Hold Tight (20 page)

“Has Reba talked to you about any of her friends having trouble?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by having trouble.”

“Let me start with this. I assume no one you know is missing.”

“You mean, like my wife?”

“I mean like anything. Take it a step further. Are any of your friends away, even on vacation?”

“The Friedmans are in Buenos Aires for the week. She and Reba are very close.”

“Good, good.” She knew that Clarence was writing this down. He would check and make sure Mrs. Friedman was where she belonged. “Anyone else?”

Neil worked the question, chewing the inside of his mouth.

“I’m trying to think,” he said.

“Relax, it’s okay. Anything weird with friends, any sort of trouble, anything.”

“Reba told me that the Colders were having marital issues.”

“That’s good. Anything else?”

“Tonya Eastman recently got a bad result on a mammogram, but she hasn’t told her husband yet. She’s worried he’ll leave her. That’s what Reba said. Is this what you want?”

“Yes. Keep going.”

He rattled off a few more. Clarence took notes. When Neil Cordova seemed out of steam, Muse got to the heart of the matter.

“Mr. Cordova?”

She met his eye and held it.

“I need you to do me a favor. I really don’t want to go into long explanations on why or what it might mean-”

He interrupted her. “Inspector Muse?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t waste time holding my hand. What do you want?”

“We have a body here. It is definitely
not
your wife. Do you understand?
Not
your wife. This woman was found dead the night before. We don’t know who she is.”

“And you think I might?”

“I want you to take a look and see.”

His hands lay folded in his lap, and he sat up a little too straight. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Muse had considered using photographs for this part and sparing him the horror of viewing the actual corpse. Pictures don’t work though. If she had a clear one of the face, sure, maybe, but in this case, it was as if the face had spent too much time under a lawn mower. There was nothing but bone fragments and frayed sinew. Muse could have shown him photos of the torso with the height and weight listed, but experience showed that it was hard to get a real feel that way.

Neil Cordova hadn’t wondered about the venue for this interrogation, but that was understandable. They were on Norfolk Street in Newark -the county morgue. Muse had already set it up so they wouldn’t have to waste time driving over. She opened the door. Cordova tried to keep his head high. His gait was steady, but the shoulders told more; Muse could see the bunching through the blazer.

The body was ready. Tara O’Neill, the medical examiner, had wrapped gauze around the face. That was the first thing Neil Cordova noticed-the bandages like something out of a mummy movie. He asked why they were there.

“Her face suffered extensive damage,” Muse said.

“How am I supposed to recognize her?”

“We were hoping by body type, maybe height, anything.”

“I think it would help if I could see the face.”

“It won’t help, Mr. Cordova.”

He took a deep swallow, took another look.

“What happened to her?”

“She was beaten badly.”

He turned to Muse. “Do you think something like this happened to my wife?”

“I don’t know.”

Cordova closed his eyes for a moment, gathered himself, opened them, nodded. “Okay.” He nodded some more. “Okay, I understand.”

“I know this isn’t easy.”

“I’m fine.” She could see the wet in his eyes. He took one swipe with his sleeve. He looked so much like a little boy when he did that Muse nearly hugged him. She watched him turn back to the body.

“Do you know her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Take your time.”

“The thing is, she’s naked.” His eyes were still on the bandaged face, as if trying to maintain modesty. “I mean, if she’s someone I know, I would have never seen her that way, you know what I mean?”

“I do. Would it help if we clothed her somehow?”

“No, that’s okay. It’s just…” He frowned.

“What?”

Neil Cordova’s eyes had been on the victim’s neck area. Now they traveled south to her legs. “Can you turn her over?”

“Onto her stomach?”

“Yes. I need to see the back of the leg mostly. But yes.”

Muse glanced at Tara O’Neill, who immediately brought an orderly over. They carefully turned Jane Doe facedown. Cordova took a step forward. Muse did not move, not wanting to disturb his concentration. Tara O’Neill and the orderly stepped away. Neil Cordova’s eyes continued down the legs. They stopped at the back of her right ankle.

There was a birthmark.

Seconds passed. Muse finally said, “Mr. Cordova?”

“I know who this is.”

Muse waited. He started shaking. His hand fluttered to his mouth. His eyes closed.

“Mr. Cordova?”

“It’s Marianne,” he said. “Dear God, it’s Marianne.”

D R. Ilene Goldfarb slid into the diner booth across from Susan Loriman.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Susan said.

