Rough Justice (21 page)

Fuck. Wait. He wasn’t ready. He needed the Jeep in a better position to make a fast getaway. Plus it was too fuckin’ quiet. He set the rifle on his lap, pulled nearer the side street, then braked, leaving the car in drive. He took aim with the .30-.30 stuck in the crook of his arm, feeling the weight. Bearing down. Watching the target through the snow. The short lawyer was still in range, skiing into the light of a streetlight. Good. The blue coat reminded him of a bull’s-eye. A nice, easy target.

Penny pulled the trigger partway back. His hand was still shaking. Pussy. He should just shoot. Nothing to be jittery about. No reason to stall. It wasn’t like he’d get caught or nothin’. He’d have plenty of time to get away. Penny’s eyes darted around to make sure, his finger cold on the trigger. There was nobody on the street. It would take the cops forever to get here. It was fish in a barrel. Except for how quiet it was.

Then Penny heard it. A racket from a couple streets over, like a snowplow creaking. The noise would cover the gunshot. The snowplow driver would think he’d popped a chain or hit a manhole cover. Everything was going Penny’s way. There was no one around. He would be a hero. An asshole buddy of Bobby Bogosian’s, rich as shit. All Penny had to do was pull the trigger. He was an excellent hunter.

And it was lawyer season.

Judy planted the tips of her poles in the snow and turned around. Mary had fallen again. That was twice she’d fallen so far and they hadn’t even gotten off Twenty-fifth Street. Poor thing.

“Mare!” Judy called out, but she knew Mary wouldn’t be able to hear her. She was too far away and the snowplow was noisy.

“Mary!” she called again anyway. Judy didn’t want to ski all the way back to her if she didn’t have to. They’d never get home if she had to backtrack, and her ankles were wet. Judy squinted down the dark street into the driving snow. Mary was taking a long time to get up. Time for the cavalry.

“Up and at ’em, Atom Ant!” Judy turned her skis around, telemarking, and started to ski back. What was she doing, lying there in the snow? Clowning around. Typical DiNunzio.

“Come on, lazy. Get up!” Judy shouted as she skied. The snow hadn’t let up, and the wind was a killer, lashing Judy’s cheeks. The wind chill must be a record. Mary shouldn’t be lying in the snow like that. She’d only soak her snowpants and feel clammy the whole trip back. A rookie’s mistake.

“Mary, get up!” Judy yelled, but her friend didn’t move. Snowflakes collected where Mary’s legs lay on the ground, scissored in her skis. Her poles were still looped around her wrists. She wasn’t making any effort to get up, and the snow from the ground had to be blowing right into her face. What the hell?

Judy skied harder. Her throat tightened. Instinct told her what her brain wanted to deny. Something was wrong. Judy skied so fast she almost tripped forward, then threw down her poles, popped her ski bindings, and ran the last few feet to Mary. She fell to her knees beside her. “Mary? Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Mary’s eyes were open but unfocused. She seemed dazed. She lay on her side in the snow. Her poles were still strapped to her hands. “Sure.”

“Why are you lying here?”

“I’m skiing.” Mary’s eyelids fluttered. She breathed heavily. “Here I come. I’ll catch up.”

“What?” It made no sense. Judy bent over her friend, who appeared not to react to her closeness. She touched Mary’s cheek. It felt clammy, and cold.

“I’m thirsty. Got milk?” Mary giggled, and Judy bent closer and caught sight of her friend’s back. A circle of crimson oozed in the middle of her parka. Blood dripped onto the snow. It was the reddest red Judy had ever seen against the whitest white. She tore the hat from her head without knowing why.

“HELP!” she screamed. Judy looked wildly around. “HELP, SOMEBODY, PLEASE!” she screamed again at the top of her lungs.

Sirens screamed as two paramedics exploded from the back of a fire rescue truck and set upon Mary. Red emergency lights bathed the falling snow in crimson. Snow like drops of blood showered Judy, who stood shivering with cold and fear. She held fast to Mary’s skis, just for something to hold.

The rescue driver leapt from the front seat, raced to the back of the chunky red truck, and yanked a stretcher out. Its wheels bounced off the patterned steel of the vehicle’s floor and vanished in the deep snow.

