A Stranger at the Door

by Pinter, Jason

  “We can’t shield our children from pain forever or pretend the pain didn’t happen,” Rachel said. “We can only help them try to move on from it.”

  “Maybe I didn’t allow that,” Gabrielle said. “I did what I thought was right.”

  “Now you have a chance to do what’s right,” Rachel said to them. “Tony, help me find your friend. Tell me about Peter Lincecum.”

  “I’ve known Pete since we were, like, five,” Antonio said. “He lived in Ashby for a while. Played some little league. He was a pretty good shortstop. Couldn’t hit worth a damn, but he could field a hot grounder like his glove was coated in superglue. But Pete hated it here. He wanted to live in a big city, like New York or LA. At some point his dad moved them to Carltondale. Pete never knew why. He got a job delivering pizzas on his bike, but his dad took all his tips and bet on long shots. One-eyed horses at, like, fifty to one, things like that. Pete wanted to save up to be able to leave his dad behind without having to ask for a dime. Without ever saying goodbye. Said when you’ve been left behind so many times, people don’t deserve a goodbye.”

  Rachel saw Evie’s lower lip trembling. She knew what Evie was thinking. Hearing how these children got kicked around and abandoned made her understand why they’d found Bennett Brice’s offer so attractive. Even if it came with a cost, freedom itself was priceless.

  “That’s how Bennett Brice found him,” Rachel said.

  Tony nodded. “Brice knew about Pete’s family situation. And that if he really wanted a better life, and if he had the work ethic to make it happen, Brice could give him an opportunity. Brice told him he would take care of him. And Pete bought it.”

  “My brother had a good heart,” Evie said. “He wanted to help these kids. He wasn’t strong enough to stand up to the Spivaks once things got violent.”

  “Bennett Brice was your brother?” Gabrielle said. Her voice became hostile. “How dare you come here and tell me he’s a good man. He destroyed lives.”

  “We’re here for Peter. That’s it. We can deal with everything else later,” Rachel said.

  “I still don’t know what you want from us,” Gabrielle said. “My son told you everything he knows.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Rachel said. “I think Tony knows where Peter is.”

  “Even if I did, why would I tell you?” Tony said. “She admitted she’s Brice’s sister. Brice and the Spivaks were, like, best buds. I should trust her when she says she wants to help Pete? For all I know she’s going to lead Randall Spivak right to Pete.”

  “I was arrested for trying to kill Raymond Spivak,” Evie said. Tony’s head snapped to face her. “That’s the truth. There’s an arrest report. Rachel has seen it.”

  Tony looked to Rachel. “Is that true?”

  Rachel nodded. “It’s true.”

  Evie added, “I have as much affection for the Spivak boys as I do for the bubonic plague.”

  “Why did you try to kill him?” Tony asked.

  Evie sighed. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when this is over.”

  “Why can’t we just call the police?” Gabrielle said. “I spoke with Detectives Serrano and Tally before. I have their numbers. Wouldn’t we want their help?”

  “The Ashby PD doesn’t have jurisdiction on this,” Rachel said. “They’d have to kick it over to the Carltondale PD. Intercity police politics is like high school, only more petulant. Do you really want to play a game of telephone with someone’s life? And I promise you this: Randall Spivak is not waiting around. He doesn’t care about bureaucratic red tape. And if he finds Peter, nobody will ever see him again.”

  “Why do you two care so much about Pete?” Tony said. “He’s been screwed over his whole life by everyone. His birth mom abandoned him. His dad was a loser. His stepmom was a junkie. Bennett Brice used him. And now you want to save him?”

  “With every ounce of blood in my body,” Evie said, with a gritty conviction that startled Rachel.

  Tony looked at his mother. Gabrielle’s eyes pleaded with her son, but Rachel could tell she was unsure what exactly she wanted him to do.

  “Antonio,” Gabrielle said, “you can just go upstairs. You don’t need to get involved. You know what this man is capable of.”

  “That’s why I have to help them,” Tony said. He looked at Rachel and Evie. “I’ll bring you to him.”