They had discussed going out of town, but in the end Ilene had nixed that idea. Anyone who saw them would simply assume that they were two ladies at lunch, an activity Ilene had never had the time nor desire to indulge in because she worked too many hours at the hospital and feared becoming, well, one of the ladies who lunched.

Even when her children were young, traditional motherhood never called to her. There had never been a yearning to give up her medical career to stay at home and play a more traditional role in her chil- dren’s lives. Just the opposite-she couldn’t wait until maternity leave was over and she could respectably go back to work. Her kids seemed no worse for it. She hadn’t always been there, but in her mind that had helped make her children that much more independent with a healthier life attitude.

At least that was what she’d told herself.

But last year, there had been a party held at the hospital in her honor. Many of her former residents and interns came to pay respects to their favorite teacher. Ilene overheard one of her best students raving to Kelci about what a dedicated teacher Ilene had been and how proud she must be to have Ilene Goldfarb for a mother. Kelci, with a drink or two in her, responded, “She spent so much time here I never got to see any of that.”

Yep. Career, motherhood, happy marriage-she had juggled all three with shocking ease, hadn’t she?

Except now the balls were dropping to the floor with a splat. Even her career was in jeopardy, if what those agents had told her was true.

“Is there anything new from the donor banks?” Susan Loriman asked.

“No.”

“Dante and I are working on something. A major donor drive. I went to Lucas’s elementary school. Mike’s daughter, Jill, goes to the same one. I spoke to a few of the teachers. They love the idea. We’re going to hold it next Saturday, get everyone to sign up for the donor bank.”

Ilene nodded. “That might be helpful.”

“And you’re still looking, right? I mean, it’s not hopeless?”

Ilene was simply not in the mood. “It’s not hopeful either.”

Susan Loriman bit down on her lower lip. She had that effortless beauty it was hard not to envy. Men got funny around that kind of beauty, Ilene knew. Even Mike spoke with a weird vibe in his voice when Susan Loriman was in the room.

The diner waitress came over with a pot of coffee. Ilene nodded for her to pour, but Susan asked what herbal teas they carried. The waitress looked at her as if she’d asked for an enema. Susan said any tea would do. The waitress came back with a Lipton tea bag and poured hot water into the mug.

Susan Loriman stared down at the drink as if it held some divine secret.

“Lucas was a difficult birth. The week before he was born I caught pneumonia and I started coughing so hard I actually cracked a rib. I was hospitalized. The pain was unreal. Dante stayed with me the whole time. He wouldn’t leave my side.”

Susan slowly brought the tea to her lips, using both hands as though cradling an injured bird.

“When we found out Lucas was sick, we held a family meeting. Dante put on this whole brave act and talked about how we’d beat it as a family-‘We are Lorimans,’ he kept saying-and then that night he walked outside and cried so hard I thought he would hurt himself.”

“Mrs. Loriman?”

“Please call me Susan.”

“Susan, I get the picture. He’s a Hallmark-card father. He bathed him when he was young. He changed his diapers and coached his soccer team, and he’d be crushed to learn that he isn’t the boy’s father. Does that about sum it up?”

Susan Loriman took another sip of tea. Ilene thought about Herschel, about having nothing left. She wondered if Herschel was having an affair, maybe with that cute new divorced receptionist who laughed at all his jokes, and figured that the answer was probably yes.

“What’s left, Ilene…?”

A man who asks that has long since checked out of the marriage. Ilene was just late in realizing that he was already gone.

Susan Loriman said, “You don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I need to. You don’t want him to know. I get that. I get that Dante would be hurt. I get that your family might suffer. So please save it. I really don’t have time. I could lecture you on how maybe all of this should have crossed your mind nine months before Lucas was born, but it’s the weekend, my time, and I have my own problems. I also, to speak candidly, don’t care about your moral failures, Mrs. Loriman. I care about your son’s health. Period, end of story. If hurting your marriage helps cure him, I’ll sign your divorce papers. Am I making myself clear?”

“You are.”

Susan cast her eyes down. Demure-it was a word that Ilene had heard before but never quite gotten. But that was what she was seeing right now. How many men would weaken-
had
weakened-at such a move?

It was wrong to make this personal. Ilene took a breath, tried to push past her own situations-her repulsion to adultery, her fears about her future without the man she’d chosen to spend her life with, her worries about her practice and the questions those federal agents had asked.

“But I really don’t see why he has to know,” Ilene said.

Now Susan looked up and something akin to hope entered her face.

“We could approach the biological father discreetly,” Ilene said. “Ask him to take a blood test.”

The hope fled. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You just can’t.”

