by Harlan Coben
"She's scared," Katarina said. "She only knew Pavel. He left her yesterday and said not to leave the room under any circumstances."
I glanced over at Tatiana. I tried to give her a reassuring smile. It fell, I'm certain, way short.
"What did she say?" Rachel asked.
"She doesn't know anything, of course. Like me. She only knows that her baby will find a good home."
"What was that piece of paper she gave you?"
Katarina lifted the slip of paper into view. "It's a phone number. If there is an emergency, she's supposed to call and dial in four nines."
"A beeper," I said.
"Yes, I believe so."
I looked at Rachel. "Can we trace it?"
"I doubt it will lead anywhere. It's easy to get beepers using a phony name."
"So let's call it," I said. I turned to Katarina. "Has Tatiana met anyone else besides your brother?"
"No."
"Then you make the call," I said to her. "You say you're Tatiana. You tell whoever answers that you're bleeding or in pain or something."
"Whoa," Rachel said. "Slow down a second."
"We need to get someone here," I said.
"And then what?"
"What do you mean, then what? You interrogate them. Isn't that what you do, Rachel?"
"I'm not a fed anymore. And even if I was, we can't just bulldoze them over like that. Pretend you're one of them for a second. You show up and I confront you. What would you do if you were involved in something like this?"
"Cut a deal."
"Maybe. Or maybe you'd just clam up and ask for a lawyer. Then where would we be?"
I thought about that. "If the person asks for a lawyer," I said, "you leave them alone with me."
Rachel stared at me. "Are you serious?"
"We're talking about my daughter's life."
"We're talking about a lot of children now, Marc. These people buy babies. We need to put them out of business."
"So what are you suggesting?"
"We page them. Like you said. But Tatiana will have to do the talking. She'll have to say whatever to get them here. They'll examine her. We check their license plate. We follow them when they leave. We find out who they are."
"I don't understand," I said. "Why can't Katarina make the call?"
"Because whoever comes will want to examine the person they talked to on the phone. Katarina and Tatiana don't sound alike. They'll know what we're up to."
"But why do we need to go through all that? We'll have them here. Why risk following them home?"
Rachel closed her eyes, then opened them again. "Marc, think. If they find out we're on to them, how will they react?"
I stopped.
"And I want to be clear about something else. This isn't about just Tara anymore. We need to bring these guys down."
"And if we just jump them here," I said, seeing her true point now, "they'll be forewarned."
"That's right."
I wasn't sure how much I cared about that. Tara was my priority. If the FBI or cops want to build a legal case against these people, I was all for it. But that sat way off my personal radar.
Katarina talked to Tatiana about our plan. I could see it wasn't taking. The young girl was petrified. She kept shaking her head no. Time passed--time we really didn't have. I snapped and decided to do something fairly stupid. I picked up the phone, dialed the beeper number, and pressed the nine button four times. Tatiana went still.
"You'll do it," I said.
Katarina translated.
No one spoke for the next two minutes. We all just stared at Tatiana. When the phone rang, I did not like what I saw in the young girl's eyes. Katarina said something, her tone urgent. Tatiana shook her head and crossed her arms. The phone rang a third time. Then a fourth. I took out my gun.
Rachel said, "Marc."
I kept the gun at my side. "Does she know we're talking about my daughter's life?"
Katarina burst off something in Serbian. I looked Tatiana hard in the eyes. There was no reaction. I raised the gun and fired. The lamp exploded, the sound reverberating too loudly in the room. Everyone jumped. Another stupid move. I knew that. I just wasn't sure I cared.
"Marc!"
Rachel put her hand on my arm. I shook it off. I looked at Katarina. "Tell her if the caller hangs up ..."
I never finished the thought. Katarina started talking quickly. I gripped the gun, but it was back at my side now. Tatiana still had her eyes on me. Sweat popped up on my forehead. I felt my body shake. As Tatiana watched me, something in her face began to soften.
"Please," I said.
