Nancy Gordon heard a tinkle of glass when Peter Lake broke the lower left pane in the back door so he could reach between the jagged shards and open it from the inside. Nancy heard the rusty hinges squeak. She shifted under the covers and trained her eyes on the doorway, straining to see in the dark.
Two hours earlier, Nancy had been alone in the task force office when Lake appeared to tell her he had heard about the shooting of Henry Waters on the late news. As planned, Nancy told Lake she had suspected him of being the rose killer because of the gap between the time he had been seen driving home and the call to 911 and his stakeout of Waters’s home. Lake had been alarmed, but Nancy assured him that she was satisfied that Waters was the murderer and had kept her suspicions to herself. Then she had yawned and told Lake she was heading home. Since then Nancy had been in bed, waiting.
Black slacks, a black ski mask and a black turtleneck helped Lake blend into the darkness. There was an ugly snub-nosed revolver in his hand. Nancy did not hear him cross the living room. One second, her bedroom doorway was empty, then Lake filled it. When he snapped on the light, Nancy sat up in bed, feigning surprise. Lake removed the ski mask.
“You knew, didn’t you, Nancy?” She gaped at him, as if the visit was unexpected. “I really do like you, but I can’t take the chance you’ll reopen the case.”
Nancy looked at the revolver. “You can’t believe you’ll get away with murdering a cop.”
“I don’t have much choice. You’re far too intelligent. Eventually you would have realized Waters was innocent. Then you would have kept after me. You might even have dug up enough evidence to convince a jury.”
Lake walked around the side of the bed. “Place your hands on top of the sheet and take it off slowly,” he said, gesturing with the gun. Nancy was sleeping under a single light sheet because of the heat. She pulled away the sheet slowly, careful to gather it up near her right hip so Lake would not see the outline of the gun that was hidden there. Nancy was wearing bikini panties and a T-shirt. The T-shirt had bunched up beneath her breasts, revealing her rigid stomach muscles. Nancy heard a quiet intake of breath.
“Very nice,” Lake said. “Remove the shirt.”
Nancy forced herself to look at him wide-eyed.
“I’m not going to rape you,” Lake assured her. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I’ve fantasized about playing with you quite a lot, Nancy. You’re so different from the others. They’re all so soft, cows really, and so easy to train. But you’re hard. I’m certain you would resist. It would be very enjoyable. But I want the authorities to believe that Henry Waters is the rose killer, so you’ll die during a burglary.”
Nancy looked at Lake with disgust. “How could you kill your wife and daughter?”
“You can’t think I planned that. I loved them, Nancy. But Sandy found a note and a rose I was planning to use the next day. I’m not proud of myself. I panicked. I couldn’t think of a single explanation I could make to Sandy once the notes became public knowledge. She would have gone to the police and it would have been over for me.”
“What’s your excuse for killing Melody? She was a baby.”
Lake shook his head. He looked genuinely distraught.
“Do you think that was easy?” Lake’s jaw trembled. There was a tear in the corner of one eye. “Sandy screamed. I got to her before she could do it again, but Melody heard her. She was standing on the stairs, looking through the bars on the banister. I held her and hugged her while I tried to think of some way to spare her, but there wasn’t a way, so I made it painless. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Let me help you, Peter. They’ll never find you guilty. I’ll talk to the district attorney. We’ll work out an insanity plea.”
Lake smiled sadly. He shook his head with regret. “It would never fly, Nancy. No one would ever let me off that easy. Think about what I did to Pat. Think about the others. Besides, I’m not crazy. If you knew why I did it, you’d understand.”
“Tell me. I want to understand.”
“Sorry. No time. Besides, it won’t make any difference to you. You’re going to die.”
“Please, Peter. I have to know. There has to be a reason for a plan this brilliant.”
Lake smiled condescendingly. “Don’t do this. It’s not becoming. What’s the purpose in stalling?”
“You can rape me first. Tie me up. You want to, don’t you? I’d be helpless,” she begged, sliding her right hand under the sheet.
