Incriminated (19 page)

Lucy continued to be doubtful. “You seriously believe we have any chance to set this up well enough to fool a detective with an actual brain?”

Paolo nodded. “I think we could.”

Maya also began to nod. “Lucy, think about it. It's a hard blow to the head. Enough to kill on impact. The cops won't do a detailed postmortem on a body they find that looks exactly like roadkill. They'll never find out that he actually died from being whacked over the head with a shovel.”

“How can you be so sure they won't do a detailed postmortem?”

“Because we'll set it up so well that they won't be suspicious,” Paolo told her. “They'll see a horrible head wound and blood, they'll assume that's how he died.”

John-Michael said, “That's actually pretty good.”

“But we all have to agree,” Maya said. “Because if we do this, we're all in it together. We put this whole evening
in the vault and we throw away the key.”

“All of us? What about Grace and Candace?” Lucy said, practically throwing the words at Maya.

Unease settled over the trio once again. “Obviously not Grace and Candace,” Paolo said. “They can't ever know.”

“They could come home any minute now,” Lucy sneered. This was a grandiose, scary plan. There had to be a million ways it could go wrong. She could see why John-Michael might not want his involvement with the man's death to be examined too closely. But really—did the other three housemates have to take the risk, too? “It's not exactly watertight,” she said.

“No one walks away from something like this without getting their hands dirty,” Paolo said wearily. “You don't want in, you say so right now. And if you don't, then you're gonna keep your mouth shut.” He took a breath and raised his right hand. “Who's with me?”

Lucy scowled. “Hell no.”

John-Michael and Maya raised their right hands in silence. John-Michael placed both hands over his heart. Imploringly, he said, “Please, Lucy.
Please
.”

“At least come with us,” Maya said. “That guy was about to call someone on his cell phone. Maybe it's not safe for you to stay here alone anyway.”

Lucy gawped. “You think he was
getting help
?”

Maya knelt down by the dead body and picked up the man's phone. “He wasn't going to be able to handle four of us alone. Not even tied up.”

The thought that yet another hit man might be on his way to the house stunned Lucy into temporary silence. Maya pressed some buttons on the phone. “No password. No contacts. He hasn't used this phone in over two hours,” she told them. “No calls in or out.”

“No one knows he's here,” Paolo deduced.

Maya glanced from Paolo to Lucy. “Seems so.”

After a moment, Lucy released an exasperated sigh. “I guess we're all screwed anyhow. All right. What do you need me to do?”

Paolo said hopefully, “You're in?”

“What does it look like, dumbass? You did this to save my life. You're gonna need another car to follow you up to Malibu Canyon. Way I figure it, you need at least two drivers, plus someone strong enough to help you hike that body down a ravine. Maya doesn't have her driver's license yet, which means you need me.”

“I'm coming, too,” Maya said. “Otherwise I'm going to be sitting here answering difficult questions from Candace and Grace about where you guys went.”

“Two people per car works best,” Paolo agreed. “Lucy, thank you. This means a lot.”

“Does it?” she spat back. “You're not leaving me a lot of choice. This is going to come back on all of us, one day.”

“Then don't do it,” John-Michael urged.

Lucy merely gave a stubborn shake of her head. “Too late. I already gave my word. I'm a fool that way.”

Paolo reached for her hand. But Lucy withdrew with a cold, disdainful scowl.

One hour later, she was driving Paolo's Chevy Malibu along the Pacific Coast Highway. Lucy kept her hands steady at ten and two on the steering wheel as they followed the taillights of the hit man's Oldsmobile into Malibu Canyon. It was almost ten thirty at night and the road was quiet; no other traffic was visible on the same side of the road and only the occasional car zipped past heading toward the coast.

Beside her, Maya was uncharacteristically chatty.
Nerves, probably
, thought Lucy. Excessive chatter wasn't her favorite coping mechanism, so the drive was doubly difficult. Not long after leaving the house, Lucy wished that she'd remembered to bring an old MP3 player so that she could at least put some loud music on the stereo to block out Maya's chitchat. Rancid at full blast would be a huge improvement over this.

