Chapter 16
The state road near the entrance to the Warner home was crawling with local and state police cars, ambulances, uniformed officers, and other officials. Two of the Providence television stations had their vans set up beside the road, their transmission antennae fully extended, jutting forty feet upward into the night sky.
Even after flashing their badges, Bob McHugh and Dan Archer were forced to stop at the beginning of the long gravel drive while the local uniform radioed ahead. Finally getting the go-ahead, the officer waved them through. Within a quarter of a mile up the winding road, the Newport detectives were flagged down at a spot where a half-dozen unmarked cars lined the shoulder.
A few uniformed officers had already opened a pathway into the woods, and flashlights could be seen bobbing and weaving through the trees. A Wickford detective approached Archer and McHugh as they got out of the car. Introductions were short.
“Before you go up to the house, you need to see this,” the Wickford man said.
“I hear it’s not a pretty sight up there,” Archer replied as McHugh tossed him a flashlight.
“A package delivery guy found them. He went to the back door, where he usually goes, and found it open. It was impossible not to see the mess,” the detective told them, leading the way to the edge of the woods. “A professional job, from the looks of things. No fingerprints. No sign of forced entry. No witnesses. Not a thing left behind, as far as we can tell. The house was trashed, but so far we have no idea what might have been taken. We were figuring armed robbery by pros until we found something else on the property.”
Archer pushed at the branches of the undergrowth, following closely behind.
The Wickford detective flashed his light ahead toward a group of officials securing a site straight ahead. “A direct tie-in to the mess you’ve got going on across the bridge. We’ve got Sarah Rand’s car.”
Archer heard McHugh curse under his breath behind him. The Wickford man broke out of the undergrowth and into a small grassy opening. Archer moved past him and took in the scene. Yellow police tape already marked the perimeter of the site. Two uniforms were setting up floodlights and a couple of cameras were lighting up the area with sporadic flashes. A large tarp that must have been covering the vehicle had been pulled back and laid out for the fingerprint crew. A photographer was taking close-up shots of the windshield.
“The vehicle hasn’t been here too long.” The local detective pointed his flashlight at the natural debris around the tires. “We figure it was driven in here during the storm Wednesday night at the earliest. Thursday morning latest. Nothing in the trunk or the backseat. We haven’t dusted for fingerprints yet, but there are no obvious bloodstains, either.”
Archer walked methodically around the car, peering in and then pointing the beam of the flashlight on the mark of the tire threads in the dirt. He took a few steps back, turned and studied the path.
“We’ve traced the tires back to the main road.” The local detective offered. “From the windshield breakage, it looks like someone was shooting at the car from behind. We haven’t found the spot yet, but it can’t be too far. Would’ve been a bit difficult driving in the rain with the windshield like that. The driver must have pulled off the main road and tried to ditch the car in the woods.”
“Footprints?” Archer asked.
“We’ve made casts of a few so far. A lot of people have been around this thing. Dogs, too.”
“Have someone trace those.” McHugh pointed his light at two sets of tracks by a muddy embankment beyond the tape. “See if they lead back to the house.”
Archer nodded to the Wickford man.
McHugh walked back to them. “Nobody got any tire tracks on that drive, either, did they? You muttonheads ruined them before anybody even gave it a second thought, I’ll bet.”
The annoyance was obvious in the local detective’s shout as he barked an order at one of the uniforms.
“As a matter of fact, smart guy, there was a high-toned shindig at the Warner house Wednesday night, the night of the storm. The tire tracks of everybody of any importance in the whole fucking state can be found on that drive.” He turned his attention back to Archer. “This sure as hell throws your ‘Bang, bang, Judge Arnold did it’ theory to the fish. If you want my gut reaction—”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t. We’re not paid to think with our gut.” Archer started back toward the road. “Now give me a tour of this freak show.”
~~~~
Sarah dropped the pen on the desk and reached back to rub her aching shoulder. “I think this is all of them—all the cases I was working on the week of June 28. But if I did take something by mistake, it could have been buried in any of these files.”
She heard him approach and then felt Owen’s strong hands on her shoulders. He leaned over her, rubbing her stiff shoulders as he read the list.
Allowing, enjoying, wanting such casual contact with him still surprised Sarah a little, but there was a reassuring feeling that came with his touch. A familiar, comfortable nonchalance in the way in which he gently kneaded the knots out of her aching muscles. A pleasant warmth spread through her.
“Where would these files be?”
“At the downtown office. I would bet that Linda had them all filed away before the August break.”
His spice scent, the brush of his shirt against her hair, the feel of his fingers—Sarah bit her lip in an effort to keep from melting onto the desk.
“Could we somehow get in there?”
“I have a key,” she whispered. “There are night custodians who clean all the offices in the building. Tomorrow is Saturday. We can try to get in early in the morning.”
“That’s a date.”
