Hounded (15 page)

The HR person said they were assuming that Daniel had quit, but had been unable to reach him to confirm it. They certainly did not consider him to be a missing person, and at that point felt that it would have been a significant overreaction to report the situation to law enforcement.

Sharon didn’t think it was an overreaction at all, but she waited, for a couple of reasons. For one, she thought that law enforcement might not take her seriously. An adult away for three days was not exactly Amber Alert material.

Secondly, there was always the chance that Daniel had actually reported the situation to the authorities, and they had taken him into the system, perhaps in protective custody. It seemed unlikely, but Sharon was not exactly an expert in these kinds of matters.

But her biggest concern was that in talking to the FBI or police, she might be exposing Daniel to criminal liability. She had advised him to come forward, but it was his right not to. It was also his right to run, and to avoid contact with her and everyone else.

If she were to report the matter, she’d be taking those rights away from him, and it could rebound to his detriment. She just didn’t see that as something she should be doing; it was his business and his alone, not hers.

But finally, after a week, she could wait no longer. She was worried, and felt her reporting him as missing was justified. If something had happened to him, then maybe the authorities could help. And if not, if he was just ignoring her completely, knowing how worried she was, then she’d be angry enough not to care what he thought.

She knew that his plan had been to go to the FBI; he felt the matter was beyond the scope of local police. So that is what she did: she physically went to the FBI offices in Newark and said that she needed to talk to an agent about what might literally be a matter of life and death.

She was pleasantly surprised that they took her seriously enough that she was in a room with an agent within thirty minutes. His name was Special Agent Spencer Akers, and he listened attentively to everything she said, taking occasional notes.

After five minutes, she took it as a sign that he was interested that he called in another agent, and turned on a tape recorder. He repeated some of the earlier, untaped questions, so that they could be recorded. All in all, she spoke and answered questions for well over an hour.

Akers was noncommittal about where the matter would go from there, but promised that they would investigate what she had to say. He thanked her, and raised the possibility that they would be in touch with her again as the investigation progressed.

And that was the last she heard from him.

Fingerprints are not what they used to be.

At one time they were the definitive way to learn if someone was in a particular place. They are unique, and their presence positively connected a person to a room, or object, or weapon.

Now we leave our indelible fingerprints everywhere, and they pretty much have nothing to do with fingers.

Obviously there is DNA; it is almost impossible to spend any time in a place without our genetic makeup remaining after we’re gone. Investigators have had the use of the technology to identify DNA for quite a while now, but it is hard to comprehend how many criminals could have been convicted, as well as convicted people exonerated, in the years before it existed.

But that is far from all the tools investigators have at their disposal. There are cameras everywhere, public and private, that seem to document our every move. It seems like nothing happens without being captured on film, and it has become a fantasy to expect privacy or anonymity.

If we write an email, or a tweet, it is permanent. If we visit a website, the world of law enforcement, to say nothing of the world of advertising, knows we have been there, what we did once we were there, and how long we spent there.

And then there are the ubiquitous GPS devices, in rental cars, in our own cars, and most notably in our cell phones. We implant chips in our dogs to make sure they can be found, and then we carry devices around in our own pockets and in the process inadvertently let phone companies track our own movements, or at least that of our phones.

We’re attempting to make good use of the GPS in Diaz’s phone; Sam is still assigning addresses to the list of coordinates, and we’ll try to retrace his movements in his last days as best we can.

But for now, a phone call from Pete brings me back to the good old days. “We’ve got the prints,” he says. “The guy used his real name. Wally Reese.”

Pete had asked a friend, a forensics cop named Kathleen Flory, for a favor. Flory was to check for prints in room 221 of the Oakmont Gardens, where we believe Juanita Diaz was held. Wally Reese is the name he wrote on the register, but I had assumed it was a fake.

It was not; Reese was apparently unconcerned about being caught, and Flory reported that his prints were all over the room. That means he is either stupid or wasn’t doing anything illegal, which in turn would mean that Juanita Diaz was there voluntarily.

I am hoping for stupid.

“Great,” I say. “Can you have someone run his record?”

“I already have, and that’s where the news gets less great.”

“How so?”

“Reese was arrested three times for assault and attempted murder. Convicted twice, served six years, got out two years ago. He lived in Hackensack.”

That’s all interesting and helpful, but what I instantly notice is Pete’s choice of tense. “Lived?” I ask.

“Lived. His body was found yesterday in a ditch off Route 80.”

“Let me guess,” I say. “It wasn’t a car accident.”

“Not unless the other driver got so pissed that he put a bullet in Reese’s head. Everything is a goddamn dead end.”

I had seen something about it on the news, but they hadn’t named the victim. “In a way it’s good news, though probably not for Reese.”

“How is this good news?” Pete asks.

“We were chasing the angle of Diaz’s wife without really knowing if it had anything to do with his murder. Now we know; there are no coincidences that huge.”

“So?”

“So it means we’re making progress. It’s even possible that Reese died because of our progress; we were getting close to him, so maybe someone got worried.”

“You think Diaz’s wife is alive?” he asks.

“I don’t.” What strikes me in the moment is that Pete thinks of Juanita as Diaz’s wife, while I think of her as Ricky’s stepmother. It is quite likely that Ricky has permanently and violently lost two parents in a very short time. It is, in a word, awful.

“I don’t either,” he says.

We seem to have exhausted that depressing topic, so I move on. “You doing okay?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Okay. Starting to get a little scared. You?”

“I’m a little scared as well. But in my case that’s a good thing.”

“How is that?”

“It keeps me alert … on edge. Bill Russell used to get so nervous and scared before every game that he threw up in the locker room, and he is probably the greatest winner of all time.”

“Did Michael Jordan throw up?” he asks. “Did Larry Bird? Joe Montana? Willie Mays?”

