Triple Threat

by Jan Coffey

  He glanced toward the door first. “Never seen them. Shirt-and-tie look. Headlights were bright. But I might be able to.”

  Tom’s gaze flicked toward the door again. Nate turned and thought he saw a shadow of someone passing. He got off the chair, but his knee was slow to respond, and he limped to the doorway. Other than a gray-haired custodian swabbing the floor, there was no one else.

  He walked back inside. “How do you know they were after Chris?”

  “Passenger saw Chris. Pointed. Driver came at me. No robbery.”

  “How about the car?” Nate asked, pulling the chair under him again. “Do you remember anything about the car?”

  “Crown Victoria. Late model. Muddy. No front plate.”

  Nate jotted down the information. Two men coming after an eight-year-old. But this was the same story Chris had given him. Two men in a muddy car. Nate had checked, and the boy’s father was still in jail. The mother hadn’t moved from the trailer she’d set up house in. Nate recalled he hadn’t heard anything about the report that was supposedly being done comparing the tire tracks from McGill’s accident to Weaver’s trailer.

  “Another thing.” Tom’s hand lifted weakly and dropped back onto the sheets. “Tapes.”

  “Surveillance tapes? From the Fort Ticonderoga Museum?”

  He nodded. “Looked at them…again. Last weekend. Some missing.”

  Nate had looked at them, too. But now that he thought back, he’d only seen the tapes with Chris and Ellie on them. The view from the hallway. “Do you think someone tampered with them?”

  “Don’t know. But there’re…segments of the hallway tapes…missing.”

  “Are you saying they’ve been cut and spliced?”

  Tom nodded. “Maybe. No time to check. There are time segments missing…unless they stopped…and started camera…without us knowing…Check time notations on pictures.”

  The hallway shots Nate had seen showed the groups of kids on field trips. Later, the security cameras had captured Chris and Ellie. Then Chris coming out of the bathroom and walking to the flag room. There were also shots of him running out, and then the cameras were shut down.

  The face of the guard that Chris claimed had been in the room was not on any tape Nate had seen. And the hallway was the only way for the man to get in there.

  “Who knew that you were suspicious about the tapes?”

  “Didn’t figure it…till Sunday. Only told…the chief.”

  Ellie packed their bags, checked out at the office and waited downstairs in the lobby for Nate to pick her up.

  He’d called from the hospital about thirty minutes ago and hadn’t given any information other than saying that she should be ready. They were leaving for Philadelphia as soon as he got back. Something must have happened, but Ellie knew better than to ask. She trusted him to tell her what he could when he was ready.

  Her cell phone rang for the second time in an hour, and Ellie answered. This time it was Ray.

  “You’re awake!”

  “Good morning,” she said pleasantly, checking the clock on the wall.

  “Are you out of bed already?”

  “Of course. You know I’m an early riser. It’s eight o’clock.”

  “And here I thought this was going to be your hot weekend away.”

  Ellie recognized the tone. The spoiled ‘I had a bad day, so I have to ruin everybody else’s day’ tone. A specialty of her old mentor.

  “What do you want, Ray?”

  “All weekend, I kept having this recurring vision of a pair of muscular biceps planted on either side of your head and a very muscular ass pointed up toward the ceiling, with our young man pumping away. So is he as good as he looks?”

  “Let’s not go there, okay?” she said sharply.

  “Why not?”

  “You can be so crude sometimes.” She tried to keep the hurt that she felt out of her voice.

  “I’m jealous.” He laughed. “For the first time in your life, looks like you’ve landed a man with a cock bigger than the pinheads of those guys you’re used to dating. I want to hear all the details, babycakes. All the wet, delicious details.”

  “Goodbye, Ray.” Ellie disconnected the phone and stepped out of the lobby. She needed the fresh morning air to cool her temper.

