Searching for Cate

by Marie Ferrarella

  Katya cocked her head, her long brown hair spilling over one shoulder. “Is yes?”

  “We’re a long way off from yes,” Cate cautioned, then explained. “It isn’t up to me.” She saw that she was losing Katya in both languages. So she smiled, nodded and, fondly imitating Katya’s accent, said, “Is ‘maybe.’”

  Katya understood the word maybe and how far it was from yes. But she smiled because it was also far from no.

  “Maybe is good,” Katya concluded.

  She’d spent more time than she’d meant to. In both places. Which meant that she was late.

  Jumping into her car, Cate peeled out of the parking lot. She took to the road, making sure she was doubly vigilant at all times. One eye on the lookout for the flow of traffic in front of her and one eye watching for the sight of any approaching police vehicle behind her.

  She got back to the field office in what she felt could very well have been record time.

  The minute she walked into the task force room, she saw Lydia coming toward her like a shot. Something was up. She didn’t need a news bulletin to tell her that.

  “Did you listen to the news?” Lydia asked her when she was still halfway across the floor.

  Cate shook her head. “I was trying to enjoy this CD I bought a week ago. Didn’t know when I would get a chance to listen to it again.” She knew now that she should have switched on the all news station instead. Lydia had never looked so grim. “Why?”

  The news was as grim as Lydia’s expression. “There’s been a bombing at the American embassy in the Ukraine. Sullivan says they’re checking to see if some terrorist organization is claiming responsibility.”

  “Damn,” Cate muttered, then looked at Lydia as several of the others gathered around them to listen and share. “What else could it be?” Questions began occurring to her. Questions that had to be answered. Questions she was almost afraid to ask. “How many casualties?”

  The reports were still coming in and conflicted with one another. Lydia was rooting for the lower numbers, but even one was one too many. “Enough.”

  “Baker one of them?”

  Lydia shook her head, feeling helpless. “We don’t know.” Sullivan had placed several calls to the ambassador, who had been touring a museum at the time the bomb had gone off. So far, the ambassador hadn’t called back. “He hasn’t been accounted for yet.”

  Cate did a worse-case scenario. “Which means Baker might have used this as a cover-up to cut his ties and escape.”

  “He’d only do that if there’s a leak in the bureau and he found out we were after him.” There had already been one security overhaul eighteen months ago. Right now, things were as airtight as they could get. She didn’t want to entertain the thought of another leak.

  There was another explanation. “Or the people he’s dealing with made things too hot for him,” Cate pointed out. “Anyone involved in what amounts to the kidnapping and selling of children doesn’t exactly have the moral makeup of a Boy Scout.” Thoughts raced through her head as she weighed options as well as their accompanying repercussions. “In any event, I don’t see how it changes anything for me. He’s either out there to be found or dead, in which case I need to bring the body back.”

  Not to mention questioning everyone who’d ever had anything to do with the man since he’d gone over there, she added silently. As another thought occurred to her, she looked at Lydia.

  “I’m going to need to take someone with me.” She was thinking out loud and saw that Lydia wasn’t following her. “If Baker is dead, I want someone from the M.E.’s office with me to make sure the body belongs to Baker and not some poor schmuck he decided to use as a body double.” More than likely, if the bombing was started as a cover-up, Baker’s body would be burned to the point that recognition would be difficult if not impossible without an expert.

  Despite the gravity of the situation, Lydia couldn’t repress the bemused smile that came to her lips. “‘Schmuck?’”

  Cate raised and lowered her shoulder in a dismissive gesture. “You pick up things on the job.”

  Lydia grew serious again. What Cate said made sense. The more she worked with her, the more respect she had for the way the younger woman’s mind operated. “I’ll go talk to Sullivan, tell him what you need.”

  Glancing down on her desk, Cate saw that a boarding pass had already been dropped off for her. “It’s going to have to be quick, Lydia. Unless someone’s willing to give me one hell of a crash course in forensics.”

