Buried Secrets

by Joseph Finder

She looked uncertain whether to show me in. In the end she closed the front door and asked me to wait outside.

  The door opened again five minutes later.

  It was Taylor. She looked dressed to go out, her small black handbag slung over her shoulder.

  “What?” She said it the way you might talk to some neighborhood kid who’d rung your doorbell as a prank.

  “Time for a walk,” I said.

  “Is this going to take long?” she said.

  “Not long at all.”

  HALFWAY DOWN Mount Vernon Street I said, “The guy Alexa left Slammer with last night—what’s his name?”

  “I told you, I don’t remember.”

  “He never told you his name?”

  “If he did, I couldn’t hear it. Anyway, he wasn’t interested in me. He was, like, hitting on Alexa the whole time.”

  “So you have no idea what his name is.”

  “How many times are you going to ask me? Is that what you came back for? I thought you said you found something.”

  “I just wanted to be sure I understood you right. Does your daddy know you got a ride with some guy whose name you don’t even know?”

  For a split second I could see the panic in her eyes, but she covered smoothly with a scowl of disbelief. “I didn’t get a ride with him. I got a cab home.”

  “I’m not talking about how you got home. I’m talking about how you got to the bar in the first place.”

  “I took a cab.” Then she must have remembered about things like taxicab company call records and the like, and she added, “I hailed one on Charles Street.”

  “No,” I said softly, “you arrived with him in his Jaguar.”

  She did the disbelief-scowl again, but before she could dig herself in deeper, I said, “It’s all on the surveillance video at the hotel. You sure you want to keep lying to me?”

  The look of desperation returned to her face, and she didn’t try to conceal it. “Look, I didn’t…” She started off prickly, defiant, but seemed to crumple in front of me. Her voice was suddenly small and high and plaintive. “I swear, I was just trying to help her out.”

  24.

  “I met this guy at a Starbucks, okay?” Taylor said. “Yesterday afternoon. And he really, like, came on to me.”

  She looked at me, waiting for a reaction, but I kept my face unreadable.

  “We just started talking, and he seemed like a cool guy. He asked if I wanted to go to Slammer with him, and I … I was sort of nervous, ’cause I’d just met him, you know? I said, okay, sure, but I wanted my friend to join us. So it wouldn’t be so intense. Like not really a date, you know?”

  “Alexa knew all this?”

  She nodded.

  “His name?”

  A beat. “Lorenzo.”

  “Last name?”

  “He might have told me, but I don’t remember.”

  “So you two came to the Graybar together, and Alexa met you—where? Upstairs in the bar? Or in front of the hotel?”

  “In line, in front. There’s always a line there like a mile long.”

  “I see.” I let her continue spinning her tale for a while longer. The surveillance video was fresh in my mind: Alexa joining Taylor in line, no guy with her. The guy had approached the two of them in the bar an hour later. Acting as if he’d never met either one of them before.

  So: a total setup. He’d pretended to introduce himself to both girls. Taylor had been part of the arrangement.

  “You got a smoke?” I said.

  She shrugged, took the pack of Marlboros from her handbag.

  “Light?” I said.

  She shook her head in annoyance, fished around in her handbag, and pulled out the gold Dupont lighter. As I took it from her it slipped out of my hand and clattered to the cobblestones.

  “Jesus!” she said.

  I picked it up, lighted a cigarette, handed the lighter back. “Thank you. Now, tell me about Lorenzo.”

  “What about him?”

  “How old?”

  “Thirty, thirty-five.”

  “What kind of accent?”

  “Spanish?”

  “Did he give you his cell phone number?”

  “No,” she said.

  “How’d you feel when he went home with your best friend instead of you?” I said.

  She fell silent for a few seconds. I had a feeling she was thinking about how, if there were cameras outside the hotel, there might be cameras inside too. She said, unconvincingly, “He wasn’t my type.”

  I’d deliberately led her down Mount Vernon across Charles Street, then left on River Street. I didn’t want to walk down Charles. Not yet.

  “Huh. When you met him at Starbucks earlier in the day, you must have been at least intrigued enough to agree to see him again.”

  “Yeah, well, he turned out to be kind of, I don’t know, sleazy? Anyway, he was definitely more into Alexa, and I figured, Hey, you go, girl.”

  “Very nice of you,” I said acidly. “A good friend.”

  “I wasn’t being nice. Just…”

  “Reasonable,” I offered.

  “Whatever.”

  “So when you met Lorenzo at Starbucks, were you sitting at one of those big soft chairs in the window?”

  She nodded.

  “He just came and sat down next to you?”

  She nodded again.

  “Which Starbucks was this?”

  “The one on Charles Street.” She gave a wave in the direction of Charles, about half a block away.

  “Aren’t there two of them on Charles?”

  “The one on the corner of Beacon.”

  “And you were just sitting alone?” I said. “Sitting by yourself in one of those big soft chairs by the window?”

  Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like the way I repeated the bit about the big soft chairs. “Yeah. Just sitting there, reading a magazine. What’s your point?”

  “Well, what do … What do you know,” I said. “Here we are.”

  “What?”

