15 Seconds

Chapter One

You get ten days, someone once told me. Ten days in all of your life that qualify as truly “great.” That when you look back through the lens of time stand apart from everything else.

All the rest is just clutter.

And driving my rented Cadillac STS somewhere outside Jacksonville, just off the plane from Ft. Lauderdale, looking around for Bay Shore Springs Drive and the Marriott Sun Coast Resort, I thought that today had a pretty fair shot of ending high on that list.

First, there would be eighteen holes with my old college buddy from Amherst, Mike Dinofrio, at Atlantic Pines, the new Jack Nicklaus-designed course you pretty much had to sell your soul-or in my case, remove fifteen years of wrinkles from the face of a board member’s wife-to even get a tee time on.

Then it was the Doctors Without Borders regional conference I was actually in town for, where I was delivering the opening address. On my experiences in the village of Boaco, in Nicaragua, where, for the past five years, instead of heading off each August on some cruise ship or to Napa like most of my colleagues, I went back to the same, dirt-poor, flood-ravaged town, doing surgeries on cleft palates and reconstructive work on local women who’d had mastectomies as a result of breast cancer. I’d even put together a fund-raising effort at my hospital to build a sorely needed school. What had begun, I’d be the first to admit, as simply a way to clear my head after a painful divorce had now become the most meaningful commitment in my life. A year ago, I’d even brought along my then-seventeen-year-old, Hallie, who freely admitted that at first it was merely a cool way to show community service for her college applications. But this year she was back again, before starting at UVA, snapping photos for a blog she was doing and teaching English. I’d even included some of her photos as a part of my presentation tonight: “Making Medicine Matter: How a Third-World Village Taught Me the Meaning of Medicine Again.” I wished she could be there tonight, but she was going through exams. Trust me, as a dad, I couldn’t have been prouder.

Then later, after everything wound down, I had drinks lined up at the Marriott’s rooftop bar with one Jennifer H. Keegan-former Miss Jacksonville, now regional field manager for Danner Klein-whose visits to my office were always charged with as many goose bumps and as much electricity as there was product presentation. The past few months, we’d bumped into each other at cocktail parties and industry events, but tonight… hopefully basking in the afterglow of my moving and irresistible speech, with a couple of glasses of champagne in us… Well, let’s just say I was hoping that tonight could turn a day that was “really, really good” into one that would reach an all-time high on that list!

If I could only locate the damn hotel… I fixed on the green, overhanging street sign. METCALFE… That wasn’t exactly what I was expecting to see. Where the hell was Bay Shore Springs Drive? I started thinking that maybe I should’ve waited for the Caddie with the GPS, but the girl said that could be another twenty minutes and I didn’t want to be late.

Bay Shore Springs had to be the next street down.

I pulled up at the light, and started thinking about how life had bounced back pretty well for me after some definite rocky patches. I had a thriving cosmetic practice in Boca, annually making South Florida Magazine’s list of Top Doctors, once even on the cover. I’d built my own operating clinic and overnight recovery center, more like a five-star inn than a medical facility. I’d put together a successful group of three storefront medical clinics in Ft. Lauderdale and up in Palm Beach, and even appeared periodically on Good Morning South Florida, “Dr. Henry Steadman Reports”… Dubbed by my daughter as “the go-to Boob Dude of Broward County,” my reputation cemented as creator of the Steadman Wave, the signature dip I’d perfected just above the areolae that created the seamless, pear-shaped curvature everyone was trying to copy these days.

It wasn’t exactly what I thought I’d be known for when I got out of med school at Vanderbilt twenty years ago, but hey, I guess we all could look back and say those things, right?

I’d played the field a bit the past few years. Just never found the one to wow me. And I’d managed to stay on decent terms with Liz, a high-powered immigration lawyer, who five years back announced, as I came home from a medical conference in Houston, that she’d had one of those “days that made the list” herself-with Mort Golub, the managing partner of her practice. It hurt, though I suppose I hadn’t been entirely innocent myself. The only good thing that came of it was that I’d managed to stay active in my daughter’s life: Hallie was a ranked equestrian who had narrowly missed going to the Junior Olympics a couple of years back and was now finishing her freshman year at UVA. I still went with her to meets around the South, just the two of us.

But I hadn’t had a steady woman in my life for a couple of years. My idea of a date was to cruise down to the Keys on weekends in my Cessna for lunch at Pierre’s in Islamorada. Or whack the golf ball around from time to time to a ten handicap. All pretty much “a joke,” my daughter would say, rolling her eyes, for one of “South Florida’s Most Eligible Bachelors”-if he was trying to keep up the reputation.

Traffic was building on Lakeview, nearing I-10, as I continued on past Metcalfe. I saw a Sports Authority and a Dillard’s on my left, a development of Mediterranean-style condos called Tuscan Grove on the right. I flipped on a news channel… Another day of U.S. missiles pummeling Gadhafi air defenses in Libya… The dude had to go. Tornadoes carve a path of death and destruction through Alabama.

Where the hell was Bay Shore Springs Drive?

Yes! I spotted the name on the hanging street sign and switched on my blinker. The plan was to first check in at the hotel, then head over to Mike’s, and we’d go on to the club. My mind roamed to the famous island green on the signature sixteenth hole…

Suddenly I realized the cross street wasn’t Bay Shore Springs at all, but something called Bay Ridge West.

And it was one-way, in the opposite direction!

Shit! I looked around and found myself trapped in the middle of the intersection-in the totally wrong lane, staring at someone in an SUV across from me scowling like I was a total moron. Behind me, a line of cars had pulled up, and was waiting to turn. The light turned yellow…

I had to move.

The hell with it, I said to myself, and pressed the accelerator, speeding up through the busy intersection.

My heart skipped a beat and I glanced around, hoping no one had spotted me. Bay Shore Springs had to be the next street down.

That was when a flashing light sprang up behind me, followed a second later by the jolting whoop, whoop, whoop of a police siren.

Damn.

A white police car came up on my tail, as if it had been waiting there, a voice over a speaker directing me to the side of the road.

I made my way through traffic to the curb, reminding myself that I was in North Florida, not Boca, and the police here were a totally different breed.

I watched through the side mirror as a cop in a dark blue uniform stepped out and started coming toward me. Aviator sunglasses, a hard jaw, and a thick mustache, not to mention the expression that seemed to convey: Not in my pond, buddy.

I rolled down my window, and as the cop stepped up, I met his eyes affably. “I’m really sorry, Officer. I know I cut that one a little close. It was just that I was looking for Bay Shore Springs Drive and got a little confused when I saw Bay Ridge West back there. I didn’t see the light turn.”

“License and proof of insurance,” was all he said back to me.

I sighed. “Look, here’s my license…” I dug into my wallet. “But the car’s a rental, Officer. I just picked it up at the airport. I don’t think I have proof of insurance. It’s part of the rental agreement, no … ?”

I was kind of hoping he would simply see the initials MD after my name and tell me to pay closer attention next time.

He didn’t.

Instead he said grudgingly, “Driving without proof of insurance is a state violation punishable by a five-hundred-dollar fine.”

“I know that, Officer, and of course I have proof of insurance on my own car…” I handed him my license. “But like I said, this one’s a rental. I just picked it up at the airport. I’m afraid you’re gonna have to take that one up with Hertz, Officer… Martinez.” I focused on his nameplate. “I just got a little confused back there looking for the Marriott. I’m up here for a medical conference…”

“The Marriott, huh?” the policeman said, lifting his shades and staring into my car.

“That’s right. I’m giving a speech there tonight. Look, I’m really sorry if I ran the light-I thought it was yellow. I just found myself trapped in no-man’s-land and thought it was better to speed up than to block traffic. Any chance you can just cut me a little slack on this…?”

Traffic had backed up, rubbernecking, slowly passing by.

“You realize you were turning down a one-way street back there?” Martinez completely ignored my plea.

“I did realize it, Officer,” I said, exhaling, “and that’s why I didn’t turn, not to men-”

“There’s a turnoff two lights ahead,” the patrolman said, cutting me off. “I want you to make a right at the curve and pull over there.”

“Officer…” I pleaded one more time with fading hope, “can’t we just-”

“Two lights,” the cop said, holding on to my license. “Just pull over there.”

Chapter Two

I admit, I was a little peeved as I turned, as the cop had instructed me, onto a much-less-traveled street, the police car following close behind.

Through the rearview mirror I saw him pull up directly behind me and remain inside. Then he got on the radio, probably punching my car and license into the computer, verifying me. Whatever he would find would only show him I wasn’t exactly one of America’s Most Wanted. I couldn’t even recall the last time I’d gotten a parking ticket. I glanced back again and saw him writing on a pad.

The son of a bitch was actually writing me up.

It took maybe five, six minutes. A few cars went by, then disappeared around a curve a quarter mile or so in front of us. Finally, the cop’s door opened and he came back holding a summons pad.

A couple of them were filled out!

I sighed, frustrated. “What are you writing me up for, Officer?”

“Driving through a red light. Operating your vehicle without valid proof of insurance…” He flipped the page. “And driving down a one-way street.”

“Driving down a one-way street?” My blood surged and I looked up at him in astonishment. “What are you talking about, Officer?”

He just kept filling out the summons, occasionally eyeing my license, which still rested on his pad, and didn’t respond.

“Wait a minute, Officer, please…!” I tried to get his attention. I wasn’t exactly the type who lost his cool in front of authority. I mean, I was a surgeon, for God’s sake, trained to control my emotions. Not having proof of insurance was one thing-a completely minor offense in a rented car. And driving through a red light? Okay … Maybe I had sped up through a yellow.

But driving down a one-way street? Who needed that on their record? Not to mention I hadn’t driven down a one-way street.

I’d never even started the turn.

“Officer, c’mon, please, that’s just not right,” I pleaded. “I didn’t drive down a one-way street. I know I stopped… I may have even contemplated it for a second before realizing that the street sign had me all confused. But I never got into the turn. Not to mention, I’m also pretty sure I don’t need proof of insurance if the car’s a rental. Which it is! It’s all in the boilerplate somewhere…”

“I don’t need an argument on this, sir,” Martinez replied. I could have said anything and he was just going to continue writing on his pad, ignoring me. “If you want to challenge the charges, there are instructions on how to do that on the back of the summons. It’s your right to-”

“I don’t want to challenge the charges!” I said, maybe a little angrily. “I don’t think you’re being fair. Look…” I tried to dial it back. “I’m a doctor. I’m on my way to play a little golf. I don’t need ‘driving down a one-way street’ on my record. It makes it sound like I was impaired or something…”

“I thought you said you were on your way to a medical conference,” the cop replied, barely lifting his eyes.

“Yes, I did, after… Look, Officer, I acknowledge I may have sped up through the light. And I’m really sorry. But please, can’t you cut me a little slack on the ‘one-way street’ thing? You’ve already checked out my record, so you know I don’t have a history of this sort of thing. And, look, regarding the insurance…”

“This is now the second time I’ve had to give you a warning,” Martinez said, finding my eyes, his voice taking on that I’m-the-one-wearing-the-uniform here tone. “Don’t make me ask you again. If you do, I promise it will not go well…”

I sat back and blew out a long exhale, knowing I had taken it about as far as I could. It was true, if there was one thing that did irk me, it was the arbitrary use of authority, just because someone had a uniform on. I’d seen that kind of thing enough in Central America, governmentales and useless bureaucrats, and usually for no one’s good but their own.

“Go ahead,” I said, sinking back into the seat, “write me up if you have to. But I didn’t drive down a one-way street. And I do have a right to state my innocence. It’s not fair to just keep telling me-”

“That’s it! I warned you!” Martinez took a step back. “Get out of the car!”

“What?” I looked at him in disbelief.

“I said get out of the car, sir! Now!” There was no negotiation in his hard, gray eyes. It all just escalated in seconds. Later, I couldn’t even recall who had actually opened the door, him or me. But the next thing I knew I was out on the street, spun face-first against my car and roughly, with my hands twisted behind me.

“Hey…”

“Sir, you are under arrest, and your vehicle is being impounded,” Martinez barked from behind me.

“Under arrest?” I twisted around, jerking my arm back. “Under arrest for what?”

“For obstructing an officer in the act of performing his job,” he said, yanking back my arm and squeezing the cuffs tightly over my wrists. “And now for resisting arrest!”

“Resisting arrest?” I spun again. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. “Officer, please, this is crazy!” I pleaded. “Can’t we take a step back here? I’m not some thug. I’m a respected surgeon. I’m speaking at a medical conference in a couple of hours…”

He turned me back around, shooting me an indifferent smirk. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to work out that little detail from jail.”

The next thing I knew, I was thrown into the back of Martinez’s police car, my knees squeezed at a sharp angle against the front, unable to comprehend how this had happened. Maybe the cop had told me to shut up, but I was only protesting my innocence. I was never threatening. I wasn’t sure what I should do, or whom I should call. They were expecting me to give a speech at the conference. I’d have to let them know. My stomach sank. And Mike-I looked at my watch. I was supposed to meet him at Atlantic Pines in an hour! I needed a lawyer. I didn’t even have a fucking lawyer! Not that kind of lawyer. There was Sy, who looked over my business stuff. Or Mitch Sperling, who had handled my divorce. Oh God, I could only imagine Liz’s reaction when she found out. “You always think you know all the answers, don’t you, Henry…?” she would say, smirking with that gloating eye roll of hers.

Not to mention how she would play this out with Hallie.

As if in seconds, several other police cars showed up on the scene, their lights flashing. Six or so cops jumped out, diverting traffic at the intersection behind me, conferring with Martinez, radioing in. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

Who the hell did they think they actually had here-Timothy McVeigh?

As I watched, Martinez and several cops talked outside their vehicles. I twisted against my restraints for a little legroom, which, like I’d always heard, only tightened them further. I sucked in a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself and figure out what I was going to say: that this was all just some crazy misunderstanding. That I was a doctor, on my way to a medical conference. To be honored tonight. That I didn’t have as much as a parking ticket on my record. Things had simply escalated out of control. For my contribution to which, I was truly sorry.

But nothing I had done merited being cuffed and carted off to jail!

A second cop-this one muscular and bald, with a thick mustache and his short sleeves rolled up-came over and opened the rear door.

“Sir, we have a couple of questions to ask you. And as you’re already in enough trouble as it is, my advice is to be very careful how you answer.”

