Chapter 19
Heath
I hadn’t thought about how Kat would react when I shot her husband. Perhaps I should have shielded her from the trauma, but I meant for Eddie’s murder to be retribution. He hurt her. I hurt him. There’s no in-between.
She covers her mouth with her hands but doesn’t scream or cry. It could be shock or maybe his death is a relief to her. Either way, I’ve had years of practice adjusting to this type of thing, while I can’t imagine there have been many murders in Montauk while I’ve been gone.
“Kat, I know you to be iron-stomached, a fish-gutting scientist. Try to look at this through that lens. Blood is blood, be it the frogs or your late husband’s. There’s a lot to be done. Can you take instructions?”
She nods into her hands, then lowers them from her mouth. I begin to roll Eddie’s corpse in the bed sheets and comforter before the blood soaks through the mattress. Kat jumps up to move out of my way.
“I can take care of all of this. Pull down those curtains and take off your nightgown. Is that bar restaurant, The Point, still open all night?”
“I think so,” Kat says as she throws her spattered nightgown onto the pile that was once her husband.
“Go there and get some take-out, a burger and fries, and make sure the staff sees you,” I say. “Keep the receipt.”
She yanks down the nearly transparent curtains and tosses them my way.
“I’m not hungry, Heath,” she tells me.
Bless her heart.
“It’s to establish an alibi for you while I dump this body,” I say.
“Oh, right.” She nods.
With my phone to my ear, I ring Fratelli’s destroyer, a hitman feared across all five boroughs, the notorious Donovan Taglioni.
“Tag, it’s Heath Clifton. I’m out at Wainscott Hollow on the sound. I need a boat. Untraceable. No witnesses.”
He offers to help, and I insist on doing it myself. If Fratelli taught me anything, it's that there is no such thing as friendship and no one you can trust but yourself. I work alone.
“Twenty minutes is perfect. I’ve got a B500 laser pointer in blue that I’ll shine out into the water.”
“Are you going to dump him in the ocean?” Kat asks. She seems relatively calm and collected as she steps into a pair of jeans and pulls on a white blouse.
“I’m going to do whatever needs to be done. It’s better you don’t know. You’ve already seen enough. Reset the alarm system because I disabled it. Go straight there and back. Get them to notice you, but don’t talk to anyone.”
Kat looks irresistible in her jeans, her hair tousled, her cheeks flushed to the point that I’ve half a mind to strip her down and start all over again. But instead, I use my adrenaline to heft the dead weight over my shoulder and walk toward the door.
“If you notice anything more with blood stains, burn it in the fireplace until it’s completely gone. If there’s any on the rug, soak it in hydrogen peroxide and then rub it with a white bar of soap.”
Eddie is a lug now that he’s dead and wrapped in feather down. I never liked the guy, but I’m somewhat sorry it came to such an unruly goodbye. Perhaps I should have drugged him and tossed him off the pier.
“Wow, guess I’m not the only scientist. What did you say you were doing all those years in the Bronx?”
“Selling ice cream,” I tell her with a wink. Kat crosses her arms and furrows her brow. “And Italian Ices.”
“Heath, come back for me,” she says, her voice cracking with emotion.
“I’ve never left you by choice, Katelyn Shaw.” I stalk to her and deliver a chaste kiss on her full and worried lips. And with that, I walk out of her house, her dead husband balanced carefully on my shoulder.
I drop Eddie on the dock with a solid clunk and shine my blue laser across the water, so the contact will know where to steer the boat.
Donovan sends an unknown man who pulls up to the pier in Wainscott Hollow in an old cigarette boat that looks like it’s been around since the rum-runner days.
Old man Shaw had the floating docks installed in the cove, and they’re still functional, although I doubt Henry does any fishing and has probably sold off his father’s boats to pay for his accumulating debt.
It’s a shame this whole estate has gone to waste.
Instead of speaking, the man gives me a salute.
He wordlessly takes one end of a blanket-rolled-Eddie-cigar and gives me a hand entering the boat as I grab the other.
