The Safe Man: A Ghost Story

The Safe Man

The house on Shell Island was as its owner had described it over the telephone, large and white with black shutters and wide porches running the length of both the first and second floors. The house had two dormer windows that creased the roofline like eyebrows raised in surprise or maybe anger. The columns that sustained the double layer of porches looked like teeth below those eyes. Brian Holloway parked his van on the left side of the turnaround and got out without any of the tools he would need. It was his routine to meet the client first, survey the job and provide an estimate, then come back to the van for the appropriate equipment if he secured the job.

It took two rings of the bell and a hard rap from the brass lion’s-head knocker before anyone answered the door. It was a man in blue jeans and a sweatshirt. He was barefoot. He was clean-shaven and Brian guessed they were of similar age. Late thirties, maybe a little older. The man had a scowl on his face.

“Didn’t you see the sign?” he asked.

“The sign?”

The man pointed to a small brass plaque posted beneath the mailbox to the left of the door. It said ALL SERVICE AT SIDE DOOR. There was an arrow pointing to the right.

“Uh, no, sorry, I didn’t.”

“I will see you over there. And could you move your van to the driveway on the side as well?”

It was a question but it wasn’t spoken as a question.

“Sure.”

The man abruptly closed the door. Brian walked back to his van, trying to hold back his anger. He reminded himself it was a job and yes, he was, after all, in the service industry. He moved the van to the driveway that went down the side of the house and widened in front of a three-car garage. He found the service door and headed toward it. As he walked he looked across the expansive backyard to the view of the open bay.

The same man from the front door opened the service door before he got there.

“Are you Mr. Robinette?” Brian asked, though he recognized him from photos on the back of his books.

“Yes, that is right. You are the safe man, I assume?”

“Yes, sir.”

Brian could see Robinette eyeing his van. He realized he had forgotten to attach the magnetic signs to the side panels. He worked out of his house—his garage, actually—and neighbors complained about having a commercial van parked there all the time. So he painted the van a pleasing pale blue and went with magnetic signage. The problem was he often forgot to put the signs on when he went out on a call.

“Don’t you have any tools?” Robinette asked.

“I like to look at the job first, then figure out what I need,” Brian replied.

“Follow me, then.”

Robinette led him down a back hallway that went through a kitchen that looked as though it had been designed to serve a restaurant or maybe Noah’s Ark. He counted two of everything: ovens, stoves, sinks, even dishwashers. They moved through a vast living room with three separate seating areas and a massive fireplace. Finally, they came to a library, a room smaller than the living room but not by much. Three of its walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves. The books were bound in leather and the room smelled musty. There were none of the bright colors Brian saw on book jackets whenever he went into a bookstore. He didn’t see any of Robinette’s books on the shelves.

In the center of one end of the room was a large mahogany desk with a computer screen on it. A bust of Sherlock Holmes sat on a stack of white paper as a paperweight. In front of the desk was a Persian rug of primarily maroon and ocher.

Without a word Robinette used his foot to flip up the corner of the rug. He then kicked the fold back until the rug had been moved aside to reveal a small rectangular door set in the wood flooring. Brian estimated that it was two feet by one and a half feet. The door was old plywood and there was a finger hole for pulling it up and open. There were no hinges that Brian could see. Robinette reached down and pulled the door up. He then used both hands to lift the plywood inset out.

The opening revealed another door, a few inches below—the black steel facing of a safe with dusty gold filigree at the edges, a brass combination dial, and a hammered-steel handle. Robinette crouched next to the opening and reached down and gave the steel handle a solid tug, as if to show Brian it was locked.

“This is it,” he said. “Can you open it?”

Brian crouched down across the opening from Robinette and looked at the box. He could see writing in gold script beneath the combo dial. He braced his hands on the floor and leaned down closer to read it. It looked like it said Le Seuil but he wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that he didn’t recognize the safe or its manufacturer, let alone know how to pronounce its name. He gave the dial a turn just to see whether it was frozen, and it turned smoothly. That wouldn’t be a problem. He straightened up until he was kneeling on the floor next to the opening.

“I don’t recognize the make offhand,” Brian said. “In a perfect world I’d have a design schematic. It always helps to know what you’re getting into. But don’t worry. I can open it. I can open anything.”

“How much will it cost?”

“Unless I find it in one of my books, it’s probably going to be a double drill. I charge one-fifty for the first and a hundred for the second.”

“Jesus. You’re killing me.”

“I might get lucky with the first drill. You never know.”

“Just do it. I want that thing open. Too many people have seen it.”

Brian wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

“Do you have any idea how old this thing is?” he asked.

“The house was built in ’twenty-nine. I assume that it came with it.”

Brian nodded.

“You said on the phone you just bought this place?”

“That’s right.”

“The former owner didn’t give you the combo?”

“Do you think you’d be here if he did?”

Brian didn’t answer. He was embarrassed by his stupid question.

Robinette continued as if he had not asked a question. “It was an estate sale. The old man who lived here died and he took the combination with him. Nobody even knew there was a safe until I had the floors redone before moving in. Now all the painters, the electricians—everybody who was working on this place to get it ready—knows I have a safe in here. You ever read In Cold Blood?”

“I think I saw the movie. That’s the one with Robert Blake playing a killer before he supposedly became a real killer, right?”

“That’s right. It’s the one where they kill a whole family to get to the fortune in the safe. Only there isn’t any fortune. Every one of those workers who was in here went out and told who knows who about the safe I’ve got in here. I started having dreams. Me with a gun to my head, being told to open up a safe I don’t know how to open. I know these guys. I write about them. I know what they’re capable of. I’ve got a daughter. I want that safe open. I don’t even want a safe. I don’t have anything to put in it.”

Brian had never read one of Paul Robinette’s novels, but he knew before he ever saw the house that he was successful. He’d seen stories about him in the local papers and national magazines. He’d seen a couple of the bad movies based on the books. Robinette wrote crime novels that were bestsellers, though Brian didn’t think there had been a new book in the stores in a long while. Brian was willing to accept him as an amateur expert on the criminal mind. But he didn’t think that qualified Robinette as an expert on the character of painters and electricians and floor refinishers.

“Well, Mr. Robinette, whatever the reason, I will get it open for you.”

