James Grippando - Last to die

“Just remember this,” said Rudsky. He scanned the room, looking each of them in the eye. “It could be a good result. It could be a disastrous result. Either way, what Mr. Colletti said is absolutely true: Your odds have just improved. For better, or for worse.”

The prosecutor and his attorney rose. No one else moved, and the two men left without a single handshake. The door closed, unleashing an uncomfortable stretch of silence during which no one seemed quite sure what to say.

Jack decided to keep his thoughts to himself: I couldn’t have said it better, Mr. Rudsky.

Kelsey couldn’t breathe. At least it felt as though she couldn’t. On some level of consciousness she could feel her chest swelling and lungs expanding, but her heart raced with panic as she nonetheless gasped for air. She drank it in. Cold, heavy air that singed her nostrils and burned her throat. She could inhale all she wanted, more than she wanted, but she couldn’t get it out. It seemed to fill her lungs and stay there, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t exhale. Her eyes bulged, her arms flailed. She tried to scream, but it was no use. The air was too thick, too damp.

Water! She was sinking, fading fast, fighting the useless fight. Her legs felt dry but her head was soaked, submerged, trapped beneath something. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn her head. She could only suck harder, drink in the cold, black wetness that was suffocating her.

The room went black. Her mind was a blank. She was suddenly bone dry, her lungs completely clear. But her heart was still pounding as the images came back into focus, though it wasn’t strictly a dream anymore. It was part dream, part memory-a horrible memory of Nate’s worst day as a toddler, a day so frightening that her mind refused to take her back there, except when she was too tired to fight it, hovering in a semi-conscious state.

Kelsey hurried up the sidewalk and didn’t bother knocking on the front door. It was her older sister’s house, and she could come and go as she pleased. Walking through the living room and into the kitchen, she could hear her sister and a group of her girlfriends laughing and playing cards at the table. She said hello, then walked to the family room where the children were playing on the floor. Kelsey counted five of them, three boys and two girls, each of them dwarfed by the tower of Lego they’d constructed.

“Where’s Nate?” she asked.

The children were laughing and arguing at the same time, too focused on their tower to answer. An old woman was seated on the couch, one eye on the children, one eye on the television. “He’s in the kitchen,” she said. “With his mother.”

“No, I’m his mother.”

“He said he wanted his mommy.”

Kelsey’s heart fluttered. She started back down the hall, poking her head into the bedrooms along the way and calling out Nate’s name, but she got no reply.

“Where’s Nate?” she said as she reached the kitchen.

Her sister kept her eyes on her cards. “He’s in the playroom with the kids.”

“No, he’s not.”

“What do you mean he’s not?”

“He’s not there. He’s not anywhere!” She called his name once more, loud enough to be heard anywhere in the house. Silence.

The women threw down their cards and dispatched in different directions-one to the living room, one to the garage, one to the front yard.

“Nate!”

“Where are you, Nate?”

“Nate, honey!”

Kelsey ran to the backyard, calling his name at the top of her lungs, racing from one end of the house to the other, checking the trash bins and behind the bushes. She was at a dead run when she rounded the corner, then froze. A wood deck ran along the side of the house. On the deck was a hot tub. It was covered with a big plastic lid that kept out the leaves and critters. It was supposed to keep out children, too, when it was padlocked. But the latch had no lock. She sprinted up the stairs, then nearly fell to her knees.

On the deck beside the tub lay Nate’s blankie.

“Nate!” she cried, shooting bolt upright in her bed. She was breathless, her face cold and clammy with sweat as she looked around the room. It was her bedroom, she realized, which came as a relief. She was home. It had been that nightmare again, or more precisely the memory that came back to haunt her in dreams. Nate had been just two years old at the time. He didn’t know how to swim, but thankfully the tub had been only half full.

Kelsey slid out of bed and walked silently to the kitchen. The light was still on, and the photocopies were still on the table, exactly where she’d left them. Since her own attack, she’d gathered additional information about the death of Sally’s daughter. She’d studied her findings before bedtime, which had proved to be a terrible mistake.

Or maybe a very timely warning.

She took a seat at the table and thumbed through the collection of old articles. She stopped at the last one, the one reporting the medical examiner’s account of how Sally’s daughter had died. “Suffocation caused by drowning.” Kelsey skimmed the article one more time, though she couldn’t bring herself to focus too intently. The very idea was too painful for any mother, for any normal human being.

This psycho-whoever he was-had rinsed his hands and knife in the bathtub, and then drowned a little girl in water made red by her own mother’s blood.

Kelsey shuddered at the thought, and once again the words of her own attacker outside the law school library echoed in her mind: “Tatum Knight drops out, or your little boy, Nate, goes the way of Sally’s daughter.”

The dream had left her so exhausted that she practically had to prop her head up to think clearly. She was still adamant about not calling the cops. If the man had wanted to rape her or hurt Nate, he could have done that easily. He wanted Tatum out of the game-and that was all he wanted. She had to believe him when he said that Nate would pay if she involved the cops. Still, someone, somewhere, was trying to warn her that she needed to do something. Why else would she have had the dream?

Unless the message was that she was already too late.

The thought chilled her. She rose quickly and grabbed the telephone. Her mother lived in a high-rise condominium with twenty-four-hour security, the safest place Kelsey knew of. She’d decided not to go with him, however, not wanting him or her mother to see the worry in her eyes. She dialed the number and spoke at the sound of her mother’s sleepy Hello.

“Mom, hi, it’s me”…“I know it’s late, I’m sorry. But I just had to check on Nate. Is he okay?”…“Thank God.” She took a breath, her voice shaking as she added, “I really think it’s best if he stays with you for a while.”

Deirdre Meadows was staring at a blank computer screen. Not even the buzz of the busy Tribune newsroom could get her crime reporting juices flowing. She couldn’t blame it on lack of material-there was a dead hooker on Biscayne Boulevard, a circuit court judge caught taking a bribe, and it wasn’t even lunchtime-but her mind was elsewhere.

“What’s cooking?” her editor asked as he breezed past her messy cubicle.

“Oh, the usual Miami spice,” she said weakly.

She’d been moping around for the last twenty-four hours, ever since she’d left Vivien Grasso’s office with a titanic knot in her stomach. It was all Jack Swyteck’s fault. He returned from Africa and promptly warned everyone they might be in danger because of “Alan Sirap.” She’d been attacked by dogs and threatened by a madman who’d vowed that he would either kill her or kill one of the other beneficiaries-and she’d told no one about it. She didn’t like to think she was motivated by money. It was a matter of her own personal safety.