“Shit. I can’t believe I’ve missed her formative years. She and Kathleen must be devastated. What about Kimberly?”
“Let me save you some time,” he said. “Kimberly, Janet, Callie, Quinn—they’re all alive and well. You want me to go into detail about them now, or you want to hear about that night?”
“Both. But let’s start with Afaya. Did Darwin get him?”
“No, he never showed.”
“Alison?”
“I never thought to ask,” Lou said, “but I’ll find out and let you know.”
“Okay, so tell me about that night. I need to know if my life is in danger.”
Lou said, “I’m the one Callie called when you had the heart thing that night. She told me she’d just shot Tara, and you were having a heart attack.”
“She tell you the details about shooting Tara?”
“Later on, yes, but at that moment she was in a panic. She thought you were dying, but she couldn’t call 911 because there was no time to hide Tara’s body or clean up the crime scene. Blood spatter was everywhere, including your clothes.”
“Makes sense. The EMS guys find blood, they’d have to call the cops.”
“Exactly. Plus, all this happened in your hotel room, a room filled with your fingerprints, and—well, you get the picture.”
“She had to move fast.”
He nodded. “We were lucky this happened in Boston, where we’re thick with support. I called two cleaning crews and caught one of our doctors at home. At the time, I didn’t know about your psychosomatic thing, you’d never shared that with me. So we thought you were in the middle of a full-fledged heart attack. Since we didn’t have time to get our doctors to your hotel room, I told Callie to go up one floor and check for cameras in the hallway. If she didn’t find any, she was to set off a fire alarm.” That’s what she did. Then I told her to get the midget Victor sent to help you—”
“Curly.”
“You remember that?”
“Like it was minutes ago,” I said. “I’m still not convinced it wasn’t.”
“Let’s stay on track. Okay, so Callie stood watch in the hall, waiting until someone exited the room next to you on the far side. When the guy ran out to join the re drill evacuees, Curly broke in, dragged you into that room and called 911. While waiting for EMS, he got your clothes and luggage and put them in the new room. We were lucky, turns out the guy next door to you was alone, a businessman.”
I could see where this was going and didn’t like it.
“What happened to the businessman?”
“Callie needed his ID and other information for the preliminary report. So she followed him down the steps. When they got outside she struck up a conversation with him.”
Lou paused to make sure I caught the implication.
“When was his body found?”
“Sometime the next day.”
I shifted my body in the bed and thought about the way I plow through life, the wake of bodies I leave behind. I instinctively touched my hand to my chest.
“You okay?” Lou said.
“Surprisingly, yes.”
Lou continued: “EMS got to the hotel about the same time as the firemen, and put you on a gurney. By then, Callie was back in the room and she followed along and climbed into the ambulance with you. Curly was in his car by then, following you. Callie let them drive a few minutes, pulled a gun on the EMS guy in the back and made them stop the truck. Curly pulled up, got out of his car, put a gun on the driver, and Callie made the EMS guys load you into Curly’s car. He drove you to the air ambulance while Callie shot the EMS guys. She ditched their bodies and drove their vehicle to the airport, where she was met by the second cleaning crew. They did their magic on the EMS truck, drove Callie to the FBO, where she boarded our jet to fly here. She beat you here by half an hour, but you were in the medical chopper getting the best care possible. The Chopper landed, and you’ve been here ever since.”
I said, “I assume the first cleaning crew did a good job on the hotel?”
“By the time they finished, you couldn’t prove humans had ever entered it.”
“Where did Darwin fit in all this?”
“See, that’s the thing. Callie called me because she was afraid Darwin would blame you for Tara’s death. She wanted me to arrange a meeting so she could tell Darwin what really happened, and why.”
“And you said?”
“I told her she and Curly were never there.”
“So Darwin thinks I killed Tara?”
Lou nodded. “He thought you killed her and then got the heart thing because you’d been close to her in the past. Remorse, or whatever.”
“So why didn’t Darwin have me killed?”
“See, Darwin was getting ready to kill Tara anyway.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He had already approached me about having you do it.”
“What stopped him from giving me the hit?” I said.
“He thought you might be too close to her. He wanted to try someone else.”
“There was no one else capable of killing Tara.”
“That’s what he found out.”
“Who’d he send?”
“A couple of mafia guys. After that didn’t work, I told him I’d talk to you about doing it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
