Текст книги "Missing You"

Автор книги: Harlan Coben

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Chapter 12

Stagger wasn’t in his office.

Still standing in front of his office door, Kat typed up a text saying that she needed to talk to him right away. Her fingers shook, but she managed to hit the SEND button. She stood there and stared at the screen for two full minutes.

No reply.

This made no sense. Monte Leburne had been picked up by the FBI, more specifically the feds working RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. NYPD wasn’t involved in the arrest at all. The feds suspected him of murdering two members of a rival crime family. A few days later, they’d also uncovered information that Leburne had been the triggerman in the death of her father.

So why had Stagger visited Leburne before that, the day after his arrest?

Kat needed some air. A small twinge sent a reminder that she had also skipped lunch. Kat wasn’t good when skipping meals. She tended to lose focus and get grumpy. She hurried down the stairs and asked Keith Inchierca at the front desk to contact her as soon as Stagger came back. Inchierca frowned.

“I look like your secretary?” he said.

“Good one.”

“What?”

“Please? It’s important, okay?”

He waved at her to go away.

She found a falafel stand on Third Avenue and then, remembering Brandon Phelps’s home address, she figured, well, why not? She started walking north. Seven blocks later, she arrived at a fairly unassuming high-rise. On the street level, there was a Duane Reade pharmacy and a store called Scoop, which Kat had wrongly assumed was an ice-cream parlor when, in fact, it was a trendy boutique. The apartment building entrance was on 74th Street. Kat flashed her badge at the doorman.

“I’m here about Dana Phelps,” she said. “Apartment 8J.”

The doorman stared at her badge. Then he said, “Wrong building.”

“You don’t have a Dana Phelps here?”

“We don’t have a Dana Phelps. We also don’t have an apartment 8J. We don’t do letters. The apartments on the eighth floor run from 801 to 816.”

Kat put her badge away. “Is this 1279 Third Avenue?”

“No, this is 200 East 74th Street.”

“But you’re on the corner of Third Avenue.”

The doorman just stared at her. “Uh, yeah, so?”

“But it says 1279 Third Avenue on this building.”

He made a face. “You think, what, I’m lying about the address?”

“No.”

“Please, Detective, by all means. Go up to apartment 8J. With my blessing.”

New Yorkers. “Look, I’m trying to find apartment 8J at 1279 Third Avenue.”

“I can’t help you.”

Kat headed back outside and turned the corner. The awning did indeed say 200 East 74th Street. Kat moved back to Third Avenue. The 1279 was actually above the entrance to Duane Reade. What the hell? She entered, found the manager, and asked, “Do you have any apartments above you?”

“Uh, we’re a pharmacy.”

New Yorkers. “I know that, but I mean, how do I get to the apartments above you?”

“You know a lot of people who walk through pharmacies to get to their apartment? The entrance is around the corner on 74th.”

She didn’t bother with follow-up questions. The answer was now pretty damn apparent. Brandon Phelps, if that was his name, had given her the wrong—or, more likely, a false—address.

 • • •

Back at the precinct, Google gave Kat some of the answers, but they didn’t clarify much.

There was a Dana Phelps with a son named Brandon, but they didn’t live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The Phelpses resided in a rather tony section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Brandon’s father had been a big-time hedge fund manager. Beaucoup bucks. He died when he was forty-one. The obituary gave no cause of death. Kat looked for a charity—people often requested donations made to a heart disease or cancer or whatever cause—but there was nothing listed.

So why had Brandon sought out a specific NYPD cop?

Kat checked out other residences the Phelps might have owned. There was, of course, a chance that a wealthy family from Greenwich might own a place on the Upper East Side, but nothing in Manhattan came up. She ran Brandon’s cell phone number through the system. Whoa. It was a prepaid phone. Most rich kids from Greenwich don’t use those. Most people who use them either have poor credit ratings or, well, don’t want to be traced. Of course, what most people didn’t know was that it was rather easy to trace disposable phones. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had ruled that you could even “ping” a location without getting a warrant. She didn’t need to go that far. At least not yet.

For now, she played a hunch. All prepaid phone sales are registered in a data bank. She typed in the number and found out exactly where Brandon had purchased his phone. The answer didn’t surprise her. He bought it at a Duane Reade, located at, yep, 1279 Third Avenue.

Maybe that explained why he chose that address.

Okay, maybe. But it explained nothing else.

There were other links to explore, but they’d take more time. Brandon Phelps had a Facebook account, but it was set on private. It would probably take only a phone call or two to find out how Brandon’s father had died, but really, what was the relevance of that? The kid had come to her because his mother had run off with some guy.

And there was the rub: So what?

This could all be nothing but a stupid hoax. Why was she wasting her time with this nonsense anyway? Didn’t she have anything better to do? Maybe, maybe not. Truth was, work was slow today. This was a welcome distraction until Stagger got back.

Okay, she thought. Play it out.

Let’s say this was a hoax. Well, for one thing, if this was a joke on Brandon’s part, it was almost pathetically lame. The hoax wasn’t funny or clever in the slightest. There didn’t seem to be much of a punch line or big payoff.

It didn’t add up.

Cops loved to buy into their self-created myth that they have some innate ability to “read” people, that they were all human lie detectors, that they could suss out truth from deception from body language or the timbre in a voice. Kat knew that that sort of hubris was complete nonsense. Worse, it too often led to life-altering disaster.

That said, unless Brandon was either a pure sociopath or a recent graduate of the Lee Strasberg school of method acting, the kid truly was distraught about something.

The question was: What?

The answer: Stop wasting time and call him.

She picked up her phone and dialed the number Brandon gave her. Kat half expected him not to answer, to have given up on whatever little game, real or not, he was playing, and hustled his butt back to UConn or Greenwich or wherever. But he answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Brandon?”

“Detective Donovan.”

“Right.”

“I bet you didn’t find my mother yet,” he said.

She decided there was no reason to play coy. “No, but I did visit the Duane Reade at 1279 Third Avenue.”

Silence.

“Brandon?”

“What?”

“Are you ready to come clean now?”

“Wrong question, Detective.”

There was an edge in his tone now.

“What are you talking about?”

“The question is,” Brandon said, “are you?”

 • • •

Kat switched the phone from her right ear to her left. She wanted to take notes. “What are you talking about, Brandon?”

“Find my mom.”

“You mean your mom who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut?”

“Yes.”

“I’m NYPD. You need to go to the Greenwich police station.”

“I did that already. I spoke to a Detective Schwartz.”

“And?”

“And he didn’t believe me.”

“So what makes you think I will? Why come to me? And why all the lies?”

“You’re Kat, right?”

“What?”

“I mean, that’s what they call you. Kat.”

“How do you know that?”

Brandon hung up.

Kat stared at the phone. How had he known she went by Kat? Had he overheard someone in the precinct call her that? Maybe. Or maybe Brandon Phelps just knew a lot about her. He had, after all, come to her specifically, this college kid from Greenwich looking for his mommy. If indeed Dana Phelps was his mommy. If indeed he really was Brandon Phelps. She hadn’t found pictures of them online yet.

None of this made any sense. So what to do?

Call him back. Or better yet, ping his location. Pick him up.

For what?

False report maybe. Lying to a police officer. Maybe he was a random psycho. Maybe he had done something to his mother or to Dana Phelps or . . .

She was considering the alternatives when the phone on her desk rang. Kat picked it up. “Donovan.”

“This is your secretary calling.” It was Sergeant Inchierca. “You wanted to know when the captain came back, right?”

“Right.”

“The answer would be ‘now.’”

“Thanks.”

Just like that, concerns about Brandon and his maybe-missing mom fled. Kat was already out of her seat and rushing down the steps. As she reached his floor, Kat could see Stagger entering his office with two other cops. One was her direct supervisor, Stephen Singer, a guy so skinny he could hide behind a stripper pole. The other was David Karp, who supervised the uniformed cops on the street.

Stagger was about to close the door, but Kat got there just in time, blocking it with her hand.

She forced up a smile. “Captain?”

