“Ty, you’ve been wrapped up somewhere else since this woman was killed.” Annie faced him. “I’m sorry about that, Ty, I really am. But I deserve some attention too. It’s almost making me jealous. Like, is there anything you want to confess?”
Hauck shrugged and tried to smile. “Other than maybe taking you for granted from time to time.” He saw the tightness in her jaw start to soften. She drew her knees up and pushed back her hair. It took a lot to get Annie mad, and he’d overachieved. Laughter was a lot more natural for her than anger. The ticking digital clock flashed on the screen and 24 went into next week’s previews.
“Anyway, you missed a lights-out episode.” She stood up and picked up her dish. “There’s a plate for you in the microwave. A weak moment-don’t ask me why. And don’t even think of asking about what you missed because there’s no way I’m going to divulge…Even with sex,” she said, scrunching her nose playfully at him, climbing over him.
Hauck reached and caught her by the wrist and pulled her onto his lap. He squeezed her, hoping for a hint of forgiveness. “Wouldn’t even try,” he said. “However, I do have Dove bars in the freezer for dessert.” He knew she would kill for those. “I was hoping that might work.”
“Hmmm.” Annie nodded, thinking for a second, then rolled off of him. “You’re on dangerous turf there, mister…Maybe bring one upstairs when you’re done. And remember, forgiveness is predicated on performance.” She took her plate over to the sink and dumped it in. “Let’s just say we can agree the dishes are yours tonight. And by the way, there’s an envelope for you over there. It was under the door when I let myself in.” She went to the stairs. “I’m heading up.”
“Annie…”
She turned around on the landing in her baggy flannels and University of Michigan T-shirt.
“I’m sorry,” Hauck said again. “I really am.”
She continued up without saying anything but, to his delight, wiggled out of her top and tossed it back to the floor from the top of the stairs.
“Dove bar…,” she called teasingly.
“Got it.” Hauck laughed and went around to the kitchen, weighing whether to follow her up before she’d even shut the door-Right answer, he thought-or surrender to his growling stomach and the plate she had put in the microwave. He picked food. He hit the reheat button on the microwave and opened the fridge, pulling out a beer. He heard Annie in the bathroom and sat at the counter, waiting for the meal to heat.
He hadn’t been entirely forthcoming with her. And he was still holding back from being so right now. She was right; he had been elsewhere. He was sorry he’d let it all fall back on her, but he knew that if he was straight with her, it would only produce the lecture that maybe he should follow the advice of his boss right now and drop this thing for good.
While the meal warmed, Hauck reached out for the brown, taped-up legal envelope on the counter, which, he noticed immediately, had come from Vito. Good man! He slit it open and found a large ream of the phone records from Thibault he had asked for, along with a note on Vito’s company letterhead: “Bill to follow.”
Hauck chuckled.
He took a swig of beer. The microwave beeped. He went over and took out the plate and sat, flinching for a second from the heat, back at the counter. He cut into the steak, which was tender and flavorful, admiring how his own concoction of red wine, olive oil, soy sauce, and balsamic had come out to perfection, even if Annie had lit the grill.
Between bites, he leafed through the sheets.
He had homework to do. The stack was maybe two hundred pages thick. And he didn’t have much to go on. The logs went all the way back to October like he’d requested-six months. He had mulled things over maybe a dozen times on the ride from the city. Should he just drop it? He knew he was treading on thin ice. Steve Chrisafoulis was starting to get irritated. The detective in New York didn’t exactly seem like his new BFF. And then there was Foley, his boss…
“How is it down there?” Annie called from the upstairs landing.
“Pretty good,” Hauck yelled back. “Pasta’s not bad, but this flank steak is a ten!”
“Oh, you’re definitely pushing it, mister…”
“Up in a minute,” he said.
He gulped down a few last bites and quickly flipped forward to late-February and March, just before April and her family were killed.
At first glance he didn’t find any calls from Thibault to the dead trader. It was all pretty much just numbers and phone IDs he didn’t recognize. He leafed forward a month, to April, just a couple of weeks ago, the weeks before James Donovan’s death.
A number jumped out at him. 212-555-5719.
He put down his fork and knife and pushed away the plate. From a coffee mug near the wall phone where he kept things, he grabbed a yellow marker. He highlighted the number.
Then he leafed back through the stack of listings and locations. He searched for the same number. He found it several times, his pulse seeming to pick up each time. He noted the time of day of these calls.
One fifty-seven A.M.
Two fifteen A.M.
Three oh five.
Always in the middle of the night. Always to the same location. A location that just made that ice he was on even thinner.
He’d just been there today.
352 East Fifty-third Street. Donovan’s apartment building. He dialed the number on his cell. A voice recording came on. Hispanic. “This is the super’s office. No one is here to take your call…”
Hauck hung up. Something surged through his veins. Vindication.
That linked Dani Thibault to both dead traders.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The cheers from the crowd and the thwack of the ball on wooden sticks rang out on the Greenwich Academy field.
The Gators were playing the Lady Crusaders from St. Luke’s in field hockey. It was a crisp May afternoon. Greenwich was ranked number one in the state. About a hundred people were on the field or in the stands, mostly parents and friends, shouting, “Go, Green, go, Green!” as a determined blond attacker in the home jersey sprinted down the sideline past the last St. Luke’s defender. To rising cheers, she executed a spin and centered the ball directly in front of the visitor’s goal. There was a heated scrum for control. A teammate wound up and whacked the ball into the open net.
“Attaway, Jen! Good goal, good goal!”
The team celebrated with a bunch of high fives.
Dani Thibault made his way across the top row of the bleachers. A man in a red Lands’ End jacket and green bleached-out baseball cap stood up, clapping and yelling, “Way to go, Jen. Way to set Amy up!” Thibault waited until play resumed. He came over and took a seat behind him. St. Luke’s sent the ball down to the Greenwich end.
He leaned over the man in the cap. “Your daughter, right?”
The man continued clapping, Thibault’s voice seeming to take him by surprise. The man turned and recognized him from the meeting they had had in New York and also from the party circuit around town. “I didn’t know you had a kid here.”
“I don’t. That’s her who set up the goal, number fourteen, right?”
The man in the Lands’ End jacket nodded, standing up. He was a fund manager at one of the largest hedge funds in Greenwich. “Get it out of there, Jen! Dig it out! Thataway!” He sat back down and said, face forward, confused, “I thought we decided I’d contact you if I wanted to talk further.”
“Oh, yes, right, on that other issue,” Thibault said. “That situation is gone. Someone grabbed it. Another time. She’s very good, your daughter.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “North Carolina, isn’t it, next year?”
“Duke,” the man in the red jacket said, glancing along the bleachers, making sure they were alone.
“That’s right, Duke. And you’ve got two more right behind her, don’t you? Great girls, I hear. All top students…”