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Epilogue

“Are you ready? ” the doctor asked.

Del Flynn nodded. He held his beautiful Maria’s hand. The doctor pulled out the feeding tube and disconnected her breathing apparatus. Del knew that somewhere outside this room, the cops were steadily closing in on him and Goldberg, but that was okay. He had already lost whatever really mattered. This-what was going on right here, right now-was all that mattered now.

Del never left Maria’s side. He never let go of the hand. For eight hours, he talked to Maria about the first time he had ever seen her, how he knew even then that they were destined to be together. He laughed about their first date, how he stumbled jumping out of the car to open the door for her. He recounted every second of the day Carlton was born, how he had nearly fainted at the sight, how he had never seen her look more beautiful than when she held her little boy. And in the end, when there were only scant minutes left in Maria’s life, he started to sob. He begged her to forgive him. He pleaded for her not to leave him all alone. He ranted and raved, but he never told her what had happened to Carlton.

Maria died with Del holding her hand.

Before Ray Levine was released from prison, he agreed to help the authorities try to find the remains of Stewart Green. His lawyer, Flair Hickory, drew up the papers. In exchange for his help, Flair demanded that no charges be filed against his client. The county prosecutor’s office quickly agreed. In the end, Ray Levine would only be guilty of disposing of a dead body anyway, a crime where the statute of limitations had long since passed.

At the request of Sarah Green, Stewart Green’s widow, Broome was put in charge of the search party. Ray Levine led them down yet another hidden path-so many hidden paths in this case-to the remote cliff where he had hurled the bundled and bagged body parts into a lake.

In something of a final shock, the divers found a few of them still intact.

So now they were all at the cemetery, lowering the remains of Stewart Green into the earth. Sarah, officially widowed now, stood between her daughter, Susie, and her son, Brandon. Broome watched their faces and wondered what next. Sarah had been living in that state of suspended animation for so long he worried that she wouldn’t be able to move out of it.

For others, life had moved on. Ricky Mannion, for example, had been exonerated of the murder conviction and released from Rahway. When he walked out of the gates, no one was there to meet him.

The casket hit the bottom of the hole.

Broome had just come from yet another visit/interrogation with Lorraine. She would only talk to him-that was her rule-but then he was free to discuss what he learned with others. At first, he wondered what her game was, why, other than exhaustion and not wanting to be on the lam, she had so easily surrendered and what all that talk about a “plan” was.

It took some time, but eventually he got it.

Broome had become Lorraine’s confidant and confessor, and while he hated to admit it, he still liked being with her, which, of course, might explain his troubled relationships with women.

Lorraine knew that he had questions still, so she tried her best to answer them. During their last private meeting, he said, “Tell me about Ross Gunther.”

“He was my first kill,” Lorraine, now garbed in that federal-pen orange, told him. “After my husband, of course. I was a little too ambitious, but it paid off.”

“What do you mean, ambitious?”

“See, I liked Stacy. She was a nice kid who’d been battered down by men her whole life. She had this horrible boyfriend named Ricky Mannion. You wouldn’t believe what he would do to her. And then, because sometimes one creep isn’t enough, Stacy ends up attracting the attention of a second total psycho named Ross Gunther. So my original plan was to kill both.”

“What went wrong?”

Lorraine smiled and looked off. “Killing can be a little, well, like sex for most men I know. After you do it once, you kinda lose the urge for a little while. So I killed Gunther and instead of killing Mannion, I found it more interesting to just pin the murder on him. Truth was, killing Gunther alone wouldn’t have freed Stacy. I needed to get rid of both of them. It’s a funny logic, I admit that, but it works.”

“So that was year one?”

“Yes.”

Then Broome got to the real heart of it. “And Stewart Green was year two?”

“Yep. Here’s the thing. I never knew what happened to him. I mean, I knew I killed him. I sent Cassie up there because I wanted her to know she was free. I didn’t think she’d freak. I should have known. That was a mistake on my part, and I learned my lesson. Anyway, when nobody ever found Stewart’s body… well, I never really knew what happened either. It kinda freaked me out. I figured that Cassie hid the body or something. But then she vanished too. I even wondered for a bit if maybe Ray Levine had killed her and hidden both bodies, especially after I spotted him by the ruins a few weeks ago just before Carlton Flynn showed up.”

“Wait, you saw him?”

Lorraine nodded. “I almost called the whole thing off, but I figured, I wouldn’t be alive by next Mardi Gras, so what the hell.”

“So it was you who attacked Ray with the bat and stole the camera. You wanted the pictures he took.”

“Guilty,” Lorraine said. “You’re not going to charge me with assault, are you?”

“We can let it slide.”

“Wouldn’t look like much next to all those dead bodies, would it? Anyway, where were we? Cassie, right?”

