Pretend You Don't See Her Page 7

  As she died, Isabelle Waring’s arm had been reaching under a pillow, pulling out the bloodied pages. It’s because I was there two days ago that Bonnie is here tonight, Lacey thought. We could be planning her funeral right now.

  “She really is going to be all right, Lacey,” Kit said softly.

  “Didn’t you have any sense that you were being followed?” Jay asked.

  “For God’s sake, Jay, are you crazy?” Kit snapped. “Of course she didn’t.”

  Bonnie is hurt and they’re at each other’s throats because of me, Lacey thought. I can’t let this happen.

  Bonnie’s eyelids were drooping. Lacey leaned down and kissed her cheek.

  “Come back tomorrow, please,” Bonnie begged.

  “I have some stuff to do first, but I’ll be back real soon,” Lacey promised her.

  Her lips lingered for a moment on Bonnie’s cheek. I’ll never expose you to danger again, she vowed.

  Back in the waiting area, Lacey found detectives from the Bergen County prosecutor’s office waiting for her. “We’ve been contacted by New York,” they told her.

  “Detective Sloane?” she asked.

  “No. The U.S. Attorney’s office, Miss Farrell. We’ve been asked to see that you get home safely.”

  11

  GARY BALDWIN, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY FOR THE Southern District of the state, generally wore a benign expression that seemed incongruous to anyone who had ever seen him in action at a trial. Rimless glasses enhanced the scholarly look of his thin face. Of medium height and slender build, and soft-spoken in his demeanor, he nevertheless could annihilate a witness during cross-examination and accomplish it without even raising his voice. Forty-three years old, he was known to have national political ambitions and clearly would like to crown his career in the U.S. Attorney’s office with a major, headline-grabbing case.

  That case might have just landed in his lap. It certainly had all the proper ingredients: A young woman happens on a murder scene in an apartment on Manhattan’s expensive Upper East Side, the victim the ex-wife of a prominent restaurateur. Most important, the woman has seen the assailant and can identify him.

  Baldwin knew that if Sandy Savarano had come out of hiding to do this job, it had to be tied to drugs. Thought to be dead for the past two years, Savarano had made a career of being an enforcer who eliminated anyone who got in the way of the drug cartel he worked for. He was about as ruthless as they get.

  But when the police had shown Lacey Farrell the mug shots they had of Savarano, she had not recognized him. Either her memory was faulty, or Savarano had had enough plastic surgery to successfully disguise his identity. Chances are it’s the latter, Baldwin thought, and if so, then it means that Lacey Farrell is just about the only person who can actually identify him.

  Gary Baldwin’s dream was to arrest and prosecute Savarano, or better yet, get him to plea-bargain and give evidence against the real bosses.

  But the call he had just received from Detective Eddie Sloane had infuriated him. The journal that seemed to be a key part of this case had been stolen from the precinct. “I was keeping it in my cubby in the squad room—locked, of course—while Nick Mars and I read it to see if there was anything useful in it,” Sloane explained. “It disappeared sometime last night. We’re turning the station house upside down to find out who lifted it.”

  Then Sloane had added, “Jimmy Landi has the copy Farrell gave him. I’m on my way to get it from him.”

  “Make sure you get it before that disappears too,” Baldwin said.

  He slammed the phone down. Lacey Farrell was due in his office, and he had a lot of questions for her.

  Lacey knew that she was being naïve in hoping that turning over Heather Landi’s journal to the police would end her involvement in the case. When she finally got home from New Jersey the night before, it was almost dawn, but still she was unable to sleep, alternating between self-recrimination that she had put Bonnie in mortal danger, and a sense of bewilderment at the way that her whole life seemed to be falling apart. She felt like a pariah, knowing that because she could identify the man she knew as Curtis Caldwell, not only was she in danger, but anyone close to her was as well.

  I can’t go to visit Mom or Kit or the kids, she thought. I can’t have them visit me. I’m afraid to go out on the street. How long is this going to last? And what will make it end?

