Page 35 of The Chain

She crawls toward the wrench under the boiler. The chain on her left wrist tightens and when she stretches herself like Mister Fantastic, she is about three feet away. She climbs back into the sleeping bag and does some calculating. She can maybe move the oven another foot tonight. It will probably take another full night to get the wrench, but get it she will.

She’s elated. She has a plan, and now she has a way to implement it. It might get her killed. But doing nothing might get her killed too.

23

Friday, 4:20 a.m.

Poseidon Street is a little bit outside Beverly Town Centerand close to the water. It’s a typical New England tree-lined suburban road, a neighborhood of small two-story colonials with tiny windows and steep roofs sitting uneasily beside newer houses with larger footprints and bigger windows. Number 14 Poseidon Street, where the Dunleavy family lives, is one of the newer homes, a three-floor faux-Georgian oak-frame job painted a retro mustardy brown. In the front yard, there’s a beautiful red maple tree to which a swing has been attached. In the ambient street light, you can see children’s toys, a football, and a catcher’s mitt lying on the grass.

Rachel and Pete have parked on the far side of the street in the shadow of a big drooping willow tree that still has some of its leaves.

They can’t help looking slightly suspicious. Fortunately, although this isn’t the kind of neighborhood where people sleep in their cars, it is the kind of neighborhood where people pretend not to see someone half asleep in a car at four in the morning.

Pete is looking at the Dunleavys’ social media activity on his laptop. “Nobody’s awake yet,” he says.

“Mike will be up in about an hour, then Helen, then the kids. Mike sometimes catches the six o’clock train to South Station, sometimes the six thirty,” Rachel tells him.

“He should drive, there’s no traffic at this hour,” Pete says. “Hey, you know what we have to watch out for?”

“What?”

“GPS tags in the shoes. A lot of helicopter parents put GPS tags in their kids’ backpacks and shoes. That way if they go missing, the parents can find them with an app in a few seconds.”

“Is that for real?” Rachel says, aghast.

“Oh yeah, grab a kid with one of those little buggers, and the FBI will be up our ass before we know what hit us.”

“How do we stop that?”

“I can scan the kid to see if he’s transmitting. And then toss his iPhone and GPS shoes, and we should be OK.”

“Helen seems the type to brag about using that system to find her kids, but she hasn’t mentioned it,” Rachel says, surprising herself with the bitterness of this observation. She remembers that Tacitus line about how you always hate those you have wronged. Or those you are about to wrongin this case.

“Maybe you’re right,” Pete says. “But we’ll check the shoes anyway.”

They watch the house and sip coffee and wait.

No life at all on the street. The days of the milkman are long over. The first dog-walker doesn’t appear until 5:30 a.m.

The earliest indication that anybody is up in the Dunleavy house comes at 6:01 a.m., when Mike retweets a tweet from Tom Brady. Then Helen wakes and begins Facebooking. She Likes a dozen posts from her friends and shares a video about women soldiers fighting Isis in Syria. Helen is a moderate Democrat. Her husband seems to be a moderate Republican. They care about the world, the environment, and their kids. They are harmless, and in completely different circumstances, Rachel could imagine being their friend.

The kids are lovely too. Not spoiled, not bratty, just great little kids.

“Look at this,” Pete says. “Helen has just Instagrammed a picture of the Seafarer Restaurant on Webb Street in Salem.”

“It’s on Facebook now too,” Rachel says.

“She says she’s having breakfast there with her friend Debbie. How far is Salem from here?”

“Not that far. Five minutes, maybe ten if there’s traffic.”

“Not ideal. But a breakfast with an old friend has gotta take a minimum of forty-five minutes, right?”

Rachel shakes her head. “I don’t know. If it’s only coffee and muffins, it could be less. But then again, they’d go to Starbucks if they were just getting coffee and muffins. Why, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that once Mike’s gone and the kids are safely at school and Helen is safely at her breakfast, the house will be empty.”

“And then what?”