Just One Look (2004) (37 page)

"When?"

"Three months ago."

"Why?"

Larue smiled. "That balance thing again. Making things right. You call it yin and yang. MacKenzie called it God."

"I don't understand."

"Gordon MacKenzie was dying." Larue put his hand on Vespa's shoulder. "So before he went, he needed to confess his sins."

The gun was in Grace's ankle holster.

She started up the car. The Asian man sat next to her. "Head up the road and turn left."

Grace was scared, of course, but there was an odd calmness too. Something about being in the eye of the storm, she guessed. Something was happening. There was a potential to find answers here. She tried to prioritize.

First: Get him far away from the children.

That was the number one thing here. Emma and Max would be fine. The teachers stayed outside until all the children were picked up. When she didn't show, they would give an impatient sigh and bring them to the office. That old battleaxe of a receptionist, Mrs. Dinsmont, would gleefully cluck her tongue about the neglectful mother and make the children wait. There had been an incident about six months ago when Grace got caught up by construction and arrived late. She'd been wracked with guilt, picturing Max waiting like a scene from Oliver Twist, but when she got there he was in the office coloring a picture of a dinosaur. He wanted to stay.

The school was out of sight now. "Turn right."

Grace obeyed.

Her captor, if that's what you wanted to call him, had said that he was taking her to Jack. She did not know if that was true or not, but she somehow suspected that it was. She was sure, of course, that he was not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. She had been warned. She had gotten too close. He was dangerous--she didn't need to see the gun in his waistband to know that. There was a crackle around him, an electricity, and you knew, just knew, that this man always left devastation in his path.

But Grace desperately needed to see where this led. She had her gun in the ankle holster. If she stayed smart, if she was careful, she would have the element of surprise. That was something. So for now she would go along. There was really no alternative anyway.

She was worried about working the gun and the holster. Would the gun come out smoothly? Would the gun really just fire when she pulled the trigger? Did you really just aim and pull? And even if she could get the gun from the holster in time--something doubtful with the way this guy was watching her--what would she do? Point it at him and demand he take her to Jack?

She couldn't imagine that working.

She couldn't just shoot him either. Forget the ethical dilemma or the question of if she'd be brave enough to pull the trigger. He, this man, might be her only connection to Jack. If she killed him, where would that leave her? She'd have silenced her only solid clue, maybe her only chance, to find Jack.

Better to wait and play it out. As if she had a choice.

"Who are you?" Grace asked.

Total stone face. He took hold of her purse and emptied the contents into his lap. He went through it, sifting and tossing items into the backseat. He found her cell phone, removed the battery, threw it in the back.

She kept peppering him with questions--where is my husband, what do you want with us--but he continued to ignore her. When they reached a stoplight, the man did something that she did not expect.

He rested his hand on her bad knee.

"Your leg was damaged," he said.

Grace was not sure how to respond to this. His touch was light, almost feathery. And then without warning his fingers dug down with steel talons. They actually burrowed beneath the kneecap. Grace buckled. The tips of the man's fingers disappeared into the hollow where the knee meets the shinbone. The pain was so sudden, so enormous, that Grace could not even scream. She reached out and grabbed his fingers, tried to pry them out of her knee, but there was absolutely no give. His hand felt like a concrete block.

His voice was barely a whisper. "If I dig in a little more and then pull . . ."

Her head was swimming. She was close to losing consciousness.

" . . . I could tear your kneecap right off."

When the light turned green, he let go. Grace nearly collapsed in relief. The whole incident had probably taken less than five seconds. The man looked at her. There was the smallest hint of a smile on his face.

"I'd like you to stop talking now, okay?"

Grace nodded.

He faced forward. "Keep driving."

* * *

Perlmutter called in the APB. Charlaine Swain had had the good sense to get both the make and license plate. The car was registered to Grace Lawson. No surprise there. Perlmutter was in an unmarked car now, heading toward the school. Scott Duncan was with him.

"So who is this Eric Wu?" Duncan asked.

Perlmutter debated what to tell him but saw no reason to hold this back. "To date we know he broke into a house, assaulted the owner in such a way as to leave him temporarily paralyzed, shot another man, and my guess is, he killed Rocky Conwell, the guy who was following Lawson."

Duncan had no response.

Two other police cars were already on the scene. Perlmutter did not like that--marked cars at a school. They'd had the good sense, at least, to not use their sirens. That was something. The parents picking up offspring reacted in two ways. Some hurried their kids to their cars, hands on their shoulders, shielding them as though from gunfire. Others let curiosity rule the day. They walked over, oblivious or in a state of denial that there could be any danger in so innocent a setting.

Charlaine Swain was there. Perlmutter and Duncan hurried toward her. A young uniformed cop named Dempsey was asking her questions and taking notes. Perlmutter shooed him away and asked, "What happened?"

Charlaine told him about coming to school, keeping an eye out for Grace Lawson because of what he, Perlmutter, had said. She told him about seeing Eric Wu with Grace.

"There was no overt threat?" he asked.

Charlaine said, "No."

"So she might have gone him with him voluntarily."

Charlaine Swain flicked a glance at Scott Duncan, then back to Perlmutter. "No. She didn't go voluntarily."

"How do you know?"

"Because Grace came alone to pick up her kids," Charlaine said.

"So?"

"So she wouldn't just voluntarily leave them like that. Look, I couldn't call you guys right away when I saw him. He was able to make me freeze from across a schoolyard."

Perlmutter said, "I'm not sure I understand."

"If Wu could do that to me from that far away," Charlaine said, "imagine what he'd be able to do to Grace Lawson when he was right next to her, whispering in her ear."

