No Safe House (20 page)

She swallowed. “What else?”

“Vince says you’re to forget any of this ever happened.”

“Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

I grabbed both her wrists and squeezed. “You listen to me and you listen good.”

She gulped.

“Vince isn’t kidding around. You won’t forget what happened tonight, but you’re going to have to pretend you have. He wants you to forget you ever even met Stuart Koch. He doesn’t want you, or me, talking to anybody about this. He doesn’t want us looking for Stuart—he doesn’t want us checking the hospital, going to his house, nothing. And he sure doesn’t want us going to the police about it.”

Even without Vince leaning on us, I’d have had pretty mixed feelings about calling the Milford cops. What the hell would I have told them? That my daughter broke into a house with her boyfriend, who may or may not have been shot? Point the cops in the direction of Vince Fleming for the full story? Who had as much as told me he had, in his possession, the gun Grace had been holding?

That gun was a wild card. Even if Grace hadn’t fired it, what if, after she’d dropped it, someone else had? What if Grace’s prints were still on it?

“But isn’t that wrong?” Grace asked.

The question snapped me out of my thoughts. “What?”

“Isn’t it wrong? If something has happened to Stuart, whether I did it or somebody else did, isn’t it wrong not to go to the police? Don’t we have to tell them what happened?”

I felt like this was a test. Of whether I was a good father. Of whether I was a good man. It struck me at that moment that being one did not necessarily mean you were both.

I squeezed her wrists harder and looked down at the table briefly, then met her eyes with mine.

“Grace, you and that boy broke into a house. You were going to steal a car. You’re vulnerable. Very vulnerable. If there’s a way to keep you out of this, I’m going to do it and I don’t give a good goddamn whether it’s the right thing or not.”

“You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

I let go of her wrists. “The only thing that matters to me right now is you. Making sure that you’re safe, that nothing bad happens to you. There’s a lot we don’t know right now, and without knowing everything, it’s hard to figure out what the best thing to do is. And as much as I don’t like having to follow orders from a thug like Vince Fleming, right now I don’t see a lot of other options.”

“This feels wrong.”

“Grace … I don’t have all the answers right now.”

She searched my eyes for some sort of comfort. I shifted my chair around the corner of the table and hugged her. She buried her face into my shoulder and wept.

“I’m so scared,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“We have to ride this out. Maybe, soon, we’ll have an idea what we’re dealing with. But until then—and I hate this, believe me, I hate this—I’m not sure we have much choice but to go along with what Vince wants.”

She pulled away and asked, “What if my friends start asking?”

“Start asking what?”

“What’s happened to Stuart? What am I supposed to say?”

I felt a constriction in my neck. We were on borrowed time. I could keep Grace out of trouble maybe for a while, but at what point would all this catch up to us? When would the unraveling begin?

“How many know you were seeing Stuart?”

“A couple of my friends. And Stuart might have told somebody. I mean, we weren’t, like, going out, but we’d hung out together a few times, is all. I might have mentioned him on Facebook.”

Jesus. Once it was online, it was out there forever.

“If there are any mentions of him, delete them,” I said. “Delete anything you can. No, wait. Later, if they find you were deleting everything about him the same night he disappeared—Shit. I don’t know. If your friends ask what’s going on with him, you haven’t seen him lately. You drifted apart, something like that. Did anyone know you and Stuart were going to be together tonight?”

Grace thought a moment. “I don’t think so. I didn’t tell anyone.”

“What about Sandra?”

“Sandra?”

“Sandra Miller. The girl you were supposedly going to the movies with tonight.”

Grace winced.

“Yeah,” I said. “Did you tell her she was your cover story, so if I called her or her mother she’d know what was going on?” Grace shook her head. Kids think they’re so smart sometimes, but the perfect crime is beyond them.

“You told me Sandra’s mother was going to drive you home? How were you going to make that work?”

“I was going to get Stuart to drop me just down the street, so you wouldn’t have seen any car pull into the driveway,” she said.

I pushed my chair back. It was difficult, in the midst of trying to comfort my daughter, not to be furious with her, too.

“Tell me about Jane,” I said.

“What about her?”

“When did you two connect?”

