The Good Killer Read online

  Maybe he is. Webber filled them in about Garza and the FBI agent, Rachel Massoud. He told them everything, sitting with them at the kitchen table with the curtains closed, while his wife, Yvette, made them bacon and eggs.

  Sean is thinking now what he thought then: Garza and Massoud could be fake. Imposters. Jimmy might have sent them to flush him out. If he arranges to meet them, to surrender, he might end up meeting Jimmy instead.

  It’s paranoid, he knows. But sometimes paranoia keeps you alive.

  He wonders even now if he and Molly should leave. Get back on the road and away from here. But Webber has urged them to at least stay the night. Webber already moved their car into the barn.

  “We’ll hash it all out in the morning,” he said.

  Sean hears Molly stir. She comes up behind him and touches his shoulder, takes the card from his hand.

  “Tomorrow,” she says. “You can worry about everything then.”

  She leads him to the bed, lays him down, curls up against him under the covers. It takes effort to make himself lie still, and he’s sure he won’t fall asleep. But there’s a clock on the night table, the old-fashioned analog kind, with a big hand and a little one. He had one like it in his room, his own room in his own house, when his mother was still alive.

  He never had trouble sleeping there.

  He listens to it ticking. On and on, the same sound. He closes his eyes and gets lost in it.

  It’s bright out when he wakes in the morning. A patch of sunlight falls on the foot of the bed. Molly is already up. Sean dresses and goes down and finds her in the kitchen, drinking coffee with Yvette.

  Dalton Webber is shuffling around in sweats, mixing batter, making pancakes.

  It’s the second batch. The kids got the first. They’ve already caught the bus to school.

  Webber’s been up since dawn, and he’s been busy. He searched out Rafael Garza and Rachel Massoud online and confirmed, with pictures, that they are who they say they are. “So that’s one less worry for you, Garrety.” Beyond that, he’s been making inquiries, calling up friends from his army days. He’s located Steve Z.

  It was Webber who put them in touch with Steve Z. the first time, when they came to him after Cole died. When they needed to start over with new identities.

  “He’s still in business,” Webber tells Sean. “He moved out of Knoxville and set up shop in Florida. Three years ago, when his son enrolled in college there. He’s in Miami now, works out of a bar called Churchill’s.”

  It’s a long way to Miami. Sean left his burner phone upstairs, but Molly takes hers out and looks it up: almost fourteen hundred miles.

  “Steve’s rates have gone up over the last six years,” Webber says, naming a figure that’s more than twice what they paid the first time. “I can’t cover the whole thing, but I can loan you part of it.”

  Sean waves the offer away. “I won’t take your money, Dalton.”

  Molly punches him lightly on the arm. “What he means to say is that we’re grateful for the offer, but we’ll manage.”

  Sean nods, distracted. He hopes it’s true: that they’ll manage. The first time, they had the cash and gold coins from Adam Khadduri’s safe to pay Steve Z. Now what they have are the cylinder seals.

  They’re in Sean’s coat, which is on the back of one of the kitchen chairs where he left it last night. He reaches for it and takes one of the seals from a pocket. It’s rolled in a handkerchief. He unrolls it on the table.

  “Do you think Steve would make a trade?” he asks Webber.

  Webber leans over the table, examining the stone without touching it.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve never talked to him directly. I think you’d have to go and see.”

  “Couldn’t we call him?” Molly asks.

  “My understanding is he never discusses business over the phone,” Webber says. To Sean, he adds, “How many of those do you have?”

  “Fourteen here,” Sean says. “Another thirty hidden away.”

  “How much are they worth?”

  “All together? Seven figures, I hope.”

  “No kidding.”

  Webber busies himself at the stove, and a few minutes later he sets plates of pancakes in front of Molly and Sean. There’s sausage, too, and sliced cantaloupe and grapes.

  Sean eats everything that’s offered to him, but his mind is on other things. The taste of the food is lost on him.

