Dark Room (Pete 'Monty' Montgomery 2)

ONE

The nightmare crept through her like a slow-acting toxin, paralyzing her as it insinuated itself into the darkest recesses of her memory. There was no escaping the devastating finale, no looking away from the horror.

She couldn’t bear to see them. Not their broken bodies. Not their vacant stares. And not the pools of crimson blood that kept oozing beneath them as their lives drained away.

With a low moan, Morgan forced herself awake, jerking upright. Her muscles were rigid. She pressed back against the solid oak headboard, letting it cool her perspiration-drenched skin. Her heart was slamming against her ribs, her breathing fast and shallow.

This was a bad one.

She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating on the muted sounds of predawn Manhattan. The intermittent thump-thump of cars making their way down pothole-ridden streets. A distant siren. The hum of 24/7 just outside her brownstone window. It connected her to life, to the comfort of what was real and familiar. She drank it in, fighting to drown out the images of her nightmare before they engulfed her.

It was an exercise in futility. The nightmares might be sporadic, but the vivid memories had been seared inside her head for the past seventeen years.

She shoved back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her nightshirt was damp and clinging to her body. Her hair was plastered to the back of her neck. She gathered it up, twisting its shoulder-length strands into a loose knot and pinning them to the top of her head with the clip she kept on her night table. A winter draft blew past her, and she shivered.

She’d half expected tonight’s episode. It was that time of year. The nightmares always came fast and furious around the holidays. But exacerbating the situation had been her own damned fault.

Morgan glanced at the clock on her night table: 5:10. No point in trying to go back to sleep. Not that she could if she tried. But it wasn’t even worth the effort; not with only fifty minutes until her alarm went off.

She pulled on a robe and padded into the dimly lit hall, crossing over to the spare bedroom. The contents of the box she’d been going through were on the ottoman just as she’d left them—memorabilia in one pile, photos in another, and the working journals she’d only recently discovered off to a side.

Still haunted by her dream, she flipped on the light and went straight for the photos, kneeling down beside the ottoman to peel back a layer of history.

The top snapshot meant the most and hurt the most. It was the last photo of the three of them together. Wistfully, Morgan studied it. Her mother, gentle and elegant. Her father, intense and dynamic, one arm wrapped protectively around his wife’s shoulders, the other hand gripping the shoulder of the skinny little girl in front of him—a girl who had her mother’s huge green eyes and fine features and her father’s sharp, probing expression.

Morgan turned the photo over. The handwriting at the bottom was her mother’s. It read: Jack, Lara, and Morgan, November 16, 1989.

She’d penned those words a month before the murders.

With a hard swallow, Morgan put down the snapshot and sifted through the others. Her mother in college, posing with her best friend and roommate, Elyse Shore—then Elyse Kellerman. Law school graduation day for Morgan’s father, both her parents standing in front of Columbia University, brandishing Jack’s diploma. Their wedding day. The day Morgan was born. Family photos of happy occasions, from Morgan’s first birthday to summers at the beach with all the Shores—Elyse, Arthur, and Jill. Last were the photos Elyse had developed for Morgan months after the funeral—photos taken at Daniel and Rita Kellerman’s lavish Park Avenue penthouse on Christmas Eve, where Morgan’s parents had dropped by for the holiday party being hosted by Elyse’s parents in honor of Arthur and those who’d contributed generously to his political campaign.

Those were the final photos taken of Lara and Jack Winter alive. The next ones we

re snapped in a Brooklyn basement later that night by the crime-scene unit.

With a shiver, Morgan put down the stack of photographs and rose, tightening the belt of her robe. Enough. She was allowing herself to be sucked into that emotional vortex all over again. Her mental health couldn’t withstand it. Dr. Bloom had cautioned her about this very thing.

Time to listen to his advice. Be proactive. Focus on the present.

