No Safe House (25 page)

“Dad, I know—”

“Do it!”

I could hear her thumping down the stairs as she took the phone with her.

“The red light is on!” she said.

“Okay, that’s—Shit!”

I slammed on the brakes. The school bus had stopped, engaged its flashing red lights, and half a dozen kids were crossing the street in front of me. The car came to a screeching halt.

“Dad! Dad?”

“I’m okay, honey,” I said, although my heart was pounding like it was trying to break free. I glanced up at the school bus driver, a woman, who was giving me a dirty, reproachful look. The last of the students passed by the front of my car and boarded the bus. A second later, the red lights stopped flashing and I tromped down on the accelerator once again.

“Grace?”

“Yeah?”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m near the front door.”

“Can you see him?”

“No, I’m going to peek out the living room window … No, he’s not standing across the street anymore. He must have—”

In the background, I heard our doorbell.

“Dad!” she whispered.

“Grace?”

“He’s ringing the doorbell. He’s at the door!”

“It’s okay, honey. Don’t answer it. Just stay away from the door. When no one comes, he’ll go away. When he does, maybe you can get a closer look at the car. Maybe even get a license plate—”

“He’s knocking now,” she whispered. “He tried the doorbell and now he’s knocking.”

I raced through another stop sign, leaving honking horns in my wake.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m three minutes away. What’s happening now?”

“He stopped knocking,” she said, her voice sounding slightly less hysterical. “He’s not ringing the doorbell or knocking or anything.”

“That’s good, that’s good. He’s given up. So run back up to your room and see if you—”

“Hang on,” Grace said. “I’m hearing something.”

“What? What are you hearing?”

“It sounds like … Dad, it sounds like he’s putting a key in the door.”

“That’s not possible, honey. There’s no way—”

“It’s turning,” she said.

“What’s turning?” I asked, holding my breath as I pulled into oncoming traffic to pass a slow-moving van.

“The dead bolt thingy,” Grace said. “It’s turning.”

VINCE
Fleming held back in the bathroom of Eldon Koch’s apartment for a full minute after Terry Archer had left and closed the door. He didn’t want to take a chance that asshole would change his mind and come charging back in.

Maybe he should have shot him, too.

Damn you, Eldon
.

Vince told himself it was Eldon who’d forced the play. He’d made it damn clear he wasn’t going along with Vince’s plan. And if Eldon wasn’t going to help cover up what had happened to Stuart, well, it was like they said. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

And covering up the circumstances of Stuart’s death, steering the police away from anything to do with Vince and his operation, was a big problem.

If Eldon wouldn’t play his role in a story that would place Stuart all over the country for several weeks, if not months, into the future, then what, exactly, was he planning to do? Go to the police? Work some kind of deal in return for testifying against
his boss? He just might have, especially since he seemed to believe Vince was responsible for Stuart’s death.

Where’d he get a crazy idea like that?

Eldon was spouting some pretty insane shit there, right before the end. Suggesting Vince not only killed his son, but was ripping off his clients. Taking their money, scamming them into thinking he’d safeguard it, when in fact he was waiting until he had enough squirreled away, at which point he’d round it all up and take off.

Vince didn’t like it that Eldon had ideas like that in his head. He wondered whether Gordie and Bert had ever thought the same thing.

Vince emerged from the tiny bathroom and walked tentatively to the door. Looked to see whether Terry Archer was still out there, maybe standing on the steps. He saw a car parked across the street, Archer behind the wheel, just sitting there.

What the hell?

He was waiting. Waiting for Stuart or Eldon to come home. Vince touched the warm coffee on the counter.

“Shit,” he said to himself. Archer was probably thinking someone would come back for the coffees. But sooner or later, he’d have to leave.

Vince was stuck here until then.

He went back to the bedroom, looked at Eldon’s body sprawled across the bed, blood soaking into the sheets. “You dumb bastard,” Vince said under his breath. “You think I wanted to do that?”

