and went back downstairs and rang Mrs. Campanella’s buzzer.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Campanella. But I was wondering if you by any chance recall what Ms. Rossman was wearing that night you saw her.”
The woman answered immediately. “She had on a puffy jacket. It was red. And a green and black skirt.”
“Green and black?”
“Yes. Plaid.”
“Plaid? You’re sure?”
“I remember thinking that she looked like Christmas. With red and green.”
“Green plaid.”
“Plaid. Squares on top of other squares. Isn’t this plaid?”
Megan thanked her again. As she ascended the stairs, she turned the information over in her head. She leaves her apartment in a new plaid wool skirt, but she’s found dead in a black cotton skirt. Means? Obviously, it means she changed somewhere along the line. Changed skirts but not her entire outfit. Why? Megan had no idea. The conundrum popped completely out of her head when she reentered Nikki’s apartment. Pope was standing behind Rodrigo, peering over his shoulder at the computer screen.
“Finding anything?” Megan asked.
Rodrigo’s eyes remained on the screen. It was Pope who looked up.
“Gold mine.”
MEGAN LOST IT. She felt the eruption starting and was helpless to lock down the lid.
“Son of a bitch!” She grabbed the blow-up doll by the arm, pulled it out of her chair and stormed across the hall. Ryan Pope was seated at a table with two uniformed cops. “Where is he?” she demanded.
She followed the eyes. Brian McKinney was leaning against the soda machine on the far side of the room, nibbling on a partially unwrapped candy bar. “Who’s your friend, Detective? She’s kinda cute.”
Megan crossed the room in a blood fury. Everything blurred except the smug bastard peeling back the candy wrapper as if it were a banana peel. She stopped several feet in front of him. Instantly, she regretted having stormed into the corral like this. She knew how ridiculous she must look, standing there with a beet-red face, clutching the female-figure balloon. McKinney certainly knew how ridiculous she looked. His measured aplomb was a precise contrast.
No going forward, no going back. Lose, lose. Dammit, the man did have his talents. Megan gulped her rage. As much as she could. “Maybe you’d like to explain this.” She clenched her teeth in order to keep the waver out of her voice.
“Explain it?”
“Yes.”
McKinney glanced past her at his audience. “Really?”
“Yes.”
McKinney shrugged and pushed himself off the soda machine. He removed the remainder of the wrapper from the candy bar, and before Megan could react, he prodded the black candy into the ugly puckered mouth opening of the balloon.
“Maybe you can help me out with this. If I understand this correctly, you-”
Megan’s slap was dead-on. Her entire hand covered the left side of McKinney ’s face. “You fucking bastard!”
“That’s assault,” McKinney said calmly.
She wanted to hit him again. There were actual white finger marks on his cheek where she’d slapped him, though they quickly disappeared under the rising pink. The candy bar had fallen to the floor when McKinney took the slap. He reached down and picked it up and held it out to Megan. “I guess a girl like you is a little out of practice for this. Why don’t I-”
She went at him. Though she was nearly half his body weight, her shove sent him backward into the soda machine. Her hand came up and slashed at his cheek, cutting a small pink swath. As McKinney attempted to turn his head away from the attack, Megan dug a thumb at the corner of his left eye. McKinney let out a grunt. “Fuck!”
His head whipped back against the soda machine, cracking the plastic bubble atop the Pepsi logo. Megan’s thumb kept digging, while with her other hand she shoved the blow-up doll at McKinney’s face, jamming its puckered ear into his slightly opened mouth and pressing it there with all her strength. The noise coming up from her throat sounded only vaguely human. McKinney took a mouthful of the doll, his head backed up against the soda machine, before he managed to twist his head free. He brought his arm up hard and broke Megan’s grip on him. “Bitch!”
Megan heard the skidding of chairs behind her. She reached for her belt. With blurring speed, she unholstered her Glock and brought the muzzle up under the offensive detective’s nose, prodding it partway up one nostril.
“Megan!”
Joe Gallo moved from the doorway, sweeping past Pope and the two cops. McKinney ’s fear showed through his nervous laugh.
“Hey there, Lieutenant. I think we-”
“Shut up.” Gallo addressed Megan: “Holster it. Now!”
Megan hesitated. She could feel her heartbeat as far out as her elbows.
Gallo repeated, “Now!”
She pulled the gun away from McKinney ’s face. Her breath dropped away. She realized she was about to cry. Dear God, no. Do not cry in front of this ape. Not in front of any of them.
McKinney started again. “Lieutenant, look. Miss-”
“Can it.” Gallo looked from Megan to the grotesque doll she was still clutching in her other hand. He held out his hand, snapping his fingers. “Give.” Megan handed the thing to him. She felt as meek as a child. It was horrible. “Put your gun away, Detective.”
As Megan reholstered her weapon, Gallo plucked a pen from McKinney ’s shirt pocket and plunged it into the rubber doll. Megan let out an involuntary gasp. Gallo shoved the deflating doll into McKinney ’s arms. “My office. Five minutes.” He turned to Megan: “You. Now.”
He spun on his heel and left the room. Megan watched him as if he were disappearing down a tube. She wanted to dematerialize. Behind her, McKinney was scrunching the doll up in his arms.
“You’re a sick little twit, you know that?”
Before she could respond, Megan caught Ryan Pope’s eye. She could feel the blood surging into her face. Her cheeks felt blister-hot. She eyed the door across the room. It seemed years away.
“IS THERE ANYTHING you’d like to tell me?” Joe Gallo shot his cuffs and landed his wrists gently on his desk.
“He’s an ape.”
“I don’t care if he’s an ape, Megan. You pulled your weapon on him. Do you mind telling me what it was you had in mind?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
Gallo made a show of rolling his eyes. “You weren’t thinking? Let me tell you something. That gun comes out of its holster, I want you to be Albert Einstein, you’re thinking so fucking hard. For Christ’s sake, do I have to tell you how stupid-”
“No, you don’t. I know it was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“Is that what you would’ve said if McKinney was lying in there right now with a hole out the back of his head? ‘Oh. Sorry, Joe. I was angry’?”