  “On my way,” Lydia declared, already rushing toward the door. To her surprise, Cate fell into place beside her. “I’ll walk with you.”

  “Why?” Lydia shifted slightly to one side, making room for her partner. “Don’t you don’t trust me to find my way down the hall?”

  “It’s not that.” Cate searched for the right words. “I wanted to ask you something.” She sidestepped several agents coming from the opposite direction. None of their faces registered. “Off the record.”

  Lydia wondered if this had anything to do with Christian. Cate hadn’t said a word about what had happened after they got off the plane on Friday. Had the two of them gotten together? “Shoot.”

  Cate talked fast, wanting to get it all out before being interrupted. “Katya’s due to be released from the hospital soon. She’ll go into the system after that. We all know how that can be.” She pushed on before Lydia could say anything one way or another. “What do you think of my adopting Katya?”

  Lydia stopped walking and looked at her. Her puzzled expression gave way to one of compassion. “I think it’s an impulsive idea.”

  Because she liked Lydia, she took no offense. Instead, she pushed forward with her thoughts on the subject. “She doesn’t have anybody, Lydia. I’ve looked into her family and no one there knows what happened to her parents. Dead most likely. That means she’s alone. Alone, scared and she has a language problem.”

  “Timmons, the newbie we’ve got guarding her,” Lydia added in case Cate didn’t know to whom she was referring, “says he’s been trying to teach her some basic stuff. The girl’s a fast study.”

  Cate nodded. It wasn’t anything that she hadn’t already discovered for herself. “Yes, I know. Still doesn’t change the fact that she is alone. Who’s going to want to adopt a fourteen-year-old girl who’s been traumatized the way Katya has and has a language barrier to boot?”

  Lydia resumed walking down the hall to Sullivan’s office. “You never know, we might find a Ukrainian couple. After all, Katya’s not the only one who’s ever come from that country. Look, one problem at a time, okay?” she said, tabling the discussion. “We’ll tackle the question of what to do with Katya once you get back.”

  “Count on it.”

  Her words echoed back to her. Cate realized she’d used the exact terminology that Christian had earlier. No matter what else was going on, she just couldn’t get him off her mind for more than a few minutes.

  She wondered what he would think of this idea of hers and if it would affect their situation. Or even if they had a situation, she amended. She was well aware that emotions always spiked when an element of danger was involved, and they both knew she was facing it, big time.

  Maybe once she was back, the excitement, the thrill would be gone. And he would back away from any implied commitment.

  They’d reached Sullivan’s office.

  “Want me to come in?” she asked just as Lydia knocked on the door.

  Lydia grasped the doorknob, turning it. She gestured for Cate to go first as she opened the door. “It’s your idea.”

  Five hours later, Cate was on an international flight bound for Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, and sitting next to Dr. Walter Phelps, a mid-level member of the medical examiner’s office. Sullivan had pulled strings that allowed them to circumvent the long, tedious security-check process at the airport. They were allowed to board the plane the moment they arrived at the terminal.

  Nonetheless, anyone could see
that the man sitting next to her was far from a happy camper. He hadn’t said much, but had been fidgeting the entire time he’d occupied his seat.

  “I’m missing my daughter’s basketball game.”

  The half-whining declaration came out of the blue. Cate looked at him and realized that he was holding tightly onto his seat rests. His knuckles were so white, they looked as if they were about to break through his skin at any moment. Takeoff had been almost an hour ago. From the looks of it, Walter hadn’t loosened his grip in all that time.

  “First international flight?” she guessed.

  “First any-kind-of-flight,” he confirmed. “I don’t get out much,” he added defensively.

  She smiled at him, trying to bring him around and hoping to allay his fears. “Except to basketball games.”

  If he sighed any harder, he would have been classified a type-two hurricane. “Not this time.”

