The Burning Edge, page 6
“Jack,” she started, “I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”
“What’s not a good idea?”
“Our living together.”
“What?”
“It’ll just complicate things with our work. It would be too complicated for me.”
“Complicate how? What is this?”
“I think we need a break.” Tears filled her eyes. “This is hard. I’m so sorry, Jack.”
The blow nearly winded him. He released the box in his pocket, tossed several twenties on the table and walked out. He kept walking that night until he found himself on the Brooklyn Bridge, staring at Manhattan. He contemplated the river for the longest time before he caught a cab back to his empty apartment.
The subway’s automated public address called: 157th Street.
Gannon’s stop.
His neighborhood was at the southern edge of Washington Heights, in the Sugar Hill district of Hamilton Heights. He liked it here. People were fiercely proud of the community and watched out for each other. On his way home, he stopped at the corner grocery for maple ice cream.
He did his best thinking with ice cream.
His building was a seven-story walk-up on 151st Street where he rented a fifth-floor one-bedroom for thirteen hundred dollars a month. It was clean, quiet, with oak floors, crown molding, milk-white walls and a whole lot of nothing else.
Sure, he had a few things: a used black leather sofa, a coffee table, a TV, a plain table and his personal laptop. Next to it, the New York Times, News, Post, Newsday, USA TODAY and the Wall Street Journal stood in neat towers, like a newsprint shrine to his faith in the truth.
He flopped onto his sofa and spooned ice cream from the carton. Catching night breezes, soft laughter and the echo of distant sirens that floated through the window he’d opened, he assessed his day and his life.
Seeing Katrina had made him think of the little box with the ring he’d bought for her at Tiffany’s. It was still in his nightstand. He didn’t have the stomach to go back for a refund. Maybe because he hoped against all reason that Katrina would change her mind. That was before he heard she’d started dating a DEA agent a week after dumping him.
He should’ve tossed the ring off the Brooklyn Bridge.
A sudden wave of loneliness rolled over him.
Why?
He’d been a loner all his life. Was he feeling this way because he’d seen Katrina? Maybe it was his sister, Cora. Despite all the pain she’d endured, she’d found joy with her daughter, Tilly. It had forced him to take stock of himself.
I’m thirty-five. Do I want to spend the rest of my life alone?
Maybe he hadn’t met the right woman yet.
Taking a hot shower, he considered the women he’d known. There was Sarah Kirby, the human-rights worker he’d met in Rio de Janeiro. There was Emma Lane, who lived out west. Then Isabel Luna, the journalist he’d met in Mexico, although she was married. Gannon could never forget her, or the others.
All of them had blazed through his life like comets.
As he brushed his teeth, his focus shifted to his story.
Four men died today.
He thought of the families of the guards, the agent. Man, his heart went out to them. He knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of that kind of news, when the ground beneath you vanishes and you plummet into a chasm of darkness.
Who did this?
Gannon fell into his bed, exhausted, set his alarm, then reached for his BlackBerry to check his competition again. Nothing new.
He had to find a fresh angle on the story.
Worlds had collided at the Freedom Freeway Service Center in Ramapo. For three guards just doing their job and an FBI agent.
I’m missing something.
Sleep was gaining on Gannon as he reread his work.
The witness.
She was beside the agent when he was murdered.
Who was she?
How did she come to be there? What had she been doing in her life up to that point? He had to find her. If he could put readers in her place, take them through that moment, well, that would be one hell of a story.
10
New York City
Two FBI agents escorted Lisa Palmer through a side entrance of the Westover Suites Hotel on West Twenty-ninth Street.
The men said little during the drive from Ramapo to Midtown and used a service elevator to take her to a twenty-fifth-floor suite of two large adjoining rooms.
To stem the adrenaline still rippling through her, Lisa held her bag tight and scanned the layout. Each room had two doubles and a single bed. There was a hint of Chanel as three women emerged to greet her.
