The Reincarnationist (27 page)

New Haven, Connecticut—3:06 p.m.

C
arl watched the house from across the street. Inside the rented car, slumped down in the driver's seat, he appeared to be talking on a cell phone, but in fact it wasn't turned on, so to anyone who noticed him, he looked like he was parked for a benign reason.

Taking his eyes off the house, he checked the cheap drugstore watch that irritated his wrist. The nanny should be getting home anytime. He'd followed her to the park, watched her talking to the other nannies while the kids played with one another, and, when she got up to come home, he'd taken off so he'd be here waiting for her. He preferred sustained surveillance before he started a job, but he hadn't had the luxury. He'd gotten the call at three in the morning, which gave him far too little time.

He'd wanted to complain that it was no way to start a job, except the money was too good. How could he afford to turn that much down?

“Not this month. Hell, not this year,” he said out loud.
If you're going to feign being on the phone, you might as well be on the phone.

Narrowing his focus, he concentrated on the street from one end to the other. There wasn't a soul coming or going, and no sign of activity in any of the houses. Carl closed the phone and shook his head as if he had finished the call and was disturbed by it. Easy enough to fake—he just imagined he was listening to his wife. Damn, he was getting antsy.

This was the one part of the job that sucked: waiting to make the initial contact.

He'd been at attention from the time he left his apartment at six that morning, when he'd taken a train from Grand Central to Thirty-Third, and from there to Hoboken, New Jersey, where he rented the car. The woman behind the counter barely looked at him as she went through the process of setting him up. He made small talk with her, asking what part of Maine she was from. She told him Manchester and seemed a little surprised that he'd guessed. But Carl had an ear for voices and accents. He only had to talk to someone once to recognize them the very next time he spoke to them. Only had to meet one person from a region of the country and then he'd be able to identify it again.

He didn't tell her that, though. It might make him too memorable. Instead he told her his wife's family was from there.

Altogether he was pleased with his effort: he'd looked and acted normal enough to be completely unremarkable. For this job he'd become a middle-aged man of medium height with a slightly bumpy nose, glasses, sandy hair and mustache, wearing nice slacks and a sports jacket that had seen better days but was by no means shabby. He enjoyed building a disguise. As the layers and wigs and contacts
and makeup went on, he'd disappeared into the man he was becoming, so that by the time he was ready to go, he couldn't recognize himself in the mirror.

Opening the phone again, Carl pantomimed talking while mentally going over the plans one more time. There was no such thing as being too careful. What he always had to be prepared for—the one thing he could never be prepared for—was the unexpected. At that moment, he saw movement at the end of the block. There she was! Coming around the corner, pushing the stroller, she was ambling slowly, disappearing twice in the shadows cast by heavy maple trees.

Carl waited until she was closer, then shut the phone, patted his pocket, felt his wallet and detective's badge, got out of the car and crossed the street.

“Excuse me, you're Miss Winston, aren't you? You work for Professor Chase?”

The woman was in her early twenties. Short and sweet-looking with round, bright eyes that had suddenly become cautious. He glanced at the stroller. The little girl was sleeping. Perfect.

“Yes, is something wrong?”

He pulled out the badge and his identification.

“I'm Detective Hudson. I'm going to need you to come with me.”

“Why?”

“I can explain everything once you get in the car.”

“Did something happen to my parents?”

“No, there's absolutely no reason to panic.”

“I didn't do anything,” Bettina whimpered, and the little girl stirred. That wasn't good. He didn't want her to wake up now.

“Of course you didn't. Please, Miss Winston.” Very gently, he put his fingertips on her elbow and moved her
toward the curb. “But I do need you to come with me across the street. My car is over there.” He pointed.

“Right now? Can't I go into the house first and—”

Leaning down toward her just enough to be inclusive but not enough to suggest intimacy, he spoke in a grave voice. “Mrs. Chase has received a letter threatening her child, and after the recent robbery in her office, we don't want to take any chances. We want to get you and Quinn someplace safe.”

“That's just horrible.” Bettina's fingers tightened on the stroller, and she pulled it closer. “Why would anyone want to take Quinn? What does that have to do with—”

“We'll explain everything, but right now I need you to come with me.”

As he led her across the street toward the car, Carl could feel Bettina trembling slightly. Good. If she was nervous, this would be easier. He opened the door for her and she looked inside.

“I can't—we need the baby seat.”

