Sound of a Furious Sky: FBI Agent Domini Walker Book 1
Page 21
The hair at the nape of Dom’s neck quivered. Three days ago, Hettie had opened the door to her kidnapper—there had been no sign of forced entry because she had known her kidnapper. Was a mother capable of such a thing?
The hiss blew through Dom’s mind like a train entering a subway station.
Yes. A mother is capable of many things. The dog-eared memory of the barren Brooklyn apartment flooded Dom’s senses. In the memory, Aunt Lucille straightened a white shirt over a flat chest. Your mother is not coming back.
Dom turned from the window and shouted to Lea. “Are you watching Yvette’s phone?”
The bottom half of lea’s mouth dropped open.
“Pull up her phone.”
Lea whispered, “Oh shit.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard as her eyes scanned the screen. “For the last twenty-four hours she was up by Central Park. But—" Lea’s eyes widened to saucers. “She’s moved.”
Dom strode to the desk, her mind clear and focused. “Where is she?”
“Philadelphia. Looks like a suburb of Philly called Gladwyne.”
Dom bolted across the floor. “Search Yvette’s calls going back a month.”
“You think it was Yvette? You think this was her plan from the beginning?”
Dom broke into a sprint. “Check her calls. I bet she called Phalanx. In Honduras. For Jose Onofre to kill Micah. Confirm there was a call.”
“Poison of a viper is under their lips. Psalm 140. Holy mother of God, you think it was Yvette?”
“Yes!” Dom yelled from the door. “And Onofre didn’t kidnap Hettie.”
Forensics was on the second floor. It was staffed twenty-four hours a day. Fluorescent tubes glared unnaturally bright across rows of white laminate tables overflowing with machines and clinic boxes. Dom raced to Becky Turnball at the far end and skidded to a stop. “Where’s that box of evidence from Hettie Van Buren’s apartment?”
Becky Turnball darted to a shelving unit, yanked down a cardboard box, and set it at the end of the lab counter. “What do you need?”
“The stuff from inside the dishwasher.”
Becky Turnball flicked a large sheet of white paper across the counter, and both women snapped on white plastic gloves. They set down five glasses wrapped in Ziploc bags—three mismatched highball glasses and two matching short crystal glasses. Dom pointed to the matched set. “Those. Those two. I need to know if there’s residual.”
Yanking a cotton swab, Becky Turnball squeezed liquid from a plastic bottle on the tip, ran it inside the glass, and immediately followed with a dry swab. Hurrying to the gas chromatography–mass spectrometry machine, she inserted the swabs and hit start. The machine kicked up a whir.
She said, “It will take a bit.”
With a racing heart, Dom marched across the room. If her suspicions were proven, the whole investigation had just turned on a dime.
Stewart Walker whispered, Wait for it Dom, wait for it. Let the evidence show you the way.
When she reached the wall, she spun and marched back under the glare of the bright lights. As she reached the machine, it fell silent.
Becky Turnball glanced to the screen. “Yup. Evidence of benzodiazepine or GHB.”
Benzodiazepine or gamms-hydroxybutyric acid were psychotropic drugs that caused loss of inhibitions or consciousness. Yvette had roofied her own daughter.
Stewart Walker murmured, That’s my girl.
From the hallway, Lea skidded into the door frame. “Dom! You’re right! Yvette called Phalanx. Last week!”
A thousand jigsaw pieces flew through the air and landed snugly in the image of pale, perfect Yvette. After returning from Honduras, Hettie threatened to testify at the trial against Claude. The testimony would ruin the family reputation. Yvette called Phalanx and arranged for their thug, Jose Onofre, to kill Micah Zapata. On the designated night, Yvette parked in the loading zone of the Washington Square building, took the elevator to her daughter’s apartment, placed a pill in Hettie’s drink, and waited. Some time after, Hettie headed into the bedroom, stumbled, and fell against the wall, smashing the glass on the picture frame and the overturning the jewelry bowl. Once the pill had taken effect, Yvette walked Hettie down the back stairs to the loading dock and into the car. The plan was to hide Hettie outside Philadelphia at the family estate long enough for the trial to come and go.