“Good. Then after you get it open, can you get it out of here?”

“The whole safe?”

“That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

Brian looked down at the edges of the safe. The steel framing went under the flooring. He was pretty sure the houses out on the island were built on fill—the coral and shells dredged up to dig the barge channel leading to the phosphate plant.

“You’ve got no basement here, right?” he said. “No way under the house?”

“No, no way.”

“Then it looks like I’d have to tear up the floor. It goes over the lip of the box. This wood is so old you’d never match it. But I guess you could keep it covered with the rug.”

“No, I don’t want to tear up the floor. I’ve spent enough on the floor. What about the door? Can you just take it off? I could leave it with just the plywood on top, cover it back up with the rug.”

“Once I get it open I can take it off if you want. But why? You might as well just leave it unlocked.”

“Three words: In Cold Blood. Things could go wrong. I want the door taken off. Go get your tools.”

“Yes, sir.”

Brian started out of the room.

“Excuse me. Are you being sarcastic?” Robinette asked.

Brain stopped and looked at him.

“Uh, no sir. I’m just going to get my tools. By the way, it’s going to get really loud in here when I start drilling and hammering. It might last a while, too—depending on the thickness of the front plate.”

“Beautiful. I’ll work in the upstairs study.”

In the van Brian looked through all his manuals and catalogs for a listing on Le Seuil or anything close to it. He found nothing. He called Barney Feldstein, who worked in San Francisco and was the most knowledgeable box man he knew, and even Barney had never heard of the maker. He put Brian on hold and checked the archives of the Box Man website. When he came back on, he had nada.

What Brian wished was that he could talk to his old man about it. If anybody knew the safe maker, it would be him. But that was impossible. It took a request from a lawyer to set up a phone call, and a letter was useless. He needed advice right now. Resigned to the idea that he would go in blind, he gathered his tools and went back into the house. Robinette was still in the study. He was gathering some files from the desk to take with him upstairs.

“I couldn’t find anything in the manuals and I called a guy who’s been doing this longer than anybody I know in the business,” Brian said. “He never heard of this safe company either. So I’ll do my best, but it’s looking like a double drill.”

“Explain to me why you have to drill it twice,” Robinette said impatiently.

“I’ve got to pop out what they call the free wheel. It’s the locking gear. To do that I have to drill through the front plate so I can hit it with a spike. With most safes, I know where the free wheel is. I have design manuals. I can look it up. I then come through with the drill, pop the gear, and open the safe. With this one, I’m going in blind. I’ll take an educated guess but most likely I’ll miss. I’ll then snake it with a camera, find the right spot, and drill it again.”

“You’re sure you’re not just taking advantage of me here?”

“What?”

“How do I know this isn’t some kind of scam designed to get the double dip? Or the double drill, as the case may be.”

Brian was thinking that he ought to pick up his tools and just walk out, leaving the arrogant writer with his unopened safe. You open it, asshole. But he needed the money—Laura was planning to take the option of extending her maternity leave by four unpaid weeks. Besides, he was curious about the safe. He’d have something to post on the website after he got it open.

“Look,” he said to Robinette. “If you want to go out to the van and look in the manuals and try to find this, be my guest.”

Robinette waved off the suggestion.

“No, never mind. Just get it done. Come to the bottom of the stairs and call for me when you are about to open it. I want to be here to see what that old fool Blankenship put in there.”

“Arthur Blankenship? This was his house?”

“Yes, that’s right. Did you do work for him?”

“No, I just knew of him. He owned the plant. His father dug the channel.”

“Yes, that’s right. The Blankenships made this city what it is today. I’ll be upstairs.”

He left the room, carrying his files with him. Brian shook his head. He hated working for assholes but it was part of the job. He turned and looked down at the safe. Every job was a little mystery. He wondered when the black steel door was last opened. He wondered what Arthur Blankenship had put in there.

The first thing Brian did was strap on his kneepads. He then got down on the floor and contemplated the spacing between the combo dial and the handle. He took a piece of white chalk out of his toolbox and marked an X on the door about three inches to the right of the dial on a direct line to the handle. He knew he’d at least be close.

He set the tripod up over the X and hooked the lock-down chain to the safe’s handle. He fitted a half-inch bit into the drill, mounted it on the tripod, and plugged it into a nearby wall socket. He was ready to go. From the toolbox he took out the gloves, safety glasses, and breathing mask, and put them on. Last, he pressed foam plugs into his ears.

The first drill bit lasted twenty-five minutes before shattering. He guessed he had gone in only a quarter inch at that point. He let the drill cool for a few minutes while he drank a bottle of water he got out of the toolbox. He then locked a new bit into place.

The second bit completed the penetration. Brian pulled the drill out and checked the hole. It appeared that the front plate was three-quarters of an inch thick. He unlocked the tripod and moved it out of the way. The drill hole was still smoking and hot. Brian leaned down and blew away the steel shavings that had accumulated around it.

He got the camera scope out of the toolbox, plugged it in, and turned it on. He manipulated the snakelike camera extension, bending it into a curving L shape. He then fed it into the drill hole, keeping his eyes on the small black-and-white video display screen.

Almost immediately Brian saw movement inside the safe. A whitish gray blur moved across the three-inch-wide screen. He froze for a moment. What was that?

He moved the camera in an exaggerated sweep but saw nothing else. Was it smoke? Had he really seen something? He wondered if the camera movement had simply blurred a reflection of the camera’s light off one of the gears or the underside of the faceplate.

The video display had no playback function. It did not record. Brian could not go back to check the movement again. He felt a small tremble go up his spine and neck. He stared at the display for a few more moments and then started moving the scope again. He knew there couldn’t have been movement. It had to have been a reflection or a concentration of smoke left over from the drill-through.

He saw no further movement in the display. But he did see that the safe’s door had no back plate. This, he guessed, had been removed to make the door lighter, since it opened up rather than out. It probably saved fifteen or twenty pounds in the lifting.

Since the back plate was missing, Brian knew he could use the scope to see into the cavity of the safe and check its contents ahead of Robinette. He pulled the tool out of the drill hole, straightened it, and then snaked it back in. The camera’s light reached all corners of the safe. Brian saw that it was empty, save for the layer of dust that had gathered over time at the bottom.

