No Safe House (41 page)

She’d loved him, too, back when they were seeing each other. God knows, she loved the sex. Between his shifts and hers, and the fact that he was living in Stamford and she in Milford, their times together were irregular and rushed. Sometimes they’d meet at motels in Fairfield or Norwalk, slip between the sheets, have a quick drink afterward, and off they’d go, their separate ways.

But then she found out she wasn’t the only one. Snooped through his cell phone once when he slipped out of the motel to buy them some cold beer. Found e-mails.

What could she say? She was a cop. It was in her nature. He should have known better than to leave his phone there.

And then, holy smokes, the phone rang. Right in her hand. Rona had debated whether to answer. What if it was work related? What if it was something really important?

“Hello?” Rona said.

A woman: “Oh, uh, I think I must have dialed wrong.”

“You looking for Heywood?” Rona asked.

“Um, no, I don’t think so.” She hung up.

The poor bastard didn’t know what hit him when he came back with that beer. Things went south after that, despite his protests that the other girl meant nothing to him. Rona refused to see him anymore. Before long, she’d met Lamont, and the love they had for each other was the real thing, no doubt about it, even if he was never quite the lover Heywood had been. They had the church wedding, the big reception, honeymoon in Vegas, the whole deal.

Then Lamont went to Iraq and came back a shell of a man.

It was months before he even spoke. But he was doing well now. She knew he’d never forget the things he saw, but she believed he was going to be okay.

Wedmore had a long sip of her milk shake. Still icy cold. She had to be careful not to drink it too quickly. She’d get a brain freeze.

She felt herself wanting to cry.

Rona Wedmore was not going to cry sitting on a park bench in the middle of the Milford Green.

But she wanted to. For Heywood. For Lamont.

For herself.

She watched three small children run past with balloons. A woman in her eighties walking her dog. A young couple on another bench having an argument. Too far away to hear the details.

Her cell phone buzzed.

Wedmore sighed inwardly. Took another sip of her milk shake, then rested the takeout cup on one of the park bench planks. She reached into her purse, found the phone, glanced at the screen, and saw that it was work calling. She put the phone to her ear.

“Wedmore.”

“It’s me.”

Spock.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I found the car—pretty sure it’s the same one—on one of the traffic cameras. Got a clear look at the plate.”

“Give it to me. I’ll run it down.”

“Way ahead of ya. Got a name and address here if you’ve got a pencil.”

Wedmore got out her notebook.

VINCE
called up to me from the study of my house, where an armed Reggie was babysitting him.

“You find it?” he asked. There was something in his voice. Was it … mischief?

“Yes,” I said, my body blocking Wyatt’s view of the guns that had been secreted under the attic insulation. There was a hint of light filtering its way around me from the opening in the ceiling and from my phone, set to the flashlight app, which Wyatt was holding up by the rafters.

“That’s good,” Vince asked.

Reggie called up, “Is there a vase?”

I was running my hands over the contents of the box, all the guns. I was guessing at least a couple dozen.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “I’m still feeling around.”

“How hard can it be to tell what you’re feeling?” she shouted.

Vince, of course, had to know what I was going to find up here. I remembered what he’d said to me.

If an opportunity presented itself, take it.

What was it he wanted me to do when I found these? Come out shooting? Kill Wyatt, then Reggie?

No, that made no sense. We had to find out where Jane was, and that wasn’t going to be easy if Reggie and Wyatt were dead. As if shooting a couple of people was even within my capabilities.

As I’d told Vince, I didn’t know a lot about firearms, but I was betting these weapons were Glocks, just like the gun in the glove box of Vince’s truck.

There is no safety
.

So if these guns were loaded, all one had to do was point and pull the trigger. Maybe some were loaded, and others not. Kind of like playing the Connecticut lottery.

I glanced back over my shoulder at Wyatt. Phone in one hand, gun in the other.

I said, “I need to pass you some of this stuff—you can pass it through the hole down to them.”

He’d have to take a step closer and bend down to do that. Plus, he was going to have to put away either the phone or the gun, or both.

“Hang on a sec,” he said.

He chose the phone. He slid it into the front pocket of his pants and started to crouch down.

