Текст книги "Lost"

Автор книги: Chris Jordan

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“Roy!” Ricky bellows, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Dug! Roydug! Roydug! Roydug!”

Amused by putting their names together, the swamp-cracker twins who have sworn him allegiance in exchange for the new truck and whatever crumbs may dribble their way. Roy is the brains of the family, meaning he doesn’t drool overmuch. Whereas Dug, his very name apparently misspelled by his illiterate, white-trash mammy, young Dug seems to be missing about half his puzzle.

Ricky always deals with Roy, for obvious reasons, but this time it’s Dug who comes lurching out of the truck, swollen eyelids crunchy with sleep.

Upon seeing Ricky he stammers, “Um-um. Yeah hey what?”

Bare chested, bare-legged Ricky Lang coming out of the dark, chanting his name, it’s like being awakened by a hard slap in the face. An experience not entirely unknown to Dug, whose late and unlamented pappy was notoriously ill-tempered and free with his hands.

“Where’s Roy?” Ricky wants to know.

Dug is looking around, wondering how the man got here. A little segment of his brain wondering if maybe the crazy Indian really can fly without benefit of aircraft. Materializing like a ghost with Dug’s name in his mouth.

“Um-um,” says Dug.

“Um-um, where’s he at?” Ricky demands. Standing close so the stammering white-bread can smell the feral stink of him, the swamp and danger on his breath.

Dug is afraid of Ricky—any sane individual smaller than King Kong would be afraid of Ricky Lang, who exudes a kind of steroid strength from the top of his bowl-cut hairdo down to his splayed feet—but Dug is even more afraid that he’ll react the wrong way, ruin everything for Roy. Not knowing what to do, fearing the wrong reaction, he’s reduced to stammering, making um-um noises while his brain sorts out the options.

Strangely enough, Ricky seems to understand what’s going on with Dug—the obvious strain of having to think—and steps back, giving him room to work it out.

“Roy,” Dug finally says, savoring the name. “He gone to check on the girl. I’m guardin’ the airplane.”

Giving it the swamp-cracker pronunciations, two words, era plane.

“Left you the truck,” Ricky observes. “What’s he driving?”

Dug has to think about it, then carefully assemble the words. “Four-wheeler. One in the shed?”

That sets Ricky back on his bare heels just a little, because he has always intended the four-wheeler to be a present for his children, eventually. Purchased on a whim months ago, with nobody’s birthday pending anytime soon, he’d decided to store it at the airfield until they were old enough to drive the thing. Picturing Tyler gleeful as he guns the engine, spins the fat wheels. Tyler screaming.

Ricky takes a deep breath, swallows his rage, saving it for later.

“Took the wheeler, did he?” he says pleasantly, showing his teeth.

Dug nods deliberately and with enthusiasm, as if grateful for any question that doesn’t require a verbal response.

“Where’s that cell phone at, Dug? The one the girl had. Did Roy leave it with you?”

Dug nods again. Two in a row.

“Give it over, I need to make a call,” says Ricky, holding out his big fist, opening his blunt fingers.

Dug hurries to the truck, returns with the sporty little Razr cell phone, places it carefully into the palm of Ricky’s hand. Takes a step back, waiting.

“Battery, Dug,” says Ricky, ever so softly. “I need the battery, too.”

Back to the truck like a two-legged retriever. Actually Ricky’s pleased that the twins remembered to remove the battery, as instructed. Ricky knows all about surveillance and triangulation, and how an active cell phone can be a homing device.

He assembles the phone, fires it up, waits until the signal bars are glowing. Then thumbs the redial button, watches the familiar number march across the little blue screen.

