Vanish (35 page)

“Jane.”

“Regina needs her diaper changed.”

“Damn it, you’re running away from a fight.”

She turned back to him. “I don’t run from fights.”

“Then sit down with me. Because I’m not running from you, and I don’t plan to.”

For a moment she just looked at him. And she thought: This is so hard. Being married is so

hard and scary, and he’s right about my wanting to run. All I really want to do is retreat to a

place where no one can hurt me.

She pulled out the chair and sat down.

“Things
have
changed, you know,” he said. “It’s not like before, when we didn’t have Regina.”

She said nothing, still angry that he’d agreed she was a bitch. Even if it was true.

“Now if something happens to you, you’re not the only one who gets hurt. You have a

daughter. You have other people to think about.”

“I signed up for motherhood, not prison.”

“Are you saying you’re sorry we had her?”

She looked down at Regina. Her daughter was staring up, wide-eyed, as though she

understood every word being said. “No, of course not. It’s just . . .” She shook her head. “I’m

more than just her mother. I’m
me,
too. But I’m losing myself, Gabriel. Every day, I feel like

I’m disappearing a little more. Like the Cheshire Cat in Wonderland. Every day it seems harder

and harder to remember who I was. Then you come home and get ticked off at me for placing

that ad. Which, you have to admit, is a
brilliant
idea. And I think: Okay, now I’m really lost.

Even my own husband has forgotten who I am.”

He leaned forward, his gaze burning a hole in her. “Do you know what it was like for me,

when you were trapped in that hospital? Do you have any idea? You think you’re so tough.

You strap on a weapon and suddenly you’re Wonder Woman. But if you get hurt, you’re not

the only one who bleeds, Jane. I do, too. Do you
ever
think of me?”

She said nothing.

He laughed, but it came out the sound of a wounded animal. “Yeah, I’m a pain in the ass,

always trying to protect you from yourself. Someone has to do it, because you are your own

worst enemy. You never stop trying to prove yourself. You’re still Frankie Rizzoli’s despised

little sister. A
girl.
You’re still not good enough for the boys to play with, and you never will

be.”

She just stared back at him, resenting how well he knew her. Resenting the accuracy of his

arrows, which had so cruelly hit their mark.

“Jane.” He reached across the table. Before she could pull away, his hand was on hers, holding

on with no intention of releasing her. “You don’t need to prove yourself to me, or Frankie, or

anyone else. I know it’s hard for you right now, but you’ll be back at work before you know it.

So give the adrenaline a rest. Give
me
a rest. Let me enjoy just having my wife and daughter

safe at home for a while.”

He still held her hand captive on the table. She looked down at their hands and thought: This

man never wavers. No matter how hard I push against him, he is always right there for me.

Whether I deserve him or not. Slowly their fingers linked in a silent armistice.

The phone rang.

Regina gave a wail.

“Well.” Gabriel sighed. “That moment of peace didn’t last long.” Shaking his head, he rose to

answer the call. Jane was just carrying Regina out of the kitchen when she heard him say:

“You’re right. Let’s not talk about this on the phone.”

Instantly she was alert, turning to search his face for the reason his voice had suddenly

dropped. But he was facing the wall, and she focused instead on the knotted muscles of his

neck.

“We’ll be waiting for you,” he said, and hung up.

“Who was that?”

“Maura. She’s on her way over.”

THIRTY-ONE

Maura did not show up at their apartment alone. Standing beside her in the hallway was an

attractive man with dark hair and a trim beard. “This is Peter Lukas,” she said.

Jane shot Maura an incredulous look. “You brought a reporter?”

“We need him, Jane.”

“Since when do we ever need reporters?”

Lukas gave a cheery wave. “Nice to meet you, too, Detective Rizzoli, Agent Dean. Can we

come in?”

“No, let’s not talk in here,” said Gabriel, as he and Jane, carrying Regina, stepped out into the

hallway.

“Where are we going?” asked Lukas.

“Follow me.”

