Page 134 of Take Your Breath Away

Fifty-Five

Detective Hardy was almost at the scene when Andrew Carville ended their call.

“Shit,” she said.

She saw a collection of vehicles up ahead, pulled over onto the shoulder of Wheelers Farm Road. Police cars, an ambulance. She parked her car and went to the first uniformed officer she saw, a man who didn’t look old enough to have graduated from high school. Why, Hardy wondered, did everyone seem younger every year?

“Where’s the guy who called it in?’ Hardy asked.

The officer pointed to a man leaning up against a silver Nissan. Hardy recognized Norman from the times she had met, over the years, with his wife, Isabel. Hardy walked over to him.

“Norman, isn’t it?” Hardy said.

Norman pushed himself off the car and extended a hand. “Yeah. The paramedics, then that cop over there, they told me to wait for you. The one who really should have waited is Andrew. But he took off.”

“I know, but for now you’re all I’ve got. Tell me what happened.”

Before Norman had gotten very far into his story, Hardy said, “Show me,” and Norman led her down the rutted road to where he had found Andrew’s car—now gone—and the SUV that belonged to the other man. Hardy gave the vehicle a quick look, including opening the glove box and looking for the registration.

“Matthew Beekman,” she said under her breath, and made a quick call with her cell. Once she was finished with that, she let Norman continue giving her the tour.

“I heard voices coming from up that way,” he said, pointing deeper into the woods. They started making their way until a large rock became visible in the distance.

“That’s where it happened,” Norman said.

“Tell me what you saw.”

Norman said Andrew, shovel in hand, was standing over a pile of dirt and two holes in the ground, a few feet ahead of the rock. The other man was pointing a gun at Andrew. When Norman called out, all hell broke loose. When the gunman looked around, Andrew charged him with the shovel.

“He told me to call for help, and that’s kind of all I know,” Norman said.

“Mr. Carville says you followed him up here.”

Norman looked to the ground and nodded. “Yes. I had some things I wanted to say to him.”

Hardy waited. Norman told her he’d wanted to thank Andrew, and also wanted him to know he had been to the Mason house on the Saturday of the weekend Brie vanished.

“You never told me that,” Hardy said.

Norman shrugged. “I know.”

Hardy told him to go to his car and wait in case she needed to speak with him further, then made her way closer to the scene.

Matt’s body had not been moved. The area had already been cordoned off with police tape, a few nicely placed trees used as anchor points for the corners. Hardy ducked under the tape and moved carefully around the scene. Studied the wound in Matt’s belly, the severed hand, the liters of blood that had drained from his wounds into the forest floor. Then she had a look at the hole in the ground that revealed a hint of uncovered skeleton, a necklace that still looped loosely around the neck.

Her cell rang.

“Yes?” she said.

“Ran that name,” said a man at the other end. “Matthew Beekman. Forty-one, lives in New Haven. Suspected in at least five contract hits since 2011, at least three related to ongoing investigations of biker gangs, but never charged. Did you hear about this Glenn Ford guy who bought it couple of nights ago?”

“Glenn Ford the actor? He died a long time ago.”

“Some writer guy. Witness in a biker hit, hiding out up in Hartford. They think Beekman’s involved in that one. Day job runs a laundromat, married, two kids. Regular family guy who makes money on the side killing people, making them disappear.”

“Pull together everything you can on him and send it to me,” she said, and ended the call.

Hardy looked at the partially uncovered grave, and then the forest around it. She wondered whether any of Beekman’s other victims might be buried out here. She looked back at the dead hit man, and the hand that rested among the leaves a stone’s throw away from the body.