Stay Close Read online

  He didn't think so.

  He swung open the door slowly, the gun at the ready. The door squeaked in the morning air.

  "Police!" he shouted. "Is anyone here?"

  No reply.

  He took another step into the house. "Lorraine?"

  He could hear the fear in his own voice.

  Please no, please no, please no...

  His eyes took in the front room. It was completely unremarkable. There was a couch with matching love seat, the kind you could find in pretty much any highway furniture store. The TV was modest size by today's standards. In true Atlantic City style, the clock on the wall had red dice instead of numbers.

  There was a coffee table with three ashtrays showing old scenes of the Atlantic City Convention Hall on the Boardwalk. There was a small bar to the right with two barstools. Bottles of Smirnoff Vodka and Gordon's London Dry Gin stood guard like two soldiers. The coasters were the same disposable ones used at La Creme.

  "Anyone here? This is the police. Come out with your hands up."

  Still nothing.

  The artwork on the walls featured spectacular reproductions of vintage burlesque posters. There was one from the Roxy in Cleveland, one for the Coney Island Red Hots, and right up front, in bright yellow, one that featured "Miss Spontaneous Combustion," Blaze Starr appearing at the Globe in Atlantic City.

  Lorraine's place wasn't very big or fancy, but it was so her. Broome knew that her bedroom was to the left, the bathroom to the right, the kitchen in the back. He hit the bedroom first. It was, he thought, something of a mess, looking more like a dressing room than a place to sleep. Lorraine's flashy work clothes were mostly on dress dummies rather than hangers, but it almost seemed like a conscious design choice.

  The bed, however, was still made.

  Broome swallowed and moved back into the main room. There was no more time to waste. He hurried over to the kitchen. From a distance he could see the avocado-green refrigerator loaded with souvenir magnets. When he reached the door, Broome stopped short.

  Oh no...

  He looked down at the linoleum under the table and started shaking his head. He stared harder, hoping that something would change, but of course it didn't.

  The kitchen floor was drenched in blood.

  "CASSIE, DID YOU KILL STEWART GREEN?"

  Ray looked up, finding Cassie's gaze and holding it. He wanted to see her reaction to what he was about to say, to see, in the jargon of this damned city, if he could spot a "tell."

  "No, Ray, I didn't kill him," she said. "Did you?"

  Ray watched her beautiful face, but there was nothing, just surprise at the question. He looked at her hard, and he believed her.

  "Ray?"

  "No, I didn't kill him."

  "Then who did?"

  Ray had to get to it now. He had to tell her the truth. The trouble was, now that he knew for sure that she hadn't been the one, how should he word this?

  A little late to worry about that.

  "That night," Ray began, "you trekked up to that spot. You saw Stewart Green lying by that big rock, and you thought he was dead."

  "We went over this, Ray."

  "Just bear with me."

  "Yes," Cassie said. "I saw him and thought he was dead."

  "So you ran, right? You were scared. You thought you'd be blamed."

  "Or you."

  "Right," Ray said. "Or me."

  "I don't understand, Ray. Why am I here? What did you want to tell me?"

  He wondered how to make her understand. "Why were you there that night?"

  She looked confused. "What do you mean?"

  "Why did you go to the park that night?"

  "What do you mean, why? I got your message. It gave me pretty specific instructions on how to get there."

  Ray shook his head. "I never left you a message."

  "What? Of course you did."

  "No."

  "Then how did you know to go there?"

  Ray shrugged. "I followed you."

  "I don't understand."

  "I knew what you'd been going through with Stewart Green. I even asked you to run away with me. I wanted us to start fresh, remember?"

  A sad smile crossed her face. "You were dreaming."

  "Maybe. Or maybe if you'd listened to me--"

  "Let's not go down those roads, Ray."

  He nodded. She was right. "I followed you that night. You parked at that lot in the Pine Barrens and started up the trail. I couldn't imagine why or who you were meeting. I guess I was jealous, I don't know. It doesn't matter anymore. You started up the path. I didn't follow. If you wanted to be with another man, well, really, that had nothing to do with me. We weren't exclusive. That was part of the fun, right?"

  "I don't understand," she said. "You didn't leave that message to meet you?"

  "No."

  "Then who did?"

  "I've had a lot of time to think about that over the last twenty-four hours. The answer is pretty obvious, I guess. It had to be Stewart Green. He was setting you up, trying to get you alone."

  "But when I got up there..."

  "Stewart Green was dead," Ray said.

  "At least, that's what I thought."

  Ray took a deep breath. The blood filled his head. "And you were right."

  She looked confused. "What?"

  "Stewart was dead."

  "You already killed him?"

  "No. I told you. I wasn't the one."

  "Then what happened?" she asked.