“I think you might be missing the point.”

“You gonna throw up in court?” he asks.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes to win.”

Call waiting cuts in, interrupting a conversation that was badly in need of an interruption. I tell Pete to hold on and I answer it. It’s Hike, so I tell him to hold on as well, and then it’s back to Pete.

“It’s Hike,” I say, and since I’m not in the mood for another depressing conversation right now, I add, “You want to talk to him?”

“No chance. I’d rather plead guilty.”

I hang up with Pete, and switch over. “What’s up, Hike?”

“Sam finished assigning addresses to the coordinates on Diaz’s phone GPS; he brought the last week over a few minutes ago.”

“Good.”

“I looked at the day Diaz died, and there’s something interesting there.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, that morning, he was at Pete’s house.”

“Was Danny Diaz at your house the morning he died?”

Pete thinks about it for a moment. “I don’t think Danny has been to my house in years. Not since he stayed here.”

“He stayed with you?”

“Just for a couple of weeks, when he first got out of prison. The whole family did; they were getting ready to move into their own place. Why?”

“The GPS on his phone says he was here that day.”

“Well, I suppose it’s possible, because I wasn’t. I was working that day. But I strongly doubt it.”

“When he stayed here, did he have a key?”

“Of course. He was a guest, and he was a friend.”

“Did he return the key?”

“I don’t remember. Why?”

“Did you put the drugs in your house?”

“You know I didn’t,” he says.

“Well someone did. And there was no evidence of a break-in. Which there wouldn’t be if someone entered with a key.”

“Damn. None of this makes sense, Andy. Danny was a good guy.”

“He may have been a good guy under unbearable pressure,” I say.

“Or maybe someone else had his phone.”

“One sure way to find out.” I pick the phone back up and call Richard Wallace, and it only takes him a couple of minutes to come to the phone.

I dispense with the pleasantries, since I basically find pleasantries unpleasant, and get right to it. “Richard, we’d like to examine Diaz’s cell phone.”

“Fine,” he says.

“Where is it?”

“Beats me. Hold on a second.”

He’s gone for much more than a second; it’s closer to five minutes. Five minutes holding on a call is a long time, but at least there’s no recording that keeps cutting in to tell me how important my call is to them, or saying that the call volume is higher than expected. Since some places always claim the call volume is higher than expected, they might want to adjust their expectation level.

Finally, “Sorry about that, Andy. But we don’t have it; it wasn’t in the inventoried items.”

“Oh. Okay, no big deal. If you find it, let me know.”

“You’re full of shit, Counselor,” he says. Richard knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t call if it weren’t important, but that I want to pretend it isn’t.

“Watch your language,” I say. “And don’t call me counselor. Don’t you think I have feelings?”

He laughs. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

I’m about to banter right back at him, when I realize something and end the call.

I ask Pete, “You know that text you got from Diaz that evening asking you to come over to his house?”

“What about it?”

“I don’t think he sent it.”

“Who did?”

“The person who was here that day, planting the drugs in your house. The same person who was responsible for the kidnapping of Juanita Diaz. The same person who killed Danny Diaz, just before you arrived, knowing that it would therefore look like you killed him.”

We talk about the implications of this. We still don’t know nearly enough, and the trial date is coming at us like a freight train, but we know more than we did yesterday, and a lot more than the day before that.

Having said that, I still think I’m going to try throwing up in court. It worked for Russell.

Carson Reynolds knows where his next meal is coming from.

Most likely it will be prepared by his private chef, served in his private dining room, on fancy china with the family crest engraved on it. Or it might be prepared by the flight attendant on his private plane, while jetting to the islands, or the “Continent.” Based on his house, he certainly can afford either option.

I already knew that Reynolds would not be living in a shack; he runs a midsize private equity fund in Manhattan. Their approach is to buy controlling interest in companies, change management where necessary, build up the business, and then sell it at a profit. Last year he made sixty-one million dollars, and last year was not a particularly good one for him.

It’s a one-story home, and from the outside appears to go on forever. I expect a butler to come to the door, and I would have much preferred that to what I get, which is a lawyer. Jonathon Castro is tall for a lawyer. In fact, he’s pretty tall for a basketball player. He’s probably six eight, and doesn’t have an inch of fat apparent under his very expensive suit. Considering he’s got to be sixty years old, that’s pretty impressive.

“Come in, Mr. Carpenter. I’ll ask Mr. Reynolds to join us, at which point your fifteen minutes can begin.”

“Should we synchronize our watches?”

If he cares one way or the other about the sarcasm, he hides it well. “That won’t be necessary,” he says. “My watch will suffice.”

I’m led down the hall into a den, and through the glass wall to the outside I can see that the house is shaped like a half circle, and in the center is a sensational swimming pool. Just beyond that is a clay tennis court.

There are fresh flowers in both the foyer and den, and that potpourri stuff in bowls everywhere. I have never in my life bought potpourri, or been in a potpourri store, if they have such stores.

He leaves and comes back with Carson Reynolds, who seems to be about the same age as Castro. Perhaps they went to high school together, and Castro climbed onto the money tree back then.

My guess is that Reynolds is a lot wider than he was in those days, and my other guess is that he and his lawyer do not use the same personal trainer. Reynolds could accurately be described as short, fat, and bald, the exact opposite of Castro.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Reynolds,” I say, ever gracious.

“Thank you. It was sudden, and a true nightmare.” He picks up a picture of himself and his late wife from the table, and seems to wistfully reflect on happier times. Unless he’s already forgotten what she looked like, he’s doing this for my benefit.

In the photo, they seem to be on an island vacation, and based on his age in the picture, it must have been taken recently. His wife was a very good-looking woman, about the same age as her husband. There are no pictures of children or other family members anywhere.

“I can only imagine,” I say.