“I was angry. He-”
“Then kick a dog! Go into the ladies’ room and scream at the top of your lungs. Hold it in until you get home, then wreck your place, I don’t care. But I’m telling you right now what I’m not having. I’m not having one of my detectives pull her goddamn weapon on another one of my detectives in the goddamn precinct house. Or anywhere else. McKinney ’s an ape, fine. No argument here. They got apes at the Bronx Zoo. You want to go up and take a few shots at them, too?”
“I didn’t take-”
Gallo leveled a finger at her. “Are you good? That’s what I’m asking.”
“Am I-”
“Good. You tell it right here, Megan. I backed you up for reinstatement. You’re aware of that. I still think there’s plenty cop left in you. In fact, I know there is. You got bucked way the hell off the saddle, that’s no secret. It was a hell of a hit you took, but you told me you wanted to come back. And you’re back. We talked about McKinney already. We talked about all the other crap that was likely to come up now and then, so nothing’s a surprise here. I’m not going to put this delicately. To some people out there, you’re a freak. Apes like McKinney are never going to understand people-” He cut himself off.
“People what? People like me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, fuck you very much, Lieutenant. At least it’s nice to know where you stand.”
“You know where I stand, Megan. Don’t try to go isolating yourself.”
“Not to worry. That’s taking care of itself. You’re the one who said it, Joe. I’m a freak. To Brian McKinney, I’m the bull dyke who failed to protect my partner.” She gave a laugh. “Partner. For Christ’s sake, I failed to protect both my partners. Though I’m sure McKinney ’s not too glum about Helen-”
“Stop it!” Gallo slammed his hand down on the desk with such force, it gave Megan a start. “Look, I can’t hold your hand on this.”
“No one’s asking you to.”
“Do your job, Megan. To some people here, you’re a hero for loading up Albert Stenborg with lead. To some, you’re trigger-happy. Those are the facts. Either way, it’s on you like a big tattoo right on your forehead. Forget your personal life. I don’t give a damn about your personal life. Professionally, you’re a freak. You’re in a small, select club, and not a particularly happy one. You know the speech, it can make you a better cop or it can ruin you. You told me it was going to make you a better cop, and I happen to believe you. But a better cop does not pull the kind of stunt you just pulled in there. The bad guys are out there.” He gestured toward his window. “There’s one in particular we need to find and find quickly, and if Brian McKinney’s schoolboy pranks are going to distract you from your job, now’s the time to tell me. That’s bush-league distraction, Megan. I won’t put up with it. I need you focused. You’re back in the saddle. It’s up to you. Do you ride or do you slide back off?”
Megan didn’t hesitate. “I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. You’re right. McKinney’s going to bust my chops no matter what, and I might as well get used to it.”
“Good.” Gallo leaned back in his chair. “Now. Do you want to file charges?”
Megan’s mouth dropped open. “Charges?”
“Sexual harassment. You’ve got three witnesses. Four, including me. If you want to file, I’ll understand completely.”
“You must be kidding.”
“You can burn him if you want to. I’d just like a heads-up if you chose that route.”
“Sexual harassment? For Christ’s sake, I put a gun in the man’s face. I’m going to sue him?”
“Gun?” Gallo made a large point of blinking. “Brian McKinney’s a pain in my ass. It wouldn’t destroy me to see him transferred out. But the easiest way to do that is to get some leverage.”
“Three other men saw me pull my gun.”
“Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. I’d have to talk with them.”
Megan shook her head. “Joe, that’s railroading. Worse, it’s perjury.”
“It’s just a question. I thought I’d get it out there for you to consider.”
“If I file sexual harassment charges, I’m finished. You know that. Talk about a tattoo on my forehead.”
“That’s a little dramatic.”
“I’m not filing.”
“You should take some time to think about it.”
“I’ve thought about it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I want to get back to Nikki and Cynthia.”
Gallo paused a few seconds. “Good. Let’s do it. You’ve got to give me a few minutes first to read McKinney the riot act.”
Megan waved him off. “Forget it. Don’t do it on my account. You’re not going to change him.”
“I could force him to apologize. You two could kiss and make up.”
Megan felt a flutter in her chest. It was as if a feather were fooling around behind her rib cage. Oh Christ, she thought. I’m going to say it.
“Hey, Joe, I don’t kiss boys, remember? That’s the basic problem here in the first place.”
RYAN POPE HAD NOT been exaggerating when he termed the contents of Nikki Rossman’s computer a gold mine. The printouts of material pulled from the dead woman’s hard drive were beginning to resemble skyscrapers. Sifting through the voluminous correspondences that Nikki had conducted with untold numbers of strangers (the tally was still not complete), Pope had commented, “This kind of throws into question the whole matter of just what is a healthy sex life.”
Pope and Megan talked to the people Nikki had worked with at Bloomingdale’s. They went through her address book. From a friend named Tina, they heard that Nikki had been hitting pretty hard on a bartender who worked at a bar fairly near Nikki’s apartment. They checked it out. The bartender’s girlfriend was present when Megan and Pope came into the bar to talk with him. The detectives picked up on some tension between the couple concerning the topic of Nikki Rossman, but nothing that suggested either of the two had staved in her skull, strangled her, slit her throat and dumped her body in Central Park. Not to mention that they both presented solid alibis.
At least one question got answered: the connection between Cynthia Blair and Nikki Rossman. Nikki’s computer overflowed with correspondence between her and dozens of faux Foxes, or Fox-Trotters. Megan and Pope showed photographs of Cynthia Blair to everyone they interviewed about Nikki, trying to deepen the connection. They also had a team retrace their steps and re-interview everyone who had been contacted previously concerning Cynthia Blair’s murder, showing them photographs of Nikki Rossman. Nothing surfaced. Two women from two different worlds.
