Heart racing, she shut off the kitchen light so the cabin would look dark. From the bedroom, she retrieved a flannel pajama top from the stack of clothes and returned to the kitchen. Moving by feel, she found her way back to the refrigerator and wedged herself into the narrow gap between the counter and the machine. With her hand wrapped in the flannel pajamas, she bent the corner back farther, pressing it until it almost folded back on itself. Then she opened it out flat again and folded it back.
Bent and flat, bent and flat. Over and over.
When her arm ached, she paused, stretching it out behind her for several moments before starting again. Soon, the piece bent more easily, then as smoothly as slicing through warm butter, until she began to feel the bottom end loosen.
She kept working it—bending and then straightening, each time giving the triangle a little twist to try to break it free. Tired from the repetitive motion, she distracted her mind by recounting the experience of anatomy class in med school. Seven, eight, or even nine hours spent on her feet, dissecting the vascular system or the respiratory system.
Still working her left hand, she rested her forehead against the side of the refrigerator and felt the vibration of the machine against her skull.
She didn’t know how long had passed when, finally, she heard the crack of the metal breaking. She stood up, breathless, and moved the metal more quickly. Bent, straight. Bent, straight.
And finally, the triangular piece released into her fingers.
She let out a cry of relief and then cupped her hand over her mouth. Silence.
Moving quickly, she returned the refrigerator to its place and carefully hid the metal triangle inside her bra. Leaving the flannel pajamas over the kitchen chair, she used a paper towel to wipe the peanut butter off the camera and the projector. She threw away the paper towel, returned the chair to the table, and retrieved the pajama top before making her way back to the bedroom. Under her bra, the metal dug into her skin as she dragged the cord along the track into the bedroom.
There, she slipped back into bed with the small triangle of metal and the flannel pajamas. With the covers over her head, she began to saw at the collar around her neck.
45
Monday, 5:30 a.m. EST
Hal tasted dust on his tongue and felt the grit of it between his teeth. “Officer, I am not armed,” he said, clearing the fear from his throat. “I have no weapon. My wallet’s in my back pocket. You’ll find my badge there, too.”
The pulsing of his heart roared in his ears, deafening and amplifying sounds in alternating beats. In the down moments, Hal felt certain he could hear the officer’s heavy breathing, the low chuckle of Spencer MacDonald’s enjoyment as he watched from his car.
“I am an officer of the law,” Hal said, cheek still pressed to the ground. He moved his tongue over the roof of his mouth to remove the dirt, but his mouth was a desert. “I am a detective. Spencer MacDonald was charged with killing two women. He has kidnapped a third. Please don’t shoot me. I’m on your side. We are the same. Please. Please see me.” His voice cracked. Tears tracked over his cheeks, the salty taste mixing with the chalky flavor of dust.
“What’s your name?” the officer asked.
Hal sensed the gun still on him and raised his head only a couple of inches. “My name is Hal Harris. Harold Clint Harris. I’m a detective with the San Francisco Police Department. I work in Homicide.”
He felt Potter’s hand on his backside and his wallet slipped from his pocket. Shame burned his face.
“You stay right there,” the officer said.
“Yes, sir. I won’t move. I’ll stay right here.” Hal felt a lump of relief in his throat, as though Officer Potter had saved him from some other crazy person, and it was not Potter himself who’d been holding a gun to Hal’s head.
“I’m telling you, Potter,” MacDonald called across the street. “He’s dangerous, this one.”
“You probably best be going, Mr. MacDonald,” Potter said, his footsteps moving away from Hal.
Hal let out the breath he’d been holding and turned his face to wipe the tears on his shirtsleeve. He didn’t move his arms. Didn’t shift. The adrenaline burned in his gut. Sweat slid across his back.
“But I want to press charges,” MacDonald called out, his voice taking on the tone of a petulant child. “I want him in jail.”
“Press charges for what?” Potter asked, his voice now some distance away.
