Abandoned: A Thriller (33 page)

“Good, that’s good,” Alan says. “That’s exactly what you’re going to use for your cover. You are a newly divorced, disillusioned twenty-eight-year-old.”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Right, twenty-nine-year-old with a baby face, got it,” Alan teases. “You were raised by a solid, dependable father and an alcoholic mother.”

“Who physically abused you,” I interject.

“My mother never abused me.”

“I’m glad to hear it, but here is where the narrative veers away from the truth and into the profile we need. Your mother abused you physically. She did it when your father was not around, and you hid it from your father.”

“Why did I hide it?”

“Because you were trying to keep the family together. You still loved your mother, and your father had said, many times, that if things got much worse, he was going to divorce your mom.”

Leo’s face reddens. He looks away.

“Hit a nerve there?” Alan asks.

He seems to shake himself. “Dad always called Mom ‘a woman of trouble and fire.’”

“What did he mean by that?” I ask.

“It meant that she was full of life, and full of trouble, both, together.” He bites his lower lip, pensive. “I remember one Saturday, I
woke up and Mom was sober. I guess I was about twelve. I walked into the kitchen and she was awake, not hungover, and she’d made me breakfast. A great breakfast. Pancakes and bacon and fresh squeezed orange juice. I’d never had fresh squeezed orange juice until that morning. I remember drinking it and thinking it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.

“After breakfast, Mom asked me, out of the blue:
Leo, do you know how to dance?
I didn’t, of course. I was pretty geeky, and I told her as much. She grabbed my hand and took me into the living room.
It’s never too late to learn!
she laughed.” He pauses, remembering. “Mom had a great laugh. Anyway. She put on one of my CDs, and we spent the afternoon dancing. Dad was on a double shift, so we were all alone.” He picks at the knee of his pants, glum. “I wasn’t a great dancer by the end of it, but I’ve danced ever since. Mom started drinking around dinnertime. She was angry by six, crying by seven, and blitzed by eight. Fresh squeezed orange juice and dance lessons, followed by vodka and puking and tears, all in the same day. Trouble and fire.”

“You need to tell that exact story when you’re on that site,” Alan says. “It’s real, son. So it’ll ring true.”

“I understand.”

“The child end of things is more problematic,” I say. “We can’t pull a child into this operation.”

“I have an idea on that,” Leo offers. “Go ahead.”

“What if my ex-wife had an abortion?”

I resist the urge to put a hand to my own stomach. “Go on.”

“What if she got an abortion prior to the divorce to avoid child-custody issues?”

Alan whistles. “Yeah, that could generate some hate.”

“It could tie in with my whole story,” Leo continues, picking up speed as his certainty increases. “My dream was to raise my own child in a good home, with a stable mother and father. She destroyed all of that.”

“It’s a good stressor,” I agree.

“Just the kind of thing to bring a young man out of despair and into a nice, simmering rage,” Alan says. He claps Leo on the shoulder again. “Good work, son. You’re a natural.”

We spend another hour working out the details. A good cover is not
so much about the big picture. It’s about what one of my teachers at Quantico used to describe as “moments of undeniable humanity.”

There are things you hear
, he’d said,
that you know are true. Moments of undeniable humanity. Like when a character in a book admits to us that he eats his boogers, or a husband fakes an orgasm, or a wife adds spit to her cheating husband’s BLT. Perfection is not empathetic. We feel intimate with other strivers and failers; we’re comforted to find that someone else also stole a dollar from Mom’s purse.

“An important aspect of undercover work,” Alan says, “maybe the
most
important aspect, is patience. Criminals are a suspicious bunch of people. Their first assumption is that you can’t be trusted, period. You prove otherwise by not seeming too eager, by just playing the part. You don’t do anything out of the ordinary, until you do.”

“What’s that mean?”

“People are unpredictable. Being too predictable can be suspicious. The bank manager who slinks off to put on women’s panties is more believable than the bank manager with a drinking problem.”

“Why?”

“People like drama, I guess. Point is, every now and then, you throw a curveball. Not a big one, just enough to show them, yeah, this guy’s human. A key one can be to break an appointment. If he says,
Meet back in the chat tomorrow at two o’clock
, you agree and then don’t show up ’til four or maybe not until the next day. When he asks why, you say,
I fell asleep
, or
I got too depressed to move
, or
I went to a movie.
It pisses him off, and that’s real, you see?”

“I’m starting to.”

Callie bursts into the office, carrying a stack of documents and with a young woman in tow. The woman is about the same age as Leo. She’s around five feet four, with dirty-blond hair down to her shoulders and a trim figure.

“I have what we need to get started,” Callie announces. I raise an eyebrow. “That was fast.”

“Don’t discount the power of my charm.” She drops the documents down on the desk in front of me, ignoring Alan’s snort. “Driver’s license, Social Security number, bank accounts with a minimum of money in them—you’re not a rich boy, Leo.”

“Good, that’ll make it easier to get into character.”

“Your name is Robert Long. You dabble in freelance computer
consulting and are trying to break into day trading—so far unsuccessfully.”

“So I’m a quasi-loser.”

“A dreamer, honey-love, someone who walks the path less traveled. Think positively. This is your ex-wife, the ex-Mrs. Robert Long. Her real name is Marjorie Green. She just started in the financial crimes division. Her cover name is Cynthia Long, née Roberts. Being smart, as I am, I thought you could come up with a nice story about the serendipity of her maiden name being Roberts while your first name is Robert.”

“Glad to meet you, Marjorie,” I say, extending my hand.

