by Lisa Gardner
“He visited Catherine twice?” Bobby asked.
“That’s what she said.”
“Did he show ID?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was anyone else with him? Another member of law enforcement? A partner?”
“She never mentioned anyone with him.” I placed my hand on his muscled arm. “But I think partners are just a TV myth,” I told him kindly. “The real FBI doesn’t do that sort of thing.”
“But they have secret undercover agents,” he drawled.
“Oh yes.”
“Who still live at home with their families?”
Across the room, D.D. was making frantic ixnay motions with her hand. That, more than anything, caught my attention. All at once, I heard how ridiculous my words sounded. All at once, the true implication of Catherine’s words hit me, and I felt my stomach plummet, the floor drop out from underneath me. Except I couldn’t be sick anymore. I couldn’t pass out cold. I had already played my best denial cards under the influence of alcohol. I had no tricks left.
“They do have undercover agents, don’t they?” I heard myself ask. “I mean, they could.…”
My hand was still on Bobby’s arm. He took it now, led me back to the sofa. I sat down hard. Didn’t move.
He took a seat across from me, on the edge of the bed. D.D. brought me a mug of coffee.
“Did your father ever tell you he was an FBI agent?” Bobby asked quietly.
I sipped scalding black coffee, shook my head.
“Did you ever hear him tell anyone else he was an FBI agent?”
Another negative, another bitter sip.
“Of course, we’ll call the Boston field office and ask,” Bobby said gently.
“But …”
“It’s the FBI, Annabelle, not the CIA. Besides, no FBI agent worth his salt would call nine-one-one over something as stupid as a Peeping Tom. First, he’d deal with it himself. Second, if he did feel there was a threat to himself or his family, he’d call his buddies to cover his back. Your father was interviewed three times by local officers and never once mentioned being an agent. It’s just too important a piece of the puzzle for him not to mention it. It … it doesn’t make any sense.”
“But why would he tell Catherine he was with the FBI?” I stopped talking. Finally saw the logical answer they’d seen from the very beginning. Because my father had wanted information on Catherine’s abduction. Personal, firsthand information, which was important enough for him to pose as a federal agent not once, but twice.
In November of 1980, my father was already obsessed with violence toward young girls. Except, in theory at least, no one had started stalking me yet.
Coffee spilled out of my mug, burning my hand. I used it as an excuse to retreat once more to the bathroom, where I ran cold water and stared at my reflection in the mirror. My features were ashen. Sweat beaded my brow.
I wanted to be sick again. I wasn’t going to be that lucky.
I washed my face with cold water. Again and again.
When I went back out to the main room, I rebuilt my face into a façade none of us were stupid enough to believe.
“I’m going to go to my room now,” I said quietly.
“I’ll walk you there,” said Bobby.
“I’d like to be on my own.”
Bobby and D.D. exchanged uneasy glances. Did they think I would bolt? And then it occurred to me: Of course they did. That was my MO, right? The mistress of multiple identities, a girl born to run.
Except that honestly hadn’t been me. It had been my father.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Every time we moved, my mother and I made so many mistakes. Used the wrong names, referenced the wrong cities, forgot key details. But my father never did. My father was always smooth, fluid, and controlled. How could I never wonder how he learned to lie so well? How he learned to live on the run? How he learned to adapt and reconfigure himself so easily?
My father always said to trust no one. Maybe that also applied to himself.
Bobby and D.D. still hadn’t said a word. I couldn’t wait anymore. I turned on my heels and headed for the door.
They didn’t stop me, not even as the door closed behind me and left me alone in the hall.
For just one moment I thought about it.
Run. It’s not so hard. Just put one foot in front of the other and go.
But I didn’t run. I walked. Slowly, very carefully, step by step, to my assigned room.
Then I lay down fully clothed on top of the cheap hotel bed. I stared at the whitewashed ceiling. And I counted down the hours to dawn, holding on to the vial of my parents’ ashes and praying desperately to find strength for the days ahead.
Bobby’s alarm went off at five a.m. He thought that was mean, so he hit Snooze. That bought him two more minutes, then his phone rang. D.D., of course.
“Are you sleeping at all?” he asked.
“What are you, my fucking mother?”
“Now, see, this is why you need rest.”
“Bobby, we have three hours before we have to leave for the airport. Get your ass up here.”
As words went, he didn’t find them inspirational. So he showered, shaved, packed, and poured himself a steaming mug of black coffee. By the time he reached D.D.’s room, she looked about thirty seconds from full boil.
He thought she’d launch into another tirade. At the last moment, however, she seemed to realize the error of her ways, and held open the door instead.
Her hotel room looked like it had been hit by a hurricane. Papers strewn, coffee spilled, discarded food decorating a room-service tray. Whatever she’d been doing since Bobby had seen her last, it hadn’t involved any rest.
“I already spoke to the hotel manager,” she started off curtly. “He promised to alert us immediately if Annabelle tries to check out.”
Bobby looked at her. “Because if Annabelle decides to bolt, naturally she’ll have the consideration to formally check out of her room first.”
“Oh my God—”
“D.D., sit down. Take a breath. For God’s sake, you’re one step away from the Looney Tunes conga line.” He shook his head in exasperation. She merely scowled.