“Don’t debase yourself, Nancy. I thought you had more class than the others.”
Lake saw Nancy’s hand move. His face clouded. “What’s that?”
Nancy went for the gun. Lake brought the revolver down hard on her cheek. Bone cracked. She went blind for a second. Her closet door slammed open. Lake froze as Wayne Turner came out of the closet. Turner fired and hit Lake in the shoulder. Lake’s gun dropped to the floor just as Frank Grimsbo hurtled through the bedroom door, tackling Lake into the wall.
“Stay down,” Turner yelled at Nancy. He scrambled across the bed, knocking the wind out of her. Lake was pinned to the wall and Grimsbo was smashing him in the face.
“Stop, Frank!” Turner yelled. He kept his gun trained on Lake with one hand and tried to restrain Grimsbo’s arm with the other. Grimsbo delivered one more clubbing blow that bounced Lake’s head off the wall. Lake’s head lolled sideways. A damp patch spread across the black fabric that covered his right shoulder as blood seeped from his wound.
“Get his gun,” Turner said. “It’s next to the bed. And check on Nancy.”
Grimsbo stood up. He was shaking.
“I’m okay,” Nancy said. Her cheek was numb and she could barely see out of her left eye.
Grimsbo picked up Lake’s gun. He stood over Lake and his breathing increased.
“Cuff him,” Turner ordered. Grimsbo stood there, the gun rising like something with a life of its own.
“Don’t fuck around, Frank,” Turner said. “Just put the cuffs on.”
“Why?” Grimsbo asked. “He could have been shot twice when he attacked Nancy. You hit him in the shoulder when you came out of the closet and I fired the fatal shot when this piece of shit spun toward me, and, as fate would have it, caught him between the eyes.”
“It didn’t happen that way, because I know it didn’t,” Turner said evenly.
“And what? You’d turn me in and testify at my murder trial? You’d send me to Attica for the rest of my life because I exterminated this scumbag?”
“No one would know, Wayne,” Nancy said quietly. “I’d back Frank.”
Turner looked at Nancy. She was watching Lake with a look of pure hatred.
“I don’t believe this. You’re cops. What you want to do is murder.”
“Not in this case, Wayne,” Nancy said. “You have to take the life of a human being to commit murder. Lake isn’t human. I don’t know what he is, but he’s not human. A human being doesn’t murder his own child. He doesn’t strip a woman naked, then slice her open from groin to chest, pull out her intestines and let her die a slow death. I can’t even imagine what he’s done to the missing women.” Nancy shuddered. “I don’t want to guess.”
Lake was listening to the argument. He did not move his head, but his eyes focused on each speaker as his fate was debated. He saw Turner waiver. Nancy got off the bed and stood next to Grimsbo.
“He’ll get out someday, Wayne,” she said. “He’ll convince the Parole Board to release him or he’ll convince a jury he was insane and the hospital will let him out when he is miraculously cured. Do you want to wake up some morning and read about a woman who was kidnapped in Salt Lake City or Minneapolis and the note that was left on her pillow telling her husband she was ‘Gone, But Not Forgotten’?”
Turner’s arm fell to his side. His lips were dry. His gut was in a knot.
“It’ll be me, Wayne,” Grimsbo said, pulling out his service revolver and handing Nancy Lake’s weapon. “You can leave the room if you want. You can even remember it like it happened the way I said, because that’s the way it will really have happened, if we all agree.”
“Jesus,” Turner said to himself. One hand was knotted into a fist, and the one holding the gun was squeezed so tight the metal cut into his palm.
“You can’t kill me,” Lake gasped, the pain from his wound making it hard for him to speak.
“Shut the fuck up,” Grimsbo said, “or I’ll do you now.”
“They’re not dead,” Lake managed, squeezing his eyes shut as a wave of nausea swept over him. “The other women are still alive. Kill me and they’ll die. Kill me and you kill them all.”