  “No way,” Rachel said. “Just tell us where he is, and we’ll handle it.”

  “Pete is my friend. If anything goes wrong, I’m the only one I trust a hundred percent.”

  “No,” Gabrielle said. “Antonio. Please.”

  “I’ll be back for dinner,” he said. He kissed his mother’s cheek, and she closed her eyes, gripping his hand.

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  Tony walked off and gestured for the women to follow. Rachel said to Gabrielle, “I promise you we won’t let anything happen to your son.”

  “Good, because if anything does happen to him, I will make your life hell every single day for the rest of your life.”

  “I believe you,” Rachel said.

  “So go find that boy. And keep mine safe. Act like these boys are your own. Do whatever you need to do to make sure no harm comes to them.”

  “From one mother to another,” Rachel said, “I will.”

  CHAPTER 46

  John Serrano and Leslie Tally sat in a conference room at the Ashby central precinct rifling through a mountain of papers. Bank statements, phone records, email printouts, and employee records blanketed a three-by-six-foot table. Bennett Brice’s life boiled down to a miasma of busywork.

  What lay in front of them was a tangled mess of millions of dollars that had threaded its way into dozens of crevices around the world, like a fiduciary Snakes and Ladders. They had learned, with the help of a forensic accountant the department had brought in (who was definitely deserving of a nice Christmas bonus), that Bennett Brice had personal bank accounts in the Cayman Islands holding somewhere in the vicinity of $7 million.

  They found another $2.4 million stored in a legitimate trust account. No recipient was named, so they couldn’t tell who Brice had earmarked the money for. That was the money Chester Barnes was referring to. It was money Brice had paid taxes on and wanted to be able to legally declare. The rest, though, was shadier than an umbrella on a Miami beach in August.

  Rachel had been right. Brice had been using mules to deposit money into Cayman accounts for at least ten years. Serrano wondered what the legality of exhuming someone was just to put them on trial for fraud.

  Serrano stifled a yawn, ran his fingers through his hair, pinched his sinuses, and tossed back the dregs of his fourth cup of coffee that day.

  “So let’s unpack all this. YourLife itself seems to be a legitimate business. At least on the surface. But because of the sporadic nature of the incoming revenue, Brice is able to use the company as a filter-slash-laundering service for the Spivaks. He also squirrels a chunk of it away in the Caymans to keep it from the IRS.”

  “And uses front men to deposit it for him,” Tally said, “but pays taxes on enough of it so he doesn’t arouse suspicion.”

  “Ruddock was giving couriers account and deposit information—those manila envelopes Rachel saw him carrying,” Serrano said. “Now, you have to figure there’s a Benjamin Ruddock, a ‘captain,’ in at least a few towns adjacent to Ashby, including Carltondale, where Peter Lincecum lives, and Brice has himself a nice little mini-Mafia thing going on.”

  “And if you look at this,” Tally said, handing Serrano a folder, “other than the mortgage on his home and the lease on the YourLife office, Bennett Brice is actually fairly frugal. He even owned a Civic and flew economy.”

  “Didn’t want to arouse too much suspicion,” Serrano said. “But he had enough bling—the watch, the home—to impress the impressionable youth of America.”

  “Brice set up more than fifty different bank accounts for YourLife employees himself.
Most were trusts that couldn’t be accessed until the recipient turned eighteen.”

  “He sets up accounts for the kids so he can go around their parents,” Serrano said. “There are deposits totaling hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. Again, it all looks legitimate. Taxes paid.”

  Tally flipped through the pages and said, “I recognize a lot of the names these accounts are registered to. They’re Penny’s classmates. I see Benjamin Ruddock. I see LeRoy Burns. I see Martin Glickman.” She looked at Serrano. “And he already set one up for Eric Marin. There’s ten thousand dollars in it.”

  “Nice little signing bonus,” Serrano said.