  Ray made what she and Nate were sharing sound cheap and dirty, and Ellie didn’t like it. Over the years, she had generally been spared Ray’s sporadic bursts of coarse vulgarity. Ever since she was little, she knew that he had an insensitive streak. Usually, it only emerged when he was unhappy or drunk. But Ellie always felt that her mentor directed his venomous blasts at people he despised—at his personal and professional enemies. It hurt her to think that he now considered her an enemy.

  The phone started ringing again. Instead of answering, she looked at the caller ID. It was Ray again. She let her voice mail pick it up.

  Nate’s car turned into the lot, and Ellie felt a sense of relief wash through her. She walked out and was waiting before he could pull up to the door.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as soon as she opened the door.

  She gave a small nod and put their bags into the back seat before getting in.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked more gently, reaching across the seat to her and touching her face.

  Her phone rang again. Ellie’s anger bubbled over when she saw Ray’s name flash on the display again.

  “Please excuse me for a minute, I have a personal problem that needs to be settled.”

  She got out of the car and walked a few steps away before turning on the phone.

  “Listen to me, Ray,” she blasted as a greeting. “I don’t know what the hell got you going on this, but as an old friend—as someone who has been looking up to you all her life—I deserve to be treated better.”

  “Babycakes, I was joking.”

  “No, you weren’t,” she snapped. “But I want to tell you something. Just as I’ve respected your desire for privacy all these years, I expect you to respect mine. I find it wrong and hurtful to make fun of something that is private and intimate. And I would appreciate it if you’d stop harassing me just for your own entertainment.”

  “Wow.” There was a long pause. “I apologize, baby.”

  Ellie shoved her fingers into her hair and looked up at the sky in frustration. Ray continued with his apologies, and she felt tears well up in her eyes. This was so much like him—hurt you and then try to lick the wound.

  “I have to go,” she said in a more controlled voice, not willing to let him off the hook so soon. “We can talk about this later.”

  “Wait,” he said before she disconnected. “You’ll want to hear this.”

  Ellie listened to what he had to say, clicked off the phone and walked back to the car.

  “You told him off. Way to go,” Nate said proudly. “Feel better?”

  She nodded.

  “So what was Ray’s problem this morning?”

  “He got the call. He thinks one might be waiting for us, too.”

  “The auction?”

  Ellie nodded. “This coming Friday. But there’s a preview on Wednesday. In Newport.”

  The two men came through the stairwell door and quietly stood watching as a heart-attack victim was wheeled out of the elevator. All of the staff present jumped into the fray as they worked together hooking the man up to the life-support machines.

  One of the two visitors, a black man wearing a sport jacket and tie, nodded toward the end of the critical-care unit where Tom McGill lay sleeping. Wordlessly, they moved into the unit and approached the “on duty” desk.

  One of the nurses at the far end hurried toward them. “Can I help you?”

  The black man took a badge from his jacket pocket and showed it to her. As she looked from the man’s weathered face to his square build and then back at the picture ID, he produced some paperwork that he handed her, as well.

  After scanning it, she picked up the phone. “I’ll get help immediately.�
��

  The phone conversation was brief, and she could feel the man’s eyes boring into her. When she hung up, the two men moved a few paces down the glass partition.

  She stuffed the paperwork into her side pocket and looked back at the patient, surprised that anyone had authorized moving Tom McGill so soon.

  Twenty-Four

  The traffic had been heavy all along the way, a situation that only added to Nate’s growing sense of frustration. A few times, when everything had come to a standstill, he was sorry that he hadn’t arranged for a chopper to take them back from Ticonderoga. It was almost three in the afternoon when the skyline of Philadelphia came into view.

  He wanted to go directly to Sister Helen’s convent. After talking to McGill, he was concerned about Christopher’s safety, and he had a bad feeling that there were some crucial pieces of the story that the eight-year-old might have left out. Ellie had called Sister Helen, and she assured both of them that there was not even a remote possibility that Chris would be stepping out of the house. In fact, he wouldn’t even leave his room. She had also said that Christopher had something to tell Nate when they arrived.

