by Lisa Gardner
They both fell silent, considering and reconsidering.
Bobby spoke up at last. “We have two possibilities. One, Granger was playing Catherine. Set her up just so he could learn details about her abduction without anyone being the wiser. Or two, Granger honestly had a suspect in mind. He produced a sketch of the man he had reason to believe was her rapist.”
D.D. went along: “Say he had a suspect in mind—why not call the police with the name?”
“Dunno.”
“Also, this is 1980, right? Two years before Granger’s daughter allegedly starts receiving gifts. So why was Granger so obsessed with criminal activity?”
“Concerned citizen?”
“Who thought the best way of serving justice was to masquerade as the FBI? Please. Honest people don’t disguise themselves as police officers.”
“Honest people generally have records with the DMV, and Social Security numbers,” Bobby pointed out.
“Meaning …”
“Russell Granger’s not very honest.”
“And could very well have been researching criminal activity to inspire his own set of crimes. Sinkus is chasing Eola,” D.D. declared crisply. “I want you in charge of Granger. Hunt down the neighbors, locate this former head of mathematics at MIT. Let’s see what kind of life Annabelle’s father led in Arlington. Then get serious about their life on the run. You have cities, you have dates. I want to know—did Annabelle’s family run because of something Russell Granger feared or because of something Russell Granger did. You get me?”
Bobby nodded. “We should follow up with Walpole,” he said. “Catherine’s convictions aside, we need to check Umbrio’s prisoner file for records of previous correspondence, the visitors’ log, that sort of thing. Make sure he continued to be the antisocial fuckup she knew so well.”
“Agreed.”
“I … uh, I’m pretty busy covering the Granger angle.…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll sic someone else on it.”
“Okeydokey,” Bobby said.
“Okeydokey,” D.D. agreed.
Satisfied, she zipped up her files, snuggled deeper into her seat.
“Good night, Bobby,” she murmured. Thirty seconds later, she was out cold.
Bobby glanced across the aisle to where Annabelle still slept, seat reclined, long dark hair obscuring her face. Then he glanced back to D.D., whose head was already lolling against his shoulder.
Complicated case, he thought, and tried to get some rest.
We found the note on D.D.’s car on the third floor of the parking garage at Logan Airport, positioned under the right windshield wiper.
None of us had spoken since we’d disembarked from the plane, trudging through the terminal, the yawning pedestrian skywalk, the labyrinth of walled-off construction sidewalks that tunneled through Central Parking. Outside, it was cold and raining. The weather matched our moods. I was preoccupied with thoughts of my father, questions about my past, and—oh yes—the need to pick up Bella from the vet’s, which was always complicated when using public transportation. D.D. and Bobby were no doubt thinking high-level police thoughts, such as who had once kidnapped and murdered six girls, had the subject done such a thing before, and—oh yes—how could they blame my dead father for this entire mess?
Then we saw the note. Plain white paper. Thick black ink. Handwritten scrawl.
D.D. moved immediately to block my view. The first two lines, however, were already seared into my brain.
Return the locket or
Another girl dies.
There was more text. Smaller letters, lots of words following the opening threat. I couldn’t read them, however. Details, would be my guess. How exactly the police should return the locket. Or how exactly another girl would die. Maybe both.
“Shit,” D.D. said. “My car. How did he know …?”
She conducted a quick twirl of the vast cement space. Looking for the messenger? I saw her gaze dart to the corners and realized she was checking for security cameras, trying to see how lucky they might get. I glanced around for security cameras myself. They weren’t that lucky.
Bobby was already leaning over the front hood of the car, scrutinizing the sheet of paper, careful to touch nothing.
“Gotta treat it as a crime scene,” he said in a clipped, tight voice.
“No shit.”
“We’ve been away, what? Thirty, thirty-one hours? Pretty big window for delivery.”
“I know,” D.D. singsonged, her tone as curt as his.
She shot me a glance over her shoulder, her expression all pissy again.
“Hey, can’t blame my father for this one,” I said.
She glowered. “Annabelle, now would be a good time to catch a cab.”
“Perfect. Wonder how many reporters I can find along the way? I’m sure they’d love to hear about this.”
“You wouldn’t dare—”
“Gonna return the locket?”
“One, this is police business. Two, this is police business—”
“Who wrote it? Did he sign a name? Mention me? I want to read the note.”
“Annabelle, catch a cab!”
“Can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because this is my life!”
D.D. thinned her lips. She pointedly returned to the note, still untouched on the windshield of her car. She wasn’t going to let me see it. She wasn’t going to share. Law enforcement was a system. One that didn’t care about a person like me.
Moment stretched into moment. D.D. read. Bobby studied her face, his own look impenetrable. They were in the zone. I was outside, looking in.
Even I have my limits. I gave up, turned away.
“Wait!” D.D. glanced at Bobby. “Go with her.”
“Hey, I don’t need a babysitter.”
D.D. ignored me, still speaking to Bobby. “I got this covered. You stay with her.”
“We need to talk about this—” he stated levelly.
“We will.”
“I don’t want you doing anything rash.”
