hurt but her. She reached for her pocket but Kevin pressed the knife into her flesh, stabbing her with the tip. She let out a desperate cry no one could hear. “Help!”
“Anne? Anne! Is that you?” shouted someone, not far behind them.
“Help!” Anne screamed again, just as she felt Kevin’s body torque toward the sound. She seized the opportunity and twisted enough to reach her left pocket. She grabbed the Beretta. Kevin was too distracted to notice.
Anne struggled in his grasp, holding the Beretta against her leg, waiting. She was a good shot, but not good enough to shoot over her shoulder. She disengaged the safety with her thumb, pressing it down. She couldn’t hear the solid
The man’s voice called again, right behind them. “Anne! Anne, are you okay?!” It was Gil! He must have come from the bar, looking for her.
“Gil!” she screamed, but Kevin was already turning toward him, relaxing his grip. Anne felt the knifepoint ease from her back, wet with blood. She seized the chance to leap from Kevin’s hold, spin around on her heel, and aim the gun at him. “Hold it right there!” she screamed. “I’ll use it, I swear.”
But Kevin was already lunging at Gil with the jagged hunting knife. Gil caught Kevin by the wrist, pressing him backward. The two men struggled back and forth. Anne aimed for Kevin, but he was moving too much for her to fire. She couldn’t take the chance and shoot Gil. Fighting men were different from a paper target.
“Anne, shoot him!” Gil shouted, but the men kept struggling, turning this way and that. She stepped closer to the fight to get a better shot, but suddenly Gil reached out with a desperate hand and grabbed the gun from her. Kevin came at him, brandishing the knife, and reached Gil just as the gun went off, a flame of red-orange firing from the snub barrel, the report lost in the fireworks. Then another, and another, from the semi-automatic.
Anne screamed. Kevin’s neck exploded in blood. He dropped backward onto the ground, crumpling like a straw man. She hurried to Kevin. He lay sprawled on the ground, his legs bent crazily, his body motionless. His mouth hung agape, his eyes stared open but unseeing. Blood squirted red from where his Adam’s apple used to be, spurting into the air with his pulse, falling back on his face like a grisly fountain. His throat emitted a hideous, gurgling sound.
“No!” Anne heard herself scream without knowing why. Hot blood spattered her dress and drenched her hands and arms. It was no use calling 911. One look at Kevin told her he was dead.
“It’s all right now,” Gil was saying, over and over, his hand on her shoulder.
But Anne heard him only as if he were far away, and tears she couldn’t begin to explain poured down her cheeks.
30
At the interview room of the Roundhouse, fluorescent lights on the ceiling cast harsh shadows that hollowed out the faces of those assembled. Having given her statement, Anne sat numbly in a bare side chair, her white dress puckering with drying blood in gruesome polka dots. Her back stung where she had taken five stitches over the knife wound, but she’d been so disoriented at the hospital that she hadn’t even washed her hands. They lay apart in her lap, bloodstained and recoiling from each other.
She was relieved that her nightmare with Kevin was finally over, but she couldn’t help wishing it hadn’t ended with such an awful death. Her shoulder slumped with exhaustion; she felt drained and spent. Her head hurt so much she couldn’t begin to parse her complex knot of emotions. She knew she’d be doing that for the next few days, if not years.
Judy and Mary stood behind Anne’s chair like a hastily dressed girl army, their faces drawn and saddened even by a war won. A bruised Matt hovered near Anne, with an arm on her shoulder, as they all listened to Gil finish giving his statement to a grave Detective Rafferty. The heavyset Detective Hunt-and-Peck did the typing, and everyone pretended that Deputy Commissioner Parker, who leaned against the wall in a crisp uniform with his dark arms folded, always attended such occasions.
“I saw that he had Anne,” Gil was saying, seated in the steel chair bolted to the floor. “He had his hand in her back. I thought he might have a gun, or a knife.” Bennie stood behind him, her head cocked as she listened. She was representing Gil in the investigation, since Anne wasn’t permitted to, as a witness to the shooting.
SAW THAT HE, typed the detective, and Detective Rafferty leaned forward, his elbows resting on his legs. He was still dressed in a suit, but his tie was loose and the knot hung off-center. “And you knew it was Satorno, how?”
“We went over this,” Gil said, tired. His seersucker sports jacket had been torn, the lapels stained by Kevin’s blood. Anne was fairly sure that the police wouldn’t charge Gil with anything, even involuntary manslaughter, not with Bennie on defense. But it wasn’t a certainty. Anne didn’t want to see Gil indicted for saving his own life, and hers.
Bennie tapped her client’s shoulder. “You should probably repeat your answer.”
“Okay, I’ll say it again. I knew it was Satorno because I’d seen his photo on the TV and in the newspapers.”
“You remembered the way he looked from the mug shot?”
“Of course. I took an interest. He tried to kill my lawyer, my friend. When they ran his photo, I checked his features. I did the same thing with the Unabomber, didn’t you?”
“I see.” Rafferty rubbed his chin, grizzled now. “And how is it that you happened to be there at the time, Mr. Martin?”
“Be where?”
“At the hoagie tent.”
“Well, I was at a bar farther down the Parkway. East, I should say. Chase’s Taverna, okay? Celebrating the holiday.”
“You were alone?”
“Yes,” Gil replied. “My family was at home.”
Anne noted that he wasn’t volunteering any background about Jamie throwing him out, but that wasn’t police business anyway.
“Talk to anybody at the bar who’d remember you, Mr. Martin?”
“Not really. A blonde drinking Cosmopolitans, but I don’t know her name.”
“Try to pick her up?”
“Does it matter?” Gil shot back, drawing a disapproving look from Bennie.
“Maybe,” Rafferty answered.
“Okay, yes. I tried to pick her up.” Gil offered his wrists. “Cuff me.”
Off to the side, Anne was starting to wonder about Gil. Picking up a blonde right after Jamie threw him out? Trying to hit on Anne? The affair with Beth? At some point, she’d advise Gil to get some counseling, but that would be after
“How about the bartender?” Rafferty was asking.
“I didn’t try to pick her up.”
Rafferty didn’t laugh. “I didn’t know she was a woman. I meant, would the bartender remember you?”
“Yes. Her name’s Jill. Jill and Gil, that’s how I remember. Yeah, we talked. She would remember. We laughed about the name thing.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then I saw Anne on the TV over the bar, and she said where she’d be, at the hoagie tent around nine o’clock. So I went there. When I got there it was so crowded, I knew it was too crazy to even bother, so I left. When I was heading back to Center City, I just happened to see her. Her dress was white and it caught my eye. Then I saw what was going on.”
JILL AND GILL, typed the heavyset detective, and Rafferty gave a sigh that had a final ring to it, then glanced at Bennie. “Ms. Rosato, of course I’ll have to discuss it with my superiors, but I doubt that we’ll be charging Mr. Martin with any crime.”
“That’s the right result, Detective,” Bennie said. If she’d been worried, it didn’t show. She put a hand on Gil’s
