The Darkness Gathers (3 page)

Lydia’s apartment on Central Park West had looked like it belonged on the cover of
House Beautiful:
sleek, modern, impeccably decorated, but, Jeffrey thought, totally cold and impersonal. “You live in someone’s
idea
of the most gorgeous New York apartment,” he’d commented once. She’d sold it as is, furniture and all, to some software designer just months before the dot bomb. Jeffrey had sold his apartment, too, throwing in the pullout couch and rickety kitchen table and chairs. They’d both made a killing and then bought a three-bedroom duplex on Great Jones Street, downtown.

A metal door with three locks opened from the street into a plain white elevator bank. A real Old New York industrial elevator with heavy metal doors and hinged grating lifted directly into the two-thousand-square-foot space. By New York standards, it was palatial. The cost was exorbitant, of course, as it was New York City ultrachic, shabby-cool. But Lydia had declared it home the minute they’d stepped off the elevator and onto the bleached wood floors. The private roof garden, which was at least a story higher than most of the other downtown buildings, sealed the deal. From the garden, they could see the whole city. At night, it was laid out around them like a blanket of stars, which was a good thing, since you rarely can see any actual stars in New York City.

Now it was home, the place in the world they shared. But it had seemed empty, a shell of itself when she was gone. Lydia was his home, Jeffrey had realized while she was traveling. He’d had her all to himself since Santa Fe and he’d grown used to that. But he had sensed her restlessness even before she left on the book tour, and he knew she would be getting back to work soon. In fact, he knew the second he had walked into the apartment and saw her come out of her office with her coat still on that something had caught her interest. It made him sad and tender for her, but he knew her well enough to know that he had to let her go in that way if he was to share her life at all.

“So, what were you doing when I came in?”

“Oh,” she said, standing, “come with me. I want you to hear something.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said with a small laugh.

“It might be nothing.”

“But first …” he said, pulling her into his lap and pressing his mouth to hers.

“Yes …” she answered, “first things first.” She led him upstairs to their bedroom.

chapter two

I
t was quiet on Great Jones Street at 3:00
A.M.
Lydia hadn’t heard any screaming, singing, or horn blares in at least an hour as she lay listening to rain tap at the windows and to Jeffrey’s soft, steady breath. Usually, she was history as soon as her head hit the pillow, sound in a deep black sleep that was difficult to disturb. And God help the person who did. But tonight, she was restless, sleep uncooperative. Realizing she was fighting a losing battle, she untangled herself from Jeffrey and slipped out from beneath the down comforter. Jeffrey turned with a sigh as she grabbed his black knit cotton sweater from the floor and put it on. She stood in front of the window for a second, the sill coming to just above her knee. Streetlights bathed the gritty neighborhood in an amber glow; three cabs sped down Lafayette as if they were racing one another. A man in a black coat strolled along, oblivious of the rain, in spite of the fact that he was soaked, water dripping down his face like tears. Maybe he had just given up, was so wet that rushing for shelter had grown pointless.

She padded down the spiral staircase that led from their second-floor bedroom directly into the living room. She didn’t turn on any lights as she went into the kitchen and opened the stainless-steel refrigerator door. She wasn’t hungry, but looking for food was just something to do. Jeffrey was so healthy—fruit, vegetables, some deviled eggs, carrot juice, skim milk, protein bars. She opened the freezer and saw a big cold bottle of Ketel One vodka. “Yum,” she said, removing it. She got a lowball glass from the cabinet above the kitchen island, filled it with ice, and poured herself a double. She headed into her office. Because, of course, that’s where she had been headed all along.

She listened to the tape again as she booted up her computer, sipping slowly on her vodka. “It’s Tatiana. Are you there … please?”

“Who are you, Tatiana Quinn?” she whispered, her fingers dancing across the keyboard.

She logged on to her very powerful search engine and entered the name. Lydia waited, feeling the effect of the straight vodka right away, as she hadn’t eaten since a late lunch and hadn’t had a drink in weeks. The sound of the girl’s voice on the tape—the call obviously made from a pay phone—young, vulnerable, got Lydia in the gut in a way she didn’t appreciate. Ever since Shawna Fox, Lydia had developed a soft spot for lost or broken teenage girls.