“Bobby—”
“I mean it, D.D. You may be the sergeant, but I’m the former tac-team guy.” He stabbed his finger at the note. “I know about this. This is bullshit. You will not do what this says.”
D.D. jerked her head toward me. “Later,” she murmured. “Get her settled. I’ll assemble the task force. We’ll discuss.”
He scowled, gaze clearly skeptical. “Later,” he grudgingly agreed, peeling away from her unmarked Crown Vic, heading toward me. I used the opportunity to try to catch a glimpse of the rest of the note. I simply saw the same two lines: Return the locket or … Another girl dies.
Bobby put his hand on my arm, pulling me away. I let him, but only until we were out of earshot of D.D.
“What does it say?” I demanded.
“Nothing. Probably just a publicity stunt.”
“The general public doesn’t know about the locket. It never made the news.”
Apparently not even the fine detective had connected that dot yet. His footsteps faltered. He caught himself. Soldiered on. We had reached the elevator. He punched the down button with more force than necessary.
“Bobby …”
“Get into the elevator, Annabelle.”
“I deserve to know. This involves me.”
“No, Annabelle, it doesn’t.”
“Bullshit—”
“Annabelle.” The elevator doors were closing behind us. “The note doesn’t even mention you. The author wants D.D.”
He drove me in silence to the vet’s. There, Bella greeted me with ecstatic frenzy. She twirled, she jumped, she smothered my face in kisses. I held her longer than I intended, burying my face in the thick mane at her neck, grateful for her warmth, her squirming body, her madcap joy.
Then the traitor turned around and jumped on Bobby with equal enthusiasm. There’s no loyalty in the world.
Bella settled down once I got her to Bobby’s car. She enjoy
ed a good car ride as well as the next dog, scooting close to the passenger’s door so she could decorate the window with nose prints. She’d already left a trail of fine white hair all over the recently cleaned seat. It made me feel better.
Arriving at my apartment building, Bobby parked illegally and came around to the passenger side. I opened my door on my own, a rather pointed statement. He simply diverted his attention to Bella, who of course bounded out of the car and pranced around his legs, oblivious to the rain.
“Always a pleasure to help a lady,” he said, patting the top of her head.
I wanted to hit him. Pummel him. Kick and scream at him as if everything were his fault. The violence of my own thoughts startled me. I walked with shaky footsteps to the building, working my keys with fingers that trembled.
Bella dashed up the stairs to the apartment building. I followed at a slower clip, trying to pull myself together as I went through the motions of unlocking doors, checking mail, securing all portals behind me. I had a rolling feeling in my stomach. A childish urge to stop and cry. Or better yet, pack five suitcases.
My father had masqueraded as an FBI agent, interviewing a young abduction victim two years before I’d ever been stalked. My best friend had been killed in my place. Someone, twenty-five years later, was now demanding the return of my locket.
My head hurt. Or maybe it was my heart.
Once in my apartment, Bobby made the rounds. His fluid movements should have made me feel better. Instead, his need to secure my apartment only upped my anxiety as I realized that, once upon a time, this was exactly what my father would’ve done.
When Bobby finished, he gave me a curt nod, permission to enter my own home, then took up position against the kitchen counter. He watched as I went through my own homecoming routine, setting down the mail, depositing my suitcase in my room, filling a water bowl for Bella. The digital display on my answering machine read six messages, unusual volume for my quiet little world. Instinctively, I moved away; I would check the messages later, when Bobby was no longer around.
“So,” he said.
“So,” I countered.
“Plans for the evening?”
“Work.”
“Sewing?”
“Starbucks.”
He frowned. “Tonight?”
“People like their java twenty-four/seven. Why? Am I under house arrest?”
“Given recent events, a reasonable level of caution is not a bad idea,” he replied levelly.
I couldn’t take it. I jutted my chin up and cut to the heart of the matter. “My father didn’t do it. Whatever you’re thinking, my father wasn’t like that. And the note proves it. Dead men aren’t known for their personal correspondence.”
“Note’s not your concern, Annabelle. Note is official police business, which may or may not have anything to do with this case.”
“So my father posed as an FBI agent and he visited Catherine after her attack. Maybe as a father he wanted to understand first-hand what kind of monster preyed on little girls. Maybe as an academic, he felt it was the best way to do research. I know there’s an explanation!” The words sounded defensive, the theories preposterous even as I laid them out. But I couldn’t help myself. After a lifetime of warring with my father, of accusing him of being controlling and manipulative, suddenly I was his biggest defender. It was one thing for me to distrust my father. But I would be damned before I’d let anyone else beat him up.
Bobby seemed to be genuinely considering my words. “All right, Annabelle. Give me a reason. Try something on for size. I’m willing to be open-minded. The pitchforks and torches can come out later.”
“He wasn’t even around when Dori disappeared,” I said sharply. “We were already in Florida.”
“So you believe,” he said.
“So I know! My father never left us once we got settled in Florida!” I told the lie effortlessly. I thought, bitterly, that my father would be proud.
