Now I wait.
I wonder about Rachel, of course. She would most likely have been nabbed by law enforcement by now. Did she make it all the way home first? Did the cops pull her over? How much trouble is she in? I wonder about Philip and Adam and what the fallout for them will be. And finally, I think about Cheryl, my ex and Matthew’s mother. What would she make of my escape? What would Aunt Sophie make of it? If he was able to understand, what would my dad think?
Doesn’t matter. None of that matters right now.
I walk across the street. Would Hilde Winslow aka Harriet Winchester know that I escaped? I don’t know. The building doesn’t have a doorman. You have to be buzzed in by an occupant. WINCHESTER, H is listed under apartment 4B. I press the button. I can hear it ringing. Once, twice, three times. On the fourth ring, a voice I still recognize from the trial comes cracking through the speaker.
“Yes?”
It takes me a second to gain my bearings. I disguise my voice by throwing a pathetically Eastern-European accent into the mix. “Package.”
“Leave it in the vestibule, please.”
“You need to sign for it.”
I had spent the last few hours planning, and yet now, with the chance to get to her so close at hand, I am messing things up. I am not dressed like a delivery man. I don’t have a package in my hand.
“Actually,” I say, making it up on the fly, “if you give me the verbal okay, I can leave the package here. Do I have your permission to leave it in the vestibule?”
There is a pause that makes me wonder whether I’ve been made. Then Hilde Winslow says slowly, “You have my permission to leave it.”
“Okay, it’ll be in the corner of the foyer.”
I hang up. I’m about to step away and consider what to do when I spot a man coming down the stairs toward the front door. For a moment I wonder whether Hilde has asked a neighbor to grab her package, but no, not enough time has passed. As he pushes open the door, I put the phone back to my ear and say, “Okay, I’ll bring it up to your apartment now.” I needn’t have bothered with the subterfuge. The man passes through the door and heads outside seemingly without a care in the world.
I stop the closing door with my foot and slip inside. I let the door close behind me.
Then I head up the stairs toward apartment 4B.
*
Sarah’s phone buzzed. She stared at the incoming message. “You were right, Max.”
“About?”
“The license plates.”
Max had found it bizarre that no one had spotted Rachel Anderson’s car during the long trek from Maine back to New Jersey. The first working theory was that she’d kept off the main roads, but a quick review of traffic patterns told them that she wouldn’t have made it on time if she completely stayed off toll roads.
“A guy named George Belbey noticed his license plates were missing when he finished his shift at L.L.Bean.”
“I assume George Belbey is a Maine resident?”
“Yep.”
“So Burroughs or Rachel switched the plates. Took off her New Jersey ones, put on the Maine ones.”
“Except when the Port Authority spotted her car crossing the bridge—”
“She’d switched them back,” Max finished for her. “So the question is, when did she do that? And why?”
“We know why, don’t we, Max?”
“I guess we do, yeah.”
Sarah’s phone buzzed again. She stared at the screen and said, “Whoa.”
“What?”
“We’ve been following up on Rachel Anderson’s recent calls.”
“And?”
“And after she visited Burroughs at Briggs, she reached out to an old colleague from the Globe for a favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“She wanted to get the murder book on Matthew Burroughs.”
Max mulled that over. “Does the old colleague have that kind of juice?”
“He does not. But Rachel asked for something else specifically.”
“What’s that?”
“She wanted the Social Security number of a witness in the murder trial. A woman named Hilde Winslow.”
“I remember that name…”
“Winslow testified that she saw Burroughs bury the baseball bat.”
“Right. Older woman, as I recall.”
“Correct, Max, but here’s where it gets weird. Apparently, Hilde Winslow changed her name not long after the trial to Harriet Winchester.”
They both looked at each other.
“Why would she do that?” Max asked.
“No clue. But here’s the kicker: Hilde-Harriet also moved to New York City.” She squinted at her phone. “One thirty-five West Twelfth Street, to be exact.”
Max stopped chewing. His hand dropped to his side. “So Rachel Anderson visits David Burroughs in prison. After they meet, she asks about a key witness in the case—one Burroughs claimed lied on the stand—and finds out that she changed her name and moved.” He looked up. “So where do you think Burroughs is heading?”
“To confront her?”
“Or worse.” Max started for the airport exit. “Sarah?”
“What?”
“Get us a car to New York. And call our Manhattan office. I want Hilde Winslow’s place swarming with cops right now.”
Chapter
19
I stand in front of Hilde Winslow’s door.
Now what?
I could knock, of course, but since there is a buzzer downstairs and she’s already naturally wary, I don’t know whether that’s the right move. She would ask who it is. She would use the peephole to see who knocked. Would she recognize me? Probably not. Unless she’s heard the news reports on my escape. Either way, she wouldn’t just open it.
So Option One, simply knocking, probably wouldn’t work.
I wear a Yankees baseball cap I bought from a street vendor on Sixth Avenue, so if she ends up describing me, she won’t know that my head is shaved. I plan on ditching it after I visit Hilde.
Option Two: I could try to kick the door in or, I don’t know, shoot my way in. But come on. Like she wouldn’t scream bloody murder. Like none of the neighbors would report the sound of gunfire. Option Two was a dumb nonstarter.
Option Three…I didn’t really have one. Yet. But I couldn’t just keep lurking in the corridor like this. Someone would spot me and wonder what I was doing. I hadn’t really thought this through, had I? I’d spent all those hours today—today!—in a car with Rachel, and I hadn’t come up with a solid plan. Now I’m paying the price.
There is a door to the fire stairs to my left. Maybe I could hide there and try to keep an eye out for her opening the door. But it’s getting pretty late. Hilde/Harriet is in her eighties. Would she be going out again tonight? Probably not.
I am still debating my next move when I see the doorknob at 4B start to turn.
Someone is opening the door.
No plan, so I work on pure instinct. I don’t know why the door is opening right now, though I suspect that perhaps Hilde Winslow was curious about the purported package left in her vestibule and has decided to venture out to retrieve it. Doesn’t matter. I don’t hesitate. As soon as the door opens a crack, I throw my shoulder against it.