She’d recently moved into a new condo in SoHo. Also, she’d begun dating Riley Carter. He was single, handsome, and the co-producer of the new cable TV quiz show Fingers and Toes. The idea was that contestants had to type their answers, and each time they were wrong one of their fingers was taped to the finger next to it. This impeded their typing, so those with the most wrong answers wound up slapping at the typewriter with what might as well have been mittens, which allowed slower-thinking contestants to catch up. That made for some tight contests. Toes had nothing to do with anything except, as the unctuous host endlessly proclaimed, making it easier to count your winnings. Candice thought the whole thing was stupid and unwatchable, but she never told Riley. Why should she? Fingers and Toes was one of the highest-rated shows on cable television.
Her cab zoomed and veered and did everything but fly as it made its seemingly reckless way down Broadway toward her new condo. Confident that there would be no collision, that she was lucky in all things, Candice leaned her head against the cab’s seat back and smiled.
Half a block away from her condo, the rush-hour traffic finally clogged the avenues and came to a stop. Or maybe there was an accident or construction up ahead. Her cabbie, a young guy with a beard and turban, twitched behind the steering wheel and drummed his palms on the dashboard, impatient to fly some more. Candy knew exactly how he felt. She used to feel that way when things weren’t moving fast enough for her.
When vehicles had finished inching up on one another, getting as close as possible to gain precious pavement, it was obvious that traffic wasn’t going to move. Not for a while, anyway.
Candice paid her cabbie, tipping generously, and climbed out of the cab. Walking would get her home faster than staying in the vehicle. Other taxi passengers were following the same plan. They were familiar with traffic this time of evening. The subways would be packed, too. And it wasn’t a bad evening for walking, even if still on the warm side. People emerged from at least half a dozen cabs lining Broadway and joined the throngs on the sidewalks. The forward motion, at last, was exhilarating.
Along the avenue Candice strode, now and then catching a glimpse of herself reflected in a show window. She couldn’t help but smile wider at the woman smiling back at her. She had a great job, an interesting love life, a new condo unit that was everything she’d dreamed it to be, plenty of money. And a future almost too brilliant to comprehend.
Candice understood and fully appreciated her luck. She had everything she could possibly want, and in the greatest city in the world.
She also had a shadow.
The shadow had a knife.
25
Hogart, 1991
The morning after the rape of Beth Brannigan, Sheriff Wayne Westerley carefully placed his meager findings from the crime scene in the trunk of his cruiser. They consisted of a series of Polaroid shots, a quick-set plastic cast of the motorcycle kickstand indentation in the earth, and a plastic bag containing the dried brown leaf with the blood splatter on it. Not much, unless they also had a suspect. Westerley knew the odds were long on that, and getting longer with each passing hour.
He took a last look around the crime scene, thinking it was odd how a residue of emotion seemed to linger where great violence had occurred. As if somehow the very air knew that the harm done extended far beyond the victim. He tried to imagine what had gone through Beth Brannigan’s mind last night, but decided he couldn’t. What he should be doing, anyway, was trying to figure out what had gone on in the assailant’s mind. That might provide some help in apprehending him before he did even more harm.
As soon as Westerley settled himself in behind the steering wheel of the cruiser and bent forward to twist the ignition key, he received a radio call. It wasn’t his clerk and dispatcher, Ella; it was his deputy Billy Noth.
“Ella picked up a highway patrol call, Sheriff,” Billy said. “Some young boys searching the woods for arrowheads came across a man stretched out on his back. They figured he was hurt, so they went and got their dad, who was waiting back by their car. He went with them to the scene and saw that the man was drunk or stoned unconscious. Also saw who his description fit. He went back to his car with the kids and drove to a phone, where he called the highway patrol. They’re on their way.”
“To exactly where?” Westerley asked, feeling his pulse quicken.
“State Road GG, just east of the Interstate 44 turnoff. The highway patrol dispatcher said the guy was behind a big deserted barn, about a hundred yards into the woods.”
“That’s less than five miles from where I am,” Westerley said.
He didn’t hear what Billy said. He’d already gotten the cruiser’s engine turned over, the transmission in drive, and the siren switched on.
After a couple of miles, he switched the siren off but kept the roof bar lights flashing. That was enough to cause traffic to part in front of him so he could hold his speed. Within a few minutes he was turning onto the narrow blacktop road that was State GG.
The barn came into sight almost immediately, a blight off to his left. It was huge and gray and weathered and leaned so it appeared it might collapse any second. Vertical bars of light showed between some of the boards.
Westerley pulled the cruiser off the road and parked about twenty feet from the barn, near its black and cavernous entrance where the doors used to be. He switched off the engine and got out of the car without slamming the door.
It was suddenly very quiet. Westerley stood still in the tall grass and could hear the buzz of insects, the occasional rush of a car passing on the Interstate well beyond the trees. A soft breeze came up, causing the grass to sway and the old timbers of the barn to creak. He understood why somebody wanting to rest or sleep would choose the woods instead of the barn; the damned thing didn’t provide much in the way of shelter and really might collapse any second. The breeze stiffened, and Westerley actually saw the structure sway.
It was possible that the suspect had moved and was now inside the barn, but Westerley didn’t think that was the case. He unholstered his . 45 Colt revolver and checked to make sure it was loaded, and then he worked the action once to move one of the rounds in the cylinder into the breech that he usually left empty for safety’s sake.
He turned his head to the side and listened closely. No sirens in the distance. Of course, that didn’t mean the highway patrol wasn’t close. And getting closer. Like Westerley, they’d probably run silent in their approach to where the suspect had been seen.
Keeping the revolver at his side, pressed flat against his right thigh, he moved around the barn and entered the woods.
There was a narrow dirt path, somewhat overgrown but easy to follow. Probably quite a few arrowhead expeditions, and maybe some lovers’ trysts, had occurred here. The woods were mostly in shadow, cooler than out by the barn in the blazing sun, and quieter.
He saw the motorcycle first, a midnight-blue Harley-Davidson resting on its kickstand in a small clearing that the sunlight barely touched. In the center of the clearing, with the single sun patch almost to his head, lay a husky man with a dark beard. He was wearing a black T-shirt, dirty jeans, and brown leather boots with run-down heels. A beer can lay on its side near his limp right hand. Two identical cans were on the ground near the motorcycle. Wild Colt beer. The brand Beth had bought at the Quick Pick before the rape.
Westerley could hear the man snoring and breathed easier himself. Deep sleep. Just what the situation called for.
Reaching for the handcuffs hanging on his belt, Westerley moved in. He watched the man’s face closely as he advanced, observing a wisp of the suspect’s long and ragged beard stir slightly with each snore.