“I don’t think his son does, either. He’s been in jail for the past few days.”
Reed’s cell phone buzzed in his pants, and he dug it out. The number was not one he recognized. “Agent Markham,” he said as he answered.
“Agent Markham, it’s Lisa Frick,” came a distressed voice on the other end. “Do you remember me?”
“Yes, of course. What can I do for you?”
“I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. I didn’t know who else to call. I saw on the news that you’re looking for a man in connection with Chloe Lockhart’s disappearance. They said to call right away if you recognized him because he might be a witness.”
“That’s right. Do you know the man?”
“I think—I think it’s Bobby. My brother.”
27
Sarit stayed with the girls while Reed and Ellery took off for Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where Bobby Frick made his home. I-95 was clear of most civilian traffic at this time of night, leaving Ellery to zigzag around the dozens of big-rig trucks that hauled freight up and down the East Coast corridor. Reed hunched over his laptop, working his networks for any further information on Bobby Frick. “He has a record,” he reported after a time. “Minor assault, public drunkenness, arrested with two other males at the scene. Looks like a bar fight from what I can discern from the aftermath. He was arrested again a year later, this time for assault against a girlfriend. She pressed charges and he did a couple of months before being released early. Most of these charges are old, though. The most recent is three years ago.”
“Nothing with kids?” Ellery’s stomach contracted in on itself like a sea urchin at the thought of what Bobby Frick could be doing to Chloe.
“Not that I see here.”
“So, if he took her, it’s not about sex.”
“I don’t think it ever was.”
“What, then? Revenge?”
“Anger. Pain. His mother was murdered and no one ever paid for it.”
“But then, why Chloe?” Ellery clenched the wheel, feeling trapped by her own futility. “She wasn’t even born back then. If the answer is that he really wants to torture Teresa, that doesn’t make much sense, either. Teresa Lockhart didn’t do it. She was at the hospital at the time of the murders.”
“According to Lisa Frick, Teresa asked her mother to be at the house that day, an afternoon that she wasn’t originally scheduled to work,” Reed reminded her. “But for Teresa’s intervention, Carol wouldn’t have been at the Stone house when the murderer arrived. Maybe Bobby holds her responsible.”
“Unless Carol led him there. Unless she was the target all along.”
“I’m betting Bobby doesn’t see it that way.”
They had pulled his driver’s license photo and it was, as Lisa Frick had indicated, a good match to the man seen on the CCTV footage the day Chloe disappeared, but it was not yet proof he’d taken her. After the last painful dead end at the Desmond house, Ellery held slim hope they could be close to a rescue. That remnant of hope popped like a soap bubble when they arrived at Bobby’s apartment building and she saw it was old but made of bricks with a solid concrete foundation. This wasn’t the location where Chloe was being held.
A frantic-looking woman Ellery gathered must be Lisa Frick stood outside the apartment building’s front door, clutching her cell phone. “Agent Markham, thank you for coming,” she said as they walked over to her. “I’ve been calling him all day since I saw that picture, but the phone goes right to voice mail. I’m praying I’m wrong about this.”
“We’ve checked and his phone is dead or turned off,” Reed replied. “He’s not taking anyone’s calls, not just yours.”
“Please. You have to help me find him.”
“We’re doing everything we can. This is his only known address?’
“For the past few years, yes. His place is on the third floor in the corner right there. Number Three-Oh-Two. I haven’t been inside since he moved in, because he usually comes to Boston to see me.”
Ellery tilted her head back to look at the darkened windows that Lisa had indicated. It was only nine thirty at night; most of the surrounding units still had lights on. “Do you have a key?”
“Yes.” She pulled it out and closed her fingers around it. “I’ve been afraid to go inside.”
“May I?” Reed held out his palm and she hesitated a moment before dropping the key in his hand.
“Bobby wouldn’t do anything to hurt that girl. Maybe he saw the kidnapper. Maybe he’s afraid and has been hiding out.”
“Then we’ll help him,” Reed said as they went inside. He hit the button for the elevator.