Broome nodded.

“I didn’t want to mess up her life or anything, but I needed to know what happened. It haunted me. I tried to find her, but she really managed to vanish. Meanwhile I watched you, Broome, chase your own tail trying to find what happened to Stewart Green. You had no idea what happened. Without a body, you really had no case. See, I learned from that. All that confusion. So I decided to change my MO.”

“You decided to hide the bodies,” Broome said.

“Yep.”

“You made it look like maybe the men had gone missing or ran away.”

“Exactly. If I kept leaving dead bodies up there, the cops would be all over it. I’d have to find new spots every year. It’d be too much, you know what I’m saying? But with disappearances, well, in many cases there was nothing to go on.”

“There’s one thing I still don’t get.”

“Then ask away, handsome.”

Broome shouldn’t be enjoying this. “You told Megan-Cassie-that you always knew where she was. How?”

“Oh, that was a lie,” Lorraine said. “I had no idea until recently.”

That surprised him. “I don’t get it. How did you finally find her?”

“The truth is, Cassie-let’s not call her Megan, that’s not how I knew her-Cassie was the best. I loved her. Truly. And she loved the life. That’s the part they don’t talk about, Broome. You hear about the drugs and the prostitution and the abuse, but that’s not the whole picture. You’ve seen the clubs, Broome. For some of the girls, this is the best they’ll ever get. It’s fun and exciting. It’s a party every night and in this miserable drone of a life, what’s wrong with that?”

“And Cassie was one of those girls?”

“Oh, she was indeed. I knew she’d be missing the life. So, that’s why, even after seventeen years, I wasn’t surprised when she came back to the club for a visit. She told you about that, right?”

Broome nodded. “She did.”

“She pretended to come down to Atlantic City for some stupid convention, but of course she ended up back in La Creme.”

“And you recognized her?”

“Yep. So I followed her back to the Tropicana. I got friends at the front desk. They gave me her real name and address. I went up to her place and figured a way to get her back down here.”

“You pretended that you saw Stewart. You acted like maybe he had something to do with Carlton Flynn.”

“Right. And when I saw her reaction, I knew that she didn’t know what happened to the body either. So now it’s your turn, Broome.” Lorraine leaned forward. “Tell me about Stewart Green. That’s always been the big mystery to me. Tell me what happened to his body.”

So he did. He told her the whole story about Ray Levine cutting up the corpse. Lorraine listened intently.

“Poor, sweet Ray,” she said.

“Which begs yet another question,” Broome said. “How did Carlton Flynn’s Saint Anthony medal end up in Ray Levine’s apartment?”

“I put it there,” Lorraine said. “How else?”

“How did you get in?”

“You’re kidding, right? Ray lived in a basement with narrow windows. I opened one and tossed the medal into the middle of the room. Simple as that. Funny thing, though, about Ray cutting up the body.”

“What about it?”

“It’s like the opposite of what I said.”

“I’m not following.”

“When I experienced violence, I found out I had a taste for it. When poor Ray did, he found out the opposite. It brought me to life. It crushed him. It’s all in how we’re hardwired, Broome. He was too soft. It wasn’t Cassie leaving that destroyed him. It was that he couldn’t live with all that blood…”

Broome wanted to ask more, but she said, “Enough for today, hon. I got a TV thing.”

And that was what Broome had realized. That was her plan.

She was close to getting caught. They had found the bodies. They had found out about her killing her husband on Mardi Gras. The feds were involved. It was only a question of time, and she didn’t have much of that left anyway. But the moment she surrendered, well, a star was born.

Lorraine’s case became an international sensation. That was what Broome hadn’t expected at first. Serial killers are rare. Female serial killers are rarer still. That would have been enough to garner attention, but then you add some professional spin and voila. Lorraine’s lawyer was the famed Hester Crimstein, an expert in manipulating the media. Suddenly, Lorraine wasn’t a murdering monster, as per her media nickname, but an abused woman who became the “Avenging Angel.” The wives and girlfriends of her victims came out, each telling a terrifying tale of abuse, of living in agony and fear, of being saved by the only woman who would help them.

Lorraine.

So now Lorraine did TV interviews. The fascination with her was endless. Her natural likability came out because you simply can’t teach that. Hester Crimstein’s strategy was a simple one: confuse, deflect, stall. The federal prosecutors were pretty much fine with that last point. They didn’t relish trying a dying woman who many viewed as a hero.

Broome thought about that crooked smile Lorraine had given him before he arrested her. She had known. She had known exactly how it would play out in the media.

“Ashes to ashes…”

Back at the funeral of Stewart Green, a man murdered by Lorraine, the mourners bowed their heads.

