The Piper (CASMIRC Book 2) Read online

  It’s for the case, he reminded himself. If he can help, we could potentially save lives. He would put his personal vendetta—one he had every right to bear—aside.

  Jack leaned forward, talking a little more quietly and pointedly. “This morning an infant was abducted in Massachusetts, just south of Boston.”

  Demonstrating that his interest had been piqued, Randall also leaned forward, his face less than a foot from Jack’s—two inches of which were glass. His smile had faded. Amazingly, he said nothing.

  “It’s the second such abduction in the last month. Same MO.”

  Randall leaned back in his chair, his face remaining expressionless. “You’ve got two babies go missing in Southie?”

  “Not Southie, technically. But near there. You know the area?”

  “Not outside of Matt Damon movies, no.” Unlike previous interactions, Randall didn’t even crack a smile when using a pop culture reference.

  Jack knew he had his full attention. So far he didn’t regret disclosing this case to Randall.

  “What happened to the first baby?” Randall asked.

  “The first infant has not been found. She’s still missing.”

  “Wicked,” Randall replied, still stone-faced. “Truly the deely depahted, eh?”

  With that, Jack’s regret set in, ushered along by Randall’s butchering of a Boston accent.

  3

  Daylight waned. Special Agent Jeff Pine stood with a wide base, his arms folded across his chest, studying the concrete in front of him. Sara Gardner’s car hadn’t been touched, save the gentle bristles of fingerprint brushes and the hose of the forensic team’s vacuum. It sat in front of him, still parked where it had been all day, the passenger door still ajar. He couldn’t look at it without imagining Ms. Gardner lying stiff on the concrete, terrified, having heard some unknown evildoer run off with her infant child.

  Jeff always examined a crime scene in at least two different kinds of lighting, and preferably three or four. He learned the value of this technique long before his time with The Bureau. Keeping the kitchen clean had been one of his chores as a child. He took his chores seriously, priding himself on their meticulous, successful completion. Around the age of seven he struggled to understand how his father could still find smear marks on the countertops, even immediately after Jeff had just finished wiping them down. Finally, after weeks of disappointedly rescrubbing the Formica—much to his father’s entertainment—his father showed him his trick: he turned the kitchen light off and the dining room light on. The oblique angle of the light source showed smudges on the countertop not easily visible using the overhead light. Jeff employed this method in his professional work today, nearly forty years later. He often saw something he hadn’t seen before, and these discoveries aided in the resolution of a case on several occasions.

  However, standing here now, the evening air bearing that first crispness of early Fall, he saw nothing new. He had spent about ninety minutes here late this morning in the full sunlight as the forensics team wound down their sweep. Things looked the same now, just dimmer. No new clues. Nothing popped out. He crouched down, sitting his butt on his heels, his arms still folded in front of him. He had to tense his abdominal and lower back muscles to maintain this pose; he possessed exceptional strength in his core thanks to his thirty minutes of yoga every night.

  Pulling in from the far end of the parking lot, on the other side of the Accord, a car parked several spaces away. A tall young man, likely a student at one of the many local colleges, got out. Jeff recognized him as someone the local PD had interviewed earlier in the day. He looked at Jeff, who met his eyes and offered a pleasant smile. The young man averted his gaze, as if embarrassed that he snooped in on a crime scene. He hurried down the short sidewalk and disappeared into the apartment entryway.

  Jeff turned his head over his shoulder, looking in the direction from which the perpetrator approached and toward which he disappeared, according to Sara Gardner’s account. Between the angles in the apartment building’s construction and the couple dozen trees and shrubs in that direction, the perp had ample hiding spaces while he awaited Ms. Gardner this morning. His escape likely involved a car parked in the adjoining parking lot on the south side of the building.

  Another car pulled up and parked right behind Jeff.

  “Thought I’d find you here,” the driver said through her open window.

  Jeff put his elbows on his knees and pivoted, still on his haunches. Rita Ferroni got out of her unmarked cruiser and walked up beside him.

