The Senator's Wife (39 page)

At least Lissy would be safe.

She was pretty sure that the intruder wasn’t a cop, though he had worn a uniform. He hadn’t struck her as a cop any other time she had seen him. Not even a bad cop. And she was good at sniffing out cops. No, he had somehow found out that Jerry was a cop—a former cop—and had worn the uniform to gain Jerry’s confidence.

But how the heck, after all this time, had he found Jerry?

Marla didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know. It made it seem like this guy was too powerful, like he knew everything. So far, by the skin of her teeth, she had managed to elude his net.

She couldn’t count on continuing to be so lucky.

“Mom, I have to pee.”

Lissy was slumped in the front passenger seat. She was tired and hungry and cranky, and made no effort to conceal it. And Marla knew she was tired herself, because it irritated her that Lissy had to pee. Dang it, she
always
had to pee.

“So go pee.”

“I’ll be right back.” Lissy hopped out the door and trudged across the pavement to the ladies’ room around at the side.

Marla tried to think. Mrs. Second Wife’s lawyer’s office was in the building directly across the street from the service station. She had found the address in the phone book. Mrs. Second Wife herself was supposed to be there at noon, to meet her lawyer before turning
herself in to the police and being placed under arrest for murdering her husband, the Senator.

Marla had heard all about it on the radio as she drove.

The street around the lawyer’s office was thronged with TV camera crews. The building itself was ringed with cops.

All in Mrs. Second Wife’s honor.

Marla used their second-to-last quarter in the pay phone, and dialed the lawyer’s office. She got voice mail, just as she had been getting voice mail all morning. It was frustrating, because she had no number to leave.

“My name’s Marla. I have to talk to Mr. Osborn about that senator’s murder. I know who did it—well, sort of. Anyway, I know his wife
didn’t
do it. Oh, this is such crap. I hate these machines. I’m across the street and I’m coming over to talk to Mr. Osborn
now,” Marla
snarled into the machine, and hung up.

Talking to the lawyer’s voice mail was a waste of time, Marla was pretty darn sure. Probably no one ever monitored it. She had left a message with the machine before, when she had been at Jerry’s, with the number where she could be reached and everything.

And no one had ever called her back.

A white car pulled into the service station and stopped on one side, in the building’s own shadow next to the Dumpster. Marla noticed, because she was paranoid about being followed. But the man who got out of the car wasn’t the intruder. He was stocky, with curly black hair, and he wore a blue suit. His movements were ponderous as he walked inside.

Something was obviously not going well in his life,
Marla thought, her curiosity piqued. Of course what was special about that? Her own life could best be described as a disaster. But still, she glanced into the man’s car, at the woman who was with him.

The woman looked right at her. Marla’s jaw dropped.

She wasn’t absolutely positive—the woman wore a scarf over her head, so no trace of her hair could be seen—but she was ninety-nine point nine percent sure she was looking into the face of Mrs. Second Wife.

Chapter
47

September 20th
11:55
A.M
.

R
ONNIE’S THROAT
was so dry that even breathing was uncomfortable.

“Kenny. Kenny, please, could you stop and get me a bottle of water? Please?”

“Sure, Ronnie.” Kenny was sympathetic and uncomfortable, eager to do anything he could to make this nightmare easier for her to bear. He had been pressed into service by Tom, who was himself under strict orders from Dan Osborn to stay away, to deliver her to the lawyer’s office at noon.

Noon was five minutes away. She had to make the time last, to stretch it out any way she could. She had to have something to drink.

Kenny pulled into a service station, way over out of the way behind the building, just in case any of the jackals who ringed Osborn’s office should have strayed this far away from their target. It was one of those service stations that sold snacks, just a few, and cold drinks. The very idea of food made Ronnie gag. She had had nothing to eat all day.

The way she felt she might never eat again.

But she needed something to drink.

“Just water, Ronnie? Can I get you anything else?”

