Without Warning (16 page)

“Never. Totally unlike her.”

“I don’t know if I should run the story or not,” he said, talking more to himself than to her.

“If Katie said she wanted to see it first, I think you should wait.” Then, thinking she might have overstepped her bounds, Nancy added, “That’s just my opinion.”

“By the time we run it, the goddamn
New York Times
will have beaten us to it.” He said it as he was heading back to his office, not expecting Nancy to respond. Which was just as well, since she had nothing to say.

At three in the afternoon, Matt and Nancy decided to consult with Harold Novack, since he served as a lawyer and outside counsel to the
Journal
. He was also a longtime friend of Katie and her family and could analyze this from the legal and personal angles.

What Matt and Nancy did not know was that Harold was the only person that Katie had told about her growing relationship with Jake. She had felt he could provide some wise counsel as to the business implications and potential entanglements, as well as some personal guidance.

He hadn’t advised her to break off the relationship, but privately wished that she would. Instead he had cautioned her to be careful and gave her some guidelines to follow that might be useful.

And then he worried on her behalf.

And he was also worried when Matt told him that Katie was nowhere to be found. He told Matt to sit tight, that Katie as an adult and the leader of the newspaper had no obligation to tell people her every move. He asked that Matt or Nancy call him when they got in touch with her.

An hour later, Harold called Jake, telling the desk sergeant that it was important that they speak, and that it was about Katie Sanford. The message was relayed to Jake, who misunderstood and declined to take the call. The last thing he had time to do was get into a conversation about the legalities of the department’s relationship with the
Journal
.

By six o’clock, Harold was not content to wait any longer. This was so out of character for Katie Sanford that he strongly doubted there could be a benign explanation. It’s not that he was sure something criminal had taken place; certainly she could be home, having taken ill. But if she was so ill that she could not call her office or respond to calls, then that in itself constituted an emergency.

A second call to Jake got him nowhere, so Harold went down to the precinct house himself. He told the desk sergeant that he had to see Jake immediately, and when he was rebuffed, he said that it was personal about Katie Sanford, and that it might well be a matter of life and death.

The desk sergeant relayed the matter to Jake Robbins, who came out to see Harold ten seconds later.

Katie Sanford had no idea that anyone was worried about her. She was not aware that Matt and Nancy had been waiting for her all day and had not a clue that Harold Novack was in Jake’s office reporting her disappearance. She also did not realize that she had been unconscious for more than twenty hours, nor did she know where she was.

In fact, Katie was still slipping in and out of consciousness and was not remotely in a condition to have any sense of her surroundings. When she was finally clearheaded enough to understand at least some of her situation, fear and panic would set in.

But that would be later.

For now all she could do was sleep.

“What’s going on, Harold?” Even though the message had come back to me that he was there on an urgent, personal matter concerning Katie, my assumption was that it was a legal issue. Harold Novack was a lawyer, and I knew that he represented the
Journal
, so I figured that he overstated the emergency just to get me to see him.

He motioned that he didn’t want to talk in the reception area, so I led him back to my office. We walked in and he closed the door behind us, after which it took him three words to make me understand that I misjudged the seriousness of his reason for being there.

“Katie’s missing, Jake.”

As frightening as the words were, it was his tone that scared me the most.
Harold
Novack had been around a long time and was not the type to overreact or dramatize. And
Harold
Novack was scared.

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“She never showed up for work today, never called in, and is unreachable at home or by cell. That is so completely out of character for her that I am very, very concerned.”

We were immediately on the same page. I also knew it to be out of character, and I shared his concern. “Who was the last person to see her?”

“As far as I know, you.”

I tried not to do a double take at his answer, but I doubt that I was completely successful. “How much do you know?”

“I know that you were secretly dating, and I know that the case regarding this time capsule was complicating things. And I know she was going to your house last night to talk about it.” Then, “Katie and I are very close, Jake. She’s like a daughter to me.”

I nodded. “She left at about ten o’clock. I haven’t heard from her since.”

“Was there anything about your conversation that could explain this?”

“No. I was pretty hard on her, but she could handle it. Katie’s not the type to go slinking off to lick her wounds.”

“So now what?”

An adult missing for less than twenty-four hours does not qualify for a missing persons report, much less a full-fledged search. That is standard police practice throughout the country, but I was not inclined to give a shit about standard police practice.

“Now we find her. Do you know where her car is?”

“No.”

“Have you been to her house?”

“No.”

“Let’s go.”

I drove
Harold
and Hank to Katie’s house in my car. I also arranged for backup, in the unlikely event that she was being held captive in her own house. Four uniformed cops followed us out there, but it was just a precaution. I doubted we’d need them.

Katie’s car was not at her house when we got there, and there didn’t seem to be any lights on. We rang the bell, but there was no answer, so we walked the perimeter. There was absolutely no indication that anyone was in the house, nor any obvious signs of criminal activity.

“Can we go in?”
Harold
asked.

The truth was that we couldn’t, at least not legally. Someone missing for this short a time does not by itself constitute justification for the police to go around breaking into their house. But I was quite content to deal with any fallout that might come out of it, and since it was Katie I doubted that there would be any.

Picking locks is a specialty of mine, but breaking them with a powerful kick works faster, so that’s what I did. From the vantage point of the door there was still no sign of activity within the house, so I drew my weapon and entered.

Hank and the other officers followed and spread out throughout the house, conducting what I knew would be a thorough search. I’ve developed an instinct for these things, which I trust, and I was fairly certain they would not find anything.

