Page 4 of Witness 8

It wasn’t revulsion.

It wasn’t shock.

It wasexcitement.

Quickly and quietly, Ruby left the house and followed the path of the killer back up the street.

He had stopped around halfway, she remembered.

Why had he stopped?

Ruby saw a pile of garbage bags leaning against a lamp post. One of the bags was ripped at the side. She peeled back the rip in the bag, saw the matt-black butt of a gun. The gun and the bag would be taken in six hours, heaved into a garbage truck at dawn and lost forever.

Pulling the sleeve of her coat over her hand, Ruby reached into the bag and retrieved the gun, then slipped it into her purse.

There was no one else on the street. No sirens from police cars. No paramedics. She watched the windows of the houses. No one peering out.

Ruby turned back the way she’d come, made her way past the Blakemore’s home, and kept on walking.

She didn’t call the cops. Just walked the ten blocks home on a warm night, her mind alive with possibilities.

Ruby knew who had shot and killed Maggs.

Knowledge is power. She could hear her grandmother saying it now, her watchful eyes mooning at young Ruby from her throne.

The only question on Ruby’s mind was what she was going to do with that power. She was used to keeping secrets. For the years she had worked for the rich families of West 74thStreet, knowing their minds, their secret affairs, their hopes and fears, and their crimes . . .

She hated them. She hated the fathers, the mothers and even some of the children.

Now was her chance.

A possible way out of the deep trouble that had agonized her thoughts for the past months.

A chance for a new life.

While thoughts of her terrible situation had kept her from sleep, her choices had not. Ruby had hurt people. She knew that she would have to hurt a lot more of them before the end. She did what she had to do without fear, without mercy, without a second thought for those she would destroy.

Suddenly, Ruby had the solution. It was right there, in her purse. Still warm from firing three rounds into a woman she had fondly known all of her life.

Ruby felt nothing for Maggs. No sadness. If anything, she was glad. She could now see a way out.

West 74thStreet would wake in the morning to the shocking murder of one of their own.

It would not be the last.

Because, right now, Ruby Johnson had a plan.

PART ONE

1

Eddie

In the beginning, and in the end, it all comes down to money.

New York City runs on the stuff like no other place on earth. Everything is about the green. What you can make. How you can get over. Kickbacks and greenbacks. Everything. And everyone.

All the damn time.