Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) (13 page)

“Don’t say it.” Jane hit her phone’s speaker, hooking us into an impromptu meeting with her team. “I remember something about St. Francis College having cameras outside, and a few banks and shops on Court Street are putting them in. Get on it. Now. Maybe they’ve picked up something.” She hit the off button, and her eyes bored into mine. “Of course, Lower Manhattan’s loaded with them. Some of the schools in Brooklyn, too, although lots of the parents are objecting.”

“Stupid,” Willoughby said.

“Why not object?” I said. “Our privacy is at stake. Pretty soon there will be none left, and that’ll be the end of our freedom. I can feel it floating downriver already.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t take advantage of your contacts at Verizon and AT&T and the FBI. They feed you whatever you ask for.”

She had me there, but not for long.

“But I know when to stop and what’s at stake, and whenever it has to do with a child …”

“So the ends justify the means.” Jane wagged her finger in my face.

She had a point, at least I think she did. Believe it or not, personal freedom is an issue with me, even though I’ve benefited from the lack of it many a time. It was a popular subject between Denny and me, one that we wrestled with on a regular basis, probably preventing us from having the real conversation we needed to have. The one about us. The thought sent another chill down my back. “Just because we have access to information doesn’t mean we should.”

“Don’t get me started,” Willoughby said.

Ever the stick-my-neck-out type, I said, “Could you just elaborate on the hush-hush work your team is doing, just so we don’t step on toes, that sort of thing.”

Jane rolled her eyes at Willoughby. “See what you started? Okay, you’re in charge of anything we get from camera surveillance. Get whoever’s good with digital and closed-circuit stuff. I don’t need to know their names, but get me five, six officers and add them to the team. Get them on it right now. And here’s another thing, if in fact they abducted Brandy close to Packer, that wasn’t their first visit. I suspect they know the area well. Go through the tapes inch by inch. Use a macro lens if you have to. Pronto. Got to go through the last two, three weeks of stuff. Light fires. Have them start with Packer Collegiate and the college across the street and don’t forget the mom-and-pop stores, especially the guy whose wife or whatever told Cookie she saw the moving tarpaulin. Someone knows something. Talk to everyone with windows on Joralemon, but don’t stop there. Make sure we interview everyone within a two-block radius. And the minute you have anything, anything at all, let me know. Fina, too. A child’s life is in our hands.”

I could see why Jane was popular with the higher-ups. She could be a whirlwind, and when she knew she needed to do it, she let everyone play in her sandbox, not afraid to give credit, either. I kept returning to what she’d said about Cookie. So I felt good until my gut told me Jane was keeping stuff from me.

Chapter 23

Brandy. In Chains

Bad guys are stupid,
Dad told me
. Don’t be afraid of them unless they’re fighting with one another.
I hear them downstairs. They’re back, and they’re arguing. I smell pizza, and my stomach growls.

I make a fist, monster-up my face, and try it out,
“I’m warning you.”
Yuck. Let’s face it, I’m a nothing. My heart is pounding in my head. I can’t breathe. I have to barf again. I hope I make it, at least to the bathroom. Smells gross in there.

Footsteps. It’s the nice one, I can tell by the sound. I feel him close. I hope he doesn’t do what some men do to girls. He’s listening, I can tell. Dad, don’t let him touch me. Footsteps going back down the stairs.

“Be quiet in there!”

Mr. Mean Ass, where did he come from? He doesn’t scare me.
“I need to talk to someone,”
I tell him. Maybe if I keep it up, they’ll get so sick of my yapping, they’ll let me go.

The room’s rocking and rolling like when I get the flu. Lying down now. Nope, not a good idea. Earth to Pah-tricia. Where are you, and why are you doing this to me? Dad? Where are you, Dad? Why did you guys have me if you’d let them do this to me? I just want to go to school. No more problems with gym, and I’ll take the poster down, too. Don’t need a piercing. Where are my slip-ons? My legs are aching again, and I could use some food.

I could count to infinity. Got nothing better to do, but I hate math. Reading’s better. If I had a book, I’d read. But I can’t see. He told me not to take the tape off. If I did, he’d do bad things to me, and I believe him. Got no other choice. Mom would never do this to me. She’s messed up sometimes, even for a grown-up, but not that fierce.

“Help! I’m going to barf!”

