Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

“Does it matter?”

“He’s a lost kid. Hopeless. Going nowhere. Honestly.”

She shot me a look. “So what are you saying? He wasn’t worth saving because he’s not a girl?”

Her aim was good with that one.

I knew that was a reference to a student I’d had seven years ago. Jane Scavullo, her name was. A troubled kid, always getting into fights. No one on staff had any use for her. But I’d thought there was something there. It came through in her writing assignments. She had a real gift, and I ended up going to bat for her. Of course, there were some extenuating circumstances, too, but those aside, Jane had struck me as a kid who could amount to more than she herself could have imagined. She ended up going to college, and not that long ago, I’d run into her.

I’d talked about her from time to time with Grace, so she knew the story.

“It’s not that,” I said defensively. “Jane had... potential. If Stuart has any, it wasn’t evident to me at the time.” I hesitated. “If I’ve misjudged him, feel free to set me straight.”

She had nothing to say to that, and I let it go — I sensed there was a more immediate problem involving this kid. Were they going together? If so, when had it started? How long had this been going on without my knowledge? Had they had some kind of fight this evening? A breakup?

“What were you doing at that gas station?”

“I walked there,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek. “I walked for, like, ten minutes or so, and when I got there I figured it would be an easy place for you to find to come get me.”

“Was Stuart driving?” A nod. “But he left you to walk on your own at night, to that gas station? That sure as hell speaks well of him.”

“It’s not like that,” she said. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand because you haven’t told me anything. Did Stuart hurt you? Did he do something he shouldn’t have?”

Her lips parted, as if she was about to say something, then closed.

“What?” I asked. “Grace, I know that maybe some things would be easier to talk about with your mother, but did he... did he try to make you do things that made you uncomfortable?”

A slow, torturous nod.

“Oh, honey,” I said.

“It’s not what you think,” she said. “It wasn’t... it wasn’t that kind of stuff. He knew about this car.”

“What car?”

“A Porsche. He knew where there was one that he wanted to take me for a ride in.”

“But it wasn’t his car?”

Grace shook her head.

“Did it belong to someone he knew?”

“No,” she whispered. “He was kind of going to steal it. I mean, not forever, but just for a little while, and then he was going to take it back.”

I put a hand to my forehead. “Good God, Grace, tell me you and this boy didn’t take someone’s car for a joyride.” My mind made several leaps in a nanosecond. They’d stolen a car. They’d hit a pedestrian. They’d fled the scene and—

“We didn’t steal it,” she said. But she didn’t say it in a way that gave me any reason to feel relieved.

“You got caught? He got caught? Trying to take the car?”

“No,” Grace said.

I folded the lid down on the toilet and took a seat. “You gotta help me here, Grace. I can’t play twenty questions with you over and over until we get to what happened. Tell me that when Stuart went to take this car, that’s when you walked away.”

“Not totally,” she said, and sniffed. I handed her more tissues and she blew her nose. Even if she wasn’t sick, she looked terrible. Eyes red and bloodshot, skin pale, her hair in tangled strands. An image of her when she was five or six flashed before my eyes, when Cynthia and I took her to Virginia Beach and she was covered in sand from head to toe, building a castle at the water’s edge, flashing a smile with three missing teeth.

Did that girl still exist? Was she still here? Buried deep inside this one curling in on herself in front of me?

I waited. I could sense her steeling herself. Getting ready to tell me, and then face the music after I knew what she’d done.

“I think...”

“You think what?”

“I think...”

“Jesus, Grace, you think what ?”

“I think... I think I might have shot somebody.”

Gordie Plunkett was starting to think everybody was going to be late for this meet tonight. Even the boss.

He spoke to the guy behind the desk in the motel office, rented the room, and not for the going rate, either, since they wouldn’t be messing up the sheets. This was the kind of place many customers would take for an hour, and Gordie knew Vince wasn’t going to need it for much more than that, unless their latest customers were late.

Even then, it wouldn’t be an issue. If people you were meeting with didn’t show up on time, you didn’t wait around. Made you look weak. Vince had taught Gordie that. You didn’t sit on your ass while someone disrespected you. You got up and you left. Besides, someone being late could mean something bad. Maybe the cops had picked them up. You didn’t wait around to find out.

Gordie just hoped the boss, and Bert and Eldon, managed to get here before their latest clients.

Bert Gooding showed up first.

“Where’s Eldon the Cock?” Bert asked, getting out of his car and walking over to Gordie, who was standing on the sidewalk outside of room twelve.

“Eldon? What about you? Where you been? And where’s Vince?”

“I think maybe he had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon and it took a lot out of him,” Bert said.

“He looks like shit lately.”

“Yeah. First his wife, and then he gets it. But he should be along any second. I don’t know where Eldon is.”

“Jeez,” Gordie said. “Eldon’s supposed to be covering the front door. You’re supposed to be out back—”

“I know where I’m supposed to be.”

“And I’m inside. That’s the way Vince likes it.”

“Yeah, well, Vince don’t run as tight a ship as he used to,” Bert observed.

Gordie’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean? You mean because he’s been sick?”

“That’s just part,” Bert said. “He’s not cracking the whip. Things are sliding. We should be out jacking cars, pulling over trucks, the kind of stuff we used to do.”

“Vince hasn’t got the energy for that anymore,” Gordie said.

“He should do the chemo.”

“He doesn’t want to.”

“He doesn’t do the chemo, he’s just hurting himself.”

“Don’t argue with me about it,” Gordie said. “Where the fuck is Eldon?”

“All I’m sayin’ is, I don’t like the way things are going.”

“Then maybe you should bring it up with the boss,” Gordie said, using a tone almost daring Bert to do it, knowing he never would. Vince Fleming might not be the man he once was, but you didn’t cross him. “Anyway, what’s your excuse?”

“For what?”

“For being late.”

Bert shrugged. “Jabba.” As in Jabba the Hutt, his pet name, at least away from home, for his wife, Janine.

Gordie didn’t have to ask for details. Janine had a face that would make a Pamplona bull turn around and go back, and a disposition to match. Gordie figured it was a testament to Bert’s character that he hadn’t killed her. God knows he had the wherewithal, and plenty of experience at getting rid of bodies. He could take her up to the farm, feed the pigs for a couple of days. Unlike Bert, Gordie had never married. He’d always figured paying someone once a week was a simpler way to take care of one’s needs. The irony was, Bert did the same.

“There’s Vince,” Bert said, pointing to the Dodge Ram pickup turning into the lot. He parked the truck, got out and walked over to the two men.