Vanish

by Tess Gerritsen

  “Like you?”

  “Tenacity is getting me absolutely nowhere with you. And here I thought we could be friends. Not that I was expecting any special favors.”

  “What do you expect from me?”

  “Dinner? Dancing? Cocktails, at the very least?”

  “Are you serious?”

  He answered her question with a sheepish shrug. “No harm in trying.”

  The elevator opened and they stepped out.

  “She died of gunshot wounds to the flank and the head,” said Maura. “I think that’s what you wanted to know.”

  “How many wounds? How many different shooters?”

  “You want all the gory details?”

  “I want to be accurate. That means going directly to the source, even if I have to make a nuisance of myself.”

  They walked into the newsroom, past reporters tapping at keyboards, to a desk where every horizontal square inch was covered with files and Post-it notes. Not a single photo of a kid or a woman or even a dog was displayed here. This space was purely for work, although she wondered how much work anyone could actually do, surrounded by such clutter.

  He commandeered an extra chair from his neighbor’s desk and rolled it over for Maura to sit in. It gave a noisy squeak as she settled into it.

  “So you won’t return my calls,” he said, sitting down as well. “But you do come by to see me at work. Does this qualify as a mixed message?”

  “This case has gotten complicated.”

  “And now you need something from me.”

  “We’re all trying to understand what happened that night. And why it happened.”

  “If you had any questions for me, all you had to do was pick up the phone.” He pinned her with a look. “I would have returned your calls, Dr. Isles.”

  They fell silent. At other desks, phones rang and keyboards clacked, but Maura and Lukas just looked at each other, the air between them spiked with both irritation and something else, something she didn’t want to acknowledge. A strong whiff of mutual attraction. Or am I just imagining it?

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I’m being a jerk. I mean, you are here. Even if it’s for your own purposes.”

  “You have to understand my position, too,” she said. “As a public official, I get calls all the time from reporters. Some of them—many of them—don’t care about victims’ privacy or grieving families or whether investigations are at risk. I’ve learned to be cautious and watch what I say. Because I’ve been burned too many times by reporters who swear that my comments will stay off the record.”

  “So that’s what kept you from calling? Professional discretion?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s no other reason you didn’t call me back?”

  “What other reason would there be?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe you didn’t like me.” His gaze was so intent, she had trouble keeping eye contact. He made her that uncomfortable.

  “I don’t dislike you, Mr. Lukas.”

  “Ouch. Now I fully appreciate what it means to be damned with faint praise.”

  “I thought reporters had thicker skin.”

  “We all want to be liked, especially by people we admire.” He leaned closer. “And by the way, it’s not Mr. Lukas. It’s Peter.”

  Another silence, because she didn’t know if this was flirtation or manipulation. For this man, it might amount to the same thing.

  “That went over like a lead balloon,” he said.

  “It’s nice to be flattered, but I’d rather you just be straight-forward.”

  “I thought I was being straightforward.”

  “You want information from me. I want the same from you. I just didn’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

  He gave a nod of understanding. “Okay. So this is just a simple transaction.”

  “What I need to know is—”

  “We’re getting right to business? I can’t even offer you a cup of coffee first?” He rose from the chair and crossed toward the community coffeepot.

  Glancing at the carafe, she saw only tar-black dregs, and said quickly, “None for me, thank you.”

  He poured a cup for himself and sat back down. “So what’s with the reluctance to discuss this over the phone?”

  “Things have been . . . happening.”

  “Things? Are you telling me you don’t even trust your own telephone?”

  “As I told you, the case is complicated.”

  “Federal intervention. Confiscated ballistics evidence. FBI in a tug-of-war with the Pentagon. A hostage taker who still remains unidentified.” He laughed. “Yeah, I’d say it’s gotten very complicated.”

  “You know all this.”

  “That’s why they call us reporters.”

  “Who have you been talking to?”

  “Do you really think I’m going to answer that question? Let’s just say I have friends in law enforcement. And I have theories.”

  “About what?”

  “Joseph Roke and Olena. And what that hostage taking was really all about.”

  “No one really knows that answer.”

  “But I know what law enforcement is thinking. I know what their theories are.” He set down his coffee cup. “John Barsanti spent about three hours with me, did you know that? Picking and probing, trying to find out why I was the only reporter Joseph Roke wanted to talk to. Funny thing about interrogations. The person being interrogated can glean a lot of information just by the questions they ask you. I know that two months ago, Olena and Joe were together in New Haven, where he killed a cop. Maybe they were lovers, maybe just fellow delusionals, but after an incident like that, they’d want to split up. At least, they would if they were smart, and I don’t think these were dumb people. But they must have had a way to stay in contact. A way to regroup if they needed to. And they chose Boston as the place to meet.”

  “Why Boston?”

