Three Women Disappear

by James Patterson

There’s nothing I enjoy less than feeling sidelined. I opened a game of solitaire to calm myself down, made it halfway through the deck before my phone started vibrating. I pulled it out of my pocket, checked the caller ID: OLD SCHOOL. My nickname for Vincent Costello.

  Great, I thought. Exactly what I need.

  I didn’t answer, and he didn’t leave a message. Or rather the call itself was his message: I had five minutes to find a secure line and a private place to talk. I stood, headed for the elevator, did my best to look casual. When the doors opened, my legs nearly buckled: Heidi was standing there, scowling as though I was blocking her way on purpose. Or at least the woman standing there looked like Heidi. Same height, same physique, and a pantsuit right out of Heidi’s wardrobe. But this woman was older by a decade, and she was wearing tennis shoes instead of pumps. And Heidi was still in the interrogation room, trying to break my wife.

  I smiled to myself as the doors closed. Jumpy much? I thought. I was doing exactly what our marriage counselor had accused me of during our one and only session: looking for danger where there was none.

  I speed-walked across the parking lot, got behind the wheel of my Jeep, and pulled a burner phone from the glove compartment. Costello picked up on the second ring.

  “I shouldn’t have to chase you down like this,” he said.

  He had a painfully deliberate way of speaking—like Jimmy Stewart at half speed.

  “I told you I’d call when I had an update,” I said. “So far there’s nothing.”

  “Your wife hasn’t confessed?”

  “My wife didn’t kill Anthony.”

  “For your sake, I hope you’re right. Still, you don’t seem to be bending over backward to prove her innocence.”

  “I’m doing what I can,” I told him. “Have you found Anna?”

  “My men are on the scent. She knows damn well how I feel about her, so I imagine she’s being extra cautious. What about the maid?”

  “Serena?”

  “Is there another?”

  “She’s in the wind,” I said. “But she couldn’t afford a bus ticket on what Anthony paid her. I’ll find her. Soon.”

  “Make sure that you do, Detective. I’m running out of reasons to keep you around.”

  Chapter 5

  Anna Costello

  October 14

  Noon

  Interview Room A

  “GAWK AT me all you want,” I told her, “but I’m not spinning some story just to make your life easier. And if you keep lying to me, telling me there’s proof when there is none, then I promise this’ll end very badly.”

  Haagen flashed another blank stare. That seemed to be her specialty.

  “Are you threatening me, Mrs. Costello?” she said.

  “Oh, Detective, if I was threatening you,” I told her, leaning forward so she could see my baby browns, “you wouldn’t have to ask.”

  I leaned back. She sat up straighter. The upright citizen, glaring down her nose. Detective Heidi Haagen, the kind of married-to-her-work sad sack who could suck the fun out of a children’s birthday party. I almost felt sorry for her: two days in the box with me and not a thing to show for it. The higher-ups must’ve been giving her hell.

  “Mrs. Costello,” she said, “the minimum penalty for threatening an officer is 365 days in jail.”

  “Yeah, but you won’t press charges.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’m guessing you’re already a source of laughs around the watercooler. You really want to arrest a grieving widow because she hurt your feelings?”

  “No,” she said. “I want to arrest you because you murdered your husband.”

  I laughed in her face.

  “Dirty Harriet,” I said. “God, I could use a cigarette.”

  Haagen looked away as if she was afraid that too much eye contact with me might turn her to stone. She was itching to clock me, but there was a two-way mirror and cameras in every corner. I grinned. With biceps like that, it was a good bet she hit harder than Anthony.

  She made a show of sifting through my folder, then started rehashing bits of yesterday’s session.

  “I asked you about your husband’s business affairs,” she said. “You refused to answer. That alone is obstruction.”

  “You asked what part I played in his business. I didn’t play any part.”

  She looked suddenly very glum. I decided to throw her a bone.

  “But I never said I wouldn’t talk about Tony’s affairs.”

  I waited for the nod.

  “Anthony was creative with numbers,” I said. “He round-tripped for window dressing while diverting phantom tax obligations offshore.”

