Buried Secrets (15 page)

Why was her fevered magpie mind dwelling on all those awful stories?

After all, she was living her own worst nightmare.

34.

“Her phone’s on and transmitting,” Diana said.

“Where is she?” I said.

“Leominster.” She said it wrong, like most people new to the state. It’s supposed to rhyme with “lemming,” almost.

“That’s an hour away.” I looked at my watch. “Maybe less, this time of night. How precise a location did they give you?”

“They’re e-mailing me lat-and-long coordinates, in degrees and minutes.”

“Okay,” I said. “That could be as big an area as a thousand square meters, the way these things work. But once I’m there I can start searching for likely locations.”

“Give me ten minutes.”

“Go back to bed. Otherwise, you’ll be a wreck tomorrow. I got this.”

“Technically, I put in the request. I’m not allowed to pass on the information to someone outside the Bureau.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll drive, you navigate.”

I QUICKLY gathered some equipment, including the Smith & Wesson and a handheld GPS unit, a ruggedized yellow Garmin eTrex.

As we drove, I told her what had happened in the hours since I’d seen her last: the surveillance tape at the Graybar Hotel, the guy who’d spiked Alexa’s drink and driven her away.

Her “friend” Taylor Armstrong, the senator’s daughter, who’d cooperated in the abduction for some reason I didn’t yet understand. The streaming video. Marshall Marcus’s admission that he’d taken money from some dangerous people in a last-ditch attempt to save his fund, though he lost it all anyway.

Diana furrowed her brow. “Let me check the phone detail records.” She began scrolling through her BlackBerry.

“Yeah, I’d like to know when the last phone call was, in or out.”

“The last outgoing call hit the tower in Leominster at two thirty-seven A.M.”

“Almost twenty-four hours ago,” I said. “How long did it last?” More scrolling. “About ten seconds.”

“Ten seconds?” I said. “That’s pretty short.”

I heard her scroll some more, and then she said, “The last call was to nine-one-one.

Emergency. But it doesn’t look like the call ever went through. It hit the tower, but it must have been cut off.”

“I’m impressed. She must have been pretty spaced-out from the drugs, but she had the wherewithal to try to call for help. What calls did she receive around then?”

“A bunch of incoming, between three in the morning to around noon today.”

“Can you see who they’re from?”

“Yeah. Four different numbers. Two landlines in Manchester-by-the-Sea.”

“Her dad.”

“One mobile phone, also Marcus’s. The fourth is another mobile phone registered to Taylor Armstrong.”

“So Taylor did try to call. Interesting.”

“Why?”

“If she was trying to reach Alexa, that may indicate she was actually worried about her friend. Which indicates she might not have known what happened to her.”

“Or that she was feeling guilty about what she’d done and wanted to make sure Alexa was okay.”

“Right,” I said. For a long time we didn’t talk. There was no quick way to Leominster.

No shortcut. I had to take the Mass Turnpike to 95 North and then onto Route 2. Leominster is on Route 2, an east-west highway that winds through Lincoln and Concord and then keeps going west to New York State.

But I wasn’t too concerned about the speed limit. I had a federal law-enforcement officer in the front seat next to me. If ever I had a chance of beating a speeding ticket, this was it.

It had started to rain. I switched on the wipers. The only vehicles on the road at this time of night were trucks. An old tractor-trailer was just ahead of me, rubber mudguards flapping, sheeting water onto my windshield. I clicked the wipers faster and changed lanes.

I began to sense her looking at me.

“What?” I said.

“Why is there blood on your collar? And please don’t tell me you cut yourself shaving.” I explained about the breakin at my loft. Gave her my theory that Gordon Snyder was behind it. As I talked, she shook her head slowly, and when I was done, she said, “That’s not FBI. That’s not how we work. We don’t do that kind of stuff.”

“Not officially.”

“If Snyder wanted to monitor your e-mail, he’d do it remotely. He wouldn’t send a couple of guys in to do a black-bag job.”

I thought for a moment. “You may have a point.”

We went quiet again. I was about to ask her about what had happened between us—or almost happened between us—earlier in the day, when she said abruptly, “Why is her phone still on?”

