Every Waking Hour

by Joanna Schaffhausen

He searched himself. “She was always pissed at her parents, especially her mom. Her brother got killed, you know, before she was born, and that’s why her mom didn’t want Chloe to go anywhere. She said once, ‘She didn’t even want me. My dad had to make her.’ Which, I dunno, man. How do you make someone have a kid? I told her that her mom was probably just scared after what happened before. Chloe said that didn’t help her now.”

  Ellery tamped down her rising frustration. None of this was especially new information. “What about the second cell phone? Did you ever see one?”

  “No, she had an iPhone in a Hello Kitty case. That’s all I saw. Wait.” He sat up with a jolt and pulled out his own phone. “She texted me once from a different number. She said it was a friend’s phone, but maybe it wasn’t. I can show you the number—would that help?”

  Ellery tried not to grab the phone out of his hands too eagerly. A real break. Finally. “Yes,” she said. “I believe it would.”

  * * *

  Ellery cursed as she fed her dollar bill into the soda machine for the third time, only to have it spit the bill back out again with an electronic hum. Dorie appeared next to her, took the dollar, flapped it like a waiter might do with a linen napkin before placing it into a woman’s lap, and then gently inserted it into the machine. It took. “Patience, grasshopper,” she said to Ellery.

  Ellery hit the button to dispense a Diet Coke. “What did you find out on Wintour?” she asked as she cracked the tab.

  “His record is clean. Which may mean he’s not our creeper.”

  “Or he’s really good at getting away with it.”

  “Yeah, well, here’s a piece of free advice from someone who’s been there before: we don’t want to rattle the cage of a six-hundred-dollar-per-hour lawyer without more evidence than hearsay from a teenager. We’ll have to do a full background and hope something shakes loose.”

  “That takes days, often weeks.” A complete background required tracing Wintour back through every address he had ever had, contacting law enforcement in those districts, as well as talking to former friends, relatives, and neighbors.

  “We have no choice unless we find something much more incriminating than a rumor.”

  “We have her computer data.”

  “Just one month’s worth. If there was anything substantive there about Wintour, it’d have been flagged already.”

  Ellery chewed her lip and worried the pop-top of her soda can back and forth. “We could tail him, see where he goes.” This was how Reed had caught Coben all those years ago. The detectives had interviewed the serial killer and released him, deciding he was not their guy. Reed had seen Coben’s weird obsession with hands and decided to follow him anyway. He’d been green at the time, barely on the job a few months. He was supposed to be aiding background checks, not surveilling suspects, but he’d played a hunch and it panned out. A few more hours in that hellhole and she would have died from her injuries and the infection that had set in. Chloe had been gone for almost three days now.

  “Conroy isn’t going to authorize surveillance based on what we’ve got so far. We need more.”

  Ellery’s brain was still whirring. She drained her drink and tossed the can into the nearby recycling bin. “We don’t need more. We just need Wintour to think we have more.”

  “Did you not just hear me about the dangers of bluffing a shark in an Armani suit?”

  “We won’t be the ones doing the bluffing.” She checked the time on her phone. “Come on, we can meet Conroy at the Lockhart place and run it by him. Teresa’s set to make her next public statement in less than an hour.”

  “What about Chloe’s second phone? Did you find out anything from the number?”

  “It’s a burner phone purchased from a third-party distributor. He says he sold it at some farmers market in Providence back in May. The buyer paid cash and he doesn’t remember who it was—not a big help.”

  Dorie halted in mid-stride. “Did you say Providence?”

  Ellery stopped, too. “Yeah, why?”

  “Stephen Wintour owns a second home in Narragansett.”

  Ellery turned on her heel and doubled her determined pace. This time, Dorie didn’t try to slow her down or make her argue her position. She beat her to the front doors by a nose.

