Hiding in the Shadows tbscus-2

by Кей Хупер

  She wondered what he was basing that doubt on, but didn't ask. Instead, she said, "If I was drugged, the question is, who did it? I guess the why is obvious — they wanted me out of action."

  "Yeah. Grabbed you in the parking garage would be my guess. It was a bit after hours, the area likely to be deserted, so it's a good possibility."

  "So why didn't I just go for a phone and call the police once they let me go? Why did I attempt to drive?"

  "You may have already been disoriented from the drug, not thinking clearly. They probably held on to you long enough to make sure of that. We do have half an hour or so unaccounted for, from the time you left the garage to the crash only six miles away."

  "I suppose." But Faith remembered the flash in which she had reminded Dinah that they couldn't trust the police. Had she, even in a drugged and panicked state, felt that the only thing she could do was get to Dinah as soon as possible?

  It might have been better if you had. It might have been so different ...

  "That's the answer then," he said with bitterness rather than relief, calling from another pay phone.

  "Just like you thought. She's gone to Macgregor."

  "They're in a restaurant right now, heads together and talking up a storm."

  "Get back here now."

  "But shouldn't I follow..."

  "We've found out what we need to know for the moment. She's gone to him, and you can bet he'll keep her close, hoping she can lead him to Dinah."

  "What if she can? What if she can lead him to us?"

  "We'll have to make sure she doesn't, won't we? Get back here now."

  "Right."

  "Faith?"

  She looked at him, shook her head. Whose voice?

  Not quite alien in her head, it could have been her own, her subconscious, the healed part of her mind trying to nudge the part still unable or unwilling to remember.

  Or it could have been Dinah's.

  "What is it?"

  "Nothing." She tried to think clearly, still not sure of that voice in her head. "So somebody wanted me out of the way and arranged an accident. I end up in a coma, presumably no longer a threat. But then something happened. Something must have changed. Dinah became a threat to them somehow. Maybe they hadn't even connected her to me until she visited me in the hospital. Then they ... watched her, maybe? Saw her go to my apartment, maybe leave with my laptop?"

  "Maybe. And maybe it was just common sense that she would become an enemy sooner or later. She's a journalist, a good one. Once they connected her to you, they might have been convinced you had told her whatever damaging information you had."

  "I don't think Dinah became a threat because they realized she knew me. I think she became a threat when they realized something of theirs was missing."

  "This evidence you believe you'd found?"

  Faith frowned at her cup without seeing it, trying to make the pieces fit. "They keep asking her where it is. Over and over. That's why they didn't just kill her outright. And it has to be whatever I found, don't you see? They never searched Dinah's apartment, but they've searched mine twice-both times since she disappeared."

  "So they have to be convinced you have whatever it is they're looking for, but that Dinah knows where it's hidden?"

  "It's the only possibility that makes any sense to me." She looked steadily at Kane. "I took something from them, and they either didn't know about it until after the accident or thought they were safe once I was out of the way. Then they realized there was a connection between me and Dinah — a smart journalist with a knack for breaking big stories. So they grabbed her to try to make her talk. Only she's not talking."

  "You said she refused to talk because she was protecting someone."

  Kane's voice was almost as level as hers had been.

  "You?"

  Faith shook her head. "The last time she saw me, I was in a coma. I was ... safe."

  "Maybe they told her you came out of it."

  "I suppose they could have, but why would she feel her silence was protecting me? If I was the one she was concerned about, hearing I was out of the coma would make her more likely to tell them what she knew. Wouldn't it? So they wouldn't come after me."

  Kane nodded slowly. "Then who does she believe she's protecting?"

  Faith rubbed her forehead fretfully. "I don't know. How can we know that until we know what it is I found? And who's threatened by it?"

  He grasped her wrist and pulled her hand away from her face. "Maybe you should take a break for a few hours. I can take you back to the apartment..."