Governor Raymond Colby ducked under the rotating helicopter blades and ran toward the waiting police car. Larry Merrill, the governor’s administrative assistant, leaped out after the governor and followed him across the runway. A stocky, red-haired man and a slender black man were standing next to the police car. The redhead opened the back door for Colby.
“John O’Malley, Governor. I’m the Hunter’s Point police chief. This is Detective Wayne Turner. He’s going to brief you. We have a very bad situation here.”
Governor Colby sat in the rear seat of the police car and Turner slid in beside him. When Merrill was in the front, O’Malley started toward Nancy Gordon’s house.
“I don’t know how much you’ve been told, Governor.”
“Start from the beginning, Detective Turner. I want to make certain I don’t miss anything.”
“Women have been disappearing in Hunter’s Point. All married to professionals, childless. No sign of a struggle. With the first woman, we assumed we were dealing with a missing persons case. The only oddity was a note on the woman’s pillow that said ‘Gone, But Not Forgotten,’ pinned down by a rose that had been dyed black. We figured the wife left it. Then the second woman disappeared and we found an identical rose and note.
“After the fourth disappearance, all with notes and black roses, Sandra and Melody Lake were murdered. Sandra was the wife of Peter Lake, whom I believe you know. Melody was his daughter.”
“That was tragic,” Colby said. “Pete’s been a supporter of mine for some time. I appointed him to a board last fall.”
“He killed them, Governor. He murdered his wife and daughter in cold blood. Then he framed a man named Henry Waters by bringing one of the kidnapped women to Waters’s house, disemboweling her in Waters’s basement, planting some roses and one of the notes in Waters’s house and calling the police anonymously.”
It was four a.m. and pitch-black in the car, but Turner saw Colby blanch as the car passed under a streetlight.
“Peter Lake killed Sandy and Melody?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“What I’m going to tell you now is known only to Chief O’Malley, Detectives Frank Grimsbo and Nancy Gordon and me. The chief created a task force to deal with the disappearances. It consists of Gordon, Grimsbo and me, plus a forensic expert. We suspected Lake might be our killer, even after we found Patricia Cross’s body at Waters’s house, so we set him up. Gordon told Lake she suspected him but had kept the incriminating evidence to herself. Lake panicked, as we’d hoped he would. He broke into Gordon’s house to kill her. She tricked him into admitting the killings. We wired her house and we have his confession on tape. Grimsbo and I were hiding and heard it all. We arrested Lake.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Merrill asked.
“Three of the women are still alive. Barely. Lake’s been keeping them on a starvation diet—he only feeds them once a week. He won’t tell us when he fed them last or where they are unless the governor gives him a full pardon.”
“What?” Merrill asked incredulously. “The governor’s not going to pardon a mass murderer.”
“Can’t you find them?” Colby asked. “They must be in property Lake owns. Have you searched them all?”
“Lake’s made a good deal of money over the years. He has vast real estate holdings. Most of them aren’t in his name. We don’t have the manpower or time to find and search them all before the women starve.”
“Then I’ll promise to pardon Peter. After he tells us where he’s holding the women, you can arrest him. A contract entered into under duress won’t stand up.”
Merrill looked uncomfortable. “I’m afraid it might, Ray. When I was with the U.S. attorney, we gave immunity to a contract killer for the mob in exchange for testimony against a higher-up. He said he was present when the hit was ordered, but he was in Las Vegas on the day the body was found. We checked out his story. He was registered at Caesars Palace. Several honest witnesses saw him eating at the casino. We gave him his deal, he testified, the higher-up was convicted, he walked. Then we found out he did the hit, but he did it at fifteen minutes before midnight, then flew to Vegas.
“We were furious. We rearrested him and indicted him for murder, but the judge threw out the indictment. He ruled that everything the defendant told us was true. We just didn’t ask the right questions. I researched the hell out of the law on plea agreements trying to get the appellate court to rule for us. No luck. Contract principles apply, but so does due process. If both sides enter into the agreement in good faith and the defendant performs, the courts are going to enforce the agreement. If you go into this with your eyes open, Ray, I think the pardon will stick.”