Hal remained frozen in place, face in the dirt. Breathing. Still breathing.
“For following me,” MacDonald called out.
“Following you along a public road doesn’t constitute a crime.”
“He was sitting outside my home.”
“Afraid that’s not a crime either,” Potter said. “You want, you can stop by and speak to someone at the department in the morning.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. What good is the police if they don’t do their job?”
Potter didn’t answer. Hal could hear the sound of a voice over a radio. MacDonald’s car revved as he started to make a U-turn, nosing his car to within inches of Harper’s Subaru. The Lexus’s tires closed in on his fingers, and Hal prepared to roll out of MacDonald’s path.
MacDonald seemed to change his mind and stopped. Maybe he realized he’d accomplished the goal of terrifying Hal, so instead he backed the Lexus into the middle of the road, facing the same direction he’d been headed before. “Fuck you, Harris,” he hissed and was gone.
Hal still didn’t move. His hamstrings and quads stiffened. Potter talked into his radio. A door opened, and footsteps approached. Hal wanted to look backward—it felt impossible not to check and see if Potter still had his service weapon drawn.
But he didn’t dare.
Suddenly, the sound of another engine filled the night air, nothing like the expensive purr of MacDonald’s Lexus. Instead, it was low and guttural, like an ancient truck. The sound steadily increased, the headlights adding a glow to the darkness, along with Potter’s own headlights and the blue and red strobe.
The sound of honking followed, loud and cranky like an old man shouting. Over and over. Hal imagined a truck full of Klansmen. And Potter would be his only witness.
How long would it take him to get into the Subaru? Could he outrun them? He’d have to go straight, continuing along the quiet country road. The word lynch rose in his mind, bringing with it the sour taste of stomach acid.
The sound of brakes. A woman’s voice. “Hal! Are you okay? Officer, do not shoot that man. He’s an officer. A police officer.”
Harper.
He turned his head, unable to make out her face beyond the headlights. His eyes teared at the sound of her voice, momentarily reminded of that first time he’d talked to Harper, over the phone, when Anna had run off to South Carolina. Before . . . before all of it.
Harper was talking rapidly. Her voice rose and fell as she told him that she, too, was an officer. Charleston. MacDonald. An old case. Missing. Words were audible, but sentences were lost to the roar of the truck’s engine.
“I know who he is,” Potter said finally.
“You have to let him go,” she said.
“I am letting him go.” Potter’s voice sounded exasperated.
Shoes—soft-soled now—ran toward him, and Harper was on her knees beside him, holding his arm, helping him up.
“Harper.”
“Oh my God. You scared the devil out of me.”
“I’m okay.” The words were as much for himself as for her.
“Let’s get you out of here.”
He rose, dusted himself off, and took a step. His hips and legs were stiff, frozen. “How did you find me?”
“Lucy.”
Hal shook his head at the reference to her daughter. “What? How?”
“I’ll explain later.”
When Hal turned, Potter stood a few feet away. He held out Hal’s wallet. “Sorry for the confusion.”
Hal wasn’t sure what confusion he was referring to. Confusi
on that a black man might not be a killer? That a rich white man could be the guilty one? He took the wallet and returned it to his pocket. “Where did he go?”
“Not sure,” Potter said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Headed back into town, I think.”
Hal looked down at the front of his clothes. To Harper, he said, “We’ve got to find him.”
“You want, I can put a call in, send a car by his house,” Potter said, all graciousness now that Harper was there.
“No, but thanks,” Hal said, the sarcasm thick on his tongue.
“I’ll follow you back to MacDonald’s,” Harper said quietly.
Hal nodded.
It was still dark when they arrived back at MacDonald’s house. No lights. No sign of life inside. Harper got out of the truck and met him in the street. Together, they stared at the house.
“What now?” he asked.
“We knock on the door.” She took a step toward the house. “Or I do.”
