Текст книги "Taken"

Автор книги: Chris Jordan

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29 six degrees of pizza

As it happens, I was right the first time about the pizza. Randall Shane may not litter the floor with empty boxes, but the delivery guy treats him like an old friend, and seems interested that he’s ordered more than the usual solo pizza.

“Ain’t by any chance your birthday, is it, Mr. Shane?” he wants to know, leaning in the door to clock us. “Bet it’s somebody’s birthday, huh?”

“Nope,” says Shane, moving to block his view. “Just having a few friends over. Thank you, Marty, keep the change.”

I had offered to cook, thinking that the act of food preparation might be soothing, but Shane really doesn’t keep much in the house other than Ritz crackers, Campbell’s soup and a frost-bitten chicken potpie scabbed to the inside of the freezer.

So that’s how we end up around the dining-room table, eating slices and discussing how to go about identifying the man who abducted my son.

“This is a back-channel kind of operation,” Shane explains as he passes out paper napkins. “It’s not like you can just call up ‘Special Ops’ and ask for a list of guys who might have insignia tattoos. All information about personnel is classified, and it takes more than a court order to pry it out of the army.”

“So who do we ask?” I want to know.

“A guy who knows a guy. In this case, a woman who knows a guy. Or to be even more specific, an FBI special agent who has a brother assigned to the Pentagon. The brother happens to be an officer and a lawyer, which is different from being an officer and a gentleman, apparently.”

Maria Savalo makes a face. “Randall, can I ask you a favor? Give me a break on the lawyer jokes for a while. I’m feeling, you know, vulnerable and all that crap.”

Even with a smudge of tomato sauce on her chin, the last thing Savalo looks is vulnerable. Petite, feisty, blazing with self-confidence, she’s everything that vulnerable is not.

“Okay, fine,” agrees Shane. “So this, ah, lawyer and gentleman is a high-ranking dude, works for the Pentagon equivalent of Internal Affairs. Which means he pretty much has unlimited access to a truly amazing amount of data. He’s been a willing source for years. At the agency, the feeling is his superiors are aware he’s a conduit to the FBI, and that he’s aware they’re aware, and that he’s allowed and maybe even encouraged to pass on certain types of information to another branch of the federal government.”

“Very cloak and dagger,” says Savalo, staring at him with her large and radiant eyes. The comment is not intended as a joke, she means it sincerely.

Shane shrugs—it’s all part of how he works, what he does. “It’s how things are done when you have to work your way around an enormous bureaucracy. For this source, at his level, a list of SOF personnel, active and discharged, is no big deal. Much easier than, say, requesting medical records for the same men.”

“Medical records?” I ask. “Why would you ask for medical records? Oh, wait, of course. The tattoo.”

“Correct,” Shane says approvingly. “Tattoos are noted in medical records for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is possible transmission of blood-borne disease. But they also like to have it on the jacket as a means of quick identification, which may or may not prove useful if every man in the unit has the same marking. What I’m going to do is wait for the first batch of names, cull through it, eliminating by age and height, race and so on, and then go back for medical records for the likely candidates.”

“How long will that take?” I ask.

One of the many things I like about this man is that he takes all of my questions seriously. No matter how obvious they may be to him, or even how silly or inappropriate. So he thinks about it before responding. “As long as forty-eight hours for the turnaround. That’s max. Could be much quicker if a name and location pops out. A Special Forces guy who lives in your town and banks at your bank, for instance. Or happened to be in a position to come into previous contact with your son. Could be a few steps removed from that and still have a connection.”

“The six-degrees thing,” Savalo offers.

“Yes,” says Shane. “Exactly. Once we know how this man chose you and Tomas, we’ll know who he is, where he is and where to find your son.”

“What if there’s no connection?” I ask. “What if he flew in from Idaho?”

Again, Shane takes his time considering the question. “I suppose there’s a remote possibility that Bruce responded to an ad in Soldier of Fortune, or the Internet equivalent. If that’s the case, then we’re not only looking for him, we’re looking for whoever hired him. But that still leaves us with a very specific connection to you, Mrs. Bickford. Why you? Why your son?”

“I’ve been asking myself that question ever since it happened. Maybe because I had money in the bank? He knew all about my bank accounts, down to the penny,” I remind them both.

Shane nods, then pauses to pat his mouth with a napkin before proceeding. “No doubt money was a factor,” he begins. “It may be possible that Bruce or one of his associates is a hacker and was trolling bank data, looking for a likely prospect, and happened to find you. But if I were planning a crime like that, I’d keep the child right in the home while I sent the mark—you—to withdraw or transfer the funds. That’s how it’s usually done.”