  "You went up that path," Ray said. "You saw his body. You thought that he was dead, so you ran back down. I saw you. In fact, I was going to stop you, make sure you were okay. Another one of those what-ifs. If I had just stopped you there. If I had asked you what happened..."

  His voice drifted off.

  She leaned forward. "What happened, Ray?"

  "I thought... I don't know... I thought Stewart had hurt you or something. I was confused and angry, so I hesitated. And then, well, you were gone. So I ran up the path. Toward the ruins."

  Megan studied his face. She was curious, sure, but she also cared. He could see that. He was coming to it now, and maybe, finally, she was starting to see the truth.

  "When I got up there, I saw Stewart Green lying there. He was dead. His throat had been slit." Ray leaned closer, wanted to make sure that she could see his eyes now--see what he had seen that night. "So picture it, Cassie. Picture me running up there and finding Stewart's throat slit."

  She could see it now. All of it. "You thought... You thought I killed him."

  He didn't bother nodding. He lowered his head.

  "What did you do then, Ray?"

  Tears started flowing down his face. "I panicked..."

  "What did you do?"

  The blood. All that blood.

  "...or maybe it was just the opposite. Maybe I suddenly grew too logical. I'd seen you run away. I drew the most obvious conclusion: You'd had enough of his abuse. He was a real citizen. No one would help. So you did what you had to. You arranged to meet him in that remote spot so you could kill him, and then something made you run. Maybe you freaked out. Maybe someone spotted you. I don't know. But you left clues. There were other cars in that lot. Someone might remember you. They'd find the body and the police would start investigating and they'd trace him back to La Creme, and in the end, well, it would all come back to you."

  She saw it now. He could tell by the expression on her face.

  "So I did the only thing I could do to help you. I got rid of the body. No body, no case."

  She started shaking her head.

  "Don't you see? If there was no body, people would assume Stewart ran away. Someone might suspect you, but with no body, I knew you'd be safe."

  "What did you do, Ray?"

  "I dragged him deeper in the woods. Then I went home and got a shovel to bury him. But it was February. The ground was too hard. I tried, but the dirt wouldn't give way. Hours passed. Daylight was coming. I had to get rid of the
body. So I went home and got my chain saw...."

  Her hand went to her mouth.

  The blood, Ray thought again, his eyes closing. So much blood.

  He had wanted to stop, but once the chain saw started, Ray had no choice. He had to finish the job. He didn't bother telling her the rest, what it felt like to saw through human flesh and bone, to put pieces of a human being, even one as deplorable as Stewart Green, into black plastic garbage bags. The only thing that got him through was the thought he was doing it to save the woman he loved. He took the bags and weighed them down with rocks and drove down to a spot he knew near Cape May. He threw the bags into the water. Then he went home and expected to find Cassie. But she wasn't there. He called her. She didn't reply. He spent the night shivering in his own bed, trying to get those images out of his head. They wouldn't leave. He looked for Cassie the next day and the next. She still wasn't there. The days turned to weeks, to months, to years. But Cassie was gone.

  And all Ray had left was the blood.

  ERIN ANDERSON HIT PAY DIRT.

  She had spent most of the evening working with the feds on the IDs. It was too early for anything firm, but she had already gathered enough information about clothing and watches and jewelry to get an idea of what bones might belong to what missing man. The rest would be up to DNA. That might take some time.

  When Erin got a free second, she hit the precinct computer. Broome had told her to spread out the search, look for any other violence that might connect to Mardi Gras. A few minutes later, she found one case that might fit, though it wasn't really a direct hit.

  At least, not at first.

  Erin had been searching for murdered or missing men. That was why this particular case had slipped through the cracks. In the end, this particular death had been ruled self-defense rather than a homicide. Because no one was charged with a crime, the case had not been widely reported. A man named Lance Griggs was stabbed to death in his home in nearby Egg Harbor Township--not Atlantic City itself. Griggs had a long history of spousal abuse. That was why the case had now caught her eye. No, he hadn't vanished. He hadn't been dumped down a well. But Griggs, like so many others involved in this case, was a serial abuser.

  According to the report, his wife had been hospitalized repeatedly. The neighbors reported hearing beatings over the years. The cops had visited the residence plenty of times. Erin shook her head. She had dealt with plenty of cases of spousal abuses. She had heard all the justifications, but she still, in her heart of hearts, never got why the women stayed.

  Griggs had, it seemed, attacked his wife with a tire iron, breaking her leg and then pressed the bar against her throat. His wife finally broke away, grabbed a knife, and stabbed him. With Griggs's long arrest record, there were plenty of mug shots for her to bring up. She did that now. The wife had also been arrested when the body was first discovered. Erin brought up her picture too and put them side by side.

  Some happy couple.

  "What are you working on?"

  She turned to see Goldberg. Great, just what she needed. He, too, looked drawn and exhausted, his tie loosened to the point where it could almost double as a belt. It had been a long night for all of them.

