IN HIS APARTMENT, MILLER WAITED FOR BARTON TO ARRIVE. Though the blue flame was gone there was still a lightness in his head, as if he had just awakened and was no longer in the world of dreams but not yet in the waking world either, drifting instead along some narrow, twilight edge between the two. He knew he wouldn’t feel this way for long, that the effects of the painkillers would dissipate and that sense of lingering in a kind of no-man’s-land would, like the blue flame, be gone. But there was nothing he could do till then, so he closed his eyes and listened anxiously for the sound of Barton’s car on the street below his front windows. Of course, when he closed his eyes, all he saw was Abby.
He had been able, for a while, to keep track of her after she had left. Doing so had nothing to do with his being a private investigator, or his being the son of the former chief of police, with the certain set of skills that were no doubt in his blood. It had, instead, everything to do with Southampton being a small town, especially during the long, desolate winters. After leaving Miller, Abby had waited tables for a few months at LeChef, the French restaurant on Job’s Lane, met an older man while working there, a regular customer, a man with money and a boat, or so the rumors said, with a house in Sag Harbor and all the time in the world to spend with Abby, keep her company day and night. Even now, all these years later, Miller found himself cringing at the idea of the nights she and this older man must have spent together. Abby was, when Miller had been around to receive it, when he wasn’t too busy with furthering his personal redemption through PI work, a dedicated lover, willing to do anything, to become just what the man she loved wanted. It was all Abby wanted not to be left alone at night, and so she made love as if doing so kept back the darkness and all the monsters that roamed within it, kept it all at bay. It was difficult for Miller, then and now, to imagine another man receiving Abby’s devoted attention and sometimes bold curiosity and eagerness—an almost wild need—to please. It was even more difficult for Miller to imagine this occurring night after night, imagine this other man—this older man—free to explore and enjoy what Miller, because of his business, his quest, had been unable to.
Miller learned where in Sag Harbor Abby and her lover lived but refrained from ever going there to get a look at the man, to glimpse a happy Abby, happy in a way Miller had been unable to provide, happy in the way she had always wanted. Now, of course, in Miller’s mind, the man was everything Miller wasn’t. Whether that was the case or not didn’t really matter. Miller wasn’t sure how exactly Abby had come to learn the truth about her lover, but after six months or so the older man with money and all the time in the world to give turned out to be a not-yet-divorced man with nothing but dwindling credit and crushing debt. A man on the run from a life he had grown tired of. The security Abby thought she had found—the security, Miller knew, she sought from all the men she loved—turned out to be anything but secure, so she fled in the middle of the night, just as she had fled Miller. Miller half-hoped that she would show up at his door, but she never did. This was in the summertime, and she simply disappeared into the crowd, into the anonymity of summer shares and off-the-books work. Eventually Miller learned that she had found a job as, of all things, a housepainter. Rumor had it that she was involved, to some degree or another, with her boss, and as much for her as for himself, Miller checked up on that man, found some things he didn’t like. It had taken him a while to piece the man’s past together, follow it to the one place he didn’t want it to go, the one place Miller couldn’t go, but by the time he had all the information he needed, and before he could even decide what exactly to do with it, Abby had moved on again. Miller didn’t know what had happened to make her flee, worried for several long nights that some harm had come to her through her boss, but then she turned up on his radar again, working as a bartender out in Montauk, living with yet another man. When that relationship eventually failed, Abby disappeared once again, this time, it seemed, for good. No rumors about her, no reported glimpses of her, no trail. Miller kept his ears and eyes open, read all the local papers looking for a mention of her, or a mention of some unidentified Jane Doe recently found by the police. Nothing, not even a whisper. A part of Miller saw this period as his chance to forget about her, put his foolish choice, the choice that had made her leave, behind him. But try as he might, there wasn’t a day, then and now, that he didn’t wonder what had happened to her, where she had gone, who she was with now. There wasn’t a day when he didn’t say her name aloud at least once, half the time without even realizing he had until he heard himself speak.
Now, though, suddenly, after all this time, he not only had a lead to her but the knowledge that she might be in danger. Miller could feel his heart in his throat and a surge in his legs that made sitting there and waiting an almost unbearable thing to do.
Finally he heard a car come to a stop outside on the street below, then a car door close. At last Barton was here. The downstairs door opened and closed, and then Miller heard her climbing the steep stairs to his apartment door. A light knock, and then she entered. They were family, she didn’t usually even bother to knock, but it had been a while since she visited, a while since either was anything more than an absence in their respective lives.
Miller was standing, ready to go, his heart like a clenched fist. Barton walked through the kitchen to the wide entranceway of his large living room. Miller got the sense almost immediately that they wouldn’t be rushing out the door, that Barton needed to tell him something first.
“What?” he said.
“I’ve been thinking that maybe you shouldn’t get involved in this, Tommy. That you’re too involved, you know? Maybe you should leave this up to Ricky and me.”
“I’m not sure I like any of this.”
“It’s Abby, Kay. You can’t possibly expect me to just sit here and do nothing.”
“You’re not responsible, Tommy. You have to know that. You’re not responsible for all the bad luck she ran into after she left you. She’s a grown woman, she makes her own choices. Bad choices, in her case. But you can’t save people, not from themselves.”
“I’m not trying to save her from herself. If she’s in trouble—real trouble—I want to help her.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt, Tommy. She’s maybe not the person she used to be. You might even find out she wasn’t ever the person you thought she was.”
“Do you know something you’re not telling me, Kay?”
Barton didn’t answer. She waited a moment, then said, “The address Spadaro gave me is where the second victim’s girlfriend, Romano’s girlfriend, lived. It seems that your Abby has gotten very adept at covering her tracks.”
“What do you mean?”
Barton shrugged. “She’s a ghost. Off the grid.”
“Then how does Spadaro know that she was going out with Michaels?”
“He wouldn’t say over the phone. But I have the feeling that Ricky has been doing some moonlighting.”
“What kind of moonlighting?”
“I have a feeling he’s been keeping an eye on this, whatever this is exactly, for a while.”
“But why would he be doing that? He’s just a uniformed cop.”
“He’s a uniformed cop with ambitions to be more, and a strong dislike for the chief. Whatever is going on, Tommy, it didn’t start tonight.”
“It seems we have some catching up to do. All the more reason for us to hurry, don’t you think?”
“Hurry and do what exactly?”
“Maybe Romano’s girlfriend and Abby were friends. If so, then it’s possible there’s something in her place that would lead us to Abby. We find Abby, maybe we can begin to piece everything together.”
“Like I said, are you sure you want to do that?”
“Do I have a choice? If Roffman is up to something, I need to know what it is.”
“I don’t think you’re seeing where this might be going, Tommy.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think your eagerness to find Abby has you blinded to something.”
“To what?”
“Roffman has a weakness for adoring young women. You know that.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Someone taught Abby how to hide her tracks. Maybe it was someone who had something to gain from her knowing how to hide her tracks.”
Miller looked at her for a moment. “You think Abby and Roffman are involved?”
“It would explain Spadaro knowing what he knows about her. About someone who’s obviously so determined to be make herself hard to find. If he’s been following Roffman in his spare time, keeping tabs on him, and if Roffman and Abby were having a secret affair, then that would explain Spadaro knowing what he knows.”
“But I thought Abby was with Michaels, according to Spadaro?”
“A small-time criminal. A dumb kid, by all accounts. Not exactly the father figure type she’s been hooking up with since you guys split.”
Miller could think of nothing to say, nothing to do. He just stood there, stunned into dumbness. His heart, so active a moment ago, felt like a dead weight in his chest.
“What were the odds, you know?” Barton said after a moment. “My ex and your ex ending up together. Who could have done that math?”
“I just don’t see it, Kay,” Miller murmured. It took all the air in his lungs just to get those six words out.
Barton took a step toward him, entering the large living room. “Let me ask you a question,” she said. “Those four-year-old business cards of yours, did you ever give one to Abby? Did she maybe take one with her when she left?”
Again, Miller could say nothing.
