by HN Wake
“Bring it with you tomorrow,” he commanded.
Of course, she thought. What a wasted use of words.
He handed her a slim white envelope with something inside. She accepted it and placed it on her lap.
“Open it,” he commanded.
She slid her finger through the flap and ripped it gently before sliding out a stiff shiny passport with gold lettering, Republica de Honduras Pasaporte.
He pointed at the passport. “Be careful with that.”
More wasted words.
“Where are you staying?” His eyes were suspicious.
Her cousin lived in West Comayagüela. She did not need to explain to him that it was a poor neighborhood. Everyone knew West Comayagüela.
“How will you get back here tomorrow?” His voice was harsh and his lips were tight.
She was embarrassed. She did not want him to know that she did not have much money and that taking city busses would take a long time and many transfers. She may be a poor person, she may be a small person in the eyes of the world, but she had pride.
He waited.
She said nothing.
He gave her an exasperated look as if she was dense, then called out to the surly woman. “Get her the cash advance.”
“We have been told to give you an advance. You will use some of it today to get back to where you are staying and some of it tomorrow to get back to this office. The traffic will be bad tomorrow morning. You must take a taxi. Not a bus. No busses. You cannot be late tomorrow morning. Do you understand?” He stared at her with disdain.
She may be from a village, but she wasn’t stupid. She nodded.
The ill-tempered woman handed him an oblong brown envelope, just like the ones the market ladies save from the bank. It was thick with cash. Her stomach growled.
His fat hand waggled the envelope as only the rich can, simultaneously reluctant to offer it yet indifferent to the amount. “Don’t use it for anything other than transport or food. You understand? This is for your transport and your food. Only those two things.”
Always the insult. That poor people were somehow irresponsible or thieves. She was neither. She was just poor.
22
At four am Dom was staring at the bedroom ceiling as possible scenarios looped through her mind. Hettie was being held by a gang who had lashed her to a bed with duck-tape. Hettie was locked in a basement with music blaring from overhead. Hettie was drugged in a crack house, her mind spaced out on meth. Dom threw back the sheet, sat up, ground her heels into carpet, and checked her phone. Madeline Abbott had left a voice mail: She was available first thing in the morning. A tiny Chihuahua, its pink tongue extended, raised its head off a pillow.
Two years ago, Tinks & Tongue had been relegated to a high-kill shelter. “It’s okay, Tinks. I’ll put you in with Beecher.”
Dom got dressed by the dim light of a bedside lamp. Scooping up the dog, she padded down the hall and rapped on Beecher’s door.
A sleepy voice mumbled, “Yo. Come on in.”
The room smelled of sour breath and the tangy sweat of male sleep. She gently set Tinks on the bed. “You got her? I gotta run out.”
Beecher pulled the dog to his chest and rolled toward the wall. “We got this. Me and Tinks. Good luck with the case.”
The Javits Building’s eighth floor was one long field of cubicles like tiny farming plots under a florescent sun. At this time of the morning, huge ceiling vents ruffled papers on empty desks.
Dom set down a large coffee on Lea Peck’s desk in the center of the space. “As promised.”
Lea’s hundred tight braids were pulled back into a neat ponytail, and her eyes were teenager-lack-of-sleep puffy. “Guardian angel, you.” She sipped from the plastic lid’s slit. “Did you sleep at all?”
Dom eased into a chair. The throbbing in her toes had softened but it had not disappeared. “I got a bit.”
“There was nobody out this early. I dominated the streets.” Lea’s head wobbled. “Even the idiot Uber drivers got outta my way.”
It was good to be working with Lea’s sass again. “How you been?”
“Oh, yeah, all good. My last assignment after St. Chris was Italian mob. That shit is no joke. Fatty Fingers this, Uncle Gumbo that, Cousin Two-Shits the other thing. I mean, holy shit, can them old boys talk when they think nobody is listening. But we were up in there with electronic surveillance, consensual monitoring, what have you. It was fascinating.”
