by Andrew Gross
“I was at the mall,” the woman said. “I picked up a few things for the house. Frames for those pictures of the kids. Then I went into Williams-Sonoma. I was looking at those Japanese knives we were talking about—”
“Okay …” I heard her husband sigh, beginning to lose interest. If I wasn’t so damn scared, I might have laughed out loud—it sounded a lot like Dave and me.
“Anyway, I’m pulling in now. See you home.”
“Love you.”
The SUV turned to the right. I rolled against the shopping bags, knocking one over, a bubble-wrapped vase or something tumbling out. Did she hear? When she parked at the store, would she come around and check the back to make sure everything was all right?
I raised myself to see where we were and, to my alarm, saw that it wasn’t the Stop & Shop after all, but an Exxon station.
A wave of panic sheared through me—not knowing which side of the vehicle the gas tank was on, I envisioned the woman getting out and standing virtually inches from me as she filled up the tank. Her eyes becoming twice their size at what she saw curled up inside her car …
She pulled up at a tank. The driver’s door opened and the woman stepped out and went around the car, passing right above me. I held my breath. Thank God, the windows were tinted and I had her shopping bags pulled all around me. She crossed to the other side of the vehicle and went over to a pump.
Through the darkened glass I watched her put in her credit card and unscrew the fuel cap. My heart stood still as I realized what would happen if she merely looked up and let her eyes wander inside her car.
I froze.
Suddenly she put the pump on automatic and headed away. I lifted myself just enough to watch her go around the car and inside the market.
This is my chance.
I pushed aside the bags and rolled myself over the backseat. I opened the door on the gas tank side, away from the market, and slid out, shutting the door behind me. Immediately I was face-to-face with a man at the pump directly across from me. Inside I froze, but on the outside I got my wits together just enough to give him an innocent smile; to him it would just seem like anyone climbing out of the backseat. I doubted if he’d even still be there when the woman came back.
Hastily, I hurried away from the car, expecting any second to hear a shout from behind me. Hey, you, what are you doing? Stop!
But I didn’t. Ahead of me, there was a Bed, Bath & Beyond and a Burger King across the street. I hurried to Burger King and ran around the corner, out of sight. For the first time, I exhaled in relief. I checked the time. I was two miles away from where I had to meet Harold and had no way to get there. I had only ten minutes. I did the only thing I could think of.
I called Harold on his cell.
“Yes,” he answered hesitantly. I could hear he didn’t want to take the call. “You made it out okay?”
“Little wrinkle,” I said with a chuckle. “But doing better now.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
In the makeshift Homeland Security–FBI Command Center at Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, Alton Dokes looked through a series of photos that had just come in.
The first was of a navy GMC Explorer parked at the Town Center mall in Stamford, Connecticut. It had New York license plates that had been stolen off of a 2008 Honda Civic in Bridgeport four days before. The Explorer matched the one that had been reported missing from a private home in Vermont yesterday morning.
A home directly across from one owned by David and Wendy Gould.
The next photo was of that same vehicle going through the ticketing gate at the Town Center mall in Stamford an hour earlier.
Dokes focused on the driver behind the wheel and smiled. Her shortened and newly dyed hair, the partially hidden face. Gotcha, darling. He chuckled to himself.
But what was she doing here?
A team of agents was already on their way. As well as additional surveillance photos requested from office buildings surrounding the mall. It was just a stroke of luck as it turned out, his luck actually, that she had managed to avoid being captured there.
He had to hand it to the gal—she had shown herself a remarkably difficult target to kill.
Still, one thing did concern him as he leafed through the photos. One of the suspect as she made her way through the mall, another of her sitting at a table having coffee in the first-floor atrium. She was huddled in conversation with a man. A man whose face might not be known to most, but it was to him. Someone connected to her in ways beyond what she likely knew.
Dokes paused on the photo. He knew what had to be done. His own survival depended on it. The survival of a host of people depended on it. That was what they did—warriors. They did the work that had to be done. The work that no one ever saw, through the muddy troughs of what ended up as history and what would never be fully known.
But that wasn’t the only reason he would make sure she never got to tell her tale.
He had spent too many years getting his hands dirty in holes like El Paso and Mexicali to see it all washed away now. And Harold Bachman … he had gotten his nose in it. He’d been asking about Gillian in DC. Hadn’t he learned?
He was another one to deal with.
One of the young agents came over, Holmes, who had been the trigger man at Grand Central, and asked, “You want me to get this out to the press?” He pointed to the close-up taken of Wendy Gould driving into the garage. “We can have her face across the country in minutes.”
Dokes looked at the grainy security photograph of her behind the wheel. You’ve been more trouble than you’re worth, he said to himself, but that’s about to come to an end.
“Thanks,” he said, picking up his cell phone, motioning for the agent to leave. “I’ll handle it from here.”
The number appeared on the screen. KVC Consulting.
On the fourth ring a woman answered. “Sabrina Stein.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
We drove for an hour and turned off Route 15 in Hamden. We wound through the quiet streets of small apartment buildings and attached houses until we were near New Haven. A sign pointed straight ahead to Quinnipiac University.
