Tell No One (31 page)

I nodded because it was all suddenly transparent. “You had to make them think she was dead.”

He smiled, and new goose bumps surfaced all over me. “I had some money saved up. My brother Ken had more. We also had the contacts. Elizabeth went underground. We got her out of the country. She cut her hair, learned to wear disguises, but that was probably overkill. No one was really looking for her. For the past eight years she’s been bouncing around third world countries, working for the Red Cross or UNICEF or whatever organization she could hook up with.”

I waited. There was so much he hadn’t yet told me, but I sat still. I let the implications seep in and shake me at the core. Elizabeth. She was alive. She had been alive for the past eight years. She had been breathing and living and working.… It was too much to compute, one of those incomprehensible math problems that make the computer shut down.

“You’re probably wondering about the body in the morgue.”

I allowed myself a nod.

“It was pretty simple really. We get Jane Does in all the time. They get stored in pathology until somebody gets bored with them. Then we stick them in a potter’s field out on Roosevelt Island. I just waited for the next Caucasian Jane Doe who’d be a near enough match to pop up. It took longer than I expected. The girl was probably a runaway stabbed by her pimp, but, of course, we’ll never know for sure. We also couldn’t leave Elizabeth’s murder open. You need a fall guy, Beck. For closure. We chose KillRoy. It was common knowledge that KillRoy branded the faces with the letter K. So we did that to the corpse. That only left the problem of identification. We toyed around with the idea of burning her beyond recognition, but that would have meant dental records and all that. So we took a chance. The hair matched. The skin tone and age were about right. We dumped her body in a town with a small coroner’s office. We made the anonymous call to the police ourselves. We made sure we arrived at the medical examiner’s office at the same time as the body. Then all I had to do was make a tearful ID. That’s how the large majority of murder victims are identified. A family member IDs them. So I did, and Ken backed me up. Who would question that? Why on earth would a father and uncle lie?”

“You took a hell of a risk,” I said.

“But what choice did we have?”

“There had to be other ways.”

He leaned closer. I smelled his breath. The loose folds of skin by his eyes drooped low. “Again,
Beck, you’re on that dirt road with those two bodies—hell, you’re sitting here right now with the benefit of hindsight. So tell me: What should we have done?”

I didn’t have an answer.

“There were other problems too,” Hoyt added, sitting back a bit. “We were never totally sure that Scope’s people would buy the whole setup. Luckily for us, the two lowlifes were supposed to leave the country after the murder. We found plane tickets to Buenos Aires on them. They were both drifters, unreliable types. That all helped. Scope’s people bought it, but they kept tabs on us—not so much because they thought she was still alive, but they worried that maybe she had given one of us some incriminating material.”

“What incriminating material?”

He ignored the question. “Your house, your phone, probably your office. They’ve been bugged for the past eight years. Mine too.”

That explained the careful emails. I let my eyes wander around the room.

“I swept for them yesterday,” he said. “The house is clean.”

When he was silent for a few moments, I risked a question. “Why did Elizabeth choose to come back now?”

“Because she’s foolish,” he said, and for the first time, I heard anger in his voice. I gave him some time. He calmed, the red swells in his face ebbing away. “The two bodies we buried,” he said quietly.

“What about them?”

“Elizabeth followed the news on the Internet. When she read that they’d been discovered, she figured,
same as me, that the Scopes might realize the truth.”

“That she was still alive?”

“Yes.”

“But if she were overseas, it would still take a hell of a lot to find her.”

“That’s what I told her. But she said that wouldn’t stop them. They’d come after me. Or her mother. Or you. But”—again he stopped, dropped his head—“I don’t know how important all that was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes I think she wanted it to happen.” He fiddled with the drink, jiggled the ice. “She wanted to come back to you, David. I think the bodies were just an excuse.”

I waited again. He drank some more. He took another peek out the window.

“It’s your turn,” he said to me.

“What?”

“I want some answers now,” he said. “Like how did she contact you. How did you get away from the police. Where you think she is.”

I hesitated, but not very long. What choice did I really have here? “Elizabeth contacted me by anonymous emails. She spoke in code only I’d understand.”

“What kind of code?”

“She made references to things in our past.”

