Page 11 of The Accomplice
Carrie Miller was suffering like no one else I’d ever met.
I had listened carefully as she had spoken.
It’s hard to describe the truth. It has a weight. A density. It makes a sound when it drifts through your breastplate, hits your soul and then falls into your guts. You feel it. It haunts the air and it’s so thick and undeniable you almost feel like you can take a bite clean out of it. Mostly, you just know it when you hear it.
She was telling the truth. And I knew then I would fight for her.
Because no one else would.
Sure, there would be a line of lawyers willing to take this case to help their own careers, or simply for the money.
I didn’t care about money. As I stood watching her fall to pieces on her couch, I knew then I had to help her. I wanted to believe she could get through this. More than anything else, I wanted her to believe that.
We all hurt sometimes. The dark touches all of us sooner or later. If I could get Carrie through this, if I could save her, then it was possible that anyone could be saved. Even me. I didn’t become a lawyer to win cases. I became a lawyer to help people. It’s human instinct. Maybe the best part of us. No matter what kind of catastrophe you see on the news – a fire, building collapse, earthquake or terrorist attack – there are always people running toward that danger, trying to help.
She needed someone to stand beside her. To hold her hand.
She needed Kate and the rest of us.
Right now, Carrie Miller was in a burning building and I was outside, ready to climb the ladders and get her out.
I looked at Bloch. She smiled at me, winked. Harry gave me the thumbs up.
I nodded at Kate.
Kate said, ‘Mrs. Miller, we’re delighted to be your new legal team.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SANDMAN
Lots of people lead two lives.
A bloodthirsty, remorseless CEO in a penthouse office can be a gentle, loving parent and spouse at home ; a caring, dedicated psychotherapist by day could be a destructive, obsessive partner by night ; a soldier who won’t hesitate to take a life on the battlefield but flinches at the sight of blood from the cut on their child’s knee. People don’t just put on a different set of clothes for each life, they put on a different persona. The situation and environment help reinforce this change of personality.
For those few people who are not like the rest of us – the ones who are driven to prey on their fellow humans without remorse or regret – the change can be even starker.
For this man, one of those few, had shed his outer skin like a beast from a nightmare, being born into the world by tearing through the flesh of its host with sharp claws. He had given this version of himself a name. And when he worked in his beast’s skin, he thought only of himself by that name. It carried fear into others. It had power. And he wore it proudly.
His name was Sandman.
He had been in hiding for a year, avoiding the FBI and the NYPD.
He could hide no longer.
Now, he had a purpose. A mission. One that could not fail.
The low red sun was descending below the dilapidated roof of Grady’s Inn when the Sandman pulled into the parking lot. There were any number of hotels in the area. This part of Queens was close to JFK, so it was practically cheap-hotel city. Grady’s Inn happened to be cheaper than any of the others and you got what you paid for. It had once been a grand mansion, but the family had their entire fortune wiped out on Black Friday 1929, when the New York Stock Exchange crashed heralding the Great Depression.
From the look of the building, the Great Depression was still going on. Only those who were desperate, or broke, or both, would stay here.
Money wasn’t a problem for the Sandman.
Security cameras – they were the problem.
Grady’s Inn had been a premier hotel for fifty years, but time and lack of care had let the place fall to near ruin. The New York Department of Justice had kept the place going for a number of years by block booking rooms to sequester juries. That had helped keep the place afloat, but all of that had now stopped since the serial killer Dollar Bill had stayed here, and killed here, while himself serving on a jury. Now, the only guests were those who couldn’t afford a Holiday Inn and didn’t care or didn’t know about the hotel’s recent bloody history.
There were two other vehicles in the small lot, which had maybe twenty spaces. The old station wagon had been there for a long time, judging by the dirt on the windshield and the four flat tires. The other, a Toyota, probably belonged to the night manager.
