The Good Killer Page 24

  “I know where he lives. He’s not there. Where would he go, if he had to hide for a while?”

  “He has apartments in London and New York.”

  “What about someplace closer, where there wouldn’t be many people around?”

  Matthew hesitates, bows his head. Jimmy watches him in the gray dark.

  “There’s no place closer,” Matthew says.

  Jimmy nods once at Kelly. Kelly leans over Matthew Khadduri and punches him hard in the stomach. Matthew doubles over and Kelly drags him off the sofa and pushes him to the floor. He kicks him once in the small of the back.

  “You heard what I told you about broken ribs,” Jimmy says.

  Matthew tries to crawl. Kelly kicks him again. Jimmy gets out of the chair. He’s got the gun he bought in Knoxville. He crouches down and presses the muzzle against Matthew’s cheek.

  “When I said I wouldn’t kill you, that was more a prediction than a promise. I meant I wouldn’t kill you if you told me what I needed to know.”

  Matthew lies still on the floor. His breathing is a little crazy, but he gets it under control. “There’s a lodge up north, on the Au Sable River. Near Grayling. Sand Hill Road. The closest neighbor is a mile away.”

  Something hollow in his voice. Defeated. It sounds like truth.

  “Good,” Jimmy says, moving the gun away from the kid’s cheek. “Help him up,” he says to Nick. “Get him some ice for his lip.”

  32

  Sean Tennant

  Cole’s voice sounds faint and distant, like it’s being carried on the wind.

  “You need to straighten up,” it says.

  It’s three in the afternoon. The day after Molly got taken in Knoxville. Sean is in upstate New York, on the outskirts of a town called Rome. He’s walking on a long, straight path beside a remnant of the old Erie Canal.

  “You need to get your shit together,” Cole says. “That’s what she told you, way back when.”

  Sean frowns. “She never said that to me.”

  “She used prettier words. But it amounts to the same thing.”

  Sean remembers the words: Today a new sun rises and we start again.

  Fragments of memory—that’s all he has from the days after Cole died. He remembers meeting up with Molly in Toledo. Leaving his car behind because Cole had bled there, in the back seat. Traveling east in Molly’s car and spending a night in a seedy motel in Pennsylvania.

  On the road again the next day, crossing into New York State. Slush on the Thruway. A gray sky. Sean leaned his head against the window beside him while Molly drove. When she tried to talk to him he gave her one-word answers.

  She left the Thruway in the early afternoon. Exit 34. Took a two-lane highway north. She didn’t say where she was going. Half an hour later, a few random turns, and she pulled over on a patch of wet gravel and melting snow and got out.

  “Come on,” she said. He didn’t ask why. It felt easier to follow along.

  There was a wooden barrier and a sign that read: NO MOTORIZED VEHICLES. And beyond: a path with trees on one side and a canal on the other. A thin blanket of snow on the path. The water in the canal was murky black.

  They walked half a mile and Molly said, “Today a new sun rises and we start again.”

  Sean kept walking and made no reply.

  She got ahead of him, turned around, stopped him with a hand on his chest.

  “Did you hear me?” she asked.

  “I heard you,” he said. “I don’t want a pep talk.”

  She hit him lightly with the side of her fist. “It’s not a pep talk. It’s a deal you have to make with me. Ask me why.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need you, and because you and I are alive. Aren’t we?”

  He took his time answering. It was a serious question.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then say the words.”

  He wasn’t the sort of person who cared about rituals. But she was waiting.

  He said the words. “Today a new sun rises—”

  She finished it with him: “—and we start again.”

  Afterward she watched him. Solemn. As if she was wondering if he would come through for her.

  “Where do we start?” he asked.

  “Anywhere,” she said. “We just have to pick a place.” She looked up at the gloomy sky. “But not here. Somewhere warm.”

  They made a few decisions that day: They would go to Dalton Webber for help. They would spend the cash and the gold coins Sean had stolen from Adam Khadduri, but they wouldn’t try to sell the cylinder seals.