  * * *

  At the Lockhart mansion, Conroy gave them permission to discuss the idea of confronting Wintour with Martin Lockhart. Ellery reasoned that if anyone could con Wintour into making a slip at this stage, it would be his friend. “But tread lightly,” Conroy said, directing the caution more to Dorie than to Ellery, as though she were the one who would actually heed it. “If he does have the girl, the absolute last thing we want to do is spook him. In the meantime, I’ll put some people on the deep background check. Maybe we get lucky and they’ll find an early hit.”

  Ellery and Dorie found Martin Lockhart at the back of the living room, watching as the cameras and microphones were set up around his wife. He gripped the back of an armchair so hard his fingers had turned completely white. “The FBI said she should do it alone this time,” he said to them as they came to stand near his side. “It’s supposed to make her look more vulnerable, which is apparently what this guy wants. He wants to see her fear, they said. I said, why does it have to be just her? Look at me.” He jerked his hand free from the chair and held it out to show them. His fingers trembled as though they were leaves riffling in the breeze.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellery said. “I’m sure they have their reasons.”

  “It’s my fault, you know.” He snapped his mouth shut, his jaw tight.

  “What’s your fault?”

  “All of it.” He stared straight ahead as the white lights came up on his wife. “Teresa didn’t want a child, not at first. I wore her down. Hell, I practically begged her. I promised her it would be different this time.” He swallowed visibly. “She loves Chloe, with every cell of her being. I’m sure of it. But she was so afraid. And now look where we are.”

  “You didn’t know this would happen,” Dorie said.

  “I didn’t know it wouldn’t,” he shot back, his voice raw with pain. “That’s what I didn’t see, what I wouldn’t admit. Teresa knew it.” He made a fist and pounded it lightly on the chair. “This monster is punishing the wrong person.”

  “Mr. Lockhart,” Ellery said. “We need to talk to you in private.”

  He turned hawklike eyes on her. “Is it Chloe? You know something?”

  Ellery kept her tone neutral. “Is there someplace we can go?”

  “My study.” He led them down the hall to his private office, taking care to shut the heavy wooden door behind them. “What is it?” he asked, his expression anxious. “Please don’t keep me in suspense here.”

  “What can you tell us about Stephen Wintour?” Ellery asked.

  “Stephen? We work at the same firm. We’ve been friends for two decades now. He’s as upset about Chloe as anyone.”

  “He and Chloe are close, then?”

  “He was at her christening. He brings her little treats whenever he comes to dinner—costume jewelry, markers, that sort of thing. He plays piano, so they’ve done duets together for fun sometimes. He’s like an uncle to her, I guess you could say.”

  A funny uncle, Ellery thought. “Does he have her cell phone number?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, but maybe. She might have called him at some point.”

  “What if he called her?” Dorie broke in pointedly. “Would that be a normal occurrence?”

  “Why are you asking me all of this? I don’t understand.”

  “Chloe told some of her friends that an older man was ‘creeping on her,’ to use their words about it. She said it was one of your friends. A lawyer.” Ellery watched him for a reaction. His expression turned incredulous.

  “That’s impossible and frankly disgusting. Stephen dates women—adult women. His interest in children is purely avuncular. He organizes charity drives for Boston Children’s Hospital. He takes kids
from the Boys and Girls Club to Red Sox and Celtics games.”

  “He spends a lot of time with kids, does he?” Ellery asked.

  “You make it sound sick. Stephen helps these kids. He—he betters their lives.”

  “He may have asked your twelve-year-old for a nudie pic,” Dorie said.

  “Prove it,” Lockhart said harshly. “Show me the text if you have it.”

  “It wasn’t in the material covered by our warrant,” Ellery said.

  “I don’t believe it then.” He went to the window and peered out at the pink flowers. “Stephen would never hurt Chloe.”

  “That’s good. That’s what we’re hoping for.” Ellery took a step closer to him. In her pocket, her cell phone buzzed. She pulled it out and saw a text from Conroy: Wintour was arrested in Cambridge in 1989 for kidnapping a minor female. No charges brought. Claimed misunderstanding, but he agreed to move out of the building. It was his landlady’s daughter. “Mr. Lockhart,” she said as she tucked the phone away again, “Stephen Wintour was arrested once for kidnapping a girl. Did you know that?”

