“Sure, Clarence, what’s up?”
“I almost called you at home last night.”
“Oh?”
“I thought I figured out the name of your Jane Doe.”
That made Loren sit up. “But?”
“We got a call from the Livingston PD about a Mr. Neil Cordova. He lives in town and owns a chain of barbershops. Married, two kids, no record. Anyway, he said his wife, Reba, was missing and, well, she roughly matched your Jane Doe’s description.”
“But?” Muse said again.
“But she disappeared yesterday-after we found the body.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. The husband said he saw her that morning before he went to work.”
“He could be lying.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did anyone look into it?”
“Not at first. But here’s the funny thing. Cordova knew someone on the police force in town. You know how it is out there. Everyone knows someone. They found her car. It was parked at the Ramada in East Hanover.”
“Ah,” Muse said. “A hotel.”
“Right.”
“So Mrs. Cordova wasn’t really missing?”
“Well,” Clarence said, stroking his chin, “that’s the funny thing.”
“What is?”
“Naturally the Livingston cop felt like you did. Mrs. Cordova hooked up with some lover and was late getting home or something. That’s when he called me-the Livingston cop, that is. He didn’t want to be the one to tell his friend, the husband, this news. So he calls me to do it. As a favor.”
“Go on.”
“So what do I know-I call Cordova. I explain that we found his wife’s car in a local hotel lot. He tells me that’s impossible. I tell him it’s there right now, if he wants to go see it.” He stopped. “Damn.”
“What?”
“Should I have told him that? I mean, thinking back on it. Might have been an invasion of her privacy to tell him. And suppose he showed up there with a gun or something? Man, I didn’t think that through.” Clarence frowned under his coarse mustache. “Should I have kept quiet about the car, Chief?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, whatever. Anyway, this Cordova refuses to believe what I’m suggesting.”
“Like most men.”
“Right, sure, but then he says something interesting. He says he first started to panic when she didn’t pick up their nine-year-old daughter from some special ice-skating class in Airmont. That wouldn’t be like her. He said she’d planned to spend some time at the Palisades Mall in Nyack-he said she likes to buy the kids basics at Target-and then head over to pick up the girl.”
“And the mother never showed?”
“Right. The ice rink called the father’s cell phone when they couldn’t reach the mother. Cordova drove up and picked the kid up. He figured that maybe his wife got stuck in traffic or something. There was an accident on 287 earlier in the day and she was bad about keeping her cell phone charged, so he was concerned but didn’t go into full panic when he didn’t reach her. As it got later and later, he got more and more worried.”
Muse thought about it. “If Mrs. Cordova met up with a boyfriend at a hotel, she might have just forgotten to pick up the kid.”
“I agree, except for one thing. Cordova already went online and checked his wife’s credit card records. She had been up at the Palisades Mall that afternoon. She did indeed buy stuff at Target. Spent forty-seven dollars and eighteen cents.”
“Hmm.” Muse signaled for Clarence to take a seat. He did so. “So she goes way up to the Palisades Mall and then comes all the way back down to meet the lover, forgetting her kid who is getting skating lessons right near the mall.” She looked at him. “Does sound weird.”
“You had to hear his voice, Chief. The husband’s, I mean. He was so distraught.”
“I guess you could check with the Ramada, see if anybody recognizes her.”
“I did. I had the husband scan a photo and e-mail it over. No one remembers seeing her.”
“That doesn’t mean much. New people are probably on duty and she could have sneaked in after, I don’t know, her lover checked in. But her car is still there?”
“Yep. And that’s weird, isn’t it? For the car to still be there? You have your affair, you get back in your car, you drive home, or whatever. So even if it was an affair, wouldn’t you think by now it’s an affair gone wrong? Like he grabbed her or there was some violence-”
“-or she ran away with him.”
“Right, that could be it too. But it’s a nice car. Acura MDX, four months old. Wouldn’t you take that?”
Muse thought about it, shrugged.
Clarence said, “I want to look into it, okay?”
“Go for it.” She thought about it some more. “Do me a favor. Check and see if any other women have been reported missing in Livingston or that area. Even if just for a short while. Even if the cops didn’t take it too seriously.”
“Already did it.”
“And?”
“None. Oh, but some woman called to report her husband and son were missing.” He checked his pad. “Her name is Tia Baye. Husband is Mike, son is Adam.”
“The locals looking into it?”
“I guess, I don’t really know.”
“If it wasn’t for the missing kid too,” Muse said, “maybe this Baye guy ran off with Mrs. Cordova.”
“You want me to look for a connection?”
“If you want. If that’s the case, it’s not a criminal matter anyway. Two consenting adults are allowed to disappear together for a little while.”
“Yeah, okay. But, Chief?”
Muse loved that he called her that. Chief. “What?”
“I got a feeling there’s something more here.”
“Go with that then, Clarence. Keep me in the loop.”
17
IN a dream there is a beeping sound and then the words: “I’m so sorry, Dad…”
In reality Mike heard someone speaking Spanish in the dark.
He spoke enough of it-you can’t work at a hospital on 168th Street and not speak at least medical Spanish-and so he recognized that the woman was praying furiously. Mike tried to turn his head, but it wouldn’t move. Didn’t matter. All was black. His head thudded at the temples as the woman in the dark repeated her prayer over and over.
Meanwhile, Mike had his own mantra going on:
Adam. Where is Adam?
Mike slowly realized that his eyes were closed. He tried to open them. That wouldn’t happen right away. He listened some more and tried to focus on his eyelids, on the simple act of lifting them up. It took a little while but eventually they began to blink. The thudding in his temples grew into hammer pounds. He reached a hand up and pushed at the side of his head, as if he could contain the pain that way.
He squinted at the fluorescent light on the white ceiling. The Spanish praying continued. The familiar smell filled the air, that combination of harsh cleaners, bodily functions, wilting fauna and absolutely no natural air circulation. Mike’s head dropped to the left. He saw the back of a woman hunched over a bed. Her fingers moved over the prayer beads. Her head seemed to be resting on a man’s chest. She alternated between sobs and prayers-and a blend of the two.
He tried to reach his hand out and say something comforting to her. Ever the doctor. But there was an IV in his arm and it slowly dawned on him that he too was a patient. He tried to remember what had happened, how he could possibly have ended up here. It took a while. His brain was cloudy. He fought through it.
There had been a terrible unease in him when he woke up. He had tried to push that away but for the sake of his memory he let it back in now. And as soon as he did, that mantra came back to him, this time just the one word: