15 Seconds

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The next morning Carrie knocked on Bill Akers’s door.

“Carrie, come on in,” her boss said, moving some papers around. “There’s been some news.”

“I’ve got something as well,” she said, pushing back the flutter in her stomach and taking a seat across from him. She placed the folder, which contained photos she had put together of the blue Mazda at both crimes scenes, on her lap.

Akers’s walls were lined with framed criminology degrees, citations for merit, as well as photos of himself with prominent officials, including the mayor, and a former head of Homeland Security. Which only made what Carrie was about to share with him even harder to do.

She knew she had no greater supporter in the department than Bill. Truth was the community outreach effort had been one of his own personal initiatives. She also knew she’d need every bit of that support when it came to the budgetary cutbacks she’d heard were coming. She’d worn her most flattering suit, black pants and jacket, and a light blue tee. She wanted to look as proper and businesslike as she could for when the shit would hit the fan later.

“How about I go first?” Carrie said. She took in a breath. “I have an admission to make, Bill. I want to show you something…” She put the folder on his desk.

She had struggled all night over showing this to him. She knew what she had done would get her into a lot of hot water: withholding key evidence from the investigation, a murder investigation; and going around on her own obtaining confidential security tapes using a JSO ID.

Not to mention, how she was probably the only person here who harbored any doubts about Steadman’s guilt, which she knew, politically, wasn’t exactly a home run. She’d pretty much tossed and turned the whole night.

But in the morning, she’d awoken, sure in her heart that she was doing the right thing.

Carrie swallowed. “Look, Bill…” she began, trying to ignore the photo of Akers with the new Chief Hall directly in her line of sight, “I’ve had some thoughts… about what Steadman was saying the other day… How certain things just weren’t adding up. Like why would he have shot Martinez in the first place? I know the others said he was being belligerent and argumentative, but by the time they all left, things had calmed down considerably, and Martinez was only writing up a warning and about to let him go…”

Akers nodded obligingly. Carrie judged his gaze as disappointed.

“Not to mention where any possible weapon would have come from. I mean, he’d just come off a plane, right? And how there’s nothing in the guy’s past to suggest he had these kinds of tendencies…”

Akers took off his reading glasses. “Carrie…”

A look of skepticism came over her boss’s face, and she found herself suddenly rushing things, not giving him the chance to interrupt. “Then it kind of seemed crazy Steadman would kill his own friend? Who he knew from college. More likely he was going there because he had nowhere else to go-he told us he only ran from the scene in the first place because the police fired on him. I mean, he did place a call to 911… So I asked around… He’d also placed two calls to Dinofrio, minutes after he ran from the crime scene, so it seems possible, doesn’t it, Bill, that he only headed there because Dinofrio was the only person he knew in town, not to mention an attorney, which kind of backs up his assertion that he only went there in the first place to turn himself in. And the second murder scene showed no sign of any struggle or altercation-”

“I didn’t realize he had said he was only going there to turn himself in.” Akers looked at her inquisitively. “You certainly sound like you’ve been following this case closely, Carrie.”

“I’m only pointing out that there are inconsistencies, Bill. You know how Steadman kept going on and on the other day about us looking for that blue car? With South Carolina plates?” She opened up the file. “I started thinking-”

“Look, Carrie.” Akers pushed himself back in his chair. “I appreciate all your thought on this, but have you given any thought to the possibility that maybe Steadman intended all along to kill his friend?”

“What? Why in the world would he want to do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there was some history between them that will come out. And given what has come out, the other night, about his time in college, you may well be wrong about any predating ‘violent tendencies.’ And it’s entirely possibly he could have planted the gun somewhere. Off the airport grounds. Maybe on a previous visit.”

“A previous visit?”

“Why not? That would give him a perfect alibi, right? To come up here to play golf with him… Then he stashed the gun somewhere when he ran from the scene. Or left it near Dinofrio’s house. People are searching the areas now. And what if Martinez somehow found something? What if Steadman somehow felt Martinez was interfering with his plan?”

“He was up here to give a speech at a doctors’ conference, Bill! Look, there’s something you need to see.” Carrie blew out a breath, knowing there was no holding back now, and took out the first photo, the one of the blue Mazda racing from Martinez’s murder scene. Here goes the career, she thought.

Akers put up his hand. “No, Carrie, I think you’re the one who needs to see something…” He reached to the side of his desk and pushed a piece of paper across to her. “This came in just an hour ago.”