“Yo, Edwin,” Ricky says jovially, his free hand slipping into his gym shorts, adjusting his genitals. “You still up. Me again, yeah. What’s a matter, can’t sleep? You call the cops yet? No? FBI? CIA, Wackenhut, Pizza Hut, whoever? No? You swear? Oh that’s good, I believe you. You’re pretty smart for a white dude. Yeah, I’m down with you, bro. We can figure a way out of this, we put our brains together and think real hard. Uh-huh, uh-huh. I know you’re worried about your son. I know that. You should be worried. If we can’t work this out, if you can’t help me, I’ll be forced to cut off your boy’s ears and his nose and his fingers and little white pecker, and then FedEx him to locations around the world.”

The FedEx stuff is pure improvisation, something he heard in a movie or on TV. Ricky has already decided that when the time comes the body will go into the swamp, clean and simple and forever. But who knows, FedEx might work for the smaller appendages.

Ricky loves this part, deciding who lives, who dies, who gets the power, who shrivels like an earthworm in the sun.

“Calm down, Edwin,” he says. “Concentrate on figuring out how to get me what I want. You’ve got twelve hours before I start cutting.”

19. The Taste Of Dirty Pennies

Men, most of them, seem to think that when a woman cries she’s signaling weakness, falling apart. But sometimes crying is just what you do to relieve the tension. Guys scream or sweat or kick the cat. We cry. There’s this old movie with Holly Hunter, she’s the producer of a TV news show, and she starts the day by sitting at her desk and crying her eyes out for about thirty seconds. Then she’s good to go.

I’m having a Holly Hunter moment. The forbidden word abducted is spoken and I’m a fountain, sobbing so hard it hurts in my ribs.

Give him credit, Randall Shane doesn’t try to comfort me or offer a shoulder to cry on. He sits back and gives me time, and when I’m finished blowing my nose he simply continues where he left off.

“It’s a theory and therefore by definition it could be wrong,” he says. “But I think we have to proceed on the assumption that Edwin Manning believes his son is in peril. Therefore we have to assume your daughter is also in peril, until we hear otherwise. Does this make sense to you, Mrs. Garner?”

I nod miserably. “Unfortunately, yes. I was thinking the same thing myself. Guess I didn’t want to admit it.”

“Then we’re in agreement?”

“I guess,” I say. “Does that mean we go to the cops? Tell them what we suspect?”

Shane shakes his head. “We’re not quite there. We need to know why Manning hasn’t called in the Feds. Why he’s so terrified that he’s prowling his own yard in camouflage. Once we’ve resolved that, once we have an indication that your daughter is in danger, we’ll notify the local authorities and they’ll contact the FBI. That’s how it’s done.”

“How do we find out? He won’t talk to us.”

In the dark his smile is tight, resolute. “I’ve got an idea,” he says.

Second time around, getting inside is easy. Shane’s idea is to push the button on the intercom and say, “Let us in, Mr. Manning, or I’ll call my colleagues at the FBI. The assistant director in charge of kidnapping is Monica Bevins and I have her on speed dial. Count of three. One … two.”

And just like that, the gates slid open. As we roll up the long, curving driveway, I ask Shane if he really has a Monica Bevins on speed dial, and if she’s really an agent-in-charge.

“Yes to both,” he says. “And yes, I’m fully prepared to make the call.”

“And they let you assist clients like me? The FBI?”

“Can’t stop me. I’m a civilian.”

“But you’ve got, like, all these connections to the agency, right?”

“Some useful connections, yes.”

“And this is what you did before you retired, you found missing children?”

His eyes find mine in the rearview mirror. He gives me an odd look, like I’m a kid asking too many questions at the wrong time. “No,” he says, “not exactly. I assisted with a number of kidnap cases as an agent on general assignment. At the time it wasn’t my specialty.”

At this point I’m too numb to be shocked by this revelation. “No? What did you do?”

“Electronics, surveillance gear, mostly hardware stuff. Gear and gizmos. Later I helped develop a software program for rapid fingerprint recognition.”

“You really were a computer geek? That’s what you did in the FBI?”

“Pretty much,” he admits.

What was I thinking, that he’d shot John Dillinger and smoked out terror cells? “So how’d you get into this line of work?”

