Vanished (7 page)

14.

Y
ou don’t seem surprised.”

“Because it wasn’t him,” I said. In fact, I was pretty much blown away at first, but I’ve got a decent poker face. So Garvin had put a flag on Roger’s bank accounts. “You might want to ask for the ATM videotape,” I said, just to watch his reaction.

Garvin began to sputter with indignation, but then he grinned. “Got me,” he said. “Wachovia’s sending it over as soon as they pull it.”

“Whoever abducted my brother grabbed his card and forced his PIN out of him. He didn’t withdraw the money of his own volition.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Nothing else makes sense. I’m sure my brother has several bank accounts. Which one?”

“His personal checking account. The one he uses most often to get cash.”

“What time was this?”

“Eleven oh-nine
P.M
. Sixteen minutes after we got the nine-one-one call from someone who saw his wife lying on the ground.”

“Gotta be a holdup, then,” I said. “If someone abducted him for some reason, they’d never jeopardize it for, what—a thousand bucks? The maximum Roger could withdraw at any time?”

“Probably.”

“A holdup that went bad, then.”

“If by ‘went bad,’ you mean they killed him, where’s the body?”

“You tell me.”

“Right,” Garvin said with muted disgust.

“It’s also possible they’re still holding him.”

“Your big kidnapping theory again, that it?”

“Look, Lieutenant, you guys are stretched way too thin. You don’t have half the resources my firm has. It’s not fair, but it’s true.” I ignored his cold stare. “We’ve got access to some very powerful, and very expensive, investigative databases. How about I put some of that firepower to work? Case like this, I figure you can use all the help you can get.”

Garvin took off his glasses and set them down on top of a neatly stacked pile of folders. He closed his eyes and massaged his eyelids with his fingertips, pressing hard. “Believe it or not, Mr. Heller, this ain’t my first rodeo.”

It was never anyone’s first rodeo, was it? “I’m only talking about the investigative tools we have at our disposal.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“We’ve got asset locator services and corporate databases and law-enforcement databases that you probably think only the National Security Agency has. We’ve got access to international records that the CIA and the NSA
wish
they had. Don’t tell me you’d turn away a lead if I handed you one.”

“Actually, yes. I would turn it away. I can’t use anything you find, Mr. Heller. It wouldn’t be admissible in court. I can’t establish the chain of custody.”

“Forget about trial. If I can piece together what happened to Roger, you’re not going to ignore what I come up with.”

“I know you want to find your brother,” Garvin said. “I get that. But if you start meddling in my case, you’re going to screw it up. You start talking to a potential target before we have our ducks in a row, you’ll tip our hand before we’re ready. The target’s going to start destroying evidence and building alibis in advance. I can’t have that.”

“It ain’t my first rodeo either.”

“Yeah, well.”

“You’re the pro here, not me,” I said. “I’m not here to bust your butt, and I sure as hell don’t want credit. If an envelope happens to turn up in your mailbox with some interesting information in it, don’t throw it away. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I didn’t ask you do to anything,” Garvin said.

“Absolutely not.”

“And certainly nothing illegal.”

“Never,” I said.

Garvin looked at me for a second or two, then nodded. “Good. Just so long as we’re clear on this. I don’t want you doing a damned thing.”

“Hell no,” I said, and smiled. I handed him a business card. “Here’s my cell number. Let me know if you find anything interesting, okay?”

MY CAR
—or maybe I should say truck—was an old, rebuilt Land Rover Defender 90. It was rugged and utilitarian and indestructible and totally reliable. Not at all luxurious. Not a living room on wheels like the Range Rover. It was a tall steel box with hand-cranked windows and a Spartan interior, and it could tow cars and drive through rivers. A true off-road vehicle, even though my off-road driving, since I started working for Stoddard, was mostly limited to gravel driveways in Nantucket.

The Defender was a gift from a grateful Jordanian arms dealer after I made the mistake of admiring it while advising him on protection at his Belgravia estate. He had it reconditioned, repainted the same glossy Coniston green, and shipped over. It was a 1997, but it looked brand new.

I climbed in just as my cell phone started ringing.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Nick.” It was Lauren, and she was whispering. “Can you come over?”

“What is it?”

“I just got an e-mail,” she said. “From Roger.”

15.

L
auren was sitting in front of a computer screen in the small nook off their living room that served as her home office. She was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and she was barefoot. She looked up as I entered. She’d been crying, I could see. Her eyes were bloodshot.

