Fear the Worst

  “Hey,” he said. “You remember one of Evan’s friends had a summer job up in Stowe? Ask him about that. Ask him who it was, where the place was.” He said to me, “If Sydney heard about it, maybe she might have gone there to hide out for a while.”

  Then he got very quiet. He said, “It’s okay…. I do…. You know I do…. Okay.” He stayed on the phone a moment more, then handed the phone to me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “If I hear anything more, I’ll call,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, and flipped the phone shut. Tentatively, I asked Bob, “Everything okay?”

  Bob said nothing for a moment, then, “She just… she was just thanking me for going with you.” Long pause. He glanced over at me, the gauges casting soft light across his face. “She thinks she made a mistake, leaving you.”

  “I doubt that,” I said.

  “It’s true,” he said. “And now, with all this shit with Evan, I wouldn’t blame her if she moved out and tried to patch things up with you.”

  I watched as the dotted lines came zooming toward the Mustang and then slipped away. “I know you love her,” I said. “I saw it when Susanne collapsed that day.”

  We went another mile or so before Bob said, “I know you think that I think I’m better than you. But I have to compete with your ghost every day.”

  My cell rang. I flipped it open.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Mr. Blake.”

  “Detective Jennings,” I said.

  “Do you know where I am right now?”

  “I’m guessing the hospital, or the dealership.”

  “The dealership,” she said. “At least what’s left of it. The whole place is ablaze. Your wife tells me that once this fire is out, we’re going to find three dead people inside. We’ve got a man in the hospital in serious condition. Shot in the shoulder and the knee. But I gather I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

  “I know Susanne’s told you that two of the men in the building tried to kill me. So did the one you found outside, the one you took to the hospital. A man named Gary executed Andy Hertz. Shot him point-blank in the head. Same way he shot Kate Wood.”

  “We need to talk about that.”

  “Soon,” I said.

  “How did the other two men in that building die, Mr. Blake? Did you kill them?”

  “You’re kind of fading in and out,” I lied.

  “Wherever you are, turn around and come in right now.”

  “I can’t do that. Maybe, if I had any faith that you and Detective Marjorie weren’t trying to pin everything on me, I’d feel differently. The fact is, there’s been a goddamn human-trafficking operation going on at that hotel right under your noses. Why don’t you work on that till I get back?”

  “Human trafficking? Is that what your daughter’s gotten mixed up in?”

  “She was working there all the time,” I said. “Everybody there was told to lie. And they did a pretty convincing job of it.”

  “Mr. Blake, please, come in. We’ll take over looking for Syd and—”

  “You need to go through that hotel,” I pressed. “Room by room.” I felt a lump in my throat. “You need to see if there’s any sign of Patty.”

  “You think she’s hiding there?”

  “I think… I think she’s dead.”

  Jennings waited.

  “Gary said she was dead,” I said.

  Jennings was silent. “Detective?” I said.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “You got anything to say?”

  Another pause, then, “We obtained Patty’s cell phone records.”

  “I’ve been calling her cell,” I said. “She’s not answering.”

  “There’ve been several calls, over the last few weeks, to her phone from a number in Vermont. From Stowe, specifically.”

  I tried to keep my voice even. “Whose phone?”

  “Pay phones. A couple of different numbers, actually. Someone made the calls using prepaid phone cards.”

  “What about the other way?” I asked. “Were there any calls from Patty’s phone to Stowe?”

  “No,” Jennings said.

  “Well, I suppose it could have been anyone,” I said. “A boyfriend, a relative.”

  “Mr. Blake, is that where you’re headed? To Stowe?”

  “No,” I said. “I have to go, Detective.” And I flipped the phone shut. Seconds later, it started to ring. Jennings calling back.

  “You’re not going to answer that?” Bob asked.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  A FEW MILES LATER, Bob shouted, “Tim!”

  “Huh?” I said.

  The Mustang had rolled onto the shoulder. I jerked hard on the wheel, bringing the car back onto the road.

  “Jesus Christ!” Bob shouted. “You fell asleep!”

  I blinked furiously, shook my head. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” I said.

  “Let me drive for a while,” he said.

  I was going to argue, but realized it was the smartest thing to do. I pulled the car over to the side, left it running as I got out and stretched in the cool night air. Bob came around, got behind the wheel. I slipped into the passenger seat and was doing up the seat belt as Bob pulled back onto the road.

  “You know the way?” I said.

  Bob looked at me. “I know you think I’m a fucking moron, but I know how to drive.”

  “The thing is, now I’m awake,” I said.

  Thirty seconds later, I was out cold.

  FORTY-THREE

  SOMEWHERE AROUND BRATTLEBORO, Bob decided we needed to start looking for a gas station. It was the middle of the night and it was clear we weren’t going to make it all the way to Stowe without refilling. Holding the car at ninety was sucking up the fuel pretty quickly.

  We found an all-night station, a run-down place that was light on the amenities, including a working restroom. Bob ran off into the bushes to take a whiz while I filled the tank at the self-serve. When he came back, I ran off into those same bushes.