“Maybe I’m all wrong,” Barton offered. “Maybe your Abby has nothing to do with Roffman. I just thought you needed to know what I was thinking. I just needed you to know going in that you might not be happy with what we find out.”
“It’s not about being happy, Kay.”
Barton nodded. “Love rarely is, it seems. That’s why I get my love in pill form these days.”
Miller looked at her then. He’d known her longer than anyone—anyone who was still around, still alive. So many people gone, so many people dead. The last two souls on a dwindling frontier, the two of them, in an abandoned place. It was, this he had to admit, both a good and a bad thing. She’d seen him at his worst, as a troubled young man, then had seen him at his best, a man taking on the troubles of others, trying to help, trying to do good, to make up. He was neither person now, and here was Barton, witnessing that, too. Was this the reason for his part in letting their friendship ebb? Was it as simple as him seeing her see him and somehow being defined by that?
It was easier to be no one in the presence of no one.
In her oversized military surplus parka, Barton seemed to Miller, despite the fact that she was older than he, like some kid lost in hand-me-downs. She’d shed so much weight since quitting the force, not that she’d had any to spare. With it, certainly, had gone much of her strength, her power. Once, surprisingly strong, wiry. Now, thin, on the verge of frail. Was this what she had been trying to hide from? Trying not to face it by not facing him, seeing him see her, a woman faded into uselessness?
“I need this,” Miller said. “If I hadn’t . . . abandoned Abby, she wouldn’t be where she is now.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I do. Please, Kay. We have to assume we don’t have long before the cops find out that the victims had girlfriends. If we’re going to do this, we need to do this now.”
“It means breaking the law, you know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you didn’t do that.”
“It wasn’t ever about Abby before.”
Barton looked at him, thought about that. She never would have thought that either of their lives could come to this—she a clerk at a liquor store, he a landlord, both of them popping pills, one to feel nothing, the other, something. Who were they in the scheme of things? What would it matter to anyone if either or both of them just ceased to be?
“You maybe have amnesty, but I don’t,” Barton said. “If we get caught, I’m going to jail. Considering my relationship with everyone in the department, I’d rather that didn’t happen. I’d rather not have to stand there at their mercy with my hands cuffed behind me.”
“Then let’s make sure we don’t get caught.”
She looked at him once more, this time through squinted eyes. Doubtful but, too, a little curious.
“And how exactly are we going to do that?”
“Let me show you,” Miller said.
He told Barton to leave her parka because she was known by it, had been seen wearing it by a lot of people in town for a long time. From his bedroom closet he removed a black leather jacket, a gift from him to Abby that she had left behind the night she took off. His reason for hanging on to it was, of course, obvious. Barton put the jacket on; it fit as though it had been cut especially for her. For himself Miller grabbed a dark raincoat that he had found in the thrift shop in town and hadn’t worn in years, and an insulated vest to wear beneath it. From a footlocker at the bottom of the closet he dug out two pairs of rubber galoshes and two dark baseball hats. Barton could see that there were several more pairs of galoshes inside the footlocker. Miller grabbed two pairs of cotton work gloves, then one final item before closing and locking the locker. As they left his bedroom, Barton glimpsed the unknown item just before Miller slipped it into the pocket of his raincoat. It was a Brockhage pick gun, a device locksmiths used to pick tumbler locks quickly.
In his kitchen, from a cabinet beneath a counter, he removed a box containing a large salad bowl. He took the bowl from the box, then carried the empty box into his living room, got a roll of bright red Christmas wrapping paper from the closet there and proceeded to wrap the box with it. Barton watched him, saying nothing. When he was done, they left his apartment together, Miller carrying the wrapped-up empty box with him.
The address provided by Spadaro was a cottage near Conscience Point, out in North Sea. Barton insisted that she do the driving, but Miller would agree to that only if they took his pickup. That made sense, considering Roffman’s promise to Miller that his men would be looking the other way for the next day. He wasn’t likely to be pressed to explain the presence of his vehicle anywhere, and even if he were, he was Tommy Miller, known for showing up in places he shouldn’t.
On the way to North Sea, passing through patches of dense fog, neither Barton nor Miller spoke. Quiet, each lost in their thoughts for minutes at a time, just as Miller’s pickup was now and then lost to the curtain of grainy white that crossed in front of them, surrounded them. Barton had never been on this side of an investigation before—Miller’s side—and so she had no idea at all what the next hour might bring. As a cop she had been bound by laws and rules, remained bound by them even when she began to realize that many of the men around her weren’t. Not that she was an angel, of course—her affair with Roffman was wrong, there was just no way around that, and every now and then, when he needed them for a case he was working on, she provided Miller with copies of police reports, coroner reports, crime scene reports. Still, those infractions aside—in the name of love, she told herself, always in the name of love—she had never strayed far from the pledge she had taken the day she was given her badge. Tonight was, then, new for her. Heading to a private residence to break in before the authorities arrived. A step into a foreign world. It was, of course, new for Miller, too. Back when he had a license to protect, he had been bound by a strict code of conduct, a code he had set for himself and clung to like a zealot to holy doctrine. Unwaveringly righteous, that was his way, though she had always forgiven him for that, had always understood that this was who he was, who he had to be. But now that he was no longer a private investigator with a license to protect, and she was no longer a cop bound by a pledge, just how far over the line would they be willing to go? Was this breaking and entering an exception out of necessity, or was it merely the start of something more?
But as concerned about all that as Barton was, what occupied her thoughts most as they neared Conscience Point was the question of how much to heart Miller would take the notion of amnesty. Knowing him as she did, if she had ever wanted to set him up for some kind of fall, freeing him from the consequences of his actions and dangling the woman who haunts his dreams in front of him would certainly be one way to go. How much, Barton wondered, did Roffman know about Miller? How much had she herself told Roffman during the course of their affair?
Romano’s girlfriend’s place was a small single-story cottage set on a narrow lot in a neighborhood crowded with small single-story cottages set on narrow lots. As was the case with many of the areas on the outskirts of town, there were no streetlights lining this road. As they approached the cottage Barton slowed, but Miller told her to continue past and park several houses down. Once she did, they slipped their galoshes on over their shoes, put on their baseball hats, bills low, and the cotton work gloves. Miller then handed the empty box to Barton. She now understood what it was for—to any one of the neighbors who may have been looking, she and Miller would appear as nothing more than a couple bearing a gift, arriving for some late-night party. Barton felt an odd exhilaration, a rush she could only describe as a mix of appreciation and pride. As minor a detail as the present might be, the guy knew his stuff, that much was certain. She stepped out of Miller’s truck and, shoulder to shoulder, they made their way casually toward the cottage. Halfway there, to complete the illusion, Miller reached down and took Barton’s hand, held it as they walked the rest of the way. This was the first touch Barton had felt in a long, long time. She barely even felt her own touch these days, thanks to the Lexapro. The urge to come came infrequently, and when it did, the result was hard-sought and less than earthshaking. Miller’s hand, though, was warm, his grip strong. A male’s touch. It seemed both familiar and alien. Still, this intimacy, however much for show it was, was enough to send a chill through her, to cause goose bumps to rise along her thin arms. Her reaction—a sudden break in a dull but real tranquility, the kind of tranquility only a state-of-the-art drug can provide—caught her a little off guard.
There was a light on inside the cottage, somewhere toward the back of it, Barton could see that. They followed the brief sidewalk and climbed the three steps up to the porch, approaching the door. Barton wasn’t sure what exactly would happen next. Would Miller knock while they stood like a couple on the porch? What would they do if the door was answered? And if it wasn’t answered, how long would he wait before he picked the lock?
In the end, none of these questions mattered. The front door was closed, but not all the way, not to the point where the catch had slipped into the notch. Lightly, Miller pushed on the door with the knuckle of his middle finger. That was enough to send the door back an inch or so. He waited a second, listening, then pushed the door again, this time with all five tips of his gloved fingers. The door swung open a few feet, enough for them to glimpse inside.
It was as if a violent storm had moved through the interior of the cottage. Everything that Barton and Miller could see had been turned upside down, maybe even more than once. It was nothing short of chaos.
