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Skylark Aviation was a beetle-shaped, four-story structure, nestled behind security gates at the far edge of the airport. The top floor, aglow with lights blurred by the driving rain, was a circular bulb of bowed glass and curved struts, affording an expansive view of the runways stretching to the hills.
I’d taken the first airport exit and then swung around the two-lane outer rim, almost skidding on the sluicing water, until I spotted SkyLark. Other than a few cars in the lot, fronted by chain link and a well-lit guard kiosk, there weren’t any signs of activity.
“That guard’s gonna stop us,” Garman said nervously.
“I know.”
I glanced over at the small hangar attached to the west side of the building. Through its mural-sized windows, I could make out the shapes of three large corporate jets with the SkyLark logo emblazoned on their tails.
I was still debating what I was going to say to the guard when I opened my window and pulled to a stop at the kiosk. The lights on within revealed a trio of monitor screens, ledger book and phone. But no guard.
“What the hell?” Garman peered past me into the guard box. “Think we can just go in?”
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” came a harsh voice just beyond and behind my window.
Before I could react, my door was jerked open by a smiling, narrow-eyed Carl Trask. Holding a machine pistol in his free hand.
“C’mon out.” He stepped back, unmindful of the rain dousing his uncovered head. His gun-—maybe an Uzi, I didn’t know—was pointed at my chest. “You first, Doc, then your friend.”
I got out of the car, hands away from my body. Garman scrambled out behind me. Trembling, he had to grip the door frame to steady himself.
Ignoring him, Trask stared at me. “Okay, let’s get out of the rain. Mr. Wingfield wants to have a little talk with you. After that, he said you an’ me could have the next dance. I’m really lookin’ forward to it.”
He leaned in, face inches from mine. Then he rammed the point of his gun in my ribs. Pain exploded in my gut, and I doubled over, gasping. It took everything I had to stay on my feet.
“Oh, Christ.” Garman sagged against the car, voice cracking.
Trask laughed and silenced Garman with a look. I straightened up, gulping air. Trask nodded at the building, and Garman and I walked stiffly ahead of him toward the entrance.
***
Miles Wingfield stood at one of the bowed windows, looking out at the lights.
He didn’t bother to turn as Garman and I were brought at gun-point into the spacious lounge. Typical
Fortune 500
mileu: crystal fixtures, shining wet-bar, polished Japanese wood cabinets. Money likes to see money.
The only other person in the carpeted room was a steward of some kind, a slender man in his fifties in a crisp black suit. His breast-pocket handkerchief formed a neat triangle of white. He was pouring Dom Perignon into a fluted glass and studiously avoiding looking at the Uzi glued to my back.
“Thank you, Stevens,” Wingfield said, staring at his own reflection in the glass. The steward looked up. “I’ll be the only one drinking.”
The steward replaced the bottle in its standing ice bucket and padded out of the room.
After the door closed behind him, Wingfield turned and gave me that small, tight smile. Another tailored Italian suit, black silk shirt, and tie. Hands in his pockets.
“Time is short, Dr. Rinaldi. For all of us. So say your piece and let’s bring things to an end, okay?”
As before, his voice smooth, amiable. Eyes veiled with a milk-white film.
“It’s over.” I feigned a bravado I didn’t feel. “The cops are on their way. The Feds. Hell, with any luck, CNN.”
“Yes, I know.” Wingfield was unperturbed. “Though not quickly, I assure you. One of my friends in Justice is slowing things down as best he can.”
“I’m not surprised.” And I wasn’t.
“Before they get here, with their lawyers and their warrants, I’ll be long gone. And you’ll be dead.”
Wingfield glanced past me at his head of security.
“Stand over by the doorway, will you, Carl? If that gun goes off in your hand, you’re liable to spray the whole damn room.”
I heard Trask snort behind me, then felt the pressure of the gun ease off my spine. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the big security man lumber over to the door.