Paolo had cautioned them against bringing phones, apart from the hit man's, which obviously needed to be disposed of. He'd insisted they all leave their own cell phones in the house. “Someday the cops might want to ask where we were tonight. The answer is gonna have to be that we were all home, all totally distracted, partying or watching a movie or something.”

“You need pretty high security clearance to look at cell phone records,” Maya had said. “But you're right, we can't
allow any risk that we'll be caught. All our phones can be used to link us to a location.”

They still needed to be able to communicate between cars, however, as Maya had pointed out, so the housemates stopped at a store on the way to the freeway, and picked up a couple of cheap pay-as-you-go cell phones; one for Lucy and Maya, one for Paolo and John-Michael, who'd waited outside the store in the hit man's car and were now leading the way.

The phone that lay in Maya's lap began to buzz. With a quick glance at Lucy, Maya answered it. After a second, she put the phone on speaker.

It was Paolo. “We're going to head up into the canyon. I checked on the map, if we take Piuma, the road gets pretty twisty. We'll find a blind curve, the kind of place that's a risk spot for accidents. We'll slow down and stop. You guys need to make a note of where we are and then keep driving. Stay out of sight. The last thing we need is for someone else to drive by and see both our cars. In fact, I don't want them to see my Chevy at all. Wherever you stop, get right off the road, somewhere safe, and turn off all your lights. Even inside.”

“We're just gonna sit in the dark until you guys do whatever it is you're gonna do?” Lucy asked.

“Exactly. You and Maya sit tight. All we need you to do is give us advance warning if any cars come the other way. Drive until you're at least two minutes from where we are, and call as soon as you see someone coming.”

Maya said, “What if someone comes up behind you?”

“Yeah, maybe we shoulda got an extra phone and left one of you behind as a lookout behind us. But I didn't think of that. Sorry. John-Michael and I will just have to hide behind the shooter's car if we see headlights coming up on our side of the road. At least if you give us fair warning of stuff coming the other way, we can do something.”

Maya ended the call and then said energetically, “I think five minutes would be safer, don't you? I'm gonna set the timer on my cell phone.” She paused. “Oh, damn. I don't have it.”

Lucy said dryly, “Just look at the time on the one you bought. You're right, five minutes is safer. Five minutes should give them enough time to arrange the body and get out of sight.”

“Paolo's smart for coming up with this idea,” Maya said thoughtfully. She was fidgeting with the cell phone now, scrolling through the various options on its tiny, blue-lit screen. “You know, I'm kind of surprised actually.”

Lucy found herself agreeing. The
surprise
of it was probably the most interesting aspect—until she reminded herself of what Paolo had actually done. He'd almost killed a guy with a shovel. She'd seen him nod at John-Michael, agreeing that their friend should finish the man off once he started having the seizure.

Maybe it was euthanasia, like it had probably been with JM's dad. Maybe John-Michael had only meant to defend them against the bullets. But then again, maybe
he'd intended to kill. Maybe Paolo had intended to kill. She wasn't inside their heads, and no juror ever would be. That was something the boys would have to carry inside for the rest of their lives.

Yet, the reality of it was that Paolo and John-Michael had started to dig a hole into which all four of them had immediately fallen. Climbing out wasn't going to be easy. Like Paolo said, they all had their hands dirty now.

The phone began to buzz once again. Lucy watched as Maya took the call. This time she just listened, said a quiet, “Okay, but we're going for five minutes,” and then ended the call.

“They're going to stop at the next major hairpin bend. We should slow to thirty-five miles an hour and then start timing.”

Lucy nodded, staring directly ahead. Her eyes felt suddenly dry, like hard stones scraping inside her eye sockets.

We're actually doing this. We killed a guy. Now we're going to cover it up.

Paolo pulled slowly onto the edge of a hairpin bend on Piuma Road. With slow deliberation, he turned off all the car lights. Outside, an even layer of clouds glowed with very faint moonlight. Without the cloud cover the Oldsmobile they sat in would have been obvious to any passing vehicle. As it was, there was just enough light not to trip up, but probably not enough to spot a shadowy car and its occupants, pressed to the side of the road.