“You’ve seen cases like this before?”

“Not exactly like this one,” he says. “Every case is different. I wasn’t directly involved with the bank robbery unit at the Bureau, but they worked ten or twelve crimes a year that involved taking a bank manager’s family hostage in their own home, scaring the hell out of everybody, and then sending mom or dad off to get the dough and then hand it off to an accomplice. More than half the time the ploy was successful—nobody even knew what was going on until it was over. But if that’s all it is, a way to extract money from you, why go to the trouble of filing phony paternity papers? Why kill the local police chief and try to implicate you in the crime? Why keep Tommy? No, this isn’t just about the money. Bruce has an agenda.”

“What is it?” I ask. “What’s his agenda?”

Shane smiles grimly. “That’s the big question. A lot of what he’s done seems to be a diversion tactic. Trying to make sure the federal authorities aren’t involved, at least not right way. It’s as if he has a mission to accomplish. Something he needs to do that involves your son.”

What that might be remains unspoken. It’s simply too terrible to contemplate. Of course my mind has been wrestling with the possibilities, and when I start to settle on one—sick porno, for instance—it blares inside my head like a car alarm that won’t shut off. I think Shane knows what I must be thinking, what I have to be worried to a point of madness about, and has decided not to name the possibilities. Until we manage to find something concrete it’s all speculation, and anyhow, the only thing that matters is getting Tommy back. Whatever has happened to him, whatever he’s been exposed to, he and I will deal with it when the time comes. When he’s back home in his mother’s arms, safe from the evil things in the world.

“I’ve got to boogie,” Ms. Savalo announces, glancing at her wristwatch. “I’ll take you back to the motel, Kate.”

“When can I go back to my own house?” I ask plaintively. “When can I go back home?”

Savalo sighs. “Your home is still a crime scene. The state police detectives want it for a few more days. And even then, there’s that bottle blonde from Channel 6. She’ll be parked on your doorstep.”

Tears spill from my eyes. I hate this. I hate weeping like a weak sister when I need to be strong, but the urge to be home, to sit on Tommy’s bed and inhale the smell of him, is almost more than I can bear.

Shane clears his throat. “Here’s an idea. Stay here for a day or two. Use the guest room. We’ll cab over and pick up the rental car in the morning.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” says Savalo, her face betraying no expression whatsoever.

“Why not?” Shane asks.

Savalo shrugs. “It’s up to Kate.”

And so it’s decided. The great relief of not having to return to the fetid, lonesome motel room almost makes me cry again. Almost, but not quite.

The bed in the guest room is freshly made, which makes me think that Shane’s invitation wasn’t as spur of the moment as it sounded back there in the dining room. But who’s complaining, when a man changes the linen and takes the trouble to tuck in the corners? Maybe they teach that at the FBI, under self-sufficiency. Ted never made a bed in his life—what’s the point, he’d say, when we’re just going to mess it up all over again?—and Tommy thinks the idea is ridiculous, and worse, effeminate. Making beds and keeping your room tidy is something girls do. Starting short-stops are definitely exempted.

As to sleep, well, that’s going to be difficult with my mind jangling with images of Bruce and his special tattoo, and all the unspoken stuff about what my son may be going through, and the possibility of arrest hanging over my head. My attorney, borrowing a strategy from Shane, seems reluctant to get specific about what will happen if I’m charged with murder. Not wanting to add to my burden, apparently. Is bail possible, or will I be held awaiting trial? I can’t stand the thought of being shut up while Tommy is still missing. Strange how that’s the only part of a possible arrest that really bothers me; my standing in the community, my business, what my friends will think, what Fred Corso’s poor wife must think, none of it matters. Just not being there when my son comes home. That’s unthinkable.

With sleep out of the question, I prowl the guest room, looking for clues about my host. Unlike the rest of the house, this room seems untouched by his personality. A couple of lighter spots on the wall indicate that pictures may once have hung there, but no more. Nothing in the closet—just a few empty hangers. No books, no knickknacks, no indications that the room has ever been occupied. But the place has a scrubbed feel, as if someone worked hard to eradicate any trace of human habitation.

The fact is, I’m a terrible snoop. Let me in your house and I’ll seek out the secret you. I won’t open a diary, but almost everything else is fair game. I’ll check out your books, your refrigerator, your medicine cabinet. Shameful habit, but I can’t help it. As it happens, the cabinet in the attached bathroom is as empty as the closet. There’s an unopened bottle of generic shampoo in the shower stall, and a bar of soap still in the wrapper.

