Still she couldn’t bear to leave him. She knew they’d be pushing the boulder aside momentarily but how could she leave her brother alone?
Nadia focused on her breathing. Tried to think of an ingenious strategy to save him.
A single muted thump. The unmistakable sound of a gunshot.
Marko, she thought.
Light trickled in through tiny cracks in the sealed door. Then voices. Closer. Much, much closer.
Nadia’s heart pounded in her ears. If she didn’t do something, they were going to kill her. She was going to die.
The voices became more animated. The boulder moved.
They’d killed Marko and were coming for her.
A sense of impending doom gripped her. Move, she told herself. Move.
Nadia aimed her flashlight forward. Made note of the curve in the wall and the jagged edges in the floor. Shut the flashlight.
Hugged the wall and disappeared into the darkness.
CHAPTER 43
JOHNNY STOOD FACING Bobby as the guard guided him into the visitor’s room. Usually he preferred to sit across the table from his client so he didn’t appear to be an authority figure towering over him. So they could look each other eye-to-eye and on the level. But Bobby had been anything but on the level with him since he’d landed in Rikers Island. And now Johnny had the advantage he’d been hoping for. Forcing Bobby to look up at him would emphasize he had the upper hand.
The means with which he’d obtained his advantage was a source of constant guilt requiring liberal doses of rationalization. After Victor Bodnar called him with his news about the witness, however, he pushed aside the guilt. The witness had modified his original statement. As a result, everything had changed. If Johnny could get Bobby to retract his confession and tell him the truth, the DA would drop the murder charge. That much was certain. And if Johnny could prove self-defense, he had a real chance of getting the kid off completely.
The bad news was that keeping Bobby’s true identity a secret would get more complicated. But that had to be of secondary importance to a lifetime in jail, didn’t it? Johnny imagined Nadia’s reaction to his uncovering the truth about what happened that night. To seeing the charges against Bobby reduced and ultimately dropped. He pictured the look in her eyes. Johnny savored that image.
“What about Nadia?” Bobby said, as soon as the guard closed the door behind him.
“She was all right as of this morning,” Johnny said. “Time difference. We traded messages. That’s all I know for now.”
Bobby relaxed once he heard Nadia was safe. He rocked gently back and forth in his seat. Johnny knew from his prior visit that if he glanced under the table he’d find the boy’s right foot tapping away furiously. He’d never returned to being the apathetic kid since Johnny had showed him the picture of old man Valentin. From the moment of his outburst that Nadia would be killed if she dug into Valentine’s past, Bobby’s demeanor had turned into suppressed rage. He really was a short Ukrainian fuse ready to blow. And now Johnny had the match.
“So here’s the news,” Johnny said. “The witness who saw you kill Valentine? He went to the cops yesterday afternoon and changed his story.”
Bobby’s eyes shot up.
Johnny leaned over the table. “Oh. Have I got your attention? Turns out the witness saw Valentine come at you with a knife. He saw you defend yourself with your screwdriver. Then he saw you walk away. We know you went to the police station to turn yourself in. That much was true. But from then on, he didn’t tell the police everything. And neither did you.”
Bobby blinked.
“Remember when I showed you a picture of the victim? His hand was curled as though someone had pried something from his fist. Turns out that’s exactly what happened. Valentine was carrying a knife. Just like you said. A hunting knife. An expensive hunting knife. And that’s not all. He was also carrying a compact briefcase. He probably dropped it when he went for his knife. You know what was in that briefcase. Care to tell me?”
Blood seeped into Bobby’s face.
“A Sauer 202 takedown rifle with sound moderator. You know what a takedown rifle is?” Johnny paused. “Neither did I. It’s a rifle that can be disassembled without tools. You know what a sound moderator is? It diffuses the source of the gunshot. So it’s harder to tell what direction the bullet was coming from. What do you say to that?”
Bobby put his hands on the table. Moved his lips but didn’t say anything.
“There’s something else.” Johnny paced in front of him. “There was another item of interest in the briefcase. A detailed map of a very specific part of New York City. It’s called Hart Island. You know Hart Island, Bobby?”
Bobby closed his fists.
“No? Then let me tell you about it. It’s a small island at the easternmost part of the Bronx in Long Island Sound. It’s about a mile long and a quarter mile wide. Over time it’s been a Civil War internment camp, a psychiatric hospital for women, and a base for Ajax missiles. Now it’s the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world. About two thousand people who die in New York City are buried there every year. People with no names, no families. Stillborn babies. Dismembered body parts of murder victims that can’t be identified. There’re about forty of those per year. No one’s allowed on the island except the people that conduct the burials. Ironically, that’s Rikers Island prisoners. How about that, huh? Can’t make that stuff up. No press is allowed. Ever. The ferry that runs from City Island to Hart Island is controlled by the city. Even family members have to apply for a pass from the prison system.”
Johnny walked around the table and knelt down on one knee beside Bobby. Now the kid was looking down at him. Johnny lowered his voice to a near-whisper. Channeled as much compassion as he could muster into his expression.
“Hart Island is the darkest place in New York City,” Johnny said. “It’s a forbidden zone. There’s no one there but the dead. Why would a young real estate executive from London be carrying a takedown rifle with a sound moderator, a hunting knife, and a map of such a place? Why did you agree to meet him there? Why did you have no choice but to kill him?”
Bobby’s knuckles turned white. His faced turned eggplant. For a moment, Johnny was concerned the kid was going to need medical attention. Then Bobby took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. By the time he was done, all the tension seemed to have seeped out of him.
“I want to see Iryna first,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you everything.”
CHAPTER 44
NADIA SQUEEZED THROUGH the cave’s passageway. It curled into a semicircle around the inner chambers. She had to shuffle sideways, left arm by her side, right arm raised and parallel to the floor. Her hand gripped the flashlight. Her back scraped the wall. She heard the sound but felt no pain. The overalls were amazing. Then she remembered. The overalls weren’t scraping the walls. She was wearing a backpack. The backpack was scraping the wall. The backpack was the problem.
She stopped, lowered her right arm, and tried to shimmy out of it. The backpack slid halfway down her spine and got stuck. Nadia pulled on the straps. The backpack wouldn’t budge.
Light flashed behind her. Rock scraped against rock. The boulder, Nadia thought. A voice. The man with the rifle. No. Two voices. Two men. Entering the passageway.
Shit.
Nadia pushed off against the front wall and tried to compress her backpack’s contents. Plastic cracked. The water bottle, she remembered. Half-empty. She straightened. Pressed against the front wall, face turned sideways. Slipped the pack off her back.