  “So here’s what’s been eating at me,” Serrano said. “We know why Brice and Ruddock approached Eric Marin. They wanted to keep him close after Linklater’s email to Rachel and use him as leverage to distract Rachel but also intimidate her. It was a bargaining chip. If she ever came after Brice, it would seem like a vendetta.”

  “And Rachel didn’t do herself any favors showing up at Brice’s office to threaten him,” Tally said. “But if they thought they could intimidate Rachel, they didn’t think this whole thing through.”

  Serrano said, “But how could Brice know exactly which kids to target? He would need financial records, social security information, to know which kids were most vulnerable.”

  “He’d have to have a source,” Tally said. “Someone with access to all that information.”

  Serrano began sifting through the piles of paper. Dozens of pages fell to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Tally asked.

  “Brice’s phone records,” Serrano said, holding up a batch of pages.

  He laid out the pages. The technicians had underlined all numbers Brice had communicated with frequently, both calls and text messages.

  “Look at this,” Serrano said. “There’s only one phone number that Brice routinely called and texted over the last two years.”

  He brought the pages over to Tally.

  “Ninety percent of calls and texts tend to take place between the hours of nine a.m. and nine p.m. That percentage goes up if you remove people between the ages of fourteen and thirty. Kids, people who are single, and people who work odd hours. But look at this number. There are calls and texts from Brice at all hours of the day. Early morning. During the day. Many of the messages coming in groups in the middle of the night. But what’s strange is that the phone is also registered to Brice.”

  “He wasn’t calling himself,” Tally replied. “He must have bought the phone for someone else to use.”

  “Exactly what I’m thinking.”

  Tally said, “The icon next to the texts means there were media attachments with those texts.”

  Serrano nodded. “Look here. May eighth. Two pieces of media sent at one thirteen a.m. Followed by a video at one eighteen a.m.”

  “How do you know that one is a video?” Tally said.

  “Look at the data usage. One hundred and thirty-six megabytes. That’s over two minutes long.”

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Bennett Brice was getting some sexy-time videos sent to him in the middle of the night.” Serrano pulled out another piece of paper. “According to the phone company, the social security number used to register this phone is also registered with another cell phone. Different company, different service provider.”

  Tally said, “Someone wanted to keep their extracurricular activities separate from their work activities. Whoever this phone number is registered to was seeing Bennett Brice on the sly and using a phone Brice provided them to keep it quiet.”

  Serrano handed her another page. He underlined a phone number at the top with his finger. “This is the other line. Very little media, ninety-nine percent of texts and calls between the hours of seven a.m. and nine p.m.”

  Tally took the page. When she saw the number, she gasped.

  “What is it?” Serrano said. “You know that number?”

  “It’s Tamara Alvi,” Tally said. “She’s the principal at Ashby High.”

  CHAPTER 47

  Tony walked fast, his long teenage legs practically galloping along as he led Rachel and Evie toward some nebulous destination. Every block or two, Evie would ask Tony, “Are we there yet?” Tony ignored her. Rachel could see Evie’s hands clenching into fists. She seemed impatient. Rachel wanted to find Peter Lincecum as well, but this seemed personal for Evie, like she was trying to prevent Lincecum from being hurt on account of her brother’s criminal ties.

  Normally the young man’s brisk pace wouldn’t have been an issue, but between the aching wound in her leg and the aftereffects of the concussion, Rachel felt like she’d been squeezed into a blender and tossed around on “pulse.” She wanted to find Lincecum, get him safely to the authorities, and then nap until the next lunar eclipse.

  The sun was setting. A cool breeze came from the northeast. Ashby during springtime was a glorious place to be. Rachel loved the smell of freshly mowed lawns. Smiled at the way young couples intertwined their fingers, a simple smile saying more than words ever could.

  She remembered a day from a lifetime ago when she walked a sunny street with the man who would become her husband. They’d met in winter, at a dive bar on karaoke night. They spent the evening making fun of the singers who took it a little too seriously, kissed chastely at the end of the evening, then had dinner the next night. Rachel knew right off the bat that Bradley Powell was the one.