  Ray had been correct about the auction. After talking to him this morning, Ellie called her answering machine in Philadelphia and, sure enough, a message had been left only minutes before by the mysterious connection with the British accent. And this time the information was much more specific. If Ellie’s client was still interested in the previously discussed property, then they should check into the hotel on Goat Island in Newport, Rhode Island, this coming Wednesday. More information regarding a preview of the property and the specific time of the auction would be communicated to them in the hotel on that day.

  Nate decided not to call Hawes with the news until he was done talking to Chris again. Apparently, the waiting game was over.

  Nate remembered Ellie’s charity event. “What about your celebrity auction Thursday night? Do you think we’ll be done by then?”

  “I don’t know. It all depends if they have the preview of the Morris flag right before the auction or the night before the actual event.” She shrugged. “But it’s no big deal. If I have to miss it, then I’ll miss it.”

  “But you’re co-chairing the event.”

  “I know. But it would actually be a relief if I ended up not being there for it.” Her tone was sincere.

  “Why?”

  “I believe in the fund-raising aspect of the event. Augusta Biddle is hung up on the celebrity end of it. I want to give a huge check to the hospital. She wants to throw a marvelous party. Our goals make a difference. And we’ve already had a couple of minor tiffs.” She stretched and stifled a yawn. “My work on the auction is pretty much done. There are only last-minute details about the appraisals and the follow-up letters to donors that I’ll take care of. And as much as she’ll complain loudly to anyone who will listen, I don’t believe Augusta would mind at all if I canceled my appearance at the actual event.”

  “I’m sorry.” Nate took her hand and brought it to his lips. “I’m totally messing things up for you.”

  She entwined her fingers with his. “You have my permission to keep messing.”

  Nate glanced at her and felt the hard tug on his heart. She was under his skin. Ellie and all that was happening between them was forcing him to rethink his life, his career and where he was going. Everything was changing now, even his old loyalties.

  He turned his attention back on the road, forcing himself to focus. There was still a lot left to do.

  When they arrived in South Philly, a ball game was in the team-picking stage in the street in front of the convent. As they’d been told, Christopher was not among the kids outside.

  Sister Helen quickly told them everything that had happened with Chris since Friday night. She also said that since the eight-year-old had spoken to Ted Hardy the night before, he was visibly less agitated. But he’d also asked at least a dozen times today when Nate would be coming back.

  He went up and found Chris sprawled on his stomach in the small bedroom at the top of the stairs. He was doing a puzzle. As Helen had told them, Chris’s window was closed. But the door to the hallway had been left open.

  “Can I come in?”

  Chris’s brown eyes flicked up at him with an expression of recognition and then relief. The little boy nodded and scrambled quickly to a sitting position. It was easy to forget how young he was and how frightening everything must be, having no one. Nate sat on the floor and stretched his legs out in front of him. The hours in the car had left his knee aching.

  He took a look at the partially finished dinosaur puzzle. “This thing is one complicated monster. How many pieces is it, anyway?”

  “Two hundred.”

  “Two hundred?” he drawled. “I never graduated past those wooden puzzles with the little handles that you fit inside the shapes.”

  Chris bit his lip, but Nate saw the trace of a smile. “Now, who would get you something like this?”

  “Miss Ellie. She bought me those books, too.” He pointed to the neatly stacked pile on the shelf beside the bed.

  “I hope they have lots of pictures in them.”

  Chris took one down. “Some. Most of them are chapter books.” He leafed through one to show him.

  “Any big words?”

  He gave a big nod. “Lots.”

  “That’s it.” Nate leaned on his elbow and grabbed one of the puzzle pieces. “I’m not sending her my Christmas list.” He connected a corner piece to a middle one.

  “You’re pretty funny,” Chris said, giggling and taking out the piece Nate had put in incorrectly.

  “And you’re pretty smart.” He looked at the puzzle. “Will you show me how you do this thing?”