Stagger stared at the hand on the door as though it had offended him.

“Did you get my message?” Kat asked.

“I’m busy right now.”

“This can’t wait.”

“It’s going to have to. I have a meeting with—”

“I got the visitors’ logs from the day after Leburne got arrested,” she said. Kat kept her eyes on him, looking for a tell. Okay, so she wasn’t above reading body language. She just didn’t do it with hubris. “I really think I need your help on this.”

Stagger’s tell might as well have been a neon sign in Vegas. His hands clenched. His face reddened. Everyone, including Kat’s displeased supervisor, could see it.

Through clenched teeth, Stagger managed to say, “Detective?”

“Yes?”

“I said I’m busy right now.”

The two supervisors, especially Singer, whom she liked and respected, glared at her seeming insubordination. Somewhat stunned, Kat found herself stepping out of his office. He closed the door behind her.

 • • •

The text came in ten minutes later. It was from Brandon’s prepaid phone:

I’m sorry.

Enough. She picked up the phone and dialed his number. Brandon answered on the first ring. His voice was tentative.

“Kat?”

“What the hell is going on, Brandon?”

“I’m at the Hunter College Bookstore on the corner. Can you meet me?”

“I’m really tired of being jerked around here.”

“I’ll explain everything. I promise.”

She sighed. “On my way.”

Brandon was sitting on a bench outside, on the corner of Park Avenue. He fit in here, surrounded by other kids his age rushing back and forth with backpacks and hoodies and exhaustion. He huddled into himself as though he were cold. He looked young and scared and fragile.

She sat down next to him. She didn’t ask anything. She just looked at him. This was his call. Let him be the first to speak. It took some time. He stared down at his hands for a while. She rode out his silence.

“My dad died of cancer,” Brandon began. “It was slow. Just ate him up. Mom never left his side. He and Mom were high school sweethearts. They were good together, you know? I mean, I go over to my friends’ and their folks are, like, always in different rooms. My folks weren’t like that. When Dad died, I was devastated, sure. But not like Mom. It was like half of her died.”

Kat opened her mouth, closed it. She had a million questions, but they’d keep.

“Mom always calls. I know how that sounds. But I mean, always. That’s the thing that got me suspicious. See, all we really have is each other. And she’s, like, terrified of losing someone else. So she reaches out all the time, just, I don’t know, just to make sure I’m still alive.”

He looked off.

Finally, Kat broke the silence. “She’s been lonely, Brandon.”

“I know.”

“And now she’s away with another man. You understand that, right?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Is this guy her first boyfriend since . . . ?”

“Not really, no,” he said. “But, I mean, it’s the first time she’s gone away with someone.”

“Maybe that’s it, then,” Kat said.

“What’s it?”

“Maybe she’s afraid of how you’ll react.”

Brandon shook his head. “She knows I want her to find somebody.”

“Do you? You just said all you have is each other. Maybe that was true. But maybe that’s changing now. Just imagine how hard this is for her. Maybe she needs to pull away a little.”

“That’s not it,” Brandon insisted. “She always calls.”

“I get that. But maybe, well, maybe not right now. Do you think she’s in love?”

“Mom? Probably.” Then: “Yeah, she’s in love with this guy. She wouldn’t go away with a guy she didn’t love.”

“Love makes us all forgetful, Brandon. It makes us all a little self-involved.”

“That’s not it either. Look, this guy? He’s a total player. She doesn’t get that.”

“A player?” Kat smiled at him, maybe understanding a little. He was being protective. It was sweet, in its own way. “Then maybe your mom will end up with a broken heart. So what? She’s not a child.”

Brandon shook his head some more. “You don’t understand.”

“What happened when you went to the cops in Greenwich?”

“What do you think? They said the same thing you did.”

“So why did you come to me? That’s the part I still don’t understand.”

He shrugged. “I thought you’d get it.”

“But why me? I mean, how do you even know me? And how do you know people call me Kat?” She tried to catch his eye. “Brandon?” He wouldn’t let her. “Why do you think I can help you?”

He didn’t reply.

“Brandon?”

“You really don’t know?”

“Of course I don’t.”

He said nothing.

“Brandon? What the hell is going on?”

“They met online,” Brandon said.

“What?”

“My mom and her boyfriend.”

“Lot of people meet online.”

“Yeah, I know, but—” Brandon stopped. Then he muttered, “Perky and cute.”

Kat’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

She flashed to her YouAreJustMyType profile. The heading Stacy had chosen for her: Cute and perky!

“Are you . . .” She felt a sudden chill. “Wait, are you stalking me online or something?”

“What?” Brandon sat up straight. “No! Don’t you get it?”

“Get what?”

He reached into his pocket. “This is the guy my mom went away with. I got it off the website.”

Brandon handed her the photograph. When Kat saw the face, her heart yet again plummeted down a mine shaft.

It was Jeff.

Chapter 13

When Titus first started out, this was how he found the girls:

He wore a suit and tie. Let his competition wear sweats or low-slung jeans. He carried a briefcase. He wore horn-rimmed glasses. He kept his hair short and neat.

Titus always sat on the same bench in the Port Authority bus station, second floor. If some homeless guy was sleeping there, he gave it up pretty fast when he saw Titus coming. Titus didn’t have to say anything. The locals just knew to stay clear. This was Titus’s bench. It gave him a perfect bird’s-eye view of the south terminal gates 226 through 234 on the level below him. He could see the passengers get off the bus, but they couldn’t see him.

He was, he knew, a predator.

He watched the girls depart, like a lion waiting for the limping gazelle.

Patience was key.

Titus didn’t want the girls from the bigger cities. He waited for the buses from Tulsa or Topeka or maybe Des Moines. Boston was no good. Neither was Kansas City or St. Louis. The best were the runaways from the so-called Bible Belt. They came in with a mixture of hope and rebellion in their eyes. The more rebellion—the more you wanted to stick it to Daddy—the better. This was the big city. This was where dreams were made.

The girls came in demanding change and excitement—something had to happen for them. But in truth, they were already hungry and scared and exhausted. They lugged a too-heavy suitcase, and if they had a guitar that made it better. Titus didn’t know why. But if he found one with a guitar, it always upped his chances.

Titus never forced it.

If the setup wasn’t ideal—if the girl wasn’t the perfect prey—he let it go. That was the key. Patience. You throw out enough nets—you watch enough buses come in—you would eventually find what you needed.

So Titus waited on that bench and when he saw a girl who looked ripe, he made his move. Most times, it didn’t work out. That was okay. He had a good rap. His mentor, a violent pimp named Louis Castman, had mentored him well. You talked politely. You made requests or suggestions, never commands or demands. You manipulated the girls by making them believe they were in charge.

You wanted them pretty, of course, but that wasn’t a prerequisite.

Most times, Titus used the model rap. He had made up good business cards on heavy stock, not the cheap, flimsy stuff. Spend money to make money. The cards were embossed. They read Elitism Model Agency in fine calligraphy. They had his name on it. They had a business line, a home line, and a mobile phone number (all three numbers forwarded to his mobile). It had a legitimate address on Fifth Avenue and if the girls mistook Elitism for Elite, well, so be it.

He never pressed. He was commuting, he would tell the girls, from his home in Montclair, a wealthy New Jersey suburb, and happened to spot her and thought she might do well in the modeling business “if she didn’t already have representation.” He pretended to be above horning in on a competitor. At the end of the day, the girls wanted to believe. That helped. They had all heard stories about models or actresses being discovered at the local mall or at Dairy Queen or waitressing.

Why not a bus terminal in Manhattan?

He told them they’d need a portfolio. He invited them for a model shoot with a top fashion photographer. This was where some balked. They had heard this line before. They wanted to know how much it would cost. Titus would chuckle. “Here’s a tip,” he would tell them. “You don’t pay a real agency—they pay you.”

If they seemed too suspicious or worried, he would cut them loose and return to his bench. You had to be willing to cut them loose at any point. That was the key. If, for example, they weren’t runaways, if they were just here for a short vacation, if they stayed in constant touch with a family member . . . any of those, and he simply moved on.