  They spent December through February cozying on his couch, in her bed, sipping hot chocolate in the morning and red wine at night, making love like their bodies needed air and only intimacy could provide it. He cooked for her on his electric stove. She helped decorate his small, sparse apartment.

  Then, when summer came, she bought a closet’s worth of sundresses, all floral patterns and bright colors. The first time she saw him wearing a T-shirt and shorts, his pale appendages poking out like bones, she practically leaped into his arms. Rachel never thought of herself as a “girly girl.” She didn’t buy into fairy tales, considered red roses to be red flags, and assumed men who acted like Prince Charming probably kept a pile of severed heads in their closet. She did not believe in being swept off her feet . . . until she found herself floating.

  Rachel knew Brad loved her before he ever said it. One afternoon he led her into a park, refusing to tell her where they were going or why. She dutifully followed, lost in the aphrodisiac of mystery and romance. Finally, she found herself underneath a massive oak, its base wide enough for two people to sit against. Waiting for them was a picnic lunch in a brown wicker basket. Her heart swelled. She told him he was lucky it hadn’t been stolen.

  He removed two sandwiches: soppressata, mozzarella, roasted red peppers, arugula, and garlic aioli on ciabatta for him. Honey-maple turkey with swiss, alfalfa, tomato, and brown mustard on whole wheat for her. He even had a bottle of chardonnay, which he’d kept cool with plastic bags full of ice. Dessert was homemade chocolate chip cookies, whipped cream, and fresh berries.

  When they finished the meal, they leaned back against the tree, stomachs and hearts full. At that moment, if he’d asked, she knew she would’ve said yes. To marriage. Family. A life.

  But as was the tendency with men, he waited another three months before asking.

  On the day of their wedding, as she kissed him at the altar, the limitless possibilities of life stretched before them like a highway. She believed their wedding day was merely the beginning of a journey together. Rachel never really thought about the last part. Till death. It was not even a consideration.

  Knowing what came after the wedding, knowing what happened to Brad, knowing the horrors he endured, that his death would shatter their family and tear apart any hope she had for a normal life, she had asked herself if she still would have gone through with it. But every time she looked at Eric and Megan, Rachel knew, even if she felt guilty admitting it, that it was worth all the hell for the heaven of their children.
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  “We’re here,” Tony said.

  Rachel snapped to attention.

  They were standing in front of a four-foot-high metal fence. A rusted nameplate on the gate read SALLY DUBOIS PARK. The fence was flaked with rust. The gate was shut with a padlock that looked like it would snap open if sneezed on.

  “It’s a playground,” Evie said.

  “Was a playground,” Tony said. “It’s been abandoned for years. My mom told me never to go near it. She said the only people who hang out here now are addicts and dealers. And if I touched anything inside, I would need a tetanus shot.”

  “She’s probably right on all counts,” Rachel said. Through the gate Rachel could see a moldy wooden seesaw, its green paint yellowed, broken in half so that both ends rested pitifully on the ground. Next to it was a swing set with only one seat, four empty chains dangling down from metal bars like boneless limbs. There was an empty sandbox, the wooden floor cracked and soiled, and a slide whose plastic had warped so sharply that if you took a fast ride down it was liable to cut you in half.

  “This place looks like Disneyland got sucked into the seventh circle of hell,” Rachel said.

  “Sally Dubois was nine years old when she died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” Tony said. “That was ten years ago. She was diagnosed when she was four and spent the last five years of her life raising money and awareness. When she died, they named this park after her. A few years after that, the city slashed its parks budget. And then she was forgotten about. And this park was forgotten about. It used to be beautiful.”

  Rachel said, “I bet it still could be beautiful.”

  Tony said, “I was four when Sally died. And I think about her more than the people who promised they’d never forget her. Adults like to act all virtuous, but kids are the ones who get left behind. We get used, and then they forget about us.”

  With that, Tony vaulted over the fence. Evie followed suit. Rachel did the same, feeling pain in her leg and an ache in her head when she landed.