The Collective (22 page)

Sean had wanted to pummel Mike for that, but he had loved Cait enough to leave the boy alone, because she couldn’t bear to see him hurt, no matter what he had done to her. As she got older, she had never regretted stopping Sean from beating up Mike, but she
had
regretted not doing it herself. Even back then, she could have taken him, because Sean had taught her how to fight.

And he had kept teaching her. The more he had learned, the more he had trained her. What she had learned about
hand-to-hand combat in the National Guard had been next to useless in comparison to the skills and styles her brother had brought home from his training with the Marines, and then, later, from private instructors.

All to keep her safe.

“Tell me,” she said, her voice hard and cold. “Tell me how it happened.”

“Cait, listen. Sean and I worked together for a long time,” Hercules said, voice halting and full of regret. “He was one of the best people I’ve ever known. And he won’t be forgotten. I’m sure you’re aware that he worked at the Pentagon. After his service in the Marines and his employment here, he’s earned the honor of being interred in Arlington National Cemetery. His wishes have already been carried out, but—”

“Wishes? What are you talking about?” she asked.

It came at her too quickly. She could barely follow what Hercules was saying.

“Sean left explicit instructions about how he wanted his remains to be cared for in the event of his death. He’s already been cremated. A non-denominational memorial service will be held at Arlington, but we can schedule that around your availability.”

Cait could barely speak, but she forced herself to do so, if only to keep him from saying anything else to add to her pain.

“Cremated? Who gave you permission to do that?” she demanded, wiping at her tears, trying to make her brain work.

There would be no good-bye, she realized. Her brother no longer existed as anything more than ashes. She wouldn’t even be able to see his body, to touch his hand and tell him how much she loved him. How much she needed him. How much she would miss him.

“I’m his next of kin,” she said. “You can’t just cremate somebody!”

Hercules seemed to hesitate. Cait thought she heard someone talking in the background and realized he wasn’t alone. It had sounded to her almost as if he was reading from a script, and now she wondered if that wasn’t close to the truth.
This wasn’t a call from a grieving friend. It was Brian Herskowitz doing his job.

“Sean’s wishes were very clear,” Hercules said.

“Bullshit,” Cait hissed. “He never would have done that to me. Jesus, I thought you were his friend.
Sean
thought you were his friend. What the hell is really going on? My brother works at the Pentagon, he grows that beard and runs off to the Middle East every couple of months, and now he’s dead and you’ve turned him to ash before I’ve even had a chance to identify his body. Is he really dead, or is that just a story? And if he’s dead, what are you hiding by cremating him?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ms. McCandless—”

“It’s Ms. McCandless again, huh?”

“Cait,” Hercules corrected himself. “Sean and I worked together as systems analysts for the Pentagon. I know how hard this must be hitting you. I know your parents are gone. I know your baby’s father was killed, and I can’t imagine what—”

“Damn right, you can’t imagine! You don’t know me. We’ve met, like, twice. So stop trying to spin this. If these were supposedly Sean’s wishes, I want to see the documentation where he requested it. And you’d better believe I’m going to look into the legality of you fucking cremating him before even notifying me that he was—”

Dead
. The word wouldn’t come.
Oh, my God. Sean is dead
.

And then it hit her. Cars with untraceable license plates.

“Jesus,” she whispered.

“Cait, why don’t you take some time to recover from this, get your thoughts together, and then call me? You can figure out what you want to do about a memorial, and—”

“Wait.” She felt sick, but her thoughts sharpened. “Listen to me. Sean couldn’t talk about his work, but I always guessed. I always had an idea of what he was up to. And I don’t believe a word of what you’ve said.”

“It’s the truth,” Hercules said. “I wish it weren’t.”

“Shut up,” Cait said, but without rancor. She was thinking. “Did Sean ever talk about our aunt and uncle? Jane and George?”

“I guess.”

“Someone ran surveillance on their street last night and this morning. Earlier today, the same people attacked my aunt and tried to abduct my daughter. The local police are investigating, but they’ve got nothing.”

“My God,” Hercules said, his voice hushed, and for the first time Cait thought she was hearing the guy she had met before. Sean’s friend.

“If you know anything about this—if there’s something my brother was involved in that led to this—you’ve got to tell me.”

Again Hercules hesitated. And in those few seconds, Cait felt like she would fall apart completely. How could any of this be possible?

“Cait, I swear to you, if I knew anything about someone trying to snatch your baby, I would tell you. You don’t know me well but, through Sean, I feel like I do know you. There’s no way I can possibly express how sorry I am to have had to tell you that we’ve lost him, but on top of that … I wish there was something I could do.”

“There is,” Cait said, the realization coming upon her suddenly. “I’ve got a license plate number from one of the cars that was in front of my aunt’s house this morning. The police say it’s not a registered plate, that they can’t trace it. But I’m betting there’s more to it than that. If I give you the number, can you look into it for me?”

She heard muffled tones, like Hercules had covered the phone and was talking to someone else. Then he came back.

“I can do that.”

Cait got up and went to her bedroom, found the slip of paper, and read off the license plate number.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Hercules said. “Then you can let me know what you want to do about a service.”

A service
. For just a moment she had allowed her anger to cloud her grief, but now it came rushing back.

“Thank you,” she said. The words tasted bitter on her lips.
Thank you for what? For lying to me?
Because she was absolutely certain that Brian Herskowitz had not told her the truth … at least, not all of it.

When she ended the call, she went in to check on Leyla and
was amazed to find her daughter still asleep. But she knew it wouldn’t last much longer, so she walked to the kitchen and began to make some rice cereal, mixing it with jarred baby food. Leyla liked the plums best.