“Then I have no choice.”
“Yes, you do,” Merrill insisted. “You tell him no deal. You can’t pardon a serial killer and expect to be reelected. It’s political suicide.”
“Damn it, Larry,” Colby snapped, “how do you think people would react if they found out I let three women die to win an election?”
Raymond Colby opened the door to Nancy Gordon’s bedroom. Frank Grimsbo was seated next to the door, holding his weapon, his eyes on the prisoner. The shades were drawn and the bed was still unmade. Peter Lake was handcuffed to a chair. His back was to the window. No one had treated the cuts on Lake’s face and the blood had dried, making him look like a badly defeated fighter. Lake should have been scared. Instead, he looked like he was in charge of the situation.
“Thanks for coming, Ray.”
“What’s going on, Pete? This is crazy. You murdered Sandy and Melody?”
“I had to, Ray. I explained that to the police. You know I wouldn’t have killed them if I had a choice.”
“That sweet little girl. How can you live with yourself?”
Lake shrugged his shoulders. “That’s really beside the point, Ray. I’m not going to prison, and you’re going to see to that.”
“It’s out of my hands, Pete. You killed three people. You’re morally responsible for Waters’s death. I can’t do anything for you.”
Lake smiled. “Then why are you here?”
“To ask you to tell the police where you’re keeping the other women.”
“No can do, Ray. My life depends on keeping the cops in the dark.”
“You’d let three innocent women die?”
Lake shrugged. “Three dead, six dead. They can’t punish me anymore after the first life sentence. I don’t envy you, Ray. Believe me when I say that I wish I didn’t have to put an old friend, whom I admire deeply, in this position. But I won’t tell you where the women are if I don’t get my pardon. And, believe me, every minute counts. Those women are mighty hungry and mighty thirsty by now. I can’t guarantee how much longer they’ll last without food and water.”
Colby sat on the bed across from Lake. He bent forward, his forearms resting on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him.
“I do consider myself your friend, Pete. I still can’t believe what I’m hearing. As a friend, I beg you to save those women. I promise I’ll intercede on your behalf with the authorities. Maybe a plea to manslaughter can be worked out.”
Lake shook his head. “No prison. Not one day. I know what happens in jail to a man who’s raped a woman. I wouldn’t last a week.”
“You’re expecting a miracle, Pete. How can I let you go free?”
“Look, Ray, I’ll make this simple for you. I walk or the women die. There’s no other alternative, and you’re using up valuable time jawing with me.”
Colby hunched his shoulders. He stared at the floor. Lake’s smile widened.
“What are your terms?” Colby asked.
“I want a pardon for every crime I committed in New York State and immunity from prosecution for every conceivable crime the authorities can think up in the future. I want the pardon in writing and I want a videotape of you signing it. I want the original of the tape and the pardon given to a lawyer I’ll choose.
“I want immunity from prosecution in federal court …”
“I can’t guarantee that. I have no authority to …”
“Call the U.S. attorney or the attorney general. Call the President. This is non-negotiable. I’m not going to get hit with a federal charge for violation of civil rights.”
“That’s all I ask. But if you don’t do what I want, the women die.
“There’s one other thing. I want a guarantee that the State of New York will pay any civil judgments if I get sued by the survivors or Cross’s husband. I’m not going to lose any money over this. Attorney fees, too.”
Lake’s last remark helped the governor see Lake for what he was. The handsome, urbane young man with whom he had dined and played golf was the disguise worn by a monster. Colby felt rage replacing the numbness he’d experienced since learning Lake’s true nature.
Colby stood. “I have to know how much time those women have, so I can tell the attorney general how quickly we must act.”
“I’m not going to tell you, Ray. You’re not getting any information from me until I have what I want. But,” Lake said with a smile, “I will tell you to hurry.”