On the sixth ring Tatiana snatched up the receiver and started talking.
I glanced over at Katarina. She listened to the conversation and then she nodded at me. I moved back to the other side of the room. I still had the gun in my hand. Rachel stared at me. But I stared back.
Rachel blinked first.
We parked the Camaro in a restaurant lot next door and waited.
There was not a lot of chitchat. The three of us looked everywhere but at each other, as if we were all strangers on an elevator. I wasn't sure what to say. I wasn't sure what I felt. I had fired a gun and come pretty close to threatening a teenage girl. Worse, I don't think I cared very much. The repercussions, if there were any, seemed far away, storm clouds that might gather and then again might disperse.
I flipped on the radio and dialed into the local news station. I half expected someone to say, "We interrupt this program with this special bulletin," and then announce our names and give out descriptions an d maybe warn that we were armed and dangerous. But there were no stories on a shooting in Kasselton or a police search for us.
Rachel and I were still in the front while Katarina lay across the fold down seat in the back. Rachel had her Palm Pilot out. The stylus was in her hand, poised to tap. I debated calling Lenny, but I remembered Zia's warning. They'd be listening in. I had nothing much to report anyway-- just that I had threatened a pregnant sixteen-year-old girl with an illegal handgun taken off the corpse of a man who'd been murdered in my backyard. Lenny the Lawyer would certainly not relish the details.
"Do you think she'll cooperate?" I said.
Rachel shrugged.
Tatiana had promised that she was now with us. I didn't know if we could believe her or not. To be on the safe side, I unplugged her phone and took the cord with me. I searched the room for papers and writing material, so she couldn't sneak her visitor a note. I found nothing. Rachel also put her cell phone on the window ledge to be used as a listening device. Katarina had the phone to her ear now. Again she would translate.
Half an hour later, a gold-toned Lexus SC 430 roared into the lot. I whistled low. A colleague at the hospital had just bought the same car. It put him back sixty grand. The woman who emerged sported a short, spiky shock of white hair. She wore a too-tight, hair-matching white shirt and, keeping with the theme, white pants so tight they seemed to be hovering below skin level. Her arms were toned and tan. The woman had that look. You know the one. She brought on memories of the hot mother strutting around the tennis club.
Rachel and I both turned to Katarina. Katarina nodded solemnly. "That's her. That's the woman who delivered my baby."
I saw Rachel begin working her Palm Pilot. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"Putting in the license plate and make. We should know who the car is registered to in a matter of minutes."
"How do you do that?"
"It's not hard," Rachel said. "Every law enforcement officer makes connections. And if you don't, you pay off someone at the DMV. Five hundred bucks usually."
"Are you online or something?"
She nodded. "Wireless modem. A friend of mine named Harold Fisher, he's a tech geek who works freelance. He didn't like how the feds pushed me out."
"So he helps you now?"
"Yes."
The white-haired woman leaned back in and pulled out what might have been a medical bag. Sh
e threw on a pair of designer sunglasses and hurried toward Tatiana's room. The woman knocked, the door opened, Tatiana let her in.
I turned around in my seat and watched Katarina. She had the phone on mute. "Tatiana is telling her that she feels better now. The woman is annoyed she called for nothing." She paused.
"Have you heard a name yet?"
Katarina shook her head. "The woman is going to examine her."
Rachel stared at her tiny Palm Pilot screen as if it were a magic eight ball. "Bang."
"What?"
"Denise Vanech, Forty-seven Riverview Avenue, Ridgewood, New Jersey. Forty-six years of age. No outstanding parking violations."
"You got it that fast?"
She shrugged. "All Harold has to do is type the license plate. He's going to see what he can dig up on her." Her stylus started up again. "Meanwhile I'm going to plug the name into Google."
"The search engine?"
"Yup. You'd be surprised what you can find."
I knew about that, actually. I once put my own name in. I don't remember why. Zia and I were drunk and did it for fun. She calls it "ego surfing."
