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.”
THIRTEEN
DETECTIVE Wedmore didn’t have to worry about waking anyone up this time of night. Her only concern was whether anyone would hear her banging over the blast of the music.
She made a fist and pounded on the front door of the house, prepared to walk in on her own if someone didn’t answer soon. She was reaching for the doorknob when it swung open and she was looking into the slightly bloodshot eyes of a man in his early twenties.
She figured they would remember her. After the Bradleys were murdered next door, Wedmore had talked to the three young men who were living here while attending some college in Bridgeport. She had conducted thorough interviews with all three of them, separately, and had come to the conclusion they not only had nothing to do with the double homicide, but didn’t know anything useful. She wasn’t actually sure they knew anything useful about anything.
Now she was here for a completely different reason. But in the back of her mind, she couldn’t stop wondering whether there was a connection.
Rona Wedmore didn’t like coincidences.
When the young man saw her standing there, he blinked a couple of times, then said, “Hey, hi, I remember you. Did someone call the cops about the music?”
He shouted back into the house, “Turn it off!”
Seconds later, the music died.
“That okay?” he asked Wedmore.
“They don’t send me out on noise calls,” she said. “You’re Brian, right?” Brian Sinise, if she remembered correctly, and it wasn’t very often she remembered incorrectly. She knew the other two who lived here were Carter Hinkley and Kyle Dirk.
“Yeah, right.”
“Carter and Kyle here?”
He nodded. “You’re good,” he said. “Guys! The black cop lady wants to talk to us! Not about the noise!” He smiled and led her into the living room of the house, which was littered with empty beer bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and empty pizza boxes. “We just had dinner,” he said. “You want a beer?”
Wedmore shook her head. “No, thanks.”
Two sets of footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs. Carter and Kyle were both around the same age as Brian. Of the three, Carter was on the heavy side.
“Hey, man,” Carter said to Brian. “You don’t shout out ‘black cop lady.’ What’s wrong with you?”
Brian winced and looked apologetically at Wedmore. “Sorry.”
She said, “Can we all sit down?”
Kyle rushed over to clear a pizza box off a chair so Wedmore could sit. She had a good look at it first, brushed away a few crumbs. Kyle said, “So, have you figured out who killed those old folks?”
“We haven’t made an arrest in that yet,” Wedmore said. “I guess you’ve all been feeling pretty on edge ever since.”
They glanced at one another, evidently assessing one another’s level of anxiety, and finally all three shrugged. “I guess so,” Kyle said. “It’s pretty fucked-up, but we’re all kind of busy.”
The other two nodded. Wedmore thought, Dumb as shoes.
“So you’ve got more questions about that?” Carter asked.
“I wanted to ask you about someone else, someone who I think may have lived here at some point.”
“Oh,” Brian said. “
Shoot.”
“Nice choice of words, douchehead,” Kyle said.
“I can’t say anything right,” Brian said. “It’s the beer. I think I might have a problem.” His friends chuckled.
“Did someone named Eli Goemann live here?”
“Oh yeah, Eli,” Kyle said. “He was here for, like, a couple years. I moved in when it was his last year, same time as Brian moved in. And then, when Eli left, that was when Carter moved in.”
“So I never met the guy,” Carter said. “I just heard the stories.”
“But you two know him,” Wedmore said to Brian and Kyle. They nodded.
“What’s up with Eli?” Brian asked. “Because he, like, left without paying his share of the rent for the last month he was here.”
“Was he attending school while he lived here?” Wedmore asked.
“Yeah. Same place as us.”
“Why’d he move out?”
Brian shrugged. “He was kind of an ass. I didn’t want him around. Neither did Kyle.”
“Why?”
Kyle said, “He didn’t pull his weight. We try to keep the house running smoothly, you know? Make sure there’s beer in the fridge, keep the place looking good.”
Wedmore’s eyes roamed the room.
“But Eli never pitched in. It was like housework and chores were beneath him.”
“Yeah,” Brian said. “And if we ordered pizza and had to split it three ways, he’d always say, Shit, like, I didn’t get to the ATM—can I pay you back tomorrow? And then when you asked him the next day he’d say, Well, I didn’t even have that much pizza, only a slice—you guys had most of it.”
“So we said, Why don’t you find somewhere else to live?” Kyle said. “We started freezing him out. Finally, he got the message and left.”
“When was this again?” Wedmore asked.
“A year ago,” Brian told her.
“But his driver’s license gives this as his address.”
“Yeah, well—” Brian shrugged. “Mine’s still got the address from two moves ago.”
Wedmore gave him a reproachful look. “You’re supposed to notify them of a change of address.”
He nodded sagely. “I will certainly get on that.”
“Where did Eli go after he left here?”
He and Kyle glanced at each other. “Beats me,” said Kyle. “He got the odd bit of mail coming here after he left, but he didn’t tell us where he was going, so we just threw that shit out.”
Brian said, “You didn’t say why you’re asking.”
“So you haven’t talked to him since he moved out. Neither of you?”
“I haven’t,” Brian said.
“Me, neither,” Kyle said.
“And I wouldn’t know the asshole if I saw him,” Carter piped up.
“You ever know him to get into any kind of trouble? Outside of the house here? With other people, or the police?”
Heads shaking.
“You know anything about his family? Where his parents are? They in Milford?”
Brian said, “I think they’re in Nebraska or Kansas or someplace like that.”
“You don’t know which it was? Kansas or Nebraska?”
Brian shook his head. “I always think of them as kind of interchangeable.”
