Missing Pieces

by Tim Weaver

  She looked at her watch. ‘You wanna take a walk?’

  ‘A walk?’ He frowned. ‘Around the office?’

  She smiled. ‘No. I thought we could grab a coffee.’

  He looked at her desk again.

  At the file she’d closed.

  ‘You’re not too busy?’

  She glanced at her watch once more, then stood, sliding the file under another and putting both into the top drawer of her desk.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can always make time for you.’

  75

  The CVAP advocate was called Cassandra and she sat with Rebekah for an hour as the kids played in the next room. Whenever one wandered through, the conversation would freeze and the two women would chat to the girls as if everything was perfectly normal. Then, after they returned to their toys, things would start up again, and Rebekah would have to go back to that night.

  After Cassandra left, it felt like a part of Rebekah had been torn away. She watched the girls through the living-room door, the joy in them, the pristine innocence, and rubbed her eyes, expecting to find tears. But there were none. She hadn’t cried since Bowners had told her the truth about that night with Daniel Foley. All she felt was hollow, as if a chasm had been carved inside her, a void she would never be able to fill.

  Her eyes fell on a shelf next to the window.

  At the end was a snowglobe.

  She hauled herself out of the chair, and went to it, picking it up and looking through the glass to the runner inside. A few snowflakes roused. She thought of Johnny, of the day he’d brought it to her, could still see his face as he handed it over. She remembered how he’d told her that the streak of grey under the runner’s feet, and the patches of green either side, were meant to represent Central Park. But the grey strip and the finite boundaries of the glass made Rebekah think of somewhere else instead.

  The Loop.

  Being trapped on Crow Island.

  She shook the globe and set it back on the shelf, and as she watched the runner vanish in a tiny white tempest, she thought of her brother again.

  I miss you so much, Johnny.

  Please come home to me.

  Frank Travis didn’t turn up at the house that day.

  Since her return home, the hours had been long and lonely, even though she had the girls. Noella had popped by two or three times, but both she and Gareth had to go to work and the cops actively discouraged visitation from anyone outside Rebekah’s inner circle, or what was left of it, to lower the risk to her.

  So she’d begun to look forward to the times when Travis came by, not only for the adult company but because she genuinely liked him. He had a calmness that reminded her of her dad and brought her closer to the memory of him. When Travis was around, it was easy to forget that her entire life had been turned inside out.

  She tried calling him on his cellphone before lunch, but it just rang and went to voicemail. She left a message the second time, midway through the afternoon: ‘I was just wondering if you were coming around today,’ she said, then paused, unsure what else to say. In the short time she’d known him, it was unusual for him not to pick up. He’d told her to call him anytime.

  After dinner, she tried again, and when her cell actually did ring, it was Gareth telling her he was going to be late.

  ‘Okay,’ she said simply.

  ‘I’ve got this project I need to –’

  ‘It’s fine, Gareth.’

  They hadn’t talked since his dinner-table confession the night before, so he would assume it was about that, but it wasn’t. She didn’t necessarily blame him for moving on; she even thought a part of her had accepted it would happen before she ever left the island. But she didn’t want to get into the practicalities of it now. It felt so utterly trivial. She hadn’t spoken to Gareth yet about what Bowners had told her, or about Daniel Foley, and both those things weighed on her far more heavily than what was left of her marriage.

  Noella phoned about thirty minutes later. ‘Hey, hon,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry I haven’t called today. Work has been a total friggin’ nightmare – not that that’s an excuse. But tomorrow’s my day off, so I’m coming round first thing in the morning, and I’m staying all day, and you and me are gonna talk, and we’re eating all of this cake.’

  Rebekah smiled. ‘You got me a cake?’

  ‘I made you a cake. It might taste like shit.’ She was being self-deprecating: Noella was a legendarily good baker. ‘Just put on a loose pair of sweatpants.’

  At 10 p.m., she was dozing on the couch when her cellphone shattered the silence. She sat up, half asleep, and grabbed the phone off the table, trying to clear her head, hoping it might be Travis. But it was Henriks, the older cop who worked the night shift and stood guard outside her back door. He was letting her know that he and his partner Sanchez had arrived outside.

  She got to her feet, wandered through to the kitchen, and opened the door to the yard. Henriks was standing outside, on the steps leading up to the porch, with his phone to his ear. When he saw her, he hung up, slipped his cell into a pouch on his belt, and said, ‘Evening, young lady. How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m good.’ She forced a smile. ‘How are you, Jimmy?’

  He’d told her everyone called him ‘Jimmy’ because of his surname.

  ‘All good,’ he said. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you go get some beauty sleep?’

  She thanked Henriks and closed the door.

  Heading upstairs, she looked through the balustrade to where the girls were sleeping. It felt good to be close to something normal, something perfect and uncorrupted. On the walls beside her there was a cascade of photographs, still including shots of her and Gareth, but many more of the girls. There was the one of her dad, Johnny, Mike and her in the diner, and then individual pictures of Rebekah’s father, her brothers, her friends. At the top, on the left, was a shot from Rebekah’s college days, a blurred, overexposed image of her and Kirsty. It had been taken on a night just like the one when she’d gone home with Daniel Foley.

