Silver Anniversary Murder Page 23
Colin had noticed her reaction and was desperate to get away, so he grabbed Ronnie by her shoulders and manhandled her, roughly shoving her into the car and banging her head in the process. Ronnie yelled and next thing anybody knew, Officer Sally Kirwan had stepped in front of the sports car and was taking control of the situation.
“Hold on there,” Sally ordered, legs apart and right hand on her gun, which was still holstered.
Faced with the officer blocking his escape, Colin turned and yanked Lucy’s door open.
“Move over!” he yelled.
“Wha?” Lucy wasn’t about to budge, but then she felt something pressed into her side. A gun? A knife? He prodded her again and she scrambled awkwardly over the console and into the passenger seat, allowing him to take the driver’s seat. Then they were off, narrowly missing Officer Kirwan and tearing through the parking lot, clipping the tail of the last car in the row as he swung wildly into the turn and roared up Sea Street.
“You can have the car, just let me out,” begged Lucy, as he took the turn onto Main Street so fast it felt as if the SUV was on two wheels. Lucy saw the startled expressions of pedestrians, and the desperate look on a woman’s face as she yanked back the stroller she was about to push through the crosswalk, as Colin drove through the red light, pursued by a cruiser with siren blaring and lights flashing.
“You can’t get away,” Lucy told him, as another cruiser joined the chase. “They’ll have every cop in the state chasing you.”
“Shut up!” he snarled, sailing through the stop sign and taking a left onto Shore Road. “I’m not going to jail. No way.” He gave a harsh, cackling laugh. “Beth’d just love that. She always did her best to wreck my life.”
Lucy knew Shore Road only too well. She’d covered numerous crashes that had taken place on the twisty road that ran atop a cliff and offered spectacular ocean views. “Oh, no, you don’t want to go here. Take the next right—it’ll bring you to Route One.”
“No way.” The car was climbing up the steep incline, going much too fast. The sirens were screaming behind them, and when Lucy turned she saw flashing blue lights as far as she could see.
“Honest. This road . . .” She protested as he drove past the turn. “You’ve got to slow down, there’s a hairpin . . .”
It was too late, she realized, as he pushed the gas pedal to the floor. He was almost to the turn and she knew they’d never make it. The car would crash right through the barrier and fall onto the rocks and seething sea below.
Belatedly realizing his danger, Colin hit the brakes and Lucy shoved the door open and threw herself out of the car, hitting the tarmac hard and rolling onto the grassy verge. Her shoulder slammed painfully against a wooden fence post, inches from the edge. Cradling her arm, she pulled herself up in time to see her car go right through the barrier and sail into thin air. Brakes squealed as the cop cars halted and sirens silenced. They heard the awful sound of metal hitting rocks and a single, piercing scream.
Epilogue
It all seemed like a dream, actually a nightmare, thought Lucy, who was struggling to make sense of everything that had happened. The fact that her mind was muddled by the painkillers they’d given her at the hospital was only adding to her confusion.
She was pretty banged up from her leap from the car, but she’d only broken her arm, which the ER doctor thought was remarkable, especially considering the speed of the car. Her hands and elbows were scraped. She had bruises all over and whiplash from crashing into the barrier, but she would eventually make a full recovery. And for the moment, anyway, she wasn’t really in any pain, but she didn’t expect that situation to last. Once these drugs wore off, she would have to get by on over the counter painkillers now that the opioid epidemic had put an end to generous prescriptions for drugs like oxycodone and Vicodin.
Now she was tucked up in a corner of the emergency room, waiting to be released, while Bill went to the billing office with her insurance information. She’d been pleased when her friend, Officer Barney Culpepper, had popped into her curtained cubicle, eager to fill her in on the latest developments.
“Hell of a thing, Lucy,” he’d said, standing awkwardly beside her gurney and swinging his blue cap in his hand. “Good thing you jumped when you did, otherwise you’d be sleeping with the fishes.”
“I kept telling him about the curve, but I guess he didn’t believe me.”
“Maybe he figured he’d rather die than go to jail, something like that. NYPD checked the tapes from your friend’s apartment building and it turns out he was there when she died. They’ve got video of him exiting the lobby, dressed like a woman and carrying a little dog. And it seems he’s been under investigation for being a regular Dr. Feelgood, writing prescriptions for cash.”
“I suppose it was Beth, his ex-wife, who fingered him.”
“Mebbe. Or mebbe they just got into a fight, like people do. Mebbe she had a habit of playing loud music that bothered his mother, or mebbe she complained about the mom’s dog or something and he lost it and flipped her off the terrace.”
“It’s too horrible to think about.”
“Well, he got his, that’s for sure.” Barney had nodded sharply, his face set in a bulldog expression. “And his wife’s no sweetheart, either. The dispatcher heard her arguing with his life insurance company, furious that they’re withholding payment pending an investigation.”
“She was bragging about it being their silver anniversary,” Lucy had said.
“Oh, that reminds me. While we were fishing the doctor out of the drink, the county sheriff had to respond to a domestic here in town. It was the Bickersons—I mean the Bickfords—and this time he swears he’s going to divorce her.”
Lucy had started to laugh, but ended up groaning in pain. “It’ll never happen,” she finally said.
“You said it,” said Barney, setting his hat on his graying brush-cut head. “Well, I gotta go. Get well soon.”
Now, left alone, she kept thinking about that CCTV recording and how it had initially fooled the New York cops. Dressing as an old woman was a clever disguise—didn’t they say that old women were practically invisible for all the notice people took of them? But was that how he was dressed when he attacked Beth? Lucy hoped not. It was too creepy.
She shifted cautiously, trying to get comfortable, and wondered what was taking Bill so long. She wished briefly she had something to read, anything to distract herself, but found herself yawning and dozing off. She began to dream, a dream so vivid it seemed absolutely real. In her dream she saw Beth standing on her balcony, wearing a beautiful white dress, like a wedding dress. She wasn’t smiling, like a bride; she was frightened. Someone was with her and she was fearful. But why? It was only her neighbor, elderly Mrs. Feinstrom.
But then the angle switched and the focus was on Mrs. Feinstrom, only she’d changed. Now she was revealed as a man, a man who was screaming abuse at Beth, yelling at her and hitting her. Beth put her hands up to protect herself and he grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her hard. She should have fallen. All the laws of physics demanded that she should have tumbled over the railing and dropped twenty-two floors to the concrete sidewalk below.
But she didn’t. He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her over, but instead of falling, Beth floated upward, buoyed by the ballooning skirt of her white wedding dress. Her head was covered by a white veil, but it lifted in the breeze and wafted around her, revealing her face. She was radiantly happy. She looked like a Botticelli angel, with an expression of exquisite rapture on her face.
A noisy cart rattled past the cubicle and there were voices, which wakened Lucy, but there was none of the fear and anxiety that had gripped her lately. Someone had covered her with a heated blanket and she was filled with a sense of peace and contentment as she relaxed in the warm bed and drifted back to sleep.
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