“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Larue smiled. There was blood on his teeth. “I think you know.”
“I’m going to kill you. You know that.”
“Because I did something bad? So I should pay a price?”
“Yes.”
Larue got to his feet. “But what about you, Mr. Vespa?”
Vespa tightened his fists, but the adrenaline rush was quieting.
“You’ve done bad. Did you pay the price?” Larue cocked his head. “Or did your son pay it for you?”
Vespa hit Larue deep in the gut. Larue folded. Vespa punched him in the head. Larue fell again. Vespa kicked him in the face. Larue was flat on his back now. Vespa took a step closer. Blood dripped out of Larue’s mouth, but the man still laughed. The only tears were on Vespa’s face, not Larue’s.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I was like you. I craved revenge.”
“For what?”
“For being in that cell.”
“That was your fault.”
Larue sat up. “Yes and no.”
Vespa took a step back. He looked behind him. Cram stood perfectly still and watched. “You said you wanted to talk.”
“I’ll wait till you’re done beating me.”
“Tell me why you called.”
Wade Larue sat up, checked his mouth for blood. He seemed almost happy to see it. “I wanted vengeance. I can’t tell you how badly. But now, today, when I got out, when I was suddenly free… I don’t want that anymore. I spent fifteen years in prison. But my sentence is over. Your sentence, well, the truth is yours will never end, will it, Mr. Vespa?”
“What do you want?”
Larue stood. He walked over to Vespa. “You’re in such pain.” His voice was soft now, as intimate as a caress. “I want you to know everything, Mr. Vespa. I want you to learn the truth. This has to end. Today. One way or another. I want to live my life. I don’t want to look over my shoulder. So I’m going to tell you what I know. I’m going to tell you everything. And then you can decide what you need to do.”
“I thought you said you fired those shots.”
Larue ignored that. “Do you remember Lieutenant Gordon MacKenzie?”
The question surprised Vespa. “The security guard. Of course.”
“He visited me in prison.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“Why?”
Larue smiled. “That balance thing again. Making things right. You call it yin and yang. MacKenzie called it God.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Gordon MacKenzie was dying.” Larue put his hand on Vespa’s shoulder. “So before he went, he needed to confess his sins.”
chapter 44
The gun was in Grace’s ankle holster.
She started up the car. The Asian man sat next to her. “Head up the road and turn left.”
Grace was scared, of course, but there was an odd calmness too. Something about being in the eye of the storm, she guessed. Something was happening. There was a potential to find answers here. She tried to prioritize.
First: Get him far away from the children.
That was the number one thing here. Emma and Max would be fine. The teachers stayed outside until all the children were picked up. When she didn’t show, they would give an impatient sigh and bring them to the office. That old battleaxe of a receptionist, Mrs. Dinsmont, would gleefully cluck her tongue about the neglectful mother and make the children wait. There had been an incident about six months ago when Grace got caught up by construction and arrived late. She’d been wracked with guilt, picturing Max waiting like a scene from
The school was out of sight now. “Turn right.”
Grace obeyed.
Her captor, if that’s what you wanted to call him, had said that he was taking her to Jack. She did not know if that was true or not, but she somehow suspected that it was. She was sure, of course, that he was not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. She had been warned. She had gotten too close. He was dangerous-she didn’t need to see the gun in his waistband to know that. There was a crackle around him, an electricity, and you knew, just knew, that this man always left devastation in his path.
But Grace desperately needed to see where this led. She had her gun in the ankle holster. If she stayed smart, if she was careful, she would have the element of surprise. That was something. So for now she would go along. There was really no alternative anyway.
She was worried about working the gun and the holster. Would the gun come out smoothly? Would the gun really just fire when she pulled the trigger? Did you really just aim and pull? And even if she could get the gun from the holster in time-something doubtful with the way this guy was watching her-what would she do? Point it at him and demand he take her to Jack?
She couldn’t imagine that working.
She couldn’t just shoot him either. Forget the ethical dilemma or the question of if she’d be brave enough to pull the trigger. He, this man, might be her only connection to Jack. If she killed him, where would that leave her? She’d have silenced her only solid clue, maybe her only chance, to find Jack.
Better to wait and play it out. As if she had a choice.
“Who are you?” Grace asked.
Total stone face. He took hold of her purse and emptied the contents into his lap. He went through it, sifting and tossing items into the backseat. He found her cell phone, removed the battery, threw it in the back.
She kept peppering him with questions-where is my husband, what do you want with us-but he continued to ignore her. When they reached a stoplight, the man did something that she did not expect.
He rested his hand on her bad knee.
“Your leg was damaged,” he said.
Grace was not sure how to respond to this. His touch was light, almost feathery. And then without warning his fingers dug down with steel talons. They actually burrowed beneath the kneecap. Grace buckled. The tips of the man’s fingers disappeared into the hollow where the knee meets the shinbone. The pain was so sudden, so enormous, that Grace could not even scream. She reached out and grabbed his fingers, tried to pry them out of her knee, but there was absolutely no give. His hand felt like a concrete block.
His voice was barely a whisper. “If I dig in a little more and then pull…”
Her head was swimming. She was close to losing consciousness.
“… I could tear your kneecap right off.”
When the light turned green, he let go. Grace nearly collapsed in relief. The whole incident had probably taken less than five seconds. The man looked at her. There was the smallest hint of a smile on his face.
“I’d like you to stop talking now, okay?”
Grace nodded.
He faced forward. “Keep driving.”
• • •
Perlmutter called in the APB. Charlaine Swain had had the good sense to get both the make and license plate. The car was registered to Grace Lawson. No surprise there. Perlmutter was in an unmarked car now, heading toward the school. Scott Duncan was with him.
“So who is this Eric Wu?” Duncan asked.
Perlmutter debated what to tell him but saw no reason to hold this back. “To date we know he broke into a house, assaulted the owner in such a way as to leave him temporarily paralyzed, shot another man, and my guess is, he killed Rocky Conwell, the guy who was following Lawson.”
Duncan had no response.
Two other police cars were already on the scene. Perlmutter did not like that-marked cars at a school. They’d had the good sense, at least, to not use their sirens. That was something. The parents picking up offspring reacted in two ways. Some hurried their kids to their cars, hands on their shoulders, shielding them as though from gunfire. Others let curiosity rule the day. They walked over, oblivious or in a state of denial that there could be any danger in so innocent a setting.
Charlaine Swain was there. Perlmutter and Duncan hurried toward her. A young uniformed cop named Dempsey was asking her questions and taking notes. Perlmutter shooed him away and asked, “What happened?”
