“Renee.”
“-I’ll help in any way I can, but please, give me and my sister some time. An hour maybe, at one of our neighbors’ homes. We need to sort things out.”
She looked at him steadily, and Caleb had the sense that red lights were lighting up inside her skeptical brain. Facts and figures, percentages. Wasn’t the husband the perp in something like seventy percent of these cases? Right now she was probably running scenarios and creating a follow-up checklist: see how he and Lydia got along, whether he’d wanted full custody, what unsavory friends he might have contracted for arson and murder…
“All right,” she said at last. “I’ll continue working the scene here, and I’ll call on you in an hour.”
“Thank you.”
“But Mr. Crowe.”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever you find out, promise you’ll share with me.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She smiled. “Let’s just say, Caleb, that I’m open-minded about what you do here, and in what you’re about to do.”
He considered her for a long time. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but would you like to watch?”
Phoebe and Orlando were off to the side, sitting on a bench overlooking the lake.
“I’m sorry about Lydia,” Orlando said. His hand hovered around her shoulder uselessly, not sure whether to touch her or not. He had felt something close to a connection with Phoebe ever since interning for her class four years ago. Although only a few years older than he, she had a way of making him feel like an awkward teenager. “I know you were close.”
She gave an attempt at a shrug, trying to appear stoic despite her tears. “Sometimes, she could be like a sister to me. When she wasn’t being all Keeperly.” Her voice cracked. “And Robert… Are they sure it’s him in there?”
“Two other men with Lydia. Everyone was so burned up, though. Still have to do the dental records.”
“You really think he teamed up with Montross?”
“I gotta believe he never trusted Caleb, or me. Obsessed with the tablet twenty-four-seven.”
Orlando scratched the back of his neck, then stood up. “So, the FBI. What’s Caleb going to say to her?”
“Probably going to try to get rid of her,” Phoebe said. “So we can track Alexander without all the dead weight. We should probably start. Come on, we can go to the Hurleys’ house, use their basement. Kids down there have hundreds of pencils, markers and paper. We’ll find him.”
A minute later, when Caleb was alone again, they approached him. Phoebe gave him a hug, then backed away, searching his eyes. “You going to be all right? I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“Not now,” Caleb said, clenching his eyes shut, drawing Phoebe back into a crushing hug, not wanting to let go. “I’ve got to focus on Alexander. Nothing else until he’s safe.”
Sniffling, Phoebe nodded. “You told that agent about Xavier, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Thought I’d give them something to work on. Maybe they’ll dig up a clue from another angle while we try it our way. She’s got her people checking on Montross, but she wants to be in on our session.”
“What!” Phoebe asked at once. “Are you nuts?”
“Well,” Orlando said, “she is cute”. He craned his neck to watch the agent as Phoebe glared at him.
Caleb cleared his throat. “We’re going to need federal assistance with this. Travel arrangements, security, weapons. We’re lucky we drew an agent with an open mind.”
“Yeah,” said Phoebe. “Lucky, or something else.”
“We are talking about the government here,” Orlando said in a suddenly refrained voice. “They screwed you over last time.”
“We won’t make the same mistake again,” Caleb voiced.
“No we won’t.” Phoebe crossed her arms. “I’ll RV her while you guys focus on Alexander.”
“No,” Orlando said. “You’re closer to your nephew, you’ll get a better hit. I’ll spy on the FBI chick.”
Phoebe glowered at him. “Perv.”
“Anyway, I’m surprised that we haven’t gotten a call.”
“Oh crap.” Caleb dug into his jacket pocket. “My phone battery was dying, so I turned it off.”
“I’ll call your voicemail,” Orlando said, grabbing his phone before Phoebe got hers.
In a moment, Orlando handed over the phone and Caleb entered his code.
Caleb held up a hand, signaling to Agent Wagner. “It’s him.”
Renee walked over, and Caleb gave her the phone after he listened to the message. “You may want to have your people run that through their analytics. See if they can pinpoint a location.”
“What did Xavier say?” Phoebe asked.
“He said I’d know where to meet him. But to come alone.”
“Or he kills Alexander.”
“Of course,” said Orlando. “Got to be dramatic.”
“Come where?” Renee asked.
“He said I’d remember, the place where he last told me I’d see him again.”
“When was this?”
“In Alexandria. Twelve years ago. He backed out of a project we were working on. Then said he’d see me again.” Caleb closed his eyes, remembering. “At the mausoleum.”
“Mausoleum?” Renee asked. “In a cemetery somewhere?”
“I’m not sure,” Caleb answered. “But I have a thought.”
“Care to share?”
“After,” he said, pointing to the neighbors’ house. “Now we need to get to work.”
The Hurleys brought coffee for Renee, green tea for Phoebe and Caleb, and located a can of Red Bull for Orlando. “Drink of champions and psychics everywhere,” he proclaimed, grinning at Renee who just frowned and sipped at her coffee.
They were all seated around a ping pong table. The basement was furnished with a circular rug over the concrete floor, a dusty basketball game in the corner next to an equally dusty stair machine and a 20-inch TV.
“Now I’m not so sure about this,” Renee said. She held up a pad of blank white paper and a pencil. “Really, I can just observe and check on my colleagues, see how the search is going for this Xavier Montross.”
“They won’t find him,” Caleb said.
“We’ll have a dossier on the guy in an hour, everything from his favorite TV shows to how often he wet the bed as a kid. We’ve got his picture at all the airports, borders, etc. Anything he does, down to the color of socks he wears, we’ll know.”
“That’ll help,” Orlando said, “if we ever get our laundry mixed up with this nut, but my guess is that if he doesn’t want to be found, then the only chance of finding him is our way.”
“And,” said Phoebe, “we tried to find him for years after he left our group. And sorry, but we had better tools than you, and we couldn’t even get a glimpse. It’s like he was a ghost.”
“Or he had some help,” said Caleb.
“What do you mean?” Renee asked.
“Never mind. It’s just a thought. There may be things, or people, who are able to block what we can do, where we can see. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence about it, but I thought that it was more like an excuse for failure. But maybe there’s something to it.”
“Anyway,” Phoebe cut in, “come on, Agent Wagner. Try it. You might have a knack for it. We’ve had successes with the most skeptical of volunteers.”
Renee sipped her coffee. “I don’t think I’ll have any-”
“That’s okay,” Caleb said, his voice wracked with suffering and pain just below the surface. “It’s fine if nothing happens. We normally work as a team, but our team, well, I’m sure you know all about what happened in Antarctica.”
“I know what was on the report, but as far as exactly what the hell happened down there I have no idea. Forgive me for asking this bluntly, but what are you people caught up in?”