“Crazed fan,” Joe Gallo said to the two detectives as they sat in his office going over what were being dubbed the “prime printouts.” “I know you don’t like it coming back down to that. I don’t, either. That gives us something like six million potential suspects. But that’s still the link between these two women. One worked for Marshall Fox, and the other one cyber-flirted with a bunch of his clones. Somebody out there has a screw loose for this guy. Scour the fan sites. Check with the people at the studio. See if anyone can be identified who keeps popping up in the studio audience.”
Working with the different Internet providers, Rodrigo and his team had been able to identify the majority of the people Nikki Rossman had corresponded with. Of the Marshall Fox wannabes who had been identified so far, Megan and Pope were finding most of them fairly easy to eliminate. Gallo had given Brian McKinney to the detectives to assist in running down alibis. Megan appreciated the gesture.
There were eighteen Fox-Trotters who had yet to be identified. Gallo was skimming through some of the printouts. “Did this woman ever sleep?”
Pope answered, “Lieutenant, I think we’re talking about a woman who had a permanent on switch.”
Gallo looked up from one of the printouts. “If that were the case, we wouldn’t be sitting here reading her private mail. Someone found the off switch.” He leaned forward at the desk and handed one of the printouts to Pope. “This one.”
“Some of these people dig themselves in pretty deep,” Megan said. “In cyberspace, if you don’t want to be found, you won’t be.”
“‘Won’t’ don’t cut it,” Gallo said. “You know that.” He indicated the paper as Pope passed it to Megan. “Unhide this one. This guy had Ms. Rossman spinning on her thumb, if you’ll excuse the bluntness. I want him in my office. I want to see if we can make him spin a little.”
Megan looked down at the printout. “Lucky Dog.”
“That one,” Gallo said. “Lucky Dog. Fetch.”
WATERCOOLERS.
Chat rooms.
Talk radio.
Joe Gallo was aware of the talk. How couldn’t he be? Hell, his own wife was practically addicted to the topic. Gallo hoped that if he ever had as much free time on his hands as Sylvie, he would find something more productive to do with it than sit around and gossip about people he had never met. For her part, Sylvie Gallo thought her husband was missing the boat.
“My girlfriends think you’re a dupe, Joey. Look at him, all smooth and contrite. I’m telling you, he’s throwing this thing in your face. My girlfriends can’t believe you haven’t locked him up yet. You’re too cautious, Joey. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you are.”
Marshall Fox.
Even though prevailing sentiment was that an unbalanced fan of the late-night entertainer would eventually be found to be responsible for the twin killings in Central Park, the drumbeat of speculation that Fox was actually the killer was building a steady rhythm across the airwaves, phone lines, cyberspace, backyard fences, all of it. The notion was too delicious not to bandy about. The name of O. J. Simpson was being invoked. “O.J. East,” people were saying.
“I don’t know,” Gallo said to Megan two days after Nicole Rossman’s burial. The homicide chief was sitting at his desk, fiddling with a $1.50 wicker tube from Chinatown. Chinese handcuffs. “Are we being stupid? Should we be taking a closer look?”
Megan shook her head. “Based on what? Equal treatment under the law, Joe. Fox doesn’t get cut any breaks for being famous, and we also don’t send out a premature lynch squad because he’s famous. I’m not about to be railroaded by the rumor mill. He’ll earn his way onto the suspect list just like everyone else. Reasonable cause. Nothing less.”
Gallo eased the tips of his index fingers into the Chinese handcuffs, then gave them the slightest tug. The wicker tightened instantly. “I got a call from Cynthia Blair’s mother this morning. She wanted to know what I thought about Fox as a suspect.”
“And you told her what?”
Gallo grinned. “I told her he’ll have to earn his way onto the suspect list like everyone else.”
“And here I thought I was being original.”
Gallo slithered one finger farther into the Chinese handcuffs, making a futile attempt to wiggle the other finger free. The toy did not cooperate. “This thing’s probably a metaphor,” the lieutenant said. “I just haven’t sorted it out yet.”
“The Chinese handcuffs?”
“Yes.”
“The harder you try, the worse it gets.”
“Right. But the more you just relax and try to give in, the worse it gets, too.”
“There’s your metaphor.”
“It’s a depressing one.”
“Welcome to the world.”
Gallo’s phone rang. He indicated his shanghaied hands. “Do you want to get that for me?”
“What? You get caught in a metaphor and suddenly I’m your secretary?” Megan leaned forward and answered the phone. It was the attorney Zachary Riddick.
“I’m looking for Gallo,” he said.
Megan winked at her boss. “I’m sorry, Mr. Riddick, the lieutenant is tied up for the moment. This is Detective Lamb. Can I help you with something?”
“I’m calling on behalf of Marshall Fox.”
“What about Mr. Fox?”
“I want it on record that we contacted you first.”
Megan’s eyebrows rose. She glanced over at Gallo. “Noted. You contacted us first.”
“I need to have a meeting with Gallo right away. Could you please get him on the line?”
“May I ask what specifically is the purpose of this meeting?”
“You may not.” If the lawyer was attempting to conceal his impatience, he was failing handily. “I need to speak with Gallo. Where the hell is he?”
“If you would like-”
“Would it help my cause, Ms. Lamb, if I tell you that this is an urgent matter?”
“That’s coming through.”
Behind his desk, Gallo was managing at last to wiggle a knuckle free of the wicker toy. On the phone, Riddick muttered something under his breath; Megan was unable to catch it.
“I’m writing down the time,” the lawyer said. “According to my watch, it is one-thirty-two.”
Megan checked her watch. “I’ve got one-thirty-six, Mr. Riddick.”
Riddick muttered again; this time Megan caught it. “It’s Lamb, right?”
“That’s right.”
“May I ask you a favor, dear? If it’s all the same to you, can you not fuck with me at this precise moment in time?”
Gallo had freed himself. Megan dropped a dollop of sugar into her voice. “Lieutenant Gallo can speak with you now. Please hold.” She clamped her palm over the mouthpiece and held it to her chest.
