“Yeah,” Amy said. She got close to the woman and said, in a low voice, “It’s a little incomplete because I lost my wallet. We had to leave North Dakota pretty quickly. Boyfriend was…well, we were having problems. I lost my wallet downtown when that guy—when he tried to kidnap her.” She handed over the clipboard and pen.
“I’ll bring it to the administrator. If she has any questions, she’ll come find you. She’s gone home, so I’m sure she’ll touch base with you in the morning.”
As the woman was leaving, Officer Nicholson stepped in. “Well. Someone’s looking better. I’m Todd.” He sidestepped Amy and shook Melissa’s hand. “Can you tell me what the man looked like? The one who took you?”
“She doesn’t remember what happened,” Amy said.
“I remember seeing the big bear. And I remember getting ice cream.”
“He took her right after we got the ice cream,” Amy said.
Nicholson crumpled his lips and nodded. “Okay. I’m sure it’ll come back to you. When it does, we need to know everything you remember, okay?”
Melissa nodded.
He turned to Amy. “My shift’s over, so I’m gonna take off. A detective will be by to get more information. At this point, it’ll probably be tomorrow.” He took out one of his business cards. “You think of anything, or if you see anything suspicious, you call me.” He pulled out a pen and wrote something on the back. “That’s my cell. I spoke with security and they said they’ll hang around and keep an eye on your room.” Nicholson chuckled. “I gave him some tips. Tricks of the trade I learned from a deputy US Marshal a couple of years ago. He was in charge of protecting witnesses.”
“Thanks, officer. I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. You have a good night.”
“You too, ma’am.” He winked at Melissa. “Feel better.”
“I already do. Lots better.”
Nicholson hooked his belt loop with a thumb. “Now if we find the guy who did this to you, I’ll feel a lot better.”
56
Keller set the magazine down and watched as the flow of hospital staff thinned. Moments later, the officer headed toward the elevator.
He figured that meant one of two things: the girl was being released or the cop’s shift was over. Hopefully both.
Keller made his way to one of the radiology rooms and flashed his badge at an orderly who was entering data into a computer. An image of an X-ray was on the screen to his right. “This girl,” he said, holding up his phone with an image of Melissa. “She was having some diagnostic tests. Has she been released?”
“I’m afraid I can’t give out any information on patients.”
“Look, pal, I’m not interested in medical information. Nothing private. I’m working her case. Some guy tried to grab her from the farmers market and I’m in charge of catching him. I need to know if she’s finished with her testing and if so, where she was sent. Was she admitted or released?”
The man frowned. “She had a scan and X-rays but we needed to repeat a couple of films.” He clacked some on the keyboard, then said, “She was sent back to the ED. Staying overnight for observation.”
“Thanks.”
Keller used the stairs and reentered the emergency department, where he caught a glimpse of the officer walking out the doors.
He found the restroom and stepped into one of the stalls—his hiding place for the next few hours while he waited for the staffing to drop to overnight levels.
Once that happened, he would—carefully—go in search of his prey.
57
Keller’s phone vibrated ten minutes later. It was a Bay Area number, but not one he knew. He answered anyway. When on a job, you never knew who might be trying to reach you with time-sensitive information.
“Kill the bitch.”
Keller straightened up. “Who is this?”
“Christine Ellis. And I want you to get rid of her. I want Amy Robbins gone, out of our lives.”
“Mrs. Ellis, we shouldn’t be talking about this on the phone.”
“It’s doctor. And you’re not here. I have no idea where you are. Are you nearby?”
“No.”
“So this will have to do. Do you have reason to believe your phone is being monitored?”
“No, but still, it’s bad form to—”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
“Look…” Keller walked out of the stall and checked to make sure no one else was in the restroom. “I have my orders and mission scope. And what you’re asking is way outside that scope. Way, way outside it.”
“If it’s the money—”
“The money is fine—for what I agreed to do. Bring Melissa home.”
“And that’s why I’ve increased your fee. I want results. Now, not next week. Not next month.”
He cleared his throat. “Is Mr. Lira there?”
“No. And this does not involve him.”
Keller scratched his head. “Dr. Ellis, my job is to bring your daughter home. I’m working on that. She’s in the same building as I am right now. So just be patient and—”
“Patient. Patient, Mr. Keller? I’ve been patient. And my patience has run out. I want my daughter back and I want Robbins out of our lives forever. I don’t want to have to worry that she’s going to go to the media over her crazy delusions about Melissa. And I don’t want sleepless nights. The only way to accomplish that—”
“Offer her money. Make her a deal.”
“This isn’t about money.”
“Then talk to your attorney. Maybe—”
“You’re not listening. Kill. That. Bitch.”
“Dr. Ellis—”
“You’re running out of time. She’s jeopardizing a billion-dollar deal. Do you understand that? Can you comprehend that amount of money?”
Keller leaned his back against the tile wall. “Honestly, no. I can’t. I’m not sure anyone can.”
“If she talks to the media, posts things online, that deal is—”
“Right now, she wouldn’t dare. But even if she would, I’m doing my best to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Your assurances are meaningless.”
Keller cleared his throat. “Look, let me talk with Mr. Lira and I—”
“Fifty million.”
Keller pushed away from the wall. “What?”
“I’ve deposited fifty million dollars in a Cayman account in trust for Mr. Tait.”
“Dr. Ellis, my boss would never—”
“I already spoke to him.”
“You what?”
“He’s the one who set up the account. He verified the money is on deposit.”
“I’m not comfortable with this.”
She laughed contemptuously. “He thought you’d have a problem with it.”
“He said that?”
“Not exactly. He said he might need to remove you from the case. And he assured me he’d take care of it, one way or another. So you’ve got a choice to make.”
Keller stood there a long moment, absorbing this. “Dr. Ellis, why’d you call me?”
“Honestly?”
Keller did not answer. What is honesty to a person who would order an innocent woman murdered?
“You know what?” he said. “Doesn’t matter.” No doubt Tait figured a woman would have a better shot at convincing him to make Amy Robbins disappear. “Good-bye, Dr. Ellis.”
Keller disconnected the call. He stood there staring at…nothing. Inside, he felt as empty as the bathroom.
Thirty seconds after hanging up, his phone vibrated again. It was Tait.
“Can you talk?”
“This is not a secure line.”
“Call me back on the sat phone.”
Keller cursed under his breath and left the hospital—hoping he could get
back in—and dialed Tait.
“Yeah.”
“Bill, you can’t be serious.”
“I take it you spoke with Christine Ellis. And that your answer is no.”
Keller started walking the parking lot. “You knew what my answer would be.”
“Yeah, I kinda did. But fifty million dollars is a hell of a lot of money to turn away. Hell, your twenty-five million cut would be enough to retire on. You could get out of this business, like you’ve wanted to do all along.”
“Jesus.”
“I don’t want to lose you, but my sole focus right now has to be mission success. And that means getting the girl home safely and taking care of the woman. That’s it. The rest—your retirement—we can discuss later.”
“Bill…I was fine with bringing the girl back. But killing the mother?”
“Mother? What the hell are you talking about?”
“This is more fucked up than you know. The Ellises stole Amy Robbins’s embryos from a fertility clinic in Boston. That’s the girl Robbins abducted. Her own daughter.”
Tait emitted a pained sigh.
“Mickey…you know how soldiers operate. They get their orders and they execute. Efficiently. No emotional involvement—or they make mistakes.”
“And I was fine with my orders. But this…the Robbins woman lost her husband and daughter in a car accident. Her life has been torn apart. She deserves more. I can’t compound an injustice by killing her.”
“Take a few minutes to think about this.”
“Retirement is great, Bill, but you’ve gotta enjoy it. And that means a clear conscience.”
“Clear conscience? What the fuck is that? You fought in a war, buddy. You killed people. Innocent people. Who’s got a clear conscience? I sure don’t.”
“This is different. And you know it. Killing an innocent woman—”
“Innocent? She kidnapped a five-year-old girl and took her on a road trip. And from what you told me, that girl’s now in the hospital with head trauma. This was an open and shut case. If you’d done your job in the first place, they would’ve had Melissa Ellis back and Robbins would’ve continued on living her miserable life.”
Keller could not argue with that.
“So if you really want to look yourself in the mirror, you’re responsible. And either you clean it up or I send Sinbad.”
Keller squeezed the phone. Sinbad lived up to his name, a case where irony was on full display. The man had a sadistic streak to him. He was lethally effective, a six-foot-five, three-hundred-pound steroid abusing psychopath who was not above torturing his victims before carrying out the job of killing them. As a result, Tait only used Sinbad on specific jobs.
“What about Dansbury? Or Greene?”
“Both overseas on cases. This is time sensitive. And Sinbad needs the work.”
Keller groaned—internally. “I’ll do it.”
“Mickey. Take some time. An hour. Think it through.”
“No. I’ll do it. Sinbad…I couldn’t live with myself knowing what he was going to do to her. He’d probably even do it with the girl standing there. I do it, it’ll be quick and painless.”
“Fine. But if you have any doubts, any at all, you need to tell me. Otherwise you’ll screw up. We’ve had enough of that.”
Keller clenched his jaw. “I got it, Bill. I’ll take care of it.”
He put his phone down and rubbed his temples. He needed to somehow separate Melissa from Amy so that her life was not marked by witnessing the murder of a loved one—and so that she did not become a witness capable of identifying him.
He closed his eyes and sucked in the cool night air, frustrated he was even thinking along these lines.
Sometimes life just plain sucked.
58
Loren was in bed, staring at the ceiling. After getting home, she spent some time poking around the internet researching the Ellises to get a sense of who they were, what their business interests were, and what was publicly available on Melissa.