Nothing. So now I’m totally alone in this room.
In an epic black hole,
like our science teacher says. And it’s so quiet, like there’s a blanket over the streets. This isn’t Brooklyn. No. I hear a motor revving. Someone’s leaving now.

I’ll scoot over. The bed’s like Granny’s. Got those wooden jobs on the corners. Ridges. Carved pineapples at the top, maybe.

“You haven’t met my mom, have you? She’ll never pay
.
”
Will she pay? Not a chance. If she pays, what would we do for money? I wouldn’t be able to go to Packer anymore. We’d have to leave Brooklyn, go to who knows where—someplace gross like New Jersey or Pittsburg, where Johnny Fulcrum used to live. Yuck.

I should have gone to the game with Johnny. He’s not so bad. He’s got braces, but so do I. Dad says braces are the modern version of armor. Can two braces kiss? Mom says I have to wear them, so I should stop thinking about it. Cold in here, and it stinks.

Mom’s not so bad. If she’d only talk a little more. Or listen to me once in a while. I swear that’s why I talk so much, hoping that she’ll listen, at least to every other word. Maybe she’s afraid I’ll ask too many questions. I promise, no more questions, okay, Mom? I shouldn’t have hung the poster in my room. Phillipa told me it wasn’t such a good idea. She said,
Your mother doesn’t like it. I can tell by the way she holds her mouth when she looks at it.
She was right, I know.

But Phillipa’s been not quite tickety-boo lately. Granny Liam’s expression. Phillipa didn’t look at me when she handed me my lunch this morning, but other than that, she’s nice for a housekeeper. Nicest one we’ve had, Mom says, but I’ve known just the one. Phillipa’s too quiet, though. No wonder Mom likes her.

So I’m going to sit here, maybe never see my friends again. I don’t like that thought. When you have bad thoughts, turn them away. Get up and pace. Walk up and down the room. That’s what Dad says. Change the subject. Easier to do with others than with yourself.

Why is it so quiet? Wait, what’s that sound—a horse? It sounds like a horse. Not the zoo. No horses in the zoo. The country, maybe. I’m in the country. Mom will never find me here. She wouldn’t be caught dead in the country. I heard her say that a bazillion times.

This place sucks.
“Help!”

I’d yell more, but my throat still feels funny. Bet my tongue is green.

Maybe they’ll just leave me here to die. But I’ll fool them, I won’t do it. I won’t die. Must get this thing off my eyes … this tape. Heavy. Stretching. Pick one corner. One step at a time. Easy. Don’t pull it, because half my face will go with it, and I’ll bleed to death right here in the country with horses and pigs and maybe rabbits running down holes. Kneel on the bed. Find the top of the post. Reach up. There. One step at a time. Like learning to spell words, that’s how Dad taught me. Learn one word, then another. Easy. Go back to the first word and spell it. Learn the second and the third. One step at a time. Now get the fingernail in there good and peel. A little bit. More. Enough for now. One, two. What will happen if the nasty one finds out? Something bad. I hear footsteps. The door opens again. It’s him, I can tell. I can feel his snarly breath.

A bright light blinds me.

“Now you’ve gone too far.”

Chapter 24

Jane. Morning Two, In Her Office

Jane sat in her office, staring at the computer screen and thrumming her nails on her desk. She scrolled through the tapes, barely letting their images stay focused for more than one or two seconds. At this rate, she’d get through all the CCTV stuff without actually seeing anything, except for the footage one of her team members showed her of a suspicious-looking van. Unfortunately the tags were not visible. The faster she scrolled, the angrier she got, and she couldn’t do anything about it. She had to grow up, she knew it, but once again Fina’s team was two steps ahead of hers.

“Not locked!” she yelled at Willoughby’s banging on her door. Hadn’t he learned about tapping lightly? She sighed as he opened the door with his head since his hands were full of hot dogs and cola, a bag of potato chips swaying between his teeth.

“You useless piece of crap. Not even eleven, we’ve just gotten up from a full breakfast and then some at Teresa’s, and look at you, you’re a bottomless pit. I hate to think of what would happen one day if your plumbing clogged. It’d create the largest sinkhole in Brooklyn beneath your apartment building.”

Willoughby opened the chips and stuffed a wad of them into his maw. “Got the team trolling through the Packer neighborhood.”

“And?”

“As you say, it’s early days yet.”

“That might be, but once again Fina and her crew are feeding us information.”

“So? Luck, blind luck.”

