Witness to Death (20 page)

Now, he waited, not moving, only listening for the sound of footsteps on carpet.

Nothing.

He reached the second floor without a sound. His bedroom first. Nothing had been moved there. The bathroom was clear as well.

The office was a different story. Papers were tossed everywhere. His filing cabinets were pulled open, desk drawers flipped. The computer chair was turned on its side.

Callahan started picking up the papers and stacking them together. Nothing important, nothing top secret. What could the intruder be looking for?

After he organized some of his papers, he booted up the computer. No files had been erased. If they’d been copied, it didn’t matter. Nothing other than his financial files and some pictures were saved to the computer. Everything important was kept on memory sticks, which were hidden.

And that’s when he realized the picture was gone.

It was a picture of Michelle and him up in Salem, Mass the previous Halloween. They’d gone up for a weekend together. They had another tourist take the picture in a cemetery in front of the grave of one of Michelle’s favorite writers. He couldn’t remember who. But he liked the picture, Michelle looking somber as if she’d lost her first pet. Callahan had mugged for the camera, sticking his tongue out. Michelle was pissed he did that and wanted to delete the photo. He wouldn’t let her. And for Christmas, he’d gotten the picture framed. One for him, one for her.

He looked under the desk. Not there. Behind the door? No. In between the desk and the filing cabinet?

The frame was there, a thick black frame he’d found in the mall. The picture was untouched.

But the memory stick he’d hidden in the frame was gone. The one with all the information from his investigation.

All the data about Robert Sandler and his business.

“I have to call my father,” Michelle said for the seventh time that hour.

John didn’t answer. He hadn’t the previous six times either. He stared at the TV which flickered images of meterologists in winter jackets squinting against the storm. The snow had lightened, but the newscasters said it would get worse.

Michelle stared at her cell phone. A few times during the past hour she’d opened the phone. She never dialed.

“It’s bothering you too, isn’t it?” John finally said.

“What is?”

“Something is keeping you from calling your dad. I’ve been sitting here hoping you won’t call him.”

“No. He’s been really good since all this started. Really willing to help. We should take him up on it.”

“Ashley came to the jail. She got me out.” John aimed the remote and clicked off the TV. “She—” He dropped the remote on the bed. “She helped me get out. But I didn’t call her.”

Neither of them spoke. It reminded Michelle of the aftermath of the fights her parents had just before the divorce. They’d scream and yell and neither would apologize. And when they’d finished, no one would speak for the rest of the night, as if neither could find the words to fix the relationship, but didn’t want to say anything to damage it further.

Her mother finally said the words that split them. Michelle wouldn’t make the same mistake. John was the one trying to screw everything up, anyway. Following Frank. It wasn’t her fault. She was stressed out, scared, she’d never dealt with anything like this before. She wasn’t thinking straight.

“Ashley worked for your dad,” John said.

Michelle smiled. “I know. I’m the one who introduced you to her, remember?”

“I remember. How did she know I was in jail?”

“It was on the news.”

John nodded. Ashley had said that when she saw him. “But she mentioned that work had been bothering her.”

But Michelle continued. “I—There was something weird going on in my dad’s house tonight. The maid wasn’t there, he said she had the week off. And he was getting drunk. I’ve seen him drink before—his breath always smelled when I was a kid—but he never got fall over drunk. Just took the edge off. The phone was ringing all night while I was there. But he never answered it.”

“Ashley was just his secretary.”

Michelle turned. John was up again, staring out the window, watching the weather. He seemed mesmerized by it. So much so, he wasn’t following her conversation. She wasn’t even sure if he was listening.

“Yeah. She was,” Michelle said, just to be saying something.

She stood up and walked over to him. She was about to wrap her arms around him. It seemed like a natural move. She caught herself and crossed her arms. John continued dissecting what he knew.

“She blew up the police station. Why’d she do that for me? What was she up to?”

“I don’t know, John. None of this makes sense.”

John opened his mouth to say something, then stopped.

They stood there for a long time. The snow had nearly stopped, some flurries drifting to the ground.

Michelle wondered what he was thinking. In the past, she’d been able to read his face. If something was bothering him, he’d pout. When he was excited, his smile was broad and his eyes glittered.

When they were dating, she hated it, knowing that he might break at any moment in a stressful situation.

But today there was nothing. Not since the car.

“We shouldn’t call your dad,” he said.

“He can help.”

When he turned, he didn’t look at her. He walked to the other side of the room.

“We’re sitting ducks here. If someone finds us, we have no way to defend ourselves.”

“No one knows we’re out here,” she said. “You’re being paranoid.”

He took off his shirt and peeled the bandage off his shoulder. The skin around the wound was bright red and stained with dried blood. The bandage still had wet blood on it.

“The woman who stabbed me found us at Ashley’s apartment. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going, but somehow she found us. It’s not safe here either.”

“Let’s clean that out,” Michelle said. “Can you move it?”

John nodded. “Hurts to lift my arm too high.”

The sink in the bathroom only ran cold water. She soaked a towel underneath the running water and unwrapped a bar of soap. John sat on the toilet, his back to her. He grunted as she rubbed soap over the wound. Then, using the wet towel, Michelle cleaned off the blood and soap. Hopefully the towels had been washed recently.

“It’s deep. You need stiches.”

“No time. I’m going to have a hell of a scar story, if—”

“If what?”

He didn’t answer as she soaped him up once more. The bloodstains dripped down his back and revealed the skin underneath. The wound was deep and wide. Michelle didn’t even want to think about the damage to the muscles. What John needed was a hospital.

He pulled his shirt on and got his jacket. He struggled to pull it on. Michelle went over and helped him with it. Her hand grazed his back and she pulled, and she felt his muscles contract.

He looked out the window, and his body stiffened.

“I’m going outside.”

“Why?”

“There’s someone smoking a cigarette. Down by the lobby. I don’t trust him.”

“It’s probably just the desk clerk.”

“Not the guy who checked us in,” he said. “I’m going to go check it out.”

Michelle took a short breath.

“Be careful,” she said.

After the door to the room shut, the silence returned. Michelle turned the TV back on just to hear something.

John was gone for nearly twenty minutes. And in that time Michelle flipped through the TV channels. Again. And again. Nothing was on, nothing to distract her from the images of last night flitting across her mind. The muscles in her fingers started to ache soon after John left and hadn’t stopped since.

She turned the heat up, turned the heat down, anything just to keep her moving. They’d been in the hotel room less than eight hours and already she was going stir crazy. Behind her the TV droned on about someone trying to train dogs.

And then her cell phone rang. She thought she’d imagined it at first, the space between the first ring and second taking forever. But it finally rang again and she reached the desk where it sat in a couple of hurried steps.

Please be Frank.

It wasn’t. The caller ID read “DAD.”

She lifted the phone, feeling it vibrate in her hand. Three rings. Four. How many was it before the voice mail picked up? Five. Six.

She flipped the phone open.

“Michelle, where are you?”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Michelle felt sweat form on her ear as she pressed the phone receiver tighter against it. She tried to remember what she’d done last, turned the heat up or down. It didn’t matter.

“Why do you need to know where I am?”

“I’m your father.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“How about this? I haven’t heard from my daughter in hours. She said she was going to call me. She was being chased by the police. I’m worried.”