“No treasure today,” Brian said to himself.

He once more removed the scope, reconfigured it, and then fed it back into the hole. By moving the scope, he was able to view the internal workings of the safe’s locking mechanism. He was surprised. He counted nine gears. Most safes had three or four at the most. Never nine. He knew that when he posted a report on this job on the site, other box men would not believe him. He decided he would go out to the van and get his digital camera after he got the safe open. His plan would be to post a report on the site and then once the doubters posted their negatives, he would upload a few photos—count ’em, nine gears—and put them all in their place.

He refocused on the work and quickly identified the free wheel—the gear that would release the locking mechanism when popped loose. He measured its location on the front plate. Once more he marked the surface with chalk and pulled the tripod into place.

The second drill-through cost him three bits, and by the end his drill smelled like it was burning up inside. This door was—in box man’s parlance—a Dutch Treat, meaning the costs of broken or damaged equipment made the job a barely break-even proposition. Brian knew there was no way he’d be able to ding Robinette for the burned-out drill and the bits. He’d be lucky if the writer even paid him the extra hundred for the second drill-through.

He got the spike and the mallet out of the toolbox. He slid the spike into the second drill hole and felt it click against the free wheel. He raised the mallet to strike it but then stopped. He remembered that Robinette wanted to witness the opening of the safe.

Brian stood up. His shirt was sticking to his back and perspiration had popped across his forehead. He took off the safety glasses and the mask and blew out his breath. He walked out of the study and found the main hallway and the stairs. It was a grand staircase that swept upward in a curve.

“Mr. Robinette?” he called out.

“What?” came the reply.

“I’m ready to open the safe now.”

Brian headed back to the study. He heard Robinette coming down the steps behind him. He got back into position next to the safe and picked up the mallet. Robinette came into the room.

“Is it open?”

“Not yet. I thought you wanted to be here. Do you want a set of earplugs? This metal on metal gets pretty loud.”

“Can’t be louder than that drill. I don’t want earplugs.”

“Suit yourself.”

Brian started hammering the spike with the mallet, taking short strokes at first and then lengthening his arc when the gear refused to give. Each strike on the spike sent a sharp jolt through his body. Finally, after three full swings, he felt the gear start to give. He went back to the shorter, more controlled swing and hit the spike five more times before the gear broke loose and he heard it clatter to the bottom of the safe.

“Sounds like it’s empty,” he said to Robinette.

“Just open it.”

Brian reached down and gripped the handle and sharply pulled it down. It came easily. The safe was unlocked. He pulled it up and open, struggling with the weight of the steel door, and was immediately hit with the dead air that had been trapped inside for who knows how long. It was cold and heavy. It smelled like someone’s chilled breath.

Robinette stepped forward and looked down. He saw that the safe was empty. Brian wasn’t looking at the contents or lack thereof. He was looking at the workmanship of the gears and the slide bolts on the inside of the door. It was a beautiful job, and Brian found himself admiring the craftsmanship behind it.

“Empty,” Robinette said. “Figures.”

Brian reached down into the safe to retrieve the free-wheel gear from the bottom. He withdrew it quickly. It had felt strange. It had felt like he was reaching into a refrigerator for a can of beer.

“That thing must be insulated. It actually feels cold down there. Feel this.”

He held up the gear. It was ice-cold. But Robinette waved away the idea of touching it.

“So much for the treasure of Sierra Madre,” he said. “All right. Get the door off it, and if you don’t mind and it won’t cost me too much more, do you have something you can clean that out with?”

“I have a Shop-Vac in my van. It’s part of the service.”

“Good. Do it. That dust is already affecting my sinuses. I can’t breathe. I’ll be upstairs when you’re finished.”

After Robinette was gone, Brian went to work on the door’s single hinge. In five minutes he lifted the heavy door out of its spot and carefully leaned it against one of the bookcases. He thought that it weighed more than forty pounds, even without a back plate.

For a moment he studied the workmanship of the locking mechanism again. The nine—now eight—gears were clustered in an interlocking pattern that had to have been of original design. He thought it was beautiful, like a painting that should be on display. Almost like a living organism. He was hoping that Robinette would let him take the door, since he no longer wanted it.

He gathered his tools and took them out to the van. He came back in with his camera and the vacuum, and as he reentered the study, his eyes met those of a young girl who was standing by the opening in the floor. Brian had not replaced the plywood door yet.

“Careful, honey, you don’t want to fall down in there. You might get hurt.”

“Okay,” she said.

She was dark-haired and had a sweet face. Her eyes were dark and serious for such a young girl. She was wearing a dress that looked like it might be a little warm for the summer weather. Something about her was familiar to him—the eyes maybe. He couldn’t place it. He knew there was no reason he would have ever seen her before.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Lucy.”

Brian’s eyes lit in surprise.

“Really? That’s my favorite name for a girl. My wife and I are about to have a baby and if it’s a girl, we’re going to call her Lucy, just like you. Do you believe that? How old are you, sweetheart?”

She smiled, revealing that she was missing a front tooth.

“Six.”

“Wow, I would have guessed at least seven. You’re a big girl.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, listen, I have to do some cleaning up in here and it might get dusty. You should run along now, okay?”

“Okay.”

“See you, Lucy.”

“Bye-bye, Box Man.”

He watched her leave the room, wondering how she knew to call him that. Had her father used the term? He couldn’t remember but assumed Robinette had told her who he was and what he was doing in the house. He listened to her footsteps padding away and then he went back to work, vacuuming out the safe and then taking photos of the safe’s door, front and back.

After loading his equipment into the van, he sat in the driver’s seat while writing out a billing statement on his clipboard. He didn’t charge Robinette anything other than the two-fifty already agreed to. He took the bill inside with him and called up the stairs to Robinette.

Robinette studied the bill as they walked back to the library.

“I ought to retire and learn how to legally break into safes. What’s this come out to, like eighty bucks an hour for using a drill?”

“Hardly. I’m lucky if I get one job a day. There aren’t that many safes that need opening. Most of my work is just plain old locksmithing.”

“Well, I’d say you did pretty damn good today.”

Robinette dropped the bill onto the desk in the library as if he were dismissing it.

Brian said, “I usually get paid upon completion of the job.”

Robinette said, “Well, you didn’t say that before.”

