One-Way Ticket (21 page)

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s out there with her father, and we haven’t talked much since she left. She was taking him to the hospital today. Tomorrow they should know what they’re dealing with, at least.”

Horowitz was leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs and his hands dangling between his knees and his beer bottle dangling from his hands. He seemed to be gazing out at the shadowy street in front of my house. After a little silence, he said, “What I meant was, how are you doing?”

“I’m okay.”

“Your eyes look like two holes burned in a blanket, you know. I mean, you look like shit.”

“Thank you. I haven’t been sleeping that well.”

“Miss her, huh?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

He shrugged, as if it were self-evident.

A soft evening breeze ruffled the maple trees that lined Mt. Vernon Street, and we watched the streetlight shadows dance on the sidewalks.

“She coming back?” said Horowitz.

“Jesus, I hope so. Why would you say that?”

He shook his head.

“What did she say to you?” I said.

“To me?” He smiled quickly. “Not much. She’s got some kind of guilt thing with her father. Here’s her chance to get rid of it.”

“She told you that?”

“Not in so many words,” he said. “I inferred it.”

“She never said anything like that to me,” I said.

“Maybe you just weren’t listening.”

After Horowitz left, I poured myself some coffee, and Henry and I went out to the backyard. Henry lifted his leg against his favorite azalea bush, and I sat in my favorite Adirondack chair.

I sipped my coffee and thought about that hunk of Louie’s face.

A warning, Mendoza had suggested.

I doubted that. It was uncharacteristic of Paulie Russo. Too clever. Too dramatic. And unnecessary. If Paulie had kidnapped Robert Lancaster, as I assumed he did, so far he had no reason to doubt that he’d done it right. He wouldn’t be afraid of me. He’d understand that we hadn’t called in the FBI because the family didn’t want it, and he wouldn’t want to rock the boat.

When Paulie Russo wanted to warn or threaten you, he sent his goons to beat you up in a parking lot. When Paulie warned you, he didn’t leave much room for interpretation.

I figured Louie’s face was just Paulie’s way of saying:
Here’s proof that I’ve punished the man who punched you in the kidneys. I didn’t kidnap Robert Lancaster, so now we’re even.

It didn’t exactly convince me that he hadn’t kidnapped Robert Lancaster. Paulie Russo was an accomplished liar. But it did raise the question: If he didn’t do it, who did?

The question seemed hypothetical, but important nevertheless.

I thought about it while Henry finished snuffling around the garden and I finished my coffee, and I came up with no compelling theories.

Tomorrow, I decided, I’d do my best to figure it out.

That night I slept on the daybed in my office. I didn’t want to use the bedroom. It felt like an alien place without Evie.

H
ENRY WOKE ME UP
the next morning whining to go outside. It was a little after eight. I figured I’d slept for at least nine hours, and I felt like I could’ve snoozed for another nine if Henry hadn’t insisted that I rise and shine.

I let Henry out, plugged in the coffeepot, took a quick shower, and got dressed. Then I poured myself a mug of coffee, grabbed the portable kitchen phone, and joined Henry in the backyard.

The clouds hung thick and low overhead. It smelled like rain. I sipped my coffee and watched the goldfinches and nuthatches and titmice that were swarming the feeders. A hummingbird was dipping his beak into the begonias that Evie had planted back in May, which seemed like a long time ago, and a couple of mourning doves were pecking fallen sunflower seeds off the ground. City wildlife.

It was Thursday. Today, presumably, they’d know what was wrong with Ed Banyon, and how bad it was, and what, if anything, they could do about it.

Evie hadn’t called last night. I hadn’t called her, either. I hoped she knew I was thinking about her.

Guilt, Horowitz had said. That’s why she felt compelled to be with her father. I didn’t understand why she’d need guilt to do that. It just seemed like a logical thing for a daughter to do.

I wondered what she’d said to Horowitz that she hadn’t said to me.

I called my office at quarter of nine—purposely well before Julie arrived so that I’d be sure she wouldn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk to her, or argue with her, or defend my decisions to her. It was easier just to leave a message.

