Suspicion

by Joseph Finder

  “Probably better not to bring much of your old life with you. The fewer things to connect you to who you were, the better.”

  “I never thought it was going to be easy to leave my family,” Galvin said slowly. “I just didn’t expect it to hit me so hard.”

  “It’ll probably hit you even harder later on.”

  Galvin nodded. His eyes were rimmed in red and glistened.

  “Even harder because they don’t know,” Danny said.

  “Just Celina. She knows. Jenna asked why I was making such a big deal out of a business trip.”

  “Sweet Home Alabama” blared tinnily, and Galvin pulled out his BlackBerry.

  “Lina, querida,” he said softly. Then, louder: “What?” His eyes widened. “You’re kidding me. Hold on.” To Danny, he said, “You have any idea where the girls have gone?”

  “What?”

  “Celina went upstairs to get them for dinner, and they’re gone. Both of them.”

  “They—they must be somewhere in the house. It’s big enough to get lost in.”

  Galvin shook his head. “No. Celina’s Range Rover is missing, too.”

  “Christ. I assume Celina called Jenna’s cell phone.”

  Galvin nodded brusquely. “No answer.”

  “Try again. I’ll try Abby’s.”

  They both punched speed-dial numbers on their mobile phones.

  “I told her not to shut off her phone when she goes somewhere,” Danny said, more to himself than to Galvin.

  “No answer,” Galvin said. “Until I know where they are, I’m not getting on my boat. Not until I know for sure my girl is okay.”

  Abby’s voice mail came right on after a single ring. “Same here,” Danny said.

  “Jenna, it’s Daddy,” Galvin said into his phone. “Your mother and I are worried about you. I told you, we all have to stay inside the house until this all . . . blows over. Now, you—call me as soon as you get this message. Please.”

  Danny didn’t bother leaving a message. He disconnected the call. The last time Abby had disappeared and gone radio silent, she’d gotten her nose pierced. How utterly benign that now seemed.

  “I’m going to find them,” he said.

  84

  Dr. Mendoza looked around the grand room, admiring its wainscoted walls of deep, rich oak. All around the room were hung large gilt-framed oil portraits of the school’s headmistresses, going back to the founder, Miss Alice Lyman, in the early nineteenth century.

  In his well-cut serge suit and red tie, he knew he looked distinguished and prosperous. He looked like a Lyman Academy father. In fact, several parents and administrators had nodded and smiled at him, not sure who he was but never questioning that he belonged.

  He peered pleasantly around as if looking for his wife or his daughter.

  The problem was that he had no idea of his target’s appearance.

  He knew, of course, what her father looked like. But the father wasn’t here.

  It had been a stroke of luck that he’d seen the girls driving out of Galvin’s property. A gift, really. They were here somewhere; they had to be. But where?

  The students and their parents, he noticed, were socializing separately, parents with parents and girls with girls. He sensed a great deal of nervous energy in the room. He could see it particularly in the overwrought expressions on the parents’ faces, their frantic good cheer.

  He stopped one of the girls. In his most solicitous tone he said, “Where can I find Abby Goodman?”

  The girl pointed toward a small cluster of students.

  “Ah, yes, there she is!” Dr. Mendoza said. “Thank you so much.”

  85

  There was no direct route from the yacht club to the Lyman Academy, so Danny had to navigate the Honda through a maze of city streets, from Commercial Wharf to Tremont Street, poking along maddeningly, a sclerotic steel artery of rush-hour traffic.

  He cursed aloud. “Move, goddammit!” Every few moments he alternated redialing Abby’s and Jenna’s phones. Each call went to voice mail. After the first few, he stopped leaving messages.

  When he was still a few miles from school, Jenna picked up. Danny was so startled he almost sideswiped a cab.

  “Um, hi, Mr. Goodman,” Jenna said tonelessly.

  “Jenna! Is Abby with you?”

  There was a long silence. Then: “I mean . . .” and another long pause.

  “Look, your dad and I know you left the house. Where the hell are you? Are you at school?”

  Jenna didn’t reply. He understood what had happened: Abby didn’t want to miss College Night, and Jenna wanted to take her there.

  “Jenna, please put Abby on right now!”

  Jenna sighed loudly. “I just dropped her off, like, ten minutes ago. I couldn’t find a place to park. I’m still, like, circling around.”

  Lyman’s grounds were large, but for some reason it was always difficult to find parking on busy nights. Several small parking lots were nestled among the trees, attractively landscaped and unobtrusive. But never enough spaces.

  “She went into the College Night assembly?”

  Silence.

  “Jenna, this is important. You guys have to get back home. It’s not safe. Now, tell Abby to call me immediately.”

  “I mean, you tried her phone, probably, right?”

  “I’m on my way into school. Where are you right now?”

  “I’m just circling around, like—”

  “Call Abby for me, can you do that? Please!”

  Then Danny hung up.

  86

  “Excuse me—Abby?” Dr. Mendoza said. “Abby Goodman, yes?”

  “Yes?” The girl looked at him warily.

  “Oh, thank goodness. Your father needs you at once.”

  “Um, w-wait, who are you?”

