The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time (22 page)

The first thing that came back was the data from
Mustang World.
The list of new subscribers Hauck had asked for.

Back at home, he glanced over the long list of names. One thousand six hundred and seventy-five of them. Several pages long. It was organized by mailing zip code, starting with Alabama. Mustang enthusiasts from every part of the globe.

From the bank trail he’d found at Dietz’s, it seemed a valid assumption Charles might be in the Caribbean or Central America. Karen told him they’d sailed around there. The bank manager on St. Kitts had told Hauck someone else had been looking for Charles. He’d also have to have access to these banks at some point.

But as he flipped through the long list, Hauck realized Charles could be anywhere. If he was even in here…

Slowly, he started to scan through.

T
HE NEXT THING
that he got was a call from Joe Velko.

The Joint Inter-Agency Task Force agent caught Hauck on a
Saturday morning just as he had put on a batch of pancakes for Jessie, who was up with him that weekend. When she asked about the red marks on his neck and the stiffness in his gait, Hauck told her he’d slipped on the boat.

“I pulled up some hits for you on that search,” Joe informed him. “Nothing great. I’ll fax it out to you if you want.”

Hauck went over to his desk. He sat in his shorts and T-shirt, holding a spatula as twelve pages of data came rolling in.

“Listen,” Joe told him, “no promises. Generally we might get a thousand positive hits for any one that could actually lead somewhere—and
that
means merely something we can pass along to an analyst’s desk. We call any correlations to key input ‘alerts’ and rank them by magnitude. From low to moderate to high. Most classify in the lower bracket. I’ve spared you most of the boilerplate and methodology. Why don’t you flip over to the third page?”

Hauck picked up a pen and found the spot. There was a shadowed box with the heading “Search AF12987543.
ALERT.
”

Joe explained, “These are random hits from some online newsletter the computer picked up. From something called the Carlyle Antique Car Auction in Pennsylvania.” He chuckled. “Real cloak-and-dagger stuff, Ty. You see how it says, ‘1966 Emberglow Mustang. Condition: Excellent. Low Mileage, 81.5.
Shines!
Frank Bottomly, Westport, Ct.’”

“I see it.”

“The computer picked up the car and the connection to Connecticut. This communication took place last year—basically just someone making a random query into buying one. You can see the program assigned a rating of LOW against it. There’s a bunch of other stuff like that. Idle chatter. You can go on.”

Hauck flipped through the next few pages. Several e-mails. The program was monitoring private interactions. Tons of back-and-forth chatter on classic-car sites, blogs, eBay, Yahoo.com. Whatever it picked up using the reference points Hauck had
provided. A few hits on the Web site of the Concours d’Elegance in Greenwich. All were assessed as LOW. There was even a rock group in Texas called Ember Glow that opened for the singer Kinky Friedman. The priority against that hit was labeled “ZERO.”

There were twelve whole pages of this. One e-mail was literally a guy talking about a girl named Amber, with the comment, “She glows like an angel.”

No Charles Friedman. Nothing from the Caribbean.

Hauck felt frustrated. Nothing to add to the list from
Mustang World.

“Dad?”
An acrid smell penetrated Hauck’s nostrils. Jessie was standing by the stove in the open kitchen, her pancakes going up in smoke.

“Oh shit!
Joe, hold on.”

Hauck ran back into the open kitchen and flipped the black pancakes off the skillet and onto a plate. His daughter’s nose turned up in disappointment. “Thanks.”

“I’ll make more.”

“Emergency?”
Joe inquired on the line.

“Yeah, a thirteen-year-old emergency. Dad screwed up breakfast.”

“That takes precedence. Look, go through it. It’s only a first pass. I just wanted you to know I was on it. I’ll call if anything else comes in.”

“Appreciate it, Joe.”

Karen pulled her Lexus into the driveway. She stopped at the mailbox and rolled down her window to pick up the mail. Samantha was home. Her Acura MPV was parked in front of the garage.

Sam was in the last days of school, graduating in a week. Then she and Alex were heading to Africa on safari with Karen’s folks. Karen would have loved to be going along as well, but when the plans were made, months earlier, she had just started at the real-estate agency, and now, with all that was happening, how could she just walk away and abandon Ty? Anyhow, she rationalized, what was better than the kids going on that kind of adventure with their grandparents?

