Scavenger (4 page)

“They’re checking for the second time. I promise I’ll do everything I can. You went to this history club when?”

“Is today Saturday?” The overhead light was oppressively harsh.

“Not anymore. It’s past midnight.”

“Saturday was ...” Balenger fought to concentrate, to get the correct date. His left forearm remained sore. “June second?”

“That’s right. Man, whatever they gave you sure fouled up your memory. Some kind of date-rape amnesia drug maybe.”

“In the coffee and the sandwiches.” Balenger shook his head, aggravating his headache. “But everybody else drank and ate . . . The woman . . . What was her name? Come on, come on. Karen! That’s what she called herself. Karen Bailey. She brought coffee to us. That’s when it happened.”

“You said she pulled the drapes shut and turned off the lights.”

“Yes.” Balenger felt sick to his stomach. “So the professor . . . Murdock.
That
was his name. So Professor Murdock could deliver a lecture and show photographs on a screen. After a while, people started leaving. The room seemed to get darker.”

“Why do you keep massaging your left forearm?” Cochran asked.

“It aches.” Balenger took off his sport coat and rolled up his shirt sleeve. The middle of his forearm was red and swollen. Something had punctured his skin.

“Looks like somebody gave you an injection,” Cochran said. “More drugs to keep you sedated while they brought you here.”

Hands trembling, Balenger felt in his pockets. “I’ve still got my wallet. They didn’t take my watch. This wasn’t robbery.”

“Your cell phone?”

“I didn’t bring it with me. Amanda’s just about the only person I talk to on it. Since she was with me, it didn’t seem necessary to carry it.”

Cochran shoved the office phone across the desk. “Does
she
have a cell phone?”

Balenger touched numbers. Palm sweating, he pressed the phone to his ear.

An electronic voice told him, “The number you are calling is out of service.”

The voice must have been loud enough for Cochran to hear it. “Try your home,” the police chief said. “Maybe she’s waiting for you, worried about where you are.”

“But it doesn’t make sense that someone would drug us, put
me
in Asbury Park, and take Amanda to our apartment.”

“So far,
none
of this makes sense. Try home,” Cochran urged.

Balenger quickly touched more numbers. His hand was now so sweaty that it slicked the phone.

“Hello,” Amanda’s voice said.

Thank God
, Balenger thought. Abruptly, his spirit sank as he realized what he heard.

“At the tone, please leave a message.” Amanda’s recorded greeting ended.

Balenger forced himself to speak. “I don’t know what happened,” he said into the phone, alarmed by the unsteadiness of his voice. “If you get this message, call the Asbury Park Police Department.” He dictated the number on the phone. “Ask for Chief Cochran.”

“In that case—” Cochran motioned for Balenger to slide the phone to him. “—let’s see what the Manhattan P.D. can find out.”

11

Balenger’s head throbbed as Cochran steered onto East 19
^th
Street. The Sunday morning light, free of workday traffic exhaust, was so clear that it hurt Balenger’s sleep-starved eyes. The dashboard clock showed 8:11.

“The next block,” he told Cochran. “There. The middle row house.”

Balenger saw a tall, thirtyish, Hispanic man in a tie and sport coat standing in front of the building. Next to him was a severely thin woman in a designer pantsuit. Her hair was platinum. Her excessive lipstick and eyeliner made it difficult to tell how old she was.

Cochran managed to find a parking space at the end of the block. Balenger hurried toward the row house.

“Chief Cochran?” the Hispanic asked.

“That’s me,” Cochran said, catching up to Balenger.

“Detective Ortega.” The man shook hands. “This is Joan Dandridge.”

“Frank Balenger. That sign wasn’t here yesterday.” Apprehension swelling inside him, Balenger indicated the top of the stairs, where a FOR SALE sign was attached to the door. The sign read KNICKERBOCKER REALTY and provided a phone number.

“That’s my company,” Joan said. She dropped a cigarette to the pavement and stepped on it.