“Thank you, Agent Barrett,” she says, shaking my offered hand. She’s looking at me a bit goggle-eyed. “I know it’s not professional of me, but I just wanted to say that I’m a huge admirer. I’ve studied your career and your cases.” She smiles shyly. “I’m not a stalker, just a fan.”

“Well, thanks. I appreciate you taking part in our operation. Has Callie briefed you?”

“To a degree.”

Marjorie Green is one of those subtle women, the ones I secretly tend to envy the most. She looks younger than she probably is, but she radiates a mix of unselfconscious assurance and lack of ego, an air of quiet, unprepossessing confidence.

“We’ll fill you in. Let me introduce you to the others.”

Everyone is welcoming and friendly, except for James.

“We have a house,” Callie continues, when the introductions are complete. “Both the title and the mortgage will be in place by tomorrow morning, held in the names of Robert and Cynthia Long. I went with leaving a fair amount of equity in the home.”

“How much?” Alan asks.

“More than a hundred thousand.”

“Good. It’ll give credibility to Robert Long’s need to get the wife out of the way.”

“Nothing makes more sense when it comes to murder than money,” Callie agrees. “They both have a good credit rating to go with the Social Security number, and there are credit cards with minor balances on them for both. Use them sparingly and make sure you keep all your receipts.”

“I assume you have a place for Leo too?” I ask.

“Of course. Being the slighted young man, he’s in a so-so two-bedroom apartment. All utilities, including Internet and the rest, will
be activated tomorrow. Ah, and a joint life-insurance policy as well. Five hundred thousand dollars on each of you.”

I shake my head in amazement. “Jesus, Callie. How’d you manage to get all of this done so fast? This normally takes at least a week.”

“I am owed many favors by many people. And I have my numerous male fans, of course.”

“Puh-leeeze,” Alan says, rolling his eyes. Marjorie watches it all, bemused.

“Additionally,” Callie says, pinning Alan with a scowl, “I told them it could count as a belated wedding gift. It’s called incentive.”

“However it occurred, good job.”

“Thank you.”

“When are we going to start?” Marjorie asks.

It’s a good question, and I give it careful consideration. As Alan had said, the bugbear of a good undercover operation is a lack of patience. There are probably a number of women out there, locked away in dark rooms, losing their minds and picking their skin until it bleeds. He’d warned us about coming after him, and we need to ensure that our actions do not endanger any living victims.

“Tomorrow,” I decide. I look at Alan and Leo and Marjorie. “That work for you?”

“It works great for me,” Marjorie says, obviously excited about her first undercover experience.

Leo and Alan both nod, resigned to their fate.

I give Leo and Marjorie my full attention. “You have to operate on the assumption that you’re being watched, every day. When you’re on this assignment, you’re not allowed to call family, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, anyone. Success depends on assuming the identities we’re developing for you.” I pause to give weight to what I’m about to say next. “The consequences of having your cover blown go further than your own safety. We’re operating on the assumption that his threat is real, that he has other prisoners. If he thinks we’re getting too close, he could decide to kill them. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Leo says, face and voice sober.

“Yes,” Marjorie replies.

“Good. Then let’s get Marjorie up to speed and finish building your covers.”

I am at the prison, watching Douglas Hollister as he sits across from me. The rest of my team are busy at their assigned tasks; I want to spend some time with Hollister, so I can continue to fill in the picture of the man who’s behind all this.

We still know remarkably little about our perpetrator. He’s done an excellent job of hiding himself from view, whatever his anomalies in that regard. He’s kept contact at a minimum, controlled all points of communication. He’s mutilated most of our best witnesses, and Heather Hollister is too damaged to be much help right now. Douglas Hollister is the most tangible link we have.

I take some time to study Hollister before speaking. He’s a broken, beaten man. It permeates his body language and his silence. He stares down at his own hands, meeting my eyes only once, when he entered the interview room. He’s aged overnight; his skin is sallow, and his face sags in exhaustion and depression.

“Why are you here?” he asks, listless.

“Two reasons. I want to talk more with you about the man you dealt with. And I wanted to see how you were adjusting to prison life.”

He raises his head at that last. “Adjusting? Is that a joke?”

“Not at all.”

He snorts, but it’s halfhearted. “I’m trapped in a building filled with rapists, murderers, and thieves. Almost all of them are bigger and stronger than I am, and almost all of them are unfriendly. How do you think I’m doing?”

“Has anyone threatened you?”

“Not overtly. But it’s coming. I can feel it.”

“You can request protective custody.”

“Oh sure.” His tone is derisive. “Someone told me about that. You’re put in another building with a different set of rapists and murderers and thieves, except now you have a target on your back forever, because everyone assumes you’re a snitch. No thanks.”

“If it comes down to a choice between that or death, I’d advise you to choose that, Douglas.”

He sighs, rubs his face rapidly with both hands, as though he’s trying to wake himself up from a hangover or a nightmare. His skin glows red from the rubbing, then returns to its normal color. “I’m not all that concerned with living or dying right now. Why should I be? I killed one of my own sons, and the one who lived will know that eventually. Dana’s a … thing now. And Heather wins, after all. Death? I really don’t care.”

Heather wins?

I fight the instinct for anger. However many years I spend with sociopaths, with all their malignant narcissism, they still have the ability to surprise me. They have a twist in their mind that I can’t understand in the root of me.

“You will,” I say. “You feel that way now, but it will pass.”

“How do you know?”

Because I know you. Because you care more about yourself than any other human being in the world. Because you are what you are pathologically, by reflex. You couldn’t be otherwise any more than you could choose to stop breathing.

“Because I’m familiar with the phenomenon of shock,” I tell him instead. It’s a true-enough answer. “I’ve dealt with men and women in your situation. Suicide or death wishes are a common first stage. Survival asserts itself eventually.”