Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2) (5 page)

“How the bloody hell do you know what you would have done?” Tears streamed from behind her glasses, and I thought she was going to hit me.

“You’re right,” I said, glad I’d gotten a rise out of her, hoping it had restored something of her fight.

“Too bloody right I am,” she said, but the bubble had burst, and her fire had been stoked.

Trisha Liam was exhausted, but now she needed to talk, or maybe she was afraid of being alone. “My idea of heaven was sitting by the fire after we’d packed Brandy off to her grandmother’s on a cold Sunday afternoon, a stack of briefs by my side, the cook warming oxtail soup while Mitch played jazz on the piano in the sunroom.” She paused for a bit, then said something curious. “I should have given birth to a boy. I think we’d have been a pair, mother and son.”

And with that, her eyes dared me to think ill of her, wanting me to, I knew, because I’d been there before, many times before—I had that same perversity in my soul.

“I think you’re a great mom,” I said. “But what do I know about children? They’re the only things able to scare me.” All back to me again, just when I was beginning to get a sense of this family. “Something’s not right about your husband’s death, I can feel it.”

I watched the color rise up from her neck and flood her face. “Are you saying his death has anything to do with Brandy’s disappearance?”

“Maybe, maybe not, but while all of us are finding Brandy, I have an assistant who will comb through whatever old paperwork you throw at me, your briefs, Mitch’s briefs, case notes, anything. I want it all. I’m hoping you kept his?”

“Some of them, the last of them, the dregs of him.” She waved her hand to the lower part of the bookshelf and a stack of papers. “These are Mitch’s, his soul spilled all over the pages. Take them all.”

“Any of them in the computer?”

“Why is it you young people want everything digitized? It sucks the life out of written documents.” She paused and did one of her about faces, asking me to forgive her outburst. Taking out her phone, she texted me the URL, password, and security questions that gave me access to her files at work. She looked out the window into the night. Lights twinkled like stars across the East River. “If I find you’ve shared the password with others, I’ll ruin you.”

“My assistant was a paralegal for twenty-five years. She’ll be the one reading your files.” I looked at the pile of Mitch’s documents, assessing their weight. “I’ll bring my car around tomorrow morning and pick them up,” I said in the most soothing voice I could muster. But Trisha Liam stomped all over it.

“I won’t be home. I can’t afford not to be in court tomorrow. Finding Brandy is up to you, not me. Who knows, by that time she’ll be home, sleeping off her misadventure. Any minute she’ll come bounding through the door. God, where the hell is she?”

And with that, she pounded out of the room.

Chapter 7

Henry. Backstory, Part One

Before Stuart’s death, it all seemed so easy. Henry’s life had been perfect then. Now it was empty—except for Ben.

He often thought of Ben on the train. Tall with blond hair sticking up on his crown like straw. Henry told him over and over about Stuart’s death, and Ben told him to get a lawyer.

During one ride, Henry told Ben he’d taken his suggestions and gotten a wrongful death attorney who said he’d take the case for a percentage of the award, no retainer. Unless, of course, they went to trial, and it dragged on. Who cared, Henry didn’t need the money. The lawyer took down the particulars, said he would study the case and call him back in ten days or so.

“And those guys know, they know. Hell, he wouldn’t take the case if he couldn’t smell the money,” Ben had said. The train lurched.

“‘I love you, Daddy.’ Those were his last words to me. They burn my gut.”

Ben clapped him on the back.

He’d said that to the lawyer, too, about the burn in his gut, and the lawyer stared at him for a moment before he gave him a half smile.

“That’s what you want, a calculating lawyer, not a sympathetic bastard,” Ben had said.

The train stopped. Another switch problem.

“Bastard hospital,” Ben had whispered.

Two weeks later, Ben waved him over. They stood on the platform, shivering and waiting for the train. Late again. “Anything?”

Henry shook his head.

“These things take time. Bastards.”

Eighteen months later, another slow commute, and Henry sat next to Ben.

“Well?”

“They want to settle for $2.5 million.”

“Don’t settle. Never settle.”

“My lawyer says to take the money—no trial, no raking over the coals.”

“He wants a quick buck.”

A man of few words, Ben. “Go to trial,” he’d said, “and get the bastards,” and by God Henry did. Paid the lawyer a retainer. He didn’t need the money, no, but the doctor and the hospital, the nurses half asleep in their command center, having filled their needles with God knew what, they couldn’t, wouldn’t get away with Stuart’s death.

