Keep Her Safe

by K. A. Tucker

  I find Gracie struggling to get the collar I bought earlier around Cyclops’s neck. Surprisingly, Cyclops is sitting still. But Gracie’s hands are trembling.

  “I’ll take him out for a walk,” I offer. “Your mom will probably need you in a minute.”

  “I’m going to Austin with you,” Gracie blurts out in response.

  “For what?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

  “To prove that my dad’s innocent.”

  “Just like that?”

  She holds her chin up stubbornly. “Yeah, just like that.”

  Gracie’s smart enough to know how ridiculous that sounds. “Based on what?”

  “What do you mean, based on what?” she snaps. “My mom should have told the police about the guy in her room! If she’d told them, maybe the real guilty people would have been caught!”

  I push the door shut, hoping to spare Dina from her daughter’s sharp tongue. “You can’t walk into the police station and demand a fourteen-year-old case be reopened based on what a heroin addict told you.”

  “So you don’t believe her?”

  “I do believe her, but—”

  “Why the hell would a cop show up in her hospital room in Arizona all of a sudden, and start asking questions about a guy who died fourteen years ago, if not to cover up a murder?”

  I drop my voice to a whisper. “Come on, Gracie . . . Do you really think a cop showed up in her room today? Think about it; you heard her back there. She couldn’t remember what he looked like, or if he was even in uniform. She was asleep, pumped full of medication. The nurses didn’t see anyone . . . And you’re right. Why now, right after my mom died?”

  Gracie won’t admit it, but I see it in her eyes: she considered that Dina might have been delusional, too.

  “Look, I believe her about what happened in your house that night. But nobody else will.”

  She stops fussing with Cyclops’s collar and grabs the copy of the news clipping. “We have this! And a bag of ninety-eight thousand dollars! And my father’s gun holster!”

  “The money isn’t going to prove anything.”

  “Yes, it will!” She sputters, “Fingerprints!”

  “Yeah, mine.”

  Gracie’s not to be swayed, though. “We have a suspicious timeline—a drug bust that my dad observed on video and had a newspaper clipping about and ten days later, he’s dead, in the same motel where that bust happened—and then some guy is breaking into our house, threatening my mom about a video. How can you call that ‘nothing’?”

  “Fine. It’s something.”

  “And if someone could break in to threaten my mother, who says it was the first time? The same guy could have also planted the money and drugs that the cops found!”

  Maybe. But . . . “None of this is enough, Gracie.”

  “Then we find enough!” Her voice has risen, and Cyclops bolts from the bed, eyeing her warily. “We find Betsy. If she was in Austin at that time, then she’s his alibi for all those other nights. Maybe she knows something.”

  “Do you know what kinds of things happen to those girls?” I don’t want to come right out and say it, but the chances of finding Betsy alive—fourteen years later—are not good.

  “I’m not going to sit in Tucson and do nothing.”

  “And you can’t go to Austin and stomp around, waving your knife and accusing people of framing your dad.”

  “Not people, Noah. Cops. Or a cop.”

  “Even more reason not to!”

  She pauses to study the newspaper clipping. “I’ll bet that Mantis guy stole money or drugs from this bust, and my dad found out about it, and that’s why Mantis killed him.”

  “We can’t prove that. We don’t even have the original case evidence.”

  “Yeah, that’s convenient, don’t you think?” Her tone is dripping with sarcasm. “Plus, I heard what my mom said—that Jackie and my dad were ‘at odds.’ Why? What did Jackie do? Why would she not care about what happened to him—or us—after he died? Why would she be so quick to believe he was dealing drugs when anyone who knew him knew there was no way it could be true? Huh?” Her eyes narrow as she fires off accusation-laced questions. “There’s only one reason I can think of. Guilt over something she did, or something that someone else did that she knew about and kept quiet. I’ll bet she knew my father had been set up right from the start!”