“We say our final good-bye to our dearly departed…”

Sarah Green moved toward the open ground with a rose in her hand. She tossed it down on the casket. Susie followed. Then Brandon. Broome didn’t move. Erin, looking beautiful in black, was in the row behind him. Her husband, Sean, stood next to her. Sean was a good man, truth be told. Broome turned toward Erin and met her eye. Erin gave him a small smile, and Broome felt that too-familiar pang in his chest.

The longing would always be there. He knew that. But Erin was gone to him. He needed to understand that.

The mourners began to disperse. Broome started to wander back to his car when a hand touched his shoulder. He turned to see Sarah.

“Thank you, Broome.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

Sarah shaded her eyes, squinting into the sunlight. “I know it sounds weird, but this really does give me closure.”

“I’m glad.”

“It’s time to move on, right?”

“Right.”

They stood there for a moment.

“Now that this case is over,” Sarah began, “will you still come by to see me?”

He wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t know.”

“Because I’d like it if you did, Broome,” she said. “I’d like it very much.”

She walked away then. Broome watched her until she disappeared.

He thought about Lorraine and Del Flynn and Ray Levine and Megan Pierce and even Erin, who’d left him and left the job but never really left at all.

Maybe, Broome thought, Sarah was right. Maybe it was time for all of them to move on.

Fester dropped Ray off at the airport.

“Thanks, Fester,” Ray said.

“Ah, you’re not getting off that easy. Come here, you.”

Fester put the car in park and got out. He gave Ray a bear hug, and Ray, surprising himself, hugged Fester back.

Fester said, “You’ll be careful, right?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I’m allowed to be concerned. When you mess up over there, I get to have my best employee back.”

Ray had called Steve Cohen, his old boss at the Associated Press, hoping to maybe get a lead on how to try to work his way back into the business. Cohen had said, “Work your way back in? Are you kidding? Can you leave next week for the Durand Line?”

The Durand Line was the dangerous and porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Just like that?” Ray asked. “After all these years?”

“What did I always tell you, Ray? Good is good. You’re good. Really good. You’d be doing me a favor.”

Inside the terminal, Ray got on the line for the TSA security checkpoint. Two weeks ago, when Flair Hickory had first explained to him that he was going to get off for his past crime, Ray had shaken his head.

“It can’t be like that, Flair.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve run away enough,” Ray said. “I need to pay a price for what I did.”

Flair smiled and put his hand on Ray’s forearm and said, “You have paid a price. You’ve paid one for seventeen years.”

Maybe Flair was right. The images of blood hadn’t reappeared for a while. Ray wasn’t a hundred percent. He probably never would be. He still drank too much. But he was on his way.

Ray grabbed his carry-on off the conveyor belt and started for the gate. The departure board told him that he still had fifteen minutes until boarding. He sat by the gate and looked at his cell phone. He wanted to call Megan, let her know that he had found a job and would be okay, but he’d purposely lost her phone number, and even if he could remember it, which he could not, he wouldn’t call her. He’d think about it. He’d think about it a lot over the years. He’d even start dialing Megan’s number. But Ray would never let the call go through, and he’d never see Megan-Cassie-again.

Megan Pierce closed the Sub — Zero fridge and looked at her two children through the bay windows off the breakfast nook. Out in the backyard, Kaylie, her fifteen-year-old daughter, was picking on her younger brother, Jordan. Megan was tempted to open the window and tell Kaylie to stop for the umpteenth time. But today she just didn’t feel like it.

Siblings bicker. It’d be okay.

In the TV room, Dave was sprawled out in gray sweats with the remote in his hand.

“Kaylie has soccer practice,” she said.

“I’ll drive her.”

“I think she can get a ride home from Randi.”

“That would be helpful,” Dave said. “I can’t wait for her to get her license, so she can drive herself.”

“From what I hear, yes, you can.”

Dave sat up and smiled at her. She smiled back. He patted the seat next to him.

“Sit with me?” he asked.

“I got a million things to do.”

“Just for five minutes.”

Megan sat on the couch. Dave put his arm around her and pulled her closer. She snuggled in and rested her head on his chest. He flipped channels, as was his custom. She let him. The images passed by in quick flickers.

It wasn’t perfect, Megan knew. In the long run, it might not even be okay. But it was finally honest. She didn’t know where it would go, but right now, it all felt pretty good. She longed for the normalcy. She liked driving the car pools and making lunches and helping the kids with their homework and watching nothing on television with the man she loved. She hoped that the feeling would last, but history and the human condition told her otherwise. There would be restlessness again. There had to be. Grief, fear, passion, the darkest of secrets-nothing lasted forever. But maybe if she took a deep breath and held on, she could make this feeling stay with her, at least for a little while more.