Harold pulled in front of a five-story redbrick apartment building that had probably looked modern back in the sixties. He turned off the car. It was dark and cold. A few flurries were blowing around. We both agreed that someone must have recognized the Explorer—which meant the police now knew I’d taken it. Along with Jim and Cindy, who I figured could now be put in a room with just about everyone else I knew, who now assumed that whatever was being said about me had to be true.
“Wait here,” Harold said, opening the door. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He got out and went around the back of the apartment building. My anticipation started to rise. I finally was about to come face-to-face with the one person who might be able to corroborate my story. Who could take me a step closer to the truth—a truth that several people had now died for. On the street, a young couple passed by the car walking their dog.
A short while later Harold came back and waved me out of the car. I crossed the street and he took me through the rear entrance, facing the parking lot, and down the narrow lobby hallway to the elevator.
“No one knows about this place,” he said. We stepped inside and he pressed the button for the fourth floor. “Not the government. Though they’ve tried to. Not any of my colleagues. Just me and you. And just so you also know, while I value everything you’ve told me, Wendy, I value the person you’re about to meet a whole lot more.”
“I understand.” I nodded. “Though it’s not like there’s much of anyone I could possibly tell these days,” I said with a smile.
“Just so you understand,” Harold said as he closed the door.
The elevator was tiny and cramped, a diamond-shaped window on the door, and it slowly clattered up to the fourth floor, where Harold pushed open the door and we went down a dark hallway. He stopped and knocked on Apartment 4C.
&nbs
p; The door opened slightly. A woman peeked out. Adrenaline started to surge in me. She unlatched the chain.
I stared into the pretty, dark-complexioned face of Lauritzia Velez. “Please come in,” she said, looking at me haltingly, opening the door.
Harold gave her a hug. “Lauritzia …”
She squeezed him back, appreciatively and gratefully, and led us into the small, sparsely furnished apartment. She was tiny, dressed in jeans and an orange sweater tied over a white tee. Her face was almond-shaped and pretty, just like in the photo, with narrow cheekbones and shy, mysterious eyes that in another time, if things were different, might have sparkled with joy.
“It’s still a mess,” she said to me apologetically. “I’ve only been here a couple of weeks.”
“It’s nice,” I said, looking at the modern IKEA-style furnishings, bookshelves stacked with what looked like textbooks.
“The furniture came with it,” she said. “Mr. Bachman has been very generous to me.”
“Lauritzia, this is Wendy Gould,” Harold said.
“I know who you are,” Lauritzia said to me with trusting eyes. “Mr. Bachman explained …”
“And I know who you are,” I said. “I have for a while.”
“In a minute, maybe you can tell me how. In the meantime, can I get you some tea? A glass of water?”
“A cup of tea would be terrific.” It had been a week since I’d had one. A week from hell.
“I’m good,” Harold said, shaking his head slightly.
The water took a couple of minutes to boil, and I spent it looking around the living room. It was neat and barely looked lived in. I picked up a photo of what I took to be her and her brother and sisters, the girls dressed in light-blue dresses and beaming with joy, at what I figured was a family wedding. A sadness came over me. The happy faces of those who I knew were dead now. Knowing the tragic fate that awaited them all.
It was hard to look at. That was how it would be to look at my husband now …
I put it down.
“I keep it out because there are days that it somehow fills me with hope,” Lauritzia said, bringing a tray to the small, round dining table. “And then there are days I cannot look at it. Because it makes me ashamed to be alive.”
“I know exactly how you feel, Lauritzia,” I said. “And how does it make you feel today?”
“I kept it out,” she said with a shrug, and shifted a stack of books from the table. “So I guess hopeful. Please sit down.”
The tea was hot and steamy and just what I needed. “Thank you.”
“Mr. Bachman told me what has happened. I don’t read the newspapers much or listen to the news. He said you came to him a few days ago to find me. How did you know about me?”
I dug into my bag and took out Curtis’s phone. I scrolled to the last photo and pushed it across to her.
As she stared at it, she brightened slightly, her face coming alive in a hesitant smile.
I explained, “I went to see Curtis’s mother. In Boston. I found her number in there. She told me what he was looking into at the end … about what happened at the Westchester airport. I looked into it, and when I read about you, I knew it was you in the photo. I had no idea who you were, of course, but I traced it back to your trial. I know why he was trying to find you, Lauritzia. Why he needed to see you. It was the last photo he took. Just before he died. You said you know who I am, right?”
“Yes. Mr. Bachman has explained to me.”
“Then you also know that I was with him when he was killed.”
This time she stopped, and nodded slightly, averting her eyes.
“So you know that finding out why is the only way I can get to the truth behind what happened.”
“The truth …” Lauritzia seemed to be measuring me. “To prove why he died?”
“To prove my innocence, Lauritzia.” I cupped my hands around the mug. “I had no business being up there. I can’t take that back. But I didn’t kill those people. Though I suspect that’s something you probably already know. You’ve been living with this kind of sentence over you for a long time.”