Becky Turnball broke the silence. “Dom, do you know where Hettie is?”
Dom nodded. I’m coming, Hettie. In her mind, she dropped the FBI jacket on the lake’s frigid bank, planted her feet at the edge of the lapping ice water, raised her hands over her head, and dove.
45
The Lancia was made for speed. At ninety miles an hour on the New Jersey Turnpike, the wide tires ate up the glistening wet asphalt and the engine hummed. Keeping a hand on the gear shift, Dom wove through gaps in the light traffic, her foot never touching the brake. Windshield wipers danced across a blurry screen.
She instructed her phone to call Fontaine.
He picked up on the first ring. “Walker, what have you got?”
“One of them broke. The wait is over.”
“Talk to me.”
“Sir, it’s Yvette Van Buren. Yvette has Hettie. At her family home. Outside Philly.”
Through the silence, Dom remembered sitting across from Yvette only hours earlier, in the darkened living room with the sliver of sunlight breaking through heavy curtains. The pale, graceful woman in a cashmere sweater had gulped the Manhattan. Dom, assuming she had been drunk, had pressed her. “Mrs. Van Buren, do you think your husband may be involved in Hettie’s disappearance?”
Yvette Van Buren’s gaze had turned distant. “I’m sure I can’t answer that.” Yvette had closed her eyes.
Dom had assumed the pale woman was shutting down mentally, distancing herself from a horror. “Mrs. Van Buren, I can protect you. If you are afraid, I can protect you.”
Yvette had whispered, “You do not understand our world,” before standing and weaving out of the living room.
The pristine matriarch of the wealthy Lowrance-Van Buren family hadn’t been drunk—she had been acting. It had all been an act.
Fontaine demanded, “Repeat?”
“Yvette planned all this. She planned it. From start to finish.”
“Fill me in.”
The Lancia growled as Dom sped through an opening. “Yvette hears her daughter’s threat may take down her husband and their empire. She calls in thugs from Honduras. She ordered the murder of Micah Zapata. She drugged Hettie with Benzo—there was trace in a glass from Hettie’s apartment—and she has hidden her in Philly.”
“What else?”
“I was with Yvette a few hours ago. As the case got closer to her family, she tried to implicate her own husband.”
Dom remembered the full conversation in the dark apartment. She had asked, “Did Mr. Van Buren ever bully you, Mrs. Van Buren?”
“Define bully, please, Agent.”
“Used his power or strength to coerce or intimidate you … perhaps to do things you didn’t want to do? It often takes the form of aggression.”
With conviction, Yvette had answered, “Yes.”
“How?”
“Many ways. Small and large.”
“Regularly?”
“Yes.”
“Habitually?”
“Yes.”
“Have you told anyone?”
And even in her perverse theatrics, Yvette had tried to play Dom. The pale woman had said, “No. The lies we tell…”
Dom slammed her hands on the Lancia’s steering wheel. God damn it, Yvette had played her.
Fontaine asked, “Where are you?”
The sports car threaded through the lights of slower cars.
“Yvette’s phone is pinging outside Philly. Sir, Yvette’s original plan was to hide her daughter till after the trial. But now she’s trapped. I’m not sure what she’ll do.” I’m coming, Hettie. “I’m on my way to get Hettie.”
“Understood. But, Walker, we’re going to do this carefully and methodically. This is how we’re going to play this: I’m going to give you cover so you have time to ID Hettie at the location. I am not going to call Claude, the mayor, or the AG until sunrise. That will give you time to get eyes on her.”
His words made sense and weren’t too far off her initial plan. Sunrise was at 5:30 am—in six and a half hours. “Roger.”
“Once you’ve ID’d her, we’ll call in the troops from the Philly field office. It will be lightning fast. No way for anyone from New York to interfere at that point.”
