The Collective (17 page)

“Okay,” she told the detectives. “Whatever you need.”

Jane squeezed her arm, leaned over and kissed Leyla’s head, and then kissed Cait’s cheek before standing up.

“Officer Parker will drive you to the hospital,” Detective Monteforte said.

The uniformed cop who had been standing behind the other detective responded to this, moving toward the door. George reached down to gently brush Leyla’s thin hair with his fingers. Then he steadied Jane as they moved around the coffee table and followed Officer Parker from the room.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” Cait called after them.

Then she and Leyla were alone with the police. The burly officer over by the fireplace busied himself looking at family photos on the mantel while the gray-haired man gazed at his partner expectantly.

“I’m Detective Anne Monteforte,” the woman said, taking a seat on the sofa. “This is Detective Jarman, and the sasquatch who had your daughter when you came in is Officer Grant. I think Grant’s available for babysitting, by the way.”

Cait smiled politely at this attempt at humor.

“Why don’t you sit down, Ms. McCandless,” Detective Jarman said.

He had strong features, and his skin was so dark his face looked carved from cherrywood. Though he’d said little, his very presence had a reassuring weight to it. Yet it did feel a little odd that he, a stranger, was inviting her to take a seat in her aunt and uncle’s living room.

“Call me Cait, please,” she said, as she settled onto the sofa beside Detective Monteforte and sat Leyla on her lap. The baby played with Cait’s fingers, trying to bring them to her mouth to be gnawed on. She had a new tooth on the way.

“Cait,” Monteforte said. “We’ve been over the day’s events with your aunt. I want you to understand right up front that we’ve seen this sort of thing before. We’re also aware of the call you placed to Sergeant Bryce earlier this morning. In fact, it’s thanks to that call that things didn’t go even worse here today. Bryce sent a patrol car to see if there were any suspicious vehicles parked on the street, and as Officer Grant came down the street, he saw the attack in progress.”

Cait turned to Grant. “You saved them?”

Grant shrugged. “Right place, right time.”

“Thank you,” Cait said. She kissed Leyla’s head. “Thank you so much.”

“The odds are that this was a random thing,” Monteforte continued. “Even if these guys were watching during the night and this morning, it’s likely they were looking for a target, for a woman with a baby—”

“Why?” Cait asked.

Jarman shrugged. “I can think of a few reasons, all ugly. But the point is that we also have to consider the possibility that it wasn’t random. So we need to ask you some questions.”

“Shoot.”

Jarman leaned forward in his chair. “Your uncle told us that the baby … that Leyla’s father is deceased.”

Cait nodded, grateful that she wouldn’t have to tell the story. “Yes.”

“What about his family? Is it possible that any of … I’m sorry, what was his name?” Monteforte asked.

“Nizam Qadir.”

“Right.” Monteforte went on, “Is it possible any of Mr. Qadir’s relatives might think they ought to have custody of Leyla? Grandparents? Anyone?”

Cait glanced back and forth between the two detectives, blinking in surprise. This had never even occurred to her, and the idea startled her. On her lap, Leyla had managed to get the knuckle of her mother’s right index finger into her mouth and nibbled it hard with her single tooth.

“I really don’t think so,” Cait said. “I mean, Nizam’s parents and brother are dead. As far as I know his two sisters are still alive, but they’re all in Iraq. His younger sister and I write letters. I’ve sent pictures of the baby, but she’s never said anything.”

“So it’s not impossible,” Monteforte said, glancing at Jarman.

“I guess not. But I’d say it’s pretty unlikely.”

Jarman sat back in his chair. “I agree it’s far-fetched. So let’s talk about A-Train.”

Again, the line of questioning mystified her.

“A-Train?” she said, hearing the emptiness of her own voice. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Cait felt sick. Someone had tried to
take
her child. The thought filled her with a horror she had never before experienced—not even in Iraq. She could endure any physical torment that left her alive, but the idea that someone had tried to take Leyla was ripping her apart. And the cops were going off on tangents that seemed useless to her.