“Out of organized crime?”
“Yup. And, hey, thanks for asking Fontaine for me. My boss ain’t overly impressed, but then again, I ain’t overly impressed by my boss.” She eyed Dom. “You ever seen my boss’s ass? That man has a dozen Dunkin Donuts for butt cheeks.”
Dom grinned. “Don’t worry. I got your back.” During St. Chris a number of older agents tried to dominate Lea because she was a triple threat: young, black, and a woman. Dom would have none of it. Women stuck together.
“Hell, I know you do.” Lea peered over the cup’s lip. “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.”
Lea’s inspection was steady. “Three months away is a long time.”
“Absolutely.”
“So you’re good?”
It was a loaded question. Good in this building meant courageous, tough, and confident. Dom didn’t feel any of those yet. But to be fair, this was only the second day back on the job. “Sure. I’m good.” Stewart Walker’s ghost grinned at the bravado.
“How’s that tall-glass-of-fine-blonde water you call a brother? Yum, yum.” She sounded like a fifty-year-old sexpot.
Dom grinned. “He’s good.”
“He still living with you?”
Dom nodded.
“Can you invite me round for dinner?”
Dom chuckled.
“I mean, he’s still divorcing that bitch, right?”
“Yup, yup. Paperwork is going through. He’ll be rid of her soon.”
Lea’s mood turned somber. “What’s the word from the internal investigation?”
Dom’s stomach crunched. “It’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.”
“What swinging dicks. You gonna play it straight?”
Dom shrugged.
“I mean, for fuck’s sake, you saved a crap ton of kids. I’m about to go all up in their shit, if they come interview me. But they haven’t come at me yet. They need to be giving you a medal instead of prying open everybody’s ass cheeks and staring at brown rings with proctology scopes.” Lea’s coffee was kicking in.
“Is there actually something called a proctology scope?”
“I think it may be called a proctoscope, but it’s early morning still.”
“If they do come interview you, just play it straight.”
“Maybe I’ll take the initiative and call ’em and offer my testimony as to your personal character.” She shook her head and set down the coffee cup. “When we find Hettie Van Buren, we can wave that in front of their faces. Am I right?” Her face softened. “I’m sorry about the Kelvin Pena chase.”
“Time to regroup.” Dom fished out the Ziploc bag containing the travel documents. “There’s been a turn of events.” She described the search and the odd secrecy around Hettie and Micah’s Honduran trip.
“What do you think that’s all about?”
“I don’t know but we’re going to find out. You ready?”
“Fuck right, I am.” Lea cracked her knuckles and settled fingers on the keyboard. “Hit me, Ruth the Moabite. Where you go, I go.”
Dom ignored the arcane biblical reference. “Let’s start at the beginning. What have you found in the phone records?”
Like frenetic spider legs, Lea’s fingers rattled on keys. Her eyes glanced between twin computer screens. “First the landline for the Van Burens. Nada. No calls in or out in the last week.”
“Go back a few months, before the Honduras trip.”
Lea scanned the screen. “Nope. Nobody used it. I mean, who uses landlines
anymore?”
“Okay. Next. Micah’s phone logs.”
“Sunday morning at 11:05, Micah had a call with Hettie that lasted twenty-three minutes. Later that afternoon he received three texts and a ten-minute call from numbers that appear to be friends or family—frequent numbers. His evening and night were quiet. Nothing looks unusual in the final hours of his life. The last time his phone pinged off his tower was 23:48.”
Micah’s phone stopped working at approximately midnight on Sunday, forty-eight hours earlier.
Lea clicked over to Hettie’s phone log. “She made two connections on Sunday. The first was that 11:05 call to Micah. That was their last connected call. She connected with her mother at 13:26 for five minutes. Her phone last pinged against the local cell tower at 02:00 Monday morning.”
“So, given that window of time, the perp hits Micah sometime before midnight then heads over to Washington Square Park some time before two am.”
Lea nodded.
