I head straight up. Kim’s apartment is at the end of the hall, which is perfect. I slip out through the stairwell, make sure no one’s around, and walk to her door.
I should just go get the super. Make up a story, like I did with the pizza places. That should be my only option here, confronted with a locked door.
It is not my only option.
Hacking isn’t the extent of my skills. It isn’t the extent of my crimes.
I bend to check the lock. Old building; simple security. I can open it.
I’ll get inside and find evidence of a child. That’s all I need. Just the reassurance that a child exists, and then I will back off and wait for the police to ID Kim and figure it out for themselves.
I’m about to start on the lock when I hear a noise inside. I put my ear to the door and pick up a radio or TV.
Maybe she left it on when she went out.
That’s reasonable, but still . . .
I rap on the door. Ten seconds later, it swings open. A woman stands there, late twenties, tiny build, brown skin, her hair swept into the kind of style I know well: grab an elastic at 5 A.M. when the baby wakes, shove your hair up, and leave it like that until you collapse in bed at night and maybe, just maybe, remember to take it out. Sure enough, bright-colored wooden blocks litter the hall floor, and through the open door I spot a high chair in the kitchen.
The woman stage-whispers, “Yes?”
“Baby napping?”
A tired smile and a nod. “She just went down.”
I gesture to ask if she’d rather speak in the hall. She nods again and steps out, while keeping the door cracked open.
“I’m looking for Kim Mason,” I say.
Her brows knit. “Kim . . .”
“Mason. Her employer gave me this address.”
The frown deepens. I tell her the address, and she says, “That’s this apartment, but I don’t know a Kim.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“My husband and I moved in after we got married. Two . . . no, two and a half years ago.”
Long before the pizza place even opened, meaning Kim didn’t move recently and forget to update her address with her employer.
I take out the photo. “Have you seen this woman before?”
Her eyes widen. “That’s the girl on the news. The one who was murdered.”
“Have you ever seen her anywhere else?”
She shakes her head. “If I had, I’d have called it in.” She looks up at me. “You’re with the police.”
“I’m helping with the investigation.” True enough.
Her gaze returns to the photo. Then she looks at me. “This is exactly why we left the city. My parents said that since my husband had a good job, we should move someplace safe to raise our babies.”
No place is safe. Because every place has people, and the threat isn’t always the gangbanger on the corner. It can be the woman next door. Or the guy lying in bed beside you.
Which isn’t what she wants to hear.
I remember Paul last night, giving me crap about my building’s broken front door. When we picked our house, he’d looked around and declared it a good neighborhood. A “safe” one. The sort of place he felt comfortable leaving his new wife and raising his future kids, and I wanted to gape at him and say, “You’re a lawyer. You should know better.”
It was like mistaking our white picket fence for ten feet of electrical barbed wire. But he couldn’t see that. Which I suppose explains how he ended up with me. He saw what he wanted. He accepted the image I presented, of a woman who had never done anything worse than rack up traffic tickets. A bit scattered and quirky but totally harmless. That’s the package he bought. What he got . . .
What he got was very different. He’d finally sensed that and backed away.
I ask the young woman a few more questions. It’s clear, though, that she’d never seen Kim before her photo appeared on the news.
Outside, I walk around. There’s only one other apartment building on this street, and it’s five stories tall. Kim gave a seventh-floor address.
Which means she gave a false one.
I am at home, tracking down Kim Mason. Or the woman pretending to be Kim Mason. It’s a fake identity, too, as I quickly discover. Working under the table. Giving her employer a false address. Hiding the fact she has a child. Those are not the actions of a young woman who’s just a little cagey with her personal info.
A fake ID takes this to a whole other level, especially if she had documentation to back it up. There was a time when I toyed with that option. It didn’t last long, but I learned what building a false identity entails, and despite what we see on television, there isn’t some guy in the shady part of town who’ll set you up with an ironclad birth certificate for ten grand.
What you can get from that dude in the shady neighborhood, though, is fake ID cards, and for a whole lot less than ten grand. Those cards will get you into a bar before you hit twenty-one. They will not get you past a police check.
If Kim Mason was working under the table, that suggests she’s only using fake ID, not an actual false identity complete with Social Security number. She’s living under a false name the cheap way.
Why would she do that? Tons of reasons, as I well know, most of them involving mistakes made, a fresh start needed. But her situation adds a wrinkle. A hidden son.
But I need to prove there was a son. That a child has been taken. And I am no closer to accomplishing that goal than I was when the police first turned me away.
So I am home, utilizing skills left rusty for years. I’m hacking my way to Kim Mason.
I know that’s a fake name. Her address, and likely 99 percent of everything she gave her employer, is also fake. But there will be that 1 percent. The single piece of information she provided that needed to be genuine.
A phone number.
Her boss said that he’d used that number in the past, and she answered. So it is correct.
I quickly establish that it’s a prepaid. Which is what I expect. Someone like this won’t have a legitimate credit card, much less be paying a monthly cell phone bill with it.
What I need are her call lists. That could take serious work. Tech companies update their security constantly. Or they do . . . if they’re not selling cheap prepaids, which is ironic really. People buy prepaids because they provide anonymity, and yet hacking into those records isn’t nearly as tough as it would be with a regular phone.
