Shadow of Doubt (16 page)

Ms. Rachlis disagreed. “The first thing she needs to do is put as much distance as possible between herself and Mikhail,” she said.

Ms. Denholm hurried back toward us, clutching her keys.

“Let's go,” she said.

The elevator arrived.

Ms. Denholm still looked nervous, but she got in and let Ms. Rachlis press the button for the ground floor. She held her breath when the elevator finally stopped on the main floor and the doors parted. Ms. Rachlis got out first and looked around. She beckoned to us. We got out.

Apart from the security guard, there was no one in the lobby. We hurried to the elevator that would take us down to visitors' parking. I glanced at the guard while we waited for it.

“I'm going to ask the guard if he let anyone go up to Ted's place,” I said.

“We don't have time,” Ms. Rachlis said. “Melissa should get out of here, now.”

The elevator doors opened.

I looked back at the guard again and told myself that he would have to wait. First we would get Ms. Denholm to safety. Later I'd get Ted to talk to him. If the police wanted proof that Mornov was stalking Ms. Denholm, maybe the guard could help provide it. Maybe Mornov had talked him into letting him into the building. Or maybe one of the security cameras had caught him sneaking in.

The elevator doors opened in the basement. Ms. Denholm gasped. A man was standing a few steps away in the shadows. Ms. Denholm slipped her hand into her pocket. The man slammed a car door and stepped into the light. He was at least sixty years old and was carrying a suitcase. He nodded pleasantly at us as he waited for us to step out of the elevator. Ms. Denholm relaxed a little. We found her car.

“Wait until you see me behind you,” Ms. Rachlis said. “Then drive out of the garage and stop when you get to the road. As soon as you see me in your rearview mirror, turn right. I'll turn left and catch up. Don't worry, Melissa. You're going to be fine.”

Ms. Denholm hugged Ms. Rachlis.

“Thank you, Nat,” she said. “Thank you for everything. I don't know what I would have done without your help.”

“All I want is for you to be safe,” Ms. Rachlis said. “You'll get through this. I know you will.”

Ms. Denholm and I got into her car and buckled up. As soon as we spotted Ms. Rachlis's car, Ms. Denholm backed out of her parking space. She held her breath again when the garage door started to lift up. She scanned the exterior for any cars with people in them. We both did. But neither of us saw anything. The circular driveway in front of the building was deserted.

We headed for the main road. I turned to see Ms. Rachlis's car emerge from the parking garage after Ms. Denholm pulled up at the stop sign where the condo driveway met the road. Ms. Rachlis hung back until we made a right turn, then pulled forward and flipped on her left-turn signal. She disappeared from sight. I looked out the rear window of Ms. Denholm's car. There were a couple of vehicles behind us. One, driven by an old man, passed us quickly. Another, a Volkswagen, stayed behind us. I stared at it nervously until I made out a middle-aged woman alone behind the wheel. As we cleared the intersection I saw Ms. Rachlis's car swing back onto the road behind us.

As we traveled the next several blocks, other cars pulled onto the road behind us or passed us, but no one seemed to be following—except for Ms. Rachlis. After a mile or so Ms. Denholm said, “Nat just flashed her headlights. That means we're in the clear.”

“I'm going to call Ted,” I said. Ms. Denholm didn't argue with me. I hunted in my purse for my phone. It trilled before I could punch in Ted's number. I checked the display screen. My heart pounded in my chest as I said hello.

“I got your message,” said the voice on the other end. I was surprised by how good it felt to hear it.

“Ben, I'm sorry,” I said. I glanced at Ms. Denholm. “I miss you,” I said quietly.

“I miss you, too.” Ben's voice was sweet and warm. “I want to see—” His voice faded.

“What?” I said. “I can't hear you. I'm on my way home—” There was silence on the other end. “Ben? Ben?”

Nothing. Maybe he was having trouble with his phone. I waited for a few moments. Nothing. I punched in Ben's number. It went straight to voice mail. With a sigh, I tried Ted's number and got his voice mail too. I tried his office number.

“Where are you now?” he asked after I had told him what happened.

“On our way to the house. We thought she'd be safe there for a while.”

“Did you check to make sure you're not being followed?”

I reassured him that we had.

“Okay,” he said. “As soon as you get home, go inside, lock the door, and call me so I know you're safe. I'll be there as soon as I can. You're on your cell, right, Robyn? Keep it clear in case I need to get hold of you.”

I said I would and set the phone in the cupholder between the front seats. I told Ms. Denholm what Ted had said. Then, still spooked, I asked her about the gun.

“My mother bought it from a man whose house she cleaned,” Ms. Denholm said. “She was so scared. She wanted to be able to protect herself—and me.”

“I saw Ted with a gun too.”

She nodded. “When he found out I had it, he took it away from me.”

Well, that explained what I had seen in Ted's glove compartment. I was glad that it was safely back at his place.

We drove the rest of the way in silence. Ms. Denholm checked the rearview mirror obsessively. Other than that, she seemed lost in thought. She slammed on the brakes when we were two doors down from my house.

“There's a car in front of your house,” she said, pointing. “And there's someone in it.”

I peered at the vehicle.

“It's Ben. My...” I hesitated. “My boyfriend.” It sounded right.

Ms. Denholm let out a long breath. She eased her car into my driveway. I looked back at the street. Ben stepped out of his car.

“Come on, Ms. Denholm,” I said. “Let's go inside. We'll call Ted and let him know we're here.”

Ms. Denholm stared at the windshield and shook her head.