She nodded again, this time putting her hand along her face and rubbing her cheek. “I was very sad to hear what happened to him. I knew it was not how they said. He was a nice man. I could feel that as soon as he came into my room at the hospital. I could see he only wanted the truth, not to hurt anyone. I told him he shouldn’t get involved in this. That this wasn’t his fight. I told him what would happen. How it would end. But he wanted to know …
“As soon as I heard what happened, I knew it was not as they said. You are right—I have lived with that sort of knowledge a long time. Just as I knew, as soon as I looked in his eyes and spoke with him, that he would have the same fate. The truth you call it … The truth for you is how you get yourself out of this, Ms. Wendy, but truth only deepens the darkness for me.”
“The person who killed him”—I put down my mug and looked at her—“was a government agent, Lauritzia. He said, ‘This is for Gillian,’ and then he shot him. Point-blank. There was nothing I could do. I believe he was trying to stop Curtis from ever divulging what he knew. I now know the person he was referring to. It wasn’t so much a person as a place. And I know what happened down there, in Culiacán …”
A paleness crept across Lauritzia. She brushed the hair from her eyes and looked away.
“Lauritzia,” Harold said, reaching across the table, “I brought Wendy here because there are things she needs to know … things you might know. Things you’ve never told me, but I think it is safe to tell her if there are. She’s been harmed in all this, just like the two of us have been harmed. You more than anyone. It’s not just that she’s trying to clear herself … It’s that she’s lost people close to her too. Just like us. People who she loved. And those people deserve a voice too. To make it clear who bears the guilt. Who did these terrible things and what’s behind them. Just like your brother and sisters should have a voice. So it’s okay—”
“My brother and sisters do have a voice. The problem is not giving them a voice but finding anyone who will listen. Who will do anything …”
I reached across to her and touched her arm. “I want to be that person, Lauritzia.”
She stood up, away from my grasp, holding back tears. “What can you possibly do? When I look at you I see the same thing I saw in Curtis. The killing will just continue. No matter what you want to do about it. No matter who you think you can tell.” She looked at Harold, fear coming from her. “Now, even you cannot back out of it!”
She went over to the window. The blinds were down and she peeked through them, to see the street below; as if she could see far beyond it. To a different world maybe. To her home. My heart ached for her, with what she’d been through. When she turned around, all she did was nod. “I know what you want to know. You want to know what Curtis told me, sí? In the hospital?”
“Yes.” I nodded.
Her voice grew resigned, but I heard something else in it. Sadness. And her face contained a kind of sadness too. As if she was talking to people who were now alive, who would soon become ghosts. As they all had become ghosts for her. She sat back down, put her hands on the table, and nodded. “I know exactly what you’ve come to hear.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
“He said he knew why Eduardo Cano wanted me dead. That it wasn’t just revenge, revenge for what my father had done. For his betrayal. But for what he knew. What he had to protect against my father saying. It was why my father was driven from his family and agreed to testify against him.”
I pressed. “It was that the Bienvieneses weren’t the actual targets of that shooting, wasn’t it? In Culiacán.”
“The Bienvienes?”
“The government agents, in the first car. It was the girl. In the car behind them. Ana Lasser. She was the target. Yes?”
Lauritzia’s face remained still for a moment, in a last defense. Then she simply looked at me and nodded. “Sí.”
Suddenly it all made sense to me. Things I hadn’t realized before. “That’s why there was a year’s gap between the first and second killings. Your brother was killed a year before the others. That one was a warning. But then it turned into something different. The rest was a punishment. Your father talked.”
Lauritzia put her hands in front of her face, and tears came into her eyes. “I am not saying my father is a good man … I know what he has done, and he will have to answer in his own way to God. The choices in life are different for us down there. He started as a worker in a kitchen. My mother died when I was four; it was a struggle just to keep us fed. My sisters had to work at an early age. I lived with my aunts and uncles. One of them knew someone who was part of la familia. One day my father came home with money. He no longer worked in the kitchen. Who here can judge him? Soon we were all living together again in a house. He never wanted it for any of us. He always kept it separate from us. He sent us to school. He pushed us, in the other direction …”
“Lauritzia, no one’s judging him,” I said. “We just want—”
“I am not saying the murder of three American students is somehow more forgivable than the murder of two government agents … but he knew, when it came out that the two federales were killed in that first car, that the nortes would never rest until they found out who had done this. Everything changed for him then. It was to save us that he did this thing. He was able to put Eduardo Cano in a U.S. prison. The Untouchable One. If he was put away, it would have only been my father who had to suffer. Then they let him go, and my family’s life turned to hell.”
She stood up. This time there was something deeper and more resolute carved into her face. Not fear; it seemed almost freeing. As if she was finally letting go everything she had been holding back and that had been boxed inside her for such a long time.
“Yes, that girl who was in the second car was the one they were sent to kill. My father confessed this to me the day he left. In tears. He confessed this to all of us. An innocent girl, just like me. He intended to salvage some honor in doing what he did. But all it ended up bringing him was hell.”