That didn’t worry Wedmore too much. Goemann wasn’t that common a name, and a Web search for phone numbers in those two states wasn’t likely to produce too daunting a list.
“But it is kind of weird,” Brian said.
“What’s weird?” the detective asked.
“That this would be, like, the second time in a week or so when someone has come around looking for him.”
Wedmore leaned forward in her chair. “Someone else was here? Who?”
Brian shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought at first maybe he was a cop, you know, like you. But he didn’t show me a badge or anything.”
“He give you a name?”
Brian shook his head.
“Why’d you think he was a cop?”
“He just had that cop thing going on. A suit, big guy, short hair. And I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this”—he shot a glance at Kyle—“but he was black. Looked like a detective out of The Wire or something like that.”
“And what did he want?”
“Said he was trying to find Eli, that he had some business with him, that he’d been in touch, but they hadn’t gotten back to him. Thought he might live here. I told the guy he hadn’t lived here for, like, a year.”
Wedmore had a thought. If this guy had been a cop, he would have shown a badge. But if he came across like one, he might be a former police officer who’d gone private.
“This guy who came around asking,” she said. “How tall?”
Brian said, “Like, six feet? Six-two? Looked like he could have played football when he was younger.”
“How old would you say he was?”
“Pretty old. Mid-forties.”
Wedmore let that one go.
“And he had sort of a gap between his teeth, right here.” Brian touched his finger to his upper teeth.
Wedmore raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
Brian nodded.
“How about his nose?” she asked. “Did it look like it was kind of pushed over to one side, like maybe it got broken a long time ago?”
Another nod from Brian. “Yeah, I think. I even asked him about it.”
“You would,” Kyle said.
“He said it happened when he played ball.”
That nailed it for Detective Wedmore. That sounded very much like Heywood Duggan.
Of course, back when he worked for the state police, and he and Wedmore were sleeping together, she’d always called him Woody. For more reasons than one.
FOURTEEN
TERRY
“I kind of blanked out, you know?” Grace told me, sitting in the car next to me as we tried to find the home she and Stuart had broken into. “Next thing I knew, I was out of the house. I guess I dropped the gun somewhere. Or maybe back in the house. Probably in the house, because it would have been hard to hold on to when I was crawling out of the basement, you know?” She was thinking. “Unless I put it on the ground outside before I got out. Maybe I picked it up and then threw it in the bushes on my way to the gas station.”
“Think, Grace. It’s important.”
She turned away, dropped her head, studied her hands. “I don’t know. The house. I’m pretty sure. I remember when I tried to open the front door, I think I was using both hands.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s good.”
But then she added, “I think.”
I slowed the car when we got to the intersection of New Haven and Gulf. “Which way did you come from?”
She pointed right, onto Gulf. “Down that way. That much I know.”
I put on my blinker and lowered my speed to allow Grace a chance to refamiliarize herself with the neighborhood. The first cross street we came to was George.
“Was it down here?” I asked, pointing left. Then, glancing in the other direction, “Or that way?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Everything looks the same.”
That was true. At night, with only a few streetlights to distinguish one house from another, I could understand her difficulty.
“Maybe when I see his car,” she said, “then I’ll know if we have the right street.”
“What kind of car?”
“I don’t know, but it was old and really big. And sort of brown. I think I’d know it if I saw it. He didn’t park it right out front of the house. It was a few houses away.”
I drove past George. I passed Anchorage on the left, and shortly after, Bedford on the right.
“Wait,” Grace said. “I remember that.” She was pointing at a yellow fire hydrant. “I remember running by that.”
“So you must have come up Bedford,” I said, making a right.
“Yeah, I think I came along here.”
>
I barely had my foot on the gas. “Recognize any of these houses?”
She shook her head but said nothing. “Where’s his car?”
“This might not be the right street, hon.” We’d reached another street that came up from the south to join Bedford. Glen Street.
“Here!” she said. “I remember that sign. It was Glen. I’m sure it was Glen.”
I turned the wheel hard to the left. Glen took a gentle bend to the right a short distance ahead.
There were no big old cars parked along the street. There were no cars parked on the street at all. The homes along here all had driveways large enough to accommodate more than one car, so there wasn’t much need for people to leave vehicles on the street.
In a few seconds, I realized we had no place else to go. Glen dead-ended.
“If it’s on this street, then we must have passed it,” I said.
“I keep looking for the car. There’s no car.”
“Maybe Stuart’s okay and he went home,” I said, desperate for any positive development.
“Maybe,” she said.
I did a three-point turn at the end of Glen. “Okay, so study the houses on the way back, see if any of them look like the place.”
I was also trying to take some comfort from the fact that the street was not overrun with police cars, their lights flashing. If something had happened along here, it sure looked as though no one had any inkling of it yet. And a gun going off—someone would have heard that, right? Called the cops?
Maybe. Maybe not. A lot of times, people hear one shot, wait for a second, and when another one doesn’t come, they go back to sleep.
“Tell me about the house,” I said.
“It had two floors, and you couldn’t see the garage from the street because it was tucked around the back. It could be that one, or it could be that one, too, or—Cummings!”
“What?”
“That was the name. That was the name of the people who live there. Stuart said it was Cummings.”
I stopped the car, got out my cell, and opened the app that allowed me to find addresses and phone numbers. I entered “Cummings” and “Milford.”
I looked up from the phone, and then at the first house Grace had pointed to. “It’s that one.”
No Safe House Page 8
