Inherit the Dead (31 page)

“You’re crazy.”

“Am I? After you two are dead—a family feud the way I see it, your father shot you then himself, or maybe the other way around. It doesn’t really matter. Either way, the two of you will be dead and then, a few weeks from now I’ll announce my existence and I’ll get all the—”

“Um, no.” Norman cut in. “No.”

“No, what?”

“Angel’s right. You will not get any money, not a cent.”

“Of course I will! I’m Julia’s flesh and blood. Her heir. The only one. Everything will come to me.”

“I’m . . . I’m afraid not. You see, I wrote the trust papers, and they do not allow for any half siblings. Other than Angel, no one can get his or her hands on that money.”

“You’re lying!” The man took a step toward Norman. “And now you’re a dead man.”

Perry slipped his cell phone into the pocket of his trench coat. Then he charged.

So did Angel. Lunging at her half brother, the two of them struggling over the gun as Perry sprinted and the gun went off and then Norman Loki was on the floor, blood leaking from his head. Perry knocked the man to the floor, and the gun flew from his hand.

“Oh my God—my God—Daddy, no!” Angel was shrieking, but she had gotten the gun and was aiming it at her half brother.

“It’s okay,” Perry said to Angel. “Take it easy.”

The man was struggling, but Perry had him in a headlock, under control when Angel fired the gun and he sagged in Perry’s arms, a hole in his shirt, a red stain spreading.

Angel dropped the gun, and Perry kicked it away.

“Why?” Perry asked. “I had him. You saw that.”

“He killed my father, and he was going to kill me.” Angel stared at Perry. Her face looked like stone. “I had no choice. Anyone could see that,” she said, her voice calm.

A hand gripped Perry’s arm, the man coughing up blood, fighting to speak. “It was . . . her. After I left you on the bridge I—I turned around because it, it was my chance . . . she was alone and you didn’t matter anymore. But when I got there she was creeping out from the back of that house on Washington Avenue, and I, I followed her . . . from Brooklyn to Park Avenue . . . waited across the street to, to see what she was up to and—”

“Shut up!” Angel screamed. “You’re crazy!”

She went for the gun again, but Perry got it first.

“Go on,” he said, and pressed a hand into the man’s wound to staunch the bleeding.

“I, I was outside when . . . when Julia came flying off the terrace. Five minutes later I saw her, Angel, slip out of the building and . . . and lose herself in the crowd.”

“Liar!” Angel screamed. “You crazy, fucking liar!”

“It was”—his breathing was labored, blood bubbling at his lips—“her.” Then his eyelids fluttered, his grip loosened on Perry’s arm, and he slid to the floor.

“Hang on, damn it, hang on!” Perry glared at Angel.

“You don’t believe him, do you?” Angel’s blue eyes were wide, filled with her unique brand of manufactured innocence. “He’s insane. God knows if
anything
he’s told us about his life is true. I think
he made it all up. This pathetic story about being Julia’s son and, and—” She sniffed, holding back sudden tears. “Oh, it’s all so, so awful. My father, my mother—That crazy murderer, that liar!”

Perry stood up, took a few steps toward her, spoke softly but firmly. “I think it’s you who is lying, Angel.”

“How dare you? After all I’ve—”

“After all you’ve done to make sure you get all the money? That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it, Angel? Money.”

She swiped her tears away, and Perry saw the tough little girl in the nanny’s photo, jaw set, the look of determination in her eyes.

“You’ll never prove that.”

“No?” Perry had them now, the words she’d uttered, what he had been trying to recall. “The Pollock,” he said.

“The . . . what?”

“The Jackson Pollock painting in your mother’s apartment.”

“What about it?”

All she cares about is stuff—her jewelry, her houses, her great big Jackson Pollock painting.

“You mentioned it, just before, at the precinct.”

“So?”

“It’s new. Your mother just bought it.”

“So what?”

“So it means you were in your mother’s apartment. Recently. Very recently.”

“No.” Angel shook her head, ran a hand through her blond hair. “I haven’t been there but, but . . . My mother told me about it.”

