"Do they know anything?" he asked, apparently only now realizing that Rhyme was in a wheelchair — and finding the fact unremarkable. Like his daughter, Anthony Dalton earned serious points with Rhyme for this.
The criminalist explained exactly what had happened and what they knew.
Dalton shook his head. "But it doesn't necessarily mean she's been kidnapped," he said quickly.
"No, no, not at all," Sellitto said. "We're just not taking any chances."
Rhyme asked, "Do you know anyone who'd want to hurt her?"
He shook his head. "I have no idea. I haven't seen Susan in a year. But when we were together? No, everybody liked her. Even when some of her PR clients had done some pretty shady things, nobody had a problem with her personally. And she always seemed to have the particularly nasty clients."
Rhyme was troubled — for reasons beyond the danger to Susan Thompson. The problem was that this wasn't a real case. They'd backed into it, doing a favor for someone; it was a Christmas present, as Sellitto had said. He needed more facts; he needed serious forensics. He'd always felt you run a case 110 percent or you don't run it at all.
Thom brought more coffee in and replenished the plate of ugly cookies. Dalton nodded at the aide and thanked him. Then the businessman poured coffee from the pot for himself. "You want some?" he asked Carly.
"Sure, I guess."
He poured it and asked, "Anyone else?"
No one else wanted anything. But Rhyme's eyes flipped to the Macallan on the shelf and, lo and behold, without a syllable of protest, Thom took the bottle and walked to Rhyme's Storm Arrow. He opened the tumbler, then frowned. He sniffed it. "Odd, I thought I washed this out last night. I guess I forgot," he added wryly.
"We can't all be perfect, now," Rhyme said.
Thorn poured a few fingers into the tumbler and replaced it in the holder.
"Thank you, Balthazar. You can keep your job for now — despite the weeds on the back of my chair."
"You don't like them? I told you I was going to decorate for the holidays."
"The house. Not me."
"What do we do now?" Dalton asked.
"We wait," Sellitto said. "DMV's running all the Malibus with that fragment of a tag number. Or, if we're real lucky, some officer on the street'll notice it." He pulled his coat off a chair. "I gotta go down to the Big Building for a while. Call me if anything happens."
Dalton thanked him, then he looked at his watch, took out his mobile phone and called his office to say he'd have to miss his office Christmas party. He explained that the police were looking into his ex-wife's disappearance and he was with his daughter at the moment. He wasn't going to leave the girl alone.
Carly hugged him. "Thanks, Dad." Her eyes lifted to the window, staring at the swirling snow. A long moment passed. Carly glanced at the others in the room and turned toward her father. In a soft voice she said, "I always wondered what would have happened if you and Mom hadn't broken up."
Dalton laughed, ran his hand through his hair, mussing it further. "I've thought about that too."
Sachs glanced at Rhyme and they turned away, letting the father and daughter continue talking in relative privacy.
"The guys Mom's dated? They were okay. But nobody special. None of them lasted very long."
"It's tough to meet the right person," Dalton said.
"I guess…"
"What?"
"I guess I've always wished you'd get back together."
Dalton seemed at a loss for words. "I tried. You know that. But your mom was in a different place."
"But you stopped trying a couple of years ago."
"I could read the writing on the wall. People have to move on."
"But she misses you. I know she does."
Dalton laughed, "Oh, I don't know about that."
"No, no, really. When I ask her about you, she tells me what a cool guy you were. You were funny. She said you made her laugh."
"We had some good times."
Carly said, "When I asked Mom what happened between you, she said it wasn't anything totally terrible."
"True," Dalton said, sipping his coffee. "We just didn't know how to be husband and wife back then. We got married too young."
"Well, you're not young anymore…" Carly blushed. "Oh, I didn't mean it like that."
But Dalton said, "No, you're right. I've grown up a lot since then."
"And Mom's really changed. She used to be so quiet, you know. Just no fun. But she's into all kinds of things now. Camping and hiking, rafting, all that out-of-doors stuff."
"Really?" Dalton asked. "I never pictured her going in for that kind of thing."
