One-Way Ticket (14 page)

She shrugged. “If you say so.”

Ten minutes later I walked into Gordon Cahill’s office. He was at his desk talking to a strikingly pretty African American woman. I thought I might have recognized her from one of the Boston television news programs.

I sat in the reception area and thumbed through a recent issue of
Gray’s Sporting Journal
until the woman stood up, shook Gordie’s hand, and came toward the door.

She smiled at me, and I smiled back at her. Seeing her up close, I guessed I didn’t recognize her after all.

Gordie waved his hand. “Come on over.”

I went over to his desk.

“Pull that chair around so you can look at this with me,” he said.

I did that and sat beside him. “So what can you tell me?” I said.

“I’m not sure what you expected.”

“I have no expectations,” I said.

“Let’s look at it, then.” He poked some keys, and Robert’s face filled the computer screen. He began to speak, and after a minute Gordie paused it. “Look here,” he said. He touched the screen with the eraser end of a pencil. “He’s got an old black eye plus this new wound on his cheek.”

“I know about the black eye,” I said. “Happened a couple weeks ago.”

“Well this one here”—Gordie pointed at the cut on Robert’s cheekbone with the pencil—“is only a day or two old, I’d say. That’s a new scab, and see how around it it’s still red?”

“That’s good observing,” I said.

“I was going to observe further,” he said, “not knowing this young man, that he seems quite comfortable, given the words he’s reading and the duct tape on his ankles, wrists, and chest.”

“Comfortable?”

“Unstressed. At ease. In control. You know him, right?”

“Not that well.”

“Could he be drugged or something?”

“I don’t know. See, when I saw it, I just thought he was dealing with it. Stoic. Tough.”

“Is he stoic and tough?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know him well enough to say. He’s just a college kid. He plays a lot of poker. Knows how to bluff.”

“Maybe that’s what he’s doing,” said Gordie. “Playing it close to the vest. He’s not sweating. Nothing that looks like nerves. Nothing in his voice that would suggest he was anxious or worried or afraid for his life.”

“I noticed that, too,” I said. “I looked at this disc with other people who know him. None of them seemed to think he was acting out of character.” I looked at Gordie. “What are you thinking?”

“Thinking?” He shook his head. “Nothing. No interpretations or hypotheses, if that’s what you mean. I’m just observing.”

I shrugged. “Okay. Good.”

“Anyway,” said Gordie, “that’s one of the things I was observing. A kidnapping victim, his life apparently in dire jeopardy, how he’s holding up. Pretty good, it looks like. So, let me…” He played the tape until the camera pulled back to show how Robert was taped to a chair. “Take a look here,” said Gordie. He paused the image, then manipulated the mouse and zoomed into the upper-right quadrant behind Robert’s left shoulder. “See? This looks like a bedsheet. Pale blue. You can see the creases and folds. They hung it behind him so that you wouldn’t see any details of the room.”

“Interpret that for me,” I said.

“Obviously,” he said, “they’re either very professional and thorough, or else they think somebody might recognize the room they’re in.”

“Or both,” I said.

“Right,” said Gordie. “Most likely both. Anyway, here’s the interesting thing.” He pointed with his pencil. “See that?”

I looked. “I’m sorry. What am I looking at?”

“See this lighter-colored section here?” He moved the pencil in circles over the hanging blue sheet.

“Yes,” I said. “Now I do. What about it?”

“There’s light coming in from behind. It looks to me like there’s a window there.”

“I see what you mean,” I said. “How does that help us?”

“Hell,” said Gordie, “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t. You’re the one with all the information. You’re going to have to figure that out.”

I was looking at the bright spot. “It looks sort of roundish,” I said. “This patch of light.”

“With some space between the sheet and the wall,” he said, “the shape would be distorted. But I’d guess it’s a window with daylight coming in, and it looks like it’s smaller and higher up on the wall than your regular house window. He could be in a basement. This could be one of those little cellar windows up near the ceiling.”

I nodded. “This is good, Gordie. I’m not sure how it helps, but maybe it will. It would be an even bigger help, of course, if you could give me the address or GPS location.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Anyway, that’s all I noticed on the visual part of the recording. This kid’s affect, the blue sheet, and that patch of light. I don’t have the equipment to isolate and amplify sounds. That might be worth doing, you know.”

