They finally emerged from the long access road back onto Route 22, finding it eerily empty, in sharp contrast to the chaos behind them.
“So, they said you have a copy of the security video?”
“Yeah.” Nick nodded, patting the breast pocket of his blazer.
“Did you look at it?”
“Just parts, but I saw one face. I’ve got a printout, if you want to take a look. But there’s a lot of snow, they seemed to have disabled the cameras at some point.”
“All right. We’ll check it out at the station. You don’t mind if I shower first, do you?”
Nick shook his head, instantly regretting it, knowing that the clock was ticking. His time with Dance was limited. He needed to glean as much info as he could before the hour was up.
“I feel like I’m covered in death.”
“What time do you have?” Nick didn’t want to pull out the watch.
The car approached a green-railed bridge, a quarter-mile span that rose fifty feet above the Kensico Reservoir, one of the most peaceful sites in all of Byram Hills.
“Three-forty-five,” Dance said.
“I hate to ask this, but… do you think, maybe, we could… it’s just, my wife-who knows where…”
Dance looked at him, his face unreadable, before he finally nodded. “Sure, I didn’t mean to be insensitive. We’re only a minute from the station. We’re on a generator, we’ll dive right in.”
“Thanks.” Nick smiled, regretting not turning to the police earlier. He could have been much farther along in finding Julia’s killer.
“Do you me a favor?” Dance tilted his head toward the rear of the car. “On the backseat is my gym bag, can you grab it?”
“Of course,” Nick unbuckled his seat belt, turned around, and awkwardly twisted around to grab the small canvas bag that was just beyond his fingertips’ reach.
Without warning, Dance slammed on the brakes, the wheels locking up, the antilock system working overtime to avoid a skid as the car ground to a halt in the center of the bridge. Nick was hurled back into the dash, half his body thrown to the floor. A nine-millimeter Glock came to rest on his forehead.
“Hands on the dash,” Dance yelled.
“What’s the matter?” Nick said as he climbed up from the floor back onto the seat and complied, his hands shaking from the sudden change of events and the cold barrel pressing into his flesh.
Dance held the gun in his right hand as he used his left to pull out his cuffs and snap them over Nick’s wrists, binding them together.
“What the-?”
Dance pushed Nick forward and snatched Nick’s Sig-Sauer from the waistband under the rear of his jacket, throwing it in the back of his car.
“Why are you carrying a concealed weapon?” Dance yelled. “
Relax-”
“Open your door, slowly. Step from the vehicle. And don’t be an idiot.”
“Relax.” Nick gave a relieved smile. “I have a license for it. God, you scared me.”
“Out now!” Dance flipped on his police lights, the overly bright red strobes disorienting as they flashed.
“Come on, I have a license for it,” Nick said as he awkwardly opened the door with his bound hands and stepped from the car. Dance slid out right behind him.
“Hands on the bridge rail,” Dance yelled as he walked to the rear of his car, popping open the trunk.
“Dance, please. What’s the matter? I was carrying it for my wife’s protection.”
Nick couldn’t see what Dance was doing but suddenly felt something wrap his lower legs as two large plastic ties were secured around his ankles.
“Come on, don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Nick said as he looked at his now-secured legs.
Dance spun him around, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out Julia’s PDA.
“Dance, now you’re pissing me off. What the fuck are you doing?” Nick tilted his body to the left and looked into the open trunk and everything made sense.
The trunk was filled with duffel bags, one of them half open, and protruding from it, gleaming in the afternoon sun, was the gold pommel of a sword.
“You’ve got to be kidding me? You?”
Dance opened the rear door of his car, grabbed Nick’s gun off the seat, took him by his collar, and shoved him in. Slamming the door, leaving Nick alone, locked inside.
Nick sat there staring over the seat at the ticking clock on the dashboard, the LED reading 3:50.
Everything began to make sense. Why he had been arrested, why Dance was running the investigation: He was controlling it all, involved in the robbery, Julia’s murder, the cover up, his frame-up.
As bad as the situation had just gotten, Nick now knew the man responsible for Julia’s death. He knew now who he had to stop.
For the next few minutes, it was all about staying alive. He needed to survive until the top of the hour.
The clock read 3:52. Nick had never felt time move so fast and so slowly at once.
Dance opened the rear door and, with his gun, motioned Nick to get out.
“You stay the hell away from my wife or so help me God-”
Nick fell instantly silent as Dance rested the barrel of the loaded gun against his lips to quiet him.
“Great thing, those PDAs, found your home phone number along with everyone she works with, friends, neighbors. Thought I’d give her a call, tell her to come on down to the station. Maybe tell her you’ve been injured-” Dance drew back his fist and punched Nick square in the mouth, drawing blood, sending his head snapping back. “That’ll make her hurry. Of course, now we’ll have to figure out who else knows, what friends you’ve involved.”
Dance hoisted a large metal plate out of the trunk of his car, a heavy bicycle cable threaded through its center. With great difficulty he waddled forwarded, carrying it to the edge of the center span of the bridge, and dropped it with an enormous clang on the roadway.
“We were going to wait until this evening,” Dance continued talking, “kill her at home, blame it on you, but seeing you’ve chosen to stick your nose in things, we’ll just have to go kill her now.”
Nick’s heart fell. He hadn’t saved Julia, his incompetence had actually moved up her murder. “ Shannon ’s going to figure out what you’ve done.”
“Screw Shannon, he couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag.”
Dance slid the hundred-pound plate underneath the green guardrail. He reached over and grabbed hold of the bicycle cable, holding it tightly in his left hand. Standing up, he pressed the gun to the back of Nick’s head, urged him forward and, with his left hand, clipped the cable to the center chain of Nick’s handcuffs.
“Did you ever have that feeling of déjà vu? Like you’ve done something before, been somewhere before? Like time is all upside-down?” Dance asked.
Nick couldn’t believe what he was asking.
Dance pushed the plate with his foot, guiding it toward the edge, half of its iron weight hanging out over the reservoir.
And that’s when Nick saw his chest. Dance’s shirt hung wide open to his waist, the exertion of carrying the weight having popped open the three lower buttons. As dark as this man was, as much as he talked about killing Julia, he was not the man he had chased down and tackled. His neck was empty, there was no St. Christopher medal hanging against his chest.
Nick stood there, his belly pressed up against the green rail, looking out over the enormous lake, peaceful and still, in contrast to the horrific goings-on just a mile away, in contrast to the happenings on the bridge above. Dance was part of the robbery, he in fact may have been the one calling the shots, working directly with Paul Dreyfus, but he wasn’t the trigger man, he wasn’t the man who had killed Julia.
Nick turned and looked at Dance with hate-filled eyes. He might not have pulled the trigger that killed her, but he was an accomplice, someone who wanted her dead. And as Nick continued to glare, if he could have reached out, he would have ripped the man’s throat out right on the spot.