The Key Page 8

  There was a buzzing in my handbag, but I ignored it the first time. Unfortunately, it buzzed again a few minutes later, and then again a few minutes after that. The third time I grimaced and dug out my BlackBerry. I had a number of new messages, as the buzzing had indicated. One of the nicest things about Saks was that the cellular reception was lousy, so it was a good place to go if you didn’t want anyone calling you. At least, calling and actually getting through. But once I got outside, in clearer range of the closest cellular transmitter, all of the messages flooded in.

  I scanned the list of missed calls. A couple bore the telltale number of the Winslow, Brown switchboard, a couple I didn’t recognize, and the last one had been dialed from my apartment. I was debating whether or not I actually wanted to listen to any of the messages when the phone rang. Once again, the number on the screen was that of my apartment.

  Peter, I guessed. It would be just like him to call to apologize when I was the one who owed him an apology.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to figure out what to say next. Maybe I could tell him that I was working on my apology and would get back in touch when it was ready?

  “Fred,” he said. “Glad I caught you. It’s Peter Forrest.”

  “It’s not Fred, it’s Rachel,” I said. “Who’s Fred?”

  He chuckled, which was weird. Peter wasn’t a chuckler. “Listen, Fred. I’ve had an unexpected visit this morning, and I’m going to have to reschedule our meeting.”

  I may have owed Peter an apology, and I may have been an emotional menace, but that didn’t mean I was in any mood for games. “Peter, what’s going on? This isn’t Fred. You know damn well who you called.”

  “It’s funny, Fred—one of the guys reminds me of that O’Connell chap, from Boston. Or maybe more of that O’Donnell character we met last summer?”

  Not only was Peter not a chuckler, I’d never heard him refer to anyone as either a “chap” or a “character” before. “Okay, now this is just stupid—”

  Then I realized what Peter was doing. The two of us knew only a couple of police officers personally. One was a Detective O’Connell in Boston, whom I’d helped—more by accident than on purpose—to track down a serial killer a couple of months ago. The other was a Detective O’Donnell, who worked in a small town in the Adirondacks where I’d had the misfortune to discover the body of Emma’s former fiancé back in August. I leaned against a shop window and brought the phone closer to my mouth, using a hand to shield my words from the ears of passers-by.

  “The police are in the apartment?” I asked.

  “Sure, Fred. Your offices are pretty busy, too.”

  “And they were looking for me at work?”

  “That sounds great.”

  “And you’re trying to warn me.”

  “Right, right.”

  “I’m a suspect? They think I killed Gallagher?”

  “It could be even more than that,” he agreed, his voice still unnaturally jolly.

  “And Dahlia? They think I tried to kill Dahlia?” It was hard to keep my own voice down given the wave of panic that was washing over me.

  “Those projections seem to be on target. Listen, Fred, I have to go, but I’ll have someone get in touch with your team to reschedule.”

  “My team?”

  “What’s that, Fred? This isn’t the right number to use?”

  “You’re saying that I shouldn’t call you. Because you think they’ll be tracing the calls you get?”

  “Right back at you, Fred. Take care, now.”

  “Wait—”

  There was a click, and then he was gone.

  chapter fourteen

  I was having a bit of a head-spinning moment. Suddenly, it seemed as if everyone on the street was staring at me, as if my sunglasses no longer offered a protective shield and the eyes around me could penetrate their dark lenses and see through to the murder suspect lurking behind.

  The crowded avenue and the brightly lit shops felt newly perilous, and I needed to sit down, preferably somewhere quiet and safe, in order to get the head-spinning under control. Fortunately, a quick scan of my surroundings presented a handy interim solution.

  It was relatively easy to lose myself in the stream of tourists pouring into St.Patrick’s Cathedral. Given that I’d never been inside the church before, I probably should have tagged along with one of the groups, listening to what a guide had to say, but I was in no condition to fully appreciate the building’s architectural, artistic, and various other fine points. Instead, I took a seat in a pew about a third of the way down the nave and tried not to hyperventilate.