“Good question. They should have turned it off. Taken out the battery. Better yet, destroyed it. Anyone who watches crime shows on TV knows a cell phone can give up your location.”

“Maybe they didn’t find it on her.”

“Doubt it. She had it in the front pocket of her jacket.”

“Then maybe she hid it somewhere. Like in the vehicle she was abducted in.”

“Maybe.”

A black Silverado was weaving between lanes without signaling.

“I’m glad we reconnected,” I said. It came out a little stiff, a little formal.

She didn’t say anything.

I tried again. “Funny to think we’ve both been in Boston all these months.”

“I meant to call.”

“Nah, where’s the fun in that? Keep the guy guessing. That’s way more fun.” I wondered if that sounded resentful. I hoped not.

She was silent for a long moment. “Did I ever tell you about my dad?”

“A bit.” I knew he’d been killed while tracking down a fugitive, but I waited to see what she’d say.

“You know he was a U.S. Marshal, right? I remember how my mom always lived with that knot in her stomach, you know—when he left for work in the morning, would he come home safe?”

“Yet you risk your own safety every day,” I said gently, not sure what she was getting at.

“Well, that’s the life I signed up for. But always having to worry about someone else?

That’s more than I can stand, Nico.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying we had an understanding, and I knew I wasn’t abiding by it.”

“An understanding?”

“We were supposed to be casual, no strings, no pressure, no commitment, right? But I was starting to get in a little too deep, and I knew that wasn’t going to be good for either one of us.”

“Is that what you told yourself?”

“Do we really have to do this?”

I couldn’t help thinking about all that had been left unsaid between us, but all I managed was “You never said a word about it.”

She shrugged, went quiet.

We were driving along an endless, monotonous flat stretch of three-lane highway somewhere west of Chelmsford, through miles and miles of scraggly evergreen forest, steeply banked on either side. The broken white lane markers were worn. The only sound was the highway hum, a faint rhythmic thrumming.

“They didn’t ask me to go to Seattle,” she said softly. “I put in for a transfer.”

“Okay,” I said. It could have been a cool breeze from the window that was numbing my face.

“I had to pull myself out. I thought I saw my future and it scared me. Because I saw what my mom went through. I should probably marry a CPA, you know?” For a long time no one spoke.

Now we were zooming along Route 12 North, which seemed to be the main commercial thoroughfare. On the other side of the street was a Staples and a Marshalls. A Bickford’s restaurant that advertised “breakfast any time,” except apparently at two in the morning. A Friendly’s restaurant, closed and dark too. I pulled over to the shoulder and put on the flashers.

She looked up from the GPS. “This is it,” she said. “We’re within a thousand feet of her phone right now.”

35.

“Right there.” Diana pointed. “That’s 482 North Main Street.” Behind the Friendly’s was a four-story motel built of stucco and brick in the classic American architectural style best described as Motel Ugly. A tall pole-mounted road sign out front with a yellow-and-red Motel 12 logo brightly illuminated. It looked like the local kids had been using it for target practice, because there were a couple of holes and cracks in it where white light shone through. Mounted below that was a marquee sign board that said in black plastic letters COMPLEMENTARY HI SPED.

I pulled into the motel parking lot. There were maybe a dozen cars parked here. None of them was the Jaguar I’d seen on the surveillance video, not that I expected to see it here. On the other side of the motel loomed a tall self-storage building.

“Dammit,” I said, “we need more precise coordinates. Can you call AT&T back and ask them to ping the phone again? I want the GPS coordinates in decimal format.” While she called, I walked back toward the road. A few cars passed. A sign across the street said SHERATON FOUR POINTS. No construction lots that I could see, no fields or private homes.

“Got it,” Diana called out, running toward me. She held the Garmin out, and I took it.

She’d already programmed the new coordinates in. A flashing arrow represented us. A dot indicated Alexa’s iPhone, and it was quite near. I walked closer to the road and the flashing arrow moved with me.

Closer to Alexa’s iPhone.

I crossed the street, glancing at the GPS screen as I did, to a scrubby shoulder beside a guardrail. Now the arrow and the dot were almost aligned. Her phone had to be right around here.