  For a second, as she thought of the man who’d raped her, all she could hear was her own ragged breathing – but then, slowly, another noise faded in.

  A subtle low hum.

  She’d never heard it in the house before.

  76

  Rebekah went downstairs and looked out of the living-room windows at the block. An NYPD car was pulled into the kerb, at the bottom of the steps. It was the same one that Henriks and Sanchez had brought the previous night: it had a dent in the front fender, on the driver’s side. Sanchez normally stood guard out front. He wasn’t as much fun as Henriks, younger, more stoic, but it was clear he was serious about his job. In the two shifts he’d done already, Rebekah hadn’t seen or heard him take as much as a bathroom break.

  But tonight Sanchez was nowhere to be seen.

  As soon as she noticed that, she noticed something else: the door of the squad car was ajar. Why would they leave it open like that? Even in a low-crime neighbourhood, it was simply asking for trouble. Worse, it was careless, and neither Henriks nor Sanchez was careless.

  Rebekah looked towards the kitchen, sliding her cellphone into the pocket of her pants. The noise she’d heard, the subtle hum, was getting louder.

  What was it?

  Roxie wandered into the living room, but Rebekah instantly grabbed her collar and dragged her out again, into the spare bedroom downstairs. ‘Just stay there, okay, Rox?’ she whispered, closing the door, looking across the living room again. Something was going on. She could feel it, instinctively.

  ‘Jimmy?’

  She walked to the entrance to the kitchen.

  The back door was also ajar.

  Through the gap, she couldn’t see Henriks or Sanchez, only darkness. But on the floor, just inside the door, was the source of the noise she’d heard.

  An NYPD smartphone.

  It was facing up, the screen blinking, the messages
coming direct from the 911 operator. Every time an alert landed, asking for officers in the area to respond to an emergency call, the phone would buzz against the floor of the kitchen, shifting a little. Rebekah looked from the phone to the porch.

  ‘Jimmy?’

  It was pitch black outside.

  ‘Jimmy?’

  She was six feet from the door, next to the light switch for the backyard – fingers already reaching for it – when something gave her pause.

  ‘Jimmy?’

  Outside, she could see a hint of grey in the dark now.

  ‘Jimmy, is that you?’

  A shape.

  A person.

  She reached forward and pushed the light switch – and that was when the shape moved. It grew bigger, instantly, forming out of the gloom like an apparition, a second before light erupted across the porch.

  She’d been right: it was a person.

  But it wasn’t Henriks or Sanchez.

  She backed up, hitting the edge of the counter, stumbling into the table, her legs weak, her body shaking. The table shifted, tilting one of the chairs over. A coffee cup she’d been drinking from earlier rattled and came to a rest.

  And then a moan escaped from Rebekah’s throat.

  Slowly, Hain entered the kitchen.

  77

  Rebekah looked from Hain to the back door.

  The light revealed more than she would ever have chosen to see. Henriks was lying on his front, his head visible in the gap between the door and its frame, his eyes open, an entry wound in his face. Next to him, slumped on the stairs of the porch, was Sanchez: Rebekah could see his eyes too, the blood that had pooled under him forming a ruby lake.

  Rebekah thought of the squad car out front, its open door. Had Sanchez dropped everything to come through to the back? Had he heard a struggle? A gunshot?

  None of it mattered any more.

  They were both dead.

  Hain started coming around the table, towards the door that led from the kitchen to the living room. He knew that if he blocked that, there was no way out for her. She could escape into the backyard, but she’d still have to go through the basement to get out onto the street, and he would easily cut her off through the front. Rebekah had told Bowners the night before that she was starting to feel trapped inside the house.

  Now she was.

  Four days’ beard growth, thick enough and dark enough for it to have subtly altered the dimensions and appearance of his face, partly helped cover a plum-coloured bruise on Hain’s left cheek. He had cuts all over too – a dark beanie was pulled down, trying to cover some of them – and his gait appeared to be angled left because he was carrying an injury to his right leg from the car crash. On that side, in his hand, was a pistol, a tube attached to the end of it. Rebekah didn’t know a lot about guns, but she knew what the tube was.

  A silencer.

  It was why she hadn’t heard any gunshots.

  She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up – and then a harsh flutter at the base of her throat as her gaze switched to what was on his jacket.

  A blue and gold badge. An NYPD detective shield.

  ‘You’re a cop?’

  Hain just looked at her.

  Except Hain wasn’t even his real name: Bowners and her team had been looking in completely the wrong place for him. They’d been searching for felons, trawling databases for a man matching his description. Bowners said that Lima had done time in Rikers, and it stood to reason that Hain would come from somewhere similar. But he didn’t. He wasn’t a criminal – or, at least, not one who’d been caught. He was a man tasked with finding them.

  The rest saturated her, like a flood.