  “You always come back to the scene,” she said. “Ever find anything?”

  “Usually,” Jeff replied. “Sometimes.”

  Rita sat on the curb beside Jeff. The wrinkles on her face might suggest that retirement stood right around the corner for her, yet she had just celebrated her 53rd birthday. Her countless hours on the golf course, her semi-annual vacations in Florida, and her disdain for sunscreen combined for a dermatologist’s nightmare. The fact that she smoked two packs a day before quitting nine months ago didn’t help her skin either.

  “Anything new from Ms. Gardner?” Jeff asked.

  Rita shook her head. “She’s got nothin’. Poor kid can barely fuckin’ see straight. She doesn’t remember shit.”

  Jeff nodded. He had worked with Rita on a handful of cases in the past. She had already been working eleven years in Boston Police Department’s Family Justice Division when he had arrived at the FBI Boston Field Office ten years ago. He found her foul language about as appealing as splinters under his fingernails, but he respected her work ethic. And her presence had become so much more tolerable since she quit chain-smoking.

  “I called CASMIRC this afternoon,” Jeff reported. “They’re going to send a team up either tomorrow or Friday.”

  “Good,” Rita uttered. “Wish it didn’t come to that. Wish we could’ve found this fucker after the first one.”

  “Agreed.” Jeff moved over and sat on the curb beside Rita. “I think we’re going to get Jackson Byrne.”

  “No shit? Haven’t worked with him before. You?”

  Jeff shook his head. “Heard great things, though. Obviously.”

  “Me too. Straight chicks love him.”

  Jeff smiled. “Did you see that Goodnight Hour thing last spring?”

  “Yeah. Not live, but, it was on TV so much I felt like I saw the whole goddamn thing. Should be good to have him. Probably bring more media with him, which might help us.”

  “Maybe. I was thinking that we need to get something out there to warn mothers about this. ‘One is coincidence, two is a trend,’ right?”

  “And three’s an orgy.”

  Classic Rita. Jeff had no response to that.

  4

  Jack sat on the thinly padded sofa, watching Jonah play with a couple of action figures on the magazine table in front of them. He looked at his watch: a couple minutes after 6:00. While Jonah had finished early, Vicki’s session was running a little late. Jack contemplated calling his mother to let her know that they might run a little late for dinner.

  Since Vicki and Jonah’s kidnapping, they had been coming to Lake Ridge Mental Health Associates frequently. Luckily this group of psychologists, social workers, and psychiatrists had experts in post-traumatic stress and anxiety for both adults and children. Jonah’s therapist, a warm, lovely middle-aged psychologist named Maria Petrangelo, had reduced Jonah’s sessions to just once weekly since early August. She felt quite optimistic about his progress and had intimated that he might be able to go to semi-monthly sometime soon.

  Unfortunately, about two months ago, Vicki’s therapist had suggested the opposite; her sessions had escalated from twice per week to every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That was around the same time as her first dosage increase on her anti-depressant, Celexa. Then, just two weeks ago, she had added an anti-anxiety medication called Xanax to take on an as-needed basis for some of the harder times. Her therapist, a notably less warm, less lovely, and
less aged psychiatrist named Francesca Inkler, had encouraged Vicki to get out of the house on a regular basis, at least three times per week. She could use the Xanax before going out, to reduce anxiety preemptively. Dr. Inkler had said that this could allow her to be in public without the physiologic response to anxiety—things like an increased heart rate, faster breathing, and increased sweating. “I want your body to prove to your mind that you can do this without the need to feel stressed,” she had told Vicki.

  Vicki had tried the Xanax once before today. She got as far as sitting in the front seat of her car, the door still wide open. She never started the engine.

  Jack had zoned out, watching Batman and Robin climb up a stack of magazines on the table in front of him, when Vicki came out of Dr. Inkler’s office into the waiting room. He snapped out of his mini-trance and glanced up at her, offering a smile. “Hey, babe.”

