by Lisa Gardner
Good luck rebuilding this one, I think, and despite myself, I’m curious what its fate will be.
But first, to the victor goes the spoils.
It takes a minute; then I find it. Styrofoam plate, my first disappointment. Plastic bottle, however, so maybe water. No utensils. I search and search and search. Nada. But the plate . . . In the dark, I poke the contents with my finger. Roasted half chicken, cubes of potatoes, and what feels like some sort of rubbery vegetable.
Finger food. Don’t mind if I do.
I turn toward the one-way mirror. I stare right at it, do my best to peer through it as I pick up the roasted leg and go to work. My fingers are greasy. The chain rattles down from the metal bracelets circling my wrists, rubs against my bare thigh. My satin nightie has ridden up, but I make no move to adjust it.
Does he want me to be refined? Hence the new nightwear? Well, that’s not what he’s going to get. This is me, practical, methodical, efficient as I work my way through the contents on the plate.
The chicken isn’t half bad. Nor the potatoes or what turns out to be green beans. Not that I’m seeking flavor. I chew for sustenance, because now I’m not hungry. And after several cautious sips of the water, nor am I thirsty.
I am fine.
I’m okay.
I am alone in the dark and I’m perfectly all right.
* * *
LATER, MY BACK TO THE WATCHER’S WINDOW, squatted down to shield my body from view, I fold the Styrofoam plate around my fists and use it as a makeshift shield as I hammer my hands against the shattered side of the coffin. My efforts are rewarded as I break off two, three, four shards of pine. Now I just need a place to hide them. In the dark, dark room, where I can see nothing, but he can see all.
I cup the thin splinters in my palms, then wrap my hands around the two-thirds-full water bottle. Let him think I’m trying to hide that as I shuffle back to my mattress, plastic bottle clutched to my chest.
I lie down with my back to the one-way mirror. Then, moving slowly, I use the longer, sharper wooden shard to work the welted edge of the mattress. I only need a small slit, one inch across does it. Then I can slide in the first wooden splinter, the second, the third.
Pine is a soft wood. I doubt the fragments will be terribly effective as weapons. But then again, jab a sliver in the eye . . .
Resources. What I have that he doesn’t even know he should take away.
I curl my knees up and around the water bottle.
I think, as I start to drift off again, that I’m not hungry, I’m not thirsty. I’m not cold, I’m not hot. I’m not in pain, nor exhausted, nor terrified.
I am a girl ready to fight.
Chapter 22
IN A DETECTIVE’S WORLD there was one true blight on society, and it wasn’t the master criminal; after all, superpredators were few and far between. It was the media.
Sunday afternoon, D.D. definitely needed to question Colin Summers. In the comfort of his own home would be ideal, as the less he felt threatened, the more likely he would be to talk. However, given the various media-fueled rumors that Devon Goulding was the same man who’d kidnapped Stacey Summers . . . D.D. didn’t have to drive out to the Summers residence to know it would be a war zone of illegally parked news vans, feisty photographers, and rabid reporters.
The arrival of a Boston sergeant detective known for her past work on several major cases would only fan the flames. Even sending out Pam Mason, the family’s victim specialist, would stir the pot.
So, Sunday afternoon, D.D., Keynes, and Pam Mason sat in Keynes’s office and, instead of actively searching for Florence Dane, brainstormed ways of outsmarting the media in order to get Colin Summers alone for questioning. It took another round of coffee to get the job done, with Keynes sticking to water.
D.D. didn’t trust him. Anyone who could appear that alert and engaged without at least one cup of joe?
Pam came up with the winning plan. She would call Colin. Request that he come to his office for a meeting with her. He would understand immediately she had something to say outside the prying eyes of media. And while the news vans could follow him to his downtown office building, they were shut out of the high-rise itself, given it was private property. Colin could ride the elevator up to his eleventh-floor suite, which should be relatively quiet on a Sunday afternoon.
