He waited until Lydia was inside the door and then he pulled out into traffic.
He took the phone from his pocket and dialed. He listened as the phone on the other end rang, praying he wouldn’t get voicemail.
“Hello,” purred a warm female voice.
“Katrina,” he said, and the taste of her name on his tongue aroused him.
“Is that you, Mateo?” She sounded breathlessly glad to hear from him. But that was all part of the show, wasn’t it?
“Are you busy?” he asked.
“Never too busy for you,” she said softly. “When can I expect you?”
What did he want?” asked Jeffrey as she walked back into her office. He was sitting on her couch, sifting through articles Lily had written in the last year pulled from LexisNexis. He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. They’d been reading for hours. They weren’t sure what they were looking for exactly. They just wanted to know where Lily’s head had been at before her brother had died. Lydia sat back down beside him and he dropped his arm around her shoulder. She rested against his body.
“He wanted to give me this,” she said holding up the manila folder.
“What is it?”
“Apparently, the woman who greeted Lily at the bank the day she closed her accounts noticed a black SUV waiting outside for her. She said that Lily seemed concerned about it, kept looking behind her at the vehicle. The woman got a partial plate. These are the results of the search he did.”
“Anything interesting?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, opening the folder and settling in. She flipped through the pages, reading the listings of the twenty-eight drivers who owned black SUVs.
“It’s a pretty straight and narrow crew,” said Lydia after a second, her eyes still on the file. “No criminal records, no DUIs, no warrants. A couple of parking tickets-” She stopped talking abruptly and held up one of the driver’s license photos Detective Stenopolis had printed.
“What is it?”
The woman in the photo had short-cropped black hair and a full face. It was a black-and-white photograph so Lydia couldn’t determine the color of her eyes, but they looked dark. Something about the expression on her face jolted Lydia. She got up quickly and went over to her bag and sifted out the photograph she’d taken from Lily’s apartment.
She sat back down and held the photograph up next to the printout and compared the two.
“It’s the same person,” said Jeffrey, staring over her shoulder.
“Are you sure?” she said. The printout was poor quality and the light in the office was low.
“Yeah, look at the cheekbones, the shape of her eyes. She was younger and heavier when the driver’s license photo was taken, but look at the nose. It’s definitely the same woman.”
Lydia examined the features of her face and saw that he was right. The license photo was taken nearly two years earlier. Either she’d altered her appearance since then for some purpose or she was just one of those people who constantly wanted a new look.
“Jasmine said that Lily and Mickey knew her as Mariah.”
“Well, the DMV knows her as Michele LaForge.”
“This address is in Riverdale,” she said, turning her eyes to him.
He looked at her a minute, and she waited for him to say something. She saw a kind of resignation in his eyes and she knew what he was thinking. After a year of relative peace following a period of terrible fear and chaos, their quiet life was about to get a shake-up again. They both knew it was inevitable; it was what they did. It was how they lived. And small, or maybe not so small, parts of each of them wouldn’t have it any other way. He put a hand to her face and kissed her lightly on the mouth.
“We’ll go up there in the morning,” he said.
“Jeffrey, what if-,” she said, letting the sentence trail. There was a parade of what ifs in her mind; their march would keep her up all night. What if Lily’s somewhere against her will, afraid, hurt? What if Mariah knows something? What if there’s crucial information at that address that could lead them to Lily? What if tomorrow morning is too late?
He nodded solemnly. She didn’t have to tell him what she was thinking.
“Call Dax,” he said. “I’ll get our coats. It’s not like we’re going to get any sleep anyway.”
She watched him leave the office and then picked up the phone.
It’s late,” he answered, but she could hear the television in the background. He sounded cranky.
“Sorry to interrupt your late-night television viewing,” she said. “But I think we’re going to come by and get you. There’s something in your neighborhood we want to check out.”
She heard him turn off the set and sit up. “Oh, yeah,” he said, sounding happier, his Australian accent drawing out his syllables.
Dax had had kind of a tough year, recovering from two severed Achilles’ tendons, an injury he sustained while trying to help Lydia and Jeffrey. She knew that since then, he hadn’t been working as much as usual. Although exactly who Dax worked for when he wasn’t working for Mark, Striker and Strong was apparently a confidential matter. Lydia had gone to every possible length to find out, from snooping to begging. But he was like the sphinx, stony and inscrutably silent about his life.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We’ll be up there in an hour; we’ll explain it all then.”
“Sweet,” he said and hung up.
Six
Benjamin was in bed, safe between his Lord of the Rings sheets. This was her favorite time, when they were both under the same roof. They’d ordered in from the diner across the street and watched Monsters, Inc. for the one hundred and fiftieth time. What was it about kids? Why did they want to watch the same things over and over? It must be a comfort thing.
With him sound asleep, she opened a bottle of chardonnay and curled up on the couch, listening to her child breathe on the baby monitor, which she still kept in his room though he was way too old for it. It relaxed her, the sound of him and the glass of wine. The television was on but the sound was down, and she zoned out on the images from the ten o’clock news. She pushed away any thoughts about Lily Samuels and Rosario Mendez; she’d done all she could for them today and thinking about them all night wasn’t going to help anyone. She’d almost succeeded when something on the screen caught her attention.
The words “Bizarre Halloween ‘Shooting’ ” popped red in the corner of the screen and Jesamyn reached quickly for the remote, turned the volume up.
“-when a young woman was shot three times in the back during the parade,” said a plastic-looking male newscaster. “Onlookers thought it was part of the show or a prank of some kind when a white van came to a stop on a side street off the parade route, pursuing a young woman running toward Main Street. When two men emerged from the van chasing her and shots were fired, the crowd dispersed in a panic. Spectators saw the two men lift the lifeless body, place it back in the van, and drive away. In the melee, no one was able to identify a license-plate number.
“Was it a Halloween prank? Police still don’t know. There was no blood found at the scene, leading police to believe that the shooting could have been staged. They are asking if anyone has any photographs or videotape of the evening, to please call the crime stoppers tip line.” He gave the number and the newscast went on to another story.
Jesamyn was about to pick up the phone to call Mount to tell him about the story, even though it probably didn’t mean anything. It could have easily been a prank, although a very sick prank. They could call the Riverdale precinct tomorrow and see what they had and get a description of the girl, at the very least.