Say Nothing

by Brad Parks

  “Yeah. Thanks for the quote.”

  “You’re welcome. I thought about telling them you beat up orphans for sport, but I decided to keep that between us.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “So this thing has a real shot, huh?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, and didn’t add more. I knew he was just making harmless conversation, but it wasn’t proper for me to share my thoughts about Palgraff with anyone. Not even the Honorable Blake Franklin.

  “Well, you granted the injunction, didn’t you? I saw it on the Bloomberg wire just now.”

  “Yeah, well,” was all I said, because I didn’t have any other words.

  “Barnaby Roberts must be crapping a golden brick.”

  “You know him?”

  “A little. He’s testified before HELP a couple times.”

  HELP was the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, of which Blake was a part. It was something of an unwieldy amalgam of topics, but I had always enjoyed the work I did with it for that exact reason.

  “What’s your impression of him?” I asked.

  “Well, he’s a CEO. Aren’t they all the same? He’s a megalomaniac who will try to rob you blind, usually while he’s patting you on the back and smiling.”

  “Noted.”

  “Anyhow, I didn’t realize this, but it turns out I have a fund-raiser in Newport News Sunday afternoon. If you and Alison wanted to come out, I’d be delighted to have you.”

  Alison would not tolerate a public appearance under these circumstances. But knowing I had to play along, I said, “Oh yeah? What’s it gonna cost me?”

  He just laughed. “I haven’t gotten that desperate yet,” he said. “But if my so-called party doesn’t start kicking in a little more, I might have to.”

  As a genuine centrist, Blake was an unusual political creature in this hyperpartisan era. He started his career as a Reagan Republican and then switched to the other side of the aisle when he felt the GOP had drifted too far from its socially moderate roots. The end result of this was that while Republicans regarded him as the worst kind of traitor, Democrats didn’t entirely trust him either. Their support had always been lukewarm.

  He had managed to get himself reelected twice anyway. It helped that he had been on both sides of the Senate aisle and had swapped favors with nearly everyone in that august chamber. It made him a champion at the kind of horse trading that got things done in Washington. He also had a gift for retail campaigning. Few did a whistle-stop tour better.

  But now, seeking his fourth term, he had hit up against a political buzz saw: a wealthy, staunch conservative entrepreneur who had whipped the far-right base into a frenzy while managing to appeal to the center with talk of job creation. Between his opponent’s seemingly endless cash reserves and the strong anti-incumbent sentiment sweeping the nation, Blake was in the fight of his political life.

  “Have your secretary e-mail me details and I’ll see what I can do. I have no idea what Alison has planned for me this weekend, but I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

  The first part was true. The second wasn’t. Alison had never much liked Blake, either before or after The Incident. Her resentment had faded some now that I wasn’t spending most of my waking hours in the man’s service. But sometimes old rancor dies hard.

  “All right,” he said. “Well, you behave yourself, you hear?”

  “You do the same,” I said, and ended the call.

  * * *

  When I arrived home, Alison’s car was not in the driveway. It was a little before five. She and Sam must have still been in thrall to the Virginia Living Museum.

  The only person on our twenty acres—at least the only one I saw—was Justina. As I rolled by the cottage, I caught a glimpse of her carrying a box out to her car. I still hadn’t made up my mind about her. But Alison was right about at least one thing: As long as we suspected she was involved, it was untenable having her live next door.

  After parking my car, I marched straight up to our bedroom, where I put on jeans and a threadbare flannel shirt. Then I went down to our liquor cabinet, where I poured a large gin and tonic.

  I took it out to the back deck so I could look out at the river. Ordinarily this would have been a treat—a Friday afternoon, a stiff drink, the setting sun sparkling on the water. I realized it was too much to expect anything resembling the relaxation I might normally experience from this setup. But if I could at least get a little bit of a break from reality . . .

  Instead, I reached the bottom of the glass without feeling even the slightest bit of relief. So I went for a reload. This time even stronger.

  Somewhere in the middle of that second drink, the doorbell rang. I lurched to my feet and stomped heavily through the kitchen and into the foyer. I hadn’t been able to stomach much lunch—this after vomiting—so the booze had gone straight to my head. I was aware I had lost some control of my body and my inhibitions, enough that I didn’t bother to check to see who was there before opening the door.

  It was Justina. She was wearing a tank top and formfitting black yoga pants, clothing that fit the laborious task of moving. The exertion of carrying all those boxes had left her with a light sheen of sweat.

  “Oh hi,” I said, my voice thick from the drinks.

  “Hi, Judge,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know I was leaving now.”

  She had already entered, the front door closing behind her.

  “I wanted to give you my keys, too,” she said, holding them out for me until I accepted them. “I left the key to the Honda on the hook in the cottage.”

  “Thanks. That’s great.”

  “Are Mrs. Sampson and the kids home?” she asked.

  I was thankful she said “kids”—plural. It told me nothing about our strange behavior the night before had led her to suspect anything regarding Emma.

  “They’re out,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. Maybe she was expecting me to elaborate, but I didn’t.

