Finders Keepers (38 page)

He pulls at the front door. It doesn't open. He casts a wild glance back over his shoulder and sees Red Lips shamble out of Halliday's office, his chin wreathed in a blood goatee. He's got the gun and he's trying to aim it. Pete paws at the thumb-lock with fingers that have no feeling, manages to grasp it, and twists. A moment later he's on the sunny sidewalk. No one looks at him; no one is even in the immediate vicinity. On this hot weekday afternoon, the Lacemaker Lane walking mall is as close to deserted as it ever gets.

Pete runs blindly, with no idea of where he's going.

30

It's Hodges behind the wheel of Holly's Mercedes. He obeys the traffic signals and doesn't weave wildly from lane to lane, but he makes the best time he can. He isn't a bit surprised that this run
from the North Side to the Halliday bookshop on Lacemaker Lane brings back memories of a much wilder ride in this same car. It had been Jerome at the wheel that night.

“How sure are you that Tina's brother went to this Halliday guy?” Jerome asks. He's in the back this afternoon.

“He did,” Holly says without looking up from her iPad, which she has taken from the Benz's capacious glove compartment. “I know he did, and I think I know why. It wasn't any signed book, either.” She taps at the screen and mutters, “Come on come on come on.
Load
, you bugger!”

“What are you looking for, Hollyberry?” Jerome asks, leaning forward between the seats.

She turns to glare at him. “Don't call me that, you know I hate that.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Jerome rolls his eyes.

“Tell you in a minute,” she says. “I've almost got it. I just wish I had some WiFi instead of this buggery cell connection. It's so
slow
and
poopy
.”

Hodges laughs. He can't help it. This time Holly turns her glare on him, punching away at the screen even as she does so.

Hodges climbs a ramp and merges onto the Crosstown Connector. “It's starting to fit together,” he tells Jerome. “Assuming the book Pete talked about to Ricker was actually a writer's ­notebook—the one Tina saw. The one Pete was so anxious to hide under his pillow.”

“Oh, it was,” Holly says without looking up from her iPad. “Holly Gibney says that's a big ten-four.” She punches something else in, swipes the screen, and gives a cry of frustration that makes both of her companions jump. “Oooh, these goddam pop-up ads make me
so fracking crazy
!”

“Calm down,” Hodges tells her.

She ignores him. “You wait. You wait and see.”

“The money and the notebook were a package deal,” Jerome says. “The Saubers kid found them together. That's what you think, right?”

“Yeah,” Hodges says.

“And whatever was in the notebook was worth more money. Except a reputable rare book dealer wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot po—”

“
GOT IT!
” Holly screams, making them both jump. The Mercedes swerves. The guy in the next lane honks irritably and makes an unmistakable hand gesture.

“Got what?” Jerome asks.

“Not
what
, Jerome,
who
!
John Fracking Rothstein!
Murdered in 1978! At least three men broke into his farmhouse—in New Hampshire, this was—and killed him. They also broke into his safe. Listen to this. It's from the Manchester
Union Leader
, three days after he was killed.”

As she reads, Hodges exits the Crosstown onto Lower Main.

“‘There is growing certainty that the robbers were after more than money. “They may also have taken a number of notebooks containing various writings Mr. Rothstein did after retiring from public life,” a source close to the investigation said. The source went on to speculate that the notebooks, whose existence was confirmed late yesterday by John Rothstein's housekeeper, might be worth a great deal on the black market.'”

Holly's eyes are blazing. She is having one of those divine passages where she has forgotten herself entirely.

“The robbers hid it,” she says.

“Hid the money,” Jerome says. “The twenty thousand.”

“
And
the notebooks. Pete found at least some of them, maybe even all of them. He used the money to help his folks. He didn't
get in trouble until he tried selling the notebooks to help his sister. Halliday knows. By now he may even have them. Hurry up, Bill. Hurry up hurry up hurry
up
!”

