What You See

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Wait. All she had to do was find the right screen, and she’d see whatever happened. Police, rescue, shoot-out. Happy ending. Her heart raced with the possibility. She could grab her camera right now, be ready to shoot terrific exclusive video. Would that be legal?

  Did it matter?

  She stood, hands on hips. Find Gracie. And where was Jake? Trying to scan, she leaned forward, squinting. On the highest row, the screens were too small to make out much. Soon as she saw a cop the image would disappear, because the screens kept changing views, rotating every few seconds, like several cameras fed each monitor.

  Made sense, she guessed, because you didn’t need to look at the same place all the time, so they used fewer monitors and multiple sources. Probably also why they had two guys. Mesmerizing to watch these things all day. Eventually, paralyzingly boring.

  Unless, of course, there was a shooting. Or a missing girl.

  “Okay,” she said out loud. “There’s gotta be rhyme and reason.”

  Five rows of monitors. Ten monitors across. Fifty screens. If this had been her setup, she might have labeled them. But no.

  If there were no labels, did Beefy and Co. simply know camera placement by heart? There must be a—ha. She yanked a white vinyl binder from between two console banks. The yellowing clear plastic cover was separating at the corners, brittle and peeling away. Someone had made devil horns on the words HEWLITT SECURITY on the cover and added Mickey Mouse ears to their fancy logo of a camera lens. Not-so-happy employees, she thought. With not enough to do.

  She flipped open the binder. Bingo. Spreading out a triple-fold piece of paper, she saw a blueprint of what had to be a chart of the monitors. Like a big checkerboard, each square filled in with words. Supply5. Linen5. Vending4. Corridor5A.

  Looked like the five rows corresponded to each floor of the hotel. Brilliant. The middle row was the third floor, where Jake and D and a million cops were.

  Maybe this was a time suck? Maybe she should run out of here and start going door-to-door. That would be rewarding, because it would feel like she was doing something. It was also inefficient and primitive. And possibly dangerous.

  “Find. Gracie,” she commanded herself. Was the little girl hiding? Or being hidden? The whole thing was a juggle, because the shots on each screen kept changing.

  Still, in this one room, Jane could be everywhere in the hotel at the same time. Most likely, Gracie wouldn’t be changing position, right? If she was hiding.

  If she was hiding. Which was a big if. Because she might be with—

  Oh, my gosh. She was an idiot.

  Who had told the police that Gracie Wilhoite was missing? Besides Jane, only one other person in the building knew the girl was here. Or maybe—two?

  * * *

  Now it made sense, Jake thought.

  Not good sense, not rational sense, but as much sense as domestic violence ever made. The man on the stretcher was Lewis Wilhoite. Gracie’s stepfather, the one who clearly had taken her yesterday.

  “Is this the person who told you the girl was missing?” Jake asked Deb Kratky. He repeated the question to the room full of EMTs and cops. “Gracie? His stepdaughter? Did he say any more? Where she might have gone? And why?”

  “Negative, Jake,” one of the cops said. “By the time we got here, he was down for the count.”

  “So who—” Jake stopped as a familiar shape filled the hotel room door.

  “Come with me,” DeLuca said. “Move it.”

  Jake followed DeLuca, double speed, down the deserted corridor. The amplified warning instructions blared, repeating. All the room doors remained firmly closed. “D, you got people looking for Gracie?”

  “Listen, Jake. Of course we do. They’ll find her. Lotsa rooms in here, lotsa places to hide. But listen.” D stopped in a spotlighted pool of light on the mottled carpeting. A discarded room service tray holding grape stems, ketchup packets, empty breadbasket, and a pile of dirty silverware sat untouched outside the room to his left.

  “So, yeah. We have a situation. Got the shooter in there.” He pointed to a closed door black-stenciled SUPPLY RM.

  “Great work,” Jake said. Done and done. Only several million questions left to answer, but at least they knew who to ask. There wouldn’t be any more shooting. And then he could get some sleep. All in a day’s work. Two days.

  “What’s his condition? What’s his story?” Jake fired questions at DeLuca. “He call for a lawyer yet? What’s the plan for HQ transport for questioning? We’re the primaries, correct? You recover the weapon? Anything I should know?”

