The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [71]
The drug threw her body into convulsions. The convulsions went on for several minutes. Technically, she suffered a stroke. She seemed to be coming as she died. Who was the poet who had enjoyed that image? Lord Byron, wasn’t it? Watching her die, Alexandre St.-Germain was as excited as he ever became.
The men in the stateroom discarded the young woman’s body somewhere around Sandy Hook. Susan Paladino sank quietly into the dark waves of the sea. She was weighted around the waist and ankles, and wouldn’t be found until spring, if ever…
Just another dance for the Grave Dancer.
69
Sarah McGinniss and John Stefanovitch; East Hampton
SARAH COMPOSED AN opening for a very pivotal chapter in The Club, maybe the turning point of the book.
She was sitting at an old schoolroom desk, framed in a dormer window of her beach house. She eyed the main road rather than the ocean, watching as the cars steadily arrived. She wrote to distract herself as much as anything:
Everyone we could trust, possibly even trust with our lives, had been asked to come. Seven men and two women were invited out to the house in East Hampton, a list whittled down from twenty. A harrowing task in itself.
They began to arrive as early as six forty-five in the morning. The first was David Wilkes, who’d traveled from Washington. Stefanovitch and I had prepared everything as well as we could under the circumstances. Neither of us entirely believed what we had decided to do, only that something had to be done.
For Stefanovitch, there was no issue: he had to go after Alexandre St.-Germain again. There was no choice for him. No choice at all.
* * *
Stefanovitch busied himself stoking a modest fire in the living room. He tried not to think about what was going on here; about the fact that St.-Germain was alive.
He used oak and pine shavings Sarah had brought from Vermont during the spring. After twenty minutes, the house began to smell sweet and good, like New England on a crisp fall morning. The atmosphere was deceptively pleasant, as homey and traditional as any countryside inn.
Stefanovitch saw that it was still spitting rain outside. The sky was gloomy cardboard gray, pressed down and hugging the ocean. Sam raced along the top of the dune in a bright yellow slicker. He was an irrepressible spirit, an irresistible little boy. Sam seemed oblivious to all of what was happening, the possible dangers.
As he shuffled a final log onto the fire, Stefanovitch noticed his hands were unsteady. A very troubling question remained for him: had they chosen these people wisely enough? Could every member of the group be trusted?
The night before, he and Sarah had made the necessary phone calls. A meeting was decided on. The house in East Hampton seemed like a good place, as secure as any.
Sarah finally appeared downstairs. She stood beside one of the dripping bay windows, talking with Isiah Parker. Stefanovitch had told her everything about Parker. He had shown her the detective’s personnel file, which he’d been able to copy at Police Plaza. Parker had been a superior policeman for his twelve years with the department, but Parker was also an enigma.
“I guess we should start,” Stefanovitch said at last. “We’re all here now.”
They began to settle around an old oak serving table in the dining room. The room was filled with antique furniture, also humorous knickknacks Sarah had picked up both in the East and around California. They helped to lighten the mood of the room but not enough.
Three lawyers, one man and two women, were there from the district attorney’s office. They all sat together at the table. Stefanovitch had known each of them for years. Stuart Fischer had been the right hand for the district attorney over the past several years.
David Wilkes had flown up the previous night. He’d accepted the invitation immediately; he seemed well aware of problems with the ongoing investigation in Atlantic City, the mysterious