  Maybe a compliment might help him bear up to this. And calm down a little, she hoped. “I wouldn’t have asked for anyone if I didn’t need them, and they wouldn’t have given me you if you weren’t good at what you do.”

  “That’ll teach me,” Walter mumbled through clenched teeth.

  Cate took off the kid gloves and gave it one more shot. “You know, it’s the pilot who flies that plane. Pulling off the armrests really doesn’t affect the flight one way or another.”

  Walter scowled at her and went on clutching the armrests.

  Giving up, Cate began planning her next move once they were on the ground again.

  Chapter 35

  Unlike some people she knew, Cate never liked throwing her weight around, never enjoyed being pushy. She only became that way when all else failed.

  All else had failed now.

  The people she found herself dealing with from the moment she deplaned, both the Americans in charge at the embassy and the Ukrainian agents who had been sent over from Interpol, expected a woman to defer to their authority. She gave the people from the embassy a little slack because of what they had undergone in the past twenty-four hours. As far as she was concerned, the Interpol agents were deserving of no such consideration.

  It was as if officials from both groups were determined to keep her on the outside. She was just as determined not to stay there.

  Her patience quickly grew short as she tried to gather information as to the events preceding the explosion. In their meandering, conflicting responses, both groups directed their words to the medical examiner she had brought with her.

  Until Cate, exasperated, utterly out of patience and afraid that she had already run out of time, assumed the commando persona she’d seen work so well for her father. She became hard as nails.

  They had gathered in the section of the embassy that had miraculously escaped any damage. Specifically, in the shaken vice ambassador’s quarters. When she once again requested to see Baker’s body, the vice ambassador looked at Walter and in a distant voice said, “Perhaps tomorrow we can honor your request if that’s all right with you.”

  Walter in turn looked at her with miserable watery eyes. He’d already shared his allergy history with her. She had no doubt that the awful smell of smoke, which persisted in hanging in the air, had caused it to kick into high gear.

  She didn’t have time to offer him her sympathies. Sitting on the edge of her seat, curbing an almost insurmountable desire to tell the four other men in the room just what she thought of their slightly older than eighteenth-century views, Cate took over. “Gentlemen, I would appreciate it if you addressed your answers to my questions to me, not Dr. Phelps. And no, it’s not all right if we see the body tomorrow. If you really have found Mr. Baker’s body, we need to see it immediately. As in now,” she emphasized.

  The Interpol agent with breath like rotting garlic smirked at her. When he spoke, his English was as flawless as his thinking was flawed. “You seem to be very eager to view a dead body, Ms. Kowalski. This passion you have, one could almost interpret it to be a touch of necrophilia.”

  If he meant to fluster her, he was going to have to do a lot better than that, she thought. Her eye contact never wavered. “Necrophilia means that I have an erotic attraction to dead bodies. I assure you that all I want to do is make sure that Mr. Baker is really dead.”

  The vice ambassador inclined his head, confused. His hand shook as he brought the end of the cigarette he was holding to his lips and dragged in the nicotine. “Why all this interest in one undersecretary? There were a great many more important people hurt in this bombing—” His voice broke. When he looked at her, it was with the eyes of a man who had stared into hell and seen his reflection there. “Why aren’t you investigating what happened?”

  “There are people on their way to do just that,” she assured him. “But that’s not my assignment. My only job is to find Baker, verify his identity and bring him back home.”

  The vice ambassador exchanged looks with the rather thin man at his side. She’d been told Lewis Seager ran the embassy. Had he also run something else? she couldn’t help wondering.

  “Just Baker?” Seager asked.

  “Just Baker,” she repeated.

  The other Interpol agent hadn’t spoken yet. She wasn’t even sure if he understood English. Dressed in a suit that should have been on a man one size smaller, he leaned forward and fixed her with a look. “Why?”

  Her smile was perfect. And impersonal. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  His partner snickered. “You Americans are tight-lipped.”