  “Shooter’s cuffed, seated, basically silent. Got the gun, yeah. Twenty-two. Registered. Hasn’t called for a lawyer yet, no.”

  “Great,” Jake said. “Let’s get this asshole. Shooting a guy in a hotel. Scaring this little girl to death. Now she’s hiding somewhere, I bet. Shit. Hope poor Gracie didn’t see this go down. Asshole.”

  “Jake?” DeLuca said. “The shooter’s not asking for a lawyer. She’s asking for Jane.”

  54

  “I can’t look at it,” Catherine said.

  She put up both palms, blocking the computer screen in front of her. They’d hurried out of the Purple Martin and crossed to City Hall, she and Tenley and Brileen, then closed Catherine’s office door behind them. Snoop-faced Siobhan Hult had been sent to tell Ward Dahlstrom that Tenley was still with her. Siobhan had never seen Brileen before, so they would appear, Catherine hoped, to be a typical mom hanging out with her daughter and her daughter’s pal. It would all seem peacefully familial. Instead of disgusting and horrific.

  Brileen had finished her stomach-turning story, mother and daughter silent, as the din of the Purple faded into white noise around them. “I kept the thumb drive with me, all the time, on my key chain,” she’d finally said. “As insurance. It’s the only way I could make sure it was safe.”

  Now Catherine and Tenley were about to see what was on that thumb drive. The video Brileen had protected. The “insurance.” Had Greg watched it, too?

  “Tell me again.” Catherine, sitting in her leather desk chair, her computer humming, was still trying to understand. “Whose idea was this?”

  “I was only told his name was Hugh.” Brileen standing by the desk, hands jammed in her pockets, shook her head. “He said he had surveillance tape of me, with Valerie. From—well, it doesn’t matter. He threatened to show her parents, the worst possible situation, if I didn’t help him.”

  “Help him what?” Tenley perched on the edge of the couch.

  “With his—I don’t understand the whole thing, I don’t even want to, but he found me at school. Had me approach Lanna. ‘I know all about your little friend,’ he said. He told me to tell her he had surveillance video of her, you know.” She swallowed. “‘With’ someone. And that he wanted money. Or he’d make it public.”

  “Surveillance video? From where?” Catherine couldn’t process this. “With who?”

  “With who?” Tenley echoed.

  “Lanna never told me.” Brileen shook her head again. “She asked me—begged me—to go to her father. She couldn’t face him. Hugh told me to warn her that it would not only humiliate her.” She paused again. “It would ruin you.”

  “Ruin? Me? This man knew me? How?” After three terms at City Hall, Catherine had met an incalculable number of people. But how many would want to destroy her? Well, plenty, she guessed. It was politics. And all she needed was one. This one. “Do I know him?”

  “Mrs. Siskel, I simply don’t know. I only met him that once, other times it was all by phone. I simply—arranged it. I’m so sorry, but…” She paused. Took a deep breath.

  “But there was no way out. I had to protect Valerie, you know? Mr. Siskel and I met. Made the exchange. I put the money in the Dumpster, like Hugh told me. But I kept a copy of the video. In case, I don’t know, I needed it for evidence.” She pulled a chunky rectangular key ring from her pocket, silver with a black suede tassel on the end. She yanked the tassel, and a thumb dr
ive clicked out. She inserted it into the keyboard port of Catherine’s computer. “I’ve never looked at this, though. I couldn’t.”

  “Greg never told me,” Catherine murmured. The computer hummed, the screen still black. “Nor did Lanna.”

  “Me either,” Tenley said.

  Catherine reached out across the desk, took her daughter’s hand.

  “Mrs. Siskel?” Brileen’s eyes filled with tears. Again. “Do you want to look at the video now? I don’t know if your husband ever saw it. Or if he even kept the original thumb drive—he said he’d destroy it. But Lanna was happy, you know? Until this. She had some boyfriend, I guess he was the one on the tape. And her father forgave her. They had pledged never to tell you, decided that it would be their secret. She loved him, your husband, I mean, so much. And you, Mrs. Siskel. And you, too, Tenley. And when she died—”

  Catherine’s lungs worked to breathe against the weight of the burden suddenly crushing them. “This Hugh. He wouldn’t have—do you think he killed her? In the woods?”

