Criminal Enterprise, page 15
“All the same,” Nancy said, as they started up the walk to the house. “It’s a beautiful home. Very romantic.”
“Our house isn’t romantic?”
She shot him a smile. “Our house is fine, Agent Stevens. If we had a house like this, though, you might get lucky more often.”
Stevens rang the doorbell. “Fat chance,” he said. “We’d be too busy robbing banks.”
The front door swung open, Carter Tomlin behind it. He saw Stevens and hesitated. Then he smiled. “Kirk,” he said, stepping back to usher them inside. “And Nancy. Glad you could make it.”
Nancy shook Tomlin’s hand. “We were just admiring your house.”
Tomlin’s smile widened. “It’s too big,” he said, “but we like it. Everyone gets their space. Come on in.”
They followed Tomlin through the front hall. Stevens nudged Nancy as they walked. “Told you. It’s a handful. He said it himself.”
Nancy elbowed him back. “Someone’s feeling inadequate.”
“Or maybe someone else is compensating.”
She laughed, shushed him with her hand, and then they were in the vast living room. Four or five other couples milled about, drinking wine, chatting, playing with Snickers. They were all well dressed and about Tomlin’s age. Tomlin introduced Stevens and Nancy to the room, then excused himself, promising to come back with something to drink.
Almost immediately, Becca Tomlin found Nancy and brought her into a cluster of wives by the fireplace, leaving Stevens alone at the door. He looked around the room, then walked to the picture window and stared out over the dark lawn.
“You’re the guy who solved Terry Harper’s fiasco.” Stevens looked right, and found a lanky, fair-haired man beside him. The man held out his hand. “Dan Rydin.”
“Kirk Stevens.” Stevens shook Rydin’s hand. “You know Harper?”
“Work with him at North Star.” Rydin smiled. “And with Carter, too, now that the whole neighborhood accountant experiment is over.”
“Neighborhood accountant.” Stevens frowned. “I thought he was corporate.”
Rydin laughed and leaned closer. “Laid off in the summer. He’s been doing your grandmother’s taxes ever since.”
“Huh.” Stevens gestured around the room. “Guess he did okay on his own.”
Rydin shook his head. “Guess again.”
“Yeah?”
“This is all leverage, man,” Rydin said. “We’re talking copious debt. I’m amazed he kept his family intact.”
Stevens looked at Rydin. Rydin grinned back through watery eyes. There was scotch on his breath already. “Usually, these cases, the wife is the first thing to go,” Rydin continued. “Divorce, then bankruptcy. Wasn’t for me, he’d be sunk.”
Stevens smiled. “You’re the big hero, huh?”
“Got him his job, didn’t I? Saved his life.”
Stevens made to reply. Looked up and caught Tomlin’s reflection in the window. The accountant stood alone on the other side of the room, holding two tumblers and staring at Stevens and Rydin. He met Stevens’s eyes and smiled and came over. “So you’ve met my new boss.” He handed Stevens a glass. “Everything all right?”
Rydin winked at Stevens. “Everything’s fine, Carter. Relax.”
“Not while you’re around, partner.” Tomlin smiled at Stevens. “Invite an accountant to a party and you know you’re getting robbed, one way or the other.”
He looked around the room. “One way or the other,” he said again. Then he smiled again. “I’ll just check on the caterers. Excuse me.”
Rydin watched Tomlin go. Then he nudged Stevens. “Living on the edge,” he said. “Told you. I’m a hero.”
He laughed and emptied his glass. Stevens watched him. A hero, he thought. Maybe. Maybe not.
61
TOMLIN WATCHED STEVENS and his pretty wife throughout dinner. Watched them share jokes, laugh together, flirt when they thought nobody was watching. They looked so easy together, so comfortable.
Becca caught his eye from across the dinner table. She smiled at him. He forced himself to smile back. Raised his wineglass and winked at her. She smiled again wider, and Tomlin studied her face and was struck, suddenly and guiltily, by how she’d aged since he’d married her. She’d been a girl, fresh-faced and stunning. She was a mother now. A housewife.