How were Gordie and Bert going to react? The three of them had worked together a long time. They were friends. Vince believed he could persuade them that he’d done the only thing he could. Eldon lost it, he’d tell them. Was spouting crazy talk. His grief had made him irrational, a liability. No telling what he might say, or who he might say it to. If he’d talked to the cops, it wouldn’t have been just Vince who’d take the fall. Gordie and Bert would go down with him.

They’d see that. They’d understand.

They needed to know Eldon had screwed up. Big time. He’d been sloppy with the details of their operation, allowed his son to know what was going on. When you thought about it, Eldon was as much to blame for what had happened to his son as the person who’d pulled the trigger on him.

Gordie and Bert would see that.

Still, it wouldn’t be easy for them, having to come back here, tonight, when it was dark, to clean up this mess. To get rid of the body of a man they’d come to know. Vince was sure they’d grieve, but they’d know it had to be done.

Jesus. First Stuart, now Eldon.

Vince had had a plan worked out to explain Stuart’s disappearance. Let the cops think he died by misadventure while exploring America. Coming up with an explanation for Eldon’s disappearance might take more work. He’d have to give it some thought. If there was one silver lining, the one person who’d have noticed he was missing was no longer around.

Vince propped himself against the doorjamb. “Weary” didn’t begin to describe how he felt. Beaten. Defeated.

He could almost feel his insides being eaten away. The doctor wasn’t able to say with any certainty how much longer he had. Six months? A year at the outside? He might be able to buy himself more time with aggressive treatment, but Vince wanted no part of that.

Better to just keep going, as best he could, for as long as he could.

Or maybe not
.

Vince got out his phone, entered a number.

“Yeah?” said Gordie.

“Where are you?”

“I’m heading back to the shop. Done all I can do for the moment. Cleared out a few places where I could, but I still got some to go.”

“Bert with you?”

“No. He’s still doing the rounds. I’ve got, like, four hundred grand, some coke, some hardware in the car. What do you want us to do with it?”

Vince wondered whether he himself was going to have to open a safe-deposit box. The fucking irony of it.

“Leave that with me,” Vince said. “I’ve got some new fires to put out.”

“Great. We really need more of those.”

“Archer’s still snooping around.”

“I thought you talked to him.”

“I did, but he didn’t get the message. I got an idea how we might solve that, at least temporarily.”

He told Gordie his idea. “I can do that,” Gordie said. “And what else?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Okay. Look, the good news, if there is any, is so far it looks like our problems are limited to the Cummings house. Kinda puts the dog walker in the crosshairs.”

Vince said, “See ya in a bit.”

He took another look at Eldon, caught a whiff of the coppery blood smell.

He rolled the body up in the bedsheets, grunting and struggling with the effort. There was a roll of plastic sheeting in the truck, and some duct tape. He’d try to get Eldon wrapped up now. Save them some work when they came back here tonight. He’d turn up the AC unit tucked in the window full blast. Anything to help in this heat. He hoped Eldon wasn’t too ripe by the time they returned.

“I’m sorry,” Vince said. “I should have given you a chance to say good-bye to your boy.”

HEYWOOD
Duggan made an early-morning call from home to his client Martin Quayle.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Quayle? Heywood Duggan here.”

“Duggan! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. I thought you’d given up on this. Given up on me.”

“There’s a reason why you haven’t heard back from Eli Goemann. Someone killed him.”

Quayle gasped. “Good God. Who did it? What the hell was the man into? You thinking I wasn’t the only person he was trying to scam? Because that’s what I’m starting to think it was. I’m thinking he never had what he said he had. That he just saw the story on the news.”

“I don’t have the details. A police detective came to see me. A woman. She found out I’d been asking around about him. They haven’t made an arrest.”

“Did he have it?”

“Looks like he didn’t. This detective, Wedmore’s her name, didn’t say anything to suggest he was found with anything on him.”

“Then someone else may have it,” Quayle said.

“If Eli even had it to begin with,” Duggan said. “Like you say, he could have been running a game on you.”

