No Safe House

Thirty-one Terry

Fuck Vince Fleming.

It wasn’t a point of view I’d come to right away. It grew on me. After Grace stated, quite clearly, that she had to know what happened, I had to make a decision about whose interests were more important.

I chose Grace.

I chose Grace because I loved her, of course, but also because, at that moment, I realized how brave she was. She wasn’t going to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over her head. She was willing to face the consequences, and in the few short hours since this mess had begun, I’d started to feel it was the only way we were going to get through this.

It might also be the only way to save her. If Grace was perceived by someone out there to be a witness, getting to the bottom of this mess might expose who that person was.

But still.

Vince was formidable, and going against him was not going to be easy. I’d have to watch my back, try to find out as much as I could without his knowing it. And I didn’t exactly have a plan for dealing with whatever it was I might learn.

“You going to be okay here if I go out and ask a few questions?” I asked Grace. She was in the bathroom, door open, brushing her teeth.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll phone work and book off sick. You don’t have to do it. I’ll do my best sick voice. I know I’ll do something really stupid in the kitchen if I go in. Set someone on fire, drop a pot of lobsters, something, because I won’t be able to concentrate.”

“And I may need to talk to you,” I said. “Best that you’re here.” I hit my forehead with the heel of my hand, remembering that this was the day the cleaning lady came. “Shit, Teresa.”

“When does she usually show up?” Grace asked.

“In the mornings. Usually no one’s home and she just lets herself in. If you want, I can call and cancel her.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s okay.”

I asked Grace if she had continued to try reaching Stuart on his cell phone.

“Yeah, and I texted him, too. Nothing.”

I decided I’d start with Milford Hospital. It was going to be the first place we would have checked last night after leaving the Cummings house, so it seemed like the logical place to begin this morning.

I gave Grace a kiss good-bye and headed out, but not before going over the new rules. She didn’t answer the door for anyone she didn’t know. She left the alarm on. She’d stay off all her social sites. No chatting with anyone.

“Got it,” she said, and saluted.

The hospital is right downtown and getting to it took less time than finding a place to park there. I went in the main entrance and approached reception, where a woman was tapping away on a keyboard.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m looking for someone who might have been admitted last night,” I said. “I wanted to see how he was doing.”

“Name?”

“Stuart Koch.” I spelled the last name for her.

She entered the name and studied the monitor. She asked me for the spelling of Stuart, which I knew because he had once been my student. If I’d had to guess, I’d have spelled it with an “ew” in the middle.

She frowned. “I don’t see anything. When would this have been?”

“Last night around ten. Maybe closer to eleven.”

“And what was he brought in for?”

I hesitated. I almost said he’d been shot. But if it turned out Stuart wasn’t here, a comment like that was going to open a can of worms, maybe prompt this woman to call the police.

So I said, “I think it was some kind of head injury. Tripped or something.”

She reached for her phone, waited a few seconds, then said, “D’you guys treat a patient named Koch last night? Would have come in after ten, possible head injury? Yeah, well, just double-check. Okay, then.”

She hung up the phone and gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got no one by that name. Are you sure he was brought here?”

“I thought so,” I said.

“I’d tell you to check with the walk-in clinic, but they close up at seven thirty. If your friend got hurt later than that, I don’t know where else he would have gone but here.”

“Thanks for your time,” I said.

On the way back to the car I phoned Grace.

“No luck at the hospital. You heard anything?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. You know where Stuart lives?”

“I’ve never been there, but I can look it up. Can you hang on?”

I said I could. I could hear her typing away, looking up an address.

“I found it,” she said. She gave me an address. “Let me just check it on Whirl360.” The Web site that gave you an actual image of any location. Some more clicking. “Okay, he told me he lived on top of some kind of repair shop or something and I’m looking at it right now. It’s called Dietrich’s Appliance Repair. There’s stairs on the side of the building. I think they go up to his apartment.”

I was pretty sure I knew the place. I’d driven past it many times. “Can you see Stuart’s car there, on the computer?” I asked.

“Dad,” Grace said wearily, “it’s not a live shot. Duh.”

“Right, okay. I’ll get back to you.”

I got back into the Escape and headed for Naugatuck Avenue. It didn’t take long to find Dietrich’s. I parked across the street, got out, and surveyed the surroundings. It was a stretch of residences and businesses. There was a parking lot next to Dietrich’s that served a short stretch of stores on the other side. The lot was nearly empty. An old VW Golf, a pickup truck, but no huge Buick from decades past.

It was, after all, still very early. The odd car that drove past held someone going to work or school. A lot of people probably weren’t even up yet. I hated to bang on someone’s door at this hour, but this was one of those times when not all niceties could be observed.

I crossed the street and mounted the open-backed stairs that ran up the side of the building, not unlike the steps up to the second floor of Vince’s beach house on East Broadway. When I got to the top, I rapped on the door.

“Hello?”

I waited a few seconds, then tried again.

“Hello! Is Stuart home? I’m looking for Stuart Koch!”

Blinds hung over the window, but they weren’t turned shut. I put my face to the glass and shielded my eyes with my hands to keep out the sun.

The kitchen and living area made up the room that I could see. Two doors on the far wall that were probably bedrooms or a bathroom. No sign of anyone, but Stuart or his father could still be here asleep.

Maybe they couldn’t hear me shouting through the door.

I decided it wouldn’t exactly be breaking and entering if all I did was open the door and stick my head in.

If the door was unlocked.

I tried the knob, and it turned. So I opened it about a foot and leaned my head into the apartment.

“Hello?” I called out. “Anyone home?”

No response.

“Stuart?”

I knew, from experience, that it could take a lot of noise to wake a sleeping teenager. Someone had to be here. People didn’t head off for the day without locking the door.

So I opened the door wider, and stepped inside.