After the Darkness

Gavin Williams smiled. Her terror aroused him. "Hello again, my dear."

She looked weak. Dwarfed by her white prison nightgown, still pale from blood loss, she seemed as insubstantial as a ghost or a wisp of smoke.

"What do you want?"

"I'm here to make a deal with you."

"A deal?"

Yes, a deal, you greedy bitch. Don't pretend you don't understand the concept. You're as corrupt as hell and one day you will rot in hell for your sins.

"It's a deal you can't refuse. The procedure is simple. You will provide me with three account numbers. All refer to funds held in Switzerland. You are familiar with all of them."

Grace shook her head. She didn't know any account numbers. Hadn't they been through this the last time?

"In return, I will see to it that you are moved to a mental health facility."

"Mental health? But I'm not crazy."

"I assure you, the conditions at penal sanatoriums are considerably superior to those at correctional facilities such as this one. The account numbers, please." He handed Grace a piece of paper with a Credit Suisse letterhead. Grace glanced at it and sighed, closing her eyes. The drugs made her sleepy. As frightened as she was of this man, it was a struggle to stay awake.

"John Merrivale," she croaked. "It's John Merrivale. He took the money. He knows where it is. Ask him."

Gavin Williams's eyes narrowed. How typical of a woman! To try to shift the blame, just as Eve blamed the serpent when she polluted the world with her sin. How stupid did Grace think he was? Did she think the FBI hadn't looked into Merrivale, into all the staff at Quorum?

"Don't play games with me, Mrs. Brookstein. I want those account numbers."

Grace was about to reason with him, but then she thought, What's the point? He won't listen. He's insane. If anyone needs the sanatorium, it's this guy, not me.

"I know what you're doing. You're holding out for more." Gavin Williams positively glowed with rage. "Well, you won't get it, do you understand me? You won't get it!"

Grace looked around for the nurse but there was no one. I'm alone with this nutcase!

"There will be no appeal. No parole. It's the sanatorium or you will die in this place. Die! Give me those account numbers!"

"I told you! I. Don't. Know. Them." Exhausted, Grace fell back on the pillow. She was losing the battle for consciousness. Sleep engulfed her.

Gavin Williams watched her eyes flicker and close.

Her neck is so tiny. So fragile. Like a willow twig. I could reach out and snap it. Just like that. Put my hands around her lying, thieving throat and crush the devil inside.

There were no other patients. No staff. He and Grace were alone.

No one would know. I could do it in a split second. Smite the wicked, purge the evildoer of sin.

In a trance, Gavin Williams reached his hands out in front of him, flexing his long, bony fingers open and closed, open and closed. He imagined Grace's windpipe collapsing beneath them, felt his excitement building.

"I know what you're thinking."

The nurse's voice made him jump physically out of his seat.

"Your fingers. I know what you're thinking."

Gavin was silent.

"You're a smoker, aren't you? I was the same when I gave up. You never stop thinking about it, do you? Not for a second."

It took Gavin a moment to register what she was saying. She thinks I'm grasping for an imaginary cigarette. As if he, Gavin Williams, would ever be so weak as to succumb to an addiction. Out loud he smiled and said, "No. You never do."

"Believe me, I get it," chirped the nurse. "It's like an itch you can't scratch. There's a courtyard outside if you're desperate."

Gavin Williams retrieved the Credit Suisse paper from Grace's sleeping fingers and slipped it back into his briefcase.

"Thank you. I am not desperate."

But he was.

AFTER TWO WEEKS GRACE RETURNED TO her cell on A Wing. Warden McIntosh had intended to transfer her back to her original cell with the Latinas on the less austere C Wing, but Grace became so agitated that the psychiatrists recommended the prisoner be allowed to have her way. The warden was baffled.

"But Cora Budds assaulted her. She's one of our most violent inmates. I don't understand. Why would Grace want to go back to that?"

The psychiatrist shrugged. "Familiarity?"

Not for the first time, James McIntosh reflected on how little he understood the workings of the female mind.

Grace's fellow inmates viewed the situation more crudely. "No wonder Cora and Karen look so excited. Did you hear? Grace is comin' back to A Wing. Looks like the oyster bar has reopened, ladies!"

In fact, when the time came, Cora Budds greeted Grace coolly. Something had changed about Grace. The old fear, the wariness, had gone. In its place was a calmness, a confidence that made Cora uneasy.

"So you made it, huh?"

"I made it."

Karen Willis was more demonstrative, flinging her arms around Grace and hugging her tightly. "Why didn't you talk to me? If things were that bad? You shoulda talked to me. I could've helped."

Karen Willis did not know what it was that drew her to Grace Brookstein. Part of it she put down to her stubborn streak. Grace was the underdog at Bedford Hills, a pariah, hated by screws and inmates alike. Karen Willis did not believe in running with the herd. Besides, Karen knew what it felt like to be an outsider, betrayed by one's own friends and family. When she shot her sister Lisa's abusive boyfriend, a bully and a rapist who had terrorized Lisa for six torturous years, Karen expected her family to rally around. Instead they'd turned on her like a pack of hyenas. Lisa played the grief-stricken widow: "We had our problems, but I loved Billy." She even testified against Karen in court, making her out to be an angry, violent person who had a "vendetta" against men, implying that she'd acted not out of sisterly love but out of sexual rejection. "Karen always wanted Bill. I could see it. But Billy wasn't interested." The prosecutor changed the charges against Karen from manslaughter to second-degree murder. Karen never spoke to any of her family again.

But Karen Willis's affection for Grace Brookstein ran deeper than their shared abandonment. Lisa had been right about one thing. Karen had never been much of a fan of men. Short, weasel-faced rapists like her sister's boyfriend Billy had never been Karen's type. Fragile, innocent blondes like Grace Brookstein, on the other hand, with her wide-set eyes and slender, supple gymnast's limbs, her soft skin and smattering of girlish freckles across the nose, that was another matter entirely. Karen Willis was as far removed from the stereotypical predatory prison dyke as it was possible to get. Jokes about "oyster bars" made her want to gag. She had no intention of forcing herself on Grace. The girl was quite clearly (a) straight and (b) grieving. Unfortunately, neither of those things changed the fact that Karen Willis was in love with her. When she heard Grace had tried to kill herself, Karen collapsed. When they told her Grace was going to live, that the worst was over, Karen wept with relief.

Grace hugged her friend.

"You couldn't have helped, Karen. Not then. But perhaps you can help now."

"How? Tell me what you need, Grace. I'm here for you."

"I know who framed me and my husband. What I don't know is how he did it. I need evidence. Proof. And I don't know where to begin."

A smile lit up Karen's face. Perhaps she could help Grace after all?

"I have an idea."

DAVEY BUCCOLA LOOKED AT HIS WATCH and stamped his feet against the cold. I must be crazy, coming out to this godforsaken place on some wild-goose chase for Karen.

Davey Buccola was tall, dark and, if not quite handsome, certainly better looking than the vast majority of his profession. He had olive skin, faintly scarred from acute teenage acne, intelligent hazel eyes and strong, masculine features dominated by an aquiline nose that gave him a hawklike, predatory look. Women were attracted to Davey. At least, they were until he took them home to the shoddy two-bedroom apartment in Tuckahoe he still shared with his mother, or picked them up in his twelve-year-old Honda Accord, the same car he'd been driving when he graduated from high school. Private investigation was interesting work, dangerous and challenging. But it didn't make anybody rich. It wasn't like Magnum, P.I.