Guilt (6 page)

He struggled to get loose, but Annie had his arm locked in place. She increased the pressure on the back of his hand, harder and harder until he screamed in pain. Such a satisfying sound. Just a little harder and the bone would crack. It didn't take much, if you knew where to press.

“Annie!” Freddie shouted. She'd managed to get free of the padding. “Ease up.” Her voice was calm, authoritative, but her eyes were tense with alarm. The women stood in stunned silence.

Annie eased the pressure and felt Klevinski go slack.

“Someone call the police,” Annie said.

No one moved.

Annie strained over her shoulder to see. Jackie was leaning on Molly and weeping. “Annie, let him go, please,” Jackie begged.

“You know what's going to happen. He'll be back another time, another place, looking for you. It's just a matter of time before—”

“Let him go,” Jackie said, louder this time. “Please. I can't do this.”

Annie couldn't hold onto Klevinski and argue with Jackie at the same time. He let her propel him out into the hall.

Still holding on, she said under her breath, “If it were up to me, I'd have broken your arm and had you thrown in jail.”

“And I'd have sued the crap out of you,” he said. “For Christ's sake, she's my wife. I just wanted to talk to her.”

“The restraining order says you can't. But you think you're special, don't you? That none of this is your fault. I know all about men like you.”

He gave Annie a hard look, like he was trying to memorize her face. “I'll bet you do.” He ran his tongue over his lips. “Like it rough, don't you?”

It took everything Annie had to keep from losing it. “You sonofabitch. Stay away from her.”

“You know, this is none of your fucking business.”

Annie wanted to grab one of Freddie's trophies and whack the bastard across the head with it. Instead, she renewed the pressure on his wrist until he was up on his toes, swearing and howling with pain.

“All right, all right. I'm going,” he managed to say.

Annie knew she was going to regret this, but she had no choice. She loosened her hold and he broke away.

She followed him out to his truck. He stood out there massaging his wrist, his eyes a pair of burnt-out coals. Finally he turned and left. The winch on the back of the disappearing truck reminded her—wasn't he a mechanic? Wouldn't that give him easy access to whatever it took to make a bomb? Annie made a mental note to call and make sure Joe Klevinski was on Mac's list of suspects.

“What the hell's the matter with you, girl?” Freddie asked her when Annie came back inside. “You better be careful or you'll find yourself with a great big bull's-eye across your back.”

*   *   *

After class, Jackie and Annie sat on folding chairs in the empty studio. Jackie had dark smudges under her eyes. She explained that she'd been afraid to go home. She and Sophie had spent another night with Peter's mother. She'd walked Sophie to school, then taken the subway to Slim Freddie's. Joe was waiting for her when she got there, so she walked around the block. When she got back, she thought he'd gone.

“Has he moved out?” Annie asked.

“I think so. I was going to go back later today.”

“Is he bothering you at work?”

“I called in sick the last three days. I've been too afraid. I mean anyone can come into the admissions office. What if he comes back?”

Which
he
did she mean? The husband or the bomber? Or were they one and the same?

“I can't keep calling in sick. If I miss another payment, I'll lose the condo for sure. But I need to be where I feel safe.”

Jackie would never feel safe working at Harvard as long as Joe knew where to find her. But finding a new job wasn't that easy. Suddenly it occurred to Annie. She and Chip needed to hire someone, that was for sure—someone to answer the phones, take care of the filing, run the occasional paperwork over to … well, Jackie wouldn't be able to do that, not for a while at least. But she'd be safe until Joe figured out where she worked, and hopefully he'd have cooled off by then. Hiring Jackie would sure save a whole lot of time, not having to go through a gazillion resumes and interview candidates. Seemed like a slam dunk.

She told Jackie her idea. “We can't afford to pay a huge salary. But you'd get health insurance, and—”

Jackie was staring at her, wide-eyed, like she'd been hit by a two-by-four.

“What?” Annie asked.

“It's just that no one's ever … I mean … Yes is what I mean. Yes, I'll take the job. And thank you.” She hugged Annie. “You won't regret this. I promise.”