Miller slipped inside, Barton following closely. Her heart was racing. Miller remained just a few feet from the door for a moment, was once again listening. Barton listened, too. The only light on was in the kitchen, at the back of the cottage. It spilled down the narrow hallway and into this front room.
“Stay here,” Miller said quietly. He walked across the living room, stepping over a coffee table that had been turned onto its side, making his way around a couch that looked as if it had been dropped from a height. He paused at this end of the hallway, listened again, then started down, stopping halfway to look in the bathroom to his left. After a moment he continued past it, looked into the lighted kitchen, then came back down the hallway, returning to the living room. He walked to the entrances to the two bedrooms, looked inside each. Finally, he looked back at Barton, nodded an all clear. She stepped away from the door, looking down at the wreckage at her feet.
“Looks like someone got here ahead of us, huh?”
“Looks that way,” Miller said. He was preoccupied, studying the scene.
Barton took a few more steps. Everywhere she went, there was something under her feet.
“Well, it obviously wasn’t a robbery,” she said. “The stereo and TV are all still here.”
It was then that Barton looked up from her feet and saw what was occupying Miller’s attention. There were holes in the walls. Too large to have been made by fists. Below each one of them, mixed in with the debris of someone’s possessions scattered on the floor, were chunks of Sheetrock.
Miller said nothing, continued looking around. Barton sensed that he was puzzled by something, moving almost hesitantly, the way someone would when trying to reconcile in his head what could not be so easily reconciled.
“What?” she said.
Miller shrugged, looked around some more, then said, “The walls in the bedrooms had the same holes punched in them. The bathroom and kitchen, too.”
“Someone was looking for something.”
“My guess is they didn’t find it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“When you’re searching a place, you don’t start by punching holes in the walls. That’s a last resort.”
“But what makes you think they didn’t finally find whatever it was they were after?”
“There’s a wildness to this, a desperation. It’s like whoever did this was getting progressively more and more pissed as they went. There’s a line where searching becomes rage, becomes tearing apart. They obviously crossed that line.”
Saying nothing, Barton looked around.
“Whatever they were looking for,” Miller said, “it must have been important to them. Unless they had a crew, this took time. And it was noisy. But they were willing to risk it. You don’t do that because there might be something in the walls. You don’t do it for a couple hundred bucks.”
Barton, once again, felt a chill, felt goose bumps rise on her arms.
“Maybe we should get out of here, Tommy. This might have just happened, and whoever was here might still be around.”
Milled nodded, but absently. He said nothing.
“Tommy?”
“Do me a favor, Kay,” he said. “Look around for a phone.”
“I really think we should maybe get going.”
“Please, Kay.”
He didn’t look at her, was standing by a bookcase that had been emptied of its contents. His eyes were on the heap on the floor before him. Barton waited, then crossed the room. She figured the best place to look for a phone was the kitchen. She moved down the narrow hallway, saw as she entered that this room was worse than the front room. Cupboards emptied, kitchenware knocked off counters, all of it on the tile floor. Even the contents of the old freezer were there. Barton knelt down beside a carton of ice cream and opened it. The ice cream was soft but not yet melted. Whoever had been here hadn’t been gone for long.
There was a jack on the wall by the door but no phone mounted on it. Barton returned to the front room, kicked her way through the debris as she walked to the first bedroom. The holes punched in these walls were every few inches, both high and low. Thorough, but, too, as Miller had suggested, out of control. The mattress had been sliced down the middle and pulled off the box spring, which itself had been gutted. The drawers of a single bureau had been removed and turned upside down and emptied, then tossed to the side.
A life in ruins, Barton thought. She could barely imagine how it would feel to come home to this.
In the second bedroom, on the floor beside the bed, among framed photographs, their glass shattered, she found the cradle of a cordless phone. It took her a good minute of looking to find the phone itself. Returning with it to the living room, she saw that Miller was standing with his back to her. By the way he was standing, she could tell that he was looking down at something in his hands.
“I found the phone,” Barton said.
Miller didn’t answer. She walked across the room to him, stood at his side. In his hands was a small stack a photographs and the envelope that had contained them. He had already gone through the first few pictures, was holding those in his left hand. Barton looked at the photo he was now studying. A young man and a woman, sitting on a couch. Even with the room as it was now, Barton could tell that the photographs had been taken here—close, in fact, to the very spot where they were standing.
Miller said, “The guy’s Romano.”
“You sure?”
He nodded. “Roffman showed me a Polaroid at the canal.”
“Then this must be his girlfriend,” Barton concluded. The girl in the photo had dark, curly hair cut bluntly at the shoulders, and a wild smile. Mid-twenties, slender, in jeans and a red turtleneck sweater. Recent, maybe? Certainly not last summer; the sweater was a heavy, dense knit. She had a beer bottle in one hand, the other clasped around Romano’s arm. Adoringly. She was enjoying herself. In love? Maybe, probably.
“Pretty,” Barton observed.
Miller nodded, shuffled through the next few pictures. More of the same—Romano and his girlfriend laughing, drinking, kissing. The photos had been taken in a somewhat rapid succession. Not by a timer, then, by someone.
Miller shuffled through a few more photographs, then stopped. Romano was no longer in the picture. This photo was of the girlfriend and another girl, sitting together on the couch. Barton recognized her at once.
Abby.
Saying nothing, Miller looked at the picture for a moment. Studied it. Barton tried to read him but couldn’t. His face was stone. He shuffled to the next photo. In this one the girlfriend and Abby were laughing and drinking from bottles of beer. Abby was wearing green cargo pants and a white tank top. Ribbed, the tank top clung to her narrow torso, her nipples, hard, all but visible through the thin fabric. Miller moved to the next photo, and then the next. A few photos later he stopped dead again.
In this photo Abby and the girlfriend were kissing, their mouths open, their eyes closed. The next photo showed them kissing still, but trying to do so while laughing. The one after that showed them pulling away from the kiss, Abby reaching up under the brunette’s red sweater, the two of them still laughing.
“Well, I guess they know each other,” Barton said.
Miller said nothing. He thumbed through the rest of the photos quickly. He’d obviously seen enough, and anyway, this was what they had come here to determine, whether Romano’s girlfriend knew Michaels’s girlfriend, and if there was something here to lead them to her. Barton stepped away, looking around the room. She hadn’t seen a computer anywhere—certainly that might be of help. But she hadn’t really been looking for one. She decided to make another pass around and sift through the debris. As she did, she watched Miller pick two photos—each one from different places in the stack—and slip them into the inside pocket of his overcoat. He stuffed the rest of the photos back into the envelope, then dropped it onto the floor. He stood there for a moment, as if lost in deep thought. Barton waited for as long as she could, then said, “I don’t see a computer anywhere. In fact, I don’t see anything to indicate that she even owned one.”
“Does the phone have caller ID?” Miller said. He spoke as if in a trance, one he was certain he wanted to break free of.
“Yeah.”
“Scroll through it.”
Barton found the buttons, pressed them. “It’s empty,” she said.
“It was probably cleared out.”
“By who?”
“Romano’s girlfriend, or whoever was here.”
“Why would they clear out her caller ID?”
“Maybe they weren’t just looking for something. Maybe they were trying to cover their tracks.”
“So what do we do?”
“Hit redial.”
Barton did. The phone began to dial.
“Is there a number on the display?” Miller said.
“Yeah.”
“When it’s done dialing, hang up.”
Barton waited, then pressed OFF.
“What’s the number?” Miller said.
She read it off to him. It was an East Hampton number. “I should write it down,” Barton said.
“No, I’ve got it.”
Miller opened his cell phone, pressed a single button, waited a moment, then said, “It’s me. I need you to do a reverse look-up.” He repeated the number, then said, “Thanks, Eddie,” and hung up.
Neither said anything for a moment. The silence was odd, considering the state of the room they occupied. There should be noise, Barton thought, to go with this mess. Finally, she spoke, breaking the hush.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re partners in crime now, Tommy. Should you really be lying to me?”
“It’s a shock, seeing her after all this time, that’s all. Even just seeing a picture of her. I guess it’s a shock to see that she’s become quite the party girl.”