“Who can do that?”

“State police. FBI.” He cocked his head at me. “I know I’m not supposed to know anything, or ask any questions.” He arched his eyebrows.

I shook my head.

“The family refuses to go to the cops, huh?”

“Right.”

“So it’s you?”

I nodded. “It’s just me.”

He looked at me for a minute, then shrugged. “As far as the audio is concerned,” he said, “I think I’m hearing something. It’s frustrating not to have the equipment.”

“Play it for me.”

“I can slow it down to half speed and fool around with the bass and treble, just like you can do on your hi-fi. Pretty low-tech, but better than nothing. Listen.” He fast-forwarded it for a few seconds, then paused it. “It’s coming up here.” He played it at normal speed. “Hear that?”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to hear except his voice,” I said.

“Ignore that. Listen for background noises.” He backed it up and played it again, and I detected a faint, rhythmical sound. It seemed to rise and fall over the space of about thirty seconds.

“Okay,” I said. “I think I hear what you’re hearing. But I don’t recognize it.”

“Me, neither,” said Gordie. “Let’s amplify it.”

He reversed it again, made some adjustments, then played it at half speed. Robert’s voice deepened so that it sounded hollow and echoey. The rhythmical sound came through more clearly. It was a kind of soft thumping noise, as if somebody were slapping his hand on a table.

“What do you make of it?” I said.

He shook his head. “Beats the hell out of me. Like I said—”

“I know. Better equipment. I can’t go to the cops.”

“Talk to your clients,” he said. “It’s stupid not to bring in the pros.”

“I’ll try again. So was there anything else?”

“One thing,” he said. “Pretty obvious. I bet you noticed it, too.”

“What’s that?”

“No tape over the kid’s eyes.”

I nodded. “That’s not good.”

“No. It means they don’t care if he sees them.”

“They could be wearing masks,” I said.

“Let’s hope,” said Gordie.

“Right,” I said. “Anything else about the disc?”

“Nope. That’s it. What do you want for a dozen donuts?”

“Don’t forget,” I said, “I also had to listen to your dumb pun. That’s a stiff price to pay. What can you tell me about that cell phone?”

It was sitting on Gordie’s desk. He picked it up and bounced it in his palm. “You got yourself a brand-new, bottom-of-the-line, prepaid Motorola cellular telephone,” he said. “You can get these babies online from a hundred places from here to Tokyo, or from any Wal-Mart or Circuit City. Cost you about fifty bucks.”

“Meaning you can’t trace where it was purchased?”

“If there’s a way,” he said, “I don’t know it, and it would probably take weeks of legwork anyway. There’s no serial number or anything like that on it to distinguish it from all the others just like it. Whatever might’ve been programmed into it has been erased. I couldn’t even figure out its phone number.”

“The phone’s a dead end, then.”

“Well, again…” He looked at me and flapped his hands.

“Right,” I said. “Take it to the cops.”

He gave me the phone, then ejected the disc from his computer, put it in its plastic case, and handed it to me, too. “If there’s anything else I can do,” he said.

I put the phone and the disc into my pockets. “I know,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

“Just don’t forget the donuts.”

I turned to leave. Then I went back to his desk.

He looked up at me. “You disappointed I didn’t have another story for you?”

“God, no,” I said. “You remember on the disc how Robert was all taped up? Wrists, ankles, around his chest?”

“Sure.”

“Could a person do that to himself?”

“Interesting.” He frowned. “Hmm…”.He gazed up at the ceiling. “I’m trying to visualize it,” he muttered. Then he looked at me and shook his head. “I don’t see how. The ankles wouldn’t be a problem, and maybe if you used your mouth you could tape your wrists together… although once you taped your mouth, you couldn’t do that, and if you taped your wrists first, you couldn’t very well tape your mouth. Anyway, that tape around his chest went around the back of the chair and it was right up snug in his armpits. Human arms don’t bend that way.” He shook his head. “Nope. You’d have to be Houdini or something. Why? You think—?”

“I don’t think anything,” I said. “Just trying to get my head outside the box.”

“Always a good plan,” Gordie said. “Listen, speaking of Houdini and boxes, did I ever tell you—”

“I gotta go,” I said.