  “I don’t,” Brileen said. “I mean, I don’t know. Didn’t the police say it was an accident? I believe them. I have to. It’s the only way I can deal with it. It’s too horrible, otherwise, thinking that I … and now, I’d do anything to—”

  “We all would.” Catherine looked around her office. The same low-bid office where she’d battled the hotel workers’ strike and the neighborhood pothole lynch mob and the snow removal budget and the mayor’s continuing disconnect with his constituents. Boring, mundane City Hall. Now getting ready to present her daughter on some sex tape from some obviously illegal hidden camera.

  “I can’t look at it,” Catherine said again.

  But Brileen had already clicked the silvery mouse. One frame of video now filled Catherine’s computer screen. Black and white, that muddy half-tone identifying surveillance video. A white triangle violated the middle of the screen. When Brileen clicked the triangle again, the video would start.

  “Mom?” Tenley’s voice was tiny, the thin, reedy voice of a child. She pointed to the screen, moving the pale pink rounded nail of her right forefinger past the triangle. “Um. I think that’s, like, your greenroom.”

  Catherine stood, slowly, both palms on her desk. The room around her seemed to be off its axis. The floor was moving and the lights were dim, then bright, then dim again. There was no surveillance camera in her greenroom. That she knew of. She reached out a hand. It felt almost as if it weren’t attached to her arm. Lowered two fingers to the sleek polished surface of the mouse.

  And clicked the triangle.

  And then clicked it again. To stop it.

  “Wait,” she said. Catherine had more to think about than the past, more to worry about than what might have been on some contraband video—in her office! How?—of her daughter and some asshole who’d taken advantage of Lanna, and Catherine, and practically every other thing in her universe that was honorable and sane. If he had harmed her daughter, in Catherine’s own office, it couldn’t be any worse on video than it was in her imagination. She would not poison her brain with it.

  She needed one more answer. Right now.

  “Brileen,” she said. “You said you and Greg were trying to protect me and Tenley, both of us.”

  “Yeah. I—” Brileen put her face in both hands. When she took them down, three seconds later, her face was splotchy with tears. “—I only did what I thought was best for Lanna. That’s what Mr. Siskel was doing, too. We thought it was over. But two days ago, Hugh contacted me again. He told me to tell Greg he had pictures of Tenley.”

  “What?” Tenley’s voice came out a strangled cry. Her hand went to her throat and her face went white. “That could not—I mean—there’s no way that—no!”

  Catherine clamped her arm around her daughter, holding her tight, so tight that Tenley could never leave. She would never let go.

  And now Tenley was sobbing.

  “It can’t be.” Her daughter’s anguished words were muffled by Catherine’s chest. She could feel her daughter’s tears through her blouse, the wetness against her bare skin. “I never—”

  Catherine steeled herself. If there were pictures of Tenley, how had they been taken? In the greenroom?

  “Shhh.” She unclenched her daughter, sat her on the couch. Put one hand on Tenley’s thin back, trying to offer strength, then sat beside her, their shoulders touching. She reached for the words she knew were always welcome, though not always true. “Everything is going to be all right, honey,” she said.

  She needed facts. She focused on Brileen.

  “I see.” Catherine made her voice ice and fire. She forgot about everything but protecting the last living member of her family. “What did Hugh tell you to do?”

  “It was like before,” Brileen said. “Like with Lanna. He had me tell Mr. Siskel to bring money, in a brown paper bag. But I wasn’t the conduit this time. Mr. Siskel was to meet a guy at noon in Curley Park.”

  “What? You know this? And then what?”

  “Just like before. Then Hugh or someone would get the money out of the Dumpster. But I was there, hiding. Afterward I even told a cop to look in the Dumpster. Guess they didn’t.”

  “You knew this?” Catherine stood, heart pounding, head pounding, trying to understand. If she let it, this would destroy them. But she refused. Refused. She jabbed an accusing finger at Brileen. “Hugh killed my husband? You saw it?”

  Catherine needed the phone. Forget strategy. This was no longer a negotiation, no longer politics. This was family. Their lives. “We have to tell the police. We have to—”

  “Not Hugh,” Brileen said.

