The Mentor (20 page)

He typed in his password to access the evidence online and watched the video.

There was the person dressed in black, walking into the building. The gait was awkward, the shoulders too large for the hips. It had to be a man. Little Sayyid had seen that person walk out of the victim’s apartment that same day. The same clothing with traces of blood from Thompson, McKinsey, and Ridley had been found in Garnish’s car. The blog didn’t talk about that clothing directly.

He fast-forwarded the video until he saw the person in black leave the building twenty minutes later. The same awkward gait. The killer moved toward the video camera.

That was strange. The killer left in the opposite direction from which he—or she—had arrived.

Once the figure in black disappeared, Eric’s gaze was drawn to a young man walking behind the killer, all the way at the end of the frame. He had a courier company’s logo on his jacket and was carrying a package under one arm. He was wearing a baseball cap down tight on his head.

He stopped the video, then ran it backward as slowly as he could.

At a certain point the young man seemed to pop up out of nowhere behind the figure dressed in black.

“What the hell . . . ?”

He backed up to the point where the suspect walked out through the building’s main door, then forward just one frame at a time. The camera angle was set in such a way that it covered the view of the entrance for a number of seconds. The young man appeared immediately after the suspect walked out.

He’d come from inside the building.

He rewound the video again. If the young man had come out of that building, then at some point he must have gone in too.

No one had entered the building during the twenty minutes that passed from when the figure in black had gone in and when he or she came out again. A number of different people had walked past on the sidewalk: a mother and her child, a teenage couple . . . No one had so much as glanced at the entrance to that building.

He reached the point where the figure in black went in, then continued until he saw the killer disappear from the top corner of the image. But he didn’t stop there. He ran the video back for a few more minutes until another figure appeared in the doorway, walking backward across the screen.

The courier.

The courier came from the same direction he went when he left, but he was holding the same package. Why hadn’t he dropped it off? He’d gone in, stayed inside for more than twenty minutes, then left again carrying what appeared to be the same package.

They’d been so focused on that bizarre figure dressed in black from head to toe that they’d completely ignored a classic clue that should have jumped off the screen to any investigator.

He froze the image. The courier looked like a young man. He was wearing jeans and a puffy jacket. He had a pair of dark sunglasses on beneath his cap and kept his head low. It was just barely possible to make out his chin and lower lip.

Eric tried to zoom the image, but the details were blurry and didn’t reveal anything that might make the person more recognizable.

He went back to the full picture, enlarged the entire screen, and started analyzing it frame by frame, looking for something. Not even Eric was sure exactly what.

At a certain point his attention was drawn to the package. It was a cardboard box with a label stuck on top, but it was impossible to read what was written on the label. The courier kept the package tucked against his chest with his left hand.

Eric turned the zoom back on, pulling in until a hand and forearm filled up the entire screen. The resolution wasn’t the best, but he could see well enough.

He felt tears well up in his eyes. What was he supposed to do now?

He turned the key in the lock slowly, trying not to make any noise. He didn’t usually go in like this without knocking when he knew she was at home. But if he’d rung the bell at this hour of the night, he would only scare her, and that’s not what he wanted to do. He preferred to surprise her before confronting her. Eric had no idea how all this would end. All he felt was an unstoppable desire to have the truth out on the table. He wanted clarity. The only thing that counted now was the truth; he’d worry about the consequences later.

He opened the door a crack and listened. The room was filled with dim lamplight. He could hear water running in the background. He went in and closed the door gently behind him. She was taking a shower, so she couldn’t have heard him come in.

Eric swallowed. He couldn’t do anything but wait. That seemed easy enough, but his nervousness was killing him. Every passing second made the wait more difficult. Images of the victims filled his mind, flanked by images of little Mina. How could that young girl have turned into such a merciless monster?

Deep in his heart, Eric felt responsible. He knew he shouldn’t, but a small, wormlike sense of guilt kept winding its way through his mind. That was the reason why he hadn’t mentioned his suspicions and discoveries to anyone, and it was the reason why he still hadn’t decided what he was going to do. He kept telling himself that first and foremost he wanted to understand. But what was there to understand, really? His mind could barely conceive of those facts, those acts, and no justification would be enough to clear them. Yet somehow he still kept hoping there might be something that would make everything right again.

A quick whirring noise made him start and turn around. The fan on the notebook computer sitting on the table had fired up.

Maybe he should look for a little more information before he talked to her.

He walked over to the computer and brushed his fingers across the touchpad. The screensaver disappeared and the access window popped up in its place, asking for the password. Without even thinking about it, he sat down and typed in “19940403.” April 3, 1994: the day Mina’s family had been brutally massacred.

A
s soon as he hit return, the desktop opened up on the screen. The background was a photo of the two of them together, taken not more than a month ago. The pairing of that image and the date he’d used to get into the computer gave Eric the chills. Icons kept popping up, one after another. Soon the screen was almost entirely covered. They’d been arranged in such a way that they covered up the faces in the background. In addition to the usual computer program icons, there were a number he didn’t recognize. It took him a little while to find the documents folder.

He stopped. He thought he heard noises in the other room. He waited a few moments, then the water started running again.

He took a deep breath to calm himself and then opened the folder, finding a myriad of subfolders inside. What on earth did he think he was doing? Was he really going to check them all, one by one? He certainly didn’t have enough time. It looked like she catalogued everything. There was a folder for every case she’d ever worked on, along with others for photographs, music, film, and so forth. Knowing her, he’d expected things to be better organized. But that was precisely the point, wasn’t it: Did he really know her?

