Out of Reach: A Novel

by Patricia Lewin

  After the waitress left, Erin wrapped her hands around the white ceramic mug but didn’t drink. “Okay, tell me what you know about the Magic Man.”

  “Is that what you call him?”

  She shrugged.

  “In law enforcement circles, he’s known as the Magician.” Alec swallowed the hot coffee, wondering just how long the caffeine would keep him going before he crashed. “Except most don’t believe he exists.”

  “But you do.”

  “Three years ago the Coast Guard stopped a ship, the Desert Sun, off the California coast. The manifest indicated the ship was transporting engine parts to various Middle Eastern ports.” He hesitated, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “What they found were children.” He could still see those faces, the fear marring their young features, and it churned the anger inside him. “Twenty-two of them.”

  Her eyes filled with horror, though her expression remained blank. She was good at hiding her emotions, except her eyes. They spoke volumes, and he heard every word. She was thinking of families, tormented by a child’s loss. It was something too close to her, a pain she understood too well.

  That’s why he needed her help.

  “The kids had been kidnapped one by one during the previous twelve months, from all different parts of the country. Most fit a certain general physical and socioeconomic profile.” He took a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Blonds. A few redheads. All light-skinned and most from low-income families. Many of the older ones, the nine- to twelve-year-olds, had been classified as runaways.”

  “Why have I never heard anything about this?”

  “It was hushed up and deemed classified so the information wouldn’t leak out.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice even further. “Think of the outrage if the general public thought American children were being sold overseas. No one would wait for a declaration of war. There would be killing in the streets, with every mosque from here to California as prime targets.”

  “What happened to the children?”

  The waitress returned to refill their coffee, and he waited until she’d left again. “None of them had been physically harmed, but they were hospitalized for observation and counseling before being sent home.”

  “And so the FBI could question them.”

  “We wanted more than a crew of sailors who manned the ship. Or even the ship’s captain.” He sat back, feeling the caffeine start to work on his nerves. “Unfortunately, the children weren’t much help. Most were too young or too traumatized to tell us anything we could use.”

  “Most?” She was quick, her mind leaping ahead of him. “There were exceptions?”

  “One. Her name was Suzie, and she told us about the man who’d kidnapped her.”

  “The Magician?”

  “I was working out of the L.A. office at the time and was called in to help with the interviews. Suzie was a precocious ten-year-old who’d been snatched from a fairgrounds a month earlier.” She was a feisty little redhead, with a sharp tongue and a bad attitude. A survivor. If he ever had a daughter, he’d want one like Suzie. “She claimed the man who abducted her did magic tricks.”

  He gave her a moment to take it all in, finishing his coffee, while she still hadn’t touched hers. “Would you like something else?”

  She shook her head. “No, this is fine. What came of the girl’s testimony?”

  “Not much. None of the other children could verify Suzie’s story, and the man was never found or identified.” He shrugged. “The case is still open, but it’s been dormant for years. As for the Magician . . .” He paused again. “It wasn’t the first time we’d heard of a child abductor who did magic tricks. There have been random reports of him going back twenty years.”

  “But no one really believes he exists?”

  “I’m not sure I believed it myself, until that interview. You see, the Magician has become something of a myth, like the big one who got away. Anytime we fail to find a lost child, it’s easy to blame the man no one else can catch either.”

  It sounded lame, like an excuse made by lazy cops and field agents, the very people meant to protect the Suzies and Codys of the world. But, it was more defense than anything else, a way to explain and somehow deal with their failure to always protect the innocent. “Then today, when you showed up with your story . . .”

  He watched Erin work through it, analyzing his words. Cathy had done a full background check on her, but nothing she’d found explained the woman in the booth across from him.

  Erin Baker was more than she claimed.

  “So, who took the fall for the Desert Sun?” she asked.

  “The captain. He claimed he masterminded and executed the entire plan with help from his crew. It seemed unlikely, but with nothing else, he was all we had.” Alec turned over his hands, a gesture of helplessness and frustration. “Besides, he wasn’t an innocent, he knew he was running a slave ship.”

  “What about the ship’s ownership?”

  “A shell corporation, which we eventually traced to this man.” From the same envelope holding Cody’s picture, Alec drew out another and pushed it across the table. “General William Neville.”

  She studied the picture without touching it. “I know him. He’s attached to the German embassy.”

  “And you know this because you’re a professor at Georgetown?”

  “Don’t start playing games with me, Agent Donovan.” She slid the picture across the table. “We both know you had me thoroughly checked out. Yes, I do the embassy circuit. I’m a professor of international relations, and it usually helps to know something about the subject you teach.”

  “Is that why you spent two years in Cairo?”

  “If I wasn’t interested in foreign cultures, I wouldn’t be in this field.”

  “You’re not going to tell me who you work for, are you?”

  “You already know.”

  He didn’t press her, though he knew she was skirting the truth. “Okay, so you’ve met General Neville.”

  “I was introduced to him once, that’s all.” She sat back. “He’s not the Magician.” Again, she was so sure of herself.

  “No, but he might be involved.” He slipped the photo back into its envelope and returned both to his jacket pocket. “Do you know anything about Neville?”