  Catherine paused, one hand on the receiver of her black desk phone. She saw her daughter, now silent, face tearstained. Had Greg died protecting Tenley? He’d tried to protect Lanna. And Catherine herself. If only he’d told her, trusted her, confided in her. She wished he had shared this with her instead of taking it all on himself, destroying their marriage and sacrificing his life.

  “Five seconds, Brileen,” Catherine said. “You have five seconds to explain. Then I’m calling the cops.”

  “Not Hugh,” Brileen whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Yes, I saw it. And I can’t stand to think of it. But it wasn’t Hugh who killed your husband. The person who did—I’ve never seen him before.”

  55

  Jake must have ordered a door-to-door search for Gracie. As Jane watched the hotel’s surveillance monitors, flickering and changing, they now showed police officers running through all five floors of hallways. Their uniforms turned from blue to black-and-white by the cameras, jump-cutting from monitor to monitor, as if they were electronically leaping through time and space. Even the surveillance guys were involved.

  Officers approached door after door, pounding soundlessly. Sometimes they were opened by surprised or frightened hotel guests, panicky tourists who had probably been glued to breaking-news bulletins about the shooting and the missing child. Right in their very hotel. That’d be a story to take home.

  A pang of news guilt washed over her. She closed her eyes for a second as it pulled her into its undertow. Should she have called Marsh Tyson about this? Probably. So much for her short-lived career at Channel 2. Without consciously making a decision about her loyalties, she’d chosen family. Good for karma, bad for per diems.

  But on the screens, no Gracie appeared. No cop emerged carrying a little girl in his arms. No. Jane adjusted her imaginary dénouement. She’d walk out on her own. Gracie was fine. They’d find her.

  Keeping her eyes on the screens, Jane dug for her cell phone and hit speed dial. One ring. Two.

  “Melissa?” Jane began before her sister even said hello. “Any word from—”

  “No,” Melissa said. Jane heard cars honking and the murmur of moving air and acceleration. “Any word there?”

  “No,” Jane said. “They’re—we’re—everyone is looking.”

  “We’re on the way to you, Janey. Daniel and I
. I don’t understand it—I’d taken a shower, you know? Then Daniel arrived. I went upstairs to get Robyn, to tell her, that’s when I discovered she was gone. No note, no nothing. No car in the garage.”

  Jane kept her eyes on the surveillance monitors. “Are you okay? Daniel? How long until you get to the hotel?” Cameras were everywhere, like electronic windows in this otherwise windowless room. Gracie had to appear.

  “It’s as okay as it can be. I’m trying to explain it all, to him, and—” Melissa paused. “Fifteen minutes. How can there be rush hour on a Tuesday at three twenty-two?”

  “Boston,” Jane said. “Hurry.”

  “Love you,” Melissa said. And hung up.

  “Love you, too,” Jane said. Even though the line was dead.

  Okay, she told herself. Start again at screen one. But there was no Gracie. The shots flashed, changed, brought in a new view. No Gracie. No Gracie.

  Who knew how many other views there were, maybe cameras she couldn’t access. The blueprint was a technomap of squiggly lines and engineering symbols. But there was no symbol for where a little girl might be hiding.

  The doorknob rattled. The surveillance guys? If she could talk fast, explain, maybe they’d be convinced she was on the right track. Maybe help her look.

  “Jane,” Jake said, closing the door behind him.

  “How’d you know I’d be here?” It was a relief to see him, okay and safe. Much better than Tall and Beefy. At least Jake wouldn’t arrest her. Oh, wait. Maybe he would. He’d ordered her not to move from the fake palm tree. Well, whatever. She wasn’t the problem.

  “You told me about this room, remember?” Jake smiled, just for an instant. “And I know you never listen to me.”

  She opened her mouth to make a crack, but no. “Did you find her? I’ve been looking and looking but didn’t see—”

  “Jane.”

  Jake’s face had hardened. She knew him well enough to know something bad was coming. She put one hand on the video console, grounding herself. It isn’t Gracie, her mind reassured her. Lights from the flickering monitors danced in Jane’s peripheral vision as she focused on Jake.