Linwood Barclay - Stone Rain

“Sure,” I said.

“So we tried to find out from him where Trixie was, when she was coming back, where she had my money. That kind of thing.”

“But he didn’t know, did he? All Benson knew was that she was running a little S amp;M parlor.”

“Yeah, so it seems. He was actually pretty useless.”

“So why’d you kill him?”

Merker shrugged. “I dunno.” He pointed. “This where I turn?”

I was so dumbfounded by his response that it took me a moment to register where we were. “Yeah,” I said. “Turn here.” There were no other motorists blocking our way, so Merker didn’t have to bulldoze any cars out of the way. He even signaled.

“Benson’s death was a warning, wasn’t it?” I asked. “A way to let Trixie know you were serious about getting your money back.”

“Well, yeah. Now that I think about it, that is why I did it. Do you ever find, as you get older, you start forgetting little things?”

“But killing Benson, that backfired, didn’t it? Because you killed him in Trixie’s house, left him there in her mock dungeon, that made Trixie an instant suspect with the police, and she took off. She disappeared. Made it a bit difficult to get the money from her.”

Merker shrugged again. “Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a perfect plan. I generally know what I’m doing, you know, but even Einstein made the odd slip-up.” He brightened. “Shit, there it is. This is it, right?”

The Clayton Correctional Facility. It looked like a community college behind high barbed-wire fencing.

“Yeah,” I said. “This is it.”

Of course, some of this I’ve already told you. We’re back to where we started.

My first time walking into a prison. Putting my phone and change and car keys into a locker. Walking through the metal detector. Being brought to the place where you talked to inmates through the glass using a couple of phone handsets.

And now I was sitting in the chair, waiting for Trixie to be brought in. The door on the other side of the glass opened, and Trixie, in jeans and a pullover shirt, was ushered in. The female guard retreated to the other side of the door to give Trixie some privacy.

She sat down opposite me, picked up the phone.

“Zack, Jesus, what are you doing here?”

“Hi, Trixie.”

“I get this message, my lawyer’s setting up a meeting with you, very urgent. What’s going on?”

I took a breath. “I have some things to tell you, but I need you to remain cool when I do.”

“What?”

“Are you listening? You have to stay calm and listen to what I have to say.”

Her eyes danced momentarily. “Okay. What is it?”

“It’s bad,” I said, lowering my voice as I spoke into the receiver. “They’ve got her.”

Trixie’s mouth opened slowly in a silent scream. I didn’t have to say anything else, at least not yet. She had to know who “they” were. And I had no doubt she knew whom I was referring to when I said “her.”

She looked as though she’d lost the ability to breathe. She closed her eyes a moment, closed her mouth, breathed in through her nose. When her eyes opened, she asked, “Is she okay? Have they hurt her?”

“She’s not hurt,” I said. “Right now, she’s with Leo. Gary’s parked outside the prison, in his truck, waiting for me to come back.”

Trixie looked at me with eyes that were losing hope. “Claire? And Don?”

The Bennets.

I shook my head from side to side, no more than a sixteenth of an inch each way. Just enough to convey the message.

“Oh my God,” Trixie whispered. “Oh my God.”

I couldn’t help myself-it’s the way my mind works-but I thought of that scene in Invasion of the Body Snatchers , the remake with Donald Sutherland, when the real Brooke Adams, after she’s been taken over by her pod replacement, collapses like a withered corn husk.

She was crying, but trying not to attract attention to herself. Even in her grief, she knew that she didn’t want to draw the guard over. That might lead to questions. She found a tissue tucked up in her sleeve, dabbed her eyes.

“Trixie,” I said, “I need you to focus for me. I’m here-”

“I know why you’re here,” she said. A tear ran down her cheek. She sniffed, wiped her nose with the tissue. “He wants his money.”

“Yes.”

“And he’ll kill Katie if he doesn’t get it.”

“Yes.”

“How much does he think there is?”

“Half a million.”

“There’s not that much. There’s just under three hundred thousand.”

“I’m sure he’d be happy with that,” I said. “He might be angry at first, but if he can really get his hands on that kind of money, he’ll take it.”

Trixie swallowed, tried to pull herself together. “I can tell you where it is, but I don’t know how you’re going to get it. They’ll have to let me out, I can’t imagine any other way…”

“Trixie, they’re not going to let you out. There’s no way. Why would they have to?”

“It’s in a safety-deposit box. They’ll have to let me out, just for an hour.”

“Trixie, the only way they might let you out is if you tell them what’s going on, that your daughter’s life is at stake. The moment Gary finds out you’ve been released, he’ll know you’ve told them what’s going on. And then I don’t know what he’ll do.”

More tears now. But even though Trixie was in a panic, she was also thinking. For Katie’s sake. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to have to tell you what to do. You’ll need to write this down.”

“They took my pen,” I said. “Just tell me.”

“You have to go to my house. Break in, whatever you have to do. Go to the upstairs bathroom, the medicine chest, take out the shelves, then you take out the back.”

“The back comes out?”

“It’s a false back. There’s a small storage area behind that. You’ll find a safety-deposit key and a set of ID. For Marilyn Winter.”

Christ. Yet another name.

“The box is registered under Marilyn Winter. There’s a color photo with the ID. It’s not the clearest picture in the world of me, but I’m wearing a red wig in it. You’re going to have to get somebody to go into the bank, with that ID, with a red wig.”

“Where do I find a red wig?” I whispered into the handset.

“In the basement closet. Along the wall with the straps and ropes and things, there’s a set of folding doors. In there, there’s a bunch of Styrofoam heads, each one has a wig on it. You’ll find a red one there.”

“Okay,” I said. “The wig, the key, the ID. I got it.”

“The box is downtown. I didn’t want it in the same town where I lived and did business. Might run into people who know me as someone else. It’s SunCap Federal. On Kingston, near Bellview. You know where that is.”

“I think so. I mean, yes. I can find it.”

“Okay, it’s box number 2149. You go in-well, it can’t be you. But whoever it is, you show your ID if they ask for it, but they might not if you’ve got a key, you tell them the box number, you sign in, they take you into the safety-deposit box room, you use the key to open the box, you take it into a little booth. The money’s in there.”

“Trixie, I don’t know where-”

“I know. You’ll have to find someone. Zack, you have to find someone who can pass as me.”

I was feeling overwhelmed. I couldn’t begin to imagine how we could pull this off, how we could give Merker what he wanted, how we could keep Katie alive.

“Maybe Gary knows someone,” Trixie said. “He knows hookers and dancers all over the place. He can find someone to be me for fifteen minutes. Someone who can wear the wig, do my signature. She has to sign in. They usually check my signature against the one they have on file.”