As he was telling the tale, Michael watched Tommy’s face. He knew that this would hurt Tommy – they had few secrets from each other – but Tommy just listened, implacable, not judging.
Like the savvy lawyer he was, Tommy gave it a few long moments before responding with the options. “You’re saying the papers were forged?” he asked.
“Just the one document,” Michael replied, matching his volume. “The adoption broker in Helsinki, the one whose job it was to approve and clear the time frame. His assistant was paid five thousand dollars to forge his name on the clearance. The man – the official – died two years ago. We always felt that, unless they began to dig deep and ask a lot of questions, it couldn’t possibly come out.”
Tommy folded his slice, took a bite, wiped his lips. “They’re going to start digging in about an hour. You know that, right?”
Michael just nodded. He knew that, if his name was in one of Viktor Harkov’s files, investigators would get around to him.
Tommy finished eating, rolled his trash and put in the can. He carefully inspected his shirt, tie, trousers. No grease. He sipped his soda. “How did Harkov work these things Did he keep separate files?”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “I met him once at his office, then a second time at a restaurant in midtown.”
“Were there official documents you signed?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “The standard papers. Everything filed with the state of New York is perfectly legal.”
Tommy looked across the street, at the growing official presence. He looked back at Michael. “You know if you go up there, you have to sign the log. It will all be on the record.”
“I know.” Michael tried to sort out all the ramifications of his presence at this scene. He couldn’t think straight. All that mattered was keeping his family safe and intact.
Powell stepped out of the crime scene building, caught Tommy’s eye, waved him over.
Tommy slipped on his suit coat, shot his cuffs. He handed Michael the keys to his car.
“Let me see what I can find out.”
Michael watched Tommy cross the street. He looked at his watch. He was due in court in ninety minutes.
Michael stood on the street. The sun was high and warm, the sky clear. Too nice a day for dead bodies. Too nice a day for the world to end.
He recalled the first and only time he had visited Viktor Harkov in his office. He had known what he was doing was wrong, that making a covert payoff to grease the wheels of the adoption process might one day come back to haunt him, but there was a higher purpose, he had thought at the time, a nobility in his larceny.
As he stood there, watching the police do their job, getting ever closer to the truth, he asked himself if it had been worth it. In his mind, he saw his beautiful girls. The answer was yes.
He took out his phone, scrolled down to Abby’s cellphone number. His finger hovered over the touch screen. He had to call her, but couldn’t tell her about this. Not yet. Perhaps this had nothing to do with Viktor’s side- business of adoption. Maybe this was just another robbery homicide, or some family or ethnic dispute gone terribly wrong. Maybe Viktor Harkov had gotten involved in something far more dangerous than simply circumventing adoption laws. Maybe there was nothing for them to worry about.
On the other hand, maybe there was.
EIGHTEEN
He stood about ten feet away, in the hallway leading to the first-floor office. He was half in shadow, but seemed to fill up the entire door jamb.
Abby watched him. She tried to think of how much cash she could get together. The man had said nothing yet about money, but it was coming. What else could this be about? The man who called himself Aleksander, along with his partner, had probably done this before, stalking a suburban family, holding them for ransom. She’d read about it.
How long had they been watching? How much did they want? Why had they been selected? They weren’t rich. Far from it. Hell, all you had to do was check out the cars in the driveways along the street. The Murrays had a Lexus and a BMW. The Rinaldis had a Porsche Cayenne.
Abby did the math. There was less than a thousand dollars in the house. She had very little jewelry. They owned no valuable paintings or sculpture. If you added up all the gadgets – digital camera, camcorder, computers, stereo system – it didn’t add up to much. Was this going to work against them?
The initial shock of seeing a stranger standing in her home had begun to fade, turning instead into something else, the slow-crawling fear one feels when things slide completely beyond one’s control.
Keep it together Abby, she thought. The girls. The girls. The -
– cellphone rang. Abby jumped. The sound of the ringtone – a silly song she and the girls had downloaded online – sounded sardonically comic now, as if they were all in an abandoned amusement park.
The phone was on the counter, halfway across the kitchen. The man who called himself Aleksander picked up the phone, looked at it. He beckoned Abby toward him, showed her the screen.
It was Michael calling.
Abby noticed for the first time that the man was wearing latex gloves. The sight made her heart sink even lower. It added all kinds of possibilities, any number of futures to this scenario. All dark. Perhaps this was not a kidnapping after all. Perhaps this was not about money.
“I want you to speak to him,” he said. “I want you to sound normal. I want you to tell him whatever it is you tell him on a beautiful day such as this. He will soon enough know his role. But not now.” Aleks pointed out the window. The man he called Kolya was pushing the girls on their swings. “Do you understand this?”
“Yes.”
“Please put this on speakerphone.”
Abby took the phone. Despite her trembling hands, she flipped it open, pressed SPEAKER. She did her best to keep the fear from her voice. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What’s up?” Abby asked. “You at the office?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. “I’m going to be stuck here for a while. The voir dire is taking longer than I thought.”
If there was one thing Abby Roman and her husband excelled at in their marriage, it was a nightly recap of their days. Abby was certain that the Colin Harris case – a case Abby knew was close to the bone for Michael – had wrapped its jury selection days earlier. The voir dire was complete, the panel was set, and here was her husband telling her it was not.
“You’re inside your office?” Abby asked.
A pause, then: “Yeah.”
Michael was lying. She heard street sounds in the background, loud street sounds. He was outside.
Why was he lying?
“Something wrong?” Abby asked. She looked at Aleks as she said this, feeling he knew that she was trying to communicate something. He now stood in the shadows of the hallway, listening intently to the conversation. She could not see his eyes. He was impenetrable. “Are you worried about the case?”
“Not really,” Michael replied. “Just a few last-minute details. No big deal.”
“The block sale went pretty well,” Abby said, trying to sound chatty. “We sold the toreador painting. It went for high one-figures.”
The toreador painting was a running joke. Michael, whose taste in oils and acrylics ranged from A Bachelor’s Dog to New Year’s Eve in Dog Ville, bought it at a flea market while he was in college. It had sat in their garage for their entire marriage – Abby refused to hang it in the house – the unsold veteran of five straight block sales, in two different counties.
“Babe?” Abby said. “The painting?”
