15 Seconds

Akers took off his reading glasses. “Carrie…”

A look of skepticism came over her boss’s face, and she found herself suddenly rushing things, not giving him the chance to interrupt. “Then it kind of seemed crazy Steadman would kill his own friend? Who he knew from college. More likely he was going there because he had nowhere else to go-he told us he only ran from the scene in the first place because the police fired on him. I mean, he did place a call to 911… So I asked around… He’d also placed two calls to Dinofrio, minutes after he ran from the crime scene, so it seems possible, doesn’t it, Bill, that he only headed there because Dinofrio was the only person he knew in town, not to mention an attorney, which kind of backs up his assertion that he only went there in the first place to turn himself in. And the second murder scene showed no sign of any struggle or altercation-”

“I didn’t realize he had said he was only going there to turn himself in.” Akers looked at her inquisitively. “You certainly sound like you’ve been following this case closely, Carrie.”

“I’m only pointing out that there are inconsistencies, Bill. You know how Steadman kept going on and on the other day about us looking for that blue car? With South Carolina plates?” She opened up the file. “I started thinking-”

“Look, Carrie.” Akers pushed himself back in his chair. “I appreciate all your thought on this, but have you given any thought to the possibility that maybe Steadman intended all along to kill his friend?”

“What? Why in the world would he want to do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe there was some history between them that will come out. And given what has come out, the other night, about his time in college, you may well be wrong about any predating ‘violent tendencies.’ And it’s entirely possibly he could have planted the gun somewhere. Off the airport grounds. Maybe on a previous visit.”

“A previous visit?”

“Why not? That would give him a perfect alibi, right? To come up here to play golf with him… Then he stashed the gun somewhere when he ran from the scene. Or left it near Dinofrio’s house. People are searching the areas now. And what if Martinez somehow found something? What if Steadman somehow felt Martinez was interfering with his plan?”

“He was up here to give a speech at a doctors’ conference, Bill! Look, there’s something you need to see.” Carrie blew out a breath, knowing there was no holding back now, and took out the first photo, the one of the blue Mazda racing from Martinez’s murder scene. Here goes the career, she thought.

Akers put up his hand. “No, Carrie, I think you’re the one who needs to see something…” He reached to the side of his desk and pushed a piece of paper across to her. “This came in just an hour ago.”

Carrie picked it up. It was an invoice of some kind. From something called Bud’s Guns in Mount Holly, North Carolina.

An invoice for a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun.

She saw whom the bill was made out to, and her stomach fell like a ten-ton weight hurled off a cliff.

Henry Steadman

3110 Palmetto Way

Palm Beach, Florida

Steadman’s address.

An H &K 9mm, the same kind of gun that had killed both Dinofrio and Martinez. It was bought at a gun show, in Tracy, which made it perfectly legal to avoid providing certain IDs and background checks.

The invoice was dated March 2. Just three weeks ago!

Steadman had lied. He said he’d never even owned a gun. Her breath felt cut in half. Carrie was afraid to lift her eyes.

“So what exactly do you have in there that’s so important for me to see?” Akers asked her with a sharpness in his voice. Acting more like a superior officer than a colleague.

“Nothing…” Carrie swallowed, her mouth completely dry. She closed the file. “This makes it all pretty clear.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I had just about made it through Georgia when I heard the news.

I’d spent the night in Hinesville, a few miles south of Savannah. I pulled off the highway in need of a night’s sleep and, even more, a shower, and drove until I found a motel that looked even sleepier than me. The woman who checked me in seemed as anxious to get back to the tea she was brewing as I was to avoid her direct sight. Ten minutes later I was bathed and gone to the world, a King of Queens rerun on the TV. Glad to just be in a bed after two nights. When I woke up, the housekeeper was knocking on the door. It was close to ten. The news was on, Libyan Rebels Advancing on the Capital of Tripoli. I closed my eyes again, wondering if I’d hear an update about me.

What came on almost sent me into cardiac arrest.

“Florida double homicide suspect purchased a nine-millimeter murder handgun at North Carolina gun show.”

I shot up in bed, as a pretty, down-home anchorwoman told the world how on March 2, only three weeks ago, I had bought a Heckler & Koch 9mm handgun, apparently the same gun that killed both Martinez and Mike, from a local dealer at a gun show in North Carolina.

I leaped out of the bed and put my face close to the screen.

What I saw was a supposed bill of sale from an outfit called Bud’s Guns, in Mount Holly. The report claimed that the weapon had been paid for in cash at the Mid-Carolina Gun Fair almost three weeks earlier, which, it explained, avoided the requirement for a more detailed background check and ID.

My heart almost came up my throat. I’d never been to a gun show in my life! And I’d only been to North Carolina once in the past several years, to Duke University, for a conference on rebuilding facial bone structure.

But there it was. My name on the invoice. My address in Palm Beach. Having paid cash, as if I was trying to avoid detection. Three weeks ago. Before the murders. For the entire world to see!

If there was even a sliver of hope that someone might believe me that I wasn’t guilty, that was now dashed. My mind flashed to Carrie Holmes. It had taken everything just to convince her that the Amherst incident had been twisted maliciously.

What would she be thinking now?

I reached over to the night table and found one of my disposable phones.

This was part of the setup! It had to be. How could someone have my name and address on a bill of sale, buying the identical gun used in the killings, three weeks before the crime? How would anyone have known I’d be in Jacksonville? How would anyone have planted me there?

Suddenly the truth settled into me and my eyes went wide.

The sonovabitch who had been orchestrating this whole thing, who had Hallie… he’d been planning it for weeks.

How?… Why?

I turned off the TV and sat back in a daze, mentally rewinding through everything that had happened since the moment I’d arrived in Jacksonville two days before.

Martinez pulling me over; ordering me out of my car; telling me I was going to jail. All those questions, as if I’d committed some serious crime. As if they were hunting someone.

And Mike. How would anyone have known about him? Or put us together? That that was where I’d head in a panic? My head was throbbing. Who? Why? Were Martinez and Mike killed merely to make it appear that I was a murderer?

But then I suddenly realized, the bastard had gone one step too far.

I took the phone and punched in the number for the sheriff’s office. Carrie had told me not to call her. But I had to. By now, I was damn sure she thought I was guiltier than ever. Everyone would. My heart began to race as I waited for the call to go through. Finally, a receptionist answered.