45
Jimmy Weeks was thinking about water. When he wasn’t thinking about it, he was dreaming about it. The only thing he cared about right now was something cold to drink. Yes, it was crazy — bat-shit crazy, given his circumstances — but, for whatever reason, his mind had fixed on it, despite the terror of being locked away in the dark.
Every once in a while he’d hear the big, steel door outside his cage swing open. A moment of darkness would follow and then he’d hear the click of a light switch and the bare bulb would expose the small room, with its concrete walls and floor. Erected on either side of him were two more cages, both empty.
The woman who had pretended to be an FBI agent smiled every time she came to bring him food. The first time she visited, she gave him a plastic Wal-Mart bag holding someone else’s clothing: a pair of tight-fitting black sweatpants, wool socks and a big crimson sweatshirt that had the Harvard emblem printed on the front and a tear along the collar.
The food was either hard dinner rolls or Wonder Bread smeared with peanut butter, a bottle of Gatorade or water. He had tried to speak to her, asking her questions, but she simply ignored him. She gave him his food, left and shut the door. There had been no showers, and he hadn’t brushed his teeth.
She hadn’t hurt him or threatened him in any way — which made sense, because this was nothing more than a cut-and-dry kidnapping. Jimmy had seen enough movies and TV shows to know the procedure: the woman would keep him locked up in here until the time came to bring him to the drop-off point, where he would be traded for some gym bag stuffed full of cash. Do what he was told and everything would be fine.
That inner voice kept disagreeing with him, and it spoke up again now: You’re wrong, Jimmy.
No, he replied. No, I’m not.
Let’s review some key facts, then. Let’s start with -
No, I don’t want to -
Fact number one: every time she comes in here, she’s not wearing a mask. Why would she let you see her face? If she lets you go, she knows the police are going to question you. She knows you’ve seen her all up close and personal. You can describe her from head to toe. You think she doesn’t know that?
Shut up, please, just shut -
And here’s fact number two: you’re not alone. You know what I’m talking about.
Jimmy forced himself not to think about it, but his mind had this really shitty way of making him see things that he didn’t want to see. Every time the heavy door opened, he’d heard someone moaning, the sound near and yet far away at the same time — from a room close by, he thought.
Not just one voice, Jimmy. Several. You’re not the only person here.
He hugged his knees to his chest, swallowing.
I know that scares the living shit out of you, but you know as well as I do this isn’t a kidnapping. A kidnapper wouldn’t lock you naked inside a goddamn dog crate — and then there’s the matter of that wound on your back. I don’t know what that’s about, and I’m not going to bullshit you and say I have the first clue as to what’s going on here, but there’s one thing I do know, and you need to hear it. And I’m going to keep repeating it until it sinks into your head.
He jumped at the sound of the deadbolt sliding back.
You’re going to have to find a way to kill this woman.
A key was moving inside the lock.
You need to escape from this place, Jimmy. If you don’t, you’re going to die a horrible death down here.
46
Fletcher reached Midtown Manhattan a few minutes shy of 7 a.m., dry-eyed and weary. A cold and milky predawn light had broken across the streets and buildings of Fifth Avenue, the setting of Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Age of Innocence. The horse-drawn carriages that had once dominated this area over a century ago had been replaced by hustling delivery vans, taxis and limousines. Joggers, dog-walkers, and early risers off to work paced the streets, while doormen in garish uniforms poised like sentries guarded gold-plated gateways leading to luxury kingdoms owned by the new century’s robber barons.
Karim lived and conducted his day-to-day business operations from inside a historic five-floor neo-Italian Renaissance mansion commissioned in 1922 by a wealthy German merchant and designed by one of the city’s most prominent architects at the time, C. P. H. Gilbert. Karim did not employ a doorman, driver, maid or chef. With the exception of Boyd Paulson — and now, the mercurial Emma White — Fletcher did not know the names of the employees who worked out of the man’s home. Every time Fletcher visited, Karim sent his people to the company’s main office in Downtown Manhattan.
Snaking his way towards his destination, Fletcher saw a businessman step over a vagrant passed out in the middle of the pavement. A patrolman directing street traffic turned his back on a young woman repeatedly slapping her child. Seeing the common ugliness on display beyond the Jaguar’s tinted glass made him long for a hot shower, followed by an even longer, uninterrupted sleep.
He turned left and drove up the short ramp leading to Karim’s private garage. The metal gate was closed. A pair of security cameras watched him.
The gate rose a moment later and Fletcher entered an underground garage. Four high-end luxury vehicles were parked to the far left. Fletcher drove straight on and parked in a space near a set of concrete steps leading up to an elevator. Security cameras, each positioned in a corner, were fixed on the entire area. He knew they had been turned off, as Karim did not want any recorded video footage of a wanted fugitive entering his home.
Fletcher traded his leather gloves for latex. He insisted on wearing them when visiting the man’s home. Netbook in hand, he removed the evidence bag from the trunk, stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor. The doors closed and the ancient piece of machinery, one of the few items Karim had not replaced or updated, waited as if deciding whether or not it wanted to move. Finally, it rose, slowly and unsteadily, the gears creaking.
The elevator doors opened to a long hall of cream-coloured walls and a hardwood floor covered by a Turkish rug. Fletcher walked across it, passing by a side table holding stacks of mail and a bouquet of orchids arranged in a vase, and stepped into an anteroom designed to resemble an old English library. The tall space held several leather armchairs and sofas, a pair of antique secretarial desks and folio stands. The bookcases, made of a deep mahogany, stretched from floor to ceiling, the shelves packed with rare first editions.
The elegant room usually smelled of old wood and aged paper. This morning, the pleasant aromas had been spoiled by Karim’s cigarette smoke. It drifted in through the cracked-open door to the man’s office, a Spartan, oval- shaped room of bare white walls and windows offering a sweeping view of Central Park. Karim, dressed in another one of his threadbare flannel shirts, sat behind a bank of flat-screen monitors displayed on a multilevel glass desk.
‘Good morning,’ he said in a dry, tired voice. ‘Would you like coffee? There’s an urn in the waiting room, along with some pastries and fruit.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Do you want to rest for a bit or do you want to get right to it?’
‘Right to it.’ Fletcher placed the evidence bag on the desk and said, ‘The drinking glass from the closet.’
‘I’ll have my lab process it for fingerprints this morning, see if we can get a name to match this woman’s face. Speaking of which, that wildcat cartridge you found? No fingerprints. Any other presents for me?’
‘I also downloaded data from Corrigan’s phone, but I haven’t had time to examine it.’
Fletcher draped his coat over the back of the chair set up in front of the desk and settled into his seat.
‘Let’s start with my Baltimore contact,’ Karim said. ‘I told him I came across information from a credible source that the building you found might contain missing children, and he agreed to take a look.
‘The building was empty. No sign of the Lincoln or any other vehicles. There was, however, an underground garage. He found hoses and told me the floors and walls were damp. He also said the garage reeked of bleach. No blood — at least none that was visible. He can’t call in forensics until he gets more “concrete” information from