Already in enough trouble? This was growing crazier by the second. But I wasn’t about to exacerbate it further now.

“Okay.” I nodded back to him.

He knelt so that his eyes were level with me. “Where is your wife?”

“My wife?” It took me a second to respond, blinking back in total surprise. “You mean my ex-wife? I’m divorced. And I don’t know where she is. And what the hell does she have to do with this anyway?”

“I’m talking about the woman you were seen driving around with earlier this morning.” His iron-like gaze never wavered from me.

“What woman? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, almost stammering. “There was no other woman with me. I just flew in to the airport. I drove straight here until the officer over there stopped me.”

“Sir…” The officer’s look had the kind of intensity he might use on a felon or something. “I’m going to repeat my instructions, about answering carefully… You say you didn’t have a woman in your car? Approximately one hour ago? Downtown?” The question was starting to make me just a little afraid. And it seemed he already knew the answer he was looking for.

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about!” I shook my head. “And I appreciate it, but I don’t need to be cautioned on how to reply. I haven’t done anything wrong, other than to go through a yellow light.”

The cop blew out a snort, with a thin smirk that was quickly followed by a cynical glare. Then he slowly stood up, shut the door, and went back over to his crew. A group of seven or eight of them conferred again for some time. Traffic was stopped in both directions; six or seven officers standing around, looking my way. I felt my heart race and I realized I may need someone to get me out of this situation. Who the hell could I call?

A few minutes passed, and Martinez and the bald cop came back over. They slid into the front seat and looked at me through the glass.

The next question got a lot more serious.

“Sir, when was the last time you were stopped by the Jacksonville police?” Martinez asked, staring into my eyes.

Huh? I laughed a nervous, back-of-the-throat chortle. “Stopped by the police?” I uttered, my mouth completely dry. “I’ve never been stopped by the police. Listen, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but-”

“You’re saying you weren’t pulled over in downtown Jacksonville earlier this morning?” Martinez asked me again. “Around nine A.M. With a woman in this car?”

I was shaken by the total seriousness in his eyes.

“No. No! I have no idea what you’re talking about. Nine A.M. I had just gotten off a plane! You can check my itinerary. I think it’s in my briefcase in the car. Or in the rental agreement. Look, I don’t know who the hell you guys think I am, but you’ve obviously mixed me up with…”

Martinez removed his sunglasses. “Sir, what were you doing in a federal office building in downtown Jacksonville an hour ago?”

My heart stopped. As did just about everything inside me. I just sat, with my hands bound, realizing just how serious this was. Being stopped for a traffic violation was one thing… But having 9/11-like kinds of questions thrown at you-in cuffs; in the back of a police car…

“Look.” I stared back, sure that my voice was shaking. “I don’t know who you think I am, or what you think I’ve done, but look in my eyes: I’m a doctor. I’m on my way to the Marriott for a medical conference at which I am delivering a speech later. I sped up through a traffic light because I was confused about the area trying to find the damn hotel. Actually, I’m not even sure I did go through the light… And I surely didn’t drive down a one-way street, which in any event, all seems kind of trivial now in light of what you’ve been asking me.

“But that’s it! I wasn’t stopped earlier by the police. I didn’t have a woman in the car. And I damn well wasn’t in a federal office building in downtown Jacksonville! I don’t know whether you have the wrong car, or the wrong information, the wrong whatever-but you definitely, definitely have the wrong guy!”

I steadied my gaze as best I could, my heart pounding in my chest.

“You just better hope you’re right,” the bald cop finally said with an icy smirk, “ ’cause if it turns out you’re screwing with us in any way, you have my promise I’ll put a fat one up your ass so deep you’ll be shitting lead for the rest of your life. Which, I assure you, no one will be betting will be very long. You getting me, sir?”

“Yeah, I’m getting you,” I said back to him, my gaze heated too.

The cops got out again, Martinez asking for my Social Security number. Then he and another older trooper who seemed to be in charge stood talking for a bit, and out of the blue, I thought I saw Martinez smile.

Smile?

Martinez patted him on the arm, and a short while later the senior cop got back in his car and headed off. As did the others. Even Baldy, who tossed me a final glare that to me said, Don’t let me meet up with you again.

I started to think this seemed like a positive sign. If they were transporting a dangerous suspect to jail, they wouldn’t all be driving off. I even let out a hopeful breath. Maybe I would get out of this with only a ticket. A ticket I didn’t deserve maybe, but it damn well beat jail!

Finally, Martinez came around and opened the rear door again. This time his tone was different. Softer. “I’m not going to apologize,” he said. “I told you several times to keep your mouth shut, didn’t I?”

This time I wasn’t looking for any moral victories. “Yes, you did, Officer, and I guess I-”

“And I haven’t violated any of your civil rights…” He stared at me. “Isn’t that correct… ?”

Sitting there, unfairly, in the backseat of a police car, my wrists aching from the cuffs, I took a chance and smiled back at him. “That part, I’m not sure the jury isn’t still out on…”

He gave me a bit of a chuckle in return. “Turn around. I’ll get you out of there. Truth is, I suppose the streets are kind of confusing back there. Bay Shore West is only a couple of lights down the road. We do try to be friendly here…” He took off the cuffs and a wave of relief ran through me.

“Your sidekick back there… I assume he’s just the friendly type too?”

“Rowley?” Martinez snorted. “Me, I’m a teddy bear.” He slapped me amicably on the shoulder. “Him? Guess he’s just a little embarrassed by the misunderstanding. Let’s just say, better you don’t run into him again, if you know what I mean?”

“No worries,” I said, wringing my hands free.

He said, “I’m going to write you up a warning. For speeding up through a yellow light. No proof of insurance required. That sound okay?” Martinez winked, like the whole episode was just some kind of a shared joke between us. “Just take a seat back in your car.”

A warning? If the guy had said up front that all he was doing was writing me up a warning, we could have avoided the whole mess…

I got back in the front seat of the Caddie, glancing back once or twice through the rearview mirror, as Martinez, back in his car, wrote on his pad.

And suddenly it all began to make sense to me-how they were all just standing around grinning, like it was some kind of joke… How, what if there never was any other person in a federal office building? Or someone who had been stopped earlier. With a woman in the car. How what if they were all just covering Martinez’s ass for totally overreacting. He’d probably told them that he had this rich, out-of-town doctor in cuffs, and they all stared back at him, like: Are you out of your mind? You’re arresting him for that, protesting a traffic violation…?

My blood was simmering, and I could feel myself growing more and more angry at how the whole thing had gone down.

That’s when I saw an old-model blue sedan, a Ford or a Mercury or something-I wasn’t the best at those kinds of things, and nor was I really paying attention-pull up next to Martinez’s patrol car.

Yeah, that’s what I’m sure it was, I said to myself-a cover. To give him some justification for what he did, yanking me out of my car. There probably never was any other person or woman in any car. In fact-

Suddenly I heard a loud pop coming from behind me. Like a whip snapping.

Then another.

I spun around and saw the blue sedan pull into a frenetic U-turn, screeching away from Martinez’s car.

Everything was scarily still. Just this total absence of movement or sound. Including my own heartbeat.

What just happened?

I looked in my mirror as horror began to grip me. Martinez was slumped forward against the wheel.

Oh shit, Henry… I leaped out of my car, this time no one barking at me to remain inside, and hurried back to Martinez.

His police light was still flashing and the driver’s-side window was down. Martinez was pitched forward, his forehead against the wheel. The warning pad was still in his lap. There was a dark, dime-size hole on the side of his head, a trickle of blood oozing.

I found a second wound, a blotch of matting blood, near the back of his skull.

He wasn’t moving.

“No, no, no,” I shouted. How could this be…?

My heart surged into fifth gear. I ripped open the door and did a frantic check for a pulse or any sign of life. There was none. Martinez must have been dead when his head hit the wheel. I let him fall back. There was nothing I could do. Except take a step back from his car in disbelief.

He’d been killed directly in front of me.

My head whipped around and I realized that the blue sedan, which had made a sharp right onto Lakeview, was speeding away. In front of us there was this blind curve, other cars finally driving by, stopping at the light across from me. Some drivers appeared to glance over, watching me coming out of Martinez’s car. Maybe seeing the body slumped there. Probably not sure at all what had just happened.

But they damn well would be soon.

I had to do something. I’d just seen a cop being killed. And I’d seen who had done it! At least, I’d seen the car he was driving. I bolted back to my car and grabbed my cell, frantically punching in 911.

Then I stopped.

A tremor of hesitation wound through me. What was I going to say? That an unidentified blue car carrying the person who had done this was speeding away? Half the police force in Jacksonville had just seen me in the back of Martinez’s car. In cuffs. Almost carted off to jail. All those incriminating questions hurled at me…

Not to mention, all these people driving by now. Seeing me come out of Martinez’s car.

Away from his body.

The body of the policeman who had tried to arrest me!

My hesitation escalated into outright panic as I realized just what they were all going to realize.

The whole fucking world was going to think it was me.

Chapter Three

Okay, think, Henry… Think! I knew I hadn’t done anything. But I’d just seen a cop executed. And now the killer was speeding away. I was the only one who could identify him. And at the same time, exonerate me!

What was I supposed to do, just sit here until the cops came back again and automatically assumed it was me?

I didn’t think on it a second more. I thrust the ignition on and swung the Caddie into a U-ey, then pulled up to the light on Lakeview. All I remembered was that the killer’s car was blue. I hadn’t been able to determine the make. Or a plate number. I had noticed that the plate wasn’t from Florida, but more like an off-white ground with blue numbers… And as I hit Lakeview, pushing my way to the light, a couple of letters on the plate came back to me-AMD, or ADV… I tried to recall. Or was it ADJ? And I thought I’d seen a four somewhere…

But something did come back to me with certainty as I took off after it. A kind of insignia. A dragon maybe-red, with a long tail. Or a winged bird of some kind. That might make it easier to find.

I swung a right onto Lakeview at the first break in traffic. I hit the gas, weaving in and out of cars, pulling ahead of as many as I could. The guy had a minute or so on me. But there were tons of lights. And traffic. So he couldn’t just take off crazily and risk being stopped. For all I knew he could have turned off onto a side street by now. Or pulled into a strip mall and switched cars. I fixed on that plate and that image I had seen. And looked out for the police. They’d tossed me in cuffs for a meaningless traffic violation. What would they do to me now if they thought I’d killed a cop?

I knew I had to call it in. Only a couple of minutes had gone by, and the police probably didn’t even know what happened yet. I reached for my phone and punched in 911, still no sight of the car. After a few seconds, a female operator came on. “Emergency…”

“I’ve just witnessed a murder!” I shouted. I placed my phone on speaker. “A policeman! In his vehicle. On…” Suddenly I realized I didn’t even know the name of the street Martinez had had me pull onto. “Christ,” I said, stammering, “I don’t know the street. It was off Lakeview. Near Bay Shore Springs Drive…”

“Sir, you say the victim was a policeman?” the operator replied, her voice responding to what she’d heard. “In his patrol car? I’m going to need your name. And the location you’re calling from. Are you still at the scene? Are you able to give us the patrol car’s number?”

“No, no.” I wasn’t sure what I should say. “I’m driving on Lakeview. The person who did it took off in a blue sedan. I’m chasing him now!”

“Sir, I am going to ask you to please pull over and go back to the scene,” the operator instructed me with urgency.

Damn. I had to stop at a light. I pushed myself up and tried to see over the tops of the stopped cars.

Nothing. The son of a bitch was getting away! I tried to concentrate on what I’d seen on the plate. A dragon or a snake, or a winged bird. Red, I was thinking. Yes, it was red. All I knew for sure was that the plate definitely wasn’t from Florida. But I couldn’t completely visualize it. Everything had happened so quickly.

“Sir, I’m going to need you to return to the scene of the crime,” the 911 operator said to me again. “And I’m going to need your name.”

The light changed. I drove on. My name…? I was about to give it, the accelerator pressed to the floor, doing sixty on a crowded, suburban street. Seventy. “It’s…”

Then I stopped.

A few lengths in front of me was a blue sedan that looked like the one I saw, and it was weaving in and out of traffic. “Hold it!” I said, as if I’d been jolted by EKG paddles. “This may be him!”

“Sir, I don’t need you to be a hero…” the dispatcher shouted at me. “Just give us some identifying characteristics. We’ll take care of it from there.”

Hero…? I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I was trying to do what was right and at the same time save my own skin! Go back to the scene? Without a plate number or some identifying characteristics. I knew I’d have one helluva time explaining myself back there.

I was forced to stop at another light. But so was the blue car, which was approximately ten cars ahead of me. I saw a road sign for I-10, one of the main highways, straight ahead! That’s likely where he was heading. That’s where I’d be heading! The light changed, and the blue car drove on ahead. I leaned and caught a quick enough glimpse of the plate before it was blocked, and again I noticed the light ground, just like I’d seen.

“Sir…”

I knew I’d lose the guy for good with the dispatcher continuing to bark at me. I waited a few agonizing seconds for the cars in front of me to move, every nerve in my body bristling with electricity and urgency.

Then I just said, The hell with it, Henry. Let’s go!

I swung into the turn lane and sped up to the intersection, and went right through the light. I was already in up to my eyeballs anyway!

“The guy is in a blue sedan heading down Lakeview toward the entrance to I-10!” I shouted into the phone. Which caused the dispatcher to warn me to stop for a third time.

I ignored her. I spotted the car again-maybe ten or twelve vehicles in front. I kept speeding up, dodging ahead of other vehicles in front of me, making up ground.

Eight cars now.

Then, to my astonishment, I spotted another blue car! This one was one or two in front of the one I was chasing.

Which was the right one?

Neither had in-state plates, but the second one-the one in front-did have something else on the back plate, and as I squinted in the sun, I saw it began with an A! I pressed on the gas. The speedometer climbed to seventy. Now I was only a handful of cars behind them. Five or six. We were rapidly approaching the highway. I yelled to the 911 dispatcher, “There’s a second car!”

If one of them got on the highway and the other remained on Lakeview, I’d have to make a choice.

The first car I had spotted put on its blinker and began to veer toward the highway, picking up speed. I couldn’t make out the plates, other than an AD or maybe a J or something… I couldn’t see part of the plate. The second car stayed on Lakeview. And it had that thing on the plate.

I had to make a choice.

I yelled to the operator, “One of them is veering onto I-10. West. The other is staying on Lakeview… I’m staying,” I told her.

