“That’s enough!”
It took several more cracks of the gavel to silence the room. The defense attorney remained standing, red faced and sputtering, his words momentarily backed up in his brain. With a final look of warning to the witness, the judge sustained the objection. She waved her hand dismissively at the lawyer.
“Counselor, please sit down.”
As the lawyer retook his seat, the judge addressed the jury.
“You are to disregard the witness’s outburst. This was not testimony; it was mere opinion. I’m instructing the court reporter to strike it from the record and you to strike it from your memories.”
She shifted in her seat to more squarely face the witness.
“And I’m instructing you to do your job, Detective Lamb. You’re not new to any of this. Give these people the facts as you know them. Your own personal conclusions are of no interest to anyone in this courtroom except yourself.”
Megan Lamb scowled at the judge. Off on the periphery of her vision, the smugness of the defendant showed itself in the overlarge recrossing of his arms. If the dapper man was attempting to hide the smirk on his face, he was failing. Megan turned back to the courtroom and leaned forward in her seat, her gaze leveled on the defendant.
“My conclusions are the facts,” she said.
And the whole cacophony erupted once more.
Megan was positioning her computer on her desk. Again. After leaving it for a day and a half on the right side of the desk, she was thinking maybe the left side was preferable after all. She slid the phone closer to the center of the desk — again — next to the photograph of Helen. This is stupid, she said to herself. Simply resetting things on the desk precisely as they’d been when she was uptown at the 21st Precinct was… yes, it was stupid.
Be here now.
She repositioned her coffee mug next to the computer monitor. Somewhere in the move from uptown the mug had received a chip on the rim. When she’d first discovered the nick, Megan had nearly hurled the mug against the nearest wall.
She slid the photograph a little to the right.
Stupid.
“I hear you got a little testy just now in court.”
Megan wheeled around. She hadn’t heard anyone approaching.
Malcolm Bell was standing behind her, his arms crossed, a mirthless expression on his mocha face. Bell was Megan’s superior, the captain at the 6th, though not much more veteran there than Megan. Two new kids on the block.
Megan swiveled her chair to more directly face her boss.
“There was nothing testy about it,” she said. “I blew my stack.”
“That’s the word I’m hearing. The assistant DA gave me a jingle.”
Megan did a double take. “Rogers? He called you?”
“We had a number of matters to discuss. He was of the opinion—”
“Bullshit! Larry Rogers is blowing this case right in front of everybody’s eyes.”
“You were an inch away from contempt,” Bell said.
Megan wasn’t having any of it. “Oh no, Captain, there was no inch left. I was there. That so-called doctor had this woman on so many drugs she could have thought it was the man in the moon climbing on top of her. This is her doctor! The man she went to for help! Instead he systematically abused that poor woman to the point—”
Bell was trying to put the snakes back into the box. “Okay, okay, I know all—”
“She killed herself, Captain! That smug bastard is responsible for that poor woman’s death. And in the meantime, the upstanding Larry Rogers’s bungling is going to let the son of a bitch go free!”
“When my detectives are on the stand I’d like them to display a little more gravitas.”
The face Megan made was not a pleasant one.
Bell’s voice darkened. “If you don’t care for the word, Detective, we’ll just settle for the word professionalism. I trust I am being clear.”
Megan murmured, “Gravitas. I hear you.”
Bell took a deep breath and held it momentarily.
“What are you working on right now?”
“Right now?” Megan pulled a pair of pencils from her desk drawer and dropped them into the coffee mug. “Right now I’m putting my house in order. Why do you ask?”
Bell’s hand waved vaguely at his detective’s desk. “That’s going to wait. I want you at Andrew Foster’s apartment as quickly as possible.”
“Andrew Foster as in Senator Andrew Foster?”
“That’s right. Romano and Collins are there with the senator’s wife. So far no media. That won’t last long.”
Megan asked, “What’s the problem?”
Bell’s cell phone went off, and he pulled it from his belt and checked the readout. He didn’t appear to like what he saw.
“Out of the chair, Detective. The senator’s house is in a lot worse order than yours right now. You’ll have time to play with your pencils later. Let’s move it.”
Megan wondered how much longer the woman was going to remain standing at the window looking out toward the river. Compared with the postage-stamp-sized view of the Hudson in her own apartment, the Fosters’ picture window was practically CinemaScope. Christine Foster stood dead center at the window, arms wrapped tightly around herself, confronting the distant disk of the sun as it scorched the low bank of clouds spread over New Jersey.
Megan looked over at the two patrolmen, Romano and Collins, who were standing uncomfortably in front of the open kitchen counter. The nanny, Rosa, stood several feet behind her employer, also hugging herself. The poor thing was trembling like an autumn leaf.
Megan caught Romano’s eye. “Officer, could you get Mrs. Rodriguez a glass of water?” Romano fetched the water. As he approached the nanny with it, Megan added, “You can take Mrs. Rodriguez into the den, please.”
She signaled Collins to follow them. As the trio disappeared down the hallway, Megan addressed the distraught mother.
“You’re blaming the wrong person, Mrs. Foster.”
Christine murmured, “You have no idea who it is I’m blaming.”
