by Nic Joseph
As I did, I spotted Greg sitting on the patio next to another couple, beers in all of their hands. I tensed myself for a conflict, but all he did was lift his beer slightly and go back to his conversation.
What was his plan? Kill me with kindness? With classiness? Fuck that.
I stepped into the house.
“Kit?” I called out, holding the gift box in my hand.
There were a few kids playing in the living room. I walked past them and hesitated before going upstairs. I walked through the narrow hallway at the top where there were pictures on the wall of the three of them.
What, did you run out to take new family pictures as quickly as possible?
Kit’s door was partially opened, and I pushed it open, tapping on it. I was surprised to see him sitting on his bed, holding a tablet in his hands.
“Hey,” I said.
His eyes lit up, and he jumped off the bed and barreled toward me. “Hi,” he said. His eyes went to the gift.
“What’s going on? Why are you up here alone?”
“I don’t know, just didn’t really feel like being down there.”
“Are your friends down there?”
He shrugged.
I touched his hair. As he sat there in his room, I was pissed at them for making him have a party that he didn’t want and ignoring the fact that he wasn’t having a good time.
He ripped open the gift, a fifty-piece science kit. “Oh, awesome, Dad, thanks,” he said.
I felt my chest tighten. “How’s it going with the play?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not good. I forgot all of my lines yesterday. In front of everybody.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “It was just practice. You’ll remember them for the real thing.”
“Will you be there?” he asked. “It’s next week on Sunday.”
I cleared my throat. “Of course,” I said. “Front row. You won’t be able to miss me.”
He smiled a toothy grin, and I gave him a hug. As he put his headphones back on, I left the room to head back downstairs and broach the subject of the play with Lara.
As I reached the top of the landing, I saw a movement at the bottom of the stairs.
No.
I felt a shiver run through my body, and for a moment, I was paralyzed.
There were a lot of people down there—children running back and forth, a pair of women talking while their eyes remained trained on the little ones that weaved between them.
But there was someone else.
Standing behind them, there was a man in a tan suit.
Watching me.
I froze at the top of the stairs, and his beady eyes bore into mine, daring me to come down. I felt the chalkiness on my tongue, the sweat forming beneath my arms, and I let out a growl before racing down the stairs.
He was in Lara’s house.
Kit’s house.
The man turned and walked quickly away. I reached the bottom of the stairs and spun around, but he’d disappeared.
“That man,” I said to the two women who were talking at the bottom of the staircase. “Do you know who he was?”
“Which man?” one of them asked, frowning.
“The one in the tan suit.”
She looked around and shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone.”
I raced through the house and toward the front door where there were more children running and playing. The front door was wide open, and I stepped out onto the porch, searching in every direction. I jogged down the steps and back around the house where Lara and Greg were still in the yard, laughing and drinking beers.
“Did you see him?” I asked, racing up to Lara.
She turned to me, a frown on her face. “See who?”
“The man…” I said, out of breath. “The man in the tan suit.”
She looked at her friend and then back at me.
“I don’t know who—”
“There was a man in your house, Lara,” I said, and I saw her expression change. Greg had stood up and was working his way over to us.
“What’s going on?”
“I saw someone…” I took a moment and cleared my throat. “I saw someone in the house who wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“Who?”
I couldn’t figure out how to answer the question.
“Someone from one of my cases,” I said. “Someone dangerous. He was inside.”
“Oh my God,” Lara said, and she turned to race into the house. Greg was not far behind her.
I ran back to the porch, my gaze searching in every direction for the man. After a few moments, Greg and Lara both came out onto the front porch, followed by a few of their friends.
“There’s no one here,” Greg said.
“I think he left,” I told him. “I’m going to call it in.”
I was reaching for my phone when I saw Greg and Lara look at each other.
“We spoke with Meg and Julia,” he said. “Nobody saw anyone in a tan suit. They just saw you bolt out of there.”
I blinked. The way he said it—softly, slowly—it was as if he didn’t believe me.
“Who did you ask?” I asked, feeling defensive. “A bunch of seven-year-olds? Because there sure are a lot of them in the house right now, Kit included, with just Meg and Julia watching them. No wonder they didn’t see him.”
Lara put a hand on Greg’s arm. “Just let him call it in,” she said softly.
I frowned. She said it as though they were doing me a favor.
Just let him do this.
Don’t question it.
It was almost as if…he knew.
As soon as I thought it, Greg confirmed it, on a porch surrounded by all of their friends.
“Go ahead and call it in or whatever,” he said. “I’m trying to be cool here, but we don’t have time for your visions or hallucinations or whatever it is. You’re upsetting everyone.”
I saw Lara’s eyes widen, and I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut.
“I told him I wouldn’t tell anyone, ever,” she hissed at her husband.