  After a few minutes of determined deep breathing, I didn’t feel fully composed, but I was collected enough to take an initial inventory of the situation.

  Glenn Gallagher had been murdered, and I was a suspect in his murder. I knew this was preposterous, but it wasn’t completely unreasonable that the police might see things differently. I’d definitely spent a lot of time telling people how happy I’d be to see Gallagher dead—in fact, I’d even joked about poisoning his stupid pencils, although I doubted that Jake or Mark had bothered to tell anyone about that. Still, I had a well-documented motive of sorts. While I knew I hadn’t really meant it—I’d just wanted the guy out of my life—surely the authorities were duty-bound to investigate anyone who’d been saying anything that could be construed as a threat. I’d had plenty of time to slip doctored pencils into the mug on Gallagher’s desk, so I had the opportunity, as well. As for means—cyanide couldn’t be that hard to come by, and while I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea as how to get the cyanide into the pencil, the actual murderer had figured it out, so it couldn’t be that much of a challenge.

  But this all seemed too flimsy to result in the police taking the trouble to hunt me down at home when they couldn’t find me at work.

  Which meant that they were likely there because of Dahlia instead of or in addition to Gallagher, as Peter had indicated. They had the unfortunate eyewitness testimony that somebody matching my description had pushed her onto the subway tracks, and there was probably footage from surveillance cameras, as well. And I’d paid for my MetroCard with a credit card, so perhaps they could even track when and where I’d gone through the subway turnstiles. I did some quick calculations—the timing would have been tight, but if I’d caught the train I’d just missed—I could have been at the 51st Street station at the right moment. I hadn’t, of course, but would anybody do the work to try and find witnesses or video placing me where I actually was when they already thought they knew? And what they thought they knew seemed to be sufficient that Peter, who under normal circumstances would be the first to suggest that I turn myself in and get things straightened out in a reasonable manner, was suggesting that it would be best to make myself scarce.

  I wondered if I was missing anything. I replayed the conversation with Peter in my head, trying to glean what little information I could from his cryptic words. Was there a reason he called me Fred, for example? I didn’t know any Freds, and he’d never mentioned any to me, but was it a code of some sort? I played with the letters, rearranging them, but neither Derf, Dref, Erdf nor any of the other possible combinations meant anything to me.

  Then my BlackBerry buzzed, reminding me again that I had messages waiting. And I remembered Peter’s warning about his calls being traced, and his “right back at you” response. The entire conversation had been awkward, but this comment had struck me as particularly awkward. Could he have meant that calls to and from me could be traced, too?

  That, in contrast to the answers I was getting from playing with the letters in Fred, actually made sense. Dahlia had called this number the previous evening, and I’d called her back. I hadn’t managed to speak to her, but there were probably records of the calls in the computers of my wireless carrier.

  And then I remembered that last night wasn’t the only time I’d called her. I’d called her this morning, too, by accident when I thought I was calling my office voice mai
l—less than half an hour before she was pushed off the subway platform. Some people might find that incriminating, especially if they were already disposed to incriminate me.

  I wondered how it could be possible for the police to get the phone records so quickly. On TV, they usually had to get a subpoena or something like that, approved by a judge.

  But then I realized that they didn’t need access to phone records. All they needed was Dahlia’s cell phone, which she’d undoubtedly had with her when she was attacked, and its log of incoming and outgoing calls.

  My impersonator may have taken the trouble to make it look like I’d tried to kill Dahlia, but I’d unwittingly come to her aid, using the device to construct a web of supporting evidence.

  Then I remembered a movie I’d seen, in which the good guys tracked down a bad guy by the cell phone he had on him, triangulating his location based on the signals the phone was transmitting to and from different cellular towers.

  Could somebody be triangulating my own location in the same way, closing in on me, even as I sat here?