She tilted the screen so I could see it. I read a few lines, then stopped.

The e-mail was from
[email protected]
.

“ ‘
IN CASE
of death’?” I said. “What the hell’s that?”

She looked at me for a long time. “I just looked it up. It’s an e-mail service that sends out e-mails to your loved ones,” she said. “After you die.”

We were both silent for a few seconds.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” I said.

Lauren spoke haltingly. “It’s sort of morbid, really. But I guess it’s a useful service. You know, if there are things you want to tell your family after your death . . .” And she bit her lip.

“Okay,” I said. I put a hand on her shoulder.

She swallowed, wiped away her tears with the backs of her hands. “You sign up for these automatic e-mail notifications. For up to five people. The e-mails go out after you’ve died.”

I said gently, “And how do they know you’re dead?”

“I’m not sure, Nick. . . . It looks like they automatically e-mail you as often as you request—weekly, monthly, whatever—and you have up to a week to hit
REPLY
, and if you don’t…”

But I’d stopped listening. I’d moved closer to the screen and started reading Roger’s letter.

My sweet Lauren,

This has to be the strangest letter I’ve ever written. Because if you get it, that means I’m dead.

I looked up and saw that Lauren was standing.

“I need to make sure Gabe’s doing his homework,” she said.

I nodded, kept reading.

How it’ll happen, I have no idea.

But first things first. I want you to know how deeply I love you. I’m not an easy man to be married to, so you might not always have realized it—and for that, all I can do is ask your forgiveness. I’ve never been good about expressing affection, but I hope at least you know I tried my best.

Who knows what they’ll do? Will they try to make it look like I committed suicide? You’ve known me for 9 years—you know I enjoy my life far too much to be suicidal. Or maybe they’ll set it up so it looks like I drove drunk—even though you know how rarely I drink, and that I never ever drink and drive.

Or maybe they won’t even leave a body—no evidence. I have no idea what they might try. But if you get this, that means they finally succeeded.

I can only hope that you actually receive this e-mail. I’m not sure you will. The people who are trying to stop me have the ability to intercept e-mail. Given what I know them to be capable of, that’s the least of it. So one copy is going to your work e-mail address, and one copy to your personal one, and I hope you get at least one of them. I’m certain they can, and will, read this e-mail.

Whether or not I can save myself, I’ve taken precautions to protect you and Gabe—to give you the means to hold them off. You’ll know what I mean.

But whatever you do, you must never trust anyone.

I thought long and hard about e-mailing Gabe separately, but in the end I decided to leave it to you. You’ll know how to handle it. Tell him whatever you think best. Just make sure to tell him I
love him immensely. That if there’s an afterlife, I’ll be cheering him on, and I know he’ll grow up to be a terrific man.

And for all the ways I messed up your life—for all the wreckage I’m leaving behind—please forgive me.

I love you so much
.

Roger.

P.S.: Please say good-bye to the librarian.

When I finished reading, I sat there for a minute and stared at the screen in a kind of fugue state.

Then I heard Lauren’s voice, and I turned around. “He wants you,” she said.

It took me a few seconds to realize she meant Gabe.

16.

G
abe’s room stank of sweat and old laundry. I’d been in monkey houses at zoos that smelled nicer. Dirty clothes were heaped everywhere: on the floor, on his desk, on top of the CD player with the big speakers. Lauren had long ago given up cleaning up after him, and their housekeeper, who came three times a week, refused to enter his room. I could barely make my way to his bed. The only clear spot seemed to be on his desk in front of his computer.

The walls were painted bright orange, his choice, and an odd assortment of posters hung on the wall. A poster for the movie
The Dark Knight
with Heath Ledger wearing creepy eyeliner and lipstick; the only word was “Ha,” dripping blood. A movie poster for
Watchmen
: a guy getting thrown out of a tall building, shards of glass in his wake, a yellow smiley button floating in midair with a splotch of red blood on it. And the words J
USTICE IS COMING TO ALL OF US
. N
O MATTER WHAT WE DO
. His desk was piled high with comic books and a big softcover of the comic-book artist Will Eisner.

Gabe lay in bed reading a paperback called
Joker
by Brian Azzarello. The front cover was a grotesque closeup of the Joker’s feral grin, with jagged yellow teeth and smeared lipstick. Gabe was wearing headphones hooked up to an iPod Touch. Music blasted in his ears so loud that I could hear it, tinny and distorted and really awful.

