The Collective (21 page)

A noble cause. A hell of an opportunity. And a chance to put down roots in a community, though it would mean a lot of travel. But Josh knew now that one of the reasons Wood had hired them was that she trusted them not to exert the
power of the agency unless all other alternatives had been exhausted. They had to wait for things to get completely screwed up before they could do anything to fix them. At first, Josh had been all right with that, but in practice it could become incredibly frustrating.

Like now, for instance.

They knew Ed Turcotte. The man had the capacity to be a gargantuan asshole, but he knew his job and he did it well. His deployment of his own people and the various law enforcement grunts showed that. He was totally on top of this case. FBI researchers were cross-checking a picture of every suspected terrorist and militant jihadists they could find to try to turn up real names for al-Din’s surviving partners.

But it still wasn’t how Josh would have done it. The first thing he would have done was throw Norris out. The guy had the best interests of his company, not his country, at heart.

Arsenault, too
. The lieutenant seemed like a decent guy, but SOCOM had no place on this case.

The second thing he would have done was go back to the Greenlaw house and start over. They had to be missing something. Had the murders been revenge on Colonel Greenlaw? And if so, for what? Something he had done while in the service?

And how did that connect to the baby al-Din had abducted in Maine? The article Turcotte’s people had turned up in
Rolling Stone
sounded like crazy talk. Certainly no one had taken it seriously at the time of its publication, despite
Rolling Stone
’s reputation. The FBI agent the magazine had interviewed—Nixon—had been fired shortly thereafter, according to Turcotte’s researcher, leaving the writer of the article without a reputable source. There had been no follow-up story.

Still, he couldn’t discount the possibility that somehow the kids—the Greenlaw twins in Florida and the stolen infant in Bangor—really were the connection.

Josh leaned farther back in the chair. The air conditioner hummed.

The computer screen went dark as the screen saver kicked in. Josh closed his eyes and pictured the interior of the
Greenlaw home. He wished he had the case materials in hand—crime-scene photos, floor plans, phone records, the contents of Greenlaw’s hard drive—but sometimes the answers weren’t to be found in the accumulated information. Chang was focused on the hunt for al-Din and the missing baby. She had FBI and state and local cops at her disposal, but Josh’s mind kept going back to the Greenlaw home. Something had been off in that house … something more than the murder of a family of four.

The killers had taken a ladder out of the Greenlaws’ garage and used it to climb up to the twins’ second-story bedroom. They’d chosen an open window, obviously, so they would have known it was unlocked before they started climbing. They had cut the screen just enough to remove it and replaced it afterward to disguise their point of entry—

But what would it matter, if they were murdering the entire family? Had they done that just to confuse the police? It seemed a strangely contemplative choice for the fury of revenge.

Chang had gone to get them both some coffee, and to check in with the Bangor P.D. Josh could have just waited for her to come back, but his thoughts were moving fast now, so he got up to find her. He’d made it halfway across the room when the door swung open and Chang stepped in, a coffee in each hand.

She smiled. “Wow. You missed me that much, huh?”

Any other time, he would have welcomed the chance to flirt. Nala Chang was a very attractive woman, not to mention smart and competent, and the tired rasp in her voice was sexy. But he pushed such thoughts away. A family had been murdered. Children. That horror made any other concerns feel foolish.

“At the Greenlaw house,” he said. “You were the first one in. Did you happen to take note of the state of the upstairs windows?”

“In what sense?”

“Which were open and closed, and which were locked and unlocked?”

Chang let the question hang for a few seconds, maybe running through the crime scene in her mind.

“Most of them were open, but even the ones that were closed were unlocked,” she said. “The first floor had been locked up tight for the night, but upstairs … no. They weren’t prepared for anyone trying to use a ladder to get in.”

Josh frowned. He pictured the house in his mind. “The twins’ window faced the backyard.”

“Yes.”

“But there were three other points of entry at the back of the house. The guest room, the bathroom, and the parents’ bedroom. Do you remember if any of those windows were open?”

“All but the guest room, I think. What’s on your mind, Josh? I can practically hear the gears turning in your head.”

Josh exhaled, the grim weight of it bearing down on him. “There’s no way we’re finding this baby alive.”

Chang shook her head, eyes full of hurt and anger. “Don’t you dare say that. Until we find her, you’ve got to keep her alive in your mind. Once you stop hoping, you start to give up on her, in your heart. And I won’t let you do that.”

All the air seemed to have been sucked from the room, and the space between them felt charged with intimate electricity.

“You’re right,” Josh said, admiring her fierceness, and wanting even more of it. But he had to focus on the job for now. “And I’m sorry. But we’re dealing with more than guesswork now. Follow me on this. Let’s say you’re al-Din and his buddy. The garage has a side door, okay, so you can get the ladder out without the noise of raising one of the main doors. Then you have to pick a point of entry. Obviously you go to the backyard to cut down on the chance anyone will spot you in the act. Now, there’s no way to tell from the ground which windows are unlocked unless they’re open, but you’ve got three possibilities. Bathroom, boys’ bedroom, parents’ bedroom. Which one are you going to pick?”

“The room with nobody in it,” Chang said immediately. “Better chance of getting in without waking anybody up prematurely.”

“Some bathrooms have windows much smaller than the others in the house. What about the Greenlaws’ house?”

“A little smaller, maybe, but you could fit through.”

“And if I’m remembering the layout of the property, the house is canted at a slight angle, right? The corner with Michael and Neil’s bedroom is closer to the street, not to mention that the neighboring house on that side is closer. So wouldn’t you say their window was more of a risk than either of the other two open ones?”

