Authors: James Grippando
He looked up, stunned, unable to speak or even move.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.
He nearly melted in her glare. “I, uh—I’m not sure I’m at liberty to explain.”
“Wonderful,” she scoffed. “Then let’s you and I talk to someone who is.”
Driving toward Georgetown, Harley Abrams considered a variety of clever and surreptitious ways to reach Allison’s townhouse without being noticed by the media. Certainly an early Sunday morning meeting between the lead investigator and the recently suspended attorney general would raise questions. But if he tried to keep it secret and was nonetheless detected, a “secret rendezvous” would make even better headlines. He decided against the furtive approach. Short of a sex change and digging a tunnel, nothing was foolproof anyway.
He parked his car two blocks from Allison’s townhouse, the closest spot he could find. He walked briskly down the shady, colder side of the street. Most of the reporters were on the sunny and warmer side, a fair indication that the media weren’t
complete
idiots. He was a half block from Allison’s doorstop before he was recognized.
“Mr. Abrams!” someone shouted from the across the street.
Harley kept walking, same pace. Media crews jumped into action, dashing into the street like unruly Mardi Gras revelers. In seconds he was surrounded. The first question hit him like hot shrapnel. “Do you agree with Ms. Leahy’s suspension?” Others fired queries to the same effect.
Harley never broke stride. Reporters fought with each other for strategic position, trampling plants and statuettes on neighbors’ doorsteps. They lumbered down the sidewalk in one cohesive mass, a ravenous species of carnivores unto themselves. Harley stopped at the iron gate outside Allison’s townhouse. He rang the bell and waited.
Another reporter shouted, “Is this meeting business or personal?” Others picked up on the same theme, each one trying to outshout the next.
The buzzer rang and the gate unlocked electronically. Harley opened the latch and stepped inside the small, secured courtyard. The mob surged forward. He turned and spoke firmly but civilly. “You’re on private property. Please stay behind the gate.”
They backed off, cameras rolling. Harley closed the gate and headed for the front door. It opened before he could knock. The housekeeper rushed him inside and quickly shut the door.
“This way,” she said. She took his coat and led him to the family room in the back of the house. Allison was dressed sharply in a blue suit, ready for her morning news conference.
Harley did a double take, surprised. “You look—good.”
She managed a meager smile. “What were you expecting? Tattered robe, fuzzy slippers, and a fistful of cyanide tablets?”
He blushed with embarrassment. “I don’t know what I was expecting, really. Anyway, I did want to tell you I think it’s wrong the way they’re treating you.”
“Worse things have happened to me.”
He blinked, knowing how true that was. “I also wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
“For the way you stood up for me last night. I saw the statement you gave to the press at the airport. You could easily have pointed the finger at me for the botched arrest. Instead, you took responsibility.”
“I just hate to see the media trashing good people. There’s a big difference between incompetence and a talented FBI agent who’s hamstrung by outsiders who keep manipulating the investigation for their own political benefit.”
“Still, what you did took guts.”
She smiled faintly. “It took guts for you to come over here, too. I appreciate the gesture. But if you stay here much longer, we’ll only be making more problems for each other.”
“I suppose that’s true. But there is one problem I’d like to solve before I go. How do you and I stay in touch?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know—how do I keep you informed?”
“Harley, I’ve been suspended.”
“All that means is you’re no longer my boss. But I’m still in charge of the investigation, and I still haven’t ruled out the possibility of a link between Kristen’s kidnapping and your daughter’s abduction. To that extent alone, I need your input. Layer on top of that the fact that you and your husband have agreed to pay Kristen’s ransom and I’d say you’re an indispensable player—suspension or no suspension.”
“Harley, my suspension is a direct order from the president of the United States. You’re jeopardizing your career.”
“Not much of a career, is it, if I just stand by and let someone else take the fall for my mistake?
I know there’s nothing I can do to make the president reverse the suspension. But there’s plenty we can do to make sure this investigation runs the way it should.”
“How intriguing, Mr. Abrams. I’ve never seen your devilish side.”
He blushed again. She seemed to have a knack for making him do that. “Twenty-two years with the FBI, I didn’t know I had one.”
Her smile faded as she turned more serious. “Peter and I were actually talking about this whole situation earlier. Do you think the kidnappers are still after a ransom?”
“Hard to say. Our voice analysts are positive that the man who called yesterday and let Tanya talk to Kristen is definitely not the man who called you and Tanya on Friday. The guy said he would keep Kristen safe until after the election, but with all the media hoopla about yesterday’s botched arrest, he might not be feeling so protective.”
“What’s your best guess as to what’s going on?”
