Envy the Night

There was fury in his words, and he was leaning into Frank, his face close, but the boy didn’t back away. Just stood there and held Ezra’s eyes for a long time.

“Yeah,” Frank said at last. “I understand that. Now you listen to yourself, hear what you just said, and explain to me how in the hell you’re going let Devin go out to that island.”

“Didn’t say I would. I’m telling you there’s another option here.”

“The police? Shit, Ezra. You want somebody to go jail for trying to kill Devin?”

Ezra looked away, out into the lake, and said, “What do you want to do, then?”

“To get them out of here,” Frank said. “Is that so much to ask? We get them out of here. If he catches them somewhere else, fine, but he’s not going to settle up here. Not on this lake.”

“Get them out of here,” Ezra echoed. “That’s your goal?”

“It’s what I said.”

“And when you get in the middle of it? What then? Devin comes at you, or comes at the girl inside your cabin, the same way his boys already have?”

“If that happens,” Frank said, “we deal with it.”

Ezra gave a low, ugly laugh. “That’s what you’re hoping for. You want to hang that son of a bitch from one of these pines, but you also want it to be justified.”

“It’s already justified.”

“Bullshit, son. Not in a way you can accept it’s not, and you know that.”

Frank didn’t answer. The wind picked up and the water splashed into the logs below them and something rustled through the woods a few yards away.

“It’s going into action tomorrow,” Frank said eventually. “Whether it’s cops or Devin or those two assholes he sent up here, somebody is going out to that island. Are we going to let them do it? Are we going to step aside and wait for that, pretend we don’t know anything?”

Ezra took a few steps away, knelt and dipped his hand into the lake, cupped his palm and held the water. It was cool against his skin, cool enough that the hairs on his arm rose in a ripple. He kept his fingers tight, held the water until it slipped through the fractional gaps and fell back into the lake, and then he turned to his old comrade’s son.

“No,” he said. “No, we’re not going to step aside and wait for that.”

24

__________

Grady woke sometime before dawn with the knowledge that he had to play it straight with Atkins.

There was no way around it. Not at this point. He kept hearing Frank’s insistence that Grady stay in Chicago, hearing the way he’d said, I don’t have a car, when Grady urged him to leave. The kid was waiting for Devin, no doubt about it, and the smart money said he was going to get him, too.

Someone needed to intercede, and Atkins would be more than happy to do so. If Grady’s suspicion turned out to be accurate, and Frank did know where Vaughn Duncan was holed up, it was going to turn into an ugly day. But that was the sort of ugly day that paled in comparison to the one they’d see if Frank met Devin Matteson up in those woods.

It wasn’t yet six, too early to call Atkins, and Grady lay awake in the bed for almost an hour, watching sunlight fill the empty room and wondering how much of this was his fault.

It had been an anonymous tip, damn it. That’s what he told people from the beginning, what he’d assured them, and there were only a few people within the Bureau who knew the truth. On one level, he’d almost been showing kindness to Frank by telling him the tip had come from Matteson. It had seemed, back then, a lesser punishment to the boy, who was already reeling. Matteson was a worthless piece of shit, so what did Grady care if he’d added another layer of tarnish to the man’s name? Even in the worst-case scenario, one in which the kid plotted some act of vengeance, all that stood to be lost was Matteson, right? And that would be a damn favor to the community.

Except Matteson wasn’t all that stood to be lost. Grady had forgotten about the avenger. He could be lost, too.

At ten to seven he called Atkins and got no answer, left a message. At seven twenty, pacing the apartment with a cup of coffee going cold in his hand, he called again and left another message. Five minutes later Atkins finally called back.

“Didn’t hear the phone,” he said. “I was in the shower, sorry. What do you have for me?”

Grady lifted the cup, took a swallow of room-temperature coffee, and said, “I think Frank Temple knows where all the excitement is headed.”

“Pardon?”

“He didn’t kill anyone,” Grady said, “and I’m almost certain he’s more a bystander than anything else, but I think he might know where Vaughn Duncan is.”

“Why do you think this?”

“I spoke with him last night, and when I asked where Duncan was, he was very guarded. Evasive. That’s not Frank’s style. He doesn’t like to lie, and I think he was trying to avoid that last night by refusing to answer the question. If he didn’t know, or didn’t have some idea, at least, he would have told me that.”

A long pause.

“You there?” Grady said.

“I’m here.” The other agent’s voice was drawn tight with anger. “I’m just wondering who I’ll have to call in Chicago to make a formal complaint.”

“Because I talked to Frank? Listen, Atkins, you don’t—”

“No, I’m not going to listen. What you just did is such a flagrant breach of conduct . . . what the hell were you thinking? I tell you this kid is a suspect, I ask you for input, not to get on the damn phone and—”

“I knew I could get you some answers.”

“Bullshit. And even if you did think that, you don’t make a call like that without informing me first.”

“Atkins, you’re missing the point.”

“This is one of the most egregious—”

“Vaughn Duncan may be up there with another man’s wife,” Grady said. “You want to know who the man is, or not?”

Silence.

“A guy named Devin Matteson was shot in Florida a few days ago. Matteson is a key player for Manuel DeCaster. That name mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Well, it does down in Florida. He’s one of the worst they’ve got, and one of the most powerful. He’s in prison now, in Coleman, and about seven years ago Frank Temple’s father was making hits for him.”

Atkins didn’t make a sound, but Grady could almost hear the battle going on within him, curiosity fighting anger.

“Matteson won’t tell the police who shot him. But his wife is missing. So it’s not much of a puzzle, is it? And now this guard from Coleman, Vaughn Duncan, he’s up at that lake, and there’s a woman with him,” Grady said. “You want to take odds on who the woman is, I’ve got a retirement account I’ll put on Matteson’s wife.”

Atkins started to speak, but Grady rushed ahead. “And Matteson’s missing, he’s out of the hospital, he’s gone. You understand what that means? He’s coming north, Atkins. I would bet every dime I have that he is coming up to that lake.”

“And I’m still supposed to believe the coincidence,” Atkins said. His voice was clipped, tight.

“What coincidence? That Frank’s up there?”

“That’s the one. Bystander? Bystander? You out of your mind, Morgan? You really believe, and expect me to believe, that this kid just happened to smack his Jeep into his own father’s filthy history? That’s an accident?”