“Hello, Lisa, I’m Agent Vicky Chan.” The first woman extended her hand. She was wearing jeans and a blazer over a T-shirt.
“This is Agent Eve Watson,” Chan said. The second woman, also in jeans, wore a New York Yankees sweatshirt. She had a firm handshake.
Chan indicated the third woman, wearing bifocals and a conservative skirt suit. “This is Dr. Helen Sullivan.”
Sullivan sandwiched Lisa’s hand in both of hers with warm concern. “Please call me Helen. I’m a psychiatrist with the FBI’s Office for Victim Assistance. I’m here to help.”
Lisa glanced around again, concluding that the bags in the other room belonged to the women. This looked like a sleepover with strangers. All the curtains were drawn. Outside, a passing siren underscored how Lisa’s world had been turned upside down.
Chan touched her shoulder.
“We want you to feel safe and comfortable while you help us with the investigation,” Chan said. “No one knows you’re here. This location has not been disclosed. With the exception of Helen, we’re all armed. The guys—” Chan cued the men to leave “—will be in the rooms across the hall.”
“Where are Ethan and Taylor?”
“NYPD detectives are bringing them now with your friend Rita Camino.”
“My kids must be scared. I haven’t spoken to them yet. I—I—I feel like—damn it—” Lisa’s heart raced.
“They’ll be here soon,” Chan said.
“Lisa.” Sullivan stepped closer. “After an event like this, it’s normal to go through a range of emotions.”
Lisa shot her palm at Sullivan.
“With all due respect, Helen, don’t tell me about my feelings, please. I went through hell when I lost my husband.”
“Yes, I know. Matt Bosh briefed me on the phone. But Lisa, you’re enduring a lot of trauma.”
A tense moment passed as Lisa eyed Sullivan then Chan.
“Did the FBI find the monsters who did this?”
“We’re still searching.”
“Because I shouldn’t be here right now,” Lisa said. “I shouldn’t be here talking to you, waiting to see my kids. That bastard put a gun to my head! He wanted to kill me, too. And if that had happened, I would never see my kids again!”
Lisa dropped her bag and covered her face with her hands.
“Where are they? Oh, dear Jesus!”
The women moved to console her.
“It’s okay,” Sullivan soothed her. “It’s okay. Your fear, guilt and rage—anything you’re feeling—are natural reactions to this terrible event, which has hijacked whatever control you’ve had of your life.”
Lisa cried softly and Sullivan passed her tissues.
“You and your children have already been victimized by your husband’s death. This kind of trauma reopens the wound. Healing will take its own time. Everyone reacts differently. We know that Ethan and Taylor are your chief concern,” Sullivan continued. “Don’t underestimate their ability to cope. Children are perceptive. You should tell them, give them an idea you experienced something troubling. They may not need to know every detail, but they need to understand what happened to you. They need to have enough information so that they can help you heal.”
Lisa nodded, touching the tissue to her eyes until she found a measure of composure.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It all happened so fast. I just stopped at a truck stop. I was just trying to get home.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I have to fix myself up before the kids get here.”
Lisa went to the bathroom where she switched on the light and stood before the mirror, still trembling. Helen was right. What happened today had torn open her wound, pulling her back over time to that night when she was…
…keeping the meat loaf and mashed potatoes warm while worrying. Bobby’s so late. Why hasn’t he called? It’s not like him. He always calls. Why doesn’t he answer his phone? Staring at the clock over the fridge, the fridge door is feathered with Ethan’s and Taylor’s art and the picture she loved so much of all of them at the cabin by the lake.
Bobby’s smiling right at her, just smiling, and the kitchen phone is ringing…Bobby? No. A stranger’s voice asks: Is this Lisa Palmer? This better not be a telemarketer. Then the voice adds: the spouse of Robert Anthony Palmer?
The air freezes.
The “spouse” of Robert Anthony Palmer?