Gallo asked, “What are you doing?”
“At this precise moment in time, I’m fucking with him.”
ZACHARY RIDDICK’S EYES MOVED from Joe Gallo to Detective Lamb, where they lingered a few seconds. Megan entertained an image of whipping her elbow up into his nose. Instead, she maintained a deadpan expression.
Gallo spoke. “Afternoon, Zachary. I don’t recall if you’ve met Detective Lamb? Detective, this is Zachary Riddick.”
“You’re the girl who killed the Swede, right?”
The question landed in Megan’s stomach. “I’m not the girl who did anything,” she said evenly.
“Right. My apologies. You’re the woman who killed the Swede. I wasn’t aware you were back on the force.”
Gallo stepped across the threshold. “Are you going to invite us in, Zachary?”
“Of course.” Riddick stepped back, pulling the door the rest of the way open. “Straight ahead. They’re in the living room.”
Megan’s eyes remained fixed on her boss’s back as she went through the doorway. Riddick enjoyed her profile as she passed. With a low hum, he made sure she knew it.
The detectives followed a short hallway that opened up into a large room dominated by a spectacular view of the thick Central Park plumage. Seated on a tan leather couch was Marshall Fox. He was dressed in jeans and an open-collared blue shirt. His long legs were crossed. He was wearing a pair of mud-red armadillo boots and was picking at the pointy toe of one of the boots, as if trying to scrape away the scales and open up a hole. He looked up as Gallo and Megan Lamb entered the room. My God, Megan thought. He really is a handsome devil, isn’t he?
Fox smiled wanly. “They’re coming to take me away, ha ha, hee hee, ho ho.” Megan recognized the obscure novelty song of several decades previous. Rising from a matching leather armchair was Alan Ross, director of programming for KBS Television. He shot a pleading look at Fox. “Marshall.”
Fox lowered his boot to the floor. “Yes, dear,” he grumbled in a deliberately nasal monotone.
Ross stepped forward, hand extended. He aimed first for the senior detective. “Lieutenant Gallo. Nothing personal, but it would be nice if we could stop meeting like this. Thank you very much for coming.”
The two shook hands. Gallo nodded tersely. “This is Detective Lamb. She’s lead investigator in the Blair and Rossman killings.”
Riddick had stepped into the room. He took up a spot against the entry wall, arms crossed, a slightly bemused look on his face. Ross and Megan shook hands. “You both know Marshall, of course,” Ross said.
Fox rose from the couch, addressing Gallo: “No offense, Detective. But you probably could have gotten a lot more out of me the last time we met if you’d brought Miss Lamb along.” He crossed to the couple. “Marshall Fox, ma’am.”
“How do you do, Mr. Fox?”
“On balance? Does the phrase ‘I’d rather be having a voluntary root canal’ give you an idea?”
“Marshall.” Ross’s tone was a bit less pleading this time. The executive addressed the detectives. “Please have a seat. I know you two are busy. We’ll keep this as brief as possible.”
Riddick remained standing until the others had settled in. Taking an eye cue from Ross, the lawyer crossed to the couch, giving Fox a comradely pat on the knee as he sat down next to him.
The lawyer began. “Marshall has some information he would like to pass along to the authorities.” Fox opened his mouth to speak, but Riddick waved him off. “Hold up. Before Mr. Fox shares this information, we would like an assurance that this is a private conversation.”
“That’s fine,” Gallo said. “Except this isn’t a private conversation. Detective Lamb and I haven’t dropped by for tea. You have something you would like to share with us, Mr. Fox?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Riddick held his hands out as if a herd of cattle were bearing down on him. “Detective, we are making a voluntary statement here. On our own initiative. All we’re asking is that we don’t open the paper tomorrow and see the details of Mr. Fox’s statement splattered across the front page.”
“I’m not in the business of doing reporters’ work for them,” Gallo said.
“I’m not saying you specifically, Lieutenant.”
Gallo turned to Megan. She noted the light in his dark eyes. He said, “Are you and Jimmy Puck taking bubble baths together again, Detective Lamb?”
Megan had pulled out her notebook and flipped it open. She produced a ballpoint pen and clicked it. “I’m ready for your statement, Mr. Fox.”
Riddick blurted, “Wait. Hold on. We need to be on the same page here.” He turned to Ross. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, Alan.”
Fox muttered, “I could use a drink,” and fell back on the couch, bringing his boot back to his knee and recommencing his excavation work.
Alan Ross cleared his throat. Megan had the sense that the executive had agreed to Riddick launching the conversation but was now pulling rank. The sense came as much from Ross as it did from the way in which Riddick let his arms drop to his sides with a poorly veiled petulance. If she needed confirmation, Fox provided it, mimicking Riddick with a pat to his knee.
Ross began. “Lieutenant Gallo, you know this from the last time we met. But for Detective Lamb’s edification, I am here as Marshall’s friend, not as a representative of the network. The network’s investment in Marshall as one of our most valuable talents is immaterial to my being here. I want there to be no sense of corporate coercion at play, you understand? I’m here on behalf of my friend. I probably don’t even have to be saying this, but just in case, I’d like us to at least be on that same page.”
He took the opportunity to give Zachary Riddick one of his repertoire’s less generous smiles, then continued, “My wife and I are responsible for Marshall having come to New York in the first place. I don’t think I’m betraying any confidences in telling you that Marshall has had more than his share of occasions over the past several years to wonder if gracing our city with his presence has been worth it to him in the big picture. Fame might look pretty fabulous from the outside, but Marshall will be the first to tell you that some of the costs can make a person wonder if it’s all worth it.”
From the couch, Fox cracked, “Alan, you’re going to make me cry.”
“Hold the tears, bubba.” Ross turned back to the detectives. “Lieutenant Gallo, Detective Lamb. I don’t mean to be making a speech here. I’ll shut up in a second. It’s just that you both know full well how huge Marshall is in the public eye. One of the downsides of being so huge is that you make an awfully easy target if someone decides it’s worth their while to take a shot at you.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “That’s what’s happened to Marshall.”
