The Guardian (12 page)

Beth had gone over to the doorway and was looking out at Crockett in the truck. She said, “If he can help us hurt that man, I want him, Allie. I want him in here.”

Chapter 20

Teague lived in Brighton, just across the Charles River from Cambridge. The area was a general mix of run-down buildings with occasional blocks where gentrification was under way: brownstones sandblasted clean, flowers in the window boxes, freshly washed steps.

Teague’s block was not one of those.

Garbage cans were stacked along the sidewalk, and a plywood sheet replaced what should have been a full-length glass pane in the outer doorway of Teague’s building. A Harley was chained to the streetlight post, a big bike with extended front forks and swastika rearview mirrors. Teague’s kind of bike.

Crockett had said Teague lived in apartment eight. In the foyer, there was no name on the mailbox, just the number. The name for apartment six was Hernández. Ross pushed the button for eight, held the button down for the count of ten.

He looked up the stairway, ready to take off if he saw anyone coming down.

Nothing.

He waited and did it again.

This time the speaker crackled, and Teague’s voice filled the little foyer. “What?”

Ross pitched his voice a bit high. “Pizza for Hernández.”

“You fucking dink, this is eight.”

Ross simply buzzed six quickly, figuring that Teague could hear it through walls, and then he walked out the door and to the back of the building. There was a small parking lot surrounded by a high fence. There was just one driveway in and out, and there were no other bikes. The big Plymouth wasn’t there, not that Ross really expected to get that lucky. He kept close to the building, figuring that it’d be hard for Teague to see him that way unless he had his head out the window. And Ross didn’t see anyone doing that.

So he got back into his truck and positioned himself where he could see both the driveway and the front door.

And he waited.

The first hour was manageable, but the second was excruciating.

Ross couldn’t get into the Quiet Place, as he had called it back when he was doing time for a living.

He’d found essentially two ways to manage time. One, to throw himself into the routine, the four roll calls, standing in line for chow, the work details, painting under bridges, working in the furniture shop.

The other was the Quiet Place. Thinking at first of nothing but a gray fog. He’d wrap himself in a blanket so his body was warm while he floated … until he eventually landed in the place he wanted to be, on the deck of
Bon Vivant,
or swimming in the cove, sometimes even with Giselle, throwing that coke overboard and watching his troubles dissolve.

He could pass hours there.

But the Quiet Place wasn’t available today. He needed to keep his attention focused. And when his eyes just blinked, the sight of Greg’s ruined chest came into lurid view. And Janine. Her face in that back window, crying out for him.

It was all too easy to envision that the kidnapper had been scared and angry, that he might’ve already killed her and left the state.

As the second hour closed, Ross called Beth.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Not a word. Where are you?”

“The last poster is up,” he said, truthfully enough. He told her he’d get back as soon as he could. He told himself he didn’t want to raise her hopes, thinking he had something solid in looking after Teague. More to the point, he realized, was he didn’t want her looking at him as if it was all his fault.

Not any more than she had been already. Even though she had supported him with Allie, Ross could feel the undercurrent of hostility from Beth.

He couldn’t blame her. He was a changed man from her husband’s kid brother she’d known before he went away. That first night in his cell, after listening to Crockett’s advice, Ross hadn’t slept at all. The power in his arms and legs had surged and faded as his fear would boil into rage and then cool again. Leaving him a frightened man, facing five to ten years without any idea how he’d pass the next twenty-four hours.

So when the test had come, as it had the middle of the next day, Ross had let himself go. A con named Cridler had looked Ross right in the eye and reached across the lunch table for the apple on Ross’s tray, and said, “I’m starting with a bite of that, sweetmeat.” The frightened man inside Ross had driven the angry man. Together they left Cridler with a broken cheekbone, cracked ribs, two missing front teeth, and a broken knee.

Ross had to do that kind of thing just a few times more in his term, once to Teague. The frightened man always went with him on those battles.

And as Teague came swaggering down the front stairs of his apartment building, Ross was glad to find the frightened man was with him again.

Teague kick-started his bike and took off, and Ross followed in the truck.

Ross let his breath out when Teague came out of the store. There was no shotgun in his hand, no bag of money. Just a pack of cigarettes. Marlboros, of course. Ross watched him rip open the package and tap one out. Except for a slight limp, the biker moved with a heavy kind of grace, as if he knew he was being watched. Not that Ross thought Teague had noticed him. Rather, it was the overt mannerisms that became second nature inside the wall, the body language to tell everyone,
Don’t mess with me.
The way Teague hunched his shoulders when he lit the cigarette, even though there was no breeze. The way he squinted at the mild sunlight. Ross would’ve found it kind of funny, if he didn’t know Teague was equally willing to prove his brutality in a more direct manner.

The trouble with Teague had started a few days after Ross had received a letter from Greg and Beth that held a few snapshots of Janine. Ross had taped the photos to the wall beside his bunk. As Teague was walking by, he’d slowed to look through the bars at the pictures.

“Looks good enough to eat,” he said, grinning right into Ross’s face.

Ross had told him to fuck off.

That’s all it had taken.

Teague had slammed his weight against the bars once, then moved on, saying only, “You’re gonna pay for that one.”

Ross hadn’t thought that much about it—until he saw the way Teague began watching him. Ross would be at dinner, and he’d see Teague turning away just as he looked up. Teague was never far away during the free time. And they ended up on the same work crews cutting grass along the highway. A wariness that prison time had ingrained in Ross took over. Crockett had been paroled for almost six months at that time, so Ross had asked Reece to watch his back.

“We’ve got to watch to see if he’s grouping up,” Reece had said one night after chow. “He’s not the sort who moves on his own. You know how it’d be, him and two other guys on you. One holding the pillow over your face, the other two sticking you about fifty times.”