"Not much speaking now." Katarina's face was a mask of concentration. "Maybe she's examining her?"
I looked over at Rachel. "Two hits on Google," she said. "The first is a Web site for the Bergen County planning board. She requested a variance to subdivide her lot. It was rejected. The second, however, is more interesting. It's an alumni site. It lists past graduates that they're trying to locate."
"What school?" I asked.
"University of Philadelphia Family Nurse and Midwifery."
That fit.
Katarina said, "They're done."
"Fast," I said.
"Very."
Katarina listened some more. "The woman is telling Tatiana to take care of herself. That she should eat better, for the baby. That she should call if she feels any further discomfort."
I turned to Rachel. "Sounds more pleasant than when she arrived."
Rachel nodded. The woman we assumed was Denise Vanech came out. She walked with her head high, her rear end twitching in that cocky way. The stretched white shirt was ribbed and, I couldn't help but notice, rather see-through. She got in her car and took off.
I started up the Camaro, the engine roaring like a lifetime smoker with a hacking cough. I followed at a safe distance. I wasn't too worried about losing her. We knew where she lived now.
"I still don't understand," I said to Rachel. "How do they get away with buying babies?"
"They find desperate women. They lure them here with promises of money and a stable, comfortable home for their child."
"But in order to adopt," I said, "there's a whole procedure you have to go through. It's a pain in the ass. I know some children overseas-- physically deformed children--people tried to bring over. You can't believe the paperwork. It's impossible."
"I don't have the answer to that, Marc."
Denise Vanech veered onto the New Jersey Turnpike north. That would be the way back to Ridgewood. I let the Camaro drop back another twenty, thirty feet. The right blinker came on, and the Lexus turned off at the Vince Lombardi rest stop. Denise Vanech parked and headed inside. I pulled the car to the side of the ramp and looked at Rachel. She was biting her lip.
"Could be she's using the bathroom," I said.
"She washed up after examining Tatiana. Why didn't she go then?"
"Maybe she's hungry?"
"Does she look like she eats much Burger King to you, Marc?"
"So what do we do?"
There was little hesitation. Rachel gripped the door handle. "Drop me off by the door."
Denise Vanech was pretty sure that Tatiana was faking.
The girl had claimed to be hemorrhaging. Denise checked the sheets. They hadn't been changed, yet there was no blood on them. The tiles on the bathroom floor were clean. The toilet seat was clean. There was no blood anywhere.
That alone, of course, wouldn't mean all that much. There was a chance the girl had cleaned up. But there were other things. The gynecological examination showed no signs of distress. Nothing. Not the slightest red tint. Her vaginal hairs, too, had no traces of blood. Denise checked the shower when she finished up. Dry as bone. The girl had called less than an hour before. She claimed to be bleeding heavily.
It didn't add up.
Lastly, the girl's demeanor was wrong. The girls are always scared. That goes without saying. Denise had moved out of Yugoslavia when she was nine, during Tito's reign of relative peace, and she knew what a hellhole it was. To this girl, from where she had come, the United States must seem like Mars. But her fear had a different quality to it. Usually the girls stare at Denise as if she were some kind of parent or savior, looking up to her with a mix of trepidation and hope. But this girl averted her gaze. She fidgeted too much. And there was something else. Tatiana had been brought in by Pavel. He was usually good about watching them. But he hadn't been there. Denise was about to ask about that, but she decided to wait and play it out. If nothing was wrong, the girl would certainly raise Pavel's name.
She hadn't.
Yes, something was definitely wrong.
Denise did not want to raise suspicion. She finished the exam and hurried out. Behind her sunglasses, she checked for possible surveillance vans. There were none. She looked for obvious unmarked police cars. Again nothing. Of course, she was no expert. Though she had been working with Steven Bacard for nearly a decade, there had never been any complications. Perhaps that was why she'd let her guard down.
