certainly not going to let you hand me over to Khachadurian. I don’t want to kill you, John, I swear to God I don’t, but it’s kind of up to you, isn’t it?”
She reached between the cushions of the couch and came up with a knife. It was a simple steak knife, the same sort as the one she’d left by the sink, probably the same sort she’d used on Susan. Maybe the same one, washed clean and ready for another use. She wasn’t holding it in a threatening manner, not yet, but she was pointing it in my general direction. Her eyes had a question in them. I stood up.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t pretend you’re giving me a choice. Do me that one favor, Miranda. Don’t treat me like you treated the others. I’m sure you told them it was up to them, too, that as long as they worked with you, you’d be on their side. That you loved them. It lasted just as long as you needed them, and then when you didn’t any more, when it was more convenient to you for them to be dead, all the sweet talk went out the window.”
“It’s not the same,” she said. “It’s not. Wayne Lenz was a disgusting man. It made me sick to touch him. And you know what Jocelyn did to me? After nine years, after I followed her across the whole goddamn country, after I gave up everything for her, she takes one look at this… at this… woman, and I don’t matter any more. After nine years, John. You can’t imagine what it’s like.” She stood up and came toward me. The knife was between us. “I’ve never had anyone, John, not since you. That’s the truth. No one I could trust.” I saw tears forming in her eyes. “You were always good to me. If you said you’d leave me alone, if you swore that you wouldn’t tell anyone, I know you’d keep your word. You’ve changed, but you haven’t changed that much.”
Now the point of the knife pressed against my shirt, and through my shirt, against my chest. “But I have to know. I can’t let you out of here otherwise. I can’t.”
I saw her in front of me, holding the knife to my chest, but I also saw her as she had been at age eighteen. Where along the way had Miranda turned into the person she was today? How had it happened? Was there any trace of my Miranda still in there somewhere? Or was there only the murderer, the betrayer, the woman who deserved the sort of punishment I’d imagined in the cab on the way downtown? I wanted to believe there was more. I wanted to desperately.
I reached out, touched her wrist gently. “You can put the knife away,” I said. “I won’t hurt you, Miranda. I could never hurt you.”
“Swear it,” she said.
“I swear.”
“On your life. On your mother’s life.”
“I swear,” I said. “On everything I love, on everything I care about. On your life, Miranda. I swear. Now put the knife away.”
“I want to believe you,” she said.
“I may be many things, Miranda, but I’m not a liar. Put the knife away.”
“Just give me a few days,” she said. “I’m realistic, I’m not asking for forever. But don’t tell anyone for a week, okay? I can get far away in a week.”
“Okay,” I said. “One week.”
The knife lowered. It was by her side, and then her fingers opened and it dropped to the floor. She was crying freely now, tears streaming down her cheeks. I took her in my arms and realized that I was crying, too, for her, for both of us. How had we ended up here, in a filthy tenement with a knife on the floor between us, she a killer and I – and I I stroked her hair back behind her ear with a thumb, and tried not to think about anything, tried only to feel her in my arms, to burn this fragile instant into my memory.
I let her go. I lifted her chin and pressed my lips against her forehead. “Goodbye, Miranda.”
“One week,” she said.
“One week,” I said. “I promise.”
She stood at the door as I went downstairs. At the first turn of the stairway, I looked back and saw her there, leaning against the door, framed in the light. If this was going to be the last image I ever had of her, despite everything, I was grateful for it. I’ve never hated myself as much as I did at that moment.
I turned back and kept going down.
They were waiting on the sidewalk when I opened the building’s front door. They were wearing heavy overcoats and leather gloves and dark fur hats with flaps to cover their ears. The father was patting his hands together impatiently, while the son stood absolutely still, looking at me over his father’s head.
“Where were you,” Murco said. “We’ve been here ten minutes. We were starting to think you’d doublecrossed us.”
“She’s upstairs,” I said.
Chapter 29
Leo stood beside me at the foot of the hospital bed. Susan looked terrible – pale, drawn, in pain. But she was alive. The doctors had told us that she’d regained consciousness briefly, but now she was asleep, the thin sheet over her bandages hardly rising and falling at all with her shallow breaths.
Leo tugged on my sleeve and I followed him out into the waiting room. “You’re going to have to tell them everything,” he said, speaking quietly.
“Leo, I need you to take care of this for me. I’ve never asked for anything like this before, but I’m asking now.”
“There are three precincts involved, Johnny. I can’t just wave a wand and make it go away.”
“Do you think I should go to Murco?” I said.
“Murco will be lucky to keep himself out of jail,” Leo said. “If what you’re telling me is true.”
“I wish it weren’t.”
“Let’s not forget,” he said, “that I told you so.”
“Yes, you did. So did she.” Stop looking for me, she’d written, or you’ll be sorry. I hadn’t, and I was.
I was trying very hard not to think about what Murco had done to her in the hours since I’d walked out of her building. I tried to think instead about Susan and Jocelyn and even Lenz and the two burglars, all the lives she’d ruined. But all I could see was her face at the door, tears in her eyes, begging me to give her a week’s head start and trusting me when I said I would. She’d turned into something unspeakable in the ten years since we’d known each other – but was what I’d turned into so much better?
“It’s almost eight,” Leo said. “You’d better go.”
I zipped up, went out, hailed a cab. “Pitt Street,” I said.
They kept me there all day. I told the story, and then I told it again, and I kept telling it until they stopped asking me to. Different cops came and went. I saw Kirsch stick his head in once, and once I thought I saw Lyons from Queens through an open door, but mostly it was Frank Gianakouros and me, questions and answers, back-to- back sessions with no bathroom breaks and only coffee to keep me going. They were trying to wear me down till the truth came out. What they didn’t realize was that I was giving them the truth. Maybe not the whole truth, but certainly the truth.
Jocelyn had never had her prints taken and neither had Miranda – but now that they knew it mattered, they’d take a closer look at what was left of Jocelyn’s teeth, do a DNA match on whatever they could turn up in the apartment on Avenue D, match any prints from Avenue D to the partials they said they’d found on Leo’s gun. I’d given them the videotape, which Leo had brought from the office, along with a sheet of phone numbers: Daniel Mastaduno, Bill Battles, Danny Matin. I’d told them about Roy and Keegan and what I knew about Lenz. I’d basically given them everything I had.
All I hadn’t done was tell them about the role Murco had played at the beginning and end of the affair. The burglary, sure – there was no way to tell the story without that. But what had happened to the burglars? I had no idea. How much had they stolen from Murco? I couldn’t speculate. And what had happened to the money? Not for me to say. All I knew was that Miranda had conspired with Lenz to rob their mutual employer and that they’d killed Jocelyn to cover their tracks. Then Miranda had killed Lenz to cover hers, and had tried to kill Susan for much the same reason. And what had happened to Miranda? I didn’t know. The apartment was empty when I got there.
They left me sitting in the interrogation room from five o’clock on, and it was seven before the door opened again. When it did, Leo came in with Gianakouros. Neither man looked happy. “You’ve got some good friends behind