Carrie picked it up. It was an invoice of some kind. From something called Bud’s Guns in Mount Holly, North Carolina.

An invoice for a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun.

She saw whom the bill was made out to, and her stomach fell like a ten-ton weight hurled off a cliff.

Henry Steadman

3110 Palmetto Way

Palm Beach, Florida

Steadman’s address.

An H &K 9mm, the same kind of gun that had killed both Dinofrio and Martinez. It was bought at a gun show, in Tracy, which made it perfectly legal to avoid providing certain IDs and background checks.

The invoice was dated March 2. Just three weeks ago!

Steadman had lied. He said he’d never even owned a gun. Her breath felt cut in half. Carrie was afraid to lift her eyes.

“So what exactly do you have in there that’s so important for me to see?” Akers asked her with a sharpness in his voice. Acting more like a superior officer than a colleague.

“Nothing…” Carrie swallowed, her mouth completely dry. She closed the file. “This makes it all pretty clear.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I had just about made it through Georgia when I heard the news.

I’d spent the night in Hinesville, a few miles south of Savannah. I pulled off the highway in need of a night’s sleep and, even more, a shower, and drove until I found a motel that looked even sleepier than me. The woman who checked me in seemed as anxious to get back to the tea she was brewing as I was to avoid her direct sight. Ten minutes later I was bathed and gone to the world, a King of Queens rerun on the TV. Glad to just be in a bed after two nights. When I woke up, the housekeeper was knocking on the door. It was close to ten. The news was on, Libyan Rebels Advancing on the Capital of Tripoli. I closed my eyes again, wondering if I’d hear an update about me.

What came on almost sent me into cardiac arrest.

“Florida double homicide suspect purchased a nine-millimeter murder handgun at North Carolina gun show.”

I shot up in bed, as a pretty, down-home anchorwoman told the world how on March 2, only three weeks ago, I had bought a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun, apparently the same gun that killed both Martinez and Mike, from a local dealer at a gun show in North Carolina.

I leaped out of the bed and put my face close to the screen.

What I saw was a supposed bill of sale from an outfit called Bud’s Guns, in Mount Holly. The report claimed that the weapon had been paid for in cash at the Mid-Carolina Gun Fair almost three weeks earlier, which, it explained, avoided the requirement for a more detailed background check and ID.

My heart almost came up my throat. I’d never been to a gun show in my life! And I’d only been to North Carolina once in the past several years, to Duke University, for a conference on rebuilding facial bone structure.

But there it was. My name on the invoice. My address in Palm Beach. Having paid cash, as if I was trying to avoid detection. Three weeks ago. Before the murders. For the entire world to see!

If there was even a sliver of hope that someone might believe me that I wasn’t guilty, that was now dashed. My mind flashed to Carrie Holmes. It had taken everything just to convince her that the Amherst incident had been twisted maliciously.

What would she be thinking now?

I reached over to the night table and found one of my disposable phones.

This was part of the setup! It had to be. How could someone have my name and address on a bill of sale, buying the identical gun used in the killings, three weeks before the crime? How would anyone have known I’d be in Jacksonville? How would anyone have planted me there?

Suddenly the truth settled into me and my eyes went wide.

The sonovabitch who had been orchestrating this whole thing, who had Hallie… he’d been planning it for weeks.

How?… Why?

I turned off the TV and sat back in a daze, mentally rewinding through everything that had happened since the moment I’d arrived in Jacksonville two days before.

Martinez pulling me over; ordering me out of my car; telling me I was going to jail. All those questions, as if I’d committed some serious crime. As if they were hunting someone.

And Mike. How would anyone have known about him? Or put us together? That that was where I’d head in a panic? My head was throbbing. Who? Why? Were Martinez and Mike killed merely to make it appear that I was a murderer?

But then I suddenly realized, the bastard had gone one step too far.

I took the phone and punched in the number for the sheriff’s office. Carrie had told me not to call her. But I had to. By now, I was damn sure she thought I was guiltier than ever. Everyone would. My heart began to race as I waited for the call to go through. Finally, a receptionist answered.

“Carrie Holmes…” I said.

A fear kicked up that she was probably waiting for me. They probably had a trace set up as soon as they heard my call. It might even be a trap. A plant. Knowing I’d call in. I couldn’t blame her now.