The police cars and ambulances bounced along the unpaved back road, their sirens blaring in hopes that the captive women would hear them and take heart. There were three ambulances, each with a team of doctors and nurses. Governor Colby and Larry Merrill were riding with Chief O’Malley and Wayne Turner. Frank Grimsbo was driving another police car with Nancy Gordon riding shotgun. In the back of that car was Herb Carstairs, an attorney Lake had retained. A videotape of Governor Colby signing a pardon and a copy of the pardon with an addendum signed by the United States attorney rested in Carstairs’s safe. Next to Carstairs, in leg irons and handcuffs, sat Peter Lake, who seemed indifferent to the high-speed ride.
The cavalcade rounded a curve in the country road and Nancy saw the farmhouse. It looked deserted. The front yard was overgrown and the paint was peeling. To the right of the house, across a dusty strip of yard, was a dilapidated barn.
Nancy was out and running as soon as the car stopped. She raced up the steps of the house and kicked in the front door. Medics and doctors raced after her. Lake had said the women were in the basement. Nancy found the basement door and threw it open. A stench of urine, excrement and unwashed bodies hit her and she gagged. Then she took a deep breath and yelled, “Police. You’re safe,” as she started down the stairs, two at a time, stopping her headlong rush the moment she saw what was in the basement.
Nancy felt like someone had punched a hole through her chest and torn out her heart. Later it occurred to her that her reaction must have been similar to the reactions of the servicemen who liberated the Nazi concentration camps. The basement windows were painted black and the only light came from bare bulbs that hung from the ceiling. A section of the basement was divided by plywood walls into six small stalls. Three of the stalls were empty. All of the stalls were covered with straw and outfitted with dirty mattresses. A videotape camera sat on a tripod outside each of the three occupied stalls. In addition to the mattress, each stall contained a cheap clock, a plastic water bottle with a plastic straw, and a dog food dish. The water bottles looked empty. Nancy could see the remains of some kind of gruel in the dishes.
Toward the rear of the basement was an open area. In it was a mattress covered with a sheet and a large table. Nancy could not make out all of the instruments on the table, but one of them was definitely a cattle prod.
Nancy stepped aside as the doctors rushed past her. She stared at the three survivors. The women were naked. Their feet were chained to the wall at the ankles. The chain extended just far enough to reach the water bottle and dog food dish. The women in the first two stalls lay on their side on their mattress. Their eyes seemed to be floating in the sockets. Nancy could see their ribs. There were burn marks and bruises everywhere. The woman in the third stall was Samantha Reardon. She huddled against the wall, her face expressionless, staring blankly at her rescuers.
Nancy walked slowly to the bottom of the stairs. She recognized Ann Hazelton only from her red hair. Her legs were drawn up to her chest in a fetal position and she was whimpering pitifully. Ann’s husband had furnished a photograph of her standing on the eighteenth hole of their country club golf course, a smile on her face and a yellow ribbon holding back her long red hair.
Gloria Escalante was in the second stall. There was no expression on her face, but Nancy saw tears in her eyes as a doctor bent next to her to check her vital signs and a policeman went to work on her shackles.
Nancy began to shake. Wayne Turner walked up behind her and put his hands on her arms.
“Come on,” he said gently, “we’re just in the way.”
Nancy let herself be led up the stairs into the light. Governor Colby had glanced into the basement for a moment, then backed out of the farmhouse into the fresh air. His skin was gray and he was sitting on one of the steps that led up to the porch, looking like he did not have the strength to stand.
Nancy looked across the yard. She spotted the car holding Lake. Frank Grimsbo was standing guard outside it. Lake’s attorney had wandered off to smoke. Nancy walked past the governor. He asked her if the women were all right, but she did not answer. Wayne Turner walked beside her. “Let it be, Nancy,” he said. Nancy ignored him.
Frank Grimsbo looked up expectantly. “They’re all alive,” Turner said. Nancy bent down and looked at Lake. The back window was open a crack, so the prisoner could breathe in the stifling heat. Lake turned toward Nancy. He was rested and at peace, knowing he would soon be free.