It was a savvy plan from a politically savvy guy. It gave it her six and a half hours to find Hettie and kept the NY field office out of play. “Roger.” It was the second time in the past two hours that ASIC Fontaine had proven reliable, willing to work the political angles to keep the investigation moving. Maybe she would consider trusting him. Maybe. Later.
“But it means you need to go dark. If anyone ever digs into what went down tonight, they have to find you were on your own. Are we clear?”
He wanted plausible deniability. Going dark meant she was on her own. She wouldn’t have Lea as backup for the next six and a half hours. “Yes, sir,” she said. “This is our last call. I did not tell you where I was going.”
The wet highway glared against headlights.
His voice was soft. “Safe hunting, Special Agent.”
“Sir.”
Two minutes later, Dom’s phone rang.
It was Lea, “Hi, Dom. Where are you?”
“On the turnpike to the Lowrance estate. I’m going to get Hettie.”
“Let justice roll on like a river. Amos 5:24.”
“I just spoke to Fontaine. I’m going off-grid tonight. But first I need a favor, and you’ve got to make this fast.”
“Copy.”
“I need information on Yvette’s family home. I need to know what I’m facing when I get there. Can you send that to me before—"
Lea dropped into a muffled whisper. “Dom?”
“Yeah?”
“He’s walking to my desk—”
“Fontaine?”
“Yes.”
Dom hung up. Damn. Fontaine was savvier and faster than she expected. She pulled the sports car into the slow lane. Damn. She pulled over into the emergency shoulder, clicked on her flashers, looked up a number on her cell phone, and dialed it.
The voice that answered was tentative. “Hello?”
“Mila?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Special Agent Walker. I need your help.”
“Yes?”
“As a researcher, I need your help.”
“With finding Hettie?”
Dom spoke quickly. “I need information on the Lowrance estate outside Philadelphia. I need some kind of map. I need to know what’s there.”
“You think Hettie is there.” It was a statement.
“Mila, I just need the research.”
“You think Hettie is there.”
Dom waited her out.
“Okay,” Mila said. “I’ll find architectural and landscaping diagrams, I can tap into university libraries—"
“Send it to my email.” She spelled out her a personal email.
“I’ll send you what I find.”
Dom hung up, threw the phone on the passenger seat, revved the sports car, and blasted back to the highway.
46
Cicatrices
@LastCurlew
slashes of malice delivered deftly across a heart
like smiles of a jester in a castle—
harlequin—in silk and gold—laughing, taunting, sneering
entreaties cloaked in satin endearments
as rancor strikes through dreams, slices
apart emancipation—
my dowager failed to crush
the aspirations, sureness of a muted offspring
with scarred husk—now
reassembling, buttressing for retribution.
47
At night, the wealthy Philadelphia suburb of Gladwyne, with its steep hills, gated driveways, and huge mansions, felt sleepy and well protected. Ten minutes earlier, the Lancia roared through the main arterial intersection and into the parking lot of an organic supermarket where three shoppers were making their last rounds. Next door, inside a well-lit gas station with a twenty-four-hour convenience store, a teenage girl with braids had rung up Dom’s coffee, two power bars, and a bottle of water.
Striding to back to the sports car, Dom downed the stale coffee in three gulps and pulled out her phone. Mila sent an email with three attachments. The first was a series of photos from Architectural Magazine of an enormous estate captioned Titus Hill, comprised of three large buildings of light brown stone and peaked roofs encircling a large courtyard. It was an American version of a French nobleman’s chateau situated in the middle of rolling green lawns, gardens, and woods. Dom shook her head. “Evil rolled in a dollar bill.”