Wingfield sighed, and swiveled back to me. “I had so wanted to see you destroyed, Doctor. To deliver the public humiliation and ruin you deserve. Your death would have come eventually, of course, when it suited me. But now it looks like that’ll have to happen sooner rather than later. Though Carl promises me it
will
be a long, agonizing process. Right, Carl?”
“You got my word on that, sir.”
“And the photos?”
“I’ll Fed Ex ’em to you. Pre- and post-mortem. You won’t be disappointed.”
Standing next to me, Bert Garman looked kind of queasy. I jerked my thumb toward him.
“You mind if he sits down?” I said to Wingfield. “He’s not as used to this kind of thing as I’m getting to be.”
Wingfield motioned to a chair. Garman collapsed into it, taking what was probably his first breath since we’d driven up to the guard shack.
Just then, a phone on the table near Wingfield rang. He picked it up, listened a moment, and hung up.
He walked toward me. “That was my pilot. Seems we have clearance to depart. He’s rolling our jet out of the hangar as we speak.”
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
“Does it really matter, especially to you?”
“I’m a therapist. I like closure.”
Wingfield gave a short laugh. “You know, Doctor, in a way I’m glad you were foolish enough to come here. I can console myself that I was able to look you in the eye one last time before you died.”
“Too bad you can’t say that about James Stickey.”
“Who?”
“Stickey. The guy who broke into Kevin’s apartment to rob him. The guy you had killed in prison.”
“Oh, yes. The piece of ghetto trash who dared assault a member of my family.” He shrugged. “That was nothing. Just a loose end. In memory of my late son.”
“Who
you
had killed,” Bert Garman gasped. They were the first words he’d spoken in ten minutes.
Garman’s face blanched to a whiteness matching that of his eyes. Sweat beaded his hairline.
“Dr. Garman.” Wingfield turned to him. “I recognize you from Peter Clarkson’s description. He said you were a fool, though I’ve always thought otherwise. Not after the fine job you’ve done with Ten Oaks. I’ve seen the numbers. Very impressive. I was happy to acquire it.”
He stood over Garman, who shrank back in his chair. Wingfield lifted his hands out of his pockets and put them firmly on Garman’s shoulders.
“But for a man of your clinical experience, your grasp of my character is pathetic. I
loved
my children, both of them. In ways you could never possibly imagine. We shared intimacies beyond your feeble dreams. I could no more kill Kevin than kill myself.”
Wingfield straightened then, tapping the tips of his fingers together as though in deep reflection.
“So maybe poor Peter was right, and you
are
a fool. Doesn’t really matter. I
was
going to keep you on as clinical director, but I suspect UniHealth is about to undergo a drastic restructuring. The government will freeze everything during the inevitable investigations to come. So, frankly, I’m not going to need you around.”
He smiled over at Trask. “You mind taking care of Dr. Garman here, along with Rinaldi?”
“No!!” Garman tried to wriggle out of his seat, but Wingfield shoved him down with surprising strength.
Leaning against the door, Trask nodded soberly. “No problem, Mr. Wingfield.”
As Wingfield gave Garman’s shoulder an almost paternal pat, I scanned the room, figuring the odds.
On the one hand, I had nothing to lose. On the other, I didn’t see a move. Trask and his gun were a dozen feet away from where I stood. And though I assumed Wingfield wasn’t armed, I had to take the possibility into account.
My brow was wet with sweat, my breathing shallow. I tried to think. Focus.
Miles Wingfield sniffed noisily. “Okay, Carl. Time, as they say, is money.”
I saw that same shift in his body language, the thing I’d sensed before at the Burgoyne. His transaction with Garman and me was over. Old business.
Meanwhile, Trask was motioning to Garman and me with the Uzi. “Okay, assholes. Move.”
My mind raced as we walked slowly toward the door. Maybe outside, in the stairwell. He’d skipped the elevator bringing us here to the top floor, so probably he’d do the same going down. Maybe I had a shot at something there.
