Shedrow (22 page)

“Did they tell you what they expected you to do?” Carlin asked.

“They still wanted him on a wire, talking about how he had killed the stallion.”

“Why didn’t they just arrest him at that point?” Carlin said.

“Supposedly, they said they didn’t have enough evidence to tie him to the hanging at the house. As far as the phony suicide, there was no insurance fraud or anything. The only life insurance my father ever had was a bag of cash that Uncle Ralphie would show up with once in a while. They wanted him on the big crime, the insurance scam on the horse, and they saw me as their best hope with that.”

“So they sent you to Lexington?”

“I went to Lexington where he was hiding out on this estate that belonged to the Senator...Senator Frunkle. I couldn’t get near that place, so the best I could do was to tail him when I got the chance. He didn’t leave the Senator’s place very often. This one morning, I got a call from Agent Hollis. They had finally managed to set up surveillance, so they knew when he had left the estate that morning. They wanted me to confront him, to re-establish our relationship and then get him to talk. So I followed him, keeping as much distance between us as possible. His first stop was at a gas station, but I couldn’t bring myself to get out of the car. Instead, I just kept following him.”

“To the apartment of Carla Highet,” Carlin said.

“Yeah, though I didn’t know that at the time, of course.”

“You waited until your father went inside the apartment?”

“I saw him pull his gun on the girl outside the apartment, at the top of the stairway. When they went inside, I ran up the stairs towards the apartment.”

“Where did you get
your
gun?” Carlin asked.

“From Uncle Ralphie. We used to target practice and shoot tin cans in the woods behind our house. A few times, he took me to the shooting range, and last summer he just let me keep one of his pistols.”

“Go on,” Carlin said.

“I stopped by the door, then quietly opened it. I knew my father had pulled his gun on the girl and I was really scared. The first thing I saw when I walked through the door was his big, hulking frame standing with his back to me at the far end of the room. Then I heard that poor girl—those sobs, like she was crying—except the sobs were all muffled. That fat bastard had his pants dropped down around his ankles. I saw the gun on the table beside him, and I saw the girl now, seated in the chair in front of him. I couldn’t think of anything but stopping him at that point. He had to be stopped. I crept up behind him, and once I was sure I had a direct shot at the back of his head, I fired. Right before I shot him I think I said, ‘God damn you to hell.’”

“What happened next?” Carlin said.

“He tumbled forward, falling onto the chair where the girl… where Carla sat. She screamed, and all of a sudden she stood up and pushed him back. He teetered for a bit then fell backwards onto the floor. I stood over him, pointing the gun at his chest. He quivered once or twice, and then he was still. He was dead.”

“What was Carla doing at that point?”

“She was sobbing, shaking. I put my gun down on the chair and walked towards her. She just sat with her hands over her face and kept sobbing and shaking. Then I called the number I had for Agent Hollis. When I didn’t get any answer, I called the Kentucky State Police.”

“I hope to have you out on bail today, John. You have no criminal history and the FBI will testify as to your cooperation with them. Fortunately, you have no drug arrests. I guess maybe Uncle Ralphie got to you in the nick of time. I believe this is a case of
justifiable homicide, and I think I can convince a jury of that. We’ll need to detail the long history of abuse that you were subjected to. We need to show how you acted in the defense of a helpless girl who was being held under extraordinary and very sinister conditions by a known killer.”

“She was being raped at gunpoint,” John said. “He would have killed her once he was done with her.”

“I understand. For today, we may still need to agree to a relatively substantial figure for your bail, which your mother is prepared to post. So you should certainly be able to go home. I have a sense that the district attorney will ultimately agree with a lesser charge than second degree murder, and a reduced bail figure as well.”

“Thanks, Mr. Carlin. I just want to get home. I need to go home.”

Gianni arrived home at about six o’clock that evening. He entered through the garage and walked down a corridor to the entry foyer. Janice’s Mercedes was gone and the front door had been locked. He dropped his bags in the foyer, walked to the large oriental bar in the living room and poured a generous ration of straight whiskey. In the safety of his own home, he felt at ease for the first time since leaving the island of St. Lucia.

He still hadn’t heard from Highet and that concerned him. But Chester Pawlek was dead, and the accomplice supposedly assigned to kill Gianni was in police custody. He sipped from the glass and listened to the Beethoven sonata he had started in the CD player. There was still no sign of Janice. He had asked her not to go anywhere. He would call her cell phone, but he needed another few minutes to sift through some details. For a fleeting moment, his thoughts drifted to Alice Bond.

The music played softly in the background, and he heard the
front door being unlocked. Janice would sometimes use the front door in lieu of the garage entryway. She liked their grand foyer with its polished marble floor. She would fling the door open and flood the foyer with the bright lighting from twin chandeliers that hung from the cathedral ceiling.

“Janice?” Gianni called. There was no answer. He looked towards the foyer and saw Brad Hill standing in the darkened hallway.

“Well, well, look who’s back,” Hill said.

“What are you doing here?” Gianni said.

“Oh, I come here often, Anthony. Don’t you know that? I even have my own key now.”

Gianni turned in his chair and saw that Hill had a gun pointed at him.

“Of course, you probably don’t know that because you’re so damn clueless,” Hill said. “I bet you don’t know I’ve been fucking your wife for the last two years either, do you?”

Gianni stood up and turned towards Hill.

“Careful there, doctor. I’m not ready to shoot you just yet, but if you force me to, I will.”

“Why, Brad? Why are you doing this?”

“Why indeed. Because you know too much. Now that Chet is dead, you may be the only thing standing between me and my freedom. Do you know who Wayne Logston is?”

“That’s Janice’s estranged brother. She hasn’t seen him in years.”

“Well, Wayne decided that he was going to blow the whistle on our little plot. But there’s not enough evidence to actually incriminate me, only Janice. It seems the absent-minded professor left a few
details out of his report.”

“What do you mean, your little plot?”

“Chiefly Endeavor. We killed your beloved animal. It was the only way I could see to get the money Chester owed me. He owed everyone money, including me. Several million actually.”

Gianni felt the blood rushing to his face. For a moment, he thought of lunging at the gun, then in a controlled, deliberate voice said, “So who killed the horse?”

“I guess we all did, in a way. Chet, Janice and I all knew about it. But it was her brother Wayne who actually master-minded the thing. He was the one who obtained the virus from the university lab.”

Hill shook his head and tightened his lips. “Then he decides to go to the authorities and tell it all. He is one crazy bastard. He’s in police custody right now in Kentucky.”

“So what good will killing me do?” Gianni said.

“Janice suddenly wanted to confess and tell you everything. So if you didn’t already know too much, I fear you would before too long. I’ve already lost the insurance money—Wayne made sure of that. If there’s fraud then there’s no payment. But I can’t go to jail. I’m used to a much more comfortable lifestyle, you see.”

“And you expect Janice to take the fall for you? She’ll go to jail and let you run free?”

“Of course I’m sure. She adores me. She’ll do anything for me.” Hill’s face was beaming, as though he really believed what he was saying.

“So she knows you’re planning to kill me?” Gianni said.

“Oh, no. I don’t think she’d go quite that far. Like I said, she was going to spill her guts out to you, and while I can trust
her
to protect
me, I don’t believe I can say the same of you.”

Gianni raised his voice, “You won’t get away with this, you bastard.”

“Sure I will. The mob is already after you, Anthony. So this will just look like the next in a string of mob slayings related to that damn stallion.”

“Tell me one more thing,” Gianni said. “Tell me who actually killed Chiefly Endeavor?”

“I told you that we all had a hand in it. But if you mean, who in fact physically swabbed the virus into the horse’s nose?”

“Who did it?”

“It was some degenerate that lives at the dump, the landfill in Midway. They called him Zoom.”

“How could some hillbilly that lived at the dump get past security and into the stallion area at Midway?”

“They apparently paid Zoom enough money—I doubt it took much. Zoom and the guard at Midway were lovers, you see. I expect the guard would have let him go right to the owner’s mansion if he had wanted to.”

