They had walked through the main entrance of the generic light brown brick apartment building. They took the two flights of stairs to unit #3B, Jason having to slow down for Danes to keep up. Danes was the one who knocked on Mia Andrews’s door. Four beats with no response.
In retrospect, they had each waited to the left and right sides of the apartment door, respectively-not because they sensed any danger, but instinctively, the way you eventually learn not to stand too close to a top step. They were two cops paying an unannounced visit to a stranger. Without their brains even processing that simple fact, their bodies had known not to stand at the dead center of that door.
If they had, two police departments might have had funerals on their hands.
Four beats with no response. Then another knock, again from Danes. “Miss Andrews. The apartment downstairs is reporting a leak. We need to check the sink in your kitchen. Are you there?”
Jason would remember later the way Danes looked at him from the opposite side of the doorway and winked- as if the building leak was such a clever cover story. When he replayed those seconds in his mind, Jason could almost imagine Danes’s winking eyelid returning to its place of rest, only to blink again when the first shot was fired.
They both fell to the ground so quickly that Jason hit his head against Danes’s shoulder.
Two more shots, right through the door frame.
Danes was the one who returned fire first. Jason flinched as he heard more pops-these louder and closer- before realizing they were coming from Danes’s Glock. He removed his own.40 cal Beretta from its holster and started firing through the door. He had no idea where they were aiming, but they both unloaded their weapons as they scuttled crablike across the floor toward the staircase.
He could hear his own heavy breaths blurring with Danes’s panting in the stairwell once their weapons were empty. Danes was yelling radio codes that Jason used in Dover only in theory. He could smell fear in their perspiration. And then the hallway fell silent except for the sound of a child crying somewhere on a floor above them.
The first two pops could have been a car backfiring. Alice flinched at the noise, then forced herself to take a deep breath, realizing that her imagination was getting the best of her.
But the first two pops were followed by an array of firecrackers in quick, chaotic succession. She heard a woman on the street scream. A teenager crossing the intersection in front of her ducked into the fruit market, pulling the screaming woman with him.
But as other people ran for cover, Alice felt herself running into the street. They had driven past Mia’s building when Hank dropped her off. She knew where the woman lived. She was absolutely certain the shots were fired there. Her feet were moving faster than she could think.
She heard brakes screeching next to her. Hank Beckman was jumping from his green Camry. “Alice! No!” But her feet were still moving. She was the one who had sent those police officers to the apartment. She had known going into it that Arthur had sold them on the idea by offering her up as the bait. Of course they had treated the entire enterprise as a joke. Of course they hadn’t exercised precautions. And she should have seen it coming.
Hank reached for her arm and pulled her back toward his car. “Stop it, Alice. Just stop!”
She heard a yell escape from her throat-a primal sound that she never would have recognized as her own voice. In that one, prolonged cry, she felt the pain of what was happening now-harm to the police officers whom she’d sent into that apartment, perhaps the loss of any chance to ever speak to the sole person who might exonerate her-and the pain of what had already come to pass-her brother’s death, the sight of Travis Larson’s bloodied corpse. All of it rose at once and rippled through her body, releasing itself through that horrible sound. She felt herself shivering against Hank Beckman.
“Alice. Alice, is that you?” Beckman held her tightly against his chest, patting the back of her head, but someone else was calling her name now. She peered out across Hank’s shoulder and saw Arthur crossing the street, car keys in hand. “I almost didn’t recognize you with that hairdo. I saw a parking spot a couple blocks away and figured I better grab it. What is going on here?”
Chapter Fifty-Five
A lice tapped her nails against Hank Beckman’s steering wheel, trying not to think about the minutes that had passed since he’d instructed her to pull the car to the curb while he made his way into Mia’s building. Arthur started to ask another question from the passenger seat, but she shushed him, wanting to focus on the silence that existed beyond the sounds of her tapping fingernails and the car’s idling engine.
Silence was a good thing, she kept reminding herself. Silence meant no more gunshots. Silence meant Hank was all right.
Sirens broke through the hush that had fallen over the neighborhood since the gunfire. The sounds were muted at first, but grew louder, then stopped. Help had arrived. Whatever had unfolded at Mia’s address, backup officers would be there by now, along with ambulances for anyone who was injured. It was another half an hour before her cell phone rang. She nearly dropped it in her rush to answer.
“Hank?”
“Everyone’s fine.”
“Really? Danes? Shannon?”
“Danes came with cooperating law enforcement from New Jersey. They’re both absolutely fine. Not a scratch.”
“But the gunfire-”
“Mia popped off a few shots when they arrived. They both returned fire. When backup arrived, they entered the premises and found the subject on the floor, dead from what appears to be a single gunshot to the face.” Alice noticed that he had slipped into whatever sterile mode of speaking he had learned as an FBI agent. “It’s unclear whether the bullet came from law enforcement or was perhaps self-inflicted when she realized she couldn’t escape. The good news is, she was packing a.38.”
She didn’t understand the significance.
“That’s the same kind of gun used to kill Travis Larson. They’ll run the ballistics. This is the beginning of the end, Alice. This is a good thing.”
“Did you see her?”
“Mia? Yeah, only for a second. Danes cleared me out pronto.”
“What did she look like?”
“You don’t want to know. Look: it’s too early to be definitive, but I’ve been doing this a long time. My instincts are telling me we were right. This all still needs to play out, but we were right. You’re going to be okay.”
She felt herself start to cry and gave a reassuring nod to Arthur in the passenger seat. “So what do I do now? Do they still want me to turn myself in? I’m willing to. I’m ready to do it.”
“No, but I think you need to come here. Danes found something he wants to show you.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, but he thinks you need to see it for yourself.”
She and Arthur walked the quick block and a half to Mia’s apartment. Hank met them outside, ushering them past a perimeter that a uniformed officer was beginning to erect with yellow crime tape. They stopped at the landing outside the building entrance. Hank disappeared inside, then reemerged with Willie Danes. For the first time since that initial meeting when she’d found Travis Larson’s body at the gallery, he shook her hand.
“Once we were clear, we did a sweep through the apartment to make sure there was no one on the premises. This happened to catch my eye.” Danes handed her a framed photograph. “It was on her dresser.”
The woman at the center of the five-by-seven looked thin and pale, her hair like matted straw against her scalp. Five women surrounded her, trying their best to look celebratory. Two of them meant nothing in particular to Alice, but three were significant. One was sweet Mrs. Withers, looking very much the same as she had earlier this morning when she’d sunk those marshmallows in the hot chocolate. One was a relatively attractive younger woman-probably early twenties. She had long red hair with orange and blond streaks, and what Mrs. Withers had