“Has he mentioned Chloe Lockhart at all to you?” Ellery asked.
“I was trying to think about that while I was waiting. I can only remember him mentioning her one time, the first time he found out about her. I’d just started school up here and Bobby came to visit. He was hanging around the city during the afternoon while I went to class, and when we met up afterward he said he’d seen Teresa. He said she had a new husband and a new daughter, like nothing had ever happened. Poof—she just started over.”
“Did he use those words exactly?” Reed wanted to know as they climbed into the elevator.
“Something close to that. I said I was happy for her. He said something like, ‘I can’t imagine being happy ever again, not after my kid got killed.’ Then we ordered takeout and didn’t talk about her anymore that I can remember. Bobby’s always had a temper, but I can’t believe he’d do anything to hurt that girl.”
“He’s hurt other people in the past,” Ellery said, thinking of his assault record.
“He—he’s been angry. Can you blame him? Our mom got killed and we ended up in foster care. No one ever found out who did it. Bobby took it hard. But after his last arrest, he got into counseling. He’s been taking medication. He’s doing better, I swear.”
The elevator stopped on the third floor and Ellery poked her head out to scan the hallway before letting the others out of the car. “It’s clear.”
Reed used the key to open the door to Bobby’s apartment. “Wait here,” he told Lisa.
Ellery entered first, her hand ready at her weapon. The place smelled like it had been baking in the summer sun for days, leaving hot dead air. She paused to listen, but the apartment was totally silent. “Bobby Frick? It’s the Boston Police.” She received no reply.
She felt along the wall with her left hand for a light switch, which she located and turned on. Reed and Lisa trailed behind her as she moved deeper into the apartment. It looked like a normal bachelor pad—inexpensive black leather sofa in front of a large-screen television. Big speakers. No plants or signs of anything alive. The kitchen was tidy, save for a single coffee mug sitting on the counter. Ellery glanced at the framed nature photographs on the wall, which depicted wet rocks up close so that their ridges and contrasting colors resembled abstract art.
“Bobby took those,” Lisa said. “His hobby is photography.”
“There’s a card here,” Reed called from the living area. He looked to Lisa. “It’s addressed to you.”
“That’s Bobby’s writing on it.” Lisa grabbed the envelope from the end table and tore it open. There was a white folded piece of paper inside that had been wrapped around an old photo. “This picture was taken at our house in Baltimore,” she said as Ellery came to look at it. It showed a boy and a girl, preschool age and dressed in finery, standing on some steps with a teenage girl behind them, one hand on each of their shoulders. A woman Ellery recognized as Carol Frick stood beside the steps. She wore a pink-colored skirt suit, a hat, and white gloves. “This was Easter Sunday in front of our old house. My dad took the picture. It was the last holiday before he died.”
Ellery took the photo from Lisa as she opened the accompanying note. Carol Frick smiled in the picture, but her eyes didn’t look to the cameraman. Instead, she seemed to be smiling beyond him, at someone or something far away.
Lisa read the no
te aloud: “‘Dear Lisa, Do you remember Dad making quacking noises to get us to smile for this picture? Hard to believe it could ever end up like this. You were always the best of all of us—smarter, kinder, able to leave the past where it belongs. Maybe finally I can do the same. Love forever, Bobby.’”
She looked up with shining eyes. “We need to find him.”
“We will.” Ellery nodded at her and moved to the bedroom at the back of the apartment. The door was closed and she felt her heartbeat speeding up at the prospect of opening it, despite the fact that she was nearly certain there was no one on the other side. Her hand flinched as she reached for the knob. “Mr. Frick?” she called again.
The door swung open and Ellery gasped aloud. He had photographs, all right—hundreds of them tacked to his wall, and they all appeared to show Chloe Lockhart. “Reed? You’re going to want to see this.”
He materialized immediately at her side in the doorway. “Wow.”
“What is it?” Behind them, Lisa hadn’t yet glimpsed her brother’s obsession. They parted so she could get a look. She gave a soft, horrified cry and her hands flew to her mouth. “No,” she said mournfully. “No, it can’t be true.”
Ellery stepped into the room to get a closer look at the pictures. “He’s been following her for weeks, if not months.” The photos showed Chloe in her yard with her dog, Snuffles. Outside her school, chatting with friends or leaning up against the fence, looking bored as she stared at her phone. Getting into the car with Margery, her nanny. Walking along the streets of Boston with Margery. He had followed her into the YMCA, too, because there were multiple shots on different days of Chloe laughing and talking to Ty. At one point, he caught them shooting hoops together. Teresa and Martin Lockhart appeared incidentally in the photos, too. The entire family had been photographed leaving church together.
“I don’t see a camera here anywhere,” Reed said, peering in the closet. “He must have it with him.”
“Look at this one,” Ellery said. She pointed at the most disturbing photo, one that showed Chloe’s face looking out her bedroom window. “He’s been to her house.”
“He’s been everywhere she was,” Reed replied, his gaze flicking over the wall of photos.
“Yes, but where are they now?”
Outside, the sound of approaching sirens signaled the arrival of backup. They would need a team to comb through the apartment for anything of evidentiary value. Reed pulled out his phone and turned as if to leave but stopped in his tracks. “Ellery. Look.”
She turned around and saw the back wall. This one had printed-out newspaper headlines and articles from the murders of Trevor Stone and Carol Frick.
BOY, HOUSKEEPER SLAIN
STONE-COLD KILLER ON THE LOOSE
POLICE QUESTION BROTHER IN DOUBLE HOMICIDE
COULD THE HOUSKEEPER HAVE BEEN A TARGET?
TREVOR STONE LAID TO REST
CITY MOURNS LOST SON
NEIGHBORHOOD PANIC GROWS AS KILLER REMAINS AT LARGE
TEN YEARS LATER, TREVOR STONE’S KILLER STILL UNKNOWN
“You see? Her name isn’t anywhere,” Lisa said, still sniffling as Ellery studied the headlines. “That’s what bothered him. She was always just ‘the housekeeper’—someone there by accident. Her death didn’t matter at all.”
“Did you know about this?” Ellery asked, indicating the paper trail.
“No. I mean, he talked about it whenever the case made the news again, how all the focus was on Trevor and not on our mom. But I had no clue he did … that.” She gestured weakly at the clippings and printouts.
Ellery went to the bookshelf, scanning it for clues. Paperback techno thrillers, sci-fi, books on photography. He had a baseball signed by David Ortiz and a framed photograph of himself and Lisa against the backdrop of leafy trees and a textured wall of rock. Ellery picked up the picture and studied it. “If he’s not here, where else might he go?”
“I have no idea.”
“Think hard.”
“I am. Bobby was always kind of a loner. He’d take his camera out into the woods to shoot pictures by himself. He was either doing that, visiting me, or at work.”
“Where does he work?”
“At a stone quarry not far away.”
“A stone quarry. Like where they process rocks for foundations and stuff?”
“I guess. I don’t know the details.”
“We have to get over there,” Ellery said to Reed. “It could be where he’s keeping her.”
“I’ll come with you,” Lisa said, heading for the door.
“No,” Reed and Ellery said at the same time.
She halted and turned around again. “I have to know what happened to him.”
“We’ll keep in touch,” Reed said, touching her arm on the way by. “Right now, the arriving officers are going to need your help.”
“But—”
Ellery didn’t catch the rest of Lisa’s protest. She heard only the sound of her boots on the stairs as she fled down the staircase. Moments behind her, Reed caught up as she reached the exit. Ellery glanced up long enough to see Lisa’s worried face in the window watching as they got into the car. “I don’t blame her for wanting to tag along,” she said. “It must be hell on her, too, the not knowing.”
“She’s afraid of what we’re going to find,” Reed said as she started the car.
“You mean Chloe.”
“I mean Bobby. That letter he left her—it was a suicide note.”