  Bob, pretty tired himself now, tossed me the keys. When I got into the car, he handed me a Mars bar and held up a coffee, which he then fit into the cup holder. “This, along with your nap, should keep you going.”

  “You know how I take it?” I asked.

  “Black, I know. Half the time Susanne makes me coffee, she serves it to me that way, leaves out the cream, thinks she’s still married to you.”

  I tore off the end of the candy bar wrapper as I barreled up the ramp and back onto the highway. I took a huge bite and chewed contentedly while Bob sipped his own coffee. I could not remember when I’d last eaten. I set the bar down on my lap and carefully brought the coffee up to my lips. Bob had already pried back the plastic lid so I could get at it.

  I took a sip.

  “Wow,” I said. “That has to be the worst coffee I’ve ever had in my entire life.” I had to suppress a gag reflex as it went down my throat.

  “Yeah,” said Bob, nodding. “If that won’t keep you awake, nothing will.”

  I took my eyes off the road for a second, still holding the cup close to my mouth. “Thanks,” I said.

  Another mile on, I said, “I know I’ve sometimes been, you know, where you’re concerned, a bit—”

  “Of an asshole?” Bob said.

  “I was going to say, a bit reluctant to show you much respect.”

  “Sort of the same thing,” he said, leaning back in his seat, glancing into the passenger door mirror.

  “Well, I don’t really think that’s going to change any,” I said. Bob found himself unable to stifle a laugh. “But I want to thank you for taking such good care of Susanne.”

  “Shit,” he said.

  “No, really,” I said. “I mean it.”

  “And I mean shit, you’ve got a cop on your ass.”

  I glanced into the rearview mirror. Flashing lights. Way back there, maybe as far as a mile, but unmistakably cruiser lights. I felt my he
art hammer in my chest. After all I’d been through today, I was worried now about a speeding ticket?

  Unless it was worse than that. Maybe Jennings had figured out where we were going, and what kind of car we were in, and put the word out.

  “Shit,” I concurred. The thing was, we were lucky to have gotten this far along without getting pulled over.

  There was nowhere to go, out here on the interstate, and no upcoming exits that might allow me to lose the police. I eased my foot off the gas, allowing the car to coast back down to something close to the legal speed limit, hoping that by the time the cop caught up with us, he’d think he’d made a mistake about how fast we were going.

  And if he did pull us over for something as simple as speeding—and wasn’t after me for the mayhem I’d left behind—I’d take the damn ticket.

  “What are you doing?” Bob asked as the car slowed. First to eighty, then seventy-five.

  “I’m dropping down to the speed limit,” I said.

  “No no, you’ve got to lose him,” Bob said.

  “How am I supposed to lose him? Which side street would you like me to turn down?”

  “Okay, here’s the thing,” he said, measuring his words. “I’m not sure, technically speaking, whether the registration for this car will hold up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m just saying it would be better, all around, if we weren’t pulled over.”

  “Bob, is this car stolen?”

  “I’m not saying that,” he said. “I’m just saying the registration might not hold up to close scrutiny.”

  I was still letting the car slow down. The flashing light behind me was getting closer. “Honest to God, Bob, you told me your days of Katrina cars were over. That you were on the up-and-up. I swear—”

  “Calm down,” he said. “It might be okay, I don’t know.”

  “This is a stolen car,” I said.

  “I do not have personal knowledge that this car is stolen,” he said.

  “Those are fucking weasel words if I ever heard them,” I said.

  I felt sweat breaking out on my forehead. I didn’t see as we had any choice but to pull over and see how this played out.

  We could hear the siren now.

  “I’m just saying, while this is a legitimate car, its history is a bit clouded,” Bob continued.

  “How many cars on your lot are like this?” I asked. “Have you got them grouped? These cars over here, they were in a flood, these ones over here were stolen, these ones over here come with a free fire extinguisher because they’re likely to burst into flames?”

  “This is what I mean about you being an asshole,” Bob said.

  The cruiser was nearly on top of us now, lights flashing, siren wailing.

  “You know,” Bob said, “there’s also the matter of these two guns we’ve got.”

  “Oh God,” I said. “Speeding, a car with a murky registration, and weapons we don’t have licenses for that can be traced back to actual murders.”

  “Nice going,” Bob said.

  And then a miracle happened. The cop car moved out into the passing lane and blasted past us.

  “What the hell?” said Bob.

  About another mile on, we came upon a pickup truck that had rolled over into the median. The cruiser was pulled over onto the left shoulder, the officer helping a couple of people standing about, apparently not seriously injured.

  “You see?” Bob said. “Everything’s okay.”

  The rest of the way, I held the Mustang to just a few miles per hour over the limit. It seemed safer that way.

  THERE WAS A LONG STRETCH AFTER THAT where neither of us said much of anything. I finished my Mars bar, even drank the bad—now cold—coffee Bob had bought. When there was nothing to do but stare at the road up ahead and fall into a trance watching the dotted lines zip past, I had time to think.

  About Syd’s disappearance. Gary and Carter and Owen. Andy Hertz.

  And while Syd was always there right in front, I also couldn’t stop thinking about Patty. The girl I now knew to be my biological daughter. And within minutes of learning the truth about my connection to her, came the news that I had lost her.