Carly looked off for a moment. "Remember those business trips you'd take when I was a kid? You'd go to Hong Kong or Japan?"
"Setting up our overseas offices, sure."
"I wanted all of us to go. You, Mom and me…" She played with her coffee cup. "But she was always like, 'Oh, there's too much to do at home.' Or, 'Oh, we'll get sick if we drink the water,' or whatever. We never did take a family vacation. Not a real one."
"I always wanted that too." Dalton shook his head sadly. "And I'd get mad when she didn't want to come along and bring you. But she's your mother; it's her job to look out for you. All she wanted was for you to be safe." He smiled. "I remember once when I was in Tokyo and calling home. And —"
His words were interrupted when Rhyme's phone rang. He spoke into the microphone on his chair, "Command, answer phone."
"Detective Rhyme?" the voice clattered through the speaker.
The rank was out of date — a "Ret." belonged with it — but he said, "Go ahead."
"This's Trooper Bronson, New York State Police."
"Go ahead."
"We had an emergency vehicle locator request regarding a burgundy Malibu and understand you're involved in the case."
"That's right."
"We've found the vehicle, sir."
Rhyme heard Carly gasp. Dalton stepped beside the girl and put his arm around her shoulder. What would they hear? That Sue Thompson was dead?
"Go ahead."
"The car's moving west, looks like it's headed for the George Washington Bridge."
"Occupants?"
"Two. Man and a woman. Can't tell anything more."
"Thank God. She's alive." Dalton sighed.
Heading toward Jersey, Rhyme reflected. The flats were among the most popular places for dumping bodies in the metro area.
"Registered to a Richard Musgrave, Queens. No warrants."
Rhyme glanced at Carly, who shook her head, meaning she had no clue who he was.
Sachs leaned forward toward the speaker and identified herself. "Are you near the car?"
"About two hundred feet behind."
"You in a marked vehicle?"
"That's right."
"How far from the bridge?"
"A mile or two east."
Rhyme glanced at Sachs. "You want to join the party? You can stay right on their tail in the Camaro."
"You bet." She ran for the door.
"Sachs," Rhyme called.
She glanced back.
"You have chains on your Chevy?"
Sachs laughed. "Chains on a muscle car, Rhyme? No."
"Well, try not to skid into the Hudson, okay? It's probably pretty cold."
"I'll do my best."
* * *
True, a rear-wheel-drive sports car, with more than four hundred eager horses under the hood, was not the best vehicle to drive on snow. But Amelia Sachs had spent much of her youth skidding cars on hot asphalt in illegal races around Brooklyn (and sometimes just because, why not, it's always a blast to do one-eighties); this little bit of snow meant nothing to her.
She now slipped her Camaro SS onto the expressway and pushed the accelerator down. The wheels spun for only five seconds before they gripped and sped her up to eighty.
"I'm on the bridge, Rhyme," she called into her headset. "Where are they?"
"Abou
t a mile west. Are you —"
The car started to swerve. "Hold on, Rhyme, I'm going sideways."
She brought the skid under control. "A VW doing fifty in the fast lane. Man, doesn't that just frost you?"
In another mile she'd caught up to the trooper, keeping back, just out of sight of the Malibu. She looked past him and saw the car ease into the right lane and signal for an exit.
"Rhyme, can you get me a patch through to the trooper?" she asked.
"Hold on…" A long pause. Rhyme's frustrated voice. "I can never figure out —" He was cut off and she heard two clicks. Then the trooper said, "Detective Sachs?"
"I'm here. Go ahead."
"Is that you behind me, in that fine red set of wheels?"
"Yep."
"How do you want to handle this?"
"Who's driving? The man or the woman?"
"The man."
She thought for a moment. "Make it seem like a routine traffic stop. Taillight him or something. After he's on the shoulder I'll get in front and sandwich him in. You take the passenger side and I'll get the driver out. We don't know that he's armed and we don't know that he's not. But the odds are it's an abduction, so assume he's got a weapon."
"Roger that, Detective."
