Facade (9 page)

I
ris spotted Luc sitting behind the mahogany coffee counter of his café, hunched over his laptop. He'd cut his hair. He looked so vulnerable with his gorgeous shoulder-length hair chopped off into a conventional “any guy” hairstyle. It had been only two days since she'd seen him but it felt to Iris like a war had intervened.

“Hey,” she said.

His head jerked up and his mouth tightened.

“Can we talk?” she asked.

“I thought we were going to do that last night.”

“Sorry, a student showed up with a personal emergency just as I was leaving the house.”

Luc rose slowly and led her to a table in the corner. The few patrons there, mid-afternoon on a Monday, were lost in either a book or a laptop while sipping their coffee.

Sitting across from Luc, Iris wanted to reach for his hand but didn't dare risk him pulling away. “It was the young woman I've been telling you about, the loner.”

He regarded her, waiting.

“Oh, hell. I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but I need you to understand what it was that kept me from coming over last night, Luc. This student is tangled up in the missing Lara business. She was trying to help Lara escape from her abusive father. Iris went on to fill in the rest of the story.

Luc listened to her carefully, relaxing a bit as she spoke. He was quiet for a moment, then he asked, “Why is she involving you?”

“She's on a student visa and thinks she'll get deported if the authorities learn she was somehow involved in this kidnapping. She's also terrified about what the father and his friends will do to her if they learn she was helping Lara run away.”

Luc spoke slowly, “She's keeping information from the police that could help them find Lara, and you could be charged as an accessory to kidnapping for not reporting it.”

Iris sighed. “Yeah. Could be. But if you'd have heard her story you'd have tried to help her too. We spent half the night trying to figure out how we could find Lara ourselves. We ended up talking to her neighbors and then we found someone who saw a van racing away from the building that night. That neighbor even remembered the license plate number because the van almost ran him over. So, this morning I met with the
Globe
reporter covering the Lara story and gave him the license number so he could track down whoever owns the van.”

Luc looked off toward the window facing Mass Ave. “I can see that you have bigger things on your mind now than our personal issues.” He dropped his gaze. “Why are you even with me, Iris?”

Iris felt an overwhelming ache inside her. “Because I love you.”

“But we're so different. We're from different worlds.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're from a family of academics. You went to Ivy League schools. My father was a cop. I didn't go to Harvard, I went to cooking school.”

“Those things don't matter. You view your work and your passion as professionally as I do.”

He looked up to face her. “But am I just a fling?”

Iris could feel him drifting away. She had to reel him back. “Wanting to observe DeWitt's life more closely was about questioning decisions I've made with my career. I was never questioning being with you. Listen to me, Luc—”

Iris stopped speaking when she saw Allegra, Luc's grandmotherly assistant chef, bustling towards their table.

“Luca, c'é una chiamata dal' estero per te in cucina,” she called out.

“Use English, Allegra. Who's on the phone?”

“Is your wife!” She looked nervously at Iris, then scurried back into the kitchen.

Iris waited for Luc to correct the woman's terminology. Instead, looking grim, he avoided her eyes as he followed Allegra through the swinging door.

Iris sat in stunned silence as she let the exchange sink in. Then she skidded her chair away and crashed into a table on her way out.

H
ow far could she trust Iris?
Jasna rubbed her eyes against the morning sun. She knew she'd taken a risk telling Iris about her plan to help Lara run away.

Even though the night had been far too short, she'd slept better than she had since this whole thing had begun. Maybe it was the relief of getting the search for Lara under way. Now she sat on her bed, propped against the pillows, trying not to focus on the prickliness of her skin. Earlier, she had forced herself to cook up some scrambled eggs to help get her strength back. Above all she needed to keep her mind lucid.

Iris had called Jasna after the morning meeting with the reporter to say that she thought the guy had taken the bait without questioning what the license plate request was really about.

Now they would track down the blue van's owner.

Iris had urged Jasna to take care of herself, but the tickling, tingling sensation would not go away.
You know what you need
, she heard the voice saying.

Just like that she was back there— smelling the pine trees in the Bosnian woods. It was the day she and her brother had been searching for coats.

The memory compelled her to rise and walk over to her wooden drafting table. She picked up the tiny, razor-sharp X-acto knife she kept in a wooden box.

