THE FOURTH WATCH (58 page)

"Mr. Knight, I've been thinking about what you
and Carolyn," she looked down at her hands when she said the name
and shook her head, pausing, as if she were trying to collect
herself. Then she looked up again and went on. "Your suspicions. I
was mean, and pig headed, and said things that ... to you and
her... and I'm sorry."

"Mrs. Whorley ... "

"No don't say anything, please don't ... " she
looked like she was on the verge of tears. "I am so terribly sorry,
if I had ...if we all had supported her, listened to her... and you
... but I was thinking that she was just sad, like we all were, and
that you were just, well...I don't like lawyers much, Mr.
Knight."

"Me either," I said and smiled.

She took a ball of tissue out of her purse and
wiped her nose in it. "But I know now that I was wrong. When that
happened to you, I think I knew right away. I just couldn't think
about it. I've been out of the country. Just got back last week
actually. I went away and then all I could do was think about it.
About Red and about how this thing that happened to Carolyn can
only mean that she was right about Red. It is what it means isn't
it?"

I nodded and looked down at the desk not
wanting to look at the pain that I knew was in her eyes.

"I don't know what you'll do now," her voice
was soft, she was looking down at her hands in her lap, and the
ball of tissue she was holding in them. "You've been badly
injured," she made a sobbing sound that she tried to pass off as a
laugh, "you probably hoped that you'd never see another Whorley as
long as you lived. But if you wanted to start over again ... I
mean, you know, the thing you were doing with Carolyn, about Red
... "

"Mrs. Whorley I ... "

"Because there's that, and now the police
talking about how you all were shot in some random gang thing that
I know isn't true ... "

"Mrs. Whorley, listen ... "

"I'll pay you, I'll pay for everything you
need, but I just can't let this go ... " and then her composure
broke, all the guilt and grief and loneliness combined in her, and
her lips trembled while tears flooded her eyes. It was a terrible
thing to witness. Her chin sunk to her chest and her shoulders
shook and she made the smallest and most heart piercing sounds I
think I have ever heard. I didn't know what to do so I just sat
there and let it play out.

Later, when the shaking stopped and she was
dabbing her eyes but still not looking at me, I said, "There is
nothing to start up again, Mrs. Whorley. It never stopped. Even
when I was down in that hospital all those weeks."

She looked up at me and wiped the bottom rims
of her eyes.

"My friends, the private detective I hired,
Loading Docks lawyer, the one that sent Carolyn to me, even a
Priest friend of mine, they didn't believe this gang thing either,
they never stopped, still haven't."

She opened her purse and put the balled up
Kleenex back inside it. Why she didn't just throw it in the waste
basket next to my desk is a girl thing that guys will never
understand. "Did they ever find anything out, these friends of
yours?"

"Yes," I said.

She sat forward on the edge of her chair, her
knees together, looking at me expectantly.

I thought about what, if anything I should tell
her. How did I tell her that her...what?...step daughter-in-law,
helped kill her husband and had his daughter murdered. What good
would it do me ... or her, for that matter. I weighted it out in my
mind. On the one hand, it was about time that the good guys had a
spy in that house. She might be able to help us develop the
evidence we were looking for on Genetassio through Ellen Whorley.
On the other hand, if she snapped and went home and confronted
Ellen, or Helena, or whatever, the cat would be out of the bag, and
all the players might run for the hills, and that would be the end
of Alex's little discovery plan. Of course, at the same time, it
might force everything out into the open and maybe Ellen Whorley
would roll over on Matte Genetassio.

I said, "The Loading Dock was being used to
bring drugs, probably heroin, from China, through Seattle,
Washington, here to Worcester. Red found out."

Her eyes watched me, moving side to side,
searching, not sure she wanted to hear what was coming, but needing
to.

