Джеффри Дивер - Buried (Hush collection)

Stay?

No way. Sharks circle back on their prey.

In five minutes the soup had arrived. She signed the check and stood, ignoring the gaze of the man seated to her right. Was he eyeing her figure too?

She ignored him. How tiring this all was. She knew it had happened from the beginning of time, men and women, but now, still, in the #MeToo era? Did some men simply not get it?

Walking back to her wing, over sidewalks surrounded by flowering trees, she smelled the enticing aroma of the soup and she thought: Calm down, girl. You’re tired, you’re stressed from the negotiation, you miss Josh. Don’t overreact. Looking over her body was wrong, it was an assault in a way, but it wasn’t terrible. The incident hadn’t become ugly. It was one of the thousands of incidents just like it that she’d had to endure, being a woman in... No, not just in the business world, but anywhere.

She’d had to endure, being a woman. End of story. She should—

“Look, I’m sorry.”

Morgan gasped.

Mets Man had been on an intersecting sidewalk. He stepped in front of her.

She had to stop.

“I was out of line. And—”

“You’ll excuse me. I’m going to my room.” She fished her phone from her pocket. He noticed this.

He was well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered. He held up a hand. “Look. I’m not dangerous or weird.”

The jury’s still out on...

“I just find you extremely attractive. You’re my type. And I think I’m not so bad to look at myself. And there are some other things about my life that are... appealing.”

“I’m talking to management.” She turned, her heart pounding hard. When’s the right time to scream?

“Wait,” he commanded and grabbed her arm.

“The fuck are you doing?”

“Just calm down. Let’s have a drink and—”

“Are you crazy?”

He gripped her harder.

She swung a fist at his mouth and collided solidly. She was the daughter of factory workers and had put herself through college doing the same kind of labor.

“Oh, Jesus, you fucking bitch!”

Now, time to scream.

She inhaled deep. But before she could cry out he tackled her hard, driving a shoulder into her solar plexus. She fell to the ground, pain radiating from her gut to the bridge of her nose. Tears streamed.

Oh, Josh... Josh...

She grappled with the phone. Mets Man ripped it from her hand.

“Why did you do that?” he whispered. “It could have been so good. Why?”

She tried to crawl away, but the blow had virtually paralyzed her.

He seemed disgusted, as if this were all her fault. He shook his head and looked around.

For what?

No, no...

He was plucking a large rock from a garden beside the sidewalk. He walked slowly to her. Elly Morgan closed her eyes. She was numb. She could think of nothing, she could hear nothing, she could sense nothing... except the aroma of the soup, crab soup, lovely soup, spreading in a pink pool only inches from where she lay.

“What... My God. What’ve you done?”

As he looked down at the body of the young woman, her head bloody and crushed, Peter Tile was aware of a scent: Maryland crab chowder. A dish he would never eat again in his life.

“It was an accident.” His boss doffed his Mets cap and wiped his brow.

“It wasn’t an accident. You fucking killed her. And you’re still fucking holding the murder weapon.”

His boss looked down at the bloody piece of stone. He dropped the hunk of jagged granite, now rich with DNA and fingerprints. He whispered, “She was going to—”

“Stop you from raping her? The hell did you think she was going to do?”

“It just got out of hand. She was flirting.”

“I was in the bar. We both were. We were watching you. You came on too strong.”

“She hit me.” He pointed to his jaw. “I think I lost a tooth.”

Tile looked up and down the sidewalk. No one present. And no security cameras. One of the reasons Tile had picked this hotel.

Tile took a deep breath. He made a phone call.

“’Lo?”

“Head to the South Wing. Now. We’ve got a problem.”

Sixty seconds later, Eddie Von appeared. He was five-ten and stocky, muscle-stocky. His thinning black hair was combed back with sweet-smelling lotion. He was blunt in appearance and blunt in manner. His dangling hands drew naturally up into fists.

“Shit,” he grumbled. Not horrified, just thinking of how to deal with this inconvenience.

Tile: “Get her into the bushes.”

Tile and Von gripped her feet and tugged her out of sight. Tile picked up the bloody rock with an untucked tail of his dress shirt and dropped it beside the body.

“What are we going to do?” His boss wiped his brow once more. “You have to figure this out. You have to do something.”

He was furious with the man, but, yes, Peter Tile absolutely did. It was his job to make sure that nothing — even murder — was going to derail the career of the man standing before him: John C. Heller, governor of the state of New York, and the man virtually guaranteed to lead his party to victory in the presidential election in November.

At eight a.m., Dottie Wyandotte walked into the Examiner newsroom and could see something was terribly wrong.

Police were in Gerry Bradford’s office and the editor in chief’s face was stricken. He’d misbuttoned his shirt. Five staffers were standing together, their arms crossed or dangling at their sides, their faces dismayed. Pam Gibbons, Dottie’s assistant, had been crying.

Bradford looked toward her and rose, saying something to the police. He stepped outside and walked to her.

“What?” she blurted. “Tell me.”

“It’s Fitz. He was killed last night.”

“Oh, God. No, no!” Dottie’s hands were shaking. She set down her Starbucks tea, sloughed her computer bag, let it slide to the floor. Tears welled.

Gibbons noticed her boss and made a beeline. They embraced.

“Pam.”

The women separated and, lassoing the emotions, Dottie said in a low voice, “What happened?”

Bradford nodded to the police. “They said it was meth cookers. That story he was working on? They shot him... And then burned his house down, destroyed all his files, notes, contacts. They found meth on the front doorknob and stair railing. A fentanyl patch by the curb. I mean, they’ll investigate, but we knew those tweakers were dangerous. He was...” Bradford’s thought caught. “Fitz was dead before the fire. You want to sit down?”

“No.”

“Fuck. I can’t believe it.”

The first time the pristine editor in chief had ever used an obscenity, to her knowledge.

“He has family,” she said.

“A son. They called him, the police did. He and his wife’re on their way here.”

Dottie had noted a picture of Fitz, his wife and an athletic-looking teenage boy. It was in the center of the wall behind his desk here. She could turn and look at it now. She didn’t.

“Dottie?” Bradford asked.

She looked up from the floor.

“Did you know that he had cancer?”

“Fitz?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t. But the coughing. And the lozenges. I should have guessed.”

“No, that was pollen. He was allergic. It’s pancreatic. It’d spread. I just thought I’d tell you. Not that it makes any difference.”

“Not a bit of difference,” Dottie said angrily.

Bradford nodded. “I better go back. They have some more questions. They’ll want to talk to you too, the police.”

“Sure. Of course.”

“I’ll come up with an obit. We don’t have anything in the morgue on him.”