As the commercials said,
Priceless!

Karen reached through the car window and pulled out the mail. The usual deadweight of publications and bills, credit-card solicitations. A couple of charity mailings. An invitation from the Bruce Museum was one of them. It had a fabulous collection
of American and European paintings and was right in Greenwich. The year before, Charlie had been appointed to the board.

Staring at the envelope, Karen drifted back to an event there last year. She realized it was just two months before Charlie disappeared. It was black-tie, a carnival theme, and Charlie had gotten a table. They had invited Rick and Paula. Charlie’s mother, up from Pennsylvania. Saul and Mimi Lennick. (Charlie had harangued Saul into a considerable pledge.) Karen remembered he’d had to get up in his tux and make a speech that night. She’d been so very proud of him.

Someone else invaded her thoughts from that night, too. Some Russian guy from town, whom she’d never met before, but Charlie seemed to know well. Charles had gotten him to donate fifty thousand dollars.

A real charmer, Karen recalled, swarthy and bull-like with thick, dark hair. He patted Charlie on the face as if they were old friends, though Karen had never even heard his name. The man had remarked that if he’d known that Charles had such an attractive wife, he would have been happy to donate more. On the dance floor, Charlie mentioned that the guy owned the largest private sailboat in the world. A financial guy, of course, he said—a biggie—friend of Saul’s. The man’s wife had on a diamond the size of Karen’s watch. He had invited them all out to his house—in the backcountry. More of a palace, Charlie said, which struck Karen as strange. “You’ve been there?” she asked. “Just what I’ve heard.” He shrugged and kept dancing. Karen remembered thinking she didn’t even know where in the world he had known the guy from.

Afterward, at home, they took a walk down to the beach at around midnight, still in their tuxedo and gown. They brought along a half-filled bottle of champagne they’d taken from the table. Trading swigs like a couple of teenagers, they took off their shoes and Charles rolled up his pant legs, and they sat on the rocks, peering out at the faraway lights of Long Island, across the sound.

“Honey, I’m so proud of you,” Karen had said, a little tipsy from all the champagne and wine, but clearheaded on this. She placed her arm around his neck and gave him a deep, loving kiss, their bare feet touching in the sand.

“Another year or two, I can get out of this,” he replied, his tie hanging open. “We can go somewhere.”

“I’ll believe that when it happens,” Karen said laughingly. “C’mon, Charlie, you love this shit. Besides…”

“No, I mean it,” he said. When he turned, his face was suddenly drawn and haggard. A submission in his eyes Karen had never seen before. “You don’t understand….”

She moved close to him and brushed his hair off his forehead. “Understand
what,
Charlie?” She kissed him again.

A month later he was gone in the blast.

Karen put the car into park and sat there in front of her house, suddenly trying to hold back an inexplicable rush of tears.

Understand what, Charlie?

That you withheld things from me all our lives, who you really were? That while you went in to the office every day, drove to Costco with me on weekends, rooted for Alex and Sam at their games, you were always planning a way to leave? That you may have even had a hand in killing innocent people?
For what, Charlie?
When did it start? When did the person I devoted myself to, slept next to all those years, made love with, loved with all my heart—when did I have to become afraid of you, Charlie? When did it change?

Understand what?

Wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands, Karen gathered the stack of letters and magazines on her lap. She put the car back into gear and coasted down to the garage. It was then that she noticed something standing out in the pile—a large gray envelope addressed to her. She stopped in front of the garage and slit it open before she climbed out.

It was from Tufts, Samantha’s college, where she was headed
in August. No identifying logo on the envelope, just a brochure, the kind they had received early in the application process, introducing them to the school.

A couple of words had been written on the front. In pen.

As she read them, Karen’s heart crashed to a stop.

A day later Hauck and Karen arranged to meet. They decided on the Arcadia Coffee House on a side street in town, not far away. Hauck was already at one of the tables when she arrived. Karen waved, then went to the counter and ordered herself a latte. She joined him by the window in the back.

“How’s the side?”

He lifted his arm. “No harm, no foul. You did a good job.”

She smiled at the compliment, but at the same time looked at him reprovingly. “You still should let someone take a look at it, Ty.”