And I didn’t care. I didn’t care if the cops barged in here right now and took me away. I just wanted one fucking person in this world to believe me. As long as I had one person to help me clear my name…

“Community Outreach. Carrie Hol-”

“I didn’t do it, Carrie!” I didn’t give her a second to interrupt. “I don’t care what it looks like. I don’t care how it makes me seem. I didn’t buy that gun. I’ve never been to a gun show. Someone is setting me up, Carrie. That’s what I couldn’t tell you the other day. Why I couldn’t turn myself in.

“But this time I’m pretty sure I can prove it!”

Chapter Thirty

Raef had been put to bed a half hour ago, and Carrie sat with her father over a beer on the screened-in sunporch.

She thought of her dad as a canny old codger. Actually, not old at all. At seventy-two, Nate still maintained a fit and trim physique-an ex-navy fighter pilot and a small-town police chief in New Hampshire for twenty-two years. And out of everyone else she knew, he was usually the wisest, and the one whose perspective always mattered the most. In her gym shorts and flip-flops, Carrie curled a leg up on the wicker rocking chair and faced him, gently shifting the subject from his dim view of Florida’s football chances this year. The June bugs were buzzing all around the modest, three-bedroom ranch that looked out over an islet, a couple of blocks off the beach.

“Dad, there’s something I have to go over with you… Don’t answer till I finish. Okay? Then say what you want.”

He put down his beer and nodded, knowing this was her way of broaching a serious subject. “Okay…”

She told him everything. Her doubts about Henry Steadman’s guilt from the start. How nothing quite added up. No motive. No weapon. How he had called 911. That she knew there was some crucial piece of information that he was withholding. The way he begged her to help him. Only her.

She waited to gauge his reaction.

“Finished?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

She told him how Steadman had called her a second time yesterday. How she’d had some misgivings, and then doubts about her misgivings, which made her father, the ex-police chief, wince, and his eyes registered the seriousness of her involvement.

Then she let out a deep breath herself and admitted how she had tracked down the suspicious blue car Steadman was so obsessed with. The one she could now prove was at both crime scenes.

That was when her dad’s nonjudging eyes widened.

Then she told him about the gun receipt in North Carolina, and that it didn’t sway her either.

“He claims he wasn’t anywhere near North Carolina that day. And that he can prove it. Look, Dad, I know how this all sounds. I know I’ve broken a few rules. But someone’s setting him up. Someone’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to pin these crimes on him, and put him in the middle of something. Nobody wants to hear it, and I’m not sure what to do. Everyone’s already got him convicted, and the news about the gun purchase only solidified their view.”

Nate nodded, leaning forward, forearms on his thighs. “Is there more? Can I take a sip of beer now?”

“Yeah, take a sip of beer.” Carrie sighed. “There is more, but I don’t want to completely ruin my case right from the start.”

Nate curled a smile, but only slightly. “So what is it you want to know? What I would do if I found out someone on my staff who wasn’t even part of my investigative team was having discussions on her own with the suspect and withholding evidence on the case?”

Carrie’s stomach shifted. Probably fire her, she figured he would say.

He continued to look at her. “Or what I think of your assessment of Steadman’s case?”

“I think the first part doesn’t need to be gone into too much.” Carrie shrugged with a contrite smile.

“Or maybe why you’d be putting your job at risk, what with Raef in there in need of care?”

“Just for the record, I could be out of a job next month because of a budget cutback. Even next week,” Carrie said. She sat back and pressed the cold beer bottle against her cheeks.

“Look, I can see you believe him, PK…” “PK” had been his nickname for her ever since she ski-raced as a kid back in New Hampshire, a twisting of the name of her idol, Picabo Street. “But the way you went about it…”

“I know.” She averted her eyes. Then she raised them back to him. “But the truth has to count for something, doesn’t it, Dad?”

“It does… The truth does account for something, honey. It’s just that-”

“Look”-she swung around and leaned close to him-“everything that happened from the time this guy set foot in town seems meant to pin Steadman for those murders. Why would he beg me to look for those plates? What possible gain would there be for him in that? And then the plates checked out. Why would he risk calling me, believing we’d have a trace on him? He doesn’t know me from Adam, Dad…”

“Eve,” her father said, smiling. “He wouldn’t know you from Eve…”

Carrie let out a breath, which relaxed her. “Okay, Eve…”

“You run this by anyone at the office?”

“I tried to.” Carrie sighed. “Akers. I tried to show him what I had, but the mood’s pretty tense there, politically, and everyone’s worked up over Martinez, and it was all falling on deaf ears. It’s pretty clear they don’t want to deal with any possibility except Steadman. Especially now that this thing about the gun show has come up. It’s damning. So what do I do? Drop my file off on Akers’s desk as I’m signing my own termination papers and go, ‘Oh, by the way, Steadman isn’t your man’…?”

