Very Bad Men

by Harry Dolan

  Are you about to do something reckless?

  Barging into 315 Summit Street with no plan, with nothing but a loaded gun—that would have to count as reckless.

  Sarah got the bike settled and shut the trunk. A few drops of rain sparkled in her hair.

  “Are you all right, David?” she said. “You look worn out.”

  She wasn’t afraid of a little rain. Her mother had probably asked her to keep an eye on me, but that wasn’t why she had called me either. Not really. She was sixteen. She wanted what all sixteen-year-olds want.

  “You should let me drive,” she said.

  SARAH GOT HER learner’s permit in March, right after the last big snow melted. Since then we’ve practiced once or twice a week. She could pass the test for her license tomorrow, though Elizabeth would rather have her wait until the fall.

  I buckled into the passenger seat and had her drive down Fifth to Packard, then east to State Street. I’d hidden the revolver away in the glove compartment.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said.

  I let her go where she wanted. All men by nature desire to know, and the same goes for teenaged girls. She made her way through heavy traffic on State and turned into the lot of the Winston Hotel. We got out and I showed her the spot where Lark had shot me. There was nothing to mark it, not even a strip of crime-scene tape. Lucy Navarro’s Beetle had been towed away.

  I’d left my pocketknife behind the night before, and I didn’t think I’d find it, but there it was in the grass near the picnic tables. I started to bend to pick it up, but Sarah got to it first. She folded the blade and passed it to me.

  From the hotel I let her drive on the interstate for a short stretch—seventy miles an hour, seventy-five in the passing lane. We took the north exit onto Route 23 and went as far as Washtenaw Avenue.

  From there we drove west toward home. After we passed through downtown, I realized we weren’t very far from Summit Street—from Alan Beckett. I made an impulsive decision.

  “Turn right up here.”

  Our early lessons always went this way, with me telling her where to go. In the very beginning I used to recite every move she should make. Check your mirrors, put on your turn signal, foot off the gas and onto the brake.

  She turned right and we rode north to Summit.

  “Left here,” I said.

  The rain had stopped falling, but drops of it hung from the tips of the leaves along Beckett’s street. We coasted past number 315 and I saw the car in the drive, the privacy fence leaning over it protectively. I glimpsed Beckett opening the driver’s door.

  I had Sarah make a left at the next intersection and we circled the block. When we passed the house again, Beckett and the car were gone.

  “Whose house is that?” she asked me.

  “Nobody’s,” I said.

  “Shall I go around again, to nobody’s house?”

  I closed my eyes. “I’m tired. Let’s go home.”

  Five minutes later we were there. No sign of Elizabeth at the house. I helped Sarah wrestle her bike out of the trunk. She did most of the wrestling. I held my hand out for the car keys and told her I’d be back in a little while. “I need to pick some things up at Gray Streets.”

  She had leaned the bike against the elm tree on the lawn. She held the detached front wheel.

  “I thought you were tired,” she said.

  “I plan to take a long nap when I get back.”

  She let the wheel fall onto the grass. “I’ll go with you.”

  “I can manage on my own.”

  “I’ll go with you back to Summit Street. That house—you think Lucy Navarro’s there?”

  I shook my head. “That’s not where I’m going. You’ve got the wrong idea.”

  “I can help, David. What if that man comes back? You need someone to keep watch.”

  “I’m not going to Summit Street. And if I were, I wouldn’t take you. I’m not that reckless.”

  CHAPTER 38

  I went to Summit Street, of course.

  Beckett’s car was still gone when I got back to number 315. I drove past and went around the corner. Left my car on a street called Fountain and walked back to the house.

  I ducked around the privacy fence and up the driveway. Bridget’s revolver rested in my back pocket.

  Drops of rain fell from the eaves of a porch at the rear of the house. I went up to the door and found it locked. But it had a window, four panes of glass in a square. I found a stone in the backyard, wrapped a handkerchief around it to muffle the sound, and smashed one of the panes.