“Is that your fault, too?”
Miller said nothing.
“At least we know now that your business card might have actually been in Michaels’s wallet legitimately. Abby could have known he was in trouble and gave it to him. It doesn’t rule out Roffman being up to something, but—” She shrugged and stopped there. Her thought wasn’t exactly the consolation she had thought it would be when she first started to speak. “So what now?” she said.
“Eddie will call back in a minute.”
“So why are we still here? Why aren’t we leaving?”
Before Miller could respond, his cell phone rang. He answered it, listened for a moment, then said, “What?” Barton watched his face, could see the confusion. It erupted like sudden anger. “Are you sure?” Miller said. He listened a moment more, then thanked Eddie again and hung up. He looked to Barton absolutely bewildered.
“What?” she said.
It seemed almost as if Miller couldn’t say anything.
“What?” Barton repeated.
“It’s in my name,” Miller muttered.
“What?”
“The last number dialed from this phone is a number that’s registered to my name.”
“I don’t understand. Do you have a second number?”
“No.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It’s Abby. It has to be. She’s the only person who ever had access to the information someone would need to get a phone in my name. That’s how she stayed hidden all this time.”
“Jesus,” Barton said. “Did Eddie give you the address?”
“Yeah.”
“First hit redial again,” Miller said. “This time let it ring.”
Barton did. The phone rang a half dozen times. Miller waited until it had rung ten times total, then told Barton to hang up.
“No one’s there, or someone’s there but not answering,” Barton said.
“A machine would have picked up before ten rings, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So maybe she has call waiting. Maybe someone was on the other line and didn’t click over.”
Barton could see the look in his eyes. A wild glimmer. A man caught up in bargaining, a man grasping for something. To be this close now, suddenly, had to mess with his thinking, she knew that—thinking that probably wasn’t all that clear to begin with, thanks to the pain pills. But this was dangerous territory for Miller, there was no escaping that. Everyone has certain behaviors—bad behaviors—that linger always just below the surface, looking, like insurgents, for any reason to emerge or reemerge and take us over like a riot, drive us to do things we should know better than to do. Tommy Miller, as much as he wanted the world to believe otherwise, as much as he wanted to believe otherwise, was no exception to this. He was prone to obsession, Barton knew this, everyone who knew him knew this, and when geared toward something constructive, this tendency was a positive force in a town in need of all the positive forces it could get. But when geared toward destruction, as was the case back in Miller’s youth, innocent people suffered, Miller himself suffered, and terrible events—events with long-reaching repercussions, maybe even an endless chain of repercussions, like an echo that just won’t die—were set in motion.
Miller, then, like everyone, walked the edge of his own dangerous territory, walked it every day and every night of his life. A sentry guarding himself from the worst parts of himself. It was what we all do, Barton thought, there was never any choice in the matter, at least for most of us. The only question, for Miller, was what would it take to unleash the part of himself that waited always for its chance to break free, that followed him as silently and as closely as a shadow? What would it take for the violent child to overrun the man who had finally given up on the notion of redemption?
Barton laid the cordless phone on the bottom of the overturned couch. There was no way she couldn’t express the thought that was now foremost in her mind.
“I need to know, Tommy. Is this about getting answers, or is it just an excuse for you to find Abby?”
“It seems to me one will probably lead to the other.”
“Maybe. But maybe not.”
“Listen, I’m going to make a run out there, see what I can find. First, though, I’m going to take you home.”
“Like hell you are.”
“You’ve stuck your neck out enough as it is.”
“Look, if you don’t take me with you, I’ll just follow you. Besides, Roffman’s amnesty is no good out in East Hampton. Without me, you’re just a guy in a raincoat and baseball cap walking up to someone’s door at one in the morning. You need me.”
“I don’t have time to argue, Kay.”
“Then don’t. I’m going with you, Tommy, that’s all there is to it. In for a penny, in for a pound, you know.”
“It’s better if I do this alone—”
“Please, Tommy. You need me, okay? You need me. That’s all there is to it.”
It took a moment, but Miller finally nodded. He said nothing, though, what was there to say? They left the cottage together, Barton carrying the mock present in one hand, Miller beside her, her free hand in his. His palm, unlike when they had approached the cottage, was damp now. His grip, though, remained as firm. Walking back to his pickup, he surveyed their surroundings as carefully and as discreetly as he could, the bill of his baseball cap dipped low to obscure his face, the distant ends of the dark street on which they moved barricaded by the slowly rolling fog.
It took close to an hour to reach East Hampton. The village was brightly lit but as still as a ghost town, its shimmering streets and wide brick sidewalks empty. So fashionable, East Hampton was, so proper. A New England town at heart. There was less ground fog now, much of it having broken apart as Barton and Miller drove eastward through Noyac and Sag Harbor. But by the time they had reached the edge of East Hampton, the fog had risen back up to treetop height, where it had been when this night had begun. Low-hanging fog might have proved useful, provided them with some degree of cover, but they would have to make do with the somewhat commonplace appearance of a man and woman—two lovers, to anyone’s eye—coming back from late-night drinks, coming back home, hers or his or, if they were lucky, theirs. With the air clear and the village as well lit as it was, this pretense was the only thing they could count on to conceal their intention, if not who they were.
Abby’s apartment was on Newtown Lane, a wide side street that led from Main Street to the train station. The exact heart of the village, but nonetheless asleep at this time of night. Barton parked on the far end of the long block, not far from the train station. As she did this, Miller called Abby’s number—his number, technically—from his cell phone, first entering *67 to block his information, in case Abby’s phone was equipped with caller ID. Again, only a long string of uninterrupted ringing. Barton and he had removed their galoshes before reentering the truck back in North Sea, placed them in the truck’s bed. Quickly Miller grabbed them now, rinsed them off with one of several bottles of water he kept behind the driver’s seat, then handed Barton her pair. They pulled them on, then walked together down the sidewalk—no gift in hand this time, it was too late for them to play the role of late-showing party-goers. They reached Abby’s street door, found that it was equipped with an intercom system. Three buzzers, the first two of which were labeled with names, the third one blank. According to the information Eddie had provided, the third-floor apartment was Abby’s. Miller pressed the button for that apartment, the unmarked button, with his gloved hand and waited. Nothing. He pressed it once more. Still nothing. He glanced at Barton, and understanding what the next step would be, she positioned herself to best block him as he removed his pick gun from his raincoat pocket and inserted its long needle into the lock. He pulled the trigger twice and turned the knob. It spun free. They moved inside, closed the door, and started up the stairs, Miller in front, Barton close behind him.
The stairwell was lit by a cluster of small antique lamps mounted on the walls at each landing. Tulip lamps, the amber-colored glass giving off a warm glow. A nice thing to come home to, Barton thought. The building was old, the stairs steep, and the planks, no matter how much care they took when they stepped down, noisy beneath their feet. At the foot of the second landing, Miller and Barton stopped and looked up at the door to Abby’s apartment. The same warm, inviting glow was there, but Miller waited like somebody suddenly unsure of his footing. Barton couldn’t see his face, but there was a stiffness in his shoulders, and that was enough to give her insight into his state of mind. Finally, though, Miller pushed through his hesitation and started up the second flight. Barton followed. At the door he stopped once more, this time to listen. There were no sounds from within, no light visible under the door. Miller knocked. Nothing. He knocked a second time, again got no answer, was leaning down in preparation of picking this lock when something above the door caught his attention. He stood up straight, looked. Barton followed his line of vision, found immediately what it was Miller was looking at.
A photo of a naked woman, securely taped to the molding of the door frame by several pieces of clear tape. It seemed to Barton to be a photo cut from a magazine. At first glance, the woman was flawless. Annoyingly so. Above that was another photo. The same woman, from behind, looking over her shoulder. Above that was yet another photo, this one showing two naked women, a blonde and a brunette, tall, stunning, standing face-to-face and embracing, their breasts pressed together. The brunette was holding the blonde’s face with both hands, tenderly, while the blonde was pressing her hands on the brunette’s lower back, tugging her close. They were seconds from a kiss, their mouths open, their eyes shut, their heads tilted.