His fingers went to work on her neck, and Sarah fought down the sigh of contentment rising in her throat. To keep her head clear, she reached for the stack of letters she’d noticed before on his desk.
“Did you know most of these letters are from the same person?”
“Really?” There was no note of interest in his voice.
“Someone named Jake Gantley at the Rhode Island ACI.”
His fingers were massaging her scalp, but he stopped and leaned over her again to take a look.
“Since we started this TV show, prison letters follow me wherever I go. Sometimes hundreds a week. Most of them go to the network or the production company offices.”
“Do you ever read the ones that come to you?”
“Never. When I think of it, I pass them on to one of my assistants. I think they have a form answer they send.”
“These are addressed to Newport—to this address. Isn’t it strange that this guy knows where you live?”
“Sometimes it happens. One person tells another person, and then that person tells somebody else.” His voice was gentle, as soothing as his touch. “I don’t let it bother me.”
“A couple of these have been opened.” Sarah pulled the open letters out and put them on top. “I thought you never read them?”
“Well, I had to show off my letter opener to Archer yesterday morning.”
“Oh yes. Through the closet door, I heard you tell him about Mel’s sword. Braveheart, huh?” She smiled, holding one of the letters up. “May I? I’ve never read a fan letter.”
He chuckled. “Be my guest.”
Sarah leaned back against the chair, and her head accidentally resting against his hard stomach. She shivered as his hands traveled up and down her arms. She couldn’t remember her body ever being so charged with sexual tension as it was now. She opened the envelope and took out the letter. Forcing herself to focus on the juvenile-looking script and disregarded the spelling errors, she read aloud:
“Dear Owen Dean,
Just in case you have not had a chance to read my previous letters, my name is Jake Gantley. I am forty-two years old and presently incarcerated at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institution. Known to all around here as ACI. I have been serving a prison sentence for nine years now give or take some.
I am a huge fan of you for years and having started following your latest television production, the idea came to me that someone with my depth of experience in criminal life…”
The words withered on Sarah’s lips as she felt his hand move from her shoulder down to the front of her blouse. The brush of his fingers was feathery-soft, but her body’s reaction was immediate and intense.
…experience in criminal…
Sarah tried to focus on the words again, but he reached over and took the letter out of her hands, dropping it on the desk. She allowed herself to be pulled to her feet and turned in his arms.
“What are you doing?” she managed to whisper as his lips brushed against her brow, the side of her face.
“I’m trying to release some of the tension in your body.”
“But I—”
His mouth brushed against her lips, and Sarah lit up with the heat he’d unleashed in her. Before she could stop herself, she found she was threading her fingers into his hair and kissing him with a passion that was nearly blinding in its power.
His arms were bands of steel around her, molding every contour of her body to his.
“Sarah!” he whispered hoarsely against her mouth. “I want you. I want you now.”
A wild surge of emotions ripped through her. Desire was battering down old barriers of propriety, protective walls of common sense. A flicker of a thought struck her—she was putting him in danger by becoming more involved than they already were. But that thought was fleeting, as she felt herself being swept away into a world in which she had little experience. A world of longing for another human being. A world where the sometimes faltering dynamic of emotional connection suddenly sprang to life and accelerated—tangling, churning, spinning, weaving—propelled onward and outward by the pure kinetic energy of physical desire.
Sarah found herself lifted onto the edge of the desk.
“Owen,” she whispered as his mouth blazed a trail from her lips to her neck. “I…I don’t think…we should—”
“Then tell me to stop.”
The feel of his mouth moving down the front of her shirt, pressing the fabric against her flesh, made Sarah gasp, clutch at his shoulders and bring his mouth back to hers. She kissed him back—again and again—until the very air around them became charged with their heat. His hands were beneath her shirt. The clasp of her bra came undone. His palms were pressing her aching breasts.
She saw him through a haze of desire. He was even more stunningly handsome than she’d always thought. But now he wasn’t up there on some stage or movie screen with some other woman. He was here with her, pressed against her with such a jumbled mix of tenderness and desire. No, this moment belonged to them…to just the two of them.
Emboldened, she kissed him again. Her fingers reached for him, touching the muscles on his back and chest before pinching open the buttons of his shirt and pressing her lips against his skin.
“You’re killing me,” he whispered, digging his fingers into her hair and dragging her mouth roughly to his.
The sound of the phone on the desk startled them both, and he let out a frustrated groan.
“No way,” he growled. Sarah smiled as he took her hand, pulling her off the desk and starting toward the bedroom.
She cast a parting glance at the clock on his desk. “Wait. Maybe it’s something important. It’s eleven-thirty at night.”
“It’s the damn West Coast people. The machine will pick it up.”
In the bedroom, Sarah suddenly felt the panic wash through her as Owen sat on the edge of the large bed and pulled her toward him. His blue eyes caressed and devoured her with a single sweeping glance.