The official tone, the masked emotion stops Lisa’s world because she somehow knows, the voice explains…it’s the hospital…Bobby’s been rushed to the intensive care unit…come right away…
From that point on, everything moved in hazy slow motion as if she’d been cast into a black hole. The aftermath of Bobby’s death was surreal. People said things, but she didn’t hear because she was consumed with pain.
She and the kids underwent counseling.
Still, it was so hard.
The first Christmas, birthdays, their anniversary were agony. Then she would see people she hadn’t seen in years, who didn’t know Bobby was dead, and they’d say, “How’s Bobby?” She’d tell them and watch their faces and it got so she’d just avoid people. Then there were the people who did know and they’d avoid her at the mall or someplace, as if her grief were contagious.
The life Lisa had was over.
But she had to keep going for the kids. Each morning for the last two years, she confronted mountains of destruction, hopelessness and loneliness, taking them on one step at a time; as months then years passed she’d come to believe that she’d put the worst of it behind her.
Until today.
The pop-crack of the gunfire, those poor guards, the chaos, the money bags splitting near her, Lisa dropping to the floor, her purse spilling the things she’d bought for the kids, the robber grabbing the money, the agent looking at her, his gun, she dropped his gun, the killer was on them, she looked into the agent’s eyes, a good kind face—I love you, Jennifer—the muzzle flash, the deafening explosion of blood splattering his brain matter on her. The killer comes for her, his gun boring into her head…bringing it all back…
Bobby.
We’ve already been through too much. I don’t think I can bear this.
A vague prickling crept along the back of her neck as she looked at her shirt, discovering flecks of blood—the agent’s blood.
Lisa leaned back against the bathroom door and slid to the floor, burying her face in her hands. In the stillness she begged God for her life back, pleading until a soft knock sounded at the door.
It was Vicky Chan.
“Lisa, someone’s here for you.”
“One moment.”
Lisa collected herself, reached into her bag, changed her shirt, washed her face, brushed her hair, then opened the door to the sun. Ethan and Taylor were standing before her. She dropped to her knees and took them into her arms.
“Oh, thank God! My angels!”
After hugging and kissing them, she drew back to stare at her children. At Taylor, her turned-up nose and freckles. At Ethan, calm and too mature for ten, and looking more like Bobby every day.
“I’m so happy to see you!”
“I’m happy to see you, Mommy.” Taylor locked her arms around Lisa’s neck.
“Hi, Mom. You’re not hurt or anything?” Ethan asked, taking inventory.
“No, I’m not hurt.”
Again, Lisa hugged them to her while shooting a glance over their shoulders and mouthing a big Thank you to her friend Rita.
Rita Camino was a self-described “divorced-no-kids-fun-loving-Jets-fan.” She was a natural blonde in her thirties from Forest Lawn, Queens. For the last ten years, she’d been a senior cashier at the supermarket where Lisa worked. Rita was a rock-solid friend to Lisa, practically an aunt to the kids.
“We told them that you were fine but that there was a complicated, important family matter going on,” Rita said.
“Ethan and I thought you were in big trouble,” Taylor said.
“No, sweetheart, I’m not in trouble.”
“What happened?” Ethan asked.
Lisa first introduced the children to the other women, then, after a nod of encouragement from Dr. Sullivan, she explained.
“I stopped at a gas station and I saw some people do some bad things to other people.”
“What kind of bad things?” Ethan asked.
“I saw people get hurt. I saw bad guys hurt other people.”
“Like a fight?” Ethan asked.
“Yes, sort of like a very bad fight.”
“How bad were they hurt?”
Lisa glanced at Dr. Sullivan, who nodded.
“Honey, some people were killed.”
Lisa watched Taylor’s eyes widen and stroked her hair.
“It’s sad, I know, sweetie,” Lisa said.
“But—” Ethan looked around the room, processing the information “—you didn’t get hurt?”
