“I’ve got just a few more questions.”
“Yeah?”
“Hasan’s home address.”
“Not sure.”
“What?”
“I have one on record, but when he went missing, I found out he doesn’t live there. He’s been feeding me a load of bull.”
“You must be furious. Do you keep a log of trips made by your drivers?”
“Sure. It’s required by law.”
“Can you tell me anything about Hasan’s remaining hours at work before he went missing?”
Jake paged through his log book.
“How do you like that?” he asked. “Right after he made that trip with your gal, he has more than forty-five minutes unaccounted for. Then again, throughout the day, more of the same. No metered rides after 3:00 p.m. on December 16.”
Two days before Ellen went missing.
Jake’s phone rang and he engaged in another adversarial conversation with a driver while Liz waited. “Look,” he said, turning to Liz after hanging up the phone. “I know what you’re going to ask me next. What kind of guy is he? Am I right?”
Liz nodded.
“Well, I don’t know. These Arabs, they have a different language, a different cultcha. I know he smoked in the cab. We got complaints. I know he played Middle Eastern music in his vehicle, too. Hasan sometimes turned in valuables. We logged them in here.” He opened a well-worn logbook to a page headed “December 16, 2000.”
“No, he didn’t turn in anything on his last day at work,” Jake went on. “I know he rarely turned down a fare. He kept that cab moving. Beyond that, the guy was a closed book. Didn’t talk about a wife, kids, sports, anything.”
“What’s this?” Liz asked, pointing to some wiring on the dashboard that seemed to lead nowhere.
“That’s the connection for his two-way.”
“Radio?”
“Yeah. He was always yakking on that thing.”
“Did he use it to communicate with you?”
“Nah. I told you, in the city we don’t dispatch cabs via radio. He used it to talk with his buddies. We allow this, if it doesn’t interfere with the driver’s work. But you have to be licensed to operate a two-way from the cab. He had to remove his when he wasn’t using it so the other drivers couldn’t use it. I got the documentation filed here, don’t worry.”
Like the rest of the office, the filing cabinet was orderly. It held several original documents pertaining to the missing cabbie, and photocopies of each. Jake handed Liz an extra copy of the radio license.
“Take it,” he said.
The document had the same false address that Liz had seen before. But the face in the photo was new to her.
“A dark horse,” Jake concluded. “That Hasan was one dark horse.”
December 16, 2000
The word Shukran was astonishing enough coming from the mouth of that whdah franjiyah, that non-Arab. But the remark, “Ya saqiqati al-habibah aa rifuki kull al-awqat,” was more alarming still.
“My beloved friend, I know you always.”
This is not the “How do you do?” greeting a foreigner might learn from a phrase book. Colloquially correct and properly, if slowly, pronounced, this was the statement of a person conversant in the Arabic language.
That shaqra, that blonde. Help me, Allah, she can indeed speak the language.
Such were the thoughts that drove Samir Hasan, cabdriver, to follow the pair of women into the elevator, even while his cab was idling at the curb. Making sure to turn around and face the elevator door as soon as he entered it, he heard the pale-haired woman ask someone to push the button for the top floor where the Windows on the World restaurant was located. When she awkwardly interjected the word mishmish into some silly conversation about fashion, the cabdriver decided to get out the next time the elevator doors opened and take another one back down to the lobby.
Hardly able to disguise his agitation, Hasan hurried back to his two-way radio to broadcast his panic to a compatriot he only knew as Fa’ud, the same man who had, while assuming the cabbie was alone, radioed a grocery list of highly secret code words.
“Ladhibhah teena is not enough. How tall is she? How is she dressed? Where is she at this moment?” Fa’ud demanded.
“Why are you asking this? I am telling you the words are no good now. The shaqra heard them but she doesn’t know why we are using them. We must change them.”
“It’s too late. Allah save us. You must take care of her.”
“You cannot be saying. . .”
