Scavenger (18 page)

“If your partner’s been checking my background, you already know the answer. When I was in law enforcement, my specialty was investigating sex crimes.”

“Ever been to a psychiatrist?”

Balenger felt heat rise to his face. “I assume your partner told you what happened to me in Iraq.” A car drove by. Balenger waited for the engine noise to recede, using the time to try to calm himself. “In the first Gulf War . . . Desert Storm ... I was a Ranger.”

“Nineteen ninety-one. Check,” Ortega said.

“I got headaches. Muscle pains. Fever.”

“Gulf War syndrome. Check.”

“Some people said it came from a disease spread by sand fleas. Others said it came from the depleted uranium we use in our artillery shells. The army doctors tried various treatments. When those didn’t help, they suggested I talk to an army psychiatrist to see if the illness was psychological, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“That was the
first
psychiatrist,” Ortega said.

Balenger almost walked away, but he kept telling himself that Amanda was all that mattered.
I’ll do anything to get her back
, he thought. “After the war, I became a police officer in Asbury Park.”

“Where you took psychology courses about sex crimes.”

Balenger worked to keep his voice steady. “Then my wife disappeared, and after a year, when the authorities couldn’t find her, I quit my job so I could look for her. Eventually I needed a lot of quick money so badly that I signed on as a private security operator in the second Iraq war. Twenty-five thousand dollars a month. All I needed was a couple of months guarding convoys and I’d have enough cash to keep searching for my wife. You could have asked me about this.”

“Tell me about your second time in Iraq.”

Balenger sensed the old panic taking control. “You
know
what happened. Shortly after I got there, the convoy I was guarding came under attack. An explosion knocked me unconscious. When I woke up, I was being held prisoner by a bunch of Iraqis wearing hoods, one of whom threatened to cut off my head if I didn’t look into a video camera and denounce the United States. After a Ranger unit attacked the compound where I was tied up, I managed to escape, but even when I was safe in the States, I didn’t
feel
safe. I had nightmares. I couldn’t bear being closed in. I broke out in sweat.”

“Post traumatic-stress disorder,” Ortega said.

“Check,” Balenger said, mocking Ortega’s earlier expression. “So, as you know, I went to another psychiatrist.”

“Who had an unusual method of therapy.”

“He advised me to do everything I could to distance myself from the present. Study history. Read novels about the past. Try to do everything possible to imagine I’m somewhere a hundred years ago and more. It was sort of like trying to transport myself back in time.”

“What happened after you went inside the Paragon Hotel and you found your dead wife and you rescued Amanda?”

Balenger didn’t trust himself to speak.

“Your fists are clenched at your sides,” Ortega said. “Do you want to hit me?”

“I woke up in a hospital, where a psychiatrist wanted to know why I called Amanda by my dead wife’s name.”

“Psychiatrist number three. Did you get that straightened out by the way? The names?”

Balenger was too furious to answer.

“You and Amanda. In the night, in the shadows, do you ever think you might be seeing a ghost?”

Balenger felt a scalding fury. “Stop.”

“You said psychopaths often fixate on women who resemble one another. The victims tend to remind the killer of his wife or his mother or whatever.”

“I don’t think I’m living with my dead wife! I don’t think I’m
sleeping
with my dead wife!”

Ortega didn’t reply.

“You believe I’m responsible for Amanda’s disappearance?”

“It’s a theory,” Ortega said. “Maybe you freaked out when you understood the implications of your domestic arrangements. Maybe you got so disgusted with yourself that you did something you regretted. You used to be a police officer. You could predict how the investigation would proceed.”

“Be careful,” Balenger warned.

“I told you it’s a theory. Everything needs to be considered. You set up a diversion. You rented the row house on Nineteenth Street. You hired a woman to arrange for the actors to be there. You showed up with someone you paid to impersonate Amanda. As instructed, the actors left during the talk. With everybody gone, you thanked the woman who impersonated Amanda. She was puzzled, but you paid her well, so she thought ‘Another weirdo’ and went home. Meanwhile, everybody thought they’d seen the real Amanda and that someone had abducted her.”