“And forget the Feds. They’re scratching their balls and going over their list of rules and regulations. Got nothing from them yet. Nothing. I called them, told them to go through whatever surveillance stuff they’ve amassed in the last three months and look for a greenish van. We need the tags. You told them that, right?”

Why did she bother with him? Willoughby gazed at her like a deer caught in her headlights and bit into his second hot dog, squirting mustard onto her desk. He swiped at it with a flimsy napkin and succeeded in spreading the spill.

“If you drop another crumb, I swear to … Holy Bee-F’in’ J, you’ve done it again. Clean it up now, I mean right now. There’s a mop in the janitor’s closet.”

He didn’t move. “You have to calm down, you know that? You’re like this every time you work with Fina. Face it, she’s good at what she does. She was born with, I don’t know, a sixth sense or something. You know the chief loves you, so relax. After all, this is your fourth case in three days. Fina has one, and she wants to make a name for herself. What do you care? Let her do the work. It’s not like she’s got red tape binding her hands.”

He was right. She knew it, but she hated the smell of hot dog seeping into her room at eleven in the morning.

“Seriously, Willoughby, we got nothing on this except some New Jersey bugs and a suspicious-looking olive green van, which, according to an eye witness, was being stuffed with a wiggling tarpaulin. And it’s what, close to twenty-eight hours since a child has been abducted. I tried to make light of it, but that woman who saw the moving lump of whatever, she saw the nab.”

He nodded.

“You get her statement?”

He nodded. “Joralemon, across the street from the school.”

Jane sighed. “The chief wants something by one. He doesn’t want a press conference until this evening. We can’t involve the mother—she’s such a cold fish, it’ll turn off the public.”

“But we don’t even have a chewable bite.”

“I think we do. The chewable bite is that an olive green van was involved in the nab.”

“Better go easy on the information we release.”

“Don’t worry, we are.” Jane watched her phone dance across her desk for a second before she answered the call. Fina again. “She saw something? Where? How? Never mind, we’ll meet you there.”

Jane’s toes started to curl. “Cookie saw something at the Liam house.”

“What’s she doing there?”

“Surveillance, you idiot, what we should have been doing. Now she’s on the Promenade with DSNY personnel and Patrol Officer Clancy, looking in the garbage for some sort of a hat. Once again, it’s Fina’s team feeding us stuff from our own turf. We’ve been canvassing since last night, and we’ve turned up zero.”

“Except for the olive green van.”

“With no tags!” God, she shouldn’t have yelled that last part. “Let’s get over there.”

Chapter 25

Brandy. In Chains

Maybe this is all a dream. What do you think, Dad?

No one’s talking to me, not even you. Got to get out of here before the nasty one does something else bad. He went ballistic when he saw I’d pulled the tape from my eyes. He shook me good, but I thought of you, and pretty soon, the nice one came and grabbed him and threw him out, but not before he put new tape over my eyes.

I know the nasty one’s been waiting to strike. He’ll find a way to get to me, I know he will. I can feel him looking for one now. Can’t depend on the nice one—he’s a wimp.

Pulling at the new tape hurts. I feel something dripping down my face. Blood? Wait, it’s sweat. I can see you screwing up your face. If you were here, you’d call me a drama queen. But I’ve got to get away before the bad one gets me. I must be still, fool the buzzards.

Buzzards was one of Dad’s favorite words. I asked him once if he was talking about the bird kind of buzzard. He said,
No, buzzard is the polite form of bastard, just like shucks is polite for shit.
I asked him what about fuck, what’s polite for fuck, because I want to use the polite word. He closed his eyes and shook his head. I want to use the word now. I want to say a long, snaky string of them, and I know Mom doesn’t want me to say the word, so I won’t.

Dad’s not smiling. He’s not answering me. He hasn’t answered me in a long time. He can’t, not where he is. He just decided to go away one day. Like that, he left me.

I heard Pah-tricia, Mom, talk about his face falling into the cottage cheese as if his leaving us was a game, something he decided. She said it once talking to Granny on the phone. After she said it—about his head in the cottage cheese—there was a long pause during which I heard Granny’s scratchy voice coming through the wires. Mom apologized before she slammed down the phone. Then she put her head in her hands and cried. She cried harder than she did at the funeral. Granny Liam can do that to her. So I know Mom cares. Not as much as me, I don’t think. I ache sometimes, I miss him so bad. And sometimes I can’t breathe. Why did you have to go and die, you buzzard?