Maura Isles 05 - Vanish

by Tess Gerritsen

  The Die Is Cast.

  Beneath it was a time and date and a telephone number with a 617 area code. Boston.

  The phrase could be just a coincidence, she thought. It could be two lovers arranging a furtive meeting. Or a drug pickup. Most likely it had nothing at all to do with Olena and Joe and Mila.

  Heart thumping, she picked up the kitchen telephone and dialed the number in the ad. It rang. Three times, four times, five times. No answering machine picked up, and no voice came on the line. It just kept ringing until she lost count. Maybe it’s the phone of a dead woman.

  “Hello?” a man said.

  She froze, her hand already poised to hang up. She snapped the receiver back to her ear.

  “Is anyone there?” the man said, sounding impatient.

  “Hello?” Jane said. “Who is this?”

  “Well, who’s this? You’re the one calling.”

  “I’m sorry. I, uh, was given this number, but I didn’t get a name.”

  “Well, there’s no name on this line,” the man said. “It’s a public pay phone.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Faneuil Hall. I was just walking by when I heard it ringing. So if you’re looking for someone in particular, I can’t help you. Bye.” He hung up.

  She stared down again at the ad. At those four words.

  The Die Is Cast.

  Once again, she reached for the phone and dialed.

  “Weekly Confidential,” a woman answered. “Classifieds.”

  “Hello,” said Jane. “I’d like to place an ad.”

  “You should have talked to me first,” said Gabriel. “I can’t believe you just did this on your own.”

  “There was no time to call you,” said Jane. “Their deadline for ads was five P.M. today. I had to make a decision right then and there.”

  “You don’t know who’s going to respond. And now your cell phone number will be in print.”

  “The worst that can happen is I’ll get a few crank calls, that’s all.”

  “Or you get sucked into something a lot more dangerous than we realize.” Gabriel tossed the tabloid down on the kitchen table. “We have to set this up through Moore. Boston PD can screen and monitor the calls. This needs to be thought out first.” He looked at her. “Cancel it, Jane.”

  “I can’t. I told you, it’s too late.”

  “Jesus. I run over to the field office for two hours, and come home to find my wife’s playing dialing for danger in our kitchen.”

  “Gabriel, it’s only a two-line ad in the personals. Either someone calls me back, or no one takes the bait.”

  “What if someone does?”

  “Then I’ll let Moore handle it.”

  “You’ll let him?” Gabriel gave a laugh. “This is his job, not yours. You’re on maternity leave, remember?”

  As if to emphasize the point, a loud wail suddenly erupted from the nursery. Jane went to retrieve her daughter, and found Regina had, as usual, kicked her way free of the blanket and was flailing her fists, outraged that her demands were not being instantly met. No one’s happy with me today, thought Jane as she lifted Regina from the crib. She directed the baby’s hungry mouth to her breast and winced as little gums clamped down. I’m trying to be a good mom, she thought, I really am, but I’m tired of smelling like sour milk and talcum powder. I’m tired of being tired.

  I used to chase bad guys, you know.

  She carried her baby into the kitchen and stood rocking from leg to leg, trying to keep Regina content, even as her own temper was about to combust.

  “Even if I could, I wouldn’t cancel the ad anyway,” she said defiantly. She watched as Gabriel crossed to the phone. “Who are you calling?”

  “Moore. He takes over from here.”

  “It’s my cell phone. My idea.”

  “It’s not your investigation.”

  “I’m not saying I need to run the show. I gave them a specific time and date. How about we all sit together that night and wait to see who calls? You, me, and Moore. I just want to be there when it rings.”

  “You need to back off on this, Jane.”

  “I’m already part of this.”

  “You have Regina. You’re a mother.”

  “But I’m not dead. Are you listening to me? I’m. Not. Dead.”

  Her words seemed to hang in the air, her fury still reverberating like a clash of cymbals. Regina suddenly stopped suckling and opened her eyes to stare at her mother in astonishment. The refrigerator gave a rattle and went still.