  “He’s okay, but your father’s been in a terrible accident.” He took her by the elbow and gently escorted her toward the hall. “Come this way, please. Quickly.”

  “What?” the girl cried. “Oh my God!”

  “He’s at Mass General, and he’s been asking for you. My name is Dr. Mendoza. I’m a Lyman father, and I just got a text from a colleague of mine at the hospital.”

  “Oh my God oh my God. What happened to him?”

  “Please—quickly!” Dr. Mendoza said. He began striding rapidly toward the exit. Daniel Goodman’s daughter now hurried alongside. “There was a multiple-car collision on the pike not far from Weston.”

  Dr. Mendoza was careful to use the right words, the right abbreviations. The pike, not the freeway. And Mass General, not Massachusetts General Hospital.

  The girl cried: “But is he—oh my God, you said he’s okay—he’s okay, right? He’s not hurt? Or is he?”

  The hall was deserted and dark. Once the door to Founders Hall had closed behind them, they were alone, with no one around to see. Their footsteps echoed.

  “Is he hurt?” the girl asked again, louder. “Oh my God, please tell me!”

  “Your father needs you,” Dr. Mendoza simply said.

  87

  Danny pulled his car up to the curb directly in front of the school, which was marked NO STOPPING/NO STANDING. Let ’em tow, he thought.

  He slammed the door and jogged into the main entrance of the school.

  Leon Chisholm was sitting on a chair inside the foyer. “Danny boy, I thought you weren’t coming—”

  Danny shrugged. No time to explain. “You see my daughter, Leon?”

  “No, ’fraid not, but all the girls and the parents are in Founders Hall. If she’s anywhere, she’s there.”

  “Thanks,” Danny said, hurrying away.

  “If I see her, I’ll tell her—” Leon called out.

  But Danny was already out of earshot.

 
• • •

  Founders Hall was the large, grandly appointed assembly room where the big school meetings took place. Back-to-School Night, when parents met with their daughters’ teachers, began with the parents assembled here. On College Night, juniors and their parents gathered as a group to listen to a few selected admissions officers, usually from one of the Ivy League schools or exclusive small colleges, tell them what colleges were looking for.

  When he reached the set of doors that led to Founders Hall, he stopped. Through the round glass portal windows in the double doors, he could see that everyone was seated in chairs listening to a red-haired, freckle-faced young woman holding forth.

  “. . . could fill the freshman class with students with 4.0 GPAs and 2400 SATs,” the woman was saying. “Several times over, in fact. But we’re looking for that certain special ‘plus,’ that something extra that makes the application pop.”

  From this vantage point, he could see only the backs of people’s heads. He couldn’t make out Abby or Jenna. So he walked down the hallway to the next set of doors, and from there he could see faces. At this angle, he could see roughly half of the audience. He combed the crowd, row by row, looking for Abby or Jenna, not seeing either one.

  Then, as he raced along the corridor to the other side of Founders Hall, where he’d be able to see the rest of the audience, his iPhone gave a text alert.

  He stopped, glanced at the phone’s screen, and was surprised to see a text from Jenna.

  Did u find her?

  He texted back: No, is she w. u?

  I’m here in Founders, don’t see her anywhere. Thought she was with you.

  Please come out & talk w. me, he texted back.

  A pause. Then her text came through: OK.

  He resumed jogging down the corridor toward the far side of the room. He heard a thunder burst of applause and then a rising cacophony. The presentation was over. By the time he got to the entry doors, people were getting up from their seats, talking loudly to one another. The Yale admissions rep was standing at the front, engulfed by a huge jostling crowd, a honeybee queen surrounded by worker bees. A knot of parents stood near the door, obstructing Danny’s view.

  He pushed the door open and entered, now searching only for Jenna. He had to push through a throng gathered around the tired, pillaged display of red grapes and Jarlsberg cheese cubes.

  The chatter all around him seemed to break into unconnected fragments of speech like confetti scattered into the air. A woman was saying, “But if she gets in early decision, she has to go, and then what happens if she gets into Williams, regular decision? I mean, it’s a nightmare, right?”

  A man was saying, “They don’t even do on-campus interviews anymore, just alumni interviews, and everyone knows those’re a joke.”

  He saw a small, pudgy dark-haired girl who looked sort of like Jenna, wearing a Lyman Lacrosse sweatshirt. But it wasn’t Jenna. “Excuse me, have you seen Jenna Galvin?” Danny asked her.

  The girl motioned with a jerk of her head. “I saw her back there.”

  He was jostled by a woman who was saying, “Sure, but it’s not even in the top ten on the U.S. News ranking.”

  A man was muttering to another one, “You do know that the school for war orphans their daughter allegedly founded in Rwanda was actually underwritten by her father, right?”

  Suddenly, Danny glimpsed Jenna and exhaled with relief. He pushed his way toward her. When he got closer, she saw him and said, “I don’t know where she is. Is my dad here?”

  “No. Did anyone see Abby at all tonight?”

  “Well, yeah, a bunch of people saw her come in. Then Jordan and Emily saw her walking out with this guy.”

  “What guy?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, like someone’s dad?”

  “Walking out of the building?”