  Vicki forced a smile back.

  Jonah looked up from his position, kneeling on the floor. “Hi, Mom.”

  Vicki’s smile widened spontaneously, genuinely. “Hi, sweet boy.”

  Dr. Inkler followed Vicki from inside the office. Jack stood up to greet her. “Hi, Doc.”

  “Hello, Mr. Byrne.” While Jack couldn’t exactly describe her as monotone, he hoped she showed more compassion in her speech when dealing with her clients behind closed doors.

  “Victoria is going to leave the house this week. Isn’t that right, Vicki?”

  Vicki looked at Jack and nodded. “I’m really, really going to try. I need to.”

  “OK,” Jack agreed. “Good.”

  “And we’re giving your mother two weeks’ notice, right?” Dr. Inkler’s tenor changed a little, became lighter, the first sign Jack had seen of empathy from her. It reassured him.

  Vicki took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “Right.”

  “We can be flexible, of course, but we have to set goals,” Dr. Inkler added. “And then achieve them.” She smiled, hoping to imbue confidence.

  Jack’s mother-in-law Connie had come to live with them shortly after the kidnapping. Save a weekend here or there when she returned home to Maryland to take a break and see Vicki’s father, Connie had been with them ever since. Jack had found her to be an incredibly helpful resource; she neither enabled Vicki’s fears nor pushed her too hard to overcome them. Her presence had allowed him to go back to work after taking four weeks of family leave.

  Jack nodded in agreement with Dr. Inkler. “OK. We can do this, right?”

  Vicki smiled wanly.

  Jack took it as a good sign and smiled back. “Yeah,” he said, responding to his own question. He looked down at Jonah. “Pack up your stuff, bud. We don’t want to be late for Grandma’s house.”

  Through their difficulties over the last several months, they maintained their tradition of meeting Jack’s mother Florence every Wednesday for dinner. Vicki’s agoraphobia had prevented them from going out to a restaurant, so they switched the venue to alternating between their houses. Connie would join them for the weeks when dinner occurred at their house, but she took a much-deserved night off when the Byrnes traveled to Florence’s condo.

  “How did it go?” Jack asked once they were in the car.

  Vicki shrugged. “Fine.”

  Her terseness did not surprise Jack; recently extracting conversation from her felt akin to a panhandler soliciting donations from a miserly old man. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “No,” she replied. After several seconds, she added, “Thank you, though.”

  “Of course, yeah. Just, you know, let me know.” Jack paused, feeling uncomfortable about broaching the next subject. He decided to just barrel ahead. “We got a new case today, called in from Boston.” He could see Vicki nod in assent out of his peripheral vision, her eyes still on the road ahead of them. “Dylan has asked me to go on site, tomorrow or Friday.”

  Vicki nodded again. “OK.”

  “If you think you need me to stay, just tell me. I’ll check with your mother too.”

  “No. No. You go. We’ll be fine.” She turned her head to look at him. She smiled, this time with a glimmer of love in her eyes. “Thank you, Jack. We’ll be fine.”

  DAY TWO:

  THURSDAY

  5

  Boom.

  Heath Reilly woke suddenly from a deep sleep. He recognized the sound, calmly rubbed his eyes, and then sat up on his elbows. He looked at the clock on his bedside table: 7:23.

  The knob in his bathroom shower had a tendency to stick in the “on” position. In order to turn it off, it sometimes required a forceful shove with the heel of one’s hand, resulting in a loud thud. It had never presented much of an issue for him, as no one ever slept in this bed while someone else took a shower, at least not since he had moved into this apartment. Now that Corinne stayed over a couple of nights a week, though, he realized what a nuisance it could be. Heath made a mental note to figure out how to fix it. It was now a problem, and he needed to solve it.