  Jack Regan had joined her in the waiting room outside the U.S. Attorney’s office. He gave her a reassuring smile when a secretary said, “You can go in now.”

  It was Baldwin’s habit to keep people waiting once inside his office while he ostensibly completed making notes in a folder. Under lowered eyelids, he studied Lacey Farrell and her lawyer as they took seats. Farrell looked like a woman under severe stress, he decided. Not surprising given the fact that only last night, in a spray of gunfire, a bullet had grazed her skull and another had seriously injured a four-year-old child. It was a miracle that no one had been killed in the shooting, Baldwin added to himself as he finally acknowledged their presence.

  He did not mince words. “Ms. Farrell,” he said, “I am very sorry for the problems you’ve been having, but the fact is you seriously impaired a major criminal investigation by removing evidence from a crime scene. For all we know, you may have destroyed some of that evidence. What you did turn over is now missing, which is a stunning sign of its significance.”

  “I did not destroy—” Lacey began in heated protest, just as Jack Regan snapped, “You have no right to accuse my client—”

  They were interrupted by Baldwin, who held up his hand for silence. Ignoring Regan, his voice icy, he said, “Ms. Farrell, we have only your word for that. But you have my word for this: The man you know as Curtis Caldwell is a ruthless killer. We need your testimony to help convict him, and we intend to make sure that nothing happens to prevent that.”

  He paused and stared at her. “Ms. Farrell, it is within my power to hold you as a material witness. I promise you it won’t be pleasant. It would mean that you’d be kept under twenty-four-hour guard in a special facility.”

  “How long a time are you talking about?” Lacey demanded.

  “We don’t know, Ms. Farrell. It would be however long it takes to apprehend and, with your help, convict the murderer. I do know that until Isabelle Waring’s killer is arrested, your life isn’t worth a plugged nickel, and until now we’ve never had a case against this man where we thought we’d be able to prosecute him successfully.”

  “Would I be safe after I testify against him?” Lacey asked. As she sat facing the U.S. Attorney, she had a sudden sense of being in a car that was hurtling down a steep hill, out of control, about to crash.

  “No, you wouldn’t be,” Jack Regan said firmly.

  “On the contrary,” Baldwin told them. “He’s claustrophobic. He will do anything to avoid going to prison. Now that we can link him to a murder, he may well be persuaded to turn state’s evidence once we’ve got him, in which case we would not even bring him to trial. But until that happens we must keep you safe, Ms. Farrell.”

  He paused. “Have you ever heard of the witness protection program?”

  12

  IN THE QUIET OF HIS LOCKED OFFICE, HE STUDIED HEATHER’S journal again. It was in there, all right. But he had taken care of the problem. The cops were following up all the names they had. Good luck to them. They were on a wildgoose chase.

  Finally he turned the pages over. The blood on them had dried a long time ago, probably just minutes after it had been shed. Even so, his hands felt sticky. He wiped them with his handkerchief, dampened by water from the always-present pitcher. Then he sat completely still, the only movement the opening and closing of his fingers, a sure sign of his agitation.

  Lacey Farrell had not been seen for three months. They were either holding her as a material witness, or she had disappeared into the witness protection program. She supposedly had made one copy of the journal, for Jimmy Landi, but what would have stopped he
r from making another copy for herself?

  Nothing.

  Wherever she was, she would have figured out that if the journal was worth killing for, it had to have something of value in it. Isabelle had talked her head off to Farrell. God knows what she had said.

  Sandy Savarano was back in hiding. He had seemed to be the perfect one to send to retrieve the journal and to take care of Isabelle Waring, but he had been careless. Stupidly careless. Twice. He had let Farrell see him at Waring’s apartment at the time of the murder, and now she could identify him. (And if the Feds catch him, he told himself, she will.) Then he had left a fingerprint at Farrell’s apartment that tied him to the burglary. Sandy would give everything up in a minute rather than go to prison, he reflected.

  Farrell had to be tracked down, and Savarano sent to eliminate her.