He remembered the defense attorney’s smugness in the courtroom. A bone-thin woman wearing rose-colored lenses. Her hair was like straw, like Ben’s hair, he thought at the time. But she was bloodless, he could tell. He watched her back, an almost imperceptible movement of her shoulders as the verdict was read, her client, not guilty. That was the way his world ended. The trial was a humiliation, the hospital found not negligent. Not a wrongful death. How could they? He should have asked for an autopsy while his son’s body lay in the bed, his attorney said afterward. He should have settled. He’d always made the right decisions, hunted for the right material, so how had he blown this one? He felt the bottom drop out of his soul. Never again.

The years that followed were cold, empty. He’d grown a beard, given up his front-row parking slot at the station. Ben had understood. They exchanged cards. “Call me if you need anything. Anything. I’m your man. But it can’t end this way. We’ll meet for pizza.”

And they did. Their friendship grew. They talked on the phone for hours about this and that, about the trial, about Stuart, about Henry’s need for closure.

Closure was a Big Ben word. Over and over, he’d said Henry needed closure. And he, Ben, would help. And so they devised a plan. Or Henry planned, and Ben listened.

Take your time. Take it easy. Think it through.
Since grade school, Henry had weighed everything, knew a good deal, never made a misstep—except for his mistakes with Stuart’s illness and the trial. What had come over him, he didn’t know. But he’d make up for it; he owed it to his son. After all, he knew how to plan.

He’d saved money in his numbered account. His father had given him that much—a Swiss bank account and dual citizenship. The old man had opened an account before coming to America, at Pictet & Cie headquartered in Geneva. In those days, he’d had to wire the funds. Tricky at first, but it would pay off one day, his father told him. “I put ten percent in every month and forget it. When I die, it’s yours. Just remember the goddamned number. It’s your password to an easy old age.”

So after his father’s death, Henry flew to Geneva each year and spent a week or so looking at the mountains and trying to find his father’s birthplace. When he was successful, he bought a small flat nearby. On those visits, the memory of Stuart and how he’d let him down didn’t seem so bad. He’d increased the monthly transfer into the account after Stuart’s death. Come to think of it, what were his expenses? Nothing. No more saving for college. No doctors, dentists. The wife had taken his son’s life insurance, a paltry one hundred thousand, and disappeared. Good riddance. He thought about suing, thought about divorce, but all that planning, all that wasted time, that would weaken him.

He’d saved quite a bit. After all, he was high up on the food chain in bridge building and restoration. Iron, steel, cast iron, you name it, he understood it, knew where to get it or how to wait for it. He’d built a reputation, and anyone worth their salt in bridge building knew the dock areas on all sides of the water, knew how to navigate. He had connections, loved to breathe the air, walk the streets of distant towns. And Henry knew how to broker, how to buy and sell and make deals, how to work the system.

After the trial—the culmination of his failure to the memory of Stuart—Henry visited his lawyer, gave him a bonus, and asked him, by the way, off the cuff, between you and me, what was the name of the defense attorney. Impressive, her performance, not that yours wasn’t, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t give you the right ammunition. I should have been smart from the get-go, asked questions when he died; instead I mourned, did nothing, was content with their explanation of his death.

After the trial, he sold his house in Hamilton but kept the family farm nearby. He rented an apartment close enough to Brooklyn Heights and the Promenade and took up running. He took long runs in Dumbo, through Water and Fulton Streets, down Furman. He smelled the wharves and the centuries-old scent of spices from the Far East. He looked up at the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, at the Manhattan Bridge overpass and marveled at their construction, like his plan. Dual spans. Two passports and a clear-cut plan.

The rental near the Heights was Ben’s idea. Henry was the thinker, the innovator. He was obsessed with planning, he knew it. But Ben was the gadfly. And something else Henry was hard put to name. There was something raw about Ben. Ben scared him sometimes.

When he’d had enough of Ben—which happened with growing frequency—he’d travel to Switzerland using his Swiss passport. He needed a breather. He needed to work alone. On a recent trip, he purchased a Glock subcompact and combat holster. Back in the States, he began to conceal carry. It was a hassle and expensive, an added weight when he ran, but it came back to Ben. Always Ben. There was something about him. He began to regret Ben’s involvement.