“Long story,” he says. “Maybe later.”

Secrets. Apparently Randall Shane has a few of his own.

We’ve arrived at what appears to be the main building, having passed several low, modern outbuildings. Carriage house, guest cottage, maintenance shed, all very Long Island estate. Lush, illuminated landscaping that looks au naturel but isn’t, believe me. It’s all very tastefully planned, very big money.

The main structure is an artful arrangement of steel beams and smoked glass and daring architectural angles. Must be a million precisely weathered cedar shingles keeping out the rain. The property taxes probably exceed my yearly income. No wonder the owner has, apparently, been targeted for extortion—he’s got a lot to give.

Kelly’s boyfriend or flight instructor, whatever the hell he is, how did this happen? How did she find herself in this particular world?

Shane sets the parking brake and we get out. Lights come on, illuminating a wide, elaborately shingled portico. The oversize door opens—opaque green-glass panels set in a brushed-steel frame—and Edwin Manning staggers out, dressed more or less as we last saw him, with the exception of his face, which has been recently washed.

“Who are you?” he wants to know. Then he adds, in a voice so faint it seems to fade away, “Leave me alone. Just please leave me alone!”

He trips, falls to his knees, his skinny chipmunk face slick with tears. The poor man is a mess. Shane and I help him to his feet, each taking a black-clad arm. He doesn’t weigh all that much and I can feel his pulse pounding, as if his whole body is being struck like a gong.

He is, I realize, scared nearly to death, and that makes me even more frightened.

“My daughter,” I tell him urgently. “That’s all we want, my daughter back. Whatever else happened, I don’t care.”

Manning staggers like a drunk but there’s no smell of alcohol. He’s exhausted and stressed to the point of falling down. Not quite there yet myself, but I can see it coming if Kelly isn’t home by, say, this time tomorrow.

Once when Kelly was about ten, a year or so after her last treatment, she accompanied me on a house call, what I call a catalog call because it’s all about looking at photos of designs and fabric samples—satins, silks, laces and finishes. Lots of catalogs, lots of possibilities. Long drive to Montauk, a very successful novelist’s waterfront “cottage.” Won’t mention her name because I don’t want to be sued, but the bride-to-be (marriage number three) made all of her money writing sexy stories about rich divas and had either become one herself or started out that way. A very unpleasant person to deal with, unless you happened to be a fellow celebrity, in which case it was kiss-kiss-oh-I-missed-you-so-much.

Anyhow, Kelly’s eyes got big when she saw the house and the beautiful setting on the grassy dunes, and I could tell she longed to live in a place like this rather than in boring old suburban Valley Stream. Couldn’t blame her. The writer’s cottage looked like a Laura Ashley catalog cover, the one where Ralph Lauren is visiting, and all the children are perfectly chic. Not that there were any children present other than Kelly. The rich bitch had kids from earlier marriages, but they were all grown-up and not speaking to her.

Kelly wandered from room to room as the bride-to-be-again checked out flattering designs and bosom-enhancing brocades. As I soon discovered, the lady liked to vent on the “little people,” meaning employees or contractors, and she included me as one. Contractors were scum, painters were scum, plumbers and electricians were scum. Everybody who worked on her house was scum or stupid or worthless. She said so on David Letterman. Failing to mention that she changed her mind every other minute, made ridiculous demands, then complained when it took longer, cost more. I had already decided that I’d have a scheduling conflict that would prevent me from adding her to my client list, but didn’t quite know how to get out of there without having my head bitten off. So I went along, going through the motions, suggesting possible ensembles that might work—most every suggestion dismissed as “stupid”—absorbing abuse from a woman I’d just met and hadn’t said boo to.

When we finally escaped, a mile or so down the road, Kelly touches me on the hand and asks why that lady is so horrible. All I can do is shake my head and tell her that for some people money is like a poison. It makes them sick in the head. Kelly, ten years old, she looks me in the eye and goes, “That woman was always horrible, Mom. She was born that way. Tell her to take her wedding gown and put it where the sun don’t shine.”