D.D. was wearing the same clothes from the night before, now covered in wrinkles and smelling of day-old sweat. Her skin was sallow; her blonde hair, frizzed; her blue eyes, bloodshot.
“D.D.,” he tried again, “you can’t go on like this. One glance, and the deputy will yank your command and send you packing. It’s not enough to manage staff burnout. You gotta manage your own.”
“Do not take that tone of voice with me—”
“Look in the mirror, D.D.”
“I will not be patronized for doing my job—”
“Look in the mirror, D.D.”
“I will have you know, I’m one of those people who don’t need much sleep.”
He took her shoulders and firmly turned her toward the wall mirror.
“Holy crap!” she said.
“Exactly.”
She reached up, fingered her wild mane of hair. “It’s the humidity.”
“We’re in Arizona.”
“New hair product?”
“D.D., you need sleep. Not to mention a shower and a two-week vacation to Tahiti. For now, however, try a bath.”
Her nose crinkled. She finally sighed, her shoulders slumping forward.
“There are just so many pieces of this puzzle,” she said tiredly. “And none of them fit.”
“I know.”
“Christopher Eola, Richard Umbrio, Annabelle’s father. My head is spinning.”
Bobby pulled out the desk chair, took a seat, lacing his hands behind his head. “Okay, so let’s talk it through. November 1980 …”
“Umbrio abducts a young girl and stashes her in an underground chamber he’s conveniently found in the woods.” D.D. plopped down on the edge of the bed, leaning forward and planting her elbows on her knees.
“We bel
ieve this is his first act, done independently,” stated Bobby.
“Fits his profile as a loner with subpar social skills.”
“His victim is selected at random, a crime of opportunity.”
“Because she has the right taste in clothes,” D.D. amended.
“But also because she’s alone and falls for his lure. Point is, no premeditation. So one key difference between Umbrio and the UNSUB who pursued Annabelle Granger.”
“Catherine was adamant that Umbrio preferred his bare hands.” D.D. hesitated. “I can’t be sure, but it looked to me like there was something around the victims’ necks, inside the plastic bags. Some form of ligature.”
“He tied them up awfully fancy,” Bobby agreed.
“So another difference.”
“We assume.”
“Umbrio only kidnapped one victim,” D.D. stated.
“Boston State Mental subject took six. But maybe one at a time, so we’re still uncertain there.”
“Yeah.” D.D. was nodding slowly. She seemed to have recovered from her earlier fugue, was getting it together now. “Then, of course, we have the little gem regarding Annabelle’s father.”
“Oh yeah. Then there’s that.”
“Annabelle’s father brings us back to our first theory—that someone was inspired by Umbrio’s crime and thought to replicate it at Boston State Mental. We’d made the assumption that this ‘apprentice’ would’ve reached out to Umbrio in prison, maybe in person or by mail. But masquerading as an FBI agent and grilling Catherine in the hospital does the trick just as well.”
“Yes, it does,” Bobby concurred grimly.
“How goes the search for background info on Russell Granger?”
Bobby made a face. “Still can’t find a driver’s license or a Social Security number. Have tried multiple databases, multiple spellings. Have tried Leslie Ann Granger, Annabelle’s mother. I got zero, zip, nada.”
“In other words, Russell Granger is an alias.”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I managed to reach a personnel director with MIT right before we left town. According to her, there’s no record of a Russell Granger in the HR files. She’s working on tracking down the former head of mathematics in the eighties to verify. Hopefully, I can talk to him the minute we’re back in town.”
“What about life on the road?” D.D. quizzed. “Every time Annabelle and family got the hell out of Dodge, there must have been a reason. Have you tracked the cities, checked with local law enforcement?”
Bobby gave her a look. “Sure, boss, those are exactly the type of calls I can make in my free time. You know, between two and four a.m.”
“Hey, if this job is getting too tough for you—”
“Oh, shut up, D.D.”
She smiled at him. Not too many people felt like they could tell D.D. to shut up these days. He supposed it was part of his charm.
Now, however, her expression returned to being serious. “Bobby, what was the alias Annabelle’s father was using in Boston again?”
He looked at her in bewilderment. “Russell Granger. I thought that was the whole point of this conversation.”
“Not in 1982, Bobby. Later, when he and Annabelle returned to Boston. If she became Tanya Nelson, then he became …”
“Mr. Nelson?” Bobby quipped. He flipped through his spiral notepad. First time they’d questioned Annabelle at BPD headquarters, she’d provided a rough overview of cities, aliases, and dates. He found the page in his notes, skimmed through, repeated the process two more times. “I don’t … I don’t have Boston listed. Annabelle didn’t discuss their return.”
D.D. arched a brow. “Interesting omission, don’t you think?”
“There are a lot of cities and akas,” he countered, holding up the page for her inspection. “Come on, we just figured out we’d overlooked that information ourselves.”
D.D. continued to appear skeptical. “Get the Boston alias, Detective. Run it. Maybe Russell Granger stayed off the radar screen in the early eighties, but when he returned for his second time around …”
“Yeah, okay. Sometime, someplace, someone knew this guy.”