  We’d stopped at the corner of Beacon and Charles. Directly across the street was the Starbucks she was talking about. “Take a look,” I said.

  “What?”

  “No big soft chairs.”

  “Well, but—”

  “And see? There sure as hell aren’t any chairs in the window. Right?”

  She stared, but only for show, because she knew she’d just been caught in another lie. “Look, he was just going to show her a good time,” she said in a flat, emotionless voice. She took out a cigarette and lighted it. She inhaled. “I was doing her a favor. I mean, she’s never even had a serious relationship.”

  “Man, what a friend you are,” I said. “I’d hate to be your enemy. You knew Alexa had been abducted once before and was still traumatized by it. Then you meet a guy, or maybe you already knew him, and you set him up with your so-called best friend. A guy you thought was sleazy. A guy who put a date-rape drug in your best friend’s drink, probably with your full knowledge. And abducted her. Maybe killed her.”

  A long black limousine pulled up to the red light next to us.

  I was pushing her hard, and I knew it would get a reaction out of her.

  I just didn’t expect the reaction I got.

  She blew out a plume of smoke, then flipped her hair back. “All you can prove is that I went to Graybar with some guy. All that other crap—you’re just guessing.”

  The rear passenger’s window in the limousine rolled smoothly down. A man I recognized stared at me, a natty fellow in a tweed jacket with a bow tie and round horn-rimmed glasses. His name was David Schechter. He was a well-known Boston attorney and power broker, a guy who knew all the players, knew which strings to pull to make things happen. He was utterly ruthless. You did not want to get on David Schechter’s bad side.

  Next to him in the back seat was Senator Richard Armstrong.

  “Taylor,” the senator said, “get in.”

  “Senator,” I said, “your daughter
is implicated in Alexa Marcus’s disappearance.”

  Armstrong’s face didn’t register surprise or dismay. He turned to his attorney, as if deferring.

  Taylor Armstrong opened the limo door and got in. I made one last attempt to get through to her. “And I thought you were her best friend,” I said.

  “I don’t think I’m going to have a problem finding a new one,” she said with a smile, and I felt a chill.

  The limousine had a large spacious interior. Taylor sat in a seat facing her father. Then David Schechter leaned forward and gestured for me to come closer.

  “Mr. Heller,” said Schechter, speaking so softly I could barely hear him. A powerful man who was accustomed to getting what he wanted without ever having to raise his voice. “The senator and his daughter do not wish to speak to you again.”

  Then he slammed the door and the limo pulled away from the curb and into traffic.

  I pinched out my cigarette and tossed it into a trashcan. I’d given up smoking a long time ago and didn’t want to start again.

  My BlackBerry started ringing. I pulled it out, saw Marcus’s number. “Nick,” he said. “Oh, thank God.” There was panic in his voice.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “They have her—they—”

  He broke off. Silence. I could hear him breathing.

  “Marshall?”

  “It’s my baby. My Lexie. They have her.”

  “You got a ransom demand?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know—”

  “It’s just an e-mail with a link to some—oh, please God, Nick, get out here now.”

  I looked at my watch. Soon it would be rush hour. The drive to Manchester would take even longer than usual.

  “Did you click on the link?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t open it until we get there.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Nick, come out here now. Please.”

  “I’m on my way,” I said.

  25.

  There was no day or night. There was no time. There was only the trickle of her sweat down her face and neck. Her rapid breathing, that agonizing shortness of breath, the cold terror that she could never again fill her lungs with air.

  The blank nothingness in which her mind raced like a hamster on a wheel.

  The wanting to die.

  She’d decided she had to kill herself.

  This was the first time in her seventeen years that the thought of suicide had ever seriously occurred to her. But now she knew that death was the only way out for her.

  When you hyperventilate you will increase the carbon dioxide.

  She began panting, breathing as deep and fast as she could. Trying to use up the limited supply of air inside the casket. Panting. She could feel her exhalations settling around her, a warm, humid blanket of carbon dioxide. Keep at it, and maybe she’d pass out.

  She began to feel woozy, light-headed. Faint and dizzy.

  It was working.

  And then she felt something different. A cool ripple of air.

  Fresh air. It smelled of pine forest, of distant fires, of diesel and wet leaves.

  Seeping in from somewhere. Her right hand felt for the source of the air flow. It was coming from the bottom of the coffin, beneath the metal support bands under the mattress, down where the bottles of water and the protein bars were. She touched the floor of the casket, her fingers tracing the outline of a round perforated metal disc maybe an inch in diameter.

  An air intake.

  She could hear a distant hum. No, not a hum, really. The far-off sound of a … a garbage disposal? Then something that sounded like a car engine. The regular chugging of pistons pumping. Very fast, far away.

  She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it had something to do with this new influx of air. A fan? But more mechanical and sort of bumpy than that.

  Air was being circulated.

  The Owl had been watching her pathetic efforts. Saw what she was trying to do. And was defeating her.

  She couldn’t help herself: She gasped deeply, drank down the cool fresh air as gratefully as she’d swallowed the water from the bottle. The fresh air was keeping her alive.