“The confusion suggests a pretty volatile situation, which heightens the risk of harm to the child. I see two likely scenarios, both bad. One, Kristen’s already dead and we’ll never hear from either of those two callers again. Or two, they’ll keep her alive at least until tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, when the guy who called on Friday said he would call you for the ransom. We hope it’s the second. If they make contact for the ransom, we at least have a shot at catching them before they kill her. If they don’t make contact—well, you get the picture.”
“It doesn’t sound like you think there’s much chance they’ll let her go, even if we pay.”
He sighed, unsure. “Paying the ransom at least
buys a little time, maybe gives us a chance to stall. I’d say the twenty-four-hour period between Monday at eight
A.M
. and the opening of the polls on Tuesday morning is Kristen’s primary danger zone. If they’re going to kill her, they’ll want to maximize the impact on the election, probably dump her body on the Justice Department steps or some other dramatic setting. If you wanted to narrow the time frame even further, I’d say between eight
A.M
. and six
P.M
. Monday, in time for her murder to be the lead story on the evening news on election eve and the headline story in every election-day newspaper in the country.”
“So, you’re saying that even if we pay, we’ve got at most thirty-six hours to find her.”
“Basically, that’s it.”
“And if we don’t pay?”
“She’s dead for sure in twenty-four.”
Allison looked away, thinking how little progress she’d made toward finding Emily in more than eight years of effort. “Thirty-six hours,” she said softly, her eyes drifting back toward Harley. “God help us.”
Allison didn’t watch Harley leave. She knew, without watching, that he was walking into a First Amendment frenzy outside her townhouse. Reporters started shouting the minute the front door cracked open. Closing it barely muffled their cries. Allison refilled her coffee cup at the kitchen counter, dreading the thought of venturing outside.
The phone rang, startling her. It was her personal private line, which narrowed the possible callers to a handful—even less than a handful, since Peter was upstairs and Harley was right outside being drawn and quartered by a pack of hun
gry coyotes. She answered with a mixture of curiosity and concern.
“Hello.”
“Ms. Leahy, this is Tanya Howe.”
Allison felt relief, then embarrassment—she really should have called Tanya. “I’m glad you called. I was meaning to call you.”
“You told me to call if I ever needed anything. Well, I’m in need of some answers.”
Allison settled onto the bar stool at the counter. The edge to Tanya’s voice was alarming. “You mean about last night?”
“No, I mean this morning. I found an FBI agent in my bathroom plucking a hair sample from my mother’s brush, rummaging through her cosmetic bag.”
Allison closed her eyes, like a woman with a migraine.
So much for being discreet, Harley,
she thought. “Tanya, please. I can explain.”
In minutes, she told her about the scarlet letter photograph, the message scrawled in red lipstick, the traces of saliva found at the lab, the need for a DNA sample to test for a match. She skirted around the ever-elusive Mitch O’Brien, focusing instead on the two female suspects they’d identified so far—one of whom was her mother.
Allison braced herself for a loyal daughter’s fury, but Tanya’s response was slow in coming. Finally she simply said, “You should have told me what you were doing.”
Her tone was surprisingly reasonable, putting Allison somewhat at ease. “I’m sorry,” said Allison. “Honestly, I thought the chances of your mother being involved were so remote that I didn’t want to alarm you.”
“You’re right. My mother would never do that.
And even if your DNA test confirms that the lipstick was hers, that doesn’t mean my mother was involved.”
“DNA tests are very reliable.”
“I’m sure they are. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that someone took my mother’s lipstick and scrawled the message, without her knowledge. Someone like my father.”
Allison paused. Suddenly the chances of a DNA match seemed much greater. “That sounds more plausible to me.”
Tanya was silent, as if thinking something over. “Or,” she said quietly, “I suppose someone could have scrawled the message
with
her knowledge.”
“Is there something in particular that makes you say that?”
“Not a big thing, but big enough. My father came by this morning to see if I knew anything about the FBI looking into the death of Kristen’s father. My mom arranged the meeting, which doesn’t sound bad in itself. She just did it in a very surreptitious way. She obviously knew that my father wanted to grill me about Mark, but she never even gave me a clue about the purpose of his visit. In fact, she led me to believe it was going to be another attempt at father-daughter reconciliation. I never would have thought she’d mislead me like that, especially while my daughter is kidnapped. I guess my father has more control over her than I thought.”
Allison drummed her nails on the countertop, thinking. “Tanya, I don’t like to ask you to play spy, but is there any possible way you could get your mother and father together and just watch them? See how they act toward one another, listen to what they say to each other about Kristen’s kidnapping?”
“It would be hard. My father is campaigning full blast now.”
“He has to sleep somewhere tonight. Maybe he could spend the night with your mother in the spare bedroom. Tell your mother you’d like to have the family pull together as the crisis comes to a head.”
“He and I had a pretty big blowup before he left this morning. I don’t know that he’ll ever come back, even if my mother and I both ask him.”