“Exactly. One last thing—don’t tell Annabelle.”
“I haven’t.”
“I don’t want to overplay our cards. If Russell Granger is the key to all of this, our only link to him is Annabelle. Meaning, we’re going to need her cooperation if we’re going to get anywhere.” D.D. paused. “And we need to talk to Catherine again.”
“You mean, I gotta talk to Catherine again,” he amended. “Nothing personal, but as you mentioned, clock’s ticking here, and it would take you and her half a day just to work out your aggressions. We have”—he glanced at his watch—“approximately two hours, which means I win Catherine, while you get to babysit Annabelle.” He glanced around her room. “Maybe you can put her to work cleaning.”
“Very funny.”
“Promise me you’re going to shower.”
“Funnier still.”
“Put on clean clothes?”
He was rising out of his chair. She smacked his arm. It hurt like hell, so he knew she was feeling better.
“Meet you at the airport,” he called over his shoulder.
“I can hardly wait.”
It took Bobby ten minutes to grab his luggage, square away his room, and hail a cab. The sun was just coming up, tingeing the sky an unnatural shade of pink, streaked with smoky purple. Traffic would hardly be a problem.
He doubted Catherine would be up at this hour. Which might work to his advantage, or might not. He wondered if she still had nightmares, and if so, were her dreams haunted by Richard Umbrio? Or her dead husband?
It took two tries before a voice answered the box outside the elaborate front gates. The taxi driver’s eyes widened as he entered the estate, but he didn’t say a word.
“Can you wait for me?” Bobby asked the driver, flashing his badge.
If anything, he made the hunch-shouldered Hispanic man more nervous.
“It’s okay, you can leave the meter running,” Bobby assured him. “Moment this meeting is done, I gotta hustle to the airport. Be good to have a cab already waiting.”
The driver reluctantly agreed and Bobby nodded in satisfaction. He wanted the cab visible from the house. A subtle reminder that Bobby was just passing through.
The housekeeper opened the door. She registered no surprise at his appearance. Simply told him the señora would be with him shortly. Would he like something to drink?
Bobby declined, then followed her to the atrium, where she showed him to a small patio table beautifully inset with a peacock mosaic and bearing a silver coffee service.
He took a seat, poured himself a cup of coffee, and tried not to glance at his watch. He wondered how long Catherine would make him wait. Anticipation or punishment? With her, it was always hard to know.
The answer was fifteen minutes.
When she finally did appear, she wore a royal blue satin robe, belted at the waist. The long, sinuous fabric moved with her as she walked toward him, the rich color setting off her glossy black hair. A smile toyed with the corners of her mouth. He recognized her look instantly.
First time Bobby had met Catherine after the shooting, it had been at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. She’d been standing in front of a Whistler painting, Lapis Lazuli, which featured a nude woman lounging against a rich sea of blue oriental fabric. Catherine had remarked on the sensual lines of the painting, the erotic nature of the pose.
She had picked that painting to befuddle him then, just as she had picked this robe to befuddle him now.
And even knowing better, he could feel his stomach tighten in response.
She drew toward him, pausing in front of the table. She didn’t take a seat.
“Miss me, Detective?”
“Heard the coffee was good.”
Her smile broadened. “Still playing hard to get.”
“And still as astute as always,” he
acknowledged. “How’s Nathan this morning?”
A shadow flickered across her eyes. “Rough night. I don’t think he’ll be going to school today.”
“Nightmares?”
“It happens. He’s seeing a good therapist now. Plus, he has his dog. Who knew Richard’s own puppy could make such a difference? But the dog calms him, often better than I can. I think he’s making progress.”
“And you?”
She gave him a playful look. “I’m much too old to tell a complete stranger how I really feel.” She finally pulled out a chair, gracefully taking a seat. He poured her a cup of coffee in paper-thin china. She accepted it wordlessly.
For a few minutes, both of them sipped their coffee and let the silence be enough.
“You’re here about Annabelle,” Catherine said at last. “Because I recognized her father.”
“Came as a bit of a shock,” he acknowledged. “Can you tell me about it?”
“What’s there to tell? I was in the hospital. He came to my room. Asked me some questions.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“No, just said he was a special agent, FBI.”
Bobby arched a brow, but she put down her coffee cup, dead serious now.
“I only remember him because he kept arguing with me. I was in the hospital, happy to finally have everyone gone, not asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. How do you feel, Catherine? What do you need? Can we get you anything? Really, I was starving, dehydrated, and raped out of my fucking mind. What I needed was for everyone to leave me alone.
“And then this man walked in, dressed in a dark suit and tie. Not a big man, but quite handsome. He flashed his badge and announced, ‘Special Agent, FBI.’ Just like that. With authority. I remember feeling impressed. His tone was firm, strict. Like what you would expect from an FBI agent.”
“What did he do, Catherine?”
She shrugged. “He asked questions. Police questions. What did I remember about the vehicle—color, make, model, plates, interior? Please describe the man who was driving. Height, weight, coloring, age, ethnicity. What did he say, what did he do? Where did he take me, how did we get there, and on and on and on. Then he showed me a sketch.”