“It is custom in the service industry. Usually I don’t have to say it.”

Brian could tell that Robinette didn’t like that service thing thrown back at him.

“All right,” he said curtly. “I’ll go up and get you a check.”

“Thank you.”

Just before Robinette left the study, Brian spoke up again.

“What do you want me to do with the door? It’s heavy. I could take it and get rid of it, if you want.”

“No, no,” Robinette answered quickly. “I want you to carry it out to the curb and prop it up so it can be seen.”

Brian was confused.

“Sure, but why?”

“Three words: In Cold Blood. Trash pickup doesn’t come until Thursday. That means it will be out there a couple days, and maybe the word will get out that there is no longer a safe in here.”

Brian nodded though he didn’t really follow the logic.

“What’s that old song say? Paranoia will destroy ya.”

Robinette turned fully around to confront him.

“Look, I don’t expect you to understand me or my life. Do you have children?”

“Got one on the way. I’m not trying to—”

“I don’t care what you are trying or not trying to say. Just do your job and don’t worry about my paranoia. My paranoia got me this place and this life. I think in some ways it’s like drilling through steel plates for a living, but I like it better. It’s not as noisy. Now if you don’t mind, I will go up and get you a check while you take that damn thing out to the curb. Okay?”

“You got it.”

At dinner Brian told Laura all about his encounter with the arrogant writer and she told him that Robinette hadn’t had a book out in at least three years. She suggested that maybe that had something to do with his paranoia and arrogance.

“I was reading in one of the baby books about how when babies get constipated, they can be really miserable,” she said. “Maybe Robinette is creatively constipated.”

Brian laughed but said some people are just mean, plain and simple. He thought about the girl he had briefly met in the house. Growing up in that place with that father, how would she turn out? How would she make it through? He wondered where the mother was.

When he got up to clear the plates, Brian first touched his wife’s swollen belly. They were less than a month away. He was excited and scared. Scared about the money mostly.

“Hey, Robinette’s daughter’s name is Lucy,” he called from the sink.

“Does that change your mind about it?”

“Not if it’s a girl. I still like it. And that house? It was the Blankenship place.”

“Really? What was it like inside? I’ve seen it from the outside.”

“It was big. In the kitchen I saw two of everything, even dishwashers. I guess Arthur Blankenship’s old man was the guy who put the safe in. When he built that place with money from the plant.”

After dinner Brian spent time in the workshop in the garage and posted a report on the Le Seuil safe on the Box Man website. On the chat list, he posted a note asking if anyone else out there had ever encountered such a safe and then signed off to go to bed.

Brian dreamed of darkness with swirling motion. Movements like wisps of smoke that then, for just a moment, came together to form a face he did not recognize as man or woman, adult or child. Then it was gone and he woke up.

“What is it?” his wife whispered.

“A dream. Just a bad dream.”

“What was it about?”

Laura always asked about dreams. She thought they were important.

“I don’t know. It was more like a feeling. A bad feeling.”

He got up and walked the house, checking every lock. This was his routine but it wasn’t comforting. He had the best locks money could buy but he knew how to pick and break every one of them. He knew there were other people with the same skills. He could never feel totally secure.

He sat in the kitchen in the dark and drank a beer. He wondered if he was paranoid like Robinette. He wondered if he would become like the writer once his own child was born. He started humming the Kinks song. “Paranoia will destroy ya…”

He took the beer into the nursery and looked around in the dark. The room was completely outfitted and ready, save for the things that Laura wanted to be gender specific. They’d had a disagreement. Laura wanted to know early on whether a boy or girl was coming. Brian wanted to be surprised. So she knew and he didn’t. She had done a good job of keeping the secret.

Brian’s secret was that he wanted a girl. He didn’t want to find out beforehand because he feared if he learned he was the father of a boy, he would lose his edge of excitement, that he might actually become depressed before the baby was even born. The reason he wanted a girl was that he considered his own life and thought that it was too easy for boys to get messed up, to go down the wrong path. With girls there seemed to be more two-way streets. They could turn around and come back if they wanted to. With boys it was all one-way streets. No turning back.

Brian picked up a complete-change-of-hardware job the next day. The house was an old Victorian in the Heights. Eight doors, including the garage. All Medeco locks and Baldwin brass. It was a six-hour job. That and the markup on the materials made it a good day. He came home relaxed, a big check in his wallet. He and Laura went out to eat at the Bonefish Grill. They figured that once the baby came, they wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. Might as well do it while they could.

But that night wasn’t perfect. The dream came back. He saw the face form in the darkness again. A face made of cigarette smoke. In the dream it smelled like his burning drill. He awoke and sat on the side of the bed. He felt Laura’s hand caress his back. Being pregnant had made her a light sleeper.

“Was it the same dream?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember any more of it?”

“Not really. It’s just this bad feeling. It’s dread. It’s like I let something loose in the world. Like it was all my fault.”

“What was? What did you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think it’s about the baby?”

Brian laughed.

“No, it’s not that.”

He checked the house again. Making sure it was secure even though he did not feel secure. When he went back to the bedroom he started getting dressed.

“What are you doing?” Laura asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I don’t know. I’m going to take a drive.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I just want to take a drive, put the windows down.”

“Be careful.”

“I will be.”

The phone didn’t ring the next day. No jobs came in. Brian called a foundry in Michigan and ordered drill bits to replace those he’d broken on the Robinette job. He then spent the rest of the morning in the garage workshop, trying to research the Le Seuil safe. He wrote a letter to his father about it. He went on the computer and Googled the name Le Seuil but only came up with a book publisher in France using the name. He checked the Box Man website, but no one had responded to his earlier post other than to say they had never encountered a safe of that brand.

When it was lunchtime he opened the side door to go into the house. Two men were standing there. They wore suits and dour expressions. It had been twenty years since he’d had to deal with cops, but he still knew the type.

“Officers, what can I do for you?”

“Actually, I’m Detective Stephens with the police department, and this is Agent Rowan with the FBI. Are you Brian Holloway?”

“Yes. Is it Laura? The baby? What happened?”

“Who is Laura?” Stephens asked.

“My wife. She’s at work. She—”

“This is not about her. Can we come in?”

