Envy the Night (21 page)

She pulled her head back and stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m making observations, not accusations.”

“Well, I made an observation myself today, and that’s that Frank doesn’t like to talk about his father and is very ashamed of what the man did.”

“Shame is one reason to avoid talking about his father. There are other possibilities.”

“You’re suggesting he followed in his footsteps? Frank was
seventeen
when his father died. I’ve never heard of a seventeen-year-old assassin.”

Atkins just looked at her, studying her face, silent.

“Why aren’t you asking about Vaughn?” she said.

“This is the man who drove the Lexus?”

“Yes. He’s the one who caused all of this. He’s the one who brought these murderers into my shop.”

“You were with Mr. Temple and Vaughn at the same time,” Atkins said, switching tracks. “Although he called himself Dave O’Connor at the time, right?”

“What do you know about him? Who is he?”

Atkins ignored her. “Did you sense any familiarity between the two men?”

“Frank and Vaughn?” She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I mean, they’d just gotten in an accident. So they had about twenty minutes of familiarity before I met them. That was as much as I sensed, too.”

“You let the Lexus driver leave without seeing a driver’s license or insurance information?”

“He gave me cash. I’ve explained that to everyone already. It was a mistake, but I can’t fix it now. I can’t fix any of this now.”

“And you have no idea where he went?”

She should answer that question, tell him about the island cabin and the car in the woods. That was the right thing to do, certainly, but she was remembering Frank’s reluctance to bring the police into this, the idea he had that it might make her even more of a threat to these men who had such evil ways of dealing with threats. The less involvement the better, right? Knowing nothing was better than knowing something. If you knew something, you were a loose end. Isn’t that what Frank had called her? A loose end. Just like Jerry. She wanted to be clueless again. Wanted to be a bystander. She
was
a bystander, damn it—and wouldn’t it be safer, ultimately, to stick to that role? She thought of that and of Jerry’s blood running into the floor drain, and she shook her head.

“When he took my car he said he was going to Rhinelander.”

She waited for him outside the police station as evening descended, the sky tinged with wispy purple clouds that stood stark against a backdrop of pinks and oranges. Down the street, loud music blared from speakers near the river, some sort of evening event commencing.

Jerry was dead. He’d been a cantankerous, combative employee from day one, but he’d also been the only person she was close to in the entire town. Time with Jerry made up about ninety percent of her human interaction since she’d arrived in Tomahawk, and understanding that he was gone filled her with the chill of loss. With Jerry went the shop. She couldn’t run it alone. Running it with just the two of them had seemed impossible at first, but they’d made it work. The reason for that, she knew, was Jerry’s willingness to stick around. He might not have liked working for her, but he’d done it, and without him the shop that her grandfather had opened sixty-eight years earlier would have already been out of business.

She was feeling the threatening rise of more tears when the door opened and Frank Temple stepped out of the station and came down the steps to join her. He held his jacket in his fist, and she saw for the first time that he was wearing a gun in a holster on the side of his chest.

“Where’d you get that?”

He didn’t look at her. “Had it on when we left the cabin. Cops seemed to want to keep it, but I made a compelling case against that by pointing out that nobody was killed with a gun today.”

There was a bristle to him she’d not seen before, a darkness in his voice. Atkins, probably. If he’d asked
her
so many questions about Frank’s past and his family, it could only have been worse for Frank.

The door to the police station opened again, and two cops in uniform stepped out and stared at them.

“Is your car still around?” Frank asked.

“At the shop. They were going to give me a ride, but I wanted to wait for you.”

“Let’s walk down there, then.”

They started down the sidewalk, falling in step together quickly and silently.

“The FBI was here,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I was surprised . . . I mean, I’m glad that the police are getting help, but I was surprised by that.”

He was looking at his feet and still holding the jacket in his hand, that gun open and obvious now, as if it were some sort of statement. “The question is whether I’m the only reason they’re involved.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

“Because if I am,” he said, “then it’s somewhat discouraging. I understand it, sure, but having the FBI investigate me is not going to help with this mess.”