Ten. I laughed till I cried. Right now, exhausted and shaky and ready to fall apart for at least the third time, I’m wondering if she ever set foot on the Manning estate, and if so, what she thinks of it, of them.

“Are you alone, sir?” Shane wants to know.

We’ve entered something like a glass hut with a high, cathedral ceiling vented with skylights. Canvas-bladed ceiling fans hang like monstrous white bats. Manning staggers to the right, bringing us to a living space. Cherry floors set in a herringbone pattern, stark leather couches, steel-and-strap chairs, lots of bookcases filled with books. Look like real books, too, not designer touches.

“Anybody here?” Shane asks, persisting. “Family, staff? Anybody at all?”

Edwin Manning has collapsed into one of the custom designer chairs, buried his face in his hands. When he looks up again he seems to have gained some resolve. His voice is hoarse, froglike, as if an invisible hand is gripping his throat. “Nobody,” he croaks. “Sent everyone away. I’m entirely alone.”

“Where’s your wife? Seth’s mother, where is she?”

The little man snorts, shakes his head. “Dead. Died when he was twelve. I never remarried.”

“Other children?” Shane asks.

“Just Seth.” He looks up, focuses on Shane. “If you call the FBI, or anyone else, he’ll die. Is that understood? He’ll die quite horribly. That’s really all I can tell you.”

Shane indicates that we should both sit. Put us on a level with Edwin Manning. Have a look into his sad, red-rimmed eyes, see what we can see.

“Has your son been abducted?” Shane asks, point-blank. “Is he being held for ransom? Is this about money?”

Manning shakes his head, clears his throat. “I can’t talk about it, not to you and not to anyone,” he says, as if reciting from a script. “That was made crystal clear. I have to do exactly what they say or he’ll die.”

Shane sits back, digesting Manning’s strangely laconic response. So far, almost every sentence ends in “die,” or contains the word “death” or “kill,” and yet the big guy doesn’t look the least bit discouraged. To the contrary, he has the slightly satisfied expression of a man whose assumptions have been confirmed.

“Okay,” Shane says. “We’ve established there is an abduction in progress, and that you believe your son’s life to be in danger. Have you received proof of life? An indication that Seth is still alive?”

Manning breaks eye contact, such as it is. His small, delicate jaw juts forward. “Stay out of this,” he says. “I read your card. If you’re former FBI you know what can happen.”

“What about Kelly?” I demand. Somehow I’m on my feet, trembling with anxiety and agitation. “Is she with your son? Is that what happened? Has she been kidnapped, too?”

Manning rubs his temples, avoids looking at me. “Never heard of her,” he says. “Seth never mentioned anyone by that name.”

For the first time I get a strong sense that he’s lying. He may not have met my daughter—what adult male brings home an underage girl to meet his daddy?—but he’s heard of her for sure. Mos def, as Kelly would say.

Shane leans in closer. His whole body seems to come into sharp focus, as if to demonstrate that he could, if provoked, crush the smaller man like bug.

“Are you aware that your son originally made contact with Mrs. Garner’s sixteen-year-old daughter on the Internet? That he took her skydiving, and apparently gave her flying lessons, all without her mother’s consent?”

Manning shakes his head. “I can’t discuss this.”

Shane leans closer still. His voice becomes softer, but somehow no less forceful. “You are in deep trouble, sir. You are out of your depth. Let me help.”

“I can’t do that. Leave my house at once, both of you.”

“Tell me what happened,” Shane suggests. “I’ll take it from there.”

Edwin Manning suddenly erupts, shaking his head so hard he almost spins out of the seat. “Go away!” he insists. “I don’t know about your daughter,” he says, turning to me, meeting my eyes for the first time. “If she’s with Seth, they’ll kill her, too. Do you understand? You have to let me handle this. You must. It’s the only way.”

