by Steven James
Timothy had told her that a young woman disappeared after his previous signing. It shouldn’t be that hard to verify that. It was just a matter of matching a date with a disappearance.
Last night, after ferreting Timothy out of the bookstore, Tessa had gone back in and retrieved his journal. Only after Rebekah had taken out her phone to call the cops did that frantic woman finally leave.
So now, Tessa had the journal and was waiting to hear from Timothy regarding how to get it back to him.
Then there was also the whole issue of her mom’s return.
Yeah, of course, it was good to have her back home again, but there was something serious eating away at her. Tessa knew her well enough to tell that whatever was troubling her wasn’t just the normal sort of stuff that wears on people.
She was anxious to find out what was up with her mom—anxious in both senses of the word.
Anxious in the worried sense.
And anxious in the urgent one.
After slumping into the shower to try to wake herself up, Tessa returned to her bedroom and gazed at Timothy’s journal, the one he’d read at the Mystorium.
It felt slightly intrusive to have it—like holding someone else’s phone or purse or something.
He was going to get his address to her so she could mail the journal to him, but until then . . .
You shouldn’t read it. That’s private.
But he read aloud from it last night, a voice countered. It wasn’t intrusive to hear him reading from it, was it?
That’s not the point.
Okay, too much to figure out right now. Tessa decided to decide later whether or not to read it, but she did know that she didn’t want to leave it lying around.
It was definitely better to take it along with her to school than risk letting her mom find it here.
She stuffed it into her school backpack with her books.
* * *
+++
Blake stared at Julianne’s body lying on Timothy Sabian’s bed.
“I didn’t kill her,” Timothy declared. “I found her.”
Blake wasn’t exactly sure what to think. “And you brought her here?”
“She was in my basement.”
“Not your car?”
“What?”
“You didn’t kill her when she was in the trunk of your car? That’s where she was in the photograph.”
He held out his phone and showed Timothy the picture of her corpse from the email.
“I don’t know anything about that photo.”
“You tell me that you didn’t kill her or send me her picture. Do you have access to the federal building in Manhattan? To the computers there?”
“I have no idea who sent that to you or how they might have taken that picture. No one else knew about . . .”
When he hesitated, Blake said, “What?”
“There was a man in a car who might have seen us together out by the riverfront.”
“Tell me about this man.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I didn’t get a good look at him. His car was some sort of sedan. But he had duct tape on his license plate. I noticed that.”
“Duct tape.”
“Yes. He saw me. He may have seen her. Maybe he’s the one who killed her and left me the note that she was in my basement. He could’ve also been the one who sent you the photo.”
The earnestness in the novelist’s voice led Blake to believe that he was being truthful.
Well, in that case, it resolved one issue—someone in addition to Timothy might have known about Julianne—but it left the bigger question unanswered: who was behind the photograph?
“Alright,” Blake said. “I want to look over your emails. The sent ones. If I don’t find any evidence that you routed that photo to me, I’ll leave. But if I find anything that leads me to think you emailed me that photograph of Miss Springman, we’re returning to the kitchen, and I’m going to pour you some coffee, now, while it’s still hot.”
* * *
+++
At our apartment, Christie and I found Tessa ready for school.
Christie walked her outside on her way to work, and I grabbed my computer bag and laptop.
It all seemed so typical, so normal, a slap in the face at the harsh travesty of Sasha’s death. Routine. Life goes on. In that mixed curse-and-blessing way, it has to. The metronomic movement of each day pulses past us, pressing us forward, on and on and on until we find death’s unyielding grip has found us too.
Before taking off, I reviewed the work schedules of the staff on duty when Mannie escaped and saw that Thurman had been scheduled to work only half of the day. He might have even been on his way out when he was attacked. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, if anything.
I began dictating my report of what’d happened last night at the Matchmaker’s, then I left to go see Calvin, continuing my dictation on the drive to the hospital, thinking once more of the limping, noseless man and his escape into the night.
63
8:02 A.M.
6 hours left
My friend was not doing well.
The doctors had placed him on a ventilator overnight, and when I arrived, they were removing it so that he could breathe on his own.
I stood in the hallway and spoke with a member of the medical team, out of earshot of Calvin.
“We’re keeping an eye on his blood counts,” she told me soberly. “We’ve done one CT scan, and we have him scheduled for another one later this morning to make sure there isn’t active extravasation.”
I’m no medical expert, but I’d been in this job long enough to know that extravasation meant fluid seeping from an organ.
“What happens if you find that?”
“Surgery,” was all she said.
“Okay.” I gave her my cell number. Calvin didn’t have any family in the area and, although I believed he had grown children, I didn’t think he was close to them. “Text me the results of the scan.”
