by Jack Rogan
After the police had gone, Cait sat on the sofa giving Leyla a bottle, relishing the feeling of holding her daughter close. Afterward, Leyla fell asleep, but Cait did not put her down for a nap. Nothing made her feel more at peace than when Leyla slept in her arms. When she was a little girl, Auntie Jane’s chocolate shop had been her safe place, where she felt nothing could go wrong. But Sweet Somethings had been gone for years, and Nizam’s death had unmoored her, made her feel that no place was safe … until Leyla had been born. Moments like this, cradling her sleeping child, this was her safe place. And today she had more reason than ever before to want to keep her daughter close.
She shifted her a little to the left and reached down to dig into a pocket for her cell phone. Only when she had slid it out did she recall that the battery had died, and her charger was back at her apartment. The nearest phone was on the kitchen counter. The last thing she wanted to do was get up from the sofa, but there was no way that she would be napping with Leyla today. Her thoughts whirled. The need to act, to do something, burned inside her, but she had no idea what that something might be. What could she possibly do, except be prepared in case whoever had come after Leyla tried again?
She froze. Would they do that? Try again? It seemed improbable, almost absurd, but she supposed it depended on why they had wanted her daughter in the first place. If they were organized, some kind of group that sold babies to desperate couples who longed for a child, or to pedophiles for their depravity, then certainly they wouldn’t risk making a second try for the same child. The police were involved. To try again would be foolish.
But Cait could not pretend to understand the kind of people who would abduct an infant, so she would be on her guard.
Who are you kidding? You’ll be on your guard for the rest of your life.
She stood and carried the baby into the kitchen. The phone lay on the counter, discarded by whoever had used it last—George, getting a call from Jane when the EMTs were patching her up? Cait picked it up and dialed Sean’s cell number. She had needed to take care of Leyla first, to calm herself down, reassuring them both that everything would be all right. Now, though, she wanted to talk to her brother.
“Hello?” a man answered. The voice did not belong to Sean McCandless.
“Um, hi? Who is this?” she said.
“Can I help you?” the voice asked.
“You can help by telling me who you are and why you’re answering Sean McCandless’s phone.”
The pause angered her. It had to be one of Sean’s friends, either being presumptuous or trying to be funny, but Cait had little patience for anything today.
“If you’ll tell me who’s calling, I’ll pass along the message, and someone will get back to you within twenty-four hours,” the man said. From his voice, she guessed he was fairly young—early thirties, maybe—and not entirely used to stonewalling.
“This is Caitlin McCandless, Sean’s sister. Look, all right, you won’t tell me who you are. I get it. Secrets are part of his life, but I really, really need to talk to my brother. Is he away again? Is he going to be gone long?”
The pause again, and then a kind of sigh.
“Yes, he’s away again. Someone will get back to you within twenty-four hours.”
“Please. It’s really important,” she said.
One thing she had never gotten used to about cell phones was that, unlike conventional phones, there was no click when the call became disconnected, only that strange, flat nothing. Sometimes it took her a few seconds to realize that the line had gone dead. This time, she felt sure that the man had not hung up right away. Seconds went by.
“Hello?”
And now she heard that flatness, that nothingness. The call had ended. Maybe she had been mistaken and he had hung up after his last reply, and not been listening to her breathe.
She ought to call Sean’s friend Brian Herskowitz. Sean had always said if she had an emergency when he was away, she could reach him that way. But the man on the phone had said someone would get back to her tomorrow, and Sean had not told her he was going away … had not given her the usual instructions to call Hercules. Maybe he was only gone for the day.
More troubled than ever, wishing for the soothing sound of her brother’s voice, she carried Leyla back to the sofa. They lay down together and, though Cait was confident that her anxiety would keep her awake, she fell asleep within minutes, curled protectively around her baby, guarding her, even in her dreams.
The creak of the screen door woke her.