  “Yes,” Cate agreed. “We are.” Rising to her feet, she looked directly at the vice ambassador. She was aware that Walter got up behind her, ready to move the moment she did. She got the feeling that he would be as relieved to leave this room as she would. “Now, if we may see the body…?”

  The vice-ambassador continued sitting in his chair, as if his legs no longer supported him. The cigarette he kept drawing to his lips was almost an ember by this time. He glanced at Seager.

  Seager took his cue, stood up and turned on his heel as if he’d been practicing marching all day.

  “This way.”

  Cate was relieved that the two Interpol agents had elected to remain behind.

  Cate struggled not to gag. The smell of death was everywhere within the room. Walter, she noted, had no such problem. This was his element. Thank God it wasn’t hers. The thought of becoming so anesthetized to the dead appalled her.

  There were twelve bodies in the makeshift morgue that had been hastily put together in the basement of the embassy building. Miraculously, it had escaped damage. Seven of the bodies were Americans, the rest were locals working at the embassy.

  She was told by Sally Reynolds, the weeping woman who had taken over for Seager, that the locals were all hoping to someday make the trip across the ocean and see the country for themselves.

  “And now they never will,” Sally sobbed, lifting up her rimless glasses and wiping her eyes with a worn, graying handkerchief. “This is Mr. Baker.”

  Cate looked at the body. His face was so badly burned, it hardly bore resemblance to a human being. “How do you know?”

  Sally’s hazel eyes clouded over again. “The ring.” She indicated his left hand. Except for parts of his face, the rest of him had not been burned. Cate leaned closer and saw that the ring in question was a college graduation ring. From Princeton. What a horrible waste of a once-promising life, she thought.

  “He was very proud of that ring,” Sally told her.

  She left a few minutes after that and Walter got down to work.

  Cate’s stomach revisited her throat almost immediately. “God, this is a grim business,” she muttered.

  Walter looked as if he would start humming at any moment. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked content. Wearing a leather smock over his clothes, his sleeves rolled up, it was obvious that he enjoyed his work.

  “Gotta have the stomach for it,” he told her cheerfully.

  Cate was alre
ady edging her way to the door. There was just too much death in this room to suit her. It was the kind of place that gave her nightmares.

  “Well, you obviously do.” Her hand was already on the doorknob. “I’m going to see what I can find out.”

  Walter raised his eyes from the corpse on the cafeteria table that had been brought down for them. “You’re leaving?”

  She didn’t want him panicking. “Just going exploring,” she assured him. “I won’t be gone long.”

  She was almost out the door when Walter’s mild voice called her back. “You might want to know that he didn’t die in the explosion.”

  Everything inside of her went on alert. Care crossed back to the table in long strides. “Talk to me,” she ordered.

  “Baker was already dead. Strangled. Obviously no one’s going to strangle him after he was burned.” He pointed a gloved finger to the man’s neck. “Those are ligature marks.”

  Bingo. “Walter, when we get back to the States, dinner’s on me,” she declared happily. “Anything you want. Sky’s the limit.”

  “Can I bring my wife?”

  “You can bring your daughter’s basketball team if you want to.”

  He regarded her for a second, then shook his head and got back to work. “Never saw anybody so happy about someone being strangled before.”

  “Because it just proves to me that we’re on the right trail.”

  And it also suggested, she added silently as she left the room, that the embassy bombing might not have been the act of terrorists, especially since no group had come forward claiming responsibility. She had a very strong feeling that the bombing had been the work of someone trying to cover up Baker’s death. And cover up the trail to the white-slavery ring.

  Now all they needed to find out was who had killed Baker.

  Cate packed as much work into the next few hours as she could. Their return flight was already booked and her time was limited. She talked to everyone from the embassy she could find. The impression she came away with was that no one really paid much attention to Baker. He’d been described as “a little odd” by several of the people who worked directly with him. Even Sally Reynolds agreed with that assessment, albeit reluctantly because the man was dead.