Chapter 1
FEBRUARY 2, 2014
11:16 p.m.
The motor started up with a chug of gears that sounded like teeth gnashing. The lights flashed on, and I scrambled up off the floor and charged for the doors. The elevator plunged beneath my feet, so fast it felt like free fall, but I didn’t care. I wanted down, I wanted out. In seconds we reached the lobby level. The doors opened and I burst out—into a semicircle of waiting men.
They were a blur of uniforms: policemen, firefighters, security guard, men in coveralls with oval name patches on their chests. I stopped and stared at them, but they were all staring past me, into the elevator.
I turned. Lucy Carter-Jones was sprawled in the corner of the car. Her eyes were open inside raccoon circles of mascara, and she had a hole in her left cheek so neat it looked like someone had taken a paper punch to her face. On the wall above her was a splatter of blood and gore, and on the floor beside her was the gun, a snub-nosed revolver in a matte black finish.
I felt sick, and then I was sick. I doubled over and heaved out a stream of yellow bile all over the gleaming marble floor.
Two men lunged at me from either side, and they hoisted me up, their hands tight on my elbows and wrists. My toes dragged the floor as they propelled me across the lobby and through a glass door into an empty office. It was furnished only with a metal desk and a chair and a coat rack hung heavy with winter coats. I looked around for my own coat before I remembered it was back there, on the floor of the elevator, near the gun.
I looked down. My suit jacket started out that day as a solid boring beige; now it was leopard-print, or cheetah, or some other predator splattered with the blood of its kill. The sight of it made me want to vomit again. I tore frantically at the buttons, and the two men jumped to restrain me until they saw what I was doing. They helped me remove the jacket, and one of them bore it away as the other pressed me down into the chair.
“My coat,” I said. “My things.” I tried to remember what else I’d left behind. My briefcase. My purse.
“They’re being secured,” he said.
The first man returned and handed me a plastic cup of water. He wore the uniform of a police officer. I turned to the other man and saw that he did, too. The cup trembled in my hand, and the water sloshed from side to side like waves lapping at a dock. I gulped a mouthful and swirled it around my teeth and spat it back into the cup. My hands were shaking badly. I stared at them, then at my fingernails. They were torn and ragged, and I remembered how I’d dug my fingertips into the crack between the elevator doors, how hard I’d pulled and strained to open them. I’d broken every nail, and the door never budged.
“What happened?” one officer asked, while the other said, “What’s your name?”
A different uniform came through the door. This one was a firefighter, and he stayed only long enough to shake his head.
One of the officers stepped out into the lobby. I twisted around to watch through the glass door as he spoke into his shoulder-mounted radio. My brain wasn’t working right. It took until that moment for me to realize what the firefighter’s head shake meant. With a gasp, I spun to the remaining cop. “She’s dead?”
He watched me closely and didn’t answer, and that told me what the answer was.
“Oh, God.” I dropped my face into my hands. “I should’ve tried—I don’t know—could I have saved her?” My voice was strained and muffled against my palms. I looked up again. “It was dark,” I said. “I couldn’t see where she was hurt. Or even if she was hurt. I don’t know what I could have done. What should I have done?”
“What happened?” he said again.
I took a breath to steady myself. “She had a panic attack,” I said. “I guess that’s what you’d call it. When the elevator stalled and the lights went out. She was making these sounds—I don’t know—like a dog panting. I tried to get her to calm down. I told her that building security had to know what happened. We’d be out in no time. But it was like she didn’t hear me. The intercom wasn’t working, and it didn’t seem like the alarm button worked either, so I called 911. I told her help was on the way. But she didn’t respond. She was definitely hyperventilating by then. I was afraid she’d pass out. So I turned the phone light on to check on her. That’s when I saw the gun in her hand.”
I closed my eyes and took another deep breath. “I couldn’t believe she had a gun. I didn’t know what she meant to do with it. Shoot her way out? But then she was turning it, pointing it under her chin, and I realized she meant to shoot herself. I shouted ‘No!’ and I grabbed for the gun. But she fought me. She fought me so hard. And then—and then—” I stopped and took another swallow of water from the paper cup, but it tasted of vomit, and I hurried to spit it out.
“She killed herself, you’re saying.”
I squinted at him. Did I not make that clear? “Yes!”
He took out a notepad. “Do you know her name?”
“Yes. She’s Lucy Carter-Jones.”
“Lucy Jones,” he said, jotting.
“No, Carter-Jones. With a hyphen. It’s one of those double-barreled British names, you know?”
He looked up, blank-faced. “Friend of yours?”
“She’s the HR director of our company.”
“What company’s that?”
“CDMI.” When he looked blank again, I explained: “Claudine de Martineau International. The fashion giant? We own most of the major labels around the world. Our design headquarters are in the city, but our administrative headquarters are here.” I pointed upward. CDMI occupied the top five floors of the building.
“What’s your name?”
“Shay Lambert. I work in the Law Department.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re a lawyer?”
I nodded.
The other cop returned to the room. “CID’s been alerted.”
His partner pointed at me. “She’s a lawyer,” he said.
