A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (30 page)

"Call 911. Get them to take care of you and start processing that mess upstairs."

"What are you going to do?"

"I can't get tied up with the questions they're going to want to ask, so I need to be gone by the time Arlington PD gets here. Can you feed them bull enough to keep them off my back but not enough to, ah, get in trouble?"

She smiled weakly. "It's what I do for a living, Marty."

"I need one more thing," I said. "Your car. That guy who almost caved in my face took my keys."

She unclipped her Malibu's keys from the ring and handed them over without a word. I kissed her again, then hurried over to her car. I hopped in, wincing as my head felt every inch of the bounce, and then tore out of the parking lot, throwing a wave to Julie on my way.

I didn't have a destination, but I couldn't hang around. I headed for an overpass pull-off I knew about that would put me thirty seconds from about five major highways. Once I knew where I was going.

Five minutes later and I was skidding to a stop on the pull-off. I kept the car running and pulled out the cell phone I'd found on the dead man in Julie's apartment. It was a new smart phone, with all kinds of bells and whistles, but it didn't take much to figure out how to access the call list. In just a few swipes of my thumb, I found the name I'd been hoping to see.

I took a deep breath and hit REDIAL. It picked up on the second ring. I heard heavy breathing, followed by a cough. "Who the hell is this?"

"Chief," I said. "It's your old pal, Marty Singer."

There was silence on the other end of the line, then Jim Ferrin said, "You've got Jackson's phone."

"Jackson won't be needing it anymore," I said. "And I need a new phone since your man Taylor decided to step things up from breaking and entering to punching me in the head."

Ferrin wheezed a small, short laugh. "Taylor goes overboard sometimes."

"Do I have this right, Jim? Taylor and Jackson were the ones who broke into my place. And they've been tailing me or Kransky the whole time, which didn't make sense until just now."

There was no answer, so I continued.

"Today was a setup. I thought it was because you and Lawrence were working together on whatever it is he's planning to do. But I don't think you're on the same team, not even close. You were hoping I'd lead you to him, that you'd flushed him out by giving up me and the girl. But...for what?"

There was a heavy pause, during which the reedy, bronchial breathing came across the line. Then, "They were supposed to pick him up."

"Why?"

"Do I have to spell it out for you, Singer?" Ferrin snapped. "Lawrence is sick. He's insane. He needs to be stopped."

"This is difficult to swallow, coming from you."

"I'm no saint," Ferrin said. "And I could honestly care less if Lawrence shoots you or Kransky or the girl or the fucking mayor. What I do care about is my good name and the fallout that's going to hit if Lawrence goes through with what he's after."

I squeezed the phone. "And what's that?"

There was a wet croaking sound, which I realized after a second was chuckling. "So this is the play, Singer? You got no idea where he is, so I'm supposed to give him up, just like that?"

"You don't have any better idea than I do where he is, Jim, or you wouldn't have picked up the phone. I'm guessing Taylor went inside after sucker-punching me and found his buddy Jackson already on the ground. Lawrence took him out. That wasn't according to plan, so now Taylor's driving around in circles, waiting for orders." Another silence. "So, we're both in the woods. And we need each other to stop Lawrence."

"He's still my son, Singer," Ferrin said. "I'm not going to let you put a bullet in him."

I gritted my teeth. "As much as I'd like to, I'm a hell of a lot more worried about Amanda Lane right now. If he gives her up, no one has to get shot. Now, what do you know? You must've talked to him to set me up."

The pause was so long that I thought he'd hung up. I shouted into the phone. "Goddamit, Ferrin, if you don't give me something, I swear to God--"

"I don't know." His voice was hoarse. "He said something about starting over, about... about a plan to get a second chance. Sounded like a bunch of crap to me, the kind of self-help shit you find in books from the super market. But he kept saying it over and over."

"You didn't dig any deeper?"

"I didn't think it would get that far," he said. "Taylor and Jackson were supposed to have brought him in by now. I never expected him to slip past those two."

I chewed the inside of my lip. "A chance to start over? That's all he said?"

Ferrin sighed. "That's it. And this girl is the center of whatever chance that is. Seems to think he can go back in time and un-fuck his life."

