Vanish

in that house. Prints that didn’t match any of the victims. Some of them may have been left by male clients. But one set of unidentifieds matched Olena’s.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gabriel. “Boston PD immediately requested an AFIS search on Olena’s prints. They got back absolutely no matches. Yet you’re telling me her prints were found at a crime scene in January? Why didn’t AFIS gives us that information?”

Glasser and Barsanti glanced at each other. An uneasy look that only too clearly answered Gabriel’s question.

“You kept her prints out of AFIS,” said Gabriel. “That was information Boston PD could have used.”

“Other parties could have used it as well,” said Barsanti.

“Who the hell are these others you talk about?” cut in Jane. “I was the one trapped in the hospital with that woman. I was the one with a gun to my head. Did you ever give a damn about the hostages?”

“Of course we did,” said Glasser. “But we wanted everyone out of there alive. Including Olena.”

“Especially Olena,” said Jane. “Since she was your witness.”

Glasser nodded. “She saw what happened in Ashburn. That’s why those two men showed up in her hospital room.”

“Who sent them?”

“We don’t know.”

“You have the fingerprints on the man she shot. Who was he?”

“We don’t know that, either. If he was ex-military, the Pentagon isn’t telling us.”

“You’re with Justice. And you can’t get access to that information?”

Glasser crossed toward Jane and sat down in a chair, looking at her. “Now you understand the hurdles we’re facing. Agent Barsanti and I have had to handle this quietly and discreetly. We’ve stayed under the radar, because they were looking for her, too. We were hoping to find her first. And we came so close. From Baltimore to Connecticut to Boston, Agent Barsanti has been just one step behind her.”

“How were you able to track her?” asked Gabriel.

“For a while it was easy. We just followed the trail left by Joseph Roke’s credit card. His ATM withdrawals.”

Barsanti said, “I kept reaching out to him. Voice mails on his cell phone. I even left a message with an old aunt of his in Pennsylvania. Finally Roke called me back, and I tried to talk him into coming in. But he wouldn’t trust me. Then he shot that policeman in New Haven, and we lost track of them entirely. That’s when I think they split up.”

“How did you know they were traveling together?”

“The night of the Ashburn slayings,” said Glasser, “Joseph Roke bought gas at a nearby service station. He used his credit card, then asked the clerk if the station had a tow truck, because he’d picked up two women on the road who needed help with their car.”

There was a silence. Gabriel and Jane looked at each other.

“Two women?” said Jane.

Glasser nodded. “The station’s security camera caught a view of Roke’s car while it was parked at the pump. Through the windshield, you can see there’s a woman sitting in the front seat. It’s Olena. That’s the night their lives intersected, the night Joseph Roke got involved. The minute he invited those women into his car, into his life, he was a marked man. Five hours after that stop at the service station, his house went up in flames. That’s when he surely realized he’d picked up a whole hell of a lot of trouble.”

“And the second woman? You said he picked up two women on the road.”

“We don’t know anything about her. Only that she was still traveling with them as far as New Haven. That was two months ago.”

“You’re talking about the cruiser video. The shooting of that police officer.”

“On the video, you can see a head pop up from Roke’s backseat. Just the back of the head-we’ve never seen her face. Which leaves us with almost no information on her at all. Just a few strands of red hair left on the seat. For all we know, she’s dead.”

“But if she’s alive,” said Barsanti, “then she’s our last witness. The only one left who saw what happened in Ashburn.”

Jane said, softly: “I can tell you her name.”

Glasser frowned at her. “What?”

“That’s the dream.” Jane looked at Gabriel. “That’s what Olena says to me.”

“She’s been having a nightmare,” said Gabriel. “About the takedown.”

“And what happens in the dream?” Glasser asked, her gaze riveted on Jane.

Jane swallowed. “I hear men pounding on the door, breaking into the room. And she leans over me. To tell me something.”

“Olena does?”

“Yes. She says: ‘Mila knows.’ That’s all she tells me. ‘Mila knows.’ ”

Glasser stared at her. “Mila knows? Present tense?” She looked at Barsanti. “Our witness is still alive.”

TWENTY-NINE

“I’m surprised you’re here, Dr. Isles,” said Peter Lukas. “Since I haven’t been able to reach you on the phone.” He gave her a quick handshake, a greeting that was justifiably cool and businesslike; Maura had not been returning his calls. He led her through the Boston Tribune lobby to the security desk, where the guard handed Maura an orange visitor’s badge.

“You’ll have to return that when you leave, ma’am,” the guard said.

“And you’d better,” added Lukas, “or this man will hunt you down like a dog.”

“Warning noted,” said Maura, clipping the badge to her blouse. “You have better security here than the Pentagon.”

“You have any idea how many people a newspaper pisses off every day?” He pressed the elevator call button and glanced at her unsmiling face. “Uh-oh. I think you must be one of them. Is that why you haven’t called me back?”

“A number of people were unhappy with that column you wrote about me.”

“Unhappy with you or with me?”

“With me.”

“Did I misquote you? Misrepresent you?”

She hesitated. Admitted, “No.”

“Then why are you annoyed with me? Because you clearly are.”

She looked at him. “I spoke too frankly with you. I shouldn’t have.”

“Well, I enjoyed interviewing a woman who speaks frankly,” he said. “It was a nice change.”

“Do you know how many calls I got? About my theory of Christ’s resurrection?”

“Oh. That.”

“From as far away as Florida. People upset by my blasphemy.”

“You only spoke your mind.”