Was about to come in and do God knows what.
The air-conditioning was on full blast, but she was sweating through her nightgown. Beads of salty water dripped down her forehead, into her eyes, stinging them into a series of erratic blinks. Susanna looked around the room, searching for something, anything that could help her, but there wasn't a damn thing. No cell phone even. She'd left it in the living room, where she kept the cradle for the charger. She thought about racing to the regular phone, it was just by the bed, but something told her she wouldn't have time to call, something told her it was a matter of seconds now…
She took her hand off the door and turned, told herself not to look back, no matter what, and sprinted toward her bedroom window, the window that led to the back of her building, to the back of Main Street.
The window that, because she lived in the middle of the town's one-street-long business district, had a fire escape right outside.
She threw the window open, forgetting it was locked, wrenching her back because she'd yanked so hard, then she fumbled with the latch-Stay calm, stay calm, don't panic-and then it was open and she jumped through, made it onto the landing just as her bedroom door burst open. She didn't want to look but she had to-it was instinct- and she saw a blond man barrel in, look up, and then charge the window. Instead of going down, she went up; it was easier to elude his grasp that way. Even so, he managed to grab hold of her foot. It sent a terrible shock through her entire body. The physical contact terrified her way beyond any level she had ever experienced. It made everything all too real and too close. And it brought her imagination into play, turning danger into something she hadn't let herself think of: pain. She was phobic about pain. The thought of what might be done to her made her freeze for a moment, paralyzed her. She felt herself go limp but then her anger took over. No panic, she told herself again. You cannot panic! She felt the man's grip tighten and her hysteria disappeared, replaced by fury. So she kicked as hard as she could, shook her leg and kicked again, and his fingers let go and she scurried up the fire escape, climbing away from him as fast as she could.
She got to the flat roof and even before she hoisted herself over the top, she knew she'd won. She'd been up here many times. She kept a beach chair here, used to come up and sunbathe and read on weekends when the beaches were too crowded. She knew this roof and knew that all she had to do was hop over to the next building, maybe a one-foot jump, no big deal, and there was another fire escape there, at the back. All she had to do was get there and climb down and then it was over. He couldn't possibly get there as fast as she could. Couldn't even know which direction she'd go.
It was easy now.
She was safe.
So before she pulled herself onto the roof she looked down. Saw that he wasn't even trying to follow her. He was just looking up at her. She stared straight into his eyes, studied his face so she could remember to tell the police exactly what he looked like, was startled because he was smiling. Looking up at her and smiling.
She swung her legs up onto the tarred rooftop. Started running over to the next building. But she got only a few steps before she stopped cold. It was impossible.
What she saw was physically impossible!
He was there. The blond man. He was on the roof, smiling at her. The same smile she'd just seen.
But it couldn't be. He couldn't be here! He couldn't…
She was going to scream. That was her only chance. She could scream and hope that someone would hear her. Hear her and help her.
But she didn't scream.
The blond man moved too quickly and the thing she feared more than anything, the pain, was too great. When the blond man spoke, it was quietly, as if he was being respectful of the early-morning silence. "I need to know a few things," he said.
So she nodded. She wanted him to understand that she'd be happy to tell him anything she could. He said, "Aphrodite," and she looked confused, even through the pain, so he said, "What do you know about Aphrodite and who did you tell?" She said she didn't understand what he was talking about, it was more of a whimper really. He asked her three times and after the third time she couldn't even answer, she could just moan very, very quietly and shake her head, and he was convinced she was telling him the truth. Then he said, "I need a name," and she knew the answer to that one, so she told him, she was so happy to tell him, and then he took a small step away from her.
"Is it over?" she asked, barely able to get the words out. "Do you need anything else from me?"
"It's almost over," the blond man told her. "There's just one more thing." There were details to be attended to inside Susanna's bedroom. First her body was carried down the fire escape, put inside, and arranged on the floor, by her bed. Then her nightstand was tipped over, the contents of the one drawer allowed to spill and spread on the floor, the clock radio tumbling and breaking. The sheet and summer quilt were wrapped around Susanna's feet and legs. From the kitchen, a drinking glass half-full of water was brought in, then thrown down. The glass shattered, the water spilled. Soon it was safe to assume that anyone finding the body would come to the reasonable conclusion that Susanna Morgan had gotten out of bed in the middle of the night, tripped, fallen, and broken her neck.
Outside, Main Street was absolutely empty. It took less than a minute to reach the car, which was parked in the alley behind Susanna's apartment. It took less than four minutes for the car to pass the sign that read EAST END HARBOR, TOWN LIMITS.
It had been a totally professional hit. There was no hint that a crime, much less a murder, had even taken place in the town of East End Harbor.
Nothing had been overlooked.
Except for one thing.
That thing was still up on the roof of Susanna Morgan's building. And it wasn't exactly a thing. It was a person.
It was a woman who had been sitting quietly, as still as could be, cross-legged, in the corner of the flat roof, as she often did in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep. She had been sitting peacefully, breathing in, breathing out, appreciating the misty night and the hazy half-moon. She had been thinking about life in general and her life in particular, and what direction it might be taking in the next few months. Up until the blond man had appeared on the roof, she was thinking that her life could move in just about any direction she decided to move it in. After the man had climbed down the fire escape, after she'd looked down to see the car drive away, after she'd seen her friend Susanna murdered, she had a terrible, sickening feeling that that decision had just been taken out of her hands. Book One
1
The breeze floated in off the bay, bringing in the faint odor of brine and fish and gasoline fumes. Justin Westwood tilted his head ever so slightly, taking a deep breath. His eyes closed, shutting out the world for, at most, a second or two. But it gave him just enough time to think, once again, how nice it would be to shut that world out for a much longer time. Like forever.
Half of his face caught the full impact of the hot morning sun, half was cooled by the soft wind off the water. A vague confluence of words began to float through his brain. Then they crystallized, and he realized it was a rock lyric. Elvis Costello. What shall we do with all this useless beauty? The plaintive music that went with the words also began to play inside his head. That's what was usually playing inside him: haunting, mournful songs; rough, ragged rock and roll. Harsh, melancholy words, often blunt and full of undiluted rage. Driving music that fueled his anger and overpowered him with sadness. He pushed the song out of his thoughts. Told himself to force some silence until he could get home, smoke a joint, and let some scotch slide down his throat, then let some real music overwhelm him. He told himself to wait. It was the word he repeated more than any other throughout his days: Wait.