  “Anyhow,” she said. “I guess this is good-bye.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Please tell Sam and Emma I said good-bye too.”

  She was obviously looking for some kind of closure after what was, if she was actually innocent, quite an ordeal: being summarily dismissed from a job she had held for two years and losing her place of residence in the process. But she wasn’t going to get it from me.

  “Thank you for dropping off the keys,” I said.

  “Thank you for everything,” she said, and I realized her eyes were getting moist. “I’m really going to miss it here.”

  She took a step toward me. I might have been imagining it, but she seemed to have arched her back, subtly—or not so subtly—thrusting her breasts in my direction. Her bra, lacy and black, peeked out from under her shirt. The sweet smell of her was suddenly everywhere. Was she wearing perfume?

  “You’ve always been so kind to me,” she said.

  Her right hand was suddenly resting against my left shoulder. The next thing I knew she was narrowing the gap between us. Her other arm was tracking toward my opposite shoulder. She was rising on her tiptoes.

  And really, truly, I don’t know what her intentions were. This could have just been a hug—a purely platonic exchange between two human beings who had spent two years in close quarters, sharing a duty of care for two boisterous children.

  Or she was trying to seduce me.

  If that was the case—and, really, I was too buzzed to decide with any accuracy—it certainly begged the question why. I didn’t flatter myself into thinking a beautiful twenty-one-year-old college student was actually attracted to a lumpy forty-four-year-old judge. Was she trying to save her job? Or was she after something bigger? To steal something or plant a listening device in our bedroom or perform some other task at the kidnappers’ behest?
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  I didn’t have time to ponder it. All I could do was extricate myself from the situation, and I did so. Clumsily. Drunkenly. In my haste to avoid contact, I stumbled backward. Her momentum kept her coming toward me, and she sort of mashed into me. The whole thing couldn’t have been more awkward.

  “Yes, well, okay then,” I said, gently pushing her away. “Thanks again for the keys.”

  I inched in the direction of the front door, which I held open for her, making it clear I intended for her to exit. As I followed her out onto the front porch, Alison’s car, a Lincoln MKX, appeared in the driveway. I watched, dumbly, as it came to a stop. Then I turned my attention back to Justina, so I could continue escorting her out.

  But Justina wasn’t leaving just yet. She was waiting for Sam, who had just gotten out of the back of the car.

  “Hey, bebişko,” she said, using her Turkish nickname for Sam. “Come here for a second.”

  She had her arms open. And Sam, bless his little heart, was going to accept her hug, just as he had a thousand others from Justina—until Alison, tearing around from the driver’s side of the car, started yelling.

  “Don’t you touch him,” she snarled. “Sam! Up to your room, now.”

  Sam stopped short, looking appropriately confused, casting his eyes between the two women who had been his most frequent caregivers over the past two years—which to a six-year-old might as well have been forever.

  “Now, Sam!” Alison barked.

  His chin dropped and he followed his orders, his little legs churning quickly as he passed by me on the porch.

  “Where’s Emma?” Justina asked. “I’d like to say—”

  “Good-bye, Justina,” Alison said firmly. “It’s time for you to leave now.”

  “But can’t I—”

  “Good-bye,” Alison repeated, accompanying it with a glare that forced Justina’s retreat.

  Alison watched her go, her hands on her hips, then joined me on the porch.

  “What was she doing in the house?” Alison asked.

  “Just dropping off her keys.”

  Or maybe more. But I wasn’t going to mention that theory, half-baked as it was.

  “Did you let her in?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, she knocked.”

  Alison was eyeing me. “Have you been drinking?”

  “Yeah, I had a couple of cocktails when I got home.”

  She didn’t reply. But the look on her face made her disapproval plain as she stormed past me into the house.

  TWENTY-THREE

  We didn’t talk much that night. Alison slept in the guest room, saying she didn’t want to disturb me with her tossing and turning.

  When I awoke in the morning, it wasn’t quite yet dawn. I had been in the middle of an anxiety dream where I was waiting to testify before a Senate committee, only I didn’t know what I was being called in to talk about. I started reading from a white paper, but the words on the paper disappeared. I tried to consult a colleague who was with me, who turned out to be Jeremy—even though I didn’t know Jeremy when I was in the Senate—and he wouldn’t tell me what was going on despite my repeated entreaties.

  One of the senators kept asking me questions and I couldn’t really see him, not until I started hearing gunfire. Then I realized the senator was Blake Franklin, and he was shooting at me. And I couldn’t make myself duck. I couldn’t make myself move at all. My body wouldn’t respond to my commands. And so the bullets kept slamming into me, one after another. I couldn’t even scream. All I could do was watch my torso get torn into bloody shreds.

  It was not my first time having some version of that dream, although it was worse than usual. The shooter was usually faceless. It had never been Blake before.

  Ordinarily, when I emerged from that dream, it was with the relief that it wasn’t real. Except now I was awakening to a reality that was far worse than anything my subconscious could dish out. Dread washed over me in waves that only amplified with each beat of my racing heart: Emma’s gone, Emma’s gone, Emma’s gone . . .

