Woman in Red (43 page)

Before he could object, Alice hurried on, “It makes sense. I . . . I know a little something about what he’s going through right now. Maybe I can reason with him. It’s worth a try.” She knew it was reckless, possibly suicidal, but right now all she could think about was Denise. Her sister had always been there for her; now it was time for her to repay that debt.

“No.” Denise gripped her arm. “Len’s right. It’s too risky.”

Alice placed a hand over the fingers clenched about her arm. “Please. Let me do this.”

They exchanged a long look, that of sisters for whom words weren’t necessary, then Denise dropped her hand from Alice’s arm and turned to Len with a questioning
look. He appeared dubious, but clearly he’d run out of other options, for after pondering it a moment he said, “It could work. He knows you. More importantly, he knows your history.”

Alice hugged Denise long and hard. Her sister smelled of the shampoo she bought at Costco in economy-size bottles and underneath, the sour sweat of fear. “It’ll be okay, I promise,” she whispered. “I’ll be back before you know it.” As they drew apart, she saw a queer look cross Denise’s face. “What?” she asked.

Denise gave a small, humorless smile. “That was the last thing Gary said before he left.”

Alice was being fitted with a Kevlar vest by the lone female officer, a slender red-haired woman about her size, when she heard a familiar voice call out her name. “Alice!”

She swung around, surprised to see Colin. He was approaching on foot, Shep trotting at his side and Jeremy bringing up the rear. They must have parked out on the main road in order to slip past the roadblock. Alice felt something hot and quick leap in her chest. Colin had on the same flannel shirt and corduroys he’d been wearing when she’d last seen him—hours ago that felt more like days—only there was something different about him. Gone was the preoccupied look he’d worn then. He was looking straight at her as he walked toward her with a purposeful stride, his expression that of someone determined not to let her slip through his fingers a second time.

“You’re not going in there alone,” he told her. “I’m going with you.” Alice opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off before she could get a word in. “I happen to know a little something about hostage situations. And right now,”
his gaze dropped to the Kevlar vest, “it looks as if you could use someone to watch your back.”

Alice was about to refuse—she couldn’t let him risk his life—when she noticed the stricken look on Jeremy’s face. He was staring at her, his face paler than usual, his eyes huge beneath the dark hair falling over his forehead: that of the little boy who’d watched his mommy being led away in handcuffs. “Mom,” he said. Just that, a single plaintive note.

Alice hesitated, feeling her resolve weaken. She took Jeremy aside, saying in a low voice, “If you don’t want me to go, I won’t.” If she got killed going in, she’d be abandoning him a second time. And as dearly as she loved her sister, her son came first.

Jeremy licked his lips, darting a look toward the house where his uncle was holding the mayor hostage. “Do you really think Uncle Gary would . . . would do something to hurt you?”

She could have soothed his fears, as she had when he was little in reassuring him that there were no monsters in the closet, but they’d been through too much for her to be less than honest with him now. “I’d like to believe he wouldn’t, but right now I don’t know what he’s capable of,” she said.

Jeremy thought for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “If you don’t go, he might hurt himself.” He glanced over at Denise, as if thinking about her being widowed and his cousins without their father. “It’s all right,” he said, giving Alice a brave smile that would have been more convincing if he hadn’t looked so pale and shaken. “Do what you have to do. I know Mister McGinty won’t let anything happen to you.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She was about to walk away when, without warning, Jeremy launched himself at her, throwing his arms around her in a fierce hug that nearly knocked her off balance. In that moment she knew it was all worth it. If she died in there, it would be with the knowledge that her son still loved her.

Minutes later, she and Colin set out across the lawn, stepping from the hard white glare of the floodlit perimeter into the near black of the starlight night. It was a moment before Alice’s eyes adjusted, then she was guided by the light of the full moon, which hung low in the sky, casting an almost diurnal glow and turning the grass over which they walked pale, as if with morning frost. They moved in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, the lovemaking of just hours before a memory from another lifetime. A short distance away, at the top of a grassy knoll, the house rose up out of the darkness, its lone illuminated window staring out at them like an unblinking eye. Its peaceful façade seemed to mock them somehow, as though the drama taking place inside were nothing more than a false rumor.

They’d nearly reached the house when Alice heard a high, agitated yip and turned to see the dog, whom Jeremy had been holding by the collar, break away and come streaking across the lawn toward them, a furry black and white projectile, the white blaze on its chest all that was visible as it was swallowed up by the surrounding darkness.

The automated door slid open at their approach, just as it had for Gary. Inside, they were greeted, not by gunfire, but by utter silence, which in its own way was more unnerving.
As Alice and Colin made their way through the deserted trophy room and into the hallway beyond, accompanied by the dog, the quiet was broken only by the muffled tread of their footsteps and the low growl emanating from Shep. Alice glanced around, taking in the palatial surroundings. So this was how her son’s killer had lived, while David had lain cold in his grave and she’d occupied a six-and-a-halfby-nine-foot cinderblock cell. She felt her blood rise and tasted bile at the back of her throat. But she quickly pushed the thought away. She couldn’t afford to dwell on that now.

Colin must have sensed something, for he turned to her and whispered, “You okay?”

She nodded and they continued on. Light poured from an open doorway down the hall and, as they entered the room, the first thing Alice noticed was the blasted-out TV screen, broken glass littering the oriental carpet around it. When her gaze fell on her brother-in-law she almost didn’t recognize him at first. Gary’s eyes stared vacantly from hollowed sockets and the unhealthy pallor of his skin was that of cancer wards and plants robbed of sunlight. He was seated on the leather settee across from the mayor, holding his gun loosely on one knee and wearing the look of someone who’d stumbled into the situation quite by accident. Owen, slumped in his chair, merely looked drained.

