No Safe House

Forty-two Terry

Grace was ecstatic about the text messages from Stuart Koch. Cynthia, only recently up to speed on our troubles, was eager to put a good spin on them, too.

“So she didn’t do it,” Cynthia said, unable to conceal her enthusiasm. “Grace didn’t shoot that boy. And no one else did, either. He’s okay.”

We’d left Grace in her bedroom and gone into our own, closing the door almost all the way. “So it seems,” I said.

“And you said Vince told you that he was going to see that the broken window at that house got fixed. So it’ll be like it never happened. No one ever has to know what a stupid thing our girl did. And she’s going to learn from this — I truly believe that. She’ll never do anything like this again.”

Cynthia shook her head in exasperation. “And there’ll have to be some new rules around here. Strict curfews. When she goes out someplace — when we let her go out someplace — we’re going to know where she’s going, who she’s going to be with, how long she’s going to be there, when—”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll have her fitted with one of those ankle bracelets. We can sit on the computer all night and watch where she goes.”

“You’re mocking me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This happened on your watch,” she reminded me.

“I’m aware of that,” I said.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault,” she added quickly. “It’s as much mine, because I haven’t been here.” She took a seat on the edge of the bed. “I’m just glad we’re past this part. At least now we don’t have to spend the day getting Grace a lawyer.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “You don’t see this as good news?”

“Sure, yes, of course it is. I don’t want to be the one who bursts the bubble. But it was just a text.”

“What are you saying?” Her face started to fall.

“It’s not like Grace actually talked to him.”

“Yeah, but it came from Stuart’s phone,” Cynthia said.

“I know.”

“Grace seemed to think it was him. These kids, they probably have their own kind of ‘voice’ when it comes to texting. You can tell who it is by the short forms they use and everything.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “Let’s say Stuart’s okay. He’s hiding somewhere until things blow over. What’s that got to do with someone trying to break into the house?”

Cynthia looked off to the side, as though the answer were written down on a pad on the bedside table.

“Maybe the two things aren’t connected,” she said. “This mess happened with Grace, and someone tried to break into our house.” She paused. “A coincidence.”

“Which would mean we should call the police,” I said. “Because the reason Grace and I wanted you to hold off is because we thought it had something to do with her, and we didn’t want police involved until things had sorted themselves out or we had Grace a lawyer. You want to call the cops now?”

I could see her struggling with it. She rubbed her mouth, then briefly put both hands on the top of her head, as if she had the world’s worst headache and was trying to keep her brain from exploding.

“God, I have no idea. If that man really has nothing to do with what happened to Grace, then we should call the police. He could return, or break into someone else’s house, or — hell, I don’t know.”

“But...”

She stood, went into the bathroom, ran some water into her hand and scooped some into her mouth. I followed, stood in the doorway.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” I said. “If Stuart’s alive, why didn’t Vince just tell me? He could have said the kid’s okay, but instead ordered me to let the matter drop. If he’d just told me Stuart was fine, I probably would have dropped it. I wouldn’t have gone looking for him this morning, at the hospital and his apartment.”

I paused, thinking it through. “Maybe that’s why we got the text. Vince found out — don’t ask me how — I was nosing around, and came up with that idea.”

“So it was Vince texting Grace, on Stuart’s phone.”

“Vince, or one of his bunch.”

“Oh shit,” she said, bracing herself on the countertop with her hands, looking at me in the mirror.

“We still have to know,” I said. “With certainty.”

The phone in the bedroom rang, startling both of us. I got to it first. The ID declared the caller to be unknown.

I picked up. “Hello?”

“Is your wife there?”

I knew the voice.

“What do you want?”

“Just put her on,” Vince said.

Cynthia was standing in the bathroom doorway, mouthing, “Who is it?”

I held out the receiver. “Vince,” I told her.

Her eyes went wide. She reached out, put the receiver to her ear. “Vince,” she said.

She let me put my head up next to hers so I could hear both sides of the conversation.

“Cynthia,” he said. “I need to know whether you’ve brought in the police. Are they there now?”

“Why would I have called the police, Vince?”

“Because there was an incident. At your home. Not your apartment. About an hour ago.”

“That’s right,” she said. “There was. How would you know about that?” She gave me a quick look.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“No,” Cynthia said. “The police are not involved.” She paused. “Yet.”

Another pause, at Vince’s end. Was that a sigh of relief?

“That’s good,” he said. “I owe you an apology.”

Cynthia’s face started to flush. “An apology? That was you? That was one of your goons?”

“Like I said, I owe you an—”

“No!” she said. “You owe me a fuck of a lot more than an apology! You owe me — us! — some answers, that’s what you owe us, you son of a bitch!”

“Cynthia, I—”

“No more bullshit! Why the hell was someone, working for you, trying to get into our house? How did you get a key? What’s going on? And what about Stuart? Was it you? Did you send those texts?”

“What texts would those be?” he said.

“To Grace. She received text messages from Stuart, just a few minutes ago.”

“I didn’t send Grace any texts,” he said.

Those sounded like weasel words to me. He didn’t say he didn’t know about it. But Cynthia was going in another direction.

“Our house, Vince. You sent someone to break into our house. What was the plan? Was it to get Grace? To keep her from talking? My God, is that what the plan was?”

“No,” he said. “He thought the house was empty.”

“He?”

“Bert. It was Bert.”

I took the phone. “Why, Vince? Why would Bert be trying to break into our house?”

Another moment of silence at the other end of the line.

Finally, Vince spoke.

“Because that’s where the money is.”