Back in the bedroom area, I slide open the top drawer of a pine chest and notice neatly folded linens, pillowcases and sheets with the factory creases still intact. And then, under the linens, I find what has been hidden. A framed photograph facedown against the bare wood. No doubt it will match one of the lighter spots on the unadorned wall.

In a way, the picture itself is shocking. A somewhat younger and much more relaxed Randall Shane grins at the camera. One arm around a willowy blonde with gorgeous eyes and a shy smile, the other resting on the shoulders of a girl who looks a lot like her mother. Nine or ten years old, with the clear eyes and the serious expression of a deep thinker. A little beauty who’s going to be serious trouble as an adolescent, testing all the rules, you can just feel it.

So my knight in slightly dented armor was married, once upon a time. Married and the father of a brilliant little girl. One of those kids, like Tommy, whose personality is fully formed at a young age. Suddenly the family photo seems icy cold in my hands and I hastily return it to the bottom of the drawer, feeling deeply ashamed. How dare I intrude in the man’s private life, simply to satisfy my curiosity? It’s a violation of his generosity, of his trust.

Still, I can’t help wondering. Divorced, or something worse? Something he does not share with strangers or clients. Most divorced men would have mentioned having a child by now. Shown off a well-thumbed snapshot. Alluded to the fact that they, being parents, had some idea of what I was going through. And yet Shane had done nothing of the sort. Never alluded to anything but his previous career and his present vocation. Is this loss—for it has to be a loss, one way or another—is this emptiness in his life somehow connected to his sleep disorder? And if so, how exactly?

Leave it alone, I urge myself. None of your beeswax. And never dare mention this, or he’ll know you for a snoop and never trust you again.

And I depend on his trust. Shane is my hope. Despite my current reliance on the big man, and my interest in what makes him tick, there’s no twinge of physical attraction between us, no prospect of romance. My heart is too full of Tommy for anything like that. Not to mention Ted, who still guides me in memory. But it makes me wonder what Ted would think of Shane. Would they be friends or rivals? Friends, I think. Buddies, even. He’s exactly the kind of self-contained, self-deprecating guy my Ted gravitated to. For sure he’s the type of adult male Tommy likes to be around. A true-blue father figure without any of that macho bluster that confuses boys—or girls, for that matter.

Determined to avoid another onslaught of tears—crying hurts when your tear ducts are empty—I strip off my clothes, shower, towel dry and slip into the neatly made bed. Not allowing myself to think about who this bed might have belonged to, back in the day.

Counting sheep, counting Bruce, counting my own heartbeats, I eventually drift off into a light, troubled sleep, and find myself floating down empty corridors, searching for my son.

Then out of nowhere I’m sitting bolt upright in the bed, wide-awake and shivering with fear. Because of the noise.

A dull thump! that seems to shake the floor. And then, very clear, a man shouting. Muffled, can’t make out the word.

Wham!

Right outside my door. Sounds like two men fighting for advantage, bouncing off the walls.

Shane cries out in pain: “No! God, no!”

I’m out of the bed in a flash, grabbing a sheet to cover myself. Scared to leave the bed, but even more sacred of doing nothing. Fear drives me to the door, into the hallway. A flickering light from the living room shows me the way to the source of the shouting and thumping.

Shane lies on the floor, writhing and groaning. He’s wedged between the sofa and the coffee table, face pressed into the rug.

The TV is on, with the sound off. One of the shopping channels, hawking jewelry.

As Shane’s long arms flail, the coffee table staggers away, bumps up against my shins. “Gah!” he groans. “No, no!”

The man who doesn’t sleep is having a nightmare.

I kneel by his head. At the touch of my outstretched hand his body goes still.

“Jean?” he says, his mouth muffled by the rug.

“It’s Kate,” I tell him. “Kate Bickford.”

“Gah!” he says, spitting rug.

“It’s okay,” I say, and give his bristly head a pat.

“Oh, God.” He rolls over, breathing heavily.

“You were dreaming.”

“Not dreaming,” he says thickly. “Hallucinating.”

He glances at me in the sheet, then quickly looks away.

“Sounded like you were fighting,” I tell him. “I thought the man in the mask was here. In the house.”

Shane leans against the sofa, knees drawn up, still breathing heavily. Face slick with night sweats and his eyelids twitching. Careful not to look at me in the sheet, although I’m perfectly decent. Underwear, a full sheet, what could he see? But covers his face with his trembling hands, groans softly and says, “I’m really sorry, Kate. For scaring you.”