Shane’s hands are suddenly gripping my upper arms, pulling me away. Anticipating, almost before I quite know it myself, that I’m about to launch myself at Manning, scratch out his lying eyes.

“We’re leaving,” Shane announces. “If you change your mind, call me. I can help.”

Couple miles down the road, heading out of the millionaire enclave, Shane pulls over so I can throw up. Kneeling in the darkness by the side of the road, the taste of dirty pennies in my mouth. Shane keeping back, not tempted to hold my head, because he knows what’s going on, why this has happened.

It’s not fear that’s makes me sick. It’s anger.

20. In The Bunker

Twelve hundred miles to the south, Ricky Lang heads for the bunker. A concrete cube, ready-made and then buried under a load of dirt and gravel long before Ricky was born. Supposedly it dates from the Cuban missile crisis. Some crazy white man shit, blow the whole world to pieces. The way he heard, a Cuban contractor buried the thing, all in a panic, convinced Fidel was coming to town on a rocket. Kept his family there for a few weeks, then walked away, never looked back. Whatever, Ricky’s been familiar with the bunker since he was a kid, when he used to play hide the weenie with some of the trailer girls down there. The trailer park is long gone, but the bunker still exists and you never know when a secure location will come in handy. Especially one that cannot be detected from the air.

Ricky is keenly aware that any fool with a computer can Google a satellite image these days, check out your backyard, see if you mowed the grass. He’s made sure the Beechcraft is concealed in a hangar, that activity in and around the airfield is kept to a minimum. The place is probably still under some sort of minimum DEA satellite photo surveillance from the bad old days. Nothing to draw their attention now—he made it his personal business to clean up the tribal drug trade. Couple of the stubborn old farts thought it was still a going concern, had to be fed to the gators. The others soon saw the error of their ways, agreed to live on tribal income and whatever they’d managed to hide in the ground.

Gator bait was usually ripe chicken, but like they say, everything tastes like chicken once you take the skin off.

“Smells bad down there,” Roy warns him, approaching the bunker.

Ricky stops, looks Roy in the eye. “White shit smells different from people shit, you ever notice? One sniff, I can tell.”

“Oh yeah?” Roy responds, glancing away. “The boy don’t know whether he’s coming or going, or where he’s at.”

“Uh-huh,” says Ricky. “Dug, you bring them loppers?”

“Yeah, Chief,” says Dug, bringing up the rear, letting the big-branch loppers bump against his trouser leg. Seems to think carrying the loppers is some sort of game he can win, if only he can figure it out.

Ricky holds out his hand, stops Dug in his tracks. “Ain’t no chief to you,” he says. “I am chief to my own people, only to them.”

No surprise, Dug looks confused, seeking help from his brother, who shrugs as if to say Roll with it.

“You got the key?” Ricky asks. “Open says me.”

Ricky’s laughing as Roy fumbles with the key. Neither brother registering the humor in “open says me,” puns and wordplay not being their thing. Which, in Ricky Lang’s febrile mind makes the Whittle twins more amusing than the usual swamp crackers, a tribe he has made use of, and thoroughly mistrusted, for his entire life. Started out helping his father, Tito Lang, swap tanned hides for the whiskey the crackers made in their hidden stills. Saw the contempt in their colorless eyes—drunk Indians selling their birthright for the poison that would surely kill them. A poison self-administered, and no different in its outcome than the hot bullets so many of the people fired into their own brains as punctuation to their defiled lives.

“Wait,” says Ricky, cocking an ear. “You hear that?”

Strange noises emanating from the bunker. Sounds like children keening. In his mind it feels like the transmission has slipped, can’t get in gear to the next thought. Stuck on children keening, eee eee eee.

“That’s the ventilation pipe,” Roy reminds him. “Wind goes across the top, makes a weird noise.”

Keening becomes wind and his mind moves on.

“Open the door,” he says.

Out comes the nasty smell. To Ricky a white smell. “Need to empty the bucket,” he points out.