  It seemed unlikely that that sort of manhunt—personhunt—could already be underway, but if I was indeed a suspect, and if they thought I’d attempted murder twice in twenty-four hours, even if I’d only succeeded once—for all they knew, I was on some sort of crazed killing spree and had to be stopped.

  I pulled the BlackBerry out of my bag and stared at it in horror.

  I quickly powered off the device, but it still made me nervous. Perhaps it could continue to transmit information about my whereabouts even without power.

  I thought about leaving it in the church, under the seat or in a confessional or something, but that seemed like it would only hasten its discovery and the associated discovery that I wasn’t with it. And I needed to find another safe haven, too, because even if they didn’t find my phone here, the data would in some way show that I’d been in this spot. At least that’s how it had worked in the movie. I wondered how fugitives who didn’t enjoy popular culture ever managed to remain at large.

  Finding a place for the phone turned out not to be so hard. An open side pocket beckoned from the backpack on the back of the tourist in front of me in the line leaving the cathedral, and I slipped the BlackBerry in unnoticed. With any luck, if it was still emitting a signal, and if that signal was indeed being tracked, it would lead its followers to Omaha or some place like that, by way of a matinee of The Lion King, a carriage ride through Central Park, and a Circle Line cruise.

  But I still needed to find a place where I could sit quietly, undisturbed and with little chance of apprehension while I figured out what I was going to do next. Thinking about the Circle Line had planted the seed of an idea, and when I saw one of those red double-decker buses lumbering across Fifth Avenue, it seemed like fate was trying to tell me something.

  Not only had I never been to St. Patrick’s before, I’d never taken a Gray Line tour of the city, even though the buses regularly passed in front of my office building, ferrying tourists from midtown to United Nations Plaza on the East River. Nobody would ever think to look for me on a tour, and I liked the idea of staying on the move without actually having to move.

  I strode through Rockefeller Center at a brisk but, I hoped, inconspicuous pace. The attendant in the box office at Radio City Music Hall sold me a ticket without even looking up from the paperback he was reading, but I still kept my sunglasses on as I made my purchase. A bus pulled up a few minutes after I pocketed the change.

  Given the chill to the air, most of the passengers had opted for the enclosed lower deck. I had my new hat to keep me warm, and I preferred privacy, so I took the stairs to the upper deck, doing my best not to look furtive as I went. I had a wide selection of seats from which to choose.

  I slid down an empty row and set about formulating a plan.

  chapter fifteen

  I t was dark by the time I climbed up to the pedestrian walkway over Hudson Street. I could smell the exhaust from the commuters’cars below, their engines idling as traffic moved slowly through the Holland Tunnel and into New Jersey.

  Concrete stairs led down to the cobblestones of Laight Street and its string of converted warehouses and factories. I ventured along the sidewalk with careful steps, alert to any danger that might be lurking in the shadows.

  But I reached the familiar door without encountering any lurking dangers. With a sigh of relief I pressed the button for the fifth floor.

  “Yes?” The voice over the intercom was wary.

  “It’s me.”

  Caution gave way to impatience. “It’s about time.” The buzzer buzzed and I pushed the door open.

  The hike up the four steep flights of stairs actually felt good after the several hours I’d spent on the bus. Its route had looped through midtown, over to the U.N. and then down to the South Street Seaport and the office towers of Wall Street before heading back up to Times Square and midtown. The narrative that came over the speakers had been interesting at the beginning, but it grew dull with repetition—even the same jokes were repeated. Fortunately, I felt I had enough of a plan to disembark in Tribeca before the bus headed uptown for the third time.

  The first part of my plan involved finding a hideout that was warm, comfortable, and equipped with Diet Coke and other important staples. In addition to meeting these criteria, Emma’s loft would be a relatively safe retreat given its out-of-the-way location and that it lacked the potentially prying eyes of a doorman. It had the further advantage of being accessible, because if Emma turned out not to be home, I had a convenient copy of her key stashed on my key ring. And if she were home, I doubted that she would turn me in to the cops.

