Nowhere to Run (31 page)

By the time the van had dropped everyone back at the Broadcast Center and Annabelle splurged on a cab to take her down to the Village, stopping to get the pumpkin pie the twins needed for the class Thanksgiving party, it was after nine o’clock. When she walked in the front door, the apartment was quiet. The kids were already in bed, and Mike was sleeping on the couch in the living room.

Annabelle hung her beaver jacket on the back of the kitchen chair, kicked off her shoes, and opened the refrigerator. The sparsely occupied shelves were a reminder that she had to get to the market tomorrow and do some real shopping. The day before Thanksgiving would be a zoo at the grocery store.

Deciding to scramble some eggs, she pulled the frying pan from the drawer. The clatter of pans woke Mike, who walked into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“How was the funeral?”

Annabelle whisked the eggs in a mixing bowl. “Actually, very nice as those things go. It had lots of spirit to it.” She poured the yellow mixture into the pan. “How was your day?”

“Okay, but I’m beat for some reason. I couldn’t even muster the energy to give the kids a bath tonight.”

Annabelle looked at her husband with concern.

“You should take it easy, Mike. You don’t want to overdo it.” She kissed him on the cheek. “And don’t worry about the baths. The kids can live for one night without them.”

“I’ll be right behind you, sweetheart,” said Annabelle as she set the frying pan in the sink to soak. “I’m just going to wipe up around here and then I’m turning in early too.”

She watched as Mike walked to the bedroom, hoping he wasn’t slipping backwards again. With all that had been happening at work, maybe she had been putting too much pressure on him, thrusting the child care on him too quickly. Tomorrow would be better, she resolved. She would come right home after work and a quick-as-possible trip to the supermarket.

The kitchen straightened, Annabelle switched off the overhead fixture and headed toward the twins’ room. As she stood in the doorway, the light from the hallway cast a soft glow on their peaceful faces. For the umpteenth time, her heart filled with the love and wonder of having them and ached at the fact that she hadn’t even spoken to her children today. They’d been asleep when she left in the morning, and they were asleep now.

She tiptoed inside and kissed Tara on the forehead, tucking the covers around her little body. Thomas was sucking his thumb again, Annabelle observed with resignation, as she gently pulled his soft hand away from his mouth.

Annabelle didn’t see the other hand, warm beneath the covers, or the small black lesion that grew on the tip of one of Thomas’s fingers.

He liked working the night shift, and he liked having his master key. He could snoop around to his heart’s content. Sometimes there were prizes ripe for the picking. He rationalized that the office supplies he filched supplemented the measly salary he was earning for the unpleasant job of cleaning up after other people’s messes. At least KEY was paying for the notebooks and pens and folders that his kids used at school.

He pushed his garbage container down the long ramp, stopping at a closet he hadn’t tried before. He unlocked the heavy door and felt for the light switch.

“Hey, look at all this old Olympic stuff.”

The custodian dug through the pile of baseball caps and T-shirts in the cartons strewn around the floor. A rack held ski parkas emblazoned with the snow flower emblem of the 1998 Olympics held in Nagano, Japan. He searched until he found one marked XXL and folded it up. That would fit him just fine. Maybe he should pick one up for his brother too.

As he pushed back the jackets, the gleam of reflected glass caught his eye.

What were test tubes doing in here?

“High winds and driving rains will be reaching our area in a few hours.”

The weather segment on the local eleven o’clock news was wrapping up when Joe Connelly’s home phone rang.

One of the cleaning crew had opened a little-used supply closet in the basement of the Broadcast Center and found a box of protective gloves and a junior chemistry set.

“Keep the door shut and don’t let anyone near that closet,” Joe ordered. “I’m coming in. And don’t let that custodian go home.”

Perspiration glistened on the janitor’s brow.

“I thought I should let Security know, Mr. Connelly. With all the anthrax stuff that has been happening around here and all.”

“You did the right thing, Mickey. But if you took anything from that closet, I suggest you hand it over,” Joe said knowingly. “No questions asked. You wouldn’t want to risk anything happening to you, would you?”

Joe called his connection at the local police precinct. It would be important to maintain the chain of evidence.

“The chemistry set and protective gloves are evidence, to my mind, that whoever killed Jerome Henning may have been cooking things up in that closet. I have a wireless camera we can install here and see what we catch.”

Joe was going to keep KEY out of it this time. They didn’t need any more panic at the Broadcast Center. He could take care of the problem on his own.

You couldn’t trust people to keep their mouths shut.

Surveillance cameras came in all shapes and sizes. They could be hidden almost anywhere, in pencil sharpeners or smoke detectors or sprinkler heads. Joe selected a miniature camera and personally escorted the technician down to the basement to set it up.

“What kind of field of view do you want?” the tech asked. “Wide-angle to pick up as much as you can, or narrow to pick up the details?”

Joe thought a minute before responding.

“Go with the narrow, Milt,” he decided. “We want to see the face of whoever comes to this closet.”

November 26

Annabelle awoke to the sound of wind and rain rattling against the window glass. She reached over to switch off the alarm, hoping to spare Mike another early wake-up. Managing to pick out her clothes in the dark, she crept from the bedroom as her husband slept.

The hot shower felt good until the water hit the cut on her knee. She gingerly held the washcloth in her damaged hands, instant reminders of the bus accident. She turned off the showerhead and toweled off carefully, dressing quickly in the unlit living room.

As she waited for water to boil for the container of tea she would take with her on the cab ride, Annabelle looked out the window to Perry Street. In the light of the streetlamps, she could see blustering rain pounding on the pavement below. Garbage cans were tipped over, spilling their contents onto the slick sidewalk. There were no birds sitting on the fire escapes this morning.

The nor’easter was really blowing in. It had been a good call to do the broadcast in the studio today.