31

Morris lurches to the front of the store, heart pounding, temples thudding. He drops Andy's gun into his sportcoat pocket, snatches up a book from one of the display tables, opens it, and slams it against his chin to stanch the blood. He could have wiped it with the sleeve of his coat, almost did, but he's thinking again now and knows better. He'll have to go out in public, and he doesn't want to do that smeared with blood. The boy had some on his pants, though, and that's good. That's fine, in fact.

I'm thinking again, and the boy better be thinking, too. If he is, I can still rescue this situation.

He opens the shop door and looks both ways. No sign of Saubers. He expected nothing else. Teenagers are fast. They're like cockroaches that way.

Morris scrabbles in his pocket for the scrap of paper with Pete's cell phone number on it, and suffers a moment of raw panic when he can't find it. At last his fingers touch something scrunched far down in one corner and he breathes a sigh of relief. His heart is pounding, pounding, and he slams one hand against his bony chest.

Don't you give up on me now, he thinks. Don't you dare.

He uses the shop's landline to call Saubers, because that also fits the story he's constructing in his mind. Morris thinks it's a good story. He doubts if John Rothstein could have told a better one.

32

When Pete comes fully back to himself, he's in a place Morris Bellamy knows well: Government Square, across from the Happy Cup Café. He sits on a bench to catch his breath, looking anxiously back the way he's come. He sees no sign of Red Lips, and this doesn't surprise him. Pete is also thinking again, and knows the man who tried to kill him would attract attention on the street. I got him pretty good, Pete thinks grimly. Red Lips is now Bloody Chin.

Good so far, but what now?

As if in answer, his cell phone vibrates. Pete pulls it out of his pocket and looks at the number displayed. He recognizes the last four digits, 8877, from when he called Halliday and left a message about the weekend trip to River Bend Resort. It has to be Red Lips; it sure can't be Mr. Halliday. This thought is so awful it makes him laugh, although the sound that comes out sounds more like a sob.

His first impulse is to not answer. What changes his mind is something Red Lips said:
Your house used to be my house. Isn't that an interesting co-inky-dink
?

His mother's text instructed him to come home right after school. Tina's text said their mother knew about the money. So they're together at the house, waiting for him. Pete doesn't want to alarm them unnecessarily—especially when
he's
the cause for alarm—but he needs to know what this incoming call is about, especially since Dad isn't around to protect the two of them if the crazy guy should turn up on Sycamore Street. Dad's in Victor County, doing one of his show-and-tells.

I'll call the police, Pete thinks. When I tell him that, he'll head
for the hills. He'll have to. This thought brings some marginal comfort, and he pushes ACCEPT.

“Hello, Peter,” Red Lips says.

“I don't need to talk to you,” Peter says. “You better run, because I'm calling the cops.”

“I'm glad I reached you before you did something so foolish. You won't believe this, but I'm telling you as a friend.”

“You're right,” Pete says. “I don't believe it. You tried to kill me.”

“Here's something else you won't believe: I'm glad I didn't. Because then I'd never find out where you hid the Rothstein notebooks.”

“You never will,” Pete says, and adds, “I'm telling you as a friend.” He's feeling a little steadier now. Red Lips isn't chasing him, and he isn't on his way to Sycamore Street, either. He's hiding in the bookshop and talking on the landline.

“That's what you think now, because you haven't considered the long view. I have. Here's the situation: You went to Andy to sell the notebooks. He tried to blackmail you instead, so you killed him.”

Pete says nothing. He can't. He's flabbergasted.

“Peter? Are you there? If you don't want to spend a year in the Riverview Youth Detention Center followed by twenty or so in Waynesville, you better be. I've been in both, and I can tell you they're no place for young men with virgin bottoms. College would be much better, don't you think?”

“I wasn't even in the city last weekend,” Pete says. “I was at a school retreat. I can prove it.”

Red Lips doesn't hesitate. “Then you did it before you left. Or possibly on Sunday night, after you got back. The police are going to find your voicemail—I was sure to save it. There's also DVD security footage of you arguing with him. I took the discs, but I'll be sure the police get them if we can't come to an agreement. Then
there's the fingerprints. They'll find yours on the doorknob of his inner office. Better still, they'll find them on the murder weapon. I think you're in a box, even if you can account for every minute of your time this past weekend.”

