15 Seconds

by Andrew Gross

  “I assure you I’m not up here to hassle you about sidestepping some red tape, Mr. Poole . . . I just want to show you a couple of photos, and ask if you’d be kind enough to let me know if you recognize the person you sold the weapon to.”

  “Hard not to recognize him,” the dealer grunted. “His face’s been on the evening news as much as that guy Gadhafi. But like I’ve been saying to anyone who’ll listen, I was busy; it was crowded that day. You make a lot of quick sales at these shows. Everyone has a way of melding together . . .” Bud glanced up and saw me in the aisle. “Feel free to look around. Be with you in just a moment . . .”

  “I’m sure they do.” Carrie nodded. She placed the iPad on the counter and brought up the photo of me. “Is that him?”

  Bud stared, fingers rubbing his chin. “I keep saying, could’ve been in a cap or a beard or something. Or sunglasses. My reputation is my Bible, I always say. But yeah, looks like the guy.”

  “You’re pointing to a picture of Dr. Henry Steadman,” Carrie confirmed, “of Palm Beach, Florida, who’s been accused of committing those killings down in Jacksonville.”

  Bud shrugged again. “I can’t exactly vouch for what people chose to do with ’em once they pay me the cash.”

  “Or I’m wondering, is it possible it could have been this man that you saw?” Carrie said, switching to the second image on the iPad. “I just want you to look again and think back carefully. I understand that you were very busy . . .”

  This time she showed him the photo of Vance Hofer.

  Bud didn’t have to say a word. His eyes pretty much told it all, fastening on the new face, flickering in surprise and then thought, nodding.

  “Just take a close look. I know it’s hard to admit you might have been wrong . . .” She switched back to the photo of me. “But what if I told you that this person, Dr. Henry Steadman, was actually in South Florida on the day of that sale, operating on a patient in the morning and in meetings for much of the rest of it?”

  Bud bunched his lips.

  “But that this man . . .” She switched again to Hofer. “Vance Hofer. Is there any chance, Mr. Poole, that it might have been this man who bought that gun from you that day?”

  He drew in a deep breath, his ruddy complexion replaced now by a dim pallor, staring and seemingly reevaluating. He tapped his index finger on the counter.

  “No one’s trying to get you into any trouble, Mr. Poole. Like you said, you did exactly what was required. But I’m sure there are security cameras somewhere that might show Mr. Hofer coming into the hall that day. And not Dr. Steadman. So which person was it,” Carrie asked again, “this man or this one?”—flashing once more between the two. “Truth is, we’re going to have to clear it up at some point, whether here or in front of a jury, where you’d be under oath.”

  My blood began to race in anticipation, vindication only seconds away, as I watched the wall of Bud’s conviction begin to crack, and he cleared his throat, the lump in it almost visible.

  “Guess it coulda been that guy . . .” he said, flicking his index finger toward Hofer’s photo. “Like I said, it was crowded, and it’s always a good show for me.”

  A sense of elation surged through me.

  “Sorry”—Bud scratched behind his ear—“if I gave anyone the wrong impression.”

  “No worries.” Carrie turned and shot a happy glance my way. “I have the feeling you’ve made at least one person very happy today.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  For Vance Hofer, there was only one place to go. One place where he felt at home and knew that no one would find him.

  He had driven for hours, with Steadman’s daughter asleep in the backseat, her wrist bound to the door in his old cuffs from his days on the force, her ankles tied.

  When he finally turned on the old familiar road, pulled up to the remote, ramshackle house, the last place he had been before it all fell apart, everything suddenly felt right to him.

  It looked a little the worse for wear, the grass overgrown, the porch sagging and stripped of paint, no one doing the chores for a couple of years.

  But he’d been happy here.

  “Wake up now, darlin’,” he said to the girl in back. Vance was proud of how he’d set everything up. Lifting him, he felt, from the speck-like unimportance of his life’s past mediocrity.