He ran the cursor down the sidebar. Then his eyes fell on a folder titled, simply, “Eric.” He felt nauseated for a moment, but he had to open it. Inside were other subfolders, divided by year starting in 2000. He double-clicked on the year 2000 and found himself looking at an amazing number of images. He could see from the thumbnails that some were scanned newspaper articles. Opening one by chance, he saw that it was the story of a murder case. His name was mentioned in the article heading. It was the same with the others.

There were photographs too, several hundred of them, showing him on the street or at the scene of a crime, going into or coming out of his apartment building. Eric felt his stomach turn over.

Gripped with a growing sense of anxiety, Eric moved on to another year. It was filled with the same kinds of files—only there were a lot more this time. There were more and more each year, until he came to the preceding year. There was no folder for the current year.

She’d started keeping tabs on him back when she was still a young girl. Every cell in his body screamed for him to get out of there, to go as far away as possible. He was angry, and he felt stupid for never having picked up on any of this, but he had to keep going forward. Mina’s morbid fascination with him didn’t prove anything. He was looking for something else entirely on that computer.

He went back to the documents folder and kept scrolling down until he found a subfolder with the name “Garnish.” Inside were other subfolders divided by year, this time starting from 2010. Photographs taken secretly in a range of different circumstances. Some showed the man in the company of Thompson, McKinsey, Ridley, and Dillon, though the people were always with Garnish separately, never all together. There was even a folder containing copies of the police reports for each of them, apparently taken from the archives. He found the oldest one of all in there, the one containing details of the massacre that had occurred twenty years earlier, which had been just another interrogation for him.

Somehow Mina had reconnected all the information. Unlike Eric, she had the advantage of having been there when the crime was committed. She had seen the men who murdered her family with her own eyes. Back then they hadn’t even considered interrogating her because she’d been too young and in complete shock. They’d assumed she’d hidden when it started and hadn’t seen a thing. Besides, who would have believed the word of a seven-year-old girl who’d just seen her family brutally murdered? They weren’t even sure she was capable of understanding what had happened, much less identifying those responsible. They had completely underestimated her.

Here was the proof he’d been looking for.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw movement in the doorway to the bedroom.

She was standing there, pointing a pistol at his head. “Jesus Christ, Eric!” she said, lowering the gun. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were a thief!”

Eric stood up slowly from the chair, finding it hard to breathe. He’d been so completely concentrated on the files on the computer that he hadn’t heard the shower turning off.

She stared at him, sensing something was wrong. She was barefoot and wearing a pair of gray pajamas. Her hair was wet. The gun was still in her left hand, but now she lowered it down at her side. Her eyes moved from his face to the open notebook computer on the table, and then her expression hardened.

“What are you doing on my computer?” she demanded, her voice little more than a whisper. She seemed perplexed, but there was a vaguely accusatory tone in her voice. Her hand tightened on her weapon while her eyes searched Eric.

Detective Shaw sighed. The moment had come. “I remember that day, last January, when you came to visit me in my office.”

He’d heard a knock on the door, and then it opened. The first thing he’d seen was her brown hair, shining faintly auburn in the sunlight streaming in through the window. And her beautiful green eyes.

“Good morning, boss. Can I talk to you for a couple of minutes?”

“Adele Pennington, right?”

She’d been assigned to his team merely two days earlier. He’d met her briefly, but they hadn’t started working together yet.

Adele nodded.

“Please, come on in. Make yourself comfortable.” Eric, sitting at his desk, waved to the chairs set up on the other side.

“I think I’ll stand, thanks.”

“What can I do for you, Miss Pennington?”

The woman had smiled. That was the first time he’d noticed her smile. He remembered thinking she really was beautiful, more striking than any of his colleagues. But maybe that was just because she was so young. How old was she? Twenty-six, twenty-seven at most.

Adele hesitated for a moment, apparently embarrassed. “I just felt I should tell you, before we start working together, that we’ve already met. But I’m sure you don’t recognize me now.”

Eric furrowed his brow and stared at her, interested. They already knew each other? He doubted it. He would never have forgotten a woman like this. “To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever met an Adele Pennington in my life. But it’s true that this job puts me into contact with lots of different people, and sometimes I don’t recognize them when I should.” He felt bad that he didn’t recognize her.

The young woman smiled. “No, it’s been a long time. I was just a young girl. When we met I had another name.” She paused, and the tension between them grew. She had the detective’s complete attention. “Adelmine Fontaine.”

In a fraction of a second Eric saw the image of that young girl he’d found at the scene of the crime twenty years earlier materializing in his mind. She had the same eyes that he now saw in the young woman standing in front of him. “Mina . . . ,” murmured Eric, incredulous.

Back at the apartment, he must have spoken out loud, because Adele nodded.

“I was sure you’d figure it out sooner or later, reading the file. I just thought I should be the one to tell you.” Adele’s fingers danced along the hilt of her gun. She didn’t appear to have any intention of putting it down.

“You only did so because, if I’d discovered on my own by chance, you thought I wouldn’t have appreciated it.” Eric kept his eyes on her hand, but he couldn’t help the stern tone in his voice. “What’s more, you did everything you could to make sure I’d notice. I have to admit you did a good job.”

Ever since he’d been aware that this woman was the same little girl he’d found in the most gruesome case he’d ever worked on, he couldn’t help but feel curious about her. What had she been doing all these years? Against his better judgment, this curiosity had evolved into an even deeper interest in her as a woman, an interest that made Eric deeply uncomfortable. It seemed inappropriate somehow to feel that way about a person he’d met when she was just a seven-year-old girl. The worst part was that the more he admitted his feelings, the more attracted to her he felt.

“I don’t usually go digging around in my colleagues’ pasts, but of course I would have noted the coincidence in the names. Adelmine isn’t exactly a household name, but that wouldn’t have been enough to make me think you were the same person. The last name is different.”