Barton and Miller stared at the photos for a moment. Finally, Barton said, “What the hell’s that all about, I wonder.”
“I don’t know,” Miller said.
He looked down at the doorknob, inserted the needle of the pick gun into the lock, opening the door with same ease with which he had opened the street door below. He and Barton then slipped inside, were, just like that, standing in Abby’s kitchen. Barton instantly felt a rush upon crossing the threshold, part fear, yes, but something else, too, something more. Her heart was pounding, she could hear it like wind in her ears, a reaction that caught her a little by surprise. She was also caught by the sense of power—no, not power, more like invincibility—there was in moving unseen like they were, in entering someone’s place without anyone knowing it, passing through obstacles as though they were nothing. Was this part of the draw of being a criminal? she wondered. Was this sense of being a ghost, of nothing there to hold you back, at the root of the psychology of the criminal mind? If so, it wasn’t a fact she remembered learning back in the academy, nor was it something she had picked up in her ten years as a cop. Of course, there was the chance that this wasn’t something criminals thought about at all, was rather something that only mattered to her because of all the doors—doors of every possible kind—that had been closed to her, both when she was a cop and now that she wasn’t.
Whatever the case, she felt a rush from her groin to the top of her head, a tingling along her arms and down through her legs. It was good to know, she thought, that there was at least something in this world that could punch through the pleasant cloud that was her Lexapro, bring the edges of her dulled nerves to something that was close to life.
There were no lights on in the apartment, but no real need of any because of the glow of the brightly lit village spilling in through the row of tall windows in the room beyond the kitchen. Miller nonetheless produced a small flashlight from his raincoat pocket, switched it on. He went through the apartment quickly while Barton waited in the kitchen. She had half-expected to find this place ransacked, but it was in perfect order. Abby had apparently become a very neat person. Back when she lived with Miller, at the house his parents had left him and then in the apartment by the train station, she had been as casual about being tidy as Barton was. While Miller explored the other rooms, Barton concentrated on the kitchen. The apartment, though small, was clearly upscale, she could tell that just from the kitchen. Hardwood floors, white walls, stainless-steel appliances. Above a small island in the center of the kitchen was a large skylight, its glass frosted white. Another light source, even at night, even whitened like it was. Miller appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the front room long enough to tell Barton that the place was empty, to look through the kitchen while he checked out the remaining rooms. Barton began to search through drawers, looking for mail—bills, credit card statements, letters, anything. She opened every drawer there was but found nothing. She even checked the garbage under the sink, but the basket was empty.
When she had exhausted all possibilities, she wandered into the front room. It was a living room, nicely furnished, as clean as the kitchen, with a fully appointed entertainment center. Big TV, stereo, everything. No sign of Miller there, so Barton entered a small hallway, walking past the bathroom, lit by another skylight, and into the only other room, the bedroom. It was small and dark but cozy. A cave for sleeping and making love. Barton couldn’t help but wonder if Roffman had ever been here. How long after she had called it off had he come across Abby? That is, in fact, if they were really together at all.
Standing by the bed, Miller was holding a phone in one hand, his unlit flashlight in the other. The phone was corded, Barton could see that, the kind with the caller ID display built into the cradle and not the handset.
“Tommy?”
He looked at her. “Hey.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Not really.” He reached down to the table beside the bed, switched on a small Tiffany lamp. The shade was apples and pears and cherries made of stained glass and thin bars of lead. “The only thing in the caller ID were two calls from the cottage. Mine, and then one a few hours before it.”
“No outgoing calls?”
“No. If she made any, they were cleared out.”
“What about an answering machine?”
“None. She probably used this phone only for emergencies.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s corded, not cordless. So if the power goes out and cell phone towers go down, she still has a working line.”
“That sounds more like the way you think.”
“It’s where she got it. Plus, a corded phone isn’t as easy to eavesdrop on as a cordless.”
Barton thought about that for a moment, then said, “Is that the only phone?”
“I didn’t find any mail or anything in the kitchen.”
Miller said nothing, didn’t move.
Barton looked around the room. The bed, the nightstand, a bureau. Walls as bare as the walls in Barton’s own place. A faint smell of rosewater, and the kind of stillness that is found when the occupant of a dwelling isn’t at home.
Finally, she said, “Tommy, it looks to me like she’s gone.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I checked the closet. An empty knapsack but no suitcase.”
“What does that mean?”
“Abby had an old leather suitcase that used to belong to her grandfather. It was one of her prized possessions. She always thought it was, I don’t know, romantic.” Miller shrugged, thought for a moment, then said, “It was what she packed her things in the night she left. Probably more valuable to her than the things she put into it.”
“Maybe she’s just gone for a while,” Barton said. She felt like she needed to offer him something. This was all she had. “I mean, a lot of stuff is still here. TV, stereo.” She glanced toward the open closet door. “Clothes. That’s a lot of stuff to leave behind.”
“She didn’t leave a single trace of herself, though. Not a single trace. No photos, no mail, no computer. Nothing that could immediately identify the person who lived here.”
“It could be she’s just a freak about her bills. She’s obviously a freak about neatness. Maybe she’s the kind of person who pays her bills the day they arrive, doesn’t like them lying around. As for photos, they can sometimes be . . . unwelcome reminders of things. I don’t have any in my place, either.”
“I don’t know, Kay. It just looks to me like the apartment of someone who very carefully bugged-out. That’s not really the act of someone away for a long weekend, is it? That’s the act of someone trying to cover her tracks.”
“Something else she learned from you?”
Miller’s only response was to shake his head. Barton didn’t know what to make of that. Was he saying he hadn’t taught that to her, or was he just caught up in the confusion, the puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out?
Or was it something else, something having to do with his standing so close to her bed.
“C’mon, Tommy,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”
He took another look around the room, then switched off the bedside light. In the gloom he looked down at the bed once more. Finally he turned and left the room. Barton followed him into the living room. He paused, glanced at the large TV, the DVD player, the DVR, the stereo equipment, and stacks of CDs and DVDs. Expensive stuff. Barton wondered how Abby made the money to buy all this. How could she afford this place, these things? She knew that Miller was probably wondering what was she doing with a onetime car thief. How could he not be?
Back out in the stairwell, just before closing the door, Miller stopped, looked again at the series of photos taped above the door. A hunch, come to him suddenly, it seemed to Barton, by the way he moved. He looked at the bottom photo, then the one above it, then the one above that. His head was tilted back so far back that he was all but facing the ceiling. His eyes were now fixed on something other than the photos.
Barton followed his line of vision to a smoke detector directly over their heads.
Before she could say anything, Miller was in motion. He told Barton to wait where she was, then returned into the apartment and came back out seconds later with one of the chairs from the kitchen. He placed it under the smoke detector, then stood on the chair, reached up and carefully removed the detector’s plastic cover. He examined it, found two holes in it, one for the indicator light, the other, it seemed, carved out of the plastic by the tip of a knife. With his flashlight held between his teeth he checked the detector’s inner workings. Next to the battery, held in place by several pieces of electrician’s tape, was a microvideocamera, the width of a dime and less than a half dozen dimes thick. Miller disconnected the camera from the nine-volt battery—the smoke detector’s battery—then removed it from the housing. He looked at it closely, then held it for Barton to see.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
Miller looked at the device. Built into it was a small transmitter.
“A piece like this has a very limited range,” he said. “The receiver has to be nearby.”
Back in the apartment, Miller went straight for entertainment center in the living room, pulling out the DVR and turning it around so he could get a look at the access panel in the back. Connected to the RCA inputs, the size of a small penlight, was the receiver.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispered.
He turned on the TV, then grabbed the remote from the coffee table by the couch and found the button to switch the video input to auxiliary. He then returned to the entertainment center, pressed PLAY on the DVR and held down REWIND.
On the screen, static, and then, in reverse, a bird’s-eye view of Miller removing the camera, Barton clearly visible beside him. Playing backward as it was, it appeared that he was installing it.
