The driver let Theresa go. She spun away, rubbing her neck, spitting fury from her eyes.
“Now the gun.”
“Perhaps we can talk about this—”
“You’ve got three seconds before I turn your head into cherry pie,” Mulligan said. “You understand what I’m saying? We’re not talking closed casket. We’re talking coroner’s office wet-vac to clean it all up. One. Two—”
The driver dropped the gun.
“Theresa,” Mulligan said.
She walked over and picked it up, staring at the driver the entire time.
“Get the other one, Woody,” Mulligan said.
I stood up, grabbed the passenger by his belt, pulled him backwards, reached down, and grabbed the gun that had spun under the car. Mulligan forced the driver onto his knees, shotgun still pressed against the back of his head.
Satisfied things were under control, Mulligan said, “Sorry about that. Took me a minute to figure out the best angle.”
“And here was me thinking you aced geometry,” I said. “Where’s the girl?”
The driver stayed silent.
“Wet-vac,” Mulligan said.
“In the van,” the driver said, clearly frustrated.
“Woody,” Mulligan said.
I walked to the van and slid open the rear side door. Angela was sitting in the backseat, gagged with her hands and feet bound. Her eyes went wide when she saw me. I turned and gestured to Barbara. She rushed over. I pulled out my keys and opened the blade on the Swiss Army knife I keep on the key ring for slicing up apples and for emergencies like this. I cut through the plastic zip ties binding the girl. I untied the gag around Angela’s mouth and helped her out. She and Barbara embraced as both burst into tears.
“All right,” I said, turning around. “Time for some answers.”
Otto yanked the driver’s mask off. We stared at the face of a man whose features were distorted by a stocking pulled over his head. Clever: a double disguise. Otto went to pull the stocking off when the night came to a sudden conclusion. Up the street we heard a siren. It was hard to tell where it was coming from, but it was definitely close. Maybe Mulligan’s security guard pal had forgotten to deactivate one of the silent alarms. Maybe the cop was responding to a traffic accident two miles away and it was a complete coincidence. Either way, things went to hell fast. The driver used the momentary distraction to roll away from Mulligan. When he righted himself he’d produced a gun we’d missed, hidden in an ankle holster. As he and Mulligan faced each other in a stand-off, the other man charged the van. I pulled Barbara and her niece out of the way.
“Let’s go, Woody,” Mulligan said.
“But—”
“I put people in jail for a living. I ain’t going there myself.”
“We need to know who these guys are.”
“Ain’t gonna help if we’re in a cell. Or a grave. C’mon.”
Reluctantly, I backed off. Theresa and Barbara and Angela piled into the counselor’s car, Theresa at the wheel. I jumped into my van with Mulligan in the passenger seat. We drove away fast, leaving Guy Fawkes I and II behind us, taking the turn on the curving loop with a genuine seventies cop show tire squeal. In another minute we were back on Refugee Road with Barbara’s niece safe but still no idea who her masked captors were.
31
THERESA AND I SPENT THE NIGHT AT Barbara’s house. The counselor told me it wasn’t necessary, that she would be all right. She said it with the conviction of a woman staring out the locked second-floor window of a house as it goes up in flames. I gave Mulligan the keys to my van and told him to obey the speed limit and to let the dog out when he got to my place.
“I can’t believe you’re making me drive this thing,” he said, eyeing my Odyssey. “It’s got a big butt. It’s the kind of thing a soccer mom would drive if her first car was in the garage. It says private investigator like a girdle says sexy.”
“If you wouldn’t mind putting some kibble in Hopalong’s bowl while you’re at it, that would be great,” I replied. I’d long ago given up defending my vehicle of choice. It held my collection of eighties music CDs, my Louisville Slugger, and both my boys and a friend or two just fine. Plus, he was wrong. I’d dated at least one soccer mom who liked hers plenty, though it was true she’d gone with a Jeep when it was time to trade up.
