Don't Look Twice Read online

  Don’t Look Twice

  Andrew Gross

  TO MY BROTHERS,

  MICHAEL AND RICK

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Mango Meltdown or Berry Blast?”

  Chapter Two

  The barrel erupted, spitting orange flashes of death and terror…

  Chapter Three

  Jess!”

  Chapter Four

  It took just minutes—frantic minutes—for Freddy Munoz and two other…

  Chapter Five

  Hauck got the gash on his neck looked after, while…

  Chapter Six

  The victim was a federal prosecutor working out of the…

  Chapter Seven

  Wendy Sanger had the bags packed and dragged downstairs. Haley…

  Chapter Eight

  Wendy Sanger sat numbly on the couch, her daughter’s raw…

  Chapter Nine

  The vehicle’s a file one, LT.” Munoz took Hauck around…

  Chapter Ten

  You have any connection to this case, Lieutenant?” Freddy looked…

  Chapter Eleven

  Greenwich Hospital was on the way back to the station.

  Chapter Twelve

  When Hauck got back to the station, Sunil and Munoz…

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bridgeport was just twenty minutes up the thruway from Greenwich,…

  Chapter Fourteen

  The place known as the Tombs was actually the Harry…

  Chapter Fifteen

  Freddy Munoz flipped a cassette into the recorder in interview…

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was after ten when Hauck finally made it home…

  Chapter Seventeen

  It hit him like a fist to the solar plexus.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was the end of a long, crazy Saturday night,…

  Chapter Nineteen

  You don’t have to do this, she said to herself.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ty…” Vern Fitzpatrick’s voice crackled over the office intercom around…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Hauck knocked on the door of the chief’s office, at…

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She was sitting on the bench outside the squad room,…

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was the gun.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Jetta was left in a vacant lot in a…

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Annie was rushing.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Annie was sitting on a stool at the bar when…

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The federal prison in Otisville, New York, was in the…

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Outside, Freddy Munoz turned to Hauck as soon as they…

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The man in the flat tweed cap and Burberry raincoat,…

  Chapter Thirty

  Keith Kramer walked out of the Pequot Woods Resort and…

  Part Two

  Chapter Thirty-One

  This was Hector Morales’s kind of party.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Brenda buzzed in Hauck’s office. “Lieutenant, call for you. Line…

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Wendy Sanger shuffled into the kitchen and stared at the…

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  You believe in coincidence, Lieutenant?”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  When Hauck got back to the station, Munoz jumped out…

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Wendy Sanger was heading back up the walk to her…

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  As Hauck headed back to the office, his cell phone…

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  A return call from Joe Raines of the Pequot Woods…

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Joe Raines put down the phone and stared out his…

  Chapter Forty

  That night, as Hauck was getting ready to leave, Vern…

  Chapter Forty-One

  Morales’s death put things on hold for a while.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  From the thousands of acres of rolling woods ceded to…

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Hauck’s room was large, on the thirty-second floor, with a…

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Hauck ate by himself in the trendy Italian café, then…

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Upstairs, Hauck unbuttoned his shirt, sat on the couch in…

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Hauck opened his eyes the next morning. The light canted…

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  By ten, Hauck made it back to the station. He…

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Hauck sat outside the gray shingled house on Pine Ridge…

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Hauck took the long route back to Stamford on the…

  Chapter Fifty

  Jesus, Warren, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  They cracked another beer and stepped out on the deck.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  It was later—after Warren had passed out and was snoring…

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  The next morning, Warren was just waking up as Hauck…

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Thanksgiving finally came. Without providing the answer Hauck was looking…

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Thanksgiving morning, Hauck woke around eight.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  The answer hit him as he drove along Elm, heading…

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Monday, the first thing Hauck did was meet with Vern,…

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  They met at the Stanwich Country Club, out on North…

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Maybe I’ll have that beer after all…”

  Chapter Sixty

  That same night, a black Lincoln pulled up to the…

  Chapter Sixty-One

  The next morning, Freddy Munoz leaned against the table across…

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Annie Fletcher was at the computer. It was after eleven…

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Freddy located the dealer. He came into Hauck’s office carrying…

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Annie looked adorable.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  The meal came off beautifully. The meatloaf was flavorful and…

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  In a darkened bar called the Alibi, off I-91, south…

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Hauck made it on the road before four, only the…

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Hauck stared at the house a long time before pulling…

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  The neighbors didn’t help.

