“Dead. We think.”
“Good.” The old woman lifts her head so Sam can stuff a throw pillow under her salty, wet head.
Then, her lids close and her face relaxes as she lets out a deep sigh. “I got the kidnapper to tell me how Mrs. Gallo got rid of the body.”
“In the ocean?” It makes sense to me but the former Times reporter rotates her head back and forth.
“No. He said it was too far. Gallo called him. He was the one who put the body in the dumpster.” Her voice grows weak.
“Did he say anything else?”
“He wanted me to tell him about some damn accountant and when I told him I didn’t know any, he stuck a needle in my arm.”
She pulls up her quilt and points down the hall “You’ll find some of my husband’s old clothes in the master bedroom. You should go before the cops get here. I’ll cover for you.”
While I wonder about leaving the scene of the crime, Sam races down the hall. She comes back with a pile of clothes and shoves them at me.
“She’s right. There’s no time to waste. I don’t want to spend all night in a police station while you ramble on and on for hours.”
“Fuck.” Reaching for the clothes, I change in the master bedroom. A hoodie, two sizes too small, strains to cover my chest and the sweatpants stop halfway up my calves but at least they’re dry.
When I come out, Sam, similarly attired, picks up our wet clothes, and kisses Martha on the cheeks. “You sure about this?”
“You go find that bitch and send her to the chair… A little gallows humor, get it? Gallo? Gallows?”
Suds whistles through his teeth. “You are one, very tough lady.”
“Back in the day, in my business, you had to be. You’re wasting daylight. Go.”
I throw another log on the fire and catch Sam’s eye. “Ready?”
“Y-Yeah.” Hair knotted, lips blue, and dressed in old man’s beach clothes, she’s perfect.
Grabbing her hand, we run to my SUV parked around the corner. Driving through town, we pass a parade of cops heading in the opposite direction along with a few ambulances.
My partner ducks under the dash as I pull over like a good citizen to let them pass, hoping they won’t check my plates.
“Call Slate.” I speak into the car phone and when my friend answers, I download. “One more thing, before he died, the kidnapper admitted to Martha, he disposed of a body in a dumpster.”
Sam looks up from her cell phone. “Luigi probably ended up in a Pennsylvania landfill. I’ll see what I can find out. In the meantime, how will you explain leaving the scene of a crime?”
“Jason sent them everything we have. We’re okay for now but they want us in their offices when we get to Manhattan.”
Chapter 18
Sam
Even with the SUV blasting heat on high, I can’t stop shivering. Worse, I keep reliving those awful seconds when Sebastian went under and I couldn’t find him. What if I missed as I reached for his belt? What if I hadn’t seen his body rolling around in the waves? What if, what if…
The windshield wipers slap-slap, and as the snow falls harder, Suds grips the wheel. His jaw tics, the front of the car swerves and he slows to a stop at a long line of taillights.
“Talk to me.” Rubbing his hand over his grim face, he looks down as I turn my laptop screen toward him.
“Brooklyn garbage actually does end up in Pennsylvania but the FBI won’t issue a search warrant. They think Elena orchestrated the kidnapping and Martha imagined the rest; the poison, the murder, and the confession.”
“What the hell is up with this traffic?” Suds inches the SUV forward and stops.
“Google Maps says we’ve got a twenty minute delay.” I show him the app screen and he takes a deep breath.