“He’ll come back. If nothing else, I’m sure the image of family togetherness is something that appeals to his campaign instincts. To be honest with you, it wouldn’t hurt for the kidnappers to at least think that you’re pulling together. It might make them think they have an even greater chance of collecting a ransom.”
“Is this really necessary?”
“We’ve reached the point where we have to do everything we possibly can, as quickly as we can. If anywhere in your heart you feel there’s even a remote possibility that your father is in any way involved in that scarlet letter photograph I received or in the kidnapping of your daughter, then I’d say it’s absolutely necessary for you to get him in a position where you can watch him, at least for a little while. I hate to scare you, Tanya. But Harley and I both think we’re running out of time.”
“Don’t worry about scaring me,” she said. “I’m beyond scared.”
“I know you are. Just don’t let it paralyze you.”
She sighed deeply. “I’ll take care of it,” she said in a shaky voice. “Somehow I’ll get the general back here tonight.”
Kristen wasn’t sure she was awake. The last thing she’d heard was that voice in the alley, the scary guy who’d tackled her and said she’d never escape. The last thing she’d felt was that needle in her leg, like when those men had dragged her into the van and injected her with something to make her pass out. This time, however, the sleep seemed even deeper, harder to shake. Maybe this time she was waking before the drugs had worn off. Maybe this time a part of her just didn’t want to wake up.
Kristen Howe is not afraid.
She thought it, formed the words in her mind, could almost see her mantra etched in big puffy white letters across a bright blue sky. But she didn’t believe, couldn’t make herself believe it. This time the mantra was nothing more than words.
Less
than words. Just lofty thoughts in the air that faded into smoke and dissolved in the wind.
She felt sticky, smelly, wet. Then a flash hit her eyes, though her eyes were not open. Another white flash, like lightning at midnight that brightens a black room and then leaves you in darkness. She opened her mouth to catch the raindrops on her tongue. But it wasn’t raining. And she heard no thunder.
She struggled to open her eyes, but the lids
were too heavy. The harder she tried, the heavier they seemed. Sight was the one sense that completely eluded her. The others, however, were slowly come back to her. Taste, salty. And the smell was familiar. Like meat. Bloody, red meat.
Panic raced through her.
Am I bleeding
?
Couldn’t be. No pain, not anywhere on her body. And the blood was cold—icy cold, as if it had been stored in the refrigerator.
That’s
what it was! It was like the pig’s blood in biology class, when the teacher took it from the refrigerator in the middle school laboratory, and the students put a drop on the glass slide to examine it under the microscope. The same pig’s blood she’d tasted on a dare from her girlfriends. The pig’s blood she’d smelled when those boys dropped the jar on the floor.
Pig’s blood. All over her body.
Another flash, this time even brighter. She was floating. Not just in her mind, but physically floating. Her eyes began to open, the left, then the right. Two narrow slits unaccustomed to light, unable to form images.
Suddenly it was raining. Warm water pelting her body, rinsing the sticky, thick, smelly mess from her body. Steam filled the air, more like a hot shower than any rain she’d ever known. The wet warmth made her sleepier. Her eyes were closing once again, but not without a lucid moment. White everywhere. White tiles above. White curtain at her side. Smooth white porcelain all around her. A dark red stream swirling down the drain at her feet.
Another jab in her leg—that needle again. Then blackness and a quick return to blissful sleep.
The pain was worse at the end of the day. Allison had been going through the motions since last night’s meeting with President Sires, never really absorbing the full impact of her “suspension.” Finally it was beginning to hurt. Friends were already expressing their condolences. Foes were smiling and sharpening their knives for the November version of the bloody Ides of March.
The mob of reporters outside her door had dealt the first blow. It was only a few steps from her front door to the curb, but it had seemed like miles. Without Secret Service leading the way, she might never have reached her limousine. The ride to the studio had offered a moment of peace, but it was fireworks again on ABC’s political talk show,
This Week in Washington.
One outspoken panelist, in particular, seemed out to get her.
“Why didn’t you just stay out of the investigation from the beginning,” he’d asked pointedly, “and simply avoid the whole conflict-of-interest controversy?”
“It’s interesting you ask that,” was her dry reply. “Especially since you’re the one who blasted me in last week’s editorial for not doing more to save Kristen Howe.”
It had been downhill from there. Worse, actually. More like falling off a cliff.
How things change,
she thought. Four years ago, her first appearance on a Sunday morning political talk show had been a virtual love fest—Allison Leahy, Washington’s new wonder woman. Back then, even the president had seemed taken with her. She recalled their first chat in her new office suite, just a day or so after her Senate confirmation. A photographer had snapped a shot of the two of them in front of the fireplace as they looked
up with admiration at the portrait of Robert Kennedy hanging over the mantel. Later, the president had personally signed and inscribed the photograph for her: “Someday a new attorney general will be admiring a portrait of
you.
