The Moores Are Missing

by James Patterson

  “Goddamnit, Karl,” Maggie said without anyone to hear. “Please don’t…”

  She didn’t finish the thought. She turned on the night-light and went inside, closing the door behind herself, because this felt wrong. She scanned the room slowly once more, and then she made herself move.

  Under chair cushions and inside the toy box and dresser drawers, but nothing—perhaps she’d been wrong after all. She opened the closet to find the neat racks from IKEA, which organized the interior. Maggie looked behind and beneath, but there was nothing. She looked up to the shelf running above the closet, straining to see in the dim light. Blankets were stacked there, and additional sheets and supplies. She put her hands between the folds of a soft white blanket they’d gotten from Karl’s aunt, and then she felt it.

  Maggie made a sound like crying, then remembered to be quiet. She pulled back and held her hand as if she’d been cut. Something blurred her vision, and when she wiped her eyes her fingers came away wet. She made herself reach up again and pull the ledger out into plain view. She brought it down and gripped it tightly in both hands. Even in the dark, she knew her knuckles were white. She shook, though whether it was from anger or sadness she didn’t know.

  She wouldn’t look at it here. She walked out, closed the door, and took it into the master bedroom instead. There she sat on the end of their bed and opened it. She saw handwritten notes, dense letters not entirely even, the lines meandering up and down on the unlined pages.

  If she’d hoped for names and pictures, she was disappointed. Philip Strickland was thorough, but he seemed to have some strange hesitation about the last veil of privacy. The women were marked with the symbol for female and referred to by initials. The men had their mark and initials. The rest of each entry was a detailed account of what acts had been performed, what money had changed hands.

  Maggie found Carole’s entries easily, because instead of the mark for a woman, Philip had placed a heart. The things he wrote about her made Maggie draw a sharp breath. Everything she had done or had done to her. Every moment, it seemed, catalogued in a hand that became more fevered as the specificity increased. She must have told him everything, and he wrote it all down to pore over again and again.

  Some entries had notations, either A or V or both together. It didn’t take much imagination to understand what these meant. Maggie brought out the key. She remembered what Gibbs had said. Carole was the most-recorded of all of them, which made sense in its own way. CS met with KD many times, and each visit was recorded. KD at CS home, said a dozen entries.

  Gibbs had a key to Carole’s house. He had a key to Maggie’s house.

  Karl Denning.

  Maggie put her face in her hands and cried, but cried quietly. Even now she didn’t want her mother to hear, because then she would have to say it all out loud and it would become real.

  Chapter 25

  “May I speak to Amanda?” Maggie said to the officer on the other end of the line. The steadiness of her voice was surprising even to herself. She waited until she hadn’t cried for an hour before making the call. Whenever her mother came up to check on her, she made certain she was in bed with the covers pulled up and the ledger hidden under her pillow. Once she feigned sleep.

  The line clicked. A woman answered. “Sergeant Knight,” she said. “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Amanda, it’s me. The chief.”

  Before, Amanda sounded bored. Now her tone brightened. “Chief! Hey, Chief, I heard what happened, but you’re okay. Everybody’s talking about it. I mean, you are okay, right?”

  Maggie imagined Amanda: thirty years old, going thick despite her relative youth, betrayed by hours upon hours of desk work. Amanda was always on a diet, always trying to exercise. One month it was power walking. Another month it was yoga. Nothing ever seemed to help. “I’m okay,” Maggie lied. “Everything’s okay. But I wanted to know if you could help me. I can be down there in an hour or so.”

  “You need to come in?”

  “I’ll explain when I get there. But keep it to yourself, okay? Not a word to Karl.”

  “Lips locked and the key is gone.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” Maggie said.

  She ended the call and got dressed. She tucked the ledger under her arm. Downstairs her mother was folding baby clothes. When she saw Maggie, her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  “I have to go out.”

  “No, you have to rest.”

  “I have to go out.”