Patience.

For those who made the cut, well, it depended.

Louis Castman enjoyed inflicting pain. Titus did not. It wasn’t that violence bothered him—Titus could take it or leave it. He just always sought the most profitable avenue. Still Titus had followed Castman’s methods: You invite the girls to be photographed. You take some pictures—Castman actually had an eye for it—and then you attack them. Simple as that. You put a knife to her throat. You take away her phone and wallet. You cuff her to the bed. Sometimes you rape her.

You always drug her.

This would go on for days. One time, with a particularly beautiful strong-willed girl, they kept her like that for two full weeks.

The drugs were expensive—heroin was Titus’s favorite—but that was yet another business expense. Eventually, the girl would get hooked. It never took much time. Heroin was like that. You let the genie out of the bottle, it never got put back in. For Titus, that was usually enough. Louis, on the other hand, liked to film the rapes, set the girl up so it looked consensual, and then, just to remove any last shred of hope the girl had, he would threaten to send the tapes to their often religious, traditional parents.

In many ways, it was the perfect setup. You find girls who start out already scarred, already on the run, with bad daddy issues or maybe escaping abuse. They are, yes, wounded gazelles. You take those girls and then you strip away whatever else might be left. You hurt them. You make them afraid. You get them addicted to a drug. And then, when all hope is gone, you give them a savior.

You.

By the time he put them out on the street or into a higher-end brothel—Titus worked both—they would do anything to please him. A few ran back home—a business expense—but not too many. Two girls even managed to make their way to the police, but it was their word against his, with no evidence, and by then, they were crack (or heroin) whores and really, who believed them or cared?

That was all behind him now.

Right now, Titus was finishing up his afternoon walk. He enjoyed this time, out alone in the woods behind the barn, surrounded by the lush green of foliage and the deep blue of the sky. This surprised him. He’d been born in the Bronx, ten blocks north of Yankee Stadium. Growing up, his idea of outdoor space had been the fire escape. He knew only the hustle and noise of the city, believed that it was part of him, in his blood, that he had been not only fully acclimated to brick and mortar and concrete but could not live without it. Titus had been one of eight children living in a run-down two-bedroom walk-up on Jerome Avenue. It was impossible for him to remember a time when he was alone or could bask for more than a moment or two in silence. There was little tranquility in his life. It wasn’t a question of craving it or not. It was simply an unknown.

When he had first visited the farm, Titus thought there was no way he could survive the stillness. Now he had come to love the solitude.

He found his way into the smaller clearing, where Reynaldo, an overmuscled but loyal worker, kept guard. Reynaldo, who was playing fetch with his dog, nodded at Titus. Titus nodded back. The original Amish owner had built root cellars out here. A root cellar was merely a hole in the ground with a door as cover—an underground storage unit to help preserve food at cooler temperatures. They were virtually undetectable if you weren’t looking for them.

The property had fourteen of them.

He strolled past the pile of clothes. The bright yellow sundress was still on top.

“How is she?”

Reynaldo shrugged. “The usual.”

“Do you think she’s ready?”

It was a dumb question. Reynaldo wouldn’t know. He didn’t even bother responding. Six years ago, Titus had met Reynaldo in Queens. Reynaldo had been a skinny teen working the gay trade and getting beaten twice weekly. Titus realized that the kid wouldn’t survive more than another month. The only thing Reynaldo had resembling a family or friend was Bo, a stray Labrador retriever he’d found near the East River.

So Titus “saved” Reynaldo, gave him drugs and confidence, made him useful.

The relationship had started as yet another classic ruse, as with the girls. Reynaldo became his most obedient lackey and muscle. But something had changed over the years. Evolved, if you will. Strange as it might seem, Titus had feelings for Reynaldo. No, not like that.

He considered Reynaldo family.

“Bring her to me tonight,” Titus said. “Ten o’clock.”

“Late,” Reynaldo said.

“Yes. That a problem?”

“No. Not at all.”

Titus stared at the bright yellow sundress. “One more thing.”

Reynaldo waited.

“The pile of clothes. Burn them.”