Critical Vulnerability (An Aroostine Higgins Novel Book 1)

by Melissa F. Miller

  After helping her carry the bags into her house, he stood there awkwardly while she thanked him and tried to shoo him back out the door.

  Finally, he kicked at her scuffed linoleum and cleared his throat. “Uh, is Tyrone home?”

  She jerked a thumb toward the den, where the television blared, and shouted, “Tyrone, Mr. Chang from across the way wants a word.”

  She turned back to Franklin. “I’m gonna get out of this work uniform. He’ll be right with you.” She eyed the bags on the counter, waiting to be unloaded. “You want anything?”

  “No, thanks.” He smiled in what he hoped was a casual way.

  She examined his face for a long moment and then headed up the stairs. As the sound of her footsteps faded, Patrolman Tyrone Johnson emerged from the den. He cut a massive, hulking figure, even in a plain white t-shirt and his uniform pants.

  “You want one?” Tyrone raised a beer can in Franklin’s direction.

  “Um . . . no thanks. Listen, I’m sorry to bother you. I just need some help.”

  Tyrone’s relaxed face hardened into an unreadable expression. “What’d you do?”

  “Nothing! I swear—my mom’s missing.”

  “Missing how? Like, she’s late getting back from her book club or something?”

  “Missing like there’s blood all over my house and no trace of her. As far as I know, her book club doesn’t meet this week. Neither does her card club or her knitting club. She should have been home watching her Downton Abbey videos. The whole season’s due back at the library tomorrow.” He realized he was babbling but seemed unable to stop the words that were tumbling out of his mouth.

  “Doubtin’ who?”

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Should I file a report?”

  Tyrone painted him with an exasperated look. “Don’t you watch TV, man? She’s an adult. Until she’s gone for twenty-four hours, we can’t do shit. Come on,” he said, shrugging into a plaid flannel shirt.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The police can’t do anything, but you can. We’re going to check the local hospitals, clinics, and bars.”

  “Bars?”

  “Your ma’s no spring chicken. You’d be surprised how many of these old folks have an episode and wander off and you find them sitting on a barstool, talking the bartender’s ear off.”

  “My mom has a glass of sherry at the holidays. Maybe some wine out at a restaurant. That’s it.”

  “Whatever.” He laced up his boots, then turned and bellowed up the stairs, “Gloria, I’m goin’ out for a bit with Franklin. You see his ma, call my cell. You hear?”

  Above, a bedroom door creaked open. “Hear? The whole street heard you, you fool.” The door banged shut.

  Franklin spent the next hour on an awkward scavenger hunt with his taciturn neighbor. He was glad for the company, even though their search proved futile. Somehow, Tyrone’s massive, silent presence settled Franklin’s nerves.

  Tyrone dropped him off with instructions to call the station the next day and ask for the missing person’s desk. Franklin stood on the porch and watched him cross the street back to his house.

  “Mom?” he called as he walked inside. A blanket of silence greeted him. His panic came rushing back in a wave, and he paced around the living room.

  Where was she? Was she hurt?

  Franklin’s cell phone vibrated to life in his pocket. He checked the display. Unknown caller.

  “Hello? Mom? Where are you?”

  An unfamiliar voice said, “No. This isn’t your mother, Franklin. Listen very carefully. Go to your mailbox and remove the gift I left you. Turn it on.”

  “Who is this?” he demanded to an empty line. The caller had already hung up.

  Feeling numb, Franklin walked out onto his porch. Inside the metal mailbox, he found a cheap flip phone—the kind of prepaid phone that bodegas all over the city sold to illegal immigrants who couldn’t contract for service with any of the major carriers.

  He stepped back inside, then powered it on. It began to ring immediately, and he nearly dropped it in surprise.

  “H-h-hello?” he stammered, unable to keep the nerves out of his voice.

  “I have your mother. She is unharmed. For now.”

  “You have her? Who is this?”

  “That is not your concern.”

  “Wait, you’re lying. You hurt her. There’s blood all over my house.”

  A put-upon sigh sounded in his ear. “An unfortunate accident. She panicked and fell. She hit her chin on the corner of the sink. This cut, it bled copiously, but it was a superficial wound. You may ask her yourself.”

  There was a pause and a muffled noise, then Franklin heard his mother’s voice.

  “Franklin, is that you?”

  “Mom, yes, it’s me! Are you okay?”

  His mother answered in a careful voice. “I’m fine, honey. I don’t know what this gentleman wants you do to, but he says if you do as you’re told, he’ll bring me home.” He heard the tears she tried to choke back. “Please do what he says.”

  “I love you, Mom. I’ll find you,” he managed before the man’s voice came back on the line.

  “You will not find her,” the man assured him. “You will never see her alive again unless you follow my instructions to the letter. I will be in touch when I need you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  12:02 a.m. Friday

  Franklin punched ten memorized digits into the prepaid cell phone with shaking fingers, then wiped his sweaty hands on the thighs of his khakis. While the call connected, he swallowed several times in a futile attempt to wet his very dry mouth.