Pete realizes with dismay that he can't even do that. He missed
everything
on Sunday. He remembers Ms. Bran—alias Bran Stoker—standing by the door of the bus just twenty-four hours ago, cell phone in hand, ready to call 911 and report a missing student.

I'm sorry,
he told her.
I was sick to my stomach. I thought the fresh air would help me. I was vomiting
.

He can see her in court, all too clearly, saying that yes, Peter
did
look sick that afternoon. And he can hear the prosecuting attorney telling the jury that any teenage boy probably
would
look sick after chopping an elderly book dealer into kindling with a hatchet.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you that Pete Sau­bers hitchhiked back to the city that Sunday morning because he had an appointment with Mr. Halliday, who thought Mr. Saubers had finally decided to give in to his blackmail demands. Only Mr. Saubers had no intention of giving in.

It's a nightmare, Pete thinks. Like dealing with Halliday all over again, only a thousand times worse.

“Peter? Are you there?”

“No one would believe it. Not for a second. Not once they find out about you.”

“And who am I, exactly?”

The wolf, Pete thinks. You're the big bad wolf.

People must have seen him that Sunday, wandering around the resort acreage.
Plenty
of people, because he'd mostly stuck to the paths. Some would surely remember him and come forward. But, as Red Lips said, that left before the trip and after. Especially Sunday night, when he'd gone straight to his room and closed the
door. On
CSI
and
Criminal Minds
, police scientists were always able to figure out the exact time of a murdered person's death, but in real life, who knew? Not Pete. And if the police had a good suspect, one whose prints were on the murder weapon, the time of death might become negotiable.

But I
had
to throw the hatchet at him! he thinks. It was all I had!

Believing that things can get no worse, Pete looks down and sees a bloodstain on his knee.

Mr. Halliday's blood.

“I can fix this,” Red Lips says smoothly, “and if we come to terms, I will. I can wipe your fingerprints. I can erase the voicemail. I can destroy the security DVDs. All you have to do is tell me where the notebooks are.”

“Like I should trust you!”

“You should.” Low. Coaxing and reasonable. “Think about it, Peter. With you out of the picture, Andy's murder looks like an attempted robbery gone wrong. The work of some random crackhead or meth freak. That's good for both of us. With you
in
the picture, the existence of the notebooks comes out. Why would I want that?”

You won't care, Pete thinks. You won't have to, because you won't be anywhere near here when Halliday is discovered dead in his office. You said you were in Waynesville, and that makes you an ex-con, and you knew Mr. Halliday. Put those together, and you'd be a suspect, too. Your fingerprints are in there as well as mine, and I don't think you can wipe them all up. What you can do—if I let you—is take the notebooks and go. And once you're gone, what's to keep you from sending the police those security DVDs, just for spite? To get back at me for hitting you with that liquor bottle and then getting away? If I agree to what you're saying . . .

He finishes the thought aloud. “I'll only look worse. No matter what you say.”

“I assure you that's not true.”

He sounds like a lawyer, one of the sleazy ones with fancy hair who advertise on the cable channels late at night. Pete's outrage returns and straightens him on the bench like an electric shock.

“Fuck you. You're
never
getting those notebooks.”

He ends the call. The phone buzzes in his hand almost immediately, same number, Red Lips calling back. Pete hits DECLINE and turns the phone off. Right now he needs to think harder and smarter than ever in his life.

Mom and Tina, they're the most important thing. He has to talk to Mom, tell her that she and Teens have to get out of the house right away. Go to a motel, or something. They have to—

No, not Mom. It's his sister he has to talk to, at least to begin with.

He didn't take that Mr. Hodges's card, but Tina must know how to get in touch with him. If that doesn't work, he'll have to call the police and take his chances. He will not put his family at risk, no matter what.