Eye for an Eye (An Owen Day Thriller)

by Rachel Ford

  I opted for the pizza. The oven was cold as I put it in, so I added a few minutes to the cook time. Then I grabbed the milk, settled into the couch, and drank straight from the jug.

  I thought about checking what was on TV, but it was late, and I was tired. So I sat in the semi-dark, drinking my milk and waiting for the timer.

  About twenty minutes later, I pulled my dinner out of the oven. It was soft and limp in the middle, and dark and burnt on the edges. Either the stove was going, or my trick for cooking in a cold oven wasn’t as clever as I thought.

  Probably the latter, I decided. And if not, well, I’d worry about a replacement appliance tomorrow. I’d have to get more food tomorrow too. Preferably something that wasn’t frozen pizza.

  I finished the jug of milk and half the pizza. I didn’t bother wrapping the leftovers. It was gross enough now, but cold and soggy the next day? Pass.

  The shower could wait until morning too. So I took my clothes off, brushed my teeth, and headed to bed.

  But I didn’t sleep. I closed my eyes and laid still. And didn’t sleep. I shifted and rolled over and stretched out across the whole bed. I told myself it was nice, having a bed all to myself again. I didn’t have to worry about crowding anyone else.

  Ten o’clock became eleven o’clock. Eleven turned into midnight. I was still tossing and turning. My mind wandered. I wondered where Jade was.

  Was she at her sister’s house? Had she gone back to her mom’s? Did she really mean it, when she told me not to contact her? Or was she waiting for me to apologize?

  Should I just apologize? In retrospect, I was sorry about not texting. If I’d known it would be such a big deal, of course I would have.

  But wasn’t packing up and demanding radio silence an overreaction on her part too? It wasn’t like I was late because I was with someone else. I was late because of the job. I was late because I was working. Why the hell was that so hard to understand? She knew where I was.

  My tossing and turning grew more agitated. Finally, I sat up. It was fifteen minutes after midnight, and I was wide awake, and further away from sleep than I’d been so far.

  It was this room, this damned bed where Jade and I had spent so many nights. We’d sunk into that bed after long days of hard work, exhausted but content in each other’s company. We’d stumbled in here, drunk and delirious, and passed out almost before we hit the pillows. And other nights, and weekends, and days off? We’d barely left this room, or the bed. We’d made love and made plans. We’d talked about getting married in that bed. We’d talked about upgrading the house some day: something bigger, with a better yard for kids.

  I grabbed my phone, my pillow and a blanket, and stalked out of the bedroom. I shut the door hard behind me, like the slam of a door could wall off those memories for good. Then I settled onto the couch.

  Sleep still didn’t come. I found myself staring at the ceiling and thinking about Jade; thinking about the case that had caused the turmoil in the first place; and thinking about Owen Day, and why he hadn’t returned my call.

  He’d started this thing so eager to help, it surprised me that he hadn’t bothered to return my call since. It seemed uncharacteristic.

  But, then, I hadn’t exactly approached his report with a lot of interest, had I? I’d been sure he made the whole thing up in the beginning. Maybe that had dampened his enthusiasm. Or maybe he’d just been exhausted when he got back to camp. He had two kids with him. That’d exhaust anyone.

  I’d call him again in the morning, I decided. I’d try to get ahold of him before he headed out to whatever he planned to do.

  Then my mind turned to Matthew Callaghan, and Joey Rabbitt. If the vic Day found was indeed Callaghan – and I suspected he was – it wouldn’t be Rabbitt’s first time. He’d killed drivers before. He’d no doubt kill them again, if he had the chance.

  Maybe, drivers just down the road from us. I frowned at the ceiling. What the hell would bring an East Coast crook up to Wisconsin? That would be what: a thousand miles? Eleven hundred miles? There were banks a lot closer to home than that. There’d be armored trucks a lot closer to home than Milwaukee.

  So why Milwaukee?

  Were things heating up too much on the East Coast? Were the feds getting too close for comfort? Maybe. Maybe Rabbitt knew his days were numbered out there, and he figured he’d move somewhere else, somewhere no one would expect him.

  I sat up and grabbed my phone. I brought up Safari and googled Joey Rabbitt armored truck robbery. I saw some of the same stories I’d already seen, the ones with thumbnail images of Matthew Callaghan’s face. I saw others too.

  I saw a listing on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted page. I saw articles about half a dozen other robberies – and two murders.

  The first murder happened almost twenty years ago. Joey Rabbitt had been fifteen at the time; the youngest of a group of four that included his older brother and an uncle. He’d been charged as an adult at the time and got fifty years.

  Twelve years later, some advocacy group had gotten ahold of his case, and made a martyr of him. There were all kinds of articles about it.

  He’d been a kid, they said; a victim of other people’s bad decisions. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he was being punished for what his relatives did.

  It had taken five years of appeals, but in the end they got him out. A judge ruled that the investigating detectives had mishandled evidence. The state declined to prosecute a second time. Rabbitt walked away with a settlement.

  It apparently lasted him about two years. Because at the end of two years, he was plying his old trade again. Only this time, he didn’t make the mistakes his family had made.