Monteforte cocked her head to one side, studying Cait. “You humiliated the man last night. It’s obvious he’s capable of violence—”

“Capable of convincing two other guys to beat the shit out of a middle-aged woman and try to snatch a baby? My aunt saw the video from last night. She’d have recognized A-Train if he was one of them. And, yeah, the guy’s capable of slapping his wife around, definitely, but what was he going to do
if he got my daughter? Kill her? Blackmail me? I don’t see it. You need to focus on those cars. I tried approaching the one this morning, and it took off, but I got the plate number. I gave it to Sergeant Bryce. He was going to run it.”

“He’s still working on it,” Jarman said.

“Hang on,” Monteforte said, rising from the sofa. “I’ll check in with him, see what he’s turned up.”

She went into the kitchen, leaving Cait and Leyla alone with Jarman and the silent Officer Grant. Leyla had started to fuss. Cait kissed her daughter’s head, shushing her, and bounced her a little on her lap.

“We’re not going to keep you much longer,” Detective Jarman said.

Leyla started to cry, and Cait was relieved for the excuse to get up.

“Sorry, Detective, but it’s time for her bottle.”

When Cait had started working, she had pumped breast milk for Jane to give the baby, but within days of taking a bottle for the first time, Leyla had started to lose interest in breast-feeding. The milk didn’t come fast enough for her and she’d grow frustrated and cry, refusing to latch on. Cait would have liked to nurse the baby longer, but with her schedule and Leyla’s fussing, she’d had no choice but to move entirely to formula just to keep up with the baby’s demands.

As she stood, Detective Monteforte stepped back into the room, just completing her phone call. Leyla would have to manage without her bottle for a couple of minutes longer.

“Thank you, Sergeant. Yeah, good. Much appreciated,” Monteforte said. She ended the call and palmed her cell, gazing first at Cait and then at Jarman.

Cait could see the doubt in her eyes, mixed with confusion and disappointment.

“Anything?” Jarman asked.

Monteforte addressed her reply to Cait. “I spoke with Sergeant Bryce. He ran the license plate that you gave him but he came up with nothing. There’s no plate with that number in Massachusetts or New Hampshire.”

“It’s a Mass plate. And the number I gave him was off that car. I’m a hundred percent sure of that.”

“Maybe you wrote it down wrong?” Jarman suggested.

Cait shook her head. “I didn’t.”

Monteforte clipped her phone into the leather sheath on her belt. “That’s a problem, Cait. There isn’t a car on the road with that plate number.”

Cait held Leyla tightly. The baby seemed to weigh more, as if she had somehow become more solid. She tried to let the anger flow out of her, breathing evenly, not wanting to upset her little girl.

“There is,” she said, biting down on the words. “I saw it. Unless the plate was a fake.”

Monteforte and Jarman glanced at each other, and Cait wanted to scream.

“I know what I saw,” she said. “When the Audi tore out of here this morning, I got a face full of exhaust fumes. I can still smell them. And I wrote the number down correctly. The fact you can’t find the registration should get you
more
curious, not make you assume I’m delusional.”

“We’re not discounting what you’re saying, Cait,” Monteforte replied. “But as we explained, we’ve got to investigate every avenue that might lead us to the answers we’re all looking for.”

Cait took a deep breath and let it out. “I hope you do, Detective,” she said. “Investigate every avenue, I mean. We’re not imagining all of this. And the A-Train thing … that’s a waste of your time.”

“And yet we have to talk to him,” Jarman said.

Cait uttered a sound that was half sigh and half chuckle. “Great. Have fun with that. Are you going to have someone watching for these cars, in case they come back?”

Jarman narrowed his eyes, nostrils flaring. She had apparently pushed his buttons, but she was glad. Maybe it would wake him up a little.

“Officer Grant will be in his car, right out front, for a couple of hours. If you decide to go home during that time, he’ll follow you and enter first.”

