High Crimes (3 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Claire found
the car in the mall parking garage, just where she’d left it, almost expecting to find Tom crouched in the back seat, or at least something there, some sort of sign from him. A note on the dashboard, or slipped under the windshield-wiper blade. But nothing. Their Volvo station wagon was empty.

For a few minutes, she sat still, breathing heavily, trying to regain control. The reality of what had just happened—or, rather, the
unreality
of it—was just beginning to sink in. While Annie sat in the back seat, licking at an ice-cream cone, her fright apparently having subsided, Claire’s thoughts were in turmoil. What had she just witnessed? If Massie was lying to her, as she assumed, then why
had
Tom run away? And where had he learned to do such things?

There was a car phone in the Volvo, and as she drove out of the parking garage toward Cambridge, she half expected it to ring, but nothing.

Where had he gone? Was he all right?

Their house was an enormous Georgian, saved from grandeur only by an unruly ramblingness, a series of additions slapped on by a succession of previous owners. It was on Gray Gardens East, in the toniest part of Cambridge. Even a good distance away, as soon as she had turned the corner, Claire could see the stroboscopic flash of blue light, the unaccustomed buzz of late-night activity that she realized was coming from their driveway. She felt her stomach twist and turn over.

The front door was open.

Looking closer, she saw that it had actually been taken off its hinges. Dread roiled her stomach. She parked the car, grabbed Annie, and ran toward the door.

Inside the house, men were everywhere, opening drawers and carting off cardboard boxes of papers. Some wore suits and trench coats; others were in dark-blue FBI windbreakers.

Annie burst into tears and choked out, “Why are these men in here?”

Claire stroked her back as they entered the foyer. “Nothing to worry about, my baby.” Then she yelled out, “All right, who’s in charge here?”

A man in a gray suit and trench coat emerged from the kitchen: tall, with a thatch of brown hair that was obviously colored, a few shades too dark, and a matching brown mustache. He held out a leather ID wallet. “Special Agent Crawford, FBI,” he said.

“Where’s your search warrant?” she demanded.

He glowered at her, then reluctantly reached into the breast pocket of his suit and pulled out a few sheets of paper, which he handed to her.

She looked them over. The first one, the authorization to search their house, seemed to be in order. It not only gave the correct address but described the appearance of the house. It also gave a ridiculously long list of items they were looking for, a laundry list so long, detailed, and comprehensive that it couldn’t possibly leave out a thing. Telephone records, airline tickets, bus or train tickets, any notes concerning times of flights and train departures, out-of-state newspapers, advertisements, any notes pertaining to such that might be found in the trash, in Tom’s files, among his personal possessions … It went on and on.

Claire looked up at Crawford. “Where’s the warrant affidavit?” she asked.

“It’s sealed.”

“Where is it?”

He shrugged. “Probably in the chambers of the federal magistrate. I really don’t know. Anyway, the warrant’s valid.”

He was right, of course. “I want a complete inventory of everything that’s taken,” she said.

“Certainly, ma’am.”

She looked at the second warrant, the arrest warrant, which listed that same strange name, Ronald Kubik. The FBI agent saw what she was examining and said, “It also gives his assumed name, Thomas Chapman, ma’am. Everything’s in order.”

She heard the team spreading throughout the house, heard the scrape of furniture against the wooden floor in Tom’s study immediately above, heard shouts back and forth. The sound of glass breaking. She cringed involuntarily. Everything felt unreal to her, terrifying and quietly menacing and unreal.

“They broke something!” Annie said, looking at her mother aghast.

“I know, honey,” she said.

“Mommy, I want these guys to leave.”

“Me too, baby.”

“Mrs.—uh, Professor Heller,” Agent Crawford said, “if you have any knowledge whatsoever about your husband’s whereabouts and you do not reveal them to us, you can be charged as an accessory after the fact, which in this case would be a felony. And obstructing justice, which is another felony.”

“Try it,” she said. “Go ahead, charge me. Really, I’d welcome that.”

Crawford scowled. “You have a vacation home?”

“We’ve got a house in Truro, on Cape Cod. You’re welcome to send your boys out there—I can’t stop you—but do you seriously think that, if he’s really on the run for some reason, he’d hide out in such an obvious place? Get real.”

“Friends, relatives he might try to approach?”

“What do you think’s going on?” She shook her head.

“You understand, Mrs. Chapman, that we’ll be watching your every move in case he tries to contact you, or you try to contact him.”

“I’m quite aware,” Claire said, “of what sort of shit the government is capable of when they decide to come down on you.”

Crawford nodded, half smiling.

“And you can bet my husband is aware of that, too. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to put my daughter to bed.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Claire’s sister
, Jackie, arrived half an hour after Annie went to bed. She was taller than Claire, skinnier, but not as pretty, with long streaked blond hair. She was two years younger but looked older. Jackie wore black jeans and a black T-shirt under her scruffy denim jacket. Her fingernails were painted, not black, but a sort of eggplant, a Chanel vamp color.