Hal nodded, stepping back to the Subaru to wait. His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text from Telly. He checked the time: 6:00 here, which meant 5:00 a.m. in Dallas.
Got a potential lead.
Hal dialed.
“Hey,” Telly answered. “You’re up early.”
“I’m in Greenville,” Hal said, and not particularly kindly. “What’s the lead?”
“Our Atlanta office arrested a guy last week for passport forgery. We think MacDonald might have been a client.”
A passport. He planned to leave the country. Hal looked up at MacDonald’s house, where Harper still stood at the closed front door.
“Based on some financial documents, it looks like MacDonald may have bought two passports.”
Hal felt steam build in his lungs. “That means he’s got Anna. He’s going to try to get her out of the country.”
“Or he bought two passports for himself. Two different identities.”
“Well, find out,” Hal barked. “We need to know his alias before he leaves the country.”
“The forger managed to erase his hard drive before his arrest. Our Atlanta tech team is working to retrieve the lost data. As soon as I have any details, I’ll call you.”
“He’s gone,” Hal whispered. “I followed him this morning, but—” He halted, not wanting to explain the whole story. “But I lost him. What if he’s going to get her and leave now? Today. We need to stop him, Telly.”
“How do you know he didn’t go to the office?”
“At four in the morning?”
“Okay,” Telly said. “I’ll call the field office down there and get someone on him.”
“I want to know where he is. As soon as you hear anything—”
“I’ll call,” Telly promised.
Across the street, Harper knocked on the door again, shaking her head. MacDonald wasn’t opening it.
Hal crossed the street and met Harper in the driveway.
“I’m guessing he’s not home.” She frowned and held up a finger. “Stay here.” Harper left him in the driveway and rounded the far side of the house.
Hal took a few steps so that he could see her. On her tiptoes, she was trying to look through a small window set high in the wall.
“This is the garage,” she said, jumping up. “But I can’t see inside.”
Hal approached and looked in the window, confirming what he already knew. “Car’s not there.”
A car drove by on the street, and both of them froze. “Let’s get out of here,” Harper said, hurrying back to the street. “I’ll leave the truck here for now.”
Hal handed her the keys to the Subaru, and they climbed in as though they knew where they were going. But they didn’t.
Hal stared down the block in both directions. “Where was he going at four in the morning?”
“There’s nothing farther out that road. Potter confirmed it.”
“He was leading me on a goose chase.”
“Because he had the police coming.”
“That must have been the plan,” Hal said. “Get me arrested so that he could lose the tail.” Hal touched his head and felt the dust still stuck to his scalp. “Or get me shot.”
Harper exhaled, shaking her head.
“How did you find me?”
“Jed put a GPS tracker in the Subaru. It technically belongs to the lab, but they’re down a van right now, so he keeps it in the car. It allows him to track mileage for work.”
Hal shook his head. “You said Lucy.”
Harper smiled. “It also allows him to track Lucy when she has the car so he can make sure she’s where she says she is.”
“So Jed tracked me?”
“I’ve got the software. When I woke up and your bedroom door was open, I figured you’d gone back to MacDonald’s. Then I got your voicemail, and I got nervous. When you didn’t answer your phone, I knew something was wrong.”
Hal leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. Exhaustion settled in his bones, braiding itself with fear and desperation, leaving him feeling both wired and totally fried. He had lost his only lead to Anna. Spencer MacDonald had set a trap for him.
He had walked right into it.
And now MacDonald was in the wind.
46
Monday, 6:20 a.m. EST
Leaving the truck behind, Hal and Harper took the Subaru to look for MacDonald’s Lexus. They started at his office and then went to the club and the gym. They drove to the airport and went down the lanes of parked cars, one by one. They contacted the local police and asked for assistance—an APB, calls to every airport within a three-hour drive, and a subpoena for his cell phone records. They weren’t likely to get it—especially not at this hour—but they asked anyway. Starving, they stopped for doughnuts and coffee and kept looking. Hal offered to take Harper back to her friend’s house and let her rest, but she refused.
