Stay close

34

Broome shivered in the cold.

There were six more cops by the well now. One offered him a blanket. Broome frowned and told him to buzz off.

There were bodies in the well.

Lots of them. One piled on top of the other.

The first one they brought up belonged to Carlton Flynn.

His corpse was the freshest and, ergo, most horrid. It reeked from decay. Small animals-rats and squirrels, maybe-had gnawed on the dead flesh. One of the officers turned away. Broome didn’t.

The ME would try to find a time and cause of death, but despite what you see on television, there was no guarantee he’d find either. What with the outdoor temperatures and the animals feasting on vital organs, there would be tons of room for confusion.

Of course, Broome didn’t need scientific evidence to know the timing. Carlton Flynn, he was certain, had died on Mardi Gras.

For a few moments, when the body was brought up with a pulley and rope, they all just stood there solemnly.

“The rest are little more than skeletons,” Samantha Bajraktari said.

That didn’t surprise Broome. After all these years, after all the twists and turns and new developments and sightings and rumors, it all came down to this. Someone had killed these guys and dumped them down this well. Someone had gotten the men to come to this remote site, murdered them, and then used a handcart to drag them to a well about fifty yards off the beaten path.

There was no doubt anymore. This was the work of a serial killer.

“How many bodies?” Broome asked.

“Hard to say yet. At least ten, maybe twenty.”

The Mardi Gras Men hadn’t run off or taken on new identities or traveled to some remote island. Broome shook his head. He should have known. He’d always believed that JFK was killed by the lone gunman. He’d scoffed at UFOs, at Elvis sightings, at fake moon landings, at pretty much every dumb-ass conspiracy theory. Even as a cop, he always suspected the obvious: the spouse, the boyfriend, the family member, because in nearly all matters, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Stewart Green would probably be near the bottom of the pile.

“We have to tell the feds,” Samantha said.

“I know.”

“You want me to handle it?”

“It’s already done.”

He thought about Sarah Green, sitting in that house all these years, not able to move on, not able to mourn, and all this time her husband had probably been dead in the bottom of a well. Broome had gotten too involved. That had clouded his vision. He had wanted to rescue the Greens. He had convinced himself there was a chance to do that; that despite the odds, he would find Stewart Green whole and bring him back.

Dumb.

There were still questions, of course. Why hadn’t Ross Gunther’s body been dumped down the well too? There were a few possibilities, but Broome didn’t love any of them. The bodies in the well also didn’t answer the question about who had killed Harry Sutton and why, but perhaps the timing had indeed been a coincidence. As for Lorraine seeing Stewart Green alive, that was an easy mistake to make. Even she had admitted that she had her doubts. It was probably someone who looked like Stewart. What with the shaved head and goatee and seventeen years of aging, even Broome could hardly say for sure that age progression was based on him.

Unless, of course, Lorraine hadn’t been wrong. Unless Stewart Green hadn’t been the first victim but the perpetrator…

He didn’t think so.

Another skeleton was brought up.

“Detective Broome?”

He turned.

“I’m Special Agent Guy Angiuoni. Thanks for calling us.”

They shook hands. Broome was too old to play territory games. He wanted this crazy son of a bitch caught.

“Any clue who’s down there?”

“My wi”-he almost said wife-“My partner, Erin Anderson, is still making up a list of men who vanished on or around Mardi Gras. We can get you that information so you can match it to the victims in that well.”

“That’d be very helpful.”

The two men watched the pulley and rope head back down.

“I hear you may have a suspect,” Angiuoni said. “A man named Ray Levine.”

“He’s a possibility, I guess, but there’s not much evidence yet. We already have a warrant being served on his place.”

“Great. Maybe you could help coordinate with our people taking over that?”

Broome nodded and turned away. It was time to get out of the woods. There was nothing he could do here right now. It’d be hours, maybe days. In the meantime he’d find out what his people had uncovered, if anything, in Ray Levine’s basement. He thought about Sarah Green and if he should wait until they had firm confirmation that he was in that well, but, no, the media would be all over this. He didn’t want Sarah to hear about it from some pushy reporter.

“I can meet your guys at Levine’s,” Broome said.

“I appreciate that. I want to keep you involved in this, Detective. We do need a local guy to coordinate with us.”

“I’m at your disposal.”

The two men shook hands. Using his flashlight, Broome started back down the path toward his car. His cell phone buzzed. He saw that it was from Megan Pierce.

“Hello?”

But it wasn’t Megan Pierce. It was a homicide investigator from Essex County telling him that someone had just tried to murder Megan Pierce.

It took Erin a while, but she’d finally found the home number for Stacy Paris, the exotic dancer Ross Gunther and Ricky Mannion had fought and, in Gunther’s case at least, died over. Stacy Paris had changed her name to Jaime Hemsley. She was single and owned a small clothing boutique in the tony suburb of Alpharetta, Georgia, half an hour from Atlanta.

