Guilt (22 page)

He looked at his watch. “So you said you needed advice? For the next three minutes I'm at your disposal.”

Annie told him about her search for Brenda and Joey Klevinski, and how she'd come up empty.

“Klevinski?” MacRae said, recognizing the name.

Annie told him she'd been married to one of the A-bomber suspects.

“Nine people killed, we've got a credible threat against the State House, and you're wasting my time with a woman who ran off six years ago?” MacRae shook his head. “She's probably sitting pretty on the beach in Miami, thinking Thank god no one from my old life has tracked me down. So long to lousy husbands, bad debts—”

“Mac, she's got twelve thousand dollars in a savings account here. Hasn't touched it since she disappeared.”

He considered that for a moment. “I'm not going to ask you how you know that.”

“She was disowned by her family, kept isolated by her husband. As far as I can tell, she had no friends, no job. She had a little boy. He'd be twelve years old.” She let that sink in. Mac had a son about that age who lived with his ex. “Someone has to care what happened to them.”

MacRae rolled his chair up to the desk and started typing on his computer. “You know I shouldn't be doing this.”

“Yeah, but you're a decent human being and you like it when I owe you one. Brenda Mulvaney Klevinski,” Annie spelled the name as MacRae typed. She gave him the social security number.

He paused for a moment, eyes on the screen. “Let's see. No missing person's report.” He typed some more, then waited. “No car's registered in her name.” More typing. “Sheesh. No driver's license even. No criminal record, either.” He typed more and waited, tapping a pen up and down on the blotter. “Looks like she took out a couple of restraining orders, but you already know that.”

“How about a detailed credit report? All I could get was the short version.”

“You're pushing it.”

A police officer stuck his head in the door. Annie knew him from way back. “Hey, Annie,” he said. To MacRae he added, “We're ready for you.”

“Be there in a sec.” MacRae said, continuing to type.

“Don't say I never done nothin' for ya,” he said, pushing back a minute later.

“Consider this your good deed for the year,” she said. The printer beside his desk groaned to life and the pages began to print.

Annie noticed two telephone numbers tacked to the wall over MacRae's desk. They were Peter's office and home numbers.

“One more thing,” Annie said. “Do me a favor, don't mention this to Peter.”

MacRae handed her the printout and gave a Cheshire-cat smile. “I wouldn't think of it.”

*   *   *

Annie drove back to her office. She had Brenda Klevinski's credit report safely stowed in her backpack. What was in it had surprised her. Brenda was continuing to use a MasterCard issued to “Brenda Klevinski.” The billing address had been changed to a post office box in Brighton, and at the end of last month there was an outstanding balance due of $1,850.

Up to that moment, Annie had been sure Brenda had vanished without a trace, something which wasn't that easy to do if you didn't have a lot of cash. It had seemed more and more likely that she'd been killed. Discovering an active credit card should have allayed her fears, but it didn't make sense. For one thing, credit card companies charged an easy 20 percent interest rate. Why wasn't Brenda using the money in her savings account to pay off the balance?

She cruised up Mem Drive. Traffic was light as she passed the BU Bridge.

And for another thing, if Brenda felt safe enough to go into Brighton Center and check mail in a post office box, then why …

Blue flashing lights and the brief whoop of a siren disturbed her thoughts. She glanced in the rearview mirror. The cop behind her wanted her to stop. What was his problem? She was barely doing forty. Pain in the ass.

Annie pulled over, flipped open the glove compartment, and got out her registration. She got her wallet from her backpack, opened it, and stared at the little plastic window where her driver's license should have been. It was empty. She checked the billfold, in the other wallet compartments.
Why now?
She rummaged in her purse, coming up empty.

There was a tap on the window. Annie squinted up at the officer, praying that it would be a familiar face. It wasn't. He had his hand out. She rolled down the window and passed him her registration.

