Oops.
Artie slowly moved the knife behind his back, as though Carmen and I wouldn’t notice he was still holding the thing.
Good move, Artie.
Sometimes I really love my job. Put them under enough stress, and most people are endlessly entertaining.
Big sister returned ten seconds later, breathless. For the first few moments after she reentered the kitchen, she couldn’t make her mouth work. I had already started looking around for the basement stairs when she finally cried out, “I couldn’t find her. And the bathtub was dry.”
Carmen was halfway through the door. She demanded, “The basement stairs? Where are they?”
My cell phone rang. I should’ve been following after Carmen and grabbing my handgun in order to mount a search-and-rescue mission to the basement, but I grabbed the phone instead.
The caller ID? I held it at full arm’s length from my aging eyes. What did it read?
To Carmen, I said, “It’s Gibbs.”
Carmen instantly recognized the possible implications. She stopped in her tracks and stared at me. Her big gun dropped from the ready position until it was pointing vaguely at my feet.
Artie’s wife asked, “Who is Gibbs?”
“Yeah,” I said into the phone.
“He’s here, Sam! Sterling is here. Oh my God. Oh my God. Help me!” Gibbs was frantic.
I pulled the phone away from my ear, covered the microphone, and said to Carmen. “Sterling’s in Vail.”
Artie’s wife asked, “Who is Sterling?”
Carmen said, “So where’s Holly?”
The big sister said, “She didn’t take a bath. The tub’s dry.”
I lifted the phone back beside my ear just in time to hear Gibbs’s frenetic whisper, “Help me!”
SIXTY-FIVE
The house was calm when I got home from the two-act farce I’d produced at my office.
The meeting with Jim Zebid had been brief and relatively cordial. He seemed surprised by my revelation that some of the same lapses in confidentiality that had been plaguing my practice were also plaguing my partner’s practice next door. I went into a long explanation about the design of the soundproofing of the interior walls of the offices and why we had ruled out the possibility of eavesdroppers. I then revealed that my partner and I were planning to interview the couple who cleaned the offices for us the next day, and that we suspected that one or both of them may have found a way to get into our locked filing cabinets.
I promised to let him know the results of our inquiries.
He thanked me as he left. Truthfully? I didn’t see a sign that he was playing along with me. He was a better actor than I was.
I helped Grace into her pajamas and told Lauren to keep playing pool, that I would happily read stories to Grace before bed. I checked the charge on my cell phone battery, stuffed the phone into the pocket of my corduroys, and settled into the big chair in Grace’s room to read. She picked the same books that she picked every night-she was in a phase where she liked the idea of cardboard characters popping up at her as she turned the pages. Her current favorite was a tall skinny book full of multicolored, pop-up monsters. We read it twice-I admit that I did most of the reading-and her delight was no more muted the second time through than it had been the first.
That’s when the phone rang in my pocket.
I kissed Grace, lowered her into her crib, opened the phone, wrapped it hastily in one of my daughter’s lilliputian T-shirts, dropped my voice an octave, took a deep breath, and said, “Yeah?”
“You don’t know me, but… but don’t hang up.”
“What?”
“How’s your sc-scrotum feeling? Your… balls?”
“What the- Who’s this?”
“Just listen to me. The doctor who did your vasectomy? She-”
“What the- How do you-”
“No, no, listen to me. She screwed up when she did it. She clipped a nerve. No, snipped, snipped a nerve. You may be… impotent. You need to get a lawyer, sue her ass. She’s… out to get you.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend. You can… trust me.”
My friend hung up.
I did, too.
While I tried to still my pulse, I kissed Grace again, told her I loved her, and made sure her favorite stuffed toys were within her sight.
I walked back out to the pool table, told Lauren that Grace was tucked in and waiting for a good-night kiss, and then plopped down on the sofa in the living room.
The lights of Boulder twinkled in the dark at my feet.
Emily waddled in, her stubby tail darting around on her butt in a parody of wagging, her paw umbrella clacking on the wood floor with each fourth step. She stood in front of me for a moment, looked me right in the eyes, and then lowered her head onto my lap. Prior to joining me in the living room she’d apparently just completed a visit to her water dish, and her long beard was dripping with enough water to wash a small car.
She was telling me that things were going to be all right.
Her instincts about such matters were usually infallible, but this time I couldn’t figure out how it was all going to turn out okay.
SIXTY-SIX
“Calm, Gibbs. Calm. Did you call nine-one-one?”
“Yes.”
“What did you see?”
“In the parking lot-he-he got out of his car. I saw him.”
“Sterling’s outside? Is he alone?” I said, repeating some of what Gibbs told me so that Carmen would know what I was hearing. Carmen was standing three feet away. I watched her eyebrows jump up at the news about Sterling. “You’re not sure. The lights in your room, are they on or off?”
“On.”
“Turn them off. The TV, too. Shhhh. Quiet now.”
“I’m scared.”
“The door’s locked, right? The chain, too?”
“Yes. Help me, Sam. Help me.”
“Do you hear sirens yet?”
“No, no!”
Carmen’s eyes told me she was puzzled, the kind of puzzled usually reserved for those times when you think you just heard your cat ask you for a beer.
“Shhhh,” I told Gibbs. “Quiet voice. What floor are you on?”
“Um, uh. Third. Third story.”
“Third story. Get on the floor, okay? On the far side of the bed, away from the door. Can you do that?” As soon as I told her to get on the floor, I remembered that she was on her cell phone and wished I’d sent her into the bathroom.
“Yes, yes. Help me.”
“Sirens yet?”
“Uh, no. No.”
The commercial section of Vail is a few blocks wide, a few dozen blocks long. That’s it. A cruiser in a hurry could get from one end to the other in seconds. Where were they?
“You’re on the floor, right, Gibbs?”
“Yes.”
“You’re doing good.”
“Come help me.”
“I’m in Indiana, Gibbs.”
“I know. Come help me.”
“Someone will be there any second.”
I heard pounding. Gibbs said, “He’s here, Sam. He’s here. Oh no, oh no.”
“Someone’s there?” I mimed the act of knocking so that Carmen would know what Gibbs was saying. “It might be the police, Gibbs. Stay still. If you know it’s him, run for the bathroom.”
More pounding.
This time Carmen mimed the act of knocking. Then, inexplicably, she pointed down toward the floor.
For a long moment I was confused by Carmen’s charade and then, suddenly, I got it.
Holy shit.
I lowered the phone from my ear, and my pulse rocketed as though my heart had a turbocharger on it.
I moved the phone back to my face and said, “Gibbs? Stay quiet until you’re sure who it is. Don’t open the door. Shhhh.”
With the pad of my thumb firmly over the phone’s microphone, I leaned over to Holly’s oldest sister and whispered, “Get the kids and get out of the house. Now! Front door, everybody. Got a cell?”