Gabriel led the way up two flights of stairs, and they emerged on the apartment rooftop. Here,

the building’s tenants had established an exuberant garden of potted plants, but the heat of a

city summer and the baking surface of asphalt tiles was starting to wilt this oasis. Tomato

plants drooped in their pots, and morning glory vines, their leaves scorched brown by the heat,

clung like withering fingers to a trellis. Jane set Regina in her infant seat under the shade of the

umbrella table, and the baby promptly dozed off, her cheeks a rosy pink. From this vantage

point, they could see other rooftop gardens, other welcome patches of green in the concrete

landscape.

Lukas placed a folder beside the sleeping baby. “Dr. Isles thought you’d be interested in seeing

this.”

Gabriel opened the folder. It contained a news clipping, with a photo of a man’s smiling face

and the headline:
Reston Man Found Dead Aboard Yacht. Businessman Missing Since

January 2nd.

“Who was Charles Desmond?” asked Gabriel.

“A man very few people really knew,” said Lukas. “Which, in and of itself, was what intrigued

me about him. It’s the reason I focused on this story. Even though the medical examiner

conveniently ruled it a suicide.”

“You question that ruling?”

“There’s no way to prove it wasn’t suicide. Desmond was found in the bathroom on his motor

yacht, which he kept moored at a marina on the Potomac River. He died in the tub, with both

his wrists slashed, and left a suicide note in the stateroom. By the time they found him, he’d

been dead for about ten days. The medical examiner’s office never released any photos, but, as

you can imagine, it must have been quite a pleasant postmortem.”

Jane grimaced. “I’d rather not imagine it.”

“The note he left wasn’t particularly revelatory.
I’m depressed, life sucks, can’t stand to live

another day.
Desmond was known to be a heavy drinker, and he’d been divorced for five

years. So it made sense that he’d be depressed. All sounds like a pretty convincing case for

suicide, right?”

“Why don’t you sound convinced?”

“I got that tingle. A reporter’s sixth sense that there was something else going on, something

that might lead to a bigger story. Here’s this rich guy with a yacht, missing for ten days before

someone thinks to go looking for him. The only reason they could pinpoint the date he went

missing was the fact his car was found in the marina parking lot with January second stamped

on the entry ticket. His neighbors said he traveled abroad so often, they weren’t alarmed when

they didn’t see him for a week.”

“Traveled abroad?” said Jane. “Why?”

“No one could tell me.”

“Or they wouldn’t tell you?”

Lukas smiled. “You’ve got a suspicious mind, Detective. So do I. It made me more and more

curious about Desmond. Made me wonder if there was more to the story. You know, that’s the

way the Watergate story got started. A routine burglary case blows up into something much,

much bigger.”

“What was big about this story?”

“Who the guy was. Charles Desmond.”

Jane looked at the photo of Desmond’s face. He wore a pleasant smile, a neatly knotted tie. It

was the sort of photo that might appear in any corporate report. The company executive,

projecting competence.

“The more questions I asked about him, the more interesting stuff started to turn up. Charles

Desmond never went to college. He served twenty years in the army, most of it working for

military intelligence. Five years after he leaves the army, he owns a nice yacht and a big house

in Reston. So now you have to ask the obvious question: What did he do to amass that huge

bank account?”

“Your article here says that he worked for a company called Pyramid Services,” said Jane.

“What’s that?”

“That’s what I wondered. Took me a while to dig it up, but a few days later I learned that

Pyramid Services is a subsidiary of guess which company?”

“Don’t tell me,” said Jane. “Ballentree.”

“You got it, Detective.”

Jane looked at Gabriel. “That name just keeps popping up, doesn’t it?”

“And look at the date he went missing,” said Maura. “That’s what caught my eye. January

second.”

“The day before the Ashburn massacre.”

“An interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”

Gabriel said, “Tell us more about Pyramid.”

