Page 98 of One of Us Is Guilty

Empty.

She stood at the sink on the right, furthest from the door, and stared into the smeared, cracked mirror. The woman in the mirror stared back. Somehow, she was different. Her eyes looked harder. Her skin paler. She believed in the soul, and wondered how much of hers was left.

Death changes people. She wondered if she was the woman in the mirror now, or if there was a way back. Only time would tell.

Her hands trembled as she took her phone from her purse and opened the secure messaging app. She typed with her thumbs. The message would be sent securely and would disappear within the hour. But it would be read.

And it would be understood.

Flynn’s people are searching the Hamptons house.

She hit send, dropped the phone back into her purse and looked at her hands. They were clean.

In the mirror, those same hands looked dirty.

She hit the hot water faucet, held her hands beneath the running water then pumped soap into her palms and worked it in between her fingers. Using her nails, she scrubbed her knuckles, her cuticles, every inch, and then rinsed.

The water was too hot, and her skin burned red.

And she held her hands beneath it, biting her lip against the pain.

She had to be clean. She had to wash off the dirt.

Somewhere either in Vanessa, or in the woman in the mirror, she knew her hands would never be clean.

Because she understood one thing now above all else.

You can’t get away with murder on your own.

39

Bloch

‘Why do I have to wear a suit?’ asked Raymond.

Bloch gave him a stare from the driver’s seat of her Jeep.

He swallowed, stared out the front window, said, ‘You didn’t have to get dressed up.’

‘I’m not the one playing a part,’ said Bloch. ‘I’m just being . . . me.’

He pulled at the collar of his shirt with a finger, then yanked his tie down and began wrestling with his top button. They had been parked in a laneway for half an hour, waiting. And with every passing minute Raymond had grown more uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to wearing a suit and tie, and at first he had balked at the idea and refused flat out. It had taken Harry to persuade him. A visit to Harry’s tailor on the west side with the promise of an indulgent lunch at Patsy’s Italian restaurant had sealed the deal. Harry complained that the following week he had to take his tailor out to lunch at Patsy’s to apologize. His tailor was seventy-nine years old and he’d never cut a suit for a man who’d shown up to his business in a pair of camo shorts and a Napalm Death T-shirt.

Even Bloch had to admit it was a nice suit. Well cut to Raymond’s generous figure. He had even had a haircut, but had drawn the line at shaving off his goatee. Harry had managed to slip the barber a twenty to accidentally trim it.

A silver BMW pulled up outside the electronic security gates. A single occupant. A young man in a dark suit and blue shirt. He got out of the BMW and waved at Bloch. She fired up the engine of the Jeep, flashed the lights. The BMW driver opened the gates with a key fob, then drove through, Bloch following.

‘Do up that tie, Raymond.’

‘It’s strangling me,’ said Raymond.

‘I’ll strangle you.’

Raymond buttoned his shirt and straightened his tie.

The driveway was a narrow single lane that snaked through a crop of old trees. The BMW crawled along, and Bloch followed close behind. After close to a minute, the trees thinned to reveal the large shingled house. Bloch had never seen this kind of architecture outside of the Hamptons. The house was covered in wood shingles, from its base up and over the roof. The small individual wood shingles had darkened with age and weather, and were darker still on the canopy that covered the entrance porch.

Parking beside the BMW, Bloch got out and met the young man in the sharp suit. Raymond had picked up a hefty black bag from the trunk of the Jeep and joined them.