“Well, Susan, that’s your best bet.” Her tone was sharp now. “I’m trying to help you, but either way, I’m not here to listen to you tell me about the wonder of Dante the cuckold husband. I care about your family dynamics but only to a point. I’m your son’s doctor, not your shrink or pastor. If you’re looking for understanding or salvation, I’m not your girl. Who’s the father?”

Susan closed her eyes. “You don’t understand.”

“If you don’t give me a name, I will tell your husband.”

Ilene had not planned on saying that, but the anger rose up and took control.

“You’re putting your indiscretion ahead of your child’s health. That’s pathetic. And I won’t let it happen.”

“Please.”

“Who’s the father, Susan?”

Susan Loriman looked off, gnawed the lower lip.

“Who’s the father?”

And finally she answered: “I don’t know.”

Ilene Goldfarb blinked. The answer just sat there, between them, a gulf Ilene wasn’t sure how to cross. “I see.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You had more than one lover. I know that’s embarrassing or whatever. But we just bring each one in.”

“I didn’t have more than one lover. I didn’t have any lover.”

Ilene waited, not sure where this was headed.

“I was raped.”

MIKE sat in the interrogation room and tried to remain calm. On the wall in front of him, there was a large rectangular mirror that he assumed was one-way glass. The other walls were done up in school-lavatory green. The floor was gray linoleum.

Two men were in the room with him. One sat in the corner, almost like a scolded child. He had a pen and clipboard with him and kept his head down. The other guy-the officer who had held up the badge and gun in front of Club Jaguar-was black with a diamond stud in his left ear. He paced and carried an unlit cigarette in his hand.

“I’m Special Agent Darryl LeCrue,” the pacer said. “This here is Scott Duncan-the liaison between the DEA and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. You’ve been read your rights?”

“I have.”

LeCrue nodded. “And you’re willing to speak with us?”

“I am.”

“Please sign the waiver on the table.”

Mike did. Under normal circumstances he wouldn’t. He knew better. Mo would call Tia. She would get here, be his lawyer or get him one. He should shut up until then. But he didn’t really care about any of that right now.

LeCrue continued to pace. “Do you know what this is about?” he asked.

“No,” Mike said.

“No idea at all?”

“None.”

“What were you doing at Club Jaguar today?”

“Why were you guys following me?”

“Dr. Baye?”

“Yes.”

“I smoke. Do you know that?”

The question puzzled Mike. “I see the cigarette.”

“Is it lit?”

“No.”

“Do you think that pleases me?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“My point exactly. I used to smoke right in this very room. Not because I wanted to intimidate the suspects or blow smoke in their faces, though I did that sometimes. No, the reason I smoked is because I liked it. It relaxed me. Now that they’ve passed all these new laws, I’m not allowed to light up. You hear what I’m saying?”

“I guess so.”

“In other words, the law won’t let a man relax. That bothers me. I need my smokes. So when I’m in here, I’m grumpy. I carry this cigarette with me and long to light it up. But I can’t. It’s like leading the horse to water but not letting him drink. Now I don’t want your sympathy, but I need you to understand how it is because you are already pissing me off.” He slammed his hand against the table but kept his tone even. “I’m not going to answer your questions. You’re going to answer mine. We on the same page?”

Mike said, “Maybe I should wait for my lawyer.”

“Cool.” He turned to Duncan in the corner. “Scott, do we have enough to arrest him?”

“Yes.”

“Groovy. Let’s do that. Put him in the system on a weekend. When do you think his bail hearing will be?”

Duncan shrugged. “Hours from now. Might even have to wait until the morning.”

Mike tried to keep the panic off his face. “What’s the charge?”

LeCrue shrugged. “We can come up with something, can’t we, Scott?”

“Sure.”

“So it’s up to you, Dr. Baye. You seemed in a rush to get out before. So let’s start this again and see how it plays. What were you doing at Club Jaguar?”

He could argue some more, but it felt like the wrong move. So did waiting for Tia. He wanted out. He needed to find Adam.

“I was looking for my son.”

He expected LeCrue to follow up on that, but he simply nodded and said, “You were about to get into a fight, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Was that going to help you find your son?”

“I was hoping it might.”

“You want to explain.”

“I was in that neighborhood last night,” he began.

“Yes, we know.”

Mike stopped. “Were you following me then too?”

LeCrue smiled, held out the cigarette as a reminder, and arched an eyebrow.

“Tell us about your son,” LeCrue said.

Warning flags shot up. Mike didn’t like this. He didn’t like the threats or being followed or any of it, but he especially didn’t like the way LeCrue asked him about his son. But again, what were his options?

