The Black Widow

by Wendy Corsi Staub

Again.

  And then again.

  Frustrated, she turns to her laptop. After swiftly signing into her own account, she looks for Ben’s profile. She’s had enough practice at that to know how to bring it up immediately. Only . . .

  It isn’t there.

  According to the Web site, there’s no such person registered on InTune.

  And the only Alex Jones on the site, when she looks for her, turns out to be an older African-American gentleman who lives in SoHo.

  The truth is apparent—and ominous: both accounts have been deleted without a trace.

  Sully gulps the tea she just poured into her cup, then curses as boiling water scorches her throat.

  “You okay?” Stockton asks.

  “Not really. I’m delirious and supremely pissed off.”

  “You can’t blame Morales. He’s trying to call attention to his nephew’s case.”

  She nods grimly. She understands that José Morales is desperate to find Bobby, frustrated by the many months that have gone by and the lack of media attention. But a good many people in the tristate area have now seen the frenzied reports of a potential serial killer.

  “The last thing we need is for whoever took Bobby Springer and the others to see the news, panic, and harm them.”

  “If they’re still alive.”

  “A big if,” Sully contends. “But possible. Dammit.” She shakes her head and blows on the mug of tea clasped in both her hands. “I wanted to control what was released to the press, and when.”

  “I’m thinking someone might come forward with information about one of the other cases.”

  “Maybe. Along with all the stark raving lunatics we’re going to have to weed out.”

  “Goes with the territory. You know that. Easy there, Gingersnap.”

  She blows on her tea again and sets down the mug to rub her aching back.

  The other three missing men’s names haven’t been released in the press—yet. But it’s only a matter of time before someone figures out who they are. Their families will need to be warned, and—

  “Detectives?” The rookie again, poking his head in the door.

  Sully and Stockton look up expectantly.

  “There’s a phone call. About Carlos Diaz.”

  “That was fast.” She looks at Stockton. “You want to take it, or should I?”

  “Depends. Is it a stark raving lunatic?”

  “I hope not. It’s a cop. NYPD,” the rookie adds. “Said he might have a lead for you.”

  Gaby is waiting on the curb in the rain without an umbrella when Jaz pulls up in front of her building. She jumps into the passenger’s seat. “Go around the block,” she says, “and head north.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Vanderwaal. It’s up in Westchester.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Please, let’s just get going. I’ll program the address into your GPS in a second.”

  Jaz starts driving. “Why are we going to Westchester?”

  “Because that’s where she lives.”

  “The woman Ben is with? How do you know?”

  “She wrote it in her profile. I saw it before she deleted it. She said she’s a nurse and she owns a house in Vanderwaal and her name is Alex Jones.”

  “That sounds fake.”

  “It might be, but when I Googled, I found an address—the house is owned by an Alex Jones. It’s a brick cape built in the fifties. That’s exactly what she described to Ben.”

  “Did you tell the police all this?”

  “I keep trying. I left a few messages with the detective in New Jersey, and then I called 911, but when I heard myself trying to describe what had happened, I sounded crazy. Please tell me I’m not crazy, Jaz.”

  “You’re not crazy. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but . . .”

  Gaby flashes a brief smile. “I just called my local precinct, and they gave me a number for Missing Persons.”

  “Did you call it?”

  “I’m calling it now.” She takes out her cell phone and the scrap of paper where she’d scribbled the number. “Just keep heading north.”

  “What are we going to do when we get there? Knock on her door and ask where Ben is? Because if he really is in danger—”

  “We have to help him.”

  “How? I’m pretty sure you’re not a superhero, Gaby. And I know I’m not. We have to let the police handle it.”

  “We will, as soon as we can get the right person to listen to what’s going on. But I’m not going to sit at home waiting for that to happen. I love him, Jaz.”

  “Obviously. And I’ll keep driving you up there on one condition.”

  “What is it?”

  “That when this is over and everything is fine and Ben is back where he belongs . . . you’ll stop pretending.”

  “Pretending what?”

  “Pretending that you’re moving on, pretending you’re over your marriage, pretending you’re thinking about a future with someone new. ’Cause none of that is happening. You’re wasting your time and my time, acting like it is. If you want Ben, then go back to Ben.”

  “You make it seem so easy.”

  “You make it seem impossible.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “No room for maybes anymore, Gaby. This wishy-washy stuff . . . it isn’t you.”

  “People change. Things change them.”

  “Good. Then let this change you back to the way you used to be. If you’re brave enough to go barreling up to Westchester to save Ben, then you’re brave enough to either give your marriage a second chance or cut him loose forever. Period. That’s what I think.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Gabriela turns her attention back to the scrap of paper. “Just drive.”

  “I will. And just you remember our deal.”

  Ivy Sacks isn’t answering her home phone or her cell phone. That isn’t surprising. Sully left messages on both voice mails asking her to call immediately.

  “You really think she’s gonna call you back?” Stockton asks from the passenger seat as they barrel up the Henry Hudson Parkway through the rainy dusk, heading toward the northern suburbs.

  “Do you?”

  “Depends on what she wasn’t telling us.”