  Sean remembers the spot where he made his deal with Molly. There’s an ash tree by the side of the trail. Back then, he carved an X in the trunk with his pocketknife. He finds the tree now and leaves the trail. He counts off twenty paces, due north.

  Here’s a stone the size of a softball, half sunk in the ground. Here’s another, six feet away. He drops his backpack on the grass and unfolds his camp shovel. Starts to dig midway between the two stones.

  Five minutes later he has the box. The last of the cylinder seals. The first ones he buried. He puts the box in the backpack.

  Cole’s voice is with him as he hikes back to the pickup truck.

  “You need to pull it together.”

  “Yeah,” Sean says.

  “How long have you been wearing those clothes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Too long. Put on something clean. Brush your teeth.”

  “Sure.”

  “Do it. You’ll feel human again. Then we need to talk about sleep.”

  “I slept last night,” Sean says.

  Technically, it was this morning. He found a hotel parking lot around 7:00 a.m., in Hagerstown, Maryland, just off the interstate. He slept sitting up in the truck.

  “Two hours,” Cole says. “Doesn’t count.”

  “Closer to three,” says Sean.

  Cole goes silent, but he’s still there. Off to Sean’s right and half a step behind. Sean can hear the tread of his boots in the mud.

  There’s no snow now, not like the last time. The trail is littered with fallen leaves. The wind is blowing more of them down from the trees. Red and orange. They spin slowly through the air.

  Sean comes to the wooden barrier. The end of the path. He sees the white pickup. And a cop standing behind it, looking at the license plate.

  The cop looks up and sees him.

  For a handful of seconds, they’re balanced on the edge of a knife. The cop moving closer and taking him in. Sean sees everything play out over the cop’s face: No, it can’t be. Holy shit, it is.

  “What’s your name?” Sean says.

  It throws the cop off. He’s used to being the one asking the questions. But he can’t be too used to it, Sean thinks. The cop is young. Maybe twenty-one.

  “Brian Cole,” he says.

  Sean’s laugh surprises both of them.

  “Is that funny?” the cop says.

  “No,” says Sean. “I used to have a friend named Cole.”

  The cop nods. He’s maybe ten feet away now. “I need to see some ID,” he says.

  “No you don’t,” Sean says. “You know who I am.”

  It’s not the response the cop expected. He runs his tongue over his teeth.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Sean glances back along the path. “There was something I needed. I had to dig it up.”

  The cop’s eyes narrow. “What was it? What did you dig up?”

  Sean slips the backpack from his shoulder and lowers it to the ground. The cop reaches for the pistol on his belt. He unsnaps the holster. But he doesn’t draw.

  Sean holds still. Arms down at his sides. “I could show you,” he says. “But honestly it wouldn’t mean anything to you. It’s just some rocks.”

  “Rocks?” the cop says. “Like diamonds?”

  “No. Not diamonds.”

  The wind picks up. A leaf floats down through the air between
them.

  The cop says, “You’re not making sense.”

  “Well, I haven’t been sleeping enough,” Sean tells him.

  “You drove here from Knoxville.”

  “Yes.”

  “They briefed us this morning about you. Said you were driving a white pickup now. Be on the lookout. And I thought, Right. Like he’s gonna come here. There’s a warrant out for you in … where is it?”

  “Michigan,” Sean says.

  The cop nods. “Michigan. You’re supposed to be armed and dangerous.” His hand is resting on the grip of his pistol. “Are you armed?”

  “I’m not dangerous.”

  “That’s good. I like you.”

  Something a kid would say. It makes Sean smile.

  The cop blushes. “I mean I like what you did in Houston. I respect it. But I have to take you into custody.”

  “I understand.”

  “I need you to get down on your knees,” the cop says, drawing the pistol from his holster, “and place your hands on top of your head with the fingers interlaced.”

  “On my knees?” Sean says.

  “That’s right.”

  “No.”

  The cop raises the pistol and takes a step closer. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “I haven’t moved my hands, Brian.”

