Facade (11 page)

“W
hat should I do?” Iris whispered to Detective Malone. “I told him I was on the other line and needed to call him back.”

“You don't need to whisper. He can't hear us,” Malone said. “Are you willing to meet with him— in a public place, of course? We could wire you up and have our people nearby.”

“That sounds dangerous. Wait a minute. Didn't I read it was illegal to tape someone without their consent in Massachusetts?”

“This is a police investigation. We're exempt from that statute.”

The wheels turned in her brain and she was quiet for a moment, chewing her lip. “I'll do it on one condition—full immunity for Jasna, signed off by the District Attorney.”

“Well...ok, if you can get us information that leads to Lara we'll see what we can do about Ms. Sidron's obstruction of justice charge.”

Iris was quiet for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Not good enough. If I'm going to risk my life meeting with some kind of kidnapping pedophile, I'll need written assurance that Jasna won't be brought up on any charges. You can prep me with whatever questions you want me to ask him. Whether that leads to useful information or not isn't part of the deal. You know that this is your best chance at getting to him while his guard is down. Agreed?”

“Why does everyone watch cop shows nowadays? Good God. I'll call you back after I talk to the D.A. Meanwhile, think about a meeting place where you'll feel comfortable.”

For a crazy second Iris thought of the Paradise café. She used to feel comfortable there.

A few minutes later Malone called her back. “I got a green light on the deal.”

Iris clenched her fist and pumped her arm down in a silent “Yes!” She couldn't wait to tell Jasna about this new negotiating success. Her brother, too.

“So, where do you want to meet him?” Malone asked.

“How about the bar at Chez Jacques? Is that too small and closed-in?”

“No, small is good. We can get there beforehand and let the maitre d' know what's going on. We'll be at your house shortly to get you wired up.”

“What if Xander notices the wire?”

“He won't. Besides, we'll have our people sitting nearby.”

Fifteen minutes later, standing in her kitchen, Iris felt all too conscious of the small plastic box taped to her back. It was hidden under an oversized sweater and wires ran under one arm to a mike hidden in her collar. In her mind she tried to work the questions Malone had given her into a natural-sounding conversation, but the flow of conversation would depend on whatever agenda Xander brought to the meeting. Did he want to confess to Iris that he had indeed taken Lara, and now felt contrite? Unlikely...

She decided to drive the nine blocks to Chez Jacques. Her Jeep might come in handy if she needed to make a hasty escape. Ellie, predictably, had tried to talk her out of taking this risk, regardless of what she felt about Jasna, and pointed out that wearing a wire for the police exceeded Iris' pay grade as an adjunct professor. Ellie was right, but Iris headed there anyway.

Showtime.

*                     *                   *

Chez Jacques had set up a heavy velvet curtain around the front door to protect the bar from the chilly drafts off the street. Iris pushed it aside and looked around the cheery, yellow-walled space. No sign of Xander. The maitre d' gestured Iris over to the only empty table, in a corner of the small front room. She glanced around at the lively bar scene wondering who else was in on the plan for her meeting.

She beckoned to the waiter, discreetly slipped him a twenty dollar bill, and instructed him to leave the alcohol out of whatever she ordered later. He gave her a wink and turned away just as Xander appeared through the curtain, entering like an actor walking on stage. His arm was in a sling and he held himself stiffly. As he approached to greet her with his usual kiss on each cheek, she drew back.

“What happened to you? You look like you've been inside a cement mixer! Were you in a fight?” she asked.

Xander sank heavily into a chair across from her. He had a black eye, a gash across his cheek, and probably more damage she couldn't see, judging by the way he walked.

“A one-sided fight. Lara's father thought that I might be the villain who took her and that he might be able to beat some truth out of me.”

Iris noticed that his left hand trembled slightly. “My God! Do the police know about this?”

“They're the ones who saved my life. I just got out of the hospital. I'm fine now, or they say I will be in a few days. I just don't want the press to find out about this. I don't need any more links to that girl.”

Iris couldn't believe that Malone hadn't mentioned this development, but then realized he probably didn't want Iris to have revealed by her reaction that she may have had inside information. And Budge—she'd have to think of some way to forestall him from staking out the Malkin pool where Xander swam until his injuries were healed. He'd definitely want to write about the beating.