“Christ’s sake,” I said. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

He stood up again. “Okay, fine.” The phone came back out, the flashlight app reactivated. This time, Wyatt tucked his gun into the waistband of his pants. But as he started to kneel, he realized tucking it in front was pretty uncomfortable, so he shifted it around to the side.

He knelt down, fumbling with the phone, trying to shine the light where he thought I wanted it.

I swung around, squatting on my haunches, and touched the barrel of the gun to his temple.

I whispered, “Not. One. Word.”

Wyatt took a breath.

“If you move an inch I’ll pull the trigger,” I said.

And thought,
Please don’t move
.

“Vince,” I called out softly.

“Yeah, Terry?”

“Could you tell Reggie that our situation has changed up here?”

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“I’m guessin’,” Vince said, “the balance of power has shifted.”

“What are you talking about?” Reggie said again.

“That be fair to say, Terry?” Vince said.

“Yeah, that’s fair. I’ve got one of these Glocks pressed up against Wyatt’s head here.”

Wyatt twitched, like maybe he was thinking of going for his gun, but it would have been an awkward move for him to make, and not something he could do quickly, kneeling as he was.

Reggie said, “What? Wyatt?”

“It’s true,” he said. He’d set my phone, faceup, on the narrow side of a stud, the upward cast of light highlighting the droplets of sweat beading up on his forehead.

“How the hell’d that happen?” she asked. “Jesus! How’d he get your gun?”

“He didn’t! It was already up here.”

Vince said, “Hand your piece over, Reggie, or Wyatt’s brains become part of the insulation.”

“No! No way!” she shouted upward. “You take that gun off Wyatt, or I swear to God I’ll shoot your boss!”

Sweat was trickling down my forehead, too. A drop went into my eye and stung like the dickens. I blinked several times.

I said, “How would you like to handle this, Vince?”

Vince, directing his voice my way, said calmly, “Shoot him.”

“Wait!” Wyatt shouted. I couldn’t have been more grateful.

“No!” Reggie screamed. “I swear, if you do, I’ll shoot him
one second later. You—you get your ass down here now, you fucker, and let my husband go, or I’ll kill Vince. You think I won’t? You want to try me?”

Vince said to her, “Go ahead. Shoot me. And then my friend will kill your husband. That’s what you stand to lose. Your
husband
. But all my friend’ll lose is an asshole boss he’s never liked much anyway. But if you hand over your piece, I can talk my friend into not putting a hole in Wyatt’s head.”

“Reggie,” Wyatt said, trying to keep calm, “I don’t want to fucking die up here.” And then he said an interesting thing. “Babe, come on, you can’t run the tax thing without me. You need me for that.”

Like, if Reggie was going to save him, it was going to be for more than love.

I know it’s a cliché, but things really did seem to be moving in slow motion. Every second I held that gun to Wyatt’s head felt like an hour. It wasn’t as if the Glock weighed twenty pounds, but holding it with my arm extended, I was feeling the strain. And my legs, hunched down the way I was, were screaming with pain.

I was a teacher of high school English and creative writing. Holding a gun to the head of a kidnapper did not fall into my general realm of experience. Sure, things got pretty hairy seven years ago, but even then, I hadn’t found myself in a position quite like this.

“So what’s the fucking deal, then?” Reggie asked.

“I want Jane,” Vince said.

“Okay, fine, you get the little bitch back. Wyatt comes down. You get Jane. We’re square. Just give me the vase and the cash that’s up there.”

“There is no vase,” I said. “And there is no cash.”

“Look harder!” Reggie shrieked. “The vase, it doesn’t mean anything to me or you. It’s got no value. It’s my uncle’s.”

“If you’re looking for something Eli Goemann left with me,”
Vince said, “it’s not up there. Never was. We stashed his stuff elsewhere. Everything there? It’s from those bikers you asked about earlier. From New Haven.”

“Then we go to where you hid Eli’s stuff,” she said. “You take us there. Then you get Jane. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

“No.” Vince’s voice was very calm. “That’s not how it’s going to work. I get Jane, right now, and you two live.”

Wondering whether there might be a way I could move things along, I pressed the Glock harder against Wyatt’s temple, to the point he nearly lost his balance. I said to him, “She needs to decide just how much she loves, and needs, you.”