“Or…?” Nate asked, looking at her judiciously.

“Or… I don’t know…” Carrie said. “Prove it.”

Her dad cradled his beer again, rotating the bottle. “You know you’ve been through a lot, Carrie. You’ve had things taken from you that none of us should ever have to deal with. You’ve always been a tough little gal, and we’ve all been proud of you… Whatever you’ve done. But are you sure you’re not finding some way to feel”-he hesitated a second as he chose the word-“important again in some way. Not important…” He frowned at himself. “Maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe I mean attached to something. Or simply alive.”

“I feel plenty alive, Dad,” Carrie said. She looked toward Raef’s bedroom. “I feel about as alive as I need to feel right now.”

“Then you’re boxing yourself into a dangerous place, honey… Between what your conscience says, and what the rest of us would say.”

There was a long-drawn-out silence. He was saying what Carrie pretty much expected him to say. What anyone rational would say. Of course, “rational” wasn’t exactly the operative word in her life lately. And maybe her dad was right-maybe there was just a little need to feel vital again after what had happened to her, and it was this that had opened her a little to Steadman’s pleas.

Then you’ll understand what I’m saying, Carrie. I swear, on my daughter…

But that didn’t change what she now was certain had to be the truth.

“So you’re sure?” Nate brought her back, looking her in the eyes. “You’re one hundred percent sure, Carrie, it was the same car at both scenes?”

“You want to see the photos?” Carrie looked back at him just as firmly.

“No,” he answered, leaning back. “I don’t need to see the photos. Not if you say so, girl. It’s just that… this isn’t gonna go so well for you, as you say, politically, no matter which way it works out.”

“Which way…” Carrie cocked her head quizzically.

“Whether you drop it off on Akers’s desk. Or whether you do what you have to do. To find the truth.”

She stared at him.

Her father winked. “Never let it be said Nate Walsh stood in the way of the truth. Or of his little girl, when she’s got a mind to do something. You’ve got the plate number…” He shrugged. “I don’t think it would be too hard to find a name behind it. I think we both know a federal agent in Atlanta who just might get you an ID on it pretty quick.”

Carrie looked at her father and smiled at him gratefully, the blood rushing back into her face.

“And you damn well better hope they’re not stolen…” He rolled his eyes. “Which they probably are. ’Cause where the hell would that set your case?”

“I know.” Carrie grinned and nodded. “I know.”

“So come on…” He stood up. He reached a hand for her. “Let’s go help your mom clean up…”

She took his hand, and when she got to her feet, she looked into her father’s eyes, his deep, gray, shouldering eyes, and he put his arms around her and she put her head against his chest.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered. “Thank you for believing in me.”

“As long as you know the real reason you’re taking this on, PK? Why you’re putting everything at risk, everything that only a few months back seemed like the world to you. Your position. Your reputation. It’s one thing to keep a secret from the job, something else to keep it from yourself.”

“Because it wasn’t everything, Daddy.” She lifted her head off his chest and looked him in the eyes. She knew exactly why she would do it, though the answer had never come so clearly, nor quite this way. “Rick was! And he would do it. He wouldn’t just let it go. He’d dig for the truth, right? Wouldn’t he, Dad? And right now…” Her eyes glazed up a bit and a tear rolled down her cheek and landed on his golf shirt. “Right now what I want more than anything in the world is to make him proud.”

“He would be proud, honey,” her father said, squeezing her. “He’d have to stand in line to say it, but I promise you, he would be proud.”

Chapter Thirty-One

“Maryanne…?”

I knew I was taking a chance. I could feel my assistant trying to decide whether to answer. And with all that had come out, I couldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

Finally, she said hesitantly, “Dr. Steadman…?”

“Yeah, Maryanne, it’s me. But please-before you say a word, I don’t want anyone else to know I’m calling. Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course. Doctor…” She lowered her voice. “We’re just all so confused about what’s going on. But I want you to know, no one here believes a word of it. We all know you couldn’t have done those things. We just want to help you prove yourself…”

It was like a warm breeze hearing her say that. To know that the people who actually knew me, who worked with me, didn’t blindly believe what was being said. Maryanne Kunin had been my assistant for fifteen years. I’d been there for her when her husband lost his contracting company and then a condo they owned in Destin went down below their mortgage.