  Reaching through, I turned the dead bolt and the lock on the knob. The door opened into a kitchen that looked unused. I figured Beckett might have gone out for dinner. If he went to a restaurant he could be away for quite a while. If he went to pick up carry-out he could be back any minute.

  Off the kitchen I found a small room with a washer and dryer and a set of pantry shelves. Beyond the shelves was a whitewashed door that might have been a closet, but more likely led to a basement. I decided to save the door for later.

  The living room spanned the front of the house. It had a bricked-over fireplace and the kind of furniture you find in rental properties: bland, beige. The place was tidy apart from sections of a newspaper scattered over the cushions of a sofa, and a drinking glass abandoned on a side table.

  From there I passed into an unfurnished space that might have been intended as a dining room. Smooth wooden floorboards underfoot. A stairway on the right, leading to the second floor.

  Upstairs were three bedrooms and a single bathroom. Beckett had an electric razor on the sink, and a toothbrush balanced on the rim of a coffee mug.

  I found more of his things in the largest of the three bedrooms. A robe tossed carelessly at the foot of a full-size bed. A suitcase on a chair. Three decade-old suits in the closet, along with a selection of shirts. The other two bedrooms were bare. No evidence that anyone had been held captive in them.

  Down the stairs again and I looked out at the street and the driveway. No sign of Beckett’s car. I moved through the kitchen to the laundry room and tried the whitewashed door. The hinges made a sound like a far-off cavalry horn. Wooden stairs led down into darkness. I flipped the switch at the top of the steps and a bulb lit up at the bottom. Wood bowed and creaked beneath my feet as I descended.

  First thing I noticed: a basement window that had been boarded over. The floor was cracked concrete. A heavy punching bag, the kind boxers use to train, hung by a chain from a steel I-beam.

  The back wall, farthest from the street, had a door in it.

  I could see no furnace or water heater. Logically, they would be on the other side of the door. I didn’t know what else might be there. The house seemed solidly built. The back wall was of the same concrete as the foundation. The door was locked.

  I pounded it with the side of my fist and called Lucy’s name. No answer.

  No reason to think she was back there. The lock on the door didn’t mean anything. It would have been put there years ago, probably by parents who wanted to keep their kids from playing near the furnace. I looked around for a key. Reached up and ran my fingers along the top of the frame. Nothing but dust.

  I stepped back and kicked hard at the door with the heel of my right shoe. A bad idea. The force of the blow sent a fresh spike into the wound in my side.

  I spun around and braced my back against the wall. Waited for the pain to settle down to something manageable. Battering down the door wasn’t going to work. I had the revolver, but I didn’t like my chances of shooting out the lock either. I needed to find the key.

  Up the stairs. I checked the pantry shelves and a cabinet on the wall above the clothes dryer. In the kitchen I found a key rack by the door. Four metal hooks, all of them empty.

  As I stepped over the broken glass on the floor, I got a call on my cell phone. I had turned the volume down to nothing, so I felt the phone vibrate in my shirt pocket.

  Ignoring it, I
started opening drawers in the kitchen. The first was empty. The second held a notepad and a lot of mismatched pens. I pushed the pens around. No key. The third drawer had a hammer in it, a set of screwdrivers. A roll of silver duct tape.

  My phone had stopped vibrating, but now it started again. I drew it from my pocket and saw Sarah’s name on the display.

  Outside, a car pulled into the driveway.

  I opened the phone. She didn’t wait for me to say hello.

  “You didn’t answer,” she said. “I tried to warn you.”

  I crossed to the window that overlooked the driveway. Heard the sound of an engine being cut off. Through the parted curtains I saw the door of Beckett’s Lexus swing open. I leaned closer so I could look down the length of the drive. Sarah came into view, walking her bike along the sidewalk. Cell phone held to her ear.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I said in a low voice.

  “Helping,” she said. “I’ll stall him as long as I can.”