“Where were we?”
“I…I don’t usually do this.” She had to force out the words before she forgot her own name.
“I know. I saw your appointment calendar.”
“No…I mean, I don’t get involved…this soon after just…”
The look in his eyes was tender. “I know that, Sarah. I don’t think that what we—”
She could hear the beep of the answering machine.
“Mr. Dean, this is Carol Doyle, the academic dean of Rosecliff College.” The woman’s grave voice came through loud and clear. “I’m sorry to call you so late in the evening. But I have…I have some terrible news. It has to do with Andrew. He…well… he…”
As the caller’s voice broke down, Owen picked up the phone beside the bed. “Hello, Carol. This is Owen. What’s happened?”
Instantly, Sarah felt those same icy claws clutch at her insides. She knew the feeling now. It was becoming a part of her everyday existence. She sat down on the edge of the bed for fear of crumbling to the floor.
Owen’s face became hard, but she glimpsed anguish behind the mask. He wasn’t saying a word, only listening to what was being said.
When he sat down himself, Sarah knew. Her car. She had left her car on Warner’s property. She closed her eyes and prayed, knowing that it was too late.
“Are you there now?”
Owen’s question drew her gaze. In the dim light of the bedroom, she saw the tear that slipped down his cheek.
Two thoughts struck her at once. She wanted to go to him, to console him. But at the same time, common sense told her that she should simply walk out of this apartment, clear out of his life. For all his efforts to help her, she had just brought him pain and suffering. Perhaps even worse to his friends. Perhaps he would be next.
“Thank you for calling, Carol.”
Sarah watched his hand shake as he hung up the phone. He sat in silence, lost in thought, one hand vacantly rubbing the day’s growth of beard along his jaw.
She finally forced herself to her feet, moving to him. He didn’t even seem to see her when she sat down next to him and took his hand. One tear, and then another, coursed down his clenched cheek. He was working hard at accepting the news and controlling his pain.
“Something has happened to him, hasn’t it? Someone has been hurt again… because of me.”
“Don’t.” He whispered the word low and hard, turning to her as he said it and pulling her into his embrace. She held him, letting her own tears soak his shirt as he rested his face against her hair. “This is not your fault. Blaming yourself will not help anything.”
“They killed him, didn’t they.” It was not a question. “They found my car…and then they killed him.”
His voice was cold, his words clipped. “These are ruthless people. They kill in cold blood.”
“Oh, my God. I should never have dragged you into the middle of this.”
Sarah sobbed quietly, and they said nothing for a long moment. Owen broke the silence.
“Long before you came into our lives, Andrew Warner was dying…one painful inch at a time. His suffering is over now. And this may sound warped, but I know he would have preferred to die any way other than the way he had ahead of him… suffocating in a hospital bed while his body shut down one piece at a time.” Owen stopped for a moment, gathering himself. “For a long time, I’ve insulated myself from life. I don’t know if it was fate or karma or luck that brought us together, but I’m glad it happened. Andrew is gone…he’s gone…and I feel…pain and hurt and loss. But I feel something else, too. Something I know he wanted for me. He wanted me here because he wanted me to remember what it is…to be human.”
~~~~
Sarah didn’t know for how long they stayed wrapped in each other’s arms. He told her everything that the college dean had said. Tracy, surprisingly enough, was still alive, but she was in surgery. Her chance of pulling through was very slight. He told her what the police had told the dean about what had happened—about robbery being the most likely motive behind the killing—but Owen and Sarah knew the truth.
“We need to go ahead just as we planned,” he told her finally. “Carol is at the hospital now. I’d like to stop by there and see her first. When I get back, we’ll go and check out the files at your office.”
“I can go while you’re at the hospital.”
“No,” he objected. “I want you right here, with the doors locked and with the curtains closed, until I get back. Please, Sarah. Do this for me.”
She didn’t argue. She wasn’t about to call for a taxi again. The last time had been too close a call, and now everyone in Newport was looking for a sixteen-year-old who looked just like her.
It was after one in the morning when Owen went back into the living room to make some calls. Sarah used the time to hide in the bathroom and change the color of her hair.
Standing before the mirror, she tried to not think of what had happened. She tried not to blame herself for all these deaths. But it was impossible to ignore the fact that people around her were dying. It felt like a hot poker piercing her chest to think that it might happen again. That it might happen to Owen.
Owen. Why was he at the edge of every thought?
What was happening to her? She was not a woman to grow so attached, so quickly. She was not a woman to trust a man so instinctively or so completely. True, she trusted the judge, but that trust was based on years of working with the man, of seeing him with Avery.