  Her tone was flat. Her mother looked at her, seemed to think, and then nodded. “Don’t stay out too long.”

  “If Karl calls, I’m sleeping.”

  Maggie drove with the ledger on the seat beside her. She thought she could still smell Gibbs, but she knew it was her imagination. It was almost ninety minutes to the second since she talked to Amanda when she pulled into the lot outside the station. She almost parked in a space allotted for department vehicles before she checked herself and moved on to the civilian area. It had been six months since she’d been here.

  The building was sandy, with windows tinted dark brown, giving everything a sort of dull appearance, even on a sunny day like this one. Cruisers were in and out, and though Maggie looked, she didn’t see a single familiar officer behind the wheel of any of them.

  She went inside and was allowed through the metal detector by more officers she didn’t know. She felt like she was on some alien planet. In two years everything had changed except for the sounds and scent of the building. These were not her imagination, and were as familiar to her as the beating of her heart. She went to the elevator and pressed Down.

  On the sub-level she found Amanda’s lab at the end of a long corridor. It had the look and feel of a campus research facility, markedly different from everywhere else in the station. Here no one wore uniforms, but white coats instead. They had a tank for discharging weapons, they had more computers than there were people, and a self-contained lab for chemical analysis. Anything they couldn’t handle, they would send out, but Amanda prided herself in keeping most forensics work in-house.

  Maggie found her at a workstation filing a report. She stood at the desk for a minute, waiting, until finally she cleared her throat. Amanda jumped, then smiled. She got up to give Maggie a hug. She was much shorter than Maggie. “Chief,” she said, “you look great. I mean, really great. Nothing sticks to you.”

  “You look good, too,” Maggie replied. “You lost weight.”

  Amanda patted her hips. “Zumba classes.”

  “They work.”

  Amanda looked at the ledger. “Is that for me? Is this for a case? Oh, are you doing private investigations now?”

  “Nothing like that. It’s actually this I need help with.”

  Maggie brought the key out of her pocket. She gave it to Amanda, who held it up to the light. “Safe deposit box key,” Amanda said immediately.

  “That’s what I thought. It has a serial number. You can use that to narrow down the facility, right?”

  “Oh, sure. And the key’s pretty new, so that means the boxes were installed within the last couple of years probably. That’ll help a lot. Let’s check it out.”

  Amanda went to another workstation. Maggie watched her navigate screen after screen full of things she didn’t know or understand. Many times investigations could not proceed without forensics, and the reverse, but they remained separate disciplines. Finally, Amanda settled on a database where the key’s serial number could be entered.

  The result took half a second. “We have three banks in the tri-county area with safe deposit box installations to go with the key,” Amanda said. “It’s impossible to know which one until you check them out, but you could probably hit them all in one day if you hustle.”

  Maggie took the key back. She put it in her pocket. “Great—would you give me the addresses?”

  Chapter 26

  After a restless night of feigning sleep to avoid Karl, Maggie started on the list
the following morning. She found the vault under Karl’s name in the second bank. Maggie played dumb, said she found her husband hiding something, and she wanted to know what it could be. To do this required a warrant, she was informed, and there was no way around it, husband or not. Maggie called Mike.

  The process took a long two hours, but Mike got the ADA to find a judge willing to issue a warrant for the contents of whatever box the key opened. Maggie waited in a chair by the windows with the ledger on her lap. Occasionally she looked at the litany of initials: MM, JE, RL, MC, and KD. Always KD. MC was the only set of initials that appeared as often. Clearly KD liked Carole, or Carole liked KD. It didn’t matter. Only KD mattered.

  She saw Mike when he parked in the lot. He came in through the doors and spotted her. She met him halfway. “Do you have it?” she asked.

  “I have it. But Karl’s gonna find out as soon as he comes back from his meeting with Collins. I can’t keep a lid on that. And he’s gonna be pissed, Chief. There’s no two ways about it.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to matter,” Maggie said, and her vision clouded again. She turned her head. She didn’t want to cry in front of Mike. She was still the Chief to him, and the Chief never cried.