Lukas nodded. “It’s the transportation and security arm of Ballentree, part of the range of

services they provide in war zones. Whatever our defense needs abroad—bodyguards,

transport escorts, private police forces—Ballentree can do it for you. They’ll go to work in

parts of the world where there are no functioning governments.”

“War profiteers,” said Jane.

“Well, why not? There’s a lot of money to be made in war. During the Kosovo conflict,

Ballentree’s private soldiers protected construction crews. They’re now manning private police

forces in Kabul and Baghdad and towns all around the Caspian Sea. All paid for by the US

taxpayer. That’s how Charles Desmond financed his yacht.”

“I’m working for the wrong damn police force,” said Jane. “Maybe I should sign up for Kabul,

and I could have a yacht, too.”

“You don’t want to work for these people, Jane,” said Maura. “Not when you hear what’s

involved.”

“You mean the fact they work in combat zones?”

“No,” said Lukas. “The fact they’re tied in with some pretty unsavory partners. Anytime you

deal in a war zone, you’re also making deals with the local mafia. It’s merely practical to form

partnerships, so local thugs end up working with companies like Ballentree. There’s a black

market trade in every commodity—drugs, arms, booze, women. Every war is an opportunity, a

new market, and everyone wants in on the booty. That’s why there’s so much competition for

defense contracts. Not just for the contracts themselves, but for the chance at the black market

business that comes with it. Ballentree landed more deals last year than any other defense

contractor.” He paused. “Partly because Charles Desmond was so damn good at his job.”

“Which was?”

“He was their deal maker. A man with friends in the Pentagon, and probably friends in other

places as well.”

“For all the good it did him,” said Jane, looking down at the photo of Desmond. A man whose

corpse had lain undiscovered for ten days. A man so mysterious to his neighbors that no one

had thought to immediately report him missing.

“The question is,” said Lukas, “Why did he have to die? Did those friends in the Pentagon turn

on him? Or did someone else?”

For a moment, no one spoke. The heat made the rooftop shimmer like water, and from the

street below rose the smell of exhaust, the rumble of traffic. Jane suddenly noticed that Regina

was awake, and her eyes were fixed on Jane’s face.
It’s eerie, how much intelligence I see in

my daughter’s eyes.
From where she sat, Jane could see a woman sunning herself on another

rooftop, her bikini top untied, her bare back glistening with oil. She saw a man standing on a

balcony, talking on his cell phone, and a girl seated near a window, practicing her violin.

Overhead, the white streak of a contrail marked the passage of a jet. How many people can see

us? she wondered. How many cameras or satellites, at this moment, are trained on our rooftop?

Boston had become a city of eyes.

“I’m sure this has crossed everyone’s mind,” said Maura. “Charles Desmond once worked in

military intelligence. The man Olena shot in her hospital room was almost certainly ex-military,

yet his prints have been scrubbed from the files. My office security has been breached. Are we

all thinking about spooks here? Maybe even the Company?”

“Ballentree and the CIA have always gone hand in hand,” said Lukas. “Not that it should

surprise anyone. They work in the same countries, employ the same kind of guys. Trade on the

same info.” He looked at Gabriel. “And nowadays, they even pop up here, on home territory.

Declare a terrorist threat, and the US government can justify any action, any expenditure.

Untold funds get channeled into off-the-books programs. That’s how people like Desmond end

up with yachts.”

“Or end up dead,” said Jane.

The sun had shifted, its glare now slanting under the umbrella, onto Jane’s shoulder. Sweat

trickled down her breast. It’s too hot for you up here, baby, she thought, looking down at

Regina’s pink face.

It’s too hot for all of us.

THIRTY-TWO

Detective Moore looked up at the clock as the time closed in on eight P.M. The last time Jane

had sat in the homicide unit’s conference room, she’d been nine months pregnant, weary and

irritable and more than ready for maternity leave. Now she was back in the same room, with the

same colleagues, but everything was different. The room felt charged, the tension winding

tighter with each passing minute. She and Gabriel sat facing Moore; Detectives Frost and