over The Meadows. Her car was parked on a quiet side street.
Nancy locked it and loped through a back yard. She was strung tight and conscious of every sound. A dog barked, but the houses on either side stayed dark.
Until Peter Lake came into her life, Nancy Gordon had never hated another human being. She wasn't even certain she hated Lake. What she felt went beyond hate.
From the moment she saw those women in the farmhouse basement, Nancy knew Lake had to be removed, the same way vermin were removed.
Nancy was a cop, sworn to uphold the law. She respected the law. But this situation was so far outside normal human experience that she did not feel everyday laws applied. No one could do what Peter Lake had done to those women and walk away. She could not be expected to wait day after day for the newspaper that brought news of the next disappearance.
She knew the minute Lake's body was found she would be a prime suspect.
God knows, she did not want to spend the rest of her life in prison, but there was no alternative. If she was caught, so be it. If she killed Lake and walked away, it was God's will. She could live with the consequences of her act. She could not live with the consequences of letting Peter Lake go free.
Nancy circled behind Lake's two-story colonial skirting the man-made lake. The houses on either side of Lake's were dark, but there were lights on in his living room. Nancy glanced at her digital watch. It was three-thirty a.m. Lake should be asleep. Nancy knew the security system in the house was equipped with automatic timers for the lights and decided to gamble that that was why the living room was lit.
Nancy crouched down and ran across the back yard.
When she reached the house, she pressed herself against the side wall.
She was holding a.38 Ed had seized from a drug dealer two years ago. Ed never reported the seizure and the gun could not be traced to her.
Nancy crept around to the front door. She had studied the crime scene photographs earlier that evening.
Mentally, she walked herself through Lake's house, remembering as much as she could about the layout from her only visit. She had learned Lake's — alarm code during the murder investigation. The alarm panel was to the right of the door. She would have to disarm it quickly.
The street in front of Lake's house was deserted.
Nancy had taken Sandra Lake's keys from an evidence locker at the police station. She turned the front door key in the lock, then took out a penlight. Nancy grasped the doorknob with her free hand, took a deep breath, and pushed it open. The alarm emitted a screeching sound.
She trained the penlight on the keyboard and punched in the code. The sound stopped. Nancy swung around and held her gun out. Nothing. She exhaled, switched off the penlight and straightened.
A quick tour of the ground floor confirmed Nancy's guess about the lights in the living room. After making certain no one was downstairs, Nancy edged up the stairs, her gun leading the way, The second floor was dark. The first room on the left was Lake's bedroom.
When she came level with the landing, she saw his door was closed.
Nancy approached the door slowly, walking carefully even though the carpet muffled her footfalls. She paused next to the door and walked through the shooting in her head. Ease open the door, switch on the light, then shoot into Lake until the gun was empty. She breathed in and exhaled as she opened the door, an inch at a time.
Her eyes adjusted to the dark. She could see the outline of the king-size bed that dominated the room.
Nancy cleared her mind of hate and all other feelings.
She removed herself from the action. She was not killing a person. She was shooting into an object. just like target practice. Nancy slipped into the room, hit the switch and aimed.
Part Six
Chapter Nineteen
'The bed was empty,' Wayne Turner told Betsy. 'Lake was gone. He started planning his disappearance the day after he murdered his wife and daughter. All but one of his bank accounts had been emptied the day after the murder and several of his real estate holdings had been sold.
His lawyer was handling the sale of his house. Carstairs said he didn't know where Lake was. No one could compel him to tell, anyway, because of the attorney-client privilege. We assumed that Carstairs had instructions to send the money he collected to accounts in Switzerland or the Caymans.'
'Chief O'Malley called me immediately,' Senator Colby said. 'I was sick.
Signing Lake's pardon was the most difficult thing I've ever done, but I couldn't think of anything else to do. I couldn't let those women die.
When O'Malley told me Lake had disappeared — all I could think of was the innocent victims he might claim because of me.'
'Why didn't you go public?' Betsy asked. 'You could have let everyone know who Lake was and what he'd done.'
'Only a few people knew Lake was the rose killer and we were sworn to silence by the terms of the pardon.'
'Once the women were free, why didn't you say to hell with him and go public anyway?'
Colby looked into the fire. His voice sounded hollow when be answered.
'we discussed the possibility, but we were afraid.
Lake said he would take revenge by killing someone if we breached our agreement with him.'
'Going public would have destroyed the senator's career,' Wayne Turner added, 'and none of us wanted that. Only a handful of people knew about the pardon or Lake's guilt. O'Malley, Gordon, Grimsbo, me, the U.S. attorney, the attorney general, Carstairs, Merrill and the senator. We never even told the mayor. We knew how courageous Ray had been to sign the pardon. We didn't want him to suffer for it. So we took a vow to protect Ray and we've kept it.'
'And you just forgot about Lake?'
'We never forgot, Mrs. Tannenbaum,' Colby told her. 'I used contacts in the Albany Police and the FBI to hunt for Lake. Nancy Gordon dedicated her life to tracking him down. He was too clever for us.'
'Now that you know about the pardon, what are you planning to do?'
Turner asked.
'I don't know.'
'if the pardon, and these new murders, become public knowledge, Senator Colby cannot be confirmed.
He'd lose the support of the law-and-order conservatives on the judiciary Committee and the liberals will crucify him. This would be the answer to their prayers.'
'I realize that.'
'Going public can't help your client, either.'
'Wayne,' Colby said, 'Mrs. Tannenbaum is going to have to make up her own mind about what to do with what she knows. We can't pressure her.
God knows, she's under enough pressure as it is.
But,' Colby said, turning to Betsy, 'I do have a question for you. I have the impression that you deduced the existence of the pardon.'
'That's right. I asked myself how Lake could have walked away from Hunter's Point. A pardon was the only answer and only the governor of New York could issue a pardon. You could keep the existence of a pardon from the public, but the members of the task force would have to know about it and they're the ones who were rewarded. It was the only answer that made sense.' Lake doesn't know you're here, does he?'
