Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

It would have been nice to turn on all the lights, but I knew that wasn’t an option. Couldn’t afford to have any of the neighbors spotting me wandering around in there.

“What do you see, Dad?”

“Nothing yet.” The echoing had stopped.

Three hours earlier, I’d been sitting in front of the TV watching Jeopardy! Now I was exploring, illegally, the house of someone I did not know with a flashlight, in the dead of night, hoping not to come across a body.

At that moment I thought of those two retired people slain in their home. What it must have been like for them to find a stranger — assuming it was a stranger who killed them — in their house.

That’s what I was now. I was the stranger. And while I knew I didn’t pose any threat, if I confronted someone in this house, they wouldn’t know that.

I hoped to encounter no one here — dead or alive.

I stood at the entryway to the kitchen, which was combined with a family room. To the right, a large central island, bar stools, all the usual appliances, and then opposite that a high-ceilinged room with skylights decorated with easy chairs, a couch, a fireplace, and a TV angled in one corner.

The kitchen floor was smooth. Some kind of tile, crisscrossed with what looked like a million tiny scratches. I bent down for a closer look.

“Dog,” I said to myself.

“What?” Grace said. “There’s a dog there?”

“No. I was just noticing all the scratches on the floor. Probably from a dog’s toenails. From its claws.”

“Oh.”

The countertops were cluttered with a toaster, Cuisinart, regular coffeemaker, Nespresso coffeemaker, waffle iron, bread maker, pretty much every gadget Williams-Sonoma carried. I lowered the beam, slowly scanned the floor again, saw more scratches. I figured that if Stuart, or anyone else, had been shot, they wouldn’t have ended up on the countertop. There’d be evidence — blood — on the floor. As I rounded the island, getting closer to the window, I held my breath. I had a very bad feeling that there was something around the corner, and I steeled myself for the discovery.

But there was nothing.

I came around the fourth side of the island, the space between it and the stove, and still nothing caught my eye.

“I’ve been through the kitchen,” I said. “I don’t see anything.” No response. “Grace?”

“I’m here. I heard you.” A pause. “Dad.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s a police car going by.”

Son of a bitch.

I killed the flashlight and held my breath.

“Grace?”

“I’m just hiding behind the corner of the house. It just drove by real slow. I think it’s going down to the dead end.”

My car was parked out front. Was that what had attracted some officer’s attention? Had he wondered what it was doing there, the only car on that whole stretch that wasn’t pulled into a driveway? Would he take note of the license plate? Would he stop and do a check of the house?

“You want me to see where he—?”

“No! Grace, just stay where you are.”

“Okay.”

We both waited. I was tempted to run to the living room at the front of the house, peek through the drapes, but with the flashlight off I’d probably end up tripping over something.

“I see headlights coming back,” Grace whispered. “He must have turned around.”

Shit shit shit shit.

“He must be going real slow so — there he is!”

Drive on by. Just drive on by.

“He’s stopping, Dad.”

“Where?”

“He’s... he’s stopped next to your car.”

“Is he getting out? What’s he doing?”

“I can just sort of — It’s not a guy cop. It’s a woman. She’s got the light on inside her car.”

“What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know. Don’t they have, like, computers in their cars?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe she’s running my plate.”

“She’s starting to — I think she’s getting out of the car. Dad, you have to get out of the house.”

And go where? To the car? The cop was sitting on it. Suppose I could escape out the basement window, grab Grace, and cut through the property that backed onto this house? Once the police found the broken window, found out who belonged to the car out front—

We’d be toast. Grace and me both.

“Just sit tight, hon,” I said, trying my best to tamp down the panic I was feeling. Droplets of sweat were forming on my forehead. Even if Grace managed to hide, if that cop walked around the back of the house, saw the open window—

“Wait,” Grace said. “She’s getting back in the car. I think she’s on the radio or something.”

“Is she leaving? Is she—?”

“She’s driving away! Dad, she’s going! She’s going!”

I clicked the flashlight back on, kept it pointed to the floor, and found my way to a living room window. Through some sheers, I saw the Milford police car drive up the street, round the bend, and disappear.

“That was a little too close,” I said.

“Can we go now? Can we get out of here?”

The second time in as many hours that she wanted to get the hell away from this house.

“I’ve only checked the kitchen,” I said. “Before I leave, I’ve got to take a quick look through the whole house.”

The car, an oversized GM SUV, rolled to a stop, the engine continuing to rumble. Vince was in the passenger seat, Gordie behind the wheel. The backseats were folded down, an extension ladder stowed there. Behind them, in the old Buick, was Bert. He’d come to a stop barely a car length behind them.

“Bert’ll help you when he’s done, but you get started,” Vince Fleming told Gordie. “Every location. See if anything looks out of the ordinary. If no one’s there, go in tonight. If the place looks occupied, we do it tomorrow through the day. Everything — fucking everything — has to be moved by tomorrow.”

“What if the people are home? What if—?”

“Figure it out!” Vince said. He reached for the door handle, fumbling a couple of times. His hand was shaking.

“What about Eldon?” Gordie asked.

“What about him?” Vince snapped.

Gordie tried to hide how taken aback he was by the question. “When are you going to tell him?”

“I want to know a hell of a lot more before I talk to him. Take a run by his place, too. See if he’s there. I want to know if he’s home. You may end up running into him at one of the other houses.”

Gordie looked uncomfortable. “What are you saying? You saying Eldon’s in on it? That he did this? That doesn’t make any sense. He’s hardly going to—”

“Maybe not,” Vince said. “But maybe he’s got his kid and others helping him. Maybe things went wrong at one house. Who knows what the fuck is going on at the others? This is a nuclear meltdown, that’s what this is.”

He had the door open. “Just get moving.” Vince got out, slammed the door, slapped the sheet metal with his palm, hard, as if the SUV was a horse he wanted to bolt. Gordie hit the gas, squealing the tires as he took off.

Vince took the few steps to the Buick, leaned over, and rested his arms on the window-down passenger door.

Bert said nothing, waited for orders.

“Soon as you take care of this, work with Gordie.”

“Got it,” Bert said.

“Not a word to Eldon,” Vince said. “Not yet. There’s only so many ways this can shake down.”

“It’s not him, boss,” Bert said. “No way.”

Vince pressed his lips together, shook his head very slowly back and forth. “It was his kid in there. Maybe he put him up to it. Or maybe the kid came up with the idea on his own. Either way, Eldon’s on the hook for this.”