The two men exchanged a look, and as one gave a nod, the other pulled a laminated card from his pocket and began to read: “You have the right to remain—”
“Wait.” My eyes darted between the two men. “You don’t think—? No—she killed herself!”
He kept on reading in a monotone. “—silent. Anything you say can and will be used—”
“I tried to stop her!”
His partner left the room again and went into a huddle with two newly arrived uniformed officers. The three of them went through the revolving doors to the street.
“Yes, I understand my rights,” I said when the officer was done reading. “I waive them. I’ll tell you everything. I tried to stop her.”
“Wait here.”
He exited the room, but he didn’t go far. He stopped and stood just outside the door. He was standing guard, I realized. He was standing guard over me.
Chapter 2
The principal residence of J. Ingram Barrett, Jr., was in Rye, a classic white Colonial, three stories tall, its facade uplit with a dozen well-positioned landscaping spots that made it look like the star of the street. Another set of lights shone on the fountain in the middle of the circle drive that looped around to the front entrance. Thanks to a submersible heater, the water cascaded all through the winter.
In the master suite on the second floor, Barrett slept in a California king with his phone under his pillow. The phone was equipped with a bed-shaker ring, like those in alarm clocks for the deaf. This allowed him to receive middle-of-the-night phone calls without disturbing Melanie, asleep on the far side of the bed. Running a company with production facilities in Southeast Asia meant he often received middle-of-the-night calls, and Melanie wasn’t pleased when it happened. As much as she enjoyed the income that came with his position as senior vice president and general counsel of CDMI, she resented any reminder that he had to work for it.
The phone shook him awake, and he pulled the blanket over his head before he looked at the screen. The caller wasn’t on the other side of the globe. It was Jack Culligan, and since he was head of corporate security for CDMI, a call after midnight had to mean a crisis.
Barrett slipped out of bed and stole into his separate bath and through to his dressing room before he answered. “I’ll call you back,” he whispered, and disconnected.
He left by the other door directly into the hall and past the four empty bedrooms that nominally belonged to his children, though they seldom occupied them. He trotted down the helical staircase and skidded when his foot met wet floor at the bottom. “God damn it,” he snarled as he caught himself on the newel post of the banister.
The maid was on her hands and knees scrubbing the travertine floor tiles in the foyer. “Sorry, mister. So sorry!” She crouched back on her haunches and cowered behind her upflung arms.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said. He would have preferred the cleaning to be done while he was at the office, but he knew that Melanie ordered the wet work to be done during the wee hours of the morning so as not to interfere with any of her activities during the rest of the day. “Relax,” he told the maid. “I’m not mad.”
He picked his way across the damp floor and into his office and closed the door before he called Culligan. “What?” he snapped when the man answered.
“Barry. It’s about Lucy.”
“Oh, fuck.” He circled around his desk. “What’d she do?”
“Nothing. She’s dead.”
“Jesus.” He sat down hard in his chair. “Where?”
“The office. In the elevator. Gunshot to the head.”
“Oh, God.” Were there warning signs, people always asked, and Barrett tried to think. There were certainly signs that she was bent on destruction, but he’d thought it was the company she was out to destroy, not herself. I could burn this place down, she’d threatened, which left him no choice but to remind her what the consequences would be if she tried.
“Did she say anything?” he asked Culligan. “Before—?”
“No. By the time they were rescued, she was already dead.”
“Wait. They? Rescued from what?”
“She was trapped in the elevator with one of yours. Shay Lambert.”
Barrett stood up abruptly. “Can we get to her?”
“Too late. The cops have her sequestered. And she’s already made a statement.”
“Saying—?”
“Claustrophobia. Panic attack.”
“Okay.” He digested that. “Where are you getting this?”
“Night guard chatted up one of the beat cops. By the way, they left me a voicemail asking for access to search Lucy’s office. And Shay’s.”
Barrett thought for a moment. “Stall them. Get to Lucy’s office. Look for a note, anything on her computer, anything. I’ll go to her house and prep the husband. Send Lester to meet me there. We’ll need to search there, too.”
“Got it.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Did she give you any idea . . .”
“No. At least—no more than you.”
Barrett bristled. “I didn’t have a clue!”
“Then neither did I.”
He didn’t care for the CYA subtext in that remark, but now was not the time. “Report back after you’ve been through her office.”
He disconnected and got dressed in the middle-of-the-night-crisis clothes he kept hanging in his office closet for occasions like this. Not that there’d ever been an occasion like this. I could burn this place down, Lucy had threatened, and maybe now, through her death, she’d done it. If so, the flames wouldn’t stop with the company. They’d incinerate him, too.
He started for the garage, but before he reached the mudroom, he turned and went back to his study and opened the wall safe. Inside, under his passport and some cash and jewelry, was a single unopened pack of cigarettes. He’d quit nearly a year ago but kept the pack here as a test of his willpower. He was a man who liked to be in control at all times, even of himself. Especially of himself. But not tonight.
He slit the cellophane seal and tapped out a cigarette, then tapped out two, then put the whole pack in his pocket and closed the safe.
He lit up as soon as he reached the garage.
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