No Safe House (9 page)

“What list?”

“He didn’t say. Just a list where they kept track of things. It might have been a list his dad had.”

“What’s his dad do?”

Grace sniffed and shook her head. “I don’t know, just stuff. But Stuart knew the people who lived in the house were away and figured if he could get into the house, he could get the keys and take the car for a drive.”

“Jesus,” I said. I seemed to be saying that a lot.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. It was really stupid. I’m so sorry. I know this is it for me. My life’s finished. What’s Mom going to say when she finds out? She’ll probably kill herself. After she kills me.”

“Grace, listen to me. Is it possible you didn’t actually shoot him? Did you see him get shot? What did you see?”

“I don’t know. I heard the shot, but I didn’t really see anything.”

“Were you pointing the gun? Were you holding it up, or was it down at your side?”

“I think—I don’t think I was pointing it. Stuart told me not to put my finger on the trigger, but then when I started to follow him, I kind of moved it in my hand because it was heavy and I might have got my finger on it. Maybe it went off when it was pointed down, and the bullet bounced or something.”

“Tell me again, where did this gun come from?”

“It was in the glove compartment.”

“He keeps a gun in his car?”

“It’s not his car. It belongs to his dad. It’s really old.”

“Is it possible his father’s a cop or something?”

Grace shook her head. “He’s definitely not a cop.” I had the sense she knew more than she was saying about Stuart’s father. “And it was just a dumpy old car, not a police car or anything. It was huge.”

“Okay, so Stuart got the gun from the glove compartment. Why did he want to have a gun?”

“In case we ran into anyone. He said he wasn’t going to use it to shoot anybody, just to scare them off if they gave him a hard time.”

In my head, I was screaming.

“How did it end up in your hand?” I asked.

“He dropped it while he was looking for the keys, so he asked me to hang on to it. I told him I didn’t want to, I swear. I didn’t want to touch it even. But he got really mad at me.”

“When the shot happened, did your arm kick back hard?” I didn’t know much about guns but was aware of the principle of recoil.

“I don’t know. It’s all kind of hard to remember.”

“Grace,” I said, trying to get her to look me in the eye. “Grace, look at me.”

Slowly, she raised her head.

“If this boy has been shot, then we need to get him some help.”

“What?”

“If he’s in that house, if he’s been wounded, then we have to help him. If you did shoot him, and we don’t know if you did or not, but if you did, he might be alive. And if he is, we have to get him to a hospital. We have to call an ambulance.”

Another sniff. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Think. Do you know the address?”

“I told you. I don’t even know where I was. Stuart drove, and then when I left, I didn’t even pay attention to where I was exactly. He said the name of the people who lived there, but …” She struggled to remember. “I don’t … I can’t think what it was.”

“Then we’re going to have to find that house,” I told her.

“Huh?”

“We’re going to have to go back. You’re going to have to help
me find it. If we drive around that area, maybe you’ll recognize it.”

She started to shake.

“I can’t do that. I can’t go back.”

“Look,” I said. “Call him. Try calling Stuart on your cell. Maybe he’s fine. Maybe’s he’s okay.”

“I tried,” she said. “After I ran away. I made—I made some calls before I called you, most of them to Stuart. He didn’t answer.”

“Try one more time. If you get him and find out he’s okay, then we’ll sort out what we have to do. But if you can’t get him, we’re going to have to find that house. Right now, if I called an ambulance, I’d have no idea where to send them.”

Grace swallowed again. “Okay.” She pointed to her purse, which she’d dropped by the bathroom door. “Can you reach that for me?”

I crawled over, got the bag, and set it by her knee. She dug into it, pulled out the phone. She went into her recent calls, tapped the screen, put the phone to her ear.

Waited.

Looked at me.

Waited a little longer.

A large tear formed at the corner of her right eye and left a damp trail down her cheek.

“It went to message,” she whispered.

I stood. “I guess we better go.”

“HELLO?”

“I almost gave up there. That was ten rings, Unk. I wake you?”

