“Gee, thanks, Otto,” Dink said.
The following day, Dink walked into his old room and found his civilian clothes on his bed and an envelope containing his wallet. There were no credit cards, of course-Herb Fisher had cut those in half-but his driver’s license was there, and a little over a hundred dollars. The next morning, Dink was having coffee with Otto in the rec room. “There’s a terrific movie on in town,” he said. “I saw it in the local paper. I hear the management allows trips to the village. Why don’t we go this afternoon?”
“They’ll sometimes let us take a day trip,” Otto said. “I’ll see what I can do.” He left and walked toward the administrative offices, then returned ten minutes later. “We’re on,” he said. “Starts at two-thirty.”
Otto drove Dink into the village and parked on Main Street. The theater was two buildings from the corner gas station, as Dink had remembered. Otto bought him a ticket, and they went inside. Twenty minutes into the feature, Dink grabbed his gut and made a grunting sound. “I’ve got to go to the john,” he whispered to Otto.
“Okay.”
Dink left the theater and walked quickly down to the gas station, where he found the owner reading a newspaper. “Hi,” Dink said. “My name’s Brennan. You’ve got my car stored here.”
“Right,” the man said. “Can I see some ID?”
Dink showed him his driver’s license.
“Take me a minute,” the man said. “I gassed it up when it came in.” Ten minutes later, the man was back with Dink’s BMW convertible. “You’re all paid up,” the man said, handing him the keys.
Dink gave him a twenty and pulled out of the station. It felt good to be out and behind the wheel. He headed for New Haven. He drove to his dorm and found the custodian.
“Hi, Paul. Can you let me into my room? I’ve lost the key.”
“Hey, Mr. Brennan. The boss said you’d left school, so I boxed up your stuff.”
“I’ll save you the trouble of getting rid of it,” Dink said.
The man unlocked the door. “There’s some mail, too. It’s on your desk, and there’s a package.”
Dink had thought there might be mail. He riffled through the envelopes and found three he wanted. They contained the new credit cards and an ATM card that Parker Mosely had ordered to replace the ones Herb Fisher had destroyed.
Then he turned his attention to the larger package. He opened it with a box cutter. Inside was a beautiful leather briefcase, one that matched his luggage. He opened the case and found a card inside: “Happy Birthday! You’re a man now. Love, Dad.” The old man didn ’ t forget, he thought. How about that?
He packed his suitcases with some clothes, then he found his passport and checkbook in a desk drawer and put them into the briefcase with his Mac Air. He carried the cases out to his car, stowed them in the trunk, and headed for New York City. Once in the city he visited the Apple store and bought a new iPhone. His old one had disappeared. His first call was to the Lowell, a small, elegant hotel on East Sixty-third Street, near Madison. He booked himself a suite, then retrieved his car from the garage, drove there, and checked in.
Herbie was in his room at the Strategic Defense training center, sore from exertion and with tired arms from firing a pistol-something he discovered he did very accurately. His cell phone rang.
“Herb Fisher.”
“Mr. Fisher, this is the director at the farm,” a male voice said. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Oh, God, Herbie thought, the kid has died, or something.
“What’s happened?”
“We allowed young Mr. Brennan to make a day trip into the village with a staff member, and he managed to get away from him. We haven’t been able to locate the boy.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No, he hasn’t committed a crime, and he was here voluntarily.”
“But he committed himself.”
“He agreed to that under your guardianship, but that’s no longer in effect.”
“Why not?”
“Because he had his twenty-first birthday the day before yesterday.”
“Shit,” Herbie said.
“Well, yes. I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can do for him, unless you can persuade him to return voluntarily.”
“Thank you,” Herbie said, then hung up. Now what?
40
Shelley Bach sat at the dressing table in her room at the Carlyle and regarded her image in the mirror. She used a hand mirror to look at her profile and liked what she saw, even without makeup. There were still a few red places, but as she sponged on her makeup, they magically went away. She liked her new auburn hair, too; it went beautifully with her natural, pale skin color. She dressed and left the hotel.
Now she made her third visit to her new dentist for the fitting of her new smile. The veneers from the dental lab corrected small irregularities in her front teeth, and they were whiter than the originals. She had approved them on her second visit, when they had been affixed to a mold of her teeth. Now they were put permanently in place. She gave the receptionist her credit card and regarded herself in the mirror. She was exactly what she had wanted to be: a different person. No one who knew her would recognize her with her new profile, her new teeth, and her new clothes. She looked ten years younger, and she was no longer the government drone she had been at the FBI; she was a New York woman.
Now all she wanted was to go shopping. Oh, and one other thing: she wanted a man. She stepped out onto Madison Avenue and swung her long legs toward Seventy-second Street and the Ralph Lauren store.
Dino looked up from his desk to see Viv DeCarlo standing at his office door. She looked great, he thought: slim, but busty, black hair as thick as fur, nice clothes. She seemed to be dressing better these days. “Yeah, Viv? What have you got?”
“I’ve got two TROs on Ed Abney,” she said, “but a few years back. I have a theory about that.”
“Have a seat. What’s your theory?”
Viv sat down and crossed her legs. “I think he’s never stopped abusing women,” she said, “but I think he’s gotten better at intimidating them. I think that’s the only reason there are no recent TROs.”
“Makes sense to me,” Dino said. “Are you ready to make an arrest?”
“I’m not sure about that,” she said. “All we’ve got are the old TROs and Marla Rocker’s statement about what Annette said to her in the john at Sardi’s.”
“What sort of job did the crime-scene guys do on Annette’s apartment?”
“We didn’t get lucky there. He seems to have wiped everything down, and get this: they found an empty chemical douche in her kitchen garbage can. He probably flushed out her vagina, too.”
Dino frowned. “If he’s that careful, he’s going to be hard to nail. Do we know of any other women he’s been out with?”
“No, but I’d like to tail him and see who we can turn up. Any chance of a wiretap?”
“You can talk to the DA, but I doubt it. And we’re short of manpower. We couldn’t manage a proper tail team right now, unless we suspected he was about to hurt somebody again.”
“I’ve checked back on unsolved murders of women with theatrical backgrounds. There are two that might be a fit, but we’ve no evidence to connect him with them.”
“It’s all too nebulous,” Dino said.
“I have an idea about how to make it less nebulous,” she said, “but you’re not going to like it.”
“Why am I not going to like it?”
“Because it involves Rosie and me getting to know Mr. Abney.”
“Wait a minute, you’re not talking about-”
“Of course not. Neither of us is going to sleep with him and certainly not a threesome. You don’t think I’m crazy, do you?”
“Not entirely. What do you have in mind?”
“I thought we’d give Abney a choice, see which of us he likes. If he bites, the other can run the tail, if you’ll give us one more team.”
Dino thought about it. It was a bold move, he had to admit. “You’re never to be alone with him,” he said. “Never.”