“Don’t be.”

“Really sorry,” he repeats, sounding mournful if not humiliated. “Look, I’m okay. Go back to bed, you need your sleep.”

“This is what I’m going to do,” I say, rising from the floor and adjusting the sheet. Very togalike, really. Almost formal. “I’m going to get dressed and then I’m going to make us breakfast.”

“Okay,” he says.

And that’s what happens.

30 baking bread

Cramming a body into a steel drum is hard work, Cutter discovers. If the victims had happened to be small or slight of build, no problem, but Hinks and Wald are both solid men. Not giants, by any means, but well muscled, heavy of sinew and bone, and they seem to resist going into the barrels. It’s like pushing huge lumps of stiffening taffy back into a tube. Grunt work of the worst kind. Digging shallow graves would, in hindsight, have been much less effort, but he’s already committed to the barrels.

At one point Cutter has to take a break and get his breath back, toweling the slick of sweat from his hands and face. He had the foresight to cover their heads with plastic garbage bags, so as not to make eye contact with the dead, but the whole process is exhausting, both physically and mentally.

Putting the paunchy police chief into the home freezer in Mrs. Bickford’s basement was a piece of cake compared to this. And the chief’s death had been accidental, almost, a case of wrong place, wrong time.

Until quite recently, Cutter had never considered himself to be a killer. Certainly not capable of cold-blooded murder. He’d been a soldier doing his duty, and that meant killing the enemy when necessary. But for the last three weeks or so he’s been taking the lives of civilians, American civilians, and the toll is starting to add up. One in Rhode Island, one in New York, and now a total of three in good old suburban Connecticut, with at least two more to go before the mission is completed. Could be even more, if Mrs. Bickford’s rangy investigator sticks his nose in the wrong crack.

The dead have gathered in a pile in the dark corner of Cutter’s brain and at some point they will, he assumes, demand a reckoning. Scratching like frantic bird claws against the windowpane of his soul. Hard to take, even for a trained assassin. Maybe he’ll let slip his sanity and join Lyla in her twilight world. But no, he can’t allow that to happen, not if the plan works, not if he manages to get his own son back home. He’ll have to find another way to deal with it, another way to silence his victims.

Start by not thinking of them as victims. Think of them as unfortunate casualties. Collateral damage.

“Hear that, Hinks? You’re collateral damage.”

Talking to a dead guy stuffed in a barrel. Pretty funny really. It gets him laughing so hard he has to shove a hand in his mouth to make it stop.

Much to my surprise there’s an unexpired packet of yeast hiding in a dry corner of Shane’s refrigerator, behind the butter dish. The yeast, along with a tablespoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, a little melted butter and a few cups of King Arthur flour is all that’s needed to make a simple loaf of bread. Making good on my impulse to shed flour on the counters, and also provide us with something fresh and wholesome for breakfast.

It’s been a while since I’ve kneaded dough entirely by hand, without the help of commercial kitchen equipment, and I find it comforting. The world can’t be entirely crazy, or completely evil, if you can make bread with your own hands, and fill a kitchen with that wonderful smell.

“I could go out for doughnuts,” Shane offers, watching me sift the flour through my fingers.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Just seems like a lot of trouble,” he says, indicating the mixing bowl, the flour dust.

I suspect the idea of a woman baking in his kitchen makes him a little nervous. “Don’t worry, I promise not to move in,” I assure him, keeping it light.

The very idea makes him blush. “No, no,” he protests. “It’ll be great. I love bread right out of the oven. It’s been years.”

“I could thaw out the chicken potpie if you prefer.”

“Might be dangerous by now,” he admits. “That’s just for emergencies.”

“Like nuclear attack. Relax, Randall. I enjoy doing this.”

“Right,” he says. “The catering business.”

“I loved cooking and baking long before I went into business,” I say, setting the pan in the preheated oven. “What time is it getting to be?”

“Five in the morning.”

“The sun is up,” I notice. “Time to milk the chickens.”

Shane ignores the lame joke. “Look, Kate, I wanted to apologize. You say it’s not necessary, but I think it is. You’ve got enough on your plate without having to deal with my demons.”

“Oh,” I say, trying to keep it light. “Are they really demons?”

“Sort of.”

“You don’t have to tell me. Not unless you want to.”