Annie hoped to hell that Jackie was right.

6

P
ETER WAS
stuck in traffic. He'd been on his way to the Cambridge Courthouse to testify in a purely routine case, quoting research, work he could do on two cylinders—he'd only taken the work because Chip convinced him that his young defendant deserved a break. Detours were still in effect around Harvard Square four weeks after the bombing, making traffic a world-class nightmare. To avoid the mess, Peter had crossed the Charles River into Boston and taken Storrow Drive.
Wrong.
Apparently, everyone else had the same brilliant idea. Traffic crept toward Leverett Circle.

He called Chip on his cell phone and left an update on his progress. He suggested Chip and Annie go up without him. He'd join them as soon as he could.

Then he sat back and tried to relax. There was nothing for it. He rolled down his window. The heat spell had long since snapped with a few resounding thunderstorms, and today the air was crisp with fall, the surface of the river flat as glass. Maybe he'd get out of court in time to get in some rowing.

Too bad Annie didn't love to row the way he did. She adored blading—a form of public humiliation, not a sport, as far as he was concerned. Skating killed his feet, he needed trees to stop, and when he fell down, which he did frequently, he couldn't get up without an inordinate display of klutziness. Annie said he should give it a chance. He'd grow to like it.
Right, when pigs fly.

Annie kept telling him how “just fine” Jackie Klevinski was working out. Not only did she like the work, she was talking about enrolling in a program to become a paralegal. Not at Harvard, she said. That place had bad karma, and she'd known it all along.

Annie invited him to butt out when he dared to question whether hiring Jackie was such a hot idea. Jackie needed to learn to take care of herself, he'd suggested, not continue to be taken care of, and maybe Annie was letting herself get too involved. It worried Peter, too, that his mother was babysitting Sophie after school. What if Joe Klevinski found out where they lived and showed up one afternoon in a rage? When Peter mentioned this to Pearl, she said to stop
hakken
her—Yiddish for “butt out.” She reminded him that she was the resident noodge.

By the time he got into East Cambridge, the trial was due to start in ten minutes. Parking spots were scarce, and there'd be a backup at the metal detector at the entrance. With their official IDs, Chip and Annie could zip through without waiting on line. He hoped they weren't still waiting for him.

He squeezed his Miata into a space on the top floor of the parking garage on Third and didn't bother to wait for the elevator. He ran five flights down, then cut across Bullfinch Square. If he hadn't been in such a hurry, he'd have slowed down to enjoy the refurbished century-old courtyard, an oasis of calm surrounded by early nineteenth-century red-brick court buildings.

He started down the steps to the street. Across the busy intersection stood the modern, nondescript Middlesex District Court, a building whose only virtue was to remind the good citizens of the Commonwealth that progress wasn't always a good thing. The structure had so much less appeal with its ugly concrete and—

Peter never got to finish the thought. A powerful shock wave forced him back. Time seemed to slow down as he felt himself lifted off the ground. Somewhere in midair he registered the sound of an explosion. Next thing he knew, he was flat on his back in the courtyard.

He lay there, sounds suddenly muted. Scores of pigeons flapped against a blue sky. They must have been blown out of their roosts. A deep shadow fell, like a hand had reached out to blot the sun. The air hung thick with sulphur.

Peter lifted his head. Car alarms clanged. He could make out raised voices. Somewhere a woman was screaming.

Trying not to move too fast, he propped himself on one elbow. The ground sparkled with broken glass. His back and his head hurt like hell. He touched his forehead, his head. No blood. He looked down. Legs and arms seemed intact. The only thing missing was his briefcase.

Peter started to get up, but a wave of dizziness forced him down again. He rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled to the top of the steps. From there, he looked down at the devastation. Traffic had come to a halt. Black smoke billowed from where the glass doors had blown off the front of the courthouse. People were lying on the sidewalk and in the street, blood everywhere. If he hadn't been running late, he'd have been one of them.

A man in a business suit was on his knees a few feet away, talking on a cell phone. Peter could only make out the occasional word: “injured.… explosion.… Thorndike Street.”

