Die for You (37 page)

Linda Book stood in the far corner of the gallery and watched them looking at her photographs—pointing, smiling, frowning, nodding “ahh.” Her show, called
Assignations
, was drawing a lot of attention, more attention than her last few. She liked to think that her art had reached a new level, but probably not. Mimicking candid shots that might have been taken by a private eye, she’d captured lovers around the city—exchanging glances, embraces, passionate kisses. Some were candid. Some staged. She wouldn’t say which was which. Some critics called it shameless, in view of her family’s recent scandals. Others called it magnificent, sensational.
Art Forum
wrote, “Linda Book’s most captivating show in years—maybe ever.”

It was a week after the opening and the gallery was still packed—on a Tuesday, no less. No one recognized the photographer. Her publicity photo was far too old, airbrushed even then. She looked like a windblown goddess in her photo, untouched by grief or childbirth or disappointment, or infidelity of any kind. Only her husband, who drifted, eavesdropping on conversations, offered her a secret, knowing smile. He was the only one who knew her, here or anywhere.

To see them, the way they made love in the mornings after the kids went to school, the way they held hands again in the cab on the way here, the way he smiled at her now, one might believe that she was still that young girl untouched by life’s trials, after all.

Through the large picture window, she saw Isabel and Jack walking up the sidewalk slowly. Her sister looked so small, still leaning on Jack a bit as she walked. Her injuries—internal and external—would take much more time to heal. But heal they would. She’d see to it.

She moved away from the wall and met her husband in the center of the room. They left together to walk with Jack and Isabel back to the loft—it was still theirs for now—for dinner, and to watch something on television that none of them was quite sure they wanted to watch.

The kids were staying with Margie and Fred, so that Linda and Eric could have some couple time, something they had been sorely lacking. Now that there was a wireless hub, sixty-four-inch flat screen and a Wii in the Riverdale home, Emily and Trevor no longer considered a visit with their grandparents a hardship. There was a minimum of grousing. Therefore, Linda had only a minimum of guilt. Even when Emily called to complain that Margie was making fish and wouldn’t let them order pizza instead, Linda only smiled and told her daughter that fish was good for her and she’d have to bare up.

“You don’t want to see the show again?” Linda teased her sister, embracing her gingerly, afraid to cause her pain. Izzy gave a weak laugh; she’d been to the show several times, had seen it even before it opened. She waited for a smart comment in return, but her sister didn’t say anything. In Linda’s arms, Isabel felt fragile. Linda was still waiting for the haunted look to disappear from her face. She felt as if she hadn’t seen her sister even really smile in months. Not that she could be blamed.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Linda asked.

“I happen to think it’s a terrible idea,” said Jack. “It’s not as if we’re going to learn anything we don’t already know. This is the psychological equivalent to scab picking.”

Erik nodded his agreement. “He’s right.”

“I want to see it,” Izzy said, lowering herself on the couch. “I need to.”

No one else offered any arguments. Anyway, it was too late. The newsmagazine show had already begun.

A bestselling writer and her software designer husband are living the ultimate urban dream. With a beautiful home in Manhattan, skyrocketing careers, and an extravagant lifestyle, they seemed to want for little. Except that when it came to Isabel Connelly and the man everyone knew as Marcus Raine, nothing was as it seemed
.

“We were called to the scene of a triple homicide in the West Village at the offices of Razor Technologies,” said a well-coiffed Detective Grady Crowe. He was sharply dressed and looking very much the role of the celebrity cop. “We found the bodies of Rick Marino, Eileen Charlton, and Ronald Falco, the office trashed, every file and computer removed, and Isabel Connelly unconscious in her husband’s office. We knew we were looking at something big. We didn’t realize at the time that it was international in its scope and that it reached back to the unsolved case of a missing man from years earlier.”

The hour wound on, detailing the disappearance and assumed murder of Marcus Raine after the betrayal of his girlfriend, Camilla Novak, how Kristof Ragan was able to steal the other man’s money and identity, then use Izzy’s Social Security number to establish an EIN for his new business. Some time was devoted to Kristof Ragan’s childhood in an orphanage, how he nearly made good by winning a scholarship to an American university.

He was smart, charming, hardworking, could have made a legitimate success out of himself. What made him choose murder, identity theft, fraud?
lamented the reporter in a voice-over, where they showed b-roll of the modern-day orphanage, where children sat at computers, played soccer, read books at round tables. They called in an expert psychologist to offer an explanation.

“It wouldn’t be hard to understand the despair a child like Kristof Ragan felt, abandoned to an orphanage, possibly mistreated under communist rule,” said the very proper-looking gentleman with round glasses and a red bow tie. “It might cause long-reaching damage, a self-hatred, a desire to
be
someone else. Someone like Kristof Ragan was most likely a sociopath, operating without a conscience, using people like Camilla Novak and Isabel Connelly to further his own agenda.”

Linda looked at Izzy Her sister’s face registered no expression at all. But Linda was pleased to see her leaning into Jack. He had his arm around her shoulder.

“We’re just friends, same as ever,” Isabel had insisted just the other day. But Linda could see clearly that it was much more than that. “I’m not ready for anything else,” she’d said.

“Not yet,” said Linda.

“Not yet,” her sister conceded.

But when Camilla Novak decided she no longer wanted to be a pawn in Kristof Ragan’s game, she turned to the FBI, who launched a month-long investigation with Camilla Novak’s help. But the day before a raid was scheduled on Raines office and home, another kind of raid took place
.

The footage switched to the woman Izzy knew as S being led away in handcuffs from a Queens building by Detective Grady Crowe.

