Frames Per Second (39 page)

“You sure?” Reynolds said, as he cut lengths of clothesline with a pocket knife.

“Yeah.” McGuire stood close to Ben. “Harris knows if he tries something I’ll have you waste his family.”

“You shouldn’t be using your own car,” Reynolds said.

McGuire shrugged. “Nobody’s looking for us.”

“Even so, we stop before we get on One-twenty-eight and pick up a couple new plates for both vehicles. And don’t speed.”

“Yeah, sure.” McGuire snorted impatiently as Lainnie tore away from Paulie’s hand and ran to Ben, hugging him about the waist. McGuire raised his voice. “Paulie, what is this? Can’t you even control a little girl?”

“Get over here, kid,” Paulie said, coming up behind Lainnie.

Ben hugged her back and then said, “Go on, honey. Go to Mommy.”

“C’mon, C’mon,” McGuire said.

But Lainnie wouldn’t let go.

Jake came up alongside. “Daddy,” he said, his voice breaking.

He threw himself onto Ben, standing just over Lainnie. He hugged Ben with all his might. Ben whispered in his son’s ear, “I’m going to find a way. Just look after your sister.”

“I will,” Jake said, his voice muffled.

“I love you so much, buddy.” As Ben said it, he felt his son slide something into his back pocket. He stiffened slightly and Jake held him even tighter, stopping him from reacting further. “I love you,” Jake whispered.

McGuire pulled both kids away and shoved them to Paulie. “Tie their hands. I’ll take care of Harris.” McGuire spun Ben around and shoved him against his own car and began tying his hands behind his back.

When he was done, he let Ben turn around.

Ben looked him in the eye. “What did Reynolds mean in there, ‘I can see it.’ “

McGuire said, “Nothing.”

Ben stared at him. And he saw that even McGuire looked a little uncomfortable, and then it came to him. Ben’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “You’re going to make it look like me.”

McGuire looked at him and then shrugged. “Hey, it makes sense. Ludlow told us about the restraining order they were talking about slapping on you. It’s in the paper all the time, some guy goes nuts. Kills his ex-wife and kids, then offs himself. Only difference is you’ve got your girlfriend along, and they get killed more often than wives.”

Ben’s knees almost buckled.

Framed for killing my own family.

The hell of it was he could see it playing.
Had
seen it, had come in behind the police to find the bodies splayed about the room like bloody rag dolls.

Divorced man. An earlier violent incident reported to the police. A restraining order considered, and then dropped. Recently fired then rehired by the new husband.

Ben saw those women in prison.

He sagged against the car door.

McGuire watched the other two men finish tying up Andi and the children. Perhaps some impact of what Ben was feeling sunk into McGuire, enough so that he lifted his shoulders slightly and said, “Hey, you didn’t leave me any choice, following us like that.” He turned away, not waiting for an answer.

Ben looked over at Kurt. Looking for help, somewhere. Ben’s breath was rushing fast and he thought he might be sick.

But Kurt’s hands were already bound, and he was looking down at them dully, blood dripping down his face onto his shirt. He looked dazed, out of it. Possibly concussed.

“Get them in the van.” Reynolds pushed Andi toward the open door. “Get them in and tell them I don’t want to hear a peep the whole way up.”

Andi looked over at her former husband. “Damn it, Ben,” she said, and then Reynolds pushed her head down, and forced her into the van.

Ben’s arm swelled and he strained against the rope until it bit deeply into his wrists.

“Women,” McGuire said, coming back to him. “Always bitching about something, huh?”

“I’m going to find a way.” Ben stared at McGuire. “I’m going to find a way to get to you.” As he said this, Ben slipped his fingers into his back pocket.

“Sure you are,” McGuire said. “That’ll provide some entertainment on the long drive up.”

Ben could feel it then. He kept the exultation from his face, the sudden awareness that a window had opened, if only a crack.

Jack had slipped him his Buck knife.

McGuire positioned them inside the big Chrysler: Sarah at the wheel and Ben beside her. McGuire and Teri got in the back.

“OK, kids,” McGuire said. “We snug up tight. Teri, put your gun behind her ear like this …”

He showed her on Ben, purposely scraping the sight against the back of Ben’s head. Ben involuntarily pulled away and McGuire swung his arm around his neck and pulled tight. “Like this, nice and close.”

He said to Sarah, “If you try driving too fast, or screwing with me, I just call the boys sitting outside your house and tell them to go visit your sitter and kid.”

Sarah took off slowly down the driveway and turned left. “You’ll leave her alone after, right?” she said. “You’ve got no reason.”

McGuire shrugged. “You don’t give me one, I don’t. She’s just a kid, knows nothing.”

Ben saw Sarah nod slightly, as if to herself. She drove carefully, following the van.

They came to the first intersection and turned right. The asphalt gleamed in the headlights, still slick from the rain before. The digital clock on the dashboard showed it to be just after midnight.

Just before the highway entrance ramp, they came upon a restaurant in a big white colonial building. They followed the van to the back of the lot, and parked near the Dumpster. Reynolds got out and quickly took plates off a black Toyota and a van. He quickly screwed them on to his and McGuire’s vehicles.

McGuire slid his window down as Reynolds finished.

“You get the directions from him yet?” Reynolds said.

“Just follow me north. I’ll get it out of him as we go. I may have to give you a call, prove I mean what I say if he gives me trouble.”

“You want me to put one of the kids in with you now?” Reynolds reached in and chucked Ben on the back of the head. “What do you think? I gotta put one of them through that?”

“I’ll tell you,” Ben said. In his mind’s eye, he could see the inside of the cabin. Three steps across the small living area to the master bedroom. Two big steps to the rear closet in the bedroom.