  He was proud, after his visit to Steadman, about the way he had found her up at college as she was coming from the stables, about how he had posed as an admiring spectator who was watching her ride. A picture of perfection if he’d ever seen one. Unlike his own daughter, who’s only after-school activities, he suspected, had taken place in the boys’ bathroom of the local high school.

  And he was proud about how he’d followed Steadman as he got off his plane that day, giving Martinez the heads-up about what he was driving—that fancy white Caddie—and when Martinez might expect him by. How he’d stayed a short distance behind all the way from the airport until he saw the flashing lights and sirens.

  Watching it all beautifully unfold.

  Surely there were bad things that were a part of it too. Martinez. Vance thought of the cop’s look of befuddlement when he turned and saw Vance pull up beside him.

  The gun in his face. No clue in the world what was happening. And then pow . . .

  And Steadman’s friend. In that fancy house. How Vance had found him at his desk, the garage door left open, after polishing up his clubs . . .

  They would require some lengthy conversations with the Man Upstairs.

  But Vance felt he’d done his share of good as well, bringing ol’ Wayne and Dexter to mind, plus that Schmeltzer maggot. Ridding the world of vermin like that surely cleaned it up a lick, and might earn him, he hoped, upon his ultimate judgment, the smallest measure of thanks for making the world a better place.

  But he always knew . . . Always knew sooner or later that they’d come for him. Fellows’s call showed him that.

  Yes, he’d done it well. Still, that didn’t quite make them even.

  Not quite yet.

  He opened the door to the back and uncuffed the girl’s wrist. “What? Where are we?” the frightened girl called out, pulling back from him. “What are we doing here? Get your hands off me!”

  He didn’t care—she could kick and scream all she wanted. She could scream until she was blue in the face; there was no one around to hear. He cuffed both her wrists, then picked her up and carried her into the woods, kicking overgrown branches and brush out of his way, a place he hadn’t been to in a couple of years but that used to be home to him. He found the shed. There was a lock on the door. His own lock. He set her down and opened it.

  “No, no,” the girl said. “I don’t want to go in there. I don’t—”

  “Better get used to it,” Vance said to her. “It all gets interesting from here.”

  He picked her up again and kicked the door open, flicking on the one light. Many of his old tools were still on the walls. It was dark and damp, with cobwebs all over.

  He opened the storage hut.

  “No, no, please,” she begged, shaking her head. “What are you doing? Don’t. Not in there . . .”

  “What’d you think, you were here on vacation?” Vance grabbed her wrists and undid the cuffs.

  Pretty as a picture, he recalled. The horse and rider coming around. The beating of its hooves. The rider leaning. Toward the jump. The graceful bunching of the muscles in the animal’s hind legs, then leaping, clearing, horse and rider frozen momentarily in midair. Then the landing on its forelegs, without missing a stride.

  “What are you doing? What are you staring at?” she asked, trembling.

  Pretty as a picture, right?

  Vance was all set to throw her into the dark compartment, when that gave him an idea.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Carrie and I drove from the gun shop into the center of town, where we got a coffee and sat in the small green off the main street, under a stone pillar commemora
ting the town’s World War II dead. It was a warm afternoon. A couple of kids were riding their bikes, BMX-style, up and down the stone steps. A woman on a nearby bench was feeding a few birds. All around the square and main street was the languorous still-life of the South.

  The sudden proof Carrie had just gotten made me both elated and a little scared. Now I had to turn myself in. That was our agreement. I had to hand myself over to the very people who’d been trying to kill me just the other day. Back in handcuffs probably and in a jail cell. Interrogated in a room, hoping I could convince them, probably the FBI, that they had to hide that I was innocent. Fending off all the media frenzy I knew would follow.

  Not even the Jacksonville police could doubt it now.

  “So what do you say,” Carrie asked, holding her phone. “You ready to do this now?”

