Vanished

by Joseph Finder

  A dark blue Buick Century sedan pulled up to the curb. She took note of the white license plate with the dark blue lettering that said U.S. GOVERNMENT. The license-plate number started with a J, denoting the Justice Department. Marjorie, whose cousin was married to an FBI employee, knew a fair amount about the FBI.

  After the FBI man had called her to arrange an interview concerning a matter at work, she’d been sorely tempted to call her cousin and see what she could find out. But he had instructed her not to speak to anyone. She hadn’t stopped worrying since the man called. She wondered if it had anything to do with her boss, Roger Heller. She was pretty sure it did. Especially after that man John Murray from Security Compliance had come to talk to her at the office about Roger and why he’d gone missing.

  Well, at least the FBI man was right on time. Seven o’clock p.m., just as he promised. She liked that. Marjorie was always on time, always precise. She was orderly in all things. She was nothing if not detail-oriented. This was one of the qualities that made her such a good lawyer, she was convinced. That, and her brains, and her willingness to work long hours without complaining. Right out of Georgetown Law she’d landed a job as an associate counsel in the corporate development division at Gifford Industries, working on mergers and acquisitions, and she was convinced that she was on the fast track to general counsel.

  Her salary wasn’t great, but that would change in short order. In the meantime, it had allowed her to buy this tiny ranch house in Linthicum, Mary land. The real-estate salesman had called it “an investor’s dream,” which meant that it needed a lot of work. She had done most of it herself, stripping the yellowed wallpaper, painting, even installing a new laminate hardwood floor in her kitchen by herself over a long weekend.

  This was the advantage of not having a social life. You got a lot of work done around the house.

  The FBI agent rang the doorbell, and she tried not to answer it too quickly. She didn’t want him to know how nervous she was. Nor that this was the high point of her week, although it was.

  In the other room her cockatiel, Caesar, whistled loudly.

  She opened the aluminum screen door and shook his hand. Something about his unhandsome face made him seem trustworthy.

  “Were my directions okay?” she said.

  “Perfect,” he said. “The Parkway wasn’t bad at all. Took me exactly thirty-seven minutes.”

  She liked his precision.

  She let him in and offered him tea or a soft drink, but he declined. He showed her his FBI badge and credentials, which she inspected carefully, though she’d only seen things like that on TV. The gold badge with the eagle and the embossed letters, in a black leather wallet. The laminated credentials with his photo and signature were clipped to the breast pocket of his cheap suit. He handed her a business card.

  They sat facing each other at an angle in the two easy chairs, which she had slipcovered herself with remnant fabric from a shop in Laurel. Her Apple MacBook laptop was open on the narrow desk. She glanced at it. She could see the screen from where she sat and wondered whether he could, too.

  His name was Special Agent Corelli, and he had a slight stammer that sounded like a residue from childhood. He was not slick or arrogant, as she was afraid an FBI agent might be, and she liked that, too.

  From his black nylon briefcase he took out a note pad.

  “Ms. Ogonowski, how well do you know Roger Heller?” he said.

  So it was about Roger after all. “Marjorie, please.”

  “Marjorie,” he said with an abashed smile.

  “Did something happen to him?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t talk about an active investigation. I’m sorry.”

  An active investigation! “Well, Mr. Heller is my boss-I mean, I just know him that way, of course.” She found herself looking at the business card, turning it over, evading his eyes.

  “Of course.”

  “He’s my direct supervisor, and it’s been superbusy lately-”

  “He’s been out of town a lot, hasn’t he? Out of the office?”

  “He travels a lot for business, yes.”

  “And for other reasons.”

  She hesitated. She drummed her fingers on the end table next to her chair, then reflexively, compulsively, began realigning the objects on the table, lining up the tiny Apple remote alongside the TV and cable and DVD remotes, making them all nice and parallel and evenly spaced. “I’m sorry, what’s the question?”

  “You recently tried to reach him when he was out of town. Not on company business.”

  How could the FBI possibly know about this? She’d promised never to tell anyone. Could that Security Compliance consultant, John Murray, have found out and told him? “I don’t remember.”

  “I think you do,” the FBI man said quietly.

  Something in him had suddenly switched off. No longer was he the trustworthy and sincere-seeming federal agent. Now there was a coldness in the man that frightened her even more than the question.

  Caesar started whistling again.

  “I’m sorry about the bird,” she said. “I need to change the cage liner, so he’s getting a little cranky.”

  “Not a problem,” the FBI man said.

  She slid her hand across the end table again, shifting, then straightening the remotes back into parallel lines.

  “Would you mind if I called the Bureau,” she said abruptly. “Is that all right? Just to-I don’t know…”

  He lifted his chin, turned up his hands, smiled. “Go right ahead. We always encourage that. The number’s right there on the card.”

  She stood up, went over to the wall phone in the hall outside the kitchen, within view of the FBI man. “My cousin’s husband works there,” she said. “I’m going to call him, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I don’t mind at all. Whatever puts your mind at ease.”

  Taped to the wall was a long list of phone numbers that included her cousin Beverly and Beverly’s husband, Stuart. She found Stuart’s office number and dialed it.

