Albert sighed and rubbed his face. “What time is it?”
Donovan looked at the clock. “Four o'clock.”
Albert yawned. “You think they're up on the East Coast?”
“Why?” Donovan asked him.
“Going to check up on your theory.”
Albert spent the next half hour on the phone. He switched between English and pidgin French. When he was done, he said nothing and then went to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee. Another half hour passed in silence as he meditatively drank his coffee. Donovan and Frankie sat down together on a couch in the living room. Then Albert's phone rang again and he answered it in poor French. He listened carefully for a minute and then thanked the person on the other end of the line and hung up. “That was the RCMP in Québec. A girl, by the name of Aoibhe Lang, Alpha Oscar India Bravo Hotel Echo, disappeared from that boarding school. Weird thing that family has with Gaelic names. But she disappeared and a family named L'Aigle in rural Québec reported fishing a girl from the St. Lawrence River. She had no memory and no ID. Only knew her first name. Family took the girl in. After two years, she ran away again and about that time a girl that looked exactly like her showed up calling herself Justine Aoibhe Maria Lavoie in Montréal. Disney Corp signed the girl after one of their talent scouts saw her performing in a bar in the city.”
“L'Aigle...” Donovan muttered. “The Eagle...”
Albert nodded. “It fits. Think we might have to go talk to Miss Lavoie.”
Justine Lavoie had not returned home. Naomh Walsh was missing too. Albert talked to her husband, but he had not seen her since the party. She had kissed him goodbye before he drove off in his car and then she had gotten into the limousine with Justine Lavoie. The security man had not seen the limousine return to the penthouse, nor had the neighbors.
“Where the hell could she be?” Donovan asked Albert. “And what the hell happened to Naomh?”
Albert shrugged and walked along the pavement to Toby’s, the coffee shop he liked on N 6th Street. “No idea. And no idea. I just know I need a cup of coffee after you woke me twice during the night.”
“Once. The first time you were crushing your wife.”
“Not true,” Albert grinned. “She was on top.”
“Right...” Donovan did not want to go any deeper into the subject. “So what do we do?”
“We have coffee and then we look at where they might have gone. And if Justine Lavoie is the missing Lang sister, we still don't have the answer to our questions. It might explain the eagle thing, but nothing else. Like what set her off.”
“I don't know.”
Albert ordered his coffee and paid. He looked pensive and hardly acknowledged the cashier as he did so. “You know what I'm thinking. This behavior of hers, just doing drugs would not do that. The extreme sex thing and all. Got an explanation for that?”
“Project MK Ultra?” Donovan suggested.
Albert shook his head. “Serious now. Unless you're suggesting she was programmed to do exactly that and someone activated her for that reason and made her kill. Seems very far-fetched.”
Donovan sat down on a concrete window seat outside the coffee shop and sighed. Suddenly a thought came to him. “Her sister...” He jumped up. “I have to go.”
“Oh, no!” Albert shouted at him. He ran after Donovan, but Donovan was too fast for him.
Donovan ran all the way back to his house. He took all the short cuts and back streets he knew, not wanting Albert to follow him. There was a secret room underneath the living room where he kept files on a lot of things he had been involved in as an FBI agent and as an attorney. It was the room full of files that interested him. The cases he wanted to remember for some reason. One of them was labeled Mara Lang.
It was the only file he had kept on the Lang family. Not because he wanted to remember, but because he had to. He looked through the file and found a picture. It was taken high up on the hills. He had never realized where it was, but now he did. He took the picture and left the file.
When he swung the secret door to the living room open, he heard the door.
“Storm Donovan! Come the fuck out! You need to tell me what's going on!” Albert's voice rang through the building.
Donovan pulled the door shut again and went back down. He did not want to talk to Albert right now. He opened a door to a tunnel that lead to the garage. It was the only passage he had installed himself. He had it done when he had built the garage. In the passage, just before the door to the garage, there was a small vault. He opened it and pulled a gun from it. He had used a Sig Sauer nine millimeter in his FBI days and he kept a couple around the house. He had left the other one in his nightstand again, as he did not want to walk around armed, but he felt he needed to have a weapon on him now.
He opened the final door and ended up in a storage hold in the garage. He pushed past the cleaning utensils and stepped out. He ran for the Jag and opened the garage door and the gate. When they opened, he gunned it, tearing out into the streets of DUMBO.
Inside the building Albert heard the roar of the engine of the E-type and he ran out. “Donovan!” he shouted as he crossed the step. He swore and shook his fist at his friend. He ran down the driveway a few paces, but Donovan's car disappeared rapidly. Swearing still, he reached for his phone.
“Keith! I need one of your guys to work some of their magic. Get into the car insurance databases and track a car for me. No, I don't have a fucking warrant, just do it! Just track Storm Donovan's Jaguar!”
Donovan raced into the countryside above the city. He knew now where he could find Justine Lavoie, and he reckoned he would find Naomh Walsh there too. He just hoped he would be in time.
The traffic was hellish, of course. Whenever you needed to get somewhere pronto, the traffic seemed to be worse than ever. Donovan kept his foot down and swerved in and out of the traffic as he drove along the Hudson River side. He even used the sidewalk to bypass some of the jams. It took forever to get out of Manhattan, but when he did, the road was suddenly clear. He flew up the interstate as fast as he could, racing to the top of the hill he had recognized from the photograph.
At the top of the hill there was a parking place. Kids often drove up there to make out in the evenings and during the days, people went there to enjoy the city lights. He had been there a few times for those very reasons and he had recognized it this time as he went through the picture. When the link was made to Mara Lang, he knew what had caused Justine Lavoie's deranged behavior; he remembered the picture in the file and now he knew where she was heading.
He pulled up next to the limousine and jumped out of the Jag. Then he saw them, on the grass just beyond the railing. There was blood in Naomh Walsh's thick curly hair where she had been struck and Justine Lavoie was giggling as she raised a knife above the woman's back.
“Stop!” he roared, pulling the Sig from his belt and aiming it at Justine Lavoie's head.
The girl giggled again. “Oh hi, pretty boy! Glad you're here. I'm just making her look pretty.” She brought the knife down and drew it through the flesh at the back of Naomh's shoulders. The sudden pain brought her back to consciousness with a scream.
Donovan pulled the trigger twice. He saw Justine Lavoie's arm snap and the blood spray from the flesh. She dropped the knife and jumped up.
A black SUV pulled up with screaming tires. From the corner of his eye, Donovan saw Albert get out.
Justine Lavoie twirled in a little dance step. He was surprised she was able to ignore the pain she must have in her arm. He saw her bend down to pick up the knife again and reach down to continue what she started. But her blood had sprayed the grass a wet red. As she stepped onto the red patch, she slipped. Her reactions were slow and she could not recover her balance. It seemed like an image from a dream to Donovan. Everything seemed to slow down. She fell backwards in slow motion and toppled over the edge of the small cliff. He felt himself rushing forward, but he could not reach her. He saw her tumble down and could all but hear her body break on the road below.