More slowly this time, Peter got to his feet. He saw his briefcase lying on a step halfway down. It was open, and the papers spilled out. He'd have to gather them up before they all blew away, Peter thought distractedly; otherwise he wouldn't have what he needed to testify. That's why he was here. To testify about the effects of alcohol on judgment. The trial should be getting under way—he looked at his watch—any minute. Chip and Annie should be waiting for him.…

The situation snapped into focus, and Peter stared at the smoking lobby, emptiness edging on nausea in the pit of his stomach, a cold sweat on his back. Were Chip and Annie somewhere in there?

7

“I
S THAT
adorable or what?” Annie's sister Abby asked as she tucked a strand of long red hair behind her ear with a manicured finger. Once upon a time, it had bothered Annie that Abby was perfect—five-foot-five, silky straight hair, hourglass figure, turned-up nose. And no freckles.

They were outside a grassy enclosure in a part of the Franklin Park Zoo closed to the public. Jackie, Sophie, and Abby's boyfriend, Luke Thompson—the guy Abby had been keeping under wraps—were pressed up against the chain-link fence watching a six-foot-tall baby giraffe stand on spindly legs alongside its two-story-tall mother. Annie had gotten a reprieve from going to court with Chip so she could attend this private viewing and finally meet Luke. She'd invited Jackie and Sophie to come along. When Jackie fretted about leaving the office untended, Annie reminded her that they'd survived for a year armed with only voice mail and beepers.

Who dated a zookeeper, anyway? Annie wondered as she watched Luke telling Sophie about the zoo baby that had been front-page news in the Boston media, a welcome change from articles about fear and bomb threats. With his blond, wavy hair and strong chin, Luke seemed like the type who'd watch himself in the mirror over the bar while he tried a new pickup line. Annie hoped she was wrong. It was about time her sister got a break in the man department. Abby had been married once. That guy had been a bad cliché from start to finish and, after about six months of wedded bliss, took off with a stripper. The other men who'd appeared and disappeared from Abby's life had been a pitiful bunch. There was the accountant who raised pit bulls. The chef who worked nights and weekends, and whose apartment had no furniture in it except a bed and a ceiling-mounted mirror. Every one of them was good-looking as hell, and after each one dumped her, Abby disintegrated.

You hurt my sister and I'll break off your arm and beat you over the head with the bloody stump,
Annie wanted to tell Luke, but she stifled the impulse.

The mother giraffe's slender stilt legs angled apart so she could lower her head. The flesh in her neck bunched up as she nuzzled the youngster. Annie found herself mesmerized by the sheer size and grace of these creatures, their bodies a patchwork of brown and white velvet.

“Doesn't it look just like one of those stuffed toys we lusted after in FAO Schwartz in New York?” Abby said.

Annie vividly remembered that visit to Manhattan. She had been ten years old, Abby was five. There were pictures in their family photo album of her and Abby wearing matching navy blue wool coats and berets trimmed with red ribbon, standing on the steps of the Plaza Hotel. It had been one of the few times their parents took them on a family vacation anywhere other than Cape Cod, where Uncle Jack and Aunt Felicia had a cottage.

“Remember the ice cream sundaes?” Annie asked, remembering the old-fashioned ice cream parlor their mother had taken them to across from Central Park. It was all marble and brass, and smelled like malted milk and cotton candy. When Annie returned to New York years later she couldn't find the place.

“We didn't go for ice cream,” Abby said.

Annie knew better than to argue. It was just like her sister to be so definite and so wrong at the same time.
You better pick your battles with that one,
her mother used to say.

“Sophie's going to remember this,” Annie said.

“Know what we call a baby giraffe?” Luke asked Sophie. “A calf.”

“So what's the mother?” Sophie asked. “A cow?”

Annie could relate to Sophie, as smart as she was sassy.

“That's right,” Luke said. “Actually, lots of animal mothers are called cows. Mother elephants. Hippos.”

“Dolphins, too,” Sophie said, looking serious.

Luke smiled. “That's right. And do you know how old this baby is?”