Megan rapped her fingers against her notebook, where she had just taken down the nanny’s statement.
“The element of surprise. I can’t imagine anyone reacting any differently.”
Christine brushed irritably at her bangs. “You’re not hearing me, Detective. I’m not blaming Rosa for this. I’m blaming myself. And I’m blaming my husband. We’re the parents.”
Megan knew better than to get into a parsing match. “I’m going to need to speak with your husband, of course.”
“Andy’s on his way from Washington.”
“It’s my guess that the FBI is going to get here a lot quicker than your husband.”
Christine blinked dumbly. “FBI?”
“They just can’t help themselves,” Megan said. “This is clearly the jurisdiction of the NYPD, but you can count on it. A man like your husband? You’ll get the federal treatment, Mrs. Foster. But please don’t worry. We’ll cooperate and coordinate with them. It’ll be fine.”
“It’s going to be a media circus, isn’t it?”
Megan nodded. “I’m afraid so. Clowns and all.”
Rosa Rodriguez had picked up Michelle Foster from the Little Red School House at three o’clock, as scheduled. Michelle had been waiting just outside the school, still on school property, with several of her classmates. Her homeroom teacher, Miss Brandstetter, was keeping an eye on the children while they waited to be picked up. The nanny and Michelle had headed off in the direction of Hudson River Park. Proceeding west on Perry Street, Rosa Rodriguez noticed a man standing midway down the block. She would describe him later as large, possibly six-three or six-four. Male, Caucasian, and wearing a Panama-style hat and a green wind-breaker.
A white van with no markings was parked at the curb, next to where the man was standing. Rosa contended that it was possible that the van had passed the two of them as they had started down the block and had pulled over to the curb some twen
ty or so feet in front of them. She simply could not be sure. Maybe.
As she and Michelle approached, the man hailed them. He was holding a map, and he asked Rosa if she could help him with directions. As Rosa leaned her face into the map, the man let the paper slide away to reveal a small pistol in his hand. The pistol was angled downward, aimed at Michelle. The man calmly told Rosa to get into the van and to instruct Michelle to get into the van as well. Rosa had hesitated, and when she did, the man took hold of her arm with his free hand and forced the nanny to her knees. Then he kneeled down along with her, so that they were both face-to-face with Michelle. He instructed Rosa a second time, and this time the nanny urged Michelle to do what the man said.
The side door of the van was already open, and the three piled into the vehicle, the large man sliding the door shut. Several strips of duct tape were hanging from the roof of the van. Holding the gun to Rosa Rodriguez’s temple, the man instructed the nanny to place one of the strips over Michelle’s mouth. After she did that, she was told to bind Michelle’s hands behind her back with a longer piece of tape and then to bind her ankles together. The next thing the nanny knew, the door was sliding open and she was falling backward out of the van. She landed hard on the sidewalk, skinning her elbow and suffering a tear in her skirt.
A blast of blue smoke belched from the rear of the van as it lurched forward, rounded the corner, and disappeared.
Megan concluded her phone conversation with Malcolm Bell. She flipped the phone closed and stepped in from the hallway.
Rosa was back in the living room, drinking a cup of black coffee and waiting for her husband to show up. The final blast of predusk sunlight was radiating in the apartment, saturating the living room in a brassy assault. Collins and Romano were gone.
Christine remained seated. A moment earlier, one of the purpling clouds had brought to her mind the abstract sculptures in a certain studio in a building some blocks north of where she was sitting. Christine knew that the events that had transpired in the sculptor’s studio had no connection to her daughter’s abduction. Of course they didn’t. Even if Christine hadn’t accepted the young man’s invitation to come to his studio, Michelle would still be missing. The two events were not related. Even so, Christine was finding it extremely difficult to separate them. One way or another, the day had demanded that the family be violated, and Christine felt enormous shame. As she watched an airplane slice across the sky, she wondered if Andy was feeling shame as well. As much as Christine didn’t want to admit it — it was nothing but spite — she hoped that he was.
Megan Lamb stepped over to where Christine was sitting.
“I’m going to have to ask you for a picture of Michelle.”
Christine responded as if she had read the detective’s mind. She reached over to the nearby lamp table and picked up a copy of her husband’s book.
“Here. This is a great one. Everyone loves it.”
The food containers from Mama Buddha remained largely untouched on the kitchen counter. The container of ginger chicken — Michelle’s favorite — had not even been opened. Christine couldn’t imagine what had been going through her head when she ordered it. Magical thinking? A pathetic symbol of hope? The thought was so ridiculous she didn’t want to cop to it.
Christine kicked herself for having deleted the crank call that had come in at the beginning of the week. Megan Lamb had endeavored to assure her that the authorities would likely have picked up nothing worth acting on even if they’d had a chance to review the message. The detective had urged her to consider that there was no guarantee that the call had even come from Michelle’s abductor.
But Christine knew. Megan Lamb didn’t have any children. She couldn’t be clued into this one. Christine knew.