Chapter 12
New York City, December 23, 2000
Liz decided to lose no time in getting back to Boston. But there was something she wanted to accomplish before leaving the city.
Hiring a cab from the garage, she got in the vehicle and opened her envelope containing Ellen’s photos. Squinting to read the print on the shopping bags held by Ellen and Nadia in the photo taken at the New York Public Library, she asked the driver to take her to Florissa’s Gift Emporium on 44th Street.
“Got a street number?” the cabbie asked.
“Sorry, no.”
“East or west?” he asked.
“Not sure.”
“Forty-fourth is one-way running west. Unless you hit it lucky, this’ll cost ya.”
“Let’s start near the New York Public Library and take our chances.”
“You’re the boss.”
Liz was in luck. The gift shop was just two blocks west of the library. She paid the cab and entered a shop that exuded a sickeningly sweet smell of potpourri pillows and scented soaps. It hardly seemed the sort of place a woman like Ellen would find attractive. Nor did it look like the kind of shop a tourist would favor. Even the generous stock of crystal and china sold here was largely imported from Ireland and the British Isles, making it an unlikely choice for anyone wishing to bring home something made in America. There wasn’t even a rack of postcards in the place.
Liz showed her photo of Ellen and Nadia to three clerks, but none would admit to recognizing the shoppers. Two volunteered that they’d worked on the days Ellen and Nadia spent in the city, but they said another clerk, who was presently taking a few days off for Christmas, had also worked afternoons during that time. Not surprisingly, they refused to give contact information for their colleague.
Disappointed, Liz took a business card and gave the shop girls one of her own. After leaving the shop, she hailed another cab. It was no use following up on the other shopping bag in the photo. It would be an impossible job to interview countless clerks in the massive department store, Saks Fifth Avenue. So Liz swung by Janice’s apartment. After making apologies for cutting her visit short, she picked up her travel bag, hailed another cab, and paid a pretty penny to be driven to LaGuardia Airport. She had to wait for two fully booked flights of holiday travelers to take off before she finally got a shuttle to her city. But since the shuttle flights took off every half hour and the flight was only thirty-eight minutes long, Liz made her way to Boston in time to report her story.
When she told Dermott about the cabbie’s disappearance, the city editor gave her twelve inches and the order, “Deliver the new stuff and then recap. Be sure to pull the heartstrings about the kid. Doesn’t look like Mom’s coming home anytime soon.”
On her ATEX keyboard, Liz began to hammer out her article. Then, unzipping the coconut on her desk, Liz took out a chocolate. Voted “Most Unusual Freebie of the Year” by the editorial assistants, the oddball item had been sent to her some months ago by the Fijian Tourism Board on the mistaken assumption that “Misses Higgins” was a travel editor. Originally filled with a bar of coconut soap, a vial of coconut oil, and a press release about a Fijian spa, the hollowed-out shell with a red zipper running around it now served as a quirky stash for sweet
s.
Thanks to editorial assistant E.A. Tenley, the bizarre candy container also served as a paperweight for two articles from that day’s papers. Liz picked them up. One was an article by Nancy Knight, headed: “Fingerprints Inconclusive in Missing Mother Case.” The headline said it all, but nevertheless, the broadsheet World gave Knight plenty of space in which to elaborate.
“Newton Police reported yesterday that missing Newton librarian Ellen Johansson’s kitchen was remarkably free of fingerprint evidence,” Knight wrote. “‘The dearth of fingerprint evidence suggests that an attempt was made to wipe down surfaces,’ said Newton police chief Anthony Warner, referring to the Fenwick Street home from which Johansson, 34, went missing five days ago.”
In contrast to Knight’s luxuriously long rehash, Dick Manning’s shorter Banner piece telegraphed the essentials—and the Page-Five article offered a nugget of new information:
WIPE-OUT
By Dick Manning
Newton police chief Anthony Warner fingered what he called ‘a dearth of fingerprint evidence’ as stalling the wrap-up of a chilling pre-Christmas crime that has tony Newton suburbanites shivering.