“But you said you hadn’t spoken to your mother for a year, and she said the same thing.”

“Then I, I must have read about her buying it. That’s it.”

“Where?”

“The
Times,
I think. I can’t remember.” Angel waved a hand. “What does it matter?”

“The buyer’s name was withheld, Angel.”

“So?” Her face softened, and she took a step closer to him, her voice that seductive purr Perry remembered when he’d held her trembling body against his in front of her nanny’s home. “It’s just a painting, Perry. Not important. What’s important is us.”

“Us?”
Perry looked into those wide blue eyes, no tears now, just a deep void.

“You and me,” said Angel. “Why not? There’s plenty of money—or there will be. You don’t want to scratch out a pathetic living as a private eye for the rest of your life, do you, Perry?” She eased the back of her hand across his cheek, fingernails flicking against his skin, and he felt a chill. “We can go anywhere. We can—”

Perry grabbed her hand. “
We
are not going anywhere, Angel. And neither are you. I think the police will be interested to know that you were in your mother’s apartment.”

Angel tugged her hand away, her face going hard. “Try to prove it,” she said, her purr now a rasp. “Oh, I can just see it. A disgraced cop trying to hang a murder on the casual mention of a painting.” She laughed. “That’s rich.”

Perry knew she was right. It wasn’t enough.

Angel’s lips curled into a smile. “And gee, all the witnesses are dead, aren’t they?” She looked down at her half brother and her father and shrugged. “You know, Perry, I don’t think you’re going to say anything.”

There were sirens in the distance.

Perry returned her cold stare. “You made a mistake, Angel, and my guess, you’ve made others. I’m going to start by having your mother’s building canvassed, every apartment, every doorman, every
maid, and every maintenance man.
Someone
will have seen you come in or out or passed you in the stairwell. We’ll get you, Angel.”

“The cops will never do that, Perry. They won’t listen to you. Why should they?”

“Who said anything about the cops? I’ll do the canvass myself.”

“And I’ll be long gone.”

The sirens were louder now, just outside.

Angel mussed her hair and rubbed at her eyes, looked at Perry briefly, then dropped to her knees beside her father, turned on the tears, and cried, “Daddy, Daddy,” as the front door opened and East Hampton’s Sergeant Gawain burst in, two deputies beside him, a half-dozen uniforms and a couple of medics just behind.

“Jesus Christ,” said Gawain, taking in the scene.

“Yeah,” said Perry.

“You okay?” Gawain asked.

Perry nodded.

Gawain looked at Angel, cradling her father’s head and rocking slightly. “She okay?”

“Angel? Oh, she’s just fine.”

Angel looked up, her eyes locked on Perry’s, a smile behind the tears just for him.

“This the half brother?” Gawain asked.

“He’s not my brother,” Angel said. “He made it all up. He’s just some lunatic.”

“She shot him,” Perry said.

“I had to! He shot my father and probably killed my mother!”

A medic tore open the man’s shirt, stethoscope to his chest. “There’s a pulse, weak, but it’s there.” He nodded to the EMTs who strapped an oxygen mask over the guy’s face and got him onto a gurney.

Angel watched, that secret smile of hers gone.

“I hope he makes it,” said Gawain.

“It’s a shoulder wound, mostly blood loss,” said Perry. “I think he’ll be talking.”

The medic was leaning over Norman Loki now. “He’s gone,” he said.

Perry took the cell phone from his pocket and handed it to Gawain. “You heard most of what went down here, didn’t you?”

“Enough,” said Gawain. “But a lot was garbled.”

“I’ll help you ungarble it,” Perry said. “And there are computer programs that will help, too.” He looked at Angel kneeling beside the medics who were strapping her father’s body onto a stretcher. She was crying, her hands fluttering around her beautiful face, but her brows were knit as she strained to hear what Perry was saying.

“I’d better cuff her before she runs away again,” said Gawain.

“You do that,” said Perry.