I staggered back and walked quickly to my car, my cell phone still in my hand.
As I did, I heard him tell her loudly—for my benefit mostly, I had to assume—that he wasn’t just anyone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I had a hard time concentrating as I drove toward Enid Greene’s house. When I called in what happened at Lara’s house, I’d asked Dori for the address of the Kelium patient who lived in the area. I needed something else to take me away from what I’d just found out, something to keep me focused on the case.
But Lara had told that plant-loving asshole about the visions.
It felt like she’d betrayed my biggest secret, the one she’d promised she would never tell anyone. She could’ve told him anything else about our relationship, that I was selfish or bad in bed.
But not the visions.
I tried to put it out of my mind and continued driving toward Greene’s house.
She’d been one of the last people to see Ryan Griggs before he went missing. At worst, she could tell me what he’d wanted, what his disposition had been, if he’d seemed nervous or upset.
At best, she could tell me if he’d had all of his body parts when she saw him.
If Philip Jameson and Eleanor Griggs were to be believed—which I still wasn’t entirely sure about—Griggs had driven to Greene’s home first before getting on the road. And then, instead of going to Philadelphia to see the next patient as intended, he’d changed his mind and met up with Emily Lindsey.
Greene had to know something.
She lived in a sleepy town about twenty miles from the highway. I pulled up in front of her house and turned off my car. I sat there for a few moments, not moving, wondering exac
tly what I would say to this woman who’d had her life turned upside down in the last few months.
I got out of the car and walked up to the front door. I knocked and immediately heard a cough, and then there was noise on the other side. It opened, and there was a woman standing there, staring at me through the iron door. She was a small woman, five foot one at most, and she peered up at me through the bars. She held up a key, but she didn’t say anything.
“Detective?” she asked, and I showed her my badge. She took it through a gap in the bars and examined it, then looked at my face. She nodded before handing it back to me. She finished unlocking the door from the inside and finally pulled it open, stepping back to let me inside.
I was greeted by a wall of hot, stale, musky air that crept up into my nose and seemed to settle into my pores. She coughed and walked back into the living room, motioning for me to sit down on a brown paisley couch covered in thick plastic.
“You called me,” she said suddenly, as if my presence had just registered. “You’re the detective.”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you live here alone?”
“I sure do,” she said. “I’ve lived alone for the past thirteen years, since Adam…” She shook her head. “My daughter, Julia, comes by to check on me once a day, but she misses sometimes. That’s okay. I know she’s busy with her husband, and she has two little ones. She can’t be worrying about me too much, now can she?”
I smiled softly. “I’m sure she worries about you very much. So I guess you’ve had a lot of visitors in the last few weeks, huh?”
She nodded. “Yes. You and the man from the drug company. Julia was so mad at me when I told her he came by, because she didn’t want me to meet with him alone. And because I’m not always well. I get forgetful sometimes, you know. But I’m not totally gone yet, you hear me?” There was a sparkle in her eye, and in that moment, I believed her.
I nodded. “Why was your daughter so upset that you were meeting with Mr. Griggs?”
“Well, she’s the one who agreed to talk to that reporter or blogger or whatever it is you call them these days,” she said. “I didn’t know anything, you know. I just tried to remember to take my medications when they told me to. But she talked to my doctors, and they looked at my numbers and knew something was wrong.”
“What kinds of symptoms did you experience?”
“Well, I’m already not doing great,” she said. “But they said it made me worse. I can’t say for sure, but I trust my doctors. Even better, I trust my daughter. They said that the drugs were making me sick, and I believe them.”
“Why did you let him come by?”
“I guess I wanted to hear what he had to say,” she said. “I wasn’t going to deny myself that opportunity. So when he showed up at my door, I let him in. I recognized him from the TV. He sat right there,” she said, pointing to where I was sitting.
“And when was this?” I asked. “You said he came on Wednesday afternoon?”
“Yes, Wednesday,” she said, staring at my seat, almost right through me, and I wondered if she was seeing Griggs. “I shouldn’t say this. I know I shouldn’t because he’s a bad man, but he sure is a handsome man. With the suit, and so tall. He was charming, too. Told me he liked the dress I had on that day, and that dress wasn’t anything to write home about, just a plain old white cotton dress. But he did. I’ll have to give that to him, if nothing else. He’s a charming man.”
I cleared my throat. “So what is it that he wanted to talk to you about?”
“Well,” she said slowly. “It seemed like he just wanted to come and check on me. To see how I was feeling and to tell me that he was concerned about my well-being.”
“How long did he stay?”
“About twenty minutes or so. He got up several times to get me water, in my own house. I have these coughing fits,” she said, placing her hand on her chest. “Anyway, we talked for a while, about my background, my health, my life out here. He told me about this healing retreat in India that he thought would be good for me. Nothing that could cure me, of course, but which could improve my symptoms.”