Damn, something he'd missed. This was the problem with a job that involved a child; he usually avoided them. There was too much information that wasn't intuitive to him.

“Can you hold the stroller?” she said. Before he could answer, she had run back across the street toward the car parked in the driveway. As she opened the back door, he looked up the street and then down in the other direction. The road was clear, the sidewalk still empty, but it was taking too long for her to unclip the seat, and the little girl was stirring. Then, just his luck, a silver sedan turned onto the block.

From this distance it looked like Mr. Chase's car.

Bettina had gotten the seat out and was coming toward him. Carl rushed to meet her, grabbed it and went to
work strapping it in. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the car looming closer. He fumbled with the baby seat. The sedan turned into a driveway halfway up the block. He breathed easier.

After strapping Quinn in, Bettina started to get in beside her. “I'd like you up front with me, so I can explain everything to you without twisting around.”

After they were both inside the car, he turned on the ignition and was pulling out when he saw a second car, an SUV, turn the corner at the opposite end of the block. In the shadows cast from the tall elm trees he couldn't tell if it was black or dark blue. Mrs. Chase had a dark blue Jeep. Which way to go? Risk passing the car or make a U-turn and risk the driver seeing his license plate. Carl made the U-turn. Checking the rearview mirror, he still couldn't tell what color or make the car was from this distance. If it was her, she was hours early. Was she close enough to see the plates? Probably not. Besides, she wouldn't be paying attention. A car driving down the street wasn't suspect in itself. Even if it was Mrs. Chase and she found the nanny out, she wouldn't question that right away. Not yet. Not for a few hours.

“Do you have a cell phone?” Carl asked Bettina.

“Yes.”

He made a right at the corner. No one was following. “Can I have it?”

“Why?”

“Procedure.”

She took it out of her purse and handed it to him. He opened it, shut it off and slipped it into his pocket. “I don't understand. Why do you need my phone?”

He didn't answer. She stared at his profile. Looked around at the car. Noticed now for the first time that there was nothing in it. Totally empty. And that struck her as odd. Didn't detectives practically live in their cars?

She'd learned this kind of thinking at drama school. The details of a character brought him to life.

“Can you tell me why you need my phone?”

He didn't answer.

And that didn't make sense, either. Why wouldn't he tell her? He was there to help her and Quinn and Mrs. Chase.

“Oh, God,” she said in a voice that quaked with fear. “You're not the police, are you?”

New York City—Tuesday, 4:30 p.m.

O
ne day Josh would understand why he rushed back to the foundation, borrowed Malachai's car without checking if it was all right, and drove out to New Haven without calling Gabriella to make sure she'd see him.

Later, Beryl Talmage would give him two different explanations. Rationally, she argued that, having recently been in jeopardy, he was overprotective of everyone he cared about and of course he'd want to check on her.

But intuitively she thought the strong karmic bond that Josh shared with Gabriella propelled him to her.

As soon as he saw the front door to Gabriella's house wide open, adrenaline surged through Josh, and he raced inside, afraid of what he was going to find.

She was leaning against the staircase wearing a damp raincoat, her umbrella and pocketbook at her feet, a sheet of paper trembling in her hand.

“Gabriella? Are you all right?”

She looked up. Her golden eyes shone like glass; all other color was drained from her face. Her lips were pale
except for one drop of blood where it looked like she'd bitten herself.

“What's wrong?”

“My baby…”

“What?”

All she could do was repeat, “My baby, my baby…”

Josh took the paper from her.

“When did you get this?”

“I just got home. Just now. It was in the mailbox.”

“Did you call the police?”

She shook her head. “I won't. I can't risk her life. Didn't you read it?”

“You need to—”

Gabriella interrupted, her voice low, like the growl of a feral cat. “I can't. I'll do whatever these people want. She's my heart. Don't you understand?” Veins in her neck were standing out, showing the strain in every word. “These…these must be the same people who killed Rudolfo. I can't take a chance. They're
killers
, Josh.”

She was shaking violently so Josh reached out, pulled her close and held her, feeling every one of her tremors along his whole body. She continued talking, almost as if she didn't know she was in his embrace.

“I'll find someone to translate the markings. I know
everyone in the field. I'll find out what they say. I'll figure it out now. Tonight. Then by tomorrow I'll have Quinn back, won't I?”

She was becoming frantic, and Josh was worried that she might become hysterical.

“We need to call the police,” he said.

She pulled back suddenly, her face set in anger. “No! If you aren't going to help me do this my way, then get out. I need to save my baby. Don't you understand?” She was screaming.