Now she would be there for me.

“Maryanne, listen, I need something from you. It’s important! It’s just that no one else can know. That’s vital. But there’s nothing anyone can do for me right now that can help me more. Can I count on you?”

“Of course, Doctor,” she replied almost as quickly as I had asked her.

“Thank you.” I felt a lump catch in my throat. My voice cracked a little with emotion. “You just have to know, Maryanne, I didn’t do those things they said. Any of them. I-”

“You don’t have to say that to me, Dr. Steadman. Just tell me what you need.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the operator answered. “Atlanta Office.”

“Jack Walsh, please…”

Carrie took in a breath. She had to admit that she felt some doubts about calling her brother. One side of her hoped he would be out in the field and unable to take her call. Another side told her she was doing the right thing. There had been a Steadman sighting the night before at a motel somewhere in northern Georgia. The night clerk had realized that he’d been there only when she saw the morning news after he had gone. Now the woman was all over the news. Carrie was pretty sure she herself knew where he was heading.

Anyway, she decided, the damage was done already.

The real damage was done the moment she withheld that call.

“Special Agent Walsh.” Her brother picked up the phone.

“Jack…” Carrie said. “Here’s one for you: the CIA, FBI, and LAPD are all trying to prove they’re the best at apprehending dangerous criminals. President Obama devises a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and tells each of them to catch it.”

She and her brother always started things off with a joke. He said, “Okay…”

“So the CIA goes in, and they embed animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and animal witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations, they conclude that rabbits do not exist.”

Jack chuckled.

“The FBI goes in next. After two weeks with no leads, they burn the forest down, killing everything in it, including the rabbit. And they make no apologies. They say the rabbit had it coming!”

He chuckled again.

“Finally, it’s the LAPD’s turn. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling crazily: ‘Okay, okay… I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!’ ”

This time her brother laughed.

“It’s making the rounds here,” Carrie said. “Thought you’d get a laugh.”

“Hey, Car, I was just thinking of you.”

She and her brother didn’t talk as much as they used to. Mostly they just traded e-mails a couple of times a week on family matters. Jack was two years older; he and his wife, Polly, had two young kids of their own, and half the time he was off on assignment somewhere. So they took a minute now to catch up, about how she was feeling back on the job. And about Raef.

“Pop says he’s about ready to get back to school again?”

“Definitely after the summer. He’s really doing great, Jack. Listen…” She switched from the small talk. “There’s a reason why I called…”

“I knew that,” her brother said. “The joke wasn’t that good!”

“I need a favor, Jack.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to ask me about it. About why I need it. I just need you to do it for me. I need you to track down a license-plate number for me.”

“Plate number? You guys don’t have people down there who do that kind of thing?” His tone was both jocular and a bit suspicious.

“What can I say, dude, budget cutbacks.” Carrie sighed, playing along. They always had the kind of relationship where they shared everything with each other. Though Jack was always the great pontificator. Captain of the wrestling team in high school. Debate team. Villanova Law. But this time she wasn’t volunteering anything more. But Jack was no dummy. He knew they could get that kind of information in thirty seconds down in Jacksonville. Why would she be asking him to trace the plates other than some reason to keep it out of the office? No doubt his next call would probably be to their father.

“I have confidence you wouldn’t be getting the FBI into something they ought not to be in, right, little sister?” Maybe he’d already spoken with Nate, she suddenly found herself thinking. “We’re all sorry to hear about what’s happened there, that officer of yours? The town must be turned on its heels…”

“Yeah,” she answered, “it definitely is.”

“Crazy about this guy… Steadman? That his name? He must’ve just flipped…”

She didn’t answer directly. Not this time. Instead, after a pause, she just said, “I’m simply asking my big brother for a favor, that’s all. If you worked at GE, I might be calling for a toaster.”

“Carrie…” She was sure he was about to say something big brotherly (and probably smart), like, Just be careful what you’re getting into, sis. Or, You can’t use the FBI for your own private purposes, however justified they may seem to you.

Instead, he just drew in a wistful breath. “Budget cuts, huh?” He chuckled dubiously. “We’re all deep in ’em. All right, give me the plate number. I’ll see what I can do. And, Carrie…”

Here it comes, she thought, readying herself.

“Thanks for the joke.”

The fax came in a couple of hours later. With a note attached:

“Here’s your favor, sis. How about we say 48 hours-and then I might be asking if I should look into this myself.”

The name behind the plate she was looking for. From the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles.

ADJ-4392.