Cait inhaled sharply as she pushed herself up on one elbow. Leyla had already begun to stir, a bit of drool on her chin, so she didn’t worry about waking the baby. Instead she scooped her up from the sofa and stood by the coffee table, tensed to run. But then the front door swung inward, and Uncle George entered, keys jangling in his hand. He reached back to help Auntie Jane into the house.
“I’m fine,” Jane said.
“You have a concussion,” he chided her.
“Caitlin?” Jane called, even as she turned to look through the doorway to the living room.
“I’m here,” Cait said, hurrying toward them, even as Leyla stretched and yawned in her arms, beginning to scramble upright and looking around.
“I hoped you would be,” Jane said. She smiled and reached for Leyla. “How’s my sweetie doing?”
As Jane took the baby, Cait wiped her own mouth, realizing that Leyla hadn’t been the only one to drool in her sleep. She smiled to herself.
“She’s fine. We just woke up from a nap. More important, how are you? You have a concussion?”
George dropped his keys on a little table in the front hall. “A mild concussion, but that doesn’t mean she can ignore the doctor,” he said, even as he reached out to take Leyla from his wife. “You need rest, Jane. I’m going to insist.”
Jane smiled and made a little pout, but she let George have the baby. Cait liked seeing her uncle with Leyla. He looked like the sort of man who wouldn’t know what to do with a baby, but when he held Leyla he seemed to soften.
“Go up and lie down,” he said to his wife. “I’ll fix you some lunch.”
But Jane wasn’t quite ready to be still. As tired as she looked, and in spite of the cuts and bruises and swelling on her face—which had gone down quite a bit, thankfully—she turned to Cait.
“What about you and Leyla? Have you two eaten anything?”
Cait had started to shake her head before the first word was out of her aunt’s mouth. “No way. I wanted to stay and make sure you were all right, but I’m not putting any more burdens on you. You’ve had a hellish day. I can feed Leyla at home. I’m going to change her diaper, and then we’re out of here.”
Jane frowned. “Caitlin, really, I—”
“Need rest,” George finished emphatically. But he held Leyla to him as though he did not want to relinquish her. “Caitie, Jane’s not the only one who’s had a hell of a day. And you had quite a night last night as well. I hate the idea of you and Leyla being back at your apartment alone, and I’d be happy to make lunch for all of us.” He turned to his wife. “But one way or another, Jane, you are going upstairs right now.”
“I couldn’t,” Cait said quickly. “Really, we’ll be fine.”
“If you’re sure,” George said.
Jane smiled at him, her bruises making her wince. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” George replied. “Now go.”
He kissed her forehead, and then Jane bent to kiss Leyla. “We’ll have to play tomorrow,” she told the baby.
“No way,” Cait said. “You relax tomorrow. I’ll come by first thing Tuesday morning with coffee and bagels. Turns out I have the day off.”
“All right,” Jane said. “Tuesday it is.”
Cait gave her a little hug and then watched as she went up the stairs, holding the railing with every step.
“She’s going to be fine as long as she rests,” George reassured her, once Jane was out of earshot.
“You didn’t do anything, Cait. And I don’t want to hear sorry again.”
Cait took Leyla from him. “A fresh diaper for my baby girl,” she said, “and then we’re gone.”
“Herod? Are you sure that’s what he said?”
Voss rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows, where a dull ache had been growing all day. She held the phone a few inches away, her partner’s voice sounding strangely loud to her.
“Pretty sure,” she said. “Something about Herod not feeling remorse for his beliefs.”
She had returned to the Fort Myers hotel where they’d set up their command center for the Greenlaw investigation. A couple of Advil and a few minutes with her eyes closed had helped her headache a little, but she had not wanted to wait any longer to call Josh and fill him in on what had gone down in Sarasota.
“Christ,” Josh said.
Voss uttered a small, dry laugh. “Are you being funny?”