“Give him the gun, for Christ’s sake!”

From below, near total silence. I thought I heard a muttered “Fuck.” The tension probably didn’t last more than ten seconds, but it seemed to stretch out for much longer.

It was a relief when I heard Vince say, “I’ve got it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“The two of you can come back down now. Wyatt, you first.”

“He’s got a gun on him,” I said.

“Wyatt, be a good boy and let Terry relieve you of that,” Vince said.

“Use your
left
hand,” I said. I’d seen a movie or two.

Wyatt forced his left shoulder up and took the gun from his waistband. Holding it between his thumb and index finger, he dangled it toward me and I took it with my left. Without looking, I dropped it behind me on some insulation.

“I take it,” I said to Vince, “that I don’t have to bring all these guns down.”

“Just the one in your hand.”

Wyatt turned himself around and lowered his legs through the hatch, found a perch on the ladder, and descended. I grabbed my phone on the way to the opening, and by the time I was down, gun still in hand, Vince was stationed in a corner of the
room with the gun trained on the happy couple, now standing shoulder to shoulder.

“We tell where she is, right now, you let us go,” Reggie said, still an edge in her voice, still thinking she had some leverage.

Vince looked at me and sighed. “Do I look like I have some sort of mental problem?”

“It’s okay. We’ll take you,” Wyatt said. “We’ll take you to the house. We’ll take you to her.”

“Who’s with her?”

“Nobody,” the woman said. “She’s alone. Tied up, but just fine.”

Vince’s eyes went from her to him and back again. He said, more to himself than anyone else in the room, “We only need one person to take us there.”

I thought,
Please don’t kill someone in my house
.

“Come on,” Reggie said, a hint of pleading in her voice. “We’re cooperating, we are.”

“We’ll get her back to you,” Wyatt said flatly. “We’ll do what you want.”

“We’re going back out to your car,” Vince said, “and you’re driving.” He was looking at Reggie. “I’ll be in the back with your husband.”

Which put me up front, riding shotgun, as it were. Unless Vince no longer required my services.

I decided to ask, “You still need me?”

The man looked wounded. “Are you kidding? You’re my number two.”

VINCE
said I’d lead the pack and he’d take up the rear. So I went down the stairs first, followed by Wyatt, then Reggie. Vince, hobbling some, came down last. He and I maintained a solid grip on our weapons.

Vince had taken Reggie’s car keys from her and had the presence of mind to ask Wyatt for his set, too, no doubt figuring that both of them would have keys to the BMW. He was right.

Vince tossed Wyatt’s keys into the shrubs under the front window and held on to Reggie’s. When we all came out of the house, he hit the remote to unlock the BMW. “Go on and get in,” he said to the couple. “We’ll be right along.”

Reggie got behind the wheel and Wyatt settled in behind her.

I said to Vince, “You think they’re telling the truth? That Jane’s still okay?”

Grim faced, he said, “Gotta hope.”

“You could have told me about the guns being hidden up there instead of money.”

“I knew you’d figure out what to do. If you’d known ahead of time, you’d have been too nervous.”

Like I wasn’t already?

“Vince,” I said, reaching out tentatively and resting my hand on his arm. He glanced at it and I took it away. “I wasn’t going to say this again, but damn it, you really could call the police now. You’ve got these two. You can hand them over.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said.

“You have to,” Vince said, his voice sounding weak. “Because I can’t do it alone. If it’s just me, they’ll get the drop on me. I’m feeling like shit. Coming down the stairs there, things were spinning some.”

I locked up the house while he limped to the car and got in the back next to Wyatt. Following his lead, I kept the gun down and close to my thigh so as not to attract the attention of anyone passing by. As I was getting into the front passenger seat, Vince was handing Reggie her car keys.

Reggie took us north out of the neighborhood and got on 95 heading east, but very soon she took the Milford Parkway north to the Merritt, then went west. She got off at Main, went north, passing Sikorsky on the right, then hung a left on Warner Hill Road. We made a left onto Colbert, and soon she was rolling the BMW up the driveway of a nondescript white bungalow, tapping a button on a remote clipped to the visor. Ahead of us a garage door rolled up.