Ralph Woodward had that easygoing southern way of brushing you off with a smile. “Ellie, just give me a second…” Ellie knew he didn’t take her seriously.
All right, if they wanted her to go it alone, she would.
Ellie dropped a badge on one of the local homicide detectives who was identified as primary on the scene. “I was wondering if you guys found anything interesting? In the closets, or the car? Police uniforms, maybe a Maglite flashlight?”
“Crime lab took the car,” the detective said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Of course, Ellie said to herself. They weren’t really looking. Or maybe the perps ditched them. But this feeling she had was building.
There were chalk outlines and flags identifying each victim. And evidence bags containing whatever they had on them.
Ellie started in the bedroom. Victim number three: Robert O’ Reilly. Shot in the back. She held up the evidence bag. Just a few dollars. A wallet. Nothing more. Next, the girl. Diane Lynch. The same wedding ring as Robert O’Reilly. She emptied out her purse. Just some keys, a receipt from Publix. Nothing much.
Shit.
Something urged her to go on, even though she had no idea what she was looking for. The male at the kitchen table. Michael Kelly. Blown back against the wall, but still sitting in his chair. She picked up the plastic evidence bag next to him. Car keys, money clip with about fifty bucks.
There was also a tiny piece of paper, folded up. She moved it in the bag. Looked like numbers.
She stretched on a pair of latex gloves and took the piece of paper out of the bag. She let the scrap unfold.
A surge of validation rushed through her.
10-02-85.
More than just numbers. Dennis Stratton’s alarm code.
Chapter 23
I DROVE NORTH, straight through the night, pushing my old Bonneville at a steady seventy-five on I-95. I wanted to put as much distance as I could between me and Palm Beach. I’m not sure I even blinked until I hit the Georgia- South Carolina line.
I pulled off the highway at a place called Hardeeville, a truck stop with a huge billboard sign that advertised YOU’RE PASSING THE BEST SHORT STACK IN THE SOUTH.
Exhausted, I filled up the car and took an empty booth in the restaurant. I looked around, seeing only a few bleary-eyed truckers gulping coffee or reading the paper. A jolt of fear. I didn’t know if I was a wanted man or not.
A red-haired waitress with DOLLY on her nametag came up and poured me a sorely needed cup of coffee. “Goin’ far?” she asked in an amiable southern drawl.
“I sure hope so,” I replied. I didn’t know if my picture was on the news or if someone meeting my eye would recognize me. But the smell of maple and biscuits got to me. “Far enough that those pancakes sure sound good.”
I ordered a coffee to go with them and went into the men’s room. A heavyset trucker squeezed past me on his way out. Alone, I stared in the mirror and was stunned by the face looking back at me: haggard, bloodshot eyes, scared. I realized I was still in the pitted-out T-shirt and jeans I’d been wearing when I tripped the alarms the night before. I splashed cold water over my face.
My stomach groaned, making an ugly noise. It dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten since lunch with Tess the previous day.
Tess… Tears started in my eyes again. Mickey and Bobby and Barney and Dee. God, I wished I could just turn back the clock and have every one of them alive. In one horrifying night, everything had changed.
I grabbed a USA Today at the counter and sat back in the booth. As I spread the paper on the table, I noticed that my hands were shaking. Reality was starting to hit. The people I trusted most in my life were dead. I had relived the nightmare of the previous night a hundred times in the past six hours – and each time it got worse.
I started to leaf through the paper. I wasn’t sure if I was hoping I would find something or not. Mostly, a lot of articles on the situation in Iraq and the economy. The new interest-rate cut.
I turned the page and my eyes nearly popped out of my head.
DARING ART THEFT AND MURDER SPREE IN PALM BEACH
I folded back the page.
The posh and stately resort town of Palm Beach was shattered last night by a string of violent crimes, beginning with the drowning of an attractive woman in her hotel suite, followed by a brazen break-in and the theft of several priceless paintings from one of the town’s most venerable mansions, and culminating hours later in the execution-style murder of four people in a nearby town.
Police say they have no direct leads in the brutal series of crimes, and at this point do not know if they are related.
I didn’t understand. Theft of priceless paintings… Dee said the job had been a bust.
I read on. The names of the people killed. Normally, it’s just abstract, names and faces. But this was so horribly real. Mickey, Bobby, Barney, Dee… and, of course, Tess.
This is no dream, Ned. This is really happening.
The article went on to describe how three valuable works of art were stolen from the forty-room mansion, Casa Del Océano, owned by businessman Dennis Stratton. Valued at a possible $60 million, the theft of the unnamed paintings was one of the largest art heists in U.S. history.
I couldn’t believe it.
Stolen? We had been set up. We’d been set up royally.
My pancakes came, and they did look great, as advertised.
But I was no longer hungry.
The waitress filled my coffee and asked, “Everything all right, hon?”
I tried my best to smile and nod, but I couldn’t answer. A new fear was invading my brain.
They’ll make the connection to me.
Everything was going to come out. I wasn’t reasoning very well, but one thing was clear: Once the police went to Sollie, they would make my car.
Chapter 24
FIRST THING, I had to get rid of my car.
I paid the check and drove the Bonneville down the road into a strip mall, where I tossed the plates into the woods and cleaned out anything that could be traced to me. I walked back into town and stood in front of a tiny Quonset hut that was the town’s bus depot. Man, paranoia was now my middle name.
An hour later, I was on a bus to Fayetteville, North Carolina – headed north.
I guess I knew where I was going all along. At a lunch counter at the Fayetteville station, I chomped down a desperately needed burger and fries, avoiding the eyes of everyone I saw, as if people were taking a mental inventory of my face.
Then I hopped a late-night Greyhound heading to all points north: Washington, New York.
And Boston. Where the hell else would I go?
That’s where the score started, right?
Mostly I just slept and tried to figure out what I was going to do when I got there. I hadn’t been home in four years now. Since my Big Fall from Grace. I knew my father was sick now, and even before, when he wasn’t, he wasn’t exactly the Rock of Gibraltar. Not if you count convictions of everything from receiving stolen goods to bookmaking, and three stints up at the Souz in Shirley.
And Mom… Let’s just say she was always there. My biggest fan. At least, after my older brother, John Michael, was killed robbing a liquor store. That left just me and my younger brother, Dave. You won’t be following in anybody’s footsteps, Ned, she made me promise early on. You don’t have to be like your father – or your big brother. She bailed me out of trouble half a dozen times. She picked me up from the Catholic Youth Organization hockey practices at midnight.
That was the real problem now. I didn’t look forward to seeing her face when I sneaked my way home. I was going to break her heart.