The first car veered onto the ramp, heading onto the highway. I went past it, underneath the overpass, praying that wasn’t Martinez’s killer getting away.

I hit the accelerator, pulling myself closer to the second blue car. It had light-ground plates, just like the one at the scene. I started to make out the number. AB4… I didn’t know. That could have been it.

And some kind of image too…

I sped up, inching closer, until I could finally make out the plate number in full. AB4-699.

It was from Tennessee. And the image I saw… It was a U.S. Army medallion.

And there was a sticker on the back window. Honk if you support our troops.

Could that be it?

As I pulled up even, I saw a woman behind the wheel. And a kid in the back. In a kiddie seat. The one thing I was sure of was that the person driving the murder car was a man! I drove alongside of her, staring in futility and frustration. The woman leered back at me like I was some kind of nutcase and changed lanes.

“Fuck!” I slammed my palm against the steering wheel. The killer was heading away on I-10. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck!

All of a sudden reality sank back into me. I had to go back to the scene and tell the police what I knew. I had to face a bunch of pissed-off, angry cops who might well slam me onto the ground and slap the cuffs on me again.

“I need your name, sir!” the 911 operator kept insisting.

Would they buy for one second what I’d been saying? That I was chasing after a blue car. The killer’s car. With nothing concrete to identify it. These same cops who had just seen me in cuffs, in the back of Martinez’s car. Having argued with the very policeman who was now dead! And taken off from the scene!

“You have to find the car,” I said to the operator. “It’s heading west on I-10. It’s a blue sedan. Out-of-state plates. I think the first letters were AMD… Some kind of image on it, a dragon or winged bird. I’m heading back to the scene. Someone has to have spotted it.”

I hung up and began retracing my route along Lakeview, nervously going over what I was about to face. Up ahead, it appeared as if traffic was being diverted off the main road. By now they’d probably found Martinez’s car. They all knew who I was anyway and what car I was driving. I’d have some explaining to do. How I didn’t kill Martinez. Why I’d run from the scene.

I decided to give myself up to the first policeman I saw.

About a mile from the scene, police cars had blocked Lakeview and were pushing traffic onto a side street. I knew I’d need a lawyer. A good one. A criminal attorney. As I inched closer to the cops, to my impending capture, I started going over in my head who I could call. I inched to about eight car lengths away, and spotted two navy-clad patrolmen waving cars away.

My eyes stretched wide.

One of them was that asshole. Rowley. Baldy. The one who just winked at me maliciously and said, “Just never let me catch you again!”

He’d wanted to rip me a new one over nothing more than a traffic violation. Now one of his own had been murdered.

He was the last person on earth I wanted to hand myself over to!

I thought about pulling out of my lane and finding someone else. But there wasn’t anyone. Not here. The line of cars kept creeping forward. I had no choice but to inch closer, or draw attention to myself. The kind of attention I didn’t need right now.

Suddenly Rowley looked up and scanned down the line of cars, and to my dismay, his eyes seemed to lock like a magnet on the sight of my white Caddie.

Then they fixed directly on me.

Every cell in my body froze. I put my hands up where he could see them. I didn’t know what else to do.

Then I watched as the sonovabitch shouted something to his partner and reached for his gun.

To my horror, he started running up the line of cars toward me.

I started yelling, “No, it wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!” And he was shouting something back, “Out of the car! Out of the car!”

Oh, shit!

And then he aimed!

My heart almost clawed its way up my throat as I vividly recalled what he had warned me of if our paths ever crossed again. A warning bell inside me rang: Henry, you have to get the hell away from this guy! Now!

I jerked on the wheel and forced the Caddie out of my lane.

I turned around and saw Rowley’s weapon aimed directly at me! He’s going to shoot, Henry! My heart clawed its way up my throat. No way I could simply make myself a sitting duck for him.

I hit the gas.

Suddenly the front windshield exploded, glass raining all over me. He was shooting!

Oh my God!

“No, no,” I yelled back in horror. “It wasn’t me!”

I whipped my head back and saw Rowley again, this time in a shooter’s position, two hands on his weapon, steadying, eyes trained directly at me.

He’s going to kill me! I screamed to myself.

I floored the accelerator, the Caddie screeching into the oncoming lane, as another shot crashed through the side window, shattering it, narrowly missing my head.

“How the hell is this happening?” I screamed in the car. “It’s not me!”

I spun a U-ey, jolting up onto the pavement and hitting a street sign, ducking my head as low as I could, and sped off in the opposite direction on Lakeview as two more shots slammed into my chassis, clanging off the rear.

I didn’t know if I was making the biggest mistake of my life, but I was sure that if I didn’t get out of there, I’d be dead.

I cut a sharp right onto the first cross street I encountered, and then an even quicker left onto a residential lane. I floored it again and for the first time checked behind me.

No one was there.

Chapter Four

At the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, on Adams Street downtown, it was Carrie Holmes’s first day back on the job.

She knew it wasn’t going to be an easy one. It had been four months, the four toughest months of her life, since that day. The day her world had fallen apart. But she knew she had to get back into the world. Back to the person she was before… Before “the day my heart died too,” as she always referred to it.

Take a deep breath, she told herself, stepping off the elevator onto the detectives’ floor.

Life starts over-now.

Carrie worked for the JSO. Community Outreach Director, her business card read. A glorified way of saying she took care of matters in which the department’s duty interacted with the public, building goodwill in the parts of town where the department didn’t have much. Softening the outrage after an incident in which excessive force was used, or worse, an officer-involved shooting. Overseeing police-sponsored community events. A new chief had been appointed since she’d been gone. Erman Hall. More of a numbers guy who was given a mandate on issues like the tough immigration law and budget control. She’d heard that everyone was trying to curry favor with him.

Truth was, Carrie was kind of surprised she hadn’t already received her “pink slip” in the mail. Let’s just say “community outreach” wasn’t exactly a priority in a time when cops were being pulled off the street and station houses closed. She’d always expected she’d become a detective herself-her dad had been a chief in New Hampshire for twenty-four years and her older brother, Jack, was a supervisor with the FBI in Atlanta. With a master’s in criminology from the University of Florida, she’d always thought that was the path she would take, but with Rick on duty overseas, and then starting up his law practice, and then Raef, she took the job that opened-in Administration-and it just kind of stuck. The brains of the family, her dad always said, and the looks!

Not that any of that really mattered now. Brains, looks, but nothing had prepared her for what had hit her. Nothing could.

To lose your husband and your son… Well, almost your son…

And on the very same day.

Now it was time to start over.

Carrie hugged a few people hello as she made her way back to her office. This was harder than she’d thought. Everyone was tiptoeing around on eggshells, not wanting to say the wrong thing: “How are you doing?” “So great to have you back!” And, of course, “How’s Raef?”

“He’s doing really well,” she replied, as upbeat as she could. “He’s at my folks’.” It seemed the best thing for a while that he remain with her parents in Atlantic Beach, which was closer to the hospital. “We hope to have him back in school soon.”

Of course, no one mentioned Rick-except just to shake their heads, eyes glossing over a little, and to say how sorry they were.

“Well, you give that boy a big hug from me!”

She ran the gauntlet of well-wishers back to her desk. She found a card there-signed by most of the office, detectives and administration. Great to have you back! That brought a little tear to her eye. And made her smile.

So did the handful of photos that were still on her shelf. Rick finishing the Marine Corps Marathon in D.C. last year. In 3:51:29. His personal best, by far! Raef looking very ferocious in his pee wee football gear. That nice one of the three of them at her folks’ last Thanksgiving. All decked out.

Carrie felt herself starting to get sad.

She looked at the mountain of files and memorandums that had been arranged on her desk by Andrea Carson, her deputy, and then the phone started to ring: people she dealt with on the force and even a local press contact, all glad to hear she was back. She started to read through a few of the files, trying to catch up on what was happening. She knew she’d have to ease herself back into the routine.

Andrea knocked on her door, folders in hand. “You ready?”

“Ready.” Carrie nodded with a smile. “Come on in.”

That’s when she noticed that a crowd had gathered underneath the TV in the detectives’ bullpen. Things seemed to have gotten a little hectic. Lots of people running around.

She stood up, the captain’s office door had been closed a long time now. Then she saw the chief, the new chief, with whom she’d hoped to grab a couple of minutes, heading out of the office with Cam Winfield, the department’s press liaison-not looking at all as if “community outreach” was high on his list of priorities right now.

Something had happened!

Carrie stepped out and found Robyn, Chief Hall’s secretary. “What’s going on?”

“Didn’t you hear?” Robyn’s eyes were wet with tears. “One of our guys was just shot on the street. Killed.”

“Oh no…” Carrie’s blood came to a halt. “Who?”

“A patrol officer out of Southeast. Named Martinez.” The chief’s secretary sadly shook her head.

“Robert Martinez?” Carrie sucked in a painful breath. She knew Martinez. She’d worked with him once or twice, in Brentwood, on a community center there. He was a part-time basketball coach. He had a wife and a couple of kids. “On the street?” she asked Robyn.

“Shot. Point-blank. After a routine traffic stop.” The chief’s assistant shook her head. “Right in his car.”

“Oh God…” Carrie felt her stomach fall. She tried to recall, Jacksonville hadn’t had an officer killed in the line of duty for at least a couple of years. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do…” she said, and shook her head kind of uselessly. “Please…”

She went back to her desk, an empty feeling in her gut. She went on the KJNT news website and brought up a live feed from the scene. “Police Officer Reportedly Killed on Lakeview Drive,” the headline read. The shot was from an airborne copter cam. Carrie minimized it and brought up Martinez’s “green screen.” There were several commendations. One censure years ago for excessive force that was never prosecuted. She thought of his wife, Marilyn. She would call her. She knew firsthand how tough this was going to be.

“Carrie?”

Bill Akers stuck his head inside her workstation. Akers was her boss, a captain, in charge of operations, and her department reported in to him.

Carrie stood up. “I just heard…”

“Listen, Carrie…” Akers blew out a breath. “I know it’s your first day back and all…”

“Don’t worry about that,” she answered. “What can I do?”

“We’re setting up a hotline. A lot of personnel are in the field or following up on leads. We’ve got a manhunt going. You mind manning a phone? Anyone calls in who seems legit, take down their info. A detective will get back to them as soon as they can.”

“Of course I’ll take a phone,” Carrie said. “Whatever you need. Is there a…”

“Suspect…” Akers filled in. “Yeah, we have a suspect. We’ve got a picture of him on the screen now.”

He led her over to a terminal in the detectives’ bullpen and showed her a head shot from Florida Motor Vehicles. “Apparently the guy caused a ruckus after Martinez pulled him over for running a light. He’s driving a white, rented Caddie. Name of Steadman. Henry. The guy’s a doctor, if you can imagine. Some big-shot plastic surgeon from down in Palm Beach.”

“We’re sure?” Carrie stared back at the screen. The suspect had a nice face. Bright, intelligent eyes. Wavy, long brown hair. Stylish glasses. A warm smile. Successful, nice-looking plastic surgeons generally didn’t fit the profile of a cop murderer.

“Damn sure.” The captain nodded firmly. “Bastard just fled the fucking scene.”

Chapter Five

I drove, accelerator pressed to the floor, in a state between bewilderment and outright panic.

The front windshield had a spiderweb crack and my right rear passenger window was completely shattered, glass splayed all over my lap. My pulse felt like it was in an atomic accelerator and my heart had crawled so high up my throat I could have reached in and pulled it out. I had no idea where I was heading. Just away. Away from Rowley and those trigger-happy cops.

I looked at my hands on the steering wheel and they were shaking like branches in a storm.

Okay, Henry, okay… What do I do now?

It was clear I had to turn myself in, but I had to find a way that wouldn’t end up getting me killed. I ran through all the possibilities of where to go, whom I could trust. And only one person came to mind.

Mike. Whom I was supposed to be meeting for golf in a little more than an hour!

He was a lawyer… A real estate lawyer, perhaps, but he’d have partners, contacts. I knew he was very well connected in town. He’d know what to do. No one could possibly logically believe that I was a cop killer.

I thought, if I could simply get to him, he’d be able to negotiate a safe handover. I couldn’t have killed Martinez. I had no motive, no gun…? I didn’t even own a gun! I hadn’t even shot one since… I racked my brain. Since camp, for God’s sake! When I was a kid!

I’d been to Mike’s home once. I remembered that it was in an upscale section of town. Avondale, he’d told me. I was already supposed to meet him there. He’d mentioned that it wasn’t too far from Atlantic Pines. Which meant I couldn’t be too far from him now.

Meanwhile, I had cops on my tail and I was driving a shot-up car.

The residential road I was on was coming to an end, leading into a more commercial thoroughfare. I made a right, and anxiously drove a block or two, then pulled into the first business I saw-a Sherwin-Williams paint store-and wove around to a lot behind the store.

I figured I was safe here for a short while. But I knew I couldn’t go on in this car. It was a mess, and every cop in the city would be looking for it.

I grabbed my cell and brought up Mike’s number. It went to two, three rings… “C’mon, Mike, please, answer!” I was begging. Then, agonizingly, I heard his voice-mail recording. “You’ve reached Mike Dinofrio…” the familiar voice came on. “I’m sorry I’m unable to take your call now, but if you-”

I clicked off. Why the hell wasn’t he answering? I was supposed to check in with him when I reached the hotel. C’mon, Mike, please…

Frantically I tried again. Again, his voice mail. This time I stammered through a harried message:

“Mike-it’s Henry! I don’t know if you’ve heard, but something crazy has happened. I really need your help. And now! Just call me back, please. It’s vital, Mike… and quickly! Please…”

I hung up and let out a long breath. I rested my head back and closed my eyes. I was safe here-for a while. But sooner or later a customer would drive in. I didn’t know what information had been released on the airwaves, if my car was hot-they surely knew who I was-so I turned on the radio. All anyone had to do was see my front windshield and it would be clear… I waited, seconds seeming like minutes.

I just about jumped with relief when my phone suddenly rang.

“Henry, it’s Mike…!” he said. “I was out polishing my clubs. What’s happened?”

I filled him in on what had happened, trying to keep it from sounding as if I’d lost my mind.

“They think you did what, Henry?”

“They think I killed the cop, Mike! Me!”

“That’s crazy, Henry!”

“I know, but, Mike…” I told him I needed a place to go. That I had to turn myself in.