Hoyt nodded. “She knew they might be watching.”

“Yes.” I shifted in my seat. “How much do you know about Griffin Scope’s personnel?” I asked.

He looked confused. “Personnel?”

“Does he have a muscular Asian guy working for him?”

Whatever color was left on Hoyt’s face flowed out as though through an open wound. He looked at me in awe, almost as though he wanted to cross himself. “Eric Wu,” he said in a hushed tone.

“I ran into Mr. Wu yesterday.”

“Impossible,” he said.

“Why?”

“You wouldn’t be alive.”

“I got lucky.” I told him the story. He looked near tears.

“If Wu found her, if he got to her before he got to you …” He closed his eyes, wishing the image away.

“He didn’t,” I said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Wu wanted to know why I was in the park. If he had her already, why bother with that?”

He nodded slowly. He finished his drink and poured himself another. “But they know she’s alive now,” he said. “That means they’re going to come after us.”

“Then we’ll fight back,” I said with far more bravery than I felt.

“You didn’t hear me before. The mystical beast keeps growing more heads.”

“But in the end, the hero always defeats the beast.”

He scoffed at that one. Deservedly, I might add. I kept my eyes on him. The grandfather clock ding-donged. I thought about it some more.

“You have to tell me the rest,” I said.

“Unimportant.”

“It’s connected with Brandon Scope’s murder, isn’t it?”

He shook his head without conviction.

“I know that Elizabeth gave an alibi to Helio Gonzalez,” I said.

“It’s not important, Beck. Trust me.”

“Been there, done that, got screwed,” I said.

He took another swig.

“Elizabeth kept a safety-deposit box under the name Sarah Goodhart,” I said. “That’s where they found those pictures.”

“I know,” Hoyt said. “We were in a rush that night. I didn’t know she’d already given the key to them. We emptied their pockets, but I never checked their shoes. Shouldn’t have mattered, though. I had no intention of them ever being found.”

“She left more in that box than just the photographs,” I continued.

Hoyt carefully set down his drink.

“My father’s old gun was in there too. A thirty-eight. You remember it?”

Hoyt looked away and his voice was suddenly soft. “Smith and Wesson. I helped him pick it out.”

I felt myself start shaking again. “Did you know that Brandon Scope was killed with that gun?”

His eyes shut tight, like a child wishing away a bad dream.

“Tell me what happened, Hoyt.”

“You know what happened.”

I couldn’t stop quaking. “Tell me anyway.”

Each word came out like body blows. “Elizabeth shot Brandon Scope.”

I shook my head. I knew it wasn’t true.

“She was working side by side with him, doing that charity work. It was just a question of time before she stumbled across the truth. That Brandon was running all this penny-ante crap, playing at being a tough street guy. Drugs, prostitution, I don’t even know what.”

“She never told me.”

“She didn’t tell anyone, Beck. But Brandon found out. He beat the hell out of her to warn her off. I didn’t know it then, of course. She gave me the same story about a bad fender-bender.”

“She didn’t kill him,” I insisted.

“It was self-defense. When she didn’t stop investigating, Brandon broke into your home, and this time he had a knife. He came at her … and she shot him. Total self-defense.”

I couldn’t stop shaking my head.

“She called me, crying. I drove over to your place. When I got there”—he paused, his breath caught—“he was already dead. Elizabeth had that gun. She wanted me to call the police. I talked her out of it. Self-defense or not, Griffin Scope would kill her and worse. I told her to give me a few hours. She was shaky, but she finally agreed.”

“You moved the body,” I said.

He nodded. “I knew about Gonzalez. The punk was on his way to a fulfilling life of crime. I’ve seen the type enough to know. He’d already gotten off on a technicality for one murder. Who better to frame?”

It was becoming so clear. “But Elizabeth wouldn’t let that happen.”

“I didn’t count on that,” he said. “She heard on the news about the arrest, and that was when she decided to make up that alibi. To save Gonzalez from”—sarcastic finger-quote marks—“a grave injustice.” He shook his head. “Worthless. If she’d just let that scumbag take the fall, it would have been all over.”

I said, “Scope’s people found out about her making up that alibi.”

