The Sudden Dark

Twenty

Wayne's pub didn't open until three o'clock—another hour or so—but he was inside setting up, cleaning the glasses, downturning the chairs from their places on the tables. He turned and looked at us as I walked inside with Maddie at my tail.

'Max—what's the...'

I didn't answer him. I turned to Maddie. 'Go ahead,' I said to her. 'Show us.'

She took a long breath, and avoided Wayne's curious eye contact. 'The back room,' she said quietly.

'The safe?' I said

Wayne was turning attention between the two of us with rapid speed as he came from around the bar. 'What about it?' he said, his voice carefully raising. 'Maddie—Where's Kit? What's going on?'

'We don't know yet,' I said. 'But Maddie has another connection to the whole bloody thing that she's waiting to show us.'

She went across the room and into the back; Wayne and I followed. There in its place under the desk was the safe, still with its deep drill marks etched across its face like pitted rust. She pulled open the door of the safe and stood up again. The three of us looked at a deep stuffing of cash inside.

Wayne's face went lax in bewilderment. He turned to us but couldn't seem to say anything.

I looked to Maddie. 'When did you sneak this in?' I asked.

'A couple days after Kit went missing,' she said.

Wayne said, 'After the robbery?'

She nodded. 'I knew how to get in. I just came after closing and stuck it all inside.'

I scoffed a little, involuntarily. 'You didn't think anyone would find it in there?'

'Did you?' she said. 'I mean, who the hell would look inside a broken safe? It's got no use. Plus, if Wayne did look inside and find it, I just assumed he'd assume it had something to do with Kit and wouldn't say anything about it to protect him.'

There was a silence. 'She's got a point,' I accepted discreetly.

'I don't...fucking believe it...' Wayne was still shaking his head. 'But what about Kit? What about the money he did steal from me?'

'All I've got is a hypothesis on that,' I said. I stood back at the head of the room and tried to wipe my raging head clear enough to make sense of anything.

I said, carefully, 'This is what we know: Kit was working as muscle for three lowlife heroin pushers named Rusty Mclaughlin, Frank Sumner, and Clive Reed. Frank and Clive convinced Kit to kill Rusty somehow to get him out of the picture—maybe they threatened him, maybe they convinced him that with Rusty out of the picture things would be sweeter and Kit might be in on their split. And Kit would want that split to make it away with Maddie. So Kit must've been in a hell of a bind with the whole thing.

'What I'm guessing happened is that Kit convinced Rusty that he'd brought you in on the whole thing as well. Maybe he told him that their split stash of money was being kept here instead of at Frank's club so they could plan a joint robbery of it. I think that Kit was planning on killing Rusty here on that night so it would just look like a robbery gone wrong. The police wouldn't know about the lie. They'd just find a body in a break-in and put two-and-two together.

'But, what happened next is still up to conjecture. All we know is that something bad happened during the robbery, Kit was put on the run, and Rusty turned against his partners. What I think is that Rusty double-crossed Kit in here for the entire score—knocked him out once they made it inside with the intention of getting rid of him away from here. Kit didn't even get a chance to use the code he stole. Rusty drilled the safe open on his own, but instead of finding the million dollars inside, he only found your nine thousand. Then it's just a question of Kit scrambling to make it away from him with his life still intact.

'In the meantime, Maddie stole the real stash from the Shooting Star with the intention of using it to run away with Kit, but couldn't find him because he was too scared. He was alive, but so was Rusty. Maddie stashed it here to keep it safe—the last place anyone would suspect—while Rusty went around tying up his loose ends and looking for the money himself.'

'But Kit was the one who killed Frank,' Wayne said. 'I saw him.'

'Because Kit bungled the job and drew attention to everyone after you asked me to look into it all. Frank wanted revenge, but Kit managed to one-up him, probably using the gun he was supposed to kill Rusty with. Then Rusty tracked Maddie down and killed Clive on his own. Now he's looking for Kit to finish things off.'

'So where's Kit?' Wayne said desperately.

I could do nothing but shake my head. 'That's the one thing we don't know,' I said. 'He had a flat he was renting with Maddie, but I doubt he'd be there now, especially if he knows Clive was killed there.'

It was all a summation worthy of a low-rent Hercule Poroit. I calmed my breath and looked at Wayne for a reaction. Then I noticed that Maddie was out of the room.

I stepped out and back into the pub, and found her a few paces ahead. She was icily still. She was looking at the blare of sunlight in the open front door, and the hazy shade of dark light trapped within it that almost looked like a person.