She spoke softly. “Hello, Gary.”

His head swiveled slowly toward her. He stared at her uncomprehendingly for a moment before a faint smile of recognition surfaced. “Alice. What are you doing here?”

“We came to see you. You remember Colin, don’t you? Jeremy’s lawyer?” She gestured toward Colin, who nodded at Gary, his expression carefully neutral.

“You think I need a lawyer?” Gary gave a scornful little bark of a laugh. “Not where I’m going. I’m afraid it’s a little too late for that.”

“It’s not too late until you pull that trigger,” Colin observed in a mild, conversational tone, gesturing toward the gun. “Take it from a guy who knows. Only in my case, the weapon of choice was a quart of booze a day.”

“Well, in that case, by all means help yourself.” Gary waved magnanimously toward the burled wood bar. “I’m afraid the party’s already begun, but the more the merrier.” His voice carried a note of almost manic glee. There was a strange kind of exhilaration, Alice knew, in releasing your hold on sanity and throwing yourself into the void. “You know our host, Mister White.” He gestured toward the mayor, who, though clearly frightened, wore an oddly defiant look. “As a matter of fact, we were just talking about you, Alice. Mister White here seems to think your son could benefit from some jail time of his own.”

Alice sucked in a breath. It was all she could do to keep her eyes averted from Owen, fearing that if she were to so much as look at him her already thinly stretched composure would desert her altogether. And Gary didn’t need any further provocation right now. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” she told him, struggling to keep her voice even.

“Yeah, but you don’t know the half of it,” Gary went on. “Nobody in that office takes a piss without his permission.”

Colin stepped in, saying, “Why don’t you let us handle it, Gary? There’s no reason for you to get involved.”

Gary gave a high, lunatic’s cackle, and the dog, alert at Colin’s side, let out another low growl. “Involved? Christ, I’m already in up to my eyeballs. He made me do things.
Things I’m not proud of.” Something glimmered in his blank-eyed expression, like a faulty bulb flickering to life, and the familiar face of her sister’s husband briefly emerged. “I’m sorry, Alice. You deserved better.” His voice cracked. “I never meant to hurt you. I was only trying to protect my family.”

So Gary had been in this, too? Alice felt more than betrayed; she felt ashamed, thinking of all the times he’d stopped in at the restaurant when she’d naïvely believed it was to show support. How stupid she must have seemed, pleading for his help! It was all she could do to speak calmly to him now. “No one blames you, Gary.” She kept her thoughts focused on Denise and how terrible it would be for her and the kids if this were to end in tragedy. “All we want is for you to come home.”

Gary gave her a pitying look, as if she were the one who’d lost all touch with reality. “I can’t. Don’t you see? It wouldn’t be the same. You, of all people, should know that.”

Alice took a step closer to him. “I understand, Gary, believe me I do. But for me there really was no going back. You haven’t crossed that line yet. You can still do the right thing.”

Gary shook his head, tears coming to his eyes now. “Denise and the kids will be better off without me.”

“That’s not true. They’d be devastated.” Alice’s anger gave way to compassion. She knew the special brand of agony he was in; she knew what it could do to you. “Think about Ryan and Taylor growing up without their dad. And Denise . . . she’d never get over it. She loves you, Gary.”

“She wouldn’t, if she knew what I’ve done.”

“You’re wrong about that,” Alice forged on. “There’s nothing she wouldn’t forgive you for. Yeah, she’ll be pissed
off and you might have a few uncomfortable days.” Here, Gary cracked a small smile. “But you know her. She always comes around in the end.”

“Like Randy did with you?” he said, with irony.

“It was different with us,” she said. Or maybe it had just been different circumstances, their love for each other strained to the breaking point by David’s death. “You and Denise . . .” She reached for the word that had best described them, before all this craziness. “You’re solid. I used to envy that about you. The way you always worked as a team. One of you picking up the slack when the other was too busy or stressed out. Not like it was some big favor, but because that’s just what you do when you love someone.”

Some movement out of the corner of her eye made her glance over at Colin. But he was standing perfectly still, and she realized it was his gaze that had drawn her attention; it was concentrated on her with an intensity that was almost physical.

She thought about all he’d risked for her sake and knew it was time for her to take some risks of her own. She held out her hand to her brother-in-law. “Give me the gun, Gary. Please. You don’t want to do this. Think of your family.”

“They’ll be better off,” he insisted, shaking his head.

“No. They won’t.” She was thinking of David and how she would have done almost anything to have him back. She took another careful step forward. “Now give me the gun.”

The moment stretched on, Gary staring at her without seeming to see her, as though looking inward. The only sounds were the low growl coming from Shep and the distant sounds of activity from outside. For Alice, it might have been taking place in slow motion. There was none of
the stunning swiftness with which her own sanity had been hijacked on a day very similar to this one, a day when all the ones leading up to it had coalesced in a single flashpoint that had sent her spinning over the edge. It was as if time were standing still. There was only the silence and the sight of the tortured man before her, who had no idea what he’d be taking with him should he end his life.

“Please, Gary,” she cajoled, her voice breaking.

But he went on shaking his head, those sightless eyes fixed on her like those of someone already dead, repeating, “I can’t. You know what prison is like. I can’t go there.”

“You may not have to. I’ll talk to them, explain it so they’ll understand. What you need right now is a doctor. You’re sick, Gary, but you can get better. Trust me.
I
did.”