The Prettiest One: A Thriller (7 page)

“Perfect,” he said. “I was in the mood for an omelet.”

She smiled. “You eating with us?”

“Wish I could, but I have paperwork to catch up on. I’ll take this out back.”

“You’re out there early today. It’s not even seven yet. The sun’s barely up.”

“I know, I got behind. But if the invoices don’t go out, the money doesn’t come in. Hopefully I’ll get caught up today.”

“Daddy eat,” little Julia said.

“I will eat, pumpkin,” Chops said. “I just can’t sit with you today. Daddy has work to do while he eats.”

He kissed the dark curls on the top of her head. She reached up with her chubby little hands and playfully laid down a drumbeat on his bald pate.

“That’s enough, Ringo,” he said, straightening up.

He grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and took them, with his omelet, back to his office. He unlocked the door to his workroom, stepped inside, and locked the door again behind him with a separate dead bolt, one that couldn’t be unlocked from the outside without a key. He turned to the man bound to a metal chair in the middle of the little room and said, “Give me a minute here. It’s breakfast time.”

The man didn’t respond, maybe because he had nothing to say any longer, maybe because of the duct tape across his mouth, or maybe because he had no voice left after all the screaming he’d done lately.

Chops ate the first half of his omelet, then opened one of the bottles of water and drank half of it in four gulps. The man in the chair watched, his eyes wide and pleading.

“I guess you’re thirsty, huh, Benny?” Chops said.

The man nodded weakly. Chops opened the second bottle of water.

“You’ve already learned how good the soundproofing is in here, right?”

Benny nodded again.

“So you won’t be annoying me with any more screaming, right?”

Benny shook his head.

“Okay, then.” Chops stepped over and yanked the tape from Benny’s mouth. “Open wide,” he said.

Benny opened his mouth, exposing bloody, toothless gums. Chops hadn’t yet decided what to do with all the teeth in the jar on his workbench. He poured some water into the gaping mouth, gave the man time to gulp it down, then poured in the rest of the bottle.

When he finished swallowing, Benny said, “I told you everything.” His voice was barely a croak, his words malformed, probably because of his lack of teeth. “I told you everything
two days ago
,” he added.

“I know,” Chops said as he stepped back into his coveralls.

“So why are you still doing this?”

“Well, the first two days was to get the information my employer wanted, to find who your boss was buying his shit from.”

“But I didn’t
know
who he got it from,” Benny whined.

“Yeah, but I didn’t know whether to believe you. I had to be sure. Now I am. I believe you. So that was the first two days. The last two have been to send a message. Well, several messages.”

Chops had overnighted Benny’s right hand to Benny’s boss, Kenny Jacks, a small-time drug dealer who had arrived in town a few months ago. With the hand, Chops had included a note that read,
We found this in our cookie jar
. The hope was that Jacks would learn his place and understand that that place was some small street corner very far from the territory run by Bill McCracken, a much bigger dealer who had hired Chops to put the fear of God into Jacks. Chops wanted to go after Jacks himself, but McCracken wasn’t sure yet whether he had connections about which McCracken should be concerned, so he paid Chops to make a statement without physically harming Jacks himself. Chops was good at his job. First he’d had Benny’s hand delivered—though not hand-delivered—to Jacks. Then to spread the message, Chops had sent the fingers from Benny’s remaining hand to the five guys who had been doing a little distribution for Jacks on the side, guys who used to work exclusively for McCracken. The hand alone should be enough to convince Jacks to pull up stakes and take his shit somewhere else, but just in case it wasn’t, Benny’s fingers should make it hard for Jacks to find anyone around here to work for him. And the longer that parts of Benny kept showing up around town, the less likely it was that some new dealer who tried to set up shop someday would be able to find anyone to work for him, either. But just in case . . .

Chops slapped another piece of tape over Benny’s mouth. He picked up a pair of tin snips, which he’d used a lot over the last few days, and knelt in front of the man. He untied Benny’s right boot and tugged it off. Benny grunted into the duct tape and whipped his head violently from side to side. He tried to kick out, but Chops grabbed his leg and gave it a quick, firm twist. Something snapped in the knee with the sound of a tree branch cracking, and something else tore with a popping noise, and Benny’s muffled scream faded away as his head dropped forward to his chest.