He didn’t waste a second answering. “Tell me where you are. I’ll come and get you…”

“No. No. These people are crazy. I don’t want to put you in any danger. It’s best I come to you.”

“You’re sure?” he asked unhesitatingly. “I could-”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

He gave me his address and told me it was only about fifteen minutes away. I said I’d figure out a way to get there. “I’ll be waiting for you,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll make this come out.”

“Okay. Okay… Mike, thanks a lot. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know where else to turn.”

“Don’t even say it, Henry. We’ll figure this out. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

I blew out a long, relieved breath. “Thanks.” Then I couldn’t believe what popped into my mind. “Sorry about the golf, dude. Looks like we may have to put it off for today.”

He chuckled grimly. “You just be careful, Henry…”

I hung up and jumped out of the Caddie, getting ready to leave. I grabbed my satchel case out of the backseat. I figured my iPad might come in handy. And a golf cap. Anything that might conceal me a bit. The rest… clothes, papers, my speech, what did it matter now?

They already knew who the hell I was anyway!

I locked it up and headed out onto the street. Southside Boulevard. It was a pretty commercial thoroughfare-an auto supply store, a Popeyes. On the other side of the street, a couple of blocks away, I saw some kind of motel. A Clarion Inn. I put on my sunglasses, pulled my cap down over my eyes, and hustled across the street. I stopped in the middle as a police car sped by, lights flashing, almost giving me a heart attack! But mercifully, it continued by. And just as mercifully-there was a taxi in the driveway when I reached the motel.

“You free?” I knocked on the driver’s window.

“Sorry, waiting for a fare,” he said. He picked up his radio. “If you need a car, I could…”

“How about a hundred bucks?” I reached inside my pocket and pulled out a crisp, new bill. “I need to get somewhere fast.”

The driver shot up. “I could always call them another car, is what I meant to say.” He turned on the ignition. “Hop on in.”

I did and pushed the hundred-dollar bill through the partition. I read off Mike’s address. “I need to go to…” Then I caught myself and gave him a street number that I figured would be close by. No reason he had to know exactly where I was going. “… 33443 Turnberry Terrace.”

“That’s in Avondale, huh? I think we can get you there.”

I leaned back as the taxi pulled out onto the street and closed my eyes. The driver called in to his dispatcher. “Base-this is seventeen. My fare’s fifteen minutes late and some guy’s got an airport emergency, so I took him on. You may want to check with the Clarion and see if these people still want a car…”

I sat back, away from the driver’s line of sight. My heart rate calmed for the first time since I left Martinez at the scene. The driver tried to catch my eyes in his rearview mirror, asking me questions I didn’t need to hear: “From around here?” “Shame about the weather, huh?” It was cloudless. Eighty degrees. I grunted a few halfhearted replies so that, given how the guy had just basically saved my life, he wouldn’t think I was rude. He drove a little farther, and as he pulled onto I-10, I saw two police cars staked out at the entrance ramp. I pressed deep into the seat as we went by.

“You hear what happened?” the driver asked.

“No,” I replied. “Sorry. What?”

“Some guy just plugged a cop right back there on Lakeview. Traffic’s all to hell. They won’t let anyone by.”

He turned on a local news station. First it was the weather, then a couple of car ads. Then the announcer came back on. “Now back to our lead story of the morning… The brazen execution-style killing of a Jacksonville policeman near Lakeview Drive… Police say they have a possible suspect who has fled the scene and remains at large…”

I immediately felt the sweats come over me, the announcer saying how the suspect had been detained over a traffic violation. And how he had fled the scene in a white Cadillac with Florida plates.

My stomach forced its way up.

The possible suspect I was hearing about was me!

“The slain officer, whose name is being withheld, pending family notification, is a decorated, fifteen-year veteran of the force…”

If I wasn’t sick already, that got me there. The guy had been a prick to me-I still didn’t know why he had pulled me over. But there was no reason in the world that he had to die.

We crossed a bridge and drove past another exit or two, then we pulled off at Riverside Avenue and entered a neighborhood of large, upscale homes. I knew we were close.

“Can you believe that shit?” the cabbie said, trying to catch my eyes in the mirror. “What kind of bastard does that, you know what I mean…?”

“Yeah, I know.” I shifted my face away. Please, just get me there.

We wound around some residential streets. I recognized the area from my time here before. Then I spotted a street sign for Turnberry Terrace. No need for the cabbie to know precisely which house I was headed to.

“This is fine,” I said, grabbing my satchel. “You can let me off here.”

Chapter Six

I waited until the cabbie drove off before crossing the street. The homes here were sprawling and upscale-Tudors and colonials with well-manicured lawns and pretty landscaping.

I knew Mike had done well. He had worked on some big land deals in the past few years. Just being here made me feel a bit more hopeful. Mike would hear my story. He’d be able to negotiate something with the local authorities. In spite of how everything looked, it would be clear: the lack of any motive; the impossibility of how I could have gotten my hands on a weapon; how I’d only ducked into Martinez’s car to check how badly he’d been hurt. Even why I’d fled the scene…

It would be clear I wasn’t the killer.

A mail truck drove around the circle, stopping at each house, and I waited, one resident stepping out in her bathrobe to take in her mail, until it headed back down the block. Then I found Mike’s house, a stylish, mustard-colored Mediterranean.

I began to wonder if my identity had been released. Dr. Henry Steadman. Prominent cosmetic surgeon from Palm Beach. Wanted for murder. He fled the scene in a white Cadillac STS…

By now Mike must’ve heard.

Cautiously, I went up the driveway, praying that I wouldn’t run into Gail, his wife, first and have to explain this all to her. She would probably freak. I knew Gail had her own real estate agency in town. She and Mike had two kids-one away at college. The younger one, I figured, would already be at school.

One of the three wood-paneled garage bays was open, and I recognized Mike’s silver Jag there.

I let out a sigh of relief.

I hurried up to the house and rang the front doorbell, expecting Mike to open the door instantly, but no one did. I rang again, one of those formal-sounding, church-bell chimes.

Again, no one answered.

I was about to try one more time when I pushed on the latch and the front door opened.

I stepped tentatively into the large, high-ceilinged house, facing a kind of spacious living room with a lot of art on the walls, a huge mirror, and an arched Palladian window.

“Mike…!”

Through the window, I saw a large, fenced-in backyard with a good-size pool and a pool house in the same architectural style as the main house. I waited for him to come out and called out again, “Mike… where are you?”

Suddenly a tremor shot through me. Surely he’d heard by now. Maybe he hadn’t believed me as much as I thought. I mean, we were old friends, but not exactly close friends. I started thinking, What if he’d left, or even worse, notified the police. What if-

No. I stopped myself. Jesus, Henry, you’re acting crazy. You’ve known the guy since college. You’re just being paranoid, which was kind of easy right now.

I couldn’t say I liked the idea of sneaking around someone’s house with half the police in Jacksonville searching for me. Someone could just blow me away with a gun-and it would be entirely legal! I stepped into the foyer, trying to recall the layout, feeling a little edgy.

“Mike?”

I turned right and found myself in the kitchen. Some plates on the counter, recently used. A half-picked-over muffin. A jar of almond butter-which made me smile, remembering Mike was always kind of a health nut.

Suddenly things began to feel a little odd to me. “Mike, where the hell are you…?”

I went back through the living room. The family room was just as I’d remembered, with pictures of the kids all over and a large Tarkay watercolor of a Parisian sidewalk café.

Mike’s office was just down a hallway. He had taken me in there on my one visit and showed off his collection of sports memorabilia, his pride and joy.

The door was half open. Reflexively I knocked and called out again. “Mike? You in there, guy…?”

To my relief, I saw him sitting in a high-backed, leather chair at his desk, glasses raised on his forehead as if he was looking over a report, wearing a red golf shirt-which accounted for why I didn’t see it at first.

My first reaction was to blow out my cheeks and go, “Jesus, buddy, am I glad to see you…”

Then I stopped.

He was sitting there, except that he hadn’t moved or made even the slightest sign of recognition. His eyes were wide and glassy and staring through me.

Two dark blotches were on his chest.

“Oh my God, Mike…!” My legs grew rubbery and I suddenly felt my stomach lurch up my throat. “Oh, no, no, no, no…”

I ran over. You didn’t need a medical degree to know that he was dead. His pulse was nonexistent; his body temperature was already getting cold.

“Oh, Mike, Mike…” I said, tears forcing their way into my eyes, and I basically sank, numb and not understanding, into a leather chair.

I’d known Mike for more than twenty years. Since we were freshmen at Amherst. He was on the golf team. He was one of those glass-half-full kind of guys, who’d give you the shirt off his back. Which was basically what he was doing for me now.

Or had been about to do.

I sat there with my head in my hands, looking at him, trying to figure out how this could possibly have happened. My friend was dead! How could anyone have possibly known that I would come here? Or even put the two of us together. How-

Suddenly it was clear.

I realized with mounting alarm that two people were now dead. Two people. And that I was the only connection between them!

I felt the sweats come over me and my insides slowly clawed their way up my throat. Oh my God, Henry…

Someone was targeting me.

It seemed crazy, impossible. Who? And why? What could I have done? Just an hour ago I’d been driving into town, thinking that this was going to be one of the best days of my life. Now… Now two people were dead. Brutally murdered.

And I was the only link between them!

No, no, this was crazy… It couldn’t be.

My thoughts raced wildly. I stared at my friend’s lifeless body while tears of grief and utter disbelief made their way down my cheeks. I realized now that I couldn’t explain myself. Not any longer. I’d be looked at as a suspect here as well. In two murders now. The first maybe I could explain… But this one, completely unrelated, my friend, at the place I had chosen to flee to… All they’d have to do was check my phone records to see that I’d just called him. My prints and DNA were probably everywhere.

Even on his body.

“Who’s doing this to me?”

I heard a car drive by, and suddenly I knew I had to get out of there. Now! A housekeeper might show up at any second. Or Gail could come home. My name was already all over the airwaves as a person wanted in connection to a murder.

How could I possibly explain this one now?

I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a cloth and started wiping down anything I could remember I had touched.

The doors. The coffee mug. Around Mike’s office.

Him.

Then I didn’t know if I should have done that. It only made me look as if I was covering up. Made me look guiltier.

I saw Mike’s cell phone on his desk. I knew it was crazy, but by now mine was probably being monitored by the police and I had to make a few calls. The first one to Liz. She had to know. Oh God, how would I possibly explain this? I felt completely nauseous.

“Mike…” I said, swallowing, placing my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, dude. I know you were only trying to help. I know you-”

I clasped his lifeless hand. What else was there to say?

I went out through the garage. Mike’s silver Jag was just sitting there. His Callaways leaning against the trunk. Crazy as it was, I had no other way to get out of there.

And I couldn’t possibly make myself look any guiltier than I already had.

I found the key on the front divider, and the engine started up.

I drove out, closing the garage door behind me. Tears stung in my eyes. I wanted to call Gail and let her know what horror awaited her back at home. But how could I? Until I figured it out.

I knew, once she heard the news, she’d automatically assume it was me.

I drove out the driveway and backtracked along the same route I had taken earlier, toward the highway. I had no idea where I was going, or whom I could turn to now.

In a few minutes I hit I-10 again. I knew I was safe in Mike’s car, at least for a while. But that was going to cave in fast.

I looked in the rearview mirror, just to make sure there weren’t any cops behind me, and, for the first time, actually focused on the Jag’s rear window.

Suddenly my eyes tripled in size.

The window had a decal on it-an image I was sure I had seen before. What the hell is happening, Henry…?

I pulled over to the side of the highway and spun around, frozen in shock.

It was the identical image I’d seen on the back plate of the blue car as it pulled away.

Not a dragon, as I had originally thought. But a kind of bird. With a sharp beak and bright red wings. A long tail.

A gamecock.

A mascot. From the University of South Carolina.

I remembered, Mike’s oldest son was a sophomore there.

Chapter Seven

The squat, stub-necked man stepped up to the officer behind the glass, his pink face framed by a felt of orange hair around the sides of his balding head.

“Amanda Hofer,” he said, and pushed his ID through the opening while the officer took a good look at him. “I’m her father.”

The duty guard at the Lowndes County Jail inspected it and pushed it back to him. “You can head down to Booth Two.”

Vance Hofer put his license back in the thick, tattered wallet and stepped through a security checkpoint, taking out his keys and loose change. Then he continued down to the visiting room. It had been a long time, he thought to himself, a very long time since he’d felt at home in a place like this. A lot of things had happened and not many of them good. He eased himself into a chair in the small booth and stared at his reflection in the glass.

He’d lost Joycie to cancer about a year and a half ago. Lost his job at the mill a year before that. Medical insurance too. Then he’d fallen behind on the house. Not to mention how he’d been forced to come up here in the first place, thrown to the wolves down south on trumped-up charges he couldn’t defend.

Life was bleeding him, Vance reflected, one cut at a time.

But this last one-what had happened to Amanda. Well, that was one more cut than he could bear.

They brought her out in an orange jumpsuit, hands cuffed in front of her. She looked a little overwhelmed and scared. Who wouldn’t be? Maybe a little afraid of seeing him too. Her hair was all straggly and unkempt. Cheeks sunken and pale. And when she saw him, who it was who had come to visit, she had this cautious look that he took as both worried and even a little ashamed. Like a proud animal not used to being caged. She sat down across from him with a wary smile and shrugged her shoulders slightly.

“How ya doin’, Daddy?”

He nodded back, not knowing what to say. “Amanda.”

Truth be told, Vance hadn’t known what to say to his daughter in years. He saw her as little more than a whining, pathetic child who never owned up to anything she’d done. Who’d always blamed every bit of what went wrong in her life on someone or something else. Which made Vance sick to his soul, since, if he stood on one thing, it was that each of us had to be accountable for what we had done in life.

No matter how bad.

Still, she was his daughter. He’d tried to raise her as best he could, knowing he had always had a paucity in the way of softness or understanding, until things started to go downhill in the past year. And he hated that-that he’d let things get away from him. That someone with as clear a ledger when it came to right from wrong had to look through the glass and see his own seed, his wife’s baby, and say, in a corner of his bruised, unforgiving heart, That’s my daughter there.

“How’s Benji, Daddy?” Amanda asked. Her stupid cat. Not even her cat, just a mangy, scrawny stray who lived in the woods outside and only came around ’cause Amanda was stupid enough to feed it. “Are you leaving a little something out for him? He likes a little raw chop meat maybe. Or maybe some tuna fish.”