“So why go through the boys’ window?” Chang asked. “Unless …”

“Yeah,” Josh said. “Unless the boys were the target all along. They climb up the ladder, slit the screen, suffocate Michael and Neil, then put the screen back in place. If they’re quiet enough, they can go right out the front door, put the ladder back, in its place, and in the morning the parents will think they forgot to turn the dead bolt the night before, if they even notice in the midst of the screaming.”

“God,” Chang whispered. “I knew something was off. It didn’t make sense to me that they would start with the children instead of the parents, who would be harder to subdue if they woke up. It would have made more sense to suffocate the parents—”

“If the parents had been their target,” Josh said. “But if we’re right, then they never intended to kill Mr. and Mrs. Greenlaw at all. If they hadn’t woken up, the parents would still be alive. That’s why the suspects had to clear out of their apartment in Fort Myers on such short notice, leaving so much behind. They didn’t expect to have to blow town so fast.”

“Okay, I’ll buy it. But why?” Chang asked. “These guys are supposed to be terrorists, right? They’ve set up a cell in Fort Myers and obviously have some kind of operation in mind. But now they’re killing kids in Florida and stealing babies in Maine. To what end?”

“Unless that
is
the operation,” Josh said, cold dread forming a block in the pit of his stomach. Could these lunatics actually believe in what the now-dead Agent Nixon had called the “Herod Factor”?

He rushed back to the cubicle the state police had given him and tapped a key to clear his screen saver. He had already been logged on to the ViCAP database and now he maximized that window, bringing it up to fill the screen. He typed the keywords
child, suffocation, screen
, and the phrase
point of entry
.

“Why would Gharib al-Din abduct an infant from the maternity ward?” Josh asked. “That’s what we’ve been asking ourselves, right? But let’s narrow the focus. Why would he fly to Bangor from fucking Florida to do that?”

“He had orders from someone,” Chang replied.

Search results filled the screen of his laptop, all of them with case numbers, dates, and the first couple of sentences of the report. The third result down caught his eye and he double-clicked to open the file.

“Columbus, Ohio,” he said, glancing up at her.

“What about it?” Chang asked.

“Isla Rostan, nine months old, suffocated in her crib,” he said, looking back down at the screen. “Investigators figured it was SIDS until small slits in the window screen were discovered, suggesting someone had entered the house. The baby was murdered, the killing made to look like just another tragedy.”

Chang blanched. “Holy shit. It really is about the kids?”

Josh stared at the screen. “We need to call Voss and Turcotte. Right now.”

Cait sat in the plush burgundy chair in her living room, listening for any chirp or whimper from Leyla’s room, but the only sounds came from the breeze that flowed through the windows and the creak of floorboards in the upstairs apartment. Her
second-floor neighbor seemed busy up there today, and she had decided he must be cleaning. Maybe he had a date coming over tonight, or maybe he had just gotten sick of living in a dirty apartment. Cait knew how he felt. She ought to be cleaning herself, but she knew that Leyla would wake up the second she started.

Whoever answered Sean’s phone earlier had said she would get a call within twenty-four hours. The deadline was still far away, but she needed her brother more than ever, so she tried him again.

As she listened to the ringing on the other end of the line, a cold feeling of dread crept over her. The ringing continued and she began to wish she had counted the rings from the outset. After a time, the call simply ended, with no answer and no voice mail picking up.

Cait held the phone away from her face and stared at it a moment, then pressed
END
to clear the screen. Then she flinched when her ringtone started to play, the music much too loud in the quiet house. The display showed only
Unknown Caller
, but she felt a rush of hope as she answered.

“Sean?”

“Caitlin McCandless?”

The voice did not belong to her brother.

“This is she.”

“Ms. McCandless, it’s Brian Herskowitz.”

“Hercules,” she said, with a flood of relief. “Thank God. Listen, Sean usually calls me before he goes away, and he always tells me I should get in touch with you in an emergency. Well, he didn’t call this time, but now I can’t reach him. I was going to wait until tomorrow, but I really need to talk to him, or at least have you get a message to him. Can you do that?”

In the moment of his hesitation, she knew something was wrong. Hercules was supposed to be Sean’s wingman. They were as much friends as they were co-workers—at least to hear Sean tell it. Hercules should have been warmer from the outset, friendlier, but he’d called her “Ms. McCandless” instead of just “Cait.” The formality should have been a warning.

“Ms. McCandless—” he began again.

“Cait,” she interrupted. “Call me Cait.”

“I’m sorry, Cait, but I’m calling with awful news. Sean had a heart attack early this morning. He went out for coffee and had just left the café he always goes to, when he collapsed. The doctors say he died within minutes.”

“What?” she said, telling herself she hadn’t heard correctly, or that it must be some kind of horrible joke. “You … you asshole. Don’t say that. It’s not …”

Then the tears came, shuddering out of her in fits and gasps, and she held the phone against her cheek as if it were the only thing keeping her skull from falling apart.

Images of Sean flashed across her mind like playing cards in the hands of some magician—a brief glimpse and then back into the deck. Sean in a Batman costume one Halloween when he’d dressed her up as Robin; she couldn’t have been more than seven. Sean making her lunch—peanut butter and jelly
and
Fluff, just like she wanted—on mornings when their dad had forgotten. Sean waking her up late at night to watch scary movies that Dad had forbidden her to see.

Her father had loved her, and had devoted as much time as he could to her, but for all intents and purposes, her big brother had been her primary parent. Dad had taught her to throw a baseball and to ride a bike, but Sean had taught her to throw a punch and drive a car. He had held her as she’d cried that day in the seventh grade when Mike Torchio had teased her because, at nearly thirteen, she still didn’t need a bra, and told his friends in a voice loud enough for her to hear that he wouldn’t dance with her even if she were the only girl in their class.