“No. Sorry. Just my natural response. But it’s crazy, right? Isn’t al-Jubouri a Muslim? It seems pretty weird to have a terrorist worshipping some two-thousand-year-old Roman king—”
“Herod wasn’t Roman,” Voss said. She’d done a quick online search before calling Josh. “He was … I can’t remember now. One of the Maccabees or something. Doesn’t matter. He was a local ruler, and his people had been sort of absorbed by Rome, like a corporate takeover where they leave the CEO in place to give the illusion of stability.”
“We’re talking about the same guy, though?” Josh asked. “This is the Herod that ordered the execution of all the babies in Bethlehem, trying to kill Jesus?”
“First of all, it’s biblical,” Voss said, “so let’s not confuse that with history. The story shows up in only one of the gospels. Matthew, I think. From what I read, it seems like it does refer to actual events, but the details are impossible to lock down. According to the Bible story, Herod heard a prophecy that the King of the Jews was going to be born in Bethlehem.”
“And since he was King of the Jews—”
“Yeah. He didn’t like the sound of that. He ordered all of the newborn males executed.”
“And this is the guy Karim al-Jubouri holds up as his ideological hero when he’s dying on the floor?”
“Yeah.”
The phone line fell silent for a few seconds.
“You still there?” Voss asked.
“Just processing. I’m having some pretty dark thoughts about what this means for the Kowalik baby.”
Voss massaged the ridge of her brow. “Yeah. I’ve had the same thoughts. They haven’t named the baby yet?”
“No. I think the process was put on hold when the baby was taken.”
Neither one of them mentioned that the Kowaliks might end up naming their baby only for the purposes of it being engraved on the newborn’s gravestone. But Voss knew they were both thinking it.
“What do you make of the Greenlaw killings in light of this?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s all about the kids, but with Greenlaw’s military background, that seems unlikely. And we can’t jump to conclusions based on the ravings of one dying terrorist. We don’t know that he was the leader of the cell.”
“We don’t know a hell of a lot, do we?” Josh said.
Voss leaned back in the hotel room desk chair, about to agree with him, but then there was a knock on the door.
“Hang on,” she said, rising to answer it.
A glance through the peephole showed Ed Turcotte waiting in the hallway. She unlocked the door and hauled it open. Turcotte noticed the phone in her hand.
“I can come back,” he said.
“No, you’re good,” Voss said. “I’m talking to Josh. Let me put him on speaker—”
“Inviting Turcotte into your boudoir now?” Josh teased.
If she’d been alone, Voss would have invented some kind of snappy comeback about the cobwebs and dust bunnies in her lonely boudoir. She and Josh often commented on the poor romantic prospects for people in their line of work. But even if she was working relatively comfortably with Turcotte at the moment, she wasn’t about to talk about her personal life with him around.
She hit the button to put Josh on speaker and set the phone on the desk, then slid back into the chair, leaving Turcotte to sit awkwardly on the end of the bed.
“Say ‘Hi,’ Josh.”
“Agent Turcotte. How are you holding up?” Josh asked.
“About as well as you and Agent Chang, I expect,” Turcotte said. “It’s frustrating as hell being so completely in the dark. Especially since we had one of these guys in our grasp and fucking shot him.”
“Can’t get answers from a dead man,” Josh replied.
“Exactly,” Turcotte said.
Voss couldn’t hide her surprise. Turcotte had once competed with her and Josh over certain cases, back before the ICD existed. Normally he kept them at arm’s length, so it felt peculiar—even awkward—for him to be so open now.
Seeing her reaction, Turcotte smiled grimly. “Yeah. I know what you’re thinking. It was a long night, and today’s looking even longer. I did turn up something weird on this ‘Herod’ thing, though.”
“Really?” Voss asked, intrigued.
“She’s got you doing research now?” Josh asked.
Turcotte’s grin was tired. Josh couldn’t see it anyway.
“I went to my best researcher, back in D.C. She’s been doing searches, cross-referencing files, trying to find anything that connects terrorist groups, murders, or Middle Eastern radicals with Herod the Great or, really, with any reference to the word Herod.”
