“That’s touching.”
“What you won’t read in some silly little report is that I was totally messed up after I shot my husband. I started into drugs-painkillers at first, then cocaine. I was a train wreck. I could only do one thing well, and that was shoot a gun. I’d been shooting since I was seven, and I could do it better than anybody. So my uncle’s career was falling apart when he got diagnosed with tremors, and my life was falling apart. Okay? So we helped each other. He got me straight, and I kept him in business. But he promised me it would only be bad people. Only people who were already dirty. And now I want a new life, and I want you in it.”
“You killed Kathy Rubinkowski, and you framed Tom Stoller-”
“I didn’t frame anyone. I had nothing to do with that. I just pulled the trigger and kept walking. I was told to leave behind the spent shell casing so it wouldn’t look like a professional hit. So I did that. The rest-taking her valuables and dumping them in the park with a homeless guy-I didn’t do it and I didn’t know about it.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Then who?”
“It was Lorenzo,” she said. “At my uncle’s direction. He knew this shooting would draw some attention, I guess. A nice white girl in a yuppie neighborhood? So he took extra precautions to make it look more like a garden- variety robbery gone bad. Lorenzo, he already knew about my arrangement with Uncle Pete. Only he and Paulie and Paulie’s errand boy Donnie knew. So he had Lorenzo cover my tracks. I didn’t know, Jason. I swear.”
I shook my head. “But then you did know. And you were going to let Tom-”
“No,” she interrupted. “I was never going to let him go to prison. If it had come to it, I would have confessed. Or something. I would have done something. I would not have let that poor guy go to prison.”
I watched her carefully, trying to read her, sure that my normally reliable instincts had failed me. “That’s easy to say now.”
She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. Her left hand. The gun hand remained still at her side. “You don’t believe me,” she said. “If you don’t believe that, then I guess we’re done.”
I didn’t answer. My throat was full and my stomach was churning.
She let out a bitter breath. “I wondered if this day was going to come. Believe it or not, I thought if it did, I could make you understand. I thought you’d give me a chance.” She shook her head and took another breath. “I guess that was dumb.”
I reached for the desk drawer.
“Don’t do that, Jason. Please.”
I opened it up.
She raised her gun.
“Jason, don’t.”
I removed a business card for Detective Frank Danilo, the lead on the Rubinkowski murder. I placed it on the desk, picked up the receiver of my office phone, and dialed the number.
When the police station operator answered, I said, “Detective Frank Danilo, please.”
“Hang up the phone, Jason.” Tori stared at me, the gun trained on me. We watched each other as I waited for Danilo to come on the line-probably just a few seconds but elongated by the tension. A twitch of Tori’s finger and my life was over.
“Please don’t do this,” Tori said. I stared into the barrel of the gun as the voice of Frank Danilo came over the receiver.
“Detective, this is Jason Kolarich,” I said.
Tori’s eyes narrowed. Her gun held steady. I’d be dead before I realized she pulled the trigger.
“Yeah, Jason. What’s up?”
I loved Tori, too. I knew that for certain this afternoon, when I put everything together. I always measured love by pain. What I felt when my wife and daughter died was so consuming that it crushed me and rebuilt me into something vaguely resembling my former self. This was not that kind of pain. This was poison through my blood, something that grabbed and twisted my insides and stole my breath. I loved her, and at this moment I believed that she loved me, too. That was supposed to make it easier. It made it worse.
“Kathy Rubinkowski’s killer is named Victoria Virginia Ramini,” I said. “She’s the niece of Peter Ramini. She now goes by Tori Martin. She’s Gin Rummy, Detective.”
I slowly placed the phone back in its cradle. Closed my eyes. Took a breath.
When I looked up, Tori Martin was gone.
