Chapter 49

HE DRAGGED ME into the dark alley between buildings on the south side of the riding academy. Shoving me hard against the wall, my brow mashed into the rough brick, he hissed in my ear. “I’m going to take my hand away, but if you scream, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

I stopped struggling, stood still, and gave him what little bit of a nod I could manage. He had me pinned so forcefully I could barely move my head.

Still keeping my face and body pressed against the alley wall, his hand came away from my mouth. Before I could take a deep breath, I heard a click, and felt the cold steel muzzle of a pistol against my cheek.

I didn’t have to turn around to see who was holding a weapon on me. “Why are you doing this, Arnold?”

“You phoned Didi, and lured her away. You put her up there, with that horse woman.”

“No, Arnold, I didn’t call her.” I turned around but kept my back to the brick wall. If I had to launch myself at him, to keep him from shooting me, it would be better to have something to push off from. “Didi ran away by herself. After you and Matt left the Dakota, I got the idea she might come here.”

It was pretty dark, but there was just enough light from the three-quarter moon and from the streetlight just past the mouth of the alley for me to see Arnold’s face. His features were a portrait of anguish. Beads of sweat dotted his high forehead, but his hand holding the pistol on me was steady. I had no doubt that if I made a wrong move, or said the wrong thing, he would kill me.

I leaned against the wall, my hands at my sides, and kept my tone gentle. Nonthreatening. “Didi’s in a terrible state,” I said. “She knows that you tried to kill Jay Garwood, and she’s hysterical because she feels guilty about it.”

“Guilty? That’s ridiculous! She didn’t do anything wrong. It was that bastard—”

“No, Arnold. She feels guilty because she lied to you about Jay.”

“What are you saying?” His voice was tense. Arnold was so smart, I think he suspected what I was about to say, but was fighting comprehension.

“Didi told you Jay tried to do something to her, but he didn’t. She said that because she wanted you to stop him from seeing Veronica. She thought you’d just scare him away.”

“No! That’s not true—she wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Arnold, she’s done it before. Remember back a few months ago, when she had her riding accident? You thought it was because Nancy was careless in tightening the girth, but that wasn’t true. Didi held her arm inside the strap so that it couldn’t be tightened properly and so would slip while she was riding. She fell off that horse on purpose, so that you’d blame Nancy and break up with her.”

Arnold shook his head furiously. “Ridiculous! If that were true, Nancy would have told me. We had a terrible fight. I said awful things—accused her of deliberately trying to hurt my daughter. She wouldn’t have taken that if what you’re saying—”

“Nancy refused to tell you the truth, and wouldn’t let me, because she said it would break your heart to think Didi would do something like that. Nancy took the blame because she loved you.” That turned out to be a big mistake, I thought, but I kept those words to myself.

I could see that Arnold was shaken by what I’d told him. The pistol’s barrel was still pointed at my heart, but his mind had turned inward, processing what he’d heard. I took a chance on his divided attention, eased my right hand into my pocket, and turned on the little tape recorder.

“Didi saw you come home early this morning,” I said. “She saw you put the pistol back in your safe. This afternoon, when she heard that someone shot Jay Garwood, she realized you were the one, and she knew it was her fault. When I told her that Jay was alive, not dead, she broke down and told me what made her run away.”

“No! No . . .”

“I knew Nancy didn’t murder Veronica, so I’ve been trying to figure out who did. I didn’t seriously consider you, because you didn’t have a motive. But now I know my mistake was in using the wrong verb. Of course you wouldn’t have murdered Veronica—but you killed her, probably by accident. You thought she’d exposed Didi to a child molester, so you hit her in a fit of rage, with the nearest object handy. I’m sure you didn’t mean to kill her—you lost your head for that one terrible instant. Then, realizing she was dead, you panicked and left the building to keep the appointment with your client. You didn’t know Nancy was coming to see Veronica, or that Nancy would be discovered with the body and charged with murder. You wouldn’t have deliberately framed Nancy, would you?”

“No.” Arnold’s voice was a croak of pain. He took a deep breath and swallowed before he went on. “That lawyer I wanted her to hire—Cynthia, the one I trained—I was really going to mastermind Nancy’s defense, behind the scenes. I would have done anything to save her from prison.”

“Anything except confess,” I said, angry that he’d made Nancy suffer.

“I had to think of Didi. Her mother was . . . gone. I couldn’t let her lose her father, too.” Arnold began to look a little unsteady on his feet. “It’s so hot.” He lowered the pistol, but just a couple of inches; the barrel was still aimed at my kill zone.

“Arnold, you look sick,” I said.

“I’ve got to sit down. Have to think . . .” He brought the gun back up and gestured with it. “We’ll go to my car.”

