Survival Clause, стр. 61
But that Jerry couldn’t. The car had been big and blue, he said, and the man had been “just a man.” He had no real concept of old and young; the one thing he was sure of was that the man didn’t have a beard or glasses.
“Was he brown?” I asked. “Or white?”
“Like us,” Jerry said.
White, then. So that eliminated Curtis, and Frankie Matlock, who wasn’t supposed to be around Columbia anyway, and who wouldn’t know that my sister owned the house, and even if he did, would have no reason to vandalize it.
What it didn’t do, was eliminate any of the more likely suspects, like the guy who had vandalized the house the first time, or his father, who might be upset that his son and his wife had to pay for damages. Or the family members of the guys who had set the explosion, or even the one young neo-Nazi we knew about who hadn’t been swept up in the sting, since he’d testified against his friends, and since he hadn’t actually been guilty of anything more than destruction of property. He was only twenty-one or –two, but I wasn’t sure Jerry would be able to tell the difference between that and, say, Sergeant Tucker, and there was no point in trying to get him to be more specific.
His mother took him home with the promise that Jerry would come back with the ten dollars he’d gotten for the ‘work’ so I could spend it on fixing my window. Jerry looked a little mutinous over that, and his lower lip was firmly stuck on truculent when he stomped away. But he did come back ten minutes later with two crumpled five dollar bills that he gave me, with every sign of reluctance. I took them, not because I needed help paying for the window, but because his mother clearly wanted to teach him what happens to ill-gotten gains, and it would do the boy no harm to learn that crime doesn’t pay.
By then, the second wave of visitors had started to show up. Charlotte came back with the piece of glass, so we decided we might as well show everyone how capable and responsive we were, in case anyone might want to make an offer. Replacing a broken window isn’t a difficult or drawn-out process, and we’d just replaced this window anyway, so we didn’t even have to deal with chipping out old, dry caulk. I had to move Carrie into the kitchen, since she’d been parked under the window in question. She was still asleep, and didn’t wake, not even when we started messing with the window.
People came and went, a few of them lingering to give us advice about what to do, while the rest just wandered in and out. I don’t think more than thirty seconds had passed before I glanced over my shoulder, as I’d done every thirty seconds, and saw that the spot on the floor where I’d put Carrie’s car seat, was empty.
Seventeen
I almost dropped the piece of glass. It would have shattered on the floor—for the second time that day—if Charlotte hadn’t had a good grip on it. “What?” she wanted to know, irritably, as she juggled the pane.
“Carrie.”
I didn’t have time to say anything more, since I was already on the move. I just registered Charlotte’s eyes opening wide before I was through the door into the kitchen.
There was just a chance that someone else had picked her up and moved her. Or at least that’s what I tried to tell myself, to quell the instant panic that someone had left with her.
Surely I would have noticed if someone had walked my baby out of the house?
Surely I would have—
And that’s as far as I got—the panic didn’t even have time to lodge deeply, and I can only be grateful for that—before I heard loud voices and the sound of activity behind the house.
I’m pretty sure I pushed a couple of prospective buyers out of my way as I careened down the hallway and through the master bedroom to the French doors onto the deck.
And stopped like I’d run into a wall.
Rafe, gun drawn, and Grimaldi—ditto—were advancing from the left and right on a person who stood in the middle of the grass clutching Carrie’s seat.
At first, I thought I was looking at a young girl. She was considerably shorter than David—he was there, too, at the corner of the house—and she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet.
When I got a better look, I realized she wasn’t as young as I’d thought. Younger than me by a few years, sure. Twenty-three, maybe. Or twenty-four. Dishwater blond hair to her shoulders, slight build in a pair of jeans and a pink T-shirt. Nothing even remotely like the busty Jessica Rabbit cartoon. But not a kid.
Although there was something familiar about her…
I squinted, trying to bring it into focus, when Charlotte barreled through the door behind me and knocked me forward a step. Behind her, several of the open house visitors started to crowd into the doorway, while a couple others came around the corner from the driveway and gathered behind David.
The girl was starting to look rattled. Blue eyes in a narrow face flickered from side to side, probably assessing her chances of escape.
They were pretty close to nil, as far as I could see. Both Rafe and Grimaldi had guns trained on her, and I’m sure either of them would fire before they’d let her get away with Carrie.
But she did have Carrie, and while the baby was somewhat protected, at least on the underside, by being in the heavy plastic car seat, I’m sure neither of them particularly wanted to fire, either.
And then the likeness finally registered, and I opened my mouth without really thinking about it. “I know you. You work at the pet emergency clinic.”
She