  After the meal he clears the plates and runs water in the sink to wash them. Yvette tells him to leave them, but he keeps going until he starts on the pans and she gets up and shoos him away.

  Webber takes him to a small room in a corner of the house. His study. It’s got a desk and bookshelves and a window with a view of the backyard. Sean imagines Webber sitting in here working, watching his kids play.

  “You’ve got a good thing going, Dalton,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “I shouldn’t have come here. But I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “I don’t want to hear this speech, Garrety.”

  “It’s not—”

  “It’s bull,” Webber says. “You’re where you belong. Tell me what you’re thinking, and we’ll work it out. You’ve got those stones.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You could turn them over to the cop and the FBI agent. Garza and Massoud. Take the deal they offered.”

  “I’m not sure what that gets me.”

  “No jail time is what they said.”

  Sean turns away from the window. “Jail’s not the only thing I’m worried about.”

  Webber nods. He eases down into the chair behind his desk. “Cole’s brother.”

  “That’s right,” Sean says. “Jimmy Harper won’t be making any deals with me.”

  “Maybe Garza and Massoud can help you with him. Put you into witness protection. New identities for you and Molly. That’s what you’re looking for anyway.”

  “I don’t know them. I don’t know if we can trust them. Even if they come through, we’ll have to do what they say and live where they tell us.”

  Webber brushes his fingertips over the side of his face. “So you go with the other option. Steve Z. But you’re taking a chance. A lot could happen between here and Miami. I could go instead.”

  “No,” Sean says.

  “I already talked it over with Yvette. You stay here, and I go and negotiate with Steve—”

  “No. You’re not doing it. You don’t want me staying here. The cops have already been around. If they come again and find me, that’s trouble for you.”

  “It’s small trouble.”

  “It’s too much of a risk.”

  Webber smiles. The damage to his face makes the smile crooked. “I knew a guy who took a risk once. Worked out okay for me.”

  Sean closes his eyes. Puts his hands on top of his head, the fingers interlaced. “Don’t do that, Dalton,” he says. “You don’t owe me. If you ever did, you already paid.”

  “That’s not how I see it.”

  “It’s how it is. You don’t know how close a call it was, me coming out of that alley.”

  Webber’s smile leaves him. “I’ve heard this before. It was a load of crap then, and it still is.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Whatever. You came out. I don’t care how long it took or how scared you were.”

  Sean moves away from the window. He wants to pace, but the room is too small. “Fine,” he says. “I saved you. And I like thinking about you here on your farm with your family. So if you want to pay me back, live your life. Milk the cows. Plant some corn. Buy some more acreage. Have another kid.”

  Webber starts to laugh. Sean stands still in the middle of the room and brings his hands down off his head. “We’re having one,” he says.

  It takes Webber a second to put it together, but then he uses his cane to lever himself out of his chair and comes around the desk. He’s grinning.

  “She’s not showing yet,” he says. />
  “It’s early,” says Sean.

  Webber grips his shoulders, pulls him in, pats him on the back. “Good for you, kid.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it goes.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “All right.”

  “Maybe I could go to Miami and Molly could stay here. Would that be okay?”

  Webber laughs softly and pats his back again.

  “Why is that funny?” Sean asks.

  “She’s welcome to stay as long as she likes,” Webber says. “But I’ve seen the way she is around you. Good luck trying to convince her.”

  26

  Jimmy Harper

  The lawyer, Howard Frazier, has an office in downtown Knoxville.

  It’s on the ground floor of a four-story building. The main entrance is on Market Street, but there’s another in the back that you can access from the parking lot. That’s the entrance Frazier uses.

  If Jimmy had to guess, he would say it’s the one Sean and Molly will use. If they come here.

  It’s a shaky foundation to build his plans on, but guesses are all he has right now.

  He’s guessing the busboy at Rusty’s All-American was telling the truth when he said that Howard Frazier spoke to Sean and Molly. He’s guessing Sean and Molly won’t want to run forever. He’s guessing that when they get tired of it, they might decide they need the advice of a lawyer. So he’s watching Howard Frazier’s building for the second day in a row.