“He’s doing just fine, Amanda, just fine,” Vance said, though he was plainly lying. He’d heard a couple of hopeful purrs a few days back, but now the critter must have wised up and was no longer coming around. “He stops by every couple of nights or so. Been asking for you, ’Manda.”

That made her smile.

“I talked to my lawyer,” she said, the momentary lightness in her soft eyes darkening. “They want me to plead, Daddy, to what they’re calling ‘aggravated vehicular manslaughter.’ Otherwise he says they’re going to go for second-degree murder.”

Vance nodded.

The whole thing had been played out all over the news, so much that he couldn’t even watch TV anymore. Such a nice, young thing that gal had been, and married to someone serving our country, a Marine in Afghanistan. Not to mention that baby… Only eight weeks old. The poor guy hadn’t even seen his son yet. The D.A. wouldn’t let up. Not with Amanda so juiced up and not even knowing what she had done and all. It was clear he was pushing for the max. Vance couldn’t even blame him.

It was an election year.

“Sounds like something you ought to weigh carefully, honey.”

“Aggravated manslaughter’s punishable by twenty years, Daddy!” Her eyes grew scared and wide. “I didn’t mean to hurt no one. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I wasn’t myself. Those things …” She wiped her eyes and pushed back her hair. “We’re talking my whole life, Daddy! I don’t deserve this. I’m scared. You have to help me. You do…”

“I know you’re scared, Amanda,” Vance said, looking at her. “But you’re gonna have to take responsibility for what you’ve done. You killed a woman, honey. And her baby…”

And after, how she’d just walked around in a big daze crying how she was hurt too. Those animals… Her so-called friends. Look what they’d done to her. Vance had fought for right from wrong his whole life, and this was what it had left him. “No one can make that go away, darlin’. There just ain’t much I can do.”

“Twenty years, Daddy! That’s my whole life! You know people. I know you can help me.” She was crying, his little girl. Thick, childlike tears. But crying for whom? Herself. “You have to!”

“I can’t help you, honey.” Vance lowered his head. “At least, not in that way.”

“Then how?” Amanda stared back at him. “How can you help me, Daddy? You were a cop, all those years…” Her tone was helpless and desperate, fragile as thin glass, but also with that edge that dug into him with recollections he didn’t want to hear. “You were a cop! That has to mean something.”

A fire began to light up in Vance’s belly. First, like a match to kindling. Then catching, fueled by the anger he always carried, and his shame. The people demanded justice. She’d killed two perfectly innocent people. He understood that better than anyone. His daughter had to pay the price. They’d been bleeding him, one cut at a time, over the years, one at a time… And deeper…

“How you gonna help me, Daddy?”

It got to the point you couldn’t take no more…

Someone had to pay.

Vance leaned forward and said in barely more than a whisper, “Who gave you the pills, ’Manda?”

“No one gave me the pills, Daddy. You don’t understand. You just get them, that’s all. I needed them.”

“Someone gave ’em to you, honey. So you tell me who? I’m pretty sure I know who.” His eyes fixed on hers. “You think, if the situation was reversed, that boy’d be protecting you?”

She snorted back, angry. “You’re wrong, Daddy. You’ve always been wrong.”

“Who gave ’em to you, honey?” Vance put his beefy palm on the glass partition, hoping she’d do the same, but she just sat there. “For once, do the right thing, hon. Please. Who took my little girl from me?”

“No…” For a moment she looked back at him and shook her head, and then there was anger in her eyes. “That’s your answer, Daddy? That’s how you’re gonna help me? I’m sitting here, looking at my whole life taken away, and all you want to know is who took your little girl?” She screwed up her eyes and gave him a cajoling laugh, daggers in them. “You done it, Daddy. You took her. You took that little girl. You know what I’m talking about. You want to know so bad? Well, take a long, hard look at the truth, Daddy. It wasn’t the drugs. It wasn’t Wayne. It was you. Take a good look at what you see”-she pushed herself back and lifted her jangling hands-“ ’cause you’re the one who’s responsible! You.”

She stared at him, her once-soft, brown, little-girl eyes ablaze. “You think you’re gonna help me…?” She nodded to the guard and stood up, brushing the stringy hair out of her eyes. “What’re you gonna do, Daddy, hurt them all? Everyone who took your little dream away?” She took a step away from him, crushing his heart, though he didn’t know quite how to say it.

Then she turned and faced him one more time. A smile crept onto her lips, a cruel one. “You may not be in this prison,” Amanda said, like she was stepping on a dying insect to put it out of its pain, “but that don’t mean you’re any freer than me now, does it, Daddy?”

Chapter Eight

My eyes locked on the gamecock, the question throbbing through me if some kind of connection could’ve existed between Mike and the person who had just shot Martinez, or if this was just some crazy coincidence.

Either way, I drove back on the highway, knowing I was safe in Mike’s Jaguar, at least until someone discovered the body. Which could be any moment, of course. I tried to think how I could explain this. It would hardly be a secret that I had headed to Mike’s after I left Martinez. There was the cabbie; not to mention my prints and DNA probably all over everything. Gail would tell them how we were supposed to play golf that morning. I’d taken his phone and car. As soon as he was found, everything would be linked to me. I veered off the highway at a random exit, pulled the Jag into the lot of a Winn-Dixie food market, and just sat there.

I needed someone to help me now. Someone I could trust.

Amazingly, the person who came to mind was Liz.

My ex-wife and I had stayed on decent terms since we split up. Decent because she had moved on, even if I hadn’t completely. Whatever had once come between us-our diverging careers; that she could be a total bitch at times; and oh yeah, that she had started up with the lead partner in her firm while we were still married-we still trusted each other, at least when it came to Hallie’s best interests.

Liz was a terrific immigration lawyer; she dealt mostly with people trying to get a green card for their housekeepers or a visa for their relatives from Cuba. But if there was a better person to call who would know how to get me out of this hole, I didn’t know who.

I dialed her number at work and her secretary, Joss, came on. “Liz Feldman’s office.”

“Joss, is she there?” My voice shook with urgency. “It’s important!”

“I’m afraid she’s in a meeting, Dr. Steadman. Can I have her call you back? It shouldn’t be too long.”

“No, it can’t wait, Joss. I need to speak with her now. I need you to pull her out of that meeting.”

“Give me a moment,” Joss said, obviously picking up the anxiety in my tone. “I hope that everything’s okay…”

“Thanks. I really appreciate that, Joss.”

It took another thirty seconds but finally Liz came on, in her usual bulldog style. “Henry, you just can’t pull me out of a meeting like that. Is-”

“Liz!” I cut her off. “Listen-this is important. I’m in trouble. Big trouble. I need your help.”

“What’s happened?” she shot back. Then she gasped. “It’s not-”

“No, Hallie’s okay,” I said, anticipating her concern. “It’s nothing to do with her. It’s me. I’m in Jacksonville…”

I tried to explain it all as rationally as I could. How a cop had pulled me over for running a light and began to hassle me. “It was weird-it was like he thought I was someone they were looking for. He pulled me out of the car and told me I was being arrested and slapped a set of cuffs on me…”

“Arrested? Well, you know how you can run your mouth off, Henry,” she replied in form.

“Liz, this isn’t a joke. Just listen! And I didn’t do anything-at least not enough to get pulled out of my car. But that’s not what’s important now. The cop was killed!”

“Killed?”

“Yes, Liz. Right in front of my eyes, Liz. After he let me go, someone pulled their car around next to his and shot him, point-blank, right through his head. I saw the entire thing.”

“Oh my God, Henry, that’s horrible. Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right! I mean, I’m not injured. But the police believe I did it!” I told her how the other police cars had been called to the scene and all those crazy kinds of questions they were barking at me.

“But that’s not the issue now! The guy who did it took off and I took off after him. I saw something on the car, but I couldn’t catch up. So, basically, the cops saw that I was in cuffs in the back of this dead patrolman’s car and then I fled the scene.”

“Well, you have to go back, Henry. That much is clear. Now!”

“I did go back, Liz. And they opened fire at me!”

“Opened fire! My God, Henry, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I mean, I wasn’t hit. But my car was totally shot up. The windows shattered. I managed to escape and ditched it. But now I’m on the run. They think I did it! Not to mention my fucking prints are all over his car!”

“Your prints?” I heard her struggling to put it all together. “How did your prints get in his car, Henry?”

“Because I watched him being shot, Liz! While he was writing me out a summons. Because I’m a doctor and I ran back to check on him, but he was already gone. But anyone driving by at that particular moment saw me leaning into his car. Find a news station. I’m pretty sure my name is out there as a suspect.”

“A suspect? Henry, they obviously somehow believe you were someone else. Whoever it was they were asking all those questions about. All we have to do is clear this up and… So what did you do, after you saw what happened? You called 911, right?”

“Yes, I called 911, of course. But I also went after the car. There was something about it that caught my eye as I watched it speed away… I don’t know, maybe it was instinct, but suddenly I thought, this son of a bitch just shot someone right in front of me and he’s getting away. And I was the only one who saw it. So I went after him, but I couldn’t catch up. On my way back, I ran into one of the officers who had been hassling me earlier-trust me, Liz, this guy was a total asshole-and he spotted me behind the wheel and pulled out a gun.”

“You didn’t give him any reason to shoot?”

“Liz, please don’t be a lawyer here! Maybe I panicked. When’s the last time you had someone aiming a gun at you? The guy had threatened me earlier. So, yes, I pulled the car out of my lane and he opened fire and the window caved in. I mean, what was I going to do? I thought he was trying to kill me, Liz!

“Look, I don’t know if I made the right decision or not, but I was scared for my life… So the net-net is, I basically ran from a murder scene-the murder of a cop! A cop who had me in handcuffs not ten minutes before. With my goddamn prints everywhere!”

“Okay. Okay, Henry, let me think… Did you manage to catch the plates? On this blue vehicle you spoke of?”

“Some of it. AMD or ADJ… It all happened so fast. But they were definitely out-of-state. South Carolina. I know that because I-”

“Henry, listen… Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to find a way for you to turn yourself in. You had zero motive to kill this officer, right? You said he was letting you go. And you surely had no gun…”

“For God’s sake, I don’t even own a gun, Liz! You know that. Not to mention I’d just gotten off a plane.”

“… And it’s perfectly understandable,” she kept rationalizing, “why you panicked and felt you had to run. They were shooting at you. From what you told me I think we can easily-”

“Liz, listen!” I interrupted her. “There’s more…”

“More, Henry…?” she uttered haltingly. “What could possibly be more?”

I sucked in a breath. “A lot more, I’m afraid. I can’t just turn myself in. That’s what I was trying to tell you. It gets a whole lot deeper than that.”

Chapter Nine

“You remember Mike Dinofrio-from Amherst?” I reminded her that we had all met once for drinks at the Mizner Center in Boca a couple of years back when he was in town.

“Yeah. I think so,” she answered vaguely, not convincing me that she did. “So…?”

“He’s a lawyer as well. From Jacksonville. We were supposed to play golf today before my conference. I had no idea where to go when I drove away from the scene, so I ditched my rental car and found a cab…”

“A cab?”

“Yes, Liz, a cab! I couldn’t exactly drive around in my car. Every cop in the city was looking for it. The fucking windows were blown out. And so I went there. To his house… Mike’s. To find a way to turn myself in.”

“Okay…” I could feel her losing patience.

“Well, I just left it, Liz-and he’s dead!”

“Dead?” Her voice dropped off a cliff. “Your friend…?”

In the ensuing pause, I could sense her struggling to make sense of it all-my somehow being stopped by the cop, pulled out of my car and cuffed; the officer shot dead; me, racing madly from the scene on some wild-goose chase. Then Mike…

And to my rising worry, I felt her starting to fail.

“Yes. He was a lawyer, Liz. I thought he could help me turn myself in. The cops were shooting at me and I had no frigging idea where to go. And now he’s got a couple of holes in his chest and, so help me, Liz, I have no idea why or what’s happening! All I know is that now two people are dead. Two people who I’m pretty sure that the only connection between was me! What the hell is going on?”

She didn’t reply, and the longer the pause became the more it began to worry me. “I don’t know, Henry,” she finally answered me. “Why don’t you tell me just what’s going on?”

“No, please, Liz, don’t you dare go there on me. I need you to understand. You know damn well, whatever it is, I’m not capable of that! I’m up here at a Doctors Without Borders conference. I’m supposed to be delivering a speech tonight, on my work in Nicaragua, and to play a little golf, for God’s sake! The rest…”

“Okay, okay…” Liz paused, hearing the agitation in my voice. “Look, Henry, I’m sorry about your friend, but right now all I’m thinking about is you. Is there any chance your friend Mike might be connected in all this? To the cop, or to this guy they were supposedly looking for?”

“I don’t know.” I ran the idea around in my mind. “No, that would be impossible. No one even knew we were getting together. But then again…”

“Then again what, Henry?”

“The thing I was trying to tell you before… What I saw on the shooter’s car, on his license plate, when I went after him. There’s one on Mike’s car too. It’s a gamecock. A mascot. From the University of South Carolina. I’m staring at it now!”

“A gamecock? What possible connection does that have with anything?”

“I don’t know the connection, Liz!” My voice rose at least an octave. “Mike’s son goes there. I don’t know if it’s a connection at all, or just a coincidence. But you just asked if he could somehow be involved.”

“All right, all right… You let me handle that,” Liz said. “We have to find out who that other person is. The one the cops mistook you for. But right now what you have to do is to just stay out of sight for a while. And for God’s sake, if the police find you, Henry-please don’t resist! Just throw your hands up and let them take you, okay? They think you killed one of their own!”

I blew out a breath. “Okay…” Then I followed it up with, “Oh God…” as an unsettling thought formed in my mind. “You’ve got to tell Hallie, Liz. Before she hears it from her friends, or on Facebook or something. My name’s going to be all over the news, if it’s not already. By tonight, the whole damn world is going to know. They may already know!”

“All right. I understand. You’re right. I’ll do it when we get off the phone. Speaking of which…” She paused, emphatically. “I see this isn’t your phone. Just whose are you calling me on?”

I swallowed, knowing how this was about to go over. “Mike’s.”

“Mike’s!” She let a couple of seconds pass. “That’s a joke, right?”