Cait frowned, unconsciously rocking Leyla, the way she did whenever she wanted the baby to take a nap.

“Do you think I should be afraid to go home?” she asked.

“We’re not saying that,” Monteforte jumped in. “Not at all. Detective Jarman was just offering, in case you were concerned.”

Cait glanced down at Leyla. “We’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Jarman said. “We’ll have patrol cars drive by this house and your apartment building every few hours for the next couple of days, and you can always call if you see anything suspicious.”

He stood, reached inside his jacket, and then handed her a business card. Cradling Leyla in one arm, Cait took it but did not bother to look at it. Monteforte produced her card as well.

“My cell phone number’s on there, too,” the female detective said. Then she glanced at Leyla, and her expression softened. “We’re not ignoring you, Cait. I’m going to drive by tonight myself, see if one of those cars is parked down the street. But we don’t have a lot to go on, which means we have to follow up on what we do have.”

Cait just wanted them to leave so she could be alone with her daughter. “I get it, Detective. And I appreciate your help.”

Voss stood inside the Sarasota P.D.’s command center vehicle, watching a blue screen and waiting for something to happen. The cop sitting at the computer in front of her was named Boyd, but she didn’t know if that was his first name or his last. There were hundreds of computers inside the new twenty-first-century police station. Given the price tag on the construction, which she’d heard more than one cop muttering about, she was surprised they hadn’t skimped on the tech. But it had been simple enough to locate a laptop in the building that had a camera built in, and to get an officer to
volunteer to deliver that laptop to the windowless third-floor interview room where al-Jubouri had moved his hostages.

The guy might be a murderer and a terrorist, and he might be forgetful enough to drive with an expired registration, but it turned out he wasn’t stupid. The non-hostage civilians inside the building had been evacuated, and most of the cops had gathered on the third floor, weapons ready, praying for an opportunity to kill the son of a bitch who had already shot three of their own. Of the three victims, two were DOA and one—earlier thought dead—had turned out to be alive, but in critical condition. The dead had already been retrieved, and the third victim had been taken out by EMTs. Voss had been told he was in surgery already, but nobody was making any promises about him pulling through.

The shooting had taken place in a corridor, and al-Jubouri had held a gun to the head of a fourth officer, threatening to kill him if the others didn’t put their weapons down. Then he had directed the remainder of his hostages into the interview room, at gunpoint.

“Are we sure this is going to work?” Turcotte asked.

Voss glanced at him, then over at Deputy Commissioner Lewis and Captain Wetherell. Neither of them looked like they had an answer.

Boyd looked up from his computer. “It depends on how tech-savvy this guy is. If he goes to open a browser and it opens, and he’s happy with that, we should be fine.”

A tech on the inside had worked on the laptop before it had been delivered to what was now called the “hostage room.” They had been trying to figure out a way to give al-Jubouri what he was asking for while still maintaining control of what he did with the computer once he had it. Voss figured in the post–Patriot Act era, the FBI must have a better way, but al-Jubouri knew there were computers in the building. He wasn’t going to wait for some FBI geek squad to show up.

So they’d given him a laptop with one modification. The software used by the department—and millions of other people—allowed for remote access from another computer. If your laptop or PC was having serious problems, you could
contact a tech nerd or your corporate I.T. guy, and give them access via an e-mail that was essentially a web link. All the I.T. guy would have to do was click on the link and he’d be able to remotely control your computer, move files around, and do whatever else he wanted. You’d be sitting at your desk, watching all the action on your own monitor or laptop screen, as if the computer was doing everything by itself.

What the Sarasota P.D.’s tech guy had realized was that they could reverse the process. Before giving al-Jubouri the laptop, they had set it up as if the user—al-Jubouri—was the I.T. guy. Everything he did on the laptop was actually him remotely controlling an outside computer—in this case, the one in front of Boyd, right there in the command center truck. So whatever al-Jubouri did, they could see it. Every word he typed, every link he clicked, anything he accessed, they could watch it all—and they could cut him off at any point in that process.