Unfortunately, my instinct went a step further, and told me in no uncertain terms that even though nothing happened in this house, something very definitely had happened to Katie.

If I needed confirmation as to how much I had come to care for her, it came through the fact that I was so damned scared.

I walked through the entire house myself, and I saw nothing to indicate that she had woken up in the house that morning. The bed was made, there were no breakfast dishes in the sink or dishwasher, and the coffee pot was filled and cold. It was a drip coffee maker and was obviously set to brew that morning, which it did. But there had been no one there to drink it.

It was clear to me that Katie had left my house the night before but had never gotten home. I hoped there was a benign reason for that, but I doubted that there was. She hadn’t seemed that upset by our conversation, but even if she was, and even if she decided she needed to go off and be by herself for a while, she would have called in to her office.

“Let’s get the word out,” I said to Hank. “Full scale.”

He nodded. “I’m on it.” With that, he took the other officers and left, riding along in one of their cars.

I walked off for a few minutes, needing to be alone with my feelings, to be able to sort things out and get myself under control. I was beyond upset that Katie was out there, alone and scared, or much worse. I was infuriated that she might well have been taken right from under my goddamn nose, while I was focused on the debating points I had just made in our argument.

And I was also determined that whatever asshole was behind this would not take another woman that I cared about away from me. And until that moment, I had not realized how intensely I felt about Katie.

When I finally walked back to the house,
Harold
was waiting for me. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I think we’ve got a problem.”

Harold Novack went back to the
Journal’s
office, where Matt and Nancy were waiting. Matt had not said anything to anyone about Katie’s disappearance, but Nancy had mentioned it to a couple of her close friends on the paper. Despite admonishing them not to tell anyone, the word had gotten out, and most of the staff was still there to follow the events, even though it was already evening.

Harold
did not want to address the entire staff, in fact, he felt that he should talk only to Matt. Until Katie returned, Matt would be in charge of the day-to-day functioning of the paper, since he was the number two person.

The situation would have to be handled with sensitivity, and Harold himself was not sure how to do so. This was uncharted territory, and while he would provide counsel to Matt, there would have to be journalistic decisions made, and
Harold
had neither the experience nor the standing to make them.

Harold
related in detail what had happened since he first contacted Jake, focusing mainly on what he had seen at the house, and Jake and Hank’s reaction to it. But he felt that Matt had a right to know everything that transpired, so he included the information that Katie had been at Jake’s house the evening before, and the probability that Jake had been the last one to see her before she vanished.

“So she was there to talk to him about the story I wanted to run?” Matt asked. He pretty much knew that to be the case, but he wanted
Harold
to confirm it.

“Yes.” The one area that
Harold
did not want to discuss was Katie’s growing relationship with Jake; she had told him that in confidence. If it became necessary for her safety to reveal it, he would, but he didn’t think the current situation warranted it.

Matt in turn felt that he knew things that
Harold
likely didn’t, and he was unsure if he should share them. He had already made a journalistic decision and didn’t want
Harold
to be in a position to voice an advance disagreement with it. Later on, when everything had shaken itself out and judgments were being made about how things were handled, he didn’t want it known that he had overruled a dissenting voice.

On the other hand, he felt fairly strongly that
Harold
would agree, or would go along without argument. It would put Matt in an even stronger retrospective position if he could accurately say that he had sought other opinions and found that none disagreed with his own.

He opted to withhold some facts from
Harold
. The downside to sharing them was greater than the potential upside from
Harold
agreeing with his position.

“Do you know if Jake is going public with this?” Matt asked.

“You mean about Katie disappearing? I would assume that he would have to. People might have seen her, or have some information.”

“Good. Because it’s going to be in tomorrow’s paper. We need to do everything we can.”

Harold
nodded his agreement, so Matt continued. “This is going to be no-holds barred,
Harold
. I hope we can count on your support.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’re going to report the facts, and report them accurately. That’s what Katie would want, and that’s what gives her the best chance to come out of this okay.” While Matt certainly had an agenda, he also believed what he was saying to be true. He was going to report facts accurately, Katie would want him to do so, and he saw no way that what he reported would affect Katie’s ultimate safety.

It was also going to put him directly in the center of the storm, which without question was where he wanted to be. The
Today Show
appearance was going to be the first of many such national platforms; this story was his, and he had the ammunition to keep it his for quite a while.

But he was going to do it right; he wasn’t going to cheap-shot Jake, or anyone else. No one was going to be able to say that Matt Higgins practiced gotcha journalism.

To that end, he picked up the phone and called Jake. He doubted he’d get him on the phone, so he was going to leave a message that he was preparing to run some stories that Jake would be featured in and he wanted to give Jake a chance to comment on them before they ran. It was the right thing to do.

Much to his surprise, Jake picked up the phone, and Matt told him why he was calling. He said the first of the stories was going to be about Katie’s disappearance and the fact that she was last seen by Jake himself, at his house.

“I have no comment on that,” Jake said. “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

“I’m sorry, Jake, but I also have to ask if you would like to describe your relationship with Katie.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

Matt was not surprised, nor displeased. He would include the “no comments” in his story. “There’s a second story that’s going to run, Jake. It’s about the fact that you had reason to have a grudge against each of the victims.”

Jake obviously knew that already from Katie, but he didn’t mention that to Matt. “You’re wasting my time, Matt.”