The gun pressed to her head. They don’t need to know every detail, but they need to understand what happened.
“No, I didn’t get hurt, but because I was there I need to remember everything for the police. It’s important that I do it so they can find and arrest the bad guys. So our police friends fixed it so we can stay here with Vicky, Eve and Helen until we’re done. That’s why everybody has overnight bags. It’s like a sleepover.”
“How long will it be?” Taylor asked.
“A few days, then we’ll go home. Did you guys get a chance to eat?”
The children shook their heads.
“Some chips and soda on the drive in,” Rita said.
“Okay, how about we order pizza from room service?”
“And ice cream!” Taylor said.
“And ice cream,” Lisa agreed.
While they ate, Lisa caught up with them on their school, their friends, upcoming parties, wants—“it’s always something”—and the cabin.
“So it’s really sold now, Mom?” Ethan asked while fidgeting with his small folding pocketknife. Bobby had given it to him a month before his death and Ethan cherished it.
“I’m afraid so, sweetheart.”
“But we still get to go up one last time like you promised, right?” Ethan lowered his voice for privacy, knowing the FBI people were in the adjoining room. “We have to do the special thing for Dad.”
“Absolutely. We’ll go up once we get this stuff all sorted out. A promise is a promise.”
Ethan brightened, so did Taylor. Their smiles were balm to Lisa and they spent the rest of the evening watching an animated movie together. Snuggling with them was the best medicine. Lisa drew strength from them and resolved to get back on track, seize her life back. After the movie ended, she got them into bed, smothered them with kisses before closing the door behind her and joining the women in the other room where they were watching an all-news network.
“How are they doing?” Rita asked.
“Good. They’re strong.”
“And you?” Sullivan asked.
“Better.”
“You should know,” Rita said, “that a cute FBI agent drove your car to your house and locked it in your driveway. I have your keys.”
“Thanks.”
“I told Nick at the store that you had a family emergency and you’ll need some time. You should call him in the morning.”
“I will if I am allowed.” Lisa looked to Chan.
“Well, you’re not under arrest.” Chan smiled. “But Agent Morrow will be here in the morning. You can discuss it with him. As you know, he’s concerned about guarding the seal of the investigation.”
“Another thing,” Rita said. “I also told Mrs. MacKay, the kids’ principal, that an emergency came up, so you’d better call the school tomorrow, too, Lisa.”
The TV’s images flashed with a Breaking News update on Armored Car Heist Homicides.
“Here we go.” Watson had the remote control and increased the volume slightly as the newscaster read the information.
“And this just in on that I-87 armored car heist that left four people dead in Ramapo, north of New York. The World Press Alliance, citing unnamed sources, is reporting that one of the victims was an FBI agent who was shot ‘execution style’ while going for his weapon and that investigators have a key eyewitness. Again, the WPA is reporting…”
Chan and Watson exchanged looks of concern.
“Whoa! Morrow’s going to freak out,” Watson said.
“A leak was inevitable,” Chan said, “with so many jurisdictions involved and the New York and national media all over it.”
“So much for his ‘seal’ on the investigation,” Lisa said. “How would the WPA know about this?”
“Good reporters with good sources,” Watson said.
The report made Lisa uneasy and she withdrew into her thoughts. Watson changed the channel to one showing Casablanca, and the women watched Bogart and Bergman in silence until the anxiety in the room gradually subsided. When the movie ended, Lisa got ready for bed. Sullivan, mindful of Lisa’s anxiety, went to her bag.
“You’re under a tremendous amount of stress and may have trouble sleeping,” Dr. Sullivan said. “One of these pills will work fast and help you get the rest you need.”
“Thank you.”
They moved one of the single beds so Rita could sleep in the bigger room with Chan, Watson and Sullivan because Lisa wanted Rita to be near her and the kids the first night. Lisa also requested to have a room alone with her children. After taking the pill, she kept the bathroom door open so her room was awash in soft, soothing light.
