Safe Harbor, page 17
I held the door for him. “What are you doing here?”
He came into the house and thrust the parcel at me. “For you.”
I saw that he had several stitches in his face above his left eyebrow.
“I, uh, I’m sorry about…the last time we met. Dad told me he’d be up here this weekend, so I thought I’d…come and apologize.” He paused, stared at his feet again, then back up at me. “Especially to Laura.” He looked around as if he expected to see her.
The boy had hopped on a plane and crossed the continent to apologize. Feeling slightly stunned, I led him into the sunroom.
He took off his jacket, and I saw that he was nicely turned out in jeans and a cable-knit navy turtleneck. The rings were gone from his nose and ear.
“I was in pretty bad shape at New Year’s. I did a lot of dope last fall and got terrible marks, which will probably ruin my chances for grad school.”
He paused. “Christmas was the season for parties, and that’s all I wanted to do. Party and get stoned. I didn’t want to see either of my parents. But Dad kept pushing the bonding-quality-time thing. He wouldn’t let it go. So I thought I’d make sure it was the last time he asked me anywhere. I was determined to be a complete asshole.”
“You succeeded.”
“When I got back to L.A., I went into a bar to buy some dope. I was mugged in the washroom.” He pointed to the stitches on his face. “I decided to clean up my act and start over.” He extended his right hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Tierney.”
“And nice to meet you.” I shook his hand. “I’m finally meeting the real Ryan Shaughnessy.”
“Yeah, well…” He stared at his feet again.
“I’ll tell Laura you’re here. I have no idea if she’ll want to see you.”
“I could go to a hotel.”
“No!” Laura cried when I told her Ryan was downstairs. “I never want to see that jerk again. Tell him to go away.”
“He says he’s sorry about New Year’s. Go down and say hello. His dad will be here soon and we can all go out to eat.”
“No way.” She reached for her cell phone. “I’ll go over to Jessie’s if she’s in.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” was all she had to say to Ryan when she came downstairs. She left the house with Maxie and a bag of kibble.
I took Ryan up to the spare room. “She’ll calm down and be back. You’ve surprised her. You should have let us know you were on your way.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t have me.”
Devon seemed as surprised as I’d been by Ryan’s turnaround. After his son had made his apologies, he gave him a hug. “Pat and I are going out for dinner. Like to join us?”
“I’ll stay here. Laura may come back.”
To my relief, dinner was pleasant and low-key.
“Ryan,” Devon said with a sigh when we’d given our orders. “Is he really turning a new leaf? Somehow I doubt it. He has a lot to learn about responsibility. Part of the problem is that his mother denies him nothing. She’s given him a credit card and she pays the bill every month.”
“She’s doing him no favors. He has to learn to manage money.”
“I’ve tried to talk to her about it. It’s useless.”
The waitress arrived with our wine. Devon clinked his glass against mine and took my hand. His hand felt good on mine. Maybe he wouldn’t bulldoze his way into my life.
When our salad and bruschetta arrived, I told Devon about Ali’s visit earlier that evening and how he’d escaped from the safe house. “The place he was taken to doesn’t sound like one of Sister Celia’s safe houses.”
I pictured the room Ali had described. A doctor’s examination table. Medical equipment in the cabinet. And Oskar had told him to put on one of those hospital Johnny shirts. Why?
“They’re two different places,” Devon said. “What Ali described is a prison.”
“Oskar is desperate to get hold of Ali because he escaped from that house and he can tell people about it. And Oskar knew he would have told Jude.”
“You’d better let Hardy know about this.”
“Let me know what?”
We looked up to see the detective beside our table.
“Sorry to crash your dinner.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “I stopped by your house and Mr. Shaughnessy’s son said you’d be here. What do you have to tell me?”
I told him about Ali’s visit that afternoon and what he’d told me about the safe house.
Hardy looked grim. “We’ve got to get hold of this Jacovic.”
I looked at the detective, suddenly afraid that something had happened to Laura after she left the house. Or to Tracy, who hadn’t arrived home when we left.
“You came by the house. You wanted to see me.”
“About Tommy Seaton.”
“Tommy.” My heart twisted. “What??”
“He’s missing. This afternoon, his uncle took him to his grandmother’s house for the weekend. She had a nap before dinner and, when she came back downstairs, the boy was gone. It looks like he put on his jacket and boots, and went out the back door. And vanished.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Pat
Devon and I arrived at Norah’s house at nine-thirty the next morning. Mrs. Bonokowski took us into the living room. I nodded at Hardy and Mancini, who were seated across from Norah and Arlene.
Norah had aged a decade since I’d seen her the week before. The lines were etched deeper into her face and her eyes were rimmed with red. Her normally coiffed silver hair stood up in tufts. She looked as if the stuffing had been knocked out of her.
“The police ask me the same questions over and over again,” the old woman said, stroking her poodle. “And I give them the same answers.”
“We need to see if you can remember anything else that could help us,” Hardy said. “Tommy’s disappearance has top priority. We’ve put out an amber alert.”