  We don't have a few hours. Dinah doesn't have a few hours.

  "I m fine." She carefully avoided any glance at the hand still holding her wrist, and even managed a smile. "But we don't seem to have accomplished much, really. Speculation, supposition, guesses. Maybe we're right, but even if we are, it doesn't get us any closer to finding Dinah."

  Kane's fingers tightened around her wrist for a moment. Then his gaze went to that connection between them and he frowned slightly. He leaned back, releasing her wrist. "We have to figure out who's got Dinah, and to do that we need to find whatever it is you found once before." His voice was abrupt. "The best possibility is that you'll remember what you found or where you found it. Why don't we visit the office where you worked and see if that jars your memory?"

  Faith nodded and rose to her feet. There was a clock near the door, and she could hear it ticking. Or maybe she imagined it. Ticking.

  "You knew your job." Marianne Camp, Faith's supervisor in the department where she had worked, was matter-of-fact. "You had some prior experience working for a construction company, and that gave you a solid base from which to handle your duties here."

  Faith wondered if she had done something to annoy the woman, or if her attitude was so chilly with all those she supervised. Then again, maybe she didn't view aftereffects of a coma as a good reason not to return to work.

  Kane smiled at her. "And those duties, Mrs. Camp?"

  "Secretarial, for the most part." The supervisor shrugged, possibly impatient to leave on her lunch break, since it was nearly noon. "Entering data into the system, filing paperwork, coordinating the schedules of the various inspectors."

  "Was I friends with any of my co-workers?" Faith asked.

  "Not as far as I was aware," she replied stiffly.

  "You kept to yourself. Very quiet and dependable." Kane said, "According to what you told me, Mrs. Camp, you spoke to Miss Parker for about five minutes before she left the office the day of her accident."

  "Yes."

  "Do you remember what you talked about?"

  "After all these weeks? Not really. I should imagine it was something to do with the paperwork she had stayed late to complete."

  "I see. Do you always remain late yourself if someone else is working after hours?"

  "Usually but not always. I had paperwork of my own to take care of."

  Kane glanced at Faith as she shifted slightly in the other visitor's chair then said to the supervisor, "Were are you both working on the same project?"

  "No, Mr. Macgregor. No one in my department is assigned a specific project the way you mean. We take care of work as it comes in, on a rotation basis. As I recall, Miss Parker was transcribing three different field reports and collating inspection forms from at least half a dozen construction sites. It was by no means an unusual workload."

  "Would you happen to know which construction sites those were, Mrs. Camp?"

  "Not specifically." Her voice was different.

  "Could you find out for us?"

  "I don't see how, Mr. Macgregor. There's no reason for our files to show which clerk handled the various pieces of paper."

  Faith spoke up then. "Why was I late, Mrs. Camp?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You said I was dependable. So why did I have to stay late to complete that paperwork? Didn't I have time to get it done during regular hours?"

  The supervisor frowned at her.
"You took a long lunch that day. Two hours."

  "Do you know why I did that?"

  "You said you had a doctor's appointment."

  There was the faintest emphasis on the second word.

  Slightly dry, Faith said, "I guess I didn't have a note."

  "No."

  There didn't seem to be much more they could ask, so after thanking the supervisor for her time, Kane and Faith left her tiny office.

  "Good question," he said as they stood in the hallway outside the suite of offices that made up the Office of Building Inspections and Zoning. "It never occurred to me to wonder why you stayed late that day."

  "The answer doesn't seem to help us much." She shrugged. "I didn't have a doctor's appointment that day, at least not with Dr. Murphy, so I could have been lying to Mrs. Camp about why I took the long lunch. But we don't have a clue what I might have been doing, or where I went, and after so many weeks it's doubtful we'd find anyone who might have seen me and remembered, even if we knew who to ask."

  "And you don't recognize this hallway?"

