Finders Keepers (37 page)

Ricker frowns. “Pete? That doesn't seem likely. He's one of the best students I've ever had. Demonstrates a genuine love of literature, especially American literature. Honor Roll every quarter. What kind of trouble do you think he's in?”

“That's the thing—we don't know. I asked, but he stonewalled me.”

Ricker's frown deepens. “That doesn't sound like the Pete Saubers I know.”

“It has to do with some money he seems to have come into a
few years back. I'd like to fill you in on what we know. It won't take long.”

“Please say it has nothing to do with drugs.”

“It doesn't.”

Ricker looks relieved. “Good. Seen too much of that, and the smart kids are just as much at risk as the dumb ones. More, in some cases. Tell me. I'll help if I can.”

Hodges starts with the money that began arriving at the Saubers house in what was, almost literally, the family's darkest hour. He tells Ricker about how, seven months after the monthly deliveries of mystery cash ceased, Pete began to seem stressed and unhappy. He finishes with Tina's conviction that her brother tried to get some more money, maybe from the same source the mystery cash came from, and is in his current jam as a result.

“He grew a moustache,” Ricker muses when Hodges has finished. “He's in Mrs. Davis's Creative Writing course now, but I saw him in the hall one day and joshed him about it.”

“How did he take the joshing?” Jerome asks.

“Not sure he even heard me. He seemed to be on another planet. But that's not uncommon with teenagers, as I'm sure you know. Especially when summer vacation's right around the corner.”

Holly asks, “Did he ever mention a notebook to you? A Moleskine?”

Ricker considers it while Holly looks at him hopefully.

“No,” he says at last. “I don't think so.”

She deflates.

“Did he come to you about
anything
?” Hodges asks. “Anything at all that was troubling him, no matter how minor? I raised a daughter, and I know they sometimes talk about their problems in code. Probably you know that, too.”

Ricker smiles. “The famous friend-who.”

“Beg pardon?”

“As in ‘I have a friend who might have gotten his girlfriend pregnant.' Or ‘I have a friend who knows who spray-painted anti-gay slogans on the wall in the boys' locker room.' After a couple of years on the job, every teacher knows about the famous friend-who.”

Jerome asks, “Did Pete Saubers have a friend-who?”

“Not that I can recall. I'm very sorry. I'd help you if I could.”

Holly asks, in a small and not very hopeful voice, “Never a friend who kept a secret diary or maybe found some valuable information in a notebook?”

Ricker shakes his head. “No. I'm really sorry. Jesus, I hate to think of Pete in trouble. He wrote one of the finest term papers I've ever gotten from a student. It was about the Jimmy Gold trilogy.”

“John Rothstein,” Jerome says, smiling. “I used to have a tee-shirt that said—”

“Don't tell me,” Ricker says. “Shit don't mean shit.”

“Actually, no. It was the one about not being anyone's birthday . . . uh, present.”

“Ah,” Ricker says, smiling. “
That
one.”

Hodges gets up. “I'm more of a Michael Connelly man. Thanks for your time.” He holds out his hand. Ricker shakes it. Jerome is also getting up, but Holly remains seated.

“John Rothstein,” she says. “He wrote that book about the kid who got fed up with his parents and ran away to New York City, right?”

“That was the first novel in the Gold trilogy, yes. Pete was crazy about Rothstein. Probably still is. He may discover new heroes in college, but when he was in my class, he thought Rothstein walked on water. Have you read him?”

“I never have,” Holly says, also getting up. “But I'm a big movie
fan, so I always go to a website called Deadline. To read the latest Hollywood news? They had an article about how all these producers wanted to make a movie out of
The Runner
. Only no matter how much money they offered, he told them to go to hell.”

“That sounds like Rothstein, all right,” Ricker says. “A famous curmudgeon. Hated the movies. Claimed they were art for idiots. Sneered at the word
cinema.
Wrote an essay about it, I think.”

Holly has brightened. “Then he got
murdered
and there was no
will
and they still can't make a movie because of all the
legal
problems.”