  It was why he always disappeared into the background when photos were about to be taken. It was why the only pictures of him were dark, or out of focus, or he was at the edges of them, impossible to identify. It was why he used an alias, even when he was on his own. Because as long as he remained that way, if anyone did come looking for him, as they had been for the last four days – trying to hunt him using the blurred photos he’d left in his wake – he had the perfect disguise to hide behind.

  The blue of the uniform.

  The gold of the badge.

  Rebekah thought of her girls, asleep upstairs, oblivious to every day of Rebekah’s last five months, then saw something else out of the corner of her eye. More movement on the porch. More grey in the shadows.

  Her blood froze.

  Another face formed out of the dark, like Hain’s had a minute before. This time, a woman stopped in the doorway.

  ‘Hello, Rebekah,’ she said.

  The Plan

  They were already walking away from Police Plaza, towards the Starbucks on Pearl Street, when Amy Houser told Travis she’d forgotten her cellphone.

  ‘I’ll meet you there,’ she said, and didn’t wait for his response. Travis stopped, watching her hurry back towards the ugly brown building, and then his eyes went from Houser to the thirteen floors of windows. He couldn’t see into any of them – but he wondered if someone inside was looking back.

  ‘What have you got yourself into, Amy?’ he said quietly.

  A few minutes later, she made the call.

  ‘He’s arriving now,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ Hain responded. ‘You sure you got the guts to do this?’

  There was no deference from him now. He still respected her, still owed her, but he was no longer a flunkey she could push around. Clearing up Axel’s mess had made certain of that: she needed him more than he needed her.

  ‘I can handle it,’ she said.

  Travis entered Starbucks and stood at the end of the queue. There were five people ahead of him and the place was packed. He looked up at the menu: Houser would want a flat white with almond milk, and as he thought of that, as he thought of how well he knew Amy, or thought he did, how much he’d always liked her, a spear of pain bloomed under his ribs.

  He didn’t want her to be involved in this.

  He didn’t want her to be dirty.

  ‘Just get him to the parking garage,’ Hain said.

  The line drifted as he spoke, the wind crackling at his end, and she could hear traffic. He was on the move, heading towards her car, as planned. She went over it again: she was going to have to persuade Travis to go with her, get him to believe there was something she needed to show him in the trunk. She’d have to pretend it was to do with Louise Mason or Rebekah Murphy. Whether he would trust her was another thing entirely.

  He was on high alert, she could tell.

  ‘Are you there?’ Hain said. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  She’d almost forgotten about him.

  ‘Of course I heard,’ she said, trying to reassert some measure of control. ‘I’ll do my part. You make sure you do yours.’

  She hung up and looked at Travis. He hadn’t seen her when he came in. She was partially hidden on one of the stools, her back to him, watching his reflection in the window.

  She walked over and joined the queue behind him.

  He still didn’t notice her.

  She wondered what he was thinking about.

  Maybe Louise. Maybe Rebekah.

  Maybe Amy Houser.

  Travis didn’t know she was there until she said hello.

  When he turned, she was already smiling at him. It was warm today, but while Travis felt a little flushed after the walk in the sunshine, she looked immaculate in a navy-blue pant-suit and white blouse. Her hair, a striking silver-blonde, was tied in a ponytail and it showed off the angles of her face.

  He looked at that smile again.

  People always said she didn’t smile much.

  But she always seemed to smile at Travis.

  ‘I didn’t see you there, Chief,’ Travis said.

  Chief of Detectives Katherine McKenzie smiled again. ‘Oh, I think you can drop the “Chief” if we’re in Starbucks, Frank.’

  78

  She came further in, looking ar
ound the kitchen.

  She was tall, elegant, dressed in a black coat that fell all the way to mid-calf. Her silver-blonde hair was clipped away from her face, she wore a dusting of make-up, and her nails were painted blue. She used one to tap out a soft rhythm against the edge of the sink as she passed it. At the kitchen table, she stopped and pulled out a chair, then gestured to the seat next to her.

  Rebekah didn’t move.

  ‘We’ve never met,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Katherine McKenzie.’ As they looked at each other, Rebekah vaguely recognized her. But from where? ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ McKenzie said, but again Rebekah didn’t.

  Instead, she thought, Could I scream?

  Would the neighbours hear?

  Were they even in?

  ‘You’ve got a look on your face that tells me two things,’ McKenzie continued. ‘One, you can’t quite place me. And, two, you’re thinking about doing something stupid. So, look, here’s the deal: sit down and, as long as you don’t do that something stupid, we can discuss where Johnny is.’

  Rebekah’s eyes narrowed. Was she playing her?

  ‘You know where my brother is?’

  From his position on Rebekah’s right, Hain flicked the switch for the outside lights, returning the yard to darkness. As he did, McKenzie sat down, unbuttoning her coat, revealing a black dress with blue trim. ‘Truthfully? I don’t know exactly where your brother is.’ She nodded at Hain. ‘But he does.’

  ‘And what? He’s just going to lead me there?’

  Neither of them answered.

  Hain wasn’t going to lead her anywhere.

  He’d come here to kill her.

  Rebekah glanced furtively to either side of her, searching for anything she could use as a weapon. But even if she found something, what did she have in her home that could compete with a gun?