The Guardian (13 page)

“Who?” Teague said between gritted teeth.

Ross bounced Teague’s head against the doorframe. “Where?”

“If you didn’t have the gun, man—”

“But I
do
have the gun. Tell me about the shotgun shells.”

“What?”

Ross hit him with the gun butt again. “Come on! The shotgun shells under your baby pictures. Where’s the gun?”

“Gone.”

Ross drew his hand back, and the big man said, “No, I’m telling you, I dropped it in the river after I did a job.”

“With who?”

“Huh?”

“Who’d you do the job with?”

“Nobody.”

“You send him in? You get your friend to go after her? C’mon, Teague, you’ve got the brains of a gnat. You didn’t set this up. Who’re you working for?”

“Nobody, I told you.”

“What about the shotgun? You shoot somebody? That why you got rid of it?”

Teague shrugged. “Gas station. Broke some glass. Guy pulled a gun and I missed. He took a coupla pellets, but he was in the paper next day, big hero.”

“Where?”

“Dorchester.”

“Now where is she?”

“Who?”

“My niece.”

“That’s done business, man. You fucking dropped me. I can’t walk good, now. What more do you want?”

“Where is she now?”

“How the fuck do I know?” Teague’s voice rose. “Do I look like a goddamn school monitor?”

“You look like a short-eyes pig, and your leg drags behind you because of what you said about my niece,” Ross said evenly. “And now she’s gone. I’m going to kill you unless you tell me who you sent into that store and where I can find Janine.” Ross kneed Teague in the balls, and when the big man crumpled, Ross shoved him into the corner and stepped back two steps. He held the gun in both hands.

“What’re you doing, man?” Teague’s face was white under the splash of red from his nose. His hands were up. “I don’t know anything—”

“Teague, look at my face,” Ross said quietly. “You know I’m going to do it if you don’t tell me.”

The thing of it was, at that moment, Ross meant it. The adrenaline was singing through his veins, and all the fear and anger was free, and he was no longer on the defense.

“Me and you are done, man. You should see me walk.”

“We’re not done.”

“Then you might as well pull it. ’Cause I know jack shit about your niece.” Teague stared up at him.

There was no way to tell if it was the truth or not.

Ross let the hammer down with his thumb and swiftly stepped in and cracked Teague behind the ear with the gun butt.

The big man slumped down, unconscious. Ross had to drag him away from the door before he could leave. He walked down the stairs with his tool kit, got into his truck and drove away.

Chapter 22

The next morning Beth and Allie pressed Ross for where he had been the day before. Crockett simply listened quietly.

“What did you find out?” Allie said. “What did you do?”

“Nothing good,” Ross told them.

He waited with them until midafternoon, and then said he would be back in a while.

Allie followed him out. “What are you up to?”

Ross almost snapped back at her to mind her own damned business. The way she seemed to think his family needed protection from him was infuriating. But when he turned, he could see by the rigid set of her shoulders and tightness about her mouth the strain she was under.

She said, “I can go home when I want to, but Beth has to just wait. The least you could do is tell her what you’re doing.”

He opened the door of the truck. “Why don’t you get in for a second?”

She slid across to the passenger side and turned to face him.

He said, “Look, I’ve just been checking out whether or not my being in prison brought this down on them.”

“Is there any evidence of that?”

Ross told her about how Teague had tried to kill him, and about Gilchrist’s wife. “And Teague’s a biker who does armed robberies. That’s why he was in prison in the first place. And extortion is a pretty common piece of business for bikers. So he could’ve sent somebody in after Janine. He had the motive, probably the contacts.”

Allie listened carefully, apparently weighing everything he had to say. Finally, she shook her head. “That logic wouldn’t fly in court, believe me. It sounds like Teague had motive to hurt
you,
but nothing else.”

“Maybe. But it was worth the time to find out.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Applied a little pressure.”

“Meaning you beat him up?”

Ross nodded.

“Did you find anything out?”

“Nothing useful.”

“Jesus Christ.” Allie laughed shortly and looked away. “Maybe I can just put it down to experience. I’ve slept with a guy who beats people up to get information. You realize it used to be my job to put people like you away.”

“I’d never be doing anything like this except for the circumstance with Janine.”

She shook her head. “You just don’t get it. No ‘circumstance’ makes it OK for you to go around beating people. That’s the kind of faulty thinking that got you in prison in the first place, and it’s going to land you back there sooner or later. That’s the kind of shortcut thinking that lets you figure on sailing away as soon as you sell a little land.”

“You mean if I was rich, I’d have made sense. Otherwise, I was just an interesting experience for a few weeks.”

“I
meant
think ahead! I could’ve understood if you’d planned on selling the entire place and using the money to throw in with Greg, or start a business of your own. But just sail away? There’s no future in that.”

“Look, this isn’t the time,” Ross said abruptly. “The only future I’m working toward now is getting Janine home.”

“It
is
the time. I’m telling you you’re crazy to be mixing into this any further. Let’s just let the man call again, and try to get Janine back. No shortcuts. No circumstances.” She touched his cheek, her voice softening slightly. “No more prison terms. Please, Ross.”

