Carol Novak sat back in her chair. She stared into Claire’s eyes with a fierceness that was startling. “As a woman, how do you feel about getting a rapist off?”
Claire responded quickly, unwilling to allow a pause that might be mistaken for misgivings. “As I said, that isn’t the issue-”
“Claire,” Carol Novak said with the deeply felt sorrow, the stricken intensity, the appalled concern of a daytime talk-show host interviewing a trailer-park denizen who was sleeping with the child he’d fathered by his own daughter, “do you ever feel, sometimes-right here”-she tapped her chest-“that what you’re doing is wrong?”
“If I ever felt that,” Claire said with great certainty and a dramatic pause, “I wouldn’t do it,” and she gave a smile that said, We’re all done now, a smile with which, she knew, Channel 4 would end the interview.
Ray Devereaux stood in her office doorway. The private investigator was almost as big as the door, a good three hundred and fifty pounds, but he didn’t appear fat. He was, instead, massive. His head seemed small, out of proportion to the immense trunk below, although that may have been an optical illusion, given his height.
Devereaux had a gift for the dramatic gesture. He didn’t enter a room, he made an entrance. Now he had positioned himself at the threshold, arms folded atop his girth, and waited for her cue.
“Thanks for coming, Ray,” Claire said.
“You’re welcome,” he said grimly, as if he had performed for her a great Herculean feat. “Where the hell do you park around here?”
“I park in the faculty garage. But there should have been plenty of spaces on Mass. Ave.”
He scowled. “I had to park at a hydrant. Left my blank ticket book on the dash.” He hadn’t been on the police force for some twelve years already, but he still used all the tricks and appurtenances, the perks of being on the job. His blank book of parking tickets was no doubt more than a decade old by now, but the meter maids would still observe the shibboleth and spare him a fifty-dollar ticket. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For winning the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, what the hell you think? For Lambert.”
“Thanks.”
“You realize you’re total an-thee-ma to your fellow women now.” He meant “anathema.” “They’re never going to let you into NOW.”
“I never thought much about joining. Come in, make yourself at home. Have a seat.”
He entered her office tentatively, ill-at-ease. Devereaux never liked meeting with her at her office, her turf. He preferred to meet at his lair, a fake-wood-paneled office suite in South Boston adorned with framed diplomas and certificates, where he was czar. He stopped before one of the visitor chairs and glowered down at it, as if unsure what it was. The chair suddenly looked dainty next to him. He pointed straight down at it and grinned. When he smiled, he was a ten-year-old boy, not a forty-seven-year-old private investigator.
“You got something I won’t break?”
“Take mine.” Claire got up from her high-backed leather desk chair and switched places with Devereaux. He took her seat without objection, now comfortably enthroned behind her desk. A fillip of authority symbolism, she figured, would put him at ease.
“So, you rang,” Devereaux said. He leaned way back in her chair and folded his arms across his belly. The chair creaked ominously.
“I called you, but I didn’t leave a message,” she said, confused.
“Caller ID. Recognized your number on the box. So what’s this about, Lambert again? I thought you were done with that sleazeball.”
“It’s something else, Ray. I need your help.” She told him about last night: the mall, the agents pursuing Tom, his disappearance, the search of their house.
Slowly Ray leaned forward until both of his feet were on the ground. “You’re shittin’ me,” he said.
She shook her head.
He pursed his lips, jutted them out like a blowfish. He closed his eyes. A long, dramatic pause. He was said to be excellent at interrogations. “I know a guy,” he said at last. “Knew him from my FBI days. Probably looking to get out. Maybe I’ll offer him a job with me.”
“You’re going to hire someone?”
“I said offer.”
“Well, be discreet. Fly below the radar, you know? Don’t let them know why you’re interested.”
Devereaux scowled. “Now you’re going to tell me how to do my job? I don’t tell you about torts-or whatever the hell it is you teach.”
“Point taken. Sorry. But could this whole thing be a mistake, a misunderstanding?”
Devereaux stared at the ceiling for a long moment, for maximum dramatic effect. “It’s unlikely,” he said. “Count on the fact they’ve got your phones bugged. And a trap-and-trace on Tom’s office, your home-”
“My office here, too?”
“Why not, sure.”
“I want you to sweep my phones.”
Devereaux gave a sardonic smile. “‘Sweep’ your phones? If they’re doing this outta the central office, which I’m sure they are, I’m not going to find anything. I’ll sweep if you want, but don’t expect anything. Anyway, even if I did find something, I can’t remove it if it’s legal.”
“Does that mean, if he calls me to check in, they can trace the call and find out where he is?”
“I’m sure that’s what they want. But it’s gotten a lot harder these days. You just buy one of those prepaid phone cards, and in effect the service is making the call for you, so it’s impossible to trace.”
“He left me a voice-mail message.”
“Where? Here or at home?”
“Home.”
“They can access that, no problem. Don’t need any secret code. If they’ve got a warrant, NYNEX is going to let them listen to any voice-mail messages left there.”
“So they heard the message Tom left?”
“Count on it. But he probably counted on that, too.”
“And they’re probably going to get all phone records, at home and at Tom’s office, right? So they can see who he might have tried to reach.”
“You got it.”
“But only long-distance, right?”
“Wrong. The phone company keeps a log of every single local phone call that’s made-phone number dialed, duration of call, all that. That’s how they do billing for people who don’t have unlimited calling plans.” Claire nodded. “But they don’t preserve the records beyond one billing cycle, which means roughly a month.”
“So is there any way Tom can contact me without them knowing?”
Devereaux was silent for a moment. He cupped a hand over his mouth. “Probably.”
“How?”
“I’d have to think on that. ’Course, Tom’s probably already thought about that. Also, we have to assume that they’ve bugged this office, too.”
“You gotta find out what’s going on, Ray.”
“I’ll see what I can dig up.” He grasped the arms of the chair and fixed her with a stagy glare. “Will that be all, Professor?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I want to eat while I’m watching Beauty and the Beast,” Annie chanted.
“You’ll eat at the table,” Claire said as sternly as she could. Jackie served Claire and herself salad from an immense rustic Tuscan bowl. Salads were one of her specialties. Jackie was a vegetarian these days, having gone through vegan and macrobiotic phases, all the while smoking heavily.
“No. I want to eat while I’m watching Beauty and the Beast. I want to eat macaroni-and-cheese on the couch while I’m watching Beauty and the Beast.”
At one end of the spacious kitchen was a corner where Annie stashed her vast collection of toys, which included a ragged Elmo, a torn Kermit the Frog puppet, a battle-scarred Mr. Potato Head. There were dozens of others that Annie hadn’t touched or even noticed in months. A large television set faced a tattered, slipcovered sofa stained with a thousand microwaved frozen macaroni-and-cheeses, a thousand sippy-cups of grape juice, a thousand red popsicles (no flavor known to man, just red).