  His gaze was so direct she could not avoid it. “You’re looking at the reason.”

  “You?”

  “I’m not being egotistical here. I’m just telling you what Barsanti seems to think. That Joe and Olena somehow identified me as their crusading hero. That they came to Boston to see me.”

  “And that leads to the question I came here to ask.” She leaned toward him. “Why you? They didn’t pick your name out of a hat. Joe may have been mentally unstable, but he was intelligent. An obsessive reader of newspapers and magazines. Something you wrote must have caught his eye.”

  “I know the answer to that one. Barsanti essentially spilled the beans when he asked about a column I wrote back in early June. About the Ballentree Company.”

  They both fell silent as another reporter walked past, on her way to the coffeepot. While they waited for her to pour her cup, their gazes remained locked on each other. Only when the woman was once again out of earshot did Maura say: “Show me the column.”

  “It’ll be on LexisNexis. Let me call it up.” He swiveled around to his computer and called up the LexisNexis news search engine, typed in his name, and hit search.

  The screen filled with entries.

  “Let me find the right date,” he said, scrolling down the page.

  “This is everything you’ve ever written?”

  “Yeah, probably going all the way back to my Bigfoot days.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When I got out of journalism school, I had a ton of student loans to pay off. Took every writing gig I could get, including an assignment to cover a Bigfoot convention out in California.” He looked at her. “I admit it, I was a news whore. But I had bills to pay.”

  “And now you’re respectable?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far . . .” He paused, clicked on an entry. “Okay, here’s the column,” he said and rose to his feet, offering her his chair. “That’s what I wrote back in June, about Ballentree.”

  She settled into his just-vacated seat and focused on the text now glowing on the
screen.

  War is Profit: Business Booming for Ballentree

  While the US economy sags, there’s one sector that’s still raking in big profits. Mega defense contractor Ballentree is reeling in new deals like fish from their private trout pond . . .

  “Needless to say,” said Lukas, “Ballentree was none too happy about that piece. But I’m not the only one who’s writing these things. The same criticism has been leveled by other reporters.”

  “Yet Joe chose you.”

  “Maybe it was the timing. Maybe he just happened to pick up a Tribune that day, and there was my column about big bad Ballentree.”

  “Can I look at what else you’ve written?”

  “Be my guest.”

  She returned to the list of his articles on the LexisNexis page. “You’re prolific.”

  “I’ve been writing for over twenty years, covering everything from gang warfare to gay marriage.”

  “And Bigfoot.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  She scrolled down the first and second pages of entries, then moved onto the third page. There she paused. “These articles were filed from Washington.”

  “I think I told you. I was the Tribune’s Washington correspondent. Only lasted for two years there.”

  “Why?”

  “I hated DC. And I admit, I’m a born Yankee. Call me a masochist, but I missed the winters up here, so I moved back to Boston in February.”

  “What was your beat in DC?”

  “Everything. Features. Politics, crime beat.” He paused. “A cynic might say there’s no difference between the last two. I’d as soon cover a good juicy murder than chase after some blow-dried senator all day.”

  She glanced back over her shoulder at him. “Have you ever dealt with Senator Conway?”

  “Of course. He’s one of our senators. “ He paused. “Why do you ask about Conway?” When she didn’t answer, he leaned closer, his hands grasping the back of her chair. “Dr. Isles,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet, whispering into her hair. “You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

  Her gaze was fixed on the screen. “I’m just trying to make some connections here.”

  “Are you getting the tingle?”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I call it when I suddenly know I’m onto something interesting. Also known as ESP or Spidey sense. Tell me why Senator Conway makes you sit up and take notice.”

  “He’s on the intelligence committee.”

  “I interviewed him back in November or December. The article’s there somewhere.”

  She scanned down the headlines, about Congressional hearings and terrorism alerts and a Massachusetts congressman arrested for drunk driving, and found the article about Senator Conway. Then her gaze strayed to a different headline, dated January 15.

  Reston Man Found Dead Aboard Yacht. Businessman Missing Since January 2nd.

  It was the date that she focused on. January 2nd. She clicked on the entry and the page filled with text. Only a moment before, Lukas had talked about the tingle. She was feeling it now.

  She turned to look at him. “Tell me about Charles Desmond.”

  “What do you want to know about him?”

  “Everything.”

  THIRTY

  Who are you, Mila? Where are you?

  Somewhere, there had to be a trace of her. Jane poured herself a fresh cup of coffee, then sat down at her kitchen table and surveyed all the files she had collected in the days since coming home from the hospital. Here were autopsy and Boston PD crime lab reports, Leesburg PD files on the Ashburn massacre, Moore’s files on Joseph Roke and Olena. She had already combed these files several times, searching for a trace of Mila, the woman whose face no one knew. The only physical evidence that Mila had ever existed had come from the interior of Joseph Roke’s car: several human head hairs, found on the backseat, which matched neither Roke’s nor Olena’s.

