The Betrayer (14 page)

And even then, when
he moved through the door, Atkins did so with the caution of a rodent.

Johnny was walking fast. He had
simply hurried out the street door seconds after Atkins, picked a direction,
and headed into it. His mind was racing with questions, none of which he could
answer or ignore.

Why hadn’t
McVicker said anything about Jeremy wanting a meeting? Even if they hadn’t
actually met, McVicker still should have said something when he and Cat and
Fiermonte were all together.

And why hadn’t
McVicker said anything about the woman in Chappaqua? A man with his resources
could have easily tracked her down, no? Why hadn’t he found her and, through
her, the hypnotherapist? Why wouldn’t he want to know about any memories that
Jeremy had repressed and only recently remembered?

Memories of that
terrible night.

Wouldn’t a man
who had torn his own organization apart looking for a betrayer do whatever it
took now to uncover that still-hidden truth?

But worse than
all that, Johnny wondered, what was he doing trusting this man? Living under
his protection? Working for him? Leaving the woman he loved to be watched over
by his men?

By his brutal son?

Like a cousin to
Johnny, but things like that didn’t always matter.

Johnny looked at
his watch and counted the hours since Richter had begun his five-hour shift
outside the apartment. He concluded that in less than an hour Richter would be
replaced with another man.

That would be
Johnny’s best chance.

As he walked he
determined in which direction he was moving. He realized that it was north, so
he changed his course abruptly, heading east, toward the nearest subway station
entrance.

He was on his way
to Williamsburg, to get Haley out of the apartment and bring her someplace
safe.

Then, and only
then, he would decide what to do next.

Whom to call, whom
to trust.

As he moved, he
sent her a simple coded text, one of the several they had arranged.

One word, easy
enough to type in a hurry on a cell phone keyboard.

Left thumb, right
thumb, left thumb, right thumb, and then Send.

Down.

A way for her to
be safe in the time it would take for him to make his way to her.

Or so he hoped.

He reached the
subway entrance as he got her reply.

A simple letter.

K.

He pocketed his
phone and followed the steps downward. A trash can was just beyond the
turnstile. He removed from his other pocket the cell phone McVicker had given
him, then tossed it into the trash and walked to the edge of the platform to
wait for the train.

He was lucky, could
hear one coming. Looking to his left, he could see through the darkness of the curving
tunnel a dancing light that was growing brighter.

Dickey McVicker was alone at the
desk in the study of his home in Great Neck. He had hired two men to tail
Johnny — a pair of private investigators he had used a few times before. They
were professionals, ex-military both of them, equipped always with the latest cutting-edge
technology.

But better than all
that, they weren’t part of his own organization.

There were times
when outsiders — hired hands just looking to make a buck — were more
trustworthy than the men who had taken a blood oath of loyalty and obedience,
and this was clearly one of those times.

The cell phone McVicker
had handed to Johnny was equipped with a GPS transponder, so being sure not to
lose Johnny wasn’t the only goal. The real-time overlay map currently running on
the screen of McVicker’s computer showed exactly where Johnny was. He had watched
during Johnny’s journey from Williamsburg into Manhattan. McVicker had, in
fact, given Johnny money so Johnny wouldn’t need to use the subway, which,
McVicker had been warned, would likely cause the signal to be lost, if only
temporarily.

But even
temporarily would be too long.

There was no room
for error tonight.

Too much on
the line.

The cell phone
was also equipped with something the PIs called a “hot mic,” which meant that
everything that was said by Johnny — or anyone within ten or fifteen feet of
Johnny — would be picked up. Even if the phone were shut off, the mic still
worked. Only disconnecting the battery would disable it completely.

Everything the
hot mic caught would be transmitted, but the range of the transmitter inside
the phone was only good for a few hundred feet, so the PIs were tailing Johnny —
a task made easy by the GPS — so they could, with the more powerful equipment
in their vehicle, relay the signal to the receiver in McVicker’s home twenty
miles away.

McVicker had listened
to everything said by both Johnny and Charlie Atkins. And nothing of what he
heard had pleased him. He had recorded the conversation with a digital recorder
that the PIs had connected to the receiver. This way he could listen to it
again, which he did now, taking careful notes on a single sheet of paper set on
the hard wood of his desk.

When he was done,
he leaned back in his leather chair, read over what he had written, then
thought for a moment.

There was, as he saw
it, only one thing to do.

