The Big Dig (19 page)

I drove to Brookline, doing
forty-five to fifty on thirty-mile-limit streets. If the cops had pulled me over, asked where the fire was, I'd have been hard put to justify my speed. What would a random cop make of Claire's bulletin about the Jeep? I'd leapt immediately to a conclusion: Dana Endicott's Jeep had been parked in the Charles River Dog Care shed, disguised by a stolen plate. Dana Endicott's Jeep had driven by the Horgan site minus headlights, stopped, disgorged passengers.

I pulled over behind the Allston fire station, let the car idle, watched exhaust fumes disperse in my rear-view mirror. The windshield fogged over and I had to use the air conditioner to clear it. I punched Dana Endicott's number into my cell, bullied my way past Esperanza.

Dana professed ignorance of Veronica's political leanings, wanted to know what the hell I thought I was doing. Was I trying to get Veejay into trouble? I was simply supposed to
find
her, not investigate her politics, question her loyalties.

“I am trying to find her. Did she ever say anything,
anything
that made you think she was an extremist, either wing?”

“She wanted the government to leave her alone, that's all. Not to tell her the way to live or love. Same thing I want, and I'm no radical.”

“Any political figures she hated?”

“I don't know where you're going with this—”

“Dana, please. Did she speak against say, a president, a senator?”

“Who's that guy from Idaho? Senator Gleason. She had it in for him, but I'm not sure why.”

I hung up, pulled back on the road, kept heading south.

The Horgans' house looked so fairy-tale safe perched on its idyllic hill, a few interior lights gleaming, that I hesitated, feeling like some medieval bearer of bad tidings, wary of punishment even though I knew I wasn't the culprit. If I was on target, the bad thing, the irrevocable thing, had already happened.

If I were wrong, I'd apologize. I'd grovel, hat in hand. I hoped I was wrong. Surely I was wrong. Boston, once the hotbed of Patriot sympathy, the tinderbox of the Revolution, was quiet Eastern liberal establishment now. Our revolutionary days were hundreds of years ago, and modern militias, groups of so-called “freemen” were a rural, Western phenomenon. I left my car at the bottom of the drive and walked. As I passed beneath the porte-cochere, I took a deep breath, pressed the bell.

The lady of the manor answered, keeping the door chained, peering with unfriendly eyes. She looked ill and, when she realized who had disturbed her, angry.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“Helping you out of a jam.” She started to close the door. “Let me talk! I have nothing—”

“You can't have your job back.”

“If Krissi's home, I'll leave. Without another word.”

“Krissi.” The name made her hands go limp. “Go away.”

“You're right about me, Mrs. Horgan, but you're wrong. I'm not a secretary, but I'm not who you think I am. Let me in. I can help. It's okay. I could just be bringing papers from the site, like last time.”

She closed the door, but didn't slam it. The chain rattled, the door reopened, and I stepped quickly inside. Same mess, same stepladder in the corner of the room, same broom and dustpan. They must have sent the housekeeper on vacation as soon as the horror show began, as soon as their daughter disappeared.

“Who are you?” she whispered fiercely.

“Carlotta, not Carla. My last name is Carlyle. I work for the inspector general, but I'm not working for him now. I'm working for myself now, and I hope for you. For Krissi.”

“You've seen her?” She tried to keep her voice steady but failed.

“I came at this from another direction, Mrs. Horgan. We need to talk. I need to know what you know.”

“What direction? What do you mean?”

“I was searching for a missing woman, and then I realized there were two, a missing woman and a missing girl. How did Kevin Fournier find out? Did you tell him?”

“I never told anyone. The goddam bastard. He knew
something
was wrong, that's all. Knew I should have had crews working twenty-four hours, overtime. He threatened me, said he'd kill our new contracts—”

“Unless?”

“Unless I slept with him, okay? I don't know—maybe I would have, to keep Krissi safe—but he fell—”

“Krissi's been taken, kidnapped?”

“Get out.”

“Please, I can't help unless I know.”

“How can I trust you?” Her voice was shrill. “They said—”

“You can't trust her.” I hadn't heard Gerry Horgan's footsteps on the stairs because he wasn't wearing shoes. Some part of my mind registered the socks, and the khaki pants and the plaid shirt, open over a white undershirt. The gun in his right hand was aimed at my heart.

He made his way down
the stairs, left hand on the railing, a 9-mm Beretta in his right. I watched for signs that he didn't know how the hell to use it, that the gun was an unloaded toy kept in the bedside table for emergencies. His gaze didn't waver and his finger rested easily on the trigger.