“Thank you for meeting me,” Xander said. His eyes darted around the room. The waiter hurried over to take their drink order. Iris ordered a “vodka” tonic while Xander made the poor man recite the restaurant's entire selection of wines by the glass.

“How can I help?” Iris asked. She really did feel badly for him. He looked to be in a lot of pain.

After a pause, Xander spoke. “On Saturday morning you kindly offered to mention to the police”—here Xander seemed to straighten in his chair as if girding himself for something unpleasant—“that you had seen me on the evening that the girl, Lara, went missing.”

Iris nodded. “But then you explained to the press that Lara may have discovered you were her biological father. So I thought you wouldn't need my alibi.”

“It seems now that someone is trying to implicate me in her disappearance.”

“What do you mean? Who?”

“That's the problem. I don't know.” He looked around for his drink.

No sooner were the glasses set down than Xander took a quick gulp of his white Burgundy, then continued. “There have been some developments that may have given the police a mistaken impression about me. My solicitor thinks it might be helpful if you would let them know that you saw me at home that night.”

“But if I come up with an alibi now, won't that just draw more attention to you? Maybe you're overreacting.” Iris sipped her tonic water. “What makes you think someone is trying to set you up?”

“I just know,” Xander said, a bit too loudly, then looked embarassed at his outburst.

“I'm not trying to be difficult,” Iris said. “It's just that if I'm going to get involved, I really need to understand what's going on.” She was trying to set up the dialogue Malone had given her.

Xander rested his head in his hands.“I'm going to have to tell you something. In confidence.” When he looked up at her, he looked defeated. Even the blue of his eyes had dimmed. “When my house was broken into it looked as if nothing had been taken.” He paused.

“But something had been?” Iris coaxed.

“I think my computer password was discovered in the study. I always have to write it down because Nils is always changing it. Someone used my password to open my laptop account and install pornography.”

Iris cocked her head. “Why would anyone do that?”

He pursed his lips and seemed to be counting to ten. “Certain pornography sites are monitored by the government to track down the people who visit them.”

Iris leaned forward and whispered, “Wouldn't that add up to most of the male population?”

Xander allowed himself a slight smile. “It wasn't regular pornography. It involved young girls.”

“Oh. Like Lara.”

“As you say,” he bowed his head. “That action combined with someone sending her to my office makes me look involved in her disappearance, don't you see?”

She did see. And Xander probably didn't even know yet about the keys to the blue van being found in his house. It had always been Iris' fate to see things clearly from everyone else's perspective. “But who would hate you so much? You would know if you had an enemy like this.”

“I don't know who's behind this. I just know that I need to try to protect myself.” He surprised her by reaching across the table and taking her hand. “Iris, will you help me?”

Iris drew back but said nothing. What if Xander was telling the truth? What if he was a victim, too?

“I think the police searched my house today.” Xander leveled at Iris the most pain-filled look she had ever seen. It was full of more desperation than his words could convey. He finished simply with, “Will you help me?”

She met his eyes, feeling like a Judas even as she told the truth. “Yes, I'll tell the police what I saw.”

I
n the nightmare, Iris found herself wrapped in a dank bedspread, shackled by one leg to a wall. It was dark in the room but a sliver of light penetrated through a dusty window. Her throat felt sore. She must have been screaming for a long time. Her ankle was chafed raw and her empty stomach ached with hunger. Had she been left here to die slowly of starvation?

Edging crablike over to the wall, she wrapped both hands on the chain near to the ring and yanked a few times, shoving with her legs as hard as she could.

She scrabbled back away from the wall and tried pulling again, but there was no solid place to plant her feet. A stab of pain shot up her leg as a splinter of wood jabbed her bare foot. Trapped in the dark, she pounded her fists against the floor in frustration.