We didn’t talk much after Mulligan left. We put Theresa in a guest room in the basement. I took the couch downstairs.
“Thank you,” Barbara said as she went upstairs with Angela.
“I’m glad it worked out.”
I lay awake for almost an hour, going over the events of the night, trying to figure out what was happening. Who the clowns in the scary clown masks were. At last I dozed off, snuggled up with the aforementioned baseball bat. I slept fitfully, dreaming of omelets and cats that looked like frogs and people in Guy Fawkes masks dancing around bonfires like giant marionettes, the strings stretching high, high up into the sky.
I AWOKE TO THE smell of something cooking. I sat up and gingerly rubbed my reinjured eye. I blinked. Sunlight illuminated the edges around the drawn shades in the living room. I found my phone and checked the time. It was just 7 a.m. I saw I already had texts from both Kym and Crystal about Red, White & Boom arrangements. Just three days away now.
Three days, I thought, getting my bearings. There’s a certain symmetry to that length of time one has to admire. No extraneous days you’re not sure what to do with: there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. Three is a prime number, of course, which is always special. And it’s a phrase full of historical and artistic significance. The length of time Jesus spent in the tomb. Three Days of the Condor—a book my dad once called his favorite ever. “Three Days,” a decent 1990 song by Jane’s Addiction that I always claim for the eighties, which didn’t really end until the Gulf War anyway. And most pertinent to my situation, the number of days of grace accorded under old English law before someone had to appear in court to answer a summons.
Three days. The amount of time the food left in my refrigerator would last without another trip to the grocery store, tops, assuming I went easy on the eggs and Black Label, and also assuming I had any money to replenish my supplies.
Three days. The amount of time I had until a painful appointment with destiny in the form of accompanying Joe and Mike to Red, White & Boom thanks to the generosity of Anne’s new boyfriend.
Three days. The amount of time I likely had to either find Abdi Mohamed or let Freddy Cohen know—and therefore the authorities—that Barbara Mendoza was lying about the boy. I hadn’t told her that in so many words. But she and I both knew we had to get to the bottom of this situation and fast. For Angela’s sake, if not for Abdi’s.
I WALKED INTO THE kitchen. Barbara was standing over the stove tending to a cast-iron skillet filled with sausage and eggs and potatoes and onions and green peppers.
“Are you OK?” she said, the corners of her mouth turned down in concern.
“Little sore. Fistfights aggravate my arthritis.”
“You were . . . You were snoring so loudly, I thought—”
“Occupational hazard. I’m fine.”
She smiled for the first time since I’d met her. “There’s coffee,” she said, pointing at a drip machine and a pair of cups beside it. I helped myself and sat down at the kitchen table.
“How is she?”
“Still asleep,” she said. “She stayed with me in my bed. She couldn’t bear to be alone.”
“You’re sure they didn’t hurt her?”
“Yes. Other than tying her up and blindfolding her, they didn’t touch her. They even asked her what she wanted to eat.”
“Any idea where they kept her?”
“None. She said she never saw anything or anyone, other than a flash of a face when the van pulled up. It happened so fast. There was a lot of driving around, and then stopping someplace, and then they took her into a building of some kind.”
“And no idea who they
were?”
She shook her head. “But there’s one thing—”
“Oh?”
“My phone died. What time is it?”
I looked up. Theresa stood before us in bare feet, rubbing her eyes. Her brown hair, normally held back with pins or a hairband, flew around her head as if she’d awakened, brushed her teeth, and jammed a finger into an electric socket. Her freckled face was puffy with sleep.
I stood up and handed her my cup of coffee, which I had yet to touch. She took it, nodded her thanks, and stumped over to the kitchen table. She sat down heavily in a chair next to mine. In past years her thrift-store outfits left one with the impression of a grown-up Pippi Longstocking on the way to the shooting range or a graduate seminar. She’d toned it down for last night’s adventure, opting for a black skirt over black yoga pants and a black-and-white striped sleeveless top. She looked like someone out of one of Bonnie Deckard’s manga comic books. Like someone scary clowns wouldn’t want to mess with.