Lea’s fingers tapped. “Now, let me check the five days they were in Honduras. Nope, Micah didn’t use his phone. And nope, Hettie didn’t use her phone while they were there.
“That’s gotta be intentional.” This secret trip was smelling increasingly hinky.
The brightly lit floor was silent except for the blasts from the air vents.
“Now, let me check their credit card records.” Lea scanned a new document on the screen. “They didn’t use their credit cards while they were in Honduras. They must have used cash.”
“This trip smells really fishy. Why turn off their phones? Why use only cash? Why hide it from both sets of parents? Why hide the travel documents in her bedside table? There are too many questions and not enough answers.” She stood and stretched her back. Her toes throbbed.
“What did that gangsta brother say?”
Dom relayed the story of the chase in the alley and Roberto ready to strike with the steel pipe.
Lea whistled.
“But I don’t think he’s involved. He had very genuine shock reactions. He did mention a project. I’m guessing it was this trip.” Dom cracked her neck. “What did ERT find at the two apartments?”
Lea glanced at her notepad. “Micah’s door lock was blown off with force. The perp would have jackbooted his way in. At which point Micah ran into the bedroom. The perp followed him down the hall and shot him from the bedroom door. Quick and dirty.”
“I can’t believe our perp tossed a gun with prints. Nothing back on the prints yet?”
Lea shook her head.
“What did ERT find at Hettie’s?”
“Nothing. Literally nothing. No forced entry. No residuals. No blood. No prints. Other than the overturned dish in the bedroom, there was nothing.”
“That’s really odd. At Micah’s, the perp slammed his way in—it would have been noisy—blew Micah away—that would have been noisy—and then threw the gun in the bushes with prints all over it. But at Hettie’s, there’s no noise, nobody saw anything, and he leaves absolutely no prints?”
“Maybe he was being more careful at Hettie’s, considering the neighborhood?”
“Yeah, maybe.” Dom paced to the window on throbbing toes. The sun had not risen. When it did it would bring the third day Hettie Van Buren was being held by a monster.
Lea said, “I’m going to start digging into Hettie’s computer. They just brought it up.”
“Okay, I’ve got someone I need to meet.”
23
Madeline Abbot’s bloodshot eyes stood out against translucent skin on her pixie face. “Would you like some coffee?” She sniffed back tears.
“Yes, please.” Dom took coffee where she could get it.
Madeline’s refurbished SoHo unit was on the second floor of a walk-up on Sullivan Street. Through a window the sky was blushing pink.
“Cream?”
“Black is fine. Thanks.”
The space was more loft than apartment, with a big entertaining area, an open kitchen, and a bedroom behind a sliding barn door. Exposed bricks were painted white, and the unit had lots of glam. Did everyone in this crowd use a designer? Under a low-hanging chrome chandelier, a round silver bean of a coffee table was littered with used tissues.
A long time ago Dom had learned to soothe her tension by sitting. She settled on one side of an L-shaped velveteen couch.
Five minutes later, Madeline handed her a warm mug, sat on the sectional, and wiped her nose with a crushed tissue. “How can I help … Agent?”
“Please call me Dom.” Younger women had issues with using the word Agent. She wanted Madeline as comfortable as possible, given the circumstances. “Thanks for seeing me so early.”
The tears dropped from Madeline’s eyes, and she smashed the tissue against her cheek.
“Did the Van Buren’s tell you what’s happening?”
Madeline nodded.
“So you know that Hettie is still missing?”
The tears streamed and she nodded again.
“I’m sorry to be here under these circumstances.” Best friends are slightly easier than families. But not by much.
“Her mom said Micah is dead.” Tears flowed freely and her shoulders slouched.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I can’t believe it.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and both hands rubbed upper arms.
Madeline’s body language was 100 percent sadness. Dom nodded.
“He’s such a good guy.”
“Was he?”
“Oh yeah. A lovely, lovely guy. Smart, funny. And boy did he treat her well.”
“How’s that?”