“Just water, Kenny.” Her voice was hardly more than a croak, and no wonder. In the end she had cried, in Tom’s arms, until there were no tears left. He had cried too. That was when she knew how dire her situation was. For Tom to cry …

Once she stepped inside that jail, it might be months, or years, before she came back out. She knew it. He knew it.

And there was nothing he could do to save her. Nothing she could do to save herself.

She was terrified. Sick and sweating and terrified. She had never been arrested before; but it was not the thought of arrest that terrified her so. It was the time—the days and weeks and months of her life she would lose.

Oh, God, why now, when time had become unbearably precious to her?

Kenny got out of the car and went inside the service station.

Ronnie stared through the windshield without seeing anything. It was a bright, sunlit day, but she was freezing cold. She couldn’t do this. She could not.

Her hand moved of its own accord, curling around the door handle. She
could
save herself. She could run away.…

Someone tapped on her window. A young woman with long straight: blond hair.

Ronnie was so startled that she pushed the button, rolling the window partway down before she thought.

Then she realized where she was and what she was doing, and pushed the button again, only this time in
the opposite direction. The window started to slide upward.

“No, wait! You have to talk to me! I know who did it! I know who killed your husband!” the woman said frantically.

Ronnie’s hand slackened on the button. She stared at the other woman through the glass barrier that was three-quarters raised. Whoever the woman was, she wasn’t a reporter, Ronnie was sure. She was not really pretty, but attractive in a hard sort of way. Her pale blue summer dress was cheap polyester. Her features were even enough, but sharp and thin. Her skin had seen too much sun.

But she said she knew who killed Lewis. She was probably nothing more than a nut spouting gibberish—but what harm could listening do?

Slowly Ronnie pushed the button in the other direction, and the window rolled back down.

For an instant the two women stared at each other.

“You said you know who killed my husband?” Ronnie asked slowly. She was a fool, she knew, to be grasping at straws—but then straws were all she had to grasp.

“He had a boat, the
Sun-Chaser
, didn’t he?”

Ronnie nodded.

“My girlfriend—two of my girlfriends—went out on that boat and never came back. One of them turned up dead. Murdered. Susan Martin. Charlie Kay Martin’s daughter? You’ve probably heard about it on TV.”

With a vague recollection of seeing some newsmagazine show on the TV evangelist’s murdered daughter, Ronnie nodded.

The woman leaned closer, her voice and manner urgent. Stubby fingers with bitten nails curved over the edge of the open window. “Everybody who went out on your husband’s boat that night is turning up dead. Susan. Claire. Some other friends of mine who set up the date. Your husband. Someone is trying to kill me because I know—oh!”

This last was a soft exclamation as someone came up behind her. Ronnie caught just a blur of a sudden violent movement as something was thrust against the woman’s side. There was a sharp, crackling buzz, a burning smell, and the woman’s eyes rolled back in her head. Then she dropped like a stone.

Ronnie was so surprised that all she could do was gape.

“Your turn, sweetheart.” A man’s hand came through the window, thrusting beneath the silk scarf she had tied loosely around her head to twist in her hair. Even as pain shot through her scalp and she jerked away, he was shoving something—a palm-sized white plastic rectangle?—against her shoulder.

This time she didn’t even hear the crackling buzz.

Chapter
48

September 20th
Noon

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
, she took off?” Tom was standing in his mother’s kitchen, leaning against the wall, the phone pressed to his ear. Kenny was on the other end of the line. His mother stood three feet away. Ever since Ronnie had left, his mother had been hovering over him as she had done when he’d hurt himself as a little kid.

He was a grown man, only slightly tied to her apron strings, he thought with a bleak attempt at humor. He loved his mother and appreciated her attempts to comfort him. But there were some things even a mother couldn’t fix.

Kenny had started talking as soon as Tom had picked up, without so much as a greeting.

“She took off in your
car?
” Tom felt and sounded incredulous.