“Careful with that.” I made my voice cool as ice water. Sweat trickled down the small of my back.

“You carrying?” he demanded.

My S&W .40 was locked in my bedroom closet, unloaded. I shook my head as Mrs. Horgan interrupted.

“
Please,
do you know where Krissi is?”

“Shut up, Liz.”

“I was pretty sure you weren't in on this deal,” I said. “I thought you were just taking orders—”

“Neither of us is
in
on anything,” Liz Horgan said passionately.

“Shut up! I'm not letting her mess this up.” Horgan spoke exclusively to his wife. “All we have to do is lie low for another day or two, and Krissi will come home.
It will be like it never happened
.” Now his glance included me. “Into the living room. Move!”

He kept a wary distance as I passed. I knew I couldn't tackle him before he got a shot off, and I remembered the last time I'd met up with a gun at close quarters. The scar on my thigh began to tingle.

“Do you know who you're dealing with, Mr. Horgan? Do you know who's got your daughter?” I kept it low and businesslike.

“I don't want to know. Shut up.”

“For a smart man, that's dumb. You'd never do business with people you don't know.” The tingle became a throb, an ache.

“This isn't about business. This is about my only child. Sit down.” He used the gun to point me to an armchair. “Now, who the hell are you? What business is it of yours?”

“Kevin Fournier phoned a tip to the inspector general. I was assigned to investigate.”

Gerry turned on Liz. “I told you to cool him off.”

“I tried, Gerry. Jesus, I tried.”

I said, “If the people you're dealing with killed Fournier for making a phone call, what on earth makes you think they'll let your daughter go? Someone's holding a gun on her now, the same way you're holding one on me.” I might have punched him in the stomach, the way he paled. If I moved quickly, snatched the automatic—

“He fell,” Liz Horgan said faintly. Her words brought her husband back and I temporarily shelved the idea of a rush.

“He fell,” her husband echoed. “We obey orders, they do what they say, we get her back.” It was a chant, a prayer, spoken with the flat inflection of repetition, like a nun telling beads.

“You're dealing with people who don't give a damn about your daughter's life.”

“Shut up!”

“You need the facts so you can decide what to do.”

“Gerry, maybe we need to know. Maybe she can help.”

“You're giving me
maybes
, Liz. It's Krissi!”

“
You're holding a gun,
Gerry.”

“Jesus, Liz.”

“We can't be like this, Gerry. I can't be like this.” She sounded ragged with hysteria, as though she might blow any minute. I was grateful she wasn't holding the pistol.

I pitched my voice low so they'd have to strain to listen. “Let's talk. Put the gun down. You aren't going to use it. Not on me.”

“I'd use it to save my daughter,” he said defiantly.

“Your daughter's in no danger from me.”

He exchanged a glance with his wife, then crossed the huge chilly living room and placed the automatic on top of the grand piano. He moved a scant two feet away and stood there, hands clasped behind his back.

“When did they take Krissi?” The Beretta was only a short lunge away from Horgan.

“It's been three weeks and four days. Twenty-five days. The third Friday in March.” Liz Horgan was back in rigid control. “She took the dog to the vet.”

“She should never have gone alone,” Horgan muttered.

“You baby her! She's old enough. You'd drive her around for the rest of her life—”

“If I can,” Horgan said. “
If I can. I
wouldn't have let her go alone. You shouldn't have let her—”

“She had Tess!”

“She has a dog, a good dog, a real tiger.” Horgan stopped arguing with his wife long enough to inform me. “She'd never—they must have hurt Tess.”

I could have reassured him on that count, but I didn't. I wanted him to keep talking, to forget about the gun on the piano. “How did they get in touch?”

“We found a note shoved under the front door.”

“Do you have it? May I see it?”

His eyes went to the piano, to the Beretta, to Liz. She nodded, made her way to the fireplace mantel, lifted a heavy crystal vase. The note was underneath it.

“
Your house is watched, your phone is tapped. If you go to the police or the FBI, or tell anyone, you'll never see your daughter again
.” The paper was standard-issue office bond, the text typed with the even flow of a laser printer. The single sheet had been folded twice, to fit into a standard business envelope.

“We'd hardly read it when we got a phone call,” Liz said softly.

That followed, if the house was being watched.

“Did you record the call?”

“No.”

“Can you describe the voice?”

Horgan said, “Electronically altered. I couldn't even say if it was a man or a woman, but I think it's the same voice every time. I wrote down everything. Liz?”

We waited in tense silence while she brought his notes.

He moved two more steps away from the piano to take them from her hand. “First, he or she said, ‘Your daughter is safe.' Then I said something like, ‘Let me talk to her.' Then he said, ‘Listen carefully. She's staying with us for awhile.'”