  She shrugged. “I guess. I thought maybe she’d gotten in trouble or something.”

  “You haven’t heard from her—message, call, nothing?”

  “No—”

  “She’s definitely not in here?”

  “Definitely not. I texted her—”

  “Well, you guys both need to get out of there. Get back home. And if you do hear from her—”

  “I know, I’ll tell you.”

  She’d walked out with a man who looked like someone’s dad.

  He felt a rising panic. Abby had walked out of the building with someone, a man Jenna didn’t recognize.

  But she wouldn’t go anywhere with someone she didn’t know. She wouldn’t do that. Even here, in the safe environs of the Lyman Academy, she knew not to trust strangers. That was drilled into kids these days.

  He jostled a couple, trying to squeeze past.

  “Well, her older sister got Z-listed at Harvard. They definitely played the Eliot card.”

  “Aren’t they Eliots, like that Eliot? Like President Eliot of Harvard, those Eliots?”

  “Hey, Danny,” he heard someone say. He felt a tap on his shoulder. A fellow Lyman dad he saw at school events and liked. “Man, you look as nervous as me! I mean, is this Tension City or what?”

  Danny turned to look at him, a million miles away. “Yeah,” he said thickly. He gave an unconvincing smile. Sidling away, he took out his iPhone and hit speed dial for Abby once again.

  It rang once, twice . . . and—that was different: It didn’t go directly to voice mail.

  It rang a third time, and then someone said, “Hello, Daniel.”

  A male voice.

  “Who’s this?” he said, his heart suddenly racing.

  “I’m sorry. Abby cannot come to the phone right now.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I am your life raft,” the voice said. “And you are a drowning man.”

  88

  “Who the hell is this?”

  Danny became aware that the background noise on the other end of the line was identical to the background noise in the hall, and he felt a shudder.

  The man on the phone was here, somewhere, in this room.

  “You have something I want, and I have something you want,” the voice said.

  “How the hell did you get my daughter’s phone, you bastard?” he burst out. It was all he could think to say.

  His eyes desperately searched the room, scanning back and forth, looking for someone speaking on a phone. Someone who wasn’t a Lyman parent, someone who didn’t belong.

  “Neither one of us has time to waste, Mr. Goodman. Your daughter is in the care of an associate of mine who has instructions to take good care of her.”

  “An associate . . . Who is this?”

  A knot of parents momentarily parted, and Danny saw a bald man with mocha skin and rimless glasses holding Abby’s red LG mobile phone against the side of his face.

  Their eyes locked.

  It was the man from the surveillance image Tom Galvin had shown him. The man sitting in a car outside Galvin’s house. The man sent by the cartel to . . .

  “If you cooperate,” the man was saying, “nothing will happen to her. There’s no need to worry about that. It will be quick and painless. But if you refuse to cooperate, or you are slow about it, I need only call my friend. And then, what happens to your daughter . . . well, I’m afraid she will never be the same.”

  Galvin’s words came rushing back to him.

  You know the videos on the Internet of those guys with chain saws cutting off people’s heads and all that? The ones you see in your nightmares? Well, this is the guy who gives those guys nightmares.

  And: His name is Dr. Mendoza. That’s all I know—Dr. Mendoza, no first name. He specializes in coercive interrogation.

  “Let us step outside, Mr. Goodman,” the voice said.

  89

  Heart thudding, nearly dizzy with adrenaline, Danny stood at the r
ear of the school’s main building, off to the side.

  Waiting for Dr. Mendoza.

  His skin prickled. A parking light fixture buzzed loudly. In the distance a car started.

  Everything had taken on an eerie clarity, a feeling of heightened reality.

  Then he heard the scuff of a shoe on gravel and the man named Dr. Mendoza loomed into view.

  “Well, then—” Dr. Mendoza began to say, but Danny lunged.

  “You bastard!” he roared. “You goddamned bastard!”

  He grabbed hold of Dr. Mendoza’s shirt collar, the knot of his necktie, and Dr. Mendoza made a tight strangled sound as Danny slammed his full weight against the man’s chest. But the man came back upright with surprising strength.

  Dr. Mendoza’s rimless glasses were knocked askew.

  He looked at Danny with an amused arrogance as he straightened them. “I am sorry you’ve done this,” he said, and he blinked several times. “You have just made a grievous mistake.”

  “Where the hell is my daughter?”

  “Please back away,” Dr. Mendoza said patiently. He pursed his lips.

  Blood roaring in his ears, Danny unsteadily stepped back. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

  “Mr. Goodman, you are overwrought. I will permit you this one outburst, because you are clearly unable to control your emotions. But let us be blunt. If you so much as lay a finger on me ever again, you will only harm your daughter. She will experience pain of a type and a magnitude that killing her will be a mercy, one she will beg for.”

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “I want to know where Thomas Galvin has gone.”

  “And what makes you think I have the slightest idea—?”

  “Oh, dear. This is a shame. You are risking your daughter’s life with your silly games. What I am proposing is a very simple trade. Your daughter for Thomas Galvin.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  Dr. Mendoza shrugged. “This game doesn’t benefit either one of us, and it doesn’t help your daughter. Abigail, is that right? Abby?”