“So Koslawski goes and waives a jury in the end — wouldn’t have been a problem—”
“And Fyodor Zukov had another pariah to stalk,” I said. “I’m going to put that assignment in your lap when we get home. You check with Bishop Deegan. I’ll bet he doesn’t know Zukov and just nodded to him because he spied the clerical collar and assumed he was a friendly spectator.”
“Sure, I can do that — if you shut yourself off for a few minutes. You’ll be no good to either of us if you’re all worn down.”
I rested my head against the hard wooden slats and closed my eyes. Just a fifteen-minute catnap might help refresh me.
I went out so fast and deep that I didn’t even hear my phone vibrating on the tabletop ten minutes later.
“Just a minute, Faith,” Mike said. It was his voice that woke me up. “I’ll put her on.”
He handed me the cell. “Are you all right?” I asked her, startled out of my short slumber.
“Yes. But I’ve just had a call from Jeanine Portland.”
I sat up. “Is she back on Nantucket? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, Alex,” Faith Grant said. It sounded like she was choking up as she tried to talk to me. “Chat called her.”
“When? Was that tonight?”
“No. I wish that were so. It was this morning. Late morning, maybe right after her call to me.”
“Why did she call?” The timing made it all the more likely that Chat had been abducted shortly after she left us with Faith at the seminary.
“Chat told Jeanine she needed to talk to her. You see—” Faith’s voice broke, and she took a few seconds to put herself together. “I didn’t know this. I feel like I failed my sister entirely.”
“You know that’s not true. Stay strong for us. Tell me.”
“After they met at Ursula’s play, in December, it seems Chat and Jeanine struck it off. She said she found it easier to talk to Jeanine than to me. That she was — well, less judgmental than I am.”
“That’s not about you, Faith. It was probably easier to unload some of her troubles on a person who wasn’t aware of the whole backstory. You’ve been Chat’s lifeline. You keep that going all through this night, you hear me? She’ll need you more than ever right now.”
“I so very truly want to believe that. I know I can give her all the love, all the support that she could possibly want.”
“You’re the only one who can,” I said. “Did Chat see Jeanine between Christmas and this week?”
“No. That’s why Jeanine said she thought the call was so strange. She went up to Boston yesterday, from Nantucket. She got the call today, saying Chat needed to see her. Urgently.”
“What about?”
“Chat didn’t say. Just that she needed help, and she couldn’t rely on anyone but Jeanine to give it to her,” Faith said. “She asked Jeanine to meet with her tonight.”
My head was pounding. “Where? Meet her where?”
“On the Cape. She told Jeanine she could get herself to the Cape. She asked her not to take the boat home to Nantucket, but to wait for Chat to arrive. There was a friend, Chat said to her — a man who needed help too.”
“And Jeanine?…” It sounded as though Zukov was shooting for two victims, using Chat to draw Reverend Portland into the trap.
“Agreed to do it, of course. She told me—” Faith had dissolved into tears. I could hear the voice of a woman in the background trying to comfort her.
“Are you there?” I waited a few seconds before asking her.
“I’m all right. Jeanine told me that Chat sounded like she was in pain. I can’t bear to hear that, Alex. About the pain. You’ve got to find her.”
“We’re going to do that. I promise. Is Jeanine with the police?”
“Yes. The officers have her at a hotel room in Hyannis,” Faith said, sounding as though she had found something lighter to say. “She’s not terribly serene about that, Alex. She understands, but she’s not happy about it. We’re a stubborn lot.”
“That’s how you came to be ordained. I’m counting on stubborn to help us here. I’ll call her now, Faith. Get some rest, if you can.”
“The Reverend Portland?” Mike asked when I hung up.
“Yeah. I’ll call her to get more details. I say you ask the captain for a cruiser and we head to Hyannis right now. Scratch what I said about the perp heading south.”
“I’m on it, even though I gotta think the fishing is better in Florida this time of year.”
“You’re right, Mike.” I thought of the photograph of the four women, the third victim already in the killer’s weakened hands, and the fourth one being drawn into his web. “But tonight there’s live bait in Hyannis.”
FORTY-SEVEN
“YOU don’t need to waste time programming the GPS,” I said. “I know this part of the world like the back of my hand.”
It was close to midnight on Friday when we pulled out of the trooper headquarters.
“The back of your hand has gotten me lost more times than I can count.”
“In Brooklyn, maybe. But not on Cape Cod.”
“How long you figure?”
“No more than an hour and forty-five minutes at this time of night.”
After my brief conversation with Jeanine Portland, she had agreed to let the Hyannis police take her in to their station. She knew she would get no sleep in any event, and we would oversee a plan once we reached the famous resort town.
“Did the rev give you any more information about Chat?”
“Nothing new. She sounded drugged, terrifically frightened, and complaining that she was cold — and now, hurt. And in the company of a man who needed help.”
“That’s our best hope for believing he’ll keep Chat alive throughout this road trip,” Mike said. “What was she talking to Portland about that she wouldn’t confide in her own sister?”
“More of the same. She’s just very needy, is the way Portland described it. I don’t know if that’s the truth or she simply isn’t ready to offend Faith Grant yet with some deeper unburdening,” I said. “Did you bring Peterson up to speed?”
“I did. And he tells me that Yuri Zukov’s phone shows no calls from his brother since yesterday. Same cell zone as Chat.”
“Secaucus?”
“Yeah. So he’s backed off communicating, even with his family, for the time being.”
We had traded our hot caffeine for cold. I flipped open the tops of two soda cans and placed them in the cup holders between us.
“You’re going to take I-95,” I said. “Through Fall River and New Bedford. Then the Sagamore Bridge and on out to the Cape.”
“Keep talking, kid.”
“Sleepy? Want me to drive?”
“I just want you to concentrate on the territory, the geography. You were totally thinking outside the box when you hit on the idea of the circus train this afternoon. Now find me a perp.”
We were in a marked black-and-white car, so the fact that Mike was doing eighty on the highway wouldn’t get us stopped. We batted facts and theories back and forth, none of them particularly inspired.
“Is it twelve yet?” Mike asked.
“Quarter after.”