My mind cranked furiously, but I was drawing a blank. I needed a partner to bounce ideas off of. And Jim Ferrin wasn't it. "I'm going to assume you had Kransky yanked this morning. Can you make that right?"

"I can do that. But I'm warning you, Singer: I want my son alive. You know something, you're going to tell me. I can have someone out to pick Lawrence up in a heartbeat. But if you or Kransky end up shooting him, save a bullet for yourself."

. . .

"He took her?" Kransky asked, his voice bleak. He was slumped in the passenger's seat. We were sitting at the corner of H and 14th with the engine idling, minds racing...and no place to go.

I nodded. "He's got her."

He looked out the window. "What was all this shit with Jim Ferrin?"

"The old man wants to take Lawrence off the street and, I don't know, lock him in his attic or something. The IAD hearing was to keep you busy while Taylor kept me distracted. Jackson was supposed to tranq Lawrence and take him out in a straight jacket, but ended up getting his throat cut instead. The old man thought he was setting up Lawrence, when it was really the other way around."

"If he wanted his fuckup son off the street, why didn't he just say so? It's all we've been after since this thing began."

"Not Jim Ferrin's style," I said. "Always in charge, always giving orders. And if he was able to pull it off while leaving us in the dark, all the better."

Kransky swore. "What's our plan?"

"Ferrin said Lawrence is looking for a chance to start over. And that Amanda was the key to getting that second chance."

"God," Kransky said. "What do we have to work with?"

"Just about nothing," I said, feeling myself starting to tip into despair.

We sat in the bright, late morning sun, trying to pluck an answer out of thin air. We had all the pieces, but they went to different puzzles.

Kransky blew out a breath. "Maybe the words are important," he said. "Ferrin said Lawrence had ‘a plan.' If he just meant to kill Amanda, he would've used a different word, right? He'd say off her, snuff her, push her into the river."

I liked the idea but said, "It might only be semantics, Jim."

"Is it? Lawrence spends twelve years in prison, examining his life. How he ended up where he did. Who was responsible. How he wants to get it all back. Is he going to use just any word to describe that? Or is he going to pick what he says carefully, methodically?"

"Okay, say the words are significant," I said. "What then?"

Kransky slouched in the seat, his eyes half-closed. "A plan implies elaborate thinking. Complicated timing. Something that takes effort to set up. If he wanted to kill Amanda, he would've shot her in the apartment. So there's something special about the place or the time. A ritual."

"And a ritual has to be something significant in his relationship with Amanda. Something from the past." I stared unseeing into the street, thinking. A mob of people were crossing H Street, but I hardly saw them. "Wheeler's a distraction in all of this. You take him and his obsession with Brenda Lane out of the equation and you're left with Lawrence hiding flowers and sprinkling petals on the ground."

"Flowers," Kransky said, musing. "A courtship. He's in love with her."

"No," I said, feeling something come together. "He's in love with the little girl Amanda
was
."

The answer hit me then. It was like walking into a dark room, stumbling, only to put your hand--by accident--right on the thing you were looking for. Kransky sat bolt upright, seeing it at the same time I did. He opened his mouth to tell me to get going, but I was already turning the key in the ignition and hitting the gas, heading for the only place that Lawrence and Amanda could be.

The drive was just like I remembered it.

It had been around midnight, then. The traffic had been lighter and the cars a different make and model, but the streets were the same. A building here or there had been torn down to make way in the name of progress or real estate, but in a minute I was in a section of the city where the structures had stood for decades, and the terrible feeling of having done all this before doubled and trebled. That first night, I'd been on my way to a murder already committed.

This time, I was trying to stop one.

We tore down Connecticut Avenue and then to Reservoir Road, heading for the Palisades at speed, weaving in and out of the lanes of cars like an angry drunk. Not for the first time, I wished I had a gumball and a siren.

"There's something you need to know," Kransky said as we tore down Connecticut Avenue and then on to Reservoir Road. I glanced over. He was staring straight ahead, the muscles in his jaw bunched.

"What?"

He took a couple of deep breaths before he answered. "I knew Brenda Lane."

I waited for more. When it didn't follow, I said, "I know that. You told me you and she met--"

"No, I mean I
knew
her," he said, obviously struggling with the words. "We were sleeping together."

