Deadly Intent (38 page)

He held her for a moment, stroking her hair, aware that a little more than twenty-four hours ago, he had held her much in the same way. Her heart had beaten just as fast, though for different reasons.

After another few seconds, he released her. “Let me see the note.”

Without a word, she handed it to him. He read it as he walked down the hall and toward the kitchen. A young woman with frizzy red hair and small rimless glasses, whom Abbie introduced as her friend Claudia Marjolis, shook his hand.

“How did you get this?” he asked Abbie, holding up the note.

“Brady brought it. It came through the fax at the restaurant. Apparently it had been there for some time, but

with what’s been going on, no one paid attention to the fax machine.” She pointed at a name near the top of the page. “It came from a place called Cyber Cafe.”

John read the chilling message again. “There was no follow-up phone calls? No email?”

“Nothing.” She nodded toward the open laptop on the coffee table. “I’ve had this on since I came home. A beep lets me know when I have a new message.”

She ran an unsteady hand through her hair. “Arturo Garcia used the word bitch several times that night at the lake.”

John nodded. “The rough language could be a deterrent, a way for the culprit to steer the investigation away from him and toward someone else.”

“What’s being done to find Ben?” Claudia asked.

John met her steady blue gaze and liked her instantly. She would be a soothing influence on Abbie, whose nerves seemed as brittle as glass. “Besides the APB and repeated TV announcements, I’ve made arrangements for someone to come here and wire the phones. They’ll explain the procedure when they get here.” He glanced at the sheet of paper in his hand again. “In the meantime, I’ll check out this Cyber Cafe. I know the place. It’s in New Brunswick. Last I heard, it was open twenty-four hours a day.”

Abbie lay a hand on John’s arm. “John, tell me the truth. Why that angry message? Why didn’t the kidnapper ask for a ransom?”

“I don’t know. It could be that he wants to toy with you, rattle you, so that when he does ask for a ransom, you’ll take the request seriously.”

“I’m taking it seriously now! I’ll give him everything I own, my house, my restaurant, my car, everything! All I want is my son back.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her, waiting

for the trembling to stop and her breathing to return to normal. He wanted so much to make everything right for her, but for the first time in all his years in law enforcement, after all the cases he had solved and the dozens of criminals he had put behind bars, he was having doubts about this one.

The sound of the front doorbell put an end to his gloomy reflections. Claudia went to answer it, and a moment later there was an abrupt exclamation, followed by Claudia’s angry voice.

“I thought Abbie made it clear you should stay away from her. What will it take for you to—“

In a few fast strides, John had joined her at the door. Standing on the porch was Ken Walker, the man he had questioned only hours ago. “What are you doing here?” he asked sharply.

Abbie pushed John aside. “You’ve chosen a lousy time to come and harrass me, Ken.” Her voice was thin and angry but the man gave an emphatic shake of his head.

“I didn’t come here to harass you, Ms. DiAngelo, I swear. And I’m not mad at you for sending the police after me. In your place—“

“That’s enough. Get out of here.” John took the man by the arm. “Before I haul your ass off to jail.”

“You don’t understand! Ms. DiAngelo, please, listen to me! I know who took your boy!”

Forty

Abbie barely gave him time to finish his sentence. Pushing John aside, she grabbed Ken by the shirtsleeve and pulled him inside. “Who is it? Who took my son?”

“Abbie, let me handle this,” John said.

“No! Let him talk.” She didn’t take her eyes off Ken. If he was lying, if this was another of his “get back at Abbie” games, she would know and then God help him. “Who took my son?” she repeated.

“Arturo Garcia.” He looked at John. “After you left, I had to get out, so I went for a walk and then later, I stopped at Winberie for a beer. That’s when I saw that man’s face on TV, and I remembered him.”

“What do you mean, you remembered him?” John asked. “From where?”

“Princeton Elementary. I saw him there yesterday.” He looked away and spoke in a quieter tone. “I went there to see my boy. Yesterday was Robbie’s tenth birthday and I didn’t want him to think I had forgotten.” He looked up again and met Abbie’s gaze. “I guess you know Lainie kicked me out.

“I went there to give him his present,” Ken continued when Abbie nodded. “I was waiting for Robbie to come out, when a car—a maroon sedan—pulled up along the curb, maybe three or four car lengths ahead of me. That’s the reason I noticed him, because he could have parked

closer to the school but didn’t. And he looked uncomfortable being there, you know, like he didn’t belong. I never thought anything of it, though. Not until a little while ago, when I saw his face on TV.”

The man outside Rose’s apartment had been driving a maroon car. “Are you sure you got a good look at him?”

“Good enough to know it’s the guy on TV.”

“What did he do when Ben’s class came out?”

“I don’t know. Robbie came out first and I had to hurry and give him his present before he got on his bus. Then I left.”

“And the man stayed behind?”

“I guess so. Like I said, I wasn’t looking for anything out of the ordinary at the time, so I didn’t pay much attention to him after that first look.”

“He didn’t talk to anyone?”

“Not that I saw.”

Abbie leaned against the console. In spite of her differences with Ken and the recent incident at Campagne, she didn’t think he would make up such a wild story, especially in the presence of a police detective. He was telling the truth. Arturo had been outside Ben’s school yesterday afternoon. Maybe he had gone there to familiarize himself with the surroundings. Or he had meant to take Ben yesterday and for some reason had changed his mind and decided to do it the following day. Whatever the reason, it didn’t change anything. While they now knew the identity of Ben’s kidnapper, Arturo remained as elusive as ever.