She curled up in a fetal position, cocooned in the bedspread, and tried to drift off to sleep when the whirr of a car's engine outside snapped her into awareness. The car stopped nearby, its door clicked open, and then slammed. Iris heard keys scraping in a lock. Heavy footsteps sounded, moving up inside the building. She couldn't stop herself shaking. She realized that there were worse ways to die than starvation. She had no doubt that this intruder was there to violate her, to hurt her in unspeakable ways that would make her eventual death seem like a relief.

Iris screamed as loud as she could, but as she woke, she heard only the tiniest of strangled-sounding pleas: “Help me, please help me.”

She sat bolt upright in her bed, breathing hard, her heart thundering. With both hands she touched her chest to feel if it was literally jumping out of her chest. Sheba sat next to her on the bed, whimpering, trembling. She stroked the dog.

Iris felt the nightmare trying to tug her back. “It's not real,” she repeated again and again.

She turned on her reading light and waited for the dream to recede as she blinked her eyes and her bedroom came into focus.

Maybe this was what Lara was experiencing right now— abject terror. And if the police were only focused on Xander, and he hadn't taken her, then they would never be able to find Lara in time.

T
he following morning Russo watched Malone standing before the murder board, studying a map. Malone pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket, consulted it, adjusted the calipers on his compass, and drew a large circle around the city of Cambridge.

Russo cleared his throat. “I tracked down Crazy-dog, the guy the professor saved in Bosnia.”

“Yes?”

“His name is Nils Jensen, an architect from Holland. He's thirty-eight, a little younger than DeWitt. We knew he worked in DeWitt's Amsterdam office, but get this: he's here in Cambridge acting as DeWitt's teaching assistant. He also goes back and forth to Europe to bring things from the office.”

“Is Jensen here now?”

“His plane lands a little after one this afternoon.”

“Bring him in for an interview,” Malone said.

“I'll send someone to meet him at the airport, catch him before he can speak with DeWitt. By the way, on the tape last night, how did DeWitt know we'd already searched his house?”

“How do I know? The guy seems totally anal. We probably didn't line his boots back up precisely enough. In any case, he's on his guard. Foster said he didn't budge from his house either before or after the meeting with our Ms. Reid at the restaurant.”

“Seems like the tape from last night isn't going to do us much good.”

“I told the D.A. about the girl's visit to DeWitt's office and his lie about the van. I told her about the Feebs finding kiddie porn on his computer. She says we need more solid evidence linking him to the girl— DNA, fibers. You heard what DeWitt said to the Reid woman. He's going to say that someone's framing him. Even Ms. Reid seemed to be on the fence about his guilt by the end of their conversation. Of course it didn't help that he showed up looking like he'd just gone five rounds with Muhammad Ali.”

Malone's voice was tinged with irritation, big time. Russo knew that he had missed his Tuesday night AA meeting to stake out the rendezvous. He'd exchanged a 'get out of jail free' card to the Sidran woman for getting DeWitt to speak on tape, and he still he had nothing actionable to show for it.

Russo tipped his bald head toward the map. “Think we can narrow down the search zone?”

Malone deliberately traced the wide circle with his finger. “This is the furthest distance the van could have gone in two roundtrips given the distance on its odometer.”

“How do you know he only made two roundtrips?”

“I don't. But I figure that's the minimum he could've made. First, to scope out the hidey hole and second, to drop her off. If he's used the van for more trips, he's still inside this circle. This is the farthest he could have gone.”

“That's a lot of territory to cover. It even crosses the New Hampshire border, up by Manchester.”

“Yeah. We're going to have to reach out to all the local agencies. We should also find out if our friend Jensen ever rents vehicles. Maybe has a zipcar account. He could be in on this thing with DeWitt. If they're using zipcars to get around, that would completely mess up the map which I've based on the van's milage. Still, what else can we do but start with some assumptions. Got any better ideas?”

They could hear Malone's phone ringing from inside his office and they both hurried toward it.

Malone slid into his desk chair then lifted the receiver.

Russo listened impatiently to one side of the conversation from the doorway.

“Yeah, I understand it's only preliminary,” Malone said. “What did you get off them?”

Russo approached, trying to get his ear closer to the receiver. Malone elbowed him off.

“You're sure? OK, thanks.”

Malone hung up and looked grimly at his partner. “Human blood on the boots.”