Brian stepped back. Despite the relief of knowing this was not about Laura, he felt the same sense of dread that he had awoken from the dream with building in his chest.

“Then, what is it?”

“Have a seat,” Rowan said.

Brian sat on the stool next to the workbench.

The two lawmen remained standing, their eyes moving around the shop as they spoke. The detective looked like he was deferring to the agent in this matter, whatever it was.

“This is how I would like to work this,” Agent Rowan said. “We’re going to ask you some questions here, and the first time you lie to us we pack it in and put you in a cell to think about it. Fair enough?”

“This is a joke, right?”

“No joke.”

“Then questions about what? Am I a suspect in something?”

“Not yet. We think you are just a witness. But like I said, the first time you lie to us, you become a suspect and we treat you like one.”

“Witness to what? What happened?”

“I said we are going to ask the questions. But let’s start this thing off right by getting everything right. You are Brian Holloway, thirty-nine years old, and you reside in the home that this garage is attached to. Do I have all of that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And your father has spent the last twenty-two years in an Illinois state correctional facility serving a life sentence without parole for the crime of murder.”

Brian shook his head. The sins of the father always visited the son.

“This is about my father? I was nineteen when he went away. What’s that got to—”

“He was a box man, too, wasn’t he? Only he opened boxes for the Outfit in Chicago. He taught you everything you know, right?”

“Wrong.”

“He killed a man who came home and caught him in the act, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t do it. The man he was doing the job for did it. He panicked.”

“Oh, I guess that makes it okay.”

“Look, what do you want? I haven’t talked to my father in three years.”

“Do your clients know that you’re the son of Harry ‘Houdini’ Holloway?”

“Look, I run a clean, legal business. Why would I tell someone who my father is? Why would I have to? This isn’t Chicago and I’m not my father.”

“Where were you last night?” Stephens asked, suddenly joining in, changing the direction of things.

Brian started to think. Maybe the whole thing was choreographed. Maybe it wasn’t about the old man. Maybe it was all misdirection and sudden change.

“Last night? I was here. I was home.”

“From when till when?”

“Um, I got home around three yesterday and I did some work in here and then my wife and I went out for dinner and we got home about eight-thirty and that was it. We stayed home after that.”

“Okay, eighty-thirty until when? When was the next time you left?”

Brian hesitated. He looked at their faces, wondering what had happened and how much they knew. Cops always had the advantage. He knew this. His father had always said that when it came to cops, to lie was to die.

He shook his head.

“Until now. I haven’t left yet.”

Each of the men in front of him visibly stiffened and their faces took on a stony resolve.

“Turn around,” Stephens said. “Assume the position. Your dad probably taught it to you, too.”

Instead Brian raised his hands as if to stop their advance on him.

“Okay, look. I took a drive last night. I was gone less than a hour.”

“When last night?”

“I never looked at the clock. I woke up, couldn’t sleep, and took a drive. It was the middle of the night.”

“And you never looked at the clock in the car, huh?”

“No, I took my van. The clock in it doesn’t work and I forgot to put on my watch.”

“Where did you go on your drive?”

“I just drove around. All over the place. I even went over the bridge and cruised around the island.”

Brian knew he had to give them that. He knew they had something. It must be the electronic toll pass on the van’s windshield. There would be a record of him crossing the bridge.

“Why the island? What did you do while you were there?”

Brian let out a deep breath. They were cornering him. He didn’t understand this. The FBI doesn’t come around for stealing trash. There was something else going on.

“All right, listen, I’ll tell you everything. The other day I had a job out on the island. I opened an old safe for a guy and the client had me take the door off the box and carry it out to the curb for trash pickup. He said the pickup wasn’t for a few days. So last night I went back by his place and I took the door. It would’ve been picked up this morning anyway. It’s not stealing. He put it out for trash pickup. To him it was trash.”

“And why did you take it?”

“Because until I was there I had never seen or heard of that safe or its maker and I wanted to study it. Maybe practice on it a bit. Besides, it’s a museum piece. I didn’t want it thrown away.”

“Where is it?”

Brian pointed to an object beneath an old mover’s blanket that was leaning against the opposite wall. Rowan walked over and lifted up the blanket for a look. He then dropped the cloth back down and looked at Brian.

“It was not a crime to take it,” Brian said. “It was trash.”

“So you say.”

“Look, what is going on? Why are you here? Did Robinette say I stole his door? Is that what this is about? I know the guy’s famous, but do they really send the FBI out on a call like that?”

“No, they don’t.”

“Then, what is this?”

There was a pause and the lawmen looked at each other for a moment before Stephens spoke.

“We’re not worried about you stealing Robinette’s trash. We’re wondering if you stole his daughter.”

“What?”

“His daughter, Mr. Holloway. She’s disappeared.”

Brian thought of the little girl with dark, familiar eyes and the winter dress in the middle of the summer.

“He said I took his daughter?”

“It doesn’t matter what he said. We have to check everybody out. You were the last person other than the family to be in that house. We understand that you and Mr. Robinette didn’t get along so well. So we’re starting with you.”

Brian’s chest felt as though his lungs were filling with wax. They were becoming heavy and hard. Again he thought of the little girl standing precariously at the edge of the safe. It was like she had been waiting there for him.

“Did you check the safe?” he suddenly asked.

“What do you mean?” Rowan asked.

“The safe in the library. When I was there she came in and was standing by the safe. Maybe she…I don’t know, maybe after I left she went back to it. There’s no door, but there was a piece of the flooring that covered it and that I put back in place.”

Rowan glanced at the shape of the safe’s door beneath the blanket. He then glanced at Stephens and another silent communication passed. Stephens turned and walked out of the garage.

Rowan looked back at Brian.

“The safe would be kind of small, wouldn’t it?”

“The box was pretty deep. It went down at least a foot and a half.”

“You said she came into the library?”

“I went out to my van to get the vacuum and when I came back, in she was just standing there.”

“What did she say to you?”

Brian thought for a moment. He tried to remember all the details. He was filling with fear for the little girl.

“She just told me her name and I asked how old she was. I told her she looked older. She said her name was—”

“Why would you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Ask the girl how old she was.”

Brian shrugged.

“I don’t know. I guess because we’re about to have a kid—my wife is eight months along—and, I don’t know, I never really thought about the ages of children before. Now I do.”