“I can't seem to find my driver's license. I know I have it, it's just not where it should be. You know, I keep it in my wallet…” Annie broke off.
Stop babbling,
she told herself.

He had wraparound sunglasses on under his cap. She couldn't see his eyes, but his mouth was a humorless line. He examined her registration. “This is out of date. The registration sticker on your license plate is expired.”

Annie groaned to herself. Now she remembered. She'd gotten something from the Registry of Motor Vehicles, an envelope she'd opened and left in the pile of mail on her hall table.

“I'm sorry, Officer. I've been meaning to get to it—”

“And your driver's license?”

“I have a license. I just don't
have it.
You see, I—”

There was no point in continuing. The officer walked back to his cruiser, taking her out-of-date car registration with him. Annie could see he was talking on his two-way radio. Probably running her plates.

A half hour later, Annie was standing at the curb, waiting in an impotent fury for a tow truck to come get her car. It was being impounded, and she had a ticket in her pocket that was going to cost her. It would have been poetic justice if Joe Klevinski had been driving the tow truck, but when it finally showed up, the driver was a stranger.

Annie called Abby only after failing to reach Chip and Peter. Abby sounded overjoyed to be called to the rescue. She said she'd be right over. It would give them a chance to talk about the wedding.

Great. That was the reason she'd been avoiding Abby, so she wouldn't have to make polite noises while her sister droned on about wedding plans. Why couldn't she just have eloped like she did the first time?

“You don't think I'm going overboard, do you?” Abby asked when they were riding along the river. “It's Luke's first time.”

“You can do whatever you want. It's your wedding.”

She zoned out as Abby bubbled on about calla lily bouquets and raspberry-filled wedding cake. On the river, an eight skimmed past. She could almost comprehend what Peter saw in the sport. Made it look so effortless when it so wasn't.

Abby fell silent. They were stopped at an intersection, and the turn signal ticked as they waited for the light to change.

“Annie? You're okay, aren't you? I mean, you're not angry with me or anything?”

“Of course not. What makes you think that?”

“You've just been so, I don't know, weird and distant. You like Luke, don't you?”

The light changed and Abby inched the car into the intersection, waiting for a break in the traffic.

“I like Luke a lot. And I'm happy for you. Really I am. I'm sorry, it's just that I've been so preoccupied with work.”

“Everything okay between you and Peter?”

Annie felt her back stiffen. Everything was
fine
between her and Peter. Besides which, it wasn't anyone's business but theirs. “Peter's great.”

“That's a big relief, because I've been wanting to ask you something.”

Uh-oh. Annie knew what was coming.

*   *   *

“She's going to make me wear puff sleeves, I just know it,” Annie said, grousing to Peter. That's what he got for calling her back at the office, hours after she'd sent out an SOS. “Or strapless, even worse. Maid of honor, phooey. I'll probably have to wear high heels, dyed to match. Get my hair done. Wear makeup.” It felt good to rant. It had been that kind of day. “I hate makeup. And pantyhose?” She made a gagging noise. “Between that, and getting my car towed—I mean what a royal pain in the ass. And now I have to pay god knows how much to get my car out of hock and more to get a new driver's license.”

“Maybe you left it somewhere?”

“You'd think so. I've been trying to…” Annie gazed at her backpack sitting under her desk. She lifted it onto the desk. “It's gotta be in here somewhere.” She dumped out the contents, slid her fingers into all the compartments where the license might have gotten stuck. If someone stole it, she'd have expected her wallet to be missing, too. Everything else was where it should be. Insurance ID, credit cards, and …

“Shit. My court ID is missing too.” It came back to her. “They've got all these new procedures at family court. The guard took my license and court ID, wrote my name down on a list. I don't remember him giving them back to me.”

“You were over there today?”

Annie felt a twinge of discomfort. She still hadn't told Peter about trying to track down Brenda Klevinski.

“Yesterday, just doing some research for a client.”

It was just a little lie, barely a fib even. Still, she didn't like telling it.