Fingerprint evidence was just one thing that went missing five days ago, when well-heeled Newton mom Ellen Johansson, 34, made an unexplained exit from the home she shared with her husband, Erik Johansson, 37, and the couple’s eight-year-old daughter, Veronica. The couple’s new Honda Civic was gone, too, when the strawberry-blond third-grader came home from school to a kitchen stocked with bloodied Christmas-cookie–making ingredients.
Warner said he saw evidence of a “wipe down” of the Johanssons’ top-of-the-line marble countertops. But the police chief could only speculate about why the cleanup job was left unfinished.
“It looks like someone was interrupted,” Warner told the Banner. “It’s like somebody wiped the place down before sprinkling blood on those ingredients. The only fingerprints we found in the countertop area were on the dinky dishes that held the ingredients, and those prints belong to Mrs. Johansson,” the chief added.
“The only unaccounted-for fingerprints we found were on an empty teacup in the kitchen sink,” Warner said. Other nonfamily fingerprints found on the scene belong to a handyman, Floyd Margate, 43, of Everett, who repaired the disposal last week, and the couple’s babysitter, Laura Winters, 26, of Brighton.
At the time of this reporting, police had not yet verified the whereabouts of Margate and Winters on Dec 18, the day Ellen Johansson went missing. But the Banner learned Margate was on another job in Everett throughout that day. And Winters was at work at the Children’s Enrichment Aftercare Program and later at the Johansson home on the day in question. The daycare provider stayed to help with Veronica until the child’s grandmother, Olga Swenson, 69, returned from her hairdresser’s appointment on Boston’s posh Newbury Street and was contacted to take the child to her Wellesley home.
“Hey, Dick,” Liz called out, seeing the reporter crossing the room with a cup of coffee. “Nice follow-up on the handyman and daycare provider.” It was nearly Christmas, after all.
“Just part of the job,” he said, but smiled and added, “Thanks, Legs.”
Liz turned her attention back to the ATEX terminal where the message “Lines are up!!” flashed across the top of the screen, alerting reporters they could find out how much space they had for their stories. This was a throwback to a much earlier time in the news business when type was set line by line by compositors. Now, reporters were actually given their assignments in column inches, which were measured at the press of a button by the ATEX machine. Similarly, the term “slug,” referring to the name for each story file, harked back to the days when type was set in trays for printing and lead slugs were used to identify them.
As Liz typed in her byline, another message flashed on her ATEX terminal. “Cut to 8 inches,” it read.
Sighing, she made a quick phone call to Laura Winters. Fortunately, Laura was in.
“Listen, Laura, do you have the impression that Mrs. Johansson is a neat freak? I’m asking because my colleagues in the press are jumping to the conclusion that her fingerprint-free countertop is evidence that a criminal tried to wipe down the scene.”
“Yeah, I saw those reports. But it doesn’t surprise me at all that those countertops were so clean. She’s the type to take a sponge to anything in reach—even doorway moldings—when she’s talking on the phone. And I’ve seen her, on more than one occasion, wipe the counters off before starting a cooking project. Come to think of it, she usually did that while wearing rubber gloves. I wouldn’t call her a neat freak. It’s more like she is in the habit of being tidy.”
“Do you have any idea why she would have an empty teacup with a stranger’s fingerprints on it in her kitchen sink?”
“Sorry, I don’t have a clue on that one.”
“Any word from the Johanssons?”
“To me? ‘’Fraid not. With Veronica at her grandmother’s, I wouldn’t expect they’d need me to babysit. Maybe they’ll call on me after Veronica comes back to aftercare.”
Laura was eager to hear the latest news on the case, but Liz had to say good-bye in order to write it. After filing her story, she phoned her friend Molly Trowbridge at the reference desk at Harvard University’s Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, the largest of the well-endowed institution’s ninety-six libraries. When Molly informed Liz that their specialist in Middle Eastern languages and literature had gone home and would not be back until after Christmas, Liz pressed the librarian to help her find a faculty member who could help her translate the Arabic words she’d seen squiggled on the back of the cabbie’s grocery list.