  The number on Agent Corelli’s card had a different exchange, she noticed, though she wasn’t sure that meant anything. Maybe main FBI had a different area code from the Washington Field Office. Then something else about the card attracted her notice, too.

  “Did they redo the business cards recently?” she asked, looking at Corelli’s card closely. “The seal on my cousin Stuart’s business card-”

  A hand shot out and depressed the plunger on the wall phone, breaking the connection. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

  She tried to scream, but a hand was clapped over her mouth. “I need you to tell me everything,” the man said softly, so quietly that she could barely hear his words over Caesar’s shrill whistle.

  74.

  Iwas waiting for Lauren to emerge from her bathroom.

  In the meantime, Gabe and I talked a bit in his room. I handed his graphic novel back, and he wanted to know what I thought. I told him I thought it was incredible. That I was honored and humbled to be The Cowl.

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “The hero. The Cowl. With the fortress of solitude in Adams Morgan.”

  “That’s not you,” he said.

  “I thought he looked a little like me. No?”

  “Huh? No way.”

  I sneaked a glance at his face. He looked awkward and extremely defensive. Deeply embarrassed. I had brought out in the open something he didn’t want to admit to out loud. “No,” I said. “Of course not. I mean, I wish, right?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, dude.”

  “Gabe, who’s Candi Dupont?”

  He was too young, or maybe too honest, to have learned how to cover. His eyes flashed with fear. “Just a name,” he said.

  “Candi Dupont is Dr. Cash’s girlfriend. Dr. Cash is your dad, Gabe.”

  “Oh, man. This is fiction. Don’t you understand how fiction works, dude? You take little bits and pieces from your real
life, and you weave it into this-”

  “Gabe. You read your dad’s e-mails, didn’t you?”

  “Screw you!” he shouted hoarsely. He shoved me away with one hand and turned away.

  “Gabe.” I put both of my hands on his shoulders and rotated him to face me. “Your dad used the same password on all of his accounts, didn’t he? His Gmail and his iTunes and what ever. And you accessed his e-mail.”

  He was crying by then. His face had gone scarlet, his acne like droplets of blood sprinkled over his nose and cheeks.

  “That’s how you found out about Candi Dupont, isn’t that right? That’s how you knew your dad had a… a relationship.”

  “He was cheating on Mom!” he gasped.

  “Gabe, it’s okay. I’m not going to yell at you. I really don’t care about that. I just need that password. If there’s any chance of saving your father.”

  He looked at me. “Why?”

  “Because you’re right: Candi Dupont is just a name. It’s the name that your father called his girlfriend, I’m guessing. A name she used. An alias of some sort. But it’s not her real name. Which is why we haven’t been able to locate her. But if we can find out what her real name is, we might be able to find your dad. Because maybe she knows. Gabe, I know how horrible this is for you-”

  “I don’t know her real name! How would I know that? All I know is that he was sending all these gross, like totally explicit, sexual e-mails to this woman named Candi Dupont, and she was writing back, and she was even more explicit, and he was lying to Mom the whole time, and it just made me want to puke.”

  “Of course it did,” I said gently. “Of course. But if you give me his password, we can find out her e-mail address. And that might be enough to find her.”

  His head was on his chest, his right elbow shielding his eyes from my gaze, and tears were spilling onto his T-shirt.

  “Gabe,” I said. “Come on.”

  WHEN LAUREN came downstairs, I asked her to go with me to Roger’s library so we could talk privately. We sat in the antique French club chairs, which were positioned so that each of us had to shift uncomfortably in order to look at each other.

  “How’s Roger?” I said.

  Her immediate reaction-a microexpression, I think they’re called-was shock. A split second later she had regained her poise. “You’re asking me? How could I possibly know-?”

  “Lauren,” I said. “You called him. A few hours ago. On the same disposable cell phone number that my father called him on.”

  She blinked quickly. “Nick…”

  “You’ve been lying to me since the beginning of this whole mess. You’ve known all along where he was.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t.”

  “Well,” I said, and I cleared my throat, “I wish I could believe that. But you’ve lost all credibility. If you ever had any to begin with. Is this some kind of a scam that you’re helping him pull off?”

  “Nick, will you listen to me?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d love to hear your explanation. And while you’re at it, maybe you can tell me how you justify putting Gabe through the hell you’ve put him through.”

  “Nick,” she said. “I didn’t know what happened to Roger until last night. I didn’t know anything more than you did. Yes, I admit it-I’ve been concealing a few things from you-but if you’d just hear me out-”

  “Last night,” I interrupted. “That was the first time you heard from him?”

  “Check my phone records.”

  “He called you? E-mailed you?”

  “He sent me a text message. With a number to call.” She lifted her purse from the floor, began rummaging through it. “Here, you can check my phone’s text-message in-box if you don’t believe me.”

  “So where is he?”

  “He said he’s being held somewhere in Georgia.”

  Paladin’s training facility and headquarters were in Georgia, I realized. “Yet he was able to call you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was able to receive a call from my father. What kind of imprisonment is that?”

