The Husband

The answering machine stood on a corner desk. The only message was from Iggy:

“Sorry, bro. I should’ve called as soon as he left here. But Taggart … he’s like fully macking triple overhead corduroy to the horizon. He scares you off the board and makes you want to sit quiet on the beach and just watch the monsters break.”

Mitch sat at the desk and opened the drawer in which Holly kept their checkbook and bank statements.

In his conversation with the kidnapper, he had overestimated their checking-account balance, which was $10,346.54.

The most recent monthly statement showed an additional savings-account balance of $27,311.40.

They had bills due. Those were in a different drawer of the same desk. He didn’t look at them. He was counting only assets.

Their monthly mortgage payment was automatically deducted from their checking account. The bank statement listed the remaining loan balance as $286,770.

Recently, Holly had estimated that the house was worth $425,000. That was a crazy amount for a small bungalow in an old neighborhood, but it was accurate. Though old, the neighborhood was desirable, and the greater part of the value lay in the large lot.

Added to their cash on hand, the equity in the house made a total of approximately $175,000. That was far short of two million; and the kidnapper had not sounded like a guy whose intention was to negotiate in good faith.

Anyway, the equity in the house couldn’t be converted to cash unless they took a new loan or sold the place. Because the house was jointly owned, he needed Holly’s signature in either scenario.

They wouldn’t have had the house if Holly hadn’t inherited it from her grandmother, Dorothy, who had raised her. The mortgage had been smaller upon Dorothy’s death, but to pay inheritance taxes and save the house, they’d had to work out a bigger loan.

So the amount available for ransom was approximately thirty-seven thousand dollars.

Until now, Mitch had not thought of himself as a failure. His self-image had been that of a young man responsibly building a life.

He was twenty-seven. No one could be a failure at twenty-seven.

Yet this fact was indisputable: Although Holly was the center of his life, and priceless, when forced to put a price on her, he could pay only thirty-seven thousand.

A bitterness overcame him for which he had no target except himself. This was not good. Bitterness could turn to self-pity, and if he surrendered to self-pity, he would make a failure of himself. And Holly would die.

Even if the house had been without a mortgage, even if they had half a million in cash and were wildly successful for people their age, he would not have had the funds to ransom her.

That truth brought him to the realization that money would not be what saved Holly. He would be what saved her if she could be saved: his perseverance, his wits, his courage, his love.

As he returned the bank statement to the drawer, he saw an envelope bearing his name in Holly’s handwriting. It contained a birthday card that she had bought weeks before the day.

On the front of the card was the photograph of an ancient man festooned with wrinkles and wattles. The caption declared When you’re old, I’llstill need you, dear.

Mitch opened the card and read By then, theonly thing I’ll have left to enjoy is gardening, and you’llmake excellent compost.

He laughed. He could imagine Holly’s laugh in the store when she had opened the card and read that punch line.

Then his laugh became something different from a laugh. In the past five terrible hours, he had more than once come close to tears but had repressed them. The card ruined him.

Below the printed text, she had written Happybirthday! Love, Holly. Her writing was graceful but not flamboyant, neat.

In his mind’s eye, he saw her hand as she held the pen. Her hands looked delicate, but they were surprisingly strong.

Eventually he recovered his composure by remembering the strength of her fine hands.

He went to the kitchen and found Holly’s car keys on the pegboard by the back door. She drove a four-year-old Honda.

After retrieving his cell phone from the charger beside the toaster oven, he went outside and moved his truck to the garage at the back of the property.

The white Honda stood in the second bay, sparkling because Holly had washed it Sunday afternoon. He parked beside the car.

He got out of the truck and shut the driver’s door, and stood between the vehicles, sweeping the room with his gaze. If anyone had been here, they would have heard and seen the truck approaching, would have had ample warning and would have fled.

The garage smelled vaguely of motor oil and grease, and strongly of the grass clippings that were bundled in burlap tarps and mounded in the bed of the pickup.

He stared at the low ceiling, which was the floor of the loft that overhung two-thirds of the garage. Windows in the higher space faced the house, providing an excellent vantage point.

Someone had known when Mitch had come home earlier, had known precisely when he had entered the kitchen. The phone had rung, with Holly on the line, moments after he had found the broken dishes and the blood.

Although an observer might have been in the garage, might still be here, Holly would not be with him. He might know where she was being held, but he might not know.

If the observer, whose existence remained theoretical, knew where Holly could be found, it would nevertheless be reckless for Mitch to go after him. These people clearly had much experience of violence, and they were ruthless. A gardener would not be a match for any of them.

A board creaked overhead. In a building of this vintage, the creak might have been an ordinary settling noise, old joints paying obeisance to gravity.

Mitch walked around to the driver’s door of the Honda, opened it. He hesitated, but got in behind the steering wheel, leaving the door open.

For the purpose of distraction, he started the engine. The garage door stood open, eliminating any danger of carbon-monoxide poisoning.

He got out of the car and slammed the door. Anyone listening would assume he had pulled it shut from inside.

Why he was not at once backing out of the garage might puzzle the listener. One assumption might be that he was making a phone call.

On a side wall were racked the many gardening tools that he used when working on his own property. The various clippers and pruning shears all seemed too unwieldy.

He quickly selected a well-made garden trowel formed from a single piece of machined steel. The handle featured a rubber grip.

The blade was wide and scooped and not as sharp as the blade of a knife. It was sharp enough.

Brief consideration convinced him that, although he might be able to stab a man, he should select a weapon more likely to disable than to kill.

On the wall opposite from the gardening implements, other racks held other tools. He chose a combination lug wrench and pry bar.

12 (#u59dfd530-e91d-5f2e-b5a8-9f6f571e2586)

Mitch was aware that a kind of madness, bred of desperation, had come over him. He could bear no more inaction.

With the long-handled lug wrench clutched in his right hand, he moved to the back of the garage where steep open stairs in the north corner led in a single straight flight to the loft.

By continuing to react instead of acting, by waiting docilely for the six-o’clock call—one hour and seven minutes away—he would be performing as the machine that the kidnappers wished him to be. But even Ferraris sometimes ended in junkyards.

Why Jason Osteen had stolen the dog and why he, of all people, had been shot dead as an example to Mitch were mysteries to which no solutions were at hand.