Another uniformed officer named Jackson came sprinting over to Perlmutter. His eyes were wide and Perlmutter could see he was trying everything he could not to panic. The parents picked up on it too. They took a step away.

"We found something," Jackson said.

"What?"

He leaned in closer so no one would overhear. "A van parked two blocks away. I think you should come see this."

* * *

She should use the gun now.

Grace's knee throbbed. It felt as if someone had set off a bomb inside the joint. Her eyes were wet from holding back tears. She wondered if she'd be able to walk when they stopped.

She sneaked glances at the man who had hurt her so. Whenever she did, he was watching her, that bemused look still on his face. She tried to think, tried to organize her thoughts, but she kept flashing back to his hand on her knee.

He had been so casual about causing her such pain. It would have been one thing if he'd been emotional about it, one way or the other, if he'd been moved to either ecstasy or revulsion, but there had been nothing there. Like hurting someone was paperwork. No strain, no sweat. His boast, if you want to call it that, had not been idle: If he'd so desired, he could have twisted off her kneecap like a bottle top.

They had crossed the state line and were in New York now. She was on Interstate 287 heading toward the Tappan Zee Bridge. Grace did not dare speak. Her mind, naturally enough, kept going back to the children. Emma and Max would have come out of the school by now. They would have looked for her. Would they have been brought to the office? Cora had seen Grace in the schoolyard. So had several other mothers, Grace was sure. Would they say or do something?

This was all irrelevant and, more than that, a waste of mental energy. Nothing she could do about it. Time to concentrate on the task at hand.

Think about the gun.

Grace tried to rehearse in her mind how it would go. She would reach down with both hands. She would pull her cuff up with her left and grab the weapon with her right. How was it strapped in? Grace tried to remember. There was a strip covering the top, wasn't there? She had snapped it into place. It kept the gun secure, so it wouldn't jerk around. She'd have to unsnap that. If she just tried to pull the gun free, it would get caught.

Okay, good. Remember that: Unsnap first. Then pull.

She thought about timing. The man was incredibly strong. She had seen that. He probably had a fair amount of experience with violence. She would have to wait for an opportunity. First--and this was obvious--she couldn't be driving when she made her move. They would either need to be at a stoplight or parked or . . . or better, wait until they were getting out of the car. That might work.

Second, the man would have to be distracted. He watched her a lot. He was also armed. He had a weapon in his waistband. He would be able to draw it out far faster than she could. So she had to make sure that he was not looking at her--that his attention was, in some way, diverted.

"Take this exit."

The sign read ARMONK. They had only been on 287 for maybe three or four miles. They were not going to be crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge. She had thought that perhaps the bridge would have provided another opportunity. There were tollbooths there. She could have tried to escape or somehow signal the toll worker, though she couldn't imagine that working. Her captor would be watching her if they'd pulled up to the tollbooth. He would, she bet, have put his hand on her knee.

She veered to the right and up the ramp. She began to work it out in her head again. When you really thought about it, Grace's best bet would be to wait until they reached their destination. For one thing, if indeed he really was taking her to Jack, well, Jack would be there, right? That made some sense.

But more than that, when they stopped the car, they would both have to get out. Obvious, yes, but it would provide an opportunity. He would get out on his side. She would get out on hers.

This could be her diversion.

Again she started rehearsing it in her head. She would open the car door. As she swung her legs out, she'd pull up the cuff. Her legs would be on the ground and blocked by the car. He wouldn't see. If she timed it right, he would be getting out on his side of the car at the same time. He'd turn his back. She'd be able to pull out the weapon.

"Take the next right," he said. "And then the second left."

They were moving through a town Grace didn't know. There were more trees here than in Kasselton. The houses looked older, more lived-in, more private.

"Pull into the driveway over there. Third on the left."

Grace's hands stayed tight on the wheel. She pulled into the driveway. He told her to stop in front of the house.

She took a breath and waited for him to open the door and get out.

* * *

Perlmutter had never seen anything like it.

The guy in the van, an overweight man with a standard issue mafiosa sweat suit, was dead. His last few moments had not been pleasant. The big man's neck was, well, flat, totally flat, as if a steam-roller had somehow managed to roll over only the man's throat, leaving his head and torso intact.

Daley, never one at a loss for words, said, "Serious grossness." Then he added, "He looks familiar."

"Richie Jovan," Perlmutter said. "Works low level for Carl Vespa."

"Vespa?" Daley repeated. "He's involved in this?"

Perlmutter shrugged. "This has to be Wu's handiwork."

Scott Duncan was turning white. "What the hell is going on?"

"It's simple, Mr. Duncan." Perlmutter turned to face him. "Rocky Conwell worked for Indira Khariwalla, a private investigator you hired. The same man--Eric Wu--murdered Conwell, killed this poor schmuck, and was last seen driving away from that school with Grace Lawson." Perlmutter moved toward him. "You want to tell us what's going on now?"

Another police car screeched to a stop. Veronique Baltrus came flying out. "Got it."

"What?"

"Eric Wu at yenta-match.com. He was using the name Stephen Fleisher." She sprinted over to them, the raven hair tied back in a tight bun. "Yenta-match sets up Jewish widows and widowers. Wu had three online flirtations going on at the same time. One woman is from Washington, DC. Another lives in Wheeling, West Virginia. And the last one, a Beatrice Smith, resides in Armonk, New York."

Perlmutter broke into a run. No doubt, he thought. That was where Wu had gone. Scott Duncan followed. The ride to Armonk would take no more than twenty minutes.