  “I never said you were,” Gabriel said quietly.

  “But I might as well be, the way you talk. Oh, you have Regina. You have a more important job now. You need to stay home and make milk and let your brain rot. I’m a cop, and I need to go back to work. I miss it. I miss having my goddamn beeper go off.” She took a breath and sat down at the kitchen table, her breath escaping in a sob of frustration. “I’m a cop,” she whispered.

  He sat down across from her. “I know you are.”

  “I don’t think you do.” She wiped a hand across her face. “You don’t get who I am at all. You think you married someone else. Mrs. Perfect Mommy.”

  “I know exactly who I married.”

  “Reality’s a bitch, ain’t it? And so am I.”

  “Well.” He nodded. “Sometimes.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t warn you.” She rose to her feet. Regina was still strangely quiet, still staring at Jane as though Mommy had suddenly become interesting enough to watch. “You know who I am, and it’s always been take it or leave it.” She started out of the kitchen.

  “Jane.”

  “Regina needs her diaper changed.”

  “Damn it, you’re running away from a fight.”

  She turned back to him. “I don’t run from fights.”

  “Then sit down with me. Because I’m not running from you, and I don’t plan to.”

  For a moment she just looked at him. And she thought: This is so hard. Being married is so hard and scary, and he’s right about my wanting to run. All I really want to do is retreat to a place where no one can hurt me.

  She pulled out the chair and sat down.

  “Things have changed, you know,” he said. “It’s not like before, when we didn’t have Regina.”

  She said nothing, still angry that he’d agreed she was a bitch. Even if it was true.

  “Now if something happens to you, you’re not the only one who gets hurt. You have a daughter. You have other people to think about.”

  “I signed up for motherhood, not prison.”

  “Are you saying you’re sorry we had her?”

  She looked down at Regina. Her daughter was staring up, wide-eyed, as though she understood every word being said. “No, of course not. It’s just . . .” She shook her head. “I’m more than just her mother. I’m me, too. But I’m losing myself, Gabriel. Every day, I feel like I’m disappearing a little more. Like the Cheshire Cat in Wonderland. Every day it seems harder and harder to remember who I was. Then you come home and get ticked off at me for placing that ad. Which, you have to admit, is a brilliant idea. And I think: Okay, now I’m really lost. Even my own husband has forgotten who I am.”

  He leaned forward, his gaze burning a hole in her. “Do you know what it was like for me, when you were trapped in that hospital? Do you have any idea? You think you’re so tough. You strap on a weapon and suddenly you’re Wonder Woman. But if you get hurt, you’re not the only one who bleeds, Jane. I do, too. Do you ever think of me?”

  She said nothing.

  He laughed, but it came out the sound of a wounded animal. “Yeah, I’m a pain in the ass, always trying to protect you from yourself. Someone has to do it, because you are your own worst enemy. You never stop trying to prove yourself. You’re still Frankie Rizzoli’s despised little sister. A girl. You’re still not good enough for the boys to play with, and you never will be.”

  She just stared back at him, resenting how well he knew her. Re
senting the accuracy of his arrows, which had so cruelly hit their mark.

  “Jane.” He reached across the table. Before she could pull away, his hand was on hers, holding on with no intention of releasing her. “You don’t need to prove yourself to me, or Frankie, or anyone else. I know it’s hard for you right now, but you’ll be back at work before you know it. So give the adrenaline a rest. Give me a rest. Let me enjoy just having my wife and daughter safe at home for a while.”

  He still held her hand captive on the table. She looked down at their hands and thought: This man never wavers. No matter how hard I push against him, he is always right there for me. Whether I deserve him or not. Slowly their fingers linked in a silent armistice.

  The phone rang.

  Regina gave a wail.

  “Well.” Gabriel sighed. “That moment of peace didn’t last long.” Shaking his head, he rose to answer the call. Jane was just carrying Regina out of the kitchen when she heard him say: “You’re right. Let’s not talk about this on the phone.”