  "Probably nothing important," Erin said, reaching for the monitor dimmer. "I was doing a little more investigating on Mardi Gras crimes."

  "Stop."

  "What?"

  "Turn that back up," Goldberg said.

  Erin grudgingly did as he asked.

  Goldberg stared at the screen. "And these two are involved?"

  "Yes. She killed him years ago."

  He shook his head. "This doesn't make any sense."

  "How's that?"

  Goldberg pointed to the screen. "I know that woman."

  THE SIGHT OF THE BLOOD on the kitchen floor worked like a punch deep in Broome's gut.

  He gripped his gun tighter and started making all kinds of prayers and promises, hoping against hope that Lorraine was still alive. Broome cursed himself for talking to her, especially in a place where anyone could see. Hadn't he learned anything from Tawny and Harry Sutton? There were dangerous people involved in all this.

  How could he have been so careless?

  His heart pounded against his chest, but there was no time to waste. He had to get to her, had to try to stop the flow of blood. Broome ducked down, rolled to his right, and once again, he met up with a shock.

  It wasn't Lorraine's dead body he saw.

  It was the body of a man. Looking closely, Broome remembered the description Megan had given of the guy by Harry Sutton's office. Could be the same guy.

  This man was definitely dead. His throat was slit.

  Broome was about to turn around when he felt the gun press against his neck.

  "Drop the gun, Broome," Lorraine said.

  38

  IT BROKE MEGAN'S HEART IN a thousand ways.

  She had wondered why Ray had been so surprised by the sightings of Stewart Green. Now she understood. Ray knew that Stewart had been dead all these years. He had made the huge sacrifice, too huge really, a sacrifice and then a secret that had gnawed at him, kept him down and troubled, probably cost him a bit of his sanity. Some people can live with that kind of thing. They do what they have to do. But Ray was too sensitive. He couldn't. Especially when you added on being abandoned by the woman you loved. Especially when you added on that you wouldn't see that woman--the woman you made this huge sacrifice to save--or even know what became of her, not until seventeen years later.

  The last thing Megan told Ray before she left the interrogation room was that she would do everything in her power to make sure he was freed. She meant it. She owed him that. She would help him, and then fair or not, she'd be gone for good.

  But the first thing she said when she walked out of the room was, "Where's my husband?"

  "He's down the hall on the left."

  She hurried toward him. When she got to the room, Dave looked up, startled, and Megan felt her heart swell with genuine love. She rushed over to him as he stood, collapsing into his arms.

  It was then, being held by her husband, that she felt safe enough to wonder about how she ended up on that path that night.

  Wasn't it Lorraine who had passed on that message to meet Ray up at those ruins?

  Wasn't it Lorraine who started the rumor that Stewart Green was still alive--even though they now knew for certain he was dead?

  Wasn't it Lorraine who claimed to know where Megan had been over the past seventeen years--even though it was impossible?

  She ran back toward Special Agent Angiuoni.

  "Where's Detective Broome?"

  "I don't know. He said something about a club called La Creme?"

  GOLDBERG POINTED OVER ERIN'S SHOULDER at the computer screen. "That's Lorraine, the barmaid at La Creme. What the hell happened?"

  "She killed her abusive husband."

  "What?"

  "It was declared self-defense. Open and shut."

  "Where the hell is Broome?" Goldberg snapped. "He needs to know about this."

  LORRAINE SAID, "DROP THE GUN."

  "What are you talking about? I'm here to help you, Lorraine."

  "Please, Broome." She pushed the gun harder against his head. "It's been a long night. Drop the gun."

  Broome did as she asked.

  "Now call your dispatcher. Tell them you don't need backup, that it's all clear."

  Still stunned, Broome did as she asked. Then he pointed to the body on the floor. "Who is that?"

  "Someone Del Flynn hired."

  "What did he want?"

  "To torture me into giving him information on Carlton's whereabouts. Funny though. He was the type who could dish it out but couldn't take it. So many men are like that."

  Broome looked at her. She met his eyes and nodded, as if encouraging him to see what was now so obvious.

  "My God... it was you?"

  "Yep," she said.

  "You killed all of them?"

  "You
got it. One per year. Always on Mardi Gras, but I didn't think anyone would ever figure out that pattern. Most of these scumbags had no one who cared enough to report that they were missing. I'm impressed you picked up the Mardi Gras connection."

  "It was my partner," Broome said.

  "She's your ex-wife, right? Smart woman, I bet. Kudos to her."

  He said nothing.

  "Oh, don't worry, Broome. I'm not going to kill you and go after her or any of that." Lorraine gave him a crooked smile and stared at the gun as though it had suddenly materialized in her hand. "I imagined a hundred different ways this might end, but me holding a gun on you and explaining?" She shook her head. "It's all so... I don't know... meh. Are you going to try to stall time hoping someone will rescue you?"