He rubbed his face with his hands, as if having to haul himself back into the here and now.
But when he looked at me again, his eyes were clear. He stood and reached for his jacket. “Why would they even let us in the door?”
I got a clip out and clicked it into my gun, so that—for the first time that day—it was loaded.
“I’m not planning on giving them a choice.”
chapter
THIRTY-FIVE
The call came in the dead of night. Todd had fought waking. Fought it hard. He’d lain wide-eyed for hours when he went to bed. When he finally found sleep, he wanted to stay there. The sound of the phone ringing had been faint, from downstairs. Livvie had banned a telephone by the bedside a decade before, after a spate of strange calls, some wacko calling up in the night to speak to their middle child, then only eleven years old.
The ringing stopped as the machine clicked in. But barely thirty seconds later, it started again.
Todd opened his eyes. That was weird. People hitting a wrong number usually understood their error as soon as they heard someone else’s message. They didn’t call back. Anyone with a legitimate message left a message.
He rolled over. The clock said 3:21. Jesus.
No call at that hour of the night can be ignored.
He grabbed his robe and hurried downstairs. By the time he got to the hallway, the ringing had stopped again.
He heard the answering machine click in. Nobody said anything. It clicked off. Then the ringing started once more. He grabbed the handset. “Look—”
“Be quiet,” said a voice. A young girl’s voice. It made the hairs on the back of Todd’s neck rise.
“Who is this?”
“Listen.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Dad?” A different voice. Older. Scared.
Crane gripped the phone.
“Dad, it’s me.”
“Rachel? What’s going on?”
He heard the catch of her breath. As if she were crying, trying not to let him hear. He felt frozen in place, heavy, blurred sleep turning to anger and fear.
“I’m sorry.” Then she was gone.
“Okay,” said the other voice, and he knew now where he’d heard it before. In his office the previous afternoon. “You’re going to listen now, Toddy. I found myself somewhere to stay. Guess where?”
“Put my daughter back—”
“That’s right. Rachel’s going to describe her situation to you now. Listen carefully.”
A pause as the phone was handed over, and then his daughter spoke slowly into it. “I am tied to my table. She is standing behind me. She has a knife.”
The other voice returned. “A little Hemingwayish for some tastes, perhaps, but I hope it gives a clear picture? I need you to be fully focused, Todd.”
“Please,” Crane said. “Please don’t hurt her.”
“I may not,” the voice said, as if considering the idea. “You never know. But that’s going to depend. I said I wanted to meet with someone. You were a bore about it. I need you to find another way of looking at the situation. A more workable solution, as a someone close to me might put it. I need you to set up that meeting.”
“Who—”
“Rose.”
Todd opened his mouth, shut it again. “But—”
“No. There can be no buts here, Todd. Don’t be thinking in a ‘but’ frame of mind, or I’m going to fuck Rachel up. Arrange it, and do it fast. If you don’t, I’ll just kill Rachel. If you talk to the cops, tell anyone else what’s going on, I’ll know. And then I’ll just work on her instead. So she’ll be around for you to see afterward. For you to know you made her this way, as you take out all the mirrors in her sweet little house and refit it for wheelchair access.”
Todd opened his mouth, but it was dry.
“Just do it,” the voice said, and then was gone.
Todd was on the road in minutes. It didn’t occur to him to go wake his wife. This wasn’t something she could help with, and nothing he could do or say would stop her from getting on the phone to the police.
He raced across the sleeping city in a daze, running red lights without even realizing. Drove past his daughter’s house, careful not to slow down. It was dark inside. He pulled the car around the next corner and came to a halt, trying to work out what to do.
Would this person really know if he called the police? How could she? He was pretty sure that part had been a bluff, but the threat she’d made was not. More than anything, he’d been convinced by his daughter’s voice. What had he heard—twenty, thirty words? It was enough. Rachel was independent, tough, more like her father than either of her sisters was. Couldn’t seem to get her private life together, but it took a lot to knock her confidence. She’d sounded about four years old on the phone. And very, very scared. She was convinced by the person with her, and that was enough to convince Todd. If he called the police—even assuming they’d take seriously a report of a grown woman being held hostage by a child—and they knocked on the door politely, instead of just busting their way straight in…
Todd couldn’t take that risk. Rachel could be dead and her killer away over a back fence before they got into the house.
What if he went up to the door himself? That wouldn’t constitute calling anyone, would it? But he didn’t know if it was just the girl inside or if she had someone else helping her.
He sat in the thrumming car, horribly irresolute. This was what fathers were supposed to be able to do, wasn’t it? To make this kind of call. To protect their young. To go charging in, confident of their ability to handle the situation, to prevent harm.
But now he knew that this had to do with that other thing, the oddness that had circled in the back of his world for half his life, the people for whom he had once in a while done small things and from whom he had received career-making favors in return.
And so he was not confident of his ability to control the situation. He was not confident of anything at all when it came to Rose.
“You’ve got to listen to me,” he said twelve hours later. “I really have to meet with you. Today.”
“Tell me over the phone,” she said. “I’m very busy.”
Todd put his head in his hands. His palms were slick with sweat. He felt sick. It was now a little after three in the afternoon. It had taken all this time to get the woman on the phone. He had this shot, and that was it. He could not blow it.
He raised his head. Stared out over the bay, at the mountains, tried to lock himself into the way he usually felt while at his desk, the habitual confidence.
“I can’t do that,” he said, in a voice that sounded very reasonable and professional. The voice of a good boss. The voice of someone in control.
“Why?”
“I think my phone’s being tapped.”
There was a pause. “Why would you think that?”
“I hear strange noises.”
“Are you quite all right, Mr. Crane? You haven’t been drinking? Had too long and convivial a lunch, in the pursuit of a client? Or a young lady, perhaps? Have you possibly reverted to the excessive use of cocaine that we once had to assist you in relinquishing?”
“No,” he said, and he knew he could not keep this up for much longer. “I just have to talk to you in person.”
“That’s not going to happen, Mr.—”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Come on—it’s Todd. You know I’m not going to screw you around. I’ve just got to see you. I—” He stopped just in time.
“You…what?”
Todd hesitated. He knew what he was not supposed to say. But he also knew that without giving Rose something, she wasn’t going to do what he needed her to.
“Someone came into the office yesterday,” he said carefully.