Three Women Disappear

by James Patterson

As plans go, this one felt foolproof. I was already rehearsing my exit speech: “I’ve handed you your nephew’s killer,” I’d say. “I’m done now. It’s time for me to walk away.”

  I was stopped at a light a block from the Stow-and-Go when they hit me: squad cars, unmarked cars, a goddamn armored SWAT truck. There was even a helicopter circling above. The sirens drowned out every other sound. Shock and awe meant a high-risk, high-profile arrest. The news vans wouldn’t be far behind.

  At first it didn’t compute. I thought they were raiding the Stow-and-Go, swooping in on Pete and his band of thieves. I was thankful I hadn’t arrived five minutes earlier. But then I heard Heidi’s voice bleating at me through a loudspeaker, and I saw what must have been half the Tampa police force take cover behind their vehicles, Glocks and rifles pointed at me.

  “Sean Alexander Walsh,” Heidi said, “I need you to step out of the vehicle with your hands on your head. Nice and slow.”

  I did as I was told. The chopper hovered so low to the ground that the wind off its blades had my blazer flapping and my hair blowing in every direction. I stood at what felt like the junction of a thousand spotlights, my mind spinning through every possible scenario. Only one seemed likely: Vincent had given up on me a day too early, leaked my file straight to the precinct.

  Heidi, dressed in Kevlar, crept up on me with her Glock raised. A small fleet of uniforms kept pace behind her.

  “Sean Walsh,” Heidi said, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Anthony Costello.”

  Murder? It was more than I could process. Without thinking, I took a step forward, dropped my arms to my sides. Heidi and her entourage cocked their guns in unison.

  “Hands, hands, hands!” she screamed.

  Then: “On your knees. Now.”

  She let one of the unis pat me down and cuff me. She’d have done it herself if she wasn’t getting such a kick out of pointing that gun at my head.

  “You have the right to remain silent,” she said. “Anything you say—”

  “What the hell is this?” I shouted. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

  “—will be used against you in a court of law…”

  I wasn’t listening.

  “You know where I was that day,” I said. “I was on shift. I was working a scene on the other end of Tampa. You know that.”

  She kept on reading me my rights. I looked around at the small army assembled to hunt me down. You’d have thought I was Pablo Escobar.

  “Search it,” Heidi said.

  A crew of gloved detectives descended on the Jeep. I’d worked alongside each and every one of them. They were my colleagues. My friends. I’d been to their weddings, seen their kids baptized. If they had any regrets about what they were doing, it didn’t show on their faces.

  Heidi signaled for me to get to my feet. Together we watched Jimmy, Beth, Tom, and Samuel strip my car down to the studs. They tore out the carpet, dropped anything that wasn’t nailed down into an evidence bag.

  “Come on, Heidi,” I said. “What is this? What do you think they’re going to find?”

  Crickets. She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t talk to me. My partner of more than a decade.

  “Anything?” she called.

  Samuel came trotting over, holding up a clear plastic bag. Inside was a Navy SEALs custom-engraved six-inch commemorative blade.

  “No gross residue,” he said, “but the size and color match.”

  “This is insane,” I said. “Samuel, do you really think I’d hide a murder weapon in my own damn car? You think I’d drive over to Anthony’s and kill him with my own monogrammed knife? Am I really that stupid? Samuel, look at me.”

  But he’d already turned his back and walked away. Heidi held up the bag, studied the knife.

  “All right,” she said to no one in particular, “let’s wrap this up.”

  Two uniforms I’d never seen before steered me toward the back of a squad car. The news vultures had arrived in force. There must have been a dozen cameras on me. I figured, why not give them something worth filming?

  “I’ve got shit on every one of you!” I screamed, swinging my head around, eyeballing my former friends and colleagues one by one. “You think I’ll forget this? You think I’ll go quietly? I’ll bring down every one of you. You think I’m stupid? You just flushed your careers down the goddamn toilet. I’m taking this prime time. The story of the Tampa PD is about to be writ large. Think about that when you’re kissing your kids good night.”