I heard Bert Garman’s quiet, almost resigned breathing beside me as we reached the door. Mentally drifting, going away somewhere in his head. Dissociating…
Already dead. Already gone.
Trask tapped my shoulder blade with the gun. “C’mon, open the goddam door.”
I took a breath and reached for the door handle.
Suddenly, the handle turned itself.
Trask sputtered. “What th—?”
The door flung open. I turned fast, my shoulders pushing Trask’s gun hand aside. He staggered back as I pivoted and grabbed the gun barrel.
Everything happened at once. I grappled with Trask for the Uzi, our bodies slamming against the near wall. Suddenly the gun went off, shooting a stream of bullets across the room. Bert hit the floor, hands over his head.
Shots pierced the huge windows, the shattered glass exploding into glittering shards. Wingfield crouched behind the table, unharmed. Trask and I still wrestled for the gun, his face a mask of rage. Then—
“Danny?…”
Casey’s
voice. Shrill, panicked. How? Where?
Trask drove me back against the wall again, knocking the wind out of me. The room tilted…
Had I even
heard
Casey’s voice?
Or was it her voice screaming in my mind as I struggled furiously with Trask, the lethal gun caught between us. I pulled his fingers from the trigger, but now he used the gun as a club, ramming its barrel into my side.
We careened through the opened door onto the floor of the narrow hall, arms locked, gasping, straining, cursing.
Then, a shadow of movement. Someone running out of the lounge. Legs moving past us. Bert Garman, heading down the hall, toward the stairs.
Trask buried his elbow in my throat, bearing down with all his weight, eyes glazed with murderous fury. The will to fight began draining from me.
A sound I didn’t recognize boiled up from my throat. I reared and butted his head with my own. He reeled back, sputtering. I managed to lock my hands around the gun and swung with all my might at his face.
Blood spurted in a wide gush as he howled in agony. His nose was split, cheeks caved in like craters. His eyes rolled up. Then he fell backwards, and stopped moving.
Gasping, spitting blood, I scrambled to my feet. Disoriented. Maybe in shock. I almost fell against the wall, but righted myself at the sounds of a fight coming from inside the lounge.
Voices. Screams.
I scooped up the gun and veered back through the door.
Casey and Wingfield struggled beside a shattered window, rain sheeting through its gaping hole.
He held a heavy bronze paperweight in his hands, and she was fighting him for control of it. An ugly red gash smeared her forehead.
“Casey!”
Her eyes blazing, Casey slammed Wingfield against the jagged glass shards, forcing him back onto its sharp teeth. He yelled, writhing in pain, and dropped the bronze to strike with his hands. Blood ran in thin rivulets from his neck and shoulders.
I ran towards them, gun raised. Wingfield snarled, slapping at Casey, snatching her hair, trying to keep his balance. With a fierce cry, Casey planted her feet and shoved him with all her strength.
Wingfield toppled back through the yawning opening in the glass, legs kicking at empty air.
And then he was gone.
His screams were a torrent of rage thrown up against the night. I got to the shattered window just in time to see him hit the rain-slicked pavement below with a sickening thud. His twisted body lay sprawled on the tarmac, pummeled by the storm.
Just as Richie Ellner’s had lain broken against the rubble outside an abandoned factory a week before. From another fall. From another window.
The sputtering whine of twin engines drew my eyes away from the body below and toward the SkyLark jet taxiing out of the adjacent hangar.
At the same time, the phone rang behind me on the table. I didn’t bother to pick up.
Miles Wingfield was going to miss his flight.
Casey came to stand beside me, her body trembling. I put my arm around her shoulders as she forced herself to peer out the window, rain pelting her face. She stared down at the pavement for a long time.
I spoke to her profile.
“Even after all he’s done, it’s still hard to see him dead. Isn’t it?…Karen.”