He turned to John-Michael, who had barely said a word for the whole drive. Paolo wasn't sure what to say to his friend. At some point they'd have to acknowledge that Paolo's action hadn't been intended to kill, whereas John-Michael's was more questionable. Had his friend intended to keep the hit man still during his brain seizure, to protect them from the random firing of bullets? To finish off a man in his dying throes? Or had the intent been to kill? In law as well as ethically, Paolo knew that made all the
difference. And yet, John-Michael had very clearly sought Paolo's consent.

They were both responsible. John-Michael had been the one who'd stepped up to the plate, but both of them had agreed about what needed to be done. And now they had to follow it through to the bitter end.

John-Michael spoke with difficulty. “Do you remember exactly how she was, you know, on the road . . . your
friend
. . . when she was dead?”

Paolo winced at the mention. “Yeah. Don't worry about it. Just help me get the guy out of the trunk. It should at least be easier than it was to sneak him out of the house.”

The boys opened the car doors and closed them carefully. Paolo popped the trunk and reached in, grabbing hold of the edge of the living room rug they'd wrapped around the shooter's body. Together they lugged the heavy load, which must have been around two hundred and fifty pounds, out of the car and onto the edge of the road, somewhere ahead of the Oldsmobile. He checked several times, making sure that the body lay at the same distance and in the same position as Meredith's had been when he last saw her—that it looked natural, not staged. A constant buzz of adrenaline kept Paolo from feeling anything but the most remote guilt at the memory of her death and how he'd walked away. It was starting to make sense. If it hadn't been for that experience, he wouldn't have known what to do right now.

In Paolo's mind, it felt like a kind of balance. Guilt wasn't a useful emotion in this scenario. Their freedom, their reputations, and maybe even their lives were in danger. Guilt could be banished with impunity.

John-Michael returned to the car and then came back with a wad of plastic wrap in one hand.

“The blood from under his head,” he said. “Traffic cops are gonna wonder why there's no blood on the road.” Then with precision he peeled back the layers of plastic until the clotting blood in the center of the makeshift package was revealed. Without uttering a word, he slid the ooze under the wound on the man's head. Paolo switched on the disposable cell phone and used the dim light from its screen to help John-Michael. Less than half the blood that coated the plastic seemed to make it onto the road.

John-Michael leaned back to survey his handiwork. “It's not as much blood as was on the rug, or even on the plastic wrap.”

Paolo shrugged. “At least there's
some
blood. You really think they'll be checking a thing like that so carefully, when it looks like the dude's been whacked by a hit-and-run driver?”

“I guess not.” John-Michael thought for a moment. “What are we going to do with the rug?”

“We gotta ditch it. A long way from here. The plastic wrap, too. Should probably wash it off first, burn it, dump the remains in the garbage. Anything that's touched his
blood can be linked to us
and
to the shooter.”

“You don't want to take the rug home and clean it, like, industrially?”

Paolo shook his head. “No way. Think about Grace and Candace.”

“That's what I am doing. They're going to wonder.”

“We'll tell them you fell asleep and peed on it. How hard could it be to get another one? It's probably from IKEA, like everything else.”

John-Michael stood up. “We're not saying I peed on it, asshole.”

They began to head back to the car, Paolo carrying the rolled-up rug under one arm. He propped it against the rear passenger door, facing away from the road so that it wouldn't be seen by a passing car. Then he rounded on the trunk and was about to close it when he spotted something peeking out from underneath the rug that lined the trunk's base. He raised the flap to reveal a black canvas duffel bag. He felt for the zipper and tried to pull it open, only to find a padlock had been used to secure it. He lifted the duffel bag, experimenting with its weight. John-Michael joined him.

“What's up?”

Paolo handed him the bag. “Feels heavy. But what's inside is, like, all blocky. Books, maybe. Or paper.”

They looked at each other as revelation struck. “No way,” breathed Paolo. “You think?”

John-Michael nodded. “Money? Uh, yeah, just a little bit. I doubt that hit men get paid by check.”

“How much do you think it is?”