  “English.”

  “He was an accountant for the mob. He moved money around. More money than his employers knew about.”

  She wiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead. They must have kept the heat in that room at triple digits.

  “If that’s true, it would have made him some powerful enemies,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “My husband thought he was invincible.”

  “Just to be clear: you’re saying he stole from Vincent Costello?”

  “I’m saying he got clever in ways the family might not have liked. I never said anything about Vince. Vince isn’t someone we talk about.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make an exception,” Haagen said. “Let me remind you that you’re facing a murder charge.”

  I hit the table so hard her papers jumped.

  “Good,” I said. “Go ahead and put me in jail. I’d be safer there. And so would you, if you’re hunting Vincent Costello. You think he’d care about your shield? His motto is Buy Them or Bury Them.”

  “Them being cops?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Which cops?” she asked. “Who’s he bought?”

  “Are you Internal Affairs or Homicide?”

  She saw I had a point.

  “Okay,” she said. “We’ll come back to that. Who do you think killed Anthony?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. But if I were you, I’d be looking really hard at his little black book.”

  “Little black book?”

  The question wasn’t rhetorical—I could tell she’d never heard the expression.

  “You’ve gotta get out more,” I said. “The women he was screwing behind my back. Except it wasn’t really behind my back. If anything, he flaunted it. And he wasn’t a stickler about age or marital status or even consent.”

  “I see,” she said, seeming full-on flustered for the first time since we’d started talking. “Do you have any particular women in mind?”

  I looked at her as if I didn’t know people could be so dumb and still dress themselves.

  “Are you interrogating me, or getting me to do your job for you? Think about it. The place wasn’t broken into, right? So whoever killed him had access to the house. I’m telling you it wasn’t me. Who does that leave?”

  A lightbulb switched on.

  “Sarah,” she said. “He was sleeping with Sarah.”

  “And?” I asked. “Who else had a key and the alarm code?”

  “Serena. The maid.”

  I gave her a quiet round of applause.

  “Then that’s where I’d start,” I said.

  Chapter 6

  “LET’S GET back to you for a moment,” Haagen said. “Tell me again where you were that morning.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Asleep,” I said. “Medicated. Drugged. I take a nice little cocktail every night. You would, too, if you lived with a monster.”

  “The screaming didn’t wake you?”

  “Nothing wakes me. That’s the point of the drugs. I tumble out of bed when I’m good and ready.”

  “Like a rock star,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table. “Walk me through it again. From the time you woke up to the time you fled.”

  I looked around as though I was searching for someone to rescue me.

>   “Are you serious? We’ve been over this and over this and over this.” I pointed to one of the cameras. “Why not just watch the footage?”

  “Humor me,” she said. “A little cooperation goes a long way.”

  So I humored her.

  I got up at around ten that morning, and then only because I had to pee. I did my business, thought about hopping back in bed, but my stomach was growling. As soon as I stepped into the hall, I sensed something was off. The house wasn’t just quiet, it was empty. Our house was never empty. Especially not in the morning.

  I went to the top of the stairs and called Anthony’s name. Then Sarah’s. Then Serena’s. Crickets. I started down the steps.

  “Is this a goddamn surprise party?” I yelled. “The surprise better be a vat of coffee.”

  I crossed through the dining room, noticed the sliding glass door was open, went back to close it. Anthony was always lecturing us about reptiles getting in the house—cottonmouths and gators. He had a real paranoid streak, but maybe this time he had something to be paranoid about, because there was blood all over the door handle, bloody footprints running the length of the deck outside.

  I’d have been screaming my head off if it weren’t for the benzo haze. Instead, I turned around very slowly and whispered, “Tony?” I started searching for him as if we were kids playing hide-and-seek, calling his name softly and looking in places he couldn’t possibly be: the hall closet, under the stairs, behind the piano. When I think about it now, it’s almost comical: me tiptoeing around and whispering while he lay dead in the kitchen, maybe thirty feet away.