D.D. and Pam would meet him there. Keynes would remain behind, as three against one would appear too threatening for the kinds of questions they needed to ask.
Keynes didn’t argue, merely nodded. D.D. wondered what it would take to ruffle the senior victim specialist. Or maybe that was the point. In his line of work, at this stage of his career, he really had seen it all.
Pam made the call. D.D. could only hear her side of it, but it was clear Colin was already champing at the bit, demanding to know who what why when and how. But Pam, an experienced handler, kept her voice calm and her request simple. Meet me at your office. Meet me at your office. Meet me at your office.
Eventually, Colin must have given up on beating his head against the iron wall of her answers, and agreed to meet her at his office. Three o’clock.
The hour wait gave D.D. time to check in with her team. Keynes showed her an unoccupied office she could use, and she quickly dialed Phil, filling him in on the game plan.
“So you want me to meet with Colin Summers at three?” he asked.
“No.” She frowned over the phone. “I got it.”
Pause. “Can I ask a question?”
“Maybe.”
“What part of duty are you restricting, I mean, given that you are on restricted duty?”
“I’m not carrying my sidearm,” she informed him curtly. “Why? Think I need one to interview an investment banker?”
“No. I think you need to trust your squad. Let us work while you boss us around. Come on, what’s not to love?”
“I don’t have time for this conversation,” she informed him.
“You mean the one where I’m right and you know it?”
She growled. Her former squad mate didn’t laugh. “D.D., we care about you. You’re just coming back from a major injury suffered on the job when you went off all alone, without notifying Neil or me, to review a crime scene. Can you not see the pattern? And do you not understand how much that hurts us? No, no. I’m wrong. How much that pisses us off? We were your partners, and you didn’t even give us a chance to have your back.”
That brought D.D. up short. One, because Phil, father of four, never swore. And two, because calm, good-natured, always-understanding Phil definitely sounded angry.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You never mean it that way. That’s the point. You think of yourself—”
“I think of my case!”
“Which has a whole team working it! Exactly my point.”
D.D. didn’t know what to say. Phil was chastising her. Phil never chastised her. That was her job.
“So . . . you want to question Colin Summers?” she asked quietly. Though she didn’t want Phil to interview Stacey Summers’s father. She wanted to do it. Meet the man, pass judgment on how he responded to each line of inquiry. It was her nature to want to do and see for herself. Not because she didn’t trust her squad, but simply because she was who she was.
Just ask Alex.
“I can’t,” Phil said.
“You can’t?”
“I got a bead on Kristy Kilker, whose driver’s license we found in Devon Goulding’s bedroom.”
“The one who’s supposedly studying abroad in Italy?”
“Yeah, did some digging. According to her university, Kristy never signed up for a study-abroad program. So either she lied to her mother or her mother’s lying to us. I got uniform patrol officers picking up the mom now and bringing her down for questioning.”
“Keep
me posted. Any word on Natalie Draga?”
“Yeah, heard back from her grandmother in Mobile. Natalie headed to Boston last year. Called home a few times, but Grandma Draga hasn’t heard from her in a bit. Best she recalls, Natalie had gotten a job as a waitress in a bar. But it doesn’t sound like she and her granddaughter are exactly close, so as for such details as where Natalie lived, possible roommates, friends, Grandma Draga doesn’t know, doesn’t care.”
“Which bar?”
“Grandma didn’t know. But per your savvy restricted duty sergeant commands”—Phil uttered the words dryly—“couple of district detectives paid a visit to Devon Goulding’s employer yesterday afternoon—”
“Tonic.”
“Yep. They flashed photos of Natalie Draga and Kristy Kilker. Bar manager ID’d Natalie Draga as a former employee, but claims she hasn’t seen her in months. Draga walked out one day, never came back.”
“Kristy Kilker?” D.D. asked, wondering if they could be so lucky as to have both women connected so quickly to Devon Goulding.