  Instantly she was alert, turning to search his face for the reason his voice had suddenly dropped. But he was facing the wall, and she focused instead on the knotted muscles of his neck.

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” he said, and hung up.

  “Who was that?”

  “Maura. She’s on her way over.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Maura did not show up at their apartment alone. Standing beside her in the hallway was an attractive man with dark hair and a trim beard. “This is Peter Lukas,” she said.

  Jane shot Maura an incredulous look. “You brought a reporter?”

  “We need him, Jane.”

  “Since when do we ever need reporters?”

  Lukas gave a cheery wave. “Nice to meet you, too, Detective Rizzoli, Agent Dean. Can we come in?”

  “No, let’s not talk in here,” said Gabriel, as he and Jane, carrying Regina, stepped out into the hallway.

  “Where are we going?” asked Lukas.

  “Follow me.”

  Gabriel led the way up two flights of stairs, and they emerged on the apartment rooftop. Here, the building’s tenants had established an exuberant garden of potted plants, but the heat of a city summer and the baking surface of asphalt tiles was starting to wilt this oasis. Tomato plants drooped in their pots, and morning glory vines, their leaves scorched brown by the heat, clung like withering fingers to a trellis. Jane set Regina in her infant seat under the shade of the umbrella table, and the baby promptly dozed off, her cheeks a rosy pink. From this vantage point, they could see other rooftop gardens, other welcome patches of green in the concrete landscape.

  Lukas placed a folder beside the sleeping baby. “Dr. Isles thought you’d be interested in seeing this.”

  Gabriel opened the folder. It contained a news clipping, with a photo of a man’s smiling face and the headline: Reston Man Found Dead Aboard Yacht. Businessman Missing Since January 2nd.

  “Who was Charles Desmond?” asked Gabriel.

  “A man very few people really knew,” said Lukas. “Which, in and of itself, was what intrigued me about him. It’s the reason I focused on this story. Even though the medical examiner conveniently ruled it a suicide.”

  “You question that ruling?”

  “There’s no way to prove it wasn’t suicide. Desmond was found in the bathroom on his motor yacht, which he kept moored at a marina on the Potomac River. He died in the tub, with both his wrists slashed, and left a suicide note in the stateroom. By the time they found him, he’d been dead for about ten days. The medical examiner’s office never released any photos, but, as you can imagine, it must have been quite a pleasant postmortem.”

  Jane grimaced. “I’d rather not imagine it.”

  “The note he left wasn’t particularly revelatory. I’m depressed, life sucks, can’t stand to live another day. Desmond was known to be a heavy drinker, and he’d been divorced for five years. So it made sense that he’d be depressed. All sounds like a pretty convincing case for suicide, right?”

  “Why don’t you sound convinced?”

  “I got that tingle. A reporter’s sixth sense that there was something else going on, something that might lead to a bigger story. Here’s this rich guy with a yacht, missing for ten days before someone thinks to go looking for him. The only reason they could pinpoint the date he went missing was the fact his car was found in the marina parking lot with January second stamped on the entry ticket. His neighbors said he traveled abroad so often, they weren’t alarmed when they didn’t see him for a week.”

  “Traveled abroad?” said Jane. “Why?”

  “No one could tell me.”

  “Or they wouldn’t tell you?”

  Lukas smiled. “You’ve got a suspicious mind, Detective. So do I. It made me more and more curious about Desmond. Made me wonder if there was more to the story. You know, that’s the way the Watergate story got started. A routine burglary case blows up into something much, much bigger.”

  “What was big about this story?”

  “Who the guy was. Charles Desmond.”

  Jane looked at the photo of Desmond’s face. He wore a pleasant smile, a neatly knotted tie. It was the sort of photo that might appear in any corporate report. The company executive, projecting competence.

  “The more questions I asked about him, the more interesting stuff started to turn up. Charles Desmond never went to college. He served twenty years in the army, most of it working for military intelligence. Five years after he leaves the army, he owns a nice yacht and a big house in Reston. So now you have to ask the obvious question: What did he do to amass that huge bank account?”