He disconnected
the digital recorder from the receiver, connected it to his laptop, and
proceeded to upload the WAV file. As he waited for the transfer to be completed,
he removed the disposable cell phone he carried with him always and punched in
the number that only he knew.

The number that
wasn’t written down anywhere.

A man answered. He
and McVicker talked infrequently — a necessary precaution — but for McVicker it
was always good to hear his voice.

“What’s going
on?” the man said.

“I think we have
a problem. I’m going to e-mail you a recording. Listen to it, then call me
back.”

“Trouble?”

McVicker was
attaching the WAV file to an e-mail. “Most definitely.”

“Which one?”

“All three.”

The man was
silent for a moment, then said, simply, “Shit.”

“We may need to
bring them in.”

“He’s making his
move,” the man concluded.

“I think so. Listen
to the recording, then tell me what you think. I’ll do whatever you need me to
do, you know that.”

The audio file had
finished uploading, and McVicker sent the e-mail.

Barely two
seconds later the man said, “I’ve got it. I’ll call you back after I’ve
listened.”

The call ended. McVicker
closed the cell phone and waited.

Cat recognized Elizabeth Hall from
the photo she had found on Jeremy’s account page.

And as they sat
together at a table in the small coffee shop across from the Chappaqua train
station, Cat smelled the same perfume that had been lingering this morning in
the apartment on West Tenth.

Chloé, just what
Cat’s mother used to wear.

They were alone
at first, except for a teenage male behind the counter who had served them
their coffee. He was too busy now with his pre-closing cleanup to pay them any
attention.

But shortly after
they sat down, another woman entered and took the table nearest the door. By
the way this woman — dressed in expensive jeans and a black army field jacket —
kept looking out the front window, Cat concluded that she was waiting for
someone.

Mid to late twenties,
tops, Cat happened to notice. Short blonde hair. Slavic face — broad and
angular, with prominent cheekbones and a high forehead. Tall and athletic — actually
big, well over six feet and maybe one hundred sixty. Sturdy, like a field
hockey player, maybe, but poised like a model. Beautiful, in an edgy and exotic
way.

Everything that
Cat, so plain, so thin from obsessive running, was not.

Cat wondered
about the army field jacket, though — was it really cool enough tonight for
that? And then she noticed that the woman was wearing leather gloves, too. Maybe
it was a fashion statement — the jacket was new, crisp, and the gloves looked
to be made of light leather, maybe even calfskin. And this was Chappaqua, after
all, the home of wealthy men and women. And their daughters.

So probably a fashion
statement, in which case temperature would have nothing to do with why she was
dressed the way she was tonight.

Cat shifted her
focus to the woman seated across from her.

The table was
small, so by leaning forward slightly she and Elizabeth Hall could talk freely
enough and still be assured that their conversation would remain private.

“Thanks for
meeting me,” Cat said.

“Of course.”

“I was hoping you
wouldn’t mind answering some questions.”

“I figured you’d
have a few.”

“I know that my
brother called you last night. Could you tell me what he wanted?”

“He wanted me to
contact you if I didn’t hear from him within two hours. He gave me your phone
number.”

“Did you hear
from him?”

“No.”

“But you didn’t
call me.”

“I’m assuming you
know my situation. You can guess why, right?”

“You didn’t want
to get involved.”

Elizabeth nodded,
sipped her coffee. Cat saw that her hands were trembling.

“I’m here as his sister,”
Cat assured her. “Nothing more, nothing official.”

“It’s still a big
risk for me. To get out of the house tonight I told my husband I had an
emergency meeting with a very unhappy client.” She paused, put her coffee cup
down. “I hate that I’ve become a liar.”

“How long have
you and Jeremy been together?”

“I’ve known him
for almost three months. But that’s the thing, we’ve never actually been
together. We were only just friends.”

“But you sent a
naked photo of yourself to his cell phone. Is that what friends do? If so, I
owe some friends of mine an apology.”

Panic crossed
Elizabeth’s face. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “How
did you find it?”

“It doesn’t
matter.”

“I mean you’re
FBI, right? Did you find it…?” She trailed off, unable to find the words. Then,
finally, “Who else knows about it?”

“Just me and a
friend. He’s family, I trust him. And again, I’m here as Jeremy’s sister,
nothing more.”

This seemed to
assuage Elizabeth, though only slightly. She took another sip of her coffee. Her
hand was trembling even more.