As soon as she got back into her car, Denise reached for her cell phone. She wanted to call Bacard. But no. If they were somehow on to them, they'd be able to trace that back. Denise debated using a pay phone at the nearest gas station. But they'd be expecting that too. Whe n she saw the sign for the rest stop, she remembered that they had a huge bank of pay phones. She could call from there. If she moved fast enough, they wouldn't see her or know what phone she used.
But was that safe either?
She quickly sorted through the possibilities. Suppose she was indeed being followed. Driving to Bacard's office would definitely be the wrong move. She could wait and call him when she got home. But they might have a tap on her phone. This--calling from the large bank of pay phones--seemed the least risky.
Denise grabbed a napkin and used it to keep her fingerprints off the receiver. She was careful not to wipe it off. There were probably dozens of fingerprints already on it. Why make their job any easier?
Steven Bacard picked up. "Hello?"
The obvious strain in his voice made her heart sink. "Where is Pavel?" she asked.
"Denise?" "Yes."
"Why are you asking?"
"I just visited his girl. Something isn't right."
"Oh God," he moaned. "What happened?"
"The girl called the emergency number. She said she was hemorrhaging, but I think she was lying."
There was silence. "Steve?"
"Go home. Don't talk to anyone."
"Okay." Denise saw the white Camaro pull up. She frowned. Hadn't she seen it before?
"Are there any records in your house?" Bacard asked.
"No, of course not."
"You're sure?"
"Positive."
"Okay, good."
A woman was getting out of the Camaro. Even from this distance, Denise could see the bandage on the woman's ear.
"Go home," Bacard said.
Before the woman could turn around, Denise hung up the phone and slipped into the bathroom.
Steven Bacard had loved the old Batman TV show as a kid. Every episode, he remembered, started out pretty much the same way. A crime | would be committed. They would flash to Commissioner Gordon and f Chief O'Hara. The two law-enforcement buffoons would be grim faced.j They would discuss the situation and realize that there was only one* w ay out. Commissioner Gordon would then pick up the red Batphone.j Batman would answer, promise to save the day, turn to Robin an
d say, "TotheBatpoles!"
He stared at the phone with that creepy feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was no hero he was calling. Just the opposite, in fact. But in the end, survival was what mattered. Pretty words and justification were great during times of peace. In times of war, in times of life and death, it was simpler: Us or Them. He picked up the phone and dialed the number.
Lydia answered sweetly. "Hello, Steven."
"I need you again."
"Bad?"
"Very."
"We're on our way," she said.
Chapter 39
"When I oeJOt in there," Rachel said, "she was in the bathroom. But I have a feeling she made a call first."
"Why?"
"There was a line in the bathroom. She was only three people ahead of me. She should have been more."
"Any way of figuring out who she called?"
"Not in the near future, no. Every phone in that place is taken. Even if I had full FBI access, it would take some time."
"So we keep following."
"Yes." She turned behind her. "Do you have an atlas in the car?"
Katarina smiled. "Many. Verne likes maps. World, country, state?"
"State."
She dug into the pocket behind my seat and handed Rachel the atlas. Rachel uncapped a pen and started marking it up.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm not sure."
The cell phone rang. I picked it up.
"You guys all right?"
"Yeah, Verne, we're fine."
"Got my sister to watch the kids for me. I'm in the pickup heading east. What's your ten-forty?"
I told him we were heading to Ridgewood. He knew the town.
"I'm about twenty minutes away," he said. "I'll meet you at the Ridgewood Coffee Company on Wilsey Square."
"We may be at this midwife's house," I said.
"I'll wait."
"Okay."
"Hey, Marc," Verne said, "not to get sentimental or anything, but if somebody needs shooting--"
"I'll let you know."
The Lexus turned off at Linwood Avenue. We dropped farther back. Rachel kept her head down, alternating between the stylus on the Palm Pilot and the marker on the atlas. We hit the suburbs. Denise Vanech turned left on Waltherly Road.
"She's definitely heading home," Rachel said. "Let her go. We need to think this through."