“Someone inside leaked it to them, yeah. Then they
started sending their own people around, and they found out about her investigation. The rest became obvious.”

“So that night at the lake,” I said. “It was about revenge.”

He mulled that over. “In part, yes. And in part it was about covering up the truth about Brandon Scope. He was a dead hero. Maintaining that legacy meant a lot to his father.”

And, I thought, to my sister.

“I still don’t get why she kept that stuff in a safety-deposit box,” I said.

“Evidence,” he said.

“Of what?”

“That she killed Brandon Scope. And that she did it in self-defense. No matter what else happened, Elizabeth didn’t want someone else to take the blame for what she did. Naïve, wouldn’t you say?”

No, I wouldn’t. I sat there and let the truth try to settle in. Not happening. Not yet anyway. Because this wasn’t the full truth. I knew that better than anyone. I looked at my father-in-law, the sagging skin, the thinning hair, the softening gut, the still-impressive but eroding frame. Hoyt thought that he knew what had really happened with his daughter. But he had no idea how wrong he was.

I heard a thunderclap. Rain pounded the windows like tiny fists.

“You could have told me,” I said.

He shook his head, this time putting more into it. “And what would you have done, Beck? Follow her? Run away together? They would have learned the truth and killed us all. They were watching you. They still are. We told no one. Not even Elizabeth’s mother.
And if you need proof we did the right thing, look around you. It’s eight years later. All she did was send you a few anonymous emails. And look what happened.”

A car door slammed. Hoyt pounced toward the window like a big cat. He peered out again. “Same car you arrived in. Two black men inside.”

“They’re here for me.”

“You sure they don’t work for Scope?”

“Positive.” On cue, my new cell phone rang. I picked it up.

“Everything okay?” Tyrese asked.

“Yes.”

“Step outside.”

“Why?”

“You trust that cop?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Step outside.”

I told Hoyt that I had to go. He seemed too drained to care. I retrieved the Glock and hurried for the door. Tyrese and Brutus were waiting for me. The rain had let up a bit, but none of us seemed to care.

“Got a call for you. Stand over there.”

“Why?”

“Personal,” Tyrese said. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“I trust you.”

“Just do what I say, man.”

I moved out of hearing distance. Behind me I saw the shade open up. Hoyt peered out. I looked back at Tyrese. He gestured for me to put the phone to my ear. I did. There was silence and then Tyrese said, “Line clear, go ahead.”

The next voice I heard was Shauna’s. “I saw her.”

I remained perfectly still.

“She said for you to meet her tonight at the Dolphin.”

I understood. The line went dead. I walked back to Tyrese and Brutus. “I need to go somewhere on my own,” I said. “Where I can’t be followed.”

Tyrese glanced at Brutus. “Get in,” Tyrese said.

B
rutus drove like a madman. He took one-way streets in the wrong direction. He made sudden U-turns. From the right lane, he’d cut across traffic and make a left through a red light. We were making excellent time.

The MetroPark in Iselin had a train heading toward Port Jervis that left in twenty minutes. I could rent a car from there. When they dropped me off, Brutus stayed in the car. Tyrese walked me to the ticket counter.

“You told me to run away and not come back,” Tyrese said.

“That’s right.”

“Maybe,” he said, “you should do the same.”

I put my hand out for him to shake. Tyrese ignored it and hugged me fiercely. “Thank you,” I said softly.

He released his grip, adjusted his shoulders so that his jacket relaxed down, fixed his sunglasses. “Yeah,
whatever.” He didn’t wait for me to say anything more before heading back to the car.

The train arrived and departed on schedule. I found a seat and collapsed into it. I tried to make my mind go blank. It wouldn’t happen. I glanced around. The car was fairly empty. Two college girls with bulky backpacks jabbered in the language of “like” and “you know.” My eyes drifted off. I spotted a newspaper—more specifically, a city tabloid—that someone had left on a seat.

I moved over and picked it up. The coveted cover featured a young starlet who’d been arrested for shoplifting. I flipped pages, hoping to read the comics or catch up on sports—anything mindless would do. But my eyes got snagged on a picture of, well, me. The wanted man. Amazing how sinister I looked in the darkened photo, like a Mideast terrorist.