It was cold
out on the dunes, but after Gawain had handcuffed Angel and the police and EMTs had all driven away, Perry lingered a while, looking up at the stars and moon. He thought about Derace McDonald and the girl he had found but could not save, and he thought about Angel, the girl he’d found who didn’t need saving.

The police sirens had long faded, replaced by the sound of the ocean and the howl of the wind, and Perry wondered who was going to inherit all that money. Then he decided he didn’t care.

He wound Nicky’s scarf around his neck and turned away from the ocean, thinking about his daughter and how he would call her in the morning.

Organizing twenty writers can be a difficult task, but this one was made easy. First, because David Falk entrusted me with the assignment; second, because of Michelle Howry’s astute editing; third, because Stacy Creamer stood back and let me do my thing with her blessing; and fourth, because I was following in the footsteps of Andrew and Lamia Gulli, who edited the last serial novel and got the ball rolling.

Of course the real thanks must go to the writers. I don’t think there is a more supportive or generous group of writers around, all of whom understood that we were playing with three or four noir classics at once, who followed the plan and yet made each chapter their own. They were indeed a dream team.

—JONATHAN SANTLOFER

MARK BILLINGHAM
is one of the UK’s most acclaimed and popular crime writers. His series of novels featuring D.I. Tom Thorne has twice won him the Crime Novel of the Year Award and been nominated for seven CWA Daggers. Each of his novels has been a
Sunday Times
Top Ten bestseller. A television series based on the Thorne novels starred David Morrissey as Tom Thorne. Mark Billingham’s latest novel is
The Dying Hours
.

LAWRENCE BLOCK
has been writing for so long he’s accumulated several life achievement awards—his colleagues’ gentle way of telling him his future lies largely in the past. One can but hope he’ll get the message. Meanwhile his latest book is
Hit Me,
the author’s fifth novel about that wistful urban lonely guy, Keller, philatelist and hit man.

C. J. BOX
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of fifteen novels including the award-winning Joe Pickett series. Box has won the Edgar Award for Best Novel as well as the Anthony, Macavity, Barry, and Calibre .38 awards. His novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Box lives outside Cheyenne, Wyoming. His most recent novels are
Breaking Point
and
The Highway
.

KEN BRUEN
is the author of over twenty novels, and has a doctorate in metaphysics.

ALAFAIR BURKE
is the bestselling author of nine novels, including
If You Were Here, Long Gone,
and the Ellie Hatcher series. A former prosecutor and graduate of Stanford Law School, she now teaches criminal law and lives in Manhattan.

STEPHEN L. CARTER
is the bestselling author of five novels and eight non-fiction books. He is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught for more than thirty years. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School and lives near New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife, Enola Aird.

LEE CHILD
has been a television director, union organizer, theater technician, and law student. He is the author of the Jack Reacher novels. He was born in England but now lives in New York City and leaves the island of Manhattan only when required to by forces beyond his control. Visit
www.leechild.com
for more information on his books, short stories, and
Jack Reacher,
the movie starring Tom Cruise.

MARCIA CLARK
, former O. J. Simpson prosecutor, has published three novels that feature Los Angeles special trials prosecutor Rachel Knight:
Guilt by Association, Guilt by Degrees, Killer Ambition,
which is due out in June 2013. Marcia is a frequent legal commentator on television and radio, and her books have been optioned by TNT for a one-hour drama series, currently in development. Marcia is attached as an executive producer. She’s currently at work on her fourth novel.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK
’s books are worldwide bestsellers. In the United States alone, her books have sold more than one hundred million copies. Her latest suspense novel,
Daddy’s Gone A Hunting,
was published by Simon & Schuster in April 2013. She is an active member of Literacy Volunteers. She is the author of more than thirty suspense
novels, three collections of short stories, an historical novel, a memoir, and two children’s books. She is coauthor with her daughter, Carol Higgins Clark, of five suspense novels. Two of her novels were made into feature films and many of her other works into television films. Mary Higgins Clark is married to John Conheeney and they live in Saddle River, New Jersey.