Linwood Barclay - No Safe House

“Whaddya know,” she said, getting into the backseat next to Grace. “We did a good deed.”

Vince looked at his watch. It was already past noon. He’d be getting a call soon. He gave me directions to another house.

We got lucky there. Like the first place, no one was home. Vince and I went in while Cynthia and Grace kept watch out front. I had to lift up almost all the insulation to find the cash. Vince had thought it was on one side of the house, but it turned out to be on the opposite.

“Eldon,” he muttered under his breath.

“What happened there?” I asked while I was bent over hunting for money and Vince was watching me from the access hatch. “Bert took off. Gordie got run down by a truck. You said Eldon’s dead, too.”

“Yeah,” Vince said.

“How?”

“Don’t ask,” he said.

“Could it have been him?” I asked.

“Him what?”

“Who ripped you off? Was his son helping him? Him and Stuart? Something went wrong?”

Vince shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“But it had to be someone who knew the money was there. You never told Teresa why you wanted into our house. And you didn’t tell the dog walker, either.”

“No. Unless he figured it out.”

“You saying it couldn’t have been one of your own people?”

It was suddenly very quiet in the attic. It was several seconds before Vince spoke. “I suppose one could think that. But that’s my problem. Not yours.”

We finished up, did our best to make it look as though no one had ever been there, and left the house. I got the ladder strapped back onto the roof rack.

“Where to now?” I asked as I got back behind the wheel.

Vince looked again at his watch. “They’re supposed to call in half an hour. We haven’t got time to do any more.” He talked in a monotone, as if on autopilot, his mind elsewhere.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, which told me he did. “She said she wanted everything, like maybe it’s not just about the money. It’s the needle in the haystack.”

Grace asked, “What?”

“Maybe it’s that crystal meth. The people who left that with me have been perfecting their product for some time. Maybe someone wants that batch to figure out how they did it. Or maybe it’s some documents, tucked in with some money from another house. Something they know is in one of my hiding places, but they don’t want to ask for it outright so I could just go to the right house and get it. They don’t want me to know what it is. Because if I knew it was that valuable, maybe I’d want to hang on to it myself.”

“So we might not even have it yet,” I said.

“Yeah.” He thought some more. “That’s kind of what I’m hoping.”

I shot him a look. “What?”

“But if we do have it, I still have to tempt them with something more.” He wasn’t talking to us. He was talking to himself.

His interior monologue got cut short. His cell phone was ringing. He grabbed it from his jacket, looked at the screen, and said, “It’s them.”

Jane, still bound and hooded and sitting in the chair, heard Joseph drag something across the floor from somewhere else in the room. She kept very still, listening, trying to figure out what he was doing.

The noise stopped abruptly, directly in front of her.

“Just want to make myself comfortable,” Joseph said. A chair. He’d dragged over a chair, one with wooden legs, she bet. She heard the rustling of fabric, a slight shift in the air as the man sat down.

Suddenly, she felt something touch her knees, and she flinched.

“Hey, don’t worry,” he said. “That’s just me. I pulled my chair up close so we could sit knee to knee.”

She tried to force herself back farther into her chair, but there was no place to go. He opened his legs so he could trap hers between his two knees.

“That’s nicer. I like that. You like that? You don’t say much, do you? You know something? I like that in a girl.”

He patted her knees with his palms, as if he was drumming.

“Badoop, badoop. Hey, I bet you’re wondering whether your dad is going to get you out of this. I know, I got that wrong. Reggie says he’s not your dad, that he’s your stepdad. I had a stepdad for a while. Me and Logan, there was a couple years our mom lived with this asshole named Gert. He was from Bavaria or someplace. My mom liked him, till she got to know him and found out he got his kicks from bending her fingers back till they nearly snapped if she didn’t get his dinner on the table on time. What he liked to do to me was — and I gotta admit, I was kind of a pain in the ass — was put me in the dryer. You know, this big white Kenmore. Well, it probably wasn’t any bigger than a regular dryer, but when you’re a little kid and you can’t even see over the top of it, it’s big. So when I was a pain in the ass, he’d open the door and shove me in, and then he’d prop a chair up against the door so I couldn’t get out. I know what you’re thinking. Did he turn it on? You know, and like spin me around and toast me to death? Naw. I mean, he might have wanted to, but I was too heavy, it would have busted the machine, and the last thing he’d have wanted to do is pay a repairman to fix it. So he’d just leave me in there, all bunched up. One time, he musta forgot he’d put me in there, or just didn’t give a shit, because he went out for the afternoon to go drinking with his buddies. Your mom ever do anything like that to you? Did she have a nice body? Because you do.”

A hand came off her knee and touched the side of her head. Caressing her through the hood.

“So, anyway, we saw your stepdad last night, and I couldn’t believe it. He pissed his pants. I guess we scared him. He must scare easy, because we weren’t being threatening or anything.”

He took his hand from her head and rested it back on her knee. “Anyway, about when I was in the dryer.”

Jane made a mewing noise of frustration.

“Don’t interrupt. I used to go to this place, like, in my head, when Gert would do shit like that to me. Somewhere far away, so I wouldn’t think about what I was going through. It was really helpful. Sometimes I’d imagine I was on a ship out in the ocean, or maybe on a rocket going to Mars — anything like that. I wondered, is that kind of what you’re doing now? Imagining you’re someplace else? Because if you’re not, I think that’s what you might want to start doing.”

From upstairs: “ Joseph! ”

“Shh,” he said to her. “That’s my brother. He probably wants me to do something. Whatever it is, it can wait. I thought we’d have a little fun first. Even with a bag over your head, you’re nice-looking. Some girls, you’d want to do them with a bag over their head. I have to stand up for a second.”

He released his grip on her knees, stood back. Jane wondered whether he was leaving, but she didn’t sense him moving away. She could hear his breathing. Then she could hear something else. A clinking, like the sound of a belt buckle. Then the unmistakable sound of a zipper.

Descending, in all likelihood.

“Go to your special place,” he said, his voice sounding very close.

“ Joseph! ”

She could feel his breath on her face, even through the fabric of the hood. His face directly in front of hers.

Jane figured, if she was ever going to try something, it was now. It didn’t take her more than half a second to figure out what it would be, and to execute.

She leaned back, to allow herself a few inches to build up some momentum, then shot her head forward.

Fast.

Whole thing couldn’t have taken more than half a second.