by Andy Straka
“What's his first name?”
“Don't ask him.” he said.
“Roger that.”
At my office a half hour later, a letter had arrived along with the usual assortment of bills and junk mail. Addressed to me personally, presorted standard, the stationery bore a shiny gold foil edge and the almost garish image of an equally golden eagle. The communiqué was a bold request, as he put it, from none other than Congressman Tor Drummond himself, an opportunity to donate a certain amount of money to his campaign war chest and thereby be designated an honorary member of what he called his Eagle Council. He was even planning a little get-together for this group of the local faithful—an outdoor speech and pep rally two days hence at the amphitheater on the east end of the city's downtown mall.
The amount of money wasn't that large—eagles must have lost some of their lofty status in the present climate. That I had somehow made it onto the congressman's mailing list was a bit ironic, given that the congressman and I had not parted on the best of terms. Also surprising, given my political leanings, which could best be described as apolitical.
I selected a Krispy Kreme from the dozen we'd stopped to pick up along the way and took a bite.
“You guys need a woman around this office more often to help keep you straight,” Nicole said, wadding up a stray napkin Toronto had left on the table and tossing it into the trash. “You know how much cholesterol there is in this junk you're eating?”
“We don't want to know, do we, Jake?”
“Un-huh,” he grunted.
“How'd you and Cassidy get along?” I asked her.
“Awesome, considering she's going through a lot right now.”
“That's good. I'm afraid what's not good is the fact the cops don't seem to have much new information and no one's found her sister's body yet. If there's any chance that Cartwright's still alive, the longer it takes to find her, the worse the chance's that she will be when we do.”
Toronto finished off his third doughnut, plugged in Cartwright Drummond's laptop, and booted it up. “Okay,” he said. “We're going to have some solid info here for you in a few minutes. I was also thinking, Frank, long as I'm gonna be here, you need any help with Armistead while you're on this case? I might as well make myself useful.”
“I'd say you're pretty useful already, but thanks very much.”
“Armistead's been a little testy lately… don't you think?” Nicole said. “You think she knows you're getting ready to release her?”
I shrugged.
“Could be,” Toronto said. “The more I work with hawks, the more I wonder just how much they know.”
“Dad,” Nicole said, “if you and the police think something bad's happened to Cartwright Drummond, we need to make sure we document and bag any evidence.”
“Bag any evidence?” Toronto cocked a brow and looked at her with teasing admiration.
“Girl wants to be an investigator,” I said.
He shook his head. “You know, Frank, passion's wasted on the young, isn't it?”
She punched him playfully in the shoulder. “It is not,” she said.
“In youth we learn,” I said, trying to remember the von Ebner-Eschenbach line. “In age we understand.”
They both ignored me and set to work with the computer. I flipped open the file Nicole had prepared for me, to which I'd added the newly acquired copy of the photo of Tor Drummond standing with George and Norma Paitley. The folder was in chronological order, as well organized, I thought, as any I'd ever received as background when I worked as a cop. Nicole had printed most of it from the Internet: photos and news clippings, a handful of op-eds, even a couple of spin pieces from Torrin Drummond's Web site regarding his current bid for reelection. A five-year-old article from a national business magazine profiled Drummond's business interests, which ran from publishing to biotechnology, transportation to forest redevelopment. Drummond's sex scandal figured prominently, of course, with several tabloid exposés and a number of essays. Opinions ranged from apologetic disappointment to incredulous disdain.
“Okay, you ready, Frank? Here's what we've got,” Toronto said a few minutes later, rubbing his hands together.
They'd shown me some snatches of sentences the night before, mostly gibberish, nothing too useful.
“We broke the password and got into her current E-mail pretty easily. Nothing too spectacular there. Reconstructing her deleted files, we hit pay dirt, though.”
“You can do that?” I asked.
“Sure,” Nicky said. “People think when they delete something it's automatically erased from their hard drive, but that's not true. It's only moved to a different sector, waiting to be overwritten by another file. Until that happens, you can still recover it.”
“We found two recent E-mails that looked interesting, both from the same address,” Toronto went on. He turned the laptop screen so I could read it.
Picture me, a secret amphibian,
Sprung from kingdom chain,
Species yet unfound.
Fashioned whole,
Heir to code,
Conscience,
Reason,
Blur too
fast for sound.
—SA
“Looks like a poem,” I said. “Free verse—not much in the way of iambic pentameter. ‘A secret amphibian.’ Strange.”
“Sounds like it could be your swimmer,” Toronto said.
“Maybe.”
“But here, check out the second E-mail. It's a little more straightforward. Came from the same address.”
meet me. twelve-thirty a.m. i've got big news.
“That's it?” I said.
“That's it.”
“When did she receive these E-mails?”
“Both around the same time,” he said. “Two days ago.”
“The night she disappeared.”
“She must've read them, because they'd both been opened,” Nicole said.
“Somebody read them, at least,” Toronto said.
“Can they be traced?” I asked.