Balenger stared toward the empty space above the door. “There was a bronze plaque up there.”

“What?” Her voice became sharp.

“Above the door. With the words MANHATTAN HISTORY CLUB.”

Joan climbed the steps, pulled spectacles from her purse, and stared toward the bricks above the entrance. “My God, I see holes where the plaque was attached. He promised he wouldn’t damage the building.”

“He?” Cochran asked.

“The owner bought this place on spec and wants too much for it,” the realtor complained. “I keep telling him, the boom’s over, the price is too high. So when I got a call from somebody offering to rent the building for a day, I encouraged the owner to accept. I negotiated a very nice rate.”

“Rent the building?” Balenger felt off-balance.
Amanda
, he thought, desperate to get inside.

“For a reception. The man said he lived here until his parents sold it when he was a teenager in the 1980s. He happened to drive by, noticed it was for sale, and decided to have a surprise birthday party for his father, who always regretted selling the place. I kidded him, ‘Never mind renting it for a day. Convince your father to buy it back.’ He laughed and told me, ‘Nostalgia isn’t worth four million dollars.’”

Balenger quickly asked, “What did he look like?”

“I never met him.”

“You never—?”

“We made all the arrangements over the phone. The contract went through the mail. His check didn’t bounce. I got a security deposit and a fee. That’s all I cared about. I did find out who owned the property in the 1980s. Victor Evans. The man who signed the rental contract is Philip Evans. The same family name. As far as I was concerned, everything looked legitimate.” She pulled a key from her purse and scowled again at the holes above the door. “This is a historical district. The damage deposit might not be enough to pay for the repair.”

She unlocked the door.

“Wait here,” Ortega said.

“But I need to find out if anything else is damaged.”

“After we make sure no one’s inside.”

Ortega, Balenger, and Cochran entered. The vestibule smelled musty.

“There was an easel here,” Balenger told them. “A poster with the professor’s photograph was on it.”

They followed the corridor. All the old photographs of Gramercy Park were gone.

Balenger gestured to the right. “The lecture was there.”

They went into the long room. The folding chairs were gone. So were the photographs, the draperies, the lectern, the screen, and the tables for the coffee, tea, and sandwiches.

Ortega cautiously opened a door at the back and looked inside a room. “Empty.”

Balenger listened to the building’s silence. “Amanda!” he shouted.

The echo died. No one answered.

Massaging his forearm, he returned to the corridor and peered up the stairs. Its dark carpet led toward shadows.

“Amanda!”

Still, no answer.

The stairs creaked as Balenger hurried up.

“I’m coming with you,” Cochran said.

“You’d better let me go first.” Ortega caught up to them.

“I know how to do this,” Balenger said. “I used to be a police officer.”

“But are you armed?”

“No.”

“Chief Cochran?”

“I’m out of my jurisdiction. I didn’t bring my gun.”

“Then I’ll go first,” Ortega emphasized. At the top, he checked a murky room, then proceeded along a corridor.

Balenger went into the room. Its carpet had imprints where a bed, a dresser, and a chair once stood. The closet door was open, revealing a couple of hangers on a rod.

The second room contained two empty packing boxes.

On the next floor, all they found were a few more hangers and a strip of bubble wrap.

Ortega opened the final door. “The attic.”

No one moved for a second. Then they braced themselves and went up a narrow stairway, where the creaking was louder than on the main stairs. Balenger followed Ortega, dust irritating his nostrils. He heard Cochran behind him.

Sunlight struggled through a grimy window. The pitched ceiling was so low that Balenger needed to stoop. He studied an uneven pine floor and an exercise mat, torn at one edge. “A long time ago, this was probably the servants’ quarters.”

“Sort of like a cave,” Ortega said. “I bet kids would enjoy playing up here.”

Cochran pointed. “What’s that in the corner?”

“Looks like a couple of CD cases,” Balenger said.

