The Safe Man (3 page)

When he got up to clear the plates, Brian first touched his wife’s swollen belly. They were less than a month away. He was excited and scared. Scared about the money mostly.

“Hey, Robinette’s daughter’s name is Lucy,” he called from the sink.

“Does that change your mind about it?”

“Not if it’s a girl. I still like it. And that house? It was the Blankenship place.”

“Really? What was it like inside? I’ve seen it from the outside.”

“It was big. In the kitchen I saw two of everything, even dishwashers. I guess Arthur Blankenship’s old man was the guy who put the safe in. When he built that place with money from the plant.”

After dinner Brian spent time in the workshop in the garage and posted a report on the Le Seuil safe on the Box Man website. On the chat list, he posted a note asking if anyone else out there had ever encountered such a safe and then signed off to go to bed.

Brian dreamed of darkness with swirling motion. Movements like wisps of smoke that then, for just a moment, came together to form a face he did not recognize as man or woman, adult or child. Then it was gone and he woke up.

“What is it?” his wife whispered.

“A dream. Just a bad dream.”

“What was it about?”

Laura always asked about dreams. She thought they were important.

“I don’t know. It was more like a feeling. A bad feeling.”

He got up and walked the house, checking every lock. This was his routine but it wasn’t comforting. He had the best locks money could buy but he knew how to pick and break every one of them. He knew there were other people with the same skills. He could never feel totally secure.

He sat in the kitchen in the dark and drank a beer. He wondered if he was paranoid like Robinette. He wondered if he would become like the writer once his own child was born. He started humming the Kinks song. “Paranoia will destroy ya…”

He took the beer into the nursery and looked around in the dark. The room was completely outfitted and ready, save for the things that Laura wanted to be gender specific. They’d had a disagreement. Laura wanted to know early on whether a boy or girl was coming. Brian wanted to be surprised. So she knew and he didn’t. She had done a good job of keeping the secret.

Brian’s secret was that he wanted a girl. He didn’t want to find out beforehand because he feared if he learned he was the father of a boy, he would lose his edge of excitement, that he might actually become depressed before the baby was even born. The reason he wanted a girl was that he considered his own life and thought that it was too easy for boys to get messed up, to go down the wrong path. With girls there seemed to be more two-way streets. They could turn around and come back if they wanted to. With boys it was all one-way streets. No turning back.

Brian picked up a complete-change-of-hardware job the next day. The house was an old Victorian in the Heights. Eight doors, including the garage. All Medeco locks and Baldwin brass. It was a six-hour job. That and the markup on the materials made it a good day. He came home relaxed, a big check in his wallet. He and Laura went out to eat at the Bonefish Grill. They figured that once the baby came, they wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. Might as well do it while they could.

But that night wasn’t perfect. The dream came back. He saw the face form in the darkness again. A face made of cigarette smoke. In the dream it smelled like his burning drill. He awoke and sat on the side of the bed. He felt Laura’s hand caress his back. Being pregnant had made her a light sleeper.

“Was it the same dream?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember any more of it?”

“Not really. It’s just this bad feeling. It’s dread. It’s like I let something loose in the world. Like it was all my fault.”

“What was? What did you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think it’s about the baby?”

Brian laughed.

“No, it’s not that.”

He checked the house again. Making sure it was secure even though he did not feel secure. When he went back to the bedroom he started getting dressed.

“What are you doing?” Laura asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I don’t know. I’m going to take a drive.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just want to take a drive, put the windows down.”

“Be careful.”

“I will be.”

The phone didn’t ring the next day. No jobs came in. Brian called a foundry in Michigan and ordered drill bits to replace those he’d broken on the Robinette job. He then spent the rest of the morning in the garage workshop, trying to research the Le Seuil safe. He wrote a letter to his father about it. He went on the computer and Googled the name
Le Seuil
but only came up with a book publisher in France using the name. He checked the Box Man website, but no one had responded to his earlier post other than to say they had never encountered a safe of that brand.

When it was lunchtime he opened the side door to go into the house. Two men were standing there. They wore suits and dour expressions. It had been twenty years since he’d had to deal with cops, but he still knew the type.

“Officers, what can I do for you?”

“Actually, I’m Detective Stephens with the police department, and this is Agent Rowan with the FBI. Are you Brian Holloway?”

“Yes. Is it Laura? The baby? What happened?”

“Who is Laura?” Stephens asked.

“My wife. She’s at work. She—”

“This is not about her. Can we come in?”

Brian stepped back. Despite the relief of knowing this was not about Laura, he felt the same sense of dread that he had awoken from the dream with building in his chest.

“Then, what is it?”

“Have a seat,” Rowan said.

Brian sat on the stool next to the workbench.

The two lawmen remained standing, their eyes moving around the shop as they spoke. The detective looked like he was deferring to the agent in this matter, whatever it was.

“This is how I would like to work this,” Agent Rowan said. “We’re going to ask you some questions here, and the first time you lie to us we pack it in and put you in a cell to think about it. Fair enough?”

“This is a joke, right?”

“No joke.”

“Then questions about what? Am I a suspect in something?”

“Not yet. We think you are just a witness. But like I said, the first time you lie to us, you become a suspect and we treat you like one.”

“Witness to what? What happened?”

“I said we are going to ask the questions. But let’s start this thing off right by getting everything right. You are Brian Holloway, thirty-nine years old, and you reside in the home that this garage is attached to. Do I have all of that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And your father has spent the last twenty-two years in an Illinois state correctional facility serving a life sentence without parole for the crime of murder.”

Brian shook his head. The sins of the father always visited the son.

“This is about my father? I was nineteen when he went away. What’s that got to—”

“He was a box man, too, wasn’t he? Only he opened boxes for the Outfit in Chicago. He taught you everything you know, right?”