“We talked a lot,”
she said. “I was lonely, he was lonely. He was very good at giving me attention.
He needed
so
much, and that was…seductive.”

“But you two never
slept together.”

She shook her
head. “We did talk about it. A lot, especially toward the end there. Too much. I
probably wanted to from the start, from the first time he and I talked, but I
knew if I gave in, there wouldn’t be any turning back.”

“You ended it.”

“I told him we
couldn’t talk anymore. At least not for a while.”

“When was that?”

“A week ago.”

Cat recalled the
discrepancy between Jeremy’s previous bill and his current usage.

“How’d he take it?”

“He wasn’t angry,
but he wasn’t happy.” She shrugged. “I was all he had, which was part of the
problem for me.”

Cat thought about
that, understood what she meant. “But he called you last night and asked you to
get in touch with me if you didn’t hear back from him. Why?”

“He said he was on
his way to meet someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone who was also
interested in getting to the truth about what happened to your father.”

“Did he give you
a name?”

“Yes. Morris.”

Cat kept her face
blank and her tone even. “You’re positive about that?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“
Detective
Morris,” Cat said.

“Yes.”

“And why were
they meeting?”

“Morris was going
to help Jeremy clear your father’s name.”

Cat needed a
moment to process that. Eventually, a single question emerged.

“And how was
Morris going to do that, exactly?”

“Jeremy had
remembered some things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told him to
tell you,” Elizabeth said. “I told him you could help. But he didn’t think
anyone would listen to him, considering his history.”

“Wait a minute,”
Cat said. “I’m not following you.”

“Jeremy had
uncovered repressed memories.”

“Of what?”

“Of the night
your father was killed.”

Cat could no
longer hide her surprise. “What kind of memories?” She heard a hint of urgency
in her voice.

“Memories of who
was at the apartment he was being held in. Things that were said. Those kinds
of memories.”

Cat looked at
Elizabeth. “How exactly were these memories uncovered?”

Elizabeth said, “Jeremy
was struggling with his addiction when we met. He’d quit, but only recently. He
was determined to stay clean, but the temptation was clearly still there. Some
people just transfer their addiction to something else, cigarettes or chocolate
or whatever. I could tell that he was transferring his to me. I had gone
through the same thing when I quit drinking. All I did was eat chocolate, but I
was only trading one addiction for another. So I looked into other ways to
quit, and quit for good, and ended up going to a hypnotherapist. It worked for
me, so I thought it might work for Jeremy. I paid for him to go — the cost of
the sessions, as well as his train ticket and hotel.”

“The therapist
was out of town?”

“He’s up in
Boston.”

“Could you give
me his name and address?”

“His name is
Robert Sumner. I don’t know his exact address, but I can get it for you.”

Cat removed a pen
from her leather jacket and grabbed a napkin. As she wrote the name down,
Elizabeth continued.

“Jeremy clearly
had some others issues, too. My father suffered from post-traumatic stress
disorder, and Jeremy displayed a lot of the same symptoms.” She shrugged. “I’m
sure that was part of the attraction, right? I couldn’t fix my father, but
maybe I could fix this kid. This kid who was so attracted to me. Anyway, I thought
maybe Robert could help Jeremy with that, too. Apparently, he was regressing
Jeremy backward, looking for the source of his PTSD, and that’s when the
memories started coming.”

“You were in the
room during the sessions?”

“No.”

“So Jeremy told
you what went on.”

Elizabeth nodded.
“We talked about it for days afterward.”

“Over the phone?”

“Yeah. And we met
once. In a café in Brooklyn. Far from his place, even farther from mine.” She shrugged.
“That way there was less of a chance that we’d end up in bed.”

“I know it’ll probably
feel like a betrayal of confidence,” Cat said, “but would you tell me what he
told you?”

“I could, but I
think you’d rather hear the whole thing for yourself, no?”

“What do you mean?”

“The sessions
were recorded. Robert transferred all the sessions from his digital recorder to
a CD and gave it to Jeremy.”

“How many
sessions did they have?”

“Four.”

“And they all fit
on one CD?”

“Yeah.”

“I was in the
apartment this morning, but I didn’t see any CDs. You don’t by any chance know
where that disc might be right now?”

“I know exactly
where it is.”

“Where?”

“Jeremy rented a
post office box at one of those office supply places in the city. He had burned
the disc onto his computer, but he wanted a backup plan, so a few days ago he
mailed the disc to himself. It should be there by now.”