I stepped over the guardrail and onto a steep downward grade that rolled into a drainage ditch, then rose sharply. I scrambled down the hill, lost my footing, and slid part of the way.

As I got to my feet at the bottom, I looked again at the GPS. The arrow was precisely on top of the dot. I looked up, then to my right, and to my left.

And there, in the yellow light of the streetlamp, I saw it. Lying in the ditch, a few feet away. An iPhone in a pink rubber case.

Alexa’s iPhone.

Discarded by the side of the road.

36.

“Alexa?”

The Owl’s voice startled her.

She’d been trying to remember the lyrics to “Lose Yourself” by Eminem. She’d been singing songs dredged up from memory, jingles from TV commercials, anything she could think of. Anything to keep her mind off where she was. She’d managed to recall all of the words to

“American Pie.” That took a long time. She didn’t know how long, since she’d lost all sense of time.

“You deviated from the script, Alexa.”

She didn’t reply. She didn’t know what he was talking about.

Then she remembered. The way she’d sneaked in those song lyrics to tell her father what they’d done to her.

“Do you understand that your life is entirely in my hands?”

“Oh—God—
kill me
!” she screamed, though it came out as a strangled croak. “Just do it. I don’t care!”

“Why would I want to kill you, Alexa? It is much worse for you to be buried so deep under the ground in your coffin.”

“Oh God, kill me,
please
!”

“Oh, no,” said the voice. “I want you to stay alive for a very long time. Knowing that no one will ever find you. No one.”

She moaned, screamed, felt light-headed, nauseous.

“There you are, ten feet underground, and no one has any idea where you are. Maybe I go for a ride. Maybe I go for a trip for some days. I will keep the ventilation on, of course, so you won’t run out of air. You will scream and no one can hear you, and you will beat your fists and claw against the steel walls of your casket, and no one knows you are there.”

“Please, I’ll do anything,” she said. “Anything.” She paused, swallowed hard, thought she might be sick again. “You’re very strong. I think you’re a very attractive man.” A chuckle came from the speaker overhead. “Nothing you can do to me can excite me more than watching you beg. This is very
very
exciting to me, Alexa.”

“My father will give you anything you want. Anything!”

“No. You are wrong. He gives nothing to free you.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know what Mercury is.”

“Your father knows. He understands very well. Do you know why he doesn’t give what we ask?”

“He doesn’t know what you want!”

“You are not important to him, Alexa. He loves his wife and his money more than he loves you. Maybe he never loves you. You are trapped like a rat and your father knows you are there and he doesn’t even care.”

“That’s not true!”

No reply.

Just silence.

“It’s not true,” Alexa repeated. “Let me talk to him again. I’ll tell him he has to do it now.”

Nothing. Silence.

“Please, let me talk to him.”

Not a sound.

In the dreadful silence she began to hear distant sounds that at first she thought were just hallucinations, squeaking from the hamster wheel of her terrified mind.

But no, these really were voices. Murmured, indistinct, but definitely voices. The way she’d sometimes hear her parents’ voices coming through the heating grates in the floor of the big old house, even though they were two floors below.

There were people up there
. Probably the Owl and the others he was working with. Their voices were coming through the tube or pipe or duct that let in the fresh air. Were they with him?

What if they weren’t and they knew nothing about her?

She yelled as loudly as she could: “HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME PLEASE

SOMEBODY HELP ME I’M DOWN HERE HELP ME!”

Only silence in reply.

Then the distant murmuring started up again, and she was sure she could hear someone laughing.

37.

Instead of finding Alexa, we’d found her discarded phone.

A huge disappointment, sure. But the more I thought about it, the more it told us.

It told us she was probably within a hundred miles of Boston.

We knew from the hotel’s surveillance tape what time she’d been abducted. We knew from the 911 call that she’d passed through Leominster, north of Boston, less than an hour later.

Once Diana had made a few calls, we concluded that Alexa had probably been driven, not put on a plane. The only airfield nearby was the Fitchburg Municipal Airport, which had two runways and was used by a couple of small charter companies. But no flights had left between midnight the night before and six that morning.