Okay, he was shacking up with a girl. Pine wondered who that might be.
On the nightstand was a bottle of Oxycontin that, despite the label, didn’t look to be prescription. Probably street made with other shit in it, like fentanyl that could send you to the hereafter faster than any other synthetic drug known. There was also a wad of cash bigger than her fist, and two burner phones. And a bong with a full baggie of weed sat next to the phones.
Pine looked up and saw the dangling rope. She pulled on it and a set of folding wooden stairs came down, revealing the attic access.
She didn’t expect Vincenzo to be hiding up there, but she wouldn’t know until she checked. Still, she doubted he would have left his gun down here if he was up there.
She mounted the steps and shone her light around. There was no floor, only ceiling joists with pink insulation in between. But as she kept shining her light around, she saw that some large pieces of plywood had been laid over some of the joists. And there were some cardboard boxes stacked there.
The place smelled starkly of age, mold, and mildew, and Pine covered her mouth as she tread carefully over the joists to the boxes.
Sitting on her haunches she eyed the four boxes.
She opened the first one and saw that it contained nothing but old, mildewed clothes.
The next box was full of old photo albums. She quickly looked through them and saw a history of the Vincenzo family from the generation preceding Ito and his brother, Bruno, all the way to Teddy’s time. Evie had been pretty and vivacious. Ito looked reserved and disengaged. Bruno, decked out in a three-piece suit with a yellow pocket square in one photo, looked larger than life, his smile huge, his eyes bulging with delight, his burly arm around his brother, who looked like he would rather be hugged by a python.
The next box contained business papers and copies of old tax returns from the ice creamery business.
The contents of the last box stopped Pine dead in her tracks.
CHAPTER
55
ROBERT PULLER SAT IN THE OFFICE behind a large desk with a computer screen that seemed even bigger. The building was a secure one, the room was windowless, the insides of the walls were coated with a material that would block exterior electronic surveillance, so it qualified as a SCIF. Access to the place was restricted by RF badges, with certain rooms, including this one, requiring retinal portals.
Not many people could get into this building, and even fewer into this room.
Robert Puller was obviously one of them.
He had created algorithms—five of them, in fact—and unleashed them on all the databases at his disposal, which were some of the most exclusive ones in the world. He had also sent his search formulas, like charging armies, into every other database he could think of.
He sipped on a Coke and let both the carbonation and the sugar wash over him. He had been at this for a while now. It was something he was used to doing, but not for the purposes for which he was now doing it.
He stretched, stood, and did some light calisthenics. Though not yet forty, sometimes he felt twice that age. The pressure of his job, plus the countless hours bent over a computer, did not equate to a healthy posture.
His phone buzzed and he frowned. It was his brother.
He said, “What the hell are you doing using your phone?”
“I promised the nurse to be off in under a minute and she told me in no uncertain terms that she was coming to check, so talk fast. Anything yet?”
“If I had I would have contacted you. Now turn the phone off and go to sleep.”
“I got a text from Carol Blum a little while ago. She’s watching a building right now.”
“Why would she text you?”
“She said she wanted to keep me in the loop.”
“Why is she watching the building?”
“Because our shooter is in there.”
“Shooter?”
“The guy impersonating a cop who killed Jerome Blake. His real name is Adam Gorman. He’s head of security for a congresswoman named Nora Franklin.”
“Nora?”
“You know her?”
“Just in her official capacity. She’s the ranking member on Ways and Means. I’ve testified before that committee.”
“What’s your call on her?”
“Smart, dedicated, committed, patriotic.”
“Which begs the question of why she’s got a murderer as head of security. Can you dig up what you can on Gorman? Pine apparently did a fast and dirty, but we need more.”
“Okay. And where is Pine?”
“In her text Carol said Pine’s in Manasquan, New Jersey. She got a line on Tony Vincenzo and is running it down.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can find while I’m waiting for my algorithms to do their thing. Now, your sixty seconds are up.”
“I know, Nurse Ratched just stormed into my room with duct tape.”
The line went dead.
Robert Puller turned back to his computer screen and typed in a search on Adam Gorman. He didn’t expect to find much. The man would have been thoroughly vetted before landing a position with a congressperson. But background checks had been known to miss things. And the government had grown lax with doing them and allowed a backlog to accumulate. So maybe there was something useful that had slipped through.
His first search brought up the basics. Name, rank, and serial number. Puller did think it odd that the man had been a member of the intelligence services for another country before coming here. It was true that Austria wasn’t exactly Russia, China, or Iran. It was a member of both the UN and the EU. A federal republic with a parliamentary-style government, Austria had proclaimed itself politically permanently neutral back in 1955. They obviously did not want a repeat of the Third Reich.
However, a country wasn’t a person, and who knew where Gorman’s true allegiances lay?
He did another search, read over the results, and then noticed something curious buried in the timeline background info on Gorman. He made a phone call to someone he knew in the State Department.