They sat on the glassed-in sun porch. The stuffy, overheated room was like a greenhouse. Its floor-to-ceiling glass walls were steamy; its outside surface was running with condensation.

“They really tore the house up, didn’t they?” Jackie said in her husky, smoker’s voice. She ate sesame chicken with chopsticks out of a white paper carton.

Claire nodded.

“Can’t you sue for that? Destruction of property, or whatever?”

Claire shook her head slowly. “We got bigger problems, kid.”

“What do you think’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice quavering.

Jackie took a swig of her Diet Pepsi, then fished out a cigarette from the pack of Salems. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes.”

Jackie flicked the plastic lighter anyway. The tip of the cigarette flared orange. She sucked in and spoke muzzily through a mouthful of smoke. “They want him for murder? That’s got to be bullshit. Pope Tom?”

“Pope?”

“Good Catholic and Mr. Perfect.”

“Very funny, Jackie. You don’t get it, do you? You’re making jokes.”

“Sorry. Did the arrest warrant say what he did?”

Claire shook her head again. “Sealed.”

“Can they do that?”

“You don’t know the government. You wouldn’t
believe
the shit they can get away with.”

“What’s with the name? Rubik or whatever.”

“Kubik. Ronald Kubik. I have no idea, Jacks.”

“Can that be right?”

“What do I know anymore? They seem so sure of it.”

“They
say
they’re sure of it. Who knows what the real story is.”

“Good point. I’ll have one of those. I
need
one.”

“Uh-oh.”

“You’re a bad influence.” She took a cigarette and the lighter from Jackie. She lighted it, inhaled, and coughed. “It’s been a couple of years.”

“Like riding a bicycle,” Jackie said.

“Ooh, menthol,” Claire said. “Yuck. Almost as bad as clove cigarettes. Tastes like Vicks VapoRub.”

Jackie looked through the steamy glass at the perfectly landscaped backyard. “So where
is
he?”

Claire shook her head, exhaled a cloud of smoke. The room was hazy with cigarette smoke. “They say they lost him in the parking garage.”

“Doesn’t that tell you he’s guilty of something?”

“Oh, come on!” Claire snapped. “That’s such bullshit. Tom’s not guilty of a goddamned thing.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Do? They’re right, he’ll get in touch with me. Or he’ll come back. And he’ll explain what’s going on.”

“And if he really is guilty of murder?”

“You know him, Jackie,” Claire said, low and intense and angry. “What do you think?”

“You’re right. He’s not a murderer. But he did run. And you gotta wonder why.”

Claire scowled, shook her head as if to dispel the thought. “You know,” she said after a while, “when all those guys were chasing him down, one of them reached him, and I thought it was all over. But suddenly Tom had him down on the ground. Disabled him with his bare hands. Crippled him or knocked him out—maybe killed him, I don’t know.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s as if— Well, I’ve never seen him do anything like that. I had no idea he could do something like that. It was scary. And the way he scaled that wall, the waterfall. It’s like a different Tom took over.”

“I had no idea he knew how to rock-climb.”

“I didn’t either!”

They sat for a minute in silence.

“Think there’ll be something in the papers about this?” Jackie asked.

“I haven’t gotten any calls yet. I don’t think anyone recognized me, except the waiter, who probably didn’t see the incident.”

Jackie exhaled a plume of smoke through her nose, her chin jutting forward. “Tom’ll be back. He’ll explain all this shit.”

Claire nodded.

“He’s a great stepdad. Annie adores him. Daddy’s little girl.”

“Yeah.” She felt a swelling in her chest. She missed him already, and she was frightened for him.

“Annie told me he came into her school for Mom’s Day last week.”

Claire winced. “I was all set to, but I was in New York, meeting with Lambert’s attorneys, and I couldn’t get a flight back in time.”

“Ouch. She must have loved that.”

“I felt horrible.”

“How come he’s able to just take off time in the middle of the day like that to go to her school? I thought he’s one of those obsessive-compulsive Type-A types.”

“He let his chief trader, Jeff, man the trading desk, I guess. I don’t know. Lot of guys wouldn’t do that.”

“At least he doesn’t call her Princess. That would be gross.”

“I get a feeling Annie thinks
I’m
the stepparent.”

“She was, what, like two when you guys got married? She doesn’t even remember when he wasn’t her daddy.”

“Still,” Claire said sulkily, “I
am
the birth mother.”

“You guys got any vodka?” Jackie asked.

*   *   *

Claire was convinced that happy marriages were only really appreciated by those who’d been married, badly, already. She’d met Jay, her first husband, at Yale Law School, and at the time he’d seemed such a good match. He was good-looking, seemingly easygoing (though in reality wound tighter than a clock spring), tall and blond and slim. He’d paid her the kind of attention no man had really paid her before, and that alone—for an insecure young woman whose father had abandoned the family when she was nine (she’d been in therapy; she recognized the issues)—was almost mesmerizing. Jay was as career-oriented, as hardworking as she was, which she’d mistakenly thought made them compatible. After her clerkships, when she was hired to teach at Harvard Law School, he’d moved to Boston to take a job at a high-powered downtown firm, and also to be with her. They were married. They worked, and talked about work. On the weekends Jay would unwind by getting roaring drunk. He also became abusive. He was, it turned out, a deeply unhappy man.