  I felt a hand on my head, pushing me down into the car. I took a last look around. My eyes settled on Heidi. She gave my stare right back, then broke into a wide and vicious grin.

  Part II

  Chapter 34

  Sarah Roberts-Walsh

  MOST OF what people say about jail is true. The roaches are so big you can hear their footsteps. Showering is a spectator sport. The guards are at least as terrifying as the inmates. And every meal is one part powder, two parts grease.

  Luckily, the subhuman chow came in handy for me. Once my fellow inmates found out I could cook they went from wanting to have some fun with the newbie to making sure I didn’t break so much as a fingernail. We had access to a microwave and an electric kettle, which was pretty much all the equipment I needed. Twenty-four hours into my stay they were calling me M.S.—short for Martha Stewart, another inmate who famously brightened up her tier.

  My shtick was this: I’d take whatever someone bought at the commissary and turn it into something they might actually want to eat. You’d be amazed at what you can do with a packet of ramen noodles. Crush them up, boil them to mush, then tamp the mush down and let it cool and you have the wrap for a burrito. What you fill it with is up to you, but the most popular items were American cheese and fake sausage, two of the pricier commissary foods.

  As for dessert, Oreo cookies make a nice base for mini cakes and pie crusts. Break them up, mix the crumbs with Kool-Aid or cola, and you’ve got a kind of batter that fluffs out like a yeast after just a few minutes in the microwave.

  If you’re feeling fancy, you can scrape away the creamy center and use it later as icing.

  In short, I was accepted—even celebrated. Which isn’t to say I’d ever want to go back to jail, but I learned something about myself I never would have guessed: when my back’s to the wall, I find a way to survive.

  All told, I was incarcerated for three days and three nights. On the morning of what would have been the fourth day, a CO the inmates called Gangrene because of her mossy-colored skin told me to come with her and leave my blanket behind. Once we were off the tiers and out of the cellblock, she handed me off to a young social worker in a turquoise pantsuit. Her name was Karen, and her handshake was limp bordering on submissive—as if it was her way of saying I’m no threat.

  I was being released—Gangrene had made that much clear—but Karen wondered if she might have a word with me first.

  “A kind of exit interview,” she said.

  I had no objections. The truth is, I didn’t know where I’d go once they let me walk back through those gates. I followed her into a small office that was tiled with yellow subway tiles and furnished with a laminate desk and plastic chairs. It reminded me of my high school principal’s office, only smaller.

  “You know that the police have arrested your husband for the murder of Anthony Costello?” Karen asked once we were seated.

  “I heard rumors,” I said. “I didn’t know for sure if they were true. There are a lot of stories flying around this place.”

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Karen said.

  I tugged at the collar of my orange jumpsuit—a nervous tic I’d picked up in no time at all.

  “I guess I’m not,” I said. “Sean is a violent man. Anthony was a violent man. Something was bound to give.”

  Karen plucked a paper clip from a tray on her desk and started straightening it, then bending it back to its original shape—her own nervous tic.

  “I’m just wonde
ring why you didn’t come forward with a full report.”

  “Full report?”

  “About the abuse. The physical abuse in your marriage.”

  She made her voice sound as if she was consoling me when really she was blaming me for something. After all those hours in the box with Heidi, I’d played enough games to last me a lifetime.

  “You might as well ask why I didn’t report the rape,” I said.

  “The rape?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Don’t you people talk to each other? Anthony Costello raped me. He drugged me, and then he raped me.”

  A piece of paper clip broke off in her hands. She was blushing. Her cheeks turned phosphorescent under the cheap overhead lights. I was glad I got a young one. Karen couldn’t have been more than a year or two out of social work school. Maybe less. Maybe this was her prison internship.

  “I didn’t know,” she said.

  “Neither did Sean. Or at least I didn’t tell him. You know why?”

  She shook her head.

  “Because Anthony would have denied it. More than denied it—he would have claimed the sex was all my idea. He’d have said he fought me off for as long as he could stand it, but I just kept coming on to him. And Sean would have believed him. And I think you can guess what would have come next.”