As Henry ran, he chanted to himself, to the memory of the witch:
Lawyer Liam, you’ll pay, you’ll pay, Lawyer Liam
.
The same tuneless refrain wound through his head and into the place where his soul used to be. It seeped out his running shoes and into the gutter, where it mixed with the other detritus.

Five years became seven, seven became ten and soon twelve. He waited, existing, planning, saving, running on the streets of Brooklyn. To pay his expenses, he freelanced as a bridge restoration expert. Easy to do—with the Internet he could live anywhere in the world, Skype into meetings and advise. He had most of his fees transferred to his Swiss account. Once a year he’d call Geneva for the balance, surprised each time he heard the amount. He realized he didn’t need the money that Liam would deliver in order to get her daughter back. No, it wasn’t for the money. It was the perfect plan in exchange for all his mistakes. And something else: it was Henry’s revenge. The just payment, closure, perhaps the equivalent of a life for a life, especially since he’d watched her. He’d taken her measure, and Liam’s measure was money. Money and rules and the law. Do this, don’t do that. She was so careful, so clever, but he’d show her. You see, she had a child, too, a precious gift. And this one was still alive. Taking her daughter would even things up. And afterward, Lawyer Liam’s life would never be the same.

He shopped at stores near his apartment and seldom ate lunch unless he ran across the bridge and met Ben at a hot dog stand on Water Street. The doctor, the hospital, but especially the lawyer wouldn’t get away with it.
Lawyer Liam, you’ll pay, you’ll pay, Lawyer Liam.

Henry joined the ranks of local runners, rain or shine. He learned to run in snow and became sure-footed on ice. His main path was the Promenade, but every few laps, he’d veer off onto Columbia and trawl through the Heights, never wandering too far from the lawyer’s street, looking for the limousine that picked her up and dropped her off each weekday. He would get to know this woman, learn her habits, discover how he could hurt her. He’d watch her, stalk her, but not too close, nothing she’d feel—he knew how to hang back. But watching was the wrong word. Watching implied stillness, and he was never still, always silent and steadily moving, sometimes fast, sometimes walking, but never standing still.

He wanted to be invisible, a blip on the brain of others. He moved with stealth, thought of all the events in military history where surprise was key to winning the war, read about soldiers in Belgian forests, in the jungles of the Pacific. He thought of cat burglars on mansard roofs. He studied animals stalking their prey. He changed his diet, eating only healthy foods, seaweed for breakfast, carbs for lunch, spinach for dinner. He thought of Charlie Chan: slowly, slowly catchy monkey. So the knowledge-gathering phase took more time. Not to worry, he had plenty of time. It was on his side.

One day someone waved to him as he ran by. Henry panicked. Up until now, he thought he’d been so clever, but someone in the neighborhood had recognized him. Why not? He wore the same outfit day in, day out, varying the color of his running shorts but not his shirts or sweatshirts or shoes. Shocked by his stupidity, he realized he’d have to be more thoughtful, so he found a store near his apartment where they sold top-grade running gear. He bought different outfits, some rain ponchos, ski masks, sweaters, jackets, rubber cleats for snow and ice, a runner’s stopwatch, vests, hats, gloves, mittens, boots. At last, he felt secure. But he realized he needed to gain speed, so he found a gym close to the bridge and bought a membership. He worked out on the elliptical trainer, took up boxing and fencing. He began timing himself on runs and increased his speed. He learned how to move with stealth and precision, became balletic, sure-footed, a shadow, a blip.

Chapter 8

Brandy’s Diary, Part Two

Aunt Caroline’s gone and Granny’s mostly gone, and that leaves me and my friends—Heather and Polly and Frankie, the girl I sort of told you about. She’s the tallest in the class and has a crooked nose, but makes up for it with her mouth and being born with a perfect set of teeth. No braces. And, well, I guess I forgot to tell you about Sylvia. Her parents were born in the south of India, and her father is some kind of rich maharajah. That’s what Heather’s mom told her, and that’s why Sylvia’s mom gets to wear one of those red dots on her forehead. That’s what Heather’s mom says, and she ought to know, being from Shanghai. Dad told me that her family was a something or other there, I forget, but important. Maybe that’s why Heather’s mom is always smiling.