“Two heads are better than one,” she said.
And time is of the essence, he thought. Because every minute that passed was a minute that MacDonald had a head start.
After the search, they picked up the truck Harper had borrowed and went back to the house. Harper took a quick shower, and Hal stretched out on the living room floor. The sound of Harper making a fresh pot of coffee roused him. Twenty minutes after that, they were on the road again. At MacDonald’s office a second time, they spoke with one of the partners, who got in touch with MacDonald’s assistant to confirm his calendar for the morning. It was empty for the rest of the week, which made sense. He was supposed to go from Detroit to Cleveland and then to Richmond, Virginia. He was not supposed to be home.
With nowhere left to go, they were heading back to the house when Hal’s phone rang with an unfamiliar number: 864, South Carolina’s area code; and 244, a Greenville prefix. He expected MacDonald’s voice—some kind of taunt. Instead, it was Georgia Schwartzman.
He put the call on speaker. “I’m here with Detective Leighton. How can we help you?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. I’m afraid I’ve been caring for my friend. She’s . . .” Georgia Schwartzman stopped talking.
The drunk friend, Hal thought. How long ago that seemed now.
She began again. “I’m wondering if you might drop by the house.” Her voice cracked as she added, “Please.”
Hal and Harper exchanged a glance. The last thing he wanted was to go back to that house, but she had been acting strangely when they were there before, like she had been holding something back.
“I won’t take much of your time,” she promised.
“We can come now.”
“Yes,” she said in a breathy rush. “That would be great.”
Harper made a U-turn, and they navigated back to the house where Anna grew up.
Hal had no idea what to expect, only that the place brought out mixed emotions in him—anger and sadness and discomfort. He didn’t imagine Georgia Schwartzman hosted a lot of black people. He wondered what she would think of him and Anna. On second t
hought, he didn’t give a damn.
She opened the door as though she’d been waiting at the window. No sign of the maid in her uniform. Or of the drunk woman.
Georgia took one look at Hal’s clothes, still covered in dust, and let out a gasp.
The fury built in his chest. “Spencer MacDonald almost got me shot,” he said. “You want me to spray off somewhere? Sit outside?”
“Oh, no,” Georgia said quickly, flushing a bright red. “Of course not. Come on in, please.” As though that wasn’t convincing enough, she gave a little wave.
Harper stepped into the house, and Hal followed.
Her hand floated to her throat. “I could make some coffee. Would you like some? Or tea?”
Hal stopped walking. He didn’t want coffee or tea. He didn’t want a nice chat. He wanted to scream and rant.
“That’s not necessary,” Harper said, her tone diplomatic.
Hal held back his remarks.
“Why don’t we sit in here?” Georgia said, motioning to the living room. Hal eyed the white sofa, the expensive-looking Persian rug.
“To be honest, Mrs. Schwartzman,” Hal said, “I’m not much in the mood for sitting. I’m trying to find your daughter and save her from that man.”
Georgia Schwartzman flinched but, to her credit, did not step away. He noticed then that she was dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt. Her feet were bare. She wore no makeup. She looked more like Anna this way, but seeing Anna in her did not make him less angry.
He was at his wits’ end. He had South Carolina dirt in his teeth and ears, down his shirt, and in his pants. He felt the dull nausea that always followed an adrenaline rush. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t eaten. He needed a shower, but what he needed most was to find Anna. And he wasn’t convinced Georgia Schwartzman would help him.
“Why don’t we go into the kitchen?” she said, as though that were a compromise to his wanting to leave.
“Why don’t you tell us why we’re here,” Hal said, crossing his arms.
Georgia smoothed her hands over the sides of her jeans. “I’d like to help you find my daughter.”
“Now you’d like to help?”
Georgia’s mouth opened and closed.
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