She stared at it awhile, glancing at the photos of Rick and Raef on her desk, until a drumming started up in her heart and in her blood, and she knew she was doing the right thing.

Her next stop was Akers’s office.

“Bill, I need a little more time,” she said, catching him as he was about to leave. “Raef needs some more tests. I know this is all bad timing. It’s just that maybe I wasn’t quite as ready as I thought…”

“How much time are we talking about?” her boss asked, surprised.

“Three or four days.” She shrugged. “Maybe a week.”

She could see he was disappointed; maybe even annoyed. It had been that way since she went in to talk about her doubts about Steadman the other day. But he put his sport coat on and nodded. “I’ll work it out with personnel. But, Carrie…” He sat back on his desk. “Get done what you need to get done. Then come back for good. We’ve held your job open a long time. I can’t promise I can give you any more sway.”

She grabbed a few files she could work on and was almost on her way out the door when she heard the sound of an e-mail coming in.

It was from an address she didn’t recognize. Mpkunin119@hotmail.com.

The subject line read, “March 2.”

Carrie clicked on it and there was no message, only a document attached. It looked like a page out of an appointment calendar that someone had scanned in.

Suddenly she realized it was Henry Steadman’s calendar.

There were a bunch of handwritten notations. “Discuss with Mark!” “Heat tickets 4/10 for JP.”

The rest was just his schedule for that day:

7:30-10:00 A.M.: OR-Lynda Fields

12:30: lunch, Paul Dipalo, U of M board

2:30: Patient consult: Andrea Wasserman

4:00-5:00: Conf call, Diamond-Murdoch

A routine day, Carrie thought, quizzically, why would he-

But then she realized just what the date was and what it meant-and a warm surge of triumph and vindication ran through her. And she found herself totally unable to hold back her smile.

March 2.

That was what Steadman was trying to tell her the other day, about proving his innocence.

March 2 was the day he was supposedly in North Carolina buying the 9mm gun.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Vance found John Schmeltzer at a bar in Dania, Florida, just north of Hollywood. It was a dark, sleazy, sixties-style place, set between a Jiffy Lube and a debt company, with a heavily tattooed Hispanic behind the bar. Dog races were on the TV.

Vance wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a more depressing place as he stepped in, in his sweaty shirt and rumpled pants, removing his hat.

Schmeltzer was at a table drinking a beer in a wifebeater T-shirt and pink shorts. He was thin, with coarse, curly hair, bald on top, and sideburns clear down to his chin. Maybe forty. He was with a couple of other lowlifes who, Vance thought, might have recently crawled their way out of the Everglades, and didn’t look a whole lot higher up the food chain than Schmeltzer himself.

Vance walked up to his table. “Dexter Vaughn said I could find you here. He said you could help me with my back. Hurts like the devil. Show me how it works down here.”

“Dexter, huh?” Schmeltzer looked at him a bit skeptically, squinting over his shades. “He said that. Not that it really matters…” The guy grinned, clearly not sizing Vance up as much of a threat. “That’s the beauty of it down here. I know what you’ve come for and welcome to the Promised Land.”

He proceeded to try to raise Dexter by phone, just to be sure, but failing to for obvious reasons, Vance knew-Schmeltzer just said, “Ah, hell with it,” and offered to take Vance around. They climbed into a silver Mercedes convertible, Schmeltzer saying how he had to do a little business anyhow, so why not climb on in. “So how you know Dex?” he asked casually.

Vance pressed his fingers against the fancy leather console. He felt the gun in his belt dig into his back as he pressed against the seat. “Through his cousin. Del. From South Carolina.”

“That’s where you’re from?”

Vance shrugged. Didn’t really matter much if he told him the truth. .. So he simply nodded.

“Del? Not sure I know any Del,” Schmeltzer said, squinting over his shades.

“No matter.” Vance shrugged, looking ahead. “You probably never will.”

“So what’s your story?” Schmeltzer asked. “Work accident? Chronic? Got any disability papers? X-rays you can show? A scrip?”

“Uh-uh.” Vance shook his head.

“Man, they really sent you down here cold, didn’t they?” Schmeltzer squinted. “Tell me, partner, no secrets here, you even got a bad back?”

Vance looked at him and smiled thinly. “Nope.”

“Ha! No worries, bro. Your secret’s safe with me. You will need some kind of story, though. We can do migraines. You’re under a doctor’s treatment up where you live, right? But you’re visiting. I know exactly where to take you. You may have to just spiff the doc a fifty or something. Okay by you?”