“He seemed pretty interested in you.”

“Yeah, he did. As much as that pisses me off, it’s no shock. I just wonder if I’m the heart and soul of their interest, or if I’m part of a package.” He turned to face her. “Did Atkins say a word to you about Vaughn?”

She thought about it, then shook her head. “Not until I brought him up. When I asked about him, Atkins just wanted to know whether you seemed familiar with Vaughn. Up until that point the only thing he’d wanted to talk about was . . .”

“Me,” Frank said.

She nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s basically the same response I got, like Atkins was completely uninterested in Vaughn. Since he should be
very
interested in him, I’m going to guess that my wonderful, well-known name is not the only draw that attracted our VIP from Wausau. They’ve got something on Vaughn already. That Lexus rang some bells somewhere, down in Florida maybe, or on the FBI computers. They got excited about him, and then my name was an extra wild card in the deck. They don’t know what to make of it yet.”

“And they don’t know where he is.”

The look he gave her then was both knowing and intrigued. “You didn’t mention Ezra’s find?”

“No. Did you?”

He shook his head. “Figured it was your play, and if you told them, they’d be back around with more questions. When that didn’t happen, I assumed you’d decided not to say anything.”

“I don’t know why I didn’t,” she said. “I just . . . there was a lot going through my mind.”

“You didn’t say anything because you saw what happened this afternoon.”

Blunt, but true. There had been a lot going through her mind, yes, but it was the memory of that blood dripping into the floor drain that made the decision for her.

“You remember what I said about loose ends?” he asked.

She nodded. “I was thinking about that the whole time. That, and everything you said about the guy who owns the cabin, Devin, and how everyone around him is so . . .”

“Deadly.”

“I guess that’s the word.”

“It’s the only word that counts right now. Whoever followed Vaughn up here made a clear statement today, and we’ve got to listen to it.”

“Doesn’t that mean I
should
have told the FBI about the car?”

“You were the one who chose not to,” he said. “I didn’t instruct you on that. So what’s your reasoning? Why didn’t you tell them?”

She stopped walking, and he went a couple of paces ahead before turning back to her.

“I didn’t tell them,” she said, “because I’m scared.”

“You should be.”

“And there was a moment in our conversation this morning when you seemed to suggest that it would better to distance myself from the whole thing.”

“I did think that, but as of right now, you have no distance. I don’t think there’s much chance of getting any back, either.”

“So what do we do?”

“I’m not sure yet. Here’s what I can tell you—the police in this town, with or without Mr. Atkins of the Wausau office of the FBI, aren’t ready to deal with these guys. So I don’t think you made a poor decision. I don’t think that at all.”

“So what do we do?” she repeated.

He looked at her, then down, his eyes seeming to settle on the butt of his gun.

“There are only two things I’m certain of right now. First one is that we should talk to Ezra.”

“We should talk to a
fishing guide
?”

“He’s a bit more than that, Nora.”

“Okay. And the other thing you’re certain of?”

He started to walk again, the gun bouncing a little with each step.

“That you if go home tonight, you probably die.”

__________

G
rady hadn’t dated much since Adrian left. The occasional setup, or maybe somebody he’d meet at a party and see once or twice again, but nothing serious. He had a date for Saturday night, though, a woman who worked computers at one of the major Chicago banks and had been assigned to help Grady review hundreds of transactions. He was with a team that was trying to trace terrorism dollars now, the new concern, and Helen was the liaison the bank had offered up to the Bureau. They’d spent the better part of two weeks together, going over numbers that led nowhere, and Grady had enjoyed her very much. Good-looking, personable, and able to laugh at herself, which was certainly not a trait Adrian had possessed. He wouldn’t have asked her out; there was a professionalism issue as excuse, but the reality was that he’d never been good at that, getting around to the actual question. Two days after he’d broken off from the project, though, she called him at work and asked if he wanted to go to dinner. It was the first time a woman had ever done that with Grady.