“No, it’s not a joke, Liz. I realize how it looks, but how could I possibly use mine? I found it on his desk. And it’s not like I can deny ever going there. My DNA is all over his place. I thought it would buy me some time.”

“Some time? Jesus, Henry… And now, why do I think I already know the answer to my next question…? Just whose car are you driving around in?”

I felt an empty space in my stomach. This one would go over even worse. “It was better than my car, Liz. Every cop in Jacksonville was looking for mine!”

“Oh God, Henry… Just get your ass off the street. I don’t want to see you end up like Bonnie and Clyde. Go to a motel. Or a public space somewhere. Someplace you won’t have to show your ID. Let me talk to some people. I’ll be back with you soon as I can.”

“Liz…” I said, stammering, a tide of emotion finally welling up inside me. It had been a long time since we had talked to each other like this-in what you might call friendship, even trust. “I can’t tell you how much… Just thank you, Liz. You must know how much this means to me…”

“Twenty years, Henry…” Her voice seemed softer than I’d heard in years. “It’s not like we were enemies.”

“No, I guess you’re right. We weren’t.”

“But listen, Henry…”

I hunched over as a police car sped by, hoping to hear something soft and compassionate from her, maybe I’m sorry about the way things turned out. “Yes…”

“That car you’re driving makes you look like a killer. I would ditch it as soon as you can.”

Chapter Ten

She was right. Mike’s Jag did make me look guilty.

Guiltier.

And it was only a matter of time before an APB was out on it as well. I had nowhere to go, but I had to get off the street until Liz could work a miracle. At least for a couple of hours. I had my iPad; that was one way to communicate. I just needed a safe place to hold out.

I flicked on the radio and found a news channel. It took no more than a minute to hear the news I dreaded come on:

“Our continuing story this morning is the execution-style slaying of a Jacksonville police officer off Lakeview Drive. Dr. Henry Steadman, a prominent South Florida surgeon…”

A sickening feeling filled up my belly, my hands on my head. I couldn’t believe I was actually hearing my name in connection with a homicide investigation! A double homicide. It was only a matter of time until Mike was discovered-and his missing car. Okay, Henry, think-is there anyone else you know here you can trust? Was there anyone here whom I could count on? Just to stay off the streets. For a short while. Who would believe me?

I thought of Richard Taylor, the head of the Doctors Without Borders conference who had invited me to speak tonight. But I didn’t want to involve him. I couldn’t ask that.

Then Jennifer came to mind. Miss Jacksonville. I could explain it all to her. I knew she’d see me for who I was. Not some crazy cop killer. I recalled that she was staying at a different hotel from mine. The Hyatt.

Hopefully she’d already made it to town and checked in.

I took Mike’s phone and punched in the number I had for her. I knew it was kind of a long shot, but that’s what we were playing now. It took a few seconds for her to answer, probably not recognizing the caller ID-Mike’s-but sure enough, after I heard her voice, a little tentatively perhaps, I felt better.

“This is Jennifer Keegan.”

“Jennifer-it’s Henry Steadman. Please don’t hang up. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but something crazy has happened.”

“I did hear!” Jennifer replied. She sounded surprised, but not upset that I was calling. “We’ve all heard, Dr. Steadman! What’s happened? They’re saying such incredible things…”

“Jennifer, I’ll explain… Just trust me-it’s not at all what you might think. I just need to be somewhere safe, for an hour or two, until I can negotiate something and get this whole crazy thing resolved. That’s all. Can I trust you, Jennifer? I know I have no business asking this, it’s just that… It’s just that, to be honest, I just don’t have anywhere else to turn.”

“You want to come here?” she asked, clearly surprised.

“Just for an hour or two, that’s all! I have someone working on turning me over. I won’t put you in any harm. I promise. What do you say?”

Chapter Eleven

“Yes,” she replied, without hesitation. “I knew this all had to be something crazy. I’m at the-”

“I know where you are-” I cut her off. “And you have no idea what this means to me, Jennifer. You can’t. You’re a godsend. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

It took about twenty minutes to get there, and just to be safe, I entered the hotel grounds at the adjacent golf course, and left Mike’s Jag on the second level of the two-story garage.

I walked the short distance over to the main lobby, telling myself I had no reason to be concerned, that no one was looking for me here. That I looked like any golfer, in my khakis, my golf cap, and shades. That Mike’s stolen car wasn’t on any news reports yet.

I stepped into the glass-roofed, atrium lobby. It was packed with people from maybe a dozen trade-show groups and conventions. There was some kind of arena football game in town and a throng of boosters wearing black-and-aqua Shark caps and logo sweatshirts was gathered near the entrance, probably heading to some kind of rally.

Everything seemed benign, nothing to worry about. Not that I was exactly trained to spot undercover police if they were there. I scanned the lobby… lots of noise, people moving everywhere… and spotted the elevators. Jennifer told me to go to room 2107.

I put down my cap and was about to head across the floor when I saw him.

My chest tightened.

Not someone in uniform, but in a plain, navy-blue windbreaker, leaning against the wall near the restrooms while scanning the crowd.

He might well have just been hotel security, if it wasn’t for the terrifying realization that I had seen him once before.

From the back of Martinez’s police car.

He was one of the policemen who was milling around when Martinez stopped me.

Every nerve in my body slammed to a stop.

I turned my back to him. I didn’t know what to do, except that I had to get out of there now. In truth, I was petrified to even take a step. The guy clearly hadn’t seen me yet. He just stood there as if he was waiting to meet a friend. I eased my way toward the football boosters.

Why was he here now?

Then the answer became clear: Jennifer had turned me in. It was a trap! They were waiting for me. Who could even blame her? The only reason I wasn’t spread-eagled on the floor with a gun to my head was that I hadn’t come in through the front entrance, pulling up in my white Caddie, as they were clearly expecting me to do. They must not know about Mike yet. I figured there were several of them, stationed all around. My whole body went rigid with fear. I searched around for the best way out.

And then my cell phone rang.

I would never have even glanced at it in that moment-I was petrified it would draw attention to me-had I not thought that it could well be Liz, and I didn’t want to miss her. Slowly I melded into the crowd of boosters. I pulled out my phone and glanced at the screen. It wasn’t Liz.

It was Hallie.

I didn’t want to answer, but it rang two, then three times, and I felt as if the trill was echoing around the lobby, calling everyone’s attention to me. I just saw my daughter’s name on the screen-Hallie, Hallie… And I didn’t know if Liz had spoken with her and if she knew. Knew all that had happened.

So I just pressed the green button before my voice recording came on and muttered softly, set to call her back. “Hallie…”

But the voice I heard wasn’t hers. It was a man’s voice, both muffled and unrecognizable.

And what he said on my daughter’s phone jarred me more than anything that had happened today.

He kind of chuckled as he asked, “So how you liking it all so far, Doc?”

Chapter Twelve

I froze.

I realized right away who was on the other end. That I was speaking to the person who was responsible for all this. Who had killed Mike. Martinez.

And he was calling on my daughter’s phone.

“Who are you? Where’s Hallie? Where’s my daughter?” I demanded, my body heaving with mounting dread.

“Oh, we’ll get to all that pretty soon. I promise,” the man said. “But if you ever want to see her again-alive, that is-I think there’s just one little thing you oughta know…”

“Go on,” I said. I ducked behind two boosters introducing their wives.

“If I happen to hear that you get caught by the police, or even turn yourself in… Or if it comes out in the press that your little girl is missing, meaning if you tell ’em, Hallie here’s gonna end up with a bullet in that smart, pretty brain of hers. And that’s if I’m feeling generous. You hear?”

The crowd was loud and buzzing all around. I tried to think if I had ever heard the voice before, but it was Southern, slangy, and wasn’t clear.

“You hearing me, Doc?” he said again, like ice this time. Waiting.

“Yes.” I swallowed, razors in my throat. “I hear.”

“So here’s a little present for you-just so there’s no doubts, about our arrangement.”

My heart started to race. Suddenly Hallie got on, her voice shaking with fear. “Daddy… Daddy, is that you?”

“Yes, hon, it is! It’s me.”

“Oh, Daddy, I’m so sorry… Please just listen to what he says. He’ll do it. I know he will. He’s crazy! Just do what he says. Please. He-I love you, Daddy,” she blurted as the phone was yanked away from her in midsentence.

“Just wanted you to have a sense of what’s really at stake here, Doc. Pretty little thing, if I say so myself. And she surely can ride.”

“You touch a hair on her head and I’ll kill you myself, you son of a bitch! So help me God…” I shouted above the noise, my blood on fire.

“Now don’t you be giving me orders,” the man said. “That wouldn’t go over well. Long as you heard exactly what I said, about if I hear the cops find you.”

“What is it you want? Why are you doing this to me? I have money. I can pay you. Please…”

“We’ll get to what I want. In a while. First, go get yourself a new phone. One of those disposable ones. Text the number to Hallie here. Okay? That is, if you ever want to hear from her alive again.”

I shuddered.

“So get on now, y’hear?” I could hear the laughter in his voice. “You keep yourself safe. Remember, longer you stay out there, Doc, longer your little girl lives.”

“Listen! Don’t hang up! Listen…”

I heard the phone click off, and all trace of my little girl with it. I pushed the button to call her back, but no one answered. I was left staring at her name on the cell-phone screen.

My knees felt weak.

I turned in the crowd, every corner of me filling up with a mounting sense of dread. He was right! I had to get out of here! I still had the cop to worry about. Liz had told me just to give up if anything went wrong. But now I couldn’t. Now I had to do everything I could to get away!

I scanned the lobby and realized there was no way I could go back the way I’d come in. If the police were waiting for me here, there were probably dozens of them all around. I glanced back at the one I had seen, still protected by the crowd.

A heavyset man in a green Sharks headdress shifted from my line of sight just as I did so.

Suddenly the cop and I were eye to eye.

My heart felt like it exploded. He looked straight at me, seemingly trying to pierce through the golf cap and the shades…

Then, suddenly, he did just that!

I watched his eyes grow wide and his face light up with recognition. He took a step toward me. I moved away, pushing my way through the throng of boosters. I thought I heard him shout out something, echoing, above the din of the lobby. I began to run.

Then I heard him call out: “Steadman!”

I spun and saw him pull out his radio, signaling the others. I slithered through the dense booster gathering, thirty or forty strong, and came out directly in front of the elevators. A door opened in front of me. I didn’t know where it would take me, other than away. Which was all I wanted right then. I jumped in.

The cop was already running after me. “Steadman. Stop!”

Bystanders turned. The cop still had to cross the lobby and make his way through the crowd. I jammed my finger against the heat-sensored panels. Pushing on every upper-floor-30… 32… 34.

The doors didn’t close. C’mon, goddammit, shut!

I watched, in mounting horror, as the cop elbowed his way through the shocked crowd. Midway through, he stopped, his eyes locked on me in the elevator, still thirty feet away.

He pulled out his gun.

C’mon, c’mon, close! I realized he saw me as nothing more than a cop killer. He’d be justified to shoot. He wouldn’t hesitate for a second. They already hadn’t hesitated! I kept pressing on the arrow. And on the upper floors.

Close.

The cop finally made it through. Suddenly we were face-to-face again. He leveled his gun at me. I realized he could squeeze off a shot at any second and I’d be dead. Close, you sonovabitch. Close!

That’s when the doors finally started to shut. The cop sprinted toward me, aimed, and squeezed off a shot, which slammed into the doors as I ducked behind them.

Another made it into the car, ripping into the wood walls. The guy was crazy! What if there were other people in here?

A third clanged off the handrail.

The doors finally squeezed shut an instant before he made it over to me. I could hear the cop holler, “Shit! Shit!” and bang on the doors as the elevator started to rise. All the higher floors were lit up now, and I knew in that instant that all that would happen if I went up there was that I’d be trapped and captured… and then Hallie…

As if by instinct, I hit the button for the third floor. The elevator came to a sudden stop. I bolted out, knowing it would keep on going up, floor by floor, all the way to the top.

I ran down the hall, searching frantically for the fire exit. I didn’t know how many cops were spread about-or would be, in a matter of minutes. But the elevator was heading up to the roof. They’d have to check around up there. They’d have to search all the upper floors. Room by room.

By that time the entire building might be on lockdown.

I had to get out of here fast.

At last, I found the emergency stairwell and bounded down the stairs, two at a time, my heart almost in spasm. I was completely winded and gasping by the time I reached the ground floor. I fully expected to run right into some trigger-happy policeman who would force me to the ground with a gun at my head.

Mercifully, no one was there. I pushed open the pneumatic door and, with a whoosh, found myself outside.

Thank God. I didn’t wait to get my bearings-I just sprinted, fast as I could, away-spotting the golf course to my right and realizing I was heading toward the clubhouse. Where my car was parked!

I spun around and didn’t see anyone behind me. No one shouted my name. I just prayed that I wouldn’t feel a bullet ripping into my back. Ahead, I saw the garage, which I figured was reserved for golfers. I knew I couldn’t use Mike’s car anymore. The police might have found him by now, and if they hadn’t, they surely would soon. Any second it might be over the airwaves… and then I was cooked.

I ran inside the garage and spotted one of the green-vested valets hustling to get a car and I waited behind a stanchion until he climbed inside a Lincoln-and I saw him feel under the seat for the key. Then it started up. I had a flashback to my old parking-attendant days, one of the jobs I did to get myself through med school. I counted the seconds until the Lincoln drove off, then I ran over to a red GMC parked nearby. The door was unlocked and I felt frantically under the seat for the key.

Shit. Nothing. I had to try another car.

I hopped out and tried a blue Lexus SUV in the next bay. I figured there was a security camera here and that someone might well be watching me right now. Heisting a car.

This time I found the keys under the floor mat.

I started it up and drove out of the garage, leaving Mike’s Jag behind. It didn’t matter that my DNA was all over it. I wasn’t about to deny taking it. I knew I had only a short time before all exits from the hotel were shut down. I drove out to the front gate. There was a guard there. I’d had to talk my way past him the first time, but now he gave me just a lackadaisical wave, as if to say, Hope you hit ’em well. See you next time.

I made a right, knowing I was only minutes from the highway. I was so excited, I wanted to whoop out loud.

But then a sober realization ran through me, and my whole body began to tremble.

I suddenly realized that if there was even a chance I was only a person of interest an hour ago after fleeing the scene of Martinez’s killing, that possibility was now long gone.