A list of articles in order of their most recent appearance in newspapers filled her computer screen. She scrolled down to the earliest article, appearing in the
Miami Herald
on September 15. Its headline read
DAUGHTER OF PROMINENT MIAMI BUSINESSMAN MISSING
. The accompanying picture featured a small woman with her face buried in the shoulder of a very handsome gray-haired gentleman wearing an expensive suit and an expression of stoic grief; they were standing on the steps of a police precinct. There was something about the photograph that struck Lydia as odd. She stared at it for a second and realized that it was the art quality of the news photo, how focused the camera was on the man and women in the center of a moving crowd of police and bystanders. It communicated grief and grace under pressure, the chaos of the moment. It was beautiful. In fact, it was so perfect, it could have been staged by a publicist.

The article reported that fifteen-year-old Tatiana Quinn, who had emigrated to the United States with her mother from Albania in 1997, had disappeared from her bedroom sometime after midnight on September 13. Her backpack, the $160 dollars she had in her jewelry box, and her favorite clothes were also missing, leading police to the conclusion that she had run away. The article also revealed that Tatiana was Nathan Quinn’s stepdaughter and not his biological daughter, the child from the first marriage of Jenna Quinn, the sobbing woman in the picture, according to the caption. The Quinns offered $1 million for information leading to Tatiana’s safe return. That’s a lot of money to throw around, thought Lydia as she continued to scroll through the articles. As the weeks wore on, the articles grew shorter; one reported that a Greyhound driver had been questioned regarding his claim that he had seen Tatiana on a bus bound for New York City; another reported that the Quinns had hired a private detective to find their daughter. The last article, written on October 17, was a feature on missing girls, the terrifying statistics on their fates, and a mention of Tatiana, “who has not been heard from and may never be.” Looks like Tatiana has ceased to be of interest to the media, thought Lydia. Not even two months after her disappearance, and Tatiana had already become a past tense, a sad picture on the news, a mystery that leaves an ache when you read about her in the paper.

None of the articles mentioned the tape, which meant that no one knew about it, or that no one had told the police about it. The tape that Lydia had been sent, if it was in fact Tatiana Quinn’s voice on it, would have been a big break, a compelling lead in the case of a missing child. So either the parents didn’t know about it or, less likely, didn’t care. But it just didn’t make sense. If someone were truly concerned with helping Tatiana, why wouldn’t he or she give the tape directly to the police?

People didn’t throw a million dollars around for show. And grieving, terrified parents
with
a million dollars to throw around surely would have arranged for a phone tap in the event that the child called in a frightened moment. So did that mean Tatiana had left that message for someone else? There was definitely something strange going on.

“Lydia, it’s four-thirty in the morning,” said Jeffrey softly behind her.

“I know,” she answered, not even looking up, “I couldn’t sleep.”

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking over her shoulder at the screen. Lydia had zoomed in on a picture of Tatiana’s face. She was exquisite for a fifteen-year-old child—full waves of jet-black hair and fathomless blue-green eyes, high cheekbones, and fragile features. She was a Lolita, with that sexy, coquettish smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Something about that look reminded Lydia of those beauty pageant children, their little-girl bodies in sparkling bodysuits, posing, provocatively, with no idea
what
they were provoking, looking like some disturbing combination of baby doll and whore. There was a vacancy to Tatiana’s gaze, a look of wishing she was somewhere else.

“This is what I wanted you to hear,” Lydia said as she rewound and played the tape again. She handed him the letter, which he had to squint to read in the dim light without his glasses. He sunk into the sienna leather couch across from her desk and put his feet up on the mahogany table, which had once been the door of an eighteenth-century Spanish castle. Lydia’s office, which had been more or less transplanted from her home in Santa Fe, took up the greatest square footage on the first floor. The south wall faced Great Jones Street and was comprised largely of four ten-foot windows. The east wall was covered by floor-to-ceiling bookcases, containing the intellectual clutter of books she had read and all she had written in her career.

