by Steven James
Four masks in that video.
Four.
Four hands, four people.
But the camera in the video had panned across the couch. It wasn’t static, wasn’t on a tripod, so someone was holding it.
A fifth person was present in the room, watching things from behind the lens.
Half a block.
Don’t assume too much.
Don’t give in to conjecture.
At last, I made it to the street corner and I paused, trying to catch my breath after running full out for nearly a mile and a half. Under ideal conditions I could have done it in the allotted ten minutes, but navigating through the crowds and across busy streets had not been ideal at all.
I glanced at the time.
I was late. Not by much, just thirty seconds or so, but I didn’t know if, to these guys, that might make all the difference in the world.
I searched the crowd for Blake.
My phone rang and immediately I answered it. “I’m here.” I was still out of breath. “I’m at the corner.”
“I see you. Turn around.”
I spun.
Looked for him.
Nothing. No sign.
But I did see the gargantuan bouncer who’d frisked me in the bar’s hallway. He was walking my way, but was staring past me, pretending not to recognize me.
Five meters away.
I flexed, ready for a fight, as I studied his hands for a weapon. It seemed outrageous that he would attack me here on this busy street in broad daylight, but I didn’t want to put anything past him.
“Just be easy, Agent Bowers,” Blake said into my ear, as if he could read my thoughts.
Two meters.
One.
I was ready.
The gorilla bumped into me as he passed, and then lumbered down the sidewalk and disappeared into a nearby restaurant.
“Now what?” I asked Blake.
“Check your pocket.”
I did.
In my left front pants pocket I found a key identical to the one that’d been on Randy McReynolds’s body last week.
Okay, that big guy was good. I hadn’t even felt him deposit the key into my pocket.
“What’s it a key to?” I asked Blake.
“Everything.”
I flipped it over and saw that a time was written on the back with a thin-line permanent marker: 9:00.
“What about the video?” I said. “‘Aurora’s birthday’—can I get a copy?”
“Just keep the key with you.”
“Morning or evening?”
No reply.
“Blake, are you there? Is it nine o’clock in the morning or at night?”
But the line had gone dead.
I visually swept the area again. He’d said on the phone that he saw me, but he wasn’t on the street. I scrutinized the windows of the buildings around me, but I didn’t see anyone staring down.
Thinking that maybe his bouncer might be able to give me some answers, I went to the restaurant and looked around, but he wasn’t anywhere inside.
Fire codes: there has to be another exit out the back.
Instinctively, I reached for my creds to show them to the people in the kitchen as I passed through it, but found my pocket empty.
Of course, since I’d turned the creds in to DeYoung earlier in the day.
Oh well.
I made do, excusing my way past the angry line cooks who were rattling off what I assumed to be invectives at me in Korean, and I burst out the back door.
Down the block, the bouncer was squeezing into the back of a taxi.
It pulled forward, wove around an executive car that was dropping someone off, and then accelerated down the street.
For a moment I thought about trying to catch up with them, but then realized that if I were a dirty agent trading in child porn, I wouldn’t have any reason to. I had the key. Things were moving forward.
I didn’t really want to walk all the way back to Christie’s apartment, so I called Tobin to have him pick me up.
“What did you learn?” he asked me.
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
+++
Blake had watched Bowers from the button camera that his bodyguard, Mannie, was wearing.
Just giving Bowers the time for now was enough. Let him be vigilant when nine o’clock rolled around.
71
On the drive back to Christie’s place, I filled Tobin in, showed him the key, and told him about the bouncer and Blake’s phone call and Tessa seeing me take the camera.
“And you don’t know anything more about the time listed on the key?” he asked me.
“No.”
“What are you going to tell Tessa and Christie?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“Go with the truth when you talk to Christie. Trust me, Patrick. Just lay it out there. Don’t lie to the woman you love.”
“What makes you say I love her?”
He seemed surprised by my question. “I mean, the familiar way you speak about her, the fact that you’re staying at her place. I guess I just, well . . . I assumed you two were in love.”
Maybe you’re right, I thought. Maybe we are.
“I don’t know you very well yet,” he said, “but I have the sense that you’re not someone who does things halfway. You’re all in or all out. Am I right?”
“Possibly.” I steered the conversation away from my feelings toward Christie. “In any case, I do think going with the truth in this case is the best call. I’ve been told I’m not a very good liar.”
I phoned Christie and finally caught her. She told me she’d been in meetings all day and hadn’t been checking her messages. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, but there are some things I need to talk to you about. Do you know when you’ll be home?”
“I’m on my way there now. When I got all your messages and then this frantic call from Tessa a few minutes ago, I left work early. Can you tell me what happened? I haven’t heard her that upset in a long time—not even when I told her about the possibility of moving. What’s this about a camera in her room?”
“It’s a long story, but I can tell you that no pictures were taken of her. No footage either.”
“Who put the camera in there, Pat?”
“I did.”
There was a long pause.
“It’s for a case,” I explained, although I had the sense that I wasn’t really helping things.
“I’ll see you in twenty minutes,” was her blunt reply.
Then she hung up.
“It’s not going to be good, is it?” Tobin said.
“No. I don’t think it is.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to show up at Christie’s apartment before she got there, so Tobin and I met up with Naomi at a restaurant nearby.
While she was in Tessa’s closet she’d stuffed her own clothes into the backpack she’d been carrying and had since changed back again. She handed Tessa’s clothes to me folded up neatly and placed in a plastic shopping bag.
We thanked her, and after she left, Tobin and I were discussing the fact that there were five people present during the filming, when he got word from Agent Descartes that the construction company that’d built Romanoff’s house twenty-three years ago was in the clear. “The paperwork was filed with the city of Princeton that the place was up to code,” he told Tobin, and then Tobin told me.
“Well, someone took that insulation out,” I said.
“A remodel?”
“Yeah. And a major one at that. Have him scour Romanoff’s bank records and see if he can find anything.”
He relayed the request to Descartes.
When Tobin checked the online case files, he saw that Officer Hinchcl
iffe had posted a note that one of the realtors he’d interviewed remembered someone using the name Shane. “Could be the same guy who abducted Lily Keating. I’m looking into it.”
I’d been hoping that we might be able to track the Tribaxil back to someone who might’ve obtained it to administer to Randy McReynolds on the night he died. We perused the files, but there was nothing so far on that front.
A few minutes later, I heard from Christie that she was home, and then Tobin dropped me off at her apartment.
+++
Blake got on the line with his contact. “He has the key,” he explained.
“Do you think that was a good idea?”
“I think it’ll be easier to get him alone this way to find out.”
“And the package?”
“I’ll use a courier service, get it to him in the morning.”
+++
Sitting in Christie’s living room with her and Tessa, I told them the story of what had happened.
I was as honest and upfront as I could be without revealing the specifics of the case or the identity of the Port Authority officer we’d called on to change in Tessa’s bedroom.
Tessa just gasped. “Seriously? You went into my room without my permission? You invaded my privacy? And you had this woman go through my things and change into my clothes!”
I showed her the bag I’d brought with me. “I got them back for you, it’s just—”
“I don’t care about the stupid clothes! That’s not the point. The point is, you didn’t respect me!”
Going out a bit on a limb, I mentioned that this case involved three missing persons. “Children who have been gone for months,” I said. “They might still be alive and this might be our best chance at finding them.”
Christie hadn’t said anything yet and I did not take that as a good sign.
“Okay,” Tessa said impatiently. “I get it that this was important, but you should have waited and asked first.” She looked to her mom for support and finally just shook her head. “Screw this.” She stomped down the hall to her room and slammed the door loud enough to accentuate how she truly felt.
“Well.” Christie laid her hands on her lap. “I’m not sure what to say.”
“Listen, I’m sorry. I tried getting in touch with you. I know that doesn’t excuse—”
“Before you say another word.”
“Yes?”
“You need to know that I’m not angry.”
“You’re not?”
“This case, this investigation, I realize that there’s a lot more at stake than Tessa’s privacy or the fact that you had this female officer change into some of her clothes. I get that.”
I hadn’t been expecting this from her. I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“However,” Christie continued, “it appears that my daughter doesn’t see things the same way. It may take some work to patch things up on that front.”
“Yeah. I’ll have to see what I can do.”
“I need to ask you something, though, and I want you to be completely honest with me.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you think this was a good call? To do this, to film this here today?”
“No,” I told her frankly. “It wasn’t a good call. There were no good calls here, Christie, not this time. It’s just what we had to work with at the moment. It wasn’t a good call, but it was the right one.”
She considered that. “Okay.”
“Do you think I should go talk to Tessa?”
“Now might not be the best time.”
“Right.”
I tried to put myself in Tessa’s shoes and I could certainly see why she was upset. What would get me un-upset, though, if I were her? That really was the question.
Christie pointed to my head. “I can see the wheels up there turning.”
“I think I might have an idea of how to start bridging the gap.”
“What’s that?”
“Come up with something she can’t solve.”
She looked at me quizzically. “Something she can’t solve?”
“Yeah. A puzzle. A challenge. Logic.” I pulled out a notebook and a pencil and got to work.
Christie stood. “Alright, well, in the meantime, let me go speak with her.”
72
Tessa threw her pillow against the wall.
How dare he!
This was her room. This was her stuff.
A knock on the door. “It’s me,” her mom said. “You okay in there?”
“Oh, I’m brilliant.”
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Tessa, please.”
“What!”
“I need to talk with you and I don’t want to do it through a closed door.”
“Fine. Whatever. Come in. I don’t care.”
Her mom eased the door open, entered, and closed it behind her. “I can understand how you’d be upset.”
“Oh, well, in that case, that solves everything. Thanks for being there for me, Mom. I appreciate it. I guess you can leave now.”
“Let me ask you something.”
Tessa said nothing. Waited for her to go on.
“If we would have asked, would you have allowed it?”
“What do you mean?”
“If Patrick had gotten ahold of me and we would have been able to clear this with you first, would you have had a problem with it—with this undercover operation happening in your bedroom?”
“Oh, I get it—this is one of those ‘It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission’ deals, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. But I want to know, would you have given us your blessing to go ahead with this?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “Of course. I mean, if it’ll help save some kids.”
“Then we need to find a way to move forward and trust each other again.”
It annoyed Tessa that she agreed with her mom right now—even if it was just to a minuscule degree. It wasn’t fair that she was making a good point. Seriously not fair.
“Every family ends up with collateral damage,” her mom said. “You can’t live with someone for any length of time without hurting those closest to you by the things you do or say. It’s what happens afterward that makes all the difference.”
“You said ‘family.’”
“What?”
“You said ‘every family.’”
“I guess I did.”
“But we’re not a family yet.”
“No, no. We’re not.”
Neither of them spoke.
“Okay,” Tessa muttered. “I’ll reconsider hating him forever.”
“That’s a good place to start.”
73
Francis had never made dinner for anyone before.
Spaghetti wasn’t that hard, though. That’s what he told himself. How can you mess up spaghetti? You boil some water, drop in some noodles, make sure they’re not overcooked, microwave some sauce, and you’re done.
He’d bought some garlic bread too, and had spent nearly half an hour at the grocery store picking out just the right ingredients for a salad that he’d mixed together when he first got home from work an hour ago.
He didn’t want Skylar to think he was weird or that something was wrong with him, so now, while the water boiled, he took down the posters of the children that covered his wall and hid them in the closet.
There was also a pile of them by the window that wouldn’t fit in the closet, so he turned the top one over so Skylar wouldn’t see what he had collected. Then he set some books and a house plant on the stack.
It’d been nearly eight years since his walls were bare, so it m
ade him a bit uncomfortable and made the room look strange, but Skylar didn’t need to see the walls covered with posters of dead children, especially when he told her what he was planning to share.
You could tell where some of the posters had been. The paint looked a different color, slightly more white.
He scrubbed the wall down and it helped a little, but it was still noticeable and he just hoped Skylar wouldn’t say anything about it.
He put the garlic bread in the oven and was opening the package of noodles when Skylar buzzed him from the front door of the apartment building. She’d arrived a few minutes early and he was glad he’d decided to take care of the posters when he did.
He buzzed her in.
She’d dressed up and put on makeup.
“Hello, Francis.”
“Hello, Skylar. You look very pretty.”
She blushed. “Thank you.”
Along with her purse, she was carrying a bottle of wine.
“Come in. Please.”
As she did, she handed him the wine. “I didn’t really know what kind to get, but you said we were having spaghetti. The lady at the liquor store said this would go with it. It’s red. A Chianti.”
“Okay.”
He’d given up drinking because Dr. Perrior said it lowered his inhibitions, but he didn’t want Skylar to know about that, so he accepted the wine and put it on the counter.
The water was at a rolling boil when he checked it.
“I guess it’s time for the noodles.” He dumped them in. “The secret to making good noodles is making sure they’re in boiling water the whole time.”
“Do you cook a lot?”
“I just read it,” he admitted. “It was in the cookbook.”
“That’s nice. I mean, that you looked that up.”
He heated up some sauce and when the noodles were done “al dente,” as the cookbook had said, he drained them and carried them to the table, where Skylar took a seat across from him.
He’d prepared a salad, spaghetti with marinara sauce, and garlic bread.
A real meal.
He poured them both some wine.
There was a lot he wanted to tell her—what he really did at work, how he’d been chatting with graciousgirl4, that he’d turned on the camera and discovered that it was really a man there instead, but truthfully, he had no idea where to start.