My thoughts were still careening, still trying to make sense of Roger’s strange and cryptic e-mail.
If you get this, that means they finally succeeded,
he’d written. So he was expecting to be killed.
I’ve taken precautions to protect you and Gabe,
he’d said.
The means to hold them off.
What could that be? Would Lauren know? And what was that bizarre postscript
—Please say good-bye to the librarian
—supposed to mean? A code, surely, but what?

I sat on the side of Gabe’s bed, and he pulled the headphones off and hit the
PAUSE
button on his iPod.

“Whatcha listening to?” I asked.

“Slipknot.”

“Well,
obviously
. Which cut?”

“ ‘Wait and Bleed,’ ” he said. “But you knew that.”

He didn’t smile, but there seemed to be a twinkle in his eye. He enjoyed the game. He knew I didn’t get the emo-screamo stuff he’d started listening to recently, and never wanted to.

“You call that music?” I said. Just like old farts have been saying to teenage kids for generations. I imagine Mozart’s dad said something like that, too.

“What do you listen to?” Gabe said. “No, wait, let me guess. Coldplay, right?”

Busted. But I just gave him a steely stare.

“And what else—Styx? ABBA?”

“All right, you win,” I said. “How’s the comic book?”

“It’s a graphic novel,” he bristled.

“Same thing, right?”

“Not even close.”

“When do I get to see it?”

He blushed, shrugged.

“Not for public consumption, huh?”

He shrugged again.

“I’d love to read it sometime.”

“Okay. Maybe. I’ll see.”

“Anyway. You wanted to talk to me?”

He wriggled himself around until he was sitting up. I noticed he was wearing a black T-shirt with Homer Simpson looking into the barrel of a nail gun. It said
CAUTION: MAN AT WORK
. He also had a stuffed animal in the bed with him, a ratty-looking giraffe Beanie Baby he’d named Jaffee.

Gabe was a strange kid, no doubt about it. He was fourteen, almost fifteen, and had only just entered adolescence. He was a remarkable artist, entirely self-taught, and he spent most of his time—when he wasn’t reading comic books—doing panel drawings with an ultrafine black pen. He was scary-smart, brilliant at math and science, and he affected a world-weary cynicism. But every once in a while a crack would appear in his brittle shell, and you’d catch a fleeting glimpse of the little boy. He didn’t seem to have any close friends. They called him a dork and a nerd at school, he told me once, and I felt bad about what he must be going through. Adolescence was hard enough for a normal kid.

He wasn’t easy to spend time with, which was why I made a point of spending as much time with him as I could. I’d take him to the Air and Space Museum or the Museum of Natural History or the National Zoo, or just for a walk. When he was younger, I taught him how to throw a baseball, and for one disastrous season I coached his Little League team (at the end of which he decided he wasn’t cut out to be an athlete). We tried fishing once, but we both found it boring. Recently, I’d been taking him to comic-book stores a lot, and once, a year or so ago, he made me take him to a comic-book convention at a Quality Inn somewhere in Virginia, for which I truly deserved a purple heart.

“That e-mail was about Dad, wasn’t it?”

I looked at him for a few seconds while I decided how to reply.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I figured it out.”

“Were you spying on your mom?”

“Of course not. I don’t have to.”

“You don’t read her e-mail, do you?”

“No way.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Uncle Nick. He left us, didn’t he? He ran off with someone.”

“Why in the world would you say that?”

“I can tell. I know things. What did his e-mail say?”

“That’s between you and your mom. But no, he didn’t run off. Nothing like that.”

“Don’t lie to me, Uncle Nick.”

“I won’t. And I’m not.”

“Are you going to take off, too?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Like Dad.” He said it with a kind of scalding hostility, but that was only to mask the fear, the vulnerability.

“You wish,” I said. “But sorry. You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

He smiled despite himself.

From downstairs I heard Lauren calling, “Nick?”

“All right,” I said, standing up. “Good night. Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this. We’ll find your dad.”

“Nick?” Lauren said again, her voice distant and muffled.

Gabe hit the
PAUSE
button on his iPod and put his headphones back on.

I closed his bedroom door behind me.

“Nick?” Lauren’s voice echoed in the stairwell. Something in her tone made me quicken my pace. “Can you come here?”