He turned the TV and DVR off, said quickly, “Give me a hand.” Barton helped him disconnect the power cord and connecting cables, then Miller pulled the DVR from its shelf and held it under his raincoat as he started toward the door. Back out on the landing, Miller waited as Barton returned the chair to the kitchen and pulled the door closed. Together they made their way down the two flights of stairs and out into the night. It was raining again, a cold, brittle rain, but Barton doubted Miller even noticed. When they reached his pickup they each peeled off their galoshes and tossed them into the bed again. Miller drove this time, heading for Montauk Highway; Barton sat in the passenger seat with the DVR on her lap and the microcamera in her gloved hand.
Just outside East Hampton, passing one of the hedged-in estates that line Montauk Highway, Miller noticed that a car was suddenly behind them. He informed Barton, and as they headed westward, they each watched carefully, silently. When the road curved, Barton was able to identify the vehicle as a town car with a glossy black paint job. The car followed them for several miles, moving as fast as Miller’s pickup, not on his tail but not keeping back, either. It stayed there, made no attempt to overtake or pass. Barton started to consider the possibility that she and Miller had walked into a trap, knew that Miller was certainly thinking the same thing, but as they reached Wainscott, the town car suddenly slowed down, then made an abrupt right turn into the dark parking lot of a restaurant called Helenbach. Barton kept a close eye on the blackness behind them for at least another mile. It was only then that Barton realized she was holding her breath. She let it out and looked at Miller. He glanced at her but said nothing.
For the rest of the ride back to Southampton there was never a sign of any car behind them, let alone the black town car, not even far back in the distance when Montauk Highway became a stretch of straight and well-lit road running through Bridgehampton, and Barton could see at times up to a good half mile behind them.
They rode without speaking, the long drone of the rain interrupted every few seconds by the sweep of the windshield wipers. They sounded, to Barton’s ear, like footsteps crunching in frozen snow.
In Miller’s apartment they connected the DVR to his small TV and turned both units on, stood together and watched. The camera was obviously motion-sensitive, and there was a time-and date-stamp at the bottom of the screen. The DVR had a program that allowed the viewer to watch the most recent recording first, from start to finish, then move back in time recording by recording. Miller selected this option, started with the recording of him and Barton discovering the camera and removing it from the smoke detector. The next recording, the event prior to that one, was of him and Barton arriving. As they looked up at the photos placed above the door, even with baseball caps on, they exposed their faces to the camera.
“Clever girl,” Barton said.
Miller nodded. The recording prior to that one was time-stamped at 8:11 P.M., roughly seven hours ago. It showed a woman leaving the apartment with an old leather suitcase in her hand. She made a point of looking up at the camera, even kind of half-waved at it. She said something, but there was no audio. The woman was, of course, Abby.
“That’s a few minutes after the first call from the cottage came,” Miller said.
“Someone called her and told her to leave.”
“But they called on her landline, her emergency line.”
“What does that mean?”
Miller shrugged. “I’m not sure. A call from the cottage on her land-line could have been a signal in itself.”
“She didn’t look all that upset,” Barton noted. “She didn’t look like someone who was just told her boyfriend was dead.”
Miller said nothing. The next recording was time-stamped a little before three in the afternoon, just hours before Michaels and Romano were murdered at the canal. It showed a man leaving Abby’s apartment, his face not visible to the camera. The recording prior to that one showed him arriving, a knapsack on his shoulder. He looked up at the nude photos and smiled wryly.
“That’s Michaels,” Miller said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Barton looked at the screen closely. “He doesn’t look like a guy who knows he’s going to be dead in a few hours.”
Miller pressed the button in the DVR, skipping back to the previous recording of Michaels leaving. He studied it, then skipped to the recording of him arriving.
“Do you see that?” he said to Barton.
“He arrived with a knapsack but didn’t leave with one.”
“Exactly. It looks like the knapsack in Abby’s closet.”
“So whatever was inside it is either still somewhere in her apartment or was in Abby’s suitcase.”
“My bet is the suitcase.”
“Mine, too.”
The next recording showed Abby leaving roughly an hour before Michaels arrived. The one following that showed her arriving with two bags of groceries in her arms.
“You don’t really stock up on groceries when you know you’re going out of town, do you?” Miller said.
Barton shook her head. “No.”
He pressed PAUSE on the DVR. The screen froze just as Abby was opening her door. Miller stepped away from the TV, thinking. Barton watched him, waiting.
“I should go back to the cottage,” he said.
“What for?”
“In case there was a hidden camera there.”
“The place was torn apart. If there was, whoever got there before us must have found it.”
“Maybe not. They might not have known to look for it. We didn’t. If there is one and the cops find it, it’ll show the two of us walking in and walking out.”
“Are you sure you should go?”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, I need you to stay here, see what else Abby’s camera caught. And I need you to get hold of Spadaro.”
“Why?”
Miller grabbed a notepad and a pen from the shelf below his television. “I need the home number of this man.” He wrote down a name, handed the pad to Barton. She read it, then looked at Miller.
“Who is he?”
“He owns a supply shop in Riverhead, lives in the apartment above his store. It’s on Main Street. I’ve bought a lot of stuff from him over the years.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Surveillance equipment, tools of the trade.”
“Why do you need his home number?”
“Whenever a dealer sells surveillance equipment to someone, he’s required to copy down all the info from the customer’s driver’s license. Name, address, license number. It’s supposed to be kept on file along with the serial number of the equipment sold so if it ever turns up where it isn’t supposed to be the cops can trace it to its owner. If we’re lucky, the camera we found was bought from that shop. He’s the only dealer on the East End, so there is a chance it came from there.”
“Why do you want to know who bought it? I mean, Abby must have put it there. She looked right up at it when she left with the suitcase. And those photos were there, so she had to have known.”
“It’s just a hunch,” Miller said. “Will you try to reach Spadaro?”
“Yeah, of course.” She glanced again at the pad in her hand. “Is this guy a friend of yours?”
“He knows me,” Miller said. “It might be best if you call him; he’s not all that fond of the police. Tell him you need this information for me, that I’d consider it a favor. And when you call Spadaro, call from a pay phone.”
Barton nodded. “Okay.”
“I’ll be back in an hour, Kay.”
“And if you’re not?”
“I will be.”
Miller looked once more at the paused image of Abby on the screen. He seemed almost reluctant to look away.
“Be careful,” Barton said.
He looked at her, nodded, and then crossed his living room and hurried out the door. Barton listened to him on the stairs, then listened to his pickup drive away.
Freshly rinsed galoshes on his shoes again, his pickup parked even farther down the dark road than before, Miller entered the cottage and did a quick search for hidden cameras. All four of the smoke detectors present were actual smoke detectors, and all of the wall- and ceiling-mounted light fixtures were light fixtures. Everything else that could have contained a concealed camera—knickknacks, throw pillows, framed photos and prints—was in disarray on the floor. The way in which this place had been searched seemed even more desperate to Miller now that he was there alone. Such thorough destruction, bordering, really, on vandalism. Maybe it was the contrast between this place and the solemn neatness of Abby’s apartment that made Miller feel this way. Or maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t help but connect in his mind the chaos around him with the image of Abby leaving with her beloved antique suitcase after being visited by Michaels. Was the item someone was so clearly intent on finding now in Abby’s possession? Could that be it, what was in play here, behind all this sudden death and trail of selective destruction? Could all this be a mad grab for some thing?
Miller felt suddenly, deeply helpless. He stood still for a long time, letting his mind wander, sifting through free association after free association until a single, crucial thought arose from the clutter. This took close to a minute, but when the thought came to him, Miller was glad he had taken the time necessary for it to be born.
The phone.