Gallo cut in. “Are you referring to the rumors, Mr. Ross?”
“The rumors?”
“About Mr. Fox and the Blair and Rossman killings.” Gallo turned to Fox. “No offense, but my wife and her cronies are thinking of checking you out for the Lindbergh baby at this point.”
Fox held up his hands. “Hey, I never touched the kid. I don’t even like kids.”
“We’re aware of those rumors, yes,” Ross said. “They’re part of the price of being a celebrity these days. But no. The reason we’ve asked you here concerns something more substantial. This isn’t about the Rossman woman at all, who, by the way, Marshall has no connection with whatsoever. Most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. This concerns Cynthia Blair.” He paused, looking at Fox.
“Go on,” Fox said. “Air the old dirty laundry. The world insists on knowing.”
Ross cleared his throat again. He looked pained. “We have good reason to believe that Marshall is the person responsible for Cynthia’s pregnancy.”
The room fell silent. Megan’s eyes were on her boss, who gave no outward indication of having even heard what Alan Ross had just said. Ross sent a sympathetic look Fox’s way. Almost a paternal look, like that of a disappointed but still supportive father.
Gallo spoke. “Is this true, Mr. Fox?”
The entertainer threw a look at Megan that was almost mischievous. He leaned back on the couch and tilted his head, looking up at the ceiling. He remained silent for several seconds, then exhaled loudly.
“Busted.”
THE AFFAIR HAD BEGUN some two and a half months before Cynthia Blair’s abrupt resignation as producer of Midnight with Marshall Fox. Not a soul on the staff had the vaguest clue. The outward behavior of the show’s star and its producer had not deviated one iota from its standard combative mode. If anything, on reflection, it might have seemed that the daily antagonistics between the two hardheaded personalities was spiking more than usual.
It had started, appropriately enough, with a fight. Fox, at his acerbic best, had tied his producer into ever more infuriating knots until, finally, she had exploded with clenched fists raining down on his head. This had been followed by a burst of angry tears. The simple ugly truth was that Cynthia Blair adored Marshall Fox-her dirty little secret. Herculean efforts notwithstanding, Cynthia had failed to convince herself that she was ever likely to meet another man with the same infuriatingly wonderful qualities as her colleague and erstwhile combatant. At the same time, he offended her in more ways than she could count. Talented, charming, smart, sexy and about as self-centered, arrogant and old-fashioned sexist as anyone she had ever laid eyes on. What Cynthia had hated the most was that from the moment she met him, he had been, for all his evident faults, consistently the single most vibrant person she had ever encountered. Marshall Fox made all the other men she dated bland and pale by comparison, even some of the otherwise considerably dynamic ones. It wasn’t fair. For Cynthia, the son of a bitch had become the gold standard. Damn it all to hell, no one else need apply.
And, of course, he was still married.
Not to mention a royal shit.
Their argument had taken place at Fox’s borrowed apartment early on Friday evening. Fox had invited Cynthia to continue the spirited postmortem of the week’s shows that had kicked up in his office after the taping of the Friday program. Somewhere along the line, the argument had gone terribly awry, and the two had ended up in a sweaty clutch on the tan leather couch. She had remained the entire weekend. If anyone at work on Monday morning noticed that Cynthia was wearing the same outfit she had been wearing on Friday, they didn’t say anything. For her part, Cynthia had felt as if she were going through her workday stark naked, with a big SCREWED BY MARSHALL FOX stenciled diagonally across her front and her back. By the end of the workday, she had determined that the orgiastic weekend with her boss had been an exquisite fluke and that both she and Fox were already back on their standard argumentative footings. But later that evening, Cynthia’s cries echoed in her own ears as her fingers clutched at her boss’s back. This time she managed to get herself home, where she crawled into her bed, curled into a fetal position around her feather pillow and laughed herself to sleep. An open, free, lung-cleansing laughter she could not recall experiencing since she was a child.
For two and a half months, Marshall Fox had driven her into a delirious oblivion. Ten times a day, Cynthia declared silently that she was disgusted with herself and that she could see right through Fox and his king-of-the-mountain game. I’m smarter than this, she told herself. I know better.
And then it ended. She had known it would. In the months since leaving his wife, Marshall Fox had already run through nearly a dozen minor relationships that Cynthia knew of, the most recent being that striking Quaker girl he’d picked up at the Rosses’ annual Long Island orgy. Naturally, it would end. That was the Fox way. Even so, Cynthia had pretended that with her, it would somehow be different. But really, the only difference between her and the others was that she worked with the goddamn man. That was how stupid she had been.
And then the other difference. Or maybe she was being extraordinarily naïve and it wasn’t a difference at all. Maybe Fox had been forced to finesse this development before. She was pregnant. Careful here, careful there, it had still happened. On learning the news, Cynthia had realized instantly that she had no intention of aborting the child. Absolutely not. Being a mother had always been somewhere in her plans (or, if not plans, then intentions), and Cynthia was under no illusions. She was seeing more and more women throwing in the towel early, as far as hoping to land one of the world’s rapidly vanishing species-the worthwhile single man-and when she discovered that she was pregnant, she knew this was her moment. She sobered up concerning Fox himself. There could be no illusions that he would respond to the news with any intent to be a real part of the child’s life. And she was ready for all that. She could see her future. Finally. And she accepted it.
What she had not expected was Marshall Fox’s adamant insistence that she “lose the kid.”
“My fucking seed? My kid? Oh, I don’t think so, Miss Cindy. That’s not the plan, girl. Word will get out, I know it will. You’ll tell. One of your friends will tell. Or the little bastard will look like me. Uh-uh. No, ma’am. I’ve got some plans of my own, you know. I’m waking up and smelling the coffee, honey, and it still smells like the lovely Rosemary. We’re in negotiations as we speak, so don’t even think you can go pulling a stunt like this. It goes. If I have to rip the damn thing out myself. This isn’t going to happen. Have you got that? Not in the script, Cindy. Not in the script.”