“For any of that to work, I’d also need to be responsible for the fire at the theater. But you and I were always together.”

“Except for the time you waited in the lobby while I went into the main part of the theater to look around. You could have started the fire then. I wouldn’t have noticed.”

“We almost died. Why would I put myself in danger?”

“To convince me of the threat. Anyway, according to this theory, you were never in danger.”

“What do you mean?” Balenger’s forearm felt as if an abscess wanted to burst.

“You should have come with me to talk to the fire investigators you tried so hard to avoid. The conversation was revealing. It seems the woman who hired the actors asked for a tour of the theater. She was very interested when she learned about the sub-basement. She asked to be taken down there so she could have a look. A couple of weeks ago, a woman matching her description also visited businesses along the street. The antique store was one of them. While she pretended to think about buying something, she mentioned that she’d heard about dried-up streams under Greenwich Village and passageways where the water used to flow. As it turns out, the antique store owner was happy to talk about it because that piece of history helps him sell antiques. He has the only other building in the area with a sub-basement that matches the one in the theater.”

“You think I set the fire, hoping I could escape by crawling along a passageway that I couldn’t be sure was open? That’s crazy!”

“Is it any more crazy than your claim to have seen this same woman in the library this afternoon? A woman who magically disappeared and who hasn’t the slightest reason to show herself and whom nobody else saw except you.”

“Why would I lie?”

“To make me continue believing there’s a threat. To keep throwing me off track. You took every chance you could to assume control of the investigation.”

Balenger stared past Ortega toward the end of the street where a woman wearing dark slacks and a white blouse waved at him.

“You’re wrong,” he told the detective.

“It makes as much sense as your theory that somebody abducted Amanda to force you to play a sicko game.”

“You’re wrong, and I can prove it.”

“Believe me, I’d like a little proof about
something
.”

“The woman who showed herself at the library, the woman who hired the actors and introduced herself as Karen Bailey at the lecture. ...”

“What about her?”

“She’s standing down the street, waving at us.”

4

As Ortega spun to look, Balenger was already running. For a moment, Karen Bailey didn’t move. Then she ducked around the corner on the right.

Balenger raced. It was almost five thirty. Classes were finished for the day, students having returned to their dormitories or homes elsewhere in the city. Few pedestrians got in Balenger’s way. He reached the corner and saw Karen Bailey’s white blouse disappearing around another corner.

He avoided a passing car and turned the next corner in time to see her charge into what looked like an apartment building. Her shoes were laceup, low-heeled, like a man’s, giving her mobility.

“Stop!” he yelled.

He heard Ortega’s rapid breathing behind him. Then Ortega was next to him, and they rushed toward the building.

“Now do you believe me?”

A wire fence blocked the sidewalk. A Dumpster held broken plaster and boards.

Chest heaving, Balenger reached the fence. No one was around. He studied a gate that seemed to be locked. Then he saw that the lock hung loose. Furious, he shoved the gate open.

Ortega grabbed his shoulder. “For God’s sake, wait till I call for backup. We don’t know what’s in there.”

“
You
wait.” Balenger raced over bits of debris toward grit-covered steps that led to a sheet of plywood tilted over the entrance as a makeshift door.

“You’re not a police officer!” Ortega shouted. “You don’t have authority!”

“Which means I don’t have a job to worry about!” Balenger yelled over his shoulder. “I can do whatever I want!”

He gazed warily through the gap beyond the plywood, then eased inside. The place smelled of dust, mildew, and old plaster. As his eyes adjusted to the murky light, he saw exposed floorboards and walls stripped to their joists. A corridor led to door less entrances to what he assumed were other stripped rooms. On the right, a stairway didn’t have a banister. The ceiling had dangling strips of ancient paint.

Another old abandoned building, Balenger thought. Shadows. Narrowing walls. Shrinking rooms. Sweat oozed from his pores, but not because he’d run to get there. With all his being, he wanted to turn and escape.

Amanda
, he thought. Footsteps echoed on the next floor. He climbed the stairs, stretching his legs over gaps. A noise behind him made him pause. He turned and saw Ortega enter the building.

“Backup’s on the way,” Ortega said.