“Do you know the
name of the store, and the box number?”

“Yes.” Elizabeth
paused. “I also have a copy of the key.”

“On you?”

“No. It’s all
back home, hidden.”

“Would you be
willing to give them to me?”

Elizabeth nodded.
“It’s what he wanted me to do. And to be honest, I’d like to be rid of it.”

“Then why didn’t
you bring it with you now?”

“I needed to be
certain.”

“Of what?”

“That you were
alone. Jeremy was very specific about that. ‘Give it to Cat, and only Cat.’”

“What do you
think he meant by that?”

“That he only
trusted you.” Elizabeth shrugged. “There were some things about certain
memories that Jeremy didn’t understand. That’s why he contacted Morris. He
needed help connecting the dots.”

“Why Morris?” Cat
said. “Did he say?”

“No. I called it
off a few days before he was supposed to meet with Morris. Morris was going to
put him together with someone else.”

Cat thought of
the man in the second photo. Dickey McVicker’s man.

“Did he say who?”

“No.”

“So you don’t
know anything about what happened after you called it off.”

“Only what he
told me when he called last night. That he was going to meet with Morris, and
if I didn’t hear from him in two hours that I should call you.”

“And give me the
box number and key?”

Elizabeth nodded.

Cat looked at her
watch. It was half past nine. Whatever store Jeremy had used would likely be
closed now. It would certainly be closed by the time she got back into the
city. The earliest she could get access to the box would be when it opened
tomorrow morning.

A long time away.

“You’ll have to
wait here while I get it, though,” Elizabeth said. “You understand why, right?”

“How will you
explain it to your husband? Running in and running out again, I mean.”

“I’ll tell him I
came back to get some invoices. I told him the client I was meeting was local.”

“That was good
thinking.”

“Yes, I’ve become
a terrific liar,” Elizabeth said remorsefully. “Anyway, he’s probably into his
third scotch by now.”

“How far away is your
house?”

“Five minutes
from here. Not even.”

“So, what, fifteen
minutes, tops?” Cat asked.

“Yeah.”

Cat grabbed
another napkin, wrote her number on it, and handed it to Elizabeth. “Here’s the
number to my cell, in case there’s any trouble.” Elizabeth took the napkin with
her left hand, pocketed it without even looking at it. Cat waited a moment,
then said, “I wish you had called me last night. Like he’d asked you to.”

Elizabeth didn’t
respond at first. Finally, she nodded once, tensely, and said softly, “It was
just too much of a risk.”

“We take risks
for the people we care about.”

“In a perfect
world, yeah. But my world is far from perfect. And anyway, Jeremy assured me
that he knew what he was doing. For the first time in his life, he knew what he
was doing. And what he had to do.”

“Which was?”

“Build a case. ‘Like
my father would,’ he said.” Elizabeth paused. “‘Like Cat would.’ I wanted to
believe that he could do it. I
needed
to believe it. Besides that, I
couldn’t be what he wanted me to be. It just wasn’t in the cards. I had to let go
of him. You can understand that, right?”

Cat nodded, though
reluctantly. Johnny had done that years ago, had dismissed his brother and let
him go. And eventually, Cat had, too.

Everyone gave up
on Jeremy, sooner or later.

“When I met him,
he was this troubled boy,” Elizabeth said. “Just so…tragic, you know? So hurt
and angry. Smart and handsome, but self-destructive. The proverbial candle
burning at both ends. And why wouldn’t he be? He lost his mother, lost his
father, then lost his brother and sister. He was as alone as they come. But then,
after his memory was restored, he just…” She trailed off, looking for the right
word or phrase.

“He just what?”
Cat urged.

Elizabeth Hall
shrugged. “He just transformed before my eyes,” she said.

“Into?”

Elizabeth looked
at her directly. “A man. A man with a purpose. That only made me want him more,
I think. And that only made it more obvious that I had to end things.”

Cat said nothing.
Elizabeth looked to her suddenly like a woman who didn’t dare ask the question
that was on her mind. After a moment, Cat prodded her.

“What?”

Elizabeth glanced
away, then looked back at Cat. “Do you think Jeremy is still alive?”

“Yes,” Cat
answered. It was the only one she was willing to consider.

“But isn’t this
what happened to your father? Didn’t he disappear one night, and it wasn’t
until days later that you all found out he’d been killed?”