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  No, he was not about to leave this to the cops alone.

  Del knew that earlier in the day Ken and Barbie had traced down a stripper Carlton had been banging. Her name was Tonya or Tawny or something like that. Earlier, the police had questioned the girl, but she gave them almost nothing. Ken and Barbie had been able to extract more information.

  "Are you familiar with a town called Kasselton?" Ken asked.

  Del thought about that. "It's up north, right?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't think I've ever been there."

  "How about anybody with the last name Pierce? David or Megan Pierce?"

  "No. Do they have something to do with my son?"

  Ken and Barbie updated Del on their day. They didn't go into details about how they went about gathering information, and Del didn't ask. He just listened, feeling his heart break and harden at the same time.

  Mostly harden.

  "Do you think there'll be some blowback?" Del asked.

  Ken looked at Barbie, then to Del. "From Tawny? No. From Harry Sutton? Yes. But they won't be able to trace it back to us."

  "Or you," Barbie added.

  Again Del didn't ask for details. "So now what?"

  "We normally follow the evidence," Barbie said, in a voice that sounded almost rehearsed, as if she were suddenly playing someone much older. "In this case, that would mean questioning Mr. and Mrs. Pierce."

  Del said nothing.

  "And," Ken said, "that would mean leaving Atlantic City for Kasselton, thereby widening the circle."

  "And adding to the collateral damage," Barbie added.

  Del kept his eyes on the window. "So you're here to get my approval?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you think the Pierces know something?"

  "I think the wife does, yes," Ken said. "We know that Detective Broome met with her today. She chose to have a lawyer with her--that lawyer being Harry Sutton."

  "That means she had something to hide," Barbie added.

  Del thought about that, about his visit to the precinct. "Whatever this Megan Pierce told him--Broome acted on it. He had the crime techs at a park tonight. They found blood."

  Silence.

  "Do the Pierces have children?" Del asked.

  "Two."

  "Try to keep them out of it."

  It was, Del knew from personal experience, the most merciful thing he could do.

  MEGAN'S DRIVE HOME TOOK TWO HOURS.

  Dave had recently put satellite radio in the car, so she tried to listen to Howard Stern for a while. One time, when she and Dave were alone in the car and listening, Howard had chatted up a stripper named Triple Es, and Megan nearly jumped out of her skin because she immediately recognized the voice as belonging to Susan Schwartz, a girl who worked La Creme back in the day. They had even been roommates for a time.

  Oddly enough, Megan found Howard Stern to be his least interesting when the show was its most provocative. While far from a prude, Megan had found the more graphic bits--the dirty sex, the bodily functions, the freaks--tame but got totally immersed when Howard conducted celebrity interviews or commented on the news with Robin. Megan was always surprised at how often she agreed with him, how much sense he made--Howard could be a wonderful distraction/companion on long, lonely car rides--but tonight, after a few futile minutes, she flicked off the radio and let herself be alone with her thoughts.

  What now?

  It was nearly one A.M. when she reached her driveway. The house was entirely dark, except for the lamp on a timer in the living room. She hadn't called Dave to say she was coming home. She wasn't sure why. She just didn't know what to say to him, how she would answer his obvious questions. She had hoped the two hours in the car would clarify that for her. But it hadn't. She had considered everything from a total fabrication ("A friend--I can't tell you who--had a personal problem") to total truth ("You better sit down for this one") to something in the middle ("I went to Atlantic City, but it's no big deal").

  So as Megan parked in her driveway, as she dropped her keys in her purse and opened the car door and closed it quietly, because it was so late and she didn't want to wake anyone, she still had no idea what she would say to the man she'd been married to for the past sixteen years.

  The house was quiet--almost too quiet, as they say--as if the shiny new brick and stonework were somehow holding its collective breath. The stillness surprised her. Despite the late hour Megan figured that Dave would be up, waiting for her to return, maybe sitting in the dark, maybe pacing. But there was no sign of any life at all. She tiptoed up the stairs and turned right. Jordan's door was open. She could hear him breathing. Like most eleven-year-olds, when Jordan finally fell asleep, he fell hard and deep and it would take an act of God to wake him up.

  Jordan always kept his door open and still, at the age of eleven, used a night-light. Megan could see the mounted shark above his head. For some strange reason, Jordan loved fishing more than anything. Neither she nor Dave had ever fished--or remotely enjoyed fishing--but Dave's brother-in-law had taken Jordan when he was four, and the kid just got the bug. For a little while, that brother-in-law took Dave on his local fishing excursions, but when he divorced Dave's sister, that ended. So now at least twice a year, Dave arranged a boys' fishing weekend (some might coin this "sexist," since the females weren't invited, but Megan and Kaylie preferred the word "grateful"), everything from fly-fishing in Wyoming to bass fishing in Alabama and last year, shark fishing off the coast of northern Georgia. That was where Jordon got that particular trophy mount.