“You still haven’t found Jude’s killer,” Arlene said. In contrast to her mother, she was smartly turned out with her hair swept up in a chignon.
The muscles around Hardy’s mouth twitched. “There’s a tap on your phone line. And you’ll need to let us know immediately if someone contacts you about Tommy any other way.”
I followed the detectives and Arlene into the front hall. “Have you talked to Oskar Jacovic?” I asked Hardy.
He frowned. “If you see him, let me know right away.”
“Who is Oskar Jacovic?” Arlene asked when the detectives had gone.
“Someone Jude did volunteer work with.”
“Have you…have you talked to Clive?”
“I told him you didn’t want to talk to the police.”
Her face fell. “I don’t know what to do.”
I gave her what I hoped was a sympathetic smile and we returned to the living room.
Norah looked up at us. “Tommy just…vanished.”
“I’m worried about Mom’s health,” Arlene said. “Those policemen have been hounding her.”
“I’m fine,” Norah said. “I just want Tommy back safe and sound.”
“What happened last night?” I asked.
Arlene looked put out. “Do we have to go over it again?”
“Tell her, dear,” Norah said.
“All we know is that Tommy went out while Mom was resting upstairs. When she came down, he was gone. His jacket and boots were gone, and so was Gigi.”
“Mrs. Bonokowski found Gigi in the backyard with her leash caught around a bush,” Norah said. “Tommy must have taken her out, then…”
She began to cry.
“Can I take a look at the back of your house?” I asked Norah.
She pointed to the dining room and the doors that opened onto the yard. Outside, I saw a raised patio and an expanse of snow-covered ground that had been trampled by many pairs of feet. The yard was enclosed by a high wooden fence.
I drew a deep breath. Someone had been waiting out there for Tommy.
“Have the police looked at those footprints?” I asked.
“They certainly have,” Arlene said behind me. “They were here until late last night with their lights set up, taking measurements and photographs. Most of those prints were made by the police.”
I returned to Norah in the living room. “Does the fence have a gate?”
“There’s a six-foot gate on each side of the yard,” Norah said.
“They’re both locked?”
“No. Our security people suggested that I have locks put on them, but we always set the alarm when no one’s at home.
“I told Patrick on Thursday that I wanted Tommy here for the weekend,” she went on. “The headmaster wasn’t happy about it, but I put my foot down. Tommy needs to be with his family.”
“Who knew that Tommy would be here for the weekend?” I asked.
“The police already asked Mom that(several times,” Arlene snapped.
I ignored her and addressed Norah. “Would anyone at the school know where he’d gone?”
“I never thought to ask them to keep it a secret. I figured Tommy and I would stay in the house all weekend, and Patrick would drive him back to school on Sunday afternoon. I’d forgotten how active young boys are.”
Back at home, I found Ryan stacking the dishwasher. I felt my jaw drop. “You’re handy around a kitchen.”
“I guess. Dad’s out with your dog.” His face broke into a grin. “Laura’s back. She’s going to show me Toronto today.”
I hoped the city’s highlights didn’t include a hotel room. But I gave him a smile and wondered at Laura’s change of heart. And where Kyle was that weekend.
The front door opened and Tracy came in. When she took off her coat, I saw that she was wearing the same pantsuit she’d had on the morning before. I hadn’t realized that she hadn’t come home the night before.
“Where were you last night?” I asked.
She blushed. “We went out for drinks after work. It ran pretty late, so I stayed with a woman I work with. I should have called. Sorry.”
“You should have. I was worried.”
The phone rang and she rushed to get it. “Farah, it’s your boyfriend.”
Farah hurried into the kitchen and grabbed the receiver. I couldn’t help but hear her end of the phone conversation.
“Look after kid?” she said.
Farah paused for a moment. “Mama and Raad, they not let me stay out all night.” After another short pause, she added, “It is not possible, Oskar.”
She paused again. “What movie?”
Another pause. “Okay, okay!” She slammed down the receiver.
I smiled. Farah was treating her new boyfriend the same way she treated everyone else.
Thirty minutes later, I was trying to chill out in the sunroom with Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” Tommy’s face drifted through my thoughts and my heart constricted.
Where was he? How was he being treated? Was he…alive?
A wave of compassion for Jude washed over me. I had been shocked by her murder. No one deserved to die before her time and so horribly, but it had been like hearing about a stranger’s death on the evening news. I had only met the woman once, and the meeting had not been pleasant.
But now I saw her with new eyes. Caught in the middle of whatever trouble she’d been in, she was frantic with worry about her son. I knew what it was like to love a child, to be willing to give up your own life in a heartbeat to save that precious little life.
“Pat?”
I opened my eyes. Farah stood in front of me, wearing a sullen expression. I turned down the volume and braced myself for a complaint about the extra work our guests had given her.
“All right to leave early today?”
“Everything okay at home, Farah?”
She shrugged.
“Then I could really use your help today with Devon and Ryan here. How about some time off next week?”
“Must be today.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I meet someone this afternoon.”
I studied her face. “This someone is Oskar, isn’t it?”
