After the Darkness

"Thirty-five. Tha's my final offer."

"Deal."

"OH GOD, GRACE, PLEASE! DON'T SHOOT!"

Davey Buccola was sobbing. Grace felt oddly detached. It was almost distasteful, listening to him beg for his life, rivers of tears and mucus streaming down his contorted, terrified face. As if any words of his could change her decision.

"Give me the file."

"The file?"

"The information you promised me. The information you were going to give me in Times Square, remember? Before you got greedy and decided to turn me in for two hundred grand."

"It wasn't like that, Grace. I was trying to protect you."

Grace moved her index finger over the trigger. "One more lie out of your mouth and I swear to God I will blow your head off."

Davey whimpered with fear. She meant it. This was not the Grace Brookstein he'd met at Bedford Hills. This was a totally different person. Cold. Ruthless. Reckless.

"There is a file, isn't there, Davey? I hope for your sake you weren't lying about that as well."

"No, no, it's here. I have it."

He'd missed out on the reward, but Davey had still hoped to find a bidder for his gold mine of secrets. So far no magazine editors had taken his call, but he was working on it. He reached under the bed.

"Stop!" Grace commanded.

Davey froze.

"Keep your hands where I can see them. On top of your head."

Davey did as he was asked.

"Good. Now walk into the middle of the room and kneel down."

Davey felt his stomach turn to liquid. Oh God. The classic execution pose. She's going to put a bullet in the back of my neck.

"Please, Grace..."

"Be quiet!" Cautiously, keeping the gun trained on Davey, Grace squatted down on her haunches and reached under the bed herself. She pulled out a brown manila folder.

"Is this it?"

Davey nodded. "Once you were safe, I was going to take it to a lawyer, I swear to God! I would have helped you launch an appeal."

Grace pressed the folder to her chest like a lover. Then she released the safety catch on the gun. "Have you shown this to anyone? The police, or the press?"

Davey shook his head vehemently. "No one. The only people that know this exists are you and I."

It was the right answer. Grace smiled. Davey felt relieved. She's going to let me live.

Grace picked up a pillow from the bed. Holding it in front of the gun, she said coolly, "You betrayed me. Do you know what the punishment is for traitors, Davey?"

Before he could answer, he heard the muffled sound of the shot, followed by a warm, wet sensation in his lower body.

After that, there was nothing.

MITCH CONNORS SURVEYED THE SCENE. THE hotel maid who made the call had such poor English, and was so terrified and hysterical, he hadn't known what to expect. But it definitely wasn't this.

Despite himself, Mitch burst out laughing.

"It's not funny!"

Davey Buccola was in the middle of the room, naked and trussed up like a chicken with the cord from the window blinds. Literally like a chicken. After he'd passed out, someone - Grace - had tarred and feathered him. Feathers from the hotel pillows had been stuck to his limbs with hair gel, and the word traitor written across his forehead in permanent marker. The same permanent marker, Mitch presumed, that was sticking out of Davey's asshole now like a poultry thermometer.

"From where I'm standing, buddy, it is a little funny." Mitch was starting to like Grace more and more.

A single bullet was lodged in the wall next to the window. Below it, in a pile on the floor, lay Davey's soiled clothes. Buccola must have been so terrified when Grace fired the shot into the pillow, he'd lost control of his bowels.

"She's psychotic!" Davey sobbed. "She could have killed me! I want police protection."

"Yeah, and I want Gisele B??ndchen to lick whipped cream off my balls but it ain't gonna happen," said Mitch wryly. "Untie him, somebody, would you? If I have to look at that ass crack for one more second, I'm gonna need some serious therapy. I may never eat chicken again."

"Shouldn't we take some pictures first, boss? Document the crime scene?"

"Who for?" Mitch laughed even harder. "Colonel Sanders?"

"You're not taking this seriously!" Davey Buccola did his best to sound indignant, not an easy thing to do with a Sharpie stuck up your ass. "Grace Brookstein threatened me at gunpoint. That's armed robbery! Don't you care?"

"About you, Buccola? No, I don't care. And what do you mean 'armed robbery'? Robbery of what? What did she steal?"

Davey hesitated.

"Either you tell me, or I'm gonna leave you here like this."

"If I tell you, will you give me police protection?"

Mitch walked toward the door.

"Wait!" Davey yelped. "Okay, okay. There was a file. Information about her husband's death. We think...we believe that Lenny Brookstein was murdered."

"What?"

"I was working with Grace. Investigating the case. That's why she broke out of Bedford. She doesn't care about the money. All she wants is to find who killed her husband. Who set her up. She wants vengeance."

Mitch could understand about wanting vengeance. He thought back to the day Grace had called him. "I didn't steal any money, Detective. I was framed and so was my husband." Was it possible?

"Why the hell didn't you tell me this earlier?" he shouted. But as soon as he'd said the words, he knew the answer: "You were going to sell the information, weren't you? You greedy little shit."

Davey Buccola was silent.

"So you gave her this file?"

"I had to! She had a gun..."

"You have a copy, right? Tell me you have a copy."

LESS THAN THREE MILES AWAY, GRACE lay in a bathtub, rereading Davey's information for the hundredth time.

Suddenly she sat bolt upright. There it was, in black and white.

I know who killed Lenny.

At last, the hunt was on.