He was in a good mood as Saturday afternoon wore down, went for a long run along the lake and then spent an extra ten minutes stretching, felt the week’s tension leave his muscles and fade into the air. When he got back to the apartment he showered and—this was embarrassing—tried on three different shirt-and-pants combinations, feeling like a high school kid. He’d just decided on a black button-down with a dark green pair of gabardines, was still threading
the belt around his waist, when the phone rang. Not the home number, but his cell, which meant it wasn’t a call that he could ignore. He fastened the belt and answered the phone.

“Agent Morgan?”

“Speaking.”

“Ron Atkins calling from Wausau.”

Wausau? Grady knew there was a field office up there, but what in the hell could Wausau have cooking on a Saturday evening that required his attention?

“What can I do for you?” Grady said, standing before the full-length mirror and taking inventory, trying to ignore the gray hair.

“I’m sorry to bother you on a Saturday night like this, but I’ve been doing a little research, and it looks like you’re the foremost expert we’ve got on Frank Temple.”

Grady watched his face change in the mirror, saw it drape with concern and alarm.

“Which one?” he said.
Please say the dead one, Atkins. Tell me it’s old, tell me it’s something very old.

“The son,” Atkins said. “Frank the Third.”

Grady turned away from the mirror and walked out to the living room, the sick taste of defeat rising in his mouth. Wausau. Shit, he should have remembered. That town was maybe fifty miles from the cabin, that infamous family cabin Frank had spoken of with such warmth, the one he wasn’t sure he could ever return to, the one his father had purchased with Matteson and the other soldier, Ballard.

“What’s happening?” Grady said.

“I’m still trying to figure that out. Right now here’s what I know: The Temple kid blew into town yesterday, with a couple of real bad boys from Miami on his heels, and we’ve already got one body in the morgue and a cop recovering in the hospital.”

Real bad boys from Miami on his heels.
The words spun through Grady’s brain like whirring blades, and he sank down onto the couch knowing that the kid had done it. He’d gone down to Miami to settle up, he’d put three bullets into Devin Matteson’s body, and Grady had sent him there.

“I’ve been told,” Atkins said, “that you spent some time with the kid.”

“Yes.”

“And you brought his father down.”

“He brought himself down.”

“What? Oh, sure. Sure. The thing is, you know, it seems the apple didn’t fall
far from the tree, right? Like father like son and all that? You pick whatever cliché you want, because they all apply here.”

“I wouldn’t rush to that judgment.”

“What rush? He’s been adrift for damn near a decade now, floating all over the country without a job but with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cash.”

The supply was exhaustible—probably getting close to exhausted by now, actually—and Grady was well aware of its source. Frank’s father had been clever with his banking, setting up some hidden trusts and offshore accounts that his son could use. Frank, though, actually told Grady about their existence. Explained his father’s final conversation with him, which included information on the money. By the time the kid disclosed this, Grady was beginning to feel overwhelmed by his guilt, and the sort of trust Frank was showing made it worse. So instead of shutting the money down, as he should have, Grady merely warned Frank that he ought to separate himself from a bloody slush fund like that.

“I spent some time with him,” Grady said into the phone, “and he seemed to have his head on right.”

“Did you not hear me say I’ve got one dead up here already?”

“I heard that, and I understand what you’re looking at. But let’s not start painting Frank as the same as his father right away, all right? Not right away.”

The disbelief, tinged with disgust, was clear in Atkins’s voice as he said, “Yeah, when a contract killer’s son floats into town, wearing a gun and leaving bodies in his wake, I suppose he really could just be on a fishing trip.”

“He was wearing a gun?”

“Uh-huh. Smith & Wesson with his father’s initials engraved on the stock.”

Grady pressed his eyes shut. That was the suicide gun. “Tell me what you know, Atkins.”

“These guys from Miami, they showed up yesterday and attacked a woman who owns a body shop here. The same body shop where Temple’s car ended up after an accident a few miles north of town. Temple interceded—and I’ll admit that the woman hasn’t claimed any sense of familiarity between Temple and the pricks who went after her. But by the end of the day the cops somehow lost both of these guys, which takes some doing.”