The longer they waited to call the police, the colder the kidnapper's trail would become. “Gabriella, listen to me, you said this yourself, they are killers, and—”

Ignoring him, she kept talking, too quickly, too loudly. “I can't. All I can do is what they tell me to do. I can't do anything else. If you don't want to help me, then just get out. Get out!”

“I do want to help you,” Josh said softly, trying to soothe her, but she wasn't listening to him. “Of course I want to help you,” he repeated. This time she heard him. She took a breath. He'd broken through.

“How did you know what happened? Who told you?” she suddenly asked.

“No one. I don't know. I had this crazy feeling…it doesn't matter. C'mon, sit down, let me get you some water. Let's talk about what to do.”

He led her to the couch where she did as he asked and sat down, and then popped up immediately, running toward the stairs. “I need to see if she has her bear….” She took the steps two at a time. “Her father gave me the bear when I was pregnant. She knows it's from him and she never goes anywhere without her bear. She never does….”

Josh followed her into the baby's room while she fran
tically searched in the bed, under the blankets and in the toy chest. He knew why she was looking for it. If Quinn took the bear, then she was alive when she left the house.

“It's not here,” she said, managing a heartbreaking smile through her tears.

New York City—Tuesday, 5:50 p.m
.

A
lex cut a branch off the miniature ficus tree. The bonsai had been another passion that her uncle and aunt had shared. Now the care and feeding of the dozen ancient trees scattered through the duplex was left to him alone and he treated it with the sacredness of a visit to his wife's grave.

Rachel stood in the doorway to the living room, not wanting to interrupt her uncle, but he'd said he'd wanted to leave at six. She watched him minister to the one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old tree that stood only eighteen inches high and, as she did so often when she was with him, wished there was some way she could help ease his grief over losing his wife.

Putting down the pruning scissors, Alex stepped back and inspected the tree's silhouette and, satisfied, set to picking up the clippings and tiny leaves he'd just cut off.

“Uncle Alex?” she called out softly.

He turned. The sadness etched on his face only lasted a few seconds before he pulled the curtain on his
emotions and his expression returned to the equanimity he usually exhibited. Her aunt had once told her that Alex was so successful in business because he was a master of deception. “He can hide everything he's thinking so no one knows what he's doing. Even me. And I must say it's very disconcerting.”

“Is it time to go?” he asked. “I'm very much looking forward to this.”

Fifteen minutes later, as they walked around the Albert Rand gallery, Rachel was glad she'd agreed to come. It would have been a shame to miss this private showing of master drawings that included a Tintoretto, a Raphael and the prize: a Michelangelo sketch.

Even the sophisticated upper echelons of the art world who often paid little attention to what hung on the walls at an opening were swooning over these rare finds that had come from an estate and were being seen by the public for the first time in more than a hundred years.

She stood in front of the Michelangelo, studying the rough drawing of a hunched-over naked man, his back to the artist in a pose that seemed a premonition of one of the slave sculptures.

“It's amazing, isn't it?” Harrison said, coming up behind her, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her into him. She hadn't known he was going to be there, and now shivering with erotic tension, she leaned back against him, feeling that conflicting excitement and fear that he produced in her.

“Treasures like this, which have been hidden away for so long, have a special aura surrounding them. It's almost as if they are animated, they know that finally they are being seen and they shine—like you do. What a pleasant surprise to see you here, Rachel.”

She turned around and smiled at him. “I didn't know you'd be here, either.”

“Did you come by yourself?”

“No, I'm with my uncle.”

She wasn't sure but she thought that Harrison's eyes narrowed slightly at her uncle's name. That didn't really surprise her. Despite the pleasantries they'd shown each other the first time she saw them together at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that first night, both men, in private, had made it clear to her how much they disliked and distrusted the other. It was yet one more complication that troubled her.

Harrison looked at the drawing again, not aware of her consternation. His sensitivity and devotion to art was one of the reasons she found him attractive.

“Think about it, before tonight, for more than a hundred years this drawing was a secret that almost no one knew existed.”

Rachel felt the first stirring of friction as the humming began and the terra cotta of the artist's crayon spiked into oranges and yellows and reds and crimson curls that fanned out into an arc of colors that pulled her into its current. The noises in the room faded away. She felt as if she were getting smaller and smaller, almost disappearing. Nothing
here
was translating into
there
, except for one feeling, the pressure of his arm around her waist.