He’s obviously been thinking of little else since I found him flailing about on the floor. “Better if you know,” he says with some reluctance. “Not that it’s a big secret. Maria knows. Anybody who knew me at the time, they know.” He forces himself to meet my eyes and says, “I had a family. Wife and daughter. Both killed in an accident.”

That explains the photograph in the drawer, the blank spaces on the wall, and, quite possibly, his obsession with finding lost children.

“I’m very sorry,” I tell him. “It must have been awful. Must still be awful.”

Lame words, but they come from experience. I’d lost a husband and faced losing a child. So I knew something of what he’d gone through, was still going through each day.

“We were driving up from Washington,” he explains, sounding somewhat detached. Finding the necessary distance. “Amy had a project for her world-studies class, I figured it was our chance to show her the Smithsonian. Fabulous museum. We had a great time, stayed longer on the last day than we intended, and then it was time to come home.”

I’d like to know if home was here, in this very house, but don’t want to interrupt him. And figure he’ll make it clear at some point.

“It’s night, heavy traffic,” he says. “We’re on the New Jersey Turnpike when my eyelids start getting heavy. So I pull into a rest area and let Jean take over driving. She’s wide-awake and raring to go. Amy’s in the back, sound asleep. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a wreck and I’m the only survivor. While I was asleep, Jean got sideswiped by a tractor-trailer and dragged under his rear wheels. Totally his fault.” He pauses, studies the backs of his hands before looking up, eyes incandescent with remembering. “So that’s my story. And yes, the sleep-disorder thing happened afterward. I’m fully aware it has to be related to the accident, to losing my family, but awareness doesn’t make it better.”

My impulse is to give the big guy a hug, but my instincts are picking up a vibe that says a hug is the last thing in the world he wants. It won’t change anything, and it can’t possibly ease the pain. So I let it go and continue to fuss around, cleaning up after myself, making the place tidy again.

“Okay,” I finally say. “You make coffee while we wait on the bread.”

Later, after scoffing down two slices of warm, honey-drenched warm bread, Shane grins at me. “This was a good idea. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Figure we’ve got a busy day ahead of us, right?”

“Absolutely,” he says.

“Care to share?”

He shrugs, takes another slug of strong coffee. “Got several irons in the fire. Waiting for an ID on the vehicle Bruce was driving. Waiting on a list of suspects from my Pentagon source. Waiting on whatever Jared Nichols is cooking up for the state of Connecticut. So while we’re waiting, I’ll try calling around Pawtucket.”

Pawtucket. That stumps me for a moment. And then I remember why Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is important. “The adoption agency,” I say. “Where we got Tommy.”

Shane nods. “I tried phoning them yesterday. They’re no longer in business, so we need to check with the city and possibly the state or county, see where the adoption records are being stored. We might have to run up there, I won’t know until I call.”

Eleven years have passed, but the thought of what happened that fine and glorious evening gives me a heart-size pang. Ted drove, of course, while I chewed my nails. He’d tell me nothing, not even the gender of the baby, in case it fell through, like so many of the other attempts had fallen through. And I knew better than to ask, though I longed to know. Which made for a long, near-silent ride. The only reason I could stand it without freaking out was because Ted had seemed so confident, so certain that our long ordeal was over. Confident not in words but in posture, in the way he gripped the wheel, the way he glanced at me and smiled. And I remember thinking, in the midst of a near anxiety attack, that whatever happened I’d always have Ted, and that even if we never got a baby it would be fine, we’d have each other.

Ignorance was a kind of nervous bliss, on that fine day. In the end we hadn’t gone to Pawtucket, where Family Finders was located, but to the airport in Providence. And there in Arrivals we’d been introduced to baby Tomas, scrawled our names on a few sheets of paper and walked out to the parking lot as parents. Ted had hidden a car seat in the trunk, but I insisted on holding the baby. Sitting in the back, in the so-called safe seat, cooing at the beautiful baby and crying and giggling and talking a mile a minute while Ted drove us home. Both of us knowing we’d never be the same, that two had become three. Never imagining that three would become two again. Or that two might, in some terrible way, become one.

“You okay?” Shane wants to know.

“I’m fine.”

Shane checks his watch. “Should be answering the phones at the town offices in another hour or so. We’ll just have to hold tight until then.”

Long before the hour is up, a car pulls into Shane’s driveway. Looking through the drapes, I see Maria Savalo open the door to her BMW, stick out her bare feet and put on her heels. As she takes her briefcase from the seat and makes for Shane’s front door, I’m thinking she doesn’t look happy, but maybe she’s not a morning person.

Wrong.

“Bad news,” she tells me. “You’re going to be arrested.”