  Sometimes he watches from a Starbucks on Walnut Street that has a view of the back entrance. At the moment, he’s parked in the lot, watching from his rental car. Nick is curled up on the back seat, napping.

  Jimmy says, “Wake up.”

  He says it twice more, then crumples an empty coffee cup and tosses it at Nick’s shoulder. Nick sits up, groggy.

  “Stay alert,” Jimmy says. “I’m gonna take a walk.”

  It’s 11:00 a.m. and the sun is out. He walks to Market Street and crosses it, and a block north there’s a small park with trees and benches. A homeless man sits on a low concrete wall with his bedroll beside him. Jimmy leans against the same wall a dozen feet away and watches the front entrance of Frazier’s building.

  Five or six minutes pass and the homeless man approaches him. Asks for a dollar. Jimmy puts his hand in the pocket of his coat and shakes his head. The guy goes away.

  Another five minutes pass before Jimmy realizes he’s holding tight to the gun in his pocket.

  He lets go of it and withdraws his hand.

  The gun is a recent acquisition. He decided he needed it yesterday and wasn’t sure how he would get it, but it turned out to be simple. He went back to the busboy at Rusty’s and slipped him another hundred dollars, and the busboy put him in touch with a friend of his named Troy. Troy sold Jimmy two Ruger nine-millimeter pistols and two boxes of rounds out of the trunk of a cherry-red Chevy Camaro.

  “Is that all, hoss?” he said. “Or do you need somethin’ else?”

  “That should do it,” Jimmy told him.

  “I got more. You’d be surprised what I got.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Got what you need, if you plan to get into a fight. Hold on, let me show you.”

  He dug around in the trunk, pulled out something heavy. A black vest. Kevlar.

  “Just your size,” Troy said. “I got you covered, hoss. You put this on, you ain’t gotta worry about shit.”

  Jimmy bought it, and now he’s wearing it—with a black button-down shirt to conceal it and a lightweight coat over the shirt. He thought it would be uncomfortable, but it’s not bad. The worst part is that it makes him sweat. But it’s a cool day, even with the sun. He can deal with it.

  He leaves the park and walks toward Walnut Street. Gets back to the parking lot and sees his rental car. Nick is in the front passenger seat now, nodding along to whatever music he’s listening to. Jimmy scans the other vehicles in the lot. One of them is a blue Mercedes: Howard Frazier’s car. But there’s another that Jimmy recognizes. A black Ford Explorer.

  It’s the second time he’s seen it. The first time was last night.

  Last night he followed Frazier when he left his office. The man drove west for around twenty minutes, to a big house with a well-tended lawn on Wesley Road. The house had a facade of red brick and two tall, white columns supporting the roof of the porch. A row of arched windows on the second floor. A horseshoe driveway and a two-stall garage.

  The other houses in the neighborhood were equally prosperous. They were all alike without being too much alike. Jimmy parked along the curb across from Frazier’s house and kept watch on the place as the night grew dark. There were other cars parked on the street, so he didn’t stand out.

  Around 10:00 p.m. he felt ready to fall asleep. He got out and stretched and took a stroll through the neighborhood. Passed a teenager walking a dog and nodded to her like they were neighbors.

  As he was walking back to his car, he saw a black Ford Explorer parked a block away from Frazier’s house. He watched as the headlights flared on and the Explorer came away from the curb and drove off down the street.

  Half an hour later, the same vehicle returned and parked in front of a different house. It was still there when Jimmy left for the night around 2:00 a.m.

  He never saw who was inside, but he didn’t need to. He knew. And he didn’t do anything about it. But now, seeing the Explorer again in the lot behind Frazier’s office, he thinks he should.

  From a distance he can tell the vehicle is empty. When he gets up close, he sees fast-food wrappers on the floor, and discarded coffee cups.

  From Starbucks.

  That’s where he finds them. Khadduri’s men: Tom Clinton and Lincoln Reed.