  I collect the collar from the bed. Surprisingly, Cyclops comes to me unbidden. I focus my attention on fastening the thin leather strap and hooking the end of the leash, all while trying to come up with a suitable response. “You know what? Maybe my mother is guilty of something. And maybe that money is the only way she knew how to make it right.”

  I give the leash a light tug and Cyclops hops off the bed, looking as ready to get out of this suffocating motel room as I am.

  But Gracie’s not ready to let me leave yet. “When I was eleven, thugs robbed the convenience store down the street where Nan bought her cigarettes. They shot the nice man behind the counter three times and he died. His name was Ahmed. He had a mole above his right eye and he always threw in a candy and a wink for me when he handed my nan her change. He had been working there for six months when it happened. For three years, every time I went into that store, I’d ask if the police had caught the killer. I hated that this person was running free, that Ahmed didn’t get the justice he deserved.” Gracie stands there with her arms folded, watching me.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because he was just Ahmed—the nice man who I saw two to three times a week, who gave me candy. He wasn’t the man who played basketball with me in his driveway, who coached my team, whose wife cared for me almost every day. He wasn’t a part of my life. But my dad was a part of yours—a big part. How can you not be furious? How can you not be fighting to make the people responsible for his death pay?”

  “Because what if one of those people is my mother?” My voice cracks with emotion.

  Sympathy flickers in her eyes, but it quickly vanishes. “My dad deserves to have his name cleared. What exactly does she deserve?”

  Part of me is desperate to know the answer to that.

  The other part hopes I never find out.

  I march out the door, Cyclops on my heels.

  CHAPTER 24

  Officer Abraham Wilkes

  April 23, 2003

  “How’s your Coke machine doing, Isaac?”

  “Nobody messin’ with it yet. Maybe having you loiter around the parking lot has helped scare ’em away.” The Lucky Nine’s maintenance man rests his forearm on the hood of my car. “Still no luck findin’ that girl?”

  I grimace. “And no leads.” Every time my phone rings with an unknown number, my heart races. I’ve gotten a few calls, but they’ve led nowhere. Gutsy hookers, thinking they can bait me into coming to their rooms. I’m not going to track them down and arrest them. Not much else to do except tell them not to call again and hang up.

  Isaac’s gaze drifts aimlessly over the lot. “I can tell she’s important to you.”

  “She’s my wife’s sister,” I admit, something I don’t tell anyone when I’m canvassing. But Isaac seems trustworthy enough.

  “I’ve been keepin’ an eye out.”

  “I appreciate that. But I’m beginning to wonder if I’m talking in the wind. I’ve got a little girl at home, crying herself to sleep every night because she wants her daddy home.” And a wife that I’m lying to, because I can’t explain how I lost Betsy in the first place. It’s bad enough that I won’t ever forgive myself for it; I can’t bear what Dina might think. It’s best she doesn’t know about my run-in with Betsy until I can bring her sister home. Then . . . I’ll admit the truth and pay the consequences.

  If I find her.

  “What’s your girl’s name?”

  “Gracie.” I smile wide. “Gracie May. She’s six and stubborn as a mule. She wouldn’t understand this, even if I did tell her.”

  “But she
will one day, and she’ll love you for it.” He says it with such certainty.

  “Hope you’re right,” I murmur as I watch a bronze Chevy coast into the parking lot. It pulls into a spot almost directly across from me, right in front of the vending machine. The driver, a thin white guy with a shaved head and ink marking his throat, climbs out, seemingly in a hurry, his eyes casting furtively back toward the parking lot entrance where a dark SUV races in.

  I recognize the vehicle, even before it comes to a halt and the men hop out, the reflective police decal on their bulletproof vests gleaming in their headlights as they round the truck, guns drawn and pointed. Dwayne Mantis is in the lead, the same stony look on his face no matter where he is. He was always a cocky son of a bitch, but he’s become even more so since Chief Canning created this special task force against drugs in Austin and tapped Mantis to lead it. I guess he has something to be cocky about, given the DA’s office has put more dealers away in the last six months than the previous two years, thanks to him and his team. And, if it keeps Austin’s streets and schools clean for Gracie, then I’ll accept his inflated ego with a smile and a thanks.