“Hey, Don, it’s Robert Puller. Yeah, it’s been a while. Look, I’ve been doing some digging on something and an issue popped up that I think you might be able to help me with.”
Puller proceeded to tell him about Gorman and the possible issue he had found. His friend told Puller he would look into it and get back to him.
Then Puller turned his attention to the other person: Nora Franklin.
Accessing both databases available to the public and those available only to a handful of people like him, Puller quickly accumulated what looked to be significant material. Taken alone, none of it added up to much. But when it was all put together, Puller sensed something that was important. He sensed a pattern.
Later, his phone buzzed. It was his friend, Don.
“Got what you wanted. It was a six-month period. Best as I can tell Gorman went back to Austria for a sabbatical.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But passport control records don’t indicate that.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Don. “That puzzled me, too.”
“And the airline he flew on after he got overseas was curious as well.”
“Right, it’s a sub of Aeroflot. Is this something we should focus on?”
Puller said, “I’ll let you know the answer to that as soon as I can.”
He clicked off and went back to the search on Franklin. He was looking at two things: financial disclosures and travel, going back fifteen years.
The financial disclosure forms required by the government were, to his mind, a joke. Everything could be placed into ranges. One million to fifty million. Assets could be hidden behind shell companies, or in relatives’ names to avoid having to disclose. There were a million different dodges, and Puller had found that the politicians with the most money and assets worked very hard to hide their wealth. For electability reasons, they would much prefer to have the image of just being ordinary folks working for a l
iving.
What he found with Franklin was a mountain of diversions and inconsistencies. He marveled at the fact that no one had called out the woman on this before. Then the truth struck him: Why would her colleagues call her out when many of them were probably doing the very same thing?
When he looked at the timeline of her history and travel, something seemed to click in the back of his mind. That’s when he digitally laid Gorman’s timeline over Franklin’s. There was only one time period that matched.
A six-month sabbatical that both had taken at the same time. Only Franklin had not flown on a sub of Aeroflot. But she had ended up in Austria. And from there she could have gone anywhere by car or train or private jet, and Puller would have no accurate way to track that. The other thing that stuck out for him was the fact that shortly after Franklin returned to the States, she started her first bid for elected office. She had now won reelection multiple times and had a lofty perch on Ways and Means, and other committees, including—tellingly, for Puller—the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, meaning she was privy to most of the important intel secrets of this country.
A feeling of dread rising up in him, he placed all this in a file and emailed it to Pine. Then he sat back in his chair and wondered what else he could do to help.
A phone call he got a few minutes later answered that question for him.
CHAPTER
56
PINE HELD UP THE PAIR OF PAJAMAS as a whirlwind of memories engulfed her.
They were small, the size for a tall six-year-old, as Mercy had been. They had pink ponies on them. They were the PJs that Mercy had worn the night she vanished. Pine had a matching pair that their mother had bought them, although Pine’s were not pink, but blue.
She held the cloth up to her nose, hoping that it retained her sister’s scent. After all these years . . . there was none. It was just mildewed and smelled foul.
She picked up the packet of letters that had been underneath the pajamas. By her quick count, there were more than a dozen of them, faded and yellowed.
They were all addressed to Ito Vincenzo and had been sent from Leonard and Wanda Atkins in Taliaferro County, Georgia.
She opened the first one. It was dated three months after Mercy had been abducted.
She looked down at the signature at the end of the letter.
Len Atkins.
As she read the letter her mouth kept dropping and her eyes grew teary.
So happy we could give the girl a home.
They named her Rebecca.
The money you sent was a godsend.
And you more than paid me back for saving your butt in Nam.
Take care and we’ll send pictures when we can.
Pine thought, Rebecca? Pictures? Nam?
She tore through the other letters, most of which had a similar theme. They were all dated a year apart. But there were no pictures in any of them.
Ito Vincenzo had apparently given Mercy to another family, the Atkinses of Taliaferro County, Georgia.
Pine did a quick Google search and learned that in 1990 Taliaferro only had 1,900 people spread over nearly two hundred heavily wooded square miles. She learned there were even fewer people living there now, making it the least populated county in Georgia and the second-least populous county east of the Mississippi. She did another search and found that Taliaferro was a three-hour drive from her old home in Sumter County.
Pine inwardly groaned.
You idiot.
She had learned on her trip back to her old homestead that a man she now knew to be Ito Vincenzo had gotten into a fight with her father the very next day after Mercy had been taken. Once Pine had also learned that he had been the abductor, it should have been clear that Ito had taken Mercy someplace relatively close by. Otherwise, he could not have been back the next day to have the altercation with her father.
She tore through the rest of the box. At the very bottom, under a layer of old clothes, was a metal box. Inside were two things: old check registers and a single photo, an old Polaroid.
Pine gripped the photo but didn’t look at it. Not just yet.
