Antonio De Vito - Ailanthus

Antonio De Vito

Ailanthus

Nightmares and Crimes

2nd episode of the series

CRIME IN NEW YORK

To my wife Stefania

who helped me to pull some threads together in this novel.

Any resemblance to persons or actual events is purely coincidental.

Backstory

In the first episode ‘ Doubts from the past ’, Stacie Scott lives a very delicate stage of her life. Her relationship with Sam, with whom she has lived together for the last seven years, ending the studies together, abruptly interrupts. She struggles to get up and restart without him a brilliant career as a lawyer first and as a journalist then, after moving to the Big Apple. The steady growth of Stacie’s professional life continues until she begins to work for the District Attorney of New York City: Douglas. Her achievements serve to hide the big inner hole left by Sam’s sudden departure. Stacie begins to deal with a case of a missing-person. A young woman, Carla De Sena, also a lawyer, disappears without leaving a trace.

Meanwhile, Sam, who is also in New York, meets Carla and begins dating her. Unfortunately, she will prove to be obsessed with a possessive jealousy. When she has a feeling that Sam could get away from her, she tries to kill him.

With the help of the police, Stacie finds Sam just in time to save his life.

After this adventure, the two lovers will have the opportunity to put the past behind them and return to live together, until...

http://www.amazon.it/DUBBI-PASSATO-Giallo-York-Vol-ebook/dp/B00NLLEL5U

Prologue

It was deep night, almost dawn and the lights of the city fairly illuminated the streets. The headlights of the few cars still around fought through the streets in the Flatbush district, in the heart of Brooklyn. A black Corvette, so much brilliantly beautiful and flashy that alone could give light to alleyways and palaces, was going fast near the Brooklyn Center Cinema. By that time the theater had already closed the doors and the over one thousand people who had been there until a few hours earlier had already left that place. Immediately after the theater, a traffic light, careless of late hours, gave the red signal to the Corvette. The driver, though irritated by having to stop his run, pushed the brake pedal and stopped the car. In the meantime, he lit up a cigarette and rolled down the window to let out the smoke. With the fingers of his left hand he nervously drummed on the car roof, while with the right hand he was bringing the cigarette to the mouth. A noise on his left attracted his attention, just as the long-awaited green light was about to reappear at the traffic lights. First, he looked into the rearview mirror, then into the side-view mirror to his left, but he saw nothing. So he leaned his head out of the car. But as soon as he was out of the window, two arms clasped his neck tight and, before he could whine, a blade cut his throat sharply.

-1-

Stacie had been in the Oncology Hospital of Geneva for two weeks, where she and Sam had put their hopes and dreams of life together. Stacie had absolutely no difficulty in persuading him to follow her. She had flaunted with all her strength, security and decision and Sam had chosen to grab the last thing he had left behind: Stacie’s love.

Although both of them had left for Geneva with the awareness that it would not be a simple challenge, they had not considered that it would be time to separate, a devastating moment for both of them. Stacie realized that perhaps that greeting before Sam entered the operating room could be the last gesture that made sense. Sam realized that despite all that they had been saying so far, his life, their destiny, would no longer depend on their will from that moment. They said goodbye to each other with the saddest of kisses, but it was natural. Hope remained. A desire to get together again remained.

Exhausted by stress, Stacie let herself fall into the seat in the waiting room and, for a moment, she felt like forgetting everything as if nothing had ever happened. There were a few but very pleasant moments in which every feeling of fear vanished, concealed by others never felt before. It was only for a few moments. Then, uncontrollable noises and amplified and incomprehensible sounds, as if produced by an old gramophone, gave Stacie a wake-up call.

She got up from her chair and tried to figure out what or who was making those noises. She glanced around herself and there, where she had just tried to rest a few moments, now there was only her chair in the middle of the room. The floor was covered with sheets of paper, and at each step, she could hear them crackling under her feet. She leaned down and took one of them to try to figure out why all those sheets were on the floor. There was an inscription. She immediately took another one and then another one. All with the same sentence,

“I better get a move on. Sam”.

Stacie ran to the door and, before she could grab the knob, she opened the door outwards, opening it to a dark corridor.

She had a moment of hesitation; she did not know whether to move on or not. As she was trying to make a decision on what to do, Sam’s voice came from down the hall.

“Stacie, don’t move; I’ll come to you.”

Stacie did not understand the meaning of what was going on. Sam was in surgery and could not be down the hall.

“Stacie, don’t move; I’ll come to you.”

Stacie kept hearing that phrase repeated and began to fidget because she could not see Sam but she could hear his voice. So she screamed at the top of her lungs and in that moment, she opened her eyes and woke up from the nightmare she had rushed in. Everything was back in its place. The other seats, the magazine cabinet, the beverage dispenser. On the floor, there was no trace of sheets. Stacie was soaked, for how upset she was.

She immediately ran for the door to obtain information on the success of the surgery Sam had undergone. As she was about to grab the knob, the door opened again outward just as before. Stacie’s face fell. She felt like she was falling into a nightmare again. This time there was a doctor on the other side and he was asking for her.

Sadly he did not seem to have good news. His face was speaking for itself. Stacie immediately knew what had happened and before the doctor could complete all the explanations, she avoided him with a low head and ran out of that room into tears.

The story between Sam and Stacie ended here. It remained only the memory of so many years of dreams and shared hopes and the interrupted desire of starting again together. Sam had loved her so much to get away from her when he had realized he was too ill to hope for a future together. He had preferred to get away from the woman he loved rather than be loved for his suffering.

Stacie had suffered his departure, disguised as abandonment, but then she had been able to appreciate Sam’s gesture so much that she had loved him even more than before, since the moment they had found themselves again.

All their hopes were dissolved in that Hospital in Geneva, so far from Colorado, from those places that for many years had been silent witnesses to their love story.

Stacie also had to face the sad ritual of the funeral. The presence of Sam’s mother, who she had promptly called, was not comforting her. Annie, who had come from Colorado, had brought with her all the pain of an American mother who had left her 18-year-old son to go to study and had found him on a bed of a butcher a few years later without even being able to say goodbye to him.

-2-

It was early in the morning on Bedford Avenue and a curious mass crowded the perimeter delineated by the police’s yellow tape. The scene was macabre and people’s curiosity became morbid. A man had been dragged out from his car through the window. He was still hanging in half from the door and on the floor there was a huge blood pool gushed from his throat clearly torn apart right off.