John-Michael tested the weight. “A lot,” he said, handing it back. “Put it back. When the shooter's people find the car they're gonna want that cash.”

“You think they'll know how much is inside?”

John-Michael gave Paolo a curious look. “You're seriously talking about stealing from the kind of people who carry guns and bags of cash? Who'd you think that woman hired to hit Lucy? The local neighborhood watch? This has organized crime written all over it.”

“You're saying Dana Alexander is
connecte
d
?”

John-Michael shrugged. “She sure knows who to ask for a job like this. This is way too much money for a single hit.”

Incredulously, Paolo said, “Where are you getting all this?”

Sighing, John-Michael said, “It wasn't all sweetness and light, living on the streets for a year, y'know? I met my share of bad men. Never got involved, but I had offers. There's always work if you're willing to do anything. And I'm telling you—compared to this bag of cash, it's pocket change to arrange a hit on a civilian like Lucy. This amount of money—that's from something else. Maybe no one's gonna miss a hit man. But money like this, someone is gonna follow.”

The cell phone in John-Michael's pocket was buzzing. He checked the screen and glanced up at Paolo, panic in his voice. “It's from the girls. Car on its way. Come on, Paolo, move it.”

Paolo glanced anxiously into the road and closed the trunk. The duffel bag was still in his right hand. “But the mob or whoever, they're not gonna know we took it. How could they?”

The way Paolo saw the situation—they now had to use every possible resource to save themselves. Money could help. It could buy them cars, protection, somewhere to go if they ever needed to run. Money was
insurance
.

“Could we please just get inside?” John-Michael said tensely.

He was right. They'd scarcely closed the doors to the hit man's Oldsmobile behind them when an RV sailed by on the opposite side of the road. Paolo held his breath as it passed. Was the driver going to stop? Had he perhaps caught a glimpse of a body in his headlights? But after a moment the taillights disappeared around a bend, and then another.

“Better wipe down the car for fingerprints while we wait for the girls to come pick us up,” Paolo told John-Michael.

“And the guy's cell phone,” John-Michael said, adding wearily, “and his gun. We'd better wipe it all down.”

“Yeah, I'm not sure we want to leave those things in the car,” Paolo said. “It's evidence that could match up with the bullet hole in the wall of our house.”

John-Michael thought for a moment. “His people will be expecting his stuff to be with him.”

“Why?” challenged Paolo. “Who's to say someone didn't stop by and just take everything outta the car,
without reporting the accident?”

Without warning, a ringtone began to sound. Paolo and John-Michael froze. “That's not our phone,” John-Michael whispered. “It's coming from the glove compartment.”

“What the hell?” Paolo cried out, much louder than he'd intended. His heart was racing, he realized, at the mere spike in John-Michael's fear.

John-Michael's voice was shaking as his hand withdrew from the glove compartment. He opened his fist right in front of Paolo's face. In his palm lay a vibrating, ringing smartphone.

Paolo blinked and then stared at John-Michael, mystified. “Well?”

John-Michael turned the screen toward him. “I'm not answering it!”

“Me either!”

“Well, someone better!”

After another five seconds, the ringing stopped.

“This . . . could be bad,” John-Michael said in what sounded like a constricted throat. No more words seemed to want to leave his mouth.

Paolo looked from the phone in John-Michael's hand to the glove compartment. “Hey, look,” he said, smiling. “A key ring. You suppose this fits the padlock on the duffel bag?”

“Forget about the bag of money for one second, could you?” John-Michael said, exasperated. “Paolo, look at this phone, will you? At the house, the shooter was using his second cell phone. A
burner
. Come on, man, what the hell is
wrong with you? Have you lost your mind? He had
another phone
. Don't you understand what's going on here?”

A dull realization began to wash over Paolo, stripping away all the bravura and hubris, until he felt nauseous from it.

“Oh no,” he said, his voice empty. “Oh God, no. Maya said he didn't make any recent calls from the burner . . . but if he used this
smartphone
to call someone else, then . . .”

John-Michael's eyes seemed to bulge in his head. He stared at Paolo in horror and disbelief and said, “Then that
someone
is gonna come looking for the money.”