The bastard Serbs had piled the Muslim bodies in shallow graves. She and Edvin would wash the coats in the stream if they did not have too much blood on them, or bullet holes, then barter them for food.

Jasna peeled off her sweat pants and tee shirt carefully, folding them onto a chair, then lay back on the bed. Her thighs were covered with aging hieroglyphic networks of delicate scars.

She remembered being so hungry during the war. To this day she would vomit if she had to eat another mushroom. She had wandered away from Edvin thinking she saw a bush with edible berries. She'd heard a rustling in the bushes—maybe a squirrel? That's when the man had grabbed her.

Jasna drew the blade slowly across her white flesh and felt release mingled with pain. She pressed down a tissue to staunch the oozing blood, and lay back against the pillows.

She could deal with this awful compulsion to cut herself later. For now, it felt good to have told Iris Reid part of the story.

D
etective Malone stopped by Russo's workstation on Tuesday morning and perched on the corner of his desk. “Looks like the father's gonna be locked up for quite awhile. But on another front, we've caught a break. I just got a call from our Feeb friend, Carlyle.”

Russo swiveled around in his seat to face his partner. “It's the assistant, isn't it?”

“No—his alibi checked out. He was at that bar in the South End. Carlyle, got a hit from a kiddie porn site he was monitoring. After following the satellite pings through half of Eastern Europe, it bounced back to DeWitt's address.”

Russo whistled. “The prof's a pedophile?”

“Affirmative. Carlyle's giving us a heads-up because he knows from the press that we're interested in him, too. The porn was of pre-teen girls, sick stuff. They got a warrant to take his computer and passport, but I convinced Carlyle to have the FBI watch and wait instead. We can't spook DeWitt before he leads us to the girl.”

“DeWitt didn't give up anything when the father was wailing on him,” Russo pointed out. “Then again, maybe he had nothing to admit that wouldn't have made things worse.”

“We'll nail him now. But we've got to find the girl—she's priority #1. Judge Taylor is issuing a 'sneak and peek' warrant using the kiddie porn as probable cause. DeWitt was released from the hospital yesterday so he's probably teaching this afternoon. I need you to confirm that he's not at home.”

“I can do that. What exactly will we be looking for?”

“Anything that can tie him to the girl. He claims he doesn't have a car. We need to find out if he has access to one. ”

“If this guy's a predator and he sees us closing in, I doubt he'll keep the girl alive.”

“That's why we're using a 'sneak and peek.' You and I are going to comb through the place, but leave it so he never knows we've been there. Nice and neat.”

“I can't believe Interpol didn't turn up anything on him.”

“This guy knows how to cover his tracks. To a point. After all, the Feebs traced him to the porn site.”

I
ris ducked into Budge's tiny Fiat parked in her driveway. “How did your interview go with Professor DeWitt?”

“He never showed. Great tip, Reid.”

“But he swims there every morning. Maybe he got lucky last night and decided to sleep in. Try him at the pool tomorrow. He told me he goes there every day.” Iris took out a pad and pen from her pocket. “Can I get my information on credit? Were you able to find out who the guy was who hit my car?”

“That's the strange thing, Iris. I see two cars here in your driveway—a Jeep and a very cool Porsche. Neither of them shows any sign of damage.”

“I already got the bodywork done.”

Budge's look turned into
Oh, come on.

“What do you care why I want it? Maybe the car belongs to a hot guy I saw driving around.”

“As much as I'd like to help you with your love life, Iris, it's worth my job to track down license plates. But my spidey sense tells me this one's connected to an important story.”

Iris swore inwardly. She needed that name. Lara's life might depend on it.

“If I tell you something off the record,” Iris said, “will you keep my source's identity out of this?”

“Journalism 101, Reid—always protect your source.”

“We're not talking Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford here. We're talking you, Budge. Would you go to jail to protect this source?”

“Jeez, Iris. What have you gotten yourself into?”

“We're talking a missing twelve year old girl and how the police have the wrong idea about when and where she was taken.”

Budge let out a low whistle. “The Lara story. My story.” He thought for a minute. “OK, I'll protect the source if I can, but I won't jeopardize the girl's life.”