  Mike waited until she could look him in the eye again. “That’s the book?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I look at it?”

  “Be my guest. I’ll deal with the manager.”

  She left Mike and made the arrangements. When she came back, Mike’s expression was grim. “He’s the one,” he said. “He’s got to be the one. And you think this safe deposit box has the audio and video to prove it?”

  “I do.”

  “Then let’s look.”

  The manager bent to the warrant and let them into the vault. The box was located, and it was much smaller than Maggie expected. Maggie opened it. Inside was a single thumb drive and nothing else. “You got something that can read that?” Maggie asked.

  “My laptop’s in the trunk.”

  “You’re taking it?” the manager asked.

  “That’s what the warrant’s for,” Maggie returned. Mike took the thumb drive and nodded to her. They left together.

  They sat side by side in the car when Mike accessed the drive. The file revealed a screen full of folders marked by dates. “Give me one of the dates where KD was with Carole Strickland,” Mike said.

  Maggie did. They saw MP3 and MP4 files available. Maggie felt her stomach turn. “I don’t think I can watch a video,” she said.

  “I understand,” Mike said, and he patted her on the arm in a familiar way he had never done before. “But if KD is Karl, then we’re going to have to look at everything, Chief. You know that.”

  “I know. Put it on.”

  He clicked the icon, and the audio began. Maggie heard a man say, “Is it on?”

  “That’s Philip Strickland,” Maggie told Mike.

  “Yes, it’s on.”

  “Carole,” Maggie said.

  “Okay. Press the button on the camera when you put your purse down.”

  “I know how to do it, Philip.”

  Kissing. A moan. Philip chuckled. “Yeah, you know how to do it. You ready for it?”

  “You know I am.”

  “I want to see and hear it all.”

  “Is that all you want?”

  “No, but I can wait.”

  The audio rustled, and Maggie surmised the microphone had gone inside Carole’s purse with whatever small camera they were using. Video quality would be terrible, and the audio wouldn’t be much better, but they used such things in the department all the time. So long as the basics were distinguishable, it could be used in court.

  She heard the murmur of voices and the sharp click of heels on marble. Maggie imagined Carole inside the Ambassador, moving through the lobby. The ping of an elevator. Light music, muffled by the purse.

  Maggie realized she was holding her breath. She let it out. Mike was watching her. “You know, you don’t have to listen to this, either. I can do it all on my own.”

  “Keep going,” Maggie said. She had to make herself inhale and exhale. Her heart beat too quickly.

  No footsteps anymore. Carole would be on carpet. A rapping on wood. A man’s voice. Karl’s voice. Maggie felt her insides fall through the floor of the car. She gripped the armrest as Karl spoke to Carole in familiar terms, then in rawer language. The volume rose and fell as they moved around the room relative to the purse-bound microphone.

  Maggie listened to them together, and then Carole said, “Is that all you want?”

  “No,” Karl said.

  Carole laughed the kind of laugh Maggie had never heard from her. The private laugh of people who knew each other intimately. Maggie remembered laughing like that once a long time ago, when she and Karl saw each other in secret, boss and subordinate, in motels and hotels and in apartments where they didn’t dare turn on the lights.

  They began again. Maggie grabbed for the door handle with her eyes burning and fled the car with Mike calling after her.

  Chapter 27

  The days of sticking a wire to an informant with tape were long gone. A few hours after she and Mike had listened to the recording, Maggie was donning a slightly padded bra with pockets specifically to hold the recording device and microphone in place. With a loose-fitting blouse on, the difference wouldn’t be noticeable. She put the bra on in the bathroom then went out to Mike in the bedroom to place the device.

  “You sure you don’t want backup for this?” Mike asked her.

  “I’m sure. If he’s the one, then we have to be the people who bring him in. This is family.”

