Chapter 4
CHAPTER
Gravel crunched beneath Gary Soneji’s sneakers. When he saw the woods open ahead, he put the wool socks on over his sneakers and the balaclava over his curly blond hair.
He took a few steps into the clearing and spotted the old Bronco about forty yards away on a concrete pad above the river. It was parked facing away from him toward Little Falls. The moonlight had turned the scene a dusky blue.
Soneji felt a thrill shoot through him.
It wasn’t a Joyce scenario, but his heart was suddenly booming. He got out the weapon, breathless at the solid weight of the pistol in his hand.
After gauging where the moon would throw his shadow and locating the blind spot of the Bronco’s side-view mirror, Soneji padded forward. He heard the low roar of the nearby rapids and the distant wail of a siren somewhere on the Virginia side of the river.
Feeling the blood pound in his temples, he watched for movement in the car as he closed the distance. At five yards, he could see the silhouettes of the jock and his girlfriend in the moonlight and the glow of the radio, which was playing the intro to Springsteen’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.”
At two feet away, he saw they were both topless and entwined in a kiss.
He flashed on an image of Joyce freed of her shirt and bra, then shook the memory off.
Soneji lifted the gun. He aimed through the side window at the back of the lacrosse captain’s head, thinking beyond what the genius had done, trying for two dead with one shot. A split second before the gun went off, however, the girl moved her head.
The shot was much louder than he’d expected. Soneji looked at the spiderwebbed window and felt an overwhelming urge to flee the scene. So he did.
He took off, running back toward the spur road and into the darkened woods. He tripped and almost fell, stuck the pistol back in his pocket, and got out the penlight.
He sprinted to the back of the van, meaning to return the pistol, the balaclava, and the socks to the duffel bag, reached for the door handle, and froze.
Someone had scrawled with a finger across the two dirty back doors Bike trail, asshole. Reporting you to police.
For two or three beats, Soneji stood there, his mind unable to process the ramifications of the message. Then his survival instinct, honed over years of abuse as a child, kicked in.
He looked at the ground and saw the bike’s thin track. The bicyclist must have come from the south, seen the van, stopped to write the note, then looped right and continued north.
Soneji jumped into the van, started it, and rammed it into reverse.
He spun the van around, then smashed it into drive.
He figured he’d been gone no more than fifteen minutes.
The bicyclist had a head start, but how much of a head start?
If he’d seen the van right away, he could be across the lock and up on the parkway by now.
But if the bicyclist had spotted the van a few minutes later, he might still be on the towpath. And he might have heard the gunshot.
Soneji turned on the fog lights and sped up.
For almost a minute, he felt nothing but anxiety and uncertainty. Then, four hundred yards short of the bridge off the island, he saw a bicycle taillight about a hundred yards away, blinking red, and the bright reflectors of a safety vest.
He floored the gas pedal. When he was fifty yards away and closing, the bicyclist turned, revealing a headlamp and the concerned face of a bearded man.
When Soneji was twenty-five yards from him, the man tried to pull over to his left to let Soneji pass. He was facing away from the van and had not come to a full stop when the van’s left front bumper plowed into him, launching both rider and bike off the path and into the darkness of the woods.