  Instead, when I finally emerged from the stairwell, she was standing in the open doorway holding out a glass of white wine.

  “We thought you’d never get here. Are you hungry? We were thinking of ordering Thai.”

  My friends had been awaiting my arrival since midafternoon. They’d anticipated the thought process that would lead me to Emma’s loft—in fact, they’d arrived at my decision well before I had. They probably hadn’t wasted as much time trying not to hyperventilate and getting rid of spy phones.

  “How’s our favorite fugitive from justice?” Jane said by way of greeting.

  “Assuming there’s actually a warrant out for Rachel’s arrest, which is probably premature, let’s remember that technically neither Rachel nor anybody here knows she’s a fugitive from justice,” warned Luisa. “Otherwise, we’d be harboring a fugitive. And this isn’t my area of expertise, but I’m fairly confident that would be against the law.”

  “So you’ve heard the whole story?” I asked.

  “Matthew called me,” Emma explained. “Peter called him from a pay phone, apparently being very cloak-anddaggers about the whole thing. He was concerned enough about his call being traced, even from the pay phone, that he didn’t want it to go to any of our cell phones or homes. I guess he thought Matthew’s clinic was the best option—he even dialed the switchboard rather than Matthew’s direct extension as an extra precaution. If anyone were actually tracing the call, it would probably take awhile to figure out that Matthew was the person he called and that his girlfriend was your college roommate.”

  At least I wasn’t the only one being paranoid about phones. I’d been scared to even use a pay phone. Not that there was one on the bus.

  “And then Matthew called Emma, and Emma called us,” said Luisa. “We figured you’d come either to my apartment or here, but since my building has a doorman, we thought you’d choose here.” Luisa’s family practically owned a small South American country, and their New York apartment had more than a doorman—it had a staff that included a butler, a cook, and assorted other uniformed attendants. It was a great place to hang out if you wanted your every whim catered to, but it probably wasn’t the place to be if you wanted to minimize personal interactions.

  “We’ve been waiting for you,” said Jane. “But we thought you’d be here sooner�
��we were starting to worry.”

  “And for Peter to get so worked up, when he’s usually so calm—we knew that whatever was happening had to be serious,” added Emma.

  “Little did we know that you’d cooked up such a clever disguise, Rach. It’s a good look on you. Is it Mary-Kate or Ashley that you’re going for?” asked Hilary.

  In addition to the warmth, comfort and availability of certain caffeinated beverages, I’d chosen Emma’s apartment because I knew it was the most likely to yield another important part of my plan. If the police thought I’d killed Gallagher and attempted to kill Dahlia, they would be focusing all of their efforts on finding me and further building their case against me.

  Which meant that nobody was trying to find out who the real murderer was. And not only was unmasking the killer a prerequisite for clearing my name and returning to business as usual, it seemed to be the only way to guarantee that he or she—and a lot of what I knew implied that it could very well be a she—wouldn’t strike again.

  However, tracking down a killer wasn’t going to be easy when I was a fugitive. I needed help.

  There was Peter, of course. But even if I hadn’t been so awful to him, and even if I had been able to deliver a decent apology, it wasn’t possible to turn to him in this situation, when the police were probably tracking his movements and communications in the hope that he’d lead them to me.

  No, I knew who I needed, and that unusual twist of events that had brought all of my friends to the city this week now seemed especially fortuitous. And, fortuitously, they all seemed eager to come to my aid. In fact, they were surprised that I bothered to ask.

  “Why do you think we’ve spent the entire afternoon cooped up here, waiting for you to show?” Hilary replied.

  Emma called in an order to a restaurant around the corner. “I’ll pick it up instead of having them deliver,” she said. “That way we don’t have to worry about a deliveryman seeing you, and I can stop at a pay phone and call Matthew. Then he can call Peter and let him know you’re safe.” She giggled. “We’ll have to figure out a code. Like ‘the eagle has landed’ or ‘full moon over Tulsa’ or something like that. Rachel, is there any special message you want to get to him?”