The Guilty: (P.I. Jack Marconi No. 3) Read online

  PRAISE FOR VINCENT ZANDRI

  “Sensational . . . masterful . . . brilliant.”

  —New York Post

  “My fear level rose with this Zandri novel like it hasn't done before. Wondering what the killer had in store for Jude and seeing the ending, well, this is one book that will be with me for a long time to come!”

  —Reviews by Molly

  “I very highly recommend this book . . . It's a great crime drama that is full of action and intense suspense, along with some great twists . . . Vincent Zandri has become a huge name and just keeps pouring out one best seller after another.”

  —Life in Review

  “A thriller that has depth and substance, wickedness and compassion.”

  —The Times-Union (Albany)

  "The action never wanes."

  —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinal

  "Gritty, fast-paced, lyrical and haunting."

  —Harlan Coben, bestselling author of Six Years

  "Tough, stylish, heartbreaking."

  —Don Winslow, bestselling author of Savages

  The Guilty

  (A Jack ‘Keeper’ Marconi Novel)

  By

  Vincent Zandri

  “He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde Satan.”

  —Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

  “I'm Eve in the Garden of Eden, and he's the serpent, and I cannot resist.”

  —E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey

  Table of Contents

  BOOK I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  BOOK II

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  BOOK I

  In the Beginning . . .

  . . . SHE FALLS FOR HIM as fast and hard as a plane crash. He has that devastatingly immediate effect on her, and she swallows up everything about him like a woman dying of an incurable thirst.

  But then, he is so different from her ex-husband.

  This man . . . this ambitious young man . . . he offers something so different from the tight, pit-in-the-chest, lonely relationship she’s endured for six long years. This man isn’t at all like the man she married. This man is kind with his words, caring with his actions, tender with his touch. When he makes love to her, he does so unselfishly and with a power so focused on her and her alone that it takes her breath away.

  There are other wonderful things about him.

  He is kind to her little boy. He’s the kind of man to buy the little guy a train set for no reason at all other than it’s a beautiful sunny Sunday. He plays with the boy. Cowboys and Indians. Reads with the boy. Carts him off to the movies. Shares Happy Meals with him. In some cases, he is more dad than the boy’s real dad.

  This man is exceptionally handsome, possessing the deepest green eyes she’s ever before seen on a man. A tall, slim-but-not-skinny, muscular build, and thick, wavy, red-blond hair that just screams for her to run her hands through it. She considers herself an attractive young woman with her shoulder-length brunette hair and deep-set brown eyes. But not deserving of a man with such out-of-this-world looks. She feels blessed.

  Unlike her ex, who is a writer, time to this man is not a commodity or something to be greedily hoarded. His generosity and selflessness seem to know no bounds, as if God placed him on this earth for her and her alone.

  It’s the same when it comes to money.

  He’s taken her places her husband couldn’t begin to afford. Weekends at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City. A full week in Paris. Deep sea fishing and nude sunbathing in Aruba. Dinner at the most expensive restaurants and shopping at the best stores. Garnet Hill, West Elm, Bloomingdale’s, Prada . . . He even bought her a new car. A fire engine red Volvo station wagon, which he claimed would be a safer ride for her and her little boy than the five-year-old Toyota Corolla she’s used to driving around town.

  For the thirty-eight-year-old grammar school teacher, he is a green-eyed dream come true. A knight in shining armor who has rescued her from a life of never quite making ends meet, from a husband who chooses career over family, from days filled with boredom and nights chilled by despair. For the first time ever, she has snagged the man of her dreams, and she is not about to let go. She will do anything for him.

  Anything.

  But then things change.

  Not in a dramatic, earth-shattering way. But subtly. He begins to ask her to do things for him. Things that surprise her when they come out of his mouth. Especially when he asks her to do them with a smile on his face.

  That smile.

  She’s never before heard of people doing the things he’s talking about. Correction . . . she’s heard of them before, but only when she has happened to see them on late-night cable TV or read about them in some shady, bestselling erotica novel. But then, the things he’s talking about are worse than those things. They involve other things besides human flesh on human flesh. They involve tools of wood, glass, leather and steel. They involve chants and pain and spirits summoned from anywhere but heaven. He doesn’t demand her to do these things with him. He merely asks her to explore the idea of doing them. To explore the possibilities. To explore the depths of her sensuality. In a word, he feels the need and the want to share her.

  She feels at once shocked and afraid. But then she feels confusion too. She reasons with herself that perhaps he is just being playful. Deviant, but playful. That there is no harm in what he is suggesting. She’s an adult, and so is he. So long as it happens among consenting adults, what harm can come of it? Still, she resists.