“He kicked it over.”

“Then mop it up. Use Pine-Sol.”

Roy gives him a little look, like are you serious? gets it that Ricky is deadly serious, and looks away. “Okay, sure. Pine-Sol it is.”

Inside the fetid bunker Ricky clicks on his lantern flashlight. The beam finds a frightened face, hollow eyes, a handsome mouth distorted by a gag.

“Hey, Seth, I talked to your dad. He sends his love.”

Ricky jams a tranquilizer dart into the white boy’s thigh, sees his eyes registering a higher level of fear.

“Nothing to worry about,” Ricky says soothingly, watching the tranks hit him hard, making the eyes dull, the rigid limbs relax. “Won’t take anything you’re gonna miss.”

21. We All Scream

As young moms go, I was clueless. For instance, I’d never seen an infant nursed until Kelly started playing patty-cake on my left nipple. Never, for that matter, held a newborn baby. Worse, I had no concept of what really happens to the female body during pregnancy and after. Not to be gross, but for a couple of weeks we both wore diapers to bed, me and Kelly.

I was a child raising a baby. That’s one of my secrets. Kelly can do the math, but she has no idea how young I really was at seventeen, mentally and emotionally, or how much she frightened me. It’s true. I was scared of my own baby. Terrified I’d do something stupid and she’d either be taken from me, or die. All that stuff about maternal instincts, it wasn’t working for me. Yes, I loved the little bean from the very first moment, but that didn’t stop the fear or ease the anxiety.

My mother, bless her soul, carried little white paper bags in her purse, unfurled whenever I hyperventilated. Passed them to me like you might offer a Kleenex. Later she told me the bags came from the candy store, which somehow seems fitting. What’ll you have today, Janey, a quarter pound of nonpareils or a panic attack? Baby Ruth or a real baby?

Poor Mom. To this day I’ve no idea how she managed it. Somehow she worked full-time, taught me how to care for a baby, dealt with my father’s terrifying temper, navigated the divorce minefield, and made plans for my future. When Kelly was six months old she assumed the baby-care duties and more or less forced me to get my GED and then take design courses at Nassau Community College, where I eventually discovered my inner seamstress. Looking back, it may have been that she actually thought being a single mom was a good thing for me. One less complication, not having to deal with a man. No doubt a result of her own failed marriage, but at the time I appreciated that she never once made me feel ashamed for the strange circumstances of Kelly’s conception. The big secret we never spoke of. Whereas it poured through my father like acid, corroding whatever love he’d had for either one of us.

Why is Mom so much on my mind? Because I’m wondering what she’d make of Randall Shane. For that matter, what do I make of him? The big guy has been in my life for less than a day, but already I’m letting him influence decisions that could determine whether my daughter lives or dies.

For instance, his decision to stop for breakfast.

“It’s two in the morning!” I rant. “Are you crazy? Are you insane? We should be notifying the FBI or the media or both, not eating waffles!”

“I’m more of a scrambled eggs person,” Shane says, very calm and matter-of-fact. “Can’t notify my friends at the agency without protein. Preferably in the form of bacon.”

I know what he’s doing. He’s using gentle humor to calm me down. Just like he’d gently but firmly discouraged me from throwing rocks at Edwin Manning’s big glass house. Like he’d prevented me from grabbing the rich little weasel by the throat and shaking the truth out of him.

“If I thought that would work I’d do it myself,” he explains, coaxing me out of the place, back into the Town Car and away from the Manning estate. “The man believes his silence will keep his son alive. He’s clinging to that hope. Physical intimidation won’t change his mind. You could hook him up to a battery, he still wouldn’t talk.”

“You’d do that?”

Shane shrugs his big shoulders. “Whatever a given situation requires. As a rule I try to avoid torture.”