“He’s missing. I thought he might be at Club Jaguar.”

“And that’s why you went there last night?”

“Yes.”

“You figured that he might be there?”

“Yes.”

Mike filled them in on pretty much everything. There was no reason not to-he had told the police the same story at the hospital and at the police station.

“Why were you so worried about him?”

“We were supposed to go to a Rangers game last night.”

“The hockey team?”

“Yes.”

“They lost, you know.”

“I didn’t.”

“Good game though. Lots of fights.” LeCrue smiled again. “I’m one of the few brothers who follows hockey. I used to love basketball but the NBA bores me now. Too many fouls, you know what I mean?”

Mike figured that this was some disruption technique. He said, “Uh-huh.”

“So when your son didn’t show up, you looked for him in the Bronx?”

“Yes.”

“And you got jumped.”

“Yes.” Then: “If you guys were watching me, how come you didn’t help?”

He shrugged. “Who said we were watching?”

Then Scott Duncan looked up and added, “Who said we didn’t help?”

Silence.

“Have you ever been to that place before?”

“Club Jaguar? No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Just to be clear: You’re telling me that before last night, you’d never been to Club Jaguar?”

“Not even last night.”

“Excuse me?”

“I never made it there last night. I got jumped before I got there.”

“How did you end up in that alley anyway?”

“I was following someone.”

“Who?”

“His name is DJ Huff. He’s a classmate of my son’s.”

“So then, what you’re telling us is that you were never inside Club Jaguar before today?”

Mike tried to keep the exasperation from his voice. “That’s right. Look, Agent LeCrue, is there any way we can rush this? My son is missing. I’m worried about him.”

“Of course you are. So let’s move right along, shall we? What about Rosemary McDevitt, the president and founder of Club Jaguar?”

“What about her?”

“When was the first time you two met?”

“Today.”

LeCrue turned to Duncan. “You buy that, Scott?”

Scott Duncan lifted his hand, palm down, tilted it back and forth.

“I’m having trouble with that one too.”

“Please listen to me,” Mike said, trying to keep the pleading out of his voice. “I need to get out of here and find my son.”

“You don’t trust law enforcement?”

“I trust them. I just don’t think they see my son as a priority.”

“Fair enough. Let me ask you this. Do you know what a pharm party is? The pharm is spelled with a p-h, not an f.”

Mike thought about it. “The term is not completely unfamiliar, but I can’t place it.”

“Maybe I can help, Dr. Baye. You’re a medical doctor, isn’t that correct?”

“It is.”

“So calling you doctor is cool. I hate calling every dumb ass with a diploma ‘doctor’-Ph.D.s or chiropractors or the guy who helps me get my contact lenses at Pearle Express. You know what I mean?”

Mike tried to get him back on track. “You asked me about pharm parties?”

“Yeah, that’s right. And you’re in a rush and all and I’m just blathering away. So let me get to it. You’re a medical doctor so you understand about the ridiculous costs of pharmaceuticals, right?”

“I do.”

“So let me tell you what a pharm party is. Put simply, teens go into their parents’ medicine cabinet and steal their drugs. Nowadays every family has some prescriptions lying about-Vicodin, Adderall, Ritalin, Xanax, Prozac, OxyContin, Percocet, Demerol, Valium, you get the point. So what the teens do is, they steal them and get together and put them in a bowl or make a trail mix or whatever. That’s the candy dish. Then they get high.”

LeCrue stopped. For the first time he grabbed a chair, turned it backward, and sat with his legs straddling the back. He looked hard at Mike. Mike did not blink.

After some time passed, Mike said, “So now I know what a pharm party is.”

“Now you do. So anyway, that’s how it starts. A bunch of kids get together and figure, hey, these drugs are legal-not like dope or cocaine. Maybe little brother takes the Ritalin because he’s overactive. Dad takes OxyContin to relieve the pain from his knee operation. Whatever. They gotta be pretty safe.”

“I get it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see how easy it would be? Do you have any prescription drugs lying around at home?”

Mike thought about his own knee, the prescription for Percocet, how he worked hard so he didn’t take too many of them. They were indeed in his medicine chest. Would he even notice if a few went missing? And how about parents who didn’t know anything about the drugs? Would they be wary of a few missing pills?

“Like you said, all households have them.”

“Right, so stay with me a minute. You know the value of the pills. You know these parties are going on. So let’s say you’re something of an entrepreneur. What do you do? You take it to the next level. You try to turn a profit. Let’s say you’re the house and getting a cut of the profits. Maybe you encourage the kids to steal more of the drugs from their medicine cabinets. You can even get replacement pills.”

