Page 58 of No Safe Place

“I just noticed it myself,” I said.

“How the hell do they have a roadblock? Where are the real police? Dead?”

I looked at him.

“Wait. You know more about this than you’re letting on, don’t you? Don’t lie to me. What’s really going on?”

I didn’t want to spill the beans, but at this point I realized I would need this guy’s help, so I had no other choice but to trust him.

He was trapped now, too, so what did it matter?

“Okay, Mathias,” I said. “You’re right. I do know more. I held off to save everyone from freaking out. We need to work together here or we are screwed. I mean done. Over. Do you understand?”

“What is it? Tell me,” he said.

“Here’s the story. You know this is a college town, right? Whole area is run by Beckford College.”

“Uh-huh. The big money school with the basketball team.”

“Well,” I said, “the blonde woman with me is the wife of the college president. She’s blowing the whistle about a girl who died last year at the college. Her husband, the college president, is involved and the local Beckford cops including the chief of police helped cover it up. See, so it’s not a drug cartel out there. It’s a hundred times worse. It’s the real local corrupt cops and because we all saw the murder of Big Joe, they are going to come in here and kill every last one of us if we don’t figure something out.”

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Mathias stood mute.

In the silence, you could hear the thrum of the water outside as it came over a fall under the bridge. In the cold, you could smell the water, the metallic edge of it.

I watched his troubled face turn somber.

“That tattoo on your forearm, the anchor,” I said. “You were a sailor somewhere?”

He nodded.

“Royal Norwegian Navy,” he said.

“You ever been in a dangerous storm out at sea?”

“Yes.”

“How did everybody on the ship react? Well?”

“No, there was a lot of panic.”

“How did the captain react? Did he panic?”

“No, he was as cool as a cucumber.”

“Exactly. That was his job. To lie and say, hey, everyone, everything is A-OK, even though it wasn’t. We’re in a storm now, Mathias. A real shitstorm and not everyone is as smart and seasoned or trained as you and me. Add fear, and we’re looking at as many problems inside this place as outside.

“You think that Mario is going to be able to handle the truth? He’s already falling apart. Instead he will try to kill the messenger, namely me. I’ve seen it before. We would be at each other’s throats instead of against the bad guys. I want us all to get out of this. But you can’t save drowning people if they’re flipping out and fighting you and not even believing what you’re telling them.”

“I see,” he said. “I get it. You were keeping up morale.”

He shook his head sadly as he absorbed what I had told him.

“When I left for this job two months ago,” he said, “my little girl was crying. To make her stop, I told her I would bring her back a present. A pink Red Sox cap just like the one her mother has. Her mother is from Boston, you see.”

I watched his face, watched it fall. He passed a hand through his hair, gripped at his beard.

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