  Sully nods, hands clenched on the wheel, trying to picture the benign Ivy Sacks as some kind of black widow serial killer. It isn’t particularly hard to do. She’s met her share of unlikely psychopaths.

  Still . . .

  “If she was responsible for his disappearance,” she asks Stockton, “then why go looking for him? And why claim he’s her brother?”

  “Good question. Maybe she—” Breaking off as his cell phone rings, he answers it immediately. “Barnes here . . . Yeah, we are . . . Yeah . . . Yeah . . .”

  Impatiently listening to his end of the conversation, Sully can tell by his tone that something’s up. He pulls out a notebook and scribbles, asking questions like, “When was this?” and “Where is it?”

  At last he hangs up.

  “What?” Sully asks.

  “I know you were on a roll with your three-month-cycle theory, but . . . we got another one.”

  “Another disappearance? When?”

  “Today. Hispanic male. Benito Duran. Thirties. Structural engineer. Went to meet a woman he met online and no one knows where he is now, but someone saw them together and he was acting like he might have been drugged.”

  She shakes her head. “Doesn’t fit the pattern. It’s too soon.”

  “The timing doesn’t fit. The rest does. He had an InTune account that was deleted sometime today, and so was the profile of the woman he was meeting.”

  “How do we know this?”

  “His ex-wife. Gabriela Duran. She’s the one who called the police. She admitted that she was looking through his files. She saw the private messages between Duran and this woman. She got a name and everything.”

  “Way to go Gabriela Duran! What did she say the woman’s name is?”


  “Alex Jones. They’re running it now. The other thing is . . . you ready for this? She drives a black BMW.”

  Sully’s eyes widen. Jimmy Pontillo, the cop who lives in Vanderwaal, had also mentioned a black BMW, saying that Ivy Sacks claimed Carlos had been a passenger in one the night he disappeared.

  Ivy hadn’t mentioned that to her and Stockton when they interviewed her yesterday. Either she hadn’t been aware of it then or she didn’t want them to know about it. If the latter—why not? And if the prior . . . then the latter is also the case, because she didn’t share the information with them as soon as she got it.

  Thoughts spinning, Sully presses down a little harder on the gas pedal. The sooner they get up to Vanderwaal, the better.

  Five minutes later Stockton’s phone rings again. This time the call is brief.

  He hangs up and looks at Sully.

  “We got the name for Pontillo’s neighbor. The house is owned by an Alex Jones.”

  Chapter 14

  Still holding the gun, Alex takes a shovel from the garage wall, keeping an eye on the passenger’s seat. She doesn’t have to guess what’s running through his mind when he sees her drop the shovel into the trunk.

  He’s afraid. She can feel it.

  She slams the trunk closed. All set. Again.

  But this is the last time she’s going to make this trip. It isn’t working out. All she wanted was to get her son back in her arms—Dante. Her beautiful boy. All she wanted was another chance.

  She’d been so certain it was going to happen now that Carmen is back, but—

  Climbing into the driver’s seat, she gasps.

  It’s not Carmen waiting for her. It’s . . . Ben.

  That’s right. You knew that. Remember?

  She frowns, troubled by her own confusion.

  Ben . . .

  Carmen . . .

  They’re so much alike. So are all the others who have come and gone. They had all the right qualities to recreate the son who had been stolen away from her.

  Maybe she should have given Ben a chance to try, too.

  But her fertile time is still weeks away.

  If only it had worked before now, with one of the others. If only her son was in her womb again. If only . . .

  She’d been so excited that day in the obstetrician’s office last summer, before the doctor uttered those terrible words: “You’re not pregnant, Alex.”

  “But . . . but I have to be. I’ve missed my period for months now. My husband and I have been trying, and now I’m late.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Yes, Carmen is away on business, and—”

  “You seem a little confused,” the doctor cut in gently. “Your husband isn’t—”

  Alex talked on in a rush, not wanting to hear the doctor’s words, not wanting to see the look of concern—or was it alarm?—in her eyes.

  “Before Carmen left, we were trying for a baby, and we did just what you told us to do, Doctor. We used the calendar to mark my cycle, and I took my temperature, and—”

  “Alex, that was twenty-five years ago. It was—”

  “—and it worked, and now my period is late. I’ve been keeping track. It’s been months. I can show you the calendar!”

  “I believe you. But you’re not pregnant. You’re fifty-five years old, and you’re in menopause, and your husband isn’t away on business, he’s—”

  “No!” she shouts now, pushing away the memory of that awful February day.

  The man in the passenger’s seat flinches violently.

  Again she’s startled to see Ben, and not Carmen, sitting there.

  It’s unnerving, the way she keeps forgetting and mixing them up.

  “We’re going now,” she tells him, pressing the garage remote and then shifting into reverse, all with her left hand. The gun is still clutched tightly in her right.

  The garage door whirs into motion, slowly rising behind the car. The night beyond is dark and rainy.

  “If you try anything stupid—like opening the car door and jumping out—I will shoot you. Get it?”

  “Yes.”

  But he might be willing to take that chance, she realizes. He’s probably weighing the odds that she’ll be able to spontaneously take aim and shoot accurately from behind the wheel of a moving car.