  “Very little.” He could sense her pulling away from him, reining in her interest. “My expertise is in Middle Eastern cultures.”

  “Neville’s old-world aristocracy. His father was a high-ranking officer in Hitler’s SS who lost the family fortune during the war.”

  “But Neville is wealthy.”

  “He’s also brilliant and ruthless. Over the past thirty years, he’s built a business empire whose interests are worldwide and diversified. And one of those interests is a small shipping firm.”

  “Which owned the Desert Sun.”

  “Exactly. He was, of course, questioned, but with his diplomatic attachments and the captain’s claim of operating on his own, we couldn’t pin anything on him.” Alec thought about it, holding in the anger that threatened to rise up whenever he thought about Neville and how he’d sidestepped responsibility for running a slave ship. “But yeah, I think he’s more than involved.”

  “And his connection to the Magician?”

  He scooted forward, feeling the frustration of something just beyond his reach. “I’m chasing threads here, Dr. Baker, and they may not connect. But that little girl was taken by a man who lures children with magic tricks, a predator who has been operating with impunity for years. And she ends up on one of Neville’s ships.” He leaned back. “Now I have a boy, a street-smart kid who’s not going to fall for much. He’s not getting into a stranger’s car or helping a guy unload a van. But the day he disappears, he’s seen with a man who plays the shell game.”

  He forced himself to relax. “Seems to me there could be a connection.”

  “Or none at all.”

  He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair. That�
�s exactly what Cathy had said, what he knew his superiors would say if he ran this theory by them. He wasn’t chasing leads, he was chasing phantoms. “I’m desperate, Dr. Baker.” And he couldn’t ignore the instincts that had so often led him to find the lost, even when he knew there was very little logic to back him up. “If we don’t find Cody Sanders soon, we’re not going to find him ever. And the man with the shell game is our only lead.”

  She looked away, out the plate-glass window, where night had given way to morning while they’d talked. When she spoke, she kept her eyes on the street and seemed far away, distant. “This is all very interesting, Agent Donovan, but—”

  “Alec, please call me Alec.”

  She turned to him, then hesitated. “Agent Donovan”—she emphasized his title, denying his request to use his first name—“you’ve got to be breaking a half-dozen Bureau rules telling me all this.”

  He couldn’t deny it. “At least.”

  “So why? Just because you think I can help identify the Magician, if you ever find him?”

  “First, I need you and Beckwith to work with a police artist, to come up with a composite sketch of the man you saw yesterday.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “But that’s not why you’re here. You could have sent anyone to ask me for that.”

  “You’re right.” He leaned forward. “I need to know whether I’m on track, or if everyone else is right and I’ve lost my senses. You say you’d recognize him if you saw him again. That’s great, but if your sister—”

  She reared back. “Whoa, wait a minute. Leave Claire out of this.”

  “I can’t. She can help.”

  “Claire can’t help anyone. Not even herself.”

  “Just hear me out. You were right earlier; I pulled a file on you last night. I know your sister was found in San Francisco four years after her abduction.”

  “Then you also know the man they found her with is serving a thirty-year prison sentence.”

  “Yes, but on charges unrelated to your sister.”

  “He’s still in prison. What difference does it make why?” Except it did bother her, he could tell. When it came to her sister, she wasn’t as good at masking her reactions. “He said he found her on the street and gave her a place to stay.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t know what to believe, Agent Donovan, because my sister refused to testify at his trial. At first we thought she’d eventually talk about her ordeal, at least to the doctors. Finally we realized it wasn’t that she wouldn’t tell us, she couldn’t. She doesn’t know who kidnapped her or what happened to her during those four years. And the rest of us . . .”

  “Don’t want to know.”

  She recoiled as if slapped. “That’s not true. I’d give anything to see the man who took her punished.”

  “Then help me.” He leaned forward and grabbed her hands. “It’s been fifteen years, if she can just tell us something about the man who kidnapped her, anything, even verify that he did magic tricks. That’s all I need.” It would help him convince his superiors to give him the manpower needed to run with this.

  She pulled her hands from his and buried them beneath the table. “Aren’t you listening to me? She doesn’t remember, she’s blocked it out.”

  “Maybe she just doesn’t want to remember.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  His back was against the wall. He hadn’t been able to find out nearly as much about Claire Baker as he’d found about Erin. Just that she’d had serious problems since the cops found her during a drug raid on the West Coast fifteen years ago. She’d gone home to her family, but she’d been damaged in unseen ways, and had run away within a month of her homecoming. It was a pattern that had repeated itself throughout her adolescence, along with attempted suicides. Over the years, she’d been in and out of three psychiatric hospitals. But her condition and treatments were protected by doctor-patient privilege that not even a desperate FBI agent could violate. He’d been hoping that with Erin’s help he could get to the woman whose secrets might lead to Cody Sanders.

  “She’s a cutter,” Erin said, reading the question in his silence. “When she feels threatened, she uses sharp objects to make herself bleed. And any little thing can set her off.” She laughed abruptly, bitterly. “They tell me it’s a survival mechanism. Do you believe that? It’s her way of keeping herself from committing suicide.”