Luckily, Teague had been arrogant.

One evening just as Ross was breaking down from chipping paint on an overpass, Reece had brushed close and said quietly, “Behind you.” Ross had turned to see Teague coming his way fast, his hand inside his shirt. The nearest guard was two dozen feet away, and his view was momentarily blocked as he stood alongside the truck watching the men stack the ladders.

Apparently, Teague had figured he could do it himself, figured his fifty or so pounds of weight advantage could overcome Ross. Ross had raised his hands, as if to box it out. Teague pulled out the blade and came in fast, his left arm out, ready to pull Ross onto the knife.

Ross had kicked him right in the balls, and followed that up with a solid right and left into Teague’s face.

Teague had shaken his head, confused for a second, and then he’d charged, both arms wide, apparently ready to take the punishment so he could pin Ross against the rail.

Ross didn’t stand his ground. He’d backed up until Teague was almost on him, then grabbed the man’s wrist, ducked down, and spun, letting Teague’s 250 pounds roll over his back and, with a little lift, over the rail.

Luckily for both of them, Ross had been standing near the end of the bridge, and Teague only fell eight or ten feet alongside the road. The men below had dropped the knife down into the storm sewer before the guards could get down to Teague. And Teague had denied everything, simply covered all their questions with a string of curses about his damaged knee.

And that’s why Teague had a limp now.

Ross followed the man to his next stop, a bar on Harvard Avenue, and saw through the dirty smoked glass that Teague sitting at the bar with a beer and a shot. And he figured that it was as good a time as any to go back to Teague’s place and see if there was any evidence that Teague had decided Janine should help pay for his limp.

Chapter 21

Back at Teague’s building, Ross sounded the buzzer for several apartments again. After a few minutes, a young woman with a crying little boy at her leg opened her door and looked at Ross through the glass. Ross lifted his toolbox up and smiled, thinking that here was his chance to see if there was any truth to Reece’s adage about how you could go anywhere and steal anything as long as you carried a toolbox.

She opened the door. “You for the sink? Apartment two?”

“No, ma’am,” he’d said cheerfully. “Cable company, got to go up to the roof for a minute.”

“That’s great,” she said, her back already turned. “TV but no water, that’s what I need.”

He continued up to Teague’s apartment, which was in the back of the building, top floor. He knocked, and then waited quietly. Nothing. He continued up the back stairway to the roof.

Ross squinted in the bright sunlight as he walked casually over to the tar-covered roof and onto the roof of Teague’s small deck overlooking the parking lot. In case anyone was looking, he pulled out a tape measure and a pocketknife and played the part of a building super, picking at the rot in the frame. After a few minutes, Ross took a coil of rope out of the toolbox, and while he whistled tunelessly, he used it to swing the toolbox onto the deck below. He looped the line around the chimney, and before he gave himself too much time to think about it, he slid over the side, and walked down the brick wall a few feet until he could step onto the rail, and then down onto the deck.

From there it got really easy. Teague’s window was open. Maybe the weather was too hot for Teague, or maybe he counted on his own personality to keep the place safe. Inside, Ross could smell the man: a mix of sweat, stale beer, pot, and cigarette smoke. Ross moved through the rooms quickly, the gun in his hand. No one was there.

He came back to the living room. To his left were a big-screen television and a stack of porno tapes. Ross glanced through them quickly and saw several featuring titles like “Barbie Dolls” and “Daddy’s Girl.”

Kiddie porn.

Ross felt the pressure right behind his eyes, felt the tightness of his jaw. And he decided against trying to keep the search of Teague’s apartment a secret.

He went through all the drawers, ripped open the couch, pushed through the kitchen cabinets, through the bedclothes. In the closet, he pushed aside work clothes that were stiff with sweat, dried dirt, concrete dust. Teague apparently worked in construction. Ross looked through the bathroom. He didn’t know exactly what to look for, other than some sign of Janine, anything to suggest she’d been there.

But he found nothing more than a bag of marijuana, a lot of cockroaches, a box filled with a stack of porno magazines … and, at the bottom of them, a box of shotgun shells.

Buckshot.

Ross pulled up a chair facing the door, put the gun on the coffee table beside him, and settled in for the wait.

Almost two hours passed before Ross heard the sound of heavy footsteps outside the door. Ross moved quietly into the bathroom, directly across from the entrance. He could hear Teague’s breathing and figured the guy probably had knocked back more than a couple of drinks. That could be bad. Ross didn’t imagine Teague was the type to turn into a friendly drunk.

Ross waited until he heard the front door open and close. The smell of beer filled the room, and Ross tensed himself, figuring the first stop Teague would make after all that beer and a jolting ride on the Harley would be the bathroom.

Through the crack in the door, Ross saw Teague coming straight in, his hands fumbling with his zipper. Ross stepped around the door, put the gun in the biker’s face, and cocked it. “Right there, Teague. Now tell me what I want to know.”

Ross kept his eyes on Teague’s, looking for something beyond the initial surprise, some flicker of recognition.

For an instant, maybe there was something there, maybe not. Teague’s face went slack.

“What?” he said stupidly, then shook his head as the color began to rise in his face. “Stearns. Little Rossie Stearns. What the fuck’re you doing?”

Ross hit him, two fast left jabs in the nose that drew blood and set Teague back on his heels. Ross grabbed Teague’s shirt and ran him backward into the hallway and slammed him against the front door. Teague’s breath gusted out, and Ross hit him hard on the bridge of his nose with the gun butt, making the man cry out. Ross cupped Teague’s jaw, shoved his head against the wall, and put the barrel to Teague’s temple. “Where is she?”