  But he keeps asking her to share herself. Day after day. Night after night. He never lets up. Her beautiful man, he is determined.

  Other changes begin to occur.

  Physical changes.

  His already thin physique becomes thinner, veinier, his muscles more pronounced. The retinas in his striking green eyes always seem to be dilated now. As if
he were secretly experimenting with some new drug or drugs. He rarely trims his fingernails, preferring now to grow them out like claws. And his teeth . . . he’s doing things with his teeth. Having his incisors sharpened so that when he opens his mouth, he resembles a vampire.

  The changes cause more and more anxiety in her. But she chooses to ignore it. He is still so kind to her. To her boy. So loving and protecting. She doesn’t want to ruin what they’ve built together. She doesn’t want to break the spell. She decides to keep her mouth shut and carry on like her life is all wine and roses.

  Then one day he reveals a secret.

  He takes her by the hand, leads her down the stairs into the basement. There he reveals a hidden room.

  The. Room.

  He reveals the room to her and all the room contains.

  It makes her dizzy at first. So dizzy she thinks she might pass out. There are the four windowless, red-painted walls, a concrete floor with the drain positioned in the middle, strange devices hanging on metal hooks, video cameras, lights, and the strangest thing of all: a large, heavy, wood spinning wheel balanced atop a ball bearing-topped pilaster. A wooden wheel with four heavy leather straps attached to it that can accompany a fully grown human being. Standing in the door opening, she feels as if she is looking into a medieval dungeon.

  “I had this constructed for us,” he whispers. “Because I love you.”

  Her knees grow weak, her legs wobbly.

  She fears she will faint.

  But then he takes her into his strong arms and smiles that smile. That’s when he tells her he wants to show her something else. Something very special. Releasing her, he raises up the sleeve on his right arm to reveal a long, white, gauze bandage held in place with strips of white surgical tape. Reaching out with his left hand, he slowly, tenderly, peels away the bandage. What he exposes is as shockingly wonderful as that room is shockingly frightening.

  It’s a new tattoo.

  But not just any tattoo.

  This tattoo contains no artistic rendering. No red hearts with arrows piercing them. No Indian heads. No tribal insignias, wings, crosses, dragons, stars, or angels. This tattoo contains only a name.

  SARAH, inked in deep black, with rich scarlet droplets of blood dripping from each letter.

  For her, the tattoo isn’t just decorative body paint. It is instead a declaration of the purest love. The tattoo means he is proclaiming his devotion and his love for all eternity.

  “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want,” he says, his blue eyes shifting from her to the sex room, and back to her. “I’ll understand completely. If you like, I can close up the secret room for good.”

  She slowly turns away from him, focuses on the heavy wood wheel, and as much as it pains her to even contemplate being strapped to it with other people watching . . . watching and doing things to her and themselves . . . she can’t help but begin to feel a hint of excitement running through her veins and between her legs. It’s as if in the revelation of this basement space, along with her lover’s new tattoo, a tiny door inside her has been pried open. The room, and all it contains, might still bring out the fear in her, but her love and desire for him is so much stronger.

  “If it will please you,” she whispers, “I will do it for you.”

  With that, he once more takes her into his arms, holds her hard against his chest, his hands forming tight, angry fists, his sharpened incisors biting down into his lip, piercing the flesh, drawing blood.

  “Till death do us part,” he whispers into her ear.

  1

  HAROLD SANDERS DIDN’T LOOK like a world-renowned architect who was said to be richer than God. He looked more like the grand master or head priest for one of those new, pray-for-profit, storefront Christian churches you see springing up all over the suburbs these days.

  But then what the hell did I know?

  I was neither world renowned nor rich and I believed in God only when it was convenient. Like when someone had the business end of a pistol barrel pressed up against the back of my head, for instance.

  I guess, in some ways, not being rich or famous made me feel sort of sad, but in other ways, it provided me with an odd sense of comfort. As if in all my anonymity and humble earnings were planted a kind of peace and, dare I say it, Zen. Who wants to be rich and not have to work for a living anyway? I wouldn’t know what the hell to do with myself.

  I was still trying to convince myself that it would suck to be rich, and failing miserably at it, when Harold Sanders crossed his long, thin legs and cleared his throat. Not like it required clearing. More like he was insisting upon my undivided attention without actually asking for it. Considering he was the only other person occupying the room besides myself, and knowing how deep his pockets must be, I gave it to him.

  “Naturally, I’ve done some checking up on you, Mr. Marconi,” he said with a tight-lipped smile, his tone patronizing. Like an elementary school principal to a newly-arrived fifth-grade transfer. For a brief instant, I felt like reaching across my desk and backhanding that smile right off his cleanly shaved face. But then I once more reminded myself of those deep pockets.