  Alec felt Erin’s pain and frustration reaching across the table and wrapping around them both. Claire Baker had lived a nightmare, was still caught within its grip, and Erin was unable to do anything about it. He suspected that helplessness wasn’t an emotion that sat well with her.

  He didn’t know what to say. He’d seen such pain before, on the faces of parents waiting for news of their children, and had never had the words to ease their burden. So the silence settled between them, awkward now that she’d refused him. And he felt Cody Sanders slipping, fading away into that no-man’s-land of lost children.

  No.

  Alec wouldn’t give up yet. He had one more avenue to pursue, one more person who might know something.

  Then Erin stood abruptly. “I have to get home. Janie’s waiting.”

  “Oh, yes, Claire’s daughter. You came back to the States to raise her, didn’t you?”

  She stiffened. “That’s none of your business.”

  He took one more stab at reaching her. “This isn’t about you or me, Erin.” He purposely used her first name, forcing her to accept this as a human plea. “Or even about your sister, Claire. It’s about a young boy. Cody Sanders. And preventing what happened to your sister from happening to him. All I want you to do is talk to Claire. Soon. Today. Tell her what you saw, and ask her to help us find Cody.”

  She was shaking her head.

  “Just think about it,” he insisted, handing her his card. “Call me day or night.”

  She stared at it for a moment, and he thought he’d gotten through to her. Then she pulled a couple of bills from her sweatshirt pocket and tossed them on the table.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  XIII

  PAIN WOKE HIM.

  He’d been dreaming of lavender fields, stretching as far as the eye could see. The tiny blossoms blended together, a rippling blanket of multihued greens and purples covering the earth, their scent a balm to his senses. It was a pleasant dream, filled with sweetness and promise, and he longed to linger within its borders. But a dull, insistent ache pulled at him, wrenching him from the gentle world of dreams to one of harsh light and nightmares.

  Ryan opened his eyes, disoriented. He lay atop a bed, naked except for a rough blanket that smelled of stewed meat and onions. Nauseated, he shut his eyes again, reaching once more for the scent of lavender. But it was gone.

  Along with the oblivion of unconsciousness.

  Instead, hot sunlight streamed across him, disturbing him as much as the unfamiliar blanket. He always shut the drapes before sleep—an old habit, its origins lost somewhere in his past.

  He pushed up, half rising before a streak of pain ripped open his chest and dropped him back to the mattress. Then he couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, as the agony ricocheted through his insides, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from screaming. Seconds turned to long torturous minutes, and only after it ebbed a bit did he remember.

  Trader.

  Standing above him, anger darkening his features. And something else, something stronger and more terrifying than the anger: pure hate.

  Ryan shuddered, reliving the surprise blow that had sent him reeling, and the feel of his skin ripping open. He could smell the heat of Trader’s breath as he hissed his warning. And his savage boots, slamming into Ryan’s side.

  With a groan, Ryan touched his chest, where wide bandages bound his rib cage. Closing his eyes again, he barely kept sobs of fear at bay. He should be dead, would be except . . .

  How had he gotten back to his room?

  Slo
wly, he pushed himself to a half-sitting position, careful not to jar his body and send another wave of devastating agony through it.

  The details he’d noticed on first waking took on new meaning. Someone had found him and carried him back to his room. But who in this house of wordless servants had that kind of courage? Who had dared risk the General’s—and Trader’s—anger to help him, a boy they barely knew existed?

  Ryan had no friends in this place, no one who cared whether he lived or died. Yet someone had helped him. And that person or persons had done more than carry him to his room. He or she had removed his clothes and taped his ribs, covered him, and left food, water, and aspirin for the pain he’d face when he awoke. The idea warmed him in a way he’d never known and helped ease his fear.

  Suddenly, he noticed the time. Almost noon.

  He needed to get a tray to Cody. None of the household staff would dare enter the boy’s room, and Ryan couldn’t risk another dose of the General’s wrath by shirking his duties.

  Forcing himself to move slowly, despite his mounting panic, he swung his legs to the floor. Then waited as a wave of pain passed through him. If he was lucky, the General had already left the mansion, or at the very least hadn’t bothered to ask after his young houseguest and caretaker.

  First, Ryan took the aspirin, four, because he needed to make it down the stairs and back again, and he doubted two of the painkillers would do the trick. Then he ate, taking a lesson from his charge, to build up his strength, even though food was the last thing he wanted right now. He dressed in loose-fitting clothes to conceal his bandaged ribs while avoiding the mirror and its reflection of his ruined face. There was nothing he could do to hide that damage, so what would be the point in torturing himself by looking?

  Besides, by now the entire staff would know what had happened.

  The trip down to the kitchen was difficult, but even worse were the minutes he spent gathering Cody’s lunch. No one spoke to him, or even acknowledged him. Though he felt their eyes, their thoughts, on him. To them, he was already dead. And very soon he’d stop walking around.

  With the tray in hand, he reentered the back stairwell. Closing the door behind him, he waited, catching his breath and steeling himself for the long upward climb. It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, though. Maybe the aspirin had kicked in, or the movement eased his aching muscles. Or maybe it had more to do with the anger building inside him.