Eldon wasn’t done. “You’ve been running on empty for too long. You’re an old man. You’re sick and you’re dying and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing anymore. But I’ve stuck by you, because you know why? Because loyalty means something, that’s why. But it only goes so far. You feed a man’s son to the pigs, you can’t expect him to have your back any longer.”
Eldon turned, started walking toward the bedroom, giving Vince time to gather up enough momentum to pitch himself forward out of the chair.
“What are you doing?” Vince asked. He rested his hand on the back of the couch, gripped the cushion in his fingers.
“Getting dressed,” Eldon shot back.
“What are you going to do?”
The man was pulling on his jeans, doing up his belt. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough.”
“I’m sorry about your boy,” Vince said. He pulled a cushion off the back of the couch with his left hand, reached into his jacket with his right.
Eldon was reaching across the bed for his shirt, his back turned, when Vince came into the bedroom.
“You’re not sorry about anything, you asshole. You’re not capable of it.”
When he was less than two feet away, Vince raised the cushion, pushed the barrel of the gun into it, and fired. It still made a noise, no question. All Vince cared about was that it not be heard outside the apartment, and on that score he thought he was reasonably safe.
The bullet caught Eldon below the right shoulder blade. He fell forward onto the bed.
“Shit!” he yelled.
Vince moved quickly. He forced himself on top of the man, held the pillow over his head, and fired a second time. Eldon thrashed briefly, then stopped.
“You’re wrong,” Vince whispered. “I am sorry. More than you could know.”
Vince crawled off, breathing heavily as he did so. He put the gun back into his jacket. His joints felt stiff and his gut was sore. There was something warm and damp on his leg. He worried, for half a second, that somehow he’d shot himself. There was a dark spot on his upper thigh, just below his crotch.
All the sudden physical activity had caused his bag to leak. The tape that held it in place had come loose.
“Goddamn it,” he said under his breath.
He went into the bathroom to tend to himself as best he could. When he was done, he washed his hands and looked wearily at his reflection over the sink. He hadn’t shaved since the day before, hadn’t slept all night.
Had to do it, he told himself.
He was tucking his shirt back into his pants and zipping up when he heard someone rapping sharply on the apartment door.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice, muffled, coming through the glass.
Vince froze, worried any move he made might be heard.
“Hello! Is Stuart home? I’m looking for Stuart Koch!”
Carefully, Vince moved his head around the corner of the door far enough to get one eye on the entrance to the apartment. The blinds weren’t closed, and the man had put his face tight to the glass, cupped his hands around his eyes to see into the apartment.
Vince was able to make out who it was.
Some people just don’t listen.
Vince was confident the man at the door would not be able to see into Eldon’s bedroom from that vantage point. But then the man did something that could change all that. He was trying the door to see whether it was locked.
Which it was not.
Vince watched the doorknob slowly turn, and reached into his jacket again for his gun.
Thirty-one
Terry
Fuck Vince Fleming.
It wasn’t a point of view I’d come to right away. It grew on me. After Grace stated, quite clearly, that she had to know what happened, I had to make a decision about whose interests were more important.
I chose Grace.
I chose Grace because I loved her, of course, but also because, at that moment, I realized how brave she was. She wasn’t going to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over her head. She was willing to face the consequences, and in the few short hours since this mess had begun, I’d started to feel it was the only way we were going to get through this.
It might also be the only way to save her. If Grace was perceived by someone out there to be a witness, getting to the bottom of this mess might expose who that person was.
But still.
Vince was formidable, and going against him was not going to be easy. I’d have to watch my back, try to find out as much as I could without his knowing it. And I didn’t exactly have a plan for dealing with whatever it was I might learn.
“You going to be okay here if I go out and ask a few questions?” I asked Grace. She was in the bathroom, door open, brushing her teeth.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll phone work and book off sick. You don’t have to do it. I’ll do my best sick voice. I know I’ll do something really stupid in the kitchen if I go in. Set someone on fire, drop a pot of lobsters, something, because I won’t be able to concentrate.”
“And I may need to talk to you,” I said. “Best that you’re here.” I hit my forehead with the heel of my hand, remembering that this was the day the cleaning lady came. “Shit, Teresa.”
“When does she usually show up?” Grace asked.
“In the mornings. Usually no one’s home and she just lets herself in. If you want, I can call and cancel her.”
She shook her head. “No, it’s okay.”
I asked Grace if she had continued to try reaching Stuart on his cell phone.
“Yeah, and I texted him, too. Nothing.”
I decided I’d start with Milford Hospital. It was going to be the first place we would have checked last night after leaving the Cummings house, so it seemed like the logical place to begin this morning.
I gave Grace a kiss good-bye and headed out, but not before going over the new rules. She didn’t answer the door for anyone she didn’t know. She left the alarm on. She’d stay off all her social sites. No chatting with anyone.
“Got it,” she said, and saluted.
The hospital is right downtown and getting to it took less time than finding a place to park there. I went in the main entrance and approached reception, where a woman was tapping away on a keyboard.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m looking for someone who might have been admitted last night,” I said. “I wanted to see how he was doing.”
“Name?”
“Stuart Koch.” I spelled the last name for her.
She entered the name and studied the monitor. She asked me for the spelling of Stuart, which I knew because he had once been my student. If I’d had to guess, I’d have spelled it with an “ew” in the middle.
She frowned. “I don’t see anything. When would this have been?”
“Last night around ten. Maybe closer to eleven.”
“And what was he brought in for?”
I hesitated. I almost said he’d been shot. But if it turned out Stuart wasn’t here, a comment like that was going to open a can of worms, maybe prompt this woman to call the police.
So I said, “I think it was some kind of head injury. Tripped or something.”
She reached for her phone, waited a few seconds, then said, “D’you guys treat a patient named Koch last night? Would have come in after ten, possible head injury? Yeah, well, just double-check. Okay, then.”
She hung up the phone and gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, but we’ve got no one by that name. Are you sure he was brought here?”
“I thought so,” I said.
“I’d tell you to check with the walk-in clinic, but they close up at seven thirty. If your friend got hurt later than that, I don’t know where else he would have gone but here.”