The Good Killer Read online

He decides to take one thing at a time. Forget about the buttons. There’s his gun. He scoots over, still sitting. Picks it up. Pockets it.

  Good.

  Now to stand. Anybody can do it. Little kids. Toddlers. Jimmy rolls sideways onto his hands and knees. Feels like the muscles of his chest want to tear apart.

  Better to keep the vest on then. Could be the only thing holding him together.

  One foot under him. The ground seems solid.

  The other foot. Nothing wrong with his legs.

  One good push and he’s standing. Like a champ.

  The sirens are closer.

  Jimmy’s breath is steady. It sounded wrong before. Wheezy. He didn’t think he’d be able to hold it. But he did. Playing dead, so Sean would go away.

  Now, as Jimmy walks to his car, his breathing seems almost natural. Not normal, but no worse than a guy winding down from a long run.

  Getting into the car is a challenge. He backs in, then swivels his legs around. Panics when there’s no key in the ignition.

  It’s in his pocket.

  The engine sounds smooth. The steering wheel turns hard, like it’s attached to weights and pulleys. Jimmy gets himself aimed in the right direction. Reaches the main road and turns north.

  He sees the lights of patrol cars in his rearview mirror. Two of them. The sirens are incredibly loud.

  The cars turn toward the school.

  Jimmy drives on, heading for the interstate.

  Sean Tennant

  He doesn’t expect to find the black SUV. Not now. But he needs to be moving. East is as good a direction as any.

  Cole has gone silent, but he’s still there. Sean can see him out of the corner of his eye. Slouching in the passenger seat, one booted foot against the dash.

  Sean is looking at the first exit sign for Knoxville when his burner cell phone rings.

  He slows reflexively, pulls the phone from his pocket. Molly’s name on the screen.

  Her voice when he answers.

  “I’m not hurt,” she says. “I love you.”

  He has time to say “Thank god. Where are you?” before the second voice comes on the line. A man’s voice.

  “That’s so you know we’ve got her,” it says. “Now we’ll talk about what you’re going to do.”

  “If anything happens to her I’ll kill you.”

  “Of course. I don’t doubt it. But let’s talk about the stones.”

  “You can have them,” Sean says. “Forty-four of them. I never tried to sell them.”

  “I know. Molly and I have been having a conversation. A very civil conversation.”

  “I have twenty-eight right now. The rest I have to get.”

  “I’ve heard about that too. She says there are sixteen buried in the woods in Maine. I don’t quite believe her. I think she’d lead us on a wild-goose chase if she could.”

  “I’ll get them,” Sean says. “It won’t be a problem.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I’ll need a couple days.”

  “I have your number. I’ll call you back and we’ll talk about delivery.”

  “If anything happens—”

  “You don’t have to say it again. When we get the stones, you get her.”

  Tom Clinton and Lincoln Reed

  Clinton ends the call and hands the phone to Reed, who’s in the back seat with the girl.

  “Sloppiest ransom call I ever heard,” Reed says.

  “What did I miss?” says Clinton.

  “Forgot to tell him not to get the cops involved.”

  “He knows,” Clinton says, adjusting the rearview mirror so he can see Molly. “Right?”

  Her eyes look hateful, but she nods at him. They’ve got her sitting up, belted in, hands cuffed behind her back, ankles bound with duct tape. And it’s true: they haven’t hurt her, not in any major way, though Reed had to slap her a little to get her to calm down.

  They’re in good shape, Clinton thinks, checking his speed. They’ll be in Michigan in seven hours. Easy.

  Reed holds up Molly’s burner phone. “If he does go to the cops, they could trace this.”

  “Ditch it,” Clinton says.

  Reed finds Sean’s number on the burner and punches it into his own phone. When he’s done, he lowers his window and tosses the burner out into the dark.

  Nick Ensen

  He’s having a dream where he turns on a light, the kind with a pull chain, and he’s looking in a mirror and his face is back to normal. No wound, no stitches.

