74
L arry Ahearn was in the squad room when the call came in from Barrott. “Larry, we were right about Wallace. He just blew his brains out. Before he did, he told us that Altman is his nephew. He said that Altman has Carolyn and Leesey and he’s going to kill them and then kill himself. But he didn’t tell us where they are.”
With icy calm, Ahearn absorbed the stunning information. “As of the last few hours, neither trace we have on those phones is giving us anything,” he said. “Either the phones are turned off or they’re in an area where we can’t get reception. What about Altman? He must have a cell phone. I’ll call his boss, Olsen, on another line. Hang on.”
75
D erek Olsen, camp chair in hand, was about to go out and walk down the block to see the wrecking ball destroy his old town house. Irritated at the second phone call from the detectives, he was even more irritated at the reason for it. “Sure Howie has a cell phone. Who doesn’t? Sure I know his number. It’s 917-555-6262. But I’m telling you something. That’s the one I pay for. I get the bill. I watch it like a hawk. Business only. I guess he has another. How should I know? I’m on my way out for some excitement. Good-bye.”
As Barrott waited on the line for Ahearn to check with Olsen, Detective Gaylor moved swiftly to secure the premises. With one hand he locked the door of Wallace’s office and with the other dialed 911 on his cell phone.
Then he heard Barrott explode as he reacted to what Ahearn was telling him. “The business cell phone that Olsen gave you for Altman is turned off! But wait a minute. Wallace would never have been stupid enough to call Altman on that line anyway. There must have been another number that he used to reach him. Hold on, Larry.”
In two strides Barrott was across the room and kneeling beside Wallace’s body, rummaging through his pockets. “Here it is!” He yanked out a small state-of-the-art cell phone, opened it, and scrolled through the directory. This has got to be it, he thought, as he spotted the initials “H.A.” He pushed 5 and then the send button and, breathing a prayer, held the phone to his ear.
It rang twice and then was answered. “Uncle Elliott,” an edgy, high-pitched voice said, “we did our good-byes last night. I don’t want to talk anymore. There’s only a few minutes left.”
The connection broke. Within seconds, Barrott was back on his own phone, giving Howard Altman’s number to Ahearn, who was frantically waiting to pass it on to the phone technicians who would trace it.
76
H e came down to the basement three times during that long night. As I lay next to Leesey on that clammy dirt floor, pain vibrating from my leg, my face crusted with dried blood, my fingers entwined in Leesey’s, he alternately cried and laughed and moaned and giggled. I dreaded the sound of steps on the stairs, not knowing if this would be the time he would decide to kill us.
“Remember the Zodiac Killer?” he sobbed the first time he came down. “He didn’t want to keep going. Neither do I. He wrote a letter to a newspaper that he knew could be traced to him. I wrote one, too, but I tore it up. I am tortured, but I don’t want to go to prison. The first girl was when I was sixteen. I had put that behind me. Then it happened again. I was the caretaker on an estate, and the housekeeper’s daughter was so pretty. When they found her body, they suspected me. My mother sent me to New York to be with her dear older brother, my uncle, Elliott Wallace…”
Elliott Wallace! Uncle Elliott! But that’s impossible, I thought, that can’t be.
I felt his breath on my cheek. “You don’t believe me, do you? You should. My mother told him he had to help me or she’d expose him for the fraud that he was. But even before I met him, it happened again, right after I got to New York, the first girl in the nightclub. I weighed her body down and threw it in the river. Then I met Uncle Elliott, and I told him about it and said I was sorry, and he had to get me a job or I’d go to the police and turn myself in and tell the newspapers he was a phony.”
Altman’s voice became sarcastic. “Of course, he said he’d find me a job.” His lips touched my forehead. “You believe me now, don’t you, Carolyn?”
Leesey’s breath had become a soft, terrified whimper. I squeezed her hand. “I believe you,” I said. “I know you’re telling the truth.”
“Do you know that I’m sorry?”
“Yes. Yes. I know that.”
“That’s good.”
It was so dark I couldn’t see him but sensed that he had moved away from us. Then I heard him going up the stairs again. How long would it be before he came back? I asked myself frantically. I had been so foolish. No one knew where I had gone. It might be hours before someone looked for me. Nick, I thought, Nick, be worried. Know that something’s wrong. Look for me. Look for us.
I think a couple of hours passed, and then I screamed. He had been so quiet that I had not heard him come back. His hand covered my mouth.
“It doesn’t do any good to scream, Carolyn,” he said. “Leesey screamed in the beginning. I’d come down here and tell her about her picture being in the newspapers. She didn’t want to record those messages for her father, but I told her that if she did, I might let her go. But I didn’t mean it. Now don’t scream again. If you do, I will kill you.”
He was gone again. My head was pounding. The pain in my leg was unbearable. Would Lucas Reeves or Detective Barrott try to reach me? Would they and Nick realize that something was wrong?
The last time he returned, I had the sense that it was morning. I could see his shadow on the stairs. “I was never going to commit another crime, Carolyn,” he said. “I really did like managing those buildings, and I loved the friends I made on the Internet. I still thought I could stop. I really tried. Then Uncle Elliott said that now I owed him a favor. He needed me to get rid of your brother. Mack went to Elliott. He wanted to tap into his trust fund. His girlfriend was pregnant, and Mack wanted to get married and pay for his own education and hers, too. But Uncle Elliott had cleaned out most of the income from both of your trust funds. He’d invested tons of money in something that fell apart. He tried to put Mack off, but he knew that Mack was suspicious. I had to kill him.”
I had to kill him. I had to kill him. Mack is dead, I thought bitterly. They murdered him.
“Elliott had to keep everyone thinking Mack was alive so that the trust funds wouldn’t be examined. I made Mack say the words that you heard on the first Mother’s Day phone call before I shot him. Then a year later Elliott made me kill the teacher and steal the tapes she had of Mack so he could make new Mother’s Day calls. Elliott is a technical genius. For years he mixed what Mack had said on those tapes for the calls. Your brother’s buried right here with the other girls. Look, Carolyn.”
He directed the thin beam of a flashlight across the basement floor. I raised my head.
“See where the crosses are? Your brother and the other girls are buried there next to each other.”
Mack had been dead all these years that we had been hoping and praying for him to come back to us. The reality that Mack was buried here in this miserable, filthy basement filled me with an overwhelming grief. Somehow I had always believed I would find him. Mack. Mack. Mack.
Altman was laughing, a high-pitched giggly sound. “Sure, Elliott was born in England. His mother is from Kansas. She was a maid with an American family that was transferred to England. She got pregnant in London and was sent home after the baby was born. She helped him make up all those stories about being a relative of President Roosevelt. They made them up together. She helped him get that swanky English accent. He’s good with voices. The last three years he’s even been doing Mack’s voice himself. He knows you already had compared
