Keep Her Safe(59)

I find Gracie struggling to get the collar I bought earlier around Cyclops’s neck. Surprisingly, Cyclops is sitting still. But Gracie’s hands are trembling.

“I’ll take him out for a walk,” I offer. “Your mom will probably need you in a minute.”

“I’m going to Austin with you,” Gracie blurts out in response.

“For what?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

“To prove that my dad’s innocent.”

“Just like that?”

She holds her chin up stubbornly. “Yeah, just like that.”

Gracie’s smart enough to know how ridiculous that sounds. “Based on what?”

“What do you mean, based on what?” she snaps. “My mom should have told the police about the guy in her room! If she’d told them, maybe the real guilty people would have been caught!”

I push the door shut, hoping to spare Dina from her daughter’s sharp tongue. “You can’t walk into the police station and demand a fourteen-year-old case be reopened based on what a heroin addict told you.”

“So you don’t believe her?”

“I do believe her, but—”

“Why the hell would a cop show up in her hospital room in Arizona all of a sudden, and start asking questions about a guy who died fourteen years ago, if not to cover up a murder?”

I drop my voice to a whisper. “Come on, Gracie . . . Do you really think a cop showed up in her room today? Think about it; you heard her back there. She couldn’t remember what he looked like, or if he was even in uniform. She was asleep, pumped full of medication. The nurses didn’t see anyone . . . And you’re right. Why now, right after my mom died?”

Gracie won’t admit it, but I see it in her eyes: she considered that Dina might have been delusional, too.

“Look, I believe her about what happened in your house that night. But nobody else will.”

She stops fussing with Cyclops’s collar and grabs the copy of the news clipping. “We have this! And a bag of ninety-eight thousand dollars! And my father’s gun holster!”

“The money isn’t going to prove anything.”

“Yes, it will!” She sputters, “Fingerprints!”

“Yeah, mine.”

Gracie’s not to be swayed, though. “We have a suspicious timeline—a drug bust that my dad observed on video and had a newspaper clipping about and ten days later, he’s dead, in the same motel where that bust happened—and then some guy is breaking into our house, threatening my mom about a video. How can you call that ‘nothing’?”

“Fine. It’s something.”

“And if someone could break in to threaten my mother, who says it was the first time? The same guy could have also planted the money and drugs that the cops found!”

Maybe. But . . . “None of this is enough, Gracie.”

“Then we find enough!” Her voice has risen, and Cyclops bolts from the bed, eyeing her warily. “We find Betsy. If she was in Austin at that time, then she’s his alibi for all those other nights. Maybe she knows something.”

“Do you know what kinds of things happen to those girls?” I don’t want to come right out and say it, but the chances of finding Betsy alive—fourteen years later—are not good.

“I’m not going to sit in Tucson and do nothing.”

“And you can’t go to Austin and stomp around, waving your knife and accusing people of framing your dad.”

“Not people, Noah. Cops. Or a cop.”

“Even more reason not to!”

She pauses to study the newspaper clipping. “I’ll bet that Mantis guy stole money or drugs from this bust, and my dad found out about it, and that’s why Mantis killed him.”

“We can’t prove that. We don’t even have the original case evidence.”

“Yeah, that’s convenient, don’t you think?” Her tone is dripping with sarcasm. “Plus, I heard what my mom said—that Jackie and my dad were ‘at odds.’ Why? What did Jackie do? Why would she not care about what happened to him—or us—after he died? Why would she be so quick to believe he was dealing drugs when anyone who knew him knew there was no way it could be true? Huh?” Her eyes narrow as she fires off accusation-laced questions. “There’s only one reason I can think of. Guilt over something she did, or something that someone else did that she knew about and kept quiet. I’ll bet she knew my father had been set up right from the start!”

I collect the collar from the bed. Surprisingly, Cyclops comes to me unbidden. I focus my attention on fastening the thin leather strap and hooking the end of the leash, all while trying to come up with a suitable response. “You know what? Maybe my mother is guilty of something. And maybe that money is the only way she knew how to make it right.”

I give the leash a light tug and Cyclops hops off the bed, looking as ready to get out of this suffocating motel room as I am.

But Gracie’s not ready to let me leave yet. “When I was eleven, thugs robbed the convenience store down the street where Nan bought her cigarettes. They shot the nice man behind the counter three times and he died. His name was Ahmed. He had a mole above his right eye and he always threw in a candy and a wink for me when he handed my nan her change. He had been working there for six months when it happened. For three years, every time I went into that store, I’d ask if the police had caught the killer. I hated that this person was running free, that Ahmed didn’t get the justice he deserved.” Gracie stands there with her arms folded, watching me.