A Fatal Debt

aware of Anna. Then I felt her arms reach around me and I started to shake with relief.

“Are you hurt? Are you hurt?” she cried.

“You’re a complete idiot,” I said, holding one of her hands in mine. “You could have been killed. What possessed you?”

“I heard what she was saying on the intercom. She was going to kill you. I heard the shot and I ran. I didn’t want to lose you.”

I turned around and kissed her, and then we stayed half-slumped on the floor, with Nora’s body next to us, until we’d settled down. Then I got up and fished the card out of my top pocket that bore Pagonis’s cellphone number. From this point onward, I was going to play by the rules.

We sat side by side on the sofa. Anna was in a tracksuit, a T-shirt, and white socks stained green by the lawn.

“She was wulnerable from the south,” I said, nodding at Nora’s inert body.

Anna gave a weak laugh and slapped my hand.

“When did you know?” I said.

“She went to see Margaret Greene. I think it had something to do with you. That’s what she said. But Nathan was there and he told her about seeing you with me. When she came back, she was in a terrible temper. I’d never seen her like that before. She told me I had to drop you. I’d regret it if I didn’t, she said.”

“I remember that,” I said, thinking of finding Anna in Le Pain Quotidien and how her manner had changed.

“She sent me out here, like I was in exile, and it gave me time to think. I wondered if I’d got Nora wrong-that thing about us being best friends. The more I thought, the more frightened I was. I realized her story didn’t make sense.”

Anna hadn’t been the only one to experience Nora’s other side. As I’d sat by the woods with Nathan, he’d recalled how she’d played on his jealousy of me. After I’d told her that I was deserting Harry, she’d called Nathan again. He’s been with your girlfriend again and he’s going to get away with murder. I can’t stop him without your help, she’d said to him. He’d been easy for her to manipulate-in despair about his father’s death and angry with me. He had never been stable, as Anna had said. Anna had confessed to Nora as well as her therapist about how he’d cycled between charm and cruelty, like his dead father.

Nora had sent Nathan to get rid of me, counting on him being so out of control that he’d tear me apart the way he’d slashed Rebecca’s dress. But Nathan was more emotional than his father and less polished. He lacked focus. He’d rushed after me again before he’d even known what he’d do if he caught up. Instead of coming for me with a knife or a gun, as she’d counted on, he’d used his hands. She hadn’t been able to correct Nathan’s mistakes the way she’d corrected Harry’s. So I’d survived.

I held Anna’s hand. “Poor you,” I said.

“Then you rescued me.”

“You rescued me.”

She put her head on my shoulder and we stayed like that for five minutes, next to Nora’s body. Then I heard sirens along the lane and watched the conservatory windows flashing blue and red.

29

Pagonis burst through the door first, with Hodge right behind her. She had her gun drawn in front of her, but when she saw us sitting together on the sofa and Nora immobilized on the floor, she placed it back in her holster.

The fact that no one was firing at her didn’t seem to make her any happier. She had a dark, glowering expression on her face as she looked at me. She walked over to Nora and bent down to check her pulse as if unable to credit the story I’d told her on the phone. Finally, she called in the uniforms behind her. They came into the room in force-the village police, a paramedic crew, and others I couldn’t place.

Pagonis approached us and spoke to me alone, treating Anna as if she weren’t beside me-as if she really had been a ghost.

“Bag his hands,” she said to Hodge.

“What?” I said indignantly.

“There’s been gunfire here and there’s a woman on the ground. I want to know who fired the weapon. I’m testing you for powder,” she said.

“Maybe you should have tested her for powder the first time round. You might have saved a lot of trouble,” I said, pointing at Nora.

I felt that one strike home. Despite all her bluster, she’d missed Greene’s killer at the start, not even submitting Nora to an examination when she’d arrived back on the murder scene later that night. It was understandable, given that the obvious suspect had already confessed, but it didn’t look very good. Hodge reached into a case and produced two plastic bags, which he ceremoniously placed over my hands and taped at the wrists. Anna silently held out her hands, too, but Hodge ignored her.

“She fired the gun at me. There’s probably a bullet in the woodwork over there,” I said. “You’re wasting your time.”

Pagonis sighed heavily, as if feeling the weight of every frustration and misdirection she’d faced during the investigation. I could see it dawning on her that the only charge she could bring against me was assaulting Greene’s killer. The paramedics had now turned Nora on her back and were checking her reflexes and her blood pressure.

“I subdued her with an intramuscular shot. Five milligrams of Haldol and two of Ativan. The syringe is over there,” I called across to them, pointing to the middle of the floor where I’d dropped it.

“Okay, let’s find somewhere to talk,” Pagonis said. She beckoned to us, acknowledging Anna for the first time. “Mike, you go with her to the hospital. Don’t let her go.”

She gestured at Nora, who was being lifted onto a gurney by the medics and was about to be wheeled away to an ambulance. Hodge gave me one last hostile look before following. Anna and I followed Pagonis out of the living room, looking faintly ridiculous-Anna in socks and me with plastic bags taped over my hands. I wasn’t worried, though. We weren’t the ones who would come out of this looking stupid. As we left the room, it was filling up with white-overalled technicians preparing for another round of swabbing and sampling.

We walked into Nora’s study and sat near the window.

“So what the hell’s been going on?” Pagonis said.

“Shouldn’t you read me my rights?” I said.

“Forget it,” she said wearily. “You’re not under arrest. You’re not going to be under arrest. You’re just a witness. Okay?”

I should have refused to talk to her and called Joe, but I wasn’t too worried anymore and I felt a bit sorry for her. So I started to talk and explained the story as best I could, with Anna interjecting the odd supportive comment from beside me. Pagonis looked more and more unhappy as we talked.

It was a small thing that had made me first question Nora’s story: the image of her by the Range Rover in Green-Wood Cemetery. It was the vehicle in which Anna had driven me to New York, the one I’d seen in the Fox News helicopter shot in my gym that Sunday. Nora and Felix had both told me that Harry had disappeared from his apartment in New York that Saturday and driven to East Hampton from the Shapiros’ building. Once I’d stopped to consider, that made no sense. For years, Harry’s life had been one chauffeured Town Car and piloted Gulfstream after another. Even the old Harry wouldn’t have thought of driving himself there: it was out of the question for the man I’d known. Only Nora could have done it.

The Range Rover had meant nothing to Pagonis. The Shapiros inhabited a world with so many houses, so many cars, even a jet, that they wouldn’t have wondered at the use of one vehicle. But to anyone who knew Nora, it jarred. She hadn’t been infantilized by wealth like Harry: she knew her way around the world.

“Oh, shit,” Pagonis said finally. “I don’t know how we’re going to clean this up. You’ll have to provide a statement. Doctor, I don’t understand you. One minute you won’t tell us anything about Shapiro, the next you’re tackling his wife.”