  He hit the first truck eighteen months ago, in early January. Three masked men jumped the guards after a pickup at a big box store. The truck was early in its rounds, so it didn’t have as much as it might otherwise. But they still cleared over ten grand in bills.

  There were two men assigned to the truck: a David Frey and Danny Sala. Danny tried to overpower one of the three robbers. He was shot in the head at close range by a second robber.

  Police recovered DNA from the victim’s fingernails. At the time, there was no match in the system.

  A month later, the trio hit another armored truck. They cleared just under twenty-five grand this time, with no fatalities.

  In July of that year, they hit a third truck. They ran it off the road, and one of the guards was thrown in the process. He suffered a broken back and shattered limbs. They got away with just under ten thousand dollars that time.

  Then, they changed their MO. Their fourth hit was on the Monday evening after Thanksgiving. They took out a truck that had just come from a bank. The article didn’t list how much money they got away with that time.

  But it wasn’t chump change. That was for sure. Banks had limits on how much cash they could have on hand at any one time. To call in a truck on a Monday meant the cash had been accumulating while the bank was closed over the long weekend. People had been making ATM deposits, and cashing checks, and putting in money to cover the bills they’d racked up on their time off.

  So they’d called in a truck to haul it off. And Rabbitt and his had waylaid them and made off with whatever they could.

  The fifth hit followed the same pattern, about a month later – right after Christmas. But things didn’t go so smoothly this time. Both of the guards fought back. They shot one of the assailants in the shoulder; a grazing injury more than anything else. But he left DNA.

  DNA that matched the very first hit.

  They shot both guards this time, one in the head and one in the chest. They left both for dead, but the victim with the chest injury lived. He told the police he caught the name of the shooter: Joey.

  Twenty minutes later, a traffic cop stopped a vehicle driven by one Joseph Rabbitt. He’d been speeding and blitzed through a changing turn signal. The cop issued a ticket and thought nothing more of it.

  But it put Joey near the scene at the righ
t time. The FBI and the detectives working the case put the rest together. Like he must have known they would.

  Because by time the cops showed up to Joey’s place, he’d cleared out. He’d gone to ground since then, hitting only one more truck in the interval: another bank truck, this time coming out of New Jersey.

  And now he was here, in Wisconsin, planning – what?

  Another bank hit? It was possible. There were plenty of banks in any city, and plenty of trucks coming in and out of those cities.

  But there were plenty of cities between Milwaukee and the East Coast. Plenty of marks that didn’t require such a radical change of scenery.

  Which, I supposed, was the perfect argument for Wisconsin. It was far away, and completely random; an absolute break from established patterns. It made so little sense, it made perfect sense.

  No one would look for an East Coast robber in the Midwest.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I might have been unnecessarily harsh, but I figured they needed a cold dose of reality. Especially after how things had played out with Matthew.

  I didn’t expect them to be heroes, but if I was going to stick my neck out for them, I needed to know I could count on some kind of support in return. I needed to know they wouldn’t sit back and watch me get gunned down.

  Paige blinked at my words, like they stung her with some kind of physical force.

  Cody winced. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know they were going to kill him.”

  “It’s too late to do anything about it,” I said. “But now we know we can’t trust them. So we got to figure something out on our own.”

  “They’ll kill us,” Paige said.

  “Not if we’re smart.”

  “What should we do?” Cody asked.

  I glanced at them, one after the other. “Which of you was I talking to earlier? You know, with the Morse code?”

  “Me,” Cody said.

  I nodded. “That’s an unusual skill to have.”

  “I was a Boy Scout,” he said. “I got the Morse code interpreter strip for it. But, that was a long time ago. I’m a little rusty.”

  I nodded again. A Boy Scout was good news. Not as good as it could have been. Ideal would have been retired Army. Good would have been a marine. But he was too young for that. So Scouts would do. “Good job.”

  “Thanks. Took me long enough.”

  “You did good, honey,” Paige said. “I knew you would.”

  “He did,” I said. I had a good idea of what I was dealing with now. He was the one who would take action, but not without her say so. If I was going to get him onboard, I needed her onboard first. He wouldn’t do anything if she hadn’t signed off. Not where her safety and their kid was concerned.

  “What are we going to do?” Cody said.

  “Nothing until we’re sure we can do it safely,” I said.

  Paige nodded.

  “Tell me about your room.”

  “Our room?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s…uh…a square. I don’t know. Maybe sixteen by twelve? There’s four windows, two on each side. They’ve all been boarded over.”

  “With plywood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And your door, I assume, is locked?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. No other possible exits? No attic entry?”

  “Nope. That’s in the main hall.”

  I frowned. “Is it?”

  “Yeah. There’s a trap door in the ceiling, by the landing. I assume it’s got stairs.”

  I thought about the house from the outside, and the dormer with the big window on the top floor. Two stories, plus a half story above. I’d been too preoccupied by the gun and its proximity to the kids to notice any door on the way in.

  “Good to know,” I said.

  “So what do we do?” Cody asked.

  I thought for a long moment. “First thing first, we should open the wall up more. Enough for us to get back and forth.”

  “Why?” Paige asked.