  Faith looked around again. The Office of Building Inspections and Zoning was on the fifth floor of the busy downtown office building, and up and down the hall on this floor and others were more city offices. The hallway itself was generic, almost featureless and without charm, and struck no chord of memory within Faith.

  "This isn't the hallway I saw in that memory," she told Kane. "At least, not this floor."

  "My guess is that they all look virtually alike, but we can check a couple on the way down."

  As Kane had predicted, the other floors they checked were all but identical, and by the time they reached the lobby, Faith was certain it was not this building she and Dinah had been in when she had found ... whatever it was she had found.

  A morning filled with questions, and precious few answers. Faith said, "I think we should talk to Dinah's other lawyer, Mr. Sloan. Especially since you didn't know about him before."

  "I definitely want him to explain why he didn't come forward when Dinah disappeared," Kane agreed grimly.

  They got into the car, and for a moment he stared through the windshield without moving.

  "Kane?"

  A muscle tightened in his jaw. "I don't... I can't feel her anymore."

  The desolation in his voice went through Faith like a knife and left her aching. For him, for Dinah. And for herself.

  "She's gone further and further away from me with every day that's passed. I think about it, and I realize I can't remember the sound of her voice. I glimpse a blond woman on a street corner and my heart stops, yet I have to concentrate to remember her face."

  "Kane..."

  He turned his head and focused on her. "I have to find her," he said. "Before I lose her completely."

  There was nothing she could say to that except, "We'll find her, Kane. We will."

  After a moment he nodded, accepting that reassurance because, she thought, anything else was simply unbearable.

  "Yes," he said.

  She kept her voice steady. "I have Mr. Sloan's card, so I know the address of his office."

  Kane started the car, his actions automatic.

  More coolly now, as though he regretted the impulsive, emotional confidence, he said, "I'm willing to bet he won't tell us anything useful."

  "Maybe, but it's a base we have to cover."

  "Agreed. But I know lawyers. He won't talk."

  As it turned out, Kane was only half right.

  Edward Sloan was in his early fifties but looked ten years younger. He was trim and athletic, dressed well without ostentation, and had the trained, evenly modulated voice of an orator. And despite visibly restless clients in his outer office, he agreed to see Faith and Kane immediately.

  "How can I help you?" he asked when they were seated before his sleek, modern desk. The question might have been directed to both of them, but his eyes were on Faith.

  So she was the one who replied. "Mr. Sloan, do you have any idea if Dinah Leighton was working on a particular story when she disappeared?"

  "No. She never talked to me about her work."

  Kane said, "She used your services whenever she wanted her actions to remain very quiet."

  "Is that a question, Mr. Macgregor?" Sloan smiled faintly. "Yes, I was her confidential attorney."

  "Did she... does she use you only to arrange financial deals?"

  "Almost exclusively. Miss Leighton's family attorneys tended to view her philanthropy with a great deal of unease, from what she told me. I had the virtue of complete personal disinterest in her and in what she chose to do with her money. She told me what she wanted done, I did it."

  "Like the financial arrangements for me," Faith said.

  "Exactly so, Miss Parker."

  "You never asked her why she did it?"

  "As I said, my value to Miss Leighton lay in my discretion and my disinterest. It would not have been to my advantage to ask her questions."

  Kane tried another tack. "Okay, then tell us this. Did you notice, in the course of performing your duties for Miss Leighton, anything out of the ordinary? Anything that might give us some idea of what happened to her?"

  "You must know I can't talk in specifics about Miss Leighton's business affairs," Sloan replied immediately.

  "I'm not asking you about her business affairs," Kane said with just enough patience to make the effort noticeable. "I'm asking you if you know anything — if you saw or heard anything — that might help us to find your missing client."

  This time, there was a pause. A rather deliberate one, Faith thought. Her heartbeat quickened as she gazed at the lawyer's face. He knows something. He knows something, and he's just been waiting for somebody to ask him. But nobody had asked, because his relationship with Dinah had not been a public one — and Sloan was not a man who would ever volunteer information. Which explained why he had not come forward when Dinah had vanished.