  Which is where I found him. This time I did scream. I ran over to him and nearly threw myself on his body. I’m not going to lie: I’d dreamed of doing something like this to Tony more times than I can count, but to actually see it? To see the person you’ve lived with for fifteen years lying facedown in his own blood, his back and legs oozing from more wounds than you can count? That sobered me up in a heartbeat. I sat there with him for a long while, stroking his hair, replaying our last argument, our first argument, regretting every unkind word in between.

  And then the phone rang.

  His phone, lying just beyond the reach of his outstretched hand. I didn’t think. I picked it up, started to answer, then stopped myself when I saw the caller ID: UV. Uncle Vincent. He knew. Uncle Vincent knew. Tony must have made one last call before he toppled. I waited for the final ring, then tossed the phone back where I’d found it.

  Uncle Vincent knew, and he’d blame me. I had no doubt. He never liked me, never made any bones about it. And there’d been an incident, maybe a month earlier. A family gathering. Family in both senses of the word. Tony got drunk. I got drunk. We did what we always did when we were drunk, only this time there was a full banquet hall to watch us go at it, with Uncle Vincent at the helm. Everyone there heard me tell Tony I’d cut his throat the next time he fell asleep. And now Uncle Vincent would be coming for me. Chances were he was already on his way.

  “Jesus Christ, Tony,” I said. “What am I going to do?”

  I was hyperventilating. I actually smacked myself. I wasn’t thinking about my dead husband anymore—I was calculating how long it would take Uncle Vincent’s men to get here.

  I ran upstairs. I knew what came next, what I had to do to protect myself. Every Mafia wife prepares for flight. We come up with a plan and rehearse it as we lie awake in bed. We compare notes. In hushed voices. In back rooms. At birthday parties, bridal showers, barbecues. What would you do if it all fell apart? If the FBI came knocking? If war broke out between the families? If your husband was locked up? Murdered?

  Bribes, I reminded myself as I threw together a travel bag. Bribes are key if you want to stay hidden from a man like Vincent.

  You don’t go on the run so much as you buy your escape. You need capital, but it can’t be cash—the courts will strip you of cash. But they can’t take your property. Not unless they can prove it was stolen. And I happened to have a fat collection of very expensive, legally obtained jewelry.

  Chapter 7

  EXCEPT THAT my collection had vanished.

  I kept the most valuable pieces—a Tiffany tiara, a double-row gem-encrusted bracelet, three pearl necklaces, a blue sapphire Heart of the Ocean replica, an 18-karat-gold locket, five sets of diamond earrings—inside a large cardboard box marked FEMININE PRODUCTS. I kept the box wedged between the piping and the wall of the bathroom sink, hidden behind columns of spare toilet paper. Burglars will riffle through your drawers. They’ll tear art from the walls looking for a safe. But they generally steer clear of toiletries. I’d thought I was being clever.

  My heart started beating so hard I could feel it in my toes. Maybe, I thought, Anthony had moved my jewels. He always believed his custom-made safe was impregnable, had told me more than once that I was being ridiculous. I ran back through the bedroom and into the hallway, pulled up a corner of the carpeting, and spun the dial on Anthony’s sunken vault. Nothing inside but a ledger and some pictures of his late mother.

  Maybe Anthony had moved my stash to a more conventional locale. I checked all the places jewelry might normally be kept: the engraved mahogany case on my vanity table, my dresser drawers, my desk drawers. All empty. Every last piece gone.

  Who else would have known to look in that box under the sink?

  I thought, Sarah.

  I thought, Serena.

  I thought, Sarah and Serena.

  Had they teamed up to kill Anthony and rob me? The idea didn’t sit right. We’d always gotten along, even gone on day trips together when Anthony was away. But then I couldn’t remember the last time they’d both been absent on the same morning. At first I felt betrayed. Then I realized it went beyond simple betrayal. They knew my history with Vincent, knew Florida’s top crime boss would be only too happy to kill me limb by limb. They’d set me up. It was probably one of them who called Vincent from Anthony’s phone.