“No such luck, but Carol is headed over to Tonic now to copy Natalie’s pay stubs,” Phil said. “More and more . . .”
“Looks like Devon Goulding has direct ties to at least Natalie Draga. Working at the same bar and all.”
“Carol will figure out the details,” Phil assured her.
D.D. tried to stop her automatic snort. She was only half successful.
“Come on now,” Phil said immediately. “Why are you so hard on her? Carol Manley is a perfectly good detective with an excellent track record. Not to mention she has a golden retriever named Harley. How can you not like a woman with a dog named Harley?”
D.D. didn’t answer. Her feelings regarding the new detective were irrational, and she knew it.
“I thought Carol was reviewing video feeds from all the cameras surrounding Florence Dane’s apartment?” she asked.
“Officers are executing those warrants now. When they have the videos, she’ll start reviewing. But in the meantime . . .”
D.D. couldn’t argue with that. It did take longer to amass security footage than one might think.
“We need to find Flora,” she muttered.
“Then given that you’re the boss, how ’bout requesting more manpower? Because between working Devon Goulding from yesterday and now this from this morning . . . we’re stretched thin. You know, so thin, even the restricted duty boss lady feels a need to work in the field.”
“Touché.”
“Not that it’s my place to tell you what to do.”
Phil sounded cranky again. D.D. hesitated. Wondered if there were things here she was still missing. God knows she’d never considered that Phil and Neil might be taking her injury so personally. Left alone, she had a natural bossy streak even before she, the younger detective, was appointed a supervisor over Phil, who had more years on the job. Though she’d always been the lead detective on their three-man squad . . .
“Phil . . . ,” she started.
“Hold on. Okay. Mrs. Kilker has just arrived. Time for me to earn my paycheck. Good luck with Colin Summers.”
“Same.”
“Then come home?”
Cop-speak for returning to HQ. “Sure. Then I’ll be home.”
“See you here.”
Phil hung up. D.D. stood there a while longer, wondering again what she was missing and, if she was such an excellent detective, why the men in her life remained such mysteries to her.
* * *
COLIN SUMMERS WORKED FOR a major investment bank in the financial sector of Boston, adjacent to Faneuil Hall. From the FBI’s downtown office, it was easier for Pam and D.D. to walk to the stately pink-granite building than battle out-of-state tourists driving hopelessly lost on increasingly narrow side streets.
D.D.’s favorite leather coat wasn’t completely up to the job of battling the late fall chill, but she hunched her shoulders and soldiered through. Pam, she noticed, had exchanged her suit jacket and silk blouse for a cable-knit sweater and gold-toned scarf. Still dressy, but more approachable than the earlier buttoned-up affair. Not a bad strategy, in other words, when about to ambush an angry father about just how far he might have gone to get his missing daughter back.
Like many corporate offices in Boston, the banking building had a manned lobby even on Sundays. Pam did the honors for both of them, flashing her ID and stating they had a three o’clock meeting with Colin Summers. The young rent-a-cop stifled a yawn—no doubt they’d interrupted quality time watching YouTube videos on his cell phone—then dialed up. Colin must’ve already been there to vouch for them, as they were immediately waved through.
“I’ll take the lead,” Pam said briskly as they rode the elevator up.
D.D. didn’t argue. Pam had an established relationship with the subject, and despite what Phil might think, D.D. wasn’t that big a control freak. Maybe.
They arrived on the eleventh-floor lobby. One set of glass doors to the left, a second set to the right. Both appeared dark and secured. Pam turned to the left, and sure enough, a man appeared on the other side of the door, gaunt face already set in a grim mask as he buzzed them through.
D.D. had never met Colin Summers before. Just spoken to him by phone, plus seen him on TV, pleading for his daughter’s safe return. He must’ve recognized her from various press conferences as well, because immediately:
“I knew it! I knew it! If she’s here”—he stuck a finger out at D.D.—“then that Goulding bastard’s death did have something to do with my daughter. Did you find her? Do you have news? Where is she? Where’s Stacey!”