For a split second, my sight went dark. "Jesus Christ."

"We did meet at one of Lacey's school things. I wasn't making that up. But things with Beth were rocky. We were already taking turns with Lacy so we didn't need to be near each other. I went to all of the school functions with her by myself. The almost single dad meets the single mom." He shrugged. "After the third or fourth one, I asked her out."

I didn't say anything. My mind was racing through the implications, from the trial to the disaster we were driving to right now.

"I'm the one who told her to report Wheeler when he wouldn't leave her alone," he said, continuing. "I was afraid if I got in his face or reported him myself, word would get back to Beth. Then a divorce would be a sure thing and she'd have everything she needed to take me to the cleaners. Maybe take Lacy away from me."

I cleared my throat. "Were you with her that night?"

"No. I wanted to. But she told me she wanted some alone time." He laughed without humor. "Ironic, huh? I might've been there and taken out Wheeler and Lawrence myself."

I blinked, trying to put things together. "Was that you down in Waynesboro?'

"You mean, did I off Wheeler?'

I nodded.

He looked out the window. "I wish I had. I know I thought about it. A few nights, when the trial started looking like it was going south, I got my gun out and put it on the dining room table. I stared at it. One small thing--a phone call, a noise outside, a stray thought--and I might've been up and out of there. I would've unloaded the whole clip into him."

"But?"

"There was Beth. Things were bad between us, but they weren't all the way gone. Yet. And Lacy. She was ten. Did I want her to grow up visiting her dad in maximum security because he shot the man who killed the woman he was cheating on her mom with?"

"And?" I asked, sensing more.

He slammed a fist into the armrest. "And the fact that I'd known Brenda for, what? A month? I wasn't in love with her, I was sleeping with her. Was I supposed to shoot Wheeler for that? Throw my life away for her?"

There was a pause.

"You felt like shit for even thinking it," I said. "You still do."

He nodded.

"And you were hoping the trial would take care of Wheeler for you. When it didn't, you thought you'd failed twice. Which is why it's been eating at you for twelve years."

"I promised myself I was going to take him out one of these days," he said. "But when he vanished, I thought I'd screwed up for a third time. We know what happened, now. For years, though, I blamed myself for that night. I kept looking, ready to go after him, to try and make amends. But I never got the chance and never thought I would. Until now."

We were quiet for a minute, then Kransky said, "It was stupid to keep it from you. I'm sorry."

I swallowed the angry reply that came to mind. Now wasn't the time. "Water under the bridge, Jim. Let's get Amanda and talk about the rest over a beer."

I took a hard right onto Arizona Avenue and screamed up the hill, the car catching air as we shot across MacArthur Boulevard at seventy. The car slewed around corners, the back end fishtailing, forcing me to slow down near cross streets if I didn't want to kill everyone on the sidewalk.

We entered the Palisades neighborhood proper, passing row upon row of nearly identical Tudor homes. I swore. "Where the hell is it?"

"A block, maybe two," he said. "Near Willow. There, pull over there. We'll have to hoof it if we don't want him to see us."

The car slid on humped piles of rotting leaves, then skidded to a stop. Kransky threw his seatbelt off and pulled out his Glock, checking the action. His movements were controlled, but jerky, almost spastic. He had a wide-eyed look I wasn't comfortable with, like he was ready to jump from the car and make a beeline straight for the Lane's front lawn. I reached over and grabbed his arm.

"Easy," I said. "We can't afford to screw this up. Control is what we need now."

Kransky closed his eyes, opened them. "All right," I said. "Let's go."

We got out of the truck and set off at a jog for Willow Avenue. Half a block away from the old Lane house, we cut through a neighbor's backyard and began a crouched, stalking run, taking cover behind fences, water barrels, and jungle gyms. I caught sight of the back of the property through a wooden slat fence they shared with their Willow Avenue neighbor. We eased up to the fence and peeked through the boards. The back porch light was still on, probably forgotten in the morning rush to get to work, but the interior was dark. A mid-sized maple, skeletal without its leaves and which had probably been a sapling the last time I was here, shielded part of the second floor from view.