No Way Back: A Novel (19 page)

“
Self-defense?
You said this was a government agent, Ms. Gould?”

“He was, but whatever he was doing up there, he clearly wasn’t up to any good.”

I knew I wasn’t making complete sense. I also knew I couldn’t back up a thing that I was saying. And that the accounts that were filtering out completely contradicted me. Elaine Kitchner muttered something to her husband, and then she actually pulled back the phone from him, going, “Desmond, please . . . Why are you calling us, Ms. Gould? These are things you should be telling to the FBI, not me.”

“I can’t tell the FBI! I tried to turn myself over to the police yesterday in New York, and I’m sure you saw what took place. I didn’t try to run. People were trying to kill me. I know it seems as if I’m just some crazy woman who’s out of control, but it’s just not true. I need to know some things. It’s the only way I can prove my innocence. I need to know what Curtis might have been working on and why a federal agent would want to kill him.”

“You expect us to share this kind of information with you? All
I
know is you’re implicated in my son’s murder.”

“If you want the truth about your son to come out, there’s no other way!”

“You’re wanted in connection with multiple murders, Ms. Gould. Your own husband’s murder! I’m sorry, but if I were you, I would think about turning yourself in.”

“I can’t!”
I said again, my voice cracking. “Don’t you understand, I saw what happened up there and they don’t want any witnesses.” I realized how I was sounding. “I didn’t kill my husband . . . They killed him. Why do you think it wasn’t the police who showed up at my house? Why was it the same government agent who tried to kill me at the hotel? Please. Mrs. Kitchner, I’m not some lunatic! I don’t know what Curtis was into that he had to die. The person who shot him mentioned a name, Gillian. I don’t know if that name means anything to you?” She didn’t say anything. “But whatever it was, my husband ended up being killed for it as well. I’m not able to see his body. I can’t even touch his cheek a last time and tell him I loved him or how sorry I am. I don’t even have a fucking clue where I’m going to go once I hang up this phone! But we still have one thing in common, Mrs. Kitchner, whether you like it or not. Today we’re both mourning people we loved.”

I was crying. Not just for Dave. From the realization that I would never see him again. And that I might have lost my family too.

But because of what I’d just said. That Dave was dead, maybe Joe as well, and I didn’t know what my next step was, or where to turn. I was desperate. I was out of options, the moment she hung up.

“He was a good young man,” Elaine Kitchner said. “He put himself on the line. He cared about things . . .”

I sniffed back my tears. “I could see that. This probably sounds silly, but he was a gentleman to me.”

She said, “When he went up against these people . . . I told him, this time it was different. This wasn’t like the war. Afghanistan . . .”

“Went up against
what
people?”

“He said he knew what he was doing. He said he was working on something important.”

“Please, w
hat
people, Mrs. Kitchner?” I pressed her again.

There was a pause. I had no idea what I was expecting. She could simply say good-bye. She could just hang up on me. And then I’d be nowhere. I had nowhere to turn next.

“Do you know Boston?” Elaine Kitchner finally asked.

“A little. I went to BC.”

“Do you know the island that divides Commonwealth Avenue? It’s known as the Mall.”

“Yeah, I know it,” I replied, hopeful.

“Between Dartmouth and Clarendon. It’s across from our house. I’ll be on a bench that faces east. Can you be there at noon?”

“How do I know you just won’t turn me in?” I asked her. “How do I know the police won’t be there too?”

“I guess you don’t,” Elaine Kitchner said. “Other than like you said, tonight we’re both mourning people we loved.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I
t may not have been the smartest thing I’ve ever done, going up there on a hunch. Meeting a grieving mother who thought I was connected to the murder of her son. Who reminded me I was wanted by the police.

But what choice did I have?

I guess I thought, what would Elaine Kitchner gain by seeing me in prison? I hadn’t killed her son. And if she did call the police on me, maybe I thought better the Boston police or even the local FBI than the ones who were trying to kill me.

It took around three hours the next morning to drive up to Boston. I hadn’t been there in years. I wound through the Back Bay and found a parking space just off Newbury, a few blocks from where she told me to meet her.