“Replacement pills?”

“Sure. If the pills are white, well, you just put in some generic aspirin. Who is going to notice? You can get sugar pills that basically do nothing other than look like other pills. You see? Who’d notice? There’s a huge black market for prescribed medications. You can make a mint. But again, think like an entrepreneur. You don’t want some small-ass party with eight kids. You want big. You want to attract hundreds if not thousands. Like you might in, say, a nightclub.”

Mike was getting it now. “You think that’s what Club Jaguar is doing.”

Mike suddenly remembered that Spencer Hill had committed suicide using medications from his home. That was the rumor anyway. He stole drugs from his parent’s medicine cabinet to overdose.

LeCrue nodded, continued, “You could-if you were really entre- preneurial-take it to another level. All drugs have value on the black market. Maybe there’s that old Amoxicillin that you never finished up. Or your grandpa has some extra Viagra in the house. No one keeps track, do they, Doc?”

“Rarely.”

“Right, and if some are missing or whatever, well, you chalk it up to the pharmacy ripping you off or you forgot the date or maybe you took an extra one. There is almost no way you trace it back to your teenager stealing them. Do you see how brilliant it is?”

Mike wanted to ask what this had to do with him or Adam, but he knew better.

LeCrue leaned in closer and whispered, “Hey, Doc?”

Mike waited.

“Do you know what the next step up that entrepreneurial ladder would be?”

“LeCrue?” It was Duncan.

LeCrue looked behind him. “What’s up, Scott?”

“You like that word. Entrepreneurial.”

“I do at that.” He turned back to Mike. “You like that word, Doc?”

“It’s great.”

LeCrue chuckled as if they were old friends. “Anyway, a smart
entrepreneurial
kid can figure out ways of getting even more drugs from his house. How? He calls in the refills early maybe. If both parents work and you got a delivery service, you are home from school before them. And if the parent tries to refill and gets stopped, well, again, they figure it’s an error or they lost count. See, once you start down this road, there are just so many ways you can make a beautiful dollar. It is almost foolproof.”

The obvious question echoed in Mike’s head: Could Adam have done something like that?

“Who would we bust anyway? Think about it. You have a bunch of rich, underage kids-all of whom can afford the best lawyers-who have done what exactly? Taken legally prescribed drugs from their family homes. Who cares? Do you see again how easy this money is?”

“I guess.”

“You
guess
, Dr. Baye? Come on, let’s not play games here. You don’t guess. You know. It is nearly flawless. Now normally you know how we’d operate. We don’t want to bust a bunch of dumb teens getting high. We want the big fish. But if the big fish here was smart, she- let’s make her a she, so we aren’t accused of sexism, okay?-she would let the underage kids handle the drugs for her. Dumb goth kids who’d have to move up a step on the food chain to be called losers, maybe. They’d feel important and if she was a grade-A-felony hottie, she could probably get them to do whatever she wanted, you know what I’m saying?”

“Sure,” Mike said. “You think this is what Rosemary McDevitt is doing at Club Jaguar. She has this nightclub and all these underage kids go to it legally. It makes sense, on one level.”

“And on another level?”

“A woman whose own brother died of a drug overdose pushing pills?”

LeCrue smiled at that one. “She told you that little sob story, did she? About her brother who didn’t have an outlet so he partied too hard and died?”

“It’s not true?”

“Total fiction, far as we can tell. She claims that she’s from a place called Breman, Indiana, but we’ve checked the books. No case like the one she describes happened anywhere near there.”

Mike said nothing.

Scott Duncan looked up from his note taking. “She’s smoking hot though.”

“Oh, no doubt,” LeCrue agreed. “A fine first-class honey.”

“A man can get stupid with a woman who looks like that.”

“Sure can, Scott. That’s her MO too. Gets a sexual hold on a guy. Not that I’d mind being that guy for a little while, you know what I’m saying, Doc?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“You gay?”

Mike tried not to roll his eyes. “Yes, fine, I’m gay. Can we move on with this?”

“She uses men, Doc. Not just the dumb kids. Smarter men. Older men.”

He stopped and waited. Mike looked at Duncan and then back at LeCrue. “Is this the part where I gasp and suddenly realize that you’re talking about me?”

“Now why would we think something like that?”

“I assume you’re about to say.”

“I mean, after all”-LeCrue spread his hands like a first-year drama major-“you just said you never even met her until today. Isn’t that right?”