“How’re you doing?” I said.
“Better than those two guys.” She grinned. I couldn’t help myself. I grinned back.
I poured myself a new cup and refreshed Barbara’s.
“You were saying?”
Barbara pulled three plates out of a cabinet to her left, one yellow, one red, one green. She opened the oven, reached in, and removed a flat bowl. She set it on top of the stove, lifted a tortilla out of it, and laid the tortilla on the top plate. She spooned a large helping of the skillet concoction on top, doused the results with salsa, sprinkled on cheese, rolled up the tortilla, and handed the plate to me. I handed it to Theresa. Barbara repeated the process for me, and then served herself. She sat down on the other side of the table.
“Angela heard something. In the van, right after they took her.”
“What was it?”
“A word or a name, she wasn’t sure. ‘JJ’s.’ One of them said it, the passenger, I think, and then the driver told him to shut up. It seemed important.”
“‘JJ’s’? She’s certain about that?”
“Yes.”
I flashed back to Grizzle in the parking lot, holding up his phone. Mike Bowden, I knew now. He’s saying JJ’s.
“Does that mean something to you?” Barbara said, seeing my reaction.
“Maybe.” I told her about the reference from the assault on Kaltun Hirsi.
“Which means them two last night are connected to your parking lot guys,” Theresa said. “Same ones?”
“Young guy, maybe. The older guy with him that day was moving a lot slower than either of those two.” I told them about the call from Patty Bowden, how her brother and nephew were missing. “But what’s the connection?” I said. “And if it’s not them, why would those guys”—meaning Bowden and his son—“have anything to do with the people who took Angela?”
32
AS WE DISCUSSED THE POSSIBILITIES, MY phone buzzed with a text. I replied and stood up.
“What is it?” Barbara said.
“We’ve got some visitors—don’t worry,” I said, seeing the expression on her face. “Someone I asked to stop by. Someone who’s going to help us.”
“Who?”
“More people we can trust.”
I walked through the living room, opened the front door, and looked up and down the street. Satisfied the coast was clear, I signaled for the occupants in the car in the driveway to come inside.
“THEY’LL KNOW SOMETHING IS up,” Barbara said, tears back in her eyes. “Seeing strangers like this. No offense, I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” Bonnie Deckard said. She was working on her own breakfast burrito and coffee. Her boyfriend sat next to her. Troy hadn’t touched his food yet. He was attending to the third visitor, a mastiff sitting by his side, motionless but eyes glued on Troy. She was the biggest dog I’d ever seen. She would have swamped pleasure boats, and not small ones. It was not out of the realm of possibility that Hopalong’s entire head could fit into her mouth. Her name was Goldie. She was a rescue that Troy brought home from the kennel where he worked on the northeast side of town helping to foster dogs captured in police raids of dogfighting rings and drug houses. Troy was wearing shorts and a black T-shirt and sporting a pair of muttonchops that wouldn’t have looked out of place on HMS Intrepid.
“We’ve got a window here,” I said to the counselor. “They’re going to lay low after last night. Like Theresa said—we needed to get their attention, and we did it.” Theresa gave me a smile of triumph at the recognition. “The ball’s in our court now. They have no idea how much we know, or even if we may have figured out who they are. And if they do get any ideas, we’ve got them outnumbered.” I reached out and carefully patted the top of Goldie’s head. “Seriously outnumbered.”
“But why are they here?” Barbara said, glancing at Bonnie. Bonnie smiled encouragingly. She was wearing black workout stretch pants that stopped midcalf and a black sleeveless tank top over a green Arch City Roller Girls shirt. Her auburn hair lay across a shoulder in a thick braid. Her muscular arms looked like she could juggle two Guy Fawkes mask–wearing clowns with ease and look around for more. She’d added a couple of ear gauges recently, which suited her personality, if not my tastes, though I noticed no one had asked me my opinion.