It could be one of Ito and his family. But there had been all those photo albums for that. Why put one in here?
She set it down and picked up a check register.
The entries were neat and detailed. Ito had been a very organized man, apparently.
She scanned down the date column until she came to the relevant time period.
There it was. A check for $500 made out to Leonard Atkins. She quickly searched the other registers. She found a dozen more entries for $500 paid out to Atkins.
Five hundred bucks a year for a little girl’s expenses? It didn’t seem nearly enough, not even in Taliaferro County, Georgia. She glanced at the last check entry for the last register in the box. June 13, 2002.
And why had the money been paid at all? If Ito had gotten a little girl for the Atkinses, why hadn’t they paid him, not the other way around?
And how did he even know the Atkinses? They presumably were from rural Georgia, and Ito had spent his whole life in New Jersey. Vietnam?
Pine slowly put down the check register and stared at the facedown photo. The moment of truth had arrived. She felt her adrenaline spike and a wave of anxiety sweep over her with such force that she thought she might be having a panic attack.
If this is a picture of Mercy, what would she look like? Will we still be identical?
Pine had lifted the photo off the plywood floor when she heard a noise outside.
She thrust the photo and some of the letters into her pocket, hastily put the things back in the box, clambered down the attic stairs, and lifted them and the ceiling door back into place. She hustled to the window.
A car’s headlights were pointed straight at the house as a Subaru Outlander pulled into the driveway. Then the driver killed the lights and stepped out. The passenger in the front seat did the same. They were dressed in jeans and ski jackets against the foggy chill.
They both went around to the rear of the Outlander and the lift-gate rose. They pulled out some bags of groceries. The gate light illuminated both their faces.
The passenger was Tony Vincenzo.
The driver was a woman. And Pine quickly recognized her.
Well, well. Lindsey Axilrod had finally turned up.
CHAPTER
57
VINCENZO AND AXILROD CAME IN the front door and went straight into the kitchen with the grocery bags. This gave Pine the chance to move to the top of the stairs and listen. The house was so small their conversation easily carried to her.
“I think this is enough food for now,” said Vincenzo.
“How long do you plan to be here?” asked Axilrod.
“Long as it takes, babe.”
“Aren’t you afraid someone will find out about this place?”
“Only the family knows about it.”
“Hell, Tony, they can check the real estate records. Is it in your dad’s name?”
“I don’t know. But he’s dead now, so I guess it comes to me.”
“You have two houses now, what a big deal you are,” she said in a joking tone.
He laughed. “Come over here and I’ll show you what a ‘big’ deal I am.”
Pine heard Axilrod chortle. “Time enough for that, lover boy.”
“It was cool you came to stay with me,” said Vincenzo.
“Someone has to watch over you.”
“I can take care of myself, okay?” His tone was not joking now.
“Those two cops were talking to your father in prison. Maybe he told them something.”
“He had nothing to tell,” replied Vincenzo.
“Come on, Tony, you told me you went to visit your old man. What did you tell him?”
Pine edged forward a bit. She didn’t like how this conversation was going. Axilrod was digging for info, and Vincenzo sounded like he was totally missing what the woman was doing.
“I don�
��t know, just stuff. Stop with the third degree, okay?”
She snapped, “My ass is on the line here, too. I need to know what’s going on.”
“I’m the one that got chased by this FBI chick.”
“Right, Atlee Pine. She’s definitely trouble.”
“But you took care of that, you said.”
“She killed Sheila, Tony. I told you that.”
“Cops can’t go around killing people and get away with it.”
“It’s the system, Tony. They cover for each other. Cops can kill people and there’s no blowback for them.”
“ ‘Blowback’? Where’d you hear that word, Lindsey? You sound like a spy.”
“The point is, Tony, things are getting tight here.”
“You should let me get to know the people you’re working with.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I can help them, Lindsey. And I want to move up in the chain, okay? I don’t always want to be the low man on the totem pole.”
“Why so ambitious?”
“Look at my old man. He spent his life in the trenches, doing his own shit, carrying his own water. So when things went sideways, there he was; the cops grabbed him no problem. I’m thinking that a few layers between me and them is a good thing.”
“Okay, maybe you’re right about that,” conceded Axilrod. “Let me think on it.”
On the stairs, Pine’s hand slipped to her pistol.
Vincenzo said, “Hell, maybe I can buy one of those penthouses one day.”
“The penthouse is off-limits until further notice,” she said sharply.
“Shit, why? I like that place. And the cops don’t go there.”
“Pine did. She went in undercover and almost wrecked the place. I had to think fast to get around that. So it’s a no-go.”
“So is it really just a perk, the penthouse, I mean?”
“I’m not following.”
Vincenzo said, “I mean, it’s a pretty expensive benefit if it is just that. I know the pill business is good and all. But you gotta push a shitload of it just to pay the monthly fees on that place.”
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