McCoy shrugs. This is her operation, she has to make thecalls.
“We wait,” she tells her partner. “Somebody else is going tohave to find Dillon’s body.”
“But what about Jessica?”
“We can’t just drive over and chat with her, this time ofnight. Remember, he’s got Allison’s place wired up, too. It’s one in themorning. We might as well raise a red flag if we go there now.”
“No, you’re right,” Harrick agrees. “Tomorrow.”
McCoy’s phone rings again. “McCoy. What? Are you-what-hangon.” She moves the phone from her mouth and turns to her partner. “Someone justleft Allison’s house,” she says. “Not Jessica’s car. Allison’s.”
“Allison Pagone? Jesus Christ.” Harrick jumps in his seat.More action. What a night it’s been. A good part of an FBI agent’s job iswatching, listening, waiting. Not so much this stuff, what they’ve seentonight.
“Follow her,” McCoy says into the phone. “But for God’ssake, be invisible.”
She clicks the phone off and turns to Harrick. “None of ourpeople are in Dillon’s house right now, right?”
“No, they’re out,” Harrick says. “I’ll confirm that. Why?”He turns to her. “You think Allison is coming here?”
McCoy smiles. “Hell yes, she is.”
Allison brakes her Lexus SUV gently on Sam’s driveway andchecks her watch. It is just after one in the morning. The front door wasunlocked, Jessica said, so she should have no problem getting in.
The door is not even closed all the way. She pushes it openslowly, takes a breath, and walks in. With her shirt, she wipes the doorknob onboth sides. Jessica swore that the doorknob was the only thing she touched.
She tells herself that she will not look at him-notdirectly-at least not until she is finished. But her instincts betray her, andshe almost swoons as she sees him, lying motionless, face down, across thecarpet. Her eyes move directly to the wound on the back of his head, to thestatuette caked with blood and hair lying near him.
“Oh, Sam,” she whispers, but hearing her voice snaps her to attention.Do your job first. She walks past his body stoically, searching the carpet,until she finds it. The single platinum earring. She places it in her jeanspocket.
There. She is done.
But she thinks of her daughter. She remembers the phone callthat she forced Sam to make on Friday-Sam’s call to Jessica, firing her fromher position, shutting her out of his life, over an impersonal telephone line.
All I wanted to do was talk to him, Jessica told her, onlyhours ago.
Allison looks out the window. Most people don’t live up hereby the lake year-round. Sam did, loved the tranquility. Maybe, what, three orfour people live up here right now on this street.
Meaning three or four potential eyewitnesses, at a minimum,who may have seen Jessica come here-including the widower next door, whoselight was on in the front room when she passed it driving up here.
And who knows who may have heard Jessica’s reaction when shewas at Dillon amp; Becker’s offices in the city while Sam fired her from hisoffice in the capital. Allison could hear, over the phone and sitting at adistance, Jessica’s protests; did anyone at Dillon amp; Becker hear her?
Jessica was here, in this house, on the night of the murder.She was upset the day before, after a phone call from Sam. Not a goodcombination.
And all of this is Allison’s fault.
Allison removes the single earring from her pocket andplaces it back near Sam’s body. She yanks a strand of hair from her head andlets it fall to the carpet near Sam. She writes crime fiction; she knows that astrand of hair must have the follicle attached to provide DNA.
What else?
Allison grabs her finger, painted with red polish, andbreaks off a substantial piece of her nail. She makes the motion in the air ofswinging something, trying to figure where a fingernail might break off. Oh,who knows? She lets the fingernail drop to the carpet as well.
She can’t be too obvious. It can’t look staged. Maybe thisis enough, to draw their attention to her.
What else?
Allison looks at the statuette, on the carpet near Sam’sbody. Plenty of blood on it, almost dried now. She touches it with her finger,thick like syrup now, and wipes a stain across her maroon sweatshirt. A traceof Sam’s blood, on her sweatshirt.
What else?
The Alibi. She remembers it, from the novel she is writing.The novel she hates. Best Served Cold.
She knows where his computer is, upstairs. She takes thestairs carefully, lest she lose her balance and fall on her wobbly legs, andgoes to his office.
She is lucky, she thinks, though lucky hardly seems the word,that Sam does not use a password to protect the screen saver on his computer.The screen is black with asteroids and stars moving about. With one push of thecomputer mouse, the screen returns to his e-mail’s in-box. She hits the“ compose” icon and pulls up a new mail message. She types in the words-murky,fuzzy words, that she comes up with off the top of her head-and addresses themessage to her own web address:
She wipes down the keyboard and mouse after she sends thee-mail. She will wipe down the banister, too, and the front doorknob. No, sheis not looking to guarantee herself a conviction. She is not going to write hername in blood on his bathroom mirror. What she has done is insurance, nothingmore. They won’t necessarily be able to make a case against Allison, or evensuspect her. But after her work here, they certainly won’t be able to make acase against Jessica, either, and that is her principal goal. If it ever getsclose to Jessica, Allison will be able to hold herself out, plausibly, as thesuspect. After her work here, her daughter will never be accused of this crime.
She checks her watch. It is close to twenty after one.Having sat down for even a minute, she feels intense exhaustion sweep over her.But she resists. Now is no time to get weary. She only has to get back homenow.
She will retrieve that novel she’s working on and delete itfrom her computer. If they come looking for her, they will undoubtedly seizethe laptop. Another benefit of writing crime fiction-she knows, at leastgenerally speaking, of the government’s powers to retrieve deleted materialfrom a computer’s hard drive. They will find it. And they will find it veryinteresting that she deleted this document from her computer only minutes afterreturning from Sam’s house.
Now for the hard part. She will see him one last time. Shethinks of what she wants to say. Yes, she knows it’s foolish, she knows hecan’t hear her now any more than he would be able to hear her later, in theprivacy of her home.
She comes back down the stairs and moves to Sam, gets on herknees and begins to cry.
At this moment, she is sure that she loves him. At thismoment, her feelings for Sam have crystallized, have moved from an intensepassion, from a reawakening of feelings dormant for so many years, to love.
“I love you,” she says to him through a full throat. Shereaches for him but it seems inappropriate. Her hand is only inches from hishead. She wants him to see her one more time, even if he can’t. She wants tolook into his eyes, but she will not move him. His face is surprisinglypeaceful, if defeated, his eyes closed but his mouth open ever so slightly.
“I’m so very-Sam, I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
But he is dead, and she has Jessica to protect. She rises toher feet and heads to the kitchen, removes a freezer bag from a drawer andgrabs a paper towel off the roll. She returns to the living room and picks upthe award from the manufacturers’ association, wipes it down as well as shecan, grips it firmly with her own hand, then puts it in the freezer bag. Sheturns her head away as she does so, avoiding the blood and hair caked againstthe marble base, stifling her tears because so much of the night remains.