“I just … I just can’t imagine why anyone would do such a thing. Whether it was Eli who did it in the first place, or somebody else. What would possess someone to do that?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Quayle. My guess is someone thought the item itself, and not what was inside, was of value. But listen, I did come across some names yesterday I wanted to bounce off you. People Goemann crashed with over the last few months after his roommates booted him out. I’ve been doing some checking.”

“Crashed?”

“Stayed with.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“There were a couple of girls. Selina Michaels was one, in Bridgeport. And a Juanita Cole here in Milford. I don’t know if they were actual girlfriends, but he talked them into letting him sleep under their roof for a while. There was an older guy named Croft he may have done some work for, and someone I think he went to school with by the name of Waterman. But whether they had anything—”

“Did you say Croft?”

“Yeah.”

Quayle was silent on the other end of the line.

“You there?” Duggan asked.

“A long time ago, there was a man named Croft. He … he’d been a friend of mine. We fought together. In Vietnam. We were both from around here. I lived in Stratford. He was in New Haven. We stayed in touch when we got back.”

“Okay. You have any reason to believe he’d have anything to do with this?”

Again, nothing but silence from Quayle.

“Sir?”

“I stole her from him.”

“You what?”

“We both loved the same woman. There was … an opportunity, and I stole her away from him.”

“This was your wife? You’re talking about Charlotte?”

“Yes.” A pause. “It’s him.”

“Croft?”

“I know it. It’s him. He’s always wanted her back, and he finally did it. That son of a bitch. Now that I think of it, I was pretty sure I saw him. Two years ago. In the church. So he would have known.”

“You might be right,” Duggan said. “I can stick with this a little longer, see what I can find out.”

“That bastard. I’m going to confront him.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that, Mr. Quayle.”

“I’ll put the fear of God into him. That’s what I’ll do.”

“Mr. Quayle, listen to me. I think the best thing would be—”

“What if I tell him—here’s an idea—I tell him we’ve got her back. If he laughs, calls my bluff, I’ll know he’s got her. But if he doesn’t, if he sounds worried, we’ll know she’s still out there somewhere. Maybe he’ll think we got her from Eli, that the deal was made. I know! I’ll tell him—”

“Stop,” Duggan said. “This is not the way you want to go about this.”

“—tell him that we’re checking for fingerprints! That if we find his prints, he’s finished. I’ll get my lawyer involved, the police, and—”

“Mr. Quayle,” Duggan said, keeping his voice level, but firm. “Don’t do this.”

“I’m gonna get the son of a bitch. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

Quayle ended the call.

Fuck it
, Heywood Duggan thought. If that was what the man wanted to do, then let him. He’d be just as happy to forget this case, move on to something else.

This file was closed.

CYNTHIA
Archer did not sleep well.

She lay awake, wondering what it was her husband and daughter might be keeping from her. Why had it taken so long for Terry to go pick Grace up and come home? They hadn’t pulled into the driveway until after midnight, a couple of hours after he’d taken the call from Grace to come get her.

Something was wrong. She could sense it.

But she couldn’t call Terry and ask why they had been out so late. Not without admitting she’d been spying on them from behind a tree, like some ridiculous character in a
Scooby-Doo
cartoon. If Terry found out she’d been watching the house, he’d jump to the conclusion that she’d been doing this other nights. Maybe every night since she’d moved out of the house.

And he’d be right.

By the time Cynthia’s digital clock read 5:30, she didn’t see the point in lying in bed any longer. She got up, showered, did her makeup, put on the clothes she’d selected for herself the night before.

She put a slice of bread into the toaster, peeled a banana, made some coffee, turned on the radio. But she couldn’t have told anyone a thing she heard. Her mind was elsewhere.

Those buggers
.

Thought they could pull something over on her, did they? She could understand why they’d do it. They were protecting her. They were doing what they could to keep her anxiety level down.

It was insulting. As if she couldn’t handle things. As if she was some kind of baby.

Well, Cynthia Archer was not a baby.

She was going to find out what was going on. She was not going to go directly to work this morning. She was going to stop by their house. After all, it was still hers, too, and she could drop by anytime she wanted. She didn’t need an invitation. She didn’t need a reason.