Commonwealth Avenue was upscale and residential in between Dartmouth and Clarendon, attractive brownstones lining both sides of the divided street. From a few blocks away I watched joggers running by, people out walking their dogs. By noon, mothers had come out with baby strollers. The skyscrapers from Copley Square and the Financial Center rose above the townhouses.

I suddenly saw a police car speeding up ahead. Its lights were flashing and its siren was on, and as it came closer, my heart started to grow twice its size, and I was thinking,
You’re a fool, Wendy, a fool to have trusted her.
I started to climb the stairs to a brownstone, sure that the car would screech to a stop directly in front and cops with their guns drawn would jump out.

That it was over.

But it zoomed on by.

I think the breath I let out could be heard all the way in Copley Square.

I didn’t see anyone else who looked like a cop or an FBI agent milling around, but of course, it wouldn’t have taken much to wait until I’d made contact with her and then sweep in. Not to mention I was hardly an expert at this. I waited until precisely noon, then I circled around the block to where Elaine had said she’d be. A woman in a green down coat was sitting on a bench holding a book in her lap. As I got closer, I saw she had silver-colored hair.

The woman I saw in Curtis’s phone.

I said to myself,
You can just leave
,
Wendy. You can just bag this.
Stock it up to intuition, but what she’d said to me the night before made me feel I could trust her.

Hopefully, she was thinking the same thing about me.

I walked up, my scarf wrapped tightly around my neck, a late-October chill coming off the bay. “Mrs. Kitchner?”

She looked up. She was a stately, attractive woman. She had warm brown eyes and sharp, defined cheekbones, though she looked peaked and gaunt from what she’d been through. I saw Curtis in her handsome face.

She said, “My husband thinks I’m a fool to even be talking with you. He said we should call the police.”

I shrugged and gave her a half smile. “It crossed my mind that this isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done either.”

She forced a begrudging smile too.

She said, “Maybe there are mothers who loved their son as much as I did . . .” Her brown eyes lit up just a little. “But no one could have possibly loved theirs more. I need for you to tell me what happened.”

I sat down next to her. At this point, whatever fears I had about walking into a trap had disappeared. “Curtis fought him.” I shrugged, not sure just how much detail she was looking for. “He didn’t give in.”

She shook her head. “I mean it all, Ms. Gould.”

So I told her. Everything. From the beginning. How I’d met him in the bar. How we talked a bit, and how I listened to him play. How magical that was. Which made her smile.

“I know I should have never gone up to that room with him. It was my doing, as much as his. Not that that matters much now.”

“If you’re looking for a sympathetic ear, Ms. Gould, you don’t win many points from me having met my son at a bar and not an hour later you end up in bed with him.”

“We never did.” I shook my head. “I was about to leave when the man came in. I couldn’t go through with it.”

Her eyes grew wide.

“It’s not how everyone is saying . . . I’m not some floozy, Mrs. Kitchner. I’ve been married almost ten years. I’d never done anything like this before in my life. Your son could have been angry with me, but we both . . .” I smiled. “We both kind of found the humor in it. You can’t believe how much I appreciated him for that. I was in the bathroom preparing to leave when the man came in.”

I told her how he’d tried to force a second gun into Curtis’s hand, to make it appear like he was drawing a weapon.

“The gun fell across the bed when he and Curtis struggled. Then he shot him. Twice. Point-blank. When your son wouldn’t pick it up. He said this was about Gillian. Do you know that name?”

“No, I don’t know any Gillian.” She shook her head.

“I knew I’d be next. While he was checking on Curtis, I came out. The gun was pretty much in arm’s reach. I told the guy to put his down. He only looked back at me and said, ‘You have no idea what you’ve stepped into.’ That’s when he raised his gun at me.

“I guess you know the rest . . . Except that I didn’t kill my husband either, as everyone’s saying.” I told her how they came for me, as Dave and I were leaving. Not the NYPD, but the same people who killed Curtis. Who tried to kill me! “I’m being framed, Mrs. Kitchner. Because of what I witnessed up there. I tried to turn myself in. Now the only way I can prove what I’m saying is to find out why they wanted to kill your son.”