  “Yes.” I nodded, tossing her a halfhearted smile. Then: “No. Listen, Carrie, I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you enough for what you’ve done. Without you, I would have driven away from Fellows’s house, not even knowing it was where the plate was from. And I wouldn’t have known a thing about Hofer. I’d still be driving around, confused and panic-stricken.”

  “You found Fellows yourself. And you would have found Hofer. Let’s just say it was a team effort.” But I could see the sense of satisfaction on her face too. “So I’m going to call Jack. We’re going to explain it to him. From the start. I’m going to ask him to send a team, maybe out of the Charlotte office. We can arrange to meet somewhere neutral. Maybe in the lobby of that motel over there . . .” She pointed toward a Comfort Inn. “Or maybe outside of town, so it doesn’t create a stir.”

  “We can’t create a stir, Carrie.”

  “Or get the local police all involved. That’s just what we need, right?”

  “Then you can go back to your life . . .” I said. “Community outreach.”

  She looked at me. “I made a decision. I think I’m gonna put in for something else. Maybe a detective’s shield. It’s what I wanted to do all along, I just put it aside while Rick finished up school and then got called up in the reserves. . . . What do you think? You think I’ve got the goods?”

  “I think you’ve got all the goods,” I said, unable to stop myself from smiling.

  “If the JSO doesn’t toss me in jail, just on principle . . . You might well get out first.”

  “Look, when this is over . . .” I didn’t know quite how to say it. “I’d like it very much if . . . if we could . . .”

  “Still pushing for a client?” Carrie’s blue eyes twinkled playfully.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I . . .”

  She stopped me. I saw my own feeling reflected in her expression. “I know what you meant, Doctor . . .”

  “Henry.”

  “Henry.” She shrugged and smiled, this time, from the heart, and I felt my whole being—the one that had been alone and in the dark, separated from any connection for the longest time—light up like a warm lamp had just gone on. She said, “I hope you get your daughter back, Henry. I’d like to meet her when you do.”

  “I’d like that too.”

  “I’m going to call now . . .”

  “Okay . . .” I exhaled a breath and nodded.

  Carrie shrugged. “This is either going to be one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done—or one of the dumbest. Here goes.”

  She smiled, punching in her brother’s number. We both waited with a bit of anxiousness for him to answer. I know I surely did. Carrie looked at me, this time not turning away.

  Then I heard someone pick up and Carrie went, “Jack.”

  She cleared her throat. “Jack, I have something to tell you . . . Yes, I’m okay. I’m in Mount Holly, North Carolina—it’s about twenty miles out of Charlotte. And I have Dr. Henry Steadman with me. I want you to know—he didn’t have anything to do with the crimes he’s been accused of and we now have the evidence to prove it. He’s ready to turn himself in. But before you do anything, you have to listen . . .”

  I drew an anxious breath and looked past her, toward the main street of the small town where we had left Carrie’s Prius, as I went over in my mind what I was going to say.

  My thoughts suddenly took the oddest turn, and I found myself recalling images from my marriage with Liz. How I had failed to keep it together. Regardless of whose fault it was. How I had just drifted ever since. Never quite put to the test. But now . . . I looked at Carrie. She curled her hair around her ear as she went on with her brother. Now I was somehow being given a second chance. How life does that. How it provides many chances. Chances to redeem yourself. How—

  Suddenly a phone rang in my pocket. Not my cell. One of my prepaids!

  Hofer!

  I pulled it out while Carrie was on the line with her brother. I saw Hallie’s number.

  “Hallie?” I gasped.

  “Hey, Doc,” I heard Hofer reply.

  My blood instantly heated, just hearing his voice. “Where’s my daughter?” I barked at him—though in some deep place in my heart, I already knew.

  “Oh, sorry, Doc,” Hofer said, sighing, “she’s no longer here.”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Bud Poole got on the phone after the woman from Jacksonville left.

  He just wasn’t sure if he should call his lawyer first—or the police!

  He chose the police.

  It had been a strange conversation right from the start. Showing him those photos—Steadman and that other guy. Hofer. And how she wasn’t even a detective, just some employee at the sheriff’s office down there. No badge, only an employee ID.