"Okay, let's do it."
The Malibu exited. Sachs tried to look through the rear window. She couldn't see anything through the snow. The burgundy car rolled down the ramp and braked slowly to a stop at a red light. When it turned green the car eased forward through the slush and snow.
The trooper's voice crackled into her ear. "Detective Sachs, are you ready?"
"Yep. Let's nail him."
The light bar on his Police Interceptor Crown Victoria started flashing and he hit the squeal once. The driver of the Malibu looked up into the rearview mirror and the car swerved momentarily. Then it pulled to a stop on the side of road, bleak town houses on the left and reedy marshes on the right.
Sachs punched the accelerator and skidded to a stop in front of the Malibu, blocking it. She was out the door in an instant, pulling her Glock from her holster and jogging fast toward the car.
* * *
Forty minutes later a grim Amelia Sachs walked into Rhymes town house.
"How bad was it?" Rhyme asked.
"Pretty bad." She poured herself a double scotch and drank down half the liquor fast. Unusual for her; Amelia Sachs was a sipper.
"Pretty bad," she repeated.
Sachs was not, however, referring to any bloody shootout in Jersey, but to the embarrassment of what they'd done.
"Tell me."
Sachs had radioed in from the roadside to tell Rhyme, Carly and Anthony Dalton that Susan was fine. Sachs hadn't been able to go into the details then, though. Now she explained, "The guy in the car was that man she's been seeing for the past couple of weeks." A glance at Carly. "Rich Musgrave, the one you mentioned. It's his car. He called this morning and they'd made plans to go shopping at the Jersey outlet malls. Only what happened was, when she went out to get the newspaper this morning she slipped on the ice."
Dalton nodded. "The front path — it's like a ski slope."
Carly winced. "Mom always said that she was a born klutz."
Sachs continued, "She hurt her knee and didn't want to drive. So she called Rich back and asked him to pick her up. Oh, the spot in the snow where I thought somebody was looking in the window? It was where she fell."
"That's why he was so close to her," Rhyme mused. "He was helping her walk."
Sachs nodded. "And at the bank, there was no mystery — she really did need something out of the safe deposit box. And the thousand bucks was for Christmas shopping."
Carly frowned. "But she knew I was coming by. Why didn't she call me?"
"Oh, she wrote you a note."
"Note?"
"It said she'd be out for the day but she'd be back home by six."
"No!… But I never saw it."
"Because," Sachs explained, "after she fell she was pretty shaken up and forgot to leave it on the entryway table like she'd planned. She found it in her purse when I told her it wasn't there. And she didn't have her cell phone turned on."
Dalton laughed. "All a misunderstanding." He put his arm around his daughter's shoulders.
Carly, blushing again, said, "I'm really, really sorry I panicked. I should've known there was an explanation."
"That's what we're here for," Sachs said.
Which wasn't exactly true, Rhyme reflected sourly. No good deed…
As she pulled on her coat, Carly invited Rhyme, Sachs and Thom to the Christmas party tomorrow afternoon at her mother's. "It's the least we can do."
"I'm sure Thom and Amelia would be delighted to go," Rhyme said quickly. "Unfortunately, I think I have plans." Cocktail parties bored him.
"No," Thom said. "You don't have any plans."
Sachs added, "Nope, no plans."
A scowl from Rhyme. "I think I know my calendar better than anyone else."
Which wasn't exactly true either.
After the father and daughter had gone, Rhyme said to Thom, "Since you blew the whistle on my unencumbered social schedule tomorrow, you can do penance."
"What?" the aide asked cautiously.
"Take the goddamn decorations off my chair. I feel like Santa Claus."
"Humbug," Thom said and did as asked. He turned the radio on. A carol streamed into the room.
Rhyme nodded toward the speaker. "Aren't we lucky there are only twelve days of Christmas? Can you imagine how interminable that song would be if there were twenty?" He sang, "Twenty muggers mugging, nineteen burglars burgling…"
Thom sighed and said to Sachs, "All I want for Christmas is a nice, complicated jewelry heist right about now — something to pacify him."