“I’ll need his permission to do that,” she replied. “Privacy issues.”
Her associates finished with him, and she got Calvin’s permission to keep me updated. Then, as she was leaving, I went into the room to speak with my friend.
Gaunt and sallow, he looked ten weary years older than he had yesterday when we met for lunch.
“Calvin, you’re going to be okay,” I told him reassuringly, as much for my benefit as for his.
“Things did not quite go to plan last night,” he said, reminding me by the idiom that he was English. Then he added weakly, “Not as hale and hearty as I used to be, I’m afraid.”
“You gave those two men a good thumping before the lights went out.”
“Perhaps that’ll teach them to pick on someone their own age.”
I wasn’t sure if Calvin would still be interested in giving us any input on the case, but I left the paperwork beside his bed for him to fill out if he chose to when he was feeling better.
The hum and murmur of hospital sounds floated around us—the soft blip of the machine monitoring Calvin’s vitals, the hushed voices of nurses talking in the hallway, the relentless ticking of the clock on the wall beside the window as its hands made their way methodically around its face.
“Christie sends her thoughts and prayers,” I told him. “She mentioned that she’d like to see you, if you’re up for it.”
“I would very much like to meet her. I still regret not being able to attend your wedding.” He grimaced as he repositioned himself on the bed. “So then, you have the Matchmaker in custody?”
I debated how much speculation to allow myself. “It’s quite possible, yes. None of the people we picked up are talking, but I think there’s enough to keep them on. We’ll see what else we can come up with—besides the assault against you.”
�
��I don’t intend to press charges, Patrick.”
“What? Why not?”
“Time. It is a precious commodity, my boy. With each passing year, that becomes more and more clear to me. I would rather not spend my life conferring with lawyers and appearing in court.”
“It’s not your life, Calvin. It’s just some of your time.”
“Time is life, my boy.”
“Calvin, I—”
He shook his head with firm resolve.
Alright, you can sort all that out later.
I laid a hand softly on his arm. “Okay. I hear you.”
“Good thing you aren’t the one on this bed,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“As I recall, you have a certain reticence towards being poked with needles.”
“I don’t prefer it. No.”
“You don’t prefer it to what?”
“Getting shot. Stabbed. Drowned. Things like that.”
“Minor things.”
“Right.”
After taking a few breaths to regroup, he asked, “By the way, did you ever catch the young man who was bereft of his nose?”
“No. He got away.”
“I see.”
“Calvin, I’ve been thinking. We assumed that Joe from the basement was the Matchmaker, but what if someone else is the true puppet master?”
He contemplated that. “Mr. Noseless, for instance.”
“Yes. He might very well have been much more than the doorman. He limped like the man I chased in the subway. No one from the basement will tell us anything about him. Also, someone killed the electricity down there after he left.”
“That’s not enough.”
“No. Not yet.”
Calvin smiled weakly. “It appears I taught you well.”
“Assume nothing. Test everything—”
“And the truth will rear its head,” he said, finishing the axiom for me.
We sat in silence for a few minutes and, despite the case’s urgency, it felt like the right thing to do. Finally, he patted my hand. “You have work to do. This case will not solve itself while you sit here waiting for me to convalesce.”
“I’ll be back later to check on you.”
“Tell your wife that I’m glad to have her visit anytime, if she desires.”
“I will.”
* * *
+++
Timothy let out a sigh of relief as Blake Neeson finally left.
Though he wasn’t confident it would necessarily do a whole lot of good, he locked the door behind his unwelcome visitor, then leaned a grateful hand against the doorframe.
And then, scratching at his arm, he went to pour the nearly full pot of coffee down the drain.
* * *
+++
Tessa stood across the street from her high school, trying to decide if she was going to play hooky today or not.
She really wanted to know what Timothy had been talking about when he mentioned that woman going missing after his previous signing.
Although she was hoping to find out who that might have been, she knew that searching for the answer at school, either on her laptop or her phone—without getting caught—would be tricky, even for her.
But then again, it wasn’t like she’d never bailed on her classes before.
What would another day of unexcused absences really matter?
She could see both sides—but with her mom being troubled lately, she decided that it would be best not to add to her stress. Plus, there was an English exam that she had but hadn’t studied at all for. Better to pass it than get a zero. She could always slip out during lunchtime if she needed to.
Tessa crossed the street and entered the building just as the tardy bell was sounding.
* * *
+++
I paused in the hospital’s lobby and texted Christie that Calvin was open to seeing her. Maybe you can come over during lunch? I wrote.