  Even if he had gotten a little carried away with all the attention about Henry Steadman . . . he knew it had shaken him up, thrown him off his game.

  And then that other guy, the one who was milling around the aisles. He and the woman had come in together. He remembered how their eyes clearly ran to each other’s after he looked at that photo. There was something between them. He saw it. And then the guy looked up and Bud got a good look at his face.

  Henry Steadman.

  When they left, Bud went to the door and watched them climb into the same car . . . A white Prius.

  This was the biggest news Mount Holly had seen since snow.

  The lawyer, he could come later.

  He punched in the number, and when the duty officer answered, “Mount Holly Police,” Bud asked for Lieutenant Pete Toms. Shit, he could’ve asked for practically anyone there—he’d sold them all a weapon or two over the years.

  “This is Lieutenant Toms.”

  “Pete . . .” Bud said. “Bud Poole. Over at Bud’s Guns . . . You’re not going to believe who I just saw! That guy from Jacksonville. Steadman. Who’s wanted on those murders?”

  “Bud, you seem to be seeing him everywhere,” Pete replied with some levity.

  “I know. I know. But this is different! He just drove away in a white Prius. With Florida plates. He’s with a woman. This is for real, Pete,” he said, almost huffing on the words. “They just left my store!”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  I froze, as if a syringe of ice had been injected directly into my veins. “What do you mean she’s no longer here?” I shouted into the phone in alarm.

  “What’d you think this was—some kind of game?” Hofer said. “I told you, didn’t I? You go to the police, you knew what was going to happen. Still have your old cell phone? Take a look. Picture coming through now . . .”

  No. No . . . I almost retched right there. How could he have known? Was it Fellows? But he could have only told him Carrie and I were up there at two different times. I grabbed my cell from my pocket. “I didn’t go to the police. I swear! What did you do to her, goddammit? What did you do?”

  My phone vibrated in my hand. I saw the message come through from Hallie. Tears of helplessness started to burn in my eyes—and of fear. Fear at what I was about to see.

  My own daughter . . .

  I pressed the open option. T
he photo flickered for a moment, uploading; then it came in.

  It was Hallie. Oh God . . .

  But to my joy her eyes were open and she didn’t appear to be harmed.

  Her mouth was taped and her eyes were focused in anger and humiliation, and there was a sign hung around her neck. In her handwriting.

  JUST KIDDING, DAD.

  My pulse started to calm, like a tide receding, but then the relief turned immediately into rage. “You sonovabitch Hofer.”

  Another pause. This time I realized I’d made a mistake. Saying his name. Telling him that I knew. But I didn’t care.

  “Oh, relax. I was just trying to get a rise out of you, Doc. You can be sure, the call will be for real soon enough. Maybe even tomorrow. So you know who I am, huh? Well, all congratulations to you.”

  I turned back toward Carrie and she noticed the pallor on my face. I mouthed a single word to her. “Hofer!”

  Her eyes went wide. I heard her tell her brother she needed a minute, that she’d call him right back.

  “Yeah, I know who you are, Hofer. And what you’ve done. I know it was you who killed Martinez. And Mike Dinofrio. I know you bought that gun pretending to be me. That’s where I am now. Up in Mount Holly. I also know you knew Martinez from back when you were on the force, and that you knew Fellows from work—and that you got the license plate from him. I even know why you did it—your daughter. Because you somehow blame me for what happened to her. And I hope it was worth it, Hofer, because however long it takes, I’m gonna find you myself and wring the life out of you!”

  He snickered. “You’ve been a busy little bee, haven’t you, Doc. A busy, busy little bee. But hell, there’s only one thing missing. You’re up in North Carolina, and all the fun’s going on down here. And you don’t know where we are.”

  “What do you want from me, Hofer? Give me my daughter back. Please . . . What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to know what a man is truly capable of, when you take everything he has away from him. What it used to mean to be human.”