  She snapped her phone shut and I did the same. I watched Beckett haul himself out of the car. He was several feet away, and lower than the window. I could see his bare scalp, straw-colored hair on either side.

  His left hand held a paper bag with the logo of a Mexican restaurant called Tios. He spotted Sarah and turned toward her. My first instinct was to go out there and get between them.

  I looked back at the drawer I’d left open. The duct tape. I imagined Lucy Navarro on the other side of the door in the basement, lying unconscious on the floor with her wrists and ankles bound. A strip of tape over her mouth, another over her eyes.

  Outside, Sarah started in on a tale of woe about her bicycle. I could hear her clearly; the window had been left open a couple of inches to let in a breeze.

  “. . . ran over a pothole, like, a foot deep, and I think there were nails at the bottom or something . . .”

  Last chance to find a key. I went back to the drawers—three of them I hadn’t checked. One of them empty, one with a heap of loose silverware, one with towels and pot holders.

  “. . . lucky I didn’t go over the handlebars . . .”

  I wasted time looking under the towels. Wasted more time sifting through the silverware.

  “. . . front tire is totally flat. I could patch it but I’ve got no way to reinflate it after.”

  I started looking in the cupboards. Saltine crackers, a can of coffee. Dinner plates, chipped bowls.

  “. . . on top of everything my cell flaked out on me. Dead battery. Could I maybe borrow yours? I gotta call my dad and get him to pick me up . . .”

  Coffee mugs. Glassware. A shotglass with a cloverleaf on it. A brass key standing up in the shotglass.

  I grabbed it and headed for the laundry room. Outside, Sarah was holding an imaginary phone conversation with her dad’s secretary. The secretary put her on hold. “It’s after six and he’s in a meeting,” she said to Beckett. “He’s a major workaholic. I swear, you could shoot him and he’d be back at his desk the next day.”

  I raced down the basement stairs, skidded on the concrete floor. The key slipped into the lock. It didn’t turn. I jiggled it, eased it out a fraction of an inch and then it went. Leaned my shoulder into the door and it scraped open.

  Dark in there. Another boarded window. I could see the shape of the furnace. The water heater. Nothing else. I used up seconds looking for the pull chain of an overhead light. Sixty watts lit the room. Not even a scrap of duct tape on the floor. Lucy had never been here.

  I doused the light and locked the door. Used my handkerchief to wipe my prints from the key as I ran up the stairs.

  Outside, Sarah was thanking Beckett for letting her use his phone.

  I dropped the key into the shotglass and eased shut the door of the cupboard. Beckett offered to let Sarah come inside and wait for her father.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “He’s going to pick me up on the corner.”

  I stepped on the broken glass on my way out. Used the handkerchief to turn the inside knob, and again to wipe down the one outside. I left the door ajar.

  From the back porch I could hear Beckett’s approaching footsteps.

  I turned away from the sound, took two steps to the porch railing, and vaulted over. Landed easy apart from the stabbing pain in my side. I sprinted along the side of the house, came to a gate in the fence and thought for a frantic moment it would be locked.

  I worked the latch and went through. Got to the sidewalk in front of the house and looked to my left. Saw Sarah rounding the corner, walking her bike. I could follow her, but I’d have to cross the end of Beckett’s driveway. Better to take the long way around.

  I ended up cutting through a neighbor’s yard and passing behind number 315 on the far side of the privacy fence. Made my way to Fountain Street. Sarah was waiting beside my car.

  We stashed her bike in the trunk. I drove this time. Over to Spring Street and then south. My breathing was rough and my body was sending me messages about the wisdom of jumping and running. They were being delivered to the bullet wound in my side.

  “That was brave, but foolish,” I said.

  “I agree,” said Sarah.

  “Do you?”

  “I assume we’re talking about you breaking into that guy’s house.”

  I glanced over and saw her looking back at me with a cool smile on her lips. It reminded me of her mother.

  “I’m talking about you,” I said softly. “Following me. You shouldn’t have done it. What if he had taken a closer look at your bike tire?”