  Chapter Seventy

  If Brunswick was idyllic, picturesque, Lewiston was its ugly older…

  Chapter Seventy-One

  They went out to the back on a screened-in porch…

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  The twin-engine Cessna 310 lifted off the ground from the…

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  To Hauck, the drive back felt like days. He felt…

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Ira Wachman had put on his Burberry raincoat and cap…

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Hauck exited the thruway at Atlantic Avenue, finally home. He…

  Part Three

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  The same dream left him sweating and awake for days.

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  It was after six that d
ay when Hauck pulled up…

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  The phone continued to ring.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Warren remained there, blood on his shirt, his eye throbbing,…

  Chapter Eighty

  Hauck drove out of town, heading back toward I-84 and…

  Chapter Eighty-One

  He threw a top hat on the roof of the…

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  It took a few calls to set up. Vern was…

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Hauck gazed past Raines’s shoulder at the crowd of milling…

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Stan Taylor drove the Crown Vic away from the Pequot…

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Hauck’s phone sounded as he headed north to Hartford.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  The gated community was named Arapahoe Farms, about twenty minutes…

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  It was going on midnight when Hauck got back to…

  Part Four

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  He thought it was over.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  A week later, Hauck had begun the task of finding…

  Chapter Ninety

  Warren put down his phone. He put the Range Rover…

  Chapter Ninety-One

  A Coast Guard helicopter spotted the wreckage about a hundred…

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  You think you know how the world works, don’t you,…

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  As Hauck approached them, Annie waved to him from along…

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  The week before Christmas, Hauck sat in the Explorer and…

  Epilogue

  Vern?”

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Andrew Gross

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mango Meltdown or Berry Blast?”

  Ty Hauck scanned the shelves of the Exxon station’s refrigerated cooler.

  “Whatever…” his thirteen-year-old daughter, Jessie, responded with a shrug, her eyes alighting on something more appealing. “What about this?”

  Powie Zowie.

  Hauck reached inside and read the brightly colored label. Megajolt of caffeine. Highest bang for the buck.

  “Your mother lets you drink this stuff?” he asked skeptically.

  Jessie looked back at him. “Mom’s not exactly here, is she?”

  “No.” Hauck nodded, meeting her gaze. “I guess she’s not.”

  In just the past year, forbidding new curves had sprung up on his daughter’s once-childlike body. Bra straps peeking out from under her tank top. Jeans clinging to the hips in an “unnatural” way. Gangly suddenly morphing into something a bit more in the range of troubling. Not to mention the newly mastered repertoire of eye rolls, shrugs, and exaggerated sighs. Hauck wondered if the request for an ankle tattoo or a belly piercing could be far behind. “You don’t get to win,” a friend who had teenage daughters once warned him. “You only delay.”

  Jesus, he recalled, it was just a year ago that she liked to get shoulder rides from me.

  “Toss it in the basket,” he said, acquiescing. “One.”

  Jessie shrugged without even the slightest smile, failing to grasp the significance of his offering. “Okay.”

  At the end of the aisle, a man in a green down vest and tortoiseshell glasses reached into the cooler and met Hauck’s gaze. His amused, empathetic smile seemed to say, Know exactly what you’re going through, man!

  Hauck grinned back.

  A year had passed since the Grand Central bombing. A year since the events set in motion by the hit-and-run accident down on Putnam Avenue had thrust Hauck out of his long slumber and into the public eye. In that year, Hauck had been on the morning news shows and MSNBC and Greta Van Susteren, the case rocking not just the tall iron gates of the Loire-styled mansions out on North Avenue, but the financial circles in New York as well. It had turned Hauck into a bit of a reluctant celebrity—the object of friendly ribbing from his staff and the local merchants along the avenue. Even his old hockey buddies, who used to tip their mugs to him because of how he once tore up the football league at Greenwich High, now joked about whether he knew Paris or Nicole, or could get them past the bouncers into some fancy new club in the city on a Saturday night. Finally Hauck just had to step back, get his life in order.