My daughter was in peril. And I was a full-fledged suspect in two murders now.

Chapter Thirteen

The evening was sticky and warm and Vance Hofer waited in his car, hidden off the dirt road that led to the trailer. He kept his car lights off.

There were two vehicles parked in front. One was a beat-up, red pickup he had seen around his house a dozen times, which he knew belonged to Wayne, the waste of good spit Amanda thought of as her boyfriend. The other was a silver Kia with an “I Heart Daughtry” decal on the back and a pair of pink felt dice dangling from the inside mirror.

For a while Vance had heard sounds of laughter coming from inside. Music. A party going on. Something crashing onto the floor. More laughter. It made his blood curdle.

Then, for the longest time, he heard nothing at all.

He sat there, feeling his life’s futility coursing through his body, to the tips of his rough, workman’s hands. How things hadn’t quite worked out the way he planned, yet he smiled, thinking the story wasn’t quite over yet. He needed only one thing-something clear and fixed in this world of uncertainties-and that one thing was that someone take responsibility for what had gone down. At the end of the line, someone had to pay for what had happened to that poor girl and her baby, not to mention Amanda, and what was happening tonight might only be the first step. When it was all over, the person he would likely find would be the one who had profited the most.

From what had befallen his little girl.

That was what was wrong with life, Vance thought, how no one ever did… pay. The ones who bore the guilt. Those people always squirmed their way out, with reams and reams of legal arguments, hiding behind oily lawyers. The banks, who had taken his home; the functionaries who had pushed him out of his job; the fools in Washington and on Wall Street, even those people out in Hollywood-they did just fine, while the rest of us had no career, no home, no insurance. You were just a cipher, left with nothing. Just silt running through your hands. Only the little people had to pay. While the rest went on…

And for a man who was brought up knowing what happens when right and wrong collide, this was a heavy cost.

There is wheat and there is chaff, the Bible says. Wheat and chaff.

And it was simply a matter of separating the one from the other: those who had been harmed from those who were responsible. You didn’t need no fancy degrees or badges or fitness hearings.

Someone just had to own up. That’s all he was saying.

His little Amanda was just at the end of the line.

Vance just kept his eyes on that trailer, knowing pretty soon the door would open.

Wheat from chaff. He flexed his fingers. Someone had to own up and it would start right here.

That’s all.

Chapter Fourteen

I pulled into a McDonald’s off the highway certain that after fleeing the Hyatt half of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department that hadn’t been actively looking for me before was probably looking for me now.

I felt Mike’s phone vibrate.

I dug it out and looked at the screen. It was Liz. Thank God. She sounded off the planet. I figured I knew why.

“Henry, I just heard on the news. What the hell did you do up there?”

“Someone set a trap for me, Liz. I don’t know if you heard the whole story, but-”

“Henry, I told you to give yourself up if they found you again! Not to resist.”

“I couldn’t give myself up! Liz, I have something bad to tell you. Don’t freak out. Have you heard from Hallie? In the past few hours?”

“Hallie? No. Not since lunch yesterday. She was going riding.” I could hear her grow nervous. “Why are you asking about Hallie?”

“Because I received a call. In the lobby of the Hyatt, Just before the cops there spotted me. Liz, don’t freak out. Hallie’s been taken.”

“Taken?” I could feel tears rushing into her eyes. “What do you mean taken, Henry? By whom? How do you even know?”

“Because I heard from her, Liz. It’s the person who did these things today. Who killed Mike and that cop on the road. He called me at the Hyatt before the police found me. He has her.”

“Has her? Oh Jesus, Henry, no…” I could almost feel the blood rushing out of her face. Knowing that someone who was fully capable of cold-blooded murder had taken our daughter. I heard her sniff back sobs. This was awful. One minute she was just trying to help me out of a mess. Now she was in it herself. Up to her eyeballs. Same as me. Then she said the only rational thing she could say. “We have to go to the police. You got a partial ID on that car. They might be able to trace it!”

“No, Liz. There are things I have to tell you. That’s exactly what we can’t do. We can’t go to the police.”

“Henry, I’m sorry about what’s happening to you, but some madman has our daughter…!”

“Liz-listen! Hear me out! I went to the Hyatt because I knew someone there who I hoped could get me off the streets until you negotiated some kind of deal. But I got a call in the lobby, just before the police saw me there. He put Hallie on and she sounded okay. Scared out of her mind, but I got the sense she hadn’t been harmed. But the guy who took her, who’s doing this, he said if I went to the police on this-if I turn myself in or even if I get caught, or if he hears on the news that Hallie’s missing, he’s gonna kill her, Liz. Just like he did Mike. And Martinez. I won’t even tell you what he said he’d do. Just that the longer I stay out, the longer she lives… That’s why I had to run. It was one in a million that I even got away. That’s why we can’t go to the police!”

Liz was silent. I needed her to be rational, yet I knew that what I’d just told her violated every rational instinct she had. Her daughter had been abducted and we couldn’t even report it to the police!

It was killing me too.

Liz lashed out. “What have you done, Henry? What have you done to put our daughter’s life in danger this way?”

“I haven’t done anything, Liz. I don’t know what’s going on.”

“So what do you want me to do? You tell me this insane story about cops pulling you over and putting you in cuffs. Then everywhere you go people are being killed. And now our daughter’s been taken by this… this person who’s got some vendetta against you. Who’s killed people! Goddammit, Henry, why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”

“Please, Liz, don’t go there on me. I need you to understand. I need you now too. You know damn well I’m not capable of anything they said I’ve done. I don’t know why this is happening! I’m up here for a conference. I’m supposed to deliver a speech tonight. I got pulled over for a traffic violation I didn’t commit. The rest…” My voice started to crack. “I don’t know what’s happening, Liz!”

“And you’re saying we can’t even do the one sensible thing that could save our daughter’s life! You can’t be serious, Henry! What do you expect me to believe? What else should I believe?”

“I am serious, Liz. Deadly serious. I heard him. He’ll do it, Liz. He’s already done it. We can’t.”

I just let her sob it out for a while.

Finally Liz said, “He’s doing this for a reason. What does he want from you, Henry? Money? There’s got to be something he wants.”

“I don’t know what he wants yet-other than to watch me suffer. Other than to enjoy seeing me completely trapped.”

“So what are you saying? We just let him keep her and do nothing. I don’t know if I can do that, Henry…”

“You have to, Liz. For Hallie’s sake. I don’t know who this person is or what he thinks I’ve done, but he’s targeted me. I think Hallie will be okay, for a while, crazy as that sounds. He needs her to get to me.”

“You’re willing to put our baby’s life on the line… I’m not.”

“We have to, Liz. I don’t see any other way. I can try to find that car…”

“You don’t even have a clear memory of it, Henry. A blue car. From South Carolina. You don’t even remember the plate number! It could be chopped up to parts, repainted, hidden in some garage for months for all you know.”

She was right. “But there’s that gamecock thing…”

“Gamecock?”

“The image I saw on the shooter’s car. The mascot. From the University of South Carolina. I saw one on the back window of Mike’s car too.”

“Mike’s car?” Liz paused. “Do you think your friend is connected to this?”

“I don’t know.” I had run the idea around in my head. But no one knew Mike and I were even getting together. Only my assistant, Maryanne. And she’d been with me for fifteen years. I’d trusted her with much bigger things than this. “I don’t see how. We have to come up with a cover, Liz. For Hallie. In case people worry at school. We have to say she came home…”

She sucked in a harried breath. “All right. All right.”

“At least for a day or two…”

“Okay, I’ll think of something. Henry, I’m scared. We don’t even know what we’re doing. Hallie’s life is on the line. What do we do if he just kills her and we’re… I don’t know if I can live with that.”

“Liz, if you break down, they’re just going to use it as a way to get to me. The guy’s not going to do anything now. He won’t. I’m telling you, he wants me. He told me to get a disposable cell phone so he can contact me again. Maybe we’ll know more then. In the meantime, don’t contact me. The minute they find out about Mike… this phone will only lead them to me.”

“I know.” I felt her about to start weeping.

“You just stay strong, Liz. I’m gonna find our girl, Liz, and bring her home. He’s not gonna hurt her until he can get to me.”

“This is bad, Henry. Isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Liz,” I said. I was trying not to think of it. “Let’s not pretend any other way. It’s bad.”

Hanging up, I suddenly felt about as alone as I’d ever felt in my life. In spite of trying to pump up Liz, I really didn’t know what my next step was going to be, other than finding that car.

That car was the only thing that could save my daughter’s life.

And Liz was right. We were way, way out of our league. What resources did I possibly have? On the run. In a stolen car…

I flipped on the car radio, and it didn’t take long to hear the account of my escape from the Hyatt.

They had my name, but I didn’t hear any description of the car I’d escaped in. Which was good. With any luck, the owner might be on the golf course for a couple more hours, so for the near term I could get around.

But what I did hear, which suddenly seemed like a path for me, was a public hotline number to call with any tips related to the crimes.

Chapter Fifteen

At the sheriff’s office downtown, Carrie was manning the tip line.

She’d taken six or seven calls. A couple of them were clearly bogus. One had Steadman held up in a high school with a cache of ammo. Another had seen his Cadillac speeding away and caught his plates, info they already had. A cabbie had called in, saying he’d dropped off someone resembling Steadman at an unspecified street corner in Avondale. That one they sent a team to check out. Several others called in from the Hyatt, having witnessed the shooting in the lobby. One caller had Steadman going from room to room on the thirty-third floor, terrorizing guests. Another had him sneaking away, dressed in a waiter’s uniform.

When the lines went quiet, Carrie logged online and checked out Steadman’s website. She watched a clip of him from Good Morning, South Florida describing the pros and cons of Botox. Steadman was handsome. Sharp cheekbones. Intelligent blue eyes. Stylishly long brown hair. He had a successful business. And a fancy Palm Beach address.

Not exactly the profile of your usual fleeing cop killer. The guy even spent his vacations fixing cleft palates and helping to build schools in Nicaragua. Lots of group shots with happy villagers. Some of the photos were taken by his daughter. It was hard to connect that image with that of some crazed killer who had put two shots at point-blank range into a policeman.

A light flashed on the message board and Carrie picked up. “Sheriff’s office. Officer Martinez tip line. This is Carrie Holmes…” she said into the headphones.

“I have some information on the killer,” the caller said.

“All right, go ahead…” Carrie grabbed her pen.

“I didn’t do it. Any of it. I swear, it wasn’t me.”

Carrie’s heart came to a stop, as if an electrical wire sent a jolt through it. Silently, she snapped her fingers, trying to catch the attention of one of the other detectives to get on her line.

She put a hand over her speaker. “It’s him!”

“What do you mean by any of it?” Carrie said back, hoping to engage the guy. She pushed the record button. She also routed a message to Akers’s secretary: Get him over here!

“There’s more…” the caller said, his voice trailing off. “You’ll see.”

The whispers of “It’s him! Steadman!” crackled around the floor and a crowd of detectives gathered around Carrie’s desk. The chief of detectives, Captain Moon. Carrie’s boss, Bill Akers. Even Chief Hall, who had just come back from the shooting scene. Carrie’s heart began to beat loudly and she could feel everyone in the room silently urging her with looks and signals to keep Steadman on the line. Three minutes, Carrie knew from training. Three minutes and they should be able to triangulate a fix on where he was.

“Who am I speaking with?” she asked him. “I’ll need your name and some proof of who you say you are. You can imagine, there’s a lot of people calling in on this…”

“I think you know exactly who you’re speaking with,” the caller said. “Martinez had a bullet wound in his left temple and another higher up on the skull. His driver’s window was down. He probably still had my driver’s license in his hand… You want my Social Security number? I think that’s sufficient.”

Carrie’s adrenaline shot through the roof. She knew she had the killer on the line.

She tried to get him to keep talking. “You said any of it, Dr. Steadman. And you said, ‘there’s been more.’ Has there been another incident?”

Steadman didn’t answer. Instead, he waited a few seconds and changed the subject. “Are you a detective, Carrie?”

The question took her by surprise. She glanced around, at the elapsed time on the screen. Going on a minute. Why not tell him the truth? Sometimes people in these situations just needed someone to talk it out with. “No. I work in community outreach,” she said. “I just agreed to man a phone. It’s actually my first day back from being away for a while.”

By now several of the staff were listening in on the call.

“Well, I bet the community outreach department has a lot more company at the moment than it’s normally used to, right, Carrie?” Steadman said with a chuckle.

“Yeah,” Carrie said, holding in a smile herself. “This is true.”

A minute fifteen.

“You mind if I ask you something?” he asked. His next question threw her for a loop. “You have kids, Carrie?”

More than threw her for a loop. Where was he going with this? It was almost like he somehow knew what was going on with her. Today of all days, bringing up kids. She hesitated for a second, not sure if she should give away anything personal like that, but Bill Akers nodded for her to keep engaging him. Ninety seconds.

“Yes,” Carrie answered. “A son. He’s nine.”

“I have a daughter myself,” Henry Steadman said. “Hallie. Super kid. She’s an equestrian. She almost qualified for the Junior Olympic team last year. She’s finishing her first year of college. At UVA. She’s the world to me. Just like yours, I bet?”

“Of course,” Carrie said, feeling a flutter go through her.

“Then you’ll understand what I’m about to say… though you probably won’t believe me. None of you,” he said, firmer, “since I assume there’s a bunch of you crowded around by now.”

Carrie didn’t answer, but she smiled.

“But I swear-on my little girl-’cause I still think of her that way-and right now she needs me more than anything in the world-that whatever it looks like, whatever anyone may think, I had nothing to do with what happened to that policeman today… I was back in my car, waiting for him to finish up my ticket, when a blue sedan pulled next to him and someone shot him through the window. It sped away and I went after it-to try and ID it-that’s all-which was the reason I left the scene. You understand what I’m saying, Carrie? This is exactly the way it happened. On my little girl!”

“That’s bullshit,” Captain Moon said dubiously. “Five different people saw him coming out of Martinez’s car.”

“And not to mention that I was the one who called 911… It was a blue sedan. I don’t know the make or the model, but I do know something about it. It had South Carolina plates. You’ve got to find that car.”

“What make was it, Dr. Steadman?” Carrie asked, glancing again at the clock. They had been on two minutes now. “The car. Were you able to make out the plates?”