Either Kenny was not making sense or Tom himself was not processing information as well as usual. He took a deep breath, and tried to concentrate.

“Okay, Kenny, run that by me one more time,” he said, interrupting his partner, who was in full spate.

“Goddamn it, Tom, she’s gone! She took off in my car!” Kenny was almost yelling by this time.

“Ronnie?”

“Of
course
Ronnie. Who the hell am I talking about? Ronnie! Ronnie took off in my car. I think she’s making a run for it!”

“Kenny, are you sure the car’s not around there somewhere? Take another look.”

“Dammit, Tom, don’t you think I’ve looked? Listen, here’s what happened: She said she was thirsty, and would I please stop and buy her a bottle of water. I pulled into a service station and went inside. When I came back with the water, the car was gone.
She
was gone. Now what does that sound like to you?”

“Jesus Christ.” Tom leaned against the kitchen wall. “We talked about running. She knew they would just find her and bring her back, and then she would look guiltier than ever. Kenny, she didn’t run.”

“Maybe she panicked at the last minute. She was turning pretty white, and I could tell she was scared to death.”

“Jesus Christ!” Tom said again. “Where are you?”

Kenny told him.

“I’ll be there as fast as I can get there. Call Dan Osborn and tell him what’s going on. And try to stay away from the press!”

“Yeah,” Kenny said, and hung up.

Chapter
49

September 20th
12:30
P.M
.

F
OR A MOMENT
Ronnie thought she was trapped in another nightmare. She felt groggy, disoriented, achey. The world seemed to be rocking. The covers were all wrapped about her face—that was the problem. That’s why she was so hot and could barely breathe and couldn’t see.

She made an abortive movement to reach up, to pull the covers away from her head.

That was when she discovered that she was tied up.

The notion was so unbelievable that Ronnie had to test it. For a moment she closed her eyes, trying to clear her mind.

All at once she remembered what had happened. The service station. The blond woman. The man thrusting his hand through the window and grabbing her hair.

And then—a terrible, crushing pain, as though an eighteen-wheeler had just slammed into her body.

She had been kidnapped.

The realization was shattering.

Why?

The blond woman had said something about Lewis being killed because of his boat. Something like that. She couldn’t quite straighten it out in her mind.

Was this something to do with Lewis?

Her hands were tied behind her back with her own silk scarf.

Ronnie felt the hard knots in the soft silk with her fingertips.

Something more resilient, with a slightly rougher texture, bound her feet. Which were, not incidentally, bare. Ronnie discovered this by wiggling her toes. Her shoes were gone, and her feet and legs were bare.

Her ankles were tied with her own pantyhose.

She was lying on her right side on something that was not completely flat, covered from head to toe with a heavy, faintly musty-smelling cloth. She must be in a vehicle, because it was moving. Lurching really, as though it were traveling over really rough ground.

Every instinct she possessed told her to keep still.

“Hey, it’s me.” The voice was so unexpected, and spoke so closely beside her, that Ronnie started. It was a man’s voice, a stranger’s voice, and she guessed almost at once that he was talking on the phone.

“I got her, but there was a little problem. I had to take the other one too. The Senator’s wife.”

A burst of sound came from the other end of the phone. Whoever was there was yelling. Ronnie couldn’t make out the words, but the tone and volume were clear.

“Well, what
was
I supposed
to do? She was already talking to her—I heard her. She was telling her about the boat, about how everybody who went out on the
boat that night or knows about it is dead. I mean, what could I do? I had to take her.”

More yelling from the other end.

“Look, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry. Nobody’ll ever find them, I’ll make sure of that. I—”

He broke off. Whoever was on the other end must have been talking at normal volume now because Ronnie could hear nothing.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. I can do that. No, I know, I’ll make sure there won’t be a mark on her. Yeah, I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry. These are the last two loose ends, and when they’re taken care of, there won’t be anything else that can tie you to it. Yeah, I know. Okay, I’ll call you later.”