Vanish (33 page)

Glasser nodded. “The station’s security camera caught a view of Roke’s car while it was

parked at the pump. Through the windshield, you can see there’s a woman sitting in the front

seat. It’s Olena. That’s the night their lives intersected, the night Joseph Roke got involved. The

minute he invited those women into his car, into his life, he was a marked man. Five hours after

that stop at the service station, his house went up in flames. That’s when he surely realized he’d

picked up a whole hell of a lot of trouble.”

“And the second woman? You said he picked up two women on the road.”

“We don’t know anything about her. Only that she was still traveling with them as far as New

Haven. That was two months ago.”

“You’re talking about the cruiser video. The shooting of that police officer.”

“On the video, you can see a head pop up from Roke’s backseat. Just the back of the head—

we’ve never seen her face. Which leaves us with almost no information on her at all. Just a few

strands of red hair left on the seat. For all we know, she’s dead.”

“But if she’s alive,” said Barsanti, “then she’s our last witness. The only one left who saw

what happened in Ashburn.”

Jane said, softly: “I can tell you her name.”

Glasser frowned at her. “What?”

“That’s the dream.” Jane looked at Gabriel. “That’s what Olena says to me.”

“She’s been having a nightmare,” said Gabriel. “About the takedown.”

“And what happens in the dream?” Glasser asked, her gaze riveted on Jane.

Jane swallowed. “I hear men pounding on the door, breaking into the room. And she leans

over me. To tell me something.”

“Olena does?”

“Yes. She says: ‘Mila knows.’ That’s all she tells me. ‘Mila knows.’ ”

Glasser stared at her. “Mila
knows
? Present tense?” She looked at Barsanti. “Our witness is

still alive.”

TWENTY-NINE

“I’m surprised you’re here, Dr. Isles,” said Peter Lukas. “Since I haven’t been able to reach

you on the phone.” He gave her a quick handshake, a greeting that was justifiably cool and

businesslike; Maura had not been returning his calls. He led her through the
Boston Tribune

lobby to the security desk, where the guard handed Maura an orange visitor’s badge.

“You’ll have to return that when you leave, ma’am,” the guard said.

“And you’d better,” added Lukas, “or this man will hunt you down like a dog.”

“Warning noted,” said Maura, clipping the badge to her blouse. “You have better security here

than the Pentagon.”

“You have any idea how many people a newspaper pisses off every day?” He pressed the

elevator call button and glanced at her unsmiling face. “Uh-oh. I think you must be one of

them. Is that why you haven’t called me back?”

“A number of people were unhappy with that column you wrote about me.”

“Unhappy with you or with me?”

“With me.”

“Did I misquote you? Misrepresent you?”

She hesitated. Admitted, “No.”

“Then why are you annoyed with me? Because you clearly are.”

She looked at him. “I spoke too frankly with you. I shouldn’t have.”

“Well, I enjoyed interviewing a woman who speaks frankly,” he said. “It was a nice change.”

“Do you know how many calls I got? About my theory of Christ’s resurrection?”

“Oh. That.”

“From as far away as Florida. People upset by my blasphemy.”

“You only spoke your mind.”

“When you have a public job like mine, it’s sometimes a dangerous thing to do.”

“It goes with the territory, Dr. Isles. You’re a public figure, and if you say something

interesting, it gets into print. At least you
had
something interesting to say, unlike most people I

interview.”

The elevator door opened, and they stepped in. Alone together, she was acutely aware that he

was watching her. That he was standing uncomfortably close.

“So why have you been calling me?” she asked. “Are you trying to get me into more trouble?”

“I wanted to know about the autopsies on Joe and Olena. You never released a report.”

“I never completed the postmortem. The bodies were transferred to the FBI labs.”

“But your office did have temporary custody. I can’t believe you’d just let bodies sit in your

cold room without performing some kind of examination. It wouldn’t be in your character.”

“What, exactly, is my character?” She looked at him.

“Curious. Exacting.” He smiled. “Tenacious.”

“Like you?”

“Tenacity is getting me absolutely nowhere with you. And here I thought we could be friends.

Not that I was expecting any special favors.”

“What do you expect from me?”

“Dinner? Dancing? Cocktails, at the very least?”

“Are you serious?”

He answered her question with a sheepish shrug. “No harm in trying.”

The elevator opened and they stepped out.

“She died of gunshot wounds to the flank and the head,” said Maura. “I think that’s what you

wanted to know.”

“How many wounds? How many different shooters?”

“You want all the gory details?”

“I want to be accurate. That means going directly to the source, even if I have to make a

nuisance of myself.”

They walked into the newsroom, past reporters tapping at keyboards, to a desk where every

horizontal square inch was covered with files and Post-it notes. Not a single photo of a kid or a

woman or even a dog was displayed here. This space was purely for work, although she

wondered how much work anyone could actually do, surrounded by such clutter.

He commandeered an extra chair from his neighbor’s desk and rolled it over for Maura to sit

in. It gave a noisy squeak as she settled into it.

“So you won’t return my calls,” he said, sitting down as well. “But you
do
come by to see me

at work. Does this qualify as a mixed message?”

“This case has gotten complicated.”

“And now you need something from me.”

“We’re all trying to understand what happened that night. And why it happened.”

“If you had any questions for me, all you had to do was pick up the phone.” He pinned her

with a look. “I would have returned
your
calls, Dr. Isles.”

They fell silent. At other desks, phones rang and keyboards clacked, but Maura and Lukas just

looked at each other, the air between them spiked with both irritation and something else,

something she didn’t want to acknowledge. A strong whiff of mutual attraction.
Or am I just

imagining it?

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I’m being a jerk. I mean, you
are
here. Even if it’s for your own

purposes.”