Then Rydin’s wife touched Becca’s hand and asked her something about the kitchen cabinets, and Becca smiled at him one more time, then looked away. Tomlin snuck another glance at Kirk and Nancy Stevens.
They look perfect, he thought. Like everyone else at this table. Like they’ve never struggled to make a mortgage payment. Like they never fight, even. They’re in love, and they’re happy, and he’s barely a policeman. Probably didn’t even go to college.
And she’s some kind of Legal Aid lawyer. Older than Becca, but barely looks thirty-five. Miles out of her husband’s league, and she looks at him like she’d never had the thought. Laughing and smiling, and they’re probably piss-poor.
Her whole life is a waste. What the hell is she happy about?
—
THEY ATE A WONDERFUL dinner in the Tomlins’ stately dining room, four courses, fully catered. The price of the meal, Stevens figured, would have fed his own family for a month. But then, he decided, he might willingly starve for another helping of tonight’s prime rib.
After dinner, the partiers migrated back into the Tomlins’ living room. Stevens talked to Rydin some more, and some of Rydin’s friends, all of them bankers and businessmen. Then, when the conversation turned to best accounting practices, Stevens excused himself and asked Becca Tomlin to point him to the bathroom.
“Around the corner and by the back stairs,” she told him, smiling. “Are you having a good time?”
“A great time,” he told her. “Dinner was spectacular.”
She blushed. “A little over-the-top, but Carter wanted to show off. It’s his night.”
“Might as well do it right,” Stevens said, and Becca smiled and touched his arm and pointed him down the hall to the bathroom.
After he’d finished, Stevens stepped out into the hallway again and found himself alone. Voices carried from the living room, and light, but the hall itself was deserted. Stevens stood in the darkness, thinking about Rydin’s commentary before dinner. About Tomlin, laid off. A desperate man in an oversized house. Bank robbery almost made sense.
Stevens shook his head and started back down the hall toward the party. Then he stopped. Here’s your chance, he thought. They won’t miss you.
Someone laughed in the living room, loud. Glasses clinked together. Stevens turned and walked down the hall. Found himself in a bright, modern kitchen. The caterers looked up as he stuck his head through the doorway.
“Looking for the little boys’ room,” he said, backing out. To his right was a little stairway, five or six steps, then a door to the driveway. Another stairway headed down from the landing. If I were a bank robber, Stevens thought, where would I hide my tools?
Stevens looked back into the kitchen again. The caterers had forgotten him, were scrubbing dishes and scraping plates, chatting with one another. Stevens turned back to the stairway. Paused on the top step. You don’t even have a warrant. Nothing you find is admissible.
Calm down. It’s not even your case. You find something, you let Windermere worry about procedure.
There was a long, low hallway at the bottom of the stairs. A dim yellow light and a bare concrete floor. Stevens peered into the first room, saw a new washer and dryer set, a sink, clothes hanging above. Laundry room. He backed out. Heard the sounds of the party above him, nothing else. They would start to miss him soon. Hurry up. Stevens crossed the hall to the next room. Felt around for a light switch and flicked it on. Then he stood in the doorway and stared.
It wasn’t going to put Tomlin in jail, anyway. Wasn’t evidence of any wrongdoing at all. Still, it was breathtaking. Stevens took a couple steps into the room, the party and Tomlin momentarily forgotten.
It was a huge toy train setup. It filled the whole room. Cities and vast mountain ranges, factories and apartment buildings and marshaling yards. Thousands of tiny trees, and hordes of detailed little people, in corner stores and waiting in the stations, living out their lives. Stevens stared at it, awed. It must have taken Tomlin months to put this thing together, he thought. Almost belongs in a museum.
He walked deeper into the room, toward the control system at the center of the table. A panel of dials and levers and LED lights, complicated beyond Stevens’s comprehension. A little Amtrak train waited in front of the controls.
Stevens found the power switch on the panel. Looked at the train. Just once around the loop, he thought. Then back to the party. He reached for the power switch. Tomlin’s voice stopped him. “What the hell are you doing?”
Stevens spun. Found his host staring in at him through the doorway, his face a mask of barely contained anger.