“Wrong.”

“He killed a man who came home and caught him in the act, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t do it. The man he was doing the job for did it. He panicked.”

“Oh, I guess that makes it okay.”

“Look, what do you want? I haven’t talked to my father in three years.”

“Do your clients know that you’re the son of Harry ‘Houdini’ Holloway?”

“Look, I run a clean, legal business. Why would I tell someone who my father is? Why would I have to? This isn’t Chicago and I’m not my father.”

“Where were you last night?” Stephens asked, suddenly joining in, changing the direction of things.

Brian started to think. Maybe the whole thing was choreographed. Maybe it wasn’t about the old man. Maybe it was all misdirection and sudden change.

“Last night? I was here. I was home.”

“From when till when?”

“Um, I got home around three yesterday and I did some work in here and then my wife and I went out for dinner and we got home about eight-thirty and that was it. We stayed home after that.”

“Okay, eighty-thirty until when? When was the next time you left?”

Brian hesitated. He looked at their faces, wondering what had happened and how much they knew. Cops always had the advantage. He knew this. His father had always said that when it came to cops, to lie was to die.

He shook his head.

“Until now. I haven’t left yet.”

Each of the men in front of him visibly stiffened and their faces took on a stony resolve.

“Turn around,” Stephens said. “Assume the position. Your dad probably taught it to you, too.”

Instead Brian raised his hands as if to stop their advance on him.

“Okay, look. I took a drive last night. I was gone less than a hour.”

“When last night?”

“I never looked at the clock. I woke up, couldn’t sleep, and took a drive. It was the middle of the night.”

“And you never looked at the clock in the car, huh?”

“No, I took my van. The clock in it doesn’t work and I forgot to put on my watch.”

“Where did you go on your drive?”

“I just drove around. All over the place. I even went over the bridge and cruised around the island.”

Brian knew he had to give them that. He knew they had something. It must be the electronic toll pass on the van’s windshield. There would be a record of him crossing the bridge.

“Why the island? What did you do while you were there?”

Brian let out a deep breath. They were cornering him. He didn’t understand this. The FBI doesn’t come around for stealing trash. There was something else going on.

“All right, listen, I’ll tell you everything. The other day I had a job out on the island. I opened an old safe for a guy and the client had me take the door off the box and carry it out to the curb for trash pickup. He said the pickup wasn’t for a few days. So last night I went back by his place and I took the door. It would’ve been picked up this morning anyway. It’s not stealing. He put it out for trash pickup. To him it was trash.”

“And why did you take it?”

“Because until I was there I had never seen or heard of that safe or its maker and I wanted to study it. Maybe practice on it a bit. Besides, it’s a museum piece. I didn’t want it thrown away.”

“Where is it?”

Brian pointed to an object beneath an old mover’s blanket that was leaning against the opposite wall. Rowan walked over and lifted up the blanket for a look. He then dropped the cloth back down and looked at Brian.

“It was not a crime to take it,” Brian said. “It was trash.”

“So you say.”

“Look, what is going on? Why are you here? Did Robinette say I stole his door? Is that what this is about? I know the guy’s famous, but do they really send the FBI out on a call like that?”

“No, they don’t.”

“Then, what is this?”

There was a pause and the lawmen looked at each other for a moment before Stephens spoke.

“We’re not worried about you stealing Robinette’s trash. We’re wondering if you stole his daughter.”

“What?”

“His daughter, Mr. Holloway. She’s disappeared.”

Brian thought of the little girl with dark, familiar eyes and the winter dress in the middle of the summer.

“He said I took his daughter?”

“It doesn’t matter what he said. We have to check everybody out. You were the last person other than the family to be in that house. We understand that you and Mr. Robinette didn’t get along so well. So we’re starting with you.”

Brian’s chest felt as though his lungs were filling with wax. They were becoming heavy and hard. Again he thought of the little girl standing precariously at the edge of the safe. It was like she had been waiting there for him.

“Did you check the safe?” he suddenly asked.

“What do you mean?” Rowan asked.

“The safe in the library. When I was there she came in and was standing by the safe. Maybe she…I don’t know, maybe after I left she went back to it. There’s no door, but there was a piece of the flooring that covered it and that I put back in place.”

Rowan glanced at the shape of the safe’s door beneath the blanket. He then glanced at Stephens and another silent communication passed. Stephens turned and walked out of the garage.

Rowan looked back at Brian.

“The safe would be kind of small, wouldn’t it?”

“The box was pretty deep. It went down at least a foot and a half.”

“You said she came into the library?”

“I went out to my van to get the vacuum and when I came back, in she was just standing there.”

“What did she say to you?”

Brian thought for a moment. He tried to remember all the details. He was filling with fear for the little girl.

“She just told me her name and I asked how old she was. I told her she looked older. She said her name was—”

“Why would you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Ask the girl how old she was.”

Brian shrugged.

“I don’t know. I guess because we’re about to have a kid—my wife is eight months along—and, I don’t know, I never really thought about the ages of children before. Now I do.”

Rowan took a few moments to grind over the answer. Brian shifted his weight on the stool and started pumping his knee.

“Mr. Holloway, you seem agitated. Is something wrong?”

“Of course, there’s something wrong. That girl is missing and I just have a bad feeling about it. Look, I had nothing to do with it. You’re wasting your time. So do what you have to do with me and get it over with. I’ll take a lie detector, if you want. You can go search my van, too. Just get past me and go find her. Before it’s too late.”

Rowan seemed to be taken aback.

“What do you mean, ‘before it’s too late’?”

“Isn’t that how these things always end up?”

Before Rowan answered, Stephens came in. He looked at his partner and then at Brian.

“Safe’s empty.”

“Mr. Holloway has volunteered to take a poly,” Rowan said. “We can also take a look in the van.”