Picking up the accusing tone, she pulled back. “I found her online and became her friend.”

“Being a friend online and being someone you call in the
middle of the night when you think you’ve shot somebody, those are two very different levels of friendship,” I said. “Why did you call her? When did you get so chummy?”

“I got to know her over the last few months. I wanted to know.”

“You wanted to know what?”

“I wanted to know about Mom, and you, and what happened back then.” She sniffed. “You guys never really talk about it. I mean, you talk about how Mom’s still all freaked-out about what happened to her, that it was this big trauma and all, but you never get into the details so I could really try to understand, you know?”

I listened.

“But I knew that Vince Fleming helped you guys back then, and that he was with Mom the night her family disappeared back in, like, 1983. And I knew you used to be Jane’s teacher and that Vince was kind of her stepfather. I wasn’t going to ask Vince about things. He was way too scary, and too old to talk to. But I thought if I asked Jane, she’d answer some of my questions.”

“You could have just asked us,” I said.

“Oh yeah, right,” Grace said. “You guys have been, like, superprotective forever about this. When I was seven, and Mom and I nearly got killed, it’s like you guys put me in this bubble. It’s the thing you always say we’ll talk about one day, but we never do. And it’s like Mom’s the only one who gets to be a basket case about it. What about me? You think because it happened a long time ago I’m not still freaked-out, too? I haven’t forgotten being in that car at the top of that cliff. I can close my eyes and it’s like I’m right back there. I remember. And I want to know. I want to know everything about it, not just discuss my stupid
feelings
about it, like that time you sent me to that shrink Mom sees. And even if Jane wasn’t right there when it all happened, she knows a lot about what went down and she doesn’t mind talking about it
with me. She’s
helping
me, okay? Is that okay with you and Mom? That I talk to someone who can
really
help me?”

My neck was getting too tired to hold my head up. I let it fall again while I considered her words. “So you got together,” I said.

“Yeah. We met a bunch of times. For coffee and like that. And we didn’t just talk about all the shit that happened a long time ago, either. We just talked about stuff. I like her—I like her a lot—and when I was in trouble, I called her.”

“Because you thought she could help you more than I could?” I asked. It was hard not to feel slightly wounded.

“Not … exactly,” she said. “It was because of Stuart. And her connection.”

“Because she knew him,” I said. “Because Stuart’s dad works with Vince.”

“Yeah. I’d seen Stuart around school and all, but it was Jane who actually introduced us.”

“When was this?”

“Like, a few weeks ago? We were in the food court, and she saw him and called him over, and we all got talking. And after that, Stuart texted me and we hung out.”

“Did you know that Stuart was connected to Vince Fleming? That his father is Eldon Koch? That he works for Vince?”

“Yeah, I knew that.”

“You knew that, and you went out with him? This kid whose father is some kind of fucking gangster? You know he kidnapped me off the street back when all that stuff happened?”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“But he also helped you, right? If it hadn’t been for him helping you figure out what happened, I’d be dead, right? And Mom, too? Not bad for a fucking gangster.”

I had no comeback for that.

“That’s the stuff I found out from Jane. Maybe if you guys would tell me something once in a while, I’d have known.”

“You should never—”

I stopped myself. I was letting things get out of hand. Now I was the one losing control. Of the situation, and myself.

“You’re always about not prejudging people,” Grace said.

“What?”

“Just because someone’s dad is bad doesn’t have to mean the kid’s bad.”

I looked at her, dumbfounded. “Stuart broke into a house so he could steal a car. Who’s prejudging? The kid already proved himself to be bad news. Just like his father.”

Grace got up, ran upstairs to her room, and slammed the door hard enough the house shook.

Hard enough that it shook something free that I’d been thinking about without actually realizing I’d been thinking about it.

For all he knows, she saw him
.

This person who ran past, who may have shot and killed Stuart.

Did he know Grace failed to get a good look at him?

If he believed Grace had seen him, that she could identify him…

We might have more to worry about than the police finding out Grace was in that house.

“HEY,”
Vince said as Jane Scavullo let herself in. He’d heard her coming up the stairs and was expecting her.