“Holly, we ought to go,” Hodges says. He wants to get over to the Saubers home. Wherever Pete is now, he'll turn up there eventually.

“Okay . . . I guess . . .” She sighs. Although in her late forties, and even with the mood-levelers she takes, Holly still spends too much time on an emotional rollercoaster. Now the light in her eyes is going out and she looks terribly downcast. Hodges feels bad for her, wants to tell her that, even though not many hunches pan out, you shouldn't stop playing them. Because the few that do pan out are pure gold. Not exactly a pearl of wisdom, but later, when he has a private moment with her, he'll pass it on. Try to ease the sting a little.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Ricker.” Hodges opens the door. Faintly, like music heard in a dream, comes the sound of “Greensleeves.”

“Oh my gosh,” Ricker says. “Hold the phone.”

They turn back to him.

“Pete
did
come to me about something, and not so long ago. But I see so many students . . .”

Hodges nods understandingly.

“And it wasn't a big deal, no adolescent Sturm und Drang, it was actually a very pleasant conversation. It only came to mind
now because it was about that book you mentioned, Ms. Gibney.
The Runner
.” He smiles a little. “Pete didn't have a friend-who, though. He had an uncle-who.”

Hodges feels a spark of something bright and hot, like a lit fuse. “What was it about Pete's uncle that made him worth discussing?”

“Pete said the uncle had a signed first edition of
The Runner
. He offered it to Pete because Pete was a Rothstein fan—that was the story, anyway. Pete told me he was interested in selling it. I asked him if he was sure he wanted to part with a book signed by his literary idol, and he said he was considering it very seriously. He was hoping to help send his sister to one of the private schools, I can't remember which one—”

“Chapel Ridge,” Holly says. The light in her eyes has returned.

“I think that's right.”

Hodges walks slowly back to the desk. “Tell me . . .
us
 . . . everything you remember about that conversation.”

“That's really all, except for one thing that kind of nudged my bullshit meter. He said his uncle won the book in a poker game. I remember thinking that's the kind of thing that happens in novels or movies, but rarely in real life. But of course, sometimes life
does
imitate art.”

Hodges frames the obvious question, but Jerome gets there first. “Did he ask you about booksellers?”

“Yes, that's really why he came to me. He had a short list of local dealers, probably gleaned from the Internet. I steered him away from one of them. Bit of a shady reputation there.”

Jerome looks at Holly. Holly looks at Hodges. Hodges looks at Howard Ricker and asks the obvious follow-up question. He's locked in now, the fuse in his head burning brightly.

“What's this shady book dealer's name?”

29

Pete sees only one chance to go on living. As long as the man with the red lips and pasty complexion doesn't know where the Rothstein notebooks are, he won't pull the trigger of the gun, which is looking less jolly all the time.

“You're Mr. Halliday's partner, aren't you?” he says, not exactly looking at the corpse—it's too awful—but lifting his chin in that direction. “In cahoots with him.”

Red Lips utters a brief chuckle, then does something that shocks Peter, who believed until that moment he was beyond shock. He spits on the body.

“He was
never
my partner. Although he had his chance, once upon a time. Long before you were even a twinkle in your father's eye, Peter. And while I find your attempt at a diversion admirable, I must insist that we keep to the subject at hand. Where are the notebooks? In your house? Which used to be
my
house, by the way. Isn't that an interesting co-inky-dink?”

Here is another shock. “
Your
—”

“More ancient history. Never mind. Is that where they are?”

“No. They were for awhile, but I moved them.”

“And should I believe that? I think not.”

“Because of him.” Pete again lifts his chin toward the body. “I tried to sell him some of the notebooks, and he threatened to tell the police. I
had
to move them.”

Red Lips considers this, then gives a nod. “All right, I can see that. It fits with what he told me. So where did you put them? Out with it, Peter. Fess up. We'll both feel better, especially you. If 'twere to be done, 'twere well it were done quickly.
Macbeth
, act one.”