He bit back his response. He was angry, and it would be easy for him to dismiss her as approaching him the same way Cynthia had, with her prescribed formula for success. But he knew Allie drove herself fiercely to achieve her own ambitions. He still didn’t know her well enough to know exactly what they were. She had grown up in the backwoods of Maine, where most of the roads were owned by the logging companies. She had told him one night as they lay in her bed how it had been like growing up in the Deep South except for the snow. “Pickup trucks with gunracks, lots of mud, blackflies, snow, and stupidity. Living with people whose dreams consisted of a bigger TV.” She had done everything for herself, forcing her family to recognize she was smart and unwilling to stick around and marry another logger. She had won scholarships and scraped her way financially through law school. Ross respected her self-sufficiency and drive. He was even a bit envious. But that didn’t change the fact that he had no interest in a future that was centered on how well he did with an office desk, a suit and tie.

He reached across and opened her door. “I’ve got to go.”

“Don’t ignore me,” she said.

“I’m not. But I don’t have any more time to talk about it.”

She slipped out of the truck and went into the house without another word.

Ross stopped at the store in Watertown first. The name over the door said: “Jacob Family Spa.”

He’d never been there before, but from what Greg had told him about the night Janine had been kidnapped, Ross had a strong sense of déjá vu. He looked down the aisle to the ice cream freezer and then back up to the front counter. The wall behind the counter was bare. There had clearly been shelves there in the past—racks were still screwed into the walls.

An older woman was at the counter. She was probably in her mid-fifties, with gray hair and a scared, hurt look on her face. He bought a newspaper, giving her a dollar.

Her eyes never left the cash register during the whole transaction.

“I read about the robbery,” he said, picking up a business card from the small bulletin board beside the register. “I’m sorry to hear what happened.”

She simply nodded.

The name on the card was Bobby Jacob, a piano tuner. “A family member?”

“Louis’s boy,” she said abruptly.

“Louis wasn’t your husband?” Ross said.

Her eyes were wet when she looked up at him, shook her head. “Brother.”

“It’s a terrible thing.” Ross knew how inadequate the words were. “I lost my brother not long ago, too.”

“You’re young for that.” She looked at him directly now. “But it doesn’t make any difference when you get older. It hurts just as bad. Both of us were alone. My husband died eight years ago. Louis was divorced. His boy, Bobby, had moved on. We opened the store, bought a house. It wasn’t so lonely that way.”

“Did the police find out anything?”

Her face twisted. “Nothing. No one saw anything. No one heard anything, except one of the boys up the street at the sub shop says maybe there were two cars parked in front around the time of the robbery. The police said one most likely was the killer’s. Maybe the driver of the other one saw something. But no one has come forward.”

“So there’s no clue who did it?”

“Not unless whoever was in that car saw something,” she said bitterly. “And I guess they can’t be bothered.”

He got even less at the Store 24 in Cambridge.

There was a young man at the counter with a long ponytail who had no time for small talk. His books were open beside him. About the robbery and murder all he had to say was, “You won’t catch me working the night shift. There are monsters out at night, and they come here to shop.”

It took him just a few minutes to find the apartment of Muriel Gray, the witness to the Cambridge robbery. There were two M. Grays in the phone book, but according to the street map he bought at the Store 24, one of them lived just a few blocks away.

When he buzzed her apartment, no one answered at first. He tried once more, and just as he was about to leave, a woman’s voice said, “Who is it?”

“Ms. Gray? Could I talk to you a minute about the robbery?”

He could hear her sigh. “I’m busy.”

“It’ll just take a moment.”

She asked him to wait there. After a few minutes, she came downstairs, a dark-haired woman with a thin face and an impatient manner. “I don’t know what more you want me to say.… Hey, are you a cop?”

“No, ma’am.” Ross gave her the business card he’d taken from the bulletin board at the Watertown store. She looked at it curiously and handed it back. “Pianos?”

“My father was killed in a robbery just a few days ago.”

She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you. But when I read about the robbery you saw, what with it being so close and all, I wondered if they might be related.”

“Well, I’m sure the police are looking into that.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. But it doesn’t seem like it. It seems like the two different departments aren’t talking … and I guess maybe I just feel I need to do
something.”

She nodded. “I can imagine. But I didn’t see that much. I wish I never talked to that reporter. He made it sound like I’m some kind of star witness.”

“What did you see?”

“Just about what you read, probably. A man running out of the store, holding a gun. Driving off. And then I looked into the store, and—” She dropped her eyes. “Well, you know, it was awful.”

“Yes, I know.” He paused. “Did the man drive himself away? Or was there someone else in the car?”

“He drove himself.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“I don’t know cars. It was big and old.”

“Color?”

“Light. Light brown or gray. It’s hard to say at night.”

“And was he wearing a mask?”

She nodded. “That I saw clearly. I saw him just under the light in the doorway.”

“What kind was it?”

“A ski mask. You know, with a pattern on it.”

Ross flipped over the business card and gave her a pen. “Could you draw the pattern?”

She shrugged. “Not very well.”

But she was more skillful than she gave herself credit. The pattern was close to the same that he’d drawn for the ads, a screaming face.

“And the colors?” he asked.

“Red on black. Scary as hell.”

Chapter 23

The call came late the next morning.

Beth answered the phone, and Ross could see her face go pale. “Talk to me,” she said.