Lake smirked, goading her with his eyes but saying nothing. If he expected Nancy to rage at him, he was mistaken. Her face was blank, but her eyes bored into Lake. “It’s not over,” she said. Then she stood up and walked toward a stand of trees on the side of the house away from the barn. With her back to the farmhouse, all she could see was beauty. There was cool shade under the greenery. The smell of grass and wildflowers. A bird sang. The horror Nancy felt when she saw the captive women was gone. Her anger was gone. She knew the future and was not afraid of it. No woman would ever have to fear Peter Lake again, because Peter Lake was a dead man.
Nancy Gordon wore a black jogging outfit, her white Nikes were coated with black shoe polish, and her short hair was held back by a navy blue head band, making her impossible to see in the dim light of the quarter moon that hung over The Meadows. Her car was parked on a quiet side street. Nancy locked it and loped through a back yard. She was strung tight and conscious of every sound. A dog barked, but the houses on either side stayed dark.
Until Peter Lake came into her life, Nancy Gordon had never hated another human being. She wasn’t even certain she hated Lake. What she felt went beyond hate. From the moment she saw those women in the farmhouse basement, Nancy knew Lake had to be removed, the same way vermin were removed.
Nancy was a cop, sworn to uphold the law. She respected the law. But this situation was so far outside normal human experience that she did not feel everyday laws applied. No one could do what Peter Lake had done to those women and walk away. She could not be expected to wait day after day for the newspaper that brought news of the next disappearance. She knew the minute Lake’s body was found she would be a prime suspect. God knows, she did not want to spend the rest of her life in prison, but there was no alternative. If she was caught, so be it. If she killed Lake and walked away, it was God’s will. She could live with the consequences of her act. She could not live with the consequences of letting Peter Lake go free.
Nancy circled behind Lake’s two-story colonial by skirting the man-made lake. The houses on either side of Lake’s were dark, but there were lights on in his living room. Nancy glanced at her digital watch. It was three-thirty a.m. Lake should be asleep. Nancy knew the security system in the house was equipped with automatic timers for the lights and decided to gamble that that was why the living room was lit.
Nancy crouched down and ran across the back yard. When she reached the house, she pressed herself against the side wall. She was holding a .38 Ed had seized from a drug dealer two years ago. Ed never reported the seizure and the gun could not be traced to her.
Nancy crept around to the front door. She had studied the crime scene photographs earlier that evening. Mentally, she walked herself through Lake’s house, remembering as much as she could about the layout from her only visit. She had learned Lake’s alarm code during the murder investigation. The alarm panel was to the right of the door. She would have to disarm it quickly.
The street in front of Lake’s house was deserted. Nancy had taken Sandra Lake’s keys from an evidence locker at the police station. She turned the front door key in the lock, then took out a penlight. Nancy grasped the doorknob with her free hand, took a deep breath, and pushed it open. The alarm emitted a screeching sound. She trained the penlight on the keyboard and punched in the code. The sound stopped. Nancy swung around and held her gun out. Nothing. She exhaled, switched off the penlight and straightened.
A quick tour of the ground floor confirmed Nancy’s guess about the lights in the living room. After making certain no one was downstairs, Nancy edged up the stairs, her gun leading the way. The second floor was dark. The first room on the left was Lake’s bedroom. When she came level with the landing, she saw his door was closed.
Nancy approached the door slowly, walking carefully even though the carpet muffled her footfalls. She paused next to the door and walked through the shooting in her head. Ease open the door, switch on the light, then shoot into Lake until the gun was empty. She breathed in and exhaled as she opened the door, an inch at a time.
Her eyes adjusted to the dark. She could see the outline of the king-size bed that dominated the room. Nancy cleared her mind of hate and all other feelings. She removed herself from the action. She was not killing a person. She was shooting into an object. Just like target practice. Nancy slipped into the room, hit the switch and aimed.