“I guess I’d nodded off. What time is … It’s almost eleven. I was watching TV and fell asleep. I think I was dreaming about your father. About when the two of us were growing up together. He liked to light firecrackers under turtles. Mom always said he wasn’t wired right in the head. Something happen?”

“Just thought I’d bring you up to speed.”

“Yes?”

“First of all, they took the bait. Again.”

“That’s good, right, Reggie?”

“Yes and no. What we’re finding is, there’s not just one hiding place. She could be anywhere. It’s a risk-reduction strategy. Multiple spots. I get the wisdom of it. And like I said before, there’s a chance for a real payoff here. Something I wasn’t expecting at the outset.”

“I want you to come out okay. You deserve it.”

“It just means I may have to come up with another strategy. I
can’t hit a dozen locations at once. I’ve got help—I’ve had to bring in a couple of extra guys—but it’s not like I’ve got an army. Instead of us finding a way to get it, maybe we’re going to have to find a way to get them to bring it—and her—to us.”

“You think she’s okay?”

“I’ve got no reason to think otherwise. But we need to move quickly because we’re not the only one looking for her.”

“He can’t have her back. I won’t allow it.”

“I know.”

“You know, I nod off watching TV, but when I actually go to bed, I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about her. About how we met.”

“It was at a funeral, wasn’t it?”

“We both went to Milford High—this was before they closed it and turned it into offices—but she was a year ahead of me. Couple of years after I graduated, and there was this kid name of Brewster. Clive Brewster. Not that bright, drunk half the time. One night he’s goofing around and—You know that little bridge downtown, past the green, with those turrets at one end and those big stones with people’s names on them?”

“Yeah.”

“He decides to jump in. Water’s not that deep there, but it hardly matters because he does this little spin and whacks his head on one of those stones. That was the end of him. So lots of kids came to the church, and I end up sitting next to her, and she nudges me, whispers that the minister’s got this funny little strand of hair that’s sticking out the side of his head, and every time he moves this hair goes waving along with him, like it’s an antenna. And she starts to get the giggles.”

“Wow.”

“It was kind of like—you remember that
Mary Tyler Moore
episode where Chuckles the Clown died? He was in a peanut costume at a parade and got crushed by an elephant?”

“Before my time, Unk.”

“She can’t keep it together. Her body’s starting to shake, so I put my arm round her, like I’m consoling her, like she’s crying instead of laughing, and whisper, ‘Follow my lead. Act really upset.’ We’re right at the end of the pew, so I stand and take her with me, my arm still around her, and she’s making these noises that sound like sobs but she’s actually laughing. I get her out of the church, and the door closes, and she explodes with laughter. But I’m worried the people in the church can still hear, so I pull her in close to me, practically smother her, and I can feel her heaving in my arms, and when she slows down and has herself under control, she looks up at me, and I don’t know what happened, but right then, I looked at her and thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and I kissed her. I kissed her, Reggie, right on the mouth.”

“What a story.”

“Yeah. And the second I did it, I thought, Shit, this is wrong, I’m going to get my face slapped, but she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me back. Know what we did then?”

“Tell me.”

“Drove to Mystic, got a motel and stayed there till the next day.”

“You dog, you.”

“I was never happier.”

“I know, Unk.”

“Get her back. Do whatever you have to do.”

I
grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge for Grace as we headed out of the house. I opened the car door for her, assisting her as though she’d suffered some physical injury. She was on autopilot, going through the motions in a daze. I uncapped the bottle and told her to drink, which she did. I got her buckled in, and by the time I’d gone around the car and settled myself in behind the wheel, she’d drunk a third of the bottle.

“I need to know how you’re feeling,” I said.

She turned her head. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, this is a serious question. Your breathing seems okay. Are you still feeling sick to your stomach?”

“I guess not.”

“You dizzy?”

“I just feel … I feel like I’m in a dream.”

“Chest pain?”

“Am I going to have a heart attack?” she asked, alarmed.

“I need to know whether you’re going into shock,” I told her.