62
TOMLIN STARED IN at Stevens, struggling to keep his breathing steady. The BCA agent stood poised by the control panel, a few feet away from where Tony Schultz’s sawed-off shotgun lay hidden in its cradle.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tomlin said again. “How did you get down here?”
Stevens took a step back. Held up his hands. “Carter, I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be down here.” Tomlin felt his heart pounding, and he glanced at the mountain that housed the assault rifle. “You shouldn’t be down here. Why are you here?”
Stevens didn’t reply. He knows, Tomlin thought. He felt his heart start to pound as he realized he would have to kill the BCA agent. Schultz’s Sig Sauer waited in a box below the train table, hidden under a pile of spare parts. Stevens didn’t look armed. If I can get to that gun, Tomlin thought, I can kill him.
—
STEVENS STUDIED TOMLIN. Tomlin stared back like a dog in a fight, his body tensed, his eyes unsteady. There’s something going on here, Stevens thought. This is more than a guest wandering off at a party.
The floorboards creaked above. Laughter filtered down through the ceiling. Sooner or later, someone’s going to notice we’re gone. Stevens looked at Tomlin again and wished he’d brought his sidearm.
“I’m sorry, Carter,” he said, raising his hands. “Your wife said you had a train setup down here. I guess I wanted to see it.”
Tomlin looked past him again, to the trains. Said nothing. Stevens gestured to the setup, smiling sheepishly. “It’s really something, anyway. The detail. Amazing.”
Tomlin looked at him, hard.
“Must have taken you months.” Stevens smiled and tried to look friendly. Inside, his whole body was tensed, waiting for Tomlin to spring at him or pull a weapon, or whatever he was thinking about doing. There’s something here, Stevens thought. A couple minutes more and you might have found it. Instead, you might have to fight your way out.
63
TOMLIN KNEW the BCA agent was bullshitting. He could see it in the way Stevens’s muscles stayed tense, even as he cast Tomlin that same friendly smile across the train room. You blew it, Tomlin thought. Now he knows you’re hiding something.
What now?
The rifle was behind the mountain. The shotgun under the table. The pistol in the box below the benchwork. But if he made a move for any weapon, did anything sudden, the BCA agent would tackle him.
Anyway, none of the weapons were loaded. Tomlin made sure to empty them every time he returned to the house. Safer for Heather and Madeleine. The ammunition was close, but Tomlin knew there was no way he could grab a weapon and load it before Stevens was on him.
Stevens had his hands up, still waiting. Still smiling. He wants to get out of here as much as you do, Tomlin thought. He’s prepared to bullshit his way out. That means he doesn’t have enough to take you.
If you show him a weapon, your life is over. Right now, Stevens has nothing. No evidence whatsoever, and no warrant. You keep calm, and you’re safe. Really, what were the other options? Try and fight Stevens, overpower him, kill him. And then—what? Go back to the party? Start running?
No. Stevens was ready to bullshit. Tomlin was ready to bullshit, too. He matched Stevens’s smile. “Becca thinks I’m crazy.”
Stevens nodded. “Yeah?”
“Women never get it,” Tomlin said. He shrugged. “Come on back upstairs, huh? Let’s have another drink.”
Stevens didn’t answer for a moment. Then he nodded again. “Sure,” he said. “A drink sounds good about now.”
Tomlin stepped back and let Stevens lead him out of the room. Glanced around the train room one more time. Then he switched off the light and followed Stevens upstairs, his whole body still tense, his heart pounding.
64
YOU’RE QUIET,” Nancy said, as Stevens started the Cherokee and pulled away down Summit Avenue. “Did you have fun?”
Stevens looked back at Tomlin’s house in his mirror, lit up and dramatic like a Christmas postcard. He nodded. “Sure.”
Tomlin had disappeared after the incident in the train room. He came back twenty minutes later and started subtly moving people to the door. Hadn’t looked at Stevens. Hadn’t said much. It was only as Stevens and Nancy crossed the threshold, bundled up, and headed back to the car that he’d stepped out onto the porch, hand outstretched and eyes meeting Stevens’s. “Glad you could make it,” he said.