  Suddenly he’s awake, the glare of a table lamp in his eyes, somebody shaking his shoulder. He reaches for the pistol Jimmy gave him, but it’s in his coat and his coat is across the room.

  “Get up,” Jimmy says.

  He sounds mad and Nick wonders: What now? What fresh new thing has gone to hell?

  “Up,” Jimmy says again. “We’re leaving.”

  Nick yawns and sits up. Drinks from a half-full can of Coke on the night table. It’s warm.

  Jimmy is moving stiffly around the hotel room. He gets out of his coat like an old man. Drops it on the floor. Sheds his shirt the same way.

  He stands in front of the full-length mirror on the closet door. Picks at the Velcro straps on the Kevlar vest.

  Nick didn’t get one of those. He got a gun, but no vest. Tells you something.

  Jimmy gets the thing off and it thuds on the floor. His white T-shirt comes off last, soaked with sweat. Nick moves closer. Sees a big purple bruise across Jimmy’s chest, reflected in the mirror.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he says.

  30

  Molly Winter

  They’ve got her in a room that’s maybe twelve by fourteen, with a double bed and two chairs. It’s daytime. Three in the afternoon, if she had to guess, which means that roughly sixteen hours have passed since they grabbed her in Knoxville.

  She’s in Michigan, as far as she can tell. That’s the way they were headed last night. When it started to get light this morning, they were on I-75 in northern Ohio. At that point they made her lie down in the back of the Ford Explorer. So they might have changed course without her knowing.

  But she doesn’t think so. Michigan is Adam Khadduri’s home base. That’s where they would take her.

  The room where they’ve put her has a window, and when she looks down she can see a paved driveway. The driveway loops around a ring of stones, and in the center of the ring there’s a flagpole with no flag.

  It looks like there were flowers planted around the pole, but now they’ve all died off.

  The Ford Explorer is down there in the driveway. And one other vehicle: Adam Khadduri’s Maserati.

  He’s here, but wherever this is, it’s not his home.

  They’ve taken her up north, Molly thinks. At least two or three hours outside Detroit. Someplace out of the way. Up north is where city people go in the summer to escape the heat. Khadduri took her on trips up north when they were together, but they always stayed in hotels. Never here. She doesn’t know this place.

  But from the window she can see a garden shed with a kayak leaned up against it. So there might be water close by.

  “Are we near a lake?” she says.

  Tom Clinton ignores her. He’s in the chair by the bed. There’s a television mounted on the wall that’s playing episodes of MASH back-to-back. He was watching it before, but now the sound is muted. He’s looking at his phone.

  “How many bars do you have?” Molly asks.

  Clinton doesn’t answer.

  “On your phone,” Molly says. “You get a good signal up here?”

  Finally he lifts his head. “I could fetch the duct tape from the car,” he says.

  She takes the hint and doesn’t say anything more.

  They’ve both been like this, Clinton and Reed. They’ve taken turns guarding her: Reed going first, Clinton relieving him about an hour ago. Neither of them wants to talk to her, as if they’re afraid she might bewitch them.

&nbs
p; Molly rises from the chair by the window, crosses to the bed, and lies down. When they got here they cut off the tape they’d used to bind her ankles, and they uncuffed her hands and recuffed them in front. Reed made a big deal of it, like he was doing her a favor, but it was a practical decision. They wanted her to be able to feed herself.

  She’s been acting docile so they won’t change their minds. Staying quiet. No sudden moves. Now she closes her eyes and pretends to sleep, testing Clinton, seeing if he might leave the room.

  Without meaning to, she really does fall asleep. When she wakes, there’s a fresh episode of MASH on the TV. Clinton is in the same spot as before. He must be getting bored, she thinks. She’s being held captive, and she’s getting bored.

  The one bit of excitement came this morning, about an hour after they arrived. Reed was guarding her, and he had the TV tuned to ESPN—the sound turned up. Some show where they played highlights from football games and talked about them with a panel.

  Molly was at the window looking out, wondering if she could open it and climb through before Reed could cross the room. Wondering if she would break her legs if she jumped.

