“I’m going to go, and I promise I will never mention you in any way to anyone, nor bother you again,” I said quietly as I stood up, “but I have one more question. Why does Bruce hate Mack so?”
“There is a very simple answer. Bruce loves me. All through Columbia, from the time we were freshmen, I knew that. After I had the abortion, I went to a hotel room and swallowed sleeping pills. And then I decided I wanted to live. I called Bruce. He came rushing to me. He saved my life. He’ll always be there for me, and I love him for that, and I’ve learned over time to love him for himself. Now, do me a favor and get out of this house.”
The downstairs of the rest of the house was quiet as I walked along the hall to the front door. From upstairs I could hear the voices of the children, and my guess was that Richard Hanover had kept them there so that they could not hear what we were saying.
If I could describe my emotions, I would say I felt as though I were in a whirlwind, being slammed back and forth against opposite walls. At last I had the answer to why my brother disappeared. Mack had been unutterably selfish, but he didn’t want to go to law school, and didn’t love Barbara, and her pregnancy was what galvanized him into running away. Even the quote on the tape made sense. “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes…I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.”
In his defense, he must have counted on Barbara going to my parents for support for his baby.
Barbara’s flat statement that Mack was not responsible for these crimes, her shock that I would even consider the possibility, was both a reproach and a relief to me. In my mind, I had been trying to form an insanity defense for him. Now whatever fears I had that he was abducting and killing women were over. I knew I would stake my immortal soul on the fact that he was innocent.
Then who was doing this? Who? I asked myself as I got into the car. Of course, I had no answer.
I drove back to the hotel, keeping my fingers crossed that I could extend my stay. The place was really more of an inn than a hotel, and only had eight or ten bedrooms. I had planned to leave at six P.M., and was being billed for a late checkout.
Thank God, my room was available. I didn’t think there was any way I could have waited at the ferry and then driven home in my present frame of mind. Driven home to what? I asked myself bitterly. The media at my heels. Barrott’s insinuating calls. An absent mother who wanted no part of me. A “friend,” Nick, who was probably using me to help clear his own name.
I went upstairs. The room was cold. I had left a window open that the housekeeper hadn’t closed. I closed it now and turned up the thermostat, then I looked in the mirror. I looked gaunt and weary. My hair, which I’d left loose, seemed limp on my shoulders.
I grabbed the courtesy bathrobe from the closet, went into the bathroom, and began to run the tub. Three minutes later, I was feeling the warmth of the bathwater begin to permeate the chill in my body. When I dressed, I put on the running suit that, thankfully, I had brought with me. It felt good to be wearing it, zipped high at the neck, only my face and head showing. I twisted my hair back and pinned it, then applied a little makeup to hide the stress I saw in my eyes and expression.
Celebrities in dark glasses at night have always amused me. I often wondered how they managed to read the menu in a restaurant. This evening, I put on the glasses I had worn while I was driving up yesterday. They covered half my face and made me feel shielded.
I picked up my shoulder bag and went downstairs to the restaurant, then was dismayed to see that except for a large middle table with a reservation sign on it, there didn’t seem to be anything available. But the maitre d’ took pity on me. “There is a small table in a corner, near the kitchen door,” he said. “I don’t like to assign it, but if you don’t mind…”
“It will be fine,” I told him.
I had been settled there long enough to order a glass of wine and review the menu when they came into the dining room. Dr. Barbara Hanover Galbraith, her father, the four girls. And one other person. A boy about nine or ten years old, a boy with sandy hair, whose face I recognized as clearly as I would my own if I looked in the mirror.
I stared at him. The wide-set eyes, the high forehead, the cowlick, the straight nose. He was smiling. Mack’s smile. I was looking at Mack’s face. My God, I was looking at Mack’s son!
I suddenly felt light-headed as the realization hit me. Barbara had lied. She didn’t have the abortion. She never went into any pediatric nursery and longed for the child she had destroyed. She had borne that child, and was raising him as Bruce Galbraith’s son.
How much of the rest of her story was true? I asked myself.
I had to get out of there. I stood up and walked through the kitchen, ignoring the stares of the workers. I crossed into the lobby, stumbled upstairs, packed my bag, checked out, and caught the last ferry from the Vineyard. At two A.M. I got back to Sutton Place.
For once, there was no media truck on the block.
But Detective Barrott was standing in the garage. Obviously, he must have known that I was on the way home, and I realized I must have been followed. I was dizzy with exhaustion. “What do you want?” I almost screamed.
“Carolyn, Dr. Andrews received another message from Leesey an hour ago. Her exact words were, ‘Daddy, Mack said that he’s going to kill me now. He doesn’t want to take care of me anymore. Good-bye, Daddy. I love you, Daddy.’”
Barrott’s voice echoed through the garage as he shouted, “And then she screamed, ‘No, please don’t…’ He was strangling her. He was strangling her, Carolyn. We couldn’t save her. Where is your brother, Carolyn? I know you know. Where is that stinking killer? You’ve got to tell us. Where is he now?”
61
A t three o’clock on Wednesday morning, as he was driving around SoHo looking for a vulnerable target, his cell phone rang.
“Where are you?” a tense voice asked.
“Cruising in SoHo. Nothing special.” This was his favorite neighborhood. Lots of drunken young women stumbling home at this hour.
“Those streets are alive with cops. You wouldn’t try to pull anything stupid, would you?”
“Stupid, no. Exciting, yes,” he said, his eyes still scanning. “I need one more. I can’t help it.”
“Get home and go to bed. I have someone else for you, and she’ll make the biggest headlines of all.”
“Do I know her?”
“You know her.”
“Who is she?”
He listened as he heard the name. “Oh, that’s really good,” he exclaimed. “Did I ever tell you that you’re my favorite uncle?”
62
T he horror of the recording of Leesey’s final good-bye to her father had shaken even the hardened detective squad to the core. Catching the serial killer before he could strike again had become a burning need for each of them. Over and over, the full squad reviewed every fact that had come to light during the investigation.
On Wednesday morning, they were crowded into Ahearn’s office again.
Gaylor was reporting his findings. Benny Seppini’s story had checked out. He was seeing Anna Ryan, the separated wife of Walter Ryan, a police sergeant who was known for his heavy drinking and volatile temper. Anna Ryan confirmed that she had been speaking to Benny Monday night two weeks ago and expressed to him her fear of her husband. When told that Benny claimed he had been parked in his car outside her apartment building, she had smiled and said, “That’s just what Benny would do.”