  “Get down on the ground,” the cop says. His voice is deeper than before. Harsher.

  “Doesn’t matter how you say it, Brian. I’m not gonna do it.”

  “On the ground. Now.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Sean says. “I’ve got a Glock under my coat. The same one I used to plug Henry Keen. Go ahead and shoot me. You’ll be fine. You can say I reached for it.”

  “Do not reach for your weapon.”

  “Take it easy. I’m not reaching. We’re not gunslingers, Brian. We’re not gonna shoot it out. I’ve got someplace I need to be.”

  The cop holds his pistol steady. “Where?” he asks.

  “A long way from here. You know what happened in Knoxville.”

  The cop’s expression softens. “Somebody abducted your girlfriend. Molly.”

  “Yes they did,” Sean says. “And the only way I get her back is if I leave here, with this.” He points at the backpack on the ground. “If you won’t let me leave, you might as well shoot me.”

  The cop takes a step back. Sean can see him thinking. His patrol car is on the other side of the pickup. He’ll have a radio there, and no doubt he has a phone in his pocket.

  “You can call for backup if you want,” Sean says. “It won’t change anything. Backup only means more people who might make the wrong decision.”

  Silence between them, and then Sean hears a vehicle approaching. The cop lowers his pistol. A yellow school bus comes around a curve in the road. They both wait for it to pass.

  “Rocks,” the cop says when it’s gone. “That’s what’s in the backpack.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re gonna trade them for her?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Sean keeps his eyes on the pistol. The cop is tapping it against his thigh. An unconscious gesture. He’s working things out in his mind. Deciding.

  “You’re not just telling me a story?” the cop says.

  “No.”

  The cop sighs and lifts the pistol up and slides it into his holster.

  “I guess it’s not my problem. We’re not in Michigan, are we?”

  33

  Rafael Garza

  Garza heard the news of Molly Winter’s abduction in the middle of the night.

  His phone woke him, and he sat up. Rachel Massoud was asleep beside him, her black hair spilling over her pillow. Garza grabbed for the phone, trying to answer before it rang again. Knocked it from the nightstand to the floor.

  Two more rings and eventually he found it—under the bed. By then, Rachel was awake and laughing.

  “Jesus, Ray. You make a racket.”

  The name on the screen was Arthur Hayden, his lieutenant. When he answered, Hayden said, “You need to go to Knoxville.”

  Garza packed his bag and drove there. Eight hours on the road, the first four in the dark. Now, after a day spent interviewing witnesses and consulting with the Knoxville police, he still knows frustratingly little about what happened.

  He knows that Sean went to a lawyer, Howard Frazier, with the aim of turning himself in. He knows Molly was taken by two or more men in a black SUV. He knows Sean pursued the SUV in a white pickup truck.

  He knows that Frazier first spoke to Sean and Molly earlier in the week, at Rusty’s All-American Restaurant. Garza went there and questioned the staff—and discovered what led the men in the SUV to Frazier’s house.

  The busboy looked squirrelly from the start. A skeezy ex-con with a razor-wire tattoo on his neck. Garza had to push him, but in the end he talked. He told Garza that two men in an SUV had come around asking about Sean and Molly. Both tall, late forties: one black, one white. The busboy gave them Frazier’s name.

  “I thought they might be cops,” he said.

  “Why?” Garza asked.

  “They had the look,” the busboy said. “And they acted like pricks.”

  Garza learned that a third man had spoken to the busboy too—before the others. Another white guy, early forties with curly hair. “A tough guy,” the busboy said. “Not a cop though.”

  “No?”

  “Looked more like a boxer.”

  Garza shared the information with the Knoxville police, then called in to his lieutenant and made a report. “I want to go back to Dalton Webber,” he told Hayden. “Maybe he’s got a way to contact Sean. Maybe we can still get Sean to turn himself in.”

  Hayden was skeptical. “You tried that route.”

