“Do you know the name at all?” I said. “Trevor Weiss?”
“I…I don’t think so,” she said.
I reached a traffic light and made a right turn. It wasn’t the fastest way home, but it was worth it if I could lose the tailgater.
“I know Dylan didn’t spend a lot of time at work,” I said. “No reason why he’d know a low-level scientist from Product Development.”
“Yes, that’s exactly right…” She sounded strange and sort of dreamy. “He didn’t spend a lot of time at work.”
“Is something wrong?” I said, just as those needlessly bright headlights returned. I sped up, suddenly. The traffic light in the distance felt like a finish line.
“I don’t know if this means anything at all,” Lydia was saying. “But I just had a memory. Dylan was at our home. He kept taking phone calls, speaking very quietly or moving into another room. It happened several times.”
“Uh-huh?” I peered into my rearview, then turned around.Lost him,I thought.Finally.
“I told him he was being rude,” she said. “That he shouldn’t take phone calls during visits home. But Dylan swore to me he was talking to someone from Gonzo. A research scientist. He said it was an important business matter. I just said, ‘Honestly. How stupid do you think I am?’ I love my son, but he wouldn’t know an important business matter if it punched him in the nose.”
“He never said the research scientist’s name?”
“If he did, I don’t remember,” she said. “I would have bet all my savings at the time that he was lying and it was one of his sleazy drug friends. Whispering the way he was. I actuallyheard him say…and I quote, ‘What’s the point if there’s no buzz?’ Who says that to a research scientist?”
“How long ago was this?”
“Around a month ago.”
The same time he went to urgent care.I saw the headlights again, the car catching up with me. Quickly, I turned around to see its logo glinting in a streetlight. It was a RAV4. A black one. I swore under my breath.
“Pardon?”
“I have to go.”
“But…But I have more questions.”
“I’ll see you and Bill tomorrow for the luncheon. Name the time and give me your address, I’m there.”
“All right, then.”
I turned around again. The driver clicked on his dome light, for just a few seconds. Long enough for me to see the baseball cap. Then he waved.
Lydia was saying something about whether she should text or email me her address. “Either way,” I said. “I’m flexible.”
Then I pushed the pedal to the metal.
Nineteen
Maybe Richie has a point about my job,I thought as I swung into a sharp right turn that nearly made my car flip over. My next thoughts were, in quick succession,I wish I could drive like Spike—because Spike was the fastest and most skillfully reckless driver I knew.Where are the police when you need them?And finally,Rosie hasn’t had dinner.
My solution to the first two of the latter thoughts was to floor it until the next light, then make an unexpected and extremely illegal left turn—the light was red—and pray that I’d get pulled over.
I didn’t get pulled over.
As I tore down another deserted street full of abandoned-looking warehouses, those halogen headlights burning through my windows, I kept thinking about Rosie, and how, if thisasshole were to succeed in getting me into a fatal accident, no one would know enough to check up on her for close to twenty-four hours. She’d be stuck in my apartment—hungry, frightened, and alone—until tomorrow afternoon at three p.m., when my fourteen-year-old neighbor, Cara, would innocently show up at my front door and use her spare key, expecting to take Rosie on her daily walk. (I paid her once a week for this.) Would Rosie be able to get by until three p.m. tomorrow with no food, no walks, nome? And after that, who would take her? Spike? Richie? Would she be able to survive without me? What if she couldn’t?
What a terrible thought.
I blazed through another red light. The RAV4 didn’t slow down by even a fraction. It was as though Baseball Cap and I were the only two people left on earth, free to break any driving law we wanted to, with no repercussions. “Where are all the cops?” I said it to the windshield. And then the answer came to me.
The entire Boston Police Department was at the Gonzo manufacturing plant. An exaggeration, sure. But I happened to know that there were at least a dozen cop cars in the Gonzo factory parking lot. And I now had a plan. I’d lead him there.