  Jane took a sip of coffee, and reached once again for the file on Joseph Roke’s abandoned car. She had learned to work around Regina’s nap times, and now that her daughter was finally asleep, she wasted no time plunging back into the search for Mila. She scanned the list of items found in the vehicle, reviewing again the pathetic collection of his worldly possessions. There’d been a duffel bag full of dirty clothes and stolen towels from Motel Six. There’d been a bag of moldy bread and a jar of Skippy peanut butter and a dozen cans of Vienna sausages. The diet of a man who had no chance to cook. A man on the run.

  She turned to the trace evidence reports and focused on the hair and fiber findings. It had been an extraordinarily filthy car, both the front and the back seats yielding up a large variety of fibers, both natural and man-made, as well as numerous hair strands. It was the hairs on the backseat that interested her, and she lingered over the report.

  Human. A02/B00/C02 (7 cm)/D42

  Scalp hair. Slightly curved, shaft is seven centimeters, pigment is medium red.

  So far, this is all we know about you, thought Jane. You have short red hair.

  She turned to the photographs of the car. She had seen these before, but once again, she studied the empty Red Bull soda cans and crumpled candy wrappers, the wadded-up blanket and dirty pillow. Her gaze paused on the tabloid newspaper lying on the backseat.

  The Weekly Confidential.

  Again, she was struck by how incongruous that newspaper was, in a man’s car. Could Joe really have cared about what was troubling Melanie Griffith, or whose out-of-town husband was enjoying lap dances? The Confidential was a woman’s tabloid; women did care about the woes of film stars.

  She left the kitchen and peeked into her daughter’s room. Regina was still asleep—one of those rare moments that would all too soon be over. Quietly she closed the nursery door, then slipped out of the apartment and headed up the hall to her neighbor’s.

  It took a few moments for Mrs. O’Brien to answer her door, but she was clearly delighted to have a visitor. Any visitor.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” said Jane.

  “Come in, come in!”

  “I can’t stay. I left Regina in her crib, and—”

  “How is she? I heard her crying again last night.”

  “I’m sorry about that. She’s not a good sleeper.”

  Mrs. O’Brien leaned close and whispered. “Brandy.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “On a pacifier. I did it with both my boys, and they slept like angels.”

  Jane knew the woman’s two sons. Angels was not a word that still applied to them. “Mrs. O’Brien,” she said, before she had to listen to any more bad-mother tips, “you subscribe to the Weekly Confidential, don’t you?”

  “I just got this week’s issue. ‘Pampered Hollywood pets!’ Did you know some hotels have special rooms just for your dog?”

  “Do you still have any issues from last month? I’m looking for the one with Melanie Griffith on the cover.”

  “I know just the one you’re talking about.” Mrs. O’Brien waved her into the apartment. Jane followed her into the living room and stared in amazement at tottering stacks of magazines piled on every horizontal surface. There had to be a decade’s worth of People and Entertainment Weekly and US magazines.

  Mrs. O’Brien went straight to the appropriate pile, rifled through the stack of Confidentials, and pulled out the issue with Melanie Griffith. “Oh yes, I remember, this was a good one,” she said. “ ‘Plastic Surgery Disasters!’ If you ever think about getting a face-lift, you’d better read this issue. It’ll make you forget the whole thing.”

  “Do you mind if I borrow it?”

  “You’ll bring it back, though?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s just for a day or two.”

  “Because I do want it back. I like to reread them.”

  She probably remembered every detail, too.

  Back at her own kitchen table, Jane looked at the tabloid’s issue date: July 20th. It had gone on sale only a week before Olena was pulled f
rom Hingham Bay. She opened the Confidential and began to read. Found herself enjoying it even as she thought: God, this is trash, but it’s fun trash. I had no idea he was gay, or that she hasn’t had sex in four years. And what the hell was this craze about colonics, anyway? She paused to ogle the plastic surgery disasters, then moved on, past the fashion emergencies and “I Saw Angels” and “Courageous Cat Saves Family.” Had Joseph Roke lingered over the same gossip, the same celebrity fashions? Had he studied the faces disfigured by plastic surgeons and thought: Not for me. I’ll grow old gracefully?

  No, of course not. Joseph Roke wasn’t a man who’d read this.

  Then how did it end up in his car?

  She turned to the classified ads on the last two pages. Here were columns of advertisements for psychic services and alternative healers and business opportunities at home. Did anyone actually answer these? Did anyone really think you could make “up to $250 a day at home stuffing envelopes”? Halfway down the page, she came to the personal ads, and her gaze suddenly froze on a two-line ad. On four familiar words.

  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.