I looked at my uncle. “Petra usually calls Rachel at least once a day. Hasn’t she been in touch at all?”
My uncle made a rough, meaningless gesture. “We kept calling and getting her voice mail. Why she can’t answer-”
“Her battery seems to be dead,” Dornick said.
I raised my eyebrows. “You’ve been using your GPS monitors to track her, then. Where did you last pick up a trace?”
Dornick pressed his lips together. He hadn’t meant to tell me he was tracking Petra, but he didn’t compound the blunder by trying to deny it. “We didn’t get on it until early this morning, so we don’t know where she went after she ran out your back door.”
“Now that you have Hatfield’s acquiescence in letting the private sector handle the search, what are your plans?”
Dornick smiled thinly. “The first thing we’ll do, of course, is to sweat Merton.”
I was astonished. “You really think the Anacondas are involved in this, Georgie?”
He flushed at the nickname. “Don’t be naïve, Vicki… Vic. You know that even doing life at Stateville, Merton runs a big chunk of the South and West sides of this city. Drugs, whores, ID theft. We can squeeze him where it hurts.”
“And that would be where?” I asked politely. “He can’t do more time than he’s already doing.”
“He’s proud of his daughter. We can put pressure on her.”
“I didn’t think they were close,” I objected.
“That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be upset as hell if her law firm decided she was a security risk,” Dornick said.
“And if it turns out Merton had nothing to do with Petra’s disappearance, will you restore Dayo Merton’s reputation and make sure she gets another job as good as the one she has now?” I asked, adding to my uncle, “Is that how you’d want Petra treated?”
“If he’s behind her disappearance, he’s already treating her-”
“Okay. So you’ll start by sitting on the Hammer. And, at the same time, just in case…”
“We’ll pull in some of the Anacondas who hold a grudge against… well, let’s say, against your dad. People like this Steve Sawyer you’ve been looking for.”
“You know where he is?”
A little smile played around Dornick’s mouth, condescension mostly. “I feel pretty confident I can track him down.”
“And we’ll talk to you, Vic,” Strangwell said. “We need to know what Petra was doing for you.”
Peter was looking at Harvey Krumas with an odd, almost pleading expression. It seemed to me that the two men were holding their breath, waiting for my answer.
“Nothing, really.” I spoke slowly, studying their faces, trying to guess what they were hoping to hear. “When I was injured in the fire that killed Sister Frances, my eyes were damaged. They told me not to look at a computer for a few days, and Petra offered to look up an address in one of my databases. Then she told me Les here had sat on her and that she couldn’t do the search.”
“Are you telling the truth?” Harvey Krumas demanded.
“That’s a useless question, Mr. Krumas. If I say yes, would you believe me? And why on earth would I say no? Besides, why do you care? It’s data that’s readily available to the public at large. What difference does it make if Petra saw it or not?”
Before any of the men could speak, we heard a muffled shout outside the door, a scrabbling sound as the lock was pushed back. The door opened, and the candidate himself walked in.
35
HARVEY KRUMAS GAPED AT HIS SON. DORNICK GOT TO HIS feet, but, for once, he seemed at a loss, looking from Peter to Harvey and then to Les Strangwell, who picked up the cue and spoke first.
“Brian, you have a full schedule with donors in L.A. today. Why did you cancel that? We’re going to have to do some serious damage control out there now.”
“Chrissake, Les, the damage control isn’t about me and some B-movie starlets but about finding Petra Warshawski. I need to be here.” Brian’s tie was unknotted, and his dark hair hadn’t seen a comb for some time.
“We have the situation under control,” Les said. “George is putting his best people into finding Petra.”
“How about just once, Les, Dad, George-and whoever you two are”-Brian looked at my uncle and me without recognition-“just once, we pretend this is my campaign, my life, my staffers, that we aren’t all pawns in your big power game. I want to know what the cops have said about Petra and what we know about her disappearance. And why is George here, at damage-control central, instead of meeting with his best people to get them moving?”
“We want to minimize media attention on Petra’s disappearance,” Strangwell said. “You coming back here like this sends a message that we think it’s more serious than it is.”
Brian’s face turned white. “Are you saying it isn’t serious when a young woman on my staff vanishes into thin air? The Web is saying the FBI suspects kidnapping. And you’re nuts if you don’t think the media isn’t already on it like flies on a dead cow. When I got to LAX this morning, I had a dozen mikes under my nose wanting to know where I was when the kid disappeared and what did I think about it, and on and on and on. Tell me what’s happened. Not the sound bite you think I should chew on but what the cops and the FBI have said and done.”
“Of course,” Dornick said. “I’ll tell Derek Hatfield he should give Brian a full briefing on what the Bureau knows. And I’ll go to my office and get my team organized. Warshawski, you want to come with me?”
I started to get up, surprised at the invitation, then realized Dornick was talking to my uncle. As soon as Brian heard the Warshawski name, he realized who my uncle was and crossed the room to his side.
“I’m sorry, Pete. With all this crisis, I didn’t recognize you. I’m sorry as hell about Petra. I can’t believe her work with the campaign had anything to do with her disappearance. But George will find her, I’m sure, whatever she was doing. Is Rachel here? Do you need anything? A place to stay? Anything at all?”
“That’s right,” Harvey Krumas put in. “Come on out to the house, Pete. Jolenta will be glad to have you to look after. We all feel helpless, and she needs to be doing something.”
“Helpless? Not you, Harve.” My uncle gave a bitter smile. “Besides, I want to be where I can get to the FBI or-or anyone-fast. I’m fine at the Drake.”
“The Roscoe Street apartment, then,” Brian urged. “I can go out to Barrington Hills with Dad. Why should you run up a hotel bill?”
“No, you need to stay in the city, where you’re accessible,” Strangwell told Brian. “Now that you’re back here, we can schedule some events and some press. This is a good opportunity to build support with women, showing how sensitive you are to their needs… violence against women, that kind of thing. Art and Melanie are standing by with some ideas on how to craft-”
“Les, you are a fucking machine! I don’t want you to craft a statement on how to talk about a missing kid. I want a rundown on what we’re doing to find her. And Pete, I want to make sure you and Rachel are getting all the support you need. You’re sure you don’t want the apartment?”
“Thanks, Brian, let’s leave it lie. Vic, you can ride up to the Drake with me.”
That was an announcement, a command, that the meeting was over. Harvey Krumas and George Dornick lingered to talk to Strangwell, but Brian left the office with Peter and me.
“You’re Petra’s cousin? Aren’t you the person I talked to last night? Am I right that she was in your office yesterday and that’s the last place she was seen?”
“Vic doesn’t know anything about Petra,” Peter growled. “She thinks Petra was in her office, but she can’t prove it.”
“It was her bracelet I found outside my back door,” I said to the candidate.