Sudden Death (25 page)

S
HE ASKED ME TO
come over tomorrow night.” It’s the first sentence Kenny can manage to say after he processes what I’ve just told him.

“Why?” I ask.

“She said she was going through Bobby’s stuff, and she needed some help, and that there might be some things I’d want to keep for myself. I told her I’d be there at eight.”

“You’re not going,” Tanya says.

Kenny looks to me for guidance. “Don’t say anything to Teri right now,” I say. “Let me think about this for a while. We have until tomorrow night.”

I promise to get back to them later today. I leave to be on time for my twelve-fifteen session with Carlotta, which has just changed in content and increased in importance.

Carlotta’s door opens at exactly twelve-fifteen, not one minute sooner or later. This would be true if we were sitting just below an erupting volcano, with hot lava raining down on us, or if we were in Baghdad dodging cruise missiles. I suspect that punctuality is a trait common to all shrinks, but it is nonetheless amazing.

Once I’m seated in the chair opposite her, Carlotta asks, “So, Andy, why are you here?”

“Laurie left and I’m in such pain that sometimes I think I can’t breathe,” I say. “But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

She laughs. “Of course not. Why would it be?”

She’s familiar with the case, having testified, but I proceed to tell her everything that I have just learned about Teri Pollard and Kenny Schilling, stopping frequently to answer her questions. Finally, I say, “I know it’s hard for you to judge people from a distance, but if you can enlighten me at all, I’d appreciate it.”

“Well,” she says, “assuming Teri is the murderer, we can also assume two other things. One is that she is terribly unstable, in layman’s terms a wacko. Such people only flirt with rationality, and it’s not always helpful to try and predict their actions using logic. Two is that she took the pact that those young men made that weekend very seriously, maybe even more seriously than her husband did. When he had his accident, she thought she could rely on that pact, that the others would support her husband, and by extension her, in the manner in which they had promised. When they didn’t, she exacted her revenge. She was possibly taking out on them her anger at her husband for failing her.”

“But why commit the other killings in secret and Preston’s so publicly? And why frame Kenny? Why not kill him also?”

“I think she would have felt that Kenny deserved a special kind of demise, of torture, compared to the others. He loved her, at least in a physical sense, and then abandoned her and her child. Plus, he succeeded dramatically in the NFL, which in her eyes made him the most guilty of nonsupport.”

“But he provided support,” I say. “He made sure her husband was employed, and gave her money to raise the child.”

Carlotta shakes her head. “Not enough. In her eyes not nearly enough. She wanted to be married to a star, and instead in her eyes she thought she was living with a cripple.”

“Why now? Why would she wait and then choose to go after Kenny now?”

She shrugs. “That’s beyond my range of knowledge. Did anything significant happen in Kenny’s football career recently? Any special achievement?”

There it is; I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it. “He just signed a fourteen-million-dollar, three-year deal, plus incentives.”

She smiles. “That might be rather significant, don’t you think?”

I nod. “What is she likely to do next?”

“It’s hard to say. She could continue to try to exact her revenge on Kenny, and that desire could be increased by her husband’s death, even if she is the one that killed him. Or she could try to win him over, in the misguided notion that her husband stood between them. She might think that Kenny will now love her and they can ride off into the sunset together. One thing you can be sure of, though: She will do something. This doesn’t end here.”

On that ominous note I head down to the police station to meet with Pete Stanton. He is a very good friend of Laurie’s, and I have to resist a strong temptation to ask if he’s heard from her. Instead, I repeat the saga of Teri Pollard.

Since he’s a good cop, his first reaction is skepticism that someone like Teri Pollard could have pulled off all these killings.

“Think about it,” I say. “Most of them were heart attacks, and I’ll bet she used potassium, or something just like it. As a nurse she would have had even greater access to it than Bobby. As for the other deaths, Kenny told me she grew up in Kentucky and as a girl went hunting with her father, so she could handle a rifle. And a hit-and-run, anybody could do that.”

“Have you established that she was present in the cities where the deaths took place?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Not yet. But Bobby said she went on all the road trips with him. That’s why she couldn’t hold down a full-time nursing job. She had the same access he did.”

He’s looking doubtful, so I add, “And there was evidence that a woman called a taxi from the convenience store near where Kenny’s car was found. No one made the connection until now.”

“What about her husband’s suicide?” Pete asks. “He fired the weapon that killed him; there was gun residue all over his hands.”

“I’d be willing to bet she had given him a drug to knock him out… probably potassium as well. She held the gun to his head with his own hand.”

He still doesn’t fully believe me but is cautious enough to be alarmed by Kenny’s plan to visit her tomorrow night. He also knows that if I’m right, then Kenny’s canceling the visit is not going to solve the problem. She’d keep coming after him.

We come up with a plan, but one that requires Kenny’s participation. Pete comes with me to Kenny’s house to present it, and Tanya joins us as we do so. Basically, we want Kenny to go to Teri’s wearing a wire, and with a contingent of police secretly stationed right outside the house. If she makes a threatening or incriminating move, they will rush in and arrest her.

It’s obviously dangerous, and Tanya predictably is against it. “If you’re so sure she’s the one, why don’t you just arrest her now?” she asks.

“Because there’s not enough evidence to make it stick,” I say, and Pete voices his agreement. I go on, “Tanya, if we’re right, she’s going to keep coming after Kenny. We can either wait for her to do it on her terms or get her to do it on ours, when we’re ready.”

Kenny, who has been silent, considering this is his life we’ve been talking about, nods. “Let’s do it. I want this over with.”

P
ETE ALLOWS ME TO
sit in the police communications van, situated just around the corner from Teri’s house. Small cameras and microphones have been surreptitiously placed to monitor everything that goes on inside, and it’s all in front of us on screens.

In the van are two technicians, plus Pete and I. The armed units are stationed near the house, out of sight from the street because, although it’s seven-forty-five, Teri isn’t home yet. Kenny is due in fifteen minutes, and we’ve told him to be right on time.

I’m vaguely uncomfortable with Teri’s late arrival. If we’re right, and she’s going to make an attempt on Kenny’s life, it’s the type of thing you’d think she’d want to prepare for. You wouldn’t expect her to be somewhere looking at her watch and thinking to herself, “Gee, I’m running late. I’m supposed to be killing Kenny Schilling in fifteen minutes.”

“She might have made us somehow,” Pete says. “She may know we’re here. Or maybe something happened with her kid.”

“She told Kenny that the son was at his grandmother’s and wasn’t coming back until next week.” I don’t mention that the boy is Kenny’s biological son; it’s not something that Pete needs to know.

At eight o’clock sharp, Kenny arrives. He rings the bell and gets no answer, then seems confused as to what to do. He looks around at the street, possibly hoping that we’ll show up and tell him what the hell is going on, but of course we can’t do so, since Teri might arrive at any time. Kenny does the proper thing: He sits on the porch and waits.

Another five minutes go by, and still no Teri. Kenny just sits there on the porch, completely and rightfully confused. Pete says, “Poor guy is getting stood up by the person supposed to kill him. You can’t get much lower than that.”

One of the technicians laughs and says, “Maybe she changed her mind and wants to date him. My dates stand me up all the time.”

I don’t share in the laughter, because what he has just said triggers a recollection of Carlotta saying that Teri might no longer want to kill Kenny, that with Bobby out of the way, she might want to win Kenny back. And that recollection sends a cold chill down my spine.

“Come on!” I yell. I open the door and jump out of the van. Pete is behind me, asking what the hell is going on. I rush to his car and say, “Hurry up! I’ll tell you on the way!”

I tell him how to get to Kenny’s house and that he should get backup to follow us. Once he’s done so, I say, “Teri invited Kenny over to get him out of the house. Tanya’s the target.”

“Why?”

“To get her out of the way. Teri’s nuts enough to think that Tanya is the only reason she can’t have Kenny to herself. If she gets Tanya out of the way, she would think the coast is clear.”

“Shit,” Pete says, a sentiment I share completely.

We’re a block away from the Schilling house when I see Teri’s car.

Pete pulls up in front of the house, and I’m out of the car before he is. I run to the front door, which is fortunately but ominously open. I rush in, Pete right behind me.

We hear a woman’s voice, a frightening sound somewhere between a scream and a plea. It’s a large house, and impossible to be sure where the noise is coming from, but I realize where it must be.

“Pete!” I call out, hoping he can hear me but Teri can’t. I run for the room I was in months ago, the room where Troy Preston’s body was in the closet. I push open the door, and Tanya is huddled in a corner. Teri faces her, holding a handgun, but turns to me when she hears me coming in. Unfortunately, the gun turns along with her. “How nice you could join us,” she says.

I raise my hands, even though I haven’t been told to, and she motions me to stand near Tanya. I know Pete is out there in the hall, but he would have to get well into the room before having a clear shot at Teri. Teri could easily hear him coming and kill one of us before he could intervene.

I have no idea what to say to get out of this. Things that come to mind, like “You’ll never get away with this” and “There’s no reason anyone should get hurt,” seem like pathetically ineffective clichés.

Instead, I try to surprise her, to make her think. “Why did you kill those young men?” I ask.

“You know about that?” she asks, her voice and half-smile reflecting pride in her own accomplishments. “Bobby said you were smart.”

“Is it because they broke the pact? They didn’t take care of Bobby?” As I say it, I’m watching the small corridor between the doorway and the main part of the room, hoping Pete can get in here without her noticing him.

“He would have taken care of
them.
If he had his legs, he would have been a star, and he would have taken care of every one of them. They took an oath. A goddamn blood oath.”

Bobby did have his legs, but I don’t think I’ll remind her of that fact right now. I think I see a slight shadow in the corridor, and right now all I can do is hope the shadow is who I think it is.

The panicked Tanya seems to move slightly, causing Teri to yell and point the gun at her. I’m afraid she’s going to shoot, but she doesn’t. “Look at her,” Teri says to me, indicating Tanya. “This is who Kenny thanked on television, for making him a star. Doesn’t that make you sick?”

I see the shadow in the corridor move, so I look in the other direction, the direction of the window, and yell, “Pete!”

Teri turns toward the window, just for a split second, and it’s enough time for Pete to get into the room. He yells, “Drop the gun!”

But Teri doesn’t drop the gun, instead turns with it, and Pete has no choice but to shoot. The bullet hits her full force in the shoulder, sending her flying back into the wall as her gun falls harmlessly to the floor.

I grab Tanya and hold on to her, and it feels like within moments the room is filled with every cop and paramedic in the United States, as well as one running back for the Giants.