The second attachment was a written description. “Titus Hill, an historic estate in Gladwyne PA, is set back from Monk Road. It was built in 1928 by Herbert Lowrance. The 14,000-square-foot, twenty-room manor home was designed by Edmund Daniel and features a French Normandy manor main house, a guest house, three staff quarters, a detached five-car garage, a barn, a pool and pool house, tennis court and tennis clubhouse, an aviary, and a greenhouse. The manor is approached by a long driveway that leads to a circular motor court with fountain. The estate sits on fifty-two acres of land that as variously been cultivated as a formal garden, a maze, wild English garden, orchards, and grazing land. Titus Hill is still privately held by the Lowrance family.”
She imagined high perimeter walls and security cameras. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” she mumbled.
The third attachment was a satellite image of the property. It showed the main cluster of buildings set back from the road surrounded by a vast heavily wooded area. Yvette would be hiding Hettie in one of eight buildings. An estate this size required staff, so Dom ruled out the main building because Yvette could not easily hide a drugged Hettie among staff. That left seven possible buildings. Hettie could be hidden in one of the seven buildings. Shit.
Slipping into the car, Dom tossed the empty coffee cup and the phone on the passenger seat, turned the ignition, and revved the Lancia. Hettie, I’m close. The monster doesn’t get to keep you.
The towering trees along Monk Road choked out the moonlight. Passing Titus Hill’s gated entrance, the high beams lit up a ten-foot-high stone wall as Dom pulled into a neighboring driveway. She pulled off the gravel into the impenetrable shadows of trees, silenced the car, and slowed her mind.
The presumed first fact was that Yvette had imprisoned Hettie in one of the seven buildings surrounding the main manor. Five hours was not enough time for Dom to clear these buildings. The second presumption was that Yvette had kept Hettie alive for three days, which meant there was a feeding schedule. The only viable plan was for Dom to observe Yvette visiting Hettie and move in after for the rescue. Over the next five hours, Dom needed a hideout from which to observe the back of the manor and the seven outer buildings. In her favor were three bone fide facts: it was dark, she had the element of surprise, and she was alone and nimble.
Dom pulled up the satellite image on the phone. Situated behind and to the west of the main house was a pool, a pool house, a tennis court, and clubhouse. To the east was a cultivated square—three acres long and three acres wide—that might be a formal garden, a rectangular orcha
rd of lined trees, and a long building. In the photo the long building had an odd shine. There, inside the orchard. From a position inside the orchard, Dom would have direct line of site if Yvette went to the clubhouse or the pool house and she would be situated along the path Yvette would use to the shiny building.
Snapping the phone off, she pulled a flashlight for the glove box and stood out of the car. Sinking into wet ground, she walked to the rear, popped the trunk, slipped on a pancake holster and locked in the Glock. She unfolded a camouflage jacket and slipped it on. In the jacket pockets, she slid in two rounds of ammo, an extra battery for her phone, high-powered binoculars, the power bars, and the bottle of water. As she pulled a baseball hat snug, memories crashed over her like ocean surf, churning and roiling.
In a dark, damp basement in Cleveland, Darlin Montgomery stared listlessly at the ceiling from a stained, bare mattress. Dom placed a warm hand on the girl’s brow, but the little girl didn’t move. “My name is Domini, honey. I’m a police officer. I’ve come to take you home.” Dom softly smoothed the brow. Blank eyes didn’t flicker.
From the darkness, a man on the floor groaned.
“Just ignore him, sweetheart.” She slid out her knife and sliced through the filthy rope tied around a tiny ankle. Her ponytail brushed the girl’s face.
Darlin blinked.
“That’s it, sweetheart. I’m here to take you home. You’re safe now.” Dom clasped the girl to her chest.
Skinny arms reached around Dom’s neck and tiny hands gripped long hair.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You are a strong girl. I’ve got you now.” Dom squeezed the girl tight as tremors rattled the tiny body. “You just close your eyes, sweetheart. I’m gonna walk us out of here. I’ve got you. Just close your eyes.”
At the back of the Lancia, Dom slammed the trunk.
“You hold on, Hettie,” she spoke into the dark. “I’m coming. It’s what I do.”