  “Your article here says that he worked for a company called Pyramid Services,” said Jane. “What’s that?”

  “That’s what I wondered. Took me a while to dig it up, but a few days later I learned that Pyramid Services is a subsidiary of guess which company?”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Jane. “Ballentree.”

  “You got it, Detective.”

  Jane looked at Gabriel. “That name just keeps popping up, doesn’t it?”

  “And look at the date he went missing,” said Maura. “That’s what caught my eye. January second.”

  “The day before the Ashburn massacre.”

  “An interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Gabriel said, “Tell us more about Pyramid.”

  Lukas nodded. “It’s the transportation and security arm of Ballentree, part of the range of services they provide in war zones. Whatever our defense needs abroad—bodyguards, transport escorts, private police forces—Ballentree can do it for you. They’ll go to work in parts of the world where there are no functioning governments.”

  “War profiteers,” said Jane.

  “Well, why not? There’s a lot of money to be made in war. During the Kosovo conflict, Ballentree’s private soldiers protected construction crews. They’re now manning private police forces in Kabul and Baghdad and towns all around the Caspian Sea. All paid for by the US taxpayer. That’s how Charles Desmond financed his yacht.”

  “I’m working for the wrong damn police force,” said Jane. “Maybe I should sign up for Kabul, and I could have a yacht, too.”

  “You don’t want to work for these people, Jane,” said Maura. “Not when you hear what’s involved.”

  “You mean the fact they work in combat zones?”

  “No,” said Lukas. “The fact they’re tied in with some pretty unsavory partners. Anytime you deal in a war zone, you’re also making deals with the local mafia. It’s merely practical to form partnerships, so local thugs end up working with companies like Ballentree. There’s a black market trade in every commodity—drugs, arms, booze, women. Every war is an opportunity, a new market, and everyone wants in on the booty. That’s why there’s so much competition for defense contracts. Not just for the contracts themselves, but for the chance at the black market business that comes with it. Ballentree landed more deals l
ast year than any other defense contractor.” He paused. “Partly because Charles Desmond was so damn good at his job.”

  “Which was?”

  “He was their deal maker. A man with friends in the Pentagon, and probably friends in other places as well.”

  “For all the good it did him,” said Jane, looking down at the photo of Desmond. A man whose corpse had lain undiscovered for ten days. A man so mysterious to his neighbors that no one had thought to immediately report him missing.

  “The question is,” said Lukas, “Why did he have to die? Did those friends in the Pentagon turn on him? Or did someone else?”

  For a moment, no one spoke. The heat made the rooftop shimmer like water, and from the street below rose the smell of exhaust, the rumble of traffic. Jane suddenly noticed that Regina was awake, and her eyes were fixed on Jane’s face. It’s eerie, how much intelligence I see in my daughter’s eyes. From where she sat, Jane could see a woman sunning herself on another rooftop, her bikini top untied, her bare back glistening with oil. She saw a man standing on a balcony, talking on his cell phone, and a girl seated near a window, practicing her violin. Overhead, the white streak of a contrail marked the passage of a jet. How many people can see us? she wondered. How many cameras or satellites, at this moment, are trained on our rooftop? Boston had become a city of eyes.

  “I’m sure this has crossed everyone’s mind,” said Maura. “Charles Desmond once worked in military intelligence. The man Olena shot in her hospital room was almost certainly ex-military, yet his prints have been scrubbed from the files. My office security has been breached. Are we all thinking about spooks here? Maybe even the Company?”

  “Ballentree and the CIA have always gone hand in hand,” said Lukas. “Not that it should surprise anyone. They work in the same countries, employ the same kind of guys. Trade on the same info.” He looked at Gabriel. “And nowadays, they even pop up here, on home territory. Declare a terrorist threat, and the US government can justify any action, any expenditure. Untold funds get channeled into off-the-books programs. That’s how people like Desmond end up with yachts.”