“I’m sorry,” Elaine Kitchner said with a truly sympathetic shrug.

“What was Curtis working on?” I put my hand on her knee. “What had he found out that the government needed to kill him? You told me you said that these people were dangerous. That it wasn’t like in Afghanistan. What people are you talking about? Please, tell me who would have wanted him dead?
Who?
”

She stared at me. For a moment I thought we were done. That she was about to get up and leave. Then, “Please, take off your sunglasses,” she said. “I want to see your eyes.”

I did. If I could’ve summoned every bit of the fear and helplessness I was feeling at that moment, it would have shown right back at her.

She took out a Kleenex and handed it to me. I smiled in thanks and dabbed my eyes.

“I wish I knew what he was working on, Ms. Gould. But I don’t. Curtis didn’t share his work with us.”

“But you do know who he was trying to expose? You said you warned him that these people were dangerous.”

She looked away. I could see she was thinking about what to say. Traffic rushed by us. She waited until a man walking his terrier went by.

“Do you recall that private jet that was blown up at Westchester Airport?”

I nodded. “Of course. A month or two ago.”

It had happened in the county where I lived. I’d flown out of there dozens of times. The bomber, who had posed as a tarmac worker, was never apprehended. Four passengers were killed, including the wife of the lawyer who had chartered it.

“Curtis insisted it was some sort of retribution. By Mexican drug enforcers. Against an informant, or someone who was on that plane. It was these people I told him he mustn’t mess with.”

Mexican drug enforcers
. . . A tremor rippled through me. No people to mess with at all. I thought back and recalled there
was
a housekeeper or a nanny on board who had survived.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What would all that have to do with the U.S. government? The person who shot your son worked for the Department of Homeland Security.”

Elaine looked at me blankly. “All I know is what he was looking into when he went down to New York.”

I felt something creepy and foreboding wrap its tentacles around my heart and squeeze. That explosion had been one of the ugliest acts of terror in recent years. The bomber had been able to infiltrate security at the private airport that was used by many hedge fund magnates and CEOs.
Drug enforcers? The United States government rubbing Curtis out?
Something between a shudder and the feeling of being completely overwhelmed passed through me. This was so far out of my league I didn’t know where to begin.

That agent was right—what
had
I stepped into?

I looked back at Elaine. I knew my face had taken on a worried cast. I reached into my pocket and brought out Curtis’s BlackBerry. I pushed the camera icon and scrolled to the photo of the pretty Latina-looking woman in the hospital gown.

“Do you know who this woman is?”

Elaine looked at it and shook her head. But suddenly, the hospital gown, the Latina features, combined with the story of the airport bombing, gave me the feeling I now knew.

“This was your son’s,” I said.

Elaine’s eyes grew glassy as she took it in her palm.

“I took it. From his hotel room. I didn’t even know who he was. I just thought I might need something. Was there any place Curtis might have kept his notes? Or a record of what he was working on?”

“Other than his computer?” Elaine shook her head. “Curtis’s laptop was basically his office. He had an apartment over in Boylston Street. Near Fenway Park. But it’s already been gone through by the police.”

“The police?”

“The police were with them. My husband went. I don’t know. Maybe other people too.”

It wouldn’t be safe to go there. Not now. Plus I knew it was also too late. There wouldn’t be anything there for me to find.

“You mind if I keep this for a while?” I asked, pointing to the cell phone in her hand. “I promise, I’ll make sure it gets back to you.”

Elaine shrugged and handed it back. “It may be of more help to you at the moment than any comfort to me.”

“Thank you.” I squeezed her shoulder warmly. “I appreciate everything you’ve told me.”

“I wish it were more.”

I stood up and gave her a heartfelt smile, the kind that maybe only another woman who had lost her deepest love might fully understand. “I know you took a risk in talking with me. I’ll get this back, I promise,” I said, tucking her son’s phone into my pocket.