  Karen hesitated, cleared her throat, reached for a fresh paper clip. I hoped for her sake that she really was an intern.

  “But isn’t that all the more reason to come forward? Tell the authorities?”

  I decided to break out the props. I opened my mouth wide, pointed to two shiny, fake molars on the left side.

  “You see that?” I asked. “Last winter, Sean and I were walking downtown, doing our Christmas shopping. We got into a fight over how much to spend on my aunt. My aunt is more like my mother. She raised me. She’s all I’ve got in the way of family. Her eyesight had taken a bad turn, and I wanted to get her a large-screen TV. Sean said she was just an aunt. He said aunts get fancy soaps or gourmet chocolates, not expensive TV sets. It escalated from there. Next thing I knew, he was slapping me around in the parking lot behind Macy’s. There were people all around. When I started screaming, he switched from slapping to punching. He hit me so hard, he knocked these teeth out.

  “Back then, I was brave. I called the cops. I filed a report. And then I waited. For weeks. For a full month. I didn’t hear anything back. Meanwhile, Sean was on his best behavior. We got that television set for Aunt Lindsey. He brought me flowers, took me to fancy restaurants. He swore up and down it would never happen again. He said he loved me. He actually made me believe he’d changed.

  “So I decided to let him off the hook. I called the precinct to retract my statement, say I wouldn’t press charges. And guess what they told me? There was no report. Either it had vanished or it had never been filed.

  “Do you see what I’m saying, Karen? Sean had the power to erase history. I wasn’t just up against him. I was up against a brotherhood. A state-sanctioned gang. That was when I knew he’d lied. He hadn’t changed at all. He’d do it again. And again, and again, and again. And one day he’d go too far. He’d beat me dead, and no one would do a goddamn thing to stop him. So don’t talk to me about reports. Don’t talk to me about what I could have or should have done, because you weren’t there.”

  After that, Karen didn’t have much to say for herself. She walked me to pick up my belongings and my street clothes. I changed in a handicapped bathroom, signed a piece of paper, and was on my way.

  Outside, I waited for the shuttle bus back to the city. It was raining, which seemed about right. I thought of Sean. I felt more like a patient leaving the hospital than an inmate leaving jail. I’d survived the torturous injection, gagged down the vile medicine, and now the disease was cured. I had the rest of my life to look forward to, and the fact that I had no plans didn’t bother me one bit.

  Chapter 35

  Anna Costello

  I OPENED my eyes when they absolutely wouldn’t stay closed any longer, then rolled onto my side and switched the alarm clock to Radio. This morning—if you can call 12:30 p.m. morning—the local DJ was playing Martha and the Vandellas: “Nowhere to hide / Got nowhere to run to, baby…” I laughed out loud at the irony, then got up and danced a little.

  I never would have guessed that New Orleans was my kind of town. Jambalaya gives me the trots. Dixieland makes me twitch. But so far, I couldn’t find a single thing wrong with my post-Anthony life. I enjoyed sitting on my wrought iron balcony with a dark roast in the morning and a gin fizz at night. I enjoyed looking down on the cobblestoned street where tourists and locals mingled and sometimes clashed. I even enjoyed the smell of fresh horse manure from the buggy tours that passed under my window every hour like clockwork.

  But most of all I enjoyed being alone. It beat the hell out of tiptoeing around that soulless McMansion, doing my best to steer clear of the man who only spoke to me when he wanted someone to scream at, only touched me when he wanted someone to slap around. My marriage had become a nonstop game of hide-and-seek.

  Which isn’t to say that my old life didn’t haunt me. Coffee and gin cured a lot, but they couldn’t keep the uglier memories at bay. I’d be sitting on the toilet, swimming in the hotel pool, finishing a crossword puzzle in bed, when out of nowhere I’d flash on an image of Tony, Vincent, Defoe, Broch. They came at me like monsters rearing their heads in a children’s pop-up book. Tony spitting in my face because I’d scraped his Bentley when I was backing out of the garage. Defoe grinning at me through a shattered rear window. Vincent whispering in my ear that sooner or later Anthony would snap and kill me—not because Anthony was evil, but because, as wives go, I was “my own special ring of hell.”

