He remembered his hands around her throat, the defiance in her eyes.
He remembered the feeling of dread in his gut when he saw her body floating in the pool.
He must have killed her. She was dead. He didn’t remember.
He turned off Forest Hill into the parking lot and spotted the car.
Stick to the plan. Damage control. Contain and minimize.
Chapter 53
I watched through the foliage that divided Bennett’s property from the yard of the house next door. The house behind me was dark and vacant. People moved in and out of Bennett’s house, carrying things in, carrying things out.
My father was kept at bay outside the front door. I could tell by his body language he was angry. I could easily imagine how he had managed to insert himself into the situation. The Walkers, the Whitakers, the governor, my father. That all added up to privilege.
As I watched the people come and go from the house, I imagined Bennett’s cronies and Irina going up the sidewalk and disappearing inside on Saturday night. And all the dark scenarios of what had played out in that house swirled through my head like a toxic gas.
Not for the first time in my life, I wished I had been adopted by couple of CPAs in Middle America and had grown up to do my four years at a state college, get a job, get a husband, have a couple kids. People who had that life didn’t know the things I knew out the darker side of life. I envied them.
Because I needed to focus on something tangible, I moved toward the back of the property and peered through the branches to catch a glimpse of Bennett’s backyard. The interior lights of the house spilled out through French doors onto the patio and across the dark water of the pool. Deck chairs were scattered around.
I thought of the photograph of Irina and Lisbeth sitting on the chaise together, looking happy and silly. Sitting here, at this pool, in these chairs. I recognized the background and the stripes on the cushions.
Lisbeth had tried to prevent Irina from coming here that night. They had argued. “I begged her not to go,” Lisbeth had said.
“… he told me Irina was dead… that she was dead when he found her in his pool… ”Barbaro had said.
I wondered why he had turned his story around. Why, really. I was just too cynical to believe it was because I had somehow awakened a conscience in him.
But if it was simply to take himself out of the picture of what had really happened that night, if what he had decided to do was hang the murder on Bennett and exonerate himself, why tell a story with a component he couldn’t control?
“I saw Beth-Lisbeth-when I got to the parking lot…”
Why say that? Unless it was part of the power trip. Unless he knew he could control Lisbeth, because he had seen to it that she would be too terrified to do anything other than what he told her.
That would mean it was a game for him, that he was a monster.
I couldn’t see that, but I hadn’t seen it in Bennett Walker either.
I would have said I was well past being surprised by anything in this life, but in that moment I thought I wasn’t so sure of anything anymore. Maybe that was what came with time and bad experience-the ability to know that no matter what I’d seen, things could always get worse.
And so they would.
Chapter 54
Bennett Walker buzzed his window down halfway, looked at the kid in the car beside him, and said, “I’m not doing this here. I’m not being seen with you.”
He lifted a small duffel bag off the passenger seat. “There’s twenty-five thousand dollars in this bag, just like we agreed. If you want it, come and get it.”
The kid stared at him, his mouth hanging open. There was pizza sauce on his face. For some reason, that image would stay with him: the idiot kid with pizza sauce on his face.
He drove slowly around the end of the buildings, going behind the shopping center, and made his way toward South Shore, checking his rearview mirror.
The kid followed. Of course he did. Greedy little shit.
He took a right on South Shore and drove past Players, then took a left and another left onto the grounds of the old polo stadium, via what had been a service entrance. Abandoned now for several years, the stadium stood sagging, in a shambles from hurricane damage, waiting for progress to come along and flatten it.
Bennett pulled in at the far end of the stadium, parked his car, and got out. Creepy place, he thought. Not like it was in the old days, when the barns were full and the place was electric with the energy that surrounded high- goal international polo. The outdated security lights were lit, but they gave little in the way of light or security and did nothing to dispel the feeling of being in a ghost town.
The kid pulled in beside him, parked his car, and got out.
Neither of them noticed the third car, which killed its lights and stopped just off the road.
“Hey, man,” the kid said, his tone too familiar, like they were contemporaries, friends even. “I can understand you not wanting to do this in front of people. Believe me, I don’t want to make this difficult for you. I’m providing a service. I want my clients to feel comfortable.”
Bennett stared at him. “What the fuck are you talking about, you slimy little shit? You’re a blackmailer.”
The kid held his hands up and made a pained face. “No, no, no. That’s such an ugly word. That’s not what this is at all. You’re paying me a fee to manage some information for you. That’s all. It’s business.
“A man like yourself, you have a name to protect, yet you want to live a certain lifestyle… Think of me like a personal assistant.”
“I don’t want to think of you at all,” Bennett said flatly. “Let’s get this over with.”
He set the duffel bag on the trunk of the kid’s car and unzipped it. “Twenty-five thousand. I’m not sticking around while you count it.”
“That’s cool, Mr. Walker,” the kid said. “I don’t want to put you out.”
Bennett turned and stared at him again. Unbelievable. What was there to say?
“Now, I’m sure you understand this only covers Saturday night,” the kid said.
“What?”
“The information specific to Saturday night,” he clarified. “There’s the other thing we haven’t discussed.”
“What other thing?”
The kid made the pained face again. “I hate to bring it up. I really do. But in light of recent events-”
Bennett advanced on him, towering over him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The hands went up again. “Last April. End of the season. During the big Super Bowl or whatever you call it in polo.”
“The U.S. Open? What about it?”
“There was a night at Players… a girl… in your car…” the kid prompted. “She wasn’t very happy…”
Everything went cold inside Bennett. A fan, a polo groupie… he came on to him… She wanted it… They went outside…
“She was crying,” the kid reminded him. “You told me I didn’t see anything.”
He had paid the girl ten grand to shut up. She had been all over him in the club. No one would have believed her-without a witness to back her up.
Funny, Bennett thought, he had been agonizing over what he was going to have to do. Now he just acted. He put his hand into the duffel bag, curled his fingers around the short crowbar, pulled it out, and struck Jeff Cherry with it as hard as he could, burying the thing in his skull.
The kid’s head cracked like an egg. Blood and brain matter splattered, but not as much as Bennett had