Grace blinked a couple of times. “I … I don’t even know
what I’d be feeling if I was in shock. Mostly I’m just really scared. And numb. It’s like I’m not feeling anything, like I’m watching all this happen to someone else. It can’t be me.”

I wished. I reached out, touched her knee. “You can do this. Where should we start?”

“I guess the gas station,” she said. “Maybe I can figure it out from there.”

So back we went.

“Mom can’t know about this,” she said. “She can’t be home when they come to arrest me and charge me with murder, like in
Law and Order
.”

“We’ll find out first what we’re dealing with,” I said. “But whatever happened tonight, it’s probably not going to be the kind of thing we can keep from your mother. Unless this whole thing turns out to be some huge practical joke.”

I didn’t believe we’d get lucky that way.

“I guess, if I end up in jail, she’ll start wondering what happened to me, so she’ll have to know. Or she’ll see me on TV, when they walk the killer past the cameras and put them into the backseat of a police car.”

“Don’t talk that way.”

“That’s what’ll happen. They’ll send me off to one of those juvie places, with other kids who’ve killed people. I’ll probably get stabbed in a shower. I’ll never come out.”

“Grace,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “let’s get some facts before we go off the deep end. Okay? I need you thinking clearly. You get that?”

“I guess.”

“No, not a guess. Tell me again. What happened just before there was a shot?”

She closed her eyes briefly, trying to put herself back into that house. I had a feeling she’d be having to tell this story many times before this mess was over. To me, to Cynthia.

To the police.

To lawyers.

I had to prod her. “Tell me about when Stuart gave you the gun.”

“Okay, like I said, he dropped it, when he was looking for the keys, and then he told me to hang on to it and I said no.”

“But eventually you took it.”

She nodded. “He was getting really mad at me. So I took it, and tried to keep my finger off the trigger like he said, so I just held on to it by the handle part.”

“The butt.”

“Yeah, I guess. And then I thought I heard something, and then Stuart thought he heard it, too, in the kitchen. I mean, I guess it was the kitchen. It was dark and I’d never been in there before. Stuart wanted to check it out, but I wanted to leave, but he told me to follow him.”

“The gun’s still in your hand.”

“Yeah. I think … I might have moved it to my other hand, and then back again. I’m not sure. It’s all mixed up in my head.”

Up ahead were the lights of the gas station.

“Okay,” I said. “Then what?”

She cocked her head slightly to one side, as if she was remembering details she hadn’t thought about before.

“Someone said, ‘You.’ I remember that.”

“ ‘You’?”

“Yeah.”

“Who said it? Was it Stuart?”

“I’m not sure. It could have been. And then—” She covered her mouth with her right hand. “And then there was the shot. And then it sounded like somebody falling down.”

“The shot,” I repeated. “Where did it sound like it came from?”

“It sounded like it was everywhere. And then I tried to get out the door, and couldn’t, and next thing I knew I was outside. I’d gone back out through the basement window.”

My mind had already imagined the worst-case scenario. That Grace’s fears would be realized, that she had actually fired that gun.

And that the bullet had hit Stuart Koch.

And that Stuart Koch was dead. In that house.

If there was nothing I could do to save him, I had to do everything in my power to save Grace. To help her get through this as best she could. I wasn’t thinking about the morality of this. I wasn’t thinking that justice should run its course, that Grace should get what was coming to her.

I was thinking like her father. I wanted to save her from this. Even if she was guilty of something horrible, I wanted her to get off. The bigger picture wasn’t my concern. Justice didn’t enter into it. I didn’t want my little girl going to prison, and was already thinking about what I could do to ensure that didn’t happen.

The gun
.

It would have her fingerprints on it. The police would be able to match it up against the bullet they’d take out of Stuart Koch. If, in fact, he was shot. And if, in fact, Grace had shot him.

If I could find the gun, if I could get my hands on it before anyone else did, I could take a drive west on Bridgeport Avenue, stop on the bridge that crossed the Housatonic, and pitch it over the railing.

And I’d fucking well do it. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind.