Missing Pieces

by Tim Weaver

  ‘Are you all right, Frank?’

  He snapped out of the moment. ‘I’m good, kiddo.’ He seemed to understand what had sparked the question. ‘It’s just nice listening to them in there, that’s all. Anyway, maybe I should be asking you that question.’

  Rebekah shrugged. ‘Johnny might still be here if I’d let him go to that island alone.’

  ‘You can’t think like that, Rebekah.’

  ‘I know he’s not alive,’ she said quietly, and forced a smile, sad, painful. ‘I do know that. I accepted it months ago …’

  She blinked, didn’t want to break down again.

  ‘We’ll find Johnny,’ Travis said, pushing his coffee cup aside, reaching across the table so that his hands were almost touching hers. ‘One way or another, I promise we’ll bring your brother home.’

  73

  After the girls had gone to bed, Rebekah and Gareth ate together. He’d been living in the house for almost the entire time she was on the island, and now he didn’t have any other place to go – other than a hotel. He hadn’t offered to move out, and she hadn’t pushed it. He’d just shifted his things into the spare room.

  He had been good to her since she’d got back, thoughtful, attentive, which had made it much easier. She didn’t know if that had resulted from him spending such a long time believing she was dead, or if the new job and new hours had given him a different perspective on home and family life – or if all of it was some sort of act, a performance that would eventually wear off. Rebekah hoped it wasn’t the latter, and didn’t want to think about it too hard for now even if it was, so she embraced every small moment as it arrived – small moments like eating linguine together.

  She hadn’t told him a lot of what had happened to her. In fact, she hadn’t even mentioned Foley’s name, let alone the night they’d spent together. She’d tried to confess when they were alone the previous evening – Gareth had seemed more considered and willing to listen – but the words had stuck in her throat. Afterwards, she’d felt like a coward.

  But, then, once dinner was over and Gareth had washed the plates, he came through to the living room, to where Rebekah was sitting and reading, and said, ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

  He sat down opposite her, a look on his face she couldn’t place. Was he nervous? ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, putting down the book.

  ‘This is really difficult.’

  She eyed him.

  ‘You’ve got to understand, Bek, I thought you were dead. I thought you were never coming back.’ He pushed his lips together. ‘And before that, before you even went to the island, you and me, we were separated, and had been for months. And I know it was my fault, I know that, but I … I just … I …’ He was staring at his feet. ‘I don’t know what your expectations are.’

  ‘My expectations?’

  ‘For the two of us.’

  She frowned. ‘You’d better spell it out, Gareth.’

  But she knew what was coming. And then she realized that, when he’d heard from her out of the blue for the first time in five months, when she’d told him she was still alive, the hesitation she’d heard in his voice wasn’t entirely down to the fact that he’d told the girls Rebekah was dead.

  There was another reason.

  ‘I’ve met someone,’ he said.

  Before they’d even had a chance to talk about it, Bowners arrived at the house.

  Gareth – in a more familiar echo of the man Rebekah had known before the split – saw the opportunity to avoid a difficult conversation, and offered to give them space, near-sprinting out of the door. Bowners must have believed it was a selfless act because she turned to Rebekah and said, ‘He really didn’t need to leave on my account.’ But Rebekah looked at her and said nothing, and it seemed obvious that Bowners saw the embers of unfinished business. ‘I’d offer to do this in the morning,’ she added, ‘but I’ve got to drive back to Long Island tonight.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Rebekah said, forcing a smile. ‘Being stuck in the house is starting to get to me, that’s all.’ It wasn’t the real explanation for the way she looked, but it wasn’t untrue. She hadn’t left the house in almost two days. She didn’t want to be away from the girls, but being trapped inside felt unnatural and oppressive. In a weird way, there were moments when it felt worse than being on the island, because at least then she’d had the freedom of the car.

  ‘I know it’s tough,’ Bowners offered.

  No, you don’t, Rebekah thought cynically, then pushed aside the animosity. It wasn’t Bowners’ fault. Until Hain was caught, all she was doing was trying to protect them all. ‘Any news on Hain?’ she asked.

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Do you even know who he actually is yet?’

  ‘No, not yet – but we’re making progress.’

  Her reassurances were starting to carry less weight: Rebekah had been back nearly forty-eight hours but didn’t feel any safer. If anything, she felt less relaxed than ever. It didn’t matter that she had cops outside her home, or that – thanks to blurry Facebook photos of Hain – the net might be closing.

  Hain still hadn’t been captured.

  He hadn’t even been IDed.

  They went through to the kitchen, and while Rebekah filled the kettle, Bowners checked in with the patrol officer on the back porch. She’d already done the same with the one out front. There were six officers in total, working eight-hour shifts in pairs, and the next changeover was in fifteen minutes, at 10 p.m., when Rebekah’s favourite, Henriks, a silver-haired officer in his fifties, arrived. He had the calm reassurance she’d needed on her return to the city. The officers had a key to the basement, which had access doors at the front and back of the house, so whenever they turned up, they’d use the doors to move from one side of the brownstone to the other.

  ‘I won’t take up much of your time,’ Bowners said, and came back into the kitchen, closing the door. ‘There’s just a few things I need to run by you.’

  Rebekah finished making them some tea.

  Bowners continued: ‘I saw Frank this afternoon. We got talking about the case, and then about a whole bunch of other stuff.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘He was telling me about this nightmare you get.’

  Rebekah sat down, failing to keep the surprise out of her face. She’d told Frank about it on the drive back from Montauk, the sheer terror she felt every time it returned. She’d described everything, from the tan carpets and cream walls, to the way Roxie had begun to infect the dream more recently. She told him about the way the 7, of the 127 on the apartment door, was always askew, and how she’d always think, Seven is meant to be a lucky number. And, finally, she’d told him about the inside of the apartment, the way music would start playing and her feet would sink into the carpet. She told Travis about how she’d be pinned to the spot, as someone behind her – a voice, neither male nor female – said to her, I think you should stay, Rebekah.

  She shivered as she replayed it.

  ‘Why are you asking me about a dream?’

  Bowners opened a folder that she’d brought with her.

  Inside were some photographs. She started to spread them across the table and it took a second for Rebekah to register what they were of – and then, as she did, it was like someone had grabbed her by the throat.

  ‘Because I don’t think it’s a dream,’ Bowners said.

  Rebekah couldn’t breathe.

  She felt paralysed.

  ‘I think it’s a memory.’

  74

  Bowners spread out the pictures: the mezzanine level, where an office had been set up; the black and chrome kitchen; the living room with its widescreen view of the city; and then the bedroom – bed, nightstands, walk-in wardrobes and a shower room. The fine detail had never made it into her dream – her nightmare – but she knew it was the same place, that Bowners was right.

  This was the apartment that had haunted her.

  ‘Where is it?’ R
ebekah asked, her voice unsteady.

  ‘It belongs to the social-media company, Retrigram,’ Bowners said.

  Retrigram. The company Daniel Foley had worked for.

  Rebekah swallowed her nausea.

  ‘It’s a penthouse apartment they own on Columbus Circle, overlooking Central Park. They clear it for events. When it’s not being utilized for that, staff are allowed to book it for one-night stays at a subsidized rate. Daniel Foley worked at the company for a long time. What you might not know is that, for a three-year period, until December last year, he owned an apartment on the eleventh floor of the same building – the next one down from this one. This was 127. His was 118.’ She stopped again, waiting for Rebekah to put it all together.

  She already had.

  ‘The morning after you two had sex,’ Bowners said, not sugar-coating it, like Frank Travis had, ‘we believe you woke up in his actual apartment. But the night before, after you left the nightclub, he brought you back to this place.’

  She pointed at the photos of 127.

  I think you should stay, Rebekah.

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Rebekah said. She glanced up from the pictures and, this time, caught Bowners looking at her differently.

  ‘Why did he switch apartments midway through the evening?’ Bowners responded, her neutrality replaced by something less poised. ‘It’s speculation at this point, but we think it might have had something to do with the Retrigram apartment having a private elevator. It meant he could get up to the top floor without anyone seeing you together.’

  ‘Why would he care if we were seen together?’

  Bowners held up a finger. ‘I’m just getting to that.’

  Rebekah’s eyes returned to the pictures of Apartment 127. Her dream-memory didn’t do it justice: the views were incredible, the décor immaculate, the walls of the living room and the bedroom decorated with big, Retrigram-themed oil paintings that looked like Jackson Pollocks.

  ‘Shit,’ she said quietly. ‘I remember being drunk, but …’

  How the hell don’t I remember him moving me?

  ‘I need to tell you something else,’ Bowners said.

  The tone of her voice was frightening.

  ‘What is it?’ Rebekah asked, but she wasn’t even certain she wanted the answer now.

  Bowners’ eyes went to the pictures. ‘It’s about the night you spent with Foley.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You said you had a hard time recalling any of it?’

  ‘I was drunk,’ Rebekah said, rattled, scared.

  ‘But enough to experience a blackout like you had?’

  She stared at Bowners.

  It took a second for the implication to land – and then Rebekah felt like she was falling through the floor. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘No way. No. No.’

  Oh, please, God, no.

  She felt like she needed to puke.

  ‘Do you normally lose time when you drink?’

  No, never. Never in my life.

  Except for the night I met Foley.

  ‘You’re saying that asshole drugged me?’

  The entire room was dropping away.

  ‘We can’t prove it definitively now,’ Bowners said, trying her best to sound comforting, ‘but we’ve been speaking to some friends of Foley’s, via a Facebook post he made. One said he’d been drunk once and started telling them he’d gotten hold of some “roaches”.’

  Fuck.

  Rohypnol.

  ‘I’m sure you know they’re illegal in the States, but not down in Mexico, so it means they’re coming across the border all the time …’ Bowners faded. None of that mattered. ‘I’m really sorry. After all you’ve b–’

  ‘So he raped me?’

  Silence.

  ‘That’s what you’re telling me, right? That piece of shit roofied me and raped me.’ The word was so abnormal, so malignant, it was hard even to form.

  ‘We can’t say for sure after this time –’

  ‘But he did, didn’t he?’

  Bowners swallowed, but Rebekah could see the answer.

  And now, finally, they had the reason.

  Not just about why Foley had switched apartments midway through the night. He’d presumably done that because he didn’t want her to recall what had happened in 127. It was an insurance policy in case snatches of information came back to her. If she woke up in his actual bed, it would be in an apartment that bore no resemblance to the one she’d been attacked in, so any memories she had of the assault wouldn’t align. It was why he’d felt so comfortable being so honest with her the next morning, even going so far as to give her his actual name. Did that mean a part of him liked her? Was that why he’d appeared to be so kind? Was it his messed-up way of apologizing to her? Or was it all just an act, a part of his routine, his MO? She didn’t know, but it had worked: she’d thought Apartment 127 was just a place conjured in her head, and she’d left his apartment liking him, despite herself.

  But that was only part of the explanation.

  Only part of the story.

  Because now they had the reason why Rebekah was targeted, why Hain and whoever he worked for wanted her dead.

  Daniel Foley didn’t just sleep with women.

  He raped them.

  Out of Hand

  The next morning, Travis was invited to a meeting at One Police Plaza at the request of Bowners. The meeting started at 11.30 a.m. and was still going two hours later. He sat in a conference room with people he barely knew as Bowners, on a video feed from Suffolk County Police HQ, described what she and Travis had talked about the day before: the dream.

  As soon as they’d realized that Rebekah’s dream was a memory, that Daniel Foley wasn’t some harmless ladies’ man but a rapist, potentially many times over, Travis had floated the idea to Bowners that maybe he should be the one to tell Rebekah. They had established a relationship, it felt to Travis like she trusted him, and it wasn’t arrogant to suggest that it might be better coming from him. But Bowners had shut him down, perhaps understandably: he wasn’t a cop any more. At best he was a consultant, at worst just a civilian. So Bowners had gone to the house last night, and on the way back to Long Island she’d called Travis and told him how it had gone: ‘She’s in shock, as you might expect. She’s angry, confused.’

  ‘I’ll give her a call.’

  ‘No,’ Bowners had said. ‘Hold off for now. It’s important we don’t overload her. I’ve spoken to someone on the CVAP team and she’s going to call Rebekah tonight, then go to the house in the morning.’

  The Crime Victim Assistance Program. It was the right thing to do, the correct procedure, and if Travis was still a cop, he would have done exactly the same thing. Even so, he still wanted desperately to talk to Rebekah. He couldn’t make any of this better, but he wanted her to know he was around.

  ‘One of the theories we’re running with at the moment,’ Bowners was saying, her voice bringing him back to the insipidity of the conference room, ‘is that Daniel Foley either didn’t give Louise enough of the Rohypnol the night he killed her – or she came around much quicker than he’d expected.’

  Travis looked at the faces surrounding him.

  Some were making notes, some just staring at the image of Bowners on the screen. He turned further in his chair and looked out at the floor. There was no one he knew out there either. Anyone he knew in this building was on the level below, although – as he thought of Amy Houser, of his suspicions about her – he realized that might not be true anymore.

  ‘After that,’ Bowners was saying, ‘things got out of hand.’

  Out of hand.

  Three words so insufficient, so utterly inadequate in summing up what had happened to Louise Mason the night she was killed, they were as worthless as no words at all. And even if it had gotten out of hand at the fundraiser, it hadn’t gotten out of hand the night Foley raped Rebekah. His actions weren’t an accident. They were done lucidly, deliberately, and with pre-meditation.


  Travis tuned out the rest of the meeting.

  And then he started to think about Amy again. Was she involved in all of this? Did he know her at all? Could he trust her?

  At 2 p.m., the meeting finished. Travis took the elevator down to the Cold Case Squad, and as he came out, he almost collided with Captain Walker.

  ‘Mr Travis,’ she said.

  Mr again, Travis thought.

  ‘Captain,’ he responded.

  ‘Are you here to see Amy?’

  Travis glanced across the floor and saw Houser at her desk, hunched over a keyboard. ‘I am,’ he said, stepping past Walker.

  ‘Look, uh, Frank, I apologize if I was a little short with you the other day.’ Travis stopped as she ground to a halt again. It was obvious that apologies didn’t come easily to her. ‘When you asked about my accent.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘It’s been a stressful initiation.’

  ‘Honestly,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She nodded her thanks.

  ‘New Zealand.’

  Travis frowned. ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I was born in New Zealand, not England, and moved here with my family when I was eight. Some words still slip through, I guess – although I can’t hear them myself any more.’

  They talked politely for a while longer, then Travis headed across the floor to Houser while Walker returned to her office.

  ‘How you doing, Ames?’

  Houser startled at the sound of his voice. ‘Trav.’ She snapped closed a file on her desk. ‘Did we have a meeting today?’

  ‘No. I was upstairs on that other thing.’

  ‘Oh.’ She nodded. ‘Right. The woman on the island.’

  ‘Rebekah.’

  Houser nodded again. ‘Rebekah. Right.’

  They looked at each other for a moment.

  ‘You okay?’ Travis asked.

  ‘I’m good,’ she said, breaking into a smile. ‘Sorry. You just caught me at a bad time. I had my head in a million different things.’ She looked at the desk again, and Travis wondered if she was checking to see what she’d left out. His eyes followed hers, pinging between various pieces of paperwork. Nothing immediately registered with him – except, perhaps, for the file she’d closed.