Erin debated making the call but not for very long. Despite the hour, she picked up the phone and dialed.

A woman with a light Southern drawl answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Jaime Hemsley?”

“Yes, may I help you?”

“This is Detective Erin Anderson from the Atlantic City Police Department. I need to ask you a few questions.”

There was a brief silence.

“Ms. Hemsley?”

“I don’t see how I can help you.”

“I hate to call you out of the blue like this, but I need your help.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Well, Jaime, or should I say, Stacy, I do,” Erin said. “Like, for example, your real name.”

“Oh my God.” The Southern drawl was gone. “Please. I’m begging you. Please let me be.”

“I don’t have any interest in harming you.”

“It’s been almost twenty years.”

“I understand that, but we have a new lead in Mr. Gunther’s murder.”

“What are you talking about? Ricky killed Ross.”

“We don’t think so. We think someone else did it.”

“So Ricky is going free?” There was a sob in her voice. “Oh my God.”

“Ms. Hemsley-”

“I don’t know anything, okay? I was a punching bag for both of those psychopaths. I thought… I thought God did me a favor. You know-two birds, one stone? He got both of them out of my life and gave me a fresh start.”

“Who gave you a fresh start?”

“What do you mean, who? God, fate, my guardian angel, I don’t know. I had two men fighting over which one would eventually kill me. And suddenly they were both gone.”

“Like you were saved,” Erin said, as much to herself as the witness on the phone.

“Yes. I moved away. I changed my name. I own a clothing store. It’s not much, but it’s all mine. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“And now, what, Ricky is going to get out? Please, Detective, please don’t let him know where I am.”

Erin pondered what she was hearing. This situation again fit a certain profile that had been emerging in connection with the missing men-that is, most of these men were not exactly model citizens. Several of the wives or girlfriends had been equally up front, begging Erin not to find their missing partners.

“He won’t find you, but I need to ask: Do you have any idea who may have done this?”

“Killed Ross, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Other than Ricky, no.”

Erin’s cell phone sounded. It was Broome. She thanked Jaime Hemsley and told her that she’d call her if she needed anything else. She also promised to let her know if Ricky Mannion was released from prison.

After they both hung up, Erin picked up the cell. “Hello?”

“They’re dead, Erin,” Broome said in the strangest monotone. “They’re all dead.”

Erin felt a cold stone form in her chest. “What are you talking about?”

He told her about the photograph of the hand truck, the trip back to the ruins, the bodies in the well. Erin sat unmoving.

When Broome finished, Erin said, “So that’s it? It’s over?”

“For us, I guess. The feds will find the guy. But there are parts that still don’t fit.”

“No case is a perfect fit, Broome. You know that.”

“Yeah, okay, and but here’s the thing. I just got a call from an investigator up in Essex County. Megan Pierce was attacked tonight by a young blond woman who matched her description of the woman who was in Harry Sutton’s office.”

“Is she okay?”

“Megan? She has some injuries but she’ll live. But she killed her assailant. Stabbed her in the gut.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Definitely self-defense?”

“That’s what the county cop told me.”

“Do they have an ID on the blond woman?”

“Not yet.”

“So how do you think it fits?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s unrelated.”

Erin didn’t think so. Neither, she knew, did Broome. “So what do you want me to do?” she asked.

“Not much we can do about the Megan Pierce situation. When the local cops come back with an ID on this blond attacker, maybe we can go from there.”

“Agreed.”

“I also think we still need to figure out how exactly this Ross Gunther’s murder is tied into all this.”

“I just talked to Stacy Paris.”

“And?”

Erin filled him in on her conversation.

“That doesn’t help much,” he said.

“Other than it fits a loose pattern.”

“Abusive men.”

“Right.”

“So look harder at that angle. Abusive boyfriends or spouses or whatever. Mardi Gras is linked into this somehow. That day set this whole thing off. So widen the scope a little, see if there are any other Mardi Gras cases we missed.”

“Okay.”

“More important, though, the feds are up at the ruins right now gathering the bodies. They’re going to need your help with the IDs.”

Erin had figured as much. “No problem. Let me work up the details and get the names to them. What about you?”

“I’m going to stop by Ray Levine’s, but then I have to talk to Sarah before the media contacts her.”

“That’s going to suck,” Erin said.

“Maybe not. Maybe she’ll welcome the closure.”

“You think?”

“Nope.”

Silence.

Erin knew him well enough. She moved the phone from one ear to the other and said, “You okay, Broome?”

“Fine.”

Liar. “You want to come by when you’re done?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. Then: “Erin?”

“Yes?”

“Remember our honeymoon in Italy?”

It was a curious question, totally out of the blue, but something about it, even in the midst of all this death, made Erin smile. “Of course.”

“Thank you for that.”

“For what?”

But he’d already hung up.