Our computer geeks were dissecting Wendy’s hard drive. Wyandotte County officials were being yanked off the golf course and quizzed about the county’s underground history. Agents in New York and Kansas City were connecting the dots between Tanja Andrija and her late husband’s family while Troy Clark passed out bulletproof vests.
Even with everything coming together, the dull reality was that it might be too late to save Wendy. I may have persuaded Ben and Troy that she was more likely a victim than a perpetrator, but there would be little comfort in saving her reputation if I lost the rest of her to a bullet or a prison cell.
If presented with these facts in any other case, my professional judgment would be that she was most likely dead. Wendy had been missing for two days. She had become a pawn and pawns die unless both sides want them.
Marty Grisnik had promised to call me. I decided to use the time until he did to visit Kate.
It was late afternoon by the time I drove back to the KU Hospital. The day had gotten colder, the pale sky deepening to dirty gray, pressing toward the ground like a?atiron.
Kate’s room was at the end of a long hall, voices echoing through her open door. She was propped up in bed surrounded by people I knew but had never met. They were her family, names she had mentioned more than once. I had no trouble putting names to faces.
Her sister, Patty, had the short, frizzy hair Kate had once described as steel wool on a bad day. She stood on the near side at the head of the bed, her features a rough match of Kate’s, her face lined with worry as she and Kate whispered to one another.
Kate’s son, Brian, leaned on the other side of the mattress, idly playing with a handheld video game, which was a thirteen-year-old boy’s way of dealing with the world. His eyes jumped back and forth from the screen to his mother.
Her father, Henry, who had raised her from micro expression guinea pig to professional partner and who Kate had said was nearly eighty, stood at the foot of the bed. He had a thick body, white hair, and blotchy cheeks, his stubby hands clutching at the memory of cigars he’d been forced to give up. Kate’s ex-husband, Alan, balding, thin, and dressed in a runner’s sweat suit, was next to him, the two men locked in an intense, animated conversation, the few words I caught as I stepped into the room sounding like shoptalk.
It all stopped when they saw me. Kate rolled her eyes and smiled at me, a look that was half happy and half anesthetic hangover.
Her family’s faces widened with recognition and then dismay, eyes and mouths narrowing in collective disapproval. Patty turned her back to Kate as if to shield her. Brian straightened, edging closer to his mother. Henry and Alan slid toward Patty, the three of them forming a human barricade cutting me off from Kate.
It was clear that I wasn’t the hero of whatever story Kate had told them about what had happened. I knew she would have given them a version unadorned by exaggeration, rich with responsibility for her own actions, and gratitude for mine. But they were her family and were having none of it. There was nothing hidden in their micro expressions. I read in their faces their indictment of me, the FBI agent who’d led their loved one into danger and nearly cost them someone they held dear.
I didn’t blame them because it was true, Kate’s likely protest notwithstanding. That’s the way it’s supposed to be with families. Members were to be protected, taken care of. Anyone who threatened one of them threatened all of them. Anyone who failed in their duty to protect one failed all of them.
I couldn’t argue and I didn’t. No one spoke. It wasn’t necessary. I nodded at them, turned around, and left. Kate called my name from behind their backs but I kept on walking.
Chapter Sixty-nine
Ammara Iverson called me as I was leaving the hospital. It was dusk, the air dry and charged.
“We hit the jackpot with Wendy’s computer,” she said. “The important files are encrypted but we’ve been able to break into some of them. We’re still working on the others. So far we’ve got some offshore accounts and names.”
“Was it Tanja’s show?”
“Locally, but she was working for her in-laws. Colby joined up late last year.”
“That was when he and Wendy had gotten married. How do you know?”
“He included a confession of sorts, called it his insurance policy, and said he hid it on Wendy’s computer. It said that he would probably be dead by the time anyone read it. He says he knows that he fucked up and he’s sorry. He also says that Wendy had nothing to do with it.”
True or not, Colby had tried to protect her, though he wasn’t much of a character reference at this point. I thought of her, wondering where she was and if I’d ever see her again.
“Doesn’t help much.”
“I know you, Jack,” Ammara said. “I know what you want to do and I’m begging you not to do it, especially not in your condition. We’re going after them and we’ll find Wendy.”
My phone beeped with another call. It was Marty Grisnik. “I’ve got to go.”
“I just got a tip from one of my CIs,” he said. “It might be something. It might be nothing. We should check it out before we go see Tanja.”
I wasn’t ready to tell him about Tanja, uncertain how he would take it, wondering whether he would give her a head start, knowing that I’d be tempted to if I had the history with Tanja that Marty did.
“A tip about what?”
“I told you that I’d put the word out about your daughter. One of my guys calls me. Says he saw a man and a woman in Matney Park last night around midnight. Saw them go into a shed back in the woods. Says the man left and didn’t come back.”
“What about the woman?”
“Never saw her again. Says it was like she disappeared. That’s why I’m telling you it might be something and it might be nothing.”
“How reliable is this guy?”
“Like most of them. If they bat their weight they’re doing good.”
“What’s he doing hanging out in the park?”
“Getting high. You don’t want to check it out, we can let it ride and go have a drink with Tanja. You can ask her if she’s the drug kingpin of Strawberry Hill. If she says she is, you can arrest her. If she isn’t, you and I go get drunk. Your call.”
A tremor hit me in the gut and I bent over, one hand on my knee. It took me a moment to catch my breath.
“Hey, Jack! You there?”
“I’m here and I’m in. Tell me where and I’ll meet you.”
“You know how to get to Matney Park?”
“No clue.”
“Better I come to you. Where are you?”
“I’m just leaving the KU Hospital.”
“Wait for me in the circle drive. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The entrance to the hospital is on the east side of the complex. It faces a five-story parking garage. My car was parked on the third level. I retrieved my gun, stowing it beneath my jacket against the small of my back.
Traffic to the hospital?ows from Thirty-ninth Street onto Cambridge, which runs past the entrance, where there is a circle drive to drop off and pick people up. A steady stream of patients, visitors, doctors, nurses, and staff?owed in and out as I paced along the curb. A moment later, Grisnik pulled up, his passenger window lowered. He leaned toward me as I opened the door.
“Hurry it up,” he said as I got in. “I don’t got all night.”
“Where the hell is Matney Park?”
“West and north, maybe thirty minutes from here.”
He took Thirty-ninth to Rainbow Boulevard, turning north and staying with it as it turned into Seventh Street. He took the ramp westbound onto I-70, chasing the last bit of daylight ahead of us. I leaned back against my seat as a wave of mild tremors swept across my body.