“I’ll need you to come to the station and take a look at Garcia’s mug shot.” John’s car keys were already in his hand. “Can you do that now?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be glad to.” Ken ran his hand across his mouth, hesitated, then said to Abbie, “I’m real sorry about Ben, Ms. DiAngelo. I hope you find him soon.”

“Thank you. And thank you for coming here. I know it wasn’t easy for you.”

“You would have done the same for me.”

With Claudia’s hand holding hers, Abbie watched John and Ken drive away in their respective cars. There were still so many questions, but only one mattered.

Where was Ben?

After John had placed Garcia’s mug shot on the desk, it had taken Ken Walker only a few seconds to positively identify him as the man he had seen outside Princeton Elementary the previous day. According to his description, Arturo had apparently shaved his goatee since McGregor’s murder, but that didn’t change Ken’s conviction.

Tina took his statement, typed it and handed it to him for his signature. She had just left to request a warrant for Arturo’s arrest, when John’s phone rang. It was Manuel.

Although John wasn’t superstitious, he crossed his fingers that Manuel’s call would bring him good news. He could use some right about now. “What’s up, my friend?”

“I have a customer by the name of Henrietta who likes to brag about her conquests, not to me, but to Coletta.”

“That’s your niece.”

“She helps around the store when Freddy is in school. She and Henrietta have been friends since the fourth grade. Henrietta came in today and started to tell Coletta about that man she met a few days ago. Normally I wouldn’t have eavesdropped, but when I heard Henrietta describe him, I made a point to listen.”

“What did you hear?”

“I think her new boyfriend is the man you’re looking for, John. She didn’t call him Arturo. She said his name was Mike, but the way she described him—big, bald and

with tattooes of mermaids and dragons all over his arms, I knew it had to be the same man.”

John pulled a yellow pad toward him. “Where can I find this Henrietta?”

Manuel chuckled. “She’s a lap dancer at night, so she’s home during the day, catching up on her sleep. From what I heard, her new boyfriend spends a lot of time there, too.”

“Do you have an address?”

“Yes--113 Olden Avenue.”

“Thanks, Manuel.” John tore the sheet on which he had scrawled the address. “I owe you one.”

No sooner had he hung up than Tina walked back in. “The judge wasn’t in, but his clerk told me he’d be back within the hour. I’ll—“

“No time for a warrant.” John told her about Manuel’s call and handed her Henrietta’s address. “We need to get there fast.” He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and slipped it on. “We’ll call for back-up from the car. I don’t think our friend is going to come in willingly.”

They approached the door quietly—John, Tina and three uniformed officers, guns drawn. They knocked twice, yelling ‘Police! Open up!,’ then, when the door remained shut, they kicked it down.

The girl was sitting on the sofa, hastily pulling a short robe around her. The man, naked except for a black T-shirt, already had a knife in his hand and was in an attack position.

John stopped him short. “Don’t even think about it, Romeo, or you’re a dead man.”

Arturo looked at the five guns aimed at him. He didn’t seem to be oozing with intelligence, but he was no dummy either. Quickly assessing the situation, he dropped the knife and put his hands up. He had been through the drill before.

“Okay if I put my pants on?” His tone turned sarcastic as he gave Tina a lewd grin. “Unless Rambo chick here wants to take another look.”

Tina gave a disinterested shrug. “Nothing much to look at, shorty.” Then, as Arturo’s grin faded, she turned to one of the officers. “Toss him his pants, Joe, but check them first. And bag the knife.”

The girl, a brunette with a Kewpie doll face, sat huddled in a corner of the sofa, watching the exchange and looking terrified. “What’s going on?” she asked in a small voice. “Why did you have to break my door? How am I going to explain that to my landlord?”

“We’ll do the explaining,” Tina said. “Are you Henrietta?”

The girl nodded.

“We’ll need you to come with us.”

“Why? I didn’t do anything.”

“It’s just routine. It won’t take long.”

Arturo hollered all the way to the station, demanding to talk to an attorney and threatening to sue them for arresting him without a warrant. He was still shouting obscenities when they shoved him into an interrogation room.

“Let him stew for a while,” he told Tina. “I have to call Abbie and hope she can pick him out of the lineup as the man who attacked her at the lake. Once we have him for murder, he’ll cooperate with the rest.”

Abbie arrived fifteen minutes later, her cheeks flushed. “Did he talk? Did he tell you where Ben is?”

“Not yet. I want to make sure he’s the man who attacked you. That will give us some leverage.”

Even without the goatee, she took only five seconds to identify him. “That’s him,” she said, recoiling slightly as Arturo complied with John’s request and took two steps forward.

“Are you sure, Abbie?”

She kept nodding. “Yes, yes. It’s him. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

At John’s suggestion that she let Claudia take her back home, Abbie let out a dry laugh. “I’m not going anywhere, John, not until Arturo tells you where Ben is.”

“It could take a while.”

Her gaze did not waver. “I’m staying, John.”

In the interrogation room, where Arturo had returned after standing in the lineup, Tina perched a hip on the corner of the desk and pushed a phone in his direction. “You can do this two ways,” she said sweetly. “The hard way or the easy way.”