“I’ll give you the phone number for the faculty office of the Middle Eastern department, but you should be aware that the university is closing for Christmas break as of this evening. Too bad, because normally it wouldn’t be hard to find a grad student who could help you. If that doesn’t pan out, you might try a book dealer the library buys from—he’s originally from somewhere in the Middle East but has a shop in the vicinity of the Cambridge courthouse. Or, as a last resort, you could contact Finn Peter Translation Services in Central Square. I say ‘last resort’ because they mostly deal with Western or European languages, but they may be able to point you in the direction of an Arabic translator—if they haven’t closed shop for the holidays.”
Liz took down the librarian’s information. Sure enough, both the faculty office and Finn Peter Translation Services were closed. But the phone answering machine message at Turkoman Books was somewhat more promising. On it, a pleasant male voice announced the shop’s address, noted hours for the weeks of December 17 and 24, and invited inquiries. In case a mention of her newspaper would alarm the book dealer, Liz decided not to leave a message. Instead, regarding the blinking light on her own answering machine, she retrieved her messages.
Two of them grabbed her attention.
“Hello, Ms. Higgins,” a female voice said. “My name is Nadia and I’d like to talk with you. Since you’re not in, I will call you again.”
Liz pressed *69 to find out where the call had come from, but a recorded message informed her that the caller’s number could not be identified.
The other message was short but sweet. “It’s Cormac. Call me. Please.”
Liz dialed the doctor’s number, only to receive a recorded message. This one gave no particulars of his whereabouts.
Before exiting the newsroom, Liz accomplished three more tasks. She photocopied both sides of the grocery list she’d found in the New York City cab. She retrieved another manila envelope bearing her name from René DeZona’s cubby. And she read her e-mail messages. Amid a slew of public relations pitches and several holiday wishes from far-flung friends, Liz noticed five messages sent from as many different e-mail addresses, all bearing the same one-word message: “Blister.”
“At least it’s not another ad for Viagra,” Liz thought, exiting the e-mail system. It was too late to take time for personal messages, except for perhaps one. Reentering her password, she replied to an old message she’d saved from Cormac Kinnaird.
“Tidings of comfort and joy,” she wrote, and signed the message just “Liz.”
Out in the Banner’s parking lot, the snow was heaped in discolored mounds. But the windows of Ho Tong Noodle Company, across the street, were illuminated later than usual. Perhaps the staff was enjoying a holiday party, or working late to produce products for the New Year.
“No, no,” Liz chided herself. After three years working in this neighborhood, how could I forget Chinese New Year does not fall on January 1st? I must be tired. And no wonder, she thought as she drove past the Banner’s outdoor Christmas tree, strung with multicolored lights as if to compete with the bright hues of neon signs shining nearby in the windows of Asian restaurants.
In contrast, Liz had lost her glow. As she turned the Tracer onto the turnpike, she found herself peeved by Kinnaird’s brief message. Or perhaps it would have been more accurate for her to admit annoyance at herself for how much it mattered to her. On the one hand, he’d referred to himself as Cormac. Surely it was a good sign that he’d dropped the last name and the title “Dr.” But then the message was so uninformative. He could just as well be seeking her for personal reasons as for business. Here it was, the last night before Christmas Eve, and Liz hadn’t acquired a gift for anyone other than her plow driver and her cat. Even she and Molly Trowbridge had failed to set up a time to exchange gifts, neglecting a tradition that went back many years for them.
Liz had to bypass her house and its billboard before reaching a turnpike exit that would take her in the direction of Gravesend Street. As she approached the billboard, she wondered for the umpteenth time why the company that handled renting it did not arrange for messages to be hung on both sides. Surely that would bring everyone involved double the income. But this was not the time to inquire.
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