Hill paused and smiled, that same smug expression of self-love once again evident. “Any crime involves some combination of a few basic motives, right? Money, love…or just plain sex, and revenge.”

“That poor guard ended up slaughtered,” Gianni said.

“Yes, he did. I didn’t have anything to do with that one, though.”

Gianni looked down at the ground, his face expressionless.

Hill pointed the gun and said, “Time is getting short, my friend.”

“Drop it, Brad.” It was a woman’s voice speaking now, coming from the foyer behind him.

Hill turned his head slightly, still pointing the gun at Gianni. Behind him was Janice Gianni, clutching a pistol with two hands, her hands shaking slightly.

“I’m afraid I can’t drop it,” Hill said.

“It’s gone too far, Brad. Drop it.”

Gianni surveyed the two. Hill continued to point the gun at Gianni’s head while taking furtive glances over his shoulder at the gun Janice was pointing at him.

“There is no way I’m dropping this, Janice,” Hill said.

Janice took two steps forward then fired two shots at point blank range. One bullet hole opened at the nape of his neck, another through the back of his head. Hill fell to the ground instantly.

Gianni bent over and felt for a carotid pulse. There was none. He then looked back towards Janice. She was down on her knees and she had the barrel of the gun inside her mouth.

“No!” he screamed. There was a third shot and Gianni saw the flesh around her mouth and nose suddenly torn open. Blood poured from her mouth and there were fragments of teeth scattered about the shredded flesh. Her eyes remained open as she fell over to one side.

With tears in his eyes, Gianni instinctively positioned her to open the airway. He could see her chest rise and fall, her breathing still spontaneous. She had a palpable carotid pulse, though she had lapsed into unconsciousness. He dialed 911 from his cell phone and ordered an ambulance to 25 Hollow Ridge Road in Armonk.

Gianni looked down at her bloody visage. She needed to be
intubated soon, before the swelling could compromise her airway, and she needed to be supported with intravenous fluids. But like others he had seen who put a gun to their mouth, she would survive. She destroyed a large part of her upper face but missed the brain and would avoid the lethal injury she had presumably wanted. Had the gun been angled slightly differently, she would not be alive.

He could hear the siren of the approaching ambulance. Gianni thought of the team he would call in to operate and of the sequence of operations Janice would require. Were the victim not his wife, he would most likely be part of the team himself.

Two paramedics ran through the front door pushing a stretcher. One of them carried a bright orange emergency kit. Janice was barely conscious and her breathing had become somewhat more erratic.

“I’m a physician,” Gianni said. “The man is dead. The woman— my wife—needs to be intubated. Self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

One of the paramedics sat on the floor directly at Janice’s head and straddled her with one leg on each side. The second medic handed him a laryngoscope, which he skillfully inserted from his seated position on the floor. In seconds, an endotracheal tube was in place, the cuff inflated and the tube secured with an anchoring device. An Ambu bag was used to deliver several rescue breaths, then she continued breathing on her own.

Another siren blared, and lights from a police cruiser streaked through the living room window. As the paramedics moved Janice from the floor onto the stretcher, two troopers entered the living room. Gianni started to follow the stretcher to the ambulance when one of the troopers intervened.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” the trooper said. “One of us can transport
you to the hospital shortly, but we’ll need to take your statement first.”

Montauk, NY – Six months later

As Gianni headed east on Old Montauk Highway at the eastern tip of Long Island, the road in the distance seemed to disappear straight over the dunes and into the ocean. The deep blue hue of the water contrasted with the lush greens of the dune pines, the beach grasses, and the yellow and white wildflowers. Gianni slowed the Porsche and looked over at Highet. He had just collected him from the train station in Amagansett. The two had not seen each other in over eight months. Gianni thought back to his first trip out east and expected that his friend was perhaps just as moved by the vista off to his right.

“They call it The End,” Gianni said. “It’s the end of Long Island, the easternmost point in the state. A bird flying due east from here would end up somewhere in Spain, I expect. How in the world did your daughter end up here?”

“She came here years ago with a friend from college and fell in love with the place. From what I’ve seen so far, I can understand why.”