Second Honeymoon Part 66

"Why do you ask?" said Sarah.

"Because I'm wondering which side of your seat would I find your gun sitting on right now."

"You can come here and take a look for yourself. You won't see a gun," Sarah lied. "Not from Agent O'Hara, either."

I was listening to this exchange, but I was also watching. For the first time, I was able to take a good look at Martha Cole in her white wedding dress, with its square-cut neckline and lace sleeves down to her elbow.

Brand new, the dress was surely pretty. Now it was dirty, scuffed, and soaked with sweat. In fact, Cole looked to be drenched from head to toe. Even her hair looked as if she'd just stepped out of the shower.

What a contrast the priest was. Sure, he hadn't run twenty blocks swathed in taffeta on a hot June afternoon, but with a gun to his head you'd think he'd be sweating all the same. Instead, he appeared to be absolutely calm. At peace.

In fact, I almost got the sense he knew something that I didn't. Of course, that was the feeling I always got with priests, but this was different. More earthbound.

Either way, it was probably a good thing, because Martha Cole had no intention of setting him free. Not yet at least. I hoped she wasn't planning on setting his soul free.

"Do you know what Robbie told me when he proposed?" she asked. "He said that the two of us would be together for the rest of our lives. Forever and ever. He was very convincing."

"Martha, I understand how upset you are," said Sarah. "But-"

Cole cut her off as fast as a New York taxi. "He broke my heart, destroyed it," she said. Then she flashed a sick smile. "That's why I put a knife through his."

Sarah shook her head, her voice growing stronger. "The killing has to stop, Martha."

But she wasn't listening.

"I deserved what those other couples had. I deserved it!" she screamed.

I could practically read Sarah's mind. Stay calm, keep the dialogue going, say her name as often as possible to keep her trust.

"I'm sure you did, Martha, but those couples didn't deserve to die," said Sarah. "They didn't do anything to hurt you."

"We all die, Agent Brubaker. I saw it every day in the war. The only variable is timing."

"But you don't get to decide that, Martha. You don't get to play G.o.d."

"But I did, didn't I?"

There was something in the way she said it, the emphatic use of the past tense. The sense of finality.

My mind started racing. So many thoughts, questions, unknowns.

Two in particular.

Where was that strange green bottle the young priest outside had mentioned to us? And what was in it?

I looked up at the large gold cross looming over the altar. It suddenly occurred to me. This wasn't going to be a long, drawn-out hostage situation. In fact, it wasn't a hostage situation at all.

My eyes shot back down to Cole. I stared at her again, from head to toe. She was drenched, all right, only it wasn't sweat, was it?

Oh, Jesus, Jesus...

I could smell it now, the odor finally traveling the distance from the altar to our pew. Isopropanol. Rubbing alcohol.

"Good-bye," she said.

I jumped up from the pew as Martha dropped the gun, revealing a small lighter in her other hand. So quick, so fast, she flicked a thumb.

"No!" I yelled. "You don't have to do this! You don't!"

That's when Martha Cole spoke her last words-the two words there at the altar that she never got to say.

"I do."

There was nothing we could do. Cole pushed Father Reese away and brought the lighter to her dress.

She went up in flames.

Chapter 105

WHY WOULD SOMEONE do what she'd done? That's usually the first question in the wake of a person's suicide. But Martha Cole had told us everything we wanted to know about her motives. Not only why she took her own life but also why she took the lives of people she'd never even met.

It was those lives, especially those of the three newlywed couples, that left us with the real unanswered question. How? How the h.e.l.l did she do it? Slipping in and out of the grounds of the Governor's Club in Turks and Caicos to trap and then poison Ethan and Abigail Breslow in their sauna? Evading security at Kennedy Airport to poison Scott and Annabelle Pierce before their flight to Italy?

And finally, as if bored with poisons, or looking to show the breadth of her expertise, rigging a bomb aboard the boat that Parker and Samantha Keller had docked in Bermuda?

The answers to all my questions came soon enough. Or at least I got the sort of information that makes you nod your head and go, "Well, that might explain it."

Within an hour of Martha Cole's death, her military file had made its way to Dan Driesen, who e-mailed the pertinent information along to us.

"Here," said Sarah, handing her phone over to me once she'd read the message.

We'd just wrapped up our "official" statements to Detective Harris as well as to two detectives from the nearest Brooklyn precinct.

I'd even made a call to Warner Breslow, who was in London on business. I told him the news, bittersweet as it was. The murders of his son and new daughter-in-law were more senseless than he could've imagined. Would knowing who did it bring him any closure, any sense of justice? For a man like Breslow, I was afraid the answer was no.

"We'll talk again when I get back," he told me. "You did a fine job, John. Thank you."

Reading Driesen's e-mail, I couldn't help thinking about all those naysayers and conspiracy buffs who could never quite fathom how Lee Harvey Oswald managed to fire three shots from a bolt-action rifle in roughly eight seconds. No way-that's too fast! There had to be a second shooter! Of course, what the conspiracy theorists always seemed to forget is that Oswald wasn't some self-taught dope who was practicing on tin cans in his backyard. Oswald had received the very best training in the world-on Uncle Sam's dime, no less. In the U.S. Marine Corps.

Martha Cole had been a sergeant in the army, having received training in a wide range of disciplines, including weaponry, explosives, reconnaissance, and sabotage. She was smart, athletically gifted, and an adrenaline junkie. This was according to her psych evaluation.

A hundred times out of a hundred, such a profile makes for an excellent soldier. And during her tour in Afghanistan, that's exactly what she was. The problem began when she returned home. The unofficial term is redlining. Like a Ferrari stuck in fifth gear, she was unable to downs.h.i.+ft back into the mundanity of civilian life. New York may be the city that never sleeps, but it was no match for the 24-7 danger of Afghanistan and the Taliban forces.