I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [121]
Brittany swooped down and picked it up as police cars raced up on the lawn. Holding it on Larry Post, she said, “Don’t move! I don’t care if I use it on you and I know how to do it. My daddy and I used to go hunting together in Texas.”
Without taking her eyes off him, she backed up and opened the kitchen door for Penny. “The blueberry lady,” she said. “Welcome. Matthew Carpenter is in the closet down the hall,” she said. “The key is behind the server in the dining room.”
Larry Post scrambled to his feet and began to run. He threw open the front door and ran into a sea of blue uniforms. Other policemen pounded past them into the house. Margaret Grissom/Glory/ Brittany La Monte had slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. The gun she was holding was dangling from her hand.
“Drop the gun! Drop the gun!” a cop shouted.
She laid it on the table. “I only wish I had the courage to use it on myself,” Brittany said.
Penny found the key and rushed to the closet, then paused. Slowly she opened it. The little boy, who had obviously heard the shot, was huddled in the corner, his expression terrified. The light was on. She had seen enough of his pictures in the paper to be sure it was Matthew.
As a broad smile came over her face and tears filled her eyes, Penny bent down, picked him up, and held him close to her. “Matthew, it’s time you went home. Mommy has been looking for you.”
89
Detectives Billy Collins, Jennifer Dean, and Wally Johnson were standing in the lobby of the late Ted Carpenter’s trendy apartment building. The detectives from the local precinct had cordoned off the area around Carpenter’s body and were waiting for the arrival of the crime scene unit and the medical examiner’s van.
Their expressions grim, they were desperate to hear the outcome of Billy’s urgent call to the Middletown police to respond to the possibility that Matthew Carpenter was being held in the Owens farmhouse.
Was Alvirah Meehan’s friend in Middletown correct? Was it possible that a woman who strongly resembled Zan Moreland was hiding Matthew Carpenter all this time? And following Kevin Wilson’s phone call about the camera in Zan’s apartment, where was Larry Post now? They had just run his name through the computer at headquarters, and discovered that he had served time for manslaughter. It’s a sure bet that he’s got some part in this whole scenario about Matthew and not just the bugging of Moreland’s apartment, Billy thought.
Billy’s cell phone rang. Holding their breath, Jennifer Dean and Wally Johnson watched as a broad smile came over Billy’s face. “They’ve got the kid,” he said, “and he’s okay.”
Jennifer Dean and Wally Johnson answered in unison. “Thank God,” they said, “thank God.”
Jennifer, her voice low, said, “Billy, we were all wrong about Zan Moreland. Don’t beat yourself up. Everything pointed to her.”
Billy nodded. “I know it did. And I’m very happy to be wrong. Now let’s call Matthew’s mother. The Middletown police are on their way to our precinct with him.”
Fr. Aiden O’Brien heard the breaking news from the police officer who was guarding him at the hospital. His condition now upgraded to “critical but stable,” he whispered a prayer of thanksgiving. The sacred seal of the confessional that had cloaked his sure and certain knowledge that Zan Moreland herself was a victim would no longer haunt him. Her innocence had been proven in another way. And her child was coming home.
90
Zan and Kevin raced to the Central Park Precinct to find Alvirah and Willy already there. Billy Collins, Jennifer Dean, and Wally Johnson were waiting for them. Billy had told Zan on the phone that the Middletown Police assured him that while Matthew was very pale and thin, he looked okay. He’d explained to her that while ordinarily the police would want to have Matthew checked out by a doctor right away, that could be done later today or tomorrow. Billy had told them to get him home.
“Zan,” he cautioned her, “from what they know so far, Matthew has never forgotten you. Penny