Ortega pulled latex gloves from his suit-coat pocket, leaned into the corner, and picked up the cases. “Not CDs. Video games. I never heard of the first one, but the other is
Grand Theft Auto
. My kids play it. I told them to stop—a cop’s kids playing games about stealing cars and beating up prostitutes—but I’m sure they keep playing it behind my back.” Ortega opened the cases. “No wonder they got left behind. The discs are missing.”

Balenger’s forearm continued to ache. The small talk hadn’t eased his tension. “We’re not finished searching.”

“I know,” Ortega said. “There’s always the basement.”

12

Descending, Balenger felt his chest cramp so hard that he had trouble breathing. Dankness surrounded him. The basement was a single, long area, poorly lit, with old brick walls and cobwebbed pipes. The concrete floor had cracks. The furnace was covered with grit. Rust lay under the water heater.

“Four million dollars for this place?” Cochran murmured. “It ought to be condemned.”

The attempt at small talk still did nothing to calm Balenger. No matter how thoroughly he looked, there wasn’t any sign of Amanda.

“When was the last time you checked your home?” Ortega asked.

“The chief drove me there first. I picked up a photograph.” Balanger pulled it from a jacket pocket. It came from a shoebox Amanda kept on a closet shelf. It showed her playing with her parents’ Irish setter in their backyard in Connecticut.

Ortega studied it. “How tall is she?”

“Five six. A hundred and twenty pounds.” Balenger’s throat tightened. When he rescued her from the Paragon Hotel, she’d been gaunt. It had taken a lot of encouragement to get her to eat enough to regain a healthy weight.

“Eye color? It’s hard to tell in the photo.”

“Blue. Soft. Kind of translucent.”

“Hair. Would you call it straw-colored?”

Balenger nodded, overwhelmed with emotion. He gazed longingly at the joyous smile in the image. Shoulder-length hair. Lovely chin and elegant cheekbones. He had an anguished memory of a similar conversation with a detective when his wife disappeared.

“I need to tell you something,” Balenger said.

“Oh?”

“This happened to me once before.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My wife disappeared, too.”

The dim lights in the basement didn’t hide Ortega’s surprise.

“She looked like Amanda.” The dankness penetrated Balenger’s core, making him shiver. “Chief Cochran told you about the Paragon Hotel when he phoned you.”

Ortega nodded somberly.

“I found my wife in that hotel. Dead.” Confronting his memories made Balenger’s hands and feet numb. His rapid breathing caused him to feel lightheaded. “I also found Amanda there.”

Ortega’s gaze intensified.

“The physical resemblance isn’t coincidental.” Balenger rushed on, unable to control the speed of his words. “We know who kidnapped my wife. The same man who kidnapped Amanda a year ago. He was fixated on young women with blond hair, blue eyes, and similar features. If I didn’t know better, I’d say
he
did this. But I saw Amanda beat him to death with a two-by-four. After it broke, she used it as a stake and rammed it into the bastard’s heart. I keep having nightmares about him. But he couldn’t have done this.” Balenger felt desperate as he turned toward Cochran, needing reassurance.

“Right. That’s all he is–something in nightmares,” Cochran said. “I saw the corpse on the beach. I saw it in the morgue. I saw it in the autopsy. Later, I spoke to witnesses who saw it cremated.”

Balenger’s anguished voice reverberated through the cellar. “So what other son of a bitch would want to make this happen a second time?”

LEVEL TWO

“WELCOME TO SCAVENGER”

1

“But before the ceremony occurred, someone stole the capsule from an unattended van,” a voice droned.

Amanda felt as if she floated upward from a deep pool.

“The second most-wanted time capsule is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

Amanda drifted to the surface.

“In 1939, MIT engineers sealed various objects in a container and deposited it under a huge cyclotron they were building. The cyclotron was eventually deactivated, but the time capsule was forgotten for more than fifty years.”

Her eyes opened.