Return of the Reaper novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Abel

At his old broker's pawnshop Doyle sets one rule, nobody dies tonight, and follows a van plate to the Cavanagh tow yard.

The pawnshop on Broadway had its CLOSED sign up, and the lights were on anyway.

Doyle knocked twice, paused, and knocked once more.

It was the old pattern, and he was ashamed of how fast his hand remembered it.

Bolts slid back inside.

Abel Moss opened the door in a cardigan with leather patches on the elbows and looked at Doyle's face.

He didn't say hello.

"They took the little one," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Because you are standing in my doorway, and you said you would never stand in my doorway again."

Abel stepped back and let him in.

The shop smelled of brass polish and old coins, the way it always had.

Glass cases held wedding bands, harmonicas and a row of watches that had stopped at different hours.

At the back, behind a curtain, was the room where Abel had once handed Doyle envelopes with names in them.

Doyle had not been inside it for three years.

He went in now and put the steel case on the table.

Abel lowered himself into a chair with a hand on his knee.

"Who?"

"Harlan's son. Cade."

Abel's face went still.

"Cade is not like his father," he said. "Harlan wanted you back for the work. Cade wants you back for himself."

"Why now?"

"Because Harlan is sitting down with the Lowry family this Saturday.

Cade doesn't trust the old man to come out of it as the boss."

"What does that have to do with Lila?"

"Everything. A child is the only rope that has ever held you."

Doyle didn't answer that.

He opened the case instead.

Inside, in gray foam, lay the things he had put away the week Anna died.

Two knives.

A long black pistol with a threaded barrel.

Three pairs of thin gloves.

A roll of black tape, a lock pick set, and a ring of keys that opened nothing he still owned.

Abel watched him look.

"I have a clean gun in the safe," he said quietly. "No history. You'd need it."

"No."

Doyle lifted the pistol, held it for a moment, and set it back in its slot.

He closed the foam over it.

"I'll take the gloves and the tape," he said. "And I want a phone nobody can trace."

Abel frowned.

"You're going to walk into the Cavanaghs' house with tape."

"I'm going to walk in with my hands."

"Doyle."

"Nobody dies tonight."

The old man stared at him.

"That's a promise to who?" he asked.

"To her."

For a while neither of them spoke.

Out in the shop a clock chimed the half hour.

Abel's voice, when it came, was careful.

"I haven't heard you say her name in three years. You've been a decent man in a small apartment, and I was proud of that."

"I'm not proud of anything tonight."

"Good. Then you'll listen."

Abel reached under the table and brought out a flat gray phone, still in its plastic.

He slid it across.

"My number is the only one in it. I've also pulled the liquor store cameras on Tonawanda. I still have a friend who does that."

He turned a laptop around on the table.

The screen showed a grainy night shot of a street corner, then a gray panel van, then a freeze on its rear bumper.

Half a plate was legible, and a sticker on the glass that read the name of a company.

"Cavanagh Towing and Recovery," Abel said. "Lackawanna. They have a yard on Ridge Road, and the van belongs to them."

"Is she there?"

"Not a chance. They'd never keep her where a cop could drive past.

But the men who took her will go back to the yard tonight to hand in the keys.

Somebody there knows where she is."

Doyle pulled on one glove, flexed his hand, and pulled on the other.

The leather made a small dry sound.

It had been the sound of the end of other people's evenings.

"Is Cade there?"

"I doubt it. Cade doesn't dirty his own shoes."

"Then I'll start with whoever does."

Abel stood up slowly.

He crossed the little room and put a hand on Doyle's arm, exactly where the burn scar began.

"There's a farmhouse," he said. "My late wife's place, out in Eden. No one knows I still have it."

"When you bring her back, she goes there first. Not your apartment."

Doyle looked at the old man's hand.

"When," he said.

"When," Abel said. "I never took a contract I didn't think could be finished."

Doyle picked up the phone and the tape.

At the door of the little room he stopped.

"Abel."

"Yes?"

"Anna never knew it was you."

Abel's face changed, just slightly.

"No," he said. "She didn't."

Doyle didn't ask what he meant.

He had no room for it tonight.

He left through the front of the shop and the bell over the door rang behind him.

The night had turned colder, and a thin rain had started.

He climbed into the bakery van, which still smelled of warm bread.

He typed the company name into the gray phone's map.

Ridge Road, Lackawanna.

Ten minutes.

On the dash lay Mister Pie, with his one button eye looking straight ahead.

Doyle turned the owl so that it faced him.

"I'll be quick," he told it.

Then he put the van in gear and drove toward the dark.

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