“Bonnie’s here to help us figure something out. Troy’s here because I prefer the odds with him around. Him and Goldie.”
“Figure what out?”
“These people learned the truth about Angela somehow. I assume, based on what you’ve told me so far, it’s not something you’ve told anybody?”
“Of course not. I’ve told no one. No one.”
“So that leaves one other possibility. Do you keep files about her case on your computer?”
She reddened. “A few. Some documents. I didn’t think—”
I raised my hand. “No one’s blaming anyone. But it makes it conceivable you were hacked. That’s the only thing I can think of.” Bonnie nodded.
“I’m very careful,” Barbara protested. “I have to be.”
“Everyone is. But it’s like the feds say about fighting terrorists. You have to bat a thousand keeping your laptop secure. Hackers only have to crack the code once.” I turned to Bonnie. “Let’s assume she’s been infiltrated. Is that something you could detect?”
“Depending how good they are, probably. And if she was, there’s all kinds of debugging software I can use. But given the circumstances, it might just be easier to start completely over.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything. Totally new laptop. Just junk the old one.”
Barbara shook her head. “I couldn’t. All my files—the information on Angela. School things.”
“I figured as much,” Bonnie said. “It’s OK. I can find a way around that. But if we can isolate those files, it still might make sense to get a new laptop, just to be sure.”
The counselor nodded, accepting the reality, though I could tell she wasn’t happy about it.
“You know about phishing?” Bonnie said. “People send you fake e-mails with links that hide viruses—”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Barbara said impatiently. “The district is very strict about that. We get reminders constantly.”
“I think it’s still a possibility, since like Andy says, they only have to succeed once and they’ve gotten quite sophisticated. They phish the e-mail of someone you know, ask to share a Google doc, and it’s game over. It’s even happened to me. But let’s think about other possibilities.”
“Such as?” Barbara said.
“Do you go out with your laptop a lot?”
“What do you mean?”
“Libraries, coffee shops, that kind of thing.”
“Very rarely. Why?”
“Public wireless can be just as dangerous. Even more so, because the connection isn’t really secure.”
I thought about the number of times I’d sat in coffee shops in recent years working off free wireless, includi
ng at Tim Horton’s just the other day. It made my job infinitely easier, especially at times I’m on the far side of town and won’t be home for hours.
“There is one place,” Barbara said after a moment. “I went there once after school, this spring. A meeting ran late and I had an early evening event at church. Angela was home doing homework, so I felt all right about it. Of course, this was before everything happened.”
“Anything suspicious when you were there?” Bonnie said.
The counselor shook her head. “I didn’t stay. I was disappointed, because I had a lot to do and I wanted a chance to sit by myself out of the office, away from the school environment. But as soon as I walked in I knew it wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?” I said.
“It was full of students. It was a popular place. It’s in a strip mall near the high school. All the conversation stopped when I entered. I smiled and waved, but I felt too self-conscious. I bought myself a coffee and left.”
I recalled something Mike Parsell, Abdi’s teammate, had said about a coffee shop all the students hung out at. “OK,” I said, disappointed.
“I happened to mention it to Helene the next day. She laughed and said I’d walked into the Ninth Period.”
“Ninth Period?”
“That’s what they call the place, apparently. Because so many students go there after school to drink coffee while they log back into their lives. They’re desperate for a connection after a day without. It’s ironic, when I think about it now.”
“Why?”
“Because Abdi Mohamed was one of the students I saw there that day. He and Faith Monroe and a couple other kids were sitting at a table, their laptops open, doing homework.”
33
I SHOVELED A FORKFUL OF BURRITO INTO my mouth. Making sure Troy wasn’t looking, I pinched a wad of egg and sausage and slipped it discreetly under the table. Goldie took it, kindly leaving my fingers intact.
I said, “Did you talk to them? Any students?”
“No. As I said, it was an awkward situation.”
“So you must have been hacked some other way—”
The Third Brother Page 13