“I dunno, just reliable, caring, called her, checked in with her. They laughed all the time. Really well suited. They both have the same energy: optimistic, upbeat. They see the good things in life.” Her eyes widened as tears rolled. “Oh, God. They both saw the good things in life.”
“What kind of stuff do they do?”
“Uh, dinners. Walking around town. Movies. Drinks with friends.”
Madeline showed no signs of anxiety on this subject. Madeline believed Micah and Hettie were an authentic loving couple. “Anything special? Unique?”
“Uh, they like comedy clubs.”
“Okay.”
“They find newcomers, comics on the rise. They go to the small clubs down in the East Village, over on Bleecker. I’ve been with them. It’s fun.”
“Big drinkers?”
“No, not really. Normal.”
“Drugs.”
“No. Hettie’s pretty straightlaced.”
“Sports?”
“Hettie used to play tennis and ride horses. She doesn’t do either anymore. Her mom made her take lessons. It became slightly too demanding. She skis. She used to go with her family out to Tahoe, but she hasn’t done that in a long time.” Madeline frowned.
“Why not?
Madeline touched her neck. “You know, family stuff.”
Was the family a sore subject? “Like what?”
“Who do you think did it?”
Madeline avoided the topic of the family. Perhaps the family was a sensitive subject. “We’re looking into a number of leads. Tell me more about Hettie.”
“Oh, my God. She’s my best friend. We’ve been like sisters since college.” She wiped her nose, then decided to blow it. “She’s funny, she’s happy, she’s loyal, she’s honest. She loves nature, and the planet, and birds. I mean, she’s my best friend. She and I go shopping. We watch movies. We cook. We laugh. She’s not uppity or shallow. She thinks about the world and its problems. She’s using her standing in society to do something for the planet. Gosh, she’s just the greatest.” Madeline grinned through the tears. “She’s obsessed with this whitefish salad from Russ & Daughters—"
“Over on Houston?”
“Yeah. She’ll go buy like two pounds of it. She’ll buy bagels and carrots and whatever, but I’ve seen her eat it with a spoon right out of the container.”
“Is she an
extrovert or an introvert?”
“Oh, she’s really quiet.”
“Can you explain her personality?”
“I’d say shy. She doesn’t dominate conversations. Very thoughtful. Deliberate. She will go to parties with me even though she’s not really in her element. She stands in the corner, will find someone to chat with one-on-one. Not into crowds.”
“Boys?”
“You mean before Micah?”
Dom nodded.
“I mean, nothing to speak of. Before Micah.” One side of Madeline’s lips pulled down and she glanced at Dom with a small shrug.
It was enough of a signal. Hettie didn’t get a lot of male attention. Dom nodded understandingly. “Was she fearful?”
“Uh. She doesn’t stick up for herself. But I wouldn’t say afraid of things. No.”
“Any sadness?”
“Uh, you know. Maybe.” Madeline touched her neck again.
Was this a cluster of tells around the topic of the family? “Madeline, is there sadness around the family? Maybe some unpleasant dynamics?”
Madeline closed her eyes.
Yes, it was a clear eye block.
She opened them and nodded.
“Like what?”
“I knew you were gonna ask about this. Uh, Hettie and her parents … are uh … not on the greatest of terms.” She glanced out the window. “Her parents … are not great parents, in the kinda normal sense of the word.”
Families were always complicated. “How so?”
“They all don’t get along.”
“Can you explain that?”
“Her dad…I feel bad saying—” she squeezed her face.
“It may help me find Hettie.”
Her eyes widened. “If I talk about her parents?”
“Not necessarily about her parents, but it helps me understand how Hettie works.”
“Uh, her dad is this rich banker. My brother is a stockbroker. I know their kind. They’re not always nice people.”
It was an interesting choice of words. “How do you mean, not nice?”
“I mean they can be abrupt, tough, tell-it-like-it-is kind of people. Really into winning and making money.”
Dom asked softly, “As in a bully?”