Rowan took a few moments to grind over the answer. Brian shifted his weight on the stool and started pumping his knee.

“Mr. Holloway, you seem agitated. Is something wrong?”

“Of course, there’s something wrong. That girl is missing and I just have a bad feeling about it. Look, I had nothing to do with it. You’re wasting your time. So do what you have to do with me and get it over with. I’ll take a lie detector, if you want. You can go search my van, too. Just get past me and go find her. Before it’s too late.”

Rowan seemed to be taken aback.

“What do you mean, ‘before it’s too late’?”

“Isn’t that how these things always end up?”

Before Rowan answered, Stephens came in. He looked at his partner and then at Brian.

“Safe’s empty.”

“Mr. Holloway has volunteered to take a poly,” Rowan said. “We can also take a look in the van.”

Stephens nodded.

“What about your home?” Rowan said. “Can we look around inside?”

Brian flashed on the bag of stale dope in the bedroom dresser. Laura quit smoking when they decided to get pregnant. Out of fairness he had stopped as well and the bag had sat in the drawer with his socks for a year.

“If you’re just going to look around for the girl—closets and stuff—that’s fine. But I don’t want you going through drawers and stuff. Just make it quick. And don’t mess things up or my wife will know.”

“You know what I still don’t understand?” Rowan said. “You’re in there doing a job for Mr. Robinette and you go and ask his daughter how old she is. Why is that?”

“I don’t know. I told you. I wondered how old she was. What else do you ask? She was a cute girl and I wondered how old she was. I’m sort of hoping that we have a girl and so…that’s all.”

“You said was,” Stephens said.

“What?”

“You said she was a cute girl. Why’d you use the past tense? Is there something you want to tell us?”

Brian shook his head.

“Look, you’ve got this wrong and you’re wasting time. Don’t do this. You should be out there looking for—”

“Mr. Holloway,” Rowan said, “I think we are going to take you up on your kind offer to allow us to look around here and maybe bring you down to the station to set up a polygraph. Your offer is still good, right?”

They kept him in a small, windowless, and—it seemed to him—airless room. There was no clock on the wall and he lost track of time. He was thinking about the girl he had seen by the safe. Lucy. They came in from time to time to talk to him, to ask him the same questions over and over. But unsatisfied with his answers, they would leave again. He could tell it was dark outside. He could sense it. It had been at least that long.

Finally, the door came open again and Stephens looked in.

“You have ten minutes,” he said.

“What?”

Stephens backed away from the opening and then Laura appeared. Hesitantly, she stepped into the room and the door was closed behind her.

“Brian? What is going on? I came home and they were in our house. They had a search warrant. What did you do?”

He shook his head.

“I didn’t do anything. Robinette’s daughter is missing and they think I took her. All I did was talk to her.”

“You talked to her? When?”

“That day. I told you at dinner.”

“No, you told me she had the same name we picked. You didn’t say you talked to her.”

“She came in where I was working. I asked her what her name was and how old she was and that was it. I told her I had to get to work. She left and I never saw her again. That’s it.”

She slid into the seat across the table from him. She never took her eyes off him.

“Did you tell them this?”

“Yes, I told them a hundred times. They’re wasting their time with me when they should be out looking for her. If you ask me, they ought to be talking to Robinette instead of me.”

Laura put her hand on her abdomen, as if calming the baby inside. She started rocking in her chair.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe this,” she said.

“Neither can I,” Brian said.

He reached a hand across the table and she put her other hand on top of it.

“Have you asked for a lawyer?”

“No, I don’t need a lawyer. I didn’t do anything.”

“Brian, just tell me. Did you take that girl anywhere?”

He pulled his hand back from her. His mouth came open and it was a moment before he found his voice.

“Laura?”

“Where did you go when you got up last night? You’ve been acting weird all week. What is going on with you?”

“They sent you in here, didn’t they? They convinced you out there and sent you in here to—”

“No, Brian, you’re wrong. You’re being paranoid. I just want to know what is going—”

The door to the small room suddenly came open and Rowan stepped in.

“Mr. and Mrs. Holloway, you can go on home now.”

“What do you mean?” Laura asked.

Brian started to push back his chair.

“We found her,” the agent said in a matter-of-fact tone. “We want to thank you for your cooperation but you are no longer needed. Have a nice evening.”

Brian stood up, a weird mixture of relief and anger overtaking him.

“Is she all right?” he asked.

“She’s fine. Patrol just brought her into the station. Turns out she didn’t like moving into the new house.”

He forced a laugh.

“She thinks it’s haunted. So she split. She walked all the way back to her old neighborhood and hid in her best friend’s guesthouse.”

Rowan stepped back from the doorway so they could leave. Brian walked slowly. He was having a hard time understanding what Rowan had just told them. He was having a hard time dealing with what his wife had just asked him as well.

“That girl found her way back to her old house?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Rowan said. “Step this way and I’ll get you back your property. Then you’ll be out of here.”

Brian was led down the hallway and into a large squad room. There were several detectives working at desks and moving about. Across the room was another room separated by a glass wall. He could see a boardroom table in there. Sitting at the table were Detective Stephens and a girl. She was maybe thirteen years old. She looked like she was crying.

Rowan went to his desk and got a manila envelope out of a drawer. He handed it to Brian. It had his wallet and keys in it. His loose change. He didn’t bother tearing it open. He just held it as he stared at the girl in the glass room. Rowan noticed his gaze and looked across the room as well.

“She’s okay. She spent the night eating potato chips and drinking soda pop. I guess she had such a good time, she still doesn’t want to go back home.”

“Does Robinette have another daughter?”

“No, just the one. Just Teresa who doesn’t want to go home.”

Brian thought of the dream, of the dread he felt when he woke up from it. The feeling that he had let something loose.

“Teresa?”

Rowan looked at him.

“That’s right. I thought you said you asked—”

“Can I talk to her?”

“To the girl? No, I don’t think that would be proper, Mr. Holloway. Your involvement with this thing is over as far as I’m concerned.”

“I really need to speak to her.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen. Now it’s time for you and your wife to head on home.”

“What did she say about the house being haunted?”

“I’ll walk you out.”

