Then finally he went back in.
I think I exhaled so loudly in relief that a person a block away would have turned at the sound. I was in tears, tears from the thought of what I had just witnessed. At what I’d just done. Not knowing if I was safe, or about to be implicated in a double murder? Or if my family was about to fall apart? I knew I had to bring this to the police. But I also knew that then everything would spill out. Everything! And they would likely just bring me back to the hotel and hand me over to the very people who had just tried to kill me.
All I could think of was to just get home. To the person I trusted most in the world. If this was going to come out, he was damn well going to hear it from my lips, and not from the police. I had no idea what I would say to him. Or how he would react. I only knew that together, we’d figure out the right thing to do. How could I possibly hold it inside? A dark, shameful secret that would haunt me the rest of my life? Every time I looked at my husband.
Every time I looked at myself in the mirror.
Not just what I’d done to a federal agent …
But having that second drink. Going up to that room.
Everything!
It only took about five minutes to make it the couple of blocks to Grand Central.
There were a couple of policemen stationed at the entrance. I thought about stopping them and telling them what happened. But I just ran past.
I saw on the large schedule screen in the Grand Concourse that there was a 9:11 train back to Pelham. That was only five minutes from now.
I headed down to Track 24. Before going underground, I called the house. It didn’t surprise me that there was no answer. Dave had a business dinner with some prospective new partners. When our voice mail came on, I hung up and tried his cell. No answer again. This time I left a harried message, trying to calm my voice as best I could: “Honey, I’m sorry about what happened last night. I’m on the nine-eleven. I’m looking forward to seeing you at home. Please, I need to talk to you about something. I love you.”
What else mattered now?
The ride home was the most nerve-racking half hour of my life. As soon as we got out of the tunnel, I checked Google News on my iPhone to see if the story had hit. So far it hadn’t. I looked in the faces of the people sitting across from me. Just regular commuters. A black woman with her young daughter who was playing a handheld electronic game. A businessman heading home from a late night at the office. A couple of loud twenty-somethings. Could they see it on me? Was it all over my face? Could they hear it in the pounding of my heart? What I’d done!
Pelham is the second stop in Westchester County. It was a quiet, upper-middle-class town tucked in between Mount Vernon and New Rochelle. I’d left my Audi SUV at the station. We live in Pelham Manor, an upscale neighborhood only a couple of minutes from the town, in an old Tudor on a wooded half acre with a carriage-house garage, just two blocks from the Long Island Sound. Dave was a partner in a small advertising company that was looking to merge with a larger one. That’s what his meeting tonight was about. It would be a huge moment for him, for us both, if it all went through. And it could mean a little money for us, which we surely could use. We lived well: We had a ski house in Vermont; we belonged to a nice country club, ate out pretty much whenever we wanted. But not so well that it wasn’t a struggle to pay full tuition for the kids in college and go out west, skiing in Snowmass with friends once a year.
All of a sudden, everything seemed threatened.
I drove home, my mind a daze, and went in through the garage. Once in my kitchen, surrounded by all our familiar things, I actually felt myself start to feel safe, for the first time since the incident. Dave wasn’t back yet. I threw off my coat, pulled off my boots, and heaved myself into a chair in the den. I had to decide what to do.
It all seemed like a dream to me—a haunting, nightmarish one. Had it all actually happened? I’d witnessed the execution of a defenseless man. I’d killed a government agent in self-defense. A rogue agent maybe. One who was about to kill me. But if I came forward, I’d probably destroy my life. A woman in the hotel room of a man she had met at the bar only an hour before? Who guiltily fled the scene? Over and over I replayed the seconds leading up to my firing that gun: the intruder shooting Curtis without even blinking. The second gun pushed off the edge of the bed within my reach. Screaming at Hruseff that I was an ex-cop and to put down his gun. Then the calculating expression that came over his face and the panic in my chest as he raised his gun toward me.
I’d had no choice. I knew I would have been dead if I hadn’t pulled that trigger.
But how could I ever explain it? To the police? Or to my husband?
He could walk through that door at any time. That this horrible thing had happened … that I was in a hotel room to screw some guy. Would he even believe that I had stopped it? That I had come to my senses? Would it even matter? Everything would fall apart. My marriage. My relationship with the kids, whom I’d basically raised and whom I adored.
Our trust.
My whole fucking life.
Sorry, honey, hope dinner went well with the prospective new partners and all, but while you were having salmon tartare at the Gotham Bar and Grill, your pretty little wife just killed a government agent after she was about to fuck a …
Hot flashes running all over me suddenly made it feel like it was a hundred degrees.
I got up, went into the bedroom, pulled off my clothes, and hopped into the shower, trying to wash off the oily film of guilt and complicity. It felt good, almost freeing, to be clean again. I was in my robe, in the kitchen having a cup of tea, when I heard the automatic garage door go up and then the back door open as Dave came in.
“How did it go?” I asked, my heart beating nervously. The first words we’d said to each other all day.
“Good. It went well.” He nodded. At first a bit stiffly. He’d worn his Zegna cashmere blazer and the green striped tie I’d bought for him last Christmas. He looked a little bit like Woody Harrelson, only handsomer, in my view. Then he grinned. “Actually, it went really, really well. I’m starting to think this might work out.”
I ran over and buried myself in his arms.
Did I say that this was my second marriage? For both of us. Dave’s first was with a magazine editor who developed a serious prescription pill problem, and he got custody of the kids. Mine was just a youthful mistake at twenty-one that lasted a year. We’d both put in a lot to make this one work. And for the most part it had.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said, patting my shoulders. He could feel me shuddering against him, and I couldn’t stop crying. “Jeez, Pam must’ve been one hell of a support system …”
I couldn’t let go of him.
“Hey, what’s going on? This isn’t like you, Wend. Look …” He stroked my hair. “I know we have to talk. I know I said some things last night. Maybe this meeting was on my mind, I don’t know …”
“No, that’s not it. That doesn’t matter.” I looked at him and wiped my eyes. “Dave, something happened in the city tonight. You have to listen to me. I’ve stepped into a nightmare.”
I didn’t know where to begin, so I just blurted it out.
“Dave, I shot someone tonight. I killed him.”
“What? What do you mean you shot someone, Wendy? What are you talking about?”
“Dave,