23

A
FTER
P
ETER
hung up the phone, he sat there staring at it. Abby's upcoming wedding had Annie unglued, totally discombobulated, to use one of his mother's expressions. Marriage. It was a topic Annie had never pressed him on, and he'd never pressed her, even though they'd been seeing each other for nearly two years.

He gazed over at the spot on his bookshelf where he used to keep a photo of Kate. He'd put it away because he got tired of explaining to well-meaning visitors, acquaintances who noticed the picture and asked if that was his wife. Kate would be laughing at him now, her arms folded across her chest. He could almost hear her teasing voice.
You don't know what you want. But that's okay because neither does she. You two make a perfect pair.

Peter checked his watch. He had another five minutes before he had to be at a budget meeting. He listened to his phone messages, then scanned his email. Nothing new from CANARY911. He gathered up the papers he needed, and mused about how easy it was for a security guard to fail to return someone's ID. Peter had once inadvertently left his plane ticket and driver's license at an airport security checkpoint. Nearly missed his plane. On top of that, they'd treated him like it was his fault.

He picked up the file containing his budget spreadsheet and left his office. If Annie hadn't gotten stopped for running that red light, it might have been days, weeks even before she realized what she'd lost. Just like those people the police were investigating whose key cards were scanned the morning of the district courthouse bombing, but who insisted that they weren't there.

As Peter started for the elevator, he noticed Kwan had left his office door open again. He'd forgotten to yell at Kwan about yesterday's lapse. Fortunately, no one was hanging around in the hall today. Peter pushed the door shut.

He knew he should get to his meeting, but he stood there, feeling as if a swarm of dots were buzzing around his head, waiting to be connected. Yesterday, when Kwan left his door open, Rudy Ravitch had been waiting in the hall for Peter. He gazed toward the men's room, half expecting Ravitch to materialize, knowing full well that he'd been discharged just the day before.

You look right at us and see nothing.
That's what CANARY911 had said. A courthouse security guard like Ravitch was ideally positioned. He could have harvested key cards in the days and weeks before the bombing, then scanned them in that morning to lay a false trail. He could easily have brought a bomb in with him and left it in the lobby. When it was about to go off, he could have gone out for a smoke. Maybe he'd underestimated the power of the explosives and stayed too close to the building.

Peter had spent two or three hours alone with Ravitch. He'd seemed genuinely grief-stricken. Also blue-collar and relatively uneducated, not at all Peter's image of CANARY911. Could it all have been an act? It was possible. Panic attacks could be faked. Ditto hypnosis. But how could he have pulled off the email? Patient rooms at the Pearce didn't come equipped with computers, and there were none in the public spaces. Peter glanced back at Kwan's now closed door and saw the answer. Ravitch could easily have helped himself to Kwan's computer.

Forget the meeting.
Peter returned to his office and picked up the phone.

“Of course we ran background checks on the security guards,” MacRae said when Peter reached him. “Why do you ask?”

“I, uh…” Peter said, stammering. “I was just wondering if you checked on all the security guards.” He knew this didn't answer MacRae's question. Peter had been racing ahead, full bore, without considering the ethical issue: Rudy Ravitch was his patient. He couldn't divulge anything about their sessions.

“Why do you ask?” MacRae said, repeating the question with emphasis.

“I just had this niggling doubt and I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask. I mean, it would be real easy for a security guard to forget to give back key cards and IDs.”

“Is this any security guard in particular?”

He couldn't give MacRae Ravitch's name. “I just think you guys should be paying attention to people who blend in. That's what our emailer is telling us. Any kind of uniform is camouflage. All people see is the outfit. If someone deliberately took those key cards, then he has to have had opportunity. That means he's been hanging around the courthouse. Security guards are there all the time. If it's not a security guard, then someone whom the guards wouldn't notice if he passed through several times in short order.”

“Like a forensic psychologist? Lawyer? Investigator?” asked MacRae.