Gone Cold

by Douglas Corleone

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  Copyright Page

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  FOR JILL

  One mustn’t look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm that attracts us.

  —GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

  Prologue

  TWO YEARS AGO

  KRAKOW, POLAND

  “Have you ever thought maybe your daughter could still be alive?”

  I felt my lower lip tremble.

  “I lost hope that she was alive long ago, and I’d never want that hope back. Not in a million years. Not for one second. But I will forever be looking. In every shop, every café, every open home window in every city or town in every country on every continent. I can’t help myself. I want to know what happened to her and why. And I want to know who took her.”

  I shook my head and swallowed hard as I thought about Ostermann knocking Dietrich Braun and Karl Finster out cold in the alley behind SO36 back in Kreuzberg.

  “The violence I would do to that man, Ana, it can’t be put into words.”

  Part One

  THE GHOSTS OF DUBLIN

  Chapter 1

  “Usual, Simon?”

  “Sure.”

  As Casey turned to the espresso machine I gazed out the familiar window with the peeling green and gold letters reading TERRY’S PUB—EST. 1992. Snowflakes continued falling hard as rain on the opposite side of the glass. It was another cold one, eight to ten inches expected here in Washington, D.C., a full foot in the suburbs, at least.

  “Case,” I said, “mind making that an Irish coffee instead?”

  “No problem, Simon.”

  I’d been coming to Terry’s for over twenty years. The original owner, Terrance Davies, was a fellow Londoner who had given me my first real job. During my four years at American University, I’d worked my way up from barback to bartender to night manager. And though I’d never really taken to drinking, I found myself returning to Terry’s long after graduation. It was a quiet pub, a place where I could show up an hour or so before closing and nurse a pint or two of Harp while Terry relished me with stories of the home city. London. The “motherland” as he often referred to it.

  I watched Casey pour the two ounces of Bushmills, toss in a teaspoon of brown sugar, then combine the steaming coffee before stirring and floating the heavy cream.

  He turned, set the mug down in front of me. Casey O’Connell possessed what you’d generously call a beer belly, which stretched the faded black fabric of his Baltimore Ravens T-shirt to its limit in the vicinity of his navel. With his shaggy red hair and matching beard, he looked a bit like Zach Galifianakis of Hangover fame, following one of the Wolf Pack’s notorious nights in Las Vegas.

  Casey had been working here for the better part of a decade, took over the bartending duties a few years after Terry sold the pub to Nigel Cummings and returned to the UK.

  “Any luck?” Casey said.

  “Nothing,” I told him.

  Casey was one of the few people who knew how I’d spent the previous eleven months. Knew that I’d transformed my studio apartment on Dumbarton Street here in D.C. into a war room.

  Currently mounted on my studio’s four walls was every shred of evidence collected by the FBI and D.C. Police in connection with my daughter Hailey’s disappearance twelve years ago. Included were photographs of the house in Georgetown from which Hailey was taken. Witness statements, mug shots, lab reports, news articles, and maps of every major city in the United States and Canada, and a few cities in Mexico, Central and South America, Europe, and Asia as well. Last February I’d made a promise to myself; I would finally discover who took my six-year-old daughter and why, or I would die trying.

  Why now? That was what Casey had asked when I first told him last March. The answer was simple: This was the first time in eleven years that I didn’t have to work for a living. After Hailey was taken, I resigned from the U.S. Marshals but quickly began work as a private investigator, specializing in cases involving parental abductions. All too often, an estranged spouse will tear up the court’s custody order and flee with their child to a country that doesn’t recognize U.S. custody decisions. There were a surprising number of such countries. Russia, India, and Japan, just to name a few.

  Roughly two years ago, I was heading to Charles de Gaulle when my taxi was pulled over by the French National Police. A cop named Lieutenant Davignon escorted me to a two-story cottage in a quiet, rural village roughly forty kilometers north of Paris, where he made me an offer: help locate a missing young American girl stolen from her parents’ room at the Hotel d’Étonner in Champs-Élysées and he wouldn’t arrest me for kidnapping the young boy I’d just liberated from his abusive mother in Bordeaux. Ultimately, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

  Taking the case effectively ended my policy of not getting involved in “stranger abductions,” cases in which the kidnapper was unknown and most likely unrelated to the victim.

  Less than a year later I found myself at the multimillion-dollar estate of a movie mogul named Edgar Trenton. Edgar’s teenage daughter had been taken during a violent home invasion in Los Angeles while Edgar was attending a film festival in Berlin. At the time, I’d felt I owed Edgar Trenton. Years before, he’d agreed to nix a movie adaptation of the book about my own daughter’s kidnapping. He’d paid well for the rights, yet turned them over to me for free when I asked. I’d have taken on his case for free too but he’d insisted on paying me and paying me well. Later, when I was able to recover the $8.5 million ransom from a mara in Panama City, he’d given me a significant bonus. Enough to sustain me for at least a few years and to fund my search for Hailey, wherever and however long it took me.