“It’s probably better for you this way, Benny,” Chops said. He wasn’t necessarily disappointed. It wasn’t like he needed Benny to be awake during this so Chops could get his rocks off. No, this was business. As long as he took what he needed from Benny, something he could use to send another message, it didn’t matter to Chops if Benny was asleep or awake when he took it. But before Chops could use the tin snips, his cell phone trilled in his pocket. He answered it.

“Hello?”

He listened to the caller for a few seconds.

“How do you know something happened to him? . . . Well, how long has it been? . . . Last night? That’s not long enough to worry about. You know Mike. He’s sleeping something off. Maybe he did too much of some kind of crap or another . . . No, just relax, I’m sure he’s fine . . . No, I have work to do. If you don’t hear from him by tonight, call me back.”

He put his phone back in his pocket.

“Now where were we, Benny?”

He pulled off Benny’s sock and counted in his head how many more people Benny had said were doing a little dealing on the side for Jacks . . . how many more people needed to receive a message.

CHAPTER TEN

THE EARLY AFTERNOON TRAFFIC HAD been light, allowing them to make good time. As they pulled off the highway, Josh began to pay closer attention to the GPS app on his tablet and the pleasant robotic female voice guiding them from the device’s speaker. They were on the outskirts of Smithfield now, a city in western Massachusetts that Josh knew to be one of the largest in the state. It didn’t appear as though Katherine Southard lived in the city proper, though, even though she had a Smithfield address, because according to the map on his device’s screen, they’d be at their destination in four minutes, yet Smithfield’s tallest buildings, which Josh could see up ahead, had to be at least ten driving minutes away. Instead, they were in a slightly more rural area on Smithfield’s western edge, and the turns were coming more often now, more quickly as they neared their destination. Caitlin was driving slowly, just under the speed limit. Josh looked over at her behind the wheel, the way she watched the road with one eye while apparently scrutinizing every single thing they passed with the other. A bus stop there on the corner. A bagel shop on the other side of the street. A nail salon with a huge photograph of a woman’s beautifully pedicured foot dominating its front window. A quaint but tired little movie theater that seemed to belong decades in the past. She slowed down even more to watch a sandwich shop drift past.

“Want me to drive so you can pay attention out the window?” Josh asked.

She shook her head.

“Anything look familiar?”

After a moment, she shook her head again.

“Not at all? Not even a little?”

She sighed. “Not even a little. Was I even here at all?”

“You tell me.”

She shook her head again slowly. “I don’t know. I was hoping that seeing this place would spark a memory, like I’d somehow recall grabbing a sandwich in that shop back there or something. Anything to break through this blank wall in my mind.” She sighed. “We got off the same exit just now that I took to get on the highway last night. Shouldn’t I recognize these things?”

“Well, it was the middle of the night when you came through here. The stores were all probably closed. Everything looks different in the dark. And I doubt you were thinking too clearly. You had just . . . woken up, or whatever you want to call it. I’m sure your head was still cloudy.”

She nodded as though that made some sense to her.

“Also,” he continued, “maybe you came at the highway from the other direction last night. Want to turn around and see if anything looks familiar that way?”

She mulled it over. “No, I think we should just go right to Katherine Southard’s house, pray she’s home, and ask if she knows me . . . and what the heck I did for the last seven months.”

Josh nodded. From his tablet, Robot Girl told them to turn right onto Candace Street, which was a bucolic, tree-lined street that could have been torn from a calendar titled “Quaint Streets of the Northeast.” Several turns later, they were on Pritchard Lane, which was still fairly quaint but would not have made the calendar’s cut. Finally, after three more turns, they reached Jasmine Street, which was not quaint at all. Gone were the gingerbread Victorians and manicured lawns. Gone were the upper-middle-class cars in the driveways. Along Jasmine Street, the sidewalks buckled and the fences were chain-link rather than white picket. The houses were no longer single-family dwellings. Here, they were two-, even three-family residences. The newest car they passed was ten years old.