"Eighteen aides complaining," Rhyme continued the song. He added, "See, Thom, I am in the holiday spirit. Despite what you think."
* * *
Susan Thompson climbed out of Rich Musgraves Malibu. The large, handsome man was holding the door for her. She took his hand and he eased her to her feet; her shoulder and knee still ached fiercely from the spill she'd taken on the ice that morning.
"What a day," she said, sighing.
"I don't mind getting pulled over by the cops," Rich said, laughing. "I could've done without the guns, though."
Carrying all her shopping bags in one hand, he helped her to the front door. They walked carefully over the three-inch blanket of fine snow.
"You want to come in? Carly's here — that's her car. You can watch me prostrate myself in front of her and apologize for being such a bozo. I could've sworn I left that note on the table."
"I think I'll let you run the gauntlet on your own." Rich was divorced too and was spending Christmas eve with his two sons at his place in Armonk. He needed to pick them up soon. She thanked him again for everything and apologized once more for the scare with the police. He'd been a nice guy about the whole thing. But, as she fished her keys out of her purse and watched him walk back to the car, she reflected that there was no doubt the relationship wasn't going anywhere. What was the problem? Susan wondered. Rough edges, she supposed. She wanted a gentleman. She wanted somebody who was kind, who had a sense of humor. Somebody who could make her laugh.
She waved good-bye and stepped into the house, pulled the door shut behind her.
Carly had already started on the decorations, bless her, and Susan smelled something cooking in the kitchen. Had the girl made dinner? This was a first. She looked into the den and blinked in surprise. Carly'd decked out the room beautifully, garlands, ribbons, candles. And on the coffee table was a big plate of cheese and crackers, a bowl of nuts, fruit, two glasses sitting beside a bottle of California sparkling wine. The girl was nineteen, but Susan let her have some wine when they were home alone.
"Honey, how wonderful!"
"Mom," Carly called, walking to the doorway. "I didn't hear you come in."
The girl was carrying a baking dish. In
side were some hot canapes. She set it on the table and hugged her mother.
Susan threw her arms around the girl, ignoring the pain from the fall that morning. She apologized for the mistake about the note and for making her daughter worry so much. The girl, though, just laughed it off.
"Is it true that policeman's in a wheelchair?" Susan asked. "He can't move?"
"He's not a policeman anymore. He's kind of a consultant. But, yeah, he's paralyzed."
Carly went on to explain about Lincoln Rhyme and how they'd found her and Rich Musgrave. Then she wiped her hands on her apron and took it off. "Mom, I want to give you one of your presents tonight."
"Tonight? Are we starting a new tradition?"
"Maybe we are."
"Well, okay…" Then Susan took the girl's arm. "In that case, let me give you mine first." She got her purse from the table and dug inside. She found the small velvet box. "This is what I got out of the safe deposit box this morning."
She handed it to the girl, who opened it. Her eyes went wide. "Oh, Mom…"
It was an antique diamond and emerald ring.
"This was —"
"Grandma's. Her engagement ring." Susan nodded. "I wanted you to have something special. I know you've had a rough time lately, honey. I've been too busy at work. I haven't been as nice to Jake as I should. And some of the men I've dated… well, I know you didn't like them that much." A laughing whisper. "Of course, I didn't like them that much either. I'm resolving not to date losers anymore."
Carly frowned. "Mom, you've never dated losers… More like semi-losers."
"That's even worse! I couldn't even find a red-blooded, full-fledged loser to date!"
Carly hugged her mother again and put the ring on. "It's so beautiful."
"Merry Christmas, honey.". "Now, time for your present."
"I think I like our new tradition."
Her daughter instructed, "Sit down. Close your eyes. I'm going outside to get it."
"All right."
"Sit on the couch right there."
She sat and closed her eyes tight.
"Don't peek."
"I won't." Susan heard the front door open and close. A moment later she frowned, hearing the sound of a car engine starting. Was it Carry's? Was she leaving?
Twisted: The Collected Short Stories of Jeffery Deaver Page 26