  On the second ring, the man answered.

  “Is it done?” he asked without preamble.

  “Yes.”

  “You are sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Franklin said. “She filed the motion at two minutes to midnight. Exactly at midnight, I deleted it. The opposition motion is gone from the system, removed without a trace.”

  He picked at his ragged cuticles and waited.

  Finally, the man intoned in his stilted English, “That is good.”

  Franklin wondered, not for the first time, about the hint of an indeterminate accent. And decided, not for the first time, that he probably really didn’t want to know where the man was from. The less he knew, the better. Or so he imagined.

  “Um, so, I held up my end of the bargain . . .”

  “Yes.”

  Franklin waited for a moment, but the man didn’t seem to pick up the hint.

  “So, we’re good? You’ll let her go?”

  The man barked out a dark laugh. “No.”

  Anger collided with fear in Franklin’s gut. “We had a deal.”

  “The deal has changed. I will be in touch with further instructions.”

  “Further instructions? No, I can’t—”

  “You can, and you will. Unless you wish for me to kill your mother. Is that your desire?”

  “What? No!” Franklin yelled the word as his heart squeezed in his chest. He forced himself to keep breathing.

  “This is good. Goodbye.”

  “Wait—no, don’t hang up. I want to talk to her. Please?” he added hastily.

  Silence.

  He could hear the man’s slow, even breathing as he considered Franklin’s request.

  “She is unharmed.”

  “So you say. But I need to confirm that for myself. You haven’t let me talk to her since Monday. How do I know she’s even . . . alive?” Franklin grimaced at having to say the words, but they were true.

  “You do not trust me?”

  “You just reneged on our deal! Why should I trust you?” Franklin blurted. Then he bit down on his lip so hard he tasted blood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just—please. Please let m
e talk to her?”

  The man huffed. “She is sleeping. If the lawyer asks for a delay or offers a deal, I will release her. But, until then, until the trial is no longer a threat, I need you. And as long as I need you, your mother stays where she is.”

  “But I saw the docket. The trial isn’t scheduled to start until the Monday after next. That’s ten more days. Can’t you please let her go? I promise, I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “No.” The man’s voice was firm. “However, when I call you with your next assignment, you may speak to her.”

  Franklin was gearing up to demand, plead, cry—whatever it took to convince his mother’s captor to let him talk to her. But the line went dead with a sharp click before he could marshal his argument. He stared at the silent phone in his hand for a long moment.

  Then he gently placed it on the table and ran for the bathroom as his dinner tickled the back of his throat. He was going to puke. Again.

  As he raced for the john, the man’s words echoed in his brain: Next assignment. Next assignment. What else was the man going to make him do?

  Hot tears streamed down his cheeks as he crouched in front of the bowl and heaved into it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The wee hours of Friday morning

  “I knew from the time I was in high school that someday I would stand up in court and say ‘Mitchell Swope, on behalf of the United States of America.’” He smiled sheepishly and stared down at his scrambled eggs. “Corny, huh? I guess I watched too much Law & Order.”

  She kept her face blank, but she thought his idealism was endearing. Cute, even.

  “It’s not corny at all,” she assured him, cupping her hands around the mug of hot chocolate to warm them.

  The walk to the all-night diner had been short, but a cutting winter wind had chilled her straight through. Rich, piping hot cocoa seemed like the obvious solution. But then she’d had to find a menu item that worked with the hot chocolate. So, while Mitchell devoured a hearty breakfast, she was savoring a thick slice of apple crumb pie. Whipped cream and all. She told herself she’d run an extra mile tomorrow, knowing it was a lie.

  “What about you? How’d you end up at Justice?” He settled back against the cracked faux leather booth and pinned his eyes on her with a look of genuine interest.

  “My path was less straightforward than yours. I majored in English in college and did my senior thesis on To Kill a Mockingbird. When I met with my career counselor to discuss job options after graduation, I kept picturing myself as Atticus Finch, practicing law in a small town. So, I went on to law school and worked summers for a solo practitioner. He taught me what I needed to know to run my own practice. I set up shop in my hometown as soon as I passed the bar exam. Who sounds corny now?” She laughed at herself.

  He shook his head. “Not corny at all. Lots of people land in law school because they have dreams of six-figure salaries or they don’t know what else to do with a political science degree. You had a vision and the nerve to go out on your own as a baby lawyer. But how’d you get from there to here?”

  She cut off another bite of pie with the side of her fork and said, “I’d been practicing all of about six months when I got a call from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. I don’t know if you heard about this scandal, but about a year and a half ago, a judge was murdered in Springport. It was all over money, of course. A dirty councilwoman and her sister were working a bunch of different angles to profit from the hydrofracking boom.”

  “Yeah, sure. And the state attorney general was involved, too, right?”

  “Yes. So the Commonwealth was looking for an outsider to serve as special prosecutor to look into the AG’s role in the whole mess. The solo lawyer I had worked for had a weekly tee time with two of the justices on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. He suggested me and told them I was squeaky clean. I guess the idea of a twenty-first century Atticus Finch wannabe had some appeal to them.”