“Still not familiar?” Josh asked, actually hoping that it wouldn’t be. He hated the thought of Caitlin spending any time in this part of town.

“Not at all.”

Robot Girl announced that they had arrived at their destination. Caitlin pulled to the curb in front of a house with peeling mud-brown paint. Its two front doors—painted a yellow so faded it looked nearly colorless—told Josh that it was a two-family residence. According to her vehicle registration, Katherine Southard lived in number one.

Josh looked over at Caitlin. “Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, then. You wait here while I go knock on the door and ask for Katherine.”

“Why should I wait here?”

“Because this isn’t exactly Mayberry, and I’d feel better if you stayed in the car. Please?”

After a moment, she nodded. He opened his door, stepped out, and before he closed it, looked back at Caitlin and said, “Do me a favor and lock the doors until I get back, okay?”

He shut his door and was relieved to hear the locks engaging as he walked away. He looked up and down the block. Even in brilliant sunshine on a crisp, beautiful day in early October, this street was depressing. He looked over at the grizzled mutt chained to the next-door neighbor’s porch railing. The dog, which had been lying down with its oversize head on its paws when he and Caitlin had pulled up, was now standing at the end of his chain, his body rigid. The dog looked to be half pit bull, half Kodiak bear. It didn’t bark, but Josh figured that was because instinct told it that it didn’t need to bark to be intimidating.

Josh reached the uneven risers leading to the porch; climbed them; and, without hesitation, knocked on the door to apartment number one, which appeared to be the downstairs unit. He heard nothing from inside. No dog barking, no baby wailing, no crystal meth cooking. Standing in that part of town, on that street, on that porch, Josh wished he were wearing denim jeans, preferably worn and a little torn, rather than the comfy tan khakis he was sporting. And he should have been wearing heavy boots of some kind, work boots, not hiking sneakers. And instead of a plaid flannel shirt, he should have . . .
Okay,
he thought,
the plaid flannel is all right;
he just wished it wasn’t designed by Tommy Hilfiger. He rolled up his sleeves and knocked again. A moment later, Josh heard footsteps thudding inside. From the weight of their tread, it sounded like Katherine Southard wasn’t answering the door herself, unless she was a very solid woman. No, that was a man’s tread approaching. Those were man feet, wearing work boots. Of
course
they were wearing work boots. A lock disengaged with a solid clack and the door opened.

In the doorway stood a man roughly Josh’s age. Maybe an inch taller, around the same weight, but with a little more of his weight distributed above his waist, up in his chest and arms, which weren’t brawny but which Josh could see were well defined under a black T-shirt. By contrast, Josh wasn’t overweight, but he wasn’t as toned as he would like to be. The man standing before him either exercised more regularly and rigorously than Josh did, or he’d been born with far superior physical genes.

“Yeah?” the man said, eyeing Josh without curiosity but with thinly veiled suspicion. He gave a quick scratch to a cheek that was, not surprisingly, lightly stubbled. He wasn’t bad-looking, Josh knew. Strong features, longish sandy hair. There were plenty of women who would approve of the guy’s looks, which could best be described as—though Josh was loath to use the phrase, even in his own head—ruggedly handsome. As a man who didn’t fit that description, Josh hated it every time he heard it.

“I’m looking for Katherine Southard,” he said.

“Why?”

“Is she here?”

“Why?”

Josh tried to get a read on the guy. It didn’t seem like he was trying to be hostile, but he definitely didn’t seem the chatty type or the kind of guy who went out of his way to make others’ lives any easier.

“I’m just wondering if she’s here,” Josh said. “If maybe . . . well, it’s hard to explain . . .”

Josh heard a noise behind him. The man shifted his gaze over Josh’s shoulder and smiled. “Finally,” he said.

Josh turned and found, to his dismay, Caitlin standing just behind him. “I thought you were going to wait in the car,” he said.

“Why would she do that?” the man asked.

Josh turned back to face the man. “Because I asked her to.”

“And who the hell are you to her?”

Josh may have been far outside his comfort zone, but he was getting annoyed now. “I’m her husband,” he said. “Now who the hell are you?”