The last number dialed from it was a connection to both Abby’s apartment and Miller himself, a connection that needed to be, as best as possible, severed. Miller looked for the phone, remembered that Barton had left it on the upended couch, found it there and placed it on the floor. He looked around for something to smash it with, chose a nearby lamp, held it with his gloved hand like a club and brought it down on the phone, breaking it into several pieces. He then broke those pieces into even more pieces. Cops, via phone records, would be able to trace the call from the cottage to Abby’s apartment, and then connect Abby’s apartment to Miller, but that would take time, and anyway, it wasn’t the cops Miller was worried about. It was hard for him to imagine a cop trashing the place like this. Even a rogue cop, even one of the men blindly loyal to Roffman. And a cop would have known to press redial on the phone and collect the last number dialed, found his way to Abby’s apartment as easily as Miller and Barton had. No one in the last few hours had been caught on the camera outside Abby’s door but Barton and Miller and Abby, and anyone as intent as those responsible for the state of this place would have made a beeline straight for East Hampton if they had discovered the number and in whose name it was listed. That, plus the fact that no one had been tailing Miller and Barton, once the town car had turned off the road back in Wainscott, was reason enough to think that a cop hadn’t been here, hadn’t been involved in this.
So, then, who was? Too much destruction for this to be anyone who knew what he was doing. Someone with experience at this wouldn’t have bothered punching holes in walls covered with paint that was so obviously old, not unless what that someone was looking for had been hidden years ago. And, too, a pro would have pressed redial, gotten Abby’s address and shown up at Abby’s door, been caught by her surveillance. Unless the pro wasn’t thinking, had maybe something major to lose, had been put in a corner and because of this had gone over the edge into recklessness . . .
Stop, Miller thought. Stop chasing the mice in your head. The chaos, he knew, was getting to him. So, too, was the pain in his knee. The painkillers were wearing off. Nothing fucked-up your thinking like a dull, unending ache.
He closed his eyes, to get some relief from the mess around him, the sense it inspired him to make of it, took a breath in, let it out. He didn’t care who was killing who, not really, not anymore. He didn’t care who was looking for what, or why. All he cared about at this moment was Abby, finding her and making certain she was safe, doing that much for her, in the process undoing in some small way what he had done, the choice—the foolish choice—he had made all those years ago. He had no delusions about winning her back, or even earning a night with her in his arms—naked, fully clothed, it wouldn’t matter to him. There wasn’t a day when he didn’t remember her, remember something startlingly specific about her—the smell of her, the feel of her next to him in the night, the way she looked at him, the sudden sweat that would rise from her skin in the seconds before she climaxed, like a fever breaking. He had no delusions, as much as he thought of these things, of ever knowing them again. Still, it would be good to at least see her, to just once say her name aloud while in her actual presence.
He wandered to the other side of the front room then, near to the bedroom doors, and looked down at the envelope of photographs he had left there. He was thinking of picking them up, taking them all with him, when he heard something coming from down the hall.
It was the sound of dripping water.
He paused a moment, then followed the sound, moving down the hallway that led past the bathroom and into the kitchen. He doubted what he heard had come from there; it was the loud, ringing plop of a good-sized drop landing in deepish water, certainly that was water landing in a bathtub, not a sink. But he checked the kitchen first, more to make certain that he was in fact alone than anything else. The kitchen was empty, and the back door was closed and bolted, so he backtracked down the small hallway to the bathroom. He had of course checked it when he had first searched the place, when Barton was with him. The shower curtain had been drawn around the tub then, and he had pulled it back on the off chance someone was hiding behind it. No one had been, and the tub was, of course, bone-dry. He couldn’t remember closing the curtain, probably wouldn’t have done so, but it was closed now, and the dripping sound—slow but steady—was coming from behind it. He didn’t want to move any farther at first but knew he had to. The fact that the tub was now full of water could only mean that someone had been here in the time between his and Barton’s leaving and now. Why, of all things, would someone fill the tub? Deep down inside he didn’t want to know, but somewhere equally as deep he knew he didn’t have a choice, he needed to know, had asked for this, whatever this was.
He stepped to the curtain, reached out for it. Every part of him now was prepared for something bad. He took hold of the curtain, paused, then drew it back a foot or so, just enough to allow him to see behind it. Having himself ready for something bad wasn’t enough; there wasn’t anything he could have done to prepare himself for this, something this bad, this terrifyingly horrible.
In the tub, half-submerged in a mix of diluted blood and water, was a woman. Young, naked, both her wrists slashed. Miller in his panic saw those two details first, his eyes going to everything there was, every single thing, that would tell him that this was someone, anyone, other than Abby. He saw curly black hair, full breasts, a rounded face. Once these things had collected in his greedy mind, been sorted out and added together as best as his panic would allow, he recognized the dead woman as Romano’s girlfriend, the woman Abby had posed with in the photos, the woman she had kissed and whose sweater she had playfully reached under, to the delight of them both.
Miller stared at her, more from shock than any investigative skill, innate or acquired. He felt the urge to flee but also lacked what it took to move. His feet felt suddenly, ridiculously heavy. He found it impossible to believe what he was seeing, didn’t want it to be possible, how could it be? Not just the death—he’d been near death, had seen people die before, had more than just seen them die—but the mere logistics of it just didn’t add up. In the time since his previous visit, this woman had come back, drawn the water, stripped down and climbed in, then opened up both her wrists? Not likely. His brain repeated that, grasping at it. Not likely, not likely at all. It was the only sense, and small a piece of it at that, that could be made of this.
He finally found what it took to move, broke free of his paralysis and was heading down the narrow hallway for the living room, desperate to get out of there, to get away from there, when he first heard the sirens, far off in the distance but approaching fast. He froze yet again, but for only a second this time. His panic-induced stillness was ended by a surge of adrenaline that hit his legs and, despite his knee, despite everything, he turned and bolted back through the narrow hallway to the kitchen, ran through it, stepping over its debris, to the back door. He fumbled with the dead bolt at first, then spun it open and yanked the door back and burst through it, running across the backyard to the rim of the woods behind the cottage, running almost blindly, running even when his knee started to burn as if from friction. He didn’t look back, just locked on what was ahead of him—tree branches, saplings, uneven terrain—and followed the rim of the woods behind several cottages till he found himself at last behind the cottage in front of which he had parked his pickup. It was a dozen cottages down, at the very end of the residential street. He crossed the brief backyard and stuck close to the side of the dark cottage till he reached its front, then peeked around the corner. His chest heaving, he took a look down the street.
Two cop cars, their lights flashing, were parked at odd angles in front of the cottage. A third car was approaching from the far end of the street. It was now or never, Miller thought. He walked across the small front yard to his pickup at the curb—no running now, though it took all he had not to. He stood by the front bumper of the truck, hidden there from sight of the cop cars, and pulled off his galoshes, then stepped around to get in behind the wheel, first tossing the galoshes into the truck bed. Again, he moved slowly, calmly, despite what every nerve in his body was screaming. Once inside, he cranked the ignition—would they hear it over the sound of the rain and across the distance of the long block?—and turned right onto Shore Road, followed it to Cedar Avenue, turned right onto that, working his way back around to Noyac Road. At Noyac he made a left, not a right, which would have been the direct route back to Southampton. Amnesty or no amnesty, he didn’t want to risk passing any other cop cars that might be racing toward the scene. He watched his rearview mirror as he drove, keeping an eye out for the first sign of a cop car behind him. But none appeared. He had gotten away unseen. Still, his heart was pounding as he continued forward, putting distance between himself and the cottage, the dead body of a beautiful woman in it and the cops now more than likely moving through the chaos of the hastily searched rooms.
Miller followed Noyac Road to Majors Path, took that south, his heart doing flips in his chest. Just before Majors crossed Sunrise Highway, on the outskirts of the village, he pulled over and got out, grabbing the two pairs of galoshes from the truck bed and tossing them down a storm drain. He was miles from the cottage now, on a desolate road just past the town dump, so there was no one around to see him ditching the incriminating items. He thought he’d feel better once they were no longer in his possession—it had been all he could think about as he drove, struggling not to speed—but he didn’t feel any different at all. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and his mind wouldn’t stop thinking, running, chasing a new set of mice. It was, he knew, unlikely that it had been chance that the cops arrived at the cottage while he was there for a second time, and so long after the actual destruction, when a neighbor might actually have been alerted to the possibility of some kind of trouble going on there by the sound of furniture being overturned and Sheetrock being smashed. Of course, since he doubted Abby’s friend had committed suicide, maybe the neighbor had heard something, seen someone leave. Maybe that someone had left just minutes before Miller had arrived. There was no way of knowing that now, and when there was no way of knowing something, the safest thing was to assume the worst. Someone must have watched Miller enter the house—a neighbor, or someone else, whose presence on that street was certainly less than innocent. These were the options, the ones that he could think of now, neither good but one maybe a little better than the other, if only a little. At some point in the near future, though, Miller would need to determine which of these had been the actual cause of the cops’ arrival, how much the person who had alerted them had seen or knew.