Then I perused the online case files to see if there’d been any movement on things while I was visiting my friend.
According to the latest updates, the team was still looking for Julianne Springman’s location.
Yesterday we’d started the search for her, and frustratingly, it was taking longer than we’d anticipated. She hadn’t disclosed her new address to the Detroit Police Department when she left the force, and New York City can be a pretty big haystack to search through for a needle that isn’t necessarily interested in being found.
When I saw that we had a history of her credit card usage over the past two months, I took a careful look at the times and locations of her purchases. People tend to make financial and logistical choices based on trying to save time and money, so their purchase patterns often reveal their understanding of and familiarity with their surroundings and movement spaces.
Functional cognitive mapping is one of the foundational principles of geoprofiling, and now I found a cluster of purchases that narrowed down a two-block possible point-of-origin region in Brooklyn.
I contacted DeYoung and told him to focus the search within those blocks, looking for places that’d been leased within the last three months. “Focus on one-bedrooms that were rented to a single female Caucasian.”
“Consider it done. Where are you?”
“Still at Metro Medical. I was visiting Calvin.”
“How is he?”
“Recovering. And oh, let’s put some more resources into finding the guy without the nose who was at the Matchmaker’s. He might be more important to all of this than we’ve been thinking. Maybe we don’t have the Matchmaker in custody after all.”
* * *
+++
Blake was on his way back to the greenhouse when he got the call.
Before he’d left the novelist’s house, he’d told him, “I have people who specialize in taking care of situations like this, like the one you have here with this dead woman. I’ll have them come by.”
“Why are you helping me?” Sabian had asked him. “What do you want from me?”
“I want nothing from you. But her body, if it is discovered—and the way you’re treating things, that’s simply a matter of time—could eventually lead back to me. We will both benefit if the situation is satisfactorily resolved. Other than that, we have nothing more to discuss.”
Now, on the phone, he heard from Ibrahim.
“The canisters are here,” the Syrian told him.
“Have the chemicals been mixed?”
“Reese was adamant that we not prepare the Tranadyl until the plane landed.”
“I understand. Do it now. Then spray the mannequins down. They should be ready to ship five hours after that. Take all the necessary precautions. Hazmat suits. Use it all. Whatever you need.”
A slight pause. “I thought that what we’re using is inert on its own. It’s only when you snort or shoot up Selzucaine that’s been tainted with it, that it—”
“Better to be safe in this instance than put anything—or anyone—at risk.”
“Yes, sir. I understand. And then we will make a statement that will not soon be forgotten.”
“That’s right.” Blake slipped into the role he was playing of the terrorist mastermind, Fayed Raabi’ah Bashir. “That’s exactly right. One about depravity and holiness.”
“Yes.”
“Allahu Akbar,” Blake said theatrically.
“Allahu Akbar,” Ibrahim replied with genuine fanatical fervor.
From what Blake could tell, Ibrahim still believed he would be around to see the results of the shipments going out. And that naiveté played in Blake’s favor.
After the call, he thought through the route his silent ladies would take after they left the greenhouse: boarding the two semis and, from there, embarking to cities all along the Eastern Seaboard.<
br />
By tomorrow at this time, the product would be on the streets and people around the world would once again fear the name of Fayed Raabi’ah Bashir.
* * *
+++
Hospitals in New York City faced the difficult task of providing enough parking for staff and patients while also keeping out people who were simply looking for a convenient place to park.
Today, the underground garage was about three-quarters full.
I heard from Ralph that the team had pinpointed a location for Julianne Springman in the area I’d suggested.
“Well, then,” I said to him, battling spotty reception, “let’s head to her apartment and have a word with our old friend from Detroit.”
Then my bars dwindled off and I walked toward my car in the tight-cornered, concrete cavern beneath the hospital.
64
9:02 A.M.
5 hours left
Considering the severity of the allegations against Miss Springman, DeYoung hadn’t wanted to take any chances and had sent an FBI SWAT team over to clear the apartment before Ralph and I entered it.
By the time we arrived, they were already on-site.
As the two of us waited somewhat impatiently for them to reconnoiter and breach the premises, Ralph notified me that Greer had been put on administrative leave for his actions in allowing Sasha to go out alone and not requesting backup when he should have.
I understood the administrative leave protocol all too well—I’d walked that path more than once myself—but still, it was unfortunate, especially since we could’ve really used Greer’s help right now with the case.
“And we still don’t know where Sasha’s body is?” I asked.
“No. Greer said she had a tracking device with her, but when we tried to locate it, we got nothing. Blake and his men must have found it and either disabled it or destroyed it.”
“Anything more on the people from the Matchmaker’s basement?”
