Stuart Woods: Son of Stone

“No, I did it all at home, and on my personal computer. And I gave the initial story about the killing to the paper.”

“Good. Now get going.”

Kelli downed the rest of her coffee, went back to her desk, found a non- Post envelope, took the package downstairs, and shipped it.

Tim Rutledge checked out of the New Jersey motel where he had stayed the night and drove into Manhattan. He dropped his luggage, except for one bag, at a small hotel on West Forty-fourth Street, parked his car in the Hippodrome Garage, then walked the block back to the hotel, carrying his largest duffel.

He checked into the hotel, having earlier phoned a reservation, and a bellman took him upstairs to his room. It was of a decent size, decently furnished, with a flat-screen TV, a comfortable bed, and chair. He unpacked his clothes, then opened the large duffel.

He removed and put away the clothes in that bag, then put on a pair of latex gloves from a box he had bought at a drugstore, then finally took from the duffel an elongated package, wrapped in sturdy brown paper and packing tape. Using his pocketknife, he cut away the paper at one end, then shook the contents out onto his bed.

The contents consisted of a used, 12-gauge Remington police riot gun, with a truncated, eighteen-and-a-half-inch barrel. He had bought it from an individual at a gun show in Virginia, before he had driven north out of the state. He found the box of double-ought shells he had bought. And loaded the weapon, leaving the chamber empty. He wouldn’t need more than one or two rounds, he figured.

He took some tissues and wiped the shotgun clean of any stray prints that might have found their way to it, then returned the loaded weapon to its paper wrapping, now a sheath, from which he would fire it. Therefore, there would be no gunpowder residue on his hands or clothing, and, of course, no fingerprints on the shotgun or the shells. When he had completed his mission, he would dispose of the weapon in a dumpster at some construction site and it would vanish into a landfill somewhere.

Should the shotgun ever be found, it could not be traced to him. His mission satisfactorily completed, he would then drive his car to California. He had always wanted to drive across the United States, and, with his new and quite legal passport and Virginia driver’s license, obtained a few weeks ago, he would be safe from an unexpected arrest. He had already begun to grow a beard, and it was looking quite attractive, he thought.

After a look at California he would drive across the border to Tijuana, and thence down to Baja, where he would, eventually, move the funds he had mailed to a bank in the Cayman Islands to a neighborhood Mexican bank, then buy a little house.

He would then begin his new career as a novelist, the mysterious E. Gifford, and he just knew he would be successful at it.

Kelli had just left the Post building for the day when her cell phone buzzed. “Hello?”

“Kelli Keane?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“This is Karen Kohler at Vanity Fair. Prunie Wheaton sent me your manuscript this morning.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Everybody here loves it,” she said. “I walked it through the office, and nobody could put it down. We just had to cancel a piece in the next issue that couldn’t pass fact-checking, so we can slip it right in, instead of waiting for the usual two or three months.”

“Wonderful!”

“Do you have an agent?”

Kelli gave her the name and phone number.

“Well, assuming we can make a deal, and if the piece gets through fact-checking with no major changes, you’ll see it in the next issue.”

“That’s great news, Karen,” Kelli said.

“There’s one more thing we need, though.”

“What’s that?”

“A decent photograph of this suspect, Tim Rutledge. A head shot will do, but get the best one you can.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Kelli said.

“I’ll call you in a day or two to come over here so we can go through the fact-checking and my notes. Can you bring your laptop and make any changes on the spot?”

“Sure, I can.”

“I’ll be in touch, then.” The woman hung up.

Kelli flung herself in front of a taxi and headed for home. She couldn’t wait to tell David.

P eter met Hattie after school, and they walked down to Second Avenue and got a cab uptown. He took her hand. “Are you still sure this is what you want to do?”

“Are you against it?” she asked, looking alarmed.

“No. If it’s what you want, I’m all for it. I just want to be sure you’re sure.”

“I’m sure,” she said.

They got out at the corner nearest the clinic and walked upstairs. There was a friendly-looking waiting room with landscapes on the walls and current magazines, not all of them for women. Hattie gave the assumed name she was using to the receptionist and came and sat next to Peter.

“I’ve got the titles finished and in the movie,” he said. “It’s as good as it’s ever going to be now.” He told her this to keep her mind off where she was.

“That’s wonderful. What are you going to do with it?”

“Nothing, just yet. Dad thinks I should wait a couple of years before submitting it to anyone.”

“Why?”

“He thinks the publicity it might produce wouldn’t be a good thing for me right now.”

“I’m not sure he’s right,” Hattie said. “The Sundance festival is soon, and I think your film ought to be in it. If you wait a couple of years, someone else might do a similar film, and that would take away from yours.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Peter said.

“Anyway, you’ll be at Yale by the time the film gets released, and that’s a kind of insulation.”

“You could be right,” Peter said. “I’ll talk to Dad about it.”

“Miss Springer?” a woman’s voice said.

Hattie didn’t react until Peter squeezed her hand.

“Oh, yes,” she said, standing up.

“Please follow me.”

Hattie kissed Peter on the forehead and followed the woman from the room.

Peter sat and thought about what Hattie had said, and he realized that sending the completed film to Centurion would be an enormous relief to him. It was the natural thing to do after completing the work. He began to think about the details of doing that.

Kelli Keane arrived at the Conde Nast building and found the floor for Vanity Fair. Karen Kohler appeared in reception, shook her hand, gave her a broad smile, and took her to her office in the editorial department.

“Now,” Karen said, sitting behind her desk and waving Kelli to a seat, “here are my notes.” She handed Kelli a neatly typed sheet of paper.

Kelli read them. “I’ve no problem with any of these,” she said. “I can fix them in ten minutes.”

“Good. Now, there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“There seems to be a discrepancy in the age of Arrington’s son, Peter. She and Vance Calder were married about seventeen years ago. How could they have an eighteen-year-old son? They hadn’t even met until she did the New Yorker profile on Vance.”

“I believe the boy is Stone Barrington’s son. They were seeing each other before she met Vance. I have a copy of the boy’s birth certificate from L.A., showing him to be eighteen, and Barrington is listed as the father.”

“Both Arrington and Stone were New Yorkers,” Karen said. “Why would she have her child in L.A.?”

“I haven’t been able to nail that down,” Kelli replied, “and believe me, I pulled out all the stops. I’d like that part of the piece to remain the same, because it reflects the information I have confirmed, not what I’m guessing. Also, I don’t want to embarrass an eighteen-year-old boy by discussing his parentage in a national magazine. To be clear, I’ll put it this way: I won’t give you the piece, if that’s what you want to do.”