“Colin,” Pam said. Not soothing, which surprised D.D., but firm. “We haven’t found Stacey. Trust me, I’d be sitting with both you and your wife right now if we had.”
Colin scowled but nodded. Apparently, that made sense to him.
“We do, however, have a new line of inquiry that might help us find her. So please, may we?”
Pam gestured to the glass doors, which Colin had buzzed open but was still blocking with his body. Grudgingly, the man fell back. Pam shot D.D. a look; then both of them entered.
They walked into a tight receptionist area, punctuated by a striking wall of gray slate. Modern and sophisticated, as befitting a major i-bank. Colin headed to the right, swiping his employee ID as they passed through another set of secured doors. Then they entered the heart of the matter, a vast open space dotted with cubicles in the middle and a row of rooms with a view to the right.
Most of the cubicles were empty, as they’d hoped, the space only half lit. But D.D. could hear the clickety-clack sound of typing in the distance, as well as the low murmur of a voice on the phone. Young up-and-comers she figured, still fighting to get ahead by logging Sunday hours.
A vice president with the firm, Colin had already paid his dues. He led them to the proverbial corner office, and D.D. couldn’t help but be impressed. A massive cherry desk. Mammoth black leather executive chair. Even more startling, a city view. Sure, he was peering down a narrow street running between two other high-rise buildings, but still . . . the cobblestones of Faneuil Hall beckoned in the distance, bustling with tiny wide-eyed tourists and hungry locals enjoying the weekend.
D.D. tore her gaze from the windows and took in the gold-framed diplomas punctuating the adjacent wall. Pam Mason hadn’t been lying; there appeared to be no problem Colin’s advanced intellect and financial success couldn’t solve.
Except, of course, for the matter of his missing daughter.
Colin had already taken a seat behind his mammoth desk. Under normal circumstances, D.D. thought, he would’ve been considered good-looking. Close-cropped sandy-blond hair, intense blue eyes, trim, athletic figure. Work-hard, play-hard kind of guy.
His mouth, however, was set too hard and thin. Not cruel, but grim. And his face, upon closer inspection, was holl
owed out. A workaholic under more than his usual load of stress. A man watching helplessly as his family fell apart.
He didn’t offer water or coffee. He just sat, the desk an obvious shield before him, as he stared at D.D. and waited for her to speak.
Pam took one of the wingback chairs from the seating area and dragged it over. Perfectly calm and unruffled, she gestured for D.D. to take a seat. Then she dragged over a second chair for herself.
True to her word, D.D. waited for Pam to take the lead. Which, given how hard Colin was staring at her—as if already he considered D.D. the enemy—was definitely the right approach.
“How is Pauline?” Pam asked after a moment. She took her time getting settled into her seat, making herself comfortable. In contrast to Colin’s grim features, she appeared relaxed, engaged; she could’ve been meeting old friends for brunch.
“How do you think?” Colin bit out, eyes blazing. “Especially given . . . yesterday.”
“Did you know Devon Goulding, Colin? Ever frequent Tonic bar, recognize his picture on the news—”
“You mean other than he’s a perfect match for the guy who abducted my daughter?”
“Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren”—Pam turned abruptly—“can you please tell Mr. Summers what you found in Devon Goulding’s house?”
D.D. startled. She had no intention of giving up any such information. But Colin was already leaning forward, face nearly feverish. He wasn’t going to back off, she realized. He believed they knew something and were intentionally keeping him in the dark. As long as that was the case, they would get nothing from him and go nowhere in this interview. She’d agreed to let the victim advocate take the lead, so Pam Mason had made the executive decision: Sometimes you gotta pay to play. They would pay Colin Summers with this information. And hope he returned the favor.
“We found photos,” D.D. offered, “belonging to a young woman he was clearly stalking. We also found driver’s licenses hidden away in his bedroom. We have yet to locate either woman from the licenses.”