  He whirled from the window. “What?”

  “The charges were dropped. My guess is that she and her parents didn’t want to endure a trial. They just wanted him gone, and he agreed to move.”

  “When was this?”

  “Back in 1989.”

  “Stephen would have been in law school then. Lots of students move around.”

  “Mr. Lockhart,” Dorie said, but he held up his hands.

  “Stop! Enough. You can’t be telling me it’s Stephen. You can’t be telling me I let the wolf through the gate.”

  “We don’t know,” Ellery replied steadily. “But we need to find out. You can help us.”

  He eyed her, wary. “How?”

  “He’s not going to let us through his front door, but he would let you in. You can look around and ask him about Chloe.”

  He let out a bitter laugh. “Right. I just ask my friend if he’s been sexting my preteen daughter? Maybe I demand to check his closets to see if he’s hiding her in there?”

  The girl in the closet. Ellery’s flesh rippled under her clothes. Her skin went clammy and her vision started to swim. “I … you?” Her throat tightened and she couldn’t think. Her brain buzzed an alarm that told her to run. Go, go, go.

  Dorie’s hand appeared on her arm, gripping her. “We understand your skepticism,” she said. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe Stephen Wintour is a kindly man with the best intentions toward kids, including Chloe. But your wife is out there sweating bullets under the cameras, debasing herself on live TV in the hopes of getting your daughter back. I’d like to think you could at least ask your friend a few questions.”

  Ellery released a slow, shuddering breath. Lockhart squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment. “What is it you want me to do?” he asked finally.

  “Ask to visit Wintour’s home. We will equip you with a wire ahead of time to record your conversation. Ask him generally if he has any idea of where Chloe is or who might have taken her. His answers could be revealing. Then, we’d like you to bluff him a little bit.”

  Lockhart thinned his lips. “Stephen’s the poker player. Not me.”

  “Good,” Dorie said without missing a beat. “Then he’ll believe you.”

  “What is the bluff?”

  “We’d like you to say that you’ve found a diary of Chloe’s, and that she wrote he asked her to send him photos of herself.”

  “You want me to lie.”

  “If he didn’t do it, then it doesn’t matter,” Dorie replied.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, holding out his hands in imploring fashion. “If you suspect him, can’t you go in there and ask these questions yourselves?”

  Ellery’s thoughts snapped back like a rubber band. “We don’t have enough evidence yet for a warrant,” she said, righting herself. “If we go in hard, he’s liable to clam up and refuse to speak to us. That doesn’t help us get any closer to Chloe.”

  He bowed his head, his eyes on his smooth mahogany desk. “You really think he could have done this,” he whispered.

  “I think we need to find out, and fast.” The room fell silent and nobody moved. An antique wall clock conveniently ticked out the passing seconds as Lockhart struggled with their request.

  “Okay,” he relented at last. “I’ll do it.”

  19

  Reed did not believe in a sixth sense, but he had studied enough about neuroscience function to know that the brain did not take in all of its surroundings at once or with the same conscious understanding. If someone were to toss an apple at his head, he knew that there was one brain area that noticed the shape (round), another that detected its color (red), while a third fired off the message that the object was approaching (fast), and, finally, some executive higher-level processing that put all this information together and told him he’d better duck. Sometimes these disparate areas detected important information that got mislaid or did not immediately make all the requisite connections for true comprehension. Your brain signaled an alarm before you consciously knew the threat. Reed had learned to trust that inner alarm that said pay attention, even when he wasn’t sure yet why it mattered. He froze the video camera footage from the subway on a shot of Chloe that revealed the same male figure hovering twenty feet behind her, pretending not to watch. The man’s face continued to be obscured by sunglasses and a ball cap, but he felt familiar to Reed in a way he couldn’t yet articulate.