  We were sitting in my first-floor warehouse-converted-to-office-space-and-apartment with the door shut and the view of a sunbaked Sherman Street looking positively magnificent through the old floor-to-ceiling, wire-reinforced warehouse windows. It hadn’t rained all summer long, and what had originally been termed a “temporary dry spell” by the Albany meteorologists had evolved into a full-blown drought, complete with a lawn-watering moratorium and hefty fines, or even jail time, for those who broke them. It was so hot and dry in the city that the drug dealers who almost always hung outside my front door rarely bothered coming out during the overheated daytime hours. A situation which must have pleased the very rich and very accomplished Mr. Sanders upon his arrival at my downtown address in his brand new black BMW convertible.

  “Please, call me Keeper,” I said while painting on my best shiny, happy smile. “All my friends and enemies do.”

  “You survived the Attica uprising, as I understand it,” he said, recrossing his legs. As I said, he dressed himself in the manner of a new-wave priest or maybe even a successful pop culture artist like Richard Prince. But he did not dress poorly. If I had to guess, I would say his black leather lace-up boots, matching black gabardine slacks, and cotton blend T-shirt didn’t originate from the local Gap outlet. More like a high-end clothier in Florence, Italy. The same place he would have purchased his round, tortoiseshell eyeglasses, and maybe even the same place his thick, shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair was coiffed. I tended to notice these things since giving up the prison warden life to become a laminated license-carrying private dick.

  I leaned back in my swivel chair, locked my hands together at the knuckles, and brought them around the back of my head for a headrest.

  “I was just a kid fresh out of high school. A brand-new corrections officer. Attica was the largest American-versus-American slaughter since the Civil War. Not counting the abominable Indian wars, of course, which were much worse. From a genocidal point of view.”

  He smiled. Probably because I’d somehow managed to use the words abominable and genocidal in the same sentence.

  “Why so young?” he asked.

  “I didn’t feel the college path was right for me, and I definitely didn’t want to go to Vietnam, so my dad pulled some strings.”

  Sanders smiled as though we were both a part of the same old boy crony circuit, of which I most definitely was not. What I didn’t tell him is that I went on to score an undergrad degree in English. Took me six years of night classes, but I got through it.

  “Sometimes it pays to have parents who can afford us a proper start in life, even if that start is on the nice side of a set of iron prison bars.”

  “My dad was a construction worker,” I said. “He used to get drunk and lose at poker to the guards from Coxsackie Correctional.”

  Sanders’s smile melted in
to a tight sour puss, as though he’d just farted out loud by mistake. Made one wonder if he were as liberal as he appeared. Or maybe he just liked to portray himself as a liberal.

  “Just as well,” he said. “Both my lawyer and the Albany police force spoke highly of you. Said you were a fine prison supervisor and now you are a very competent and very mature private detective.”

  “Aw, shucks. Now you’re embarrassing me.”

  “They also said you were a bit of a jokester.”

  “You mean like a wise ass.”

  “Yes, indeed. Must be a requirement in your profession.”

  “You have no idea,” I said, bringing my hand around and adjusting the ball knot on my tie so that it hung Lou Grant low under my white, open-necked button-down. “So how can I be of service today?”

  He reached down toward his black-booted feet and took hold of a leather briefcase that didn’t have a handle or a shoulder strap. He flipped open the fine leather lid and slid out a collection of newspaper clippings bound together with an alligator clip. He handed them to me from across the desk. I leaned forward, reached my hand over the desk, and took them from him.

  “You’ve no doubt heard about my daughter, Sarah, and her recent troubles,” he said. “Troubles with her fiancé, the restaurateur, Robert David Jr.”

  I knew that if I told him I had not heard about his daughter’s troubles that he would find me ill-informed and, therefore, no longer a candidate for whatever job he wanted me to take on. So, considering his expensive tastes and the fact that he might have no trouble laying a hefty retainer on me, I played along.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, taking a bit of a gamble. “I know how hard things must be for you as of late.”

  “Thank you,” he said, genuinely pleased with my reaction. Score one for Keeper Marconi, former English major.

  While we were quiet for a reflective moment, I did my best to speed read the first couple of paragraphs on the top clipping, which bore the headline, “Manny’s Owner Under Investigation in Fiancée Head Injury Case.” It was about Sarah Levy, who was now divorced from the local writer Michael Levy. Seems she’d taken up with the aforementioned young restaurant owner and gotten herself into some trouble, which culminated in her landing in the Memorial Medical Center in a coma after suffering severe head injuries.