“You have to understand my position, too,” she said. “As a public official, I get calls all the

time from reporters. Some of them—many of them—don’t care about victims’ privacy or

grieving families or whether investigations are at risk. I’ve learned to be cautious and watch

what I say. Because I’ve been burned too many times by reporters who swear that my

comments will stay off the record.”

“So that’s what kept you from calling? Professional discretion?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no other reason you didn’t call me back?”

“What other reason would there be?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe you didn’t like me.” His gaze was so intent, she had trouble

keeping eye contact. He made her that uncomfortable.

“I don’t dislike you, Mr. Lukas.”

“Ouch. Now I fully appreciate what it means to be damned with faint praise.”

“I thought reporters had thicker skin.”

“We all want to be liked, especially by people we admire.” He leaned closer. “And by the way,

it’s not Mr. Lukas. It’s Peter.”

Another silence, because she didn’t know if this was flirtation or manipulation. For this man, it

might amount to the same thing.

“That went over like a lead balloon,” he said.

“It’s nice to be flattered, but I’d rather you just be straight-forward.”

“I thought I
was
being straightforward.”

“You want information from me. I want the same from you. I just didn’t want to talk about it

over the phone.”

He gave a nod of understanding. “Okay. So this is just a simple transaction.”

“What I need to know is—”

“We’re getting right to business? I can’t even offer you a cup of coffee first?” He rose from the

chair and crossed toward the community coffeepot.

Glancing at the carafe, she saw only tar-black dregs, and said quickly, “None for me, thank

you.”

He poured a cup for himself and sat back down. “So what’s with the reluctance to discuss this

over the phone?”

“Things have been . . . happening.”

“Things? Are you telling me you don’t even trust your own telephone?”

“As I told you, the case is complicated.”

“Federal intervention. Confiscated ballistics evidence. FBI in a tug-of-war with the Pentagon.

A hostage taker who still remains unidentified.” He laughed. “Yeah, I’d say it’s gotten
very

complicated.”

“You know all this.”

“That’s why they call us reporters.”

“Who have you been talking to?”

“Do you really think I’m going to answer that question? Let’s just say I have friends in law

enforcement. And I have theories.”

“About what?”

“Joseph Roke and Olena. And what that hostage taking was really all about.”

“No one really knows that answer.”

“But I know what law enforcement is thinking. I know what
their
theories are.” He set down

his coffee cup. “John Barsanti spent about three hours with me, did you know that? Picking

and probing, trying to find out why I was the only reporter Joseph Roke wanted to talk to.

Funny thing about interrogations. The person being interrogated can glean a lot of information

just by the questions they ask you. I know that two months ago, Olena and Joe were together

in New Haven, where he killed a cop. Maybe they were lovers, maybe just fellow delusionals,

but after an incident like that, they’d want to split up. At least, they would if they were smart,

and I don’t think these were dumb people. But they must have had a way to stay in contact. A

way to regroup if they needed to. And they chose Boston as the place to meet.”

“Why Boston?”

His gaze was so direct she could not avoid it. “You’re looking at the reason.”

“You?”

“I’m not being egotistical here. I’m just telling you what Barsanti seems to think. That Joe and

Olena somehow identified me as their crusading hero. That they came to Boston to see me.”

“And that leads to the question I came here to ask.” She leaned toward him. “Why you? They

didn’t pick your name out of a hat. Joe may have been mentally unstable, but he was intelligent.

An obsessive reader of newspapers and magazines. Something you wrote must have caught his

eye.”

“I know the answer to that one. Barsanti essentially spilled the beans when he asked about a

column I wrote back in early June. About the Ballentree Company.”

They both fell silent as another reporter walked past, on her way to the coffeepot. While they

waited for her to pour her cup, their gazes remained locked on each other. Only when the

woman was once again out of earshot did Maura say: “Show me the column.”

“It’ll be on LexisNexis. Let me call it up.” He swiveled around to his computer and called up

the LexisNexis news search engine, typed in his name, and hit search.

The screen filled with entries.

“Let me find the right date,” he said, scrolling down the page.

“This is everything you’ve ever written?”

“Yeah, probably going all the way back to my Bigfoot days.”

“Excuse me?”

“When I got out of journalism school, I had a ton of student loans to pay off. Took every

writing gig I could get, including an assignment to cover a Bigfoot convention out in

California.” He looked at her. “I admit it, I was a news whore. But I had bills to pay.”

“And now you’re respectable?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go
that
far . . .” He paused, clicked on an entry. “Okay, here’s the column,”

he said and rose to his feet, offering her his chair. “That’s what I wrote back in June, about

Ballentree.”

She settled into his just-vacated seat and focused on the text now glowing on the screen.

War is Profit: Business Booming for Ballentree

While the US economy sags, there’s one sector that’s still raking in big profits. Mega defense

contractor Ballentree is reeling in new deals like fish from their private trout pond . . .

“Needless to say,” said Lukas, “Ballentree was none too happy about that piece. But I’m not

the only one who’s writing these things. The same criticism has been leveled by other

reporters.”

“Yet Joe chose you.”

“Maybe it was the timing. Maybe he just happened to pick up a
Tribune
that day, and there was

my column about big bad Ballentree.”

“Can I look at what else you’ve written?”

“Be my guest.”

She returned to the list of his articles on the LexisNexis page. “You’re prolific.”

“I’ve been writing for over twenty years, covering everything from gang warfare to gay

marriage.”

“And Bigfoot.”

“Don’t remind me.”

She scrolled down the first and second pages of entries, then moved onto the third page. There

she paused. “These articles were filed from Washington.”

“I think I told you. I was the
Tribune
’s Washington correspondent. Only lasted for two years

there.”