He gripped Brian’s upper arm and ushered him toward the squad room’s exit. They went into another hallway and headed toward the door at the end. Rowan kept his hand on Brian’s arm. Laura trailed behind them.

“You know who owned that house before Robinette?” Brian asked.

Rowan didn’t answer.

“Arthur Blankenship.”

“So?”

“So maybe she’s got a point to why she’s scared. He built the plant. They say the runoff from the phosphate is responsible for all the fish kills. It’s like there’s a big cloud of black water in the bay. Hell, he built this city. He knew where all the bodies were buried. Maybe—”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s going home safe.”

Brian jerked his arm free and stopped. He pointed back down the hallway in the direction they had come from.

“She’s not the one I saw in the house. She isn’t the girl I spoke to.”

Rowan held up his palms in a hands-off manner. He smiled.

“Mr. Holloway, I’ve got a caseload like you wouldn’t believe. This is one of the cases that ends happy, that ends good. Let’s just let this go.”

“And what if I can’t?”

“Then you are on your own, sir. Let’s go.”

He grabbed Brian’s arm again and led him to the door.

They were quiet at first on the ride home. Laura drove. Brian thought about what he had seen in the Robinette house. They were almost home before Laura spoke for the first time.

“Brian, what’s going on? What were you talking about back there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t really feel like talking to you right now.”

“Brian, I’m sorry. They told me you did something to her. They said they had evidence and that you had admitted asking her inappropriate questions. They said it had something to do with our baby. The pressure you are under and how we haven’t had sex. They said they had seen it before.”

Brian shook his head.

“You told them about our sex?”

“They asked a lot of questions. I felt I had to.”

“And you believed everything they said. That I admitted asking inappropriate questions. That I did something to her.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“I was talking to a six-year-old, not a thirteen-year-old. I didn’t ask anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know, baby. I’m sorry. But you were acting strange all week. And then when you went out last night…I just thought…I don’t know what I thought. All I can say is that I’m sorry.”

Brian looked over at his wife. In the darkness he could see that she was crying, doing nothing about the tears rolling down her cheeks. He didn’t do anything about it either.

In the workshop Brian had a message waiting for him on his computer the next morning. It was from a box man in Montreal named Robert Pepin. Rather than publicly post the message on the website, Pepin answered Brian’s posted inquiry with a direct and private e-mail. Though Pepin was obviously French and had some difficulties with English, his message was clear.

Take cautions. I have heard story of the Threshold safe. One box man saw his young brother who was killed. I have not seen for myself. Was it in the floor? This is past on stories. The box man he make mistake to open it.

Brian stared at the message a long time, trying to decipher its meanings. He felt a coldness begin in his center. He knew it was the beginning of fear and the confirmation of something he had felt deep inside.

The message had Pepin’s business number and address at the bottom. Brian picked up the workshop phone and punched in the long-distance number. After three rings it was answered by a machine. The outgoing message was in French and Brian didn’t understand a word of it. But then the speaker switched to English with a heavy French accent. He identified the line as belonging to Fochet Lock and Safe and asked the caller to leave a message. But then he gave another number in case of an emergency. Brian wrote it down, hung up, and then called the emergency number.

The second call was answered after four rings and Brian heard a drill wind down before a man spoke rapidly in French. It was obviously a cell phone and Brian had interrupted a job. He wondered how the phone had even been heard over the sound of the drill.

“I’m sorry,” Brian said. “Do you speak English? Is Robert Pepin there?”

“This is Robert. Who is this, please?”

Brian identified himself and told Pepin he had received his message. He needed to ask him questions. Pepin tried to beg off, saying that he was in the middle of drilling a safe and that people were waiting for him to complete the job. Brian insisted and promised to be quick. Pepin relented and lowered his voice to a whisper when he spoke further.

“What did you mean by a ‘threshold safe’ in your message?” Brian asked first.

“It is the safe you showed. Uh, it is Threshold, the name. Le Seuil.”

He pronounced it like Le Soy. Brian tried to say it that way.

“‘Le Seuil’ means threshold?”

“The Threshold, yes. Like the doorway you have.”

“I understand. And the story you heard—who told you?”

“Uh, the man who I bought from him my business. Fochet. He told me. He told me, ‘If I get the job, NO, do not open.’ And so I tell you.”

“He told you he opened one?”

“A very long time ago, yes. He said big mistake opening that one, yes.”

“Why?”

“Well, he is not saying everything. He is just warning against it, you know? He is saying bad things come out. Like a dream. I didn’t ask. He sound, you know, a little crazy.”

“Is he still around? Is he retired?”

Pepin chuckled.

“He is retired to the cemetery. Mr. Fochet was very old when I bought his business.”

Frustration was welling up in Brian. Everything was like the smoke in his dreams. It formed the whispery outlines of a picture, but there was not enough there to identify it.

“In your message you said the man who opened the safe saw his brother who was killed. What do you mean?”

“Fochet, he had a brother who was killed in the train. An accident, you see. But before that, Fochet open the Threshold safe. On a job. He is saying to me that he saw a man. It was his brother but…afterward. Like he was an old man now. He tell Fochet to watch out on the train. He give the warning. But Fochet don’t know this. He didn’t tell nobody about this. Then a year later his brother he got killed. On the train. You understand? It was a crazy story. I didn’t pay too much attention because I never heard of these safes, and Fochet, he was, you know, a little crazy. His wife make him sell me the business. But then I see you on the website and think, Aha, I better give a warning for this. Just in case, you know.”

Pepin’s English made it difficult for Brian to fully grasp the story.

“Do you remember anything else about the story?”

“No, that is what I know. I tell you what I know.”

“Did he say who made these safes? Anything about the manufacturer?”

“I did ask him this and he say he could not find out. He said it was a big mystery, yes. He tried to learn. The safe came on a boat from France—this is long time ago—and there are no records anymore. In the war the Germans came and destroyed these records. He found nothing, because he was like you, with questions.”

Pepin made a spitting noise in the phone as if to signal the finality and the fruitlessness of searching for the origin of the Le Seuil safe.

“I have my work now,” he said.

“Yeah, okay,” Brian said. “Thank you for your help.”

“You show a picture of the door of the safe on the website,” Pepin suddenly said.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“You took the door off and leave it off?”

