Claire looked up at Crawford. “Where’s the warrant affidavit?” she asked.
“It’s sealed.”
“Where is it?”
He shrugged. “Probably in the chambers of the federal magistrate. I really don’t know. Anyway, the warrant’s valid.”
He was right, of course. “I want a complete inventory of everything that’s taken,” she said.
“Certainly, ma’am.”
She looked at the second warrant, the arrest warrant, which listed that same strange name, Ronald Kubik. The FBI agent saw what she was examining and said, “It also gives his assumed name, Thomas Chapman, ma’am. Everything’s in order.”
She heard the team spreading throughout the house, heard the scrape of furniture against the wooden floor in Tom’s study immediately above, heard shouts back and forth. The sound of glass breaking. She cringed involuntarily. Everything felt unreal to her, terrifying and quietly menacing and unreal.
“They broke something!” Annie said, looking at her mother aghast.
“I know, honey,” she said.
“Mommy, I want these guys to leave.”
“Me too, baby.”
“Mrs.-uh, Professor Heller,” Agent Crawford said, “if you have any knowledge whatsoever about your husband’s whereabouts and you do not reveal them to us, you can be charged as an accessory after the fact, which in this case would be a felony. And obstructing justice, which is another felony.”
“Try it,” she said. “Go ahead, charge me. Really, I’d welcome that.”
Crawford scowled. “You have a vacation home?”
“We’ve got a house in Truro, on Cape Cod. You’re welcome to send your boys out there-I can’t stop you-but do you seriously think that, if he’s really on the run for some reason, he’d hide out in such an obvious place? Get real.”
“Friends, relatives he might try to approach?”
“What do you think’s going on?” She shook her head.
“You understand, Mrs. Chapman, that we’ll be watching your every move in case he tries to contact you, or you try to contact him.”
“I’m quite aware,” Claire said, “of what sort of shit the government is capable of when they decide to come down on you.”
Crawford nodded, half smiling.
“And you can bet my husband is aware of that, too. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to put my daughter to bed.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Claire’s sister, Jackie, arrived half an hour after Annie went to bed. She was taller than Claire, skinnier, but not as pretty, with long streaked blond hair. She was two years younger but looked older. Jackie wore black jeans and a black T-shirt under her scruffy denim jacket. Her fingernails were painted, not black, but a sort of eggplant, a Chanel vamp color.
They sat on the glassed-in sun porch. The stuffy, overheated room was like a greenhouse. Its floor-to-ceiling glass walls were steamy; its outside surface was running with condensation.
“They really tore the house up, didn’t they?” Jackie said in her husky, smoker’s voice. She ate sesame chicken with chopsticks out of a white paper carton.
Claire nodded.
“Can’t you sue for that? Destruction of property, or whatever?”
Claire shook her head slowly. “We got bigger problems, kid.”
“What do you think’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, her voice quavering.
Jackie took a swig of her Diet Pepsi, then fished out a cigarette from the pack of Salems. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Yes.”
Jackie flicked the plastic lighter anyway. The tip of the cigarette flared orange. She sucked in and spoke muzzily through a mouthful of smoke. “They want him for murder? That’s got to be bullshit. Pope Tom?”
“Pope?”
“Good Catholic and Mr. Perfect.”
“Very funny, Jackie. You don’t get it, do you? You’re making jokes.”
“Sorry. Did the arrest warrant say what he did?”
Claire shook her head again. “Sealed.”
“Can they do that?”
“You don’t know the government. You wouldn’t believe the shit they can get away with.”
“What’s with the name? Rubik or whatever.”
“Kubik. Ronald Kubik. I have no idea, Jacks.”
“Can that be right?”
“What do I know anymore? They seem so sure of it.”
“They say they’re sure of it. Who knows what the real story is.”
“Good point. I’ll have one of those. I need one.”
“Uh-oh.”
“You’re a bad influence.” She took a cigarette and the lighter from Jackie. She lighted it, inhaled, and coughed. “It’s been a couple of years.”
“Like riding a bicycle,” Jackie said.
“Ooh, menthol,” Claire said. “Yuck. Almost as bad as clove cigarettes. Tastes like Vicks VapoRub.”
Jackie looked through the steamy glass at the perfectly landscaped backyard. “So where is he?”
Claire shook her head, exhaled a cloud of smoke. The room was hazy with cigarette smoke. “They say they lost him in the parking garage.”
“Doesn’t that tell you he’s guilty of something?”
“Oh, come on!” Claire snapped. “That’s such bullshit. Tom’s not guilty of a goddamned thing.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Do? They’re right, he’ll get in touch with me. Or he’ll come back. And he’ll explain what’s going on.”
“And if he really is guilty of murder?”
“You know him, Jackie,” Claire said, low and intense and angry. “What do you think?”
“You’re right. He’s not a murderer. But he did run. And you gotta wonder why.”
Claire scowled, shook her head as if to dispel the thought. “You know,” she said after a while, “when all those guys were chasing him down, one of them reached him, and I thought it was all over. But suddenly Tom had him down on the ground. Disabled him with his bare hands. Crippled him or knocked him out-maybe killed him, I don’t know.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s as if- Well, I’ve never seen him do anything like that. I had no idea he could do something like that. It was scary. And the way he scaled that wall, the waterfall. It’s like a different Tom took over.”
“I had no idea he knew how to rock-climb.”
“I didn’t either!”
They sat for a minute in silence.
“Think there’ll be something in the papers about this?” Jackie asked.
“I haven’t gotten any calls yet. I don’t think anyone recognized me, except the waiter, who probably didn’t see the incident.”
Jackie exhaled a plume of smoke through her nose, her chin jutting forward. “Tom’ll be back. He’ll explain all this shit.”
Claire nodded.
“He’s a great stepdad. Annie adores him. Daddy’s little girl.”
“Yeah.” She felt a swelling in her chest. She missed him already, and she was frightened for him.
“Annie told me he came into her school for Mom’s Day last week.”
Claire winced. “I was all set to, but I was in New York, meeting with Lambert’s attorneys, and I couldn’t get a flight back in time.”
“Ouch. She must have loved that.”
“I felt horrible.”
“How come he’s able to just take off time in the middle of the day like that to go to her school? I thought he’s one of those obsessive-compulsive Type-A types.”
“He let his chief trader, Jeff, man the trading desk, I guess. I don’t know. Lot of guys wouldn’t do that.”
“At least he doesn’t call her Princess. That would be gross.”
“I get a feeling Annie thinks I’m the stepparent.”
“She was, what, like two when you guys got married? She doesn’t even remember when he wasn’t her daddy.”
“Still,” Claire said sulkily, “I am the birth mother.”