I download an encrypted version of her call records for my laptop and run it through a simple decryption program. Then I write out the last dozen numbers calls made and received and dial her last call placed. That number goes to a take-out place. The next is her work. The third just rings, no voice mail. The fourth tells me the number is no longer in service, which means I put a big red circle around it for later. It’s the fifth-oldest call that actually give me a response. When a man answers, I say, “Hi, I just found this phone on the sidewalk, and I’m trying to track down the owner. All I have is a first name. Do you know anyone named Kim?”
“Kim Lyons?”
“Maybe?”
“I’ve got a girl, rents a place of mine, named Kim Lyons.”
“Is her phone number . . . ?” I read it out.
He checks and says, “Yeah, that’s Kim.”
“Great! I’ll drop this off for her. Where does she live?”
I don’t expect him to actually tell me, but I guess that just goes to prove that the world is full of people far more trusting than me. People who hear a friendly female voice on the phone, a Good Samaritan trying to return a lost phone, and they don’t even consider nefarious possibilities.
He rattles off an address and then says, “That’s really nice of you, you know that? Most people would just walk right past a phone on the ground. Or swipe it. Kim’s a good kid. She’ll appreciate that.”
“It’s the least I can do. I know how tough it is, being a single mom.”
He pauses.
“Single mom?”
“Bad guess?” I laugh. “Sorry. Apparently, I suck at this amateur detective stuff. I was trying to figure out whose phone it was, and I saw a photo of a little boy. I thought it might be hers.”
“Nah, Kim’s just a kid herself. No little ones yet. But she’ll be happy to get her phone back. So thanks for doing that.”
“Happy to help.”
Kim Mason—or whoever she is—has rented a house on the outskirts of Oxford. It’s no country manor. There are no country manors in that area, too close to the city’s waste disposal, too close to the railroad tracks. The house is much bigger than any apartment, but in a secluded area, away from public transport and city amenities.
A secluded place.
A private place.
That’s the first word that comes to mind when I see the property: “privacy.” It’s on a dirt road, and the house itself is surrounded by trees and set a couple hundred feet back. There’s a rear yard where a child would never be spotted. The nearest neighbors are a half mile away. A child could play unseen and unheard, even at preschooler decibels.
Could I hide Charlotte in a place like this? Yes. Room for the two of us to walk and play, and a driveway that loops around the rear, so I could get her out into a waiting vehicle and take her into the city, where I’d be just another woman with a child.
I break in the back door. It’s easy work—simple locks and no chance of a passerby spotting me behind the house. Once I get the door open, though, I see that it shouldn’t have been so easy to break in. There are two dead bolts. Good dead bolts, plus a basic security system. But the dead bolts weren’t fastened and the security system isn’t on.
I head straight for the kitchen. This is where I’ll find evidence of the boy. When Charlotte isn’t staying over, I put away her toys and store her booster seat, and take her special pillow from the bed we share, and she disappears . . . until you open my fridge.
I am not a mass consumer of juice boxes or string cheese or tiny containers of yogurt covered in cartoon animals. Even without that, you’ll find signs of Charlotte in my cutlery drawer, two child-sized sets with bright plastic handles. There’s more plastic in the china cupboard—cups and plates and bowls. A five-year-old might have graduated to silver cutlery, but I know there will be signs of him in that kitchen.
There are not.
I check every cupboard, and all I find is glassware and china. There’s food in the fridge and the pantry, but nothing particularly child-friendly. I don’t even find a box of Cheerios.
I open every drawer and door, and I see only what I’d expect in the house of a twenty-three-year-old. The basics. That’s it.
He is here.
He must be here.
And what if he’s not?
I won’t think of that. I can’t. There is a child, and I will find evidence of him in this house, proof I can take to the police.
The living room is empty. Yes, there’s furniture, but only the sort that comes with a rented house—not so much as a magazine or a blanket added. In the bathroom, I find only women’s toiletries. No tear-free shampoo. No superhero-shaped bottle of bubble bath. No tiny toothbrush alongside hers.
I grip the counter, looking at myself in the mirror.
Have I made a mistake?
What have I done? What have I risked?
Keep looking.
I head into the bedrooms. There are three. Two have nothing but bare beds and empty dressers. The third is Kim’s room. There’s not much, but it’s clearly occupied, and again, it’s all hers. Women’s clothing. Women’s shoes. Women’s accessories. Nothing more.
I walk into the bedroom right beside Kim’s. That’s the one I’d pick for Charlotte, keeping her close. But then I hear a truck rattle past and realize the window overlooks the front yard. While I can’t see the road through the trees, if I was being paranoid, I wouldn’t want light visible from more than one bedroom at night.
I search the third bedroom, with a rear-facing window. I open every drawer. I pull them all the way out and check underneath. I open the closet, pat the shelves and then bring in a kitchen chair to examine them closer. I don’t even find a piece of Lego.
It is only when I peer beneath the bed that I spot something. I crawl under it, and my hand closes around the familiar shape of a juice box.