  Of course, there was still plenty to fret over in the here and now. I’d been following the investigation from afar. I knew Sarah was out of jail, and I knew Sean was locked up. I’d even managed to get Serena on the phone. Haagen pushed her to the brink, but she stood tall. Serena, more than anyone, put Sean behind bars. When I talked to her, her voice was half nerves and half exhaustion, but there was some hope, too. She’d moved in with her brother and was starting a new job, working in the cafeteria of a downtown public school. Spooning out mashed potatoes was a far cry from what Serena wanted to be doing, or was capable of doing, but she’d be treated well, and the school system would pay for night courses. She’d be Serena Flores, Esquire, soon enough.

  It felt as though the three of us had turned a corner, but that didn’t mean we were in the clear. Anthony was dead. Sean was staring down a life sentence. But skeletal old Uncle Vincent still loomed large. Who knew what story Sean was feeding him? Chances were he’d say he’d taken the fall for Sarah, play the devoted husband to keep from getting shanked. And Vincent, who seemed to think that women were made to lay traps for men, wouldn’t be hard to convince.

  Or maybe Sean would point the finger at me. That would be the smart play. As I said, there was never any love lost between me and Vincent. It wouldn’t take much to convince him that I’d killed his beloved nephew. Besides, as he saw it, I was costing him money just by staying alive. A lot of money. Between the house, the yacht, the luxury cars, and the offshore accounts, I stood to inherit a sizable fortune—a fortune Vincent believed was rightfully his.

  Anthony wasn’t all the way stupid, but the Costello empire-building gene had skipped right over him. If the playing field had been level, if he’d been born into a nice middle-class family in the suburbs, he might have wound up managing a restaurant or owning a car wash. I’d put his absolute ceiling at real estate agent. But with Vincent backing him, he’d gone crashing through that ceiling. In other words, Vincent made Anthony wealthy, and now Vincent felt that wealth should revert back to him.

  And with me out of the picture, it would. Anthony had no other next of kin. My guess was that Vincent planned to help me commit suicide. Probably with a noose or pills. Something that would leave a clean corpse for the medical e
xaminer, who was most likely in Vincent’s pocket anyway. Not a bruise on her apart from what she did to herself, this hypothetical coroner would say. Suicide, open and shut. The distraught wife just couldn’t go on.

  All that to say: I was still jumpy as hell. In the morning, I expected to pull back the curtains and find Defoe standing on my balcony. At night, before I went to bed, I spilled a garbage bag of crumpled newspaper over the floor so no one could sneak up on me. I even cut back on the sleeping pills for fear the noise wouldn’t wake me.

  Of course, Haagen would come hunting for me, too, once the trial was underway. I’d be witness and widow—the person who humanized Anthony for the jury. Maybe the DA would offer me some kind of temporary protection, put me up in a swank hotel for the duration. But the trial would end, and unless Sean was convicted beyond a shadow of a doubt, my straits would be no less dire. Vincent had to walk out of that courtroom without a doubt in his head. Then, if I had to pay him off, I would. Meanwhile, the staff at this boutique hotel knew me as Jane Pepper, and I wore my curly red wig morning, noon, and night. I even wore it to bed.

  And yet, part of me felt so free. All that was missing was a companion. Someone I could talk to without worrying that they’d turn on me—or turn me in. To Vincent. To Haagen. Someone I trusted. Someone who had as much to lose as me.

  Chapter 36

  SHE TURNED up the morning of my fifth day in New Orleans. I might have complained about the hotel’s security. There was no call from the concierge, no bellhop announcing her arrival: just three soft knocks at the door. It was a knocking I recognized. It used to mean, I don’t want to bother you, but breakfast / lunch / dinner is ready. Truth be told, it always bothered the hell out of me. I wanted to scream at her to stand up tall and give that door a good, hard whack. Now, though, there wasn’t any sound I’d rather hear.

  “Just a minute,” I said.