“A healing retreat?” I said. “In India?”
“Yes,” she said. “He told me that a friend of a friend who has cancer like mine went there.” Her eyes lit up. “He also said they have amazing food, and being the foodie that I am, I think I talked his ear off about my recipes and all the things I could try there. He listened patiently and then got me more water.”
“So he suggested that you actually go to India?”
“Yes,” she said. “It really does sound wonderful.”
“How would you—”
“Pay for it?” she asked. “Well, he said that there may be some opportunities with Kelium and some of their community service.”
“He said that?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “And honestly, if I thought it would actually help my health, I’d consider it, of course. I could get that amount of money, or more, through a legal battle, or I could get less or nothing at all. And who knows how long and painful that would be?”
I swallowed, watching my words. “Ms. Greene, you’re a material witness in an open investigation about Griggs and his company,” I said. “I don’t know how to put this, but what he was doing was against the law. He was offering you…offering money, it seems, to keep you from testifying against him.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she smiled. “I told you, I’m forgetful sometimes,” she said. “I get it. Sometimes I ramble on, or I talk about things that make people think I’m completely silly. I don’t do it on purpose, but sometimes it happens, and I can sense them trying to stop me, or put me in line. I can’t think of any other way to describe it. And I hate it.”
“Ms. Greene?” I started, but she held up her hand.
“I might be old, and I might be sick, but I’m no fool.”
“You mean…you knew that’s what he was doing?”
“Like I told you when you first arrived, Detective, it seemed that he came by just to check on me. But I could smell the truth the minute he walked in. And trust me, I would have considered his offer if I thought I would get better. Because better people than me have compromised their morals for much less. But my doctors have already told me that my health has nowhere to go but down from here.”
“I thought—”
“I know what you thought, Detective. You thought I’d let his charm interfere with my simple logic. That I’d forgotten how to read people.”
“I’m sorry I—”
“That’s what he said, too,” she said. “That he was sorry for underestimating me.”
“Wait,” I said. “You told him that you knew what he was doing?”
“I sure did,” she said proudly. “And he apologized for that, too. Said he shouldn’t have tried to bribe me.” She stood up and walked over to a small filing cabinet and pulled it open. Reaching in, she pulled something out and turned around. “He was really upset when he saw this.”
She held up a small black box, and it took a moment for me to realize that it was a tape recorder.
“You recorded him?”
“I sure did,” she said. “He was so upset. He stormed out and went and sat in his car. Think he was making a phone call. Sat out there for ten minutes or so, then left.”
“You don’t know who he called?”
“Nope,” she said. “But I bet he was calling his lawyers to tell them what happened.”
“What did he say before he left?” I asked. “Anything? Anything at all?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing. What could he have said?” she asked, a sparkle in her eye. “I’d just handed him his fanny. Wasn’t much left to say after that, now was there?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Then
“Twen-tee sec-unds?” Brat had exclaimed earlier that
day, her eyebrows raised, her hands on her hips, her mouth scrunched up in disbelief. “You mean like two zero? Twenty. Ten measly seconds and then just another ten. That’s not possible!”
Brat’s expressive face was one of the things that easily distinguished her from her sister. Even though they were nearly identical, it seemed that Brat had three times as many emotions—and corresponding expressions—as Gumball. When she was happy, Brat’s face lit up, and her eyes beamed. When she was sad, she pouted, and you could see the anguish in every single line on her face. Gumball, on the other hand, rarely seemed affected by much, her gaze constantly cool and neutral as her jaw worked away at the ever-present gum.
Now, Brat was standing near the wall at the north end of the large gymnasium. Her sister was a few feet from her, hanging on to the monkey bars, not really moving.
The gym was located on the third floor of the building. It was a large, rectangular room with designated areas for exercising, basketball, and handball. Brat stood at one end of the structure, her back to it, her eyes narrowed as she watched Jack on the other side of the room.
“Stop looking at him,” Gumball said in a conversational voice, a fake smile on her face in case anyone was watching her. “Just get ready to go again.”
The other kids were spread out around the gym. They didn’t want to say it, not yet, but they agreed with Brat. The activity course was designed for the older kids, and at twenty feet long, it took up a sizable amount of the room.
And Jack wanted Brat to get through it in twenty seconds.
First, she’d have to scale a seven-foot ladder stretching up to the wobbly bridge. She’d then have to crawl on all fours through a tight tunnel. Once she got out of that, she’d have to race up a small staircase and go down a long slide.
To avoid suspicion, Jack had said that only the twins should stand near the jungle gym while Brat practiced. He and Perry would sit on the ground a few feet away from them, their backs against the wall, as they fiddled with their warrior projects. Jack’s eyes were trained on the large clock directly across from him and Brat’s stumbling progress through the gym.