“She was shot in the back,” Judy called to the paramedics, her eyes blurry with tears. Mary had lost consciousness waiting for the ambulance and looked lifeless even though she was still breathing. Her eyes were closed and her face was pale in the lurid red light. Her head rocked to the side as the paramedics checked the wound on her back and covered her with a thin green blanket. They lifted her onto the gurney on a hurried three-count.

Judy couldn’t bear to see it. She couldn’t bear not to. She dropped the skis and hustled after the paramedics as they hoisted the front of the stretcher into the truck. One of the paramedics scrambled in beside the stretcher and the other paramedic rolled it in from behind. The driver dashed back to his seat and tore open the door. They were leaving. “I’m coming,” Judy shouted.

“No riders,” the paramedic barked. He wasn’t wearing a jacket and his short-sleeved uniform showed a knot of biceps as he tried to close the truck’s thick door. “This is a snatch and grab. We got rules.”

“She’s my best friend!”

“I don’t make the rules.”

“I have to go with her!” Before the paramedic could stop her, Judy jammed her arm inside the doors and climbed into the truck. “I’m not moving,” she said, and crouched against the inside wall of the truck. “Sorry.”

“Have it your way,” the paramedic snapped, “only because I can’t leave you in the friggin’ snow,” He slammed the doors closed and twisted the lock. “Rock and roll!” he yelled over his shoulder, and the rescue truck lurched off with its siren screeching.

Inside the lighted truck, the paramedics set to work instantly, a feverish team. The muscular one cut the sleeve of Mary’s parka and sweater, felt with knowing fingertips for a vein, and stuck an IV into the crook of her elbow. “Possible gunshot wound to the left lung,” he shouted to the driver over Mary’s still, bundled form. “Grade Two shock. She’s losing one thousand to two thousand cc’s. She’ll need two, maybe three units when we get to the dance.”

The other paramedic checked Mary’s vital signs. “Respiratory rate, thirty. Blood pressure, ninety over fifty. Heart rate, one-thirty.”

The driver palmed a crackling radio and repeated everything into it. Judy couldn’t make out the crackled response. She couldn’t tear her eyes from Mary as the paramedics moved around her. The skin on her face looked rubbery. Whiter than snow. Bloodless.

Judy’s teeth began to chatter and she folded her arms against her chest. She huddled in the corner of the speeding truck. It was heated inside, but Judy had never felt so cold in her life.

L
ong Beach Island looked like a witch’s index finger on Marta’s map and sheltered a stretch of New Jersey coastline from the Atlantic Ocean. The map’s scale showed that the island was about twenty miles long and only half a mile wide at some points. Smaller and skinnier than Marta expected.

She followed the green minivan down a wide, snowy street that seemed to run the length of the island, north to south. The street was empty, though the storm had been lighter here, too. A blackish-gray sky shed only a dusting of snow. Marta guessed the island was deserted because of the winter, not the storm.

Marta’s truck rattled down the street, trembling in the strong gusts from the Atlantic on the right and the bay on the left. The street must have been the main drag in summertime because it was lined with darkened stores advertising boogie boards, bathing suits, and suntan oils. Marta drove past shell shops, Laundromats, and restaurants. The signs were evidence of more food than any human could consume:
BURGERS FRIES RIBS SHAKES PIZZA
and the no-frills,
BREAKFAST
. A placard on a toy store simply said
BUY IT
, and Marta gave it points for honesty if not specificity. She kept the minivan in sight and drove through a town actually named Surf City.

The minivan and truck traveled up the island, due north. Steere’s beach house was in Barnegat Light, and Marta checked the map with her flashlight. The town was at the northernmost tip of the island, where the minivan was heading so fast.

Marta accelerated to keep up. The traffic lights had been turned off. She passed easily through a commercial district and into an area that looked residential. Scrub pines reappeared by the roadside, their needles lined with snow. Evergreens lined the road like Christmas trees on display. Junky beach shops were replaced by houses of different shapes and sizes; saltboxes with weathered siding sat next to spacious modern homes on stilts, with multiple decks and large glass windows. Wooden signs in a snowy divider told Marta the towns she was passing through:
NORTH BEACH, HARVEY CEDARS
,
LOVE-LADIES
.

