Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

What we had was a bound, half-naked woman on the bed, drenched in a bloody sheet. Through the open doorway of the bathroom beyond I could see a woman’s foot hanging over the tub rim. Another young woman, a girl really, lay facedown in blood beside the toilet, hog-tied with lamp cord.

Shaking my head, I approached the bodies for a closer inspection. The two women in the bathroom were barely in their twenties. Both of them were completely naked. The woman in the bedroom was older—maybe their mother, Erica Gladstone. My gaze caught a wedding photo lying in a corner, its glass cracked from being knocked to the floor. I picked it up and held it beside her lifeless face. She was so battered, it took me a full minute to confirm it was a match.

I couldn’t believe it. Gladstone had shot and killed his wife and their two daughters. His own flesh and blood.

Other cops were coming into the room now. I could hear their exclamations of horror and disbelief behind me. I stayed where I was, staring at the blood-soaked carpet and sheets.

This was the worst crime of all, an atrocity, an outrage against humanity. God, I wanted to get my hands on this sick prick. Better yet, get him in the sights of my Glock.

Chapter 57

IT WAS ELEVEN THIRTY A.M. when the Teacher stopped in front of an electronics store at 51st and Seventh. All the TVs that he could see through the big plate-glass windows were tuned to the Fox News Channel.

“Spree Killer Update,” scrolled across the top and, “Live from Locust Valley, Long Island” across the bottom.

Hey, I know that place, he thought, smiling, as he watched the cops swarming on the lawn in front of the mansion.

Well, how about that? Score one for the gumshoes. They’d actually caught his scent. He’d started to wonder if they ever would.

But it didn’t really matter. He’d have to be a little more careful now, but he’d still be able to get all his work done. They were playing checkers while he was playing grand-master chess.

“Mommy, Mommy! Look, look!” a small Indian kid said as he pressed his face up against the store window in front of an Xbox 360. “Pokémon, Pikachu, Squirtle!” he cried.

His sari-clad mother slapped him on the backside before yanking him away down 51st.

Watching them go, the Teacher remembered the day, long ago, when he’d gone with his mother to get the last of their belongings from the lousy row house he’d grown up in. His dad had stood in the doorway, drinking a bottle of Miller beer and holding back the Teacher’s little brother, who was crying and straining to go with Mommy.

“No, buddy,” his dad kept saying. “You’re Daddy’s boy now, remember? You’re going to stay with me. It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t okay, was it? the Teacher thought.

He shook his head in disbelief, remembering how he’d just sat there in the cab of the moving truck. At first, he’d been embarrassed that the neighbors would see, until he realized they weren’t his neighbors anymore. After that, he’d actually been happy. He’d had to share a room with his stupid little brother, but now he was going to go with his mom, and he’d have his own room. His brother was a baby, he’d decided.

The Teacher’s cheeks bulged as he let out a long breath.

No, it wasn’t okay, he thought, shaking off the memory. But it was getting there. It would all be as okay as it was ever going to be, very soon.

He looked at himself in the plate-glass reflection. He was clean-shaven this morning, wearing a skintight Armani blazer over his tall, tapered frame, with a white silk shirt open at the throat and crotch-biting Dolce and Gabbana jeans—over-the-top, go-f-yourself, moneyed sex and style. Real Tom Ford.

Screw that stubbly-faced, Unabomber-look-alike picture of him on the covers of the Daily News and the Post, he thought. The only people who’d glanced twice at him on the sidewalks this morning were horny-looking forty-year-old ladies and hornier-looking gay men.

Nothing had changed. He would go over like Rover.

He took out his Treo, double-checked his next target, and adjusted his pistol at the small of his back before stepping out into the sidewalk crush.

This was a real good one coming up—somebody who’d been in dire need of his comeuppance for quite some time.

The Teacher put a little pep in his step as he flowed east with the sheltering crowd.

Chapter 58

WITHIN HALF AN HOUR of our storming the Gladstone mansion, news vans had outnumbered Range Rovers on Lattingtown Ridge Court. Alongside the barricades, I counted at least four newsies, pointing their surface-to-air-missile-like shoulder cams at the house. I felt like calling in air support. We were under siege.

I gladly handed over the master bedroom to the arriving Nassau County Crime Scene guys.

“So, is it true? A trifecta on the Gold Coast?” one of them said with a shake of his head. “I knew that was Dominick Dunne out by the mailbox.”

Downstairs, the law enforcement were standing in clusters, smoking, drinking coffee, and wisecracking like bad guests at the world’s worst cocktail party.