“I can't keep running,” she said. “My mother spent her whole life looking over her shoulder. She was terrified of what would happen if James ever found her. She made herself sick worrying about me. Only took jobs that would pay her in cash. We never had anything. We never went anywhere. If she'd had her way, I would never have gone to college.” Her voice became quiet. “I never would have met Mikhail.” She stared straight ahead for another few moments. “I refuse to live like that.”

“You don't have to,” I said. “We'll go inside. We'll call Ted. And my mom. She's a criminal lawyer. She'll know what to do. Please?”

Finally, distractedly, she nodded. I got out of the car, relieved. As soon as I did, Ben started toward me. I glanced at Ms. Denholm. She hadn't moved.

“I've been waiting for you,” Ben said. He slipped an arm around me. It felt good.

Ms. Denholm's car started to move backward, down the driveway.

“Wait!” I said.

The car stopped and the passenger-side window whirred down.

“I'm not going to spend my life running,” she said. “The police keep telling me there's nothing they can do without proof. I have to go back.”

“Ms. Denholm, wait!”

“What's going on?” Ben said.

Ms. Denholm hit the gas. Her car shot backward, cleared the driveway, and disappeared around a corner.

“She's going back to her place,” I murmured. Not only was it possible that Mornov would be waiting there, but that seemed to be what she wanted.
The police keep telling me there's nothing they can do without proof
. It sounded like she was hoping to confront him so that she could provide that proof. But what if he hurt her? What if he did something worse?

“Robyn, what's the matter?” Ben said.

“We have to catch up with her, Ben. Come on.”

“I don't understand.”

“I'll explain on the way.”

I grabbed his hand and we ran to his car.

“Where are we going?” Ben said as he pulled away from the curb.

“To Ms. Denholm's place. Where we saw the fight.”

A few moments later we were on the main road, traveling as fast as traffic would allow.

“Robyn, about last week...”

Ted! I had to call Ted and let him know what had happened. I groped in my bag for my cell phone. It wasn't there. Then I remembered. I had left it in Ms. Denholm's car.

“Where's your phone, Ben?”

“What?”

“Your cell phone. I need to make a call.”

“I have to recharge it,” he said. “That's why we got cut off.”

“Great.” I scanned the road ahead of us but didn't see any sign of Ms. Denholm's car. Maybe she'd taken a different route home. Maybe she wasn't going home at all. Maybe she was going back to Ted's place. I wished I had my phone. “Faster, Ben.”

“I'm going the speed limit, Robyn. And you still haven't told me what's going on.”

I filled him in on what had happened.

“So this guy really is stalking her?”

“It sure looks like it,” I said. “And now I'm afraid she's going to do something stupid. She told the police, but they've never been able to prove anything.”

“But if he did all those things, there must be some evidence,” Ben said. “Unless this guy is some kind of criminal mastermind.”

“He sounds pretty smart,” I said. “And Ms. Denholm knows it. I think she's tired of no one believing her. I'm afraid she's going to make him do something so that the police can arrest him.”

“What do you mean, make him do something?” Ben glanced at me. “You don't think she's going to put herself in danger...”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think she might.”

“We should pull over. We should call the police,” Ben said.

He was right. But then he said, “Hey, is that her car?”

The car immediately in front of Ben's was a little red Mini. Right in front of that was Ms. Denholm's car.

“Keep up with her, Ben,” I said. “If we stay with her, we can stop her from doing anything reckless when she gets home.”

For the next twenty minutes I strained to keep sight of Ms. Denholm's car. Ben stayed a steady car-length or two behind her all the way, and I began to think that everything would be okay. Wherever she ended up, we'd be right there with her. I'd be able to talk her into coming with us or to calling the police. No one would get hurt.

Ms. Denholm turned abruptly, without signaling. Ben missed the turn and had to circle around the block. My heart raced the whole time. Then I spotted her turning into the driveway of the big house where she lived. She disappeared behind it.

After that, everything happened so fast that it was hard to digest. By the time it was over, Ms. Rachlis was in shock, Mikhail Mornov lay dying in the snow, and Ms. Denholm was holding a gun that she had just fired. Not much later, I was at the police station, giving a statement.

D

etective Charlie Hart found a room where we could talk in private.

“Where's Ben?” I said.

“Another detective is talking to him.”

The first police officers on the scene had separated us—Ms. Denholm, Ms. Rachlis, Ben, and me. They didn't want us talking among ourselves, comparing stories and influencing each other, consciously or not.

“Is he okay?” I said. He had seemed so calm, down on his knees in the snow behind Ms. Denholm's house, his coat off despite the cold, one hundred percent focused on what he was doing. I lost track of him after the ambulance arrived.

“He seems to be,” Charlie Hart said. “He's a levelheaded kid, huh?”

I nodded.

“What about you, Robyn? How are you doing?”

“What?”

“Most people, when they see something like that, they have a...reaction,” Charlie Hart said. He peered into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

I nodded.

He looked at me a little longer before he said, “I know you already told the officers at the scene what you saw,” he said. “But I understand you were with Melissa Denholm for most of the afternoon, so I need to go over it again with you. I need you to tell me everything that happened. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

I started from the beginning—again. I told him why Ben and I had gone to Ms. Denholm's house. I told him that we had arrived right after she did.

“When Ben pulled around the back of the house, she was just getting out of her car,” I said. “She started to walk to the back door—”

“The back door?”

“Ms. Denholm's and Ms. Rachlis's apartments are on the top floor of the house. You get to them through a door at the back. There are stairs that go right to the top floor.”

Charlie Hart nodded. “So you saw her heading for the back door. Then what?”

“Then I heard shouting from somewhere inside the house.”