  I took a sip of the Irish and savored the warmth on the back of my tongue before swallowing it down. The alcohol struck me straightaway and only then did I realize I hadn’t eaten a thing in eight hours.

  Over the past three months I’d been losing weight. It wasn’t the type of weight loss people pointed out and complimented you on. It was the type of weight loss people looked away from, tried to keep themselves from staring at, wondering all the while whether you were sick or doing too many illicit drugs or both.

  I’d lost muscle in my arms and chest because I’d quit going to the gym. My cheeks were a bit sunken in and I was constantly pale, even this past summer, which was one of the hottest on record, not just in D.C. but on Earth.

  To make matters worse, I couldn’t sleep. Oh, I’d get the occasional two or three hours here and there, but I couldn’t seem to get on any type of schedule, and I seldom dreamed. The days simply ran into one another, and the Beers of the Year calendar hanging over the register here at Terry’s was the only thing I could count on to keep me grounded. That and the abrupt change in weather were the only reasons I knew I’d been at this for nearly a year.

  Even though by now it felt as though I’d never done anything else. Ever.

  As I sat there I felt the BlackBerry grumbling in my right pants pocket. I fished the device out and stared at the s
creen for several seconds before finally registering that I’d received an e-mail not a phone call.

  Something that looked like a lightning bolt flashed in the upper left-hand corner, alerting me to a low battery. I thumbed the mouse and opened the e-mail client.

  It was a message from Kati Sheffield, a former FBI computer scientist who now stayed at home caring for her three children while working on the sly for people like me. The message read, Finder (her codename for me), open the two attachments and call me right away.

  Call you? I glanced at my watch. It was too damn late to call her; I’d wake the kids, not to mention her husband, Victor, a detective with the Connecticut State Police, who was suspicious enough about her online activities as it was.

  I scrolled down to the first of the two attachments, clicked on it. The screen went blank and a blue bar crawled across the top where the time banner would normally be. As I waited I drank down most of my coffee, savored the heat in the pit of my stomach. Drew a deep breath and took in the blended fragrance of hard booze and polished wood that complement most Irish pubs in the District.

  Just before the blue bar reached its final destination a red light blinked and suddenly I was staring at the logo for Verizon Wireless.

  Casey said, “Everything okay, Simon?”

  “Battery went dead.”

  “You can use the house phone if you want.”

  I shook my head. “It was an e-mail, Case.” I dug into my pocket and pulled out a twenty, laid it on the bar. “Thanks for the drink,” I said.

  “See you tomorrow then, Simon.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  I pushed open the door and threw my arm up against the fierce wind, heavy flakes of snow still slapping me full in the face.

  As it turned out, I wouldn’t see Casey tomorrow.

  In fact, I would never see Casey O’Connell again.

  Chapter 2

  By the time I reached the door to my apartment building on Dumbarton, I was frozen, the exposed flesh on my face burned raw. I dug into the pockets of my jacket searching for my keys, but came up empty. Like a drunken teenager, I cursed and kicked at the door. Clenched my scarlet hands into fists and punched at the brick until my knuckles opened, dripping crimson down my fingers, spotting the newly fallen snow.

  Christ.

  To top it all, I was suddenly struck with the awful headache-nausea combination that often accompanies drinking on an empty stomach.

  I folded myself into a ball and dropped onto the top step, leaning my back against the black iron rail. My neck ached like hell—a cervical herniated disc exacerbated by stress. I packed some snow on my wounded knuckles to keep them from swelling. Then closed my eyes and wished I would drift off. For a few days at least. Maybe for good.

  Forty-one years old. At least half my life gone and no cause but a twelve-year-old cold-as-ice case to find the person who took and murdered my daughter. After eleven months I knew damn well that it was an impossible mission, yet I couldn’t let go. Even if I could, there was nothing to move on to. Searching for the stolen—whether mine or other people’s children—was something I simply couldn’t do anymore. Something inside me had withered and died this winter, something had all but extinguished the flame that had been keeping me alive—the desire to find Hailey’s killer.

  It was possible he was already dead, of course. In which case, I’d spent the past year chasing a ghost. It was tough enough to locate the living. Looking for a corpse was an utter waste of time. Of that I was finally sure.

  As sure as I was that Hailey had been murdered within weeks, if not days, of her abduction. I’d known that all along, never truly suffered under the delusion that my daughter might still be alive. Not since the FBI began taking agents off the case. Certainly not since Tasha’s suicide.

  No, I’d started my own chase much too late. I’d never sought to find Hailey while she was alive. Instead I’d sat on the sidelines, let the Bureau do its goddamn job, just as they’d insisted. I didn’t begin looking for my daughter until she was dead.

  And even then, I couldn’t find her. Couldn’t find the monster who’d taken her. Couldn’t find her body, couldn’t find her bones.

  And sitting on that top step to my apartment complex, shivering in the freezing cold and scudding snow, I decided that I had known long ago that I never would.