  It was a lot to take in.

  Bob would never have been my first choice of someone to open up to. But at that moment, he happened to be the only one available.

  I said, “What would you do if you found out there was a child out there who was yours, a grown-up kid, and you’d never known about this person before?”

  Bob glanced over nervously. “What have you heard?”

  “I’m not talking about you,” I said. “I’m just saying. How would you handle that? Finding out there was this person and you were the father?”

  “I don’t know. I guess that would kind of blow my mind,” he said.

  “And then,” I said, slowly, “what if, right after you learned this, you found out that something had happened to this kid. And any kind of connection you might have wanted to make, you’d never be able to do that?”

  “What happened?” Bob said. “To this supposed imaginary kid?”

  “She died,” I said.

  I could feel Bob looking at me. “What are we talking about here, Tim? You’re not talking about Evan and Sydney, and anything that might or might not have happened there, are you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So what, then?”

  I shook my head. I had to blink a few times to keep the road in focus. “Nothing,” I said. “Forget I said anything about it.”

  WE HEADED NORTH at the Waterbury exit, past the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory on the left. There were hardly any cars on the road. It was, after all, coming up on three in the morning.

  The road wound leisurely up and over graceful hills, through wooded areas and clearings. A couple of times, the headlamps caught the eyes of night creatures—raccoons, most likely—at the edge of the road, starry pinpoints of light.

  About fifteen minutes after we got off the interstate the road curved down and to the right, taking us into the center of Stowe. Colonial-looking homes and businesses crowded up to the sides of the road. We came to a stop, a T intersection. There was an inn on the right, a church and what appeared to be a government building just up ahead and to the left. Turning left would take us over a short bridge, with a pedestrian walkway on the right side modeled after a covered bridge.

  “Where the hell do we start?” Bob asked.

  A cell phone went off. I grabbed mine out of my jacket, but it wasn’t the one ringing.

  “Oh,” said Bob, and fished out his own phone. “Yeah?…We just got here, just pulled into town a few minutes ago…. Yeah, we’re okay, although we nearly got pulled over, Jesus…. Uh-huh… Okay. Okay. Did Evan know any more than that?… Okay, okay, great… Okay, yeah, of course we’ll be careful…. Okay. Bye.”

  “What?” I asked as he put the phone away. I noticed, at the gas station on the corner, a pay phone. I wondered whether any of the calls made to Patty’s cell had come from it.

  “Susanne talked to Evan, and then he tried to find this kid he knew, name of Stewart. He just found him, woke him up. Stewart said yeah, he used to work up here at a motel or inn or something.”

  “What was the name of it?” I asked.

  “The Mountain Shade,” Bob said. “Stewart said it was a good job, because they paid in cash.”

  This underground economy was everywhere.

  “Did Stewart know Sydney?” I asked. “Did he ever tell her about the place?”

  “Evan says yeah. A few months ago, they ran into each other at a Starbucks or something, and Sydney was asking about it. I guess this was before she found something else to do for the summer.”

  I thought about that. If Syd was on the run and knew she’d have to support herself while things got themselves sorted out, it would be the perfect job for her. A place where she could make some money and stay below the radar.

  “So where the hell is this place?
” I asked.

  There weren’t exactly a lot of tourist information places open this time of night. The gas station was closed as well. I went straight ahead, but in less than a mile we were driving out of Stowe, so I turned around and came back to the T intersection, turning right onto Mountain Road and across the bridge with the covered walkway.

  This route was filled with places to stay. I scanned to the left as Bob read off the names of places on the right.

  “Partridge Inn… Town and Country… Stoweflake…”

  “Up there,” I said. “You see the sign, just past the pizza place?”

  “Mountain Shade,” Bob said. “Son of a bitch.”

  I pulled into the lot, the tires crunching on the gravel. As I reached for the handle to open the door, Bob said, “Hey, you want this?”

  He had a Ruger in each hand and held one out to me. “Which one is this?” I asked. “The one with one bullet, or three?”

  He glanced down at one, then the other. “Fuck.”

  I took the gun from him. Once we were out of the car, I tried to figure out what to do with it.

  “It won’t fit in my jacket pocket,” I said.

  “Try this,” Bob said, turning to the side and demonstrating how he could tuck the barrel of the gun into the waistband of his pants at the back.

  “You’ll shoot your ass off,” I said.

  “That’s how it’s done,” he said. “Then you hang your jacket over it, no one knows it’s there. It’s better than tucking it in the front of your pants. If it shoots off by mistake there, you got a lot more to lose.”

  So, nervously, I tucked the gun into the back of my pants. It felt, to say the least, intrusive.

  The night air was so still that when we closed the doors the sound echoed. There was a light over the office door, but no light on inside.

  “What are we going to do?” Bob asked.

  “We’re going to have to wake some people up,” I said.

  I banged on the office door. I was hoping that whoever ran the joint had quarters adjoining the office and would hear the ruckus. You ran a place like this, you had to be prepared for the unexpected. A burst pipe. A guest with a heart attack.