The last thing I wanted to do was get into a car with a distraught killer holding a 9-mm automatic, but I was sure that if I tried to run, he’d shoot me. Even in his current confused state, he was bigger and stronger than I, and armed. And desperate. I couldn’t hope to overpower him. All things considered, I decided to do what he wanted. At the very least, cooperating would buy me some time. Silently, I swore at myself for leaving the apartment in such a hurry I forgot to take the little canister of Mace I usually carried when I went out alone at night.

With Arnold holding the pistol against my side in such a way that no one passing us on the sidewalk could see what he was doing, he directed me forward and around the corner to his big silver Lincoln. He pressed the button on the car key, which turned off the burglar alarm and unlocked the doors. Bizarrely, even now he played the courtly gentleman and opened the passenger door for me.

“Get in, lean forward, and put your hands flat on the dashboard,” he said. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if you scream, or try to run.”

I did as I was commanded.

As he climbed in behind the wheel, I said, “I’m cooperating, Arnold. I want to talk to you.” He settled his bulk and closed his door, but kept the weapon pointed at me.

I said, “This position is getting uncomfortable.”

“All right,” he said. “Lean back against the seat and lock your fingers together. Rest your clasped hands in your lap.”

I followed instructions.

He turned the key in the ignition. The motor came to life. He let it idle. “It’s hot outside. I need air-conditioning so I can think,” he said.

His needing to think was good for me. Clearly, his internal “jury” was still deliberating my fate.

Jury. That thought inspired a tactic I could take with him. “Arnold, you went a little crazy because you thought your daughter had been molested. Veronica’s death was just an accident. No jury would convict you.”

He kept the gun on me. “What about my shooting Garwood? That wasn’t in the heat of the moment. I’d charted his habits, found out about his five A.M. jogging routine, and I lay in wait for him.”

“But you didn’t kill him,” I said. “You could have—you could have aimed at his head or his chest—but instead you fired to hurt him, to make him suffer. Isn’t that right?”

“Wrong. I fully intended to kill him, but I wanted him to die in as much pain as possible, because of what he . . . Oh, God!” Arnold’s face contorted in horror. It was as though finally the full realization struck him that what he had done was based on a child’s lie. He whispered, “Didi . . . she’ll never get over knowing . . .”

Didi was his weakness. I hammered on that. “You can protect Didi. Let’s go to the District Attorney. You’ll explain what happened, and make a deal. You can say you thought Jay had been inappropriate with Didi—you don’t need to say she told you that he had. If you confess, and plea-bargain, there won’t be a criminal trial. She won’t have to testify about what she did. You’ll spare her a terrible ordeal. And you can probably make a deal with Jay for no civil trial. He’d only sue you for money, compensation for what he’s going through. If you’re willing to pay, I’ll make him understand that he’s better off agreeing to a settlement instead of waiting years to get to court, and paying a lawyer.”

We sat in silence. Arnold had set the air conditioner on high. While he was thinking, the temperature in the vehicle got lower and lower. I began to shiver, but I wasn’t sure whether it was from the cold or from the fear that I wouldn’t leave this car alive.

Well, I wasn’t going to just sit here and wait to die. Carefully, I unlocked my fingers and slid my right hand over toward the passenger door. Keeping my body straight, moving only that one hand, I explored the door until I grasped the handle.

At that moment Arnold heaved a deep sigh. I stiffened. He’d made up his mind and was going to do—something. With a little groan, he transferred the pistol to his left hand, turned the key again, and started the car.

My hand gripped the door handle. If I had to, I’d jump, risking minor injuries to stay alive. “Arnold, where are we going?”

“To the police station,” he said.

Traffic was light. The Twentieth Precinct was only three blocks away. We were in front of the entrance in a couple of minutes.

Arnold stopped the car, but didn’t turn off the engine. “Get out.”

“You can pull into that spot next to the cruiser,” I said.

“Open your door and get out.” His voice was without inflection. The voice of a robot. At this moment, he seemed even more frightening than he had been back in the alley. I wasn’t going to argue with him.

I opened the door, swung my right leg out onto the street. Suddenly, I felt a powerful shove in the middle of my back. I went tumbling out of the car, onto the cement. My left shoulder thudded against the curb.

The uniformed officer at the entrance yelled, “Hey! Stop!” as Arnold floored the accelerator and zoomed away. The Lincoln’s taillights, glowing like two red eyes, disappeared as the car screeched around the next corner.

“Are you okay, miss?” asked the police officer as he helped me to stand.

My shoulder hurt where it collided with the curb, my left knee was skinned and the fabric covering it shredded, but when I reached into my right-hand pocket and pulled out the unharmed little tape recorder, I said, “I’m fine, but I need to see Detective Phoenix right away.”