Sarah stared at her reflection in the mirror. The ability to trust was not her strong suit. It never had been. But that was only natural, she thought. She had been the product of a marriage that never should have happened. Her father, handsome and flirtatious, had come over from Ireland for a summer to visit with friends. In a corner store, not far from Boston’s South Station, he’d met a young and innocent clerk and swept her off her feet. Then she became pregnant by him. Trust me.
Before the summer heat had given way to autumn’s breezes, the two were married, as John Rand faced his responsibility. He’d ended up taking a job and staying in America for as long as he could. But what Sarah remembered most of her parents’ marriage were the arguments and the hurt, the accusations and the mistrust. So many nights, before crying herself to sleep, she had wished, prayed…begged silently for them to get along. To love each other. To love her.
But that had never happened. One day, John Rand had packed a suitcase and returned to his homeland, while Sarah had been left behind to fend for herself against a shattered woman’s bitterness and pain.
The next time she saw her father had been on her high school graduation day. Sarah had been the valedictorian of her class, but he’d taken her aside after the ceremony to tell her that he was finally divorcing her mother. He was thinking of marrying again.
She had seen him again when Sarah’s mother had died. He’d flown over to attend the funeral. It was the least he could do, he’d said. Sarah remembered thinking that truer words had never been spoken.
The third time she had seen John Rand after he left had been two weeks ago at his own wake. She had stood there silently, staring down at the lifeless body, hardly knowing what to feel…or even how to feel. What do you do when a lifetime of hurt has been piling up on your heart, layer upon layer, until an almost impenetrable barrier of scar tissue has formed around it? Sarah knew very well what Owen had been talking about.
Sarah checked her watch and jumped into the shower to wash off the hair dye.
Years ago, when she’d broken up her engagement with Hal, he’d told her it wasn’t him who was unable to commit. He’d told her it was she who was incapable of maintaining a healthy relationship with anyone. He’d accused her of not trusting him or anyone else and, as a result, failing to invest any part of her emotional self in the relationship.
She had not even tried to defend herself against his words. Life had taught her to trust a person only once…if at all. Hal had used up his chance.
Stepping out of the shower, Sarah wiped the steam off the glass and looked again at her reflection in the mirror. The dark auburn hair was a shocking contrast against her pale skin, but other than that, she didn’t think she looked very different.
Owen was waiting for her when she finally came out of the bathroom. He looked extremely tired, but she didn’t miss the once-over look of her face and hair and the bathrobe that she was wearing. His bathrobe.
“You look great. But I like your natural hair color better.”
“How do you know that I’m a natural blonde?”
He raised one eyebrow. Sarah’s face colored as she remembered how he had put her in the shower and later dressed her for bed.
“I called the hospital. Tracy is out of surgery and has been moved to the ICU. I think it’d be best if I go there now.”
She nodded and glanced at the clock on his bureau; it was half past two in the morning. “Be careful.”
He hesitated a moment, and then pulled her into his arms and just held her.
She wanted to ask him about Andrew Warner again—about his relationship with the man—but she couldn’t open up a wound that he was trying so hard to keep closed.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “When I get back, we can go and check out those files in your office.”
~~~~
She had dozed fitfully for a while, finally getting up and roaming around the apartment. The morning was still a long way off, and there was no sign of Owen returning.
First News at 5 was just coming on the air when she switched on the television, and she sat up straight as images of her car flashed on the screen. Pictures of Andrew and Tracy appeared behind the newscaster, with an icon depicting the chalked outline of a murder victim superimposed. A picture of Hal. A picture of herself. A picture of the judge. A live report from the country home of the Warners’. Sarah stared at the news reporter standing outside the police-tape barrier with her car in the background.
Suddenly feeling sick to her stomach, she hit the remote when they switched back to the newsroom. It was too much to bear watching.
Sarah sat quietly, hardly breathing, her eyes squeezed shut. There was no sound except for the gently buffeting sound of the breeze off the ocean and the ticking of the clock. She got up and went to Owen’s desk, picking up the Braveheart letter opener lying beside the pile of prison letters. Taking a handful of the letters, she went back to the sofa and sat down.
“Okay, Jake Gantley.” Maybe reading an account of someone else’s twisted life would take her mind off her own for a while.
The letters were a proposition for Owen to use a memoir of Gantley’s own life, a record that the career criminal had been jotting down over the years. Jake’s life of crime had started at age eight with an arson charge, and it had gradually grown into more serious activities ever since. Of course, there were no specifics, each letter contained only tantalizing hints aimed at getting a potential buyer interested in the material that he was selling.
Sarah read each one, following the sequence of the dates that they’d arrived at Owen’s address. All were pretty much the same, with a variety of attitudes expressed, from casual curiosity about Owen’s lack of interest to outright anger. But when she opened the last letter, a folded picture fell out onto her lap. Picking it up, Sarah unfolded it, for a moment staring uncomprehendingly at the photo.
And then, a pain ripped through her with such power that it tore the very breath from her lungs.