  They’re sitting by a window with a view of Walnut Street, drinking lattes and eating muffins. They’re dressed in khakis and plaid shirts.

  Jimmy remembers the first time he encountered them, a week or two after Cole died. They sought him out one night when he was working late in his office at the repair shop.

  They were an interesting pair. Clinton was white and Reed was black, but they were similar in build: tall and solid with thick necks and square jaws. They carried themselves the same way, with a kind of casual arrogance.

  The night they came to Jimmy’s shop, they wanted to know if he had been involved in the burglary of Adam Khadduri’s house. Jimmy convinced them that Sean and Cole had acted on their own; he’d had no knowledge of what they’d planned to do.

  Which wasn’t quite true.

  He hadn’t planned it with them, but he had found out about it. A few days before the burglary, he had caught Cole practicing on their father’s old safe. Jimmy knew something was up, and he wouldn’t leave Cole alone until he got the truth.

  He warned Cole not to go through with it, but he knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  The next day, he went to Sean’s apartment. Told him he was crazy. He and Cole were amateurs, and they’d end up getting arrested or killed.

  Jimmy made it as plain as he could. He took Sean by the throat, shoved him against a wall.

  “If anything happens to Cole, I’ll kill you,” he said.

  He thought the threat would be enough.

  Now, in Starbucks, Jimmy orders a venti dark roast and brings it over to the table where Clinton and Reed are sitting. Reed pulls a chair out for him.

  “We’ve been waitin’ on you, Jimbo,” he says.

  “We could have talked last night,” Jimmy replies. “At the lawyer’s house.”

  “Seemed like the wrong time,” Reed says. “And the wrong place.”

  “What about now?”

  Reed looks at Clinton. Clinton says, “We’d be happy to hear whatever you have to report.”

  Jimmy turns his coffee cup in a slow circle on the table. “I don’t report to you.”

  “Whatever you tell us, we’ll pass along to Adam.”

  “I don’t report t
o him either.”

  “That’s becoming more and more clear,” Clinton says. “Adam has lost confidence in you. That’s why we’re here.”

  Jimmy stops fidgeting with the cup, takes a sip. Says, “What will you do, now that you’re here?”

  “Same as you. Watch the lawyer. See if our friends show up.”

  “And then?”

  “Depends on when they show up and where. I figure we’ll have to improvise.”

  Jimmy turns the cup again. Clockwise. Three hundred sixty degrees. “Could be a waste of time. They might not come here.”

  “Could be,” Clinton says.

  “Doesn’t make sense for all of us to watch at once,” says Jimmy. “We could take shifts.”

  “Yeah? How would that work?”

  “You could go and get some rest, and I’ll stay here. When I get tired, I’ll call you.”

  “And if you see them?” Clinton asks.

  “Well then I’ll definitely call you.”

  Clinton smiles and looks at Reed. “He’ll definitely call us.”

  “And we get to rest,” Reed says. “He’s generous.”

  “What about this?” Clinton says, turning back to Jimmy. “Lincoln and I will stay, and you can go. When we get tired, we’ll call you.”

  Jimmy chuckles and pushes his chair back from the table. He can recognize an impasse when he sees one. He keeps his eyes on Clinton’s, which are gray and cold. They’re a cop’s eyes—unsurprising, since Clinton used to be a cop. He’s waiting, and Jimmy can guess what he’s waiting for: a parting line, a threat. Stay out of my way.

  But some things don’t need to be said. Some things, it’s better if you don’t say them.

  Jimmy stands and takes his coffee and leaves the two of them there.

  He hears Reed’s voice as he walks away.

  “Nice talkin’ to you, Jimbo.”

  Outside, the sun seems brighter, but the wind is cool. Jimmy circles the block again and returns to the rental car. He slides behind the wheel and Nick nods at him without taking out his earbuds.

  After half an hour, Clinton and Reed come out of Starbucks, cross Walnut Street, and climb into the Ford Explorer. Jimmy watches them through his open window. They don’t start the engine. They’re not going anywhere.