Twenty Years Later(59)

The knock came again, and his mind spun. He allowed into his thoughts the absurd notion that it was Avery knocking on his door. To check on him, perhaps? He had been a bit rattled after telling her the story about Meghan, one he had shared with no one before. Many knew scattered details about the affair, but no one knew the specifics. Until now. Until he had, for some inexplicable reason, confessed them to a television journalist. The knock came a third time. How had she found him? How did she know where he was staying and what room he was in? And, most urgently, was she here simply to comfort him, or was there another reason for her presence?

Some foreign emotion stirred in his chest as Walt stood from the bed, unsteadily placed his drink on the nightstand, and took a quick look in the mirror. The hazy eyes of a man who’d had too much to drink stared back at him. He ran a hand through his hair, took a deep breath, and walked to the door. When he pulled it open, Jim Oliver stood in the hallway.

“André Schwarzkopf,” Oliver said as he walked past Walt and into the hotel room.

Walt leaned his head against the edge of the door and briefly closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find on the other side of the door. He wasn’t sure he wanted Avery to be there. He wasn’t sure what might have transpired between them had he found her standing in the hallway. He felt at once disappointed that she was not there, and foolish for believing she might be. He closed the door.

“Who?”

“The brownstone in Brooklyn,” Oliver said. “It belongs to André Schwarzkopf. He flies under the radar but has been known to dabble in procuring false documents. Mostly passports, but also the occasional birth certificate and green card. We had a file on him.”

Walt shook his head to clear the cobwebs. He worked hard to change gears. “What’s it mean?”

“Garth Montgomery is either trying to get out of the country, or needs to move from wherever he’s hiding now—maybe Mexico or South America—to somewhere else. Somewhere new. He needs documents to do it, probably a passport. And his daughter is helping him. How long was she in this guy’s house?”

Walt shrugged, thinking back to the morning he followed Avery to the Park Slope neighborhood. “Maybe twenty minutes.”

“Did she have anything when she left?”

“Just her purse, same as when she entered.”

Walt walked to the nightstand and picked up his drink. “Put somebody on the guy. Keep tabs on him twenty-four/seven.”

Oliver nodded. “Already on it. Tell me about the cemetery.”

“The cemetery?”

“Yeah. When you followed her to Green-Wood Cemetery.”

“Not much to tell. She took a slow stroll through the grounds. I stayed at a good distance. She approached a grave site, hesitated for several minutes before she actually stood over it. Then she dropped flowers and hurried away. Whose graves were they?”

“Annette and Christopher Montgomery. Her mother and brother.”

Walt stared into his rum. “That’s sad.”

“Her mother died while we were investigating Garth Montgomery. Had a heart attack after he disappeared and all the details about him came out, including his fifteen-year affair with a woman half his age. We thought the death of his wife might cause him to surface, but the son of a bitch stayed in hiding. Can you believe that? Didn’t even go to his own wife’s funeral. A real son of a bitch, this guy. We’ve been watching Claire Montgomery for three years now. She visits Green-Wood Cemetery every year.”

“Every year?”

“She comes to New York every summer. Usually flies American and stays for a day or two before heading home. The only reason that we’ve ever been able to come up with for her trips to New York is to visit Green-Wood Cemetery. But this year, she changes things up. She drives instead of using the airlines. And she hasn’t used her credit card once since leaving LA. She paid for two weeks at the Lowell using a cashier’s check. She’s trying not to leave any trails. We’re convinced she either sees her father on these trips, or is in contact with him some other way. The trip to André Schwarzkopf’s brownstone is the first piece of concrete evidence we’ve managed in all the years we’ve followed her.”

“What happened to the brother?”

“Who?”

“Her brother. What happened to him?

“He died in a sailing accident. Claire Montgomery and her brother took out the family yacht, a sailboat that bore her name—the Claire-Voyance. A three-million-dollar boat daddy bought for her twenty-first birthday. They ran into bad weather a couple of miles off the coast of New York. The boat sank. She lived, but barely—the Coast Guard pulled her near-drowned and hypothermic body out of the ocean. Her brother died. She visits his grave every year.”

“Shit,” Walt whispered under his breath, taking a long swallow of rum.

“What’s the matter?”

Walt thought back to his confession earlier in the night. His stupid, bumbling, rambling confession, and his explanation of the survivor’s guilt that came with making it through the shooting that had taken his partner’s life. He spoke as if his situation were unique, as if Avery could never understand the feeling. She surely did.

“Nothing.” Walt offered a drunken wave. “Just sounds like a shit situation.”

“When are you seeing her again?” Oliver asked.