Voss arched an eyebrow. “She actually found something?”
“Not in our files,” Turcotte said. “I’ve got her scanning it right now so we can read the whole thing.”
“Wait, scanning what?” Josh asked. “If it wasn’t in FBI files—”
“It’s in an article from Rolling Stone,” Turcotte said. “In May of 1971, they ran a long piece that included interviews with an FBI agent named Nixon—no relation—and an anonymous source he had supposedly been working with. The article apparently covered a lot of ground, ticking off the reasons why Vietnam was a clusterfuck, but in one section, Agent Nixon and this anonymous source talked about what they called the ‘Herod Factor.’ ”
Voss narrowed her eyes. “The same phrase al-Jubouri used,” she said. “What the hell does it mean?”
“According to my researcher, they claimed that—for lack of a better word, I guess—breeding between enemy cultures could help bring about peace.”
“Gotta love Rolling Stone, especially in the seventies,” Josh said.
“It makes a certain amount of sense,” Voss said. “I mean, when people fall in love, that doesn’t just connect them, it connects their families, and it impacts the people around them … the people who see them.”
“It wasn’t the relationships that these guys thought could influence the war,” Turcotte went on. “They claimed that the babies born from those relationships actually had an effect on hostilities.”
“Again—” Voss began.
“Wait, you mean on, like, a metaphysical level?” Josh interrupted.
“It’s clear from the article that Agent Nixon was some kind of conspiracy nut. A fan of the Grassy Knoll,” Turcotte said. “But, yeah, that’s the gist of it. And remember, this was the time of the Vietnam War.”
Voss exhaled. “Mrs. Kowalik is Iranian.”
Turcotte flinched and stared at her. “You’re not seriously—”
“Just pointing it out,” she said. “This Agent Nixon obviously believed in this stuff. Is it so hard to buy that someone else might believe it, too?”
“There’s always someone willing to believe, no matter how crazy something sounds,” Josh said.
Turcotte stood up. “He’s dead. Heart attack in ’73. The guy who wrote the article is also no longer with us.”
“Which is going to make it hard to ID the anonymous source,” Voss said.
“Unless it’s somewhere in Rolling Stone’s files,” Josh added, his voice sounding strangely far away on the phone. Voss wished that the case hadn’t split them up, but they both had a job to do. “Something that confidential, I’d guess the writer probably didn’t put it on paper anywhere.”
“That’s what I figured, too,” Turcotte said, heading for the door. “But we’ll look into it.”
“You realize how unlikely it is that there’s a connection between some conspiracy nut from the Vietnam War and this case?” Voss asked.
Turcotte shrugged. “Given al-Juroubi’s comment about Herod, we’ve got to look into it, and this is all we’ve got. But it’s not like we’re putting all our efforts into chasing ghosts from thirty-odd years ago. We’ve got real bad guys in the here and now. The second we get another lead, we’re going to run them down. That’s when we’ll get real answers.”
“Thanks, Ed,” Voss said.
Turcotte nodded and left, pulling the door shut behind him. Voss picked up the phone and turned off the speaker.
“You doing all right up there?” she asked.
“Personally, yeah. Chang’s good company. Though we’re not as chummy as you and Turcotte.”
“Funny guy.”
“Listen, I just want to find this guy. And I want to find the Kowaliks’ baby alive.”
“Josh—”
“I know, Rachael. I know. But I can hope, right?”
Instead of making her feel safer, the police car in the rearview mirror made Cait more nervous. She glanced up again and again to confirm that it was still there, but she hated the idea that Monteforte and Jarman thought she needed the escort. Did they think that whoever had tried to snatch Leyla would make another attempt? It made no sense. If A-Train wanted payback, he would have come after her directly. And Cait couldn’t really believe that Nizam’s sisters had tried to abduct the baby, never mind the fact that they were too poor to hire someone to do it.