W
HEN I GOT HOME
, I scraped the frost off a supermarket pepperoni-and-onion pizza I found in the freezer and heated it in the oven. I ate it with a can of Coke at the kitchen table while I watched the evening news. Without Evie to share it with, I realized that I had no desire to make any kind of ceremony out of cooking or eating. Food was fuel for the machine.

I was remembering how to live alone again.

Henry sat beside me, alert and grateful for the occasional pizza crust that I gave him. For Henry, food was joy.

The phone rang at seven-thirty.

“It’s Adrienne Lancaster,” she said in that raspy voice of hers, as if I might be expecting phone calls from other women named Adrienne. “I have it.”

“The money?”

“Yes. A quarter of a million dollars. Used twenties, fifties, and hundreds. It’s making me nervous. Please come and collect it.”

“I’m on my way,” I said.

I’d left my car in a residents-only space on the street in front of the house. Henry came with me. We pulled into the judge’s driveway around eight-fifteen. There were no other cars parked there.

I cracked the windows so Henry could stick out his nose and sniff the evening air. I told him to be patient, I wouldn’t be gone long. Then I went up to the front porch and rang the bell.

A minute later the judge opened the door. “Come in, please,” she said.

I went in and followed her into the living room.

“Can I get you something?” she said.

I shook my head. “I think this is a mistake.”

“I know you do.”

“You’re going to lose your money, and you won’t get Robert back.”

She shrugged. “The money is unimportant.”

“It’s not too late,” I said. “Let’s bring the police into it. I can make a call, and—”

“No. Absolutely not.” She was wearing blue slacks and low heels and a white blouse. Gold earrings and a gold necklace. I guessed it was the same outfit she’d worn under her judge’s robes that day. She combed her fingers through her steel gray hair, blew out a breath, and gestured at a chair. “Sit down, Attorney Coyne. Please.”

I sat, and she took the sofa.

“I’m fully aware that this could be a mistake,” she said.

“It is a mistake.”

“Either way could be a mistake,” she said. “We won’t know until it’s over. I’ve thought about it, believe me, and I have concluded that we’d all feel worse if refusing to do it their way resulted in…” She shook her head, then turned and glared at me. “If you’ve changed your mind and have decided you don’t want to play the role that these people have assigned to you, Attorney Coyne, you’d better tell me right now.”

“If I back out,” I said, “will you bring in the police?”

“If you back out,” she said, “Robert is dead, police or no police.”

“I didn’t come here to tell you I was backing out,” I said. “I’m just not optimistic about how it’s going to end.”

She nodded. “Neither am I.” She slumped back on the sofa and gazed up at the ceiling. “I love my grandson, Mr. Coyne. I love my son, too, in spite of his weaknesses. I love them more than I love my money.” She moved her head so that she was looking at me. “No, I’m not optimistic, either. Involving the police wouldn’t make me feel better about it, though.”

“I guess we’ll do it their way, then,” I said.

“Thank you.” She pushed herself to her feet and left the room. She was back a minute later with a red Nike gym bag in her hand. She plopped it onto the coffee table in front of me. “It’s all here,” she said.

I unzipped the bag. It was nearly full of paper currency in decks about an inch thick bound by rubber bands. I picked up one of the decks and riffled through it with my thumb. Twenty-dollar bills. Some were crispy and new, some were soft and old.

I emptied the bag onto the coffee table.

“You’ll find fifty-five stacks of bills there,” said Adrienne. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, one hundred bills per stack. Twenty-five stacks of twenties, twenty stacks of fifties, and ten of hundreds. I called four banks this morning, and this afternoon they had the money ready for me. According to them, most of those bills have been in circulation.”

“How did you handle it?” I said.

“Handle what?”

“Collecting all that currency. The banks. What did you tell them?”

“I didn’t handle anything,” she said. “I simply filled out withdrawal slips, told them what I wanted, and reminded them that I’d called earlier to be sure they would have the currency on hand. They verified that my accounts would cover it, and they gave it to me.”

“No questions?”

She smiled. “I am a judge. I can be quite imperious.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve noticed that.” I put the decks of bills back into the gym bag and zipped it up. “Now we wait to hear from them.”