She wept silently, standing by the stove, her hands shaking. The tears were born of grief and sorrow, but also from the realization that she was not alone, even after all that she had been through. She had Jane and George, and she had her baby.

And she’d be damned if she would let anyone take Leyla away from her.

Josh stared out the passenger window of the dark gray Ford sedan, listening to the hush of the windshield wipers and wondering how Agent Merritt liked being relegated to the backseat of his own Bureau-issued vehicle.

If it troubled Chang that Agent Merritt might be sour about losing his driving privileges, she didn’t show it. And that was for the best. Turcotte might be in charge of the overall investigation, but up here in Maine, Chang was running the show. If she wanted to be behind the wheel literally as well as figuratively, Merritt would just have to deal with it.

Chang turned down a narrow alley that bisected a strip of old brick buildings. A Bangor P.D. vehicle was parked at the curb, the officer watching the alley entrance, checking them out as they drove in. Either he recognized them, or had known to expect them.

Voss and Turcotte were even now on a flight bound for Maine. The FBI was still working with Florida State Police, hunting for al-Din’s two surviving accomplices, but since the Bangor babynapping—as the press were calling it—represented the most recent sighting of any of their suspects, it made sense to move the base of operations here. There
would be a meeting in a few hours, during which they’d put their heads together and figure out what to do next with the huge pile of nothing they had to go on.

Now, though, it looked like there might be one more piece to add to the puzzle by the time Voss and Turcotte arrived.

Another alley, much wider, ran behind the row of buildings, and beyond it was a chain-link fence rooted in a three-foot-high concrete barrier. In one place, the chain link had been cut away from a metal post and the mesh pulled back to create an easily passable gap. Beyond that barrier lay the Penobscot River. Two Bangor P.D. cruisers were parked in that back alley, along with a state police car. As Chang parked and they all climbed out, Josh glanced to the right, where he saw several other police cars farther down the alley.

A captain from the Bangor P.D. hurried toward them, a state trooper just behind him. The day hadn’t gotten any brighter. Light rain pattered all around them and the gloom of the afternoon enclosed them like a shroud.

“Agent Chang,” the captain said.

“Show us,” Chang said.

The local guys led them off to the left, behind a Salvation Army store. A scarred and dented Dumpster sat beside a big metal box brightly painted with the charity’s logo.

“People can put clothing donations and toys and things through the slot there,” the captain said, pointing.

Josh thought the part of the box that pulled out, the “slot,” looked more like a hatch, but he wouldn’t argue. To donate something, you had to grab the handle and haul it down and open, like a giant mailbox.

“A car seat’s not going to fit through there,” Agent Merritt said. “Not even an infant seat.”

Josh glanced at him, wondering if Merritt had children of his own. He realized he didn’t know anything about the man. But then, that was par for the course in his world. Once the case moved on, he’d never see the guy again, and that was fine by him. So why didn’t he feel that way about Chang? He felt comfortable working with her, and was in no rush to move on to the next case or the next crime scene and leave her behind.
Weird
.

“The car seat wasn’t in the donation box,” the captain said. “An assistant manager found it between the box and the Dumpster. She wasn’t sure if it was meant to be thrown away or had been left as a donation, so she took it inside.”

“Isn’t the store closed today?” Merritt asked.

“It is, but there are still donations. Either the manager or assistant manager makes at least one visit on the days they’re closed to check the box and make sure it hasn’t been filled with unwanted items or crammed full of so much stuff that there’s not room for people to push things through.”

“So, the assistant manager?” Josh prodded.

“Like I said, she went to take it inside. Then she remembered the Kowalik abduction and called us.”

“You’ve confirmed it’s the Kowaliks’ car seat?” Chang asked.

“It’s been taken down for forensics,” the captain replied. “But it’s brand new, and the same model as the Kowaliks bought. It would be an incredible coincidence if it isn’t theirs.”

A heavy silence filled the alley as they all acknowledged what it meant that al-Din no longer needed the infant seat.

“My people are looking along the riverbank,” the captain said, gesturing toward the barrier and the river beyond.

“I’ve got agents on the way,” Chang said, “and we need as many officers as you can get. State and local. I want every Dumpster, trash can, and alley back here searched. We’ve got to get someone who knows this river, and can figure out the current and where a body might end up. And I want all of these businesses canvassed. Someone must have seen something.”

The captain nodded and turned to his state police counterpart, and they began making calls and issuing orders.

Chang turned to Merritt. “I want you on this, Ian. Stick with them and relay anything back to me.”

Agent Merritt frowned. “Where are you going to be?”

Chang glanced at Josh, then pointed at the opening torn in the chain-link fence. “Out there. Looking.”

Josh could feel the waves of anger and frustration coming off Chang. Either that, or it was his own emotion reflecting
back at him. He had been convinced that the Kowaliks’ daughter must be dead, but Chang had admonished him for that presumption. She had helped to kindle a small spark of hope in him. Now that spark had been extinguished.

He tried not to think of the Kowaliks, but he found he couldn’t think of anything else. Barring a miracle, their baby girl was dead. He felt sick just thinking about it, and wondered if the newborn had been alive when he and Chang arrived in Bangor, or if al-Din had already done his terrible work by then.

“If I had him in front of me right now—” Josh began, as he and Chang walked toward the break in the fence.

“I know,” Chang said. That was all. But it was enough.

As she started to climb through the barrier, Josh’s phone buzzed. He let her go, pulling out the phone and glancing at it. Earlier today he had set up an hourly web search, looking for any references to child abduction. Now he opened the message on his phone, connected to the news site where his search had found a hit, and read the beginning of the article.