  Decided that I’d been deluding myself all this time after all.

  * * *

  Someone shook me awake. I searched the darkness for a face but all I saw was a crimson scarf wrapped around a hood, an indistinguishable pair of eyes hidden deep within.

  Whoever it was unlocked the door, then held it open. When I didn’t attempt to rise, he or she lifted a doormat from the lobby and placed it in the frame so that the door wouldn’t close.

  I mumbled some thanks but shut my eyes tight again. When I opened my eyes a few moments later, the man or woman who’d opened the door was gone.

  Finally I pushed myself to my feet and slipped inside, kicking the doormat away behind me. I tried to shake off the cold but it had already burrowed itself deep in my bones.

  I opened the door to the stairwell and started up, only now realizing I couldn’t get back into my apartment anyway. Without my keys I’d have to spend the night curled up in the hallway. Still better than the freezing cold, I supposed.

  When I reached the fifth floor I leaned over the railing, hoping to relieve a bit of the nausea. Instead I dry heaved, nearly vomited onto the stairs leading down to the fourth.

  I stood and shoved my way out of the stairwell and lurched the fifteen steps to my door.

  There waited my keys, still dangling from the knob.

  I tried to remember leaving them this morning but my mind drew a blank. But then, what did it matter? Either I was too sloppy to continue living, or whoever was waiting for me inside my apartment was about to get what he deserved. Only one way to find out.

  Before removing the keys I tried the knob, felt it twist between my fingers. With my other hand I pushed the door open and waited a few seconds before crossing the threshold. The flat was dark and quiet.

  I slapped the light switch. Everything seemed to be just where I’d left it, and there weren’t many places to hide. Quietly, I snatched my keys and closed the door behind me. Poked my head into the bathroom and exhaled. No one was waiting for me.

  An irrational pang of disappointment struck my nauseated stomach.

  I went to my desk and opened my laptop, pressed the power button and removed my old black leather jacket as I waited for the computer to boot.

  As I tossed my jacket onto the bed my eyes fell on the refrigerator door, fixed on a photo that had been held there by a Jefferson Memorial magnet for as long as I could remember. The photo was of me, Tasha, and Hailey, standing in front of Cinderella Castle at the Magic Kingdom in central Florida, smiles all around. It was taken on our last vacation together, mere months before Hailey went missing.

  The twelve-year-old photo was faded, curled on all sides from age. I’d stared at the picture so often that any new thought it conjured punched me in the gut with surprise. Yet now I thought, That week may have been the last time I truly felt happiness.

  “Quit pitying yourself,” I muttered aloud.

  I fell into the chair in front of my desk and clicked on the icon for Firefox. The browser immediately opened and I pulled down my history and tapped on the address to my in-box.

  Kati Sheffield’s e-mail was waiting for me, right at the top of the bin.

  No subject line.

  I opened the e-mail and quickly reread the message: Finder, open the two attachments and call me right away. It occurred to me that I’d have to charge my cell phone before I called anyone. My landline had been shut off two weeks ago for failure to pay. Not because I didn’t have the money, but because clicking on their e-mail and downloading the bill and entering my payment information had seemed like too much bother.

  In recent months I’d been weighing every actio
n I took, no matter how minor. The only question I asked myself was, Will this help me figure out what happened to Hailey? Far more often than not, the answer was no.

  So doctor and dentist appointments had been missed. Haircuts became fewer and further between. Clothes were worn for two or three days straight without a proper washing.

  I downloaded the first attachment, saved it to a desktop folder marked KATI. I clicked on the icon to open the file, and a face materialized on the screen.

  It was a face I’d seen many times before. The visage of a beautiful young woman with long chestnut hair and warm brown eyes opened wide. It was a face that existed only onscreen, a computer-generated fantasy no more real than the cowboy from Toy Story.

  On the bottom right-hand corner of the screen were several familiar words: Hailey Fisk at 18 years of age. The corners of my mouth lifted as they always did when I stared at this image of what Hailey might have looked like if she’d survived to this day.

  My eyes watered. A familiar lump caught in my throat.

  Quickly I minimized the screen and clicked on the second attachment. Once it downloaded I saved it to the KATI file folder and opened it.

  Another female face appeared. This visage didn’t have the smooth skin of the girl in the other picture. The cheeks were blemished. Thinner, scarred, almost the color of ash. The eyes weren’t nearly as wide or as bright; they were narrow and dark, one slightly larger than the other, reminiscent of Lucky Luciano’s infamous mug shot. The hair was chopped short and dyed jet-black.

  This was a real girl, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, a young woman who’d struggled with the world. She appeared tired and angry, almost ugly with hatred.

  Here too there was a small caption: Wanted on suspicion of murder: Garda.

  My first thought was that Garda was the name of a local police chief or district attorney somewhere here in the States. Then it struck me. An Garda Síochána was the name of the police force in Ireland.