  No more time for thinking. I heard a car pulling up the gravel driveway, moving at top speed, then hitting the brakes hard. I went to the window, peered through the blinds. Vincent had sent his top dogs: Mr. Defoe, a consigliere of long standing, and Johnny Broch, Vincent’s go-to muscle. I watched them jump out of their sedan and take the porch steps two at a time. At least they had the courtesy to ring the bell.

  Anthony’s paranoia was about to pay off for a change. In addition to the obligatory panic room, he’d had hidden passageways built all over the house. The panic room wouldn’t do any good. Either they’d wait me out or find their way in: Anthony and Vincent shared the same architect. But the paneling behind the armoire in the front bedroom swung open if you touched it in just the right spot, and behind that paneling was a ladder leading straight to the garage. I hooked my travel bag over my shoulder, heaved the armoire out of the way, and started down.

  We had twin cars, his and hers Bentleys—his a four door, mine a coupe. If Anthony had been really smart, he’d have kept some kind of low-profile getaway vehicle: a Ford Focus or a Hyundai Elantra—something that would blend in once you’d made it past the driveway. It’s hard to go unnoticed in a Bentley, but then I guess that’s the point.

  I got behind the wheel of the coupe, tossed the travel bag on the passenger seat. Anthony must have searched far and wide to find the slowest-moving automatic garage door in Florida. I watched it inch its way off the floor, counted to fifty before it even cleared the front bumper. “Come on, come on, come on,” I begged. My nerves got the better of me. I hit the gas too soon, clipped the bottom of the door, heard an unholy scraping as it ripped the paint from the Bentley’s hood. Outside, I floored it, saw Vincent’s men sprinting for their sedan in my rearview mirror.

  I took our winding, gravel access road at eighty miles per hour, kept expecting more of Vincent’s goons to pop out from behind the bushes. If they had, I swear I’d have run them over. But the only button men I had to worry about were in the sedan on my tail, Defoe behind the wheel. And they were gaining s
teadily, as if the Bentley was a Model T and they were driving a tricked-out Aston Martin.

  My best hope was to make the highway, then let the Bentley’s engine put some distance between us. I ran every red light in the local town, passed a truck around a blind turn, took the on-ramp doing a hundred. They were right there with me. I darted between lanes, looked up to see Defoe grinning, our cars not five feet apart. I got onto the shoulder and floored it. I figured this would end one of two ways: with a caravan of state troopers in my rearview or with a clean getaway. I couldn’t allow any third option.

  They kept pace for a long stretch, then started to fade. Maybe the Bentley wasn’t such a bad choice after all. When there was enough distance between us, I slipped into traffic, got off at the next exit, zigzagged down suburban streets until I was sure I’d lost them.

  I pulled into a strip mall and practiced my deep breathing, willing my pulse to slow. Then I started for Tampa, taking back roads all the way.

  Chapter 8

  Detective Sean Walsh

  ANTHONY COSTELLO was an old-fashioned accountant: he hoarded paper. If he bought a stick of gum back in 1990, he still had the receipt, and he demanded the same from his clients. Lucky for me, he was also cautious, bordering on paranoid. Anthony hung on to every scrap, but he didn’t keep any of it—incriminating or otherwise—in the house. He rented adjoining storage units at Pete Owens’s Stow-and-Go on the outskirts of Tampa. I know because I helped him find the place.

  I first met Pete Owens back when I was working Robbery and he refused to testify against one of his cat burglar tenants. A weekend in jail did nothing to change his mind. That’s the kind of guy you want watching your stuff. Pete didn’t so much as bat an eye when Anthony signed the lease “Jonathan Dough”—maybe because Anthony agreed to pay triple the rent, plus ten grand for permission to knock down the cement wall between the units.

  Of course, I hadn’t told Heidi about the Stow-and-Go. Or anyone else, for that matter. Call it pleading the Fifth in advance. Why implicate myself over five hundred square feet that no one knew existed? Not to mention that having Anthony’s business files in my back pocket gave me a leg up on my former partner.