  It was still early, but I didn’t even attempt to go back to sleep. My bed might as well have been hot coals. Besides, I had made up my mind about something during my long, lonely evening: I couldn’t sit idly by while Emma was out there somewhere. I had to start to do something, and the something that felt most productive was to learn more about Roland Hemans.

  I redressed in the same clothes I had been wearing the night before, grabbing an old baseball hat. I left Alison a note saying I would be out for a little while following a hunch, then climbed into my Buick Enclave, the sensible crossover SUV I drive every day. Google Maps was soon pointing me toward the Newport News address I had found in LexisNexis for Hemans.

  A few turns off Interstate 64, I arrived at Hemans’ subdivision. His house was big and boxy, with all kinds of incongruous rooflines and stone facing that was supposed to keep it from looking cheap but somehow had the opposite effect. The driveway had a circular turnaround area with a basketball hoop in it.

  The land was flat, as is typical of the tidewater, so I was able to park down a curving street and still enjoy a clear view of his premises. I have often heard testimony in my courtroom about FBI stakeouts lasting days or even weeks, so I yanked my cap low and steeled myself for the long hours of nothing that were to come.

  Instead, it wasn’t more than thirty minutes before the man himself emerged. Hemans was every bit the giant he appeared to be in his picture. The golf bag he had slung over his shoulder looked small against his massive back. He moved with the easy grace of an athlete and still had a muscular trimness about him. The magazine profile put his age at fifty, but as he passed near the basketball hoop, I imagined he could still dunk if he felt the urge.

  He tossed the clubs in the back of a gold Lexus SUV that had a vanity plate that read PTNTLAW. As in patent law.

  Maybe he was going out for a Saturday-morning round of golf.

  Or maybe he was going to visit the two bearded men who had kidnapped my children.

  He was soon backing down the driveway. As his car passed mine, I ducked down. When he was nearly out of sight, I began slinking after him. He eventually merged on Interstate 64 in the direction of Norfolk. There were any number of golf courses that way. But there were far more places you could stash a child.

  I stayed three or four cars back, though he wasn’t particularly hard to keep up with. After thirty minutes, he departed the interstate at Tidewater Drive.

  That was one of the exits for downtown Norfolk. I was no expert on the local links scene, but I wasn’t aware of any courses in that vicinity. There also weren’t any forests, which was a problem. Sam had said they were held in the woods somewhere.

  I continued my tail all the same, winding through the city streets as he neared a neighborhood known as Ghent. Then he slowed and turned into a small strip mall.

  Following him into the parking lot would have been too conspicuous, so I set up in a spot just beyond. I twisted my body and looked through my rear window just in time to see him exit his SUV and enter a florist shop.

  After five minutes, he reemerged carrying a white paper sheath with a few blossoms poking out the top. He poured himself back into his car and resumed driving.

  We soon entered an area of older homes, some of them with historic signs. The streets had gotten narrower. After a few more blocks, the SUV was again slowing. It turned into a large, gated condominium complex off Princess Anne Road called Kensington Mews.

  I eased past the turnoff but did not tug my wheel. I didn’t know how I’d get past the guard. Hemans didn’t have the same problem. After he rolled down his window and uttered a few words, the gate swung open.

  There was street parking alongside the fence of the complex, so I hastily veered into one of the slots, killed the engine, and departed my car just in time to get a glimpse of Hemans. He had park
ed his car and was unfurling his rangy frame from the driver’s side, with the flowers clutched in one hand.

  This, clearly, was not where Emma had been detained. But I was still curious about what was going on as Hemans strode away from his car, covering ground quickly with his long strides until he disappeared around the corner.

  I ran up the street, trying to get a better view of where he was going. But he was blocked by landscaping and other buildings. So I returned to my Buick, where I could keep my eyes on Hemans’ Lexus.

  Now with time to kill, I considered what I had likely just witnessed. A man had told his wife he was going to play golf. He then went to a place that was not a golf course, stopping at a florist shop on the way. He took those flowers into someone else’s place of residence.

  It wasn’t a hard conclusion to reach: Roland Hemans was having an affair.

  That, in itself, was hardly shocking. Lots of men stepped out on their wives. And Roland Hemans had that hypersexual air about him.

  But there was potentially more to this, something I couldn’t be sure of, something that was taking a little longer to work its way to the top of my thinking.

  Kensington Mews was a familiar name. I had heard it mentioned around the office. Someone on my staff definitely lived there. And I was reasonably certain that someone was Joan Smith, my pious, divorcée judicial assistant.

  Was it possible that Roland Hemans was cheating on his wife with Mrs. Smith?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The little girl nearly died overnight.

  The younger brother thought they were going to let her. But the older brother—not sure how their employer would respond to their accidentally killing their captive—went out and bought some liquid antihistamine that he managed to pour down her throat.

  Now the older brother was looking forward to a quiet morning, a hope that ended when the Internet phone rang at a quarter after ten.

  “Yes?” the older brother said.

  “The judge is out of pocket,” came the voice of their employer.

  “What do you mean?”