“By pouring over banking and cell phone records, we saw that multiple calls were made to a cell phone registered to a Sara Benes,” said Detective Breslow to the camera, looking much more polished and a bit older than she did in real life.

A former Czech intelligence officer, Benes allied herself with organized
crime to run Services Unlimited, an escort service that was actually a prostitution ring. Apparently long associated with the two Ragan brothers—since childhood—and a longtime lover of Kristof Ragan, Benes was there when Ragan needed to pull up the lines on his life, assembling a team of thugs to trash Ragan’s office and home, removing any and all evidence that might have allowed for prosecution. Benes faces charges of murder, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. But she won’t face her charges in the U.S. In the country illegally, she’ll be deported to the Czech Republic
.

Linda watched as her sister absently lifted a finger to trace the scar on her forehead.

Did Camilla Novak get cold feet and reveal her betrayal to Kristof Ragan in the hope that he would forgive her? Is that how he knew the FBI was closing in on him?

“We think so.”
Special Agent Tyler Long headed the federal investigation that was destroyed by Sara Benes and her crew
.

“Camilla Novak loved Ragan. She came to us out of hurt that he had used her and kept her dangling for so many years. In the end, I think she didn’t want to betray him. She would have gone with him if he’d let her.”

But Kristof Ragan wasn’t the forgiving sort. Beware that the following images are quite graphic
. On the screen flashed the pictures Izzy had retrieved from the thumb drive, showing Kristof Ragan killing the three men and leaving his brother to die on the dock.

“When we first saw this, we thought that he must have some military training,” said Detective Grady “But the Czech government denies all knowledge of him. So we don’t really know where he learned to take down four armed men, but it’s not something everyone could do, is it?”

But in the end, it was Kristof Ragan who was going down. Isabel Raine couldn’t endure her husband’s betrayal, and when she suspected that he’d returned to the Czech Republic, she followed. Her investigation led her to the orphanage where Ragan grew up. Banking records revealed that Ragan had been making anonymous donations to the facility for years
.

But Ragan, it seemed, was one step ahead of her. He arranged for her abduction and would likely have killed her if it hadn’t been for the work of NYPD detectives Crowe and Breslow
.

“We knew she was gone but we didn’t know where, though we had our suspicions,” said Detective Crowe. Linda knew her sister had promised him not to tell anyone about the e-mail he sent her, and she’d kept her promise.

“After pouring over years’ worth of banking records for Razor Technologies, we learned that the company had purchased an apartment in Prague some years earlier. We contacted the local Czech authorities and they sent a team to the residence. Police arrived just as Isabel Raine was escaping from her husband. A chase ensued, ending with the shooting death of Kristof Ragan.”

More graphic footage here from the camcorder of a tourist who heard commotion out his window early Christmas morning
.

A grainy, wobbly, black-and-white film sequence showed Kristof Ragan running, limping, gun drawn, across a cobblestone street, near a canal. He ran down a flight of stairs and hopped onto a small boat that was docked, stuffed the gun in his pocket, and began undoing lines. Then Izzy moved into view. She stood at the rail alone for a moment before the police moved in behind her, started pulling her away. Linda watched her sister struggle and scream as Kristof Ragan raised his gun and the police started to fire.

Now, sitting on the couch, Izzy covered her eyes and started to sob, while Jack wrapped his arms around her.

“Turn this off, Erik,” Jack said quietly. Erik reached for the remote and started fumbling with it.

Kristof Ragan died at the scene, his reign of deception and murder at an end on Devil’s Stream in Prague
.

“No,” said Isabel. “I want to finish it.”

Isabel Raine, known to millions as Isabel Connelly, declined to be interviewed for this segment, but we know from her agent and spokesperson
,
Jack Mannes, that she is recovering from injuries inflicted upon her by her husband, and is fully cooperating with the ongoing investigation. When the investigation is complete, some portion of the funds stolen from her and her family will be returned, though much of it seems to have disappeared without a trace
.

The reporter wrapped up with the same old cliché they’d been hearing for weeks about truth being stranger than fiction. Erik clicked off the television, and for a minute they all sat there looking at the blank screen, lost in their own thoughts.

When the buzzer rang, everyone jumped, then laughed at themselves a bit.

“The Chinese food,” Erik said, getting up.

As they all rose to pull dishes from the cabinets, set the table, open the wine, Linda thought about how even in the shadow of the extraordinary, the ordinary still occupied them. They still slept, still cared for the children, still made love and ordered takeout.

She and Erik were both guilty of terrible betrayals of trust, and yet he still kissed her as he handed her a glass of Pinot Grigio. Isabel had been injured in every way a person could be, but she offered an ironic smile as Jack mentioned that some of her books were back on the bestseller lists because of the recent events of her life. A man Linda had an affair with and cared for had almost laid waste to her life before ending his own, but she still said things like, “This soup is too salty.”

She looked around the loft that they loved. They weren’t sure yet if they would have to sell it. Some of the money Kristof Ragan wire-transferred before he fled had been traced. No one would tell them how much or when they might see it. But her show was going well; she’d had some good sales. And Isabel had a new book contract. So they’d be all right. In comparison to everything that was almost lost, the money didn’t seem as important as it once had. What was important was that they were all together, safe, and if not happy exactly, if still damaged and haunted and unsure of the future, then at least hopeful.

No one seemed to know what to say until Jack raised a glass and they all joined him.

“Onward and forward. No looking back.”

As she sipped her wine, Linda thought they’d all endured awful, life-changing events—some, maybe all, of those events invited through their own blindness and selfish deeds. But the foliage of mundane life just grew over the past a bit every day if you let it. And maybe that was the most extraordinary event of all.