Water slaps against the side of the vessel and rocks it gently as we work.
The man is tall and haggard-looking with pockmarked skin and a chewed cigar hanging from his mouth.
“How deep and how far?” the man asks as he starts the motor.
“Deep enough and far enough. Better if I don’t know coordinates.”
He nods again and picks up speed. The boat slices through the dark water until we’re swallowed by the blackness.
The ocean at night is a different beast from the ocean during the day.
It’s not scenic or inviting, it’s a profound absence of light, a real and present danger, an easy way to die if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.
Good think I finally learned how to swim after I left Long Island Sound.
We drop the package overboard at an undisclosed location, which hits with a glug more than a splash.
The white bedsheets and covers are momentarily visible against the dark water, like a ghost floating to its watery grave.
Eddie seems to sink more slowly than I’d imagined, but maybe it’s because I’m so eager to be rid of him. I instinctually brace myself in case Donovan’s henchman wants to send me in after him. But of course, he doesn’t.
When he’s good and sunk, we speed another ten minutes in the opposite direction, and I toss the Glock out into the dark sea, where it’s swallowed up like a single plankton in the mouth of a great whale. The waters of Wainscott Hollow have always been a graveyard of secrets.
I suddenly find myself anxious about returning to Kat and ask Donovan’s man to take me back as fast as he can. He obliges, and the rum-runner juts halfway out of the water as we tear through the darkness back to the small pier in the cove below the estate.
I find my phone where I left it on top of the fuse box on the dock. Phone data tracing from Wainscott Hollow is expected. Twenty miles out into the ocean, however, is not. It’s safe to always cover one’s bases.
I cut the lights back on and check my messages. Nothing seems amiss, but I bang out a quick text to Kat, knowing I won’t feel any relief until I have her in my arms again.
Did you do what I told you? I’m on my way.
Trudging back to Eddie’s house through the sand, I curse myself for walking, which seemed like the most discreet plan at the time.
But my shoulder and back scream from having carried Eddie so far, and my pulse thrums unreasonably fast, worrying about whether Kat ran into any problems with her assignments.
I was dumb to leave her alone but taking her on a dumping job didn’t seem prudent.
The lights are on in Eddie’s beachfront mansion, looking warm and inviting like a beacon from these dark beaches.
Wainscot Hollow is as dark as a haunted house, with Henry likely passed out in a pool of his own vomit.
Henry’s next, but I like to do a neat job and take one thing at a time.
A hit cannot be namby-pamby, no matter how short you are on time.
I veer left and stride down the path back to the Lind residence, where I hope to be greeted by the love of my life.
I find the back door open, and music blares from inside the house.
“Kat!” I holler as I enter the open-plan living area surrounded by windows. There’s no way to move discreetly in this house when the lights are on.
“Kat!” I scream again and am answered by only some loud jazz.
I search for the source so I can cut it off.
“Kat, where the fuck are you?” I bellow as I tear through every single room.
The bedroom is stripped and empty. Only a couple of curtain panels dance in the wind from the open windows.
Spotting a smart remote, I push power and stop the maddening music.
“Fuck me, Katelyn Shaw,” I say to myself. “Now I’m gonna have to kill a hell of a lot more people.”
I check my phone again to see if anyone’s tried to contact me. If she chickened out and ditched me, I’ll have to end her. There’s no questioning the matter. Or lock her up in Wainscott Hollow forever, never letting her see the light of day.
On my phone, there’s an incoming message.
It’s Kat.
No words but a blurry picture that looks like it was snapped in haste.
Part boardwalk. Part black pavement. A sinister-looking clown and a red arrow nearly erased by years of foot traffic.
Luna Park this way!
Coney Island?
Only two people in this world are stupid enough to hurt Kat Shaw. One’s dead already, and the other one’s about to be.
Our darling and deranged brother, Henry Shaw.
A man who is about to meet his maker after he dies a slow death in the most painful way possible.