  "Please, Mr. Sloan." Faith knew her voice was unsteady. "Please help us if you can. Did anything unusual happen in the days before she disappeared?"

  "Just one thing." His voice was composed. "Two days before she vanished, Miss Leighton asked me to recommend a good private investigator, one who specializes in missing persons." Faith looked at Kane in confusion, and it was he who said, "Did she say why?"

  "The only thing she said to me, Mr. Macgregor, was a rather cryptic remark to the effect that she needed someone to look for a corpse."

  "And that's all he'd tell you?" Bishop asked.

  "That's all." Kane wedged the receiver between his ear and shoulder, reached for a legal pad on the coffee table, and scowled at the notes he'd jotted down earlier. "Just that Dinah wanted to hire a P I. specializing in missing persons because she needed someone to find a corpse."

  "Did he know if she actually hired the P I.?"

  "He said that when Dinah disappeared, he called the two people he'd recommended, and neither had heard from her. I'm inclined to believe him. For one thing, news of the reward has been played up heavily in the media, and I doubt very much that a professional investigator would pass up the chance to make a million bucks if he had any knowledge at all about Dinah."

  "That is a point." Bishop paused. "Where's Faith?"

  "I dropped her off at Haven House. There's a woman there who seems to have known both Faith and Dinah months ago, and Faith wanted to talk to her. Understandably, men aren't welcome there, so I've been checking out a few other things. Faith's bank, where she has no safe deposit box. Dinah's other bank, where the manager was very cooperative and is even now sending Richardson all the records."

  "Did you take a look at those records?"

  "Yeah. And they verify what Conrad told us, that Dinah used that bank account the way she used Sloan, to handle those bequests and donations she wanted to keep quiet. Guy's team will go over all of it wit a fine-tooth comb." He paused.

  "Since you're still at Quantico, I assume you've been able to look into that restricted file?"


  "I'm not still at Quantico," Bishop said, then went on before Kane could ask him anything about that.

  "But, yeah, I found out why the files on the murders of Faith's mother and sister are restricted."

  "Why?"

  "Ties in to what you told me about her former husband and the abuse. It seems that he was, and still is, under suspicion for the crimes. The theory is that abuse escalated to open violence when she dared to divorce him, and that she escaped being killed only because she was unexpectedly called in to work that night."

  Grim, Kane said, "That doesn't explain why in formation about the investigation is restricted."

  "Yes, well, it makes sense when you learn one more salient fact. Faith's ex-husband, Tony Ellis, is an FBI agent."

  Katie was at school, but Faith left new sheet music on the piano for her. Kane hadn't asked any questions when she'd requested the stop at a music store; she'd told him the gift was for a child, and he had made a couple of suggestions as to what might appeal to a budding young pianist.

  Even last names weren't offered, which Faith assumed was one of Haven House's policies — turned out to be a not very tall, solidly built woman of about twenty-one, with wary brown eyes that had already seen far too much. She was watching over a small group of toddlers when Karen took Faith down to the roomy nursery in the basement of the house to introduce her. The children's mothers, the director had explained, were working, or job hunting, or busy with lawyers or police attempting to divorce, arrest, or prosecute abusive husbands.

  But it was late in the day, and even as Faith was introduced to Eve, women of various ages were beginning to arrive to claim their offspring.

  Karen suggested she take over the nursery to give Eve a chance to talk to Faith, and they went upstairs to the second-floor sitting room near Eve's bedroom.

  "So you've lost your memory." Eve's voice was a little abrupt, but not unsympathetic, a tone explained when she added, "Happened to me once. Got knocked into a wall and out cold. When I came to, more than six months were a total blank."

  Faith winced. "Did you eventually remember?"

  Eve shook her head. "Not really. But I pieced most of it together, talking to people. I guess that's what you're doing?"