  She decided she would probably only sprain her ankles. Just then a car came along the driveway and stopped behind the Ford Explorer. A woman got out: Noura Ibrahim. Adam Khadduri’s housekeeper.

  Noura opened the trunk of her car and lifted out two bags of groceries. As she approached the house, Molly thumbed the lock on the window. Khadduri appeared below, walking out to meet Noura. Molly pushed up on the sash, but it was stuck. It was wood, and it must have swollen in the frame. She pounded the glass with the side of her fist, trying to catch Noura’s attention.

  Lincoln Reed pulled her from the chair and threw her onto the floor.

  “Don’t do that again,” he told her.

  Molly didn’t fight. She didn’t scream. It wasn’t the right time.

  Lying on the floor, she listened to the car driving away. She wondered if Noura had seen her or if it mattered. She had never been Noura’s friend. Didn’t even know if the woman liked her.

  That was hours ago. Molly hasn’t heard the sound of a car since. She thinks about Sean and hopes he’s safe. She knows if her salvation comes, it won’t come from Noura Ibrahim. It’ll come from Sean. Or from herself.

  She glances at Tom Clinton. He’s eight inches taller than her and probably eighty pounds heavier. She wouldn’t be much use against him in a fight. Not if it was fair anyway. Not if they started on a level playing field.

  But if she could trip him, if she could get him on the ground, things might even out a little.

  The handcuffs are a problem, but there are still moves she could make. She’s had years to practice. One of the benefits of living with Sean.

  We look ahead, he told her more than once. We prepare. That’s our advantage. Because we know the battle’s coming.

  She pictures Clinton on the ground. Pictures herself jamming her thumbs into his eyes, or driving her elbow into his throat.

  He keeps the keys to the Explorer in the right front pocket of his pants. He keeps his phone in the left. Those are the two things Molly needs to escape and call Sean.

  She’ll take them if she can. She only needs to wait for the right chance.

  31

  Jimmy Harper

  Seven hours of sleep in his own bed and Jimmy feels better. Or at least less awful.

  He slept some in the car as well, with Nick driving through the night, arriving in Detroit as the sun came up. The painkillers Jimmy’s taking seem to be helping. Time is passing at its customary rate, not sluggishly like before. He’s moving more like himself again.

  He showers and dresses and phones Adam Khadduri. No answer. Same as when he tried to call last night.

  It’s around three thirty in the afternoon and breakfast seems inappropriate. Jimmy makes himself a thick sandwich of ham and provolone and yellow peppers. Eats it at his dining room table with a cold beer to wash it down.

  He grabs his gun when he leaves the house and drives to Khadduri’s office in Royal Oak. Khadduri’s not there, and his secretary doesn’t know when he’ll be in. Next stop is Khadduri’s house in Huntington Woods. No one answers when Jimmy knocks, and when he peers through the windows, the house seems deserted.

  Which is what he expected. He needed to try, but he’s pretty sure things with Khadduri are not going to be resolved by talking.

  He drives back home to Corktown and stops in at the repair shop. He left his cousin Kelly in charge, and when he walks in he finds Kelly in the customer lounge watching reruns of some zombie show on the flat-screen TV.

  Jimmy waves him into the office and listens to what he has to report, which is mostly that things have been good, business as usual, though he does complain about one of the mechanics.

  “Demitri. He came in late three days in a row. Got a mouth on him too. I’m not saying you should fire him—”

  “Demitri’s fine,” Jimmy says. He knows Demitri is one of his most reliable guys. “Is there anything else?” he asks Kelly.

  Kelly shakes his head but then remembers. “A cop came by here, with a Fibbie.”

  That’s Kelly being clever. Fibbie.

  “An FBI agent?” Jimmy says.

  “They asked about Sean. Said they were talking to people who used to know him.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing,” Kelly says. “He was never a friend of mine.”

  “Did you get their names?”

  “They left cards. I put them in the desk.”