  Chris leaned over the puzzle, grabbed a few pieces and explained with a grave face about corner and edge pieces. He showed Nate how trying to do those first made the rest easier.

  Nate followed the eight-year-old’s step-by-step directions and put a piece in correctly.

  “You learn fast,” Chris said encouragingly.

  “I have an excellent teacher.” Nate put another piece in and got a high five for his effort.

  Although he knew Chris had specifically asked to talk to him, he let their conversation circle around the puzzle for now. When there were only half a dozen pieces left, Nate hid one in his hand. When that was the only piece remaining, he watched Chris search under and over everything. Then he triumphantly revealed the puzzle piece.

  There was a mad wrestle for it, and of course Christopher was the victor.

  “I won!” the boy said gleefully, fitting in the final piece.

  They both sat cross-legged and stared at the fierce teeth of the Tyrannosaurus rex for a while. At the predator’s feet, there was a young herbivore of some kind, freshly killed.

  “It would have been tough putting one of those babies in jail,” Nate commented.

  “Do you think if they lived today, they’d be the bad guys?”

  “Only some of them.” Nate stood the puzzle box up next to their completed project. “I imagine we would have found as many bad brontosauruses and stegosauruses. You can’t always tell the bad guy by his sharp teeth.”

  “Are you saying that some of the people who everyone thinks should be good guys, are bad?”

  “Maybe a very small ‘some.’ But that’s certainly a possibility.” Nate had to tread lightly here. He didn’t want to destroy Chris’s future trust in the “good guys.”

  “But if they’re the good guys and everyone believes they are…and they do something bad…and a kid knows…then there’s no way anyone would believe the kid’s word over theirs.”

  “There are people who take an eight-year-old’s word very seriously.”

  “Like you?” Chris asked quietly.

  “Like me. Would you tell me what you saw at the museum?”

  Chris started taking the puzzle apart piece by piece. “They’ll hurt me.”

  “I’ll stop
them. I’ll put them behind bars, and they’ll never touch you.”

  The brown eyes turned huge. “Can you really do that?”

  Nate nodded.

  Chris cast a worried look in the direction of the closed window. Without saying anything, he crawled on all fours past Nate and pushed the bedroom door until it was only open a crack. He came back, sat cross-legged next to Nate and started to talk.

  Ellie saw the basement door was open. She hesitated a moment, took a deep breath and headed for it. She didn’t know if Lou was downstairs or not. She was resolved, though, to take the first step. Let the chips fall where they will.

  Her stomach was doing somersaults as she started down the stairs. She paused and took a deep breath. The bottom step was as far as she’d allowed herself to go in the past. But she was determined. Still, as she descended each stair, another page in their life flickered through her memory.

  She was the only kid in the first grade who always made her own lunch. She walked to school alone and went home alone. Her father couldn’t show up for parents’ nights or the teacher conferences, and Ellie scribbled his initials on the report cards herself.

  Not that any of that upset her. He loved her. He was proud of her. He always came home before she went to bed at night, and she was his precious little girl.

  She went down a step.

  She had five A’s on her report card in fifth grade and zero friends her age. She’d changed schools three times since first grade. She was small, awkward and didn’t know what it was like to be a kid. She was in charge of everything at their apartment and understood that what Lou did for a living was illegal. She had no dreams or expectations of the future, and she was content with her father’s love.

  Another step.

  She was twelve years old and still as flat-chested as a boy. Getting A’s was a breeze. Finding friends was impossible. A social outcast among the seventh-graders, her favorite hobby was sitting next to Homeless Jack on Rittenhouse Square and watching people.

  She took another step.

  That same year, they came and took Lou away to jail. She was angry, scared, but she managed by herself with no problem. It took them a couple of months to catch up to her, but eventually she was placed in a home. She ran away. They caught her and put her in another home. Ellie ran away again. She dropped out of school and shoplifted groceries to feed herself. Lived out of a gym bag and camped out a night here and a night there on the floors of Lou’s old friends, but it was scary that she had no real roof over her head.