“You’re sure this isn’t another diversion I arranged.”

“The only thing I’m sure of is, I want to talk to this woman.”

Ortega joined him. Boards creaked as they climbed. The upper area gradually came into view: more strips of paint dangling from the ceiling, more exposed walls and naked joists, another staircase without a banister. At the top, they listened for footsteps, but all Balenger heard was the muffled sound of distant traffic.

“This seems to be the only stairway. She can’t get out,” Ortega said.

“Can’t she? Maybe there’s a way into the next building.”

A noise to the left made Balenger turn. He stepped across a hole and eased along a dusky corridor. Grit scraped under his shoes. They checked each opening they passed, seeing more gutted rooms.

In the gray light, Ortega examined a jagged edge on each side of the hallway. “Looks as if a wall was here and the renovators smashed through. It’s an awfully long corridor for one building.”

“But not for two,” Balenger said. “This is a couple of buildings being made into one.”

They came to a corridor on the right. It stretched deeper into the structure.

“Maybe
three
buildings,” Ortega said. “Maybe the university’s combining them into one big classroom complex.”

A creaking sound stopped them. It came from an area farther along. A board lay across two sawhorses. Other boards were stacked against a wall, boxes next to them. On the floor, a tarpaulin was littered with bits of wood and sawdust. A rope dangled from the upper level.

“There’s something on that sawhorse,” Ortega said.

The small rectangular object was silver and black, with buttons and a screen.

“A cell phone,” Ortega said. “One of the workers must have left it.”

“Looks different than a standard phone.”

Ortega took a step closer. “It’s a BlackBerry.”

Although Balenger had never used one, he knew that a BlackBerry could connect to the Internet and manage email. “Aren’t they expensive?”

“Several hundred dollars,” Ortega said.

“Would a construction worker, who managed to afford one, be careless enough to leave it behind?”

They stopped next to the sawhorse. Balenger reached for the BlackBerry.

“Better not,” Ortega cautioned. “If you’re right about somebody playing games, that thing might be a bomb.”

“Or maybe it’s like the video-game case, and it’ll lead me somewhere else.” Balenger picked up the BlackBerry.

“One of these days, you’ll listen to me,” Ortega said.

Balenger noted that the BlackBerry was slightly heavier and thicker than his cell phone. It had a bigger screen and many more buttons that included the alphabet as well as numbers.

“I hear voices.” Ortega turned. “Sounds like they’re coming from the entrance. Must be the backup team.” He pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll tell them where we are.”

Sudden movement caught Balenger’s attention. On the other side of the work area, a white blouse appeared in the corridor. Flushed from her hiding place, Karen Bailey ran.

Balenger shoved the BlackBerry into a pocket and chased her. He crossed the tarpaulin, and at once, it sank through a hole it disguised. His knees went down. His hips. He grabbed the rope that dangled from the next level. The tarpaulin kept sinking. His chest dropped into the hole. The rope in his hands tightened, suspending him.

Ortega hurried to grab Balenger’s hand.

“Be careful,” Balenger warned. “With the tarp, it’s hard to know where the edge of the hole is.”

Holding Balenger’s hand, Ortega leaned so far over the tarp that he needed to grip the rope for support.

The rope went slack, whatever it was attached to giving way. Ortega lost his balance. Balenger felt weightless again, groaning when Ortega landed on him, both men dropping with the tarpaulin through the hole. The rope fell with them, and something else, something that Balenger caught only a glimpse of—a wheelbarrow that the rope was tied to on an upper level.

“No!” Balenger screamed, dropping with Ortega.

The tarpaulin scraped against the hole’s edge. When Balenger hit the lower floor, the impact knocked the wind from him, as did the jolt of Ortega against him. He heard a crash, looked up, and saw the plummeting wheelbarrow strike the hole’s edge. It broke boards and continued falling.

“Look out!”

There wasn’t time to react. The wheelbarrow slammed onto Ortega’s back. Something snapped inside him. Blood bubbled from his mouth. His face went slack. His eyes lost focus. Balenger struggled to push the wheelbarrow off him, to do something to revive him, but there was no mistaking the stillness of death.