The Victim (61 page)

What, Gina didn’t tell you? Oh, well you know how it is when the baby keeps you up at night; those details seem to slip your mind.

Anton stood over the bed, eyeing the folded shirts and balled-up socks filling the space in his suitcase.

He heard footsteps on the marble, stopping at the open doorway.

Gina demanded, “I want you to call her.” He turned. Reddish circles enveloped her bloodshot eyes. “If you don’t call her right now, I’m calling the cops. You think she has our daughter, you get her the fuck back.”

Anton complied, scrolled through his contacts until he arrived at
daniella
.

She answered after one ring. “Wow. Took you longer than I thought.”

Rage swelled up in his throat, but he breathed it away. He could hear the bouncy rhythm of tires over road, the hiss of passing traffic. She was on the highway.

“
Is she okay?”

“
Yeah, she’s fine,” Lola answered. In the background he could hear a baby cooing, instantly recognizing the voice. Strangely, he felt relief.

Gina stepped into the bedroom, pointing at the phone. “You tell that bitch she lays a hand on my baby, I will personally break her fucking neck!”

Lola laughed. “Is that Gina? Oh, put her on the phone. I think we should chat. Or does she already know?” Anton said nothing. “Why don’t you show her the video, let that image worm its way into her brain. Nice thing to flash through her mind before her head hits the pillow at night.”

“
Don’t hurt my daughter.”

“
Hurt?” She emphasized the shock. “Never. In all honesty, you can drop dead for all I care, but I would never lay a finger on this precious little angel.” He heard Charley giggling and imagined Lola reaching back, tickling her. He cringed at the thought of her hands touching his baby girl. “Don’t worry, she’s in a car seat. Best of its kind, cost me over three hundred bucks. I plan to take very good care of this little girl.”

“
I want her back.”

“
Umm…yeah, no. I’m not sure I want to give her back. As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, my childhood was less than stellar, to put it politely. I just can’t leave her in the hands of a murderous, lying, cheating, piece of shit like you. Consider it my giving back.”

“
I’ve already called the cops.”

“
No you didn’t.”

He stared at his phone, wondering if she had the capability to listen in on his calls. Mandy had always told him he knew how to do that, send some sort of phantom text message that would open the line so you could listen in from a remote location. He had been seeing her night after night for nearly two months before she shot him. Had he taught her how to use that technology?

Did she kill him for something that he had stumbled upon? He thought about the email, the time it was received oddly corresponding with the estimated time of death.

They were more alike than he wanted to admit. They had both killed to protect their secrets.

“
And if I do?”

“
For chrissake, Anton, you’re one of a select few who know that I didn’t die in a forest in Arizona. I’m quite skilled at evasion. If you want to unleash the cops, I’ll have to go into hiding mode. And you know what happens when I do that.”

He froze. “Okay, okay. I won’t call the cops. Just give me back my daughter and you can disappear and we’ll let it go.”

“
You’re not getting off that easy.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
You want her back? You know what you have to do.”

CHAPTER 69

He woke up at the Rodeway Inn, ashamed that he had even been able to fall asleep. It wasn’t sleep exactly. More an involuntary shutdown, his eyelids falling without him realizing only to snap open an hour later. The light was still on. The soft murmur of
Fox and Friends
emanated from the TV on the dresser. The A/C unit by the window was on full blast. The vertical blinds clinked and swayed with the current, throwing distorted slices of seven a.m. light across the floor.

Two stories beneath his window, 14th Street echoed with early morning life. Surgical residents, lab-coated interns, specialists, and hospital bureaucrats trudged from the parking garage to the sprawling campus of Jackson Memorial across the street. Anton stood at the window, his fingers parting two slats. A man in his sixties walked alongside a sallow-complected woman in clothes that seemed too big, a supportive hand cupped on her elbow, a pink silk scarf wrapped pirate-style around her head. He was lean and tan, with toned bike rider’s calves jutting out from the legs of his khaki shorts. His choppy strides were deliberate, slowing down to match his wife’s sluggish gait. She looked so frail, like a skeleton draped in loose skin. He wondered if her condition was more a result of the treatment than the cancer.

Anton sat on the edge of the bed, the hard mattress barely sinking against his weight. His wrinkled suit hung on the towel rack in the bathroom. He ran the shower for a good twenty minutes last night, creating a box of steam, which did little to smooth out the fabric. He wasn’t even sure why he had come here, driving forty-five minutes from Parkland to Miami at eight o’clock at night, checking into a hotel just two blocks east of the courthouse.

He unplugged his phone and yanked it from the nightstand. No missed calls. No new incoming texts. He felt like any number of his clients charged with stalking, having called and texted Gina no less than fifty times without a single response.

He thought of the couple, walking down 14th. He imagined they were once young, vibrant, free of terminal illness, living a life that echoed the expected chronology of a marriage. The growing pains and early financial struggles. Lots of sex. Upward mobility, nicer cars, mortgage instead of rent. The passive-aggressive exhaustion of those first nights home from the hospital, the “whose fucking turn is it to get up and feed the baby?” The heavenly moments of four a.m. stillness when you can put them down and they don’t wake up, slipping back under the covers to that familiar warmth. Watching them grow up, realizing that successful parenting is measured in the seamless transition to empty nest. Age progressing but the gray hairs and wrinkles go unnoticed. She will always look as stunning as she did that instant you saw her in her wedding gown, trying to play the tough guy but falling to pieces. College tuition, eventual dream vacations. Grandkids. Taking her to her chemotherapy sessions. The living, breathing embodiment of
in sickness and in health.