I’m pretty sure he’s kidding about torture. He’s not kidding about scrambled eggs. Shane heads for this all-night diner in Wantagh, gets us there with a minimum of fuss. Says you’re never more than ten miles from a diner in Long Island and he knows them all. The place in Wantagh is the real thing, the shiny metal kind, with a gum-chewing waitress in a starched uniform, a tattooed short-order cook in a white undershirt, overhead lights bright enough to dissolve your eyelids, the whole bit.

When we’re seated with thick white china mugs of steaming coffee, Shane explains, “I can’t start making calls until seven a.m. Call in the middle of the night, you need a situation.”

“My daughter missing, that’s not a situation?”

“Not without further information, no. Nothing we can give them tonight requires an immediate response. If for instance we knew she was being held against her will in a certain location, that’s a call can be made at any time.”

“But we tell the FBI, right? Once they’re up and showered, had their coffee, whatever.”

He ignores my sarcasm, sips his coffee. “Yes,” he says. “We’ll tell them what we know, what we suspect.”

“And they’ll take over? Get Manning to talk?”

He shakes his head, smiling faintly. “That’s not how it works. Agents can only be assigned to a specific case upon request of the local authorities. Mr. Manning would have to call in the police, the police would in turn notify the FBI, and then the wheels would start to turn.”

“So we tell your old friends what we know and they do nothing?”

There are about six people in the diner, including the waitress, and they’re all staring at me. Apparently I raised my voice.

“Order something,” Shane suggests quietly. “You need fuel, Mrs. Garner. Keep running on empty and you’ll crash.”

“Can’t handle eggs. Not hungry. Answer my question, please.”

“I’ll have the Wake-up Special with whole wheat,” he says to the waitress, who has ambled over to take the order and also, from her eagle eyes, to check me out. Shane points his thumb at me and says, “She’ll have the same thing, hold the eggs.”

The gum-snapper likes his style. “Coming right up.” She smiles at him, flutters her false eyelashes and marches away on sturdy legs.

When she’s gone, Shane quietly continues where he left off. “I’m sure my, um, old friends in the agency will be as helpful as the law allows.”

“Helpful? Great. And we just wait until I get a ransom note?”

Shane leans across the table, more or less forces the cup of coffee into my hands. “Mrs. Garner? There may never be a ransom note. Ransom notes are actually quite rare. At this point, we don’t know what happened, or why your daughter hasn’t contacted you again. All of our efforts must be directed toward locating her. We concentrate on that. Finding her. The law can sort out the rest.”

The only reason I’m not crying is because I’m too exhausted for tears.

“What do we do?” I ask, feeling faint.

The tray arrives, loaded.

“Eat,” he says.

Home fries, sausage, cinnamon toast, applesauce, I’m gorging like a lumberjack. Instinct taking over, making me eat. And as Shane promised, the calories start to have a calming effect. When I’ve become more or less human, he explains that his next move—and our best shot—involves Kelly’s cell phone.

“She’s a minor, so the account will be in your name, correct?”

I nod.

“As the account holder, you have a right to know where and when the phone has been used. If you know the approximate time when you received her last call, we can find out where she was when the call originated, roughly.”

“Roughly?”

“What cell tower was accessed to route the call. Narrows it down to about twenty square miles or so. Again, not like on TV. But it could be very helpful.”

“But we have to wait until morning?”

He nods. “Afraid so. And even then it usually requires several hours to get through channels. We’ll be lucky to have the location by noon.”

“Noon?” Seems like a century away, a future hard to fathom.

“Here’s what I suggest,” he says, as if ticking off a list. “We get you home. You shower, put your head on a pillow, get some rest. Meanwhile I’ll be riding my laptop, see what I can find out about Edwin Manning. I’ll bring the Nassau County Police Department up to speed. At the appropriate hour I’ll contact my friend in the FBI, report what we suspect, and initiate the cell phone search.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Take a pill,” he suggests. “Later in the day I need you fully cognizant, Mrs. Garner. Firing on all cylinders.”

“What about you?”

He squints, genuinely puzzled by the question. “What about me?”