  Then, just maybe, he would be safe at last...

  13

  THE NAME ON THE BELL AT THE SMALL APARTMENT BUILDING on Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis was “Alice Carroll.” To the neighbors, she was an attractive young woman in her late twenties who didn’t have a job and kept pretty much to herself.

  Lacey knew that was the way they described her. And they’re right about keeping to myself, she thought. After three months, the sensation of sleepwalking was ending and an intense sense of isolation setting in.

  I didn’t have a choice, she reminded herself, when at night she lay awake remembering how she had been told to pack suitcases with heavy clothing but bring neither family pictures, nor items with her name or initials.

  Kit and her mother had come to help her pack and to say good-bye. We all thought of it as temporary, a kind of forced vacation.

  At the last minute her mother had tried to come with her. “You can’t go off alone, Lacey,” she had argued. “Kit and Jay have each other and the children.”

  “You’d be lost without the kids,” Lacey had reminded her, “so don’t even think that way, Mom.”

  “Lacey, Jay is going to keep paying the maintenance on your apartment,” Kit had promised.

  Her knee-jerk response—“I can handle it for a while”— had been an empty boast. She had realized immediately that once she moved and took on her new identity, she could have no involvement with anyone or any part of her life in New York. Even a maintenance check signed with an assumed name could be traced.

  It had happened quickly and efficiently. Two uniformed cops had taken her out in a squad car as though she were going to the precinct for questioning. Her bags were brought down to the garage, where an unmarked van was parked. Then she was transferred to an armored van that took her to what they called “a safe site” and orientation center in the Washington, D.C., area.

  Alice in Wonderland, Lacey would think as she passed the time in that enclosure, watching her identity disappear. In those weeks she worked with an instructor to create a new background for herself. All the things she had been were gone. They existed in her memory, of course, but after a time she began to question even that reality. Now there were only weekly phone calls from safe hookups, letters mailed through safe channels—otherwise there was no contact. None. Nothing. Only the overwhelming loneliness.

  Her only reality became her new identity. Her instructor had walked her to a mirror. “Look in there, Lacey. You see that young woman? Everything you think you know about her isn’t so. Just forget her. Forget all about her. It’ll be rough for a while—you’ll feel like you are playing some kind of game, pretending. There’s an old Jerry Vale song that says it all. I can’t sing, but I do know the lyrics; they go like this:

  Pretend you don’t see her at all... it’s too late for running... look somewhere above her... pretend you don’t see her at all...

  That was when Lacey had chosen her new name, Alice Carroll, after Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll.

  It fit her situation perfectly.

  14

  THE RACKET FROM THE RENOVATION GOING ON IN THE apartment next to the one that had belonged to Heather Landi assaulted the ears of Rick Parker as soon as he stepped off the elevator in the building at Fifth Avenue and Seventieth Street. Who the hell was the contractor, he wondered, fuming with irritation. A demolition expert?

  Outside, the sky was heavy with snow clouds. Flurries were predicted by evening. But even the vague, gray light coming through the windows revealed the general look of neglect that permeated the foyer and living room of Heather Landi’s apartment.

  Rick sniffed. The air was stale, dry, and dusty. He turned on the light and saw that a thick layer of powdery dust covered the tabletops, bookshelves, and cabinets.

  He swore silently. Damn superintendent, he thought. It was his job to see to it that a contractor thoroughly sealed off the premises he was renovating.

  He yanked the intercom off the hook and shouted to the doorman, “Tell the good-for-nothing super to get up here. Now.”

  Tim Powers, large and by nature amiable, had been superintendent of 3 East Seventieth for fifteen years. He knew full well that in the landlord-tenant world, it was the super who was always caught in the middle, but as he would tell his wife philosophically at the end of a bad day, “If you can’t stand the heat, then get the hell out of the kitchen.” He had learned to sympathize with irate co-op dwellers when they complained that the elevator was too slow, the sink was dripping, the toilet running, or the heat uneven.