Stevens hesitated before shaking Tomlin’s hand. “Thanks for having us.”
Tomlin’s hand was damp, but his grip was tight. “Basketball Tuesday.”
“Tuesday.” Stevens took back his hand and turned toward the front steps. “See you there.”
Now Nancy looked at Stevens sideways as he piloted the Cherokee back toward Lexington. “You’re too quiet,” she said. “What’s the matter?”
Stevens drove in silence for a few blocks. He stared out at the road, thinking, his tensed muscles only now starting to relax. A couple minutes more in that train room, he thought, you’d have found it. Whatever Tomlin didn’t want you to find.
A couple minutes more. Instead, you have nothing.
Nancy touched his arm. “Kirk?” Stevens glanced at her. Shook his head. Nancy caught his expression and frowned. “What the hell happened?”
Stevens stared ahead and didn’t answer. Then he sighed. “I’m not sure.”
“Are you sick? This is scary.”
“I’m not sick.” He kept driving. “I just have this funny feeling Windermere might be right.”
65
TOMLIN STOOD AT the front door, watching the last of the guests drive away. He locked the door and walked back to the dining room, where Becca was helping the caterers clear up the last of the dishes. She smiled at him as he entered. “I’m exhausted,” she said, starting into the kitchen with a load of dishes. “Playing hostess is hard work.”
“You invited the Stevenses,” he said, following her. “You didn’t tell me.”
Becca put the plates in the sink. Then she looked at him. “I thought he was your friend.”
No, Tomlin thought, Stevens isn’t my friend. He’s a BCA agent, and you invited him into my home. If I hadn’t caught him in the train room, he could have ruined everything. He forced a smile at Becca. “I’m just worried they were out of their league here.”
“I don’t think so. Nancy Stevens is one smart lady. She sounds like a hell of a lawyer.”
A lawyer and a cop. Roaming around my house. Talk about living on the edge.
“You’re not mad, are you?” Becca asked him.
Tomlin thought about Stevens again. Saw some humor in it now. The dumb cop would kill himself if he knew the shot he’d just blown. Tomlin couldn’t keep from smiling. “No,” he said, walking to her and wrapping his arms around her. “I’m not mad.”
She stiffened. “Carter, the caterers—”
“Forget about the caterers.”
Becca remained tense. Everywhere he touched felt like stone. “No,” she said. “Not tonight, honey. Okay?”
He kissed her. “Why not?”
She found his reflection in the window. Met his eyes. “Last time, it scared me. What you did.”
“Come on. We were just having fun.”
He kissed down her neck, brought his hand to her breast. She squirmed around in his grip. “Carter,” she said. “I said no.”
The last caterer walked into the kitchen, looked at them both, paused at the doorway. Tomlin ignored her. He stared at Becca’s reflection in the window, her tired eyes. He closed his eyes and imagined holding Tricia. Becca squirmed again. “Carter.”
Tomlin opened his eyes. Met her gaze in the window and thought again about Tricia. “Fine,” he said. “Suit yourself.”
He left her there. Walked out of the kitchen and back down to the basement, where he checked on his guns and then spent the next two hours fiddling with his trains, creating spectacular, fiery collisions and imagining Kirk Stevens trapped in the flames.
66
DOUGHTY DROPPED a note on Windermere’s desk. “Message from Saint Paul homicide,” he said. “The detective from that poker game.”
Windermere picked up the note. Read it and reached for her phone. “Parent,” she said. “I’ll see what he wants.”
“Already done.” Doughty leaned over and held down the receiver. “He found us a witness.”
She looked at him. “You talked to him?”
“Set up a meeting, in fact. I also took the liberty of updating the good detective’s contact information, since he seemed to think this is your case.”
The big cop looked at Windermere like he was waiting for her to react. She didn’t. Doughty had been bitchy since she’d returned from the poker game, either pissed off or jealous, or both. So far, she’d ignored him and focused on chasing down leads, but now she struggled to stay cool, wanting nothing more than to wipe the self-satisfied smirk from her partner’s face.