Before embarking on that virtual journey, however, she went into paranoid mode by using a virtual private network to mask her internet connection, then scrubbing her browsing history with software that overwrote the deleted files nearly three dozen times with a Department of Defense algorithm. She wanted to leave behind no record of any connection to the Ellises.
There was very little recent information on them—their social media presence was limited to Facebook postings on infertility and articles having to do with their breakthrough genetic testing company. Their LinkedIn profiles contained more of the same, with the addition of education and work history and job postings they made over the years.
However, an old article in the Mercury News archive mentioned that Melissa was their only child, both sets of their parents were deceased, and Christine’s only sibling, an older sister, had passed away in her thirties from a skiing accident. They had no next of kin.
Loren lay there another hour thinking. Zach was likewise awake. They both needed shuteye—Zach always rose at 6:00 AM when the market opened and Loren…well, she was going to be tired tomorrow. She did not foresee any sleep coming tonight.
Thirty minutes later, she said, “We can’t do this.”
Zach sighed. “Do what?”
Loren brought her eyes up to meet his. “We can’t turn her in. And she can’t turn herself in.”
Zach groaned.
“I know. But what if the best attorney in San Francisco can’t get her off and she goes to prison? Even if it’s only five years. It’d be a death sentence for her.”
Zach turned on his side toward Loren. “We’ve been through this.”
“Who knows what’ll happen to her in prison? One thing’s for sure—she’ll lapse back into depression. She was just starting to come out of it—because of Melissa. It brought Amy back to life again.”
“She was making progress before she met Melissa.”
Loren snorted. “Yeah, she got a job. At a bakery. Kneading dough. You’re right, Zach. She was making progress. But we’re talking about a Harvard educated, Stanford Law attorney.”
“None of this was her fault.”
“The kidnapping sure seemed to be premeditated—”
“Amy’s not a kidnapper,” Zach said. “She’s not a criminal. She was the most honest person I ever knew. And then everything was taken from her.”
Loren fell silent. She did not want to have this debate. This was one of those situations that they had little to no control over and arguing about it was not going to change that fact.
She hoped that when Amy called in the morning Melissa would be doing better and she would be able to leave the hospital. But then what?
The next thing Loren was aware of, Zach’s alarm was dinging. She turned over and found that he was already out of bed.
Loren padded over to his office and saw him sitting at his desk, the computer screen filled with stock charts and real-time quotes.
She walked into the bathroom and started to brush, checking the burner phone to make sure she had not missed a call from Amy.
As she thought about what her sister-in-law’s next moves should be, Loren realized she had made one miscalculation. In her effort to think of everything, she forgot something. Something really important.
Amy might have used her credit card in San Luis Obispo. The Bureau, with an identity attached to their kidnapper, would look for electronic traces of her whereabouts, and that included purchases involving the banking system.
Amy did not have much money left to her name. The medical and rehab expenses, psychiatrist and pharmaceutical costs drained her savings during the years she was unable to work—and state disability was wholly insufficient to keep her afloat. Even if she had planned the abduction ahead of time, it was unlikely she had much cash at her disposal to take with her.
/> Loren stood there staring at the bathroom mirror, thinking and not seeing. She refocused and spit, then rinsed. That’s why she had no money left. She probably took whatever cash she had at home and when that ran out, drained her checking account. With her ATM card.
That, or she was forced to use her credit card. Either way, the Bureau would soon have access to those records. They would then parse her receipts and charges.
Loren got dressed quickly. She had two changes of clothes in the go-bag in her Bureau car, or BuCar, trunk—along with a couple hundred dollars—but she needed more to give her maximum flexibility.
She walked into their closet and opened the safe, withdrew the envelope where they kept the cash part of their earthquake preparedness backpack, and stuffed it into her purse.
Loren stopped into Zach’s office and kissed the back of his neck. From the sound of his side of the conversation, he was on the phone with a trader.
He swiveled in his seat and glanced up at her. While simultaneously talking about option spreads for Apple, he gave her a nod. She blew him a kiss and mouthed, “Call you later”—then walked out before he could ask any questions.
It was better this way. He would not worry about her—about her doing anything stupid. For all he knew, she would be at work. And if anyone asked him where she went, or spent the day, he would truly have no clue.
Loren grabbed an awl from the tool pegboard, then fired up the Bureau car and headed for San Luis Obispo.
59
Brandon Ellis was seated at the conference room table, a venti cup of high octane Starbucks steaming by his right elbow. “Well that can’t be right.”
“Come again?” Angelo Lira was sitting across from him, paging through a PowerPoint presentation his assistant had prepared.
“Did you make a drawdown of fifty million dollars?” Ellis clicked and expanded the entry. “Electronic transfer.”
“What account?”
“Capex.”
“I don’t have access to your accounts, Brandon.” Lira squinted. “You know that.”
“Yeah.” Ellis frowned and continued clicking through recent transactions.
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