  Faced with this urgent development, his brain made another choice, this one perhaps less rational: he’d left Tula in the care of Ellery’s teenage sister. “I used to babysit all the time before I got sick,” Ashley assured him as he once again stressed they were not to leave the apartment. He wrote down his cell number in three places. He left money to order in pizza. He stated specifically that they were not to take off on any cross-country trips. Ashley seemed horrified at the idea. “With a kid? Are you crazy?” She took Tula’s hand. “Come on, we can paint our toes this time.” Tula had pirouetted with joy.

  Reed found Ellery huddled with her partner, her captain, and what looked like Martin Lockhart. The frisson of energy around them told him there had been a significant development. Ellery broke loose from the group when she spotted him, the relief on her face plain at the sight of him. “Oh, good, you’re here.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked, nodding in the direction of Martin Lockhart.

  “Stephen Wintour is looking like our guy. Seems like he may have attempted to kidnap another girl years ago, but the charges were dropped.” She gave him a brief outline of the situation, including the news that Wintour had a second home not too far from where Chloe’s burner phone had been purchased. “We don’t have quite enough for a warrant. Martin Lockhart has agreed to meet with Wintour while wearing a wire. If he can get Wintour to admit to additional contact with Chloe, that might be enough for a warrant.”

  Reed’s alarm bells went off again. “You’re sending in the father of a kidnap victim to confront her possible abductor?”

  “He won’t talk to us. Time is running out, Reed. It’s day three.”

  Her staccato speech, the fevered look in her eyes—he wondered if she’d slept at all for the past two days. “I realize time is important,” he said softly. “But this is a dangerous proposition. Need I remind you what happened the last time we paired up a victim and a perpetrator in an unregulated setting?” That meeting had ended in a shower of bullets.

  “He won’t be armed. We’ll make sure of it.” She rubbed her eyes as though they had grit in them. “It’s one conversation. One that may lead us to Chloe.”

  Reed held his laptop under one arm. His half-formed hunch about the man in the baseball cap felt weak in light of the developments on Wintour. “It’s just … I’m worried for you.”

  “I’m not the one trapped in the closet.”

  He blinked. Did she even hear herself? “No one said Chloe’s in a closet. We don’t k
now where she is.”

  “What we know is bad enough.” She looked annoyed with him. “You have a kid. Wouldn’t you want to do absolutely anything you could to bring her back?”

  “Of course.” He understood completely why Lockhart had agreed to this setup. “But my role here is to think like an agent, not like a father. What are you thinking as?”

  “Like someone who wants Chloe back.”

  She tried to brush past him, but he stopped her by grabbing her arm. “You’re projecting,” he said softly. “It’s understandable, Ellery, but it’s also dangerous. It’s okay to take a step back. It’s okay to let someone else take the lead.”

  She yanked herself free. “That’s a laugh, coming from you. Remind me why your marriage broke up again?”

  He stiffened. “That’s not the same thing at all.”

  “Isn’t it? Where’s your kid, Agent Markham? The one who is supposed to be on vacation with her father?”

  “Hey, I didn’t ask for this,” he said, more loudly than he intended.

  “Neither did I.”

  Heads turned to watch as she stalked off to where the others surrounded Lockhart. Reed turned his back to them, unwilling even to look at her right at that moment. After several deep breaths, he opened his laptop and forwarded what he had to the local FBI office, with instructions to look for additional closed-circuit footage of the man in the baseball cap. Go back in time before the point we see Chloe cross his path, he wrote. We need to check if he went into any of the nearby shops that might have a better view of his face.

  That task done, he repacked his laptop into his briefcase and joined the war room that had sprung up around Martin Lockhart. Ellery greeted him with a level gaze, but Captain Conroy appeared relieved to see him. He didn’t look like a man who had slept much in the past few days, either. “Agent Markham, please come in. We’re about to head over to Stephen Wintour’s apartment building, but perhaps you could give us some insights about the best approach.”

  He felt the weight of Ellery’s stare and her silent message: Don’t fuck this up. He licked his lips and chose his words carefully. “If Stephen Wintour is a predatory pedophile who is responsible for Chloe’s disappearance, then this is likely something he has planned and fantasized about for a long time. He will not be easily dissuaded from his course.”