Two weeks after we’d been in Florida, me, waking up in the middle of the night. Screaming. Wanting my father, begging for my father. My mother coming to my side instead. “Shhh, sweetheart. Shhhh. Your father will be home soon. He just had to go tidy up some loose ends. Shhh, sweetheart, everything is all right.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Bobby’s even-toned voice returned me relentlessly to the present: “Annabelle, where is your family’s furniture? Your whole family disappeared in the middle of the afternoon. What happened to your stuff?”
“A moving van came and got it.”
“Pardon?”
“I talked to Mrs. Petracelli—”
“You what?”
“I hid in a corner and shut my eyes,” I said sharply, anger returning to full boil. “What did you think I was going to do? Wait for you and D.D. to serve up my life on a silver platter? Please. You’re the cops. You don’t care about me.”
He took a step forward. The look on his face was no longer impassive. His eyes had turned a deep, stormy gray. I thought I should be scared. Instead, I felt excited. I wanted to fight, to war, to rage. I wanted to do anything other than continue to feel helpless.
“What did you tell Mrs. Petracelli?” he demanded.
“What, Bobby,” I parodied in falsetto, “don’t you trust me? Aren’t we all on the same team?”
“What the hell did you tell Mrs. Petracelli!”
“I told her nothing, you ass! What did you think I’d do? March into the home of a woman I haven’t seen in twenty-five years and announce the police had found the body of her long-lost daughter? Please, I’m not that cruel.” I took a step forward myself, stabbed his chest with my finger. It made me feel tough, even as his eyes went a darker shade of granite.
“She told me movers came and packed up our house. No doubt my father arranged it by phone, had everything placed in storage. Maybe he imagined the police would figure things out one day. Then we could return home, pick up where we left off. My father was a big believer in planning ahead.”
“Annabelle, there are no real estate transactions, no storage bins, no records for a man named Russell Granger.”
My turn to be blindsided. “But … but …”
“But what, Annabelle? Tell me what was going on in the fall of ’82. Give me something to believe.”
I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know … I didn’t understand.…
How could there be no record of Russell Granger? Arlington was supposed to be my real life. In Arlington in ’82, at least, I had lived.
Bobby wrapped my hands with his own. That’s how I realized I had started trembling, swaying on my feet. From the doggy bed, Bella issued a nervous whine. I couldn’t reach out to her, couldn’t speak. I was thinking of my father again, of whispers in the middle of the night. Of things I didn’t want to know. Of truths that would be too much to bear.
Oh God, what had happened in the fall of ’82? Oh Dori, what did we do?
“Annabelle,” Bobby ordered gently. “Put your head between your knees. Draw a breath. You’re hyperventilating.”
I did as he told me, bending at the waist, staring at my scarred wooden floor as I struggled for air. When I stood up, Bobby’s arms went around me and I fell into his embrace quite naturally. I smelled his aftershave, verbena and spice tickling my nose. I felt his arms, warm and hard around my shoulders. I heard his heartbeat, steady and rhythmic in my ear. And I clung to him like a child, embarrassed and overwhelmed and knowing I needed to pull myself together, but desperate for the sanctuary of his arms instead.
If Russell Granger never existed, what about Annabelle? And why, oh why had I believed that moving to Florida was the first time my father had ever told a lie?
“Shhhh,” Bobby was whispering in my ear. “Shhh …” His lips touched the top of my hair—a small, thoughtless kiss. It wasn’t enough for me. I tilted up my head and found him.
The first contact was electric. Soft lips, raspy whiskers. The smell of a man, the feel of his lips pressing against min
e. Sensations I rarely allowed myself to experience. Needs I rarely allowed myself to feel. Now I opened my mouth, drawing in his tongue, wanting to feel him, touch him, taste him. I needed this. I wanted to believe in this. I wanted to feel anything but the fear that loomed in the back of my mind.
If he could just hold me, then maybe this moment would last, and the rest would fall away and I wouldn’t have to be scared and I wouldn’t have to feel alone and I wouldn’t have to hear the voices now growing in the back of my mind.…
“Roger, please don’t go. Roger, I’m begging you, please don’t do this.…”
In the next instant, Bobby was setting me back and I was reeling away. We retreated to separate corners of the tiny kitchenette, both breathing hard and refusing to meet each other’s gaze. Bella scrambled up from her dog bed. Now she pressed against me anxiously. I reached down and focused on smoothing the fur around her face.
Minute turned into minute. I used the time to school my features, to find my composure. If Bobby had taken even one step forward, I would’ve gone to him. Yet, the moment we were done, I would’ve pulled away. Hid behind the smooth composure I had perfected over the years.
And I realized again that my mother had not been the only casualty of my father’s war. He had taken something from me, too, and I didn’t know how to get it back.
“What about my mother?” I asked abruptly. “Leslie Ann Granger. Maybe, for some reason, my parents had everything in her name.”
“Annabelle, I’ve searched for both of your parents’ names. Nothing.”
“We existed,” I insisted weakly, stroking Bella’s fur, feeling the reassuring weight of her head pressing against my hands. “We played with the neighbors, had a social life, a role in the community. I went to school, my father had a job, my mother was in the PTA. That’s all real. I remember it. Arlington was not a figment of my imagination.”
“What about before Arlington?”