Marta traveled behind the minivan for ten minutes, then twenty. The truck was freezing without a working heater and she wiggled her fingers in her gloves to keep her blood circulating. The windshield wipers had finally met a snow they could handle and pumped madly in pride. Marta stretched her neck, aching from the accident, and felt her goose eggs, sore from Bogosian. She was as beat up as the pickup but somehow her senses felt alive. Urgent.

Marta watched the homes pass on either side of the street, illuminated only by the truck’s headlights. They cast little light, and Marta figured she’d crunched a headlight in the accident. The houses loomed large in the darkness and almost all were empty. They were about four and five deep to the beach and fewer than that to the bay. The farther out Marta drove, the larger and emptier the houses.

In ten blocks the houses became mansions and more modern. There were showplaces with whimsical paint jobs, their pinks and yellows bright even in the dark. Stark white contemporary homes sat far from the road, directly on the beachfront. The construction looked new and the homes custom-built. One white one reminded Marta of her glass beach house on Cape Cod, except the lots were bigger here and dotted with snowy vegetation. She sensed she was getting closer. If Steere had a house on the island, it would be in the most exclusive location.

Marta followed the minivan another five blocks, where it turned right onto a cross street and headed toward the ocean. Marta followed it to the street and stopped at the corner. She shined the flashlight up at the street sign. Steere’s street; it was the address she remembered from his tax form. Marta had been right. She switched off her headlights so Alix wouldn’t see the truck and turned right.

Marta coasted down the street, looking for the minivan. She was almost at the end of the street when red taillights flared on the right, near a snowy curb. Then they went dark. Marta waited in the pickup, slumping low in the beaded seat. A figure got out of the van, black raincoat flapping and dark hair blowing in the light snow. Her face was clearly visible in the light from the open van door. It was Alix Locke for sure.

Marta sank lower in her seat. In the distance stood Steere’s house, which was unexpectedly different from the modern houses on the way. The back of the mansion faced the street, but Marta could see it was old and graceful, with Victorian buttresses and cantilevered towers. Three stories tall and covered with dark gray shakes, it sat farther from the main road than any of the other houses. Marta guessed it had been built on a bulge in the island. Pine trees, beach grass, and snow-covered dunes surrounded the mansion, partially concealing it. Marta could understand why Steere loved the house — and why he might use it to hide something important.

She watched Alix climb a dune and head toward the house. When Alix was out of sight, Marta parked the truck a distance from the minivan and cut the ignition. What was Alix up to? Marta grabbed her forge hammer and flashlight and was about to get out of the truck when she remembered the pritchel. She might need more protection than the hammer.

Marta flicked on the flashlight and turned around to root through Christopher’s tool chest for the pritchel. After some digging, she pulled out a long pointed spike with a tip as sharp as a dagger. The pritchel, just as Christopher had described it. A crude tool of heavy black iron. “Do you have this in navy?” she said to no salesperson in particular, then pocketed both tools, tugged on her gloves, and climbed out of the pickup.

Marta caught a faceful of snow whipping hard off the ocean and ducked her head. She was unprepared for the wind’s force and the depth of the darkness around her. It was pitch black and the stormy sky permitted only the faintest moonglow. She cast the flashlight’s beam to the glittery surface of the snow and walked toward the minivan, boot-deep in powder. Marta reached the minivan and shone the flashlight inside to make sure it was empty. It was, so she followed Alix’s footsteps to the dune, the snow groaning underfoot.

Marta came to the dune and clambered up it. Her ribs ached with each step, and snow and ice bit her cheeks. The wind blew stronger the higher she went. The sea air smelled of brine and storm. Marta climbed to the pearly crest of the dune and when she reached it ducked to brace herself against the wind buffeting her face and drumming in her ears. She stuck the flashlight in her pocket and peeked over the dune.

Dunes coated with snow rolled in sensuous, milky mounds to Steere’s Victorian mansion and to the gray-black sky, horizonless in the storm. Between the dunes dipped a valley of alabaster, crossed by the windswept shadow of a woman. Alix, her hair flying sideways, hurrying to the dark mansion.

Marta crouched on the summit of the dune and her bruised ribs screamed in protest. She waited and forced the pain from her mind. She couldn’t risk going yet. She’d be exposed on the open dunes, and if Alix saw her, it would be over. Marta hunkered down in the snow like a soldier in a foxhole. Not that she knew anything about foxholes, but she had a vivid imagination. You had to, in criminal defense.