Gripping it, I start backing out, and my other hand brushes something smooth and slick. When I pull that out with me, I find myself holding a book.
Where the Wild Things Are.
I smile, as I crack open the cover. I know every word of this book. It’s one of Charlotte’s favorites. I flip through, and I remember the woman’s words.
“I’ve been reading with him.”
I hold the book up to the light. There’s no dust on the cover, meaning it hasn’t been under there since the last tenants.
I flip through again, and there, written on the inside cover in shady block letters . . .
BRANDON.
I examine the empty drink box. It’s a child-sized one, grape juice, with a purple mouse on the front. Also no sign of dust. When I turn the box upside down, a drop of purple liquid falls.
As I watch that drop fall, a thought forms. I toss the book and box onto the bed and race around the house, checking the garbage cans.
Every one is empty.
Completely empty.
There is not one item of trash inside. And no bags outside.
You erased him. You knew something was coming—someone was coming—and you erased every trace of him.
I go back into the bedroom, and I pick up the box and the book.
Found you, Brandon.
No, I’ve found proof of him. Proof that I cannot take to the police, because it’ll be like when I told Officer Cooper about the mud-smeared license plate.
“See this juice box? This book? Here’s the proof.”
“A . . . juice box. And a . . . book. Left under a bed.”
“Right, but—”
“Tell me again how you happened to find these things, Ms. Finch?”
I would admit to breaking in—even to hacking—if it would convince the police that a child is missing. It will not.
I found evidence of you, Brandon.
And now I need to find you.
When I leave Kim’s rental, I head to Chicago, for a rental locker I have not visited since the day I married Paul. No, that isn’t true. I did come here three years ago. To the locker I rent under a fake name, from the kind of company that doesn’t ask questions if you pay in cash.
The last time I visited was a week after Charlotte was born. And I removed a gun. For six months, I kept that between the mattresses of our bed, until Charlotte started to crawl, and the day she did I brought it back to this locker.
Paul never knew about the gun. Aubrey Finch isn’t the kind of woman who’d even know how to hold one. She certainly wouldn’t want one in the house. Not with a child. I agree, yet when Charlotte was born, all my old fears ignited.
They are irrational fears. I know that. It isn’t as if I have a million bucks, stolen from my partners, stashed in this locker. No one is going to come after me. When I first left home, I’d slept with a gun under my pillow for a year before realizing I was safe. After Charlotte, though, nightmares plagued every bit of post-baby sleep I got—nightmares of someone coming for her, taking her, hurting her. Those, too, eventually died down, and I was fine returning the gun.
Now, though, I am again worried. I’m digging into something dangerous. Kim is dead. Her son is missing. It is my earliest fears with Charlotte come to life. Someone from Kim’s past came for her. I’m certain of it. If that person finds out I’m digging into Brandon’s disappearance? Into Kim’s death?
Time to visit the storage locker.
The space is barely closet sized. My possessions would actually fit into a box. But I can’t exactly stick a box in a sketchy storage locker without the risk of someone prying open the door and knowing they’ve hit the jackpot.
I’ve scattered my treasures among thrift store furniture. Taped under each drawer of a dresser is twenty thousand dollars. None of it is stolen. When Ruben first came to me with his hacking offer, it’d been a get-rich-quick scheme. Such things always are, aren’t they? The problem is that most thieves don’t funnel their ill-gotten gains into a 401K. They stuff it into a needle or spend it on a blackjack table. Not me. Of the money I made, I kept one-third to live on. One-third I donated to charity for veterans suffering from PTSD. The final third I gifted, anonymously, to people in need. That doesn’t make me Robin Hood. I did keep the one-third, and I enjoyed “sticking it to the man” a little too much.
This hidden money, though, comes from my father. It is my inheritance. When I walked away from my criminal life and reinvented myself, I knew better than to throw around money, even if it was legally mine. I lived the life I’d created for myself—a girl with a high-school education, working sales jobs. Then I met Paul, and I couldn’t exactly produce a hundred grand in cash without raising questions. So the money stays here until I have a house and joint custody of Charlotte. Then I can begin slipping it out to pay off my mortgage.
I’m storing memories here, too. My mother’s photo album. Her rings. My father’s medals. His watch. A locket he gave me when I turned sixteen. Thumb drives, too, of digital documents and photos. My past takes up so little space. Less even than the money.
The gun is taped under a nightstand. As I pull it out, I remember the first time I held one. On my twelfth birthday, I asked my father to take me to the range. He refused. Continued to refuse until he caught me in a field, target shooting with friends.
At the time, I thought he refused because I was a girl. I know now that he didn’t want me following him down his path into service. He never said that, but I see proof in my memories, of every time I raised the subject and he’d start talking about good civilian tech jobs and I’d get so angry, certain he just didn’t think I could handle army life.
I’d been determined to prove him wrong. I practiced shooting until my shoulder ached. I ran until I collapsed from exhaustion. I lifted weights until I tore muscles. And still he talked about that damned desk job, tossing around visions of Silicon Valley like it was Disney World. Which it had been, to him—the dream of a safe and successful life for his daughter.
Wherever She Goes (ARC) Page 8