“Sure, whatever,” Vance said. He sat back. He felt the gun. He felt he was close.

“So relax! Won’t be but a while, and that back of yours will be floating in the clouds. Welcome to paradise, dude. Take off that jacket… Enjoy the ride.”

Vance pushed back deeper into the seat. John got off the highway at Oakland Park Road. In Ft. Lauderdale. The street was busy and commercial. Gas stations. Car dealerships. Fast-food outlets on both sides. Lots of long lights and traffic.

There was something else Vance soon noticed. Pain clinics. Lots of fucking pain clinics. One after another.

“Welcome to Broward County,” Schmeltzer proclaimed, noticing Vance crane his neck. “Pharmaland, USA. More fucking pain clinics on the streets than there are McDonald’s. And that’s a fact!”

“This is where you get them?” Vance had thought Schmeltzer was going to take him to his source, maybe a doctor who wrote bogus scrips. But this… “A pain clinic.” He widened his eyes in surprise. This was starting to make him mad. “All legal?”

“Clinic?” Schmeltzer’s grin was wide. “Dude, I’m on the VIP list of half the pill mills from here to Palm Beach. For an extra five bills they sell you a gold card. No wait. Back-to-back prescriptions. Everything you need filled directly on-site. Oxy. Vicodin. Muscle relaxers… Whatever floats your boat! All you need to be a dealer here is a license to be an MD! These guys are raking it in.”

Vance felt his fists clench.

“Some of these places, you can just walk right in and rub your back like you’re in pain and they’ll lay it all out like a Chinese take-out menu. Won from Corumn A… Just a drug dispenser. But you gotta know the ropes. And you gotta choose your sources carefully. Comprende, partner…? Which is what I do. I used to drive around in some Korean piece of shit. Now look at what we’re riding in…”

Vance looked around. There were more of these clinics than there were barbecue stops back where he was from. All you need is an MD? This was how the sonovabitches poisoned his Amanda. “I’m especially interested in the ones where you got what you gave Dexter,” he said.

“Dexter?” Schmeltzer grinned, kind of deferentially. “You are? No worries, I’m gonna take good care of you. And your back!”

Getting closer to the beach, they passed a more upscale section of office buildings-brick and glass. Vance was feeling himself growing angrier by the minute.

Schmeltzer slowed. “See that one over there?”

Across the street. On the ground floor of a redbrick office building. A fancy glass front.

The Harvard Pain Remediation Centers.

“I see it,” Vance said, feeling his pulse start to pound.

“There’s the one. You said Dexter, right? Top-of-the-line. There’s a real MD on the premises, not some Pakistani just out of med school looking to rake in a few bucks. You need a real prescription. No scrip, they turn you away. But no worries…” Schmeltzer patted his pocket. “I know someone there. I got us covered…”

“This is where the pills you sold to Dexter came from?” Vance’s mood picked up. The Harvard Pain Remediation Centers. He felt he was at the end of a long journey. He felt his fingers itch. “You’re sure about that?”

“Dexter. Frank. Hector… Got all the bases covered, dude.” Schmeltzer pulled into the turn lane and shot Vance a quick glance. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

A cop? Vance looked back at him. “No.”

“Good. ’Cause you’re starting to sound to me like you wouldn’t know an Oxy from an Advil… And I gotta be sure.”

“My daughter…” Vance started to say.

“Your daughter… ?” He cut in at a break in the traffic and pulled into the driveway of the clinic, going behind the store and into a spot with PAIN CLINIC written on the concrete barrier.

No one was around.

Schmeltzer shook his head. “Just be glad your daughter’s not from down here. More shit in the schools down here than in the damn hospitals. ’Course, I probably don’t help those numbers, if I say so myself… No age discrimination when it comes to business. That’s the Fourth Amendment, right? Everyone gets to pay.”

He put the car in park and cut the motor. “Anyway, you were saying…?”

He turned back to Vance and his eyes almost popped out of his head when he saw the gun.

“My daughter ran over a woman and her baby,” Vance said, hardening his gaze on Schmeltzer’s startled eyes. “Jumped the road while she was high-on OxyContin. Ran ’em over right on their own front lawn. The woman’s husband was in Afghanistan. Never even saw his own kid. Not once.”

Schmeltzer swallowed. “I’m sorry, mister.”