”
Fat chance.
She had the sinking feeling that her place in history was now considerably lower, more like the basement of the Justice Building, tucked behind the group portrait of former Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell and his prison-garbed Watergate coconspirators.
At 10:00
P.M
. her limousine was finally taking her home from the airport. She’d filled Sunday afternoon with quick appearances in Philadelphia and New Jersey, followed by an in-flight meeting with her strategists to approve some new commercials. Somewhere between it all she did manage to call Harley to tell him about her conversation with Tanya Howe. He loved the idea of luring the general to Tanya’s house, though he had a more active notion of daughter-turned-spy than Allison had envisioned. She figured she’d leave it to Harley to Work out the details, knowing that Tanya wasn’t the kind of woman who could be talked into anything that made her uncomfortable.
“Should I run them over?” asked her FBI driver.
Allison peered ahead through the windshield, shaking off her thoughts. Reporters were still crowding outside her townhouse awaiting her return. She was tempted to say yes.
“That’s okay. I’ll just phone ahead and ask Peter to dump the pot of boiling oil out of the second-story window.”
The agent smiled, then braced himself for the frantic members of the media rushing toward the moving car. Excited faces and probing cameras
filled the car windows, but Allison knew the tinted glass made it impossible for anyone to see inside. From her vantage point, they were everywhere—front, back, both sides. Had the limo stopped rolling they would have jumped on the hood. It was a theater of the absurd, the way they hollered and gawked, pressing their noses against the glass, assuming that Allison was inside and listening. She thought of the underwater exhibit at Sea World, where you could sit on the safe side of protective glass and watch sharks and barracudas swim by in the tank.
The limo stopped directly in front of her townhouse. One of her FBI escorts forced his door open, muscled his way around the car, and opened Allison’s door for her. With an agent on each arm she made it to the iron gate, bathed in almost constant blinding light from camera flashes. She opened the gate and hurried to the front door. One agent stayed outside, the other followed her in.
“Thank you,” she told him. She was out of breath, exhausted from the gauntlet. It was then that she noticed the package tucked under the agent’s arm.
He handed it to her. “A mutual friend asked me to give this to you.”
She looked at him curiously, taking it. It was wrapped in brown paper, about the size of a shoe box. “What is it?” she said with some trepidation.
“It’s okay. I’ve checked it out.” He gave her a thin smile, then said good night and let himself out. The noise cranked up when the front door opened, then leveled off at an audible level of disappointment the moment the crowd realized it was only an FBI agent.
Allison carried the package to the kitchen and laid it on the table. She filled a glass with ice water and drank half of it while staring at the package. It creeped her out a little. A mysterious package from “a mutual friend.” But she’d known her escort for almost six months. If he said he’d checked it out, he’d surely checked it out.
She tore away the packaging. It was indeed a shoe box. With care, she removed the lid and tissue paper. She paused.
What in the heck?
A smile came to her face as she removed the pink fuzzy slippers; then she chuckled to herself. The card was on the bottom. She tore open the envelope and read it to herself:
COULDN’T FIND A TATTERED ROBE. STRONGLY DISCOURAGE THE CYANIDE TABLETS. HANG IN THERE. HARLEY.
Her heart swelled. For a brief moment, she didn’t feel so bad. “Thank you, Harley,” she said with a grin.
By 10:30
P.M
., the pit in Tanya’s stomach had grown to canyon proportions. Allison had been right. All she had to do was ask, and her father would come.
Not only was he coming, but he had made a point of telling everyone all about it at every stop along his Sunday campaign trail. A family pulling together in a time of crisis did indeed mesh perfectly with the general’s campaign strategy.
Tanya rose from the couch and switched off the ten o’clock evening news. If she heard one more sappy news report about the general taking time away from his busy campaign schedule to be at his daughter’s side, she would surely vomit.
She heard a commotion outside the house. She
knew that sound by now, had come to react to it, the way others might respond to the bark of their dog or the ring of their doorbell. The ever-present media watch was stirring to life, signaling the arrival of a visitor to the Howe household. She stepped to the front window and peered from behind the draperies. It was the black limo brigade.
Tanya flinched at the hand on her shoulder. Her mother withdrew her touch and said, “I’m proud of you, Tanya. It’s important for you and your father to come together at a time like this. He’s a wonderful man. He can be a real source of strength.”
She stared straight ahead, fixing on the candidate waving at the media as he cut across her lawn. She felt a pang of guilt about deceiving her mother, about not telling her the real reason she’d invited him. But she had to put Kristen first.
“Tanya, you’re doing the right thing.”
She turned and looked her mother in the eye. “Yes. I know I am.”