Back in her office, Cindy broke the glass on her display case in her fury to get at the Emmy Award she had received for her work on the show. She pounded the base of the award against the wall separating her office from Fox’s. My God, she thought as she pummeled at the drywall, I’ve gone insane. Well, fuck him! She had succeeded only in creating a large hole in the wall. She wondered what in the hell she was thinking. Was she going to climb right through the wall back into Fox’s office and sink her heavy statuette into his skull? The hole in the wall, about the size of a bowling ball, broke through to an open space. Cynthia shoved the award into the open space, and it disappeared. Five minutes later she was in the elevator, wishing Marshall Fox were in it with her, wishing that the cable would snap and send the two of them (rubbing her stomach, the three of them) plunging to their stupid, stupid, stupid, deserved deaths.
MEGAN ASKED if she could be directed to the bathroom.
Fox flicked his head. “Down the hall, on the right.”
As Megan left the room, Gallo addressed Marshall Fox. “I’m sure you know my first question.”
“Why didn’t I tell you before? Why do you think? It was something private between Cindy and me. It has no significance to what happened to her.”
Gallo was already shaking his head. “Not good enough.”
“It’s going to have to be.”
Ross began, “Someone like Marshall-”
Gallo cut him off. “Please. I really do need to hear this from Mr. Fox.”
“It’s okay, Alan.” Fox turned to Gallo. “Look. It’s pretty simple. Doing what I do, the first thing that goes is a private life, okay? The entire population of the state I come from could probably fill up the buildings between here and the Hudson River. I could go entire days without seeing a single soul. So, yeah, I tossed that out the window. My choice, I’m not whining. Or fine, maybe I am. But ever since the separation from my wife, I’ve really lost anything like a personal life. You’ve just got no idea. I’m trying to patch things back up with my wife, Mr. Gallo. I miss her. Hell. I need her, is what it is. And it’s touch and go, believe me. I screwed up pretty big over this last year. Now, you’re a smart man. Maybe you can figure out which way she’s going to lean if she finds out that I slept with my producer and got the damn girl pregnant. Do you want to do the math for me on that one?”
Gallo understood. Fox was human. The homicide lieutenant wasn’t certain what he himself might have done under similar circumstances.
“Okay,” Gallo said. “I hear you. So why are you coming forward now?”
Megan was returning to the room. It seemed to Gallo that his junior detective was giving Fox a peculiar look. But when she glanced Gallo’s way, she seemed to be giving it to him as well.
Alan Ross spoke up. “I’d like to answer your question, Lieutenant, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead.”
“Marshall?”
“Run with it, Bunky.”
Ross’s cell phone went off. He checked to see who it was but didn’t answer it. “Both Marshall and Zachary received a call recently,” he said. “They’ve decided that it is in the best interest of this whole event not to reveal who it was who called them.”
“You can just refer to her as ‘little bitch,’” Fox muttered. “That’s what I’m doing.”
“So you knew the identity of this caller,” Gallo said.
“Oh yeah, I knew her. She knew me. The whole thing. Zack hasn’t had the pleasure, but I’m sure he’ll live.”
“And the call? What was it about?”
“She knew about me and Cynthia. That we’d been naughty little boys and girls.”
Megan asked, “And she knew about Ms. Blair being pregnant?”
Fox tapped his finger to the tip of his nose. “That’s it, lady. And that one’s my own fault. Trusting people I now know I shouldn’t have trusted. One of the occupational hazards of being on top of the world.”
“And this person contacted both of you?” Gallo asked.
Riddick answered, “That’s right. Short and sweet. ‘I’ve got Marshall by the balls, now what are you going to do about it?’”
Megan addressed Fox. “So you decided to tell us the news before this friend of yours did?”
“I never called her a friend.”
“But that’s what you decided?”
“That’s right. If you’re going to hear this anyway, I want it to be from me. Mouthpiece here wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. My word against hers and all that. But I’m not a fool. How would I look if I held back on this and you found out from some other source?”
“You did hold back,” Megan reminded him.
“Well, I’m laying it out now, aren’t I?”
Gallo said, “It would help if you’d be willing to tell us the identity of this person.”
Fox shared a glance with Riddick, then with Alan Ross. “We’ve all sort of decided there’s no point in that, Lieutenant. If she’s looking for publicity, we’re damn well not going to give it to her.”
“I’m correct, though, that this is someone close to you?”
Alan Ross answered, “A person in Marshall’s position attracts a lot of people. They’re like barnacles. This was one of his barnacles.”
“I understand.”
“The point is,” Fox said, “all those calls you’re probably getting, this one would have credibility. So I decided to preempt it. I thought I’d go ahead and take me a chance with the truth.” He smiled at Megan. “Hell of a concept, isn’t it?”
AN ELDERLY COUPLE WAS on the elevator when it arrived. Megan and Gallo rode in silence. Once they reached the street, Gallo asked, “What did you make of all that?”
“He killed her, Joe. He killed them both.” Megan craned her neck, looking up at the apartment building. “Bastard.”
Gallo unlocked the driver’s-side door. “He got the woman pregnant. It’s a far leap from that to murder.”
“When I went to look for the bathroom, I made a wrong turn and found myself in Fox’s bedroom.”
Gallo’s eyes narrowed. “Very clumsy of you.”
“Yes, it was. Since I was there, I went ahead and conducted a quick unlawful search. The unflappable Mr. Fox likes to play with handcuffs, Joe. I found a pair in his bedside table. Top drawer.”
“Lots of people have handcuffs, Megan. You have handcuffs.”
“But do lots of people have this?” She pulled something flat and pale blue from her pocket.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a sympathy card for Cynthia Blair’s family. It never got delivered. It was in the top drawer, too.”