The kitchen phone was now an object of aversion. As was Christine’s laptop. The story of the abduction of Senator Foster’s daughter had broken soon after six o’clock, with special bulletins interrupting the non-news programs while the all-news channels had launched immediately into breathless wall-to-wall coverage. By seven, Christine’s email inbox had collected seventy-two messages and counting, nearly all of them from complete strangers. The majority were short messages of support, with not a few of those urging the senator and his wife to trust in God to deliver their daughter safely back to them. The remaining messages were divided into those from people using the opportunity to excoriate the senator for his politics, those claiming to have spotted Michelle, and those claiming to be from Michelle’s kidnapper. Messages in this last category were blunt and crude and vicious. The answering machine was also collecting some calls from strangers, though only a handful of these in the hate category. Neither the Fosters’ home number nor Christine’s email address were supposed to be in general circulation, but apparently those were securities that were easily breached.
As predicted by Detective Lamb, a team of FBI officials had arrived at the apartment, and when Andy got in from the airport soon afterward, he had immediately fallen into battle with them over their plan to route all of Christine’s emails to their own surveillance account as well as to maintain an open tap on their phone. Christine had joined the battle, but on the side of the federal agents’ recommendations, and so her and Andy’s first face-to-face exchange concerning the crisis with their daughter had been one of rancor. A bad start.
In the absence of any fresh developments concerning Michelle’s abduction itself, the news channels were essentially airing any footage they could scrape up that included either Michelle or Christine. They were running loops about Christine’s childhood as the daughter of Governor Hoyt, her marriage to then-congressman Foster, her career as a photographer (the print Christine had sold to Placido Domingo was clearly slated for some massive overexposure), and, of course, Michelle’s “Little Wizard” moment.
“This is like my very own designer hell,” Christine remarked after the fourth or fifth viewing of footage showing her aiming a pair of thumbs-up as she emerged from a voting booth. “Who are the freaks who are watching this crap?” The voting booth clip was replaced by a clip of Andy addressing the Earth Day rally. Christine rose from the couch.
“Stop looking at us! For Christ’s sake. Get your own goddamned life!”
Andy clicked to a new channel. Michelle was riding atop her daddy’s shoulders. Christine’s mouth dropped open.
“Where the hell did they get that?”
Andy studied the screen. “Isn’t that Whitney’s seventieth?”
Christine was already fumbling with her cell phone. “That son of a bitch! I can’t believe he—”
“Don’t call your father!” Andy set down the remote. “Chrissie, seriously. I’m sure he didn’t—”
Christine’s arm jerked and she threw her phone across the room, missing the television by several inches. It hit the bookshelf behind the television and clattered to the carpet.
“Michelle! Please, God. Where is she?”
Andy caught his wife before she collapsed to the floor. Her warm tears flooded onto his neck, and he guided her to the small leather couch next to his desk and lowered her onto it. Tears choked in his own throat as he held his sobbing wife. Over the twenty minutes the two sat clinging to each other on the small couch, Christine emerged twice from the voting booth, Michelle appeared three times as a newborn in her proud father’s arms, and Andy’s face flashed across the muted screen too many times to count.
Christine offered only the smallest resistance when Andy came into the bedroom rattling the bottle of Tylenol PM. She was dressed for bed, backed up against the pillows. Andy handed Christine a glass of water and shook two tablets into her hand.
“I regret everything,” Christine said, her voice slightly hoarse from her crying.
“Shhhhhh. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I do.”
“Sweetie, you’re exhausted. You’re beat. We’re both beat.”
Christine’s red-rimmed eyes implored him. “Can’t we talk, Andy? We have to talk.
”
He touched a finger to the middle of her brow. “It’s late. Neither of us is going to be articulate right now.” He urged her to swallow the mild sedative. Christine popped the tablets into her mouth, washed them down with water, and handed her husband the half-empty glass.
“Why is this happening?”
“Shhhh,” he said again. “This isn’t the time.”
He stripped down to his boxers and climbed into bed next to his wife. She folded her body against his and laid her cheek on his chest.
Twenty minutes later Andy slipped delicately out of the bed. Christine’s breathing was gentle and deep. In his den, Andy sat at his desk, staring at the slip of paper on which he’d written the phone number of the Mad Russian. They had only spoken that one time, three nights ago, when the blackmailer had laid out his staggering demands. Four days remained until Andy was supposed to be at the ready with half a million dollars. Andy’s thumb remained poised above his cell. The Russian must be involved in Michelle’s abduction. He had to be. Andy was convinced that his daughter was being used by the blackmailer to seal the deal. Andy himself might have been willing to accept his sordid behavior becoming public knowledge and his career immolating in a nanosecond, but there was no chance he would allow his very own daughter to suffer as a result of his pathetic indiscretions. Not a chance. The Russian would presume this. Or Aleksey Titov would. Or who-the-hell-ever.
Andy punched the number. It rang and rang and rang. He gave it a full two minutes before cutting off the signal. He sat at his desk another ten minutes, staring a hole into his future. It never became large enough for him to crawl into. At any rate, even if it had, Andy suspected it could only have been a very cold and very lonely and very unforgiving place.
The ringing of the phone pierced Megan’s dream. Sweeping out with her arm, she pawed the instrument off the bedside table.
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