  She couldn’t asphyxiate herself. She couldn’t kill herself.

  He’d deprived her of the only power she had.

  26.

  I picked up Dorothy at the office. We made better time than I expected and got to the security booth at the perimeter of Marcus’s property just before six.

  “Whoa,” she said softly as we walked up the porch steps, goggle-eyed at the spread. “And I was just starting to be happy with my apartment.”

  Marcus met us at the door. Ashen-faced, he thanked us somberly and showed us in. Belinda rushed up to me in the dimly lit hallway and threw her arms around me, a display of affection I’d never have expected. Her back was bony. I introduced Dorothy. Belinda thanked me profusely, and Marcus just nodded and led us to his study. His house slippers scuffed against the oak floor.

  His study was a large, comfortable room, not at all showy. The shades were drawn. The only illumination was a circle of light cast by a banker’s lamp with a green glass shade. It sat in the middle of a massive refectory table that served as his desk, carved from ancient oak. The only other objects on the table were a large flat-screen computer monitor and a wireless keyboard, which looked out of place.

  He sat in a high-backed tufted black leather chair and tapped a few keys. His hands were trembling. Belinda stood behind him. Dorothy and I stood on either side and watched him open an e-mail message.

  “As soon as this came in, I told him to call you,” Belinda said. “I also told him not to do anything until y’all got here.”

  “This is my personal e-mail account,” he said quietly. “Not many people have it. That’s the weird thing—how’d they get it?”

  Dorothy, wearing red-framed reading glasses on an ornate beaded chain, noticed something else.

  “They used a nym,” she said.

  “A who?” I said.

  “An anonymizer. A disposable anonymous e-mail address. Untraceable.”

  The subject heading read “Your Daughter.” The message was brief:

  Mr. Marcus:

  If you want to see your daughter again, click here:

  www.CamFriendz.com

  Click on: Private Chat Rooms

  Enter in search box: Alexa M.

  User name: Marcus

  Password: LiveOrDie?

  Note: case-sensitive.

  You may log in only from your home or office. No other location. We monitor everyone who signs in. If we detect any other incoming IP addresses, including any law enforcement agencies, local or national, all communications will be severed and your daughter will be terminated.

  He turned around to look at us. There were deep hollows under his eyes. “Belinda wouldn’t let me click on the link.” He sounded depleted and resigned.

  “What’s CamFriendz-dot-com?” Belinda said.

  “It’s a live video site,” Dorothy said. “Social networking. Mostly for teens.”

  Marcus said, “What should I do?”

  “Don’t touch the keyboard,” Belinda said.

  “Wait a minute,” Dorothy said. She took out her laptop and hooked in the back of his computer. “Okay.”

  “What are you doing?” Belinda said.

  “A couple things,” she said. “Screen-capture software so we can record anything they send you. Also, packet-sniffing software so I can log network activity remotely.”

  “Are you mad?” Belinda cried. “They say if anyone else tries to look at this, they’re going to cut off all communication! Are you trying to get her killed?”

  “No,” Dorothy said, patiently. “All I’m doing is setting up in effect a clone of this computer. I’m not logging in. No one’s going to detect it.”

  “Well, you can just look at Marshall’s computer,” Belinda said. “I will not have you compromise Alexa’s safety in any way.
”

  “They have no way to know what I’m doing,” Dorothy said. I could see her patience was beginning to run out. “Also, we need to make sure they’re not trying to infect this computer with malicious code.”

  “What’s the point of that?” Marshall said.

  “To take control of your computer,” Dorothy said. “May I?” Her fingers were poised over his keyboard. He nodded, wheeled his chair back to let her at it.

  “Don’t touch that!” Belinda said, alarmed.

  “Can I talk to you for a moment?” I said to her, and I took her out into the hall. In a low voice, I continued, “I’m worried about your husband.”

  “You are?”

  “He’d be panicking by now if it weren’t for you. You’re his rock. You did the right thing by telling him to call me and by not letting him click on that link.”

  She looked pleased.

  “And I hate to impose on you further at a time like this,” I said, “but I need you to go into another room and make an evidentiary compilation for me.”

  “An … evidentiary…?”

  “Sorry, that’s the technical term for an exhaustive description of all potential evidence that might help lead to her whereabouts,” I said. I’d made it up on the spot, but it sounded plausible.

  “What sort of evidence?”

  “Everything. I mean, what was Alexa wearing when she left. The make and size of her shoes and each item of clothing, her purse, anything she might have been carrying in her purse. You’re far more observant than Marshall, and men never pay attention to that kind of thing anyway. I know it seems tedious, but it’s extremely important, and there’s no one else who can do it. And we need it right away. Within the next hour, if at all possible.”

  “Y’all want me to use a computer or a typewriter?”

  “Whatever’s fastest for you,” I said.

  I went back in. Dorothy had positioned herself in front of Marshall’s computer, standing. She tapped, moved the mouse, and after a minute she said, “Okay, open the hyperlink.”

  In a few seconds a new window had opened. It showed a cheesy-looking website with a banner across the top: CAMFRIENDZ—THE LIVE COMMUNITY!