Brian blinked. Thinking on his feet had never been an area in which he excelled. “Uh, I’m, uh...”
The man edged Jessica out of the way and came out onto the step. “Uh, what?”
“Ron, it’s nothing,” Jessica said to her husband. “He’s just going door to door. Is it a charity?” She looked at Brian with wide, hopeful eyes, trying to encourage him to play along.
But he wasn’t getting the message. “I just... I had an appointment with your wife and came by to explain why I wasn’t able to make it.”
“An appointment?” Ron cocked his head slightly to one side.
Brian nodded weakly. “You see, something happened to me. I was coming out of Knight’s, and—”
“You should go,” the man said.
“They did something to me,” Brian said, talking past Ron to Jessica, his voice starting to break. “They did something awful to me. I might even have hepatitis. I don’t know if I can die from that, but it could be bad. They’re doing tests.”
“Jesus, so you’ve got some sort of disease?” the man said. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“No,” Brian said, “it’s not something you can catch. At least, I don’t think so. Like I said, I... I was at Knight’s. And when I came out, someone — it might have been more than one person, I don’t know — but they grabbed me and—’
“You’re some sort of fucking lunatic,” Ron said. At which point he placed his palm solidly on Brian’s chest and gave him a shove.
Brian was pitched off the step. He hit the lawn on his back, which briefly knocked the wind out of him. He struggled to catch his breath as he got up on his knees. But before he could stand, Jessica’s husband put the toe of his boot into Brian’s chest. He screamed out in pain as he hit the ground.
Ron hovered over him. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re one of the ones my wife’s been whoring around with.”
“I... I didn’t know,” Brian whispered.
“Just because she didn’t tell you doesn’t mean I won’t hold a grudge.”
And he kicked Brian a second time.
“You’ve gotten everything you got comin’ to you,” Ron Frommer said. “But that doesn’t mean there can’t be even more.” He turned and went back into the house.
Before the door closed, Brian, clutching his midsection, caught one last glimpse of Jessica’s fear-filled face.
Fifteen
Barry Duckworth drove out of the Starbucks lot after meeting with his son and his girlfriend thinking: That could have gone better.
What a disaster. And yet, what was he supposed to do? Ignore the possibility that his son might be able to help him with a serious investigation? He had to talk to him on the off chance Trevor had seen something that would lead Duckworth to whoever had abducted and tattooed Brian Gaffney.
Still, maybe he could have done a better job of it. Maybe he should have talked to his son separately from this new girlfriend of his, Carol Beakman. Except she was a potential witness, too. He’d needed to talk to both of them.
And still...
He should have realized that once he’d told them he’d seen them on the Knight’s surveillance video, it meant that he’d seen them in an intimate moment.
Well, the hell with that, he thought. If he’d walked into Knight’s, he’d have seen the same damn thing. If you were going to stick your tongue down some girl’s throat while sitting in the middle of a bar, there was only so much privacy you could reasonably expect.
Maybe this would teach them to be a little more discreet, for crying out loud. Get a room.
Except, of course, Trevor’s room these days was in the Duckworth home.
He let out a long sigh.
Maybe he wouldn’t feel so conflicted about this if either of them had been able to tell him something useful. At least then the awkwardness would have been worth it. But as it turned out, neither Trevor nor Carol had seen a thing. They hadn’t even recognized Gaffney’s picture.
“Shit,” he said aloud.
But the more Duckworth thought about it, the more he wondered what the big deal was. Okay, he’d seen them making out. That was unfortunate. But did it justify Trevor’s hostility? Maybe he had a right to be annoyed, but why so instantly defensive?
Duckworth feared this was not the end of it. He wished now that Trevor hadn’t moved in with them. If his son still had his own place, Duckworth could avoid him almost indefinitely. But at some point today, Trevor would come home. That was not an encounter Duckworth looked forward to.
Which brought up the next dilemma. How much should he tell Maureen?
Forget all the investigative implications. At a purely personal level, Duckworth was now in possession of information that Maureen, who’d expressed concern about their son within the last hour, would definitely want to know.
Duckworth now knew Trevor was seeing someone. He knew her name. He even knew where she worked. Should he let Trevor fill his mother in at some point when he felt the time was right? And if he followed that course of action, what would Maureen do to him when she eventually found out he’d had this intel all along?
What a bloody mess.
He knew he’d tell Maureen. There were some things you couldn’t hold back. The trick would be trying to tell the story without making himself look like a total idiot in the way he’d handled things.
If that was even possible.
“Shit,” he said again.
He kept replaying the scene at Starbucks in his head. I embarrassed him, he thought. Trevor had every right to be angry. The first time his father meets his girlfriend, he submits her to a police interrogation.
“I blew it. I totally blew it.”
What a terrific first impression. No wonder Trevor was pissed. Duckworth decided he’d have to apologize. Tell his son he was sorry for not handling things more tactfully.
You’re a cop for twenty-six years, and you still make mistakes.
God, he just wanted a donut. No, that wasn’t true. He wanted half a dozen donuts.
He had to put his problem with Trevor aside for now. Duckworth had something else to think about.
Craig Pierce.
Why had it taken him this long to think about Craig Pierce?
Okay, he had to cut himself a little slack. It had only been a few hours since Brian Gaffney had been brought into the police station. Only now were some of the similarities coming into focus.
Both Gaffney and Pierce had been sedated before horrible things were done to them.
In both cases, retribution appeared to play a major role. Craig Pierce was being punished for something he’d done, and it certainly appeared Gaffney was being made to pay for what had happened to “Sean,” whoever that turned out to be.
But there might come a time when Gaffney would actually consider himself lucky, at least compared to Craig Pierce.
Craig’s night to remember was 3rd February. Duckworth remembered the details of his statement.
Craig awoke to the sound of falling water. Torrents of it. An unrelenting rushing.
As he began to be more fully aware of his surroundings, he noticed how cold he felt. From the waist down, anyway. It was, after all, winter. (If Craig had anything at all to be grateful for, it was that this particular February was a mild one for upstate New York.)
His buttocks and the backs of his legs were particularly cold. That, he soon realized, was because they were resting on a thin layer of snow. He was outside, flat on his back, and all evidence pointed to the fact that he was half naked.
He’d have sat up and assessed his situation, but there were some problems there. He couldn’t see, for one thing. He had some kind of woolen hood on, like a ski mask, except there were no holes for eyes or nose or mouth. The damn thing was on backward.