  Mantis and the others surround the driver of the other car with purpose. He looks like a cornered animal.

  “Isaac, you should go on about your business,” I murmur.

  I don’t have to warn the maintenance man twice. He’s gone in a flash, leaving me to watch what I’m guessing is an impending drug bust from the privacy of my car.

  The driver has his hands up and is arguing with Mantis, telling him he knows his rights and the police have no cause to harass him, that he’s done nothing wrong.

  “Then you don’t mind popping the trunk for me?” Mantis says with feigned casualness.

  “There’s nothing in there. It’s empty.”

  “We received a tip that says different.”

  “That’s a lie. You have no cause!”

  Mantis nods toward Stapley, who reaches into the car and hits the release.

  Mantis’s stern face splits with a wicked grin.

  “That’s not mine! You planted it there!” the guy exclaims before spinning on his heels, looking intent to run. Two of the cops cut him off. They have him pinned against the hood of the car and in handcuffs in seconds.

  “What do we have here . . . coke, meth . . . Jesus, this might earn us a commendation! Hope you don’t like freedom, because you’re not gonna see it again for a long time,” Mantis says jovially. He shakes his head to himself, but he’s enjoying every second of this. “Read him his rights.”

  As the fourth officer begins reciting words I could say in my sleep, Mantis reaches into the trunk. When his hand reappears, it’s with a wad of money. He glances over at Stapley and then, barely missing a beat, he grabs a black duffel bag and tosses it through the open window of the SUV.

  CHAPTER 25

  Noah

  “Good boy,” I whisper, giving Cyclops a scratch behind his ear as he settles by the park bench. I sigh heavily, my mind a chaotic mess of puzzle pieces with no picture to guide me.

  Gracie’s right—we can’t use that money. Not yet, anyway. I have enough savings to cover Dina’s first month of rehab. It’ll wipe me out completely, but I have a giant inheritance coming my way. Hopefully, Fulcher can speed up—

  “Rough night?” a voice calls out into the quiet night, cutting into my thoughts and unsettling Cyclops.

  It’s a familiar voice, and yet I can’t place it. Not until the park bench sinks and I look over to find Special Agent Klein sitting beside me.

  “Shhh . . .” I warn Cyclops, tightening my grip on his leash, even as panic swirls inside me. What is the FBI doing here? “Don’t you belong in Texas?” I ask coolly.

  “I belong wherever my case takes me,” Klein retorts just as evenly.

  I glance around for his dark-haired partner.

  “Agent Tareen stayed behind, to follow up on a few other leads,” Klein explains as if able to read my mind.

  “Leads for what?”

  Ignoring me, Klein reaches a hand out toward Cyclops.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I warn as a deep growl resonates from the small dog’s chest.

  Klein pulls back. And frowns. “He’s missing an eye.”

  How observant. I bite my tongue. Antagonizing the feds will do me no good.

  Klein leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “He yours?”

  “A friend’s.”

  “Is that what Grace Wilkes is? A friend?” He says it so casually.

  Klein found me in Tucson. I shouldn’t be surprised that he knows who I came to see. And yet my stomach tightens with anxiety, hearing him say her name.

  I give Cyclops’s head another pat and avoid answering his question.

  “Two days ago, you told me that you haven’t seen or talked to anyone in the Wilkes family since Abraham Wilkes died. But here you are, in Tucson, with his wife and his daughter. You even rented her a hotel room.”

  I want to ask him how he knows, but I can already guess. He flashed his badge at that bubbly blonde receptionist. “So?”

  “So, why are you here?”

  I lean back, trying to give off the same air of indifference. “To see Dina and Gracie.”

  A smirk dances across Klein’s face before he smooths his expression. “I went by the Sleepy Hollow Trailer Park today, right before going to visit Dina Wilkes at the hospital, and—”

  “You were at the hospital today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You went to her room?”

  Klein pauses to regard me, curiously. “I wanted to ask her a few questions. Why?”

