The Red Hunter(99)

The building was an ominous gray rectangle, dark and vast. There had been talk of this run-down, abandoned area reinvigorating into an arts district. There was a plan, Seth said, for studios and work spaces, hot shops for glass and metal work, clay ovens. Artists being priced out of Manhattan would find a haven here. But the big structures sat fallow, abandoned by the failed businesses that had erected them.

I opened the glove box and pulled out the package of wipes that I knew Paul kept there and tried to get some of the blood off my face. There was a stocking cap in the compartment, too. I pulled it over my head, though the pressure on the gash there caused the world around me to pitch and wobble for a moment. It was never a good idea to go into a fight looking like you recently got your ass kicked. But with the bruising from the night before, there was little chance of hiding it. I was a mess.

Underneath the stocking cap was Paul’s old off-duty revolver, a five-shot Smith & Wesson. I knew how to use it; he’d made sure of it. But I didn’t like guns. A firearm was a weakling’s crutch. Anyone who couldn’t go hand-to-hand was a wuss. But since I didn’t know what I was walking into, and I wasn’t at my best, it didn’t hurt to be prepared. I killed the engine and sat, watching, trying to assess the situation. The building was dark. There was only quiet. Could I trust Josh? Would he have called ahead to his brother and told him I was on my way? Were they just waiting for me inside, ready to finish what they started?

I had some theories, some of them percolating for years, some since my visit with Seth. Scenarios that flipped through my mind like an old-time film reel, crackling and sputtering.

First theory: My father took the money. He organized the initial heist with partners. Whitey Malone found out about it, sent Didion and Beckham to get it back. But my dad hid it too well and didn’t give it up when they came to call. This theory makes my dad a dirty cop and a coward that let his wife be murdered, his daughter tortured, rather than turn over the money that he stole.

Second: Other men, cops, took the money, and my father was complicit only in hiding it. All the same implications apply to my father—dirty cop, coward. But it would add another layer, other people he had to fear or protect. Maybe he was even forced into this role. It was somewhat more palatable, but not by much.

Third: Someone else stole the money and used our property to hide it. My dad didn’t know it was there. So when they came for it, he had no idea how to save us. In it, my dad was just a victim, like Mom and me. Blameless, innocent. This was my preferred theory, though it was probably the least likely one.

But the truth was that I had no idea, even after all these years of poring over evidence with Boz and Mike, who was behind that initial heist and who sent Didion and the Beckham brothers to find the stolen money. Didion and Beckham were thugs, hired men, pirates who took their spoils; there was someone else at the helm. Seth’s theory that there were cops involved from beginning to end made sense, but it was hard to stomach. Cops stole the money, sent men to get it from my father, impeded the investigation to the degree that Didion and the Beckham brothers were questioned and released, the case went cold. It couldn’t be the truth, could it?

I slipped from the Suburban and moved quickly in the growing dark. There was the silence of the urban wasteland, a particular quiet to buildings that sat empty, something about the way air moves around and through abandoned structures. Life usually finds the deserted places—foliage springs up through cracks in concrete. Birds and small animals nest in windowsills, chimneys and rafters. The faint chirping of an unseen bird was the alarm of my arrival, if anyone was listening. But most people weren’t listening, not to things like that.

I found the back door open and slipped inside. Voices carried, echoing. I could hear the tone, measured, but not the words. Through towers of boxes, I crept toward the sound of men talking.

“Why did you do that? I can hear the sirens from here.”

“I was destroying all the evidence,” he said. Beckham. I recognized the rumble of his voice. “Getting rid of witnesses.”

“If you’d done it your brother’s way, it could have gone differently. You called a lot of attention.” The voice was odd, muffled.

There was a rasping breath, a long, unhealthy cough.

“My brother spilled his guts to that woman,” said Beckham. “He told her why we were there, what we wanted.”

Only a tense silence followed.

“And then you bring a stranger here.”

“She’s cool,” said Beckham. “She found the tunnel. Without her, we wouldn’t have known about it maybe.”

A nervous giggle followed the silence that was growing heavier. The skin on my arms tingled. I couldn’t see the other man. His voice was strange, disguised somehow, something over his mouth? I used the shadows to hide, moving closer to the dim light that burned. Even then, I didn’t know. A cough, rasping and long. But no—the mind resists. No.

The three of them gathered around a long table, a camping lantern the only light. His back is to me; there’s something on his head—a stocking cap, a mask. I can’t make it out. Rhett Beckham stood tense and shifting from foot to foot, his hands in his pockets. The woman who hit me with a shovel was behind him, looking back toward the door. She wants to leave. She’s scared. She should be.

The stranger’s hands are gloved. There’s a large plastic tarp on the ground beneath where Beckham and the woman are standing. They don’t get it. What’s about to happen. I want to stop it. Rhett Beckham is mine. But I was frozen, my body tingling; I don’t know why.