Chapter 3
“My own men confirmed it, sir. She is alive.”
There was a slight pause on the other end of the phone line.
“I told you before not to leave it to amateurs.” The sound of a stifled yawn came through the receiver, but the authority in the voice came through clearly when he spoke again. “I’m not happy, but the arrangements still work, and your instructions still stand. You know what to do.”
The rain hammered like bullets against the windows of the car. “I do, sir. And I’ll take care of it.”
~~~~
If this were a nightmare, why couldn’t she wake up?
Her eyes took in the burnished gold of the oak paneling on the walls in the outer office. The smell of old leather and parchment hung in the air from the shelves of antique law books. The secretary’s desk, the door to the judge’s private office, the open door into her own office—they were all the same. This wing of the Van Horn mansion, converted into a home office when the judge had decided to retire from the bench...it was as familiar to her as her own apartment.
And yet, everything had changed in just two short weeks. She looked again at the newspaper in her hand.
“In a second bail hearing, held in Providence today, District Court Judge Elizabeth Wilson denied a request made by the attorney of former colleague Charles Hamlin Arnold in...”
Sarah scanned the page for the fifth time. Her gaze rested once again on the picture of Judge Arnold, leaving the courthouse, his hands and feet manacled. She threw the paper aside and worked her way through the pile. Headline after headline proclaimed the alleged guilt of her friend and mentor. She pulled another paper onto her lap.
“Jealousy Possible Murder Motive.” She stared at the full-length picture of herself. It was a photograph taken at the Heart Ball last year. The judge stood on one side of her, and Hal on the other.
Leaving that issue spread on the floor, she went through the piles of newspapers stacked neatly in the bin beside the bookcase, working her way back in time. Last Sunday’s issue ran a front page article listing Sarah’s accomplishments. Two issues before, a piece with Hal’s picture. She skimmed the article, which quoted the wealthy developer speaking of his mother, Avery Van Horn, and her lengthy battle and final defeat by cancer only a month ago. And a line about the alleged murder of his closest friend by his own step father, Judge Arnold.
“But I’m alive, Hal!” She wiped at the tears on her cheeks.
She found it. The August 4 headline read, “Attorney Missing --Assumed Murdered.” Sarah sat back and read on. “Judge Arnold Held.”
Prominent Newport attorney Sarah Rand is believed dead. Homicide detectives, acting on a tip from unnamed sources, today found blood in the luxury condominium home of Attorney Rand, who has been missing since August 2…Judge Charles Hamlin Arnold was later arrested at his home and will be charged, according to the district attorney, for the murder of his colleague.
Rand has been connected with the Arnold and the Van Horn family for a number of years. Attorney Rand was a close confidante of the judge’s late wife, Avery Van Horn Arnold, and has been linked romantically to Mrs. Arnold’s son, Newport developer Henry “Hal” Van Horn...
Sarah leaned back against the bookcase, reading through the article again. Murdered. Assumed dead. But how could she be assumed dead?
“Oh, God. Tori!” Sarah whispered as she dashed for the phone at the closest desk and dialed her number at the condo. Steady rings. No answering machine. Just the same as when she’d tried to call her from Ireland. The same as when she’d tried to call from the airport.
She hung up and looked frantically around her. The piles of mail on Linda’s desk. The missing computer. The closed door of the judge’s private office. They thought she was missing. No, dead. She reached for the phone again to call Hal. The answering machine picked up on the second ring again. She waited impatiently for his message.
“Hal! Listen…this is Sarah again. There is something wrong…I am at the office on Bellevue…”
The sound was faint but distinct, and Sarah froze. She was almost certain the noise had come from the small kitchenette off the hallway. She peered into the darkness and quietly placed the phone back in its cradle. She was sure she was alone. When she came in, she had unlocked the door and disarmed the security system, locking the door behind her.
Reaching for the closest thing at hand, she picked up a heavy pineapple-shaped paperweight from the desk. Clutching the weight in one hand, she listened. There was the noise again. She switched on the light in the hallway. The door into the kitchen was slightly ajar.
She was a step from the door when the smell of gas registered.
Acting on reflex, Sarah took a deep breath, pulled open the kitchen door, and moved quickly to the small stove, searching for the knobs in front of the unlit burners. Solid stumps of greasy metal were the only thing that met her fingers. The knobs were gone.
Panic immobilized her for a moment as the low sound of escaping gas continued. She whirled and started for the door. It was her only route of escape.
The door slammed in her face.
“No! Wait!” she screamed.
~~~~
Owen stared at the newspaper, his eyes going from the picture to the article text and back to the picture again. He laid the paper on the kitchen counter and walked into the living room. The accumulating pile of last week’s papers on the coffee table supplied everything else about the case.
He could hear her voice deep in his mind. It was the same woman. It had to be. Why would anyone in her right mind want to take a dead attorney’s name? But it wasn’t just the name, it was also the way she looked and dressed. She was Sarah Rand, no doubt about it. The inside of the Range Rover had been dark, but there was no mistaking her.
He glanced at another picture of her in the paper. Even the earrings were the same. They must be her favorites, Owen thought. In every head shot of her he’d seen, she appeared to be wearing the same earrings. Star-shaped, with a diamond in the center. Her trademark.
Last Sunday’s magazine section had a big spread about her. Including exterior shots of the condominium apartment she owned.
On the surface, she seemed to be all money and easy living. But the article portrayed a different kind of woman—hard-working, independent, and smart.