Before he left, quite possibly for good, Anton made Gina promise that she wouldn’t call the police. He knew how to handle Lola. She told him so as he lugged his suitcase out the door.

You’re a shitty husband and a shittier person…but you are a damn good father. The only thing I trust about you is that you would never let anything happen to Charlotte.

He got up, splashed some icy water on his face, ran his wet fingers through his hair, trying to tamp down his bed head. He put on his suit and shook his legs, trying to soften the wrinkles. He popped a single-serving packet into the coffee maker on the dresser, watching it drip, drip, drip into the styrofoam cup before downing it in three sips.

He brushed his teeth, zipped up his shaving kit, and shoved it into his unpacked suitcase. He lugged it downstairs, signed his statement at the front desk, and handed over the keycard. One night at a time, he told himself. He’d have to figure out where he was going to stay next.

He popped the trunk and tossed his suitcase inside, grabbed his briefcase and opened it, making sure the Avery file was in order. He left his car in the Rodeway Inn parking lot and walked the two blocks to the Gerstein Building, the Metrorail chugging along the rails above.

He checked his cell, reading the one text he had received shortly after midnight. He tapped the attached image, which opened, consuming the screen. Charley, fast asleep in her car seat, an unfamiliar baby blanket folded at her waist.

A kidnapper’s reassurance that the victim was safe. At least for now.

CHAPTER 70

Anton cooled his heels at ABP for the better part of three hours until Jack walked in.

He stood over the table, eyeballed the three empty coffee cups, and said, “The fuck’s wrong with you?”

Anton pointed for him to take the empty seat. He told him.

Jack held in his hands to his lips, clasped as if in prayer. “You told her everything.” A statement, not a question. He nodded, acknowledging that facts were facts. “It’s time to stop screwing around. She took your daughter; you need to go to the police. They can trace the origin of that text message she sent you.”

Anton shook his head no. “I have her number saved in my phone. The message came from a random 786 number. I responded but the text bounced back. The phone had been shut off. Probably a prepaid.”

“
And you’re convinced that since the message was sent to you around midnight, she hasn’t hurt her? Or taken her anywhere?”

“
Call it a crazy leap of faith, but yeah. She wouldn’t hurt a baby. She wants to get me, Jack. Me, for what I did to Kelsie and Evan. Her figurative
family
, the two people who endured just as much as she did up in those mountains during that awful wilderness experience down to their very lives.”

Those kids had been products of a juvenile justice system, he explained. They had no upbringing. Before all else, be armed. Armed with the ability to survive. To transcend pain. To literally be reborn.

“
Frank said it, Jack. All three of them—Lola, Kelsie, and Evan—had planned to leave. They had help. That Machiavelli quote inked into their wrists was like an inside joke. Lola was supposed to go first. Kelsie and Evan were to follow. Where do you think they were driving that morning on the Beeline? Where we intersected was no coincidence. I was heading back to Tempe. They were coming from the north rim of the Tonto National Forest. They had taken Osvaldo Garcia from that motel and dropped him off with a bedroll and a pocketful of meth. Earl had already hightailed it out of there. They dropped him off knowing the cops were looking for him. A suspect in Lola’s disappearance.”

“
With all due respect, counselor, you extracted this information while holding a blowtorch to the guy’s leg. I think that qualifies as a statement made under duress.”

“
You don’t believe him? Remember, Mohamed Abedi, the guy who worked the desk at the Desert Rim Motel, where they had all been staying? He ID’d the girl on the missing persons poster as the one who had been at the hotel. But we know that picture was at least two years old. She looked nothing like that. He only ID’d her after a dozen Warmasters came in, dragged him up to the third floor of the motel and held him by his ankles over the railing. Took his goddamn driver’s license and everything. They had found out where his wife worked. Knew where his kids went to school.

“
Lola’s uncle was a high-ranking member of a dangerous gang, Jack. And if he could help his niece then by God he would. He bought her the ticket, escorted her out of Payson the morning Ozzie was found. Used his gang to intimidate a witness, made him fake an ID to the police and then testify about it in court. They didn’t figure that Ozzie would be tricked into confessing so they wanted to cover their bases. Make sure they had a witness who could put Ozzie and Lola together. In order to effectively fabricate your own death, there has to be an explanation. There had to be a suspect. She couldn’t just vanish without someone being suspected of wrongdoing. Her mother was in on it, too. Making the false missing persons report and providing an outdated picture. She testified, too. Figured it was the least she could do, like compensating for eighteen years of half-assed parenting and live-in boyfriends who beat and molested her daughter.

“
Lola knew the system. Frank knew the system. They saw an opportunity. The guy she was traveling around the state with was a registered sex offender. They knew that with his past, the quantum of proof needed to make him a suspect in the disappearance and probable death of a teenage girl was slim. If the cops and prosecutors couldn’t make something stick, then the public could. Didn’t matter to her, so long as people presumed she was dead. Using Ozzie’s priors, she knew how to game the system. The same system she’s playing today, using Bryan’s prior incident with Vicki Brandt to support the charge. She knew that information would come out and this would be a case that I couldn’t win. She thought she could fuck with my conscience but now it’s beyond that. She has Charlotte.”