  And keep things on a steady keel with Karen, whose husband’s death had been at the heart of the case.

  And with whom he had fallen in love.

  At first, it had been hard to bridge all the differences between them. She was rich. Hauck was the head of detectives on the local force. Their families, lifestyles, didn’t exactly merge. Not to mention all the attention the case had generated. That in solving the mystery of her husband’s death Hauck had unleashed something buried and now restless inside her. In the past year, her father, Mel, had taken ill with Parkinson’s. Her mother wasn’t handling it well. Karen had gone down to Atlanta to help take care of him, with her daughter away at Tufts and her son, Alex, now sixteen, recruited to play lacrosse at an upstate prep school.

  It had been a year in which Hauck had finally learned to put much of the pain of his own past behind him. To learn to feel attached again. To fight for someone he wanted. He knew Karen loved him deeply for what he had done for her. Still, a lot of things stood in the way. Not just the money thing or their different families and backgrounds. Lately, Hauck had detected something in her. A restlessness. Maybe a sense of wanting to finally be free after being tied to a man her whole adult life, one who had so painfully deceived her. It was always a roll of the dice, they both knew, how things might work out between them. The jury was still out.

  “C’mon,” he said to Jess, “grab some M&M’s; the boat’s waiting.”

  The autumn chill was late in coming that October Saturday morning, and they were heading out for a final jaunt on his skiff, the Merrily, over to Captain’s Island before taking it out of the water for the winter. Maybe kick the soccer ball around a bit—not a mean feat these days for Hauck (whose leg had still not fully healed from the .45 he had taken to the thigh). Grill a few dogs. Who knew how many more of these Saturdays he’d have with Jess. Just getting her up before ten was already becoming a hard sell. They’d just stopped off on the way to fill up the Explorer and pick up a few snacks.

  Sunil, who ran the Exxon station next to the car wash on Putnam, was always a friend to the guys on the force. Hauck always made it his habit to fill up here.

  As they reached the counter, a woman was at the register ahead of them. The man in the green down vest stepped up, his arms wrapped around two six-packs of soda.

  “You guys go ahead.” He waved them ahead and smiled good-naturedly.

  “Thanks.” Hauck nodded back and nudged Jessie.

  “Thanks,” she turned back and said.

  While they waited, Hauck said, “You know, I really hope you’ll come up for Thanksgiving this year. Karen’ll be back.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, Dad.”

  “You should. She likes you, Jess. You know that. It would make me feel good.”

  “It’s not that…” She twisted her mouth. “It’s just that it’s different. They’re, you know…rich. Samantha and Alex, I mean, they’re nice, but…”

  Hauck knew the adjustment had been toughest with her. His daughter felt like a fish out of water with them. Sam and Alex had grown up on rented boats in the Caribbean and on spring breaks flew out to Beaver Creek to ski. She went up to Massachusetts to visit her cousins and once they’d all flown down to Orlando to do the theme park thing. He squeezed her on the shoulder, careful not to draw any attention to it. “Yeah, but that doesn’t make them from Saturn, Jess.”

  “It’s Mars, Dad,” she corrected him.

&
nbsp; He shrugged. “Or Mars.”

  The woman at the register finally finished up. Hauck stepped up to the counter.

  Sunil greeted him with his usual smile. “Lieutenant! So, how is the big star these days? I don’t see you on the TV so much anymore.”

  “That gig’s over, Sunil. They don’t pay me enough.”

  The Pakistani laughed at Jessie. “Pretty soon, we’re gonna see your father on Dancing with the Stars…Doing the tango with some fancy celebrity. I bet you are very proud of your famous father, young lady…”

  “Sure.” Jessie shrugged.

  Hauck put his arm around her. “She thinks I’m famous in my own mind…” He brought up the basket. “So, Sunil, we have a couple of sandwiches and sodas, and we also took a—”

  It was the screech that Hauck heard first.

  Grating. Terrifying. The red truck jerking to a stop right in front of their eyes. The heavily tinted passenger window slowly rolling down.

  Then the man in the red bandana leaning out—not a man, Hauck recalled later, barely more than a boy—extending the short black cylinder as Hauck, unable to believe what he was seeing, stared at the protruding barrel.