Page 88 of Kill For Me Kill For You
‘No parent should have to bury a child. You’ve been through so much.’
They reached the intersection. On their right, Quinn’s house. A blue-and-white parked outside. On their left, a quiet street, with Amanda’s car parked halfway down it. No cops in sight. They sat silently for a time. The light changed to green and Billy turned left. He pulled up and parked at Amanda’s car.
She unbuckled her seat belt, said, ‘Well, can’t say this has been fun.’
‘I’ll send everything we have on Ruth Gelman to my PI. Hopefully by tomorrow we should have an address for her,’ he said. ‘When I get one, I’ll call you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Amanda, opening the passenger door. She stopped, hesitated, said, ‘I never would’ve found her without you. Thank you. And thank you for helping me and not . . .’
‘Not judging you? I could’vebeenyou, Amanda. In some ways, I was you. I was in your exact position only I backed out of it before Quinn saw me and attacked me. If that had happened, I would be sitting where you are now. I want to help you. I want to help us both come out of this. Now we just have to find her and stop her.’
Amanda watched Billy pull away as she opened the driver’s door to her car and got in. It had been a long night.
She had been lucky to meet Billy. He seemed a sweet, generous man. Kind, but there was a toughness in him too. And a sadness. She had caught it now and then, in the corners of the light-brown eyes, or hanging at the end of one of his sentences like a dull echo. If she hadn’t met Billy, she wouldn’t have found Ruth Gelman. Maybe her luck was changing. Slipping the car into first, she pressed the accelerator and drove out onto the street.
A yawn grabbed her, and her knee shot through with pain every time she changed gear. She wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and go to sleep. And yet she knew it would be hard to get to sleep tonight. It was hard most nights. There was too much floating around in her brain – dealing with what she had done to Quinn – knowing he was an innocent man. Wallace Crone was in the back of her mind for now. Ruth Gelman was at the front. She suspected that their search for Ruth had only just started. And she was running out of time.
50
Ruth
9.55 p.m., November 22nd, 2018
Thanksgiving Eve
Ruth sat at a red light on Atlantic Avenue in a black Mercedes, a lit cigarette between the fingers of her left hand, the window cracked open an inch to let the smoke out. She checked her dye job in the mirror. Four hours in a salon and four hundred dollars later, she was now a redhead.
An Ed Sheeran track played on the radio. Ruth liked to keep up with new music, and she enjoyed the beat of this one. The fingers of her right hand tapped out the rhythm on the steering wheel. She took a drag from her cigarette, waited for an update on the news at the top of the hour.
Her thoughts drifted to Amanda. What she must be feeling right now. Cheated, conned, angry? All of those things. And none of it mattered. Amanda would not go to the police to give herself up and, even if she did, there was no evidence to back up her story. Naomi was gone. She’d never even existed.
She took another hit from her cigarette. The traffic light was still red against the night sky. The news came in at the top of the hour.
Quinn was still alive, but critical. With luck he would die soon. She had that feeling again – relief. She was reborn, free from fear.
She’d first experienced that feeling eleven years ago. That hour she’d spent walking along Park Terrace in Frog Hollow, Hartford, after Scott had told her he’d killed Travers. She remembered the smell from the grass. Going grocery shopping. Buying that coffee. Just walking the streets without fear. And the light. In her memory, that time had been during the golden hour, or what some called the magic hour. The period of time right before sunrise, when the sky, and the light, is a mix of burnished bronze and gold. It gives every surface a Midas touch. Puddles of rainwater on the sidewalk turn into pools of gold. Stop signs look like twenty-four-karat treasures lifted from a pharaoh’s tomb.
And in the distance she could hear a brass bell ringing, softly.
It hadn’t really looked like this that day, all those years ago. She knew that. It didn’t matter. Not really. The warmth, the sheer relief and the sense of comfort she’d felt that morning had bled into her memory – painting it in shimmering gold.
The bad things that had happened later that day were not so clear in her mind. They had blurred and dulled with time and heavy medication.
She scanned the road ahead. A gas station, just beyond the intersection with Brooklyn Avenue. She would go there, fill up on gas and Lucky Strikes. A small thing. Something that people do every day. And she could do it tonight without fear. Mr. Blue-eyes, as she had come to know him, was gone. He lay fighting for his life in a New York hospital bed. He wouldn’t be waiting, hiding in the back seat of her car when she returned from the gas station. He wouldn’t be waiting for her later, while she lay awake in bed. His face would not haunt her dreams.
She could live and sleep in that golden haze again.
A horn blasted behind her.
She glanced in the rearview mirror. The driver in the car behind was gesticulating for Ruth to move on.
The light was green.
She put the car in gear and moved off slowly, turning into the gas station. She got out of the car, pumped gas into the tank and looked around while it filled. A rundown neighborhood in Brooklyn. The elevated train tracks ran down the center of Atlantic Avenue, carrying people in and out of Manhattan.
She went inside the gas station, bought four packs of Luckys and paid in cash for the cigarettes and gas. It felt good. The small things always did. To live an ordinary life without fear was something marvelous to her, and always would be. Back in the car, she checked her destination on the navigation system. She was close now.
Fifteen minutes later Ruth parked the car in the long-term parking lot, got her bag and her case from the trunk and took an Uber to her new apartment. The movers had been there yesterday, and when she entered the apartment the furniture had already been laid out, boxes opened, cutlery, plates and mugs put away and her bed made. It was an expensive service, but she could afford it.