  “You were, what, twenty-six years old and a special prosecutor?”

  “Twenty-five. So, after that case, my private practice really picked up and I had settled into a nice groove, but then the prepper thing happened—”

  “The prepper thing?”

  She sipped her hot chocolate and wondered how much she could say. The prepper thing hadn’t been quite as well publicized as the dirty state attorney general thing, even though it had been a much bigger deal. Homeland Security kept a tight lid on the fact that, just a year ago, the country had been teetering on the edge of a global pandemic that could have wiped out most of the population and the entire infrastructure.

  “It’s a really long story. But the short version is there was a big, multi-agency federal investigation in Clear Brook County, the same place where the judge was killed. And the team needed some local help—”

  “Let me guess. Your retired solo practitioner plays cards with the Director of Homeland Security?”

  She giggled. “Close. There’s this big shot white-collar criminal defense attorney in Pittsburgh. A guy named Volmer. He represented one of the witnesses in the grand jury investigation—another lawyer by the name of Sasha McCandless. You follow?”

  “So far. I feel like I need a cheat sheet. This is like one of those Russian novels with a million characters.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Russian literature fan?”

  “Guilty as charged. Anyway, go on.”

  “So Sasha was appointed to investigate the death of Judge Paulson back in 2011, and she testified during my investigation. Then last year, she got herself caught up in this other mess with the preppers. Her boyfriend—well, husband, now—is former Homeland Security. When the prepper investigation heated up, his old boss asked him for the name of a local attorney who could help them navigate the small-town culture. They had this enormous team of big-city lawyers getting doors slammed in their faces all over town. Nobody wanted anything to do with them. Will and Sasha remembered me and passed my name along.”

  “What did you do exactly?”

  “Mainly, I just made introductions and convinced people to cooperate. These people knew me, and they trusted me. I guess the team liked me, because when the opening came up in the Criminal Division, Sid called me up.”

  “He called you? You just fell into this job?”

  She shrugged. “I guess you could say that.”

  His fork clattered to the Formica table.

  “That doesn’t happen. People angle for our jobs for years. Internships, clerkships, miserable stints at big law firms. You just walked in from your small-town practice because you were local counsel on a Homeland Security case? And you’re first chairing the SystemSource trial?”

  Her stomach knotted at the reminder. “Yeah.”

  He whistled. “Nice. What kind of case is it?”

  “SystemSource settled an FCPA charge stemming from efforts to bribe a Mexican government official to buy their industrial control system. Even though the company settled, the two former salespeople who handled the Latin American territory and actually attempted to bribe the guy insist on going to trial.”

  “Is your case solid?”

  “It is now. I was filing my opposition to their motion in limine. Assuming Judge Hernandez doesn’t do something crazy, I have the evidence to nail these guys to the wall.”

  He groaned. “Not Hernandez.”

  “Why?”

  “Hernandez hates Sid. I mean, really hates him. Our win percentage in front of that guy is abysmal. Your case isn’t quite the plum assignment I thought it was.”

  Her chest turned to lead, but she ignored her dismay. “Well, the judge can hate Sid all he wants, but the jury will see the case for what it is,” she insisted.

  A shadow passed over his face.

  She knew he was thinking of all the ways a motivated federal judge could shade a case to change the jury’s mind.

  Bu
t he didn’t challenge her bravado directly.

  “I hope so.”

  She checked her watch and gasped.

  “What?”

  “It’s one thirty.”

  “Do you turn into a pumpkin?”

  “Something like that. I’ll be dead on my feet tomorrow. I have to get home.”

  He must have heard the panic in her voice, because he didn’t try to argue with her. He looked around, caught their worn-out waitress’s eye, and gestured for the check.

  “Go grab a cab. I’ll take care of this.”

  “I can’t let you pay for me, but I’d love to take off if you don’t mind waiting for the bill.”

  She pressed ten dollars into his palm and gathered up her belongings. She wound her scarf tightly around her neck and steeled herself against the chill she knew would hit her when she walked out the door.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Friday morning

  Aroostine groaned as the winter sun beamed through her slatted blinds and hit her square in the face. She opened one eye to squint at the alarm clock on the bedside table, then rolled over and buried her head in her pillows.

  Her tired body was stiff. And her brain was stuffed with cotton. But it was already seven thirty.

  Ten more minutes, she told herself and slipped back into her dream.

  A sleek beaver sat on a boulder under a low harvest moon. The moonlight glinted off its glossy coat. The animal watched her watching it for a moment, then shifted its gaze to the stream rushing by below, cold water glistening in the night. Aroostine followed its gaze. Down the hillside, across the water, and up on the opposing hill, set among the tall trees was a small log cabin. One yellow square of light shone through the sole window facing them.

  The beaver turned its silver eyes back to her. She could sense the animal trying to communicate something important about the little house.

  Then the harsh beeping back-up alarm of a garbage truck in the alley behind her building penetrated her sleep.