“You bet.” Toronto rubbed his hands together again. “That's where things really begin to get interesting. You wanna tell him, Nicky?”
My daughter picked up some more pages just coming off the printer. They'd obviously pulled them from some server somewhere. “The mailbox they came from belongs to a foundation in Richmond. It's called Second Millennium. The foundation's purpose is to help support disadvantaged kids from the inner city. It apparently doles out grants and scholarships to private schools, even pays parents or guardians for some kids’ living expenses,” she said. “And guess what?”
“What?”
“We found out who's behind the foundation—Congressman Torrin Drummond.”
“But that doesn't make any sense. Why would he have sent his own daughter E-mails like this from some foundation address?”
“I don't think our man sent them,” Toronto said. “Best I can tell, he's not involved in the day-to-day operation of the foundation. He doesn't use that E-mail box. There's a woman in Richmond who does, though. We just got the data on her. Works full-time as a nurse.” He picked up another sheet of paper. “The foundation's only address is a post office box, so my bet is she runs the thing part-time from her house or something.”
“What's her name?”
“Name's Roberta Joseph.” He handed me the paper. Listed were complete addresses, both home and work, and phone numbers.
“You guys make this too easy for me,” I said.
“You think this woman's involved, Dad?” Nicole said.
“I don't know. Seems like a stretch to me. Tell you what, Jake. Keep your cell phone handy. I may need your backup and we may need to move in a hurry. Let me know if we hear anything else from the police.
Nicky, I'd like you to make copies of all this stuff and drop it by Ferrier's office. Don't talk to anybody. Just put it in an envelope and leave it for him. Great job. And thanks.”
“Where are you h
eaded?”
“Richmond. To do a little surveillance on this Joseph woman and to track down a certain gossip reporter who used to work for Tor Drummond,” I said.
18
Ninety minutes later, I found Roberta Joseph's home address on the west end of Richmond. It turned out she lived in an apartment complex only a mile or so from the interstate. The brick-and-frame units were nicely set back from the road in a neighborhood of single-family dwellings. Brick walkways, the same color and texture as the bottom half of the buildings themselves, connected the various apartment units. Her building was the farthest in back and looked out on some woods and the corner of a small reservoir.
I parked where I could see her door and waited. A wreath of fresh-cut flowers hung from the door of unit 214. No sign of any activity. The morning newspaper was still rolled into its receptacle.
I made sure my .357 was tucked away beneath my jacket, climbed out of the truck, and went and knocked on the neighbors’ doors. Two were at home: a middle-aged guy with a beer belly rubbing sleep from his eyes and a steely-eyed seventy-something retiree watering the flowers on her front stoop. I explained who I was, but simply told them I was searching for a teenage runaway. I asked if they'd seen any suspicious activity or any strangers around the building in the last forty-eight hours, being careful not to mention any specific apartment numbers. Both shook their heads. They each took my card and promised to call me if they did.
I went back to the truck and watched and waited some more. About ten minutes later the door to apartment 214 opened and an attractive woman, about my age, with short blond hair stepped out to get the newspaper. She yawned and stretched for a moment, as she scanned the front page. Everything about her looked petite, even her feet and hands. She wore running pants and an unbuttoned man's shirt over a white tee. Didn't look like much of a kidnapper to me. She turned and went back inside.
I thought about it, climbed out of the truck, and rang her bell.
“Just a minute!” a woman's voice called from inside.
A few seconds later she opened the door.
“May I help you?”
“Mrs. Joseph?” I asked.
“Yes, I am.”
I gave her my card. “If you can spare a few moments, I'd like to ask you a few questions.”
She read the card, then searched my face a little doubtfully. “What's this about?”
“Just routine, I hope. I was trying to get some information on Second Millennium. I understand you're involved with the foundation?”
“Yes, of course. Has one of our kids gotten in trouble or something?”
I hedged a bit. “Possibly. May I come in?”
She looked at me cautiously for another moment. “Do you have any other type of identification?”
I produced my private investigator's registration complete with DMV mug shot. She examined it thoroughly before handing it back.
“All right,” she said. She stepped aside to open the door. “Just give me another minute. I need to go upstairs and finish helping my daughter get ready for work. We both leave for the hospital in a little while.”
Daughter? Could it be a ruse? Did she have Cartwright Drummond bound and gagged upstairs and was she planning to come back down with shotgun blazing? I searched her eyes for any duplicity. “Of course,” I said.
She led me into a living room, white walls and a cathedral ceiling. “Sit down, please. I'll only be a short while. My daughter has some… special needs.” She ascended an open stairwell to the second floor and disappeared down what appeared to be a hallway.
Special needs. I wasn't quite sure what to make of that, but I'd find out momentarily, I supposed. I sat down in a black rocking chair next to a contemporary sofa.