His shotgun was propped up inside. It had been on display over the mantelpiece for years. But after Jake continued to show interest in shooting it, Ben had put it away.

It wasn’t loaded. Deer slugs were on the top shelf, God knows how old. But he could see the box, knew it was there.

Somehow, he’d have to get in there alone, load the shells.

He said, “Go Route Ninety-five north for about three hours. I’ll show you after that.”

“That’s it,” Reynolds said, and straightened.

“Let’s go,” McGuire said.

Sarah took them onto the highway. Ben tried to turn his vision off, to let the monotony of the rushing yellow stripes, of the lit green signs, quell the fear he felt for his family, for Sarah, for himself. Instead, he focused upon that bedroom and the shotgun.

Get in.

Load the gun.

Problem was it was a double-barreled shotgun. Only two shots before he had to reload. And he had three people that needed shooting. Four, if he had to do Teri Wheeler. But he was fairly certain she wasn’t armed.

Ben opened his eyes. Looked at the dashboard clock.

He couldn’t see an answer to the reloading problem. Or to the larger question, of whether or not he could actually kill three people, even with all that was at stake.

He closed his eyes, visualizing the cabin. He told himself that he knew every inch, every board. That he had seen a lifetime of horror and cruelty through his camera lens and surely he had learned something about violence besides despising it.

He told himself that his father would have found a way.

As they reached the New Hampshire border, McGuire nudged Ben with the gun. “Hey. Got a question for you. How much did you clip off of Cheever blackmailing him?”

“Nothing.”

McGuire shoved the gun at him again. “C’mon, how much?”

“That wasn’t me.”

McGuire snorted. “Yeah, bullshit. Bet you didn’t get a dime. Guy was a stubborn bastard, wasn’t he? All the time we were in bed, he put his hands over his ass once he knew who was really putting it to him. Like it made a difference if it was me or if it was Goodhue telling him to sign Stockard up.”

Ben cleared his throat and said, “Your uncle must’ve been proud. The hoops you made Cheever go through.”

He waited until McGuire answered before he shifted around as if to hear better. Ben slipped the knife out of his pocket and clasped it in his palm. He closed his eyes and McGuire’s words washed over him. In a sequence of harsh, black-and-white still frames, Ben saw how it had all played out: Jimbo McGuire and Teri Wheeler, playing the high-stake sophisticates—and making brutal mistakes along the way. Ben remembered the cop, Brace’s, words as they sped through the night:
Never said they were smart.

“Sands was working for you?” Sarah asked.

“Not me,” McGuire said. To Teri, he said, “How about you? Want to tell them?”

“I want you to shut up,” she said.

He laughed. “She’s embarrassed,” he said, as if his girlfriend had been inexplicably rude at a cocktail party. “
She
whipped up Sands. She’s always telling me how connected she is—well, Sands was one of the boys you call to get something done if you’re tied in with the Free America movement.”

Sarah cocked the rearview mirror so she could see Teri.

“Go on,” McGuire urged Teri. “The two of them are
interested.
Look at them, goddamn bloodhounds for the facts.”

Teri said in a flat voice, “We knew someone was following us, we didn’t know who. That reporter kept following me in your van. So I had Sands follow him back to your place.’’

McGuire snorted. “Hell, you didn’t even send him after the right guy.”

“Turned out I did,” she said. There was a silence.

“And?” he said.

“And Sands called me,” she said, impatiently. “He said he’d looked inside the van and apartment, figured out that Harris was the photojournalist for
Insider
who nailed Jarrod Johansen. That was enough for him to kill you right there. I freaked because I figured you had a photo making me as the link between Cheever and Jimbo. So when Sands said he wanted to wire something that night to take you out, I said do it.”

“Peter figured it out,” Sarah murmured.

Ben opened his eyes to see her look at him; her eyes were shining with tears. “He made the connection.”

“Smart-ass reporter,” Teri said. “Look what it got him. Look what it’s going to get you.”

“All this over the picture of you two together,” Ben said, slowly. “But her face wasn’t even visible.”

“Tell me about it,” McGuire said. “I didn’t even know who Peter Gallagher was until I read in the paper the next day that he blew up. Couple days later, Teri comes crawling to me, says she made a big mistake. She thought Sands screwed up, got the wrong guy. That the picture must be someplace in your apartment. So I sent Dawson. Another frigging fiasco.”

“The cops didn’t show the photos to you? Brace or Calabro?”

“Naw. I own some cops, but not those two. I didn’t know you couldn’t see Teri’s face until you two came in and laid the photo out on my desk. You’re telling me you were on vacation, that it was Gallagher who made the shot, and I’m trying not to laugh in your face. I let you think that it was Suzanne in the picture and you went for it.”

“So why’d you kill Cheever?” Ben asked.

“He was going to spill it all,” McGuire said. “He got religion.”

Ben turned in time to see McGuire’s grin.

“Besides, I’ve got a problem with authority,” McGuire said. “I can’t stand it when people won’t do what I tell them.”

CHAPTER 48

KURT STARED AT HIS HANDS.

So much of his blood had dripped down onto them.

He sat beside Jake. Third seat back. Window seat. Wedged in tight with Jake in the middle, the one called Paulie beside him. The gun on Paulie’s lap, finger inside the trigger guard.

Lainnie and Andi sitting in front of them.

Reynolds was driving, the map spread out on the passenger seat.

An American family, Kurt thought. Out for a drive.

Kurt’s entire head pulsed. His left cheekbone had puffed up into his line of vision, a white blur just under his eye. He touched his cheek and winced. His eyes immediately began to water.

The cheekbone must be broken, he figured.

But his figuring was abstract, thoughts that he recognized as his own, but from far away.

Maybe the damage from that gun whipping in his face had been so severe that he truly had no choice.