“God, you really are an asshole,” Jeremy said, getting out of the car.
“Goodbye, Charlene,” I said, taking Jeremy by the elbow and steering him back to the hotel entrance.
“This is not fun,” he said.
“No shit.”
I regretted my language. I was supposed to be the adult here. I hadn’t been hired to turn Jeremy into a likeable kid, just keep him safe. The truth was, I wasn’t making much progress on either front. I’d held out the possibility of taking him into Manhattan to explore some art galleries, but now I was reconsidering. If he got away from me there, I’d never find him.
We were nearly to the main entrance when Charlene came up alongside in the Miata, the engine revving in first as she slowed the car to a crawl.
“I’m sorry,” she said. I wasn’t sure which of us she was talking to. Maybe both.
I wasn’t looking at her. Instead, I raised my hand and pointed a finger in the direction of the exit. Maybe, if I’d looked her way, I would have been better prepared for what happened next. I might have seen what was coming and been able to stop it, although, honestly, I don’t know how. At the very least, I might have yelled at Charlene to hit the gas.
Just before the crunch of metal on metal, I heard the gunning of a car engine. Then the red Miata jumped forward.
Charlene screamed and her head snapped back and whacked the headrest. Jeremy screamed, too, and took a leap in the direction of the hotel, instinctively trying to get out of the way.
I whirled around, reaching just as instinctively for my weapon.
The sound of the crash was followed almost instantaneously by the squealing of brakes. Charlene had hit hers, and the driver of the car that had rear-ended her had also made an abrupt stop.
It took only half a second to recall the woman behind the wheel, and the man sitting next to her. It was the couple from the lobby of the first hotel the night before. The ones who’d recognized Jeremy.
Not that I had a perfect view of them. Both front airbags had deployed. They’d deflated enough for me to see that the man had a phone in his hand, holding it in camera mode, and the woman had put her hand over her mouth in what looked like a gesture of shock and horror. I was guessing she hadn’t meant to ram Charlene’s car, but had gotten caught up in the moment.
The man had flung open his door and was aiming the phone at Jeremy, snapping away. But then he saw me, pointing my gun at him.
The woman behind the wheel started screaming.
“Donny!” she shouted.
Donny put his hands over his head. “Jesus! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
I yelled at Jeremy, “Check Charlene!”
He ran toward the Miata. I moved toward Donny, who still had his hands in the air. “Get down,” I said.
He lay flat on the pavement, head down, arms outstretched. “Please don’t shoot me!” he said again.
I tucked the gun away and leaned into the car from the passenger side. “Are you hurt?” I asked the woman.
“It was an accident!” she said. “I didn’t mean to hit that car! Donny said speed up, the kid was going back into the hotel!”
“Are you hurt?” I repeated.
While she’d hit the Miata hard enough to make the airbags go off, it was still a low-speed accident. Damage to the cars, I’d noticed seconds earlier, appeared minimal.
“I... I don’t know,” she said, patting her face and her chest. “I... I think I’m okay.”
Several staff from the hotel had run outside. I shouted, “Call 911.”
A couple of them nodded, as if it had already been done.
“Donny just wanted a picture,” the woman said. “For the website. There’s money!”
I moved away from the car and said to Donny, still splayed out on the asphalt, “Get up.”
Jeremy was with Charlene. He’d opened her door and she was sitting sideways, her butt in the seat, her feet on the pavement. She had her head down and was rubbing the back of her head.
“How is she?” I asked.
Before Jeremy could speak, Charlene said, “My neck hurts.”
“You’re going to have to go to the hospital,” I said. “We’ll call your parents.”
Jeremy was kneeling, trying to peer up into her face. “You’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to fine. It’s their fault. Those idiots. They caused this.”
I wanted to smack him.
“See if you can stand up,” he said.
“No,” I said. “Don’t move, Charlene. Just stay right where you are.”
Already, I thought I heard a siren in the distance. I looked in the direction of the parking lot entrance. It wasn’t what I saw pulling in that caught my attention, but what was pulling out.
A black van.
Twenty-nine
Duckworth told Trevor to stay at Carol Beakman’s building. He would come to him.
Ten minutes later, he was pulling into the lot in his black, unmarked police cruiser. Trevor was sitting on the edge of a short brick edifice that ran the length of the building, phone in hand. The moment he saw his father, he jumped to his feet. Duckworth brought the car to a stop in the no-parking zone directly out front of the building.
“Let’s find the super,” he said.
They went into the lobby together. Duckworth found the directory button marked “Building Superintendent” and leaned on the buzzer.
Several seconds later, a crackling female voice said, “Yeah?”
“Police.”
“What?”
“Police,” Duckworth repeated.
“Hang on.”
Duckworth said to Trevor, “This Toyota she drives. I don’t suppose you know the plate off the top of your head?”
“Jeez, no, how would I know that?”
“That’s okay. Just asking.” He got out his phone, entered a number. “Yeah, hi, it’s Duckworth. I need you to try to track down a plate for a silver Toyota Corolla, around 2012, registered to a Carol Beakman.” He gave the address. “Yeah, okay, give me a call when you know anything.”
The super, a pale woman in her forties wearing a dark blue bathrobe, turned the lock on the glass door and opened it. “Can I see some ID?”
Duckworth displayed it. He asked her name, which was Gretchen Hardy.
“What’s the problem?”
“We’re worried about one of your tenants,” he said. “She’s not answering her phone or knocks to her door.”
“If you’ve already been to her door, whaddya need me for?” Gretchen asked.
“We need you to let us into her apartment.”
“Don’t you have to have a warrant for something like that?”
Duckworth shook his head. “We’re not searching it. We just want to see if she’s there, and if she’s okay.”
Gretchen Hardy nodded. “Go on up to the third floor. I’ll meet you there.”
Going up in the elevator, Duckworth asked Trevor, “What about family?”
“Huh?”
“Remember I mentioned that maybe there was some kind of family emergency. Do Carol’s parents live in Promise Falls? She got any brothers or sisters? Maybe she spent the night with one of them.”
“Her parents both died a few years ago. She said something about a brother, but he lives in Toronto, I think.”
The elevator opened onto the third-floor hallway. Trevor led his father down to a door with tarnished brass numbers that said 313.
Seconds later, a fire door at the end of the hall opened and Gretchen emerged. The sound of her flip-flops echoed with every step. When she reached Carol’s apartment, she inserted a key into the lock.
“Hope she doesn’t have the chain on. If she’s got the chain on, we’re not going to be able to get in.”
“If she has the chain on,” Duckworth said, “we’ll have to kick in the door.”