“Go on.”

“He told me we had to do certain things or we wouldn't see Krissi again. I thought he'd demand money. I was prepared for that, but he said I had to think of this as a long-term business deal. When he said ‘long-term' I couldn't imagine—It started to sink in that he meant—I demanded to speak to Krissi—”

“She's alive,” Liz said. “She's okay. She reads from the paper, the
Herald,
the ‘Ins-and-Outs on the Dig' column. It's different every day, and we follow along with the text. Her voice is … She sounds so scared.”

I'd picked up Liz's cell phone; I'd heard Krissi's voice.

“What else do you hear? Sounds, background noises.” I was trying to recall what I'd heard even as I spoke. “Did you ever hear dogs barking in the background?”

“Maybe,” Horgan said.

“I'm not sure,” his wife said at the same time.

If I could make him take one more step. He was almost far enough from the gun for me to risk it. “Tell me about the business deal.”

“It wasn't any deal. There were … orders. And he said he'd know if his instructions were carried out—and if they weren't—”

“What?”

“I can't say it.”

I waited. He ran a hand through his hair and sucked in an uneven breath.

“They said they'd send us a piece of Krissi, an ear, a finger, and maybe that piece would be all we'd ever see.”

Liz Horgan made a noise and pressed her hand over her mouth. Her husband turned to her with anguished eyes, and I was out of the chair like a shot. I beat Horgan to the automatic by half a step, not enough, had to knock it across the floor instead of simply grabbing it. It landed closest to Liz, but she was paralyzed, stuck to the floorboards. I shoved Horgan aside, snatched the weapon, pointed it at him while I checked the safety.
Fuck
, the thing was ready to fire; it could have gone off and killed me, killed anyone in the room. I set it, used the pistol to wave both of them to the sofa.

“Sit.”

I was breathing hard. “Okay, exactly what orders did he give you?”

Horgan said, “Drop dead. I won't—”

Liz spoke. “He promised he wouldn't ask anything too hard, or too tricky. He might tell us to order supplies, to leave a gate unlocked. Nothing worth Krissi's life.”

“Specifically,”
I said.

“Liz,” Horgan pleaded.

“Gerry,
we have to tell someone
.”

Horgan said, “Make her promise she won't go to the cops. I'm not going to let Krissi get hurt. She's just a baby.”

There were babies at Waco,
I thought,
one named Zachariah Harrow
. I've worked law enforcement in this city for years. There are Feds I wouldn't trust to follow up on a hot tip, cops I wouldn't trust with my wallet if my back were turned. There are a few cops, a very few, I would trust with my life.

I said, “Here's what I promise. The first thing is getting your daughter back alive. If that's not the Feds' top concern, I won't talk to them. I won't help them. I swear it.”

Liz took her husband's hand, squeezed it.

He swallowed, closed his eyes.

“Today!”
I said.
“Now!”

His voice, when it finally came, was low and scratchy. “First, he told me to resist any pressure to go to extra shifts. When I heard that, I don't know, I thought it was some union thing.”

“It's
terrible,
” Liz said. “We can't explain and we're falling behind.”

“What else?”

“I can't!” Horgan protested.

“They told you to lose the keys to a storage shed, right? Which one?”

“In the trench, along the west slurry wall,” Liz murmured.

“They told you to order explosives,” I said.

Horgan, his lips pressed together in a taut line, nodded curtly. “Geldyne. I had to redirect shipments, make ‘mistakes' on requisition forms.”

“And after Fournier's death, they told you to hire a night watchman.”

“Yes,” Liz said. “They wanted us to hire him before.”

If I called the FBI, they'd grab the night watchman, nail one of the group, squeeze him. But someone else would be watching over Krissi.

“I'm going to borrow your Beretta, Mr. Horgan.”

“You won't go to the cops?”

“Not yet. Not till I run out of other ways to do this.”

If I take care of other people's children, someone will take care of mine
.

I tell people—no, I tell myself—that Sam Gianelli was my first lover, but that's a lie. When I was still a child, in Detroit, a wild child of fourteen, I had a baby. I gave him up for adoption. I never saw her. I never held him. I don't know whether it's a boy or a girl. I've never told anyone. Even when I shot and killed a man, and the brass made me see a shrink, it stayed my secret. But every kid out there is my kid.
All the lost kids are mine
.

I said, “If anyone asks why I was here, tell them I wanted my job back.”

“Did we give it to you?” Mr. H's voice was hoarse.

“No,” I said. “You're a mean sonofabitch.”