  As always, Kaylie's bedroom door was shut. She had no fear of the dark, only invasion of privacy. Kaylie had recently been campaigning--there was no other word for it--to turn the finished basement into her new bedroom, ergo, placing her person as far away from the rest of the family as possible, and while Megan was holding firm on the no, Dave was caving. His usual justification for giving in sounded like a plea: "She's going to be leaving us soon... we need to let go of the little things... with such little time left, do we really want so much strife?"

  Megan risked turning her daughter's knob and opened the door. Kaylie was in her usual sleep position, on her side with her stuffed penguin, cleverly named "Penguin," snuggled in close. Kaylie had slept with Penguin since she was eight. It always made Megan smile. Teens may look like adults, may crave adult independence from Mom and Dad, but good ol' Penguin was a constant reminder that there was plenty of parental work yet to be done.

  It felt good to be home.

  In the end, Megan had done nothing wrong. She gave Broome the important information he needed and returned to where she belonged, unscathed. As she padded through her home, Atlantic City was getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. The only thing that had thrown her slightly off her game was seeing Ray, with Lucy looming behind them. She had felt the ache all the way back--the same one she'd always had with Ray--but there were things you can do and things you can't. The idea of "having it all" is indeed nonsense. Still, that desire, that electricity as though your whole being were suddenly revved up to the tenth power, that feeling that she wanted to be close to Ray and then even closer and then that's not close enough... it, of course, still haunted her. Sure, she could try to deny it. She had and would again. But if you have that feeling, what do you do about it? It is there. Do you lie to yourself? Do you control it and forget it and move on? And was it a betrayal to admit that she didn't feel that way with Dave--or was that normal with a man you've known so well? To be expected, perhaps even good?

  She felt something deeper and richer with Dave, something driven by years and commitment, but maybe that was just fancy talk. That sort of electricity--had she ever felt it with her husband? Was it fair to even compare or think such things?

  Were such thoughts alone a betrayal?

  You don't get to have it all. No one does.

  She loved Dave. She wanted to spend her life with him. She would lay down her life for him and the kids without a moment of hesi
tation. Wasn't that, in the end, the pure definition of true love? And when you took a step back, wasn't she really just glamorizing her days in Atlantic City and her time with Ray? We all do that, don't we? We either glamorize or demonize the past.

  She approached her and Dave's bedroom door. The lights were off. She wondered now whether Dave would be in there--or had he gone out? She hadn't considered that before. He'd be upset. He had every right to be. Maybe he had run off. Maybe he'd gone out to a bar and drowned his sorrows.

  But as she started inside, she knew that wouldn't be the case. Dave wouldn't leave his children alone, especially during a time of crisis. A fresh wave of guilt washed over her. She saw now the silhouette of her husband in the bed. His back was to her. Looking at his still form, she felt scared about his reaction, but there was relief too. She suddenly felt that it was truly over.

  Seventeen years ago, Stewart Green had threatened to kill her. That was what had drawn her back to the past as much as old yearnings--the fear that Stewart had somehow survived, that he was back--but Lorraine had probably been wrong on that one. Either way she had done what she could. She had done the right thing. Megan was home now. She was safe.

  It was over. Or it was about to be.

  The decision that had been tormenting her for the entire car ride home--the last sixteen years really--was suddenly clear. She couldn't, pardon the pun, dance around her past anymore. She had to come clean. She had to tell Dave everything. She would have to hope, after all the years, that love would conquer all.

  Or was that just another comforting lie?

  Either way, Dave was owed the truth.

  "Dave?"

  "You're okay?"

  He hadn't been sleeping. She swallowed, felt the tears sting her eyes. "I'm fine."

  Still with his back to her, he said, "You sure?"

  "Yes."

  She sat on the edge of the bed. She was afraid to move any closer. Dave kept his back to her. He adjusted the pillow, settled back in.

  "Dave?"

  He didn't reply.

  When she touched his shoulder, he recoiled.

  "You want to know where I was," she said.

  He still wouldn't look at her, still wouldn't say a word.

  "Don't shut me out. Please."

  "Megan?"

  "What?"

  "You don't get to tell me what not to do."

  Finally Dave turned toward her, and she saw it in his eyes--the immense and unfathomable pain. It sent her reeling. Lies, she could see, wouldn't work. Neither would any words. So she did the only thing she could. She kissed him. He pulled back for a second, but then he grabbed her behind the head and kissed her back. He kissed her hard and pulled her down toward him.

  They made love. They made love for a long time without saying a word. When they were done, both completely spent, Megan fell asleep. She thought that Dave did too, but she couldn't be sure. It was as if they were in different worlds.