28
Reed worked the phones while Ellery drove. “The manager of the Stonewall Quarry is a man named Nga Nall,” he explained to the Providence PD. “We need him to meet us there. Go pick him up immediately—there is a young girl’s life at stake.” His shoulder slammed into the car door as Ellery careened around a tight corner. “We’ll also need a search team and medics on-site.”
“You think we’ll find her there,” Ellery said when he hung up the phone.
“I hope we’ll find her there.” He’d been grasping for motive since Chloe’s abduction, and now it was clear. Bobby Frick’s psychological profile had never matched that of a typical kidnapper; he was more akin to a suicide bomber or a man who shot up a public place before turning the gun on himself. He was going down, but he aimed to inflict as much pain as possible on his way out.
They arrived at the quarry, which was surrounded by a high fence and blocked by a locked gate. Ellery left her headlights on for illumination as she grabbed the fence at the door and yanked with both hands. It swayed slightly, but the lock held fast. Reed checked his phone. “They have Nall. ETA is now fifteen minutes.”
“We can’t wait that long.” Ellery started climbing the fence.
“What are you doing? There’s barbed wire up there.”
“So I’ll get cut.”
Reed looked up and down the deserted road, wishing for backup that wasn’t yet close. Ellery reached the top and cursed as the wire caught her clothes. He heard a rip, followed by another string of cursing. “Are you okay?” he asked as she struggled over the barbs.
“Peachy,” she muttered.
He shone his flashlight at her and saw blood on the palm of her left hand. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, slightly breathless as she jumped down on the other side. She found the lockbox and fished out a set of keys. She tried one, then another. “This is bullshit,” she said. “They’ll be here in another few minutes.”
“Yes,” he said reasonably. “They will.”
“Aha,” she said with satisfaction as the key fit and the lock sprang open. She yanked the gate open and Reed slipped inside. Mountains of rocks stood off to the right side. On the left was a long building with few windows, as well as smaller piles of daintier rocks. Reed sneezed as the dust tickled his nose.
Ellery had her flashlight out now and she began prowling the grounds. Reed followed at a distance, eyeing the hulking earthmovers that loomed like mechanical monsters in the dark. His phone buzzed with
a message from their old friend Detective Jake Osborne, who was en route with the plant manager. Nall says Bobby Frick hasn’t been to work in a week, the text message read. Reed relayed this news to Ellery as she stood on the edge of a dumpster-like container and peered inside. “He may not be here,” he said to her. “We should be thinking of other possibilities.”
Ellery shone her light on a pile of rough stones, each about the size of a small beach ball. “You see those fieldstones? They’re the same kind we saw in the photo of Chloe. We’re on the right track. Let’s see if we can get into the building.”
“Lead the way.” Reed followed her to the doors, which were, not surprisingly, also locked. The keys she’d acquired didn’t seem to work.
“Maybe we can use one of the rocks to break a window,” she said, standing on tiptoe and cupping her hands around her eyes to try to see inside the building.
“Or we could have him do it.” Reed gestured behind them at the arriving manager, who was accompanied by Detective Osborne and several uniformed officers. Osborne nodded at Reed and Ellery as they approached.
“Any sign of the girl?”
“Not yet,” Ellery replied. She regarded Nga Nall, the manager. “Can you get us inside?”
“Yes, of course.” He produced a completely different set of keys and used one to unlock the door. “But there’s no girl inside here—just offices. I locked it up myself this evening.”
Ellery didn’t answer. She jogged through the open door and began combing the premises. Nall turned up the lights to aid her search. A couple of the uniformed officers joined her while Reed and Osborne hung back to question Nall. “What can you tell me about the operations here?” Reed asked.
“We’re open eight to five, Mondays through Fridays. We’re part of a larger corporation that hauls in stone from several more remote digs and we process it on-site here. There’s a couple dozen people coming in and out of here all day long. If Bobby Frick tried to hide here, or to keep a young girl here, we’d know about it.”
Reed looked at the crude floor. “What’s under here?”
Every Waking Hour Page 25