  I heave a sigh of relief. The man with the badge . . . Dina’s not delusional after all. The man in her room wasn’t some ghost from fourteen years ago, looking to silence her. “You scared the shit out of her.”

  “Why would she be scared of talking to me?”

  “She thought you were someone else.”

  “Who is she afraid of?”

  “I’m not sure, but . . .” I hesitate. “She doesn’t think her husband’s death was an accident.”

  Klein doesn’t appear at all shocked by that. “And what do you know about Abraham Wilkes’s death?”

  “Do you make it a habit of talking to hospital patients without signing in at the desk?” I say instead.

  “There was no one at the desk to sign in with. Security is rather lacking there, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I noticed.” Dina, in pajamas and barely upright, managed to dart out, undetected.

  There’s another long pause, and I suspect Klein is weighing his next words like a move on a chessboard. “I came here to talk to Dina Wilkes about her husband’s death. Imagine my surprise when I found out that you carried her out of the burning trailer. It’s interesting . . .”

  “How is that interesting? What should I have done, left her there to die?”

  “The fire was yesterday, in the early afternoon. It’s twelve hours to Tucson from Austin if you drive, and you drove. I saw your Jeep Cherokee over there, in the lot. Now, I’ve never been good at telling time, but if we stopped by your place in Austin around . . . what was it, four in the afternoon on Thursday? You would have had to leave for Tucson that same night.” He mock frowns. “Did you decide all of a sudden to drive two states over and see the Wilkes family, whom you’ve had no contact with for fourteen years, after our little talk?”

  Shit. I force a shrug. “I wanted to get away.”

  “Did your mother tell you to come and see Dina and Grace Wilkes on the night she died?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Tell Gracie he was a good man. You’ll do that, right?”

  I heave a sigh to mask my panic. “Am I under some sort of federal investigation, Agent Klein? Because if I am, I’m entitled to have an attorney present.”

  “No. Not yet, anyway.” He reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone. “I want to play something for you. It’s sh
ort. Do you mind listening?”

  “Go ahead,” I mutter, my curiosity getting the better of me.

  He holds his phone up in the air.

  “Ten fourteen p.m., Wednesday, April fifth, 2017 . . .” the automated recording chirps into the still night, the time and date setting the hairs down the back of my spine on end. “Agent Klein! Since you’re so hell-bent on arrestin’ somebody, I’ve got a name for you,” a woman says, her Texas drawl thick, her words slurred, her tone bitter.

  My vision blurs with dizziness as I’m instantly transported back to that terrible night.

  “You need to look into Abraham Wilkes’s death. Everything about what happened to him was a lie. He was set up because he saw Dwayne Mantis steal money in a drug bust and he was gonna nail him for it. I don’t know exactly how Mantis did it, but I know he killed Abe. Look into him. Look into how Dwayne Mantis murdered a good man.” The call ends abruptly.

  “That’s your mother, isn’t it?”

  I’m sure I don’t have to answer; my ghostly white face must say it all and Klein is watching me closely.

  There’s no mistaking it. That was Jackie Marshall.

  “You could have warned me,” I manage to get out, my voice hoarse, my heart pounding in my ears. I could punch this dickhead for ambushing me.

  “So you could prepare a lie?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “I’m not sure yet. The same reason I don’t know why you lied to the police in your statement.” Klein focuses his attention on twisting the metal ring around his pinky finger, but I know he’s acutely aware of my every twitch.

  I should tell him everything. Unload this burden off my chest. Let the FBI do something with it. Something I surely can’t. That’s sounding better and better. But first I need to talk to Silas. He’s always been my voice of reason. And this affects him, too.

  A thought strikes me. If my mother was directing Klein toward Mantis, it’s because he wasn’t after him in the first place. “Who are you trying to arrest?”

  Klein shrugs noncommittally. “Another case. Another criminal your mother could have helped put away, but didn’t. She has a real problem with seeking justice, doesn’t she? Not exactly a good quality for a police chief.”