“Hi,” she said tiredly. She stood by the door.

“Come in,” he said.

“I’m fine here.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, come in and sit down.”

Jane advanced into the room and sat in the chair Terry had been in moments earlier.

“So what’d she say? She see anything?” Vince asked. “No, wait. Hold that thought. I gotta empty this thing before I blow up.” He went into the bathroom, closed the door.

Jane closed her eyes for a moment, laid her hands down on the table to rest them. Her father emerged a couple of minutes later, wiping his hands on his shirt to dry them, and took a seat opposite the young woman.

“So?”

“She wasn’t much help.”

“Shit. She must have noticed something.”

Jane recounted her conversation with Grace as close to word for word as she could.

“So we know nothing about this guy,” Vince said. “Not one goddamn thing.” Jane said nothing. “That’s just great. Did she say whether they were there for anything other than the car?”

Jane shook her head. “Like what?”

“Did she or didn’t she?”

“She didn’t. Stuart broke in to get the Porsche keys. If he was there for anything else, Grace doesn’t seem to know about it.”

“So they didn’t go upstairs?”

“I
told
you what she said.”

“Whoever else was in there didn’t have to bust in,” Vince said.

“You asking me?”

“I’m thinking out loud. Stuart broke a window, the dumb shit. But the alarm system was already off. So it could have been someone who had a key, who knew how to disarm the security system.”

“Maybe the owners have someone who checks the house for them. So they have a key, know the code.” She said it as if it was obvious.

Vince thought about that. “But if it was someone there with their blessing, why was he creeping around with the lights off?”

Jane shrugged. “I don’t know, Vince. It’s late.” She cocked her head to one side, eyeing him critically. “You’re so worried about them getting into that house and how somebody else got into the house and what they were looking for, blah blah blah, but are you even this much concerned about Stuart?” She held her thumb and index finger a fraction of an inch apart.

“Of course I am.”

“Does Eldon even know yet?”

“No.”

“When you going to tell him?”

Vince strummed his fingers on the table. “When the time is right. I got a few questions for him first.”

“You’re kidding me,” Jane said. “Before you tell him about his kid, you’re going to grill him?”

“Yeah. Like how’d Stuart know to pick that house? Eldon must have got sloppy and let him see the list.”

“What list? Why are you so freaked-out about that house anyway?”

“Never mind. The fact Stuart was there goes right back to Eldon. He fucked up. Something about this is just not right.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Maybe Eldon was there. In the house. He was late for our meet tonight.”

Jane put her fingertips to her forehead, looked downward. “Vince, really, are you saying Eldon shot his own kid?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know what happened. Maybe Eldon was there, and didn’t tell his kid, and they surprised each other.”

“This is crazy talk,” Jane said.

“Maybe Eldon was ripping me off,” Vince said, more to himself than to Jane.

“How the hell could Eldon have been ripping you off? He wasn’t in
your
house. He was in somebody
else’s
house. So Eldon could shoot his own kid, then show up for this meet you had? That’s what you’re saying? Does Eldon strike you as someone who could pull that off?”

“I’m gonna find out. I guarantee it.”

Jane pushed back her chair and stood. “Well, good luck with that.” She turned and headed for the door.

“Wait,” Vince said to her back. She stopped without turning around. “I just want to … I want to thank you for the heads-up. Grace calling you and then you letting me know, I want you to know, you did the right thing.”

“What else was I going to do?” she said, facing him now.

“I know, but still. I get that you’re pissed, being dragged into this. I don’t like you getting mixed up in my business, but this was different. I figured Grace’d tell you more than she’d tell me.”

“You don’t want me involved in your business?” Jane countered. “Since when? You think somehow I haven’t always been involved? Come on. You were living with my mother. Then you guys got married. I was living under your roof. So maybe you didn’t have me ripping off a shipment of iPads, but you think I wasn’t involved? Every time my mom got a phone call, her heart was in her mouth, worried you were dead or in jail. Someone came knockin’ at the door, I figured maybe it was the cops, or someone standing there with a gun, looking to blow your brains out. So don’t be all sorry about my having to take Grace’s call, because that was nothing compared to the kind of stuff I lived with for years.”