“A sympathy card.”
“A blue one.”
“And you’re making a point with this card?”
Holding the envelope by the edges, Megan worked the card out and handed it to her boss. Gallo handled it gingerly. The fuzzy photograph on the front was of a disembodied hand holding a large bouquet of flowers.
IN SYMPATHY FOR YOUR LOSS
“When Nikki left her apartment the night she was killed, she had a square blue envelope with her. Open it.”
“Anything we learn from this is completely inadmissible. This is stolen property.”
“I’ll return it when we’re arresting Fox.”
“You mean plant it?”
“I mean return it.”
“I don’t like this, Megan.”
“Sorry, but I don’t want him destroying it. He’s been a fool to keep it as it is.”
“Taking something from a suspect’s residence is just as foolish.”
“Fine. He’s a fool and I’m a fool. But he’s a fool who killed two women in cold blood. The way I score it, this makes me the one with some latitude. Why don’t you just look at the card and we can talk about it later.”
Gallo opened the card and read the printed inscription. It was a six-line verse, a message of sympathy as disembodied as the fuzzy hand on the front. But it wasn’t the inscription that was holding the detective’s focus. It was the personalized scrawl beneath it. Gallo gazed at the inscription for nearly ten seconds while Megan dropped onto the hood of the car. “Well?”
Joe Gallo turned his gaze to the apartment building. Specifically, up to the twenty-sixth floor. His whistle was low and strong.
“Well, holy shit.”
“WE HAVE JUST LEARNED that Marshall Fox has surrendered to authorities in the matter of the brutal slayings of Cynthia Blair and Nicole Rossman. The popular late-night entertainer, accompanied by his wife and his lawyer, was taken into custody at approximately ten-thirty this morning at the couple’s Upper East Side apartment and brought here to police headquarters at the Twentieth Precinct. Sources tell me that at this moment, Mr. Fox has not yet been formally charged, but we do expect within the hour to hear that the host of Midnight with Marshall Fox will in fact be charged in the slayings of Ms. Blair and Ms. Rossman. It’s all quite something. Just several days after Ms. Blair’s murder, not yet a month ago, Mr. Fox vowed tearfully on his television show that he would do anything in his power to bring his former colleague’s killer to justice. It’s too early to say with anything approaching certainty, but it may well be that with his arrest this morning, Mr. Fox has begun to make good on his promise. This is Kelly Cole, reporting live from the Upper West Side. Back to you in the studio.”
ROSEMARY FOX EYED the scrum of reporters and cameramen gathered on the sidewalk outside her building, and she instructed her driver to keep driving.
“Anywhere. Just get away from here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Rosemary lit a cigarette and cracked the tinted window half an inch. She stared dully at the passing buildings. Marshall was sitting in a jail cell this very minute. Unbelievable. Totally fucking unbelievable. At least Zachary had promised that Marshall would be issued his own cell. Fine. But he had also promised a discreet and orderly arrangement for Marshall to turn himself in that morning, and instead, that blond cookie had slapped handcuffs on Marshall and dragged him through the front lobby of the building like a common criminal. Infuriating. The poor boy. Rosemary had never seen such a look of helplessness on her husband’s face. All his cocksure silliness and charm had drained away at the sight of the handcuffs coming off that girl cop’s belt. She’d said something to him in a low voice, but Rosemary had missed it. In the insanity of the next several hours, she’d forgotten to ask Marshall what it was the little girl Kojak had said to him.
The phone mounted on the door chirped. Rosemary eyed the caller ID. Gloria Ross. Rosemary wasn’t sure she wanted to talk with Gloria right now. It was one thing if either of them had to be out on the coast the day Marshall was being arrested. That was the job. New York and L.A. But Alan was out there, too. He’d flown out suddenly two days before. How convenient, an entire country separating the Rosses from their soiled prodigy.
Maybe I’m just being harsh, Rosemary thought. I mean, really. What could Alan have done if he’d been in the East? Hold Marshall’s hand? He could make Marshall famous, he’d proved that, but he couldn’t make him invulnerable. Marshall had been an idiot. He’d knocked up his producer, and then he’d let himself get involved with that flat-backed, round-heeled, half-pint Barbie-doll tramp on the Internet. You plays your games, you takes your chances. Big. Stupid. Cowboy.
Rosemary lifted the phone.
Gloria sounded flustered. “Rose. I’m so glad I got you. Where are you, honey?”
“Hello, Gloria. I’m holed up in the backseat of the Town Car. I’m getting a tour of Manhattan. How’s the coast?”
Gloria Ross answered, “Dry, sunny, stale and full of phonies. Listen, honey, Alan is going to be back in the city tomorrow afternoon. He’s tied up in meetings all day. He’s over in Century City as we speak. He told me to tell you he’s thinking of you. How’s Marshall doing?”
The car was drifting slowly past the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rosemary shifted in her seat. She wasn’t in the mood to maybe catch a glimpse of the top of Cleopatra’s Needle.
“Marshall is scared shitless,” Rosemary said. “He’s convinced they’re going to ship him out to Rikers and offer him up as a sacrifice to men with tattoos on their teeth.”
“I thought they only sacrificed virgins.”
Rosemary took a beat. “Not funny, Gloria.”
The line crackled. “I’m sorry, honey. Of course it isn’t. This whole damn thing is just so surreal.”
“Tell me.”
“He’s going to be fine, Rose. It’s a huge cosmic mistake. Marshall has been targeted. We know that. Alan said just this morning it wouldn’t surprise him to find out it was all a plot by one of the rival networks.”
“Your husband has a paranoid mind.”
“My husband is in tears over what’s happening to your husband. Seriously, Rose. Alan broke down this morning at breakfast. You know we’re going to fight this thing with everything we’ve got.”
“I know, I know.”
“How are you holding up?”
Rosemary took a final drag on her cigarette and prodded the butt out the window. The smoke eased past her lips like dry ice. “I have thick skin. With all the crap Marshall’s pulled this past year? It’s probably alligator tough by now.”