“I got a few things back,” he said, changing the subject. He pushed across a copy of the list of
Mustang World
subscribers. Karen turned through a couple of pages and blew out her cheeks, daunted at the size.

“I was able to narrow it down. I think it’s a good bet to assume that Charles is out of the country. If he has funds kept in the Caribbean, at some point he’d have to access those banks. There’s sixty-five new names in Florida alone, another sixty-eight interna
tional. Thirty of them are in Canada, four in Europe, two in Asia, four in South America, so let’s forget them. Twenty-eight of them were in Mexico, the Caribbean, or Central America.”

Hauck had highlighted them with a yellow marker.

Karen cupped her hands around her coffee. “Okay.”

“I have a friend who’s a private investigator. I went to him for the information I showed you on Charles’s offshore company in Tortola. We eliminated four of the names right away. Spanish. Six others were commercial—auto dealerships, parts suppliers. I had him do a quick financial search on the rest.”

“So what did you find?”

“We scratched off six more because of issues like length of stay at their residence and stuff we could glean from credit cards. Five others listed themselves as married, so unless Charles has been really very busy in the past year, I think we’re safe to can them, too.”

Karen nodded and smiled.

“That leaves eleven.” He had highlighted them page by page. Robert Hopewell, who lived on Shady Lane, in the Bahamas. An F. March—in Costa Rica. Karen paused over him. She and Charles and Paula and Rick had once been there. A Dennis Camp, who lived in Caracas, Venezuela. A Steven Hanson, who was listed at a post-office box in St. Kitts. Alan O’Shea, from Honduras.

Five more.

“Any of these names seem familiar to you?” Hauck asked.

Karen went through the entire list and shook her head. “No.”

“A few have phone numbers listed as well. I can’t imagine that anyone trying to be invisible would do that. Most are just post-office boxes.”

“Assuming he’s even here?”

“Assuming he’s here.” Hauck nodded with a sigh. “The one advantage we have is that he doesn’t know there’s any reason for anyone to assume he’s alive.” He looked at her. “But I have a
couple more irons in the fire, before you even think of having to make that call.”

“It’s not that.” Karen nodded, fretful, massaging her brow.

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s something I have to show you, Ty.”

She reached inside her bag. “I found a couple of things last week, buried in Charlie’s desk drawer, when you asked me to go through stuff. I should have showed them to you then, but they were old and they scared me. I wasn’t sure what to do. They’re from before the bombing.”

“Let me see.”

Karen took them out of her purse. One was a small note card still in its tiny envelope, addressed to Charles. Hauck flipped it open. It was one of those cards that would accompany a floral delivery.

He looked back up at Karen. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Before he died”—Karen wet her lips—“
left…
we had another Westie. Sasha. She was run over by a car, right on our street. Right in front of our house. It was horrible. Charlie was the one who found her. A couple of weeks before the bombing…”

Hauck looked back at the note.
They were threatening him.

“And
this
…” Karen pushed forward the other item. She rubbed her forehead, her eyes strained.

It was a holiday card. A picture of the family on it. A happier time.
From the Friedmans
. Charlie, in a blue fleece vest and knit shirt, his arm around Karen, in a windbreaker and jeans, sitting on a stockade fence in the country somewhere. She looked bright-eyed and proud. Pretty.
Wishing you the season’s best for the coming year…

Hauck winced, as if a blunt force had punched him in the belly.

Samantha’s and Alex’s faces—they had both been cut out.

He looked up at her.

“Someone was threatening Charles, Ty. A year ago. Before he left. Charlie kept these things hidden away. I don’t know what he did, but I know it has to do with the people at Archer and all this money offshore.”

Someone
was
threatening him, Hauck thought, placing the cards on top of each other and handing them back to Karen.

“Then yesterday I got this.”

Karen reached into her bag and came out with something else, this time a large gray envelope. “In the mail.”

Her eyes were worried. Hauck thumbed the top open, slid out what was inside. It was a brochure. Tufts. Where Sam was heading in the fall, he remembered.

There was some writing on the front. The same forward-leaning script as on the floral note.

“They’re threatening my children, Ty. I can’t let that happen.”

He placed his palm over her hand. “No. We won’t.”