“What’s that language she’s speaking?” Jeffrey asked.

“I’m assuming it’s Albanian. I have no idea what she’s saying, though.”

“So what have you found so far?” he asked.

She told him what she had read on the Internet.

“Something doesn’t seem quite right,” she said.

“Oh?”

“Well, a fifteen-year-old rich girl disappears. There’s a flurry of media coverage; the parents offer a million-dollar reward for her return; weeks go by and attention peters out. Another little girl lost to the street, another statistic. Not really
that
out of the ordinary, except for the million. But then there’s this tape, which is not mentioned anywhere. It’s a big lead in an investigation that certainly shouldn’t have been closed yet, especially when the parents are rich, prominent people. Desperate parents would run to the police and to the media with that kind of thing. But it doesn’t look like they did. So that means to me that they didn’t know about it. And who would send it to me? Why wouldn’t they have gone to the police?”

“Maybe it’s a crank. Maybe it’s not Tatiana at all on that tape.”

“But why? If someone went to all the trouble of setting up a crank call, why wouldn’t they use it to try to get the million? Why would they send the tape to me? How would that help them?”

“Maybe they think it will seem more like a legitimate lead coming from you,” Jeffrey offered, though it was a bit of reach.

“But it was sent anonymously.”

“That’s true. I’ve heard that name before … Nathan Quinn. Who is he?”

Lydia entered his name into the search engine. A list of over 150 articles in the last year alone appeared on her screen. She scrolled through and read the headlines aloud to Jeffrey.

“Let’s see … ‘Nathan Quinn donates one point five million to NEA’; that’s five hundred thousand more than he offered for the safe return of his stepdaughter. Interesting … ‘Nathan Quinn wins Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award … importing/exporting business’; ‘Venture Capitalist Nathan Quinn: Hero to Albanian Refugees.’ The list goes on. Sounds like your general, all-around man-of-the-year type.”

Jeffrey had come to stand behind her. “He gets a lot of media coverage. I guess that’s why his name sounds familiar. But I could have sworn I’d heard it somewhere else.”

“Maybe someone in your firm was talking about the case. Here’s his picture. Does he look familiar?”

“Not really. But look at that jaw. He belongs on the hundred-dollar bill or something.”

Nathan Quinn had a bearing that communicated power, and this was apparent even in the grainy Internet photographs they were looking at. He seemed to stand at least a few inches taller than most of the people around him; his shoulders were square, his smile cool and permanent, his taste in clothes impeccable. He was positively regal.

“Maybe someone is trying to ruin him?” Jeffrey suggested.

“Well, then why not go to the police? Or the media?”

“Well, you are
kind of
the media.”

“Not the immediate, news-at-eleven kind of media.”

She started tapping her pen on the desktop, a gesture that she had picked up from Jeffrey years earlier.

“The buzz?” he asked.

“Big-time.”

“So? … What?”

She swiveled around to look at him. She cocked her head to the side and gave Jeffrey a gorgeous megawatt smile.

“You know,” she said after a moment. “We’ve been working so hard, haven’t we?”

“Well, not really. It’s been a little slow.…”

“We have. And, honestly, Jeffrey, you are looking a little pale. The winter weather must be getting to you.”

“It’s only the end of October.”

“I think we need a vacation.”

“A vacation?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Let me guess.”

“I hear Miami is beautiful this time of year.”

chapter three

B
ecause the world generally yielded to his whims, it was rare that he lost his temper. But when he did, there were casualties. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, trying to quell the rising anger. He looked up at the sweating man in faded, ill-fitting jeans and distressed-leather jacket who stood across from him.

“I just don’t understand how this can be possible,” he said quietly, but with a benevolent smile on his handsome face, as if he was
trying
to understand.

“I’m telling you, sir. There’s no trace of her,” the man responded, backing away a step, edging toward the door. He seemed to sense his client’s growing agitation and to understand how dangerous that was, though there were no outward indications of trouble.