No Safe House

Twelve Terry

I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge for Grace as we headed out of the house. I opened the car door for her, assisting her as though she’d suffered some physical injury. She was on autopilot, going through the motions in a daze. I uncapped the bottle and told her to drink, which she did. I got her buckled in, and by the time I’d gone around the car and settled myself in behind the wheel, she’d drunk a third of the bottle.

“I need to know how you’re feeling,” I said.

She turned her head. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, this is a serious question. Your breathing seems okay. Are you still feeling sick to your stomach?”

“I guess not.”

“You dizzy?”

“I just feel... I feel like I’m in a dream.”

“Chest pain?”

“Am I going to have a heart attack?” she asked, alarmed.

“I need to know whether you’re going into shock,” I told her.

Grace blinked a couple of times. “I... I don’t even know what I’d be feeling if I was in shock. Mostly I’m just really scared. And numb. It’s like I’m not feeling anything, like I’m watching all this happen to someone else. It can’t be me.”

I wished. I reached out, touched her knee. “You can do this. Where should we start?”

“I guess the gas station,” she said. “Maybe I can figure it out from there.”

So back we went.

“Mom can’t know about this,” she said. “She can’t be home when they come to arrest me and charge me with murder, like in Law and Order.”

“We’ll find out first what we’re dealing with,” I said. “But whatever happened tonight, it’s probably not going to be the kind of thing we can keep from your mother. Unless this whole thing turns out to be some huge practical joke.”

I didn’t believe we’d get lucky that way.

“I guess, if I end up in jail, she’ll start wondering what happened to me, so she’ll have to know. Or she’ll see me on TV, when they walk the killer past the cameras and put them into the backseat of a police car.”

“Don’t talk that way.”

“That’s what’ll happen. They’ll send me off to one of those juvie places, with other kids who’ve killed people. I’ll probably get stabbed in a shower. I’ll never come out.”

“Grace,” I said, trying to keep my voice level, “let’s get some facts before we go off the deep end. Okay? I need you thinking clearly. You get that?”

“I guess.”

“No, not a guess. Tell me again. What happened just before there was a shot?”

She closed her eyes briefly, trying to put herself back into that house. I had a feeling she’d be having to tell this story many times before this mess was over. To me, to Cynthia.

To the police.

To lawyers.

I had to prod her. “Tell me about when Stuart gave you the gun.”

“Okay, like I said, he dropped it, when he was looking for the keys, and then he told me to hang on to it and I said no.”

“But eventually you took it.”

She nodded. “He was getting really mad at me. So I took it, and tried to keep my finger off the trigger like he said, so I just held on to it by the handle part.”

“The butt.”

“Yeah, I guess. And then I thought I heard something, and then Stuart thought he heard it, too, in the kitchen. I mean, I guess it was the kitchen. It was dark and I’d never been in there before. Stuart wanted to check it out, but I wanted to leave, but he told me to follow him.”

“The gun’s still in your hand.”

“Yeah. I think... I might have moved it to my other hand, and then back again. I’m not sure. It’s all mixed up in my head.”

Up ahead were the lights of the gas station.

“Okay,” I said. “Then what?”

She cocked her head slightly to one side, as if she was remembering details she hadn’t thought about before.

“Someone said, ‘You.’ I remember that.”

“‘You’?”

“Yeah.”

“Who said it? Was it Stuart?”

“I’m not sure. It could have been. And then—” She covered her mouth with her right hand. “And then there was the shot. And then it sounded like somebody falling down.”

“The shot,” I repeated. “Where did it sound like it came from?”

“It sounded like it was everywhere. And then I tried to get out the door, and couldn’t, and next thing I knew I was outside. I’d gone back out through the basement window.”

My mind had already imagined the worst-case scenario. That Grace’s fears would be realized, that she had actually fired that gun.

And that the bullet had hit Stuart Koch.

And that Stuart Koch was dead. In that house.

If there was nothing I could do to save him, I had to do everything in my power to save Grace. To help her get through this as best she could. I wasn’t thinking about the morality of this. I wasn’t thinking that justice should run its course, that Grace should get what was coming to her.

I was thinking like her father. I wanted to save her from this. Even if she was guilty of something horrible, I wanted her to get off. The bigger picture wasn’t my concern. Justice didn’t enter into it. I didn’t want my little girl going to prison, and was already thinking about what I could do to ensure that didn’t happen.

The gun.

It would have her fingerprints on it. The police would be able to match it up against the bullet they’d take out of Stuart Koch. If, in fact, he was shot. And if, in fact, Grace had shot him.

If I could find the gun, if I could get my hands on it before anyone else did, I could take a drive west on Bridgeport Avenue, stop on the bridge that crossed the Housatonic, and pitch it over the railing.

And I’d fucking well do it. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind.

“Grace,” I said gently. “About the gun.”

She turned and faced me. “What about it?”

“Where is it? Where’s the gun now?”

Her face went blank. “I don’t know. I have no idea.”