  “He would have seen it was flat,” she said. “I let the air out of it.”

  “When did you have time?”

  “I did it as soon as I got there. Some of us plan things ahead.”

  We drove along under a gray sky, a few odd drops of rain falling from the trees.

  “Why did you take so long?” she asked me.

  I told her about the locked door in the basement.

  “So, no Lucy,” she said. “Where do you think she is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you still think he took her—what’s his name?”

  “Alan Beckett,” I said, slowing to make the turn onto our street. “He’s Callie Spencer’s adviser. I think if he didn’t take Lucy himself, he’s behind it. Or at least he knows about it.”

  “And he’s keeping her somewhere,” Sarah said. “Or someone is.”

  Her tone was even, as if she were stating a fact. But she was really asking a question. A question I’d been asking myself. If Beckett and the Spencers wanted Lucy Navarro out of the way, was there any reason to suppose she was still alive? She posed a danger to them because of what she’d learned from Terry Dawtrey and Henry Kormoran. I’d half convinced myself that they would keep her around, at least for a while. They’d have questions: How much did she really know? Did she have any hard evidence?

  It seemed thin, when I thought about it. Any questions they had could have been answered by now. I had no reason to think they would keep her. But I wanted it to be true. I wanted to believe there was a door somewhere, and she was waiting behind it. Waiting for me to find her.

  CHAPTER 39

  On Friday morning, Lucy Navarro was still missing. Anthony Lark was on the loose.

  Callie Spencer went on television.

  They interviewed her live via satellite on one of the network morning shows. I slept late and missed it, but in the office that afternoon I watched it online.

  The interview focused on Lark, whose story had been pieced together by reporters who had spoken to his mother and his friends. The picture that emerged was of a troubled man driven to violence by a twisted sense of justice. It helped that there was a pretty girl at the center of the story—someone had dug up videotape of Lark and Susanna Marten at their high school prom, Susanna in a blue dress with her hair up, laughing and waving at the camera.

  Susanna Marten’s story was all too common, Callie Spencer told the interviewer. A young woman full
of promise who had fallen victim to domestic abuse. Callie had known many women like her in her years as a prosecutor. She understood the damage that domestic violence could do, to the victims and their friends and family members.

  She felt sympathy for Lark, for his frustration over what had happened to Susanna—though of course she condemned his violent reaction. She was saddened that Lark had latched onto her own family’s tragic history, turning his anger toward the men who robbed the Great Lakes Bank seventeen years ago. She seemed to take it for granted, too, that Lark was responsible for the death of Walter Delacorte, whom she described as a dear friend of her father.

  Only at the end did the interviewer mention that Lark had shot me (“a local magazine editor”) outside the Winston Hotel—and that Lucy Navarro had gone missing at around the same time. Callie expressed the wish that Lucy would be found unharmed, and viewers were left with the impression that Lark had abducted her.

  Watching the interview, I had to admire Callie’s performance. People who saw her wouldn’t remember the details, but they would remember that Callie Spencer was thoughtful and tough-minded. They might forget Anthony Lark’s name, but they would remember that the world is a dangerous place, and that Callie seemed to have a sincere desire to make it safer.

  LARK WATCHED CALLIE SPENCER’S interview on a thirteen-inch TV in a dive hotel in South Bend, Indiana.

  When he saw the video of Susanna Marten at the prom, he thought it would stop his heart. He had begun to lose his memory of her; he had left it behind on the wall of the basement in his mother’s house. But the images on the television brought everything back to him. She had been real, and alive, and he had been with her.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d had that thought. The first time had been on a night three years ago, in the spare bedroom of her father’s house. The bed made up with white sheets, and Susanna lying on it, legs bare and crossed at the ankles, hands folded over her stomach. Lips parted, eyes staring. An empty pill bottle beside her. He knelt by the bed and wept and thought that she had been alive just a few hours before, and he had been with her.