  “He didn’t say he was in any kind of prison. Or even that he was a hostage.”

  “He said he was ‘being held,’ isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, that’s what he said. He kept saying he had to make it fast, that he only had a minute to talk-I had the feeling that wherever he was they didn’t know he had a phone. But listen-the main thing is, he said they were going to release him.”

  “ ‘Release’ him.”

  “That they were going to let him go free, finally. They were going to make a deal.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t say. I didn’t ask-there wasn’t time, and I didn’t know how freely he could talk.”

  “What kind of a deal?”

  “I don’t know, Nick. He just said that I should be careful, I shouldn’t do anything or make any phone calls or screw things up in any way, and they were going to let him go free. I mean, we talked for maybe a minute before he hung up.”

  “You must be relieved to hear from him.”

  “Of course I’m relieved. This has been a nightmare.”

  “You’re getting your husband back,” I said.

  For a long time she was quiet. “The truth is that our marriage has been over for a while now.”

  I felt something cold begin to coil in the pit of my stomach. “I see.” That didn’t surprise me. But it did surprise me to hear her say it.

  “I mean, ever since I found out about that affair he had-I haven’t been able to forgive him. We haven’t had a romantic life. He’s still a great dad to Gabe, though, and-”

  I stood up. “You know what, Lauren? I don’t really care anymore.”

  75.

  The Surgeon unfolded his black canvas surgical instrument kit and removed his favorite scalpel, a Miltex MeisterHand #3. He carefully inserted a blade made of the finest carbon steel.

  Marjorie Ogonowski was crying, the sound muffled by the duct tape over her mouth. Her hands and feet were bound to the bedposts by means of duct tape, too.

  He’d left her glasses on so that she could see him clearly.

  She’d stopped struggling a few minutes ago, but when she saw him put on the latex gloves, her writhing grew frenzied, her screams agonized. Seeing the scalpel escalated her terror considerably. But that was to be expected. One of the maxims of what was often euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques” was that the fear of pain was always far more effective than the pain itself.

  Of course, he wasn’t actually a surgeon-he’d been expelled from medical school after an unpleasantness he didn’t like to think about-but he’d gotten the nickname at Bagram, in Af ghan i stan. The CIA had needed to hire outside contractors to conduct interrogations in their secret prisons, in order to insulate the Agency politically. He’d so impressed his employers that they later sent him to Abu Ghraib. But when that whole mess became public, he’d been hung out to dry. There wasn’t much call for his talents in the private sector. He was fortunate to have been hired by one of the few buyers out there, Paladin Worldwide.

  Torture-to call it by its true name-was a greatly misunderstood art. It had become po liti cally correct in recent years, during the backlash to the war in Iraq, to claim that torture didn’t work. But if torture didn’t work, why had mankind been using it for thousands of years? Why had all those members of the French Re sis tance given up the names of their comrades, even their own family members, under Nazi torture? Torture was only in effective if it wasn’t done right. This wasn’t just a matter of creative techniques. You needed people skills. You had to know how to read people and how to establish your authority.

  He spoke softly, calmly, as he always did. To raise your voice was to lose control. “Let’s try this again. Mr. Heller was out of town, and you needed to reach him urgently, isn’t that right? I believe you were working on a big acquisition. A power plant in S
ão Paolo. Yes? Nod if I’m correct.”

  Her eyes were wide, and tears spilled down her face. She gave an exaggerated nod, up down, up down.

  “Something had come up suddenly. You needed to reach him right away. But he was out of the office on a personal day. Correct?”

  She nodded.

  “There was a big mergers-and-acquisitions committee meeting first thing the next morning, and the slide deck had already been prepared, but you found something in the due-diligence process that you were afraid might derail the acquisition. A showstopper, you thought. Am I right?”

  She nodded slowly. He could tell that she was puzzled as to how he knew this. Let alone who he was.

  There is nothing we fear so much as the unknown, and the Surgeon was not going to enlighten her.

  “But you had no way to reach him. You needed to reach him immediately, but he didn’t have his cell phone with him. You couldn’t e-mail him on his BlackBerry, because he didn’t have that with him either. Am I right?”

  She hesitated a few seconds before nodding.

  “Strange, isn’t it? A hardworking man like Mr. Heller didn’t have his cell phone or his BlackBerry with him while he was traveling at such a very busy time, when he needed to be reachable at all times?”

  Her eyes slid to one side. Her deception flashed like a neon sign.

  “Yet somehow you reached him. You talked to him. How so?”

  She looked away.

  “I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth,” he said. “But first I want you to see this scalpel up close. I want you to feel how sharp it is.”

  Her eyes widened, filled with tears. She began to shake her head-as if to say, No, please don’t-but then she stopped. She didn’t want him to misinterpret the gesture as an unwillingness to cooperate.

  He came in close, the scalpel in his right hand, and he moved it very close to her right eyeball.

  She closed her eyes, shook her head violently.

  “No sudden moves, please,” he said. “You’ll hurt yourself badly.”

  Her eyes remained scrunched closed.

  “Open your eyes, please, or you’ll be hurt much worse.”