“No, not the numbers. But they were definitely South Carolina. I’m sure…” He stopped himself. “And I have no idea what make,” he said with a sigh of frustration. “I would only put you in the wrong direction…”

“Just keep him going, Carrie,” one of the detectives whispered, pointing to his watch.

“I hear you, Dr. Steadman. But all I can say is-and I think I’m giving you pretty sound advice here-whatever you’ve done or haven’t done, you have to turn yourself in. Everything can be sorted out then. I promise you, you’ll be treated-”

“I think you know exactly how I’ll be treated.” He cut her off. “You all know what happened today, as I was trying to head back peacefully to the scene. And at the Hyatt. You want to help me, Carrie, look for that blue sedan. The plate number began with AMD or ADJ… There must be security cameras around somewhere that would’ve spotted them. There has to be some way.”

Two and a half minutes.

“And remember what I told you. On my daughter, Carrie. I know you’ll know what I mean. I wish I could turn myself in. I wish…” There was a long pause and Carrie almost thought he was about to share something. He finally said, “Just look for that car. I think it’s already clear, whether I turn myself in or they eventually catch me, no one there will look.”

“Dr. Steadman…” Carrie pressed. “What did you mean by-”

The line went dead.

Carrie sat back and blew out a breath for the first time. Almost two and a half minutes. A phone number had come up on the screen, but it wasn’t for Steadman’s; it was for a completely different phone. A White Fence Capital. Steadman had likely stolen the phone from somewhere.

“Excellent work, Carrie,” Chief Hall said. “Certainly a lot of excitement, no, for what I understand is your first day back?”

“Yes, sir,” Carrie acknowledged. Though she found herself wanting to ask if they should follow up on the blue car.

“Well”-he squeezed her on the shoulder-“you did just fine…”

Then suddenly someone shouted from the detective’s pool. “There’s been another shooting!”

Tony Velez, one of the homicide crew, ran up. “In Avondale! This must be what Steadman was just talking about. Victim’s name is Michael Dinofrio. His wife came home from exercise and found him dead at his desk. Two in the chest. His car’s gone. A silver Jaguar. And the kicker is… guess who Dinofrio was supposed to be playing golf with right about now…? At Atlantic Pines. Steadman,” Velez finished, looking around the table.

“I took a call from a cabbie,” Carrie said, suddenly remembering the location, “who claimed he drove someone resembling Steadman from the Clarion Inn near Lakeview to an address in Avondale…”

“That’s about a half mile from where Martinez was killed,” Bill Akers said.

Frantically, Carrie checked back on the call screen, locating the time of the call and drop-off point. 11:02 A.M. “33432 Turnbury Terrace.” She looked up. “That’s only a block away.”

Suddenly she knew what Steadman had meant when he said, “You’ll see, there’s more…”

Then Sally Crawford, who’d been tracing Steadman’s call, said loudly, “The phone Steadman just called in on… White Fence Capital. It’s a real estate partnership here in town.” She turned to face the chief. “Michael Dinofrio is the CEO.”

Carrie felt a flush of embarrassment come over her. If there was any doubt before about Steadman’s connection to these murders, there wasn’t one now.

The son of a bitch just called in on the second victim’s phone.

Chapter Sixteen

It took close to two hours, but the trailer’s front door finally opened. Vance saw a woman step out into the night, wearing a tight red halter and a denim jacket hanging from her shoulder, her blond hair all mussed up.

He watched from his perch in the woods. Good ol’ Wayne, the guy Amanda was supposedly in love with, came out, shirtless and in jeans, with a beer in hand. The girl spun around and pressed up against him and gave him a lingering kiss, Wayne’s hand snaking down her back and onto her shorts until it came to rest on her behind.

Vance couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it wasn’t too hard to figure out.

She turned and continued down the steps, a little wobbly, to her car. “You know one thing…” she said, turning back, and pointing at Wayne. “Whatever it is you got, it sure does make my register ring.”

“Ring-a-ding-ding,” Wayne sang, and took a swig of his beer, the two giggling like fools.

The girl stumbled to her car and waved as she drove away, passing right by Vance. After a short while, when Vance was sure she wasn’t coming back, he picked up the black satchel from the seat next to him. He got out of his car, lifted the trunk, and took out a heavy lead pipe, the words the responsibility starts now drumming through his mind. Wheat from chaff.

Just no knowing where it ends.

He stepped up to the front door, hearing the TV on inside. He knocked.

It took a few seconds for the door to open. Wayne appeared, with that same shit-eating grin on his face, still holding his beer, surely expecting someone else. “Forget something…?”

“Yeah,” Vance said, staring into Wayne’s shocked eyes. “I did.”

Vance swung the pipe and struck Wayne in the kneecap, probably shattering it right there, and when Wayne buckled on one foot with a yelp, Vance jabbed the butt end into the boy’s jaw, sending him across the floor in a groaning heap.

Vance shut the front door.

Chapter Seventeen

“Where the hell am I?” the boy moaned, groggily, finally opening his eyes.

The room was dark. Vance had turned off all the lights. Wayne was hog-tied, his arms behind him, dangling from a crossbeam on the ceiling. He couldn’t move. He could barely even breathe. He just hung there, his feet bare, blood pooled in his mouth and all over his shirt.

“Who’s there?” Wayne called out into the darkness. “What’s going on? Why are you doing this to me?”

Poor kid had no idea who had even strung him up there.

Vance rose up and shined a flashlight into Wayne’s eyes. The boy squinted, blinded, turning his face away. “Who is that? Mr. Hofer? Why the hell are you doing this to me, Mr. Hofer?” The kid was shaking. “What’s going on?”

“What am I doing here, son…?” Vance said, pulling out a chair and sitting down on it in front of Wayne. “I’m simply here to ask you a few things. And how you answer them will go a long ways toward determining whether you ever walk away from here… So you think about what I’m about to say, and then we’ll see. Okay, son?”

Wayne nodded, scared out of his mind.

“Good.” Vance continued to shine the light on him. “First is, what did you do to my girl?”

“I’m s-sorry, Mr. Hofer,” Wayne said, tears and mucus streaming down his face and falling onto the floor. He’d always been scared of Amanda’s old man. The guy was crazy. Even Amanda said so. The stories she would tell of him, when she and Wayne were high. How he had this violent streak. How he would just hurt things-stray cats, squirrels, Amanda’s mom. And what he used to do on the force. How he once busted a man’s wrists with his nightstick while the guy was writhing on the ground. Used it in other ways too, he’d heard. Got him thrown off the force.

“You mean her? Brandee? She ain’t nothing to me. She’s just a friend. Amanda’s still my girl.”

Vance shook his head. “I don’t mean about the girl, son. The girl could fuck you to kingdom come for all I care. You really think this is about her? You want to go on living out that putrid, dog-shit life of yours?”

“ ’Course I do!” The kid was openly crying now, almost shitting in his pants. “Please, let me down, sir. You know I do. You-”

“So then I’ll say it again, how you answer’s gonna go a long way toward determining how we get that done, Wayne. So you tell me…” Vance stood up and faced him now. “You tell me where you got the drugs from, son. I’m talking the Oxy. That’s why I’m here.”

“Oxy? We only just smoked a little weed,” Wayne said. “That’s all. We weren’t hurting no one… We jus-”

“I don’t mean tonight, you stupid fool,” Vance said, feeling his temper rear. “The Oxy that my little girl was taking. Who just got her life stolen away by whatever it was you pushed on her. That’s where she got them from, right?” Revulsion pooled in his eyes. “The stuff she was on. From you, right, son?”

“No, no… It wasn’t from me, Mr. Hofer. I swear.” Wayne was hanging like a side of beef, the blood rushing into his head. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, sir… I-”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about?” Vance humphed cynically, almost smiling. “What Amanda was high on when she killed that poor, young gal and her baby… While her husband was serving his country over there. Now, I know it was you, son, so there’s no sense playing this out. The Oxy, where’d you get ’em, boy? That’s all that I want to know. Then I’ll hoist you down.”

“I don’t know… I don’t know,” Wayne groaned. “She didn’t get ’em from me…” He shook his head back and forth like it was on a pulley. “I promise. I swear that, Mr. Hofer…”

“You swear…” Vance tightened his grip around the lead pipe, the muscles in his wide forearms twitching. “Son, we both know that’s a damn lie. And lying won’t be the thing to help you now. But here’s a bit of the truth. I lied as well. You’re gonna have to pay for what you’ve done. Everyone is. Everyone up and down the line. Till I find where it came from. No way around that. That’s just where it stands, son.”

Wayne was trembling now, barely able to garble words back. “What I’ve done? What have I done?”

“All those lives you stole, son. The girl and her baby.” Vance stared at him. “My Amanda too.”

“No…” Now the boy was squirming and sobbing, tiring himself out twisting all over the beam. Every time he jerked his legs, the rope tightened around his neck. “I didn’t do anything to them. I didn’t give her any drugs! I swear…”

Vance went over to the black bag he had placed on the chair. “Son, we can do this two ways, and I’m afraid you’re not gonna like either of ’em, but one surely more than the other. But I think we both know by the time I walk out that door”-Vance opened the bag-“it’s gonna be with those names.”

“There are no names! You hear me, Mr. Hofer, there are no names!”

It was still dark and Wayne could barely see. He just heard things from wherever Vance was moving around. Things that made him scared. Like a sharp hiss-followed by the sweet smell of gas, propane, and then a whoosh, which sent an electrical current of fear jerking through his upended body.

He shat down his pants.

Then Wayne looked up and saw the blue flame from a welding torch in Vance’s hand, coming closer to him.

“Listen, please, Mr. Hofer, please… Listen!” he screamed. Suddenly his answers changed, and he began stammering. “These aren’t like regular folk. They’re not from around here. They’re truly bad people. I can’t give you their names. I can’t! They’ll kill me.”

To which Vance replied, chuckling, “What do you think I’m doing, son, just playing around?” He adjusted the flame to high and brought it close to Wayne.

“Now, you can stay up there, whimpering like a child, long as you like. Trust me, I’ve got all night. But whimpering ain’t gonna help you in this situation. I want to hear you talking names, son. Otherwise…”

Wayne’s eyes bulged as the flame came close, darting back and forth. “I didn’t do anything to them! I swear. I didn’t.” The heat was close to his face. He began to sob. “I didn’t!”

“Well, that’s just where you’re wrong, son. Where you and I disagree.”

Vance grabbed one of Wayne’s bare feet and put the blue flame against his sole, the boy’s skin sizzling and his leg kicking around like a half-killed bass and a shriek coming out of him that might have been heard in Lowndes County.

“Please, Mr. Hofer, please…”

“Where you got the Oxy from that you fed my daughter? You hear me? I can make this last forever, son, or I can make it quick. Either way, by the time I leave, I’m going to have what I want.”

He placed the blue flame on Wayne’s foot again, the kid jerking and crying and howling bloody hell. And a stink going up. “Names, son… It’s only going to get worse. I think you must be hearing me now. No one’s leaving here without those names.”

Chapter Eighteen

He got them. Names.

Though it took longer than he’d liked-Wayne thrashing and screaming how these were bad people and they’d come and kill him, which seemed to suggest he didn’t fully appreciate what was happening to him right now.

The lad was passed out now. Still. The whimpering had stopped, though his feet smelled like meat on a spit and were puffed up bloody ugly, swollen, and blistered and blue.

Hell, they wouldn’t be much good to him now anyway.

Vance lowered him from the beam, the ropes still horse-collared around Wayne’s neck. He surely could have saved the kid a lot of pain and aggravation. But he had to pay-that was clear. Just like that girl and her baby had paid.

Just like Amanda had paid. Forfeited half her life just for being young and foolish.

Now Wayne had to pay too.

Vance hoisted up the body by the armpits. He figured as long as he had the apparatus all rigged up, he might as well put it to some use, and cinched the rope tightly around the kid’s neck, placing the noose under his chin. Then he began to squeeze.

Squeeze. With all the strength he had from those years of running that lathe.

All those years on the force and the way they’d pushed him aside without much of a thought to him.

Squeeze.

Wayne jerked awake, his eyes bulging. He made a gurgling noise and twisted to see what was happening. Strangled whimpers emanating from his throat as Vance tightened the noose, the boy suddenly understanding what was going on, his arms thrashing around behind him. Vance telling him in a soft voice, “No point in struggling, son. I told you plainly, you had to pay for what you’ve done.”

Wayne, grasping at Vance’s sides, jerking his head back and forth in some desperate, futile effort to say, “No, please, no…” But that just made Vance squeeze even tighter, spittle seeping out of the young man’s mouth and onto his chin. His fists striking with diminishing force against Vance’s thighs. His words barely even intelligible… His eyes stretched to the back of his head.

Please.

Vance didn’t let up. Not until there was no more fight in the boy. Or gasping for air. Not until he fell back on the floor in a curled-up heap.

He’d told him it had to be done.

Then he loosened the noose from Wayne’s blotched neck and undid the makeshift winch and pulley and set them aside. He wrapped the long rope over his arm into neat circles, unscrewed the propane tank from the welding torch, and put them carefully back into his bag.

Not much blood, he thought, pleased with his work. Just a few drops of spittle on the floor, which he wiped with a cloth and disinfectant. Then he put his arms under the dead boy’s armpits and lifted him up over his shoulders. Young Wayne was a sizable lad, though Vance had expected more of a fight out of him. Vance carried him outside and into the woods to the spot he had prepared. He’d already dug the hole, about forty yards in, amid a thicket of brush and brambles no one would ever find. Sweat picked up on Vance’s back as he carted the heavy weight in the humid night.

When he got to the hole, he was wheezing a bit. He dropped Wayne faceup, and puffed his cheeks so as to catch his breath.

He thought, Maybe I ought to say something, staring down at the young face. You probably weren’t a totally useless fool, though my daughter liked you, so who knows… Still, events don’t happen of themselves. They have a cause, and you were part of that cause, son. So here you lie…

He rolled Wayne’s torso inside the ditch and then kicked in his legs, which didn’t seem to want to go in. Then he started to fill up the hole with the shovel he had hidden here in the bushes.

When he was finished, he smoothed things out as best he could, but no one would ever find him here. No one but that tramp Brandee would even miss him likely.

Wheat from chaff, he said to himself, leaning on the shovel. The lowest rung on a tall ladder.

But he would do what he had to do and find his way to the top.

Vance took the shovel and headed back.

He had names.