I Will Find You(46)

From there, it was a ten-minute walk to Hilde Winslow’s address on Twelfth Street. I stopped on the way for a slice of pepperoni pizza and a Pepsi. When I took the first bite, I felt woozy. I know it is beside the point, but I don’t think I ever experienced anything so wonderfully mundane as that first bite of New York City pizza as a free man; it ignited something long extinguished, filling me with memory and color and texture. I was back in Revere Beach at Sal’s with Adam and Eddie and TJ, the whole gang, and man, did that feel right.

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.”