  Jimmy opens the center drawer and finds them. Rafael Garza and Rachel Massoud.

  Garza tried to call him at home too. He found out earlier when he checked his messages.

  “The Fibbie was hot,” Kelly says. “Small, but curvy. Looked foreign. Massoud is an Arab name, isn’t it?”

  “Right,” Jimmy says. “You can go.”

  Kelly looks disappointed. “You need me to keep covering things? Or are you back?”

  “We’ll see. I may need you for something else.”

  Kelly leaves and Nick comes in a few minutes later.

  “I didn’t think you’d really be here,” Nick says. “You feel all right?”

  Jimmy ignores the question. “What did you find out about Khadduri’s son?”

  Nick looks at the chair in front of Jimmy’s desk, like he needs permission to sit.

  Jimmy waves him into it, impatient.

  “He’s still in Ann Arbor,” Nick says. “Still at the university.”

  “You sure? He was a student there six years ago.”

  Nick shrugs. “Unless there’s another Matthew Khadduri. Six years ago he was an undergrad. Now he’s a grad student. Working on a PhD in French literature. Writing a dissertation on Victor Hugo.” Nick waits a beat and adds: “That’s the guy who wrote the book about the hunchback.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” Jimmy says. “Where did you find all this?”

  “The U of M website and Facebook. He has an Instagram account too.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Lots of pictures of him and his car. And at parties. With girls. His dad’s rich, right?”

  “Definitely,” Jimmy says.

  “I think Matthew gets laid a lot.”

  *

  Jimmy is not at his best, but he figures it can’t wait. He goes after Matthew Khadduri that night.

  The kid’s house is easy to find. It’s a small wood-frame place in a historic district on the west side of Ann Arbor. A gabled roof, casement windows, granite steps leading up to the front entrance.

  The house is dark when they get there. Matthew Khadduri is out. He arrives home at twenty minutes after ten in a metallic blue Lamborghini that seems a little out of place. His neighbors are families with kids; they have minivans parked in their driveways.

  Matthew puts the Lamborghini away in a detached garage and goes into the house through a side door—with a short, stylish blond woman in tow. She’s wearing a su
ede jacket, a leather skirt, and knee-high boots. A college student, Jimmy thinks.

  “What did I tell you?” Nick says. “Matthew gets laid.”

  They’re observing from Jimmy’s car across the street. Kelly is in the back seat.

  An hour and forty minutes later, Matthew and the girl emerge from the house. The girl looks as well put together as she did when she went in. They might have been having sex, or they might have been discussing French literature.

  Matthew gets the Lamborghini out of the garage again and the two of them drive off.

  Matty K. is a gentleman, Jimmy thinks; he’s driving the girl home.

  Jimmy crosses the street and walks to the side door of the house. The locks aren’t even a challenge. He’s inside in under two minutes.

  When Matthew Khadduri returns half an hour later, Jimmy and Nick and Kelly are waiting inside in the dark.

  Nick went down to the basement and turned the power off at the breaker, so when Matthew flips the switch in the kitchen the overhead light stays off. He comes through to the living room, and Nick and Kelly knock him to the floor. He tries resisting, but he’s not a fighter. Soon enough they’ve got him straightened out: zip ties on his wrists and ankles, a blindfold over his eyes. Not much damage beyond a bloody lip.

  They empty his pockets and sit him on the sofa. Jimmy takes a chair across from him.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he says.

  Matthew is unnaturally calm, as if he gets bound and blindfolded every day. “There’s three hundred dollars in my wallet.”

  “I don’t care,” Jimmy says.

  “There’s more upstairs. Top drawer of the dresser. About eight hundred, I think.”

  “You need to listen,” Jimmy says. “I won’t kill you, but my friend”—he doesn’t use Kelly’s name—“has a violent streak. If I have to ask him to hurt you, he might get carried away. He could break your ribs. Or other things.”

  “What do you want?” Matthew says.

  “That’s better. I need information about your father. Do you know where he is?”

  “He doesn’t live here.”