  She backs out into the rain and flips on the windshield wipers with her left hand. “Ben? Remember when I asked your ex-wife’s name?”

  She can feel him stiffen. “Yes.”

  “I will find her. And I will kill her.”

  “But . . . why?”

  She shrugs, not interested in explaining that she’s betting he still cares about his ex; that if they hadn’t lost their child, they would still be together.

  “I will kill her,” she repeats. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  She shifts the car into Drive and heads down the street, beginning the familiar route upstate to the property where Carmen built his dream house before she burned it down.

  Stockton hangs up yet another phone call. “Gotta love suspicious wives. Ex-wives, anyway.”

  “Yeah? What have you got?” Sully brakes for a car that’s creeping along in the left lane on the parkway, blocking traffic.

  For the past ten minutes Stockton’s been talking to Ben Duran’s ex-wife, Gabriela, and taking notes like crazy.

  “I’ve got a lot. I’ll fill you in. She’s on her way up there.”

  “Up where?”

  “Same place we’re going.”

  “Cherry Street? She’s meeting us there?”

  “Yeah, sounds like she’s maybe five, ten minutes behind us.” Stockton refers to his notes and begins running through them, going over everything Gabriela Duran said during their conversation. He’s thorough, as always.

  When he finishes, he says, “So that’s where we’re at. Got any questions?”

  “Just one. Is she coming up there to kick her ex-husband’s ass or to save it?”

  In the passenger’s seat of the BMW, Ben stares bleakly out the windshield, wondering where the hell she’s taking him.

  He’s familiar enough with the area to know they’re heading north, away from the city and the suburbs. When he was a kid, his parents sent him and Luis to camp up here the one summer they managed to afford it. He remembers very little about it other than being homesick and feeling as though he were in the middle of nowhere. Less than two hours from the city, yet nothing but woods and mountains all around. He hated it.

  His father thought he was ungrateful when Ben said that later, after he was home again. But his mother understood. “Eres un nino cuidad,” she said. He’s a city boy.

  They never sent him away to camp again.

  Now, staring at the forested black landscape rising around the car, he feels more isolated than he ever has in his life.

  In the city there are millions of people around to notice you, to hear you, to help you. Up here there’s no one.

  If he tries to jump out of the car at this speed, he might be killed.

  If he waits till she slows the car and gets off the road—sooner or later she’ll have to—he can jump more safely, but he might be shot.

  And even if he isn’t . . .

  I will find her. And I will kill her.

  The ominous words ring in his ears.

  Ben can’t take a chance that this lunatic will go after Gaby. He just can’t put her at risk. No matter what.

  Cuidala, Abuela had said to him on his wedding day, and he in turn had assured her that he would take care of Gaby. Despite all that’s unfolded in the years since, he intends to keep that promise.

  Arriving at 45 Cherry Street, Sully and Stockton note that the house across the street—number 42—is dark.

  “How come no one in my family ever dies and leaves me Westchester real estate?” he grumbles to Sully as they walk up the driveway of the house Jimmy Pontillo’s girlfriend inherited from a great-aunt.

/>   “You’re wishing your loved ones dead so that you can inherit real estate?”

  “They’re dying off anyway, Gingersnap, and they’re not leaving me anything but piles of crap nobody wants. You think your father’s big-ass television set’s a problem? You should see what my mama had piling up in her place for sixty years.”

  Stockton is all business once they’re inside the home’s foyer with Jimmy, who informs them that he watched his neighbor through the window as she drove away ten minutes ago.

  “It caught me off guard that she left. But I did get the plate.” He hands over a scrap of paper.

  “I’ll have them run this,” Stockton says, stepping aside with his cell phone.

  “Was she alone in the car?” Sully asks Jimmy.

  “No, there was someone with her.”

  “Man? Woman?”

  “Too dark to tell. What the hell is going on over there?”

  “We’re not sure. What else do you know about your neighbor?”

  “My girlfriend knows a lot more than I do. Hey, Heather!” he calls, and an attractive young blonde materializes instantly in the curved archway leading to the next room.

  She was listening, Sully realizes. But keeping her distance, letting Pontillo call the shots. Is it because he’s the cop—or the man?

  “They’ll run the plate,” Stockton announces, rejoining them.

  Jimmy makes introductions and Heather invites them into the living room, offering lemonade.

  They turn it down politely but hurriedly. Ben Duran’s life is hanging in the balance.

  “Like I told Ivy when she was here this afternoon,” Heather says, “I really don’t think my neighbor is dangerous. She’s just crazy. I might be, too, if I lost a child.”

  Sully opens her notebook, grabs a pen. “What happened? What child?”

  “It was years ago. I was a kid myself. I spent summers here. She had a son, Dante, who was about my age.”

  “Dante,” Sully echoes, writing it down. “As in . . .”

  “Bichette.” That comes from Jimmy.

  “What?”

  “Dante Bichette. The baseball player.” Jimmy’s tone implies Heather should know that.

  Stockton shrugs. “I was gonna say Inferno.”

  “Tell us about Dante, Heather.”

  “I didn’t really know him,” she tells Sully. “He never got to play outside with the other kids. She was really overprotective of him even before . . .”