She bit her lip. “Please, I can leave at twelve-thirty?”
“I’d like an explanation. Who are you meeting?”
She looked at the ceiling, then back at me. “Cousin in Chicago, his boy come stay us. Raad, he work today, so I must meet young boy.”
The word boy got my attention. “Oskar’s cousin?”
She shook her head. “My cousin.”
A child travelling alone? What parent would allow that?
She glanced at her watch. “One-thirty, we meet. Broadview Station.”
“You’re meeting a child at a subway station?”
Her eyes threw invisible daggers at me. “The boy, he travel with friend. I meet them at Broadview Station.”
The “friend” was Oskar. Was the boy Tommy? “So you meet the boy and…?”
“Mama must get apartment ready, make dinner. Boy and me, we go to movie at Bijou Cinema.”
The cinema where she saw Casablanca with Oskar. But I was asking too many questions. “Finish up the bathrooms and be on your way.”
I watched her go upstairs, my mind racing. Farah knew very little about Oskar. She didn’t know that he’d been taking refugees to a house in Scarborough. She didn’t know that the police were looking for him. I wondered whether should warn her.
She stopped on the landing and turned to look at me. I smiled, and she continued up the stairs.
I debated whether I should go after her. But what would I say? Don’t meet Oskar? He’s up to something and it’s not good? She would just toss her head and laugh. Besides, I had a feeling she would lead us to Tommy.
I went into my study and called Safe Harbor on my cell.
“Any news of Tommy?” Sister Celia asked.
“Not when I last spoke to Hardy a few hours ago.”
“Hardy was here last night looking for Oskar. I gave him a photo that I kept in Oskar’s file. Do you think?”
“I do. Ali told you about the safe house when he called you last night?”
“He did.”
Ali’s face, his eyes wide with fear, flashed through my mind.
“Farah told me that Oskar is running some kind of business. Do you know anything about it?”
“A business?” She sounded surprised. “No. Oskar’s worked here for years, but I have no idea what he else does. I know he shares an apartment with a couple of fellows in The Junction neighborhood. And he has an uncle in the city.”
“Does he know about your safe houses?”
“Absolutely not.”
“We’ve got to find that house he took Ali to.”
As soon as Devon had taken off his boots and jacket, I pulled him into the study. “I need to talk to you.”
When I closed the door, he cleared his throat. “You don’t want Laura seeing Ryan.”
“It’s not that. I hope they have a good time today.”
“Then what(”
“I don’t want to Farah to hear.” I told him about her plans for the afternoon.
“We’d better call Hardy.”
“No. He’ll have officers all over the station. When Oskar sees them, who knows what he might do to Tommy. I can’t take that chance.”
“This is police business, Pat. What do you think you can do on your own?”
He had a point. What if something came up that we couldn’t handle? “All right, I’ll call him. You’ll come to Broadview Station with me?”
He sighed. “You know I will.”
I touched his face. “Thank you.”
Then I punched Hardy’s number into my cell.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Pat
At one-twenty, Devon and I huddled under a shop awning directly across the street from the Broadview subway entrance, debating our next move. He wanted to wait inside the station where Hardy had said he would meet us, but I didn’t want Oskar to see me there when he arrived. Oskar had a car so I assumed that he would leave it in a parking lot and walk over to the station.
“We’ve got to go in there at some point,” Devon said.
“Here comes Oskar. Across the street.”
Oskar had just rounded the corner of Broadview and Danforth. He held the hand of a child who was dressed in a dark green snowsuit and a colorful balaclava that covered most of the face. The kid swayed like a sleepwalker.
Devon and I sprinted for the green traffic light. We had just made it across Broadview Avenue when Oskar picked up the child and went into the station.
We ran through the entrance several people behind them. Oskar got on the escalator with the child in his arms.
“We’ve got to keep them in sight,” I said.
“Pat, we have to wait here for Hardy.”
“Can’t.” I stuffed a five-dollar bill and a loonie in the collector’s box and raced toward the stairs. Devon was right behind me.
We were halfway down the staircase when I spotted Farah on the busy platform. She went over to Oskar as he got off the escalator.
She looked at the child in his arms and surprise registered on her face. She gave Oskar a questioning look. I knew then that the child was Tommy.
She looked in my direction and her eyes widened. Oskar spun around and saw me on the bottom stairs. He scowled, grabbed Farah with his free hand and pulled her farther down the platform.
I elbowed my way through the crowd, leaving Devon caught behind a woman with a child’s stroller.
“Hey, lady, what’s your problem?” a man yelled at me.
“Pat, wait for me,” Devon called.
“Oskar, put Tommy down,” I cried.
Oskar shoved Tommy into Farah’s arms and wheeled around to face me.
I sprang toward Farah, but Oskar pushed me aside. A blade flashed in his hand.
“Back off!” he shouted at Devon who had come up beside me. He snatched Tommy away from Farah. He held the boy against his chest with one arm and waved the knife in his other hand.
A woman screamed. Devon took a step back as Oskar slashed the blade through the air.
