AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re starting to pique my interest. Go.”
“On the recording, Victoria Ford claims to be innocent. She tells Emma there’s no way she’s capable of killing anyone, and she asks her sister to prove as much in the event Victoria doesn’t make it out of the North Tower.”
“You can get that recording?”
“I already have it.”
“You have it in your possession? With this woman’s permission to play it to millions of viewers?”
“Absolutely. Emma and I are best friends after a couple bottles of wine on her back porch. She gave me the answering machine so I could review every detail of the recording. She’ll give me all the help I need as long as I agree to help clear her sister’s name.”
“Out of all the crazy ideas you’ve come up with over the last couple of years, this one might actually have some shoulders.”
“Oh, it’s got shoulders. Big, broad, bowling ball shoulders that would make even Dwight Corey envious. And I plan to ride them all summer long until I find the truth.”
“You sound excited.”
“I’m on the road, I’m on my own, and I’m in the trenches. I’m feeling good about this one, Dwight.”
“I’ll stall Germaine for another week or two. Keep me posted.”
Avery smiled. “Always.”
CHAPTER 22
Manhattan, NY Tuesday, June 29, 2021
AVERY WALKED FROM HER HOTEL LOBBY. THE CONTRAST TO SUBURBAN Los Angeles was always startling when she returned to Manhattan. Her two-bedroom condo on the twelfth story of the Ocean Towers high-rise in Santa Monica offered forever views of the Pacific Ocean and long stretches of welcoming beach to the north and south. Everything in Santa Monica was low and spaced out. Here in Manhattan, it was all stacked high and compressed, the infrastructure designed to pack people tightly on top of each other. It was a nice change of pace while she chased her story, but not somewhere she ever wanted to live again. She’d spent her childhood in this city, but had longed to get away from the congestion ever since that first summer her parents sent her to Connie Clarkson’s sailing camp in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. Avery hadn’t expected to drift as far as the West Coast, but now that she had lived there for a number of years, she couldn’t consider setting up camp anywhere else.
The sights and smells of her childhood stomping grounds produced the normal nostalgia, but something else, too. So many bad things had happened in this city. So many things Avery wanted to forget. Things that had turned her life upside down, chased her away, and forced her to become someone new. Returning always dredged up memories that muddied the waters of her life. Only time had the ability to settle and calm them. Of course, the solution to this regular stirring up of bad memories would be to stop coming back to New York. But more than a few things continued to pull her back to this hallowed place. The first was the memory of the last time she had been out on the water in her Oyster 625.
She walked down the stairs of Penn Station and pushed through a turnstile to the subway. She settled into a seat near the rear of the subway car and rode in quiet contemplation until she exited at Chambers Street. She walked with afternoon commuters for several blocks, heading south until she found Vesey Street, where she eventually wound her way west to North Cove Marina. All of her senses bombarded her—the smells and the sounds and the images—and conspired to collapse time and erase the years that had passed since she was last here. It was the summer before her third year of law school. Her parents had gone to the house in the Hamptons for a long weekend, and Avery and Christopher were due to join them the following day. In the meantime, the Oyster 625 was theirs for the taking.
As Avery looked out at the marina and the boats, she thought of Christopher and that summer morning. They knew a storm was brewing out in the Atlantic. They knew they would run into weather. They knew it would be dangerous. They knew it was a bad idea to take the Oyster out that day. But still, Avery climbed aboard and motored out of the marina.
She walked down the long dock now, a slow stroll that took her back in time until she stopped at the slip where the Claire-Voyance once rested. In its place was some other boat owned by some other family. Avery closed her eyes as memories ran through her mind of whitecapped waves crashing over the bow. She squeezed her eyelids tight as she thought of the sheets of rain that turned day into night, and of the bow as it slipped under the surface of the ocean. A shiver found her shoulders when she remembered climbing over the railing and jumping into the cold, turbulent waters where the waves crashed over her head. Pressing her fingers into her temples, she tried but failed to dull the image of the sailboat’s stern rising into the air, not unlike the image in Titanic, before it speared to the bottom of the ocean. Her life vest had just barely kept her alive until the Coast Guard found her.
But the memory of the last time she had sailed the Claire-Voyance, and what that final voyage meant for her brother, was not the only thing that continued to bring Avery back to New York. She walked back up the dock and pulled from her purse the postcard that had arrived in her mailbox months earlier. She studied the image of the wooded cabin on the front and then turned the card over to read the message written there.
To the one-and-only Claire-Voyant,
Just hanging out and watching the Events of America. Could use some company.
On the bottom right corner of the card, Avery saw the numbers again.
777
Could she really do it? She had come all the way across the country for a reason, but could she really go through with it? Avery knew that she held his life in her hands, and that the decisions she made while in New York could secure his freedom, or strip it from him.
CHAPTER 23
Manhattan, NY Tuesday, June 29, 2021
SHE LEFT THE MARINA AND STARTED HER WAY EAST. WALKING THE streets of her childhood city this afternoon made Avery realize how far she had come since she’d thrown shovelfuls of dirt over her old identity and fled to Los Angeles. The plan had been to never look back, but Avery had failed miserably at that. She checked the rearview mirror of her life so often it was a wonder she hadn’t caused a head-on collision. But her success at American Events had provided stretches during which she forgot about this city and its secrets. This year’s journey, and all she had planned, would perhaps provide the clean slate she was searching for.
It took over an hour to walk back to Midtown, but she needed the time and the solitude to clear her mind of the memories stirred up from her visit to North Cove Marina. It was almost six in the evening when she walked over to Seventh Avenue and turned on West Forty-Seventh Street. She found THE RUM HOUSE painted on the front window of the establishment, pulled open the door, and walked inside. Avery spotted him before he noticed her. Sitting on a stool, his right hand twisted a tumbler on the bar in front of him while his left hand rubbed a spot in the middle of his chest. Avery’s research told her that this man had been just twenty-eight years old when he ran the Cameron Young investigation. That put him in his forties today, but from this distance and with the shadowed lighting of the bar darkening his features, he looked younger. On second glance, as she approached, Avery thought she had the wrong man. But no, she was looking at detective Walt Jenkins. He just didn’t look much different than the photos she had seen of him from 2001, when his face appeared in the newspaper articles she had read and the archived footage of press conferences she had watched online. He could pass for his midthirties and had the sort of appearance that made Daniel Craig attractive—short-cropped hair blended into tight sideburns, smile lines that bracketed his lips, which were creased now as he considered his drink, and the early presence of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes. He looked up from his drink as Avery walked up. When they made eye contact, she saw that his irises were a sort of ice blue that on first glance could be mistaken for gray.
Avery sensed that he recognized her. Celebrity had never been something she sought, quite the contrary since she fled New York City. But fame had somehow found her. Millions tuned in to American Events each week, so it was inevitable that she was often recognized. Walt Jenkins lifted his chin, which Avery noticed was cleft in the middle, and offered a smile. His teeth were straight and white and contrasted against his tanned complexion. Avery reached out her hand.