She’d get a jump start on the day; brew a pot of coffee, shower and dress. Then she’d head downstairs to the office. She had a slew of early morning phone calls to make in the hopes of catching her clients before they left for work, and a mountain of paperwork to attack. At eight-thirty, it would be time for her therapy session—which worked out well since Dr. Bloom’s office was just a block away from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where she had an eleven o’clock new-client interview. After that, it was back to the office for a one o’clock follow-up appointment with Charlie Denton—attractive, forty-four, married to his job in the Manhattan D.A.’s office. With very specific criteria and a crazy-busy life, he was still looking for Ms. Right. And it was Morgan’s job to find her.

She turned off the light and left the room—and her past—sprawled out on the ottoman behind her.

THE DEAL WAS cut.

No one in the Brooklyn D.A.’s office was happy about it. Another scumbag who’d turned on a fellow inmate to save his own neck. Another case where the rule of law converged withcut Darwin’s survival of the fittest.

Having to go easy on that drug-dealing punk, Kirk Lando, was a rotten break. But they had no choice. He’d given them a cop killer in exchange for a lighter sentence. The NYPD was happy; Nate Schiller would pay for killing one of their own.

Schiller would probably have his throat slit once word got out at Sing Sing why he’d lied about shooting Sergeant Goddfrey. Normally, killing a cop would have made him a hero there. Not this time. Schiller had screwed himself—bad. When he’d tracked Goddfrey down in Harlem and blown him away, he’d also blown away the perp Goddfrey had been cuffing at the time, figuring he was eliminating the sole witness to his crime.

Bad move. That perp had been gang leader Pablo Hernandez. Once the gang members inside Sing Sing got this news, Schiller could kiss his ass good-bye.

The whole trade-off sucked—for bigger reasons than leniency for Lando or the inmates taking out Schiller. Lando’s story was true. It had been corroborated by a couple of neighborhood teens, now adults, who’d spotted Goddfrey’s killer fleeing the scene. Originally, they’d provided a description. Now they’d each picked Schiller out of a lineup. So there was no doubt that Schiller had killed Goddfrey and Hernandez. Which meant he couldn’t have committed the double homicide in Brooklyn he’d been convicted of as part of his killing spree.

The ripple effect was going to be felt far and wide. The daughter. The congressman. The staff over at the Manhattan D.A.’s office.

And one really pissed-off retired cop.

TWO

Pete Montgomery swerved his car into the driveway, glaring at the semi-attached house that served as his office as if it were the enemy. He was in one foul mood. He’d purposely left Dutchess County at eight forty-five to avoid rush hour. Still, it had taken him three hours to get to Little Neck. It should have taken half that time. Except that it had started snowing—just a dusting with the threat of an inch or two to follow. But that was enough to transform all the drivers on the road to pitiful, scared-shit wimps who drove with their noses pressed to the windshield and crawled along at a snail’s pace.

He hopped out of his faded maroon 1996 Toyota Corolla, which had a hundred thousand miles on it and had been put back together again more times than Humpty Dumpty. Still, Monty—as everyone called him—insisted that it had another good decade of life left in it. Besides, it was the perfect car for a private investigator—ordinary, unpretentious, the kind of vehicle that could blend in anywhere.

His phone was ringing as he unlocked the office door, and he strode over to grab it. “Montgomery.”

“Hey, Monty.” It was Rich Gabelli, his old partner at the Seventy-fifth Precinct in Brooklyn. They’d worked together for a dozen years, right up to Monty’s retirement at age fifty. Gabelli was younger—and more tolerant—so retirement for him was still a ways off.

“Yeah, Rich, what’s up?” Monty was already shuffling through his files, putting his cases in priority order.

“You working half days now? I called your cell three times, and there was no answer. I guess being a newlywed takes up lots of time. And energy.”

Monty grunted. He’d been taking good-natured flack from his buddies since he’d remarried his ex six months ago. “I wasn’t home with Sally. I was on the Cross Island, cursing out the other drivers. Besides, I saw your number pop up. I ignored it. It’s time to get a sex life of your own and stop living vicariously through mine.”