His voice is cracking with emotion and he pauses for a few seconds.
“What promise?” I ask.
“I promised you that, as long as you lived, I would never let anyone hurt you. That whatever happened, whatever the consequences, I would always protect you.”
I swallow. “But you should never make promises like that, because it’s impossible to keep them.”
He sighs and rubs his eyes to wipe away the tears he can’t hold back. Then he takes a manila folder from his briefcase.
“I did what I could. I did what I had to do,” he says, handing me the folder.
Before opening it, I look at him questioningly.
That’s when he tells me: “I found him, Alice.”
“Found who?”
“Erik Vaughn.”
I am speechless. Dumbfounded. My brain cannot process what I have just heard. I ask him to repeat it.
“I found Erik Vaughn. He will never hurt you again.”
I am paralyzed by an icy wave. For a few seconds, we stare at each other in silence.
“That’s impossible!” I say finally. “Half the cops in France have been searching for him since he went on the run. How the hell did you manage to find him on your own?”
“Doesn’t matter. All that matters is I did it.”
I become irritated. “But you were fired. You’re not a cop anymore. You don’t have a team or—”
“I still have my contacts,” he says, his eyes never leaving mine. “Guys who owe me favors. People who know people who know people. You know how it works.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“I have snitches who are taxi drivers. One of them had Erik Vaughn in his cab near Porte de Saint-Cloud on the evening you were attacked. He left his phone when he realized he’d been identified.”
I feel as if my heart is about to explode. My father continues.
“The taxi took him to Seine-Saint-Denis, in Aulnay-sous-Bois, to a crappy hotel near Place du Général-Leclerc.”
He takes the folder from me and pulls a few photographs from it, the kind of pictures cops take when they are on a stakeout.
“While everyone thought he’d gone overseas, this piece of shit was hiding less than twenty minutes from Paris. He stayed there for five days under an assumed name using a fake ID. He didn’t go out much, but he needed a fake passport. On the fifth day, around eleven p.m., he came outside. He was alone. He stayed close to the walls, head down. That was when I got him.”
“Just like that, in the street?”
“That place is deserted at night. I hit him twice with a crowbar on his head and neck. He was already dead when I loaded him in the trunk of my Range Rover.”
I try to swallow, but my throat is too tight. I grip the metal security bar at the edge of my bed. “What did you do with the body?”
“I drove most of the night toward Lorraine. I’d spotted the perfect place to dump this monster, an abandoned sugar factory between Sarrebourg and Sarreguemines.”
He hands me other pictures. The place looks like something from a horror movie: a series of derelict buildings hidden behind chain-link fences out in the middle of nowhere. Boarded-up windows. Redbrick chimneys that look like they’re about to collapse. Huge metal crates half buried in the ground. Busted conveyor belts. Carts on rails overgrown with weeds. Rusted old backhoes.
He points to one of the pictures. “Behind the storage area, there are three stone wells, built side by side, that lead down to an underground tank. Vaughn’s corpse is rotting in the middle one. No one will ever find him there.” He shows me the last photo—the edge of a well covered by a heavy metal grate.
“This vengeance is ours,” my father says, hugging me. “The case will fade away now, partly because there won’t be any more murders. And anyway, Vaughn has family in Ireland and the States, so everyone will think he’s gone overseas or that he’s committed suicide.”
I hold his gaze, unblinking. I am paralyzed, unable to say a single word, filled with violent and contradictory feelings.
After the first wave of relief comes a sort of blind rage. I ball my fists, digging my nails into the flesh of my hands. My whole body contracts. Tears rush to my eyes and I feel my cheeks go hot.
Why did my father deprive me of this vengeance? Of my vengeance?
After the death of my husband and my baby, finding and killing Erik Vaughn was the only reason I had to stay alive.
Now I have nothing at all.
Part Three
Blood and Fury
16
Tracking the Killer
THE MILES RUSHED past.
Lost in his thoughts, chain-smoking, Gabriel drove with his eyes fixed on the road.
A road sign announced NEXT EXIT HARTFORD, then immediately afterward, there was another: BOSTON 105 MILES. At this speed, they would be at the FBI office in less than two hours.
Leaning her forehead against the window, Alice tried to put her thoughts in some kind of order. In light of recent revelations, she categorized her information, rearranging evidence and facts in imaginary folders in her brain.
One thing bothered her—what Seymour had said about the security camera footage. The camera picked up your license plate, but the inside of the car is too dark to see.
If only she could see those images herself…
Always this need to control everything.
To check every detail.
But how could she? Call Seymour back? Pointless. I went over to Franklin-Roosevelt and looked at their tapes, but you can’t see much, he’d said. Seymour had watched the video, but he didn’t have it with him. That was logical. Without a warrant, he wouldn’t have been able to seize the tapes. He had gone to the parking garage and had to negotiate with the security guy just to watch them.
In her head, she went through her contacts list. Then she picked up her phone and typed in the number for Captain Maréchal, the regional transportation police chief.
“Hi, Franck, it’s Schafer.”
“Alice? Where are you? My phone says you’re calling from an international number.”
“I’m in New York.”
“For work?”
“Long story. I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay, I get it. Working your own personal investigation, as usual. You’ll never change!”
“Actually, that’s true. And it’s also why I’m calling you.”
“Alice, it’s after ten at night! I’m at home. What do you want?”
“Security-camera footage. The Vinci parking garage on Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt. I’m trying to find out everything I can about a silver Audi TT—”
“Well, let me stop you there. It’s a private garage!”
After a silence, he spoke again: “What do you want me to do?”
“Do what you do best. You know people at Vinci—negotiate with them, threaten them, persuade them. Do you have a pen and paper?”
“I’m not—”
“Remember how I arrested your kid when I was working for the drug squad? You were pretty happy that he didn’t go to jail, weren’t you? Want me to remind you how much shit he had on him?”
“God, Schafer, that was nearly ten years ago! I’m not going to owe you for the rest of my life, am I?”
“Of course you are. That’s the rule. So, are you ready to write down the license number?”
Maréchal sighed with resignation.
Alice gave him the information, then said, “As soon as you have the images, send them to my personal e-mail address, okay? And be quick; I need them tonight.”
Alice hung up, satisfied, and then, in response to Gabriel’s raised eyebrows, summarized the conversation. The FBI agent wanted another cigarette, but his pack was empty.
“Still no word from your father?”
Alice shook her head.
“He holds the key to this mystery, though,” Gabriel insisted. “If he was telling you the truth—if he really did kill Vaughn—then we’re after the wrong guy.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
Gabriel crumpled the empty cigarette pack and threw it into the ashtray. “I don’t see why he would lie to you about it.”
Alice shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to help me move on after the attack.”
He frowned doubtfully. “To the point of inventing that whole story?”
“You obviously don’t know my father.”
“Well, no.”
She watched the roadside safety barriers as they zoomed past, a blur of steel and concrete.
“He has his flaws and his virtues,” she explained. “He knows me, so he must have realized I would want to get revenge by killing Vaughn with my own hands. It’s possible he was trying to stop me from doing something stupid.”
“Still, don’t you think you should try to call him again?”
“There’s no point. If he’d gotten my message, he would have called me.”
“Come on, try one more time, and then I’ll stop bugging you about it.” He smiled.
With a sigh, Alice pressed speakerphone and dialed the number again.
“Alain Schafer. Not here right now. Leave a message.”
“It’s strange he’s not calling you back, isn’t it?”
“My father is not the kind of guy who checks his messages every five minutes. And since he retired, he’s become crazy about spelunking. He’s probably with his old cop buddies in a cave somewhere.”
“So we’re shit out of luck,” Gabriel muttered.
Alice had barely hung up, though, before her phone rang. She answered it in French: “Papa, c’est toi?”
“I’m afraid not. This is Thomas Krieg. Gabriel gave me your number. May I…”
She pressed speakerphone again and handed the phone to Keyne. He took it, looking surprised.
“Hey, Gabe, it’s Thomas Krieg. Eliane Pelletier sent me the results of the DNA test you ran on the blood from that blouse. I put it into the CODIS database, and guess what—we have a winner!”
Alice and Gabriel exchanged a look. Both felt their hearts accelerate.
Alice pointed out a road sign to Gabriel.
“Thomas, we’re driving, but there’s a rest area coming up in a mile. Let me pull off there and I’ll call you back,” he said.
Grille 91 was in a long, rectangular, and fairly old-fashioned building, roomy and high-ceilinged like many 1970s constructions. It may not have overlooked the Pacific (in fact, it overlooked the parking lot of a rest area on I-91), but its geometric lines and big glass windows were more reminiscent of Californian houses than the gable-roofed Capes of New England.
Emblazoned with the slogan MILES AWAY FROM ORDINARY, the wall clock, decked out in the bright colors of a famous Mexican beer, indicated that it was nearly five p.m. Slanting sunlight poured into the almost empty dining room. Behind the counter, a waitress daydreamed while listening to Stan Getz play saxophone.
Alice and Gabriel sat at a table as far back in the room as possible. Gabriel placed the cell phone in the center of the table and put the call on speaker, and the two of them listened attentively to Thomas Krieg’s deep, resonant voice as he told them a strange story.
“The blood on the blouse belongs to a Caleb Dunn, age forty-one, who has a record for minor offenses—he was arrested eight years ago in California for drug-dealing and resisting arrest. He spent six months in prison in Salinas Valley, then he settled down—moved to the East Coast, where he found a job. No further problems until now.”
Alice took notes on a paper napkin. Gabriel asked: “What’s his job?”
“Security guard in a retirement home in Concord, New Hampshire.”
“Retirement homes are hiring ex-cons now?” Gabriel asked, amazed.
“Everyone deserves a second chance, don’t you think?”
Alice fiddled with the cap of the ballpoint pen she had borrowed from the waitress.
“Do you have his home address?”
“Yes,” Krieg replied. “A place in Lincoln, in the middle of the White Mountains. What do you want us to do, Gabe?”
“Nothing much right now. Just keep digging at your end. We’ll talk again later. We should be in Boston in two hours.”
“You need to fill me in. The boss thinks you’re still in Ireland.”
“Don’t tell him anything yet. I’ll explain it all when I get there. Actually…do you have a photo of Dunn?”
“I’ll text it to you.”
“That’s not going to work. This phone is prehistoric.” Gabriel glanced at the menu, which included the restaurant’s address and phone numbers. “Can you fax it?”
“Seriously? Do people still use those things?”
“Apparently. I’m at Grille 91, just off the interstate. Not far from Hartford. I’ll give you the number. Send me the picture and include the phone number and address of the retirement home and Dunn’s home address.”
Gabriel read out the fax number and then hung up. He and Alice looked at each other in silence. Their investigation was going nowhere. Too many leads. Too many questions. Not enough to connect all these apparently unrelated elements. Gabriel broke the silence.
“Fuck! None of this makes any sense! What was that security guard’s blood doing on your blouse?”
“You think I shot him?”
“We can’t rule it out. You told me yourself that there was a bullet missing from the Glock’s magazine.”
Alice scowled at him. “And what would my motive be, exactly? I’ve never even heard of that guy!”
He raised his hands in a calming gesture. “Okay, you’re right. I have no idea.”
He cracked his knuckles, then announced he was going to buy cigarettes from the gas station. “Do you want anything?”
She shook her head and watched him walk away.
Again, Alice felt a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach that rose up to the base of her throat. She stood and walked over to the counter to warn the waitress that a fax would be arriving for them.
“Are you feeling okay, ma’am?”
“Yes, it’s just heartburn. I’ll be fine.”
“Oh, my mom gets that! I could make you a papaya smoothie? It works real well!”
The waitress was a little blond Barbie doll with a slight lisp. In her cheerleader outfit, she looked as if she’d just stepped out of the movie Grease or an episode of Glee.
“Okay, that sounds good—thank you.” Alice sat on a bar stool. “You don’t happen to have a map of the area, do you?”
“We might. I’ll go look in the office.”
“Thanks.”
Less than two minutes later, Barbie returned with a map of New England. Alice unfolded it on the counter. It was a good old-fashioned AAA map from before the age of GPS, smartphones, and the Internet, before this crazy time when people had become slaves to technology.
“Do you mind if I write on it?”
“It’s yours. On the house. And here’s your smoothie.”
Alice thanked her with a smile. She liked this girl—kind, easygoing, sweet. How old was she? Eighteen? Nineteen at most. Alice was thirty-eight. The sentence formed inside her mind, irrefutable: I’m old enough to be her mother. An observation she made more and more often these days when encountering young people. She found herself in a no-man’s-land—feeling twenty years old in her head but being almost twice that age in her body.
Damn the passing of time. Master of those who have no master, as the Arab proverb says.
She pushed away these thoughts and concentrated on the map. She had always needed to visualize things in order to orient herself. With the ballpoint pen, she circled various places. First New York, which they had left two hours earlier, then Boston, where they were heading. They were currently close to Hartford, Connecticut, midway between the two big cities. Another ink circle—Krieg had told them that Dunn worked in a retirement home in Concord, New Hampshire. That was much farther north, at least 150 miles away. Krieg had also stated that Dunn lived in Lincoln. It took Alice almost a mi
nute to locate it on the map. It was a little village stuck in the middle of a mountain range.
“Do you know this place?” she asked her new friend.
“Yeah, there’s a ski resort near there, Loon Mountain. I’ve been there with my boyfriend.”
“What’s it like?”
“Kind of boring. And it’s not exactly next door.”
The cop nodded. It was so hot in the restaurant that she took off her sweater and sat there in a T-shirt.
Gabriel returned, cigarette pack in hand, and sat on the stool next to Alice’s.
“Can I get you a drink, sir?”
“Do you have any espresso?”
“Sorry, we don’t.”
“Maybe a Perrier?”
“We don’t have that either.”
Alice became annoyed. “Stop being so picky, Keyne!”
“Okay, just give me a regular coffee.”
While the waitress poured the coffee, Gabriel looked her up and down, lingering shamelessly on the fleshiest part of her anatomy.
“Have a good look, why don’t you?” Alice whispered.
He rolled his eyes.
“You’re such a typical guy.” She sighed.
“I never claimed otherwise,” he said, taking a cigarette from his pack and tucking it behind his ear.
Alice had her reply in mind, but she never got a chance to deliver it.
“I think your fax just came through,” Barbie trilled. She slipped into the office for a few seconds and then returned to the counter, holding two printed pages that she had stapled together.
Gabriel and Alice examined Caleb Dunn’s mug shot.
“Well, it’s better than nothing, I guess,” Alice said, disappointed.
The photograph was a grainy black-and-white image that did not reveal much. Dunn looked like Joe Average: dark-haired, medium height, no distinguishing features, ordinary in every respect.
“Just barely,” Gabriel agreed. “It could be anyone.”
Overcoming his disappointment, he turned the page and saw that Thomas Krieg had written the address of Dunn’s house and the address and phone number of the retirement home.
Central Park Page 13