“Reschedule everything for today and tomorrow,” I said to our office voice mail. “Tell anybody who seems to care that I’m under the weather. Which, actually, I am, more or less, not that it matters. I’m sure I’ll be in on Monday all geared up to accrue a mountain of billable hours. After you make the calls, go home, and don’t come back till Monday. And I don’t want you to argue with me. I’m the boss, don’t forget. Aren’t I? Have a nice weekend.”

I finished my coffee, and Henry and I went inside. I gave him his breakfast and toasted a cinnamon-and-raisin bagel for myself.

Then I went into my office and slid the kidnappers’ CD into my computer. I played it through, once again hoping to detect codes or nuances or hidden messages in Robert’s words and facial expressions and body language.

Again I detected nothing.

I played it a few more times, focusing on the shadowy room instead of Robert himself and listening to the background noises instead of his voice. It did appear that he was in a cellar with a bedsheet hung behind him to hide details of the interior, as if the kidnappers thought somebody might recognize it, but I suspected the only reason I thought that was because Gordie Cahill had put the idea into my head. So I was seeing it with expectations and preconceptions.

I could barely hear the soft rhythmic slapping sounds that Gordie had detected. If he hadn’t pointed them out, I would never have noticed them. Now, listening for them and trying to block out Robert’s voice, I still couldn’t figure out what they were. They sounded like somebody slapping a wet towel against his bare leg. I doubted that’s what the sounds actually were.

The most ominous detail on the recording was the absence of a blindfold over Robert’s eyes. Kidnappers who intended to return their hostage wouldn’t want him to be able to identify them.

I thought some more about having Louie’s face delivered to me in a shoe box. I still figured it was Paulie Russo’s unique way of apologizing for that kidney punch and trying to convince me that he didn’t have Robert.

Saundra Mendoza had suggested that it was a warning. Paulie telling me that he wouldn’t hesitate to cut off a man’s face. Robert’s face, for example.

Or mine.

Maybe. But suppose Paulie Russo was telling the truth? Suppose he wasn’t the one who’d kidnapped Robert?

Either way, I figured I had a day—two at the most—to figure it out.

I found the cell phone number that Becca Quinlan, Robert’s girlfriend, had scribbled on a scrap of paper for me and dialed it. It rang five times before her voice mail invited me to leave a message. Maybe she was in class. Maybe she was still asleep. Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk to me.

“Becca,” I said after the beep, “it’s Brady Coyne. I’d like to talk to you about Robert. Please give me a call.” I left my own cell phone number.

We’d see if she returned my call.

Teresa Samborski, Robert’s mother, answered on the second ring. When I told her who it was, she said, “Do you have news? What have you heard?”

“No,” I said. “No news since last night. I’m sorry.” I saw no reason to tell her about Louie’s face in a shoe box. “I was wondering if you’d mind if I came out to your house.”

“No, I’m here. That would be fine.” She hesitated. “Why?”

“I thought we could talk,” I said. “And I wanted to look at Robert’s room.”

“His room?”

“I don’t know Robert very well.”

She laughed softly. “I guess I don’t, either. But what good…?”

“I don’t know,” I told Teresa. “Maybe between the two of us we can figure something out.”

“I’ll put on some coffee,” she said.

I followed the directions Teresa gave me to her home in Acton. It took almost an hour in the morning traffic to wend my way out of the city to the Route 2 rotary in Concord, where I picked up 2A into Acton.

Teresa Samborski lived in a modest colonial in a little cul-de-sac lined with closely spaced modest colonials that looked like they’d all been built by the same developer at the same time during the housing boom of the eighties. Teresa’s was stained brown with red shutters and an attached two-car garage. A basketball hoop and backboard stood on a steel pole beside the driveway. There was no net on the hoop.

I parked behind Teresa’s Murano and went to the front porch.

Before I could ring the bell, she opened the door. “Come on in, Mr. Coyne,” she said.

“It’s Brady,” I said.

She was wearing cutoff jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Her feet were bare. She looked too young to have a son Robert’s age.

I followed her into the kitchen, and she gestured for me to sit at the table by a window. It overlooked a small backyard that backed up on somebody else’s small backyard. There were some empty birdfeeders hanging from a spindly maple tree.

“Coffee?” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Black, please.”

She poured two mugs full and brought them to the table. She sat across from me, took a sip, and looked at me over the rim of her mug. “So?”

“Your husband’s not here?”

“He’s at work.”