“Her boyfriend gave it to her. Who got it from some leech named Del. Dexter’s aforementioned cousin…”

A bead of sweat wound its way down Schmeltzer’s temple. “Where you going with all this, friend? You said that Dex-”

“Dexter’s dead,” Vance said. “They’re all dead. Del. Wayne. All of them except my little girl, Amanda, who might as well be. She’s serving twenty years. And where I’m going with it, friend…” Vance said, “is that I traced back the Oxy that twisted my little girl’s brain that day, that done ruined her very existence, to you.”

Schmeltzer stared back at him, the grimness and resignation on his face suggesting that he realized he only had a few more seconds to live. “This ain’t gonna solve anything, you know. They’re just gonna get it from somewhere. Fuck, man, they can find it in their parents’ medicine chests if they-”

Vance shoved the gun into Schmeltzer’s chest and pulled the trigger, twice, the sound muffled, Schmeltzer’s torso flung back against the side window with a lung-emptying groan, his eyes glazed, staring at his hands smeared with blood.

“Solves it for me. Anyway, you were right on one thing, though…” Vance leaned over and jammed the gun into Schmeltzer’s mouth, the dealer’s eyes about three times their normal size and stunned, and drew back the action. “Nice car.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Vance left Schmeltzer’s crumpled body on the floor of his car. He checked himself just to make sure he didn’t have blood all over him.

He had found what he was looking for and his search had pretty much come to an end.

Then he left the car and went to the door of the clinic.

He felt a stirring in his chest and his blood was all alive and buzzing, a voice deep inside him telling him that this was it. The end of the line. He had set out to prove that causes had effects and that you couldn’t escape the consequences of what you’d done. The sin from the sinner, the Bible said. The wheat from the chaff.

The Harvard Pain Remediation Centers.

This was where his little girl’s life got all caught up in the tide that ruined it.

Time to end it now.

Vance stepped inside and looked around. Blond paneling on the walls and a classy, almost Asian feel. All beige and white. In the waiting area, a heavyset black woman was in a chair with a metal walker in front of her. A video was running on a screen. Another woman was seated behind the counter. Pretty. In a blue nurse’s uniform. Her blond hair in a ponytail.

“Can I help you?”

The woman behind the counter was looking at him. Vance felt the emotions in his chest start to build. Can you help me? Can you make right everything that’s gone wrong in my life? Can you bring back my wife? My home? My job? Can you bring back my job on the force, which was the last time I felt like a man?

You can only take so much. Vance looked at this woman, his hand reaching into his pocket, wrapping around the gun handle.

“Just gimme a minute,” was all he could grunt.

The woman smiled at him. “First time here? I know it can be a bit unsettling. Here’s a brochure that describes the procedures we do here. They’re all doctor performed. Dr. Silva on staff is one of the foremost pain specialists in the area. But take your time.”

Vance nodded and took the brochure. His blood throbbed. The sweats had come over him. He could do it now. Do it! This was the source of it all. A sense of absolute certainty rushed through him.

“Or feel free to check out the video over there.” She pointed toward the overhead monitor in the waiting area. “It’s only three minutes, and it explains most of the procedures.”

“Thank you,” Vance said, taking his hand off the gun handle.

He went over to the screen, his heart drumming like a bass drum, boom, boom, and tried to listen, as best as he could, to a description of a bunch of procedures he didn’t give a damn about. Or could even pronounce.

Epidural steroid injection. Nerve root block. Pulsed radiofrequency neurotomy. Stellate ganglion block.

Electromyogram.

His head spun. The only thing you needed to become a drug dealer down here was to have an MD license… They were as bad as the ones who pushed the pills. Bloodsuckers. They were the ones who profited the most!

He gazed at the doctor who was narrating the video. He sounded smart, almost caring. Probably just some actor. All a sham! He looked at the woman behind the counter and wrapped his hand around his gun.

End it.

Vance’s chest felt like a furnace. Now.

The video came to an end. “Let us know how we can help you…” the doctor said, staring at Vance with those earnest eyes.

Help me?

He was about to turn back to the counter with the gun in his hand when he noticed the doctor’s name.

He wasn’t an actor at all. In fact, Vance now realized, he was the one person who should rightfully pay. Not these people here. They were just pegs, like him.

The one who had profited most from Amanda’s suffering.

Suddenly Vance felt uplifted, stronger, infused with purpose. He eased the gun back into his pants.

He stared at the earnest, smiling face, sure now where his rage should truly be directed.

The Harvard Pain Remediation Centers of South Florida.

Henry Steadman. M.D. CEO.