Owen scanned the article for the information about the murder. Her apartment was on the ground floor of a converted mansion, with a terrace looking south over the Atlantic Ocean. From what the paper reported, the police were assuming that she’d been shot, probably in the face, just inside her front door on the afternoon of August 2. The detectives in charge were speculating that her body might have been wrapped up and carried out onto the terrace and then down to a waiting car. Sarah Rand’s body, they assumed, was at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Owen leafed through the pages and stared at the picture of Sarah standing between Henry Van Horn and Judge Arnold. An unexpected knot twisted in his gut. From the newspaper account, their relationship had all the earmarks of a love triangle in which the judge had ended up as odd man out. And it appeared that the police were looking at that as the motive for murder.
He carried the paper into the kitchen. Something didn’t jive. It just didn’t seem possible that the woman looking back at him from the photo could be playing a part in this twisted script.
“You should stop going out to parties entirely,” he muttered, reaching for the phone. “Or at least stop picking up strays off the road.”
But then again, he thought, you meet such interesting people.
~~~~
No matter what she tried, the metal stumps on the stove would not turn.
Going back to the door, Sarah put her shoulder to it once again. The gas was horrible, and a fit of coughing racked her body as she threw herself against the door. It was no use, she thought, sinking to the floor. Helplessness flooded through her, and she lay her cheek against the cool tile.
As she lay there, waiting for the gas to finish her, visions collected in her head, memories pooling in her consciousness before sliding off, only to be replaced by others. The funeral of her father. The open grave with John Rand’s casket at the bottom. The cheerful face of her friend Tori when she’d last seen her standing in the doorway of the apartment. The glare of flashlights.
They were after her. On the road and now here. But why?
There was no longer any reason to fight. She waited for the end to come and the face of Owen Dean flitted into her mind. Those youthful dreams. The silly crush she’d had on him...a movie star. She’d been barely seventeen when she and Tori had hitched a ride from Boston to New York. They stood for hours in the pouring rain just to catch a glimpse of him at the premier of Restless. To think that tonight she hadn’t even recognized him, at first.
Her thoughts darkened. And now someone wanted her dead, and for no reason that she could think of.
The seconds ticked into minutes, and Sarah wondered why she was still alive.
A phone rang somewhere out in the office.
The gas was burning her eyes, but as she glanced at the glass-block window above the sink, she realized that she couldn’t hear the hiss of escaping gas. There was the sound of movement outside the door.
She found the brass pineapple lying on its side on the floor.
The door beside her head opened slightly. Sarah remained still and clenched the paperweight in her hand.
A few more moments of silence, and Sarah held her breath.
When he kicked her in the shoulder, she rolled onto her back and lay still. A moment later she heard him step past her into the kitchen.
She opened her eyes slightly. A short, heavyset man was bending over the knobs of the stove, a white handkerchief over his mouth and nose.
He didn’t have a chance when the pineapple paperweight came down like a hammer on his head.
Sarah watched him go down and, clutching her weapon in one hand, she backed out of the kitchen. Once in the hallway, she staggered for the door.
As she passed the telephone in the outer office, she paused...then picked it up and dialed.
~~~~
Nothing was said openly, but Owen knew. He was the enemy.
Most of the scripts of his show—in which he played John McKee, an internal affairs investigator for the FBI—dealt with the workings of local law enforcement. So he knew that police departments were close-knit. Protective of their own. Suspicious of everyone. No surprise he’d been on hold for close to ten minutes.
After introducing himself, he’d told the dispatcher that he might have come upon some information regarding the Sarah Rand case. The cop had been polite, asking him to hold and telling him that Detective Captain Daniel Archer would probably want to talk to him. He’d been on hold ever since.
If it weren’t for the fact that the papers had all kept mentioning this specific detective by name, Owen would have hung up long ago and left a message for the guy’s superior. For a change, he was determined to be agreeable. But Archer had roughly thirty seconds.
Owen started water for coffee. Another voice came over the wire.
“Mr. Dean. Are you still there?”
“Barely.”
“Captain Archer had to leave on a call. But he said if you’d come down to the station, he should be back in an hour or so.”
Owen glanced at his watch. One twenty. “No chance.”
“Then maybe I could take down your information over the phone.”
“No. Just tell him it’s very important and have him call me in the morning.”
He left his number and hung up. What Owen had learned tonight was too important to leave on some pink note in a pile of pink notes on the desk of an overworked detective. Nope, he had liked Sarah, somehow, in spite of the lie she’d fed him about running out of gas. Something wasn’t right, but Owen didn’t think she needed the entire Newport Police Department coming down on her tonight.
The phone rang and Owen, certain it was Archer, reached for it. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Mr. Dean. This is Sarah Rand. You told me I could call you.”
“I did.”
“I...I need your help, Mr. Dean. Please...there’s been another attempt on my life.”
“Another?”
“I don’t know what is happening. I need help.”
“I’ll call the police.”
“Don’t,” she begged. “They’re here already...but I can’t let them find me. Please, I’m frightened. I need your help.”
She made no sense. And yet the fear and desperation in her voice were very real. “Where are you?”
“The Ju...the same place you dropped me earlier. But I...you’ll have to wait...until they leave.”
“The police?”
“Yes. Please wait for me outside. I’ll explain everything. I haven’t done anything wrong. But don’t let them see you. Please!”
Owen knew at that moment he had totally lost his mind. “I’ll be waiting outside.”
~~~~
The piercing headlights of the two police cars cut sharply through darkness. The rain continued to pelt the ground, the gusting wind twisting the raincoats around the men’s legs.
Dan Archer flipped the fan switch to high and watched the fog retreat across the windshield. He stared at the police officer sweeping the broken glass on the deserted road. A second officer, shining a flashlight around the perimeter of the accident scene was inspecting the gravel shoulder. There was a pronounced limp in the man’s step.
Archer lowered his window as an unmarked police car pulled up beside his own car.
“Anything?” he barked.
“Too dark to see. But she must have turned off on one of the side roads along the way.”
Archer banged his hand on the wheel. “Goddamn it. I thought we fucking had her this time.”