  Reilly had decided he and Corinne O’Loughlin had become an official couple about nine weeks ago. They had hung out a few times in May and began fooling around in June. The first time they had sex was late one Saturday night after Corinne invited herself over to his place via text message around 1:00 in the morning. In college he would have called this a “bootie call.” (He guessed he still called it that, actually. Maybe a “bootie text.”) But that morning seemed awkward, and she left in a bit of a hurry. They didn’t see each other again for a few weeks (actually 19 agonizing days), but they kept in touch via text. They decided to meet for drinks one Friday night in the middle of July and ended up spending the rest of the weekend together. From then Reilly had started the clock on this relationship.

  Thus far it was great. They shared a number of similar interests, especially jogging. They literally pounded the pavement together almost daily. He continued to find her fascinating; he loved hearing her perspective on the world, especially regarding criminal activity and her role as an investigative reporter. She also seemed genuinely interested in him. He initially feared she sought his company only to get inside information on CASMIRC, but that insecurity disappeared when he still found her at his side in bed on Sunday morning of that weekend in July. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the sex was amazing. Not kinky or weird—though for some reason he had worried she might be into that stuff. They just connected intensely and immediately (discounting that first time in June); they fit well together, literally.

  Corinne came out of the bathroom, a towel around her hair, wearing just a bra and underwear. (Reilly had learned to call that particular garment “underwear” and not “panties.” For some reason Corinne had a viscerally repugnant reaction to the word “panties.”) She gingerly took a few steps into the dark bedroom, squinting to let her eyes adjust from the lights of the bathroom. “You’re awake. Sorry, was it the shower?”

  “No,” Reilly lied. “I need to get up.” He sat up on his elbows and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

  Corinne walked to the corner of the bedroom, beside the dresser, where she had placed her overnight bag the night before. She had begun keeping a few essentials at Reilly’s apartment—toothbrush, deodorant, a spare razor—but she hadn’t yet left any clothes there from one day to the next. Not that it would have bothered Reilly.

  “Do you have a meeting this morning?” She pulled a three-quarter-sleeve lightweight T-shirt out of her bag and pulled it on over her head.

  “Not until about 11:00, but I need to prepare for it.”

  “About that new case?”

  He nodded. Last night over dinner, Reilly had told Corinne about the infant kidnapping cases in Massachusetts.

  Corinne pulled a pair of khaki Capri pants out of her bag and sat down on the bed beside Reilly. She stuck her left foot into the corresponding leg of the pants, then stopped and dropped the pants to the ground. She looked over her shoulder at Reilly and studied his countenance for a moment. “I’d like to think I know
you pretty well by now.”

  Reilly looked up to meet her eyes. Statements like that got him pretty excited about the prospect of being with Corinne for a long time.

  “You don’t seem very excited about this case. You usually get pretty jazzed up about new cases. Not this one.”

  He dropped his eyes from hers. After a pause, he shook his head. “No. No, I’m getting geared up for it.”

  She squinted at him again, this time to discern some latent subtlety. “Don’t lie to me. Please.” She turned her hips on the bed to face him more fully, crossing her legs on top of one another in front of her. “If you don’t want to talk about something, that’s cool, we don’t need to talk about it. But don’t lie.”

  This wasn’t the first time her candor surprised him, and it wouldn’t be the last. He usually found it refreshing—but not always. He swung his legs from under the covers and over the opposite side of the bed from Corinne, his back to her now.

  She had a point: he shouldn’t lie to her. She was right about his lack of enthusiasm for this case. He just didn’t know how much he wanted to open up to her. He had succeeded in avoiding this topic through all of his adult life, even in his work. In these several seconds of palpable silence, he realized that, while he did not feel capable of discussing his past with anyone before, he could tell Corinne. The unpredictability of her reaction, though, scared him. Would she leave? Would she stop wanting to be with him?

  She’ll eventually find out, a voice declared from deep inside his mind.

  He decided it was worth taking a shot. She was worth the risk.

  He got up, still in just his boxer shorts, and walked to her side of the bed. He sat down beside her but did not look up at her. “Do you remember that first night we hung out in Front Royal at that crappy sports bar? You asked me why I joined CASMIRC. You remember that?”