“They’re investigating David’s disappearance,” I said. “And they know about Mr. Patel too.”
“Know what? What is there to know?”
“Come on.” I said. “He was a patient here. His son told me so.”
“So what? We have hundreds of thousands of patients here.”
“How many go missing?”
“You really need to leave now.”
“No. You really need to tell us what you know about David.”
“Nothing! Okay? I don’t know anything about him. He just left one day.”
“We’re pretty sure he was abducted.”
Her face went as grey as the cabinets behind her. “What do you mean? Who would abduct David Fine?”
“Why don’t you tell me? That night, he told his roommate he was stopping at a lab on his way home. Around six. You might have been the last person he spoke to. Was he here?”
“You have no basis for this-this interrogation.”
“You think this is an interrogation? Wait until the cops bring you in.”
Her complexion, like the song, was a whiter shade of pale. “I don’t know what happened to him! I–I wish I did. But I swear, he never said a word to me, not a word, not about leaving or anything.”
“But he was here.”
“Just to look at sample results. Morbidity and mortality statistics.”
“Why all the phone calls between you two?” Jenn asked.
“What calls?”
“They’re recorded in his phone, Carol-Ann.”
Her face grew tighter, as if strings were being pulled inside. “All right,” she said. “He did ask me out. I liked him and we talked a few times on the phone, okay?”
“Why didn’t you tell us that before?”
“Because it’s none of your business. But I can see that you’re not going to leave me alone until I tell you the truth, so I’m telling it. We were making plans to go out on a date and that’s all there is to it.”
“What did you decide?” I asked.
“About what?”
“The date.”
She hesitated before coming up with, “Dinner and a movie.”
“Dinner where?”
“Near David’s apartment.”
“Which restaurant, Carol-Ann?”
“Sichuan Garden, okay? Right on the corner.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks for clearing that up.” I turned to Jenn. “I think we have everything we need, don’t you?”
Being the devil she is, she set off the flash again, right in Carol-Ann Meacham’s lying face.
“Now we do,” Jenn said.
CHAPTER 11
“Sichuan Garden my lobster-loving ass,” I said as we walked back to the car. “What was he going to order there? The shrimp, the pork or both?”
“You’d order both,” Jenn said.
“I’m not Orthodox. But David is the real thing. You saw his room. He eats out of his closet so he can keep kosher.”
We retrieved our car from a parking lot and headed back toward the hotel. We still had paperwork of David’s to go through, and more calls to make, moves to plan.
Jenn turned on the camera and scrolled through the photos she had taken of Carol-Ann Meacham. “Too bad lies don’t show up on camera,” she said. “Look at that face. Totally defensive. Her body language too.”
“Like he would have asked her out. Yech.”
“Which brings us back to the phone calls. Why else were they calling each other at home?”
“Let her stew a bit. Maybe she’ll be more inclined to tell the truth next time we ask.”
Jenn leaned forward to peer out at the next street sign and said, “Shit. I think you should have made that right on Newbury.”
“The GPS would have told you that if you’d let me use it.”
“Just make the next left and double back on Commonwealth.”
I followed her instructions, then turned left on Newbury to get to the laneway behind the hotel, where the parking entrance was. A grey van behind us made all the same moves. Two men in the front seats. Both white. The driver had blond hair. The licence plate was covered over with mud.
“Ready for our next interview?” I asked.
“With whom?”
“The clowns who are following us.”
A white grocery truck sprayed with dozens of tags had its back doors open at a loading dock ahead on our right. That left room for one car only to pass. I stopped with my nose parallel to his, blocking the van behind us, and told Jenn what I was going to do. She unfolded our map and got out, moving toward the parked truck as though looking for someone to ask about directions. As soon as she was clear I put the gearshift in reverse and hit the gas. Slammed hard into the van behind us, rocking it backwards. Then I grabbed the GPS off the dashboard and rolled out of the car.
The driver had been stunned for a moment by the impact, but now he was getting out of the car and reaching for a chrome gun butt in his waistband. I threw the GPS at his head. It didn’t hit him but he had to duck and that gave me the time I needed to rush him and drive my left fist into the bridge of his nose. His head snapped back, blood streaming from his nostrils. His eyes looked half closed but his hand was still on his gun. I pulled my right wrist in close to my chest and drove my elbow forward into his cheek. It opened a nasty gash, as elbow strikes should, and knocked him flat on his back, out cold.
I looked over to check on Jenn. As soon as the passenger opened his door and swung a leg out, she threw her shoulder against it. He yelped in pain as the door slammed against his shin. When he tried to push it open, she braced her feet against the curb and kept the pressure on until he howled.
I thumbed the magazine out of the driver’s gun and put it in my coat pocket. I ejected the shell and put it there too. The empty gun went under the driver’s seat. Then I reached in and turned the engine off, grabbed the keys and scrambled around the back to Jenn’s side.
Her guy had his hands on the edges of the door, trying to keep Jenn from closing it on his leg. I slammed the heel of my hand onto his fingers and he let go with a yell. I opened the door and grabbed him by the lapels with one hand, and patted him down with my other. No gun. His wallet was in an inside pocket of his leather jacket: Kevin Walsh, a Boston address, somehow made it to twenty-six dumb years of age.
“Your partner’s out, Kevin, so you’re going to have to do all the talking.”
“About what? We were just taking a shortcut here and you attacked us, man, you’re crazy.”
“You were following us. And you and your friend tried to grab a man named David Fine two weeks ago. On Summit Avenue with this van. You hit a cyclist and he got away.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Where is David Fine?”
“How should I know!”
I added my weight to Jenn’s on the car door and he cried, “
“About what?”
“We tried to grab him. Please.”
“Then what?”