“Yes…”

Brian slowly hung up, even as he could hear Pepin’s voice on the line exhorting him to be cautious. He thought about the girl he had seen in the house on the island. He thought he now recognized her eyes. He picked up the phone again and called his wife at work. As soon as she heard his voice, she whispered that she was really busy. She wanted to talk to him but the phone was ringing off the wall. Her job was to take reservations for the most popular restaurant in town.

“Real quick, then,” he said. “I have to know. It’s a girl, right? We’re having a girl.”

“Why are you asking now?”

“Because I need to know right now.”

“I’m not going to tell you. You told me not to tell you.”

“I need to know, Laura. It’s important. Just tell me. Is it a girl?”

There was a long pause before she answered.

“Yes, it is a girl, Brian. You are the father of a daughter named Lucy.”

“Okay, thanks.”

He knew it was a significant moment and Laura was expecting more from him but it was all he could think to say. He put the phone down. He turned away from the workbench and looked at the old blue blanket that covered the door of the Le Seuil safe.

He knew what he had to do.

Robinette answered the door. This time Brian did not go to the service entrance.

“Look,” Robinette said before Brian could speak, “I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you. The police asked me for a list of names. Yours was on it. End of story.”

Brian noticed that there were deep lines under Robinette’s eyes now. He looked weary and defeated, even though he had gotten his daughter back.

“I’m not here about that,” Brian said. “I don’t care about that.”

“Then what do you want? You can’t just show up here and—”

“I want to talk to your daughter.”

“What? No, you’re not going near her. She’s been through enough. We’re moving.”

“I have to talk to her.”

“I’m going to call the police if you do not leave my property.”

“I want to talk to her about the ghost. About the little girl.”

Robinette closed his mouth and just stared. Brian saw recognition in his eyes. It was recognition of something that maybe Robinette wasn’t sure he believed himself. Then he changed when he saw the ploy.

“The police told you,” he said.

“No, the police wouldn’t talk to me. I know because I saw her, too. When I was here I saw her.”

“I don’t care what you think you saw, I want you out of here.”

He started to close the door but Brian put his foot over the threshold and stopped it.

“Her name is Lucy. I saw her, too, and I need to talk to your daughter.”

“Why? She’s been through enough. First she lost her mother, now this. What can you possibly say to her?”

“I can tell her who Lucy is.”

Brian pushed on the door and Robinette moved back without resistance. Brian walked by him and headed to the stairs.

“Where is she?”

“In her room.”

Brian went up the stairs and found all the doors in the upper hallway closed. Robinette called from below.

“The second room on the left.”

Brian went to the door, knocked, and then opened it when he heard someone call, “Come in.” The girl he had seen in the police station was sitting on a bed, her legs folded beneath her, her back against the wall.

“Teresa, right?”

“Who are you? Did my father send for you?”

“No, I just came. I’m the one who opened the safe. I saw the girl that day. She talked to me. She said her name was Lucy.”

Teresa’s eyes widened.

“Then you believe me?”

Brian nodded.

“I believe you. Have you talked to her?”

Teresa nodded.

“What did she tell you?”

“She, um, doesn’t know what is happening. She said she came through the door. That’s all she says about that.”

“What about what happened to her? Does she know?”

“She said there was a pool and she didn’t know how to swim.”

Brian closed his eyes for a moment.

“She’s confused,” Teresa continued. “I said, when did it happen? and she said it didn’t happen yet. She didn’t make sense.”

Brian nodded. It did make sense to him.

“When does she come?” he asked. “When do you see her?”

“I don’t know, anytime. It’s not like there is a schedule. Sometimes I close my eyes and when I open them she’s there.”

“Do you know where she goes when she isn’t here?”

“I think she must go back through the door she talks about.”

“Would that be where she is now?”

“I don’t know. I guess. I don’t see her.”

“Thank you, Teresa.”

Brian turned toward the door.

“Who is she?” Teresa asked.

Brian looked back at her.

“She’s my daughter. She’s coming in a few weeks.”

“You mean she’s not born?”

“Not yet. I think she came through the door to warn me. Now I have to go close the door.”

Robinette was standing in the upper hallway when Brian came out. It was as if he couldn’t venture into his daughter’s room.

“We have to put the door back on the safe,” Brian said. “This all started with the safe.”

“We can’t. The trash was taken yesterday. You put—”

“I have the door. It’s in my van.”

Brian headed to the stairs and started down. As he went, he looked up at Robinette.

“Do you want me to bring it in through the service door?”

Robinette looked at him as if not comprehending the question. Then he spoke in a quiet voice.

“No, that won’t be necessary.”

They were on the back porch of the house. It was a warm night—summer was coming on strong. And Laura with the extra weight and the extra heart beating inside her had to get out of the un-air-conditioned house. They sat side by side in lawn chairs, holding hands. Brian had forgiven her. There were more important things to concentrate on. Besides, he knew the cops could convince anybody of anything. Years back, they had done it to him with his old man, practically had him believing that his father had shot the mark in cold blood.

He had not told her the whole story of his return to the house on Shell Island. He didn’t want to upset her, especially now that it was almost time for the baby. He only told her that he had gone back to see Robinette, to set things right.

“So there might be some money in it,” he said now on the porch. “It could really help us with you taking the extra time off and all.”

“What money? For what?”

“He said all of this with his daughter and the safe and stuff made him think about writing again. He said he has an idea for a story, and since he’ll want to know about safes and being a box man, he’ll pay me for it. Like to be an expert for his story.”

Laura sat up straight in her chair. She was excited by the proposition.

“How much will he pay?”

“We didn’t get to that yet. I’m supposed to go back over there tomorrow. I’ll find out then.”

“Those writers make a lot of money.”

She didn’t say anything else. She was leaving it to him but making it clear she expected him to get a good chunk out of Robinette.

“We’ll see what he says,” Brian said, not wanting to promise anything or push anything.

They were quiet for a moment and then she let go of his hand and leaned forward.

“You know what I want to do?” she asked. “With the money, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Keep paying the bills?”

“No, we should get more than just that. I want air-conditioning, Brian. We deserve that. And then we should put in a pool. I want to go swimming at night to cool off.”

Brian stared straight ahead and off the porch into the distance. He realized that the backyard was just big enough for a pool. Without a word he stood up and went back inside.