Pete does not fess up. To fess up is to die. This is the man who stole the notebooks in the first place, he knows that now. Stole the notebooks and murdered John Rothstein over thirty years ago. And now he's murdered Mr. Halliday. Will he scruple at adding Pete Saubers to his list?

Red Lips has no trouble reading his mind. “I don't have to kill you, you know. Not right away, at least. I can put a bullet in your leg. If that doesn't loosen your lips, I'll put one in your balls. With those gone, a young fellow like you wouldn't have much to live for, anyway. Would he?”

Pushed into a final corner, Pete has nothing left but the burning, helpless outrage only adolescents can feel. “You killed him!
You killed John Rothstein!
” Tears are welling in his eyes; they run down his cheeks in warm trickles. “The best writer of the twentieth century and you broke into his house and killed him! For money! Just for money!”

“
Not
for money!” Red Lips shouts back.
“He sold out!”

He takes a step forward, the muzzle of the gun dipping slightly.

“He sent Jimmy Gold to hell and called it advertising! And by the way, who are you to be high and mighty? You tried to sell the notebooks yourself!
I
don't want to sell them. Maybe once, when I was young and stupid, but not anymore. I want to read them. They're mine. I want to run my hand over the ink and feel the words he set down in his own hand. Thinking about that was all that kept me sane for thirty-six years!”

He takes another step forward.

“Yes, and what about the money in the trunk? Did you take that, too? Of course you did! You're the thief, not me!
You!
”

In that moment Pete is too furious to think about escape, because this last accusation, unfair though it may be, is all too true. He simply grabs one of the liquor decanters and fires it at his tormentor
as hard as he can. Red Lips isn't expecting it. He flinches, turning slightly to the right as he does so, and the bottle strikes him in the shoulder. The glass stopper comes out when it hits the carpet. The sharp and stinging odor of whiskey joins the smell of old blood. The flies buzz in an agitated cloud, their meal interrupted.

Pete grabs another decanter and lunges at Red Lips with it raised like a cudgel, the gun forgotten. He trips over Halliday's sprawled legs, goes to one knee, and when Red Lips shoots—the sound in the closed room is like a flat handclap—the bullet goes over his head almost close enough to part his hair. Pete hears it:
zzzzz
. He throws the second decanter and this one strikes Red Lips just below the mouth, drawing blood. He cries out, staggers backward, hits the wall.

The last two decanters are behind him now, and there is no time to turn and grab another. Pete pushes to his feet and snatches the hatchet from the desk, not by the rubberized handle but by the head. He feels the sting as the blade cuts into his palm, but it's distant, pain felt by somebody living in another country. Red Lips has held on to the gun, and is bringing it around for another shot. Pete can't exactly think, but a deeper part of his mind, perhaps never called upon until today, understands that if he were closer, he could grapple with Red Lips and get the gun away from him. Easily. He's younger, stronger. But the desk is between them, so he throws the hatchet, instead. It whirls at Red Lips end over end, like a tomahawk.

Red Lips screams and cringes away from it, raising the hand holding the gun to protect his face. The blunt side of the hatchet's head strikes his forearm. The gun flies up, strikes one of the bookcases, and clatters to the floor. There's another handclap as it discharges. Pete doesn't know where this second bullet goes, but it's not into him, and that's all he cares about.

Red Lips crawls for the gun with his fine white hair hanging in his eyes and blood dripping from his chin. He's eerily fast, somehow lizardlike. Pete calculates, still without thinking, and sees that if he races Red Lips to the gun, he'll lose. It will be close, but he will. There's a chance he might be able to grab the man's arm before he can turn the gun to fire, but not a good one.

He bolts for the door instead.

“Come back, you shit!” Red Lips shouts. “We're not done!”

Coherent thought makes a brief reappearance. Oh yes we are, Pete thinks.

He rakes the door open and goes through hunched over. He slams it shut behind him with a hard fling of his left hand and sprints for the front of the shop, toward Lacemaker Lane and the blessed lives of other people. There's another gunshot—muffled—and Pete hunches further, but there's no impact and no pain.