  Four words, but Garza heard a larger message in them. You tried, and you failed. In hindsight, Garza knew it was true. He wondered what might have happened if he had come to Knoxville earlier, if he had talked to the busboy sooner. He might have figured out that Sean would go to Howard Frazier.

  Hayden seemed to be thinking the same thing. “It’s time for you to come home,” he said.

  Now Garza is at the Knoxville airport, waiting to board a flight for Houston. It’s six in the morning. He’s sitting near an outlet, charging his phone. He’s thinking about Rachel Massoud when it rings.

  It’s her.

  “I was wrong,” she says.

  “About what?”

  “Adam Khadduri,” she says. “I really didn’t think it was his style.”

  “Khadduri?”

  “I think he’s got Molly.”

  The story comes out, all in a rush. It’s about Rachel’s informant, the one who’s been helping with her investigation of Khadduri. She’s a woman named Noura Ibrahim. Khadduri’s housekeeper.

  “She owns a place up north,” Rachel says. “Khadduri paid for it. It’s his, but it’s in her name. He uses it to get away in the summertime. But she takes care of it. He can’t be bothered with trivia. This time of year, if you’re not using it, you have to turn the water off or the pipes can freeze. Noura closed the place down weeks ago, but yesterday Khadduri wanted her to open it again. Make sure the furnace was running. Stuff like that.

  “She drove there yesterday morning and got the place ready for him. She went to buy groceries so he’d have something to eat, like she always does. When she returned, Khadduri was there, but he wasn’t alone. She saw his car and a black SUV.”

  “Did she see Molly?” Garza asks.

  “No,” Rachel tells him. “Noura didn’t stay. Khadduri sent her home. Which was strange, because usually she stays to cook for him. But she didn’t think much about it until later, when she saw the news about Molly’s abduction. Even then, she wasn’t sure. She went back and forth about it until finally she called me. Since then I’ve been busy. But I think we’ll be able to get a warrant.”

  “Based on the SUV?” Garza says. “That’s thin.”

  “There
’s a little more. Noura heard a noise while she was there. Like someone pounding on a window to get her attention.”

  “That’s still thin.”

  “I know. I had to exaggerate when I explained things to my boss. I got him to sign off. I plan to go up there to search the place, but it’ll take some time to get organized. You’ve got a couple of hours to get here, if you want in. Knoxville has an airport, right?”

  “I’m already there,” Garza says. “I’m supposed to go to Houston.”

  “It’s up to you, Ray. But I bet they’ve got a flight to Detroit.”

  34

  Jimmy Harper

  When Jimmy heads north, it’s four in the morning.

  The trip is two hundred miles, from Detroit to the city of Grayling. Nick driving, Kelly riding shotgun, Jimmy grabbing some sleep in the back seat.

  After Grayling there’s ten more miles to go and then a hike through the woods. By seven forty-five, Jimmy is standing near the shore of the Au Sable River, looking at Adam Khadduri’s vacation house on the other side.

  The sun won’t rise for another twenty minutes, but there’s a pink glow in the eastern sky. There’s a fine mist rising from the water.

  Jimmy sees something dark break the surface near the bank. It’s not a fish, and it’s too small for a beaver. A muskrat, he thinks.

  It goes under again and he puts it out of his mind. He slides his phone from his pocket and shoots off a text to Demitri Stamatopoulos, one of his mechanics, the one Kelly wanted to fire for being late.

  Everything okay?

  The reply comes a few seconds later: No sweat.

  Demitri lives alone in a house with a basement. He’s watching over Matthew Khadduri.

  Jimmy delivered the kid to him last night. Matthew talked the whole way from Ann Arbor to Detroit, trying to persuade Jimmy that he was going about things all wrong. “Call my father. He’ll pay you whatever you want. He loves me. Do you know how much money he has?”

  “I don’t care about his money,” Jimmy said.

  “What do you want?” Matthew asked him.

  “I want him not to see me coming,” Jimmy said.

  Before he left Detroit, Jimmy made a stop at home to pick up some things he needed: mostly weapons and ammunition.