“What’s his take on this?”

“Sam?” She shrugged. “He has no particular take on it. He’s, um, supportive.”

“But he’s at work.”

She looked at me. “What are you trying to say?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

She gazed out the window. “My husband,” she said after a minute, “is a good man. He works hard. He’s helping put Robert through school. He’s not very good at expressing his feelings. I believe he’s concerned about… about what’s happened.” She shrugged.

“How do he and Robert get along?”

“About as you might expect. They keep their distance from each other.” She smiled quickly. “They’re a couple of guys living in the same house. Sam’s not his father. They’re polite with each other. Never had an argument or anything. Robert resents him, I’m sure, although he’s never said so. Sam tolerates Robert. They don’t shoot baskets or rake leaves together, if that’s what you mean.”

“I didn’t mean anything,” I said.

“But Sam not being with me during this,” she said, “it’s noticeable.”

“I noticed, sure,” I said.

She shook her head. “Don’t read anything into it. Running an automobile dealership is a hard business. He works seven days a week.”

We sipped our coffee in silence for a minute.

“I never knew he gambled,” Teresa said finally.

“I wonder if your husband did.”

She turned and looked at me. “What are you trying to say?”

I waved my hand. “I’m not trying to say anything.”

“You don’t think Sam…”

“I just wondered if Robert might have confided in him, asked him for money, maybe.”

“No,” she said. “Sam would have told me.”

“Robert could have sworn him to secrecy.”

“They don’t have that kind of relationship, Mr. Coyne.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I don’t see what difference it makes. Those criminals have kidnapped him. It’s got nothing to do with my husband. I just want to get my boy back.”

I nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess I was just being nosy. I wonder if you’d mind if I looked at Robert’s room.”

“Sure. I don’t see why not.”

“I know he has an apartment now…”

“That’s just a room he rents with some other kids while he’s at school,” she said. “He still lives here. He hasn’t moved out. He comes home most weekends, and when his summer classes are over, he’ll…” She gave me a little smile, then stood up. “This way. I’ll show you.”

I
FOLLOWED TERESA UP
the stairs. She pointed to a closed door at the end of the hall. “That’s Robert’s room,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wait for you downstairs.”

I went into Robert’s bedroom and closed the door behind me. A big poster of Tom Brady dominated one wall. Tacked to the back of the door was a poster of Janet Jackson. The single bed was neatly made. A bookcase and a bedside table flanked the bed. A small desk with a computer and a plug-in telephone sat under the room’s only window. There was a small closet and a chest of drawers. That was it.

I glanced in the closet and saw nothing but clothes. No boxes of money or marijuana or guns. Not even a stack of old
Penthouse
magazines. The chest held underwear and socks and sweaters. No pill bottles or diaries or homemade videotapes in the drawer of the bedside table.

I sat at Robert’s desk and turned on his computer, and when his e-mail server asked for his user name, I typed in ROBERT and BOBBY and LANCASTER and RLANCASTER and ROBERTL and several other permutations of his name, all of which were rejected.

I rummaged through the desk drawers and found nothing except paper and pencils and paper clips—nothing with anything written on it that resembled a user name or password.

An experienced PI like Gordie Cahill, with a lot of trial and error and persistence and creativity, might be able to deduce Robert’s user name and password, depending on how dogged he was and how random and obscure the codes were. I was not dogged.

I went over to the bookcase. It held an ancient set of Hardy Boys adventures, a few Stephen King novels, an old set of World Book encyclopedias, and a whole shelf of science and history and psychology college-level textbooks.

Several small photos in plastic frames were lined up on top of the bookcase. I took them down to look at them.

One showed Robert, wearing a cap and gown, flanked by Dalt and Teresa. High-school graduation, I assumed. Mom and Dad, smiling bravely on an occasion that had reunited them. Robert had an arm around each parent’s shoulders. He looked happy.

In another photo, a much younger Robert Lancaster—he looked about ten—was standing with a younger-looking Dalton Lancaster. They both wore hip boots and were standing calf-deep in the water of a fast-moving stream. Robert was grinning and holding a fly rod. Dalt was holding up a net that cradled a trout that couldn’t have been more than ten inches long. Robert’s very first fly-rod trout, maybe. A milestone for a boy, and a happy father-son moment.