  21

  IN 1988, RAHWAY STATE PRISON officially changed its name to East Jersey State Prison at the request of the residents of Rahway. This request was more than understandable. The residents felt as though being identified by the notorious prison unfairly stigmatized their city and, worse, lowered property values. It probably did. Still, absolutely nobody other than the residents of Rahway called it East Jersey State Prison. It was a little like the state of New Jersey itself. It might be officially known as the Garden State, but come on--who called it that?

  Heading up Route 1-9, Broome could see the prison's huge dome, a sight that never failed to remind him of some great basilica in Italy. The maximum-security prison (by whatever name) kept around two thousand inmates locked up, all male. The prison had housed boxers James Scott and, notably, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter--the man featured in the Bob Dylan song and Denzel Washington movie. The Scared Straight! documentaries, in which juvenile delinquents were purportedly rehabilitated by being berated by Rahway lifers, were also shot here.

  After going through the usual security rigmarole, Broome found himself seated across from Ricky Mannion. They say prison shrinks a man. If that were the case here, Broome would hate to have seen Mannion before his arrest. Mannion had to be six-six and weigh over three hundred pounds. He was black with a cleanly shaven head and arms that could double as oak trees.

  Broome expected the standard prison machismo, but Mannion was giving him pretty much just the opposite. Mannion's eyes flooded with tears when he looked at the badge.

  "Are you here to help me?" Mannion asked Broome.

  "I'm here to ask some questions."

  "But this is about my case, right?"

  Mannion wasn't behind a glass partition--they sat across a table from each other, his arms and feet cuffed--but he still looked like the proverbial kid pushing his nose against the glass.

  "It's about the murder of Ross Gunther," Broome said.

  "What did you find? Please tell me."

  "Mr. Mannion--"

  "I was thirty-one when they arrested me. I'm almost fifty now. Can you imagine that? In here all that time for a crime I didn't commit. And you know I'm innocent, right?"

  "I didn't say that."

  Mannion smiled then. "Think about losing all those years, Detective. Your thirties, your forties, all rotting in this sewer, trying to tell anybody, everybody, that you didn't do it."

  "Must be tough," Broome said. Mr. Understatement.

  "That's what I do. Every day. Talk about my innocence. Still. But people stopped listening a long time ago. Nobody believed me then. Not even my own mother. And nobody believes me now. I scream and I protest and I always see that same look on every face. Even if they ain't rolling their eyes, they're rolling their eyes, if you know what I mean."

  "I know what you mean. I still don't see the point."

  Mannion lowered his voice to a whisper. "You're not rolling your eyes, Detective."

  Broome said nothing.

  "For the first time in twenty years, I have someone sitting across from me who knows I'm telling the truth. You can't hide that from me."

  "Wow." Broome sat back and frowned. "How many times have you given someone that line of bull?"

  But Mannion just smiled at him. "You want to play it that way? Fine. Ask me whatever you want. I'll tell you the truth."

  Broome dived in. "When you were first questioned by the police, you said that you'd never met Ross Gunther. Was that true?"

  "No."

  "So you opened with a lie?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "You're joking, right? I didn't want to give them a motive."

  "So you told a lie?"

  "Yes."

  "You told the police you didn't know Gunther, even though at least five people saw you attack him at a bar three days before his murder?"

  The chains rattled as Mannion shrugged his massive shoulders. "I was young. And stupid. But I didn't kill him. You have to believe that."

  "Mr. Mannion, this will go faster--and better for you--if you dispense with the protestations of innocence and just answer my questions, okay?"

  "Yeah, sorry. Just a reflex, you know?"

  "You've had a lot of time to think about this crime, right? Let's say I believe you. How did the victim's blood get into your house and car?"

  "Simple. It was planted."

  "So someone broke into your car?"

  "I don't lock my car in my own driveway."

  "And the house?"

  "The blood wasn't found in the house. It was found by the washing machine in the garage. I left the garage door open. Lots of folks do."

  "Do you have any proof that the blood was planted?"

  Mannion smiled again. "I didn't at trial."

  "But you do now?"

  "That's what I was trying to tell everyone. That I had proof. But they said it was too late. They said it wasn't enough."

  "What proof, Mr. Mannion?"

  "My pants."

  "What about them?"

  "The polic
e found Gunther's blood in my car, right?"

  "Yes."

  "And they found a ton of blood on my shirt. I've seen the crime scene pics. They showed them at the trial. The killer practically sawed Gunther's head off. There was a lot of blood."

  "Right, so?"

  Mannion spread his hands. "So how come they didn't find any blood anywhere on my pants?"

  Broome considered that for a moment. "Maybe you hid them."