“There’s a lot of sympathy for you out there. You stood by your man. You’re a beautiful victim of Marshall’s silly irresponsibility. That plays well.”
Plays well. Is everything a goddamn angle for these people? Get real, Rosemary thought. She laughed out loud. Gloria Ross wouldn’t know real if it hit her in the face. Alan, either. Their careers depended on fiction and fantasy, the mere appearance of truth.
Gloria asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“We’re going to get you out to the house when we’re back east,” Gloria said. “You’re free to go out to the Island anytime. You know that, right? I don’t think you’ll want to stay in the city the next several days.”
“I’m staying. This is where my man is, remember?” Rosemary flicked another cigarette from her pack. “I’ve got to stand by him.”
“You sound bitter, dear.”
Rosemary sighed. “I’m fine.” She squinted out the window at the Plaza. The Plaza was where she and Marshall had first made love. She smiled despite herself. Son of a bitch kept his boots on the entire time. His big ear-to-ear grin, too. Miss Boggs. Miss Boggs…
“I’m fine,” Rosemary said again. “Thanks for calling, Gloria. If I talk to Marshall, I’ll tell him you were asking after him.”
“Do. Please do that. And Alan, too. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“So long, dear.”
Rosemary thumbed the off button. She instructed her driver to take her home. The press wasn’t going to fold their tents and leave. Her building was going to be under siege for the duration of the mess. She’d have to think of something, but for now she wanted to be home.
She pulled out a compact and touched up quickly. She knew her role. And she knew the power of her best assets.
ROSEMARY WOULD WATCH the footage on television later in the evening. CNN was running the clip over and over. The Town Car pulling to a stop. The driver getting out and opening the back door. Rosemary stepping out, holding her coat collar tight at the neck and calmly facing the onslaught of cameras and microphones. As always, she looked beyond exquisite, her sea-green eyes registering a deep sadness as well as a deep resolve.
“I want to say that the people we should all be thinking about at this moment are the families of the victims. These are the people whose pain can only be increasing the longer this goes on and the murderer of these two women remains at large. My husband is innocent. The pain that Marshall and I are suffering is temporary. It will pass. We’re not the story here. We’re the distraction from the story.”
Rosemary aimed the remote and fired. The image vanished with a light sizzle. She was sitting up in her bed. The sleeping pills she had taken a half hour earlier had not yet kicked in. She took a sip of her warm Scotch. As she was setting the glass back down, the door buzzer went off.
Two short, one long.
Rosemary got out of bed and pulled on her white robe. Her Zsa Zsa, as Marshall always called it. She glanced at her mirror as the buzzer rang a second time. Same pattern. She pushed at her hair and gave her cheeks a quick slap, then went to the front door, peered through the peephole and pulled the door open.
Her visitor was leaning against the doorjamb. The smile was too large, the eyes in partial dilation. “You in bed already?”
“It’s been a tiring day,” Rosemary said. “Perhaps you’ve heard, my husband is spending the night in jail.”
“I caught that.”
“I assume you came up through the garage?”
“Do I look stupid?”
“What you look is stoned.” Rosemary stepped back from the door and let her visitor in. She asked, “Don’t you think you’re being a bit ballsy?”
“I thought you might be lonely.”
“I took some sleeping pills.” Rosemary closed the door. “I plan to be zonked out in ten minutes, tops.”
“I can show myself out after.”
“This is ballsy.”
Her visitor followed her as she retraced her steps to the bedroom. Rosemary stopped a few feet before the foot of the bed. Now that she had gotten out of bed and moved around, she was aware that the sleeping pills had kicked in. Her brain felt cloudy. In a nice-feeling way, though her feet weren’t feeling the floor.
She unknotted the sash and shrugged the robe off her shoulders. It fell to the carpet with a satin whisper. God, Rosemary thought vaguely, how cheap a move is that? She stepped away from the bunched robe, climbed onto the bed and crawled to the pillows. I’m a jungle cat, she thought. As she settled in, closing her eyes, she heard a laugh. It took her a fuzzy moment to realize it had come from her.
Her visitor was standing at the foot of the bed, working at the buttons of his shirt. “What’s so funny?”
Rosemary decided her eyes were too heavy to open. She felt as if her head were still sinking into the pillows. Deeper and deeper. Everything’s funny, she thought. All of it. It’s all one big cosmic joke. She felt the mattress shift and sensed a darkness moving down on top of her. An unshaved jaw scraped along her cheek.
Big joke. Great big joke.
ROBIN BURRELL SAT FROZEN in front of her television set. The only movement she had made the last hour and a half was with her arm, pointing the remote at the television and punching the button to change the channel. There was nothing new. Every clip she had seen now more than a dozen times. Marshall then; Marshall this morning; Cleopatra’s Needle and a white sheet covering a dead body; Marshall pacing aimlessly on the set of his show, aching over his former producer’s murder; a fuzzy snapshot of a petite buxom blonde in a bikini; Cleopatra’s Needle again. All of it. Ad nauseam. Over and over.
Robin didn’t blink.
She wasn’t answering her phone. Eighteen messages had racked up on the machine. Michelle. Edward Anger. Denise from work. Reporters. She had nothing to say. For three months, she had felt like she was on a delicious drug. What normally mattered had no longer mattered. What people thought had been of no real concern. Robin had slipped more easily into fantasyland than she ever would have imagined possible and had remained there until things turned ugly and Fox snapped his fingers and the fantasy ended.
Near midnight, Robin set down the remote. She rose from the couch and shuffled to the bathroom, barely lifting her feet. She turned on the shower and got out of her clothes. Stepping into the spray, she paused and looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the wall opposite the showerhead. For just an instant, a form superimposed itself on her reflection, which, in the steam coming up from the hot water, was already beginning to grow blurry.
She spun around. There was no one there. Not this time. Robin crossed her arms across her chest and stepped into the stream of water. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. And cried.