He called his landline as he drove, but Barton didn’t pick up. She would have seen his cell number on the caller ID, so that meant she had left, was probably talking to Spadaro right now. He thought of calling Barton on her cell phone—maybe she could find out from Spadaro how the cops had come to be at the cottage—but he didn’t dare. So far there was no direct link between him and Barton, and a call to her cell phone from his at this time of night, moments after he had fled the cottage one step ahead of the cops, would require her, should this all go to hell, to do some explaining to the very men who had driven her off the force. He wanted to spare her such grief.
From Majors Path, Miller was only a few moments from the train station. He made his way into the village and parked his pickup at the far end of Powell Avenue, just a few blocks east of his apartment. Powell was as much of an industrial side of town as there was in Southampton—running parallel to the train tracks, it was home to a lumberyard and several small auto shops on one side of the street and a row of working-class houses on the other. Miller ran the length of Powell in less than a minute, paused at the corner of Elm to study his street, what was parked along it now, saw nothing out of the ordinary. He then looked for Barton’s Volvo, didn’t see it anywhere. He stepped out into the open and walked the dozen steps to his street door, then climbed the steep stairs and entered his cold apartment.
He heard only silence but hadn’t been expecting anything else. He moved through his kitchen to the large living room, then checked his bedroom and bathroom, making certain he was alone. He went back into the living room, looked at his TV, saw immediately that the DVR was gone. He took a quick look around; maybe Barton had moved it, or placed it somewhere for safekeeping. But he couldn’t find it anywhere. It, like she, was gone.
He stood there in his empty apartment, still laboring to catch his breath, his heart still throbbing. The blue flame in his chest, so long gone now, had been replaced by a burning in his lungs. There was, too, heat in his knee now, but there was nothing comforting about that. Out of habit he thought of his painkillers, the bottle on the table by his bed, but quickly dismissed that idea. He needed a different kind of escape now, an actual route through the trouble ahead and not just a hole in which he could sleep and hide.
He listened to the stillness around him, as still as Abby’s place had been, as still as a graveyard. There was only one thought on his mind now. Why had Barton taken the DVR? Had she found something she didn’t want Miller to see? Had she witnessed Roffman coming to visit his new lover? Had she, when push came to shove, felt more loyalty—a twisted, neurotic loyalty—toward Roffman than she did toward Miller? Or, with Roffman’s fate in her hands for a change, had she found the idea of revenge too tempting to pass up?
For whatever reasons, had Barton betrayed him?
Another thought came to his mind then, the worst yet. Had Barton been the one to send the cops to the cottage?
There was nothing left for Miller to do but to wait and see. But he had no desire to do so there, sit around like a rat in a trap, so easily found by anyone who might want to do him harm. There was, then, only one place for him to go.
He left his apartment, checking all directions before stepping out onto the sidewalk, out into the open, then made his way around to the back of the restaurant and let himself in through the kitchen door. He sat at a table toward the back of the room, Elm Street and the train station visible through the large front windows but himself invisible to anyone who might pass by. With the lights off and a tumbler of grappa in front of him—for his knee but also for his nerves—he waited there for whatever was to come next.
He’d been there only fifteen minutes when his cell phone rang. The number on the caller ID was one he recognized, one of the pay phones in town. He answered quickly, knew who it had to be.
“Where’d you go?” he said.
“I was getting the information you wanted,” Barton said. The sound of her voice was no small relief to Miller.
“Where’s the DVR?”
“I have it with me,” she said. “I didn’t want to let it out of my sight. I swung by my place to get my VCR so we could make copies. And a change of clothes and things. I found something on the surveillance you’ll want to see, Tommy.”
Miller already knew what it was. He could tell by the sound of her voice. “Hang up and I’ll call you right back from a landline.”
“Okay.”
They hung up. From the phone behind the bar he called Barton back. She answered on the first ring.
“I watched everything there was in the memory,” she said. “Abby installed the camera herself about two weeks ago. You can see her doing it. The only people who came and went during that time were Abby and Michaels—with one exception.”
“Roffman,” Miller said.
“Exactly. But I’m not sure what to make of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He showed up two nights ago, came to the door, knocked, glanced up at the photos, then left. Hardly definitive evidence.”
“Was anybody home at the time?”
“Michaels had been there but left about ten minutes before Roffman showed up.”
“What the fuck?” Miller said quietly.
“I know. Roffman is up to something, Tommy. There’s no doubting it now.”
Miller nodded, took a breath, then said, “Did you get hold of Spadaro?”
“Yeah. He got your friend’s home number and I called it.”
“What did you find out?”
“The good news is he sold a device with that serial number. The bad news is, it was over four years ago.”
“Who to?”
“A guy named Bechet. Jonah Bechet.”
Miller said nothing.
“Tommy?”
“I’m here.”
“I take it your hunch was right.”
“Yeah.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a guy we need to find as soon as possible. Did you get an address?”
“Yeah. It’s just a few blocks from you, actually, on Hampton Road. But the address is four years old, so he might not be there anymore. You know how people move around a lot out here. I can see what Spadaro can find out through the DMV.”
“Do that. And find out, too, if you can, why the cops showed up at the cottage minutes after I got there.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“You obviously got out okay.”
“Barely. But there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Romano’s girlfriend was in the tub. Dead.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“Her wrists were slit.”
“That doesn’t quite add up, does it?”
“No. Someone put her there and then called the cops when they saw me go inside.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m in the restaurant.”
“Downstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing down there?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m a little shaken. She didn’t have any clothes on.” He hesitated, then said, “For a second there I didn’t know if it was Abby or not. Of the four of them, she’s the only one who’s left.”
“We’ll find her, Bobby. How’s your knee holding up?”
“It’s not.”
“Do you have any Tylenol or anything?”
“No.”
“I’ll bring some. First I’ll call Ricky back, then meet you at your place, okay? We need to make some video copies of what’s on the DVR, for safekeeping.”
“Yeah,” Miller said. “See you in a bit.”
They hung up. He went back to the table but didn’t sit, downed the rest of the grappa standing, feeling its heat move down through him as he looked toward the large front windows. The heat wasn’t the same heat he felt when he took his painkillers, but it would have to do. Outside, it was still raining, a mizzling rain, though, as much churning mist lingering in the air as needlelike drops falling. There were blurred halos around the streetlights that lined Elm Street, and the lights that ran the length of the train platform. Miller watched them all for a moment, till his own vision began to blur from exhaustion and everything that cast or reflected even the smallest trace of light took on a halo all its own. He then left the tranquility of the empty restaurant and returned to his apartment above, to the very place he’d been when he last felt Abby next to him in the dark, last heard her voice and the sound of her feet on his floor, was last in her presence when he spoke her name aloud.
Standing at his front window, watching the train station, his overcoat still on, it was difficult for Miller to think of Abby at all and not see in his mind’s eye the dead woman in the bathtub. It was difficult, too, not to do the math—first the two men were killed, then, hours later, one of the men’s lovers. Assuming the worst—the best and only thing to do in this situation—meant that Abby could be next. Would be next. The thought was more than Miller could bear.
Leaving his window, Miller grabbed a lockbox from an upper shelf in his bedroom closet, thumbed in the combination and opened the lid, looked at the Colt .45 semiautomatic and the three loaded clips resting on a cloth inside. Dark, well-oiled metal, a walnut grip, the thing was older than he. Removing the items, he quick-checked the weapon, then slid in one of the clips. Back in his living room, at his front window, the gun hanging heavy in the pocket of his overcoat, Miller looked out at the last hours of night and waited for Barton.