  “In case we need to make a quick exit. In case they change their minds and decide keeping us alive is too much of a risk.”

  Cody nodded. “It’d give Paige and the kids a chance to run, anyway, while we tried to stop them.”

  Paige chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. But be quiet. We don’t want to wake them up.”

  So we got to work, the pair of us this time. We took turns working with the bar, knocking plaster out of place until the laths were mostly clear. Then we worked at snapping the wood away.

  It took time and patience. Plenty of both, since we were also prioritizing quiet. But in the end, we got a hole about two feet wide and four feet tall.

  It was an old home, so the studs were further apart than they would be today. Which meant more work, but a more comfortable exit, too. It meant less chance of plaster brushing onto our clothes as we passed back and forth. So all in all, it was a good thing.

  The kids had woken up with the noise. They were thrilled at the sight of light. But they’d eventually gotten bored with the slow progress, and headed back to sleep.

  I glanced back at them. Not much light from Cody and Paige’s room reached their closet, and less reached ours. Less yet reached the room beyond. But I could see dark silhouettes against the wall: little shapes, slumped in sleep.

  I decided to let them stay where they were for now. I crawled through the hole in the wall, and into the closet.

  Cody and Paige gestured for me to follow them into the main room.

  A ceiling fan and light fixture hung from the ceiling, with two of the four bulbs supplied. There were cobwebs around the light fixtures, with smudges where fingers had recently touched ancient layers of dust. But the two bulbs were enough to see by.

  The closet had been the same size as our closet, but the room was bigger. Considerably bigger. The extra four feet in length made it seem almost twice as long. An optical illusion, but the effect was there all the same.

  There was space for a wide open seating area with two chairs rather than one, and a big throw rug between them. The dresser here was larger too, both taller and wider, with a giant mirror situated atop it.

  This might have been the master bedroom, or maybe the favorite kid’s room. Maybe my and the kids’ room had been a spare bedroom, reserved for guests.

  But whatever, this was definitely the bigger and better of the two I’d seen so far.

  I took a long look around. Cody watched me do it. Paige clutched Avery to her chest and watched too. “Well?” she said. “Do you see any way out?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

  “We could go through the wall,” Cody said. “Just like we did in the closet. You and me, working together: I’ll bet we could get through it before morning.”

  Paige started to shake her head. I could practically smell the fear emanating off her. I spoke before she could. “No. Too risky.”

  He seemed surprised by that. “Oh.”

  “You guys have light. Even if we move the bed –”

  “They’d hear it,” Paige said.

  “They wouldn’t,” I said. “Cody and I could lift it and set it down without making a sound.”

  He nodded. She shook her head.

  “But even if we did that, when they come in here with breakfast, they’ll see plaster dust. It’s not like in the closet. We can’t hide it.”

  “We can’t do nothing,” Cody said. “You said so yourself.”

  “No,” I said. “We can’t.”

  “We could turn off the light,” he said. “So they can’t see anything.”

  “Too risky,” I said again.

  “They’ll know something’s up,” Paige said, her voice rising. “And Avery won’t like it.”

  “We won’t do it,” I said. “Not in your room. Better to do it in ours. There’s no light there.”

  “Then how are we going to see?” he asked.

  “We’ll keep the closet door
s open. There’ll be a little bit of light. Enough to make out shapes, anyway.”

  “It’s going to be hard,” he said.

  “It will. But our eyes will get used to it. Theirs won’t have time to adjust. So chances are, even if we miss some mess, they won’t see it.”

  Paige accepted that. As long as the construction happened in our room, and not hers, she was okay with it. Cody didn’t seem thrilled, but he accepted his wife’s decision. “Okay. When do we get started?”

  We got started right away. He crawled back with me, into the darkness. It took him a good minute before he could navigate his way in the dark.

  The kids heard us, and they woke up. Just as well, since I would have had to wake them before we could start any kind of construction anyway. But it slowed us down.

  They wanted to see the other room. Their sudden emergence worried Paige. “They’ll wonder why we’re walking around so much.”

  “They won’t be able to hear them,” Cody said. “They’re too light to make much noise.”

  I worried about them crawling through the plaster and getting covered in plaster dust. That’d be a sure giveaway. “Don’t touch the edges of the wall and try not to get dust on your clothes or hands.”

  They were thrilled, though, to see light again. Maisie beamed. Daniel shook his head knowingly when Paige worried about noise. “Don’t worry. Uncle Owen’s going to kill them. He was in the Army, you know.”

  Perversely, that seemed to quiet some of Paige’s fears. “Really?” she asked. “You were in the Army?”

  “A long time ago,” I said.

  “Still, you don’t forget that kind of thing, do you? It’s like riding a bike, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  She nodded and went back to her seat in the other room. “I’ll watch the kids. You guys work. And hurry. It’ll be morning before you know it.”

  Cody and I picked the wall behind the dresser. It was a medium sized item, made of solid wood. So it was heavy. But not too heavy for the pair of us to move.

  We set it three feet to right of our working area, flush with the corner. Then we started chiseling, giving ourselves a good foot of space between the door. That was our margin of error, just in case we’d over or underestimated anything.