  But standing in the doorway as he listened to Rick Parker’s tirade, Tim decided that in all these years of putting up with angry complaints, he had never experienced the near manic fury that was being hurled at him now.

  He knew better than to tell Rick where to get off. He might be a young jerk riding on his papa’s coattails, but that didn’t make him any the less a Parker, and the Parkers owned one of the biggest real estate/building management companies in Manhattan.

  Rick’s voice grew louder and his anger more pronounced. Finally, when he stopped for breath, Tim seized the opportunity to say, “Let’s get the right person in here to hear this.” He went back into the hall and pounded on the door of the next apartment, shouting, “Charley, get out here.”

  The door was yanked open, and the sounds of hammering and banging grew louder. Charley Quinn, a grizzled-faced man dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and carrying a roll of blueprints, came out into the corridor. “I’m busy, Tim,” he said.

  “Not busy enough,” Powers said. “I’ve talked to you before about sealing up that job when you start ripping the walls out. Mr. Parker, maybe you’ll explain why you’re so upset.”

  “Now that the police have finally released this apartment,” Rick shouted, “we are responsible for selling it for the owner. But will you tell me how the hell we can bring anyone in here with all the mess you’re causing? The answer is, we can’t.”

  He shoved Tim aside, stalked out into the hall, and rang for the elevator. When the door closed behind him, the superintendent and the contractor looked at each other.

  “He’s on something,” Powers said flatly. “What a jerk.”

  “He may be a jerk,” Quinn said quietly, “but he looks to me like the kind of guy who could go off the deep end.” He sighed. “Offer to get a cleaning service in here, Tim. We’ll pay for it.”

  Rick Parker knew better than to go directly to the office. He didn’t want to run into his father. I shouldn’t have blown my stack like that, he told himself. He was still shaking with anger.

  January was a lousy month in New York, he thought. As he turned in to Central Park and walked rapidly along a jogging path, a runner brushed into him. “Watch out!” Rick snapped.

  The jogger didn’t break pace. “Cool it, man,” he yelled back over his shoulder.

  Cool it! Sure, Rick thought. The old man’s finally letting me handle some sales again, and that nosy detective has to show up this morning of all times.

  Detective Sloane had come by, asking the same questions, going over the same territory. “When you got that ca
ll from the man who identified himself as Curtis Caldwell, did it ever occur to you to check with the law firm he claimed was his employer?” he had asked for the umpteenth time.

  Rick jammed his hands in his pockets, remembering how lame his response had sounded. “We do a lot of business with Keller, Roland, and Smythe,” he had said. “Our firm manages their building. There was no reason not to take the call on faith.”

  “Have you any idea how the caller would have known his background wouldn’t be checked? I understand that Parker and Parker has a standing policy of screening all applicants, of being sure that the people you take to look at upscale apartments are on the level.”

  Rick remembered the dread he had experienced when, without knocking, his father had joined them.

  “I have told you before and I’ll tell you again, I have no idea how that caller knew enough to use the law firm’s name,” Rick had said.

  Now he kicked at a ball of crusted, dirty snow that was lying in his path. Were the police getting suspicious of the fact that he had been the one to set up the meeting? Were they starting to suspect that there never had been a phone call?

  I should have figured out a better story, he thought, kicking savagely at the frozen earth. But it was too late now. He was stuck with it, so he had to make it stick.

  15

  THE KEY WORD IN THIS PROGRAM IS “SECURITY,” LACEY thought as she started a letter to her mother. What do you write about? she asked herself. Not about the weather. If I were to mention that it’s ten degrees below zero and there’s been a record twenty-six-inch snowfall in one day, it would be a dead giveaway that I’m in Minnesota. That’s the sort of information they warn you about.

  I can’t write about a job because I don’t have one yet. I can say that my fake birth certificate and my fake social security card just came through, so now I can look for a job. I suppose I can tell them that now I have a driver’s license, at least, and my advisor, a deputy U.S. marshal, took me to buy a secondhand car.