"Mrs. Whorley. Do you really want to know?" I
said leaning forward on my desk. "I don't need your money to end
this thing. It's not about money anymore, and Carolyn gave me more
than I'd need anyway. But if you really want to help, you can. It's
going to require you to keep your emotions in check, it will mean
that you have to live in your own house with a murderer, and not
let on that you know."

"Oh my God," she said. "Oh my God!" she leapt
up out of her chair and put her hands to the sides of her head and
turned and walked to my office door then turned and came back.
''No! Oh my God, its Ellie isn't it!"

I nodded my head up and down. "Yes."

"Oh my God, it can't be!" She was crying. "Oh,
no, no, no."

"Mrs. Whorley," she was seconds away from
becoming hysterical. "Mrs. Whorely?

Listen to me," I said. "Will you help
me?"

She kept saying "no, no, no" but she wasn't
answering my question. When you suddenly find that evil has invaded
your life, and when you find out that it came calling not with a
demon's face but with a friend's, the spiritual trauma can make you
feel as if a vital piece has been torn out of the center of you
with a hook.

"Samantha!" I nearly yelled it at her. She
stopped, and put her face in her hands, and crumbled down into the
chair again. "Look at me," I said softly. She did. "Will you help
me? Do you really want to help?"

Her face was white. That shifting gaze back in
her eyes. "Yes," she whispered.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said again, with some timber in it
now.

"Okay. This is what we know." And then I told
it to her. She listened with a face that transformed itself as the
story went on. Fear and pain slowly changed to anger and finally
resolve. The shipping containers, Ernie Alcantra, the employee
being bribed in Seattle by Sal Moltinaldo's organization, Ellen
Whorley's past, her relationship with Genetassio, the need for an
insider at the Baron Ridge house, I told it all to her. Alex would
have killed me.

When I was done she shook her head. "I just
can't believe that Ellie would help do that to Carolyn."

"But you do believe she could do it to your
husband?" I asked.

She thought about that. "My husband never
warmed up to Ellie. He didn't trust her and she knew it. She always
thought that Red was working against her with Teddy. Jesus...,
Teddy! He won't believe it! He loves her. He can't be involved in
this, right? That she could do this to, to any of us ...
"

"It is certainly possible that Genetassio was
blackmailing her, you know. She marries into this rich family and
he comes back from the past and threatens to expose her. She
doesn't care much for Red anyway. She does what she thinks she has
to do. Ted didn't know, at least we don't believe he did. Maybe she
didn't know anything about Carolyn until after it was over. It
could have happened that way."

"That doesn't matter," she said. "That's
bullshit. She betrayed Red and Carolyn, all of us. She was my
friend. We played tennis and lived in the same house. We ate dinner
together and went shopping together and she murdered my husband.
It's just so unbelievable!"

I sat with her in silence.

"There were traitors everywhere in this. The
man that worked for us that betrayed us and used us to smuggle
drugs, that police chief, Ellie. Its humiliating, I'm so stupid."
Her eyes welled up again but she got her control back and leaned
forward. "There must be another one, an employee of the company I
mean. The one getting the drugs out of the shipments
here."

I nodded. "We'll find him - or her, I
promise."

"So, how do I do this thing? What do I do? Just
be nice to her or something? I might punch her instead." Her face
had changed again, fear maybe, not of Ellie, but of not being able
to do her part, of not being able to look at Ellen Whorley and
smile.

"You have to try to make things seem the same
as they've been, whatever that is now, after everything, you know?
She's probably a little on edge, so she might be already imagining
things. She'll pick up on it if you're acting different towards
her."

"It's funny that you said that. Because I've
only been home a week, and she seems really …I don't know, tense or
something."

"Yeah," I said, "she might be freaking out. My
P.I. went out to the house and rattled her cage a little bit a few
weeks ago. She might be seeing ghosts in the shadows. You have to
seem the same to her, as hard as it is for you. "

She shook her head and blew out a breath. "That
little bitch," she said, "I'll try, but I don't know how long I can
keep it up Mr. Knight. Really."

