Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [30]
“If I had to bet, Peter’s uncle, Jack, who was the head of Boston PD’s Internal Affairs, used every dirty secret and favor and string he had to squash our case. At least the stink I made got the punk to resign from the force.”
I closed my eyes, my forehead banging against my knees as all the breath escaped my lungs.
“If you ask me—” Yorgenson started.
Then my time had elapsed and the phone went dead.
The phone clicking back into its cradle sounded like a pistol shot in the silence. A bullet right through my brain. I stared down at my hands as they shook in time with the painful thump of my heart.
I wandered outside dazed. Blinking in the sunlight, I felt weary, drained, like I’d just completed a stint of hard labor. The sun-blasted steps and sidewalk were empty. The George Hamilton look-alike bum who’d been weaving palm frond hats was long gone.
What a coincidence, I thought, glancing up into the painfully blue sky. So was my mind.
I left my moped where it was and decided to walk. I headed south past a construction site where a bunch of black and Mexican laborers sat in the shade of a king palm on a metal tool cart, staring blatantly, silently, and rapaciously. Usually I was nervous about such scenes, but that morning, I stared back defiantly, daring them to whistle, to say something to me, to set me off.
Where was I going? I wondered as I made a turn and wandered down a picket fence–lined street. I didn’t have a home anymore. I’d never had one, in fact.
How stupid could a person be? I thought. Red flag after red flag had been raised, and I’d pushed them aside time and time again. It was over. I’d been duped, scammed, fleeced. The strangest and by far the worst part of all was that I was the one who’d conned myself.
Peter wasn’t my best friend, wasn’t the love of my life. I thought about the happy life of ease and suntan lotion on the deck of Peter’s Stingray I’d been envisioning less than twenty-four hours ago, and I started laughing. Instead of tanning myself topside, I was in a hole as black and deep as they come, and I had no idea how to get out of it.
It was a rabbit hole, I realized as I walked down the sunlit street, skating along the edge of my sanity. And I was Alice. Peter was the White Rabbit. Who had Elena been? The Queen of Hearts, I thought. And off went her head.
Key West was actually Wonderland, I thought. The theory made a lot of sense, especially if you’ve ever been to Duval Street after midnight.
Chapter 36
I RETRIEVED MY MOPED and got back to the house twenty minutes later. I went straight to the bedroom closet and took down a suitcase. I opened it on the floor of the closet and threw in some underwear, my shirts, my jeans.
I glanced up at the top shelf at the big white box that contained my wedding dress and shook my head. That was staying. All yours, Peter!
By Greyhound bus, it would take about four or five hours to get back to Homestead, my small Florida hometown. My mom was gone, but I knew a couple of people there. I had a grandaunt I could crash with for a few days. I lifted the phone to call a taxi. Maybe I could get a job at the Gap, where I’d worked summers, until I figured things out.
I dropped the phone back into the cradle.
Wait a second. What was I doing? That would be the first place Peter would look for me.
I was assuming Peter would just accept the fact that I had left him. But hadn’t the Boston cop said that Peter had stalked his wife when she tried to leave? I held my head in my hands as I sat down on the bed.
Was that what I had to look forward to? Would Peter stalk me now? Murder me in a staged robbery?
My hand covered my mouth.
Wait a second. No.
Just like Elena.
Jamaicans hadn’t killed Elena and the store clerk.
Peter had.
It all clicked into place. Peter had shot Elena with the machine pistol I’d seen on his boat and made up the story about the robbery.
It was over drugs, I realized, nodding my head. Which had to be why the FBI was involved. Peter was under investigation!
As I sat there, I knew it was true. All of it. I couldn’t believe how much