“Fair enough.” Iris exhaled. “Lara went to a friend's house after her father went out to play cards that night. She was taken from the friend's house closer to ten o'clock, not nine. The friend heard about a blue van with this license plate speeding off from her apartment building at ten that night.”

“Why hasn't the friend told this to the cops? He's obstructing the investigation.”

“I can't explain, it would jeopardize the friend. Can't you say that you got an anonymous tip with this information?”

Budge narrowed his eyes. “The cops would be all over how the tip came in. A lot has changed since Hoffman and Redford's day. Besides, my editor would never run an unsubstantiated story.”

“So what are we going to do?”

Budge looked at her sideways. “Suddenly it's 'we'?”

“Come on, Budge. I told you my blockbuster. Now tell me who owns the van.”

“Have you heard of a Harvard History professor named Stuart Kunstler?”

“I don't know many other profs unless they teach at GSD, and he's not one of the big names.”

“He's on sabbatical in Turkey writing his next book,” Budge said.

“Then he obviously wasn't driving a van here in Cambridge last week unless he made a quick trip home.”

“The more important detail is where he lives.” Budge paused for dramatic effect.

“Out with it.”

“He lives at 8 Howland St. In other words, he's Xander DeWitt's neighbor.”

“M
alone, come check this out,” Russo called as he spotted a set of keys, half hidden in a jumble of tools in the back of a drawer in Xander DeWitt's kitchen.

Malone thumped down the stairs from the second floor and inspected Russo's find. “Bingo,” he said. He uncurled a paper clip from his pocket and used it to lift a keyring gingerly. “This one's for a GMC vehicle. That second one looks like it goes to a padlock.”

“You think it's for a locker?”

“Or maybe a garage. One of those old-fashioned ones with swinging doors.”

Malone's attention moved to the keyring itself— some kind of dog with a big jaw. “D'you know if this dog is a sports mascot?”

Russo peered at it closely. “It's no team I've ever followed. Maybe a college mascot. Look, it's got a number scratched into the back, an eight. Think it could be an address?”

“Eight Howland Street is right next door. Let's see if there's a padlock on their garage when we leave. Photograph these keys before you put them back, and log in where they were. We can always come back and get them if it looks like they'll fit the neighbor's garage.”

“Maybe we'll get lucky and find a vehicle with the professor's prints on it. Then so much for his story about not having access to a car.”

An hour later they had searched the compact house from attic to basement and were finishing up in the study. Malone was flipping through a Dutch passport.

“Tell me why DeWitt flies to Bangkok once or twice a year.”

“He likes Thai food?”

“Bangkok is a mecca for the underage sex trade.”

A laptop sat on the desk. Malone eased himself into the leather desk chair, looked carefully around the edge of the computer, and flipped it open. “Password, password. What could it be? Too bad we couldn't spring loose a techie to come with us.”

Russo was rifling through the CDs on a bookshelf. “Lots of classical stuff.” He moved on to some audiobook CDs. “Hey, look at this one—Lolita. I think I saw the movie. Wasn't it about a pedophile?”

“Right,” Malone said. “It's by Nabokov. Actually, according to an old girlfriend of mine, it's great literature.”

Malone typed “Lolita” in the password box. An error message appeared.

He typed in “Nabokov.” Again, no joy. That would have been too easy. He snapped the laptop's lid closed.

They completed their search in the small vestibule by the kitchen door. Malone noticed a pair of boots sitting on a mat. “These are the only things in the whole house that aren't immaculate. I can't believe that a guy lives here! Scrape off some of the crud from the soles and bag it for the lab, will you, Russo?”

They went out quietly through the back door so as not to attract attention from the neighbors, but as they followed the path along the side of the house they heard excited voices coming from the backyard on the other side of a tall fence.

“I can't believe you talked me into this, Reid!”

“We know he's on sabbatical in Turkey. It's not like anyone's going to notice us looking in the garage's windows. I just want to see if the blue van is in there.”

Malone and Russo crept closer to the voices. Malone peeked above the fence to see a man and a woman peering in the side window of a detached garage belonging to DeWitt's neighbor. Malone broke into a run around the fence, Russo at his heels. They both had their hands resting on their Glocks.

“Freeze!” Malone commanded. Budge and Iris stared at him, wide-eyed, and shot their hands in the air.