Though she was about to turn thirty, neither one of them was ready to start a family. Only later did Claire realize that her reluctance was an early-warning signal of a bad marriage. When she’d gotten pregnant by accident, Jay started drinking regularly, on weekdays, then at lunchtime, then pretty much all the time. His work suffered, of course. He didn’t make partner. He was told to begin looking at other firms.

He didn’t want a child, he said. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to be married to her. He admitted he was threatened by this high-powered woman he’d married. By the time Annie was born, Jay had moved in with his parents in Austin, Texas.

Here she was, a young star on the Harvard Law School faculty, a great success by most conventional measures, and her personal life was a train wreck. Without the help of her sister, Jackie, she didn’t know how she’d have made it.

Jackie, and a guy named Tom Chapman, the investment adviser Jay had chosen to manage their small but growing portfolio of stocks. Tom became a friend, a support, a shoulder to cry on. When Annie was six months old, Jay, the daddy she’d never known, was killed in a car accident. Drunk, naturally. And Tom Chapman had been there, at Claire’s house, almost nightly, helping her through it, helping make funeral arrangements, counseling her.

Five months later, Claire and Tom started seeing each other. He’d nursed her back to emotional health, forced her to go out to Red Sox games at Fenway Park and Celtics games at the old Boston Garden. He explained to her the mysteries of basketball, the fast break and the pick-and-roll. When she was morose, he wheedled her with jokes, mostly bad ones, until she laughed at their badness. They’d go for picnics in Lincoln, and once, when they were rained out, he set it up on the carpet of the front room of his South End apartment, with picnic baskets stuffed with sandwiches and macaroni salad and potato chips. Tom was as emotionally attentive as Jay had been unavailable, distant. He was gentle and caring, yet at the same time fun-loving, with a mischievous streak she adored.

And he loved Annie. Was in fact crazy about her. He would spend hours playing with Annie, building castles out of blocks, playing with the big wooden dollhouse he’d made for her. When Claire needed to work, Tom would take Annie to the playground or the pet shop or just walking around Harvard Square. Annie, who didn’t understand what had happened to her real father, was at once drawn to him and instinctively resentful of him, but by the time Claire had fallen in love with Tom, Annie had too. A year and a half later Claire and Tom were married. Finally she’d found a man to build a life with.

All right, so the first husband had been a mistake. There was an old Russian proverb Claire had read once and never forgotten: The first pancake is always a lump.

*   *   *

She brushed her teeth twice with a new baking-soda-and-peroxide toothpaste, but her mouth still tasted like an ashtray. How come it never used to bother her when she smoked a pack a day? Tom hated it when she smoked and had gotten her to quit.

A little woozy from the vodka she and Jackie had drunk, she settled into bed and thought.

Where could he be right now? Where could he have gone?

And why?

She picked up the phone to call Ray Devereaux, the private investigator she often used. The dial tone stuttered, indicating that there were messages on their voice mail.

Nothing unusual about that, but maybe Tom had left a message. It made a certain sense: only the two of them knew the secret code to access their voice mail.

Then again, if the FBI was really monitoring their phones, they’d hear anything she did.

She speed-dialed voice mail.

“Please dial your password,” invited the friendly-efficient female automaton voice.

She punched the digits.

“You have two messages. Main menu: to hear your messages, press one. To send a message—”

She punched one.

“First message. Received today, at six-fifteen
P.M.
” Then a woman’s voice: “Hey, Claire, long time no speak. It’s Jen.” Jennifer Evans was one of her oldest and closest friends, but she liked to gab, and Claire had no time for it now. She punched the number one to get rid of the voice, but instead it started the message from the beginning. Frustrated, she sat there listening but not listening to Jen’s long and involved message, until finally Jen wound it up, and then the friendly female automaton gave her the option of replaying or erasing or forwarding a message, and she erased it, and the next one came on.

“Received today, at seven-twenty-seven
P.M.
” Then a male voice, Tom’s, and her heart jumped.

“Claire … honey…” He was calling from someplace out of doors, the sound of traffic roaring in the background. “I don’t know when you’re going to get this, but I don’t want you to worry about anything. I’m fine. I’m … I had to leave.” A long pause. The throaty snarl of a motorcycle. “I—I don’t know how much to trust the security of this voice mail, darling. I don’t want to say too much, but don’t believe anything you’re being told. I’ll be in touch with you one way or another, very soon. I love you, babe. And I’m so, so sorry. And please give my little dolly a great big hug for me. Tell her Daddy had to go away on business for a little while, and he’s sorry he couldn’t kiss her goodbye, but he’ll see her soon. I love you, honey.”

And the message was over. She played it again, then saved it by pressing two, then hung up.

Alone in their bed, she began to cry.