  Mike closed a Velcro flap. “Except I’m not family.”

  Maggie squeezed Mike’s arm. “You’re the only one we can trust,” she said.

  They looked at each other for a beat. Mike’s eyes were dark. A flicker of emotion showed there, but he kept it down deep where it could barely be seen. Maggie hoped she looked the same, but she knew her face was a mass of tics and feelings. When Karl came, she would have to pull it together.

  “Done.”

  Maggie buttoned up her blouse. The recording device felt like a brick pressed against her ribs under her breasts. The microphone was imperceptible. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s test it out.”

  Mike put an earpiece in. The wire trailed to a digital receiver and recorder only a little larger than a pack of cards. When Maggie started on the force, such a thing would have been ten times as large, or maybe more, and would use cassette tape. Soon perhaps there’d be no need for a device at all, with words plucked from the air and whisked off to a secure server somewhere on the internet.

  “Test, test,” Maggie said. “Test.”

  “It’s good. I’m gonna set up two houses down. The one that’s for sale? Nobody in there, nobody to notice me in the driveway. When you say, ‘I think I need a drink,’ I’ll come running. I have the key in my pocket. Okay?”

  Maggie nodded. “Okay.”

  “You can do this, Chief.”

  Her face felt hot. She touched her forehead. She was perspiring, but only a little. “I know I can.”

  “It’s almost time. I’m gonna move.”

  She waited until Mike left and then she sat on the end of the bed. She hugged herself to stop the trembling she felt in her limbs. It took some time, but bit by bit she stilled and the anxiety shrank. She kept it wrapped up inside her core, crushed tightly, and then tighter still. The sweat dried on her skin. Her mouth still felt papery, but that was all.

  When she was ready, she went to the closet. She found the lockbox and opened it with a small key. The Detective Special her father gave her was inside, the trigger locked for double safety. Maggie took the gun and returned the box to the top shelf. At the bedside table she unfastened the trigger lock, put it away, and retrieved a speed-loader from her pocket. Six .38 caliber rounds, their casings a brilliant, untouched gold shade. Unsullied brass.

  She snapped the
cylinder back into place. With the tail of her blouse untucked as it was, she was able to pin the gun against her flesh at the back of her pants. It felt startlingly cold. Her spine crawled, and then the sensation faded.

  Finally, there was the sound of Karl’s engine. Maggie tensed at once. Conscious will forced looseness back into her arms and legs. She rolled her head and shrugged off the tightness in her shoulders. “It’s on,” she said to the empty room. Mike couldn’t reply, but she knew he heard her.

  Karl’s key in the door, and then his voice. “Maggie?”

  Maggie stepped into place at the foot of the bed. “Up here,” she called back.

  Footfalls on the stairs. Karl appeared in the hallway. He looked toward the twins’ room, where the lights were out. “You said there was something wrong. Where are the girls?”

  “My mother took them out,” Maggie said, and then she cleared her throat. “They’ll come back when I call them.”

  Confusion crossed his face. He approached her slowly. “Why would you send them out? What’s going on here?”

  Maggie kept her arms loose at her sides. The gun at her back was a solid reminder. “We have something to talk about. It’s important.”

  He stood at the bedroom door. “What do you want to talk about? What the hell is happening?”

  “Carole,” Maggie said with too much force. “It’s Carole.”

  Karl blinked at her. His expression didn’t change, but now Maggie knew it was because he had closed himself up the same way she had. It wasn’t real calm, but outward calm. When he spoke again, it was in a softer tone. “I’m not sure what you mean. What about Carole?”

  “Were you seeing her?”

  She caught the faintest register of something like surprise, but it was gone before it had a chance to take shape. “Who have you been talking to?”

  “Carole’s husband, Philip, kept a ledger with the names of the people she slept with. He wrote down everything they did. He got video and audio, too. He was watching all the time. He knew about you, Karl. He knew it all.”