The room was fragrant with the smell of cleanser and quite bright. Two skylights let in sun overhead, which shone on several framed black-and-white photographs. They were mostly landscapes, but a few were of people. Since they were neither framed posters nor signed, I assumed Roberta Joseph was the photographer. A couple of the images showed a girl about my own daughter's age, quite different from her mother, if this was Roberta's daughter. The girl's hair was dark. She had a wide nose and pretty dark eyes. Her features made her appear Eastern European, and large blotches were visible on her skin. Something about her looked vaguely familiar, but I wasn't sure why.
Roberta Joseph reappeared at the top of the stairs. She wore clogs now, but they didn't seem to interfere with her coming down the steps.
“I'm sorry,” she said. She sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Now. What can I do to help you?”
“You said your daughter has special needs?”
“Yes. She's autistic, partially disabled, and mildly retarded. At least that's what all her testing shows. She rarely speaks.”
“And you said she works with you?”
“We both work at the hospital, yes. I'm a critical care nurse and Averil works in the cafeteria.”
“I see. Is this your daughter in the photos?”
“Yes.”
“You took the photos?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She has quite an expression, which the photographer seems to have captured perfectly.”
“Thank you,” she said, maybe surprised by the compliment. “You said you wanted to know something about Second Millennium?”
“Yes. Do you work for the foundation?”
“Yes, I do. I run most of it, actually. We're not that large.”
“And its purpose is?”
“We donate money to needy families for their children, mostly here in our community, and in a couple of other areas across Virginia.”
“How do you find out about these children?”
“Direct referrals. As I said, we're quite small. We're not a government agency. We've built up a small network of doctors and nurses in the area, and we also are sent names by some of the local churches. In fact, it's why I work as a nurse.”
“Who provides your funding?”
“Our donors prefer to remain anonymous,” she said.
She'd obviously been asked the question before. I
wondered how Toronto had made the connection to Drummond. Bank records? Maybe I didn't want to know. “Can you tell me where the foundation's office is?”
She shrugged. “That's no secret. It's here. I've turned a third bedroom into a small home office. We like to keep costs down so that the funds we have mostly go to benefit the children.”
“Do you use the Internet?”
“Sure.”
“Send much E-mail?”
“Some. Look, Mr. Pavlicek, I really would like to know what this is all about.”
“I'm trying to track down the source of some suspicious E-mail messages,” I told her.
“Messages? What kind of messages?”
“They've surfaced in an investigation involving a missing person,” I said. “They appear to have originated from your foundation's E-mail account.”
“What?”
“Who has access to your E-mail, besides you, Ms. Joseph?”
“Well, no one. Unless you count Averil, my daughter. She does send E-mails from time to time. Usually with my help. She has some friends she likes to correspond with. But I can't imagine why or how she would be sending the kind of messages you seem to be talking about.”
I glanced at the newspaper she had set on the coffee table. On the front page was a story about Cartwright Drummond's disappearance.
“Are you sure these E-mails are coming from my account?”
I wasn't sure of anything. But Toronto knew what he was doing. “They appear to be.”
“I'm sorry,” she said, “but I don't know anything about them.”
She didn't seem threatened by my questions. She seemed to be telling the truth. If Roberta Joseph truly knew nothing about the E-mails sent to Cartwright Drummond, and her daughter was as she described, it was improbable the messages had emanated from this home. Maybe whoever had sent them had hacked into
her account and used the box as a conduit to funnel their rantings to Cartwright. Which meant we'd have a much harder time tracking the person down. But that still didn't explain Second Millennium's connection to Congressman Drummond.
“You mind if I take a look at your office?”
“Of course not.”
She led me from the living room around a corner, down a back hallway to what the building's architect had obviously meant to be a spare bedroom or small family room. The room was dim. She switched on an overhead light.
Lavish plants hung from the ceiling and ferns grew on the windowsill. A nondescript desk and chair, a large filing cabinet, a cork bulletin board with a map, and a personal computer. Otherwise, the office looked unremarkable.
“Any of your clients ever visit here?”
“The kids? No.”
If I'd still been a cop, I would've directed her not to touch a thing and gotten a team in to look for fingerprints. Maybe I could still get Ferrier to have that done. “Okay. Thanks very much,” I said.
She switched off the fight. I followed her back toward the living room. There was a thud on the stairs as we rounded a corner by the front hall, and I looked up to see an overweight young woman, with the same pretty hair and eyes I had seen in the photos on the wall, coming slowly down the steps. Her gait was slightly irregular, as if one leg were shorter than the other.
“Averil, I'd like you to meet our guest,” Roberta Joseph said.
The woman descending the stairs smiled through large white teeth and stared at me without saying a word. She reached the bottom of the steps and made her way to stand in front of us. Her skin didn't look as bad as in some of the pictures, but it was obviously abnormal.
“Pleased to meet you, Averil,” I said.
The girl said nothing. She just kept right on staring at me with that fixed smile.
“Averil loves meeting new people—don't you, honey?” Roberta Joseph said, taking her daughter's hand. “She understands a lot more than she's able to communicate verbally. We get along fine most of the time. She does excellent work at the hospital. She likes music and photography, even books.”