As it turned out, she didn't have to do it long
at all.

39

KAREN JAYNES WAS
a plump, pretty, twenty-four year old Kindergarten teacher at
St. Margret's Elementary School in Millbury and the girl's K - 2nd
grade Basketball Coach. Sister Helen Rita Murphy, the school
principal, was Karen's Assistant Coach and so, along for the road
trip to the girl's basketball game at the Paxton Middle School Gym.
After the game, a 12 - 6 win for St. Margret's, Karen bought the
girls pizza in the center of town. She was single, making okay
money for a twenty-four year old, and studying for her Master's
Degree at Worcester State. She loved her job and her
kids.

After pizza they all piled into the short bus
for the ride back to Millbury, where the girl's parents would
collect them at the school. It looked like they'd be back just
around the end of the school day. The bus driver was a
white-haired, pink-faced older man named Charlie. Charlie was a
retired fireman that the children loved. He told them fireman
stories of daring rescues of kittens out of tall trees, and about
Scruff, the spotted firehouse dog, and he sang songs with them as
they went along to pass the time. They were singing Christmas songs
as the bus made its way out of town, and south, down the hill along
Baron Ridge .

*****

RONALD SULLIVAN HATED
to do 'favors' for cops. Not that he ever had a
choice in the matter. That fuckin' Genetassio, he thought, shaking
his head

Now he'd gone out and fixed the brakes on this
bitches ride!

He'd been twice in the bag. The first, a
fifteen month House of Correction hitch at West Boylston, for
wacking his former girlfriend in the face with a bat. He had to
plead out because the DA was gonna toss her teeth out on a table in
front of the jury like dice. That little slut got just exactly what
she deserved. The other time down, he did thirty-nine months at
Concord on a grand theft auto beef.

The last time he did one of these, the car
didn't go over. It just burst into flames all tangled up in the
guard wires of a telephone poll. Mercifully, the guy jumped out of
the car, all lit up like a Roman candle, and ran around crazy until
he went over the edge by himself.

Ron had a nice new girl now, and a job his
probation officer got him putting up electronic dog fences for a
big kennel outfit over in Sterling. He was making some nice scratch
and got vacation and benefits and everything. He was gonna do the
straight dance. Genetassio told him that it was up to him, but if
he really wanted to go straight, he'd arrange it so Ron could go
straight back to Concord. Genetassio had juice. And he was giving
him fifteen large for the job. Five up front, the rest ... you know
... after.

Ron Sullivan drummed his fingers on the
steering wheel and watched the hairdresser joint across the street.
Yesterday he did a test run with an old Buick. He made about a
three-quarter inch incision in the brake line and drove the route,
measuring distance. The master cylinder was pumped just about dry
by the time he got to the top of the hill and the brakes were bad
going down. He rode the emergency brake to the bottom. On her car,
a newer Volvo station wagon, he'd made a one inch slit in the line,
and cut the emergency brake cable. She should go off the road, and
down into the rocks, pretty quick after cresting the
hill.

He watched her as she came out of the chink
hairdressers in Tatnuck Square. She was unbelievable! What a
carriage! All tits and slinky ass that the winter coat couldn't
quite hide. White knee-high boots to match the coat. Dark hair held
back behind sun glasses, a mouth as red as an apple. He couldn't
believe he was going to kill her. He should be fucking her instead!
He shook his head at the unfairness of it all.

She looked pissed coming out. She opened the
door of the Volvo and threw her purse in, then she jumped in and
fired it up and spun her wheels on the ice going out of the lot.
Sullivan pulled slowly out onto Pleasant Street and followed her up
the hill.

She went around the rotary at the airport hot,
and let it loose toward home. When she crested the last hill on
Baron Ridge, he was a hundred yards back. When he got to the top of
the hill her car was out of control, winding back and forth across
the road, trying to decrease speed, because the curve was coming at
her and she was about to be launched into the abyss.