Silent Scream (15 page)

“And that feeds you, too?” Eric asked bitterly.

Albert’s expression remained unmoved. “Did you not wonder why I went along with you?”

Eric shook his head, not sure he wanted to know. “I thought you believed.”

“In saving a lake?” Albert scoffed. “I believed in your future. I thought if you got this… obsession out of your system, you’d
be able to go on. I wanted to be sure you’d be safe.” This was said stiffly, accusingly. “So I did what needed to be done.”

“I’m sorry,” Eric said quietly. “I didn’t think.”

“No, you didn’t. Now it’s my turn to think. Tell me everything you know. Somehow we have to figure out who this blackmailer
is.”

“And then?” Eric said.

Albert lifted a shoulder. “We kill him. What’s one more?”

Eric drew a breath, nodded. “And then?”

“And then, I’m leaving. Find yourself another toy. I’m not interested anymore.”

Monday, September 20, 12:45 p.m.

Abbott leaned against Olivia’s desk as she hung up the phone. “Well?” he asked. “You get anything from that serial number?”

“The girl’s name is Tracey Mullen,” Olivia said, moving her goddess statue to one side so that Abbott didn’t knock her fedora
to the floor. “Tracey was sixteen. Her father lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and her mother lives in Gainesville, Florida.”

“You were right about the Gators,” Abbott said, then pointed to Kane who was drumming his fingers impatiently, the phone crushed
against his ear. “What’s with him?”

“He’s talking with Tracey Mullen’s father in Iowa, who is deaf. They’re using a relay service. Kane speaks, the relay operator
types into a TTY, Mr. Mullen types back, and the operator reads to Kane. It’s a slow process.”

“So what was Tracey Mullen doing in Minneapolis?” Abbott asked.

“We’re still sorting it out. I spoke with the mother in Florida, who’s hearing and who has custody, but who said Tracey begged
to live with her father and go to the deaf school in Iowa. She put Tracey on a plane to dad two days before Labor
Day. She thought Tracey was with dad. Dad thought she was with mom. It’s not clear why Tracey ran away, but she hasn’t been
seen since Labor Day. She’d texted both of them, as recently as yesterday morning, indicating she was with the other parent.”

“Did either parent indicate the other was abusive?”

“Mom didn’t, but they don’t seem to communicate very frequently. Most of their communication went through Tracey. We haven’t
mentioned the bruises and arm fracture yet. We’re going to talk with her teachers and area social workers in both Iowa and
Florida to see if anyone noticed anything suspicious. This could take some time.”

“How did the mother sound?”

Olivia shrugged. “Devastated. Stunned. Angry. She and her new husband are flying up here on the first flight they can get.”

Kane hung up and let out an exhausted breath. “There has got to be a better way. Dad is on his way. He should be here after
dinner. He seemed very upset, especially at his wife for ‘throwing Tracey out,’ but going through the operator, it’s hard
to say.”

“Mom said Tracey begged to live with dad,” Olivia remarked.

“Dad said Tracey hated Florida but never said she’d asked to live with him. It’ll be interesting to have them all in the same
room. I’ll line up a sign-language interpreter.”

“What about the guy she had sex with?” Abbott asked.

“Mom said there was no boyfriend. Tracey was focused on her studies,” Olivia said. “Whether that was true, Mom wanted it to
be, or Mom was naïve remains to be seen.”

“Dad said Tracey didn’t have a boyfriend because her mother forced her to go to hearing school in Gainesville and she was
isolated,” Kane said.

Abbott sighed. “I’ll call Jess Donahue. I’m going to
want a shrink’s take on this family. I thought this girl had the implant, so she could hear.”

“Mom said they hadn’t had a lot of success with the implant,” Olivia said. “Tracey didn’t get the surgery until she was ten,
after Mrs. Mullen got remarried. Her new husband paid for the surgery. Tracey didn’t have good success. Not everyone does.”

Abbott smoothed his bushy mustache thoughtfully. “I’m more concerned with the identity of the male she was with just before
the fire started. Focus on him for now.”

“Let’s go back out to the lake,” Olivia said, “and see if anybody saw her there.”

“What’s going on with the Feds?” Kane asked.

“I called Special Agent Crawford, but he wasn’t in the office. Tried his boss, left a message.” Abbott got up to leave, but
Micki breezed in from the elevator.

“I’ve been trying your phones for an hour.”

“We ID’d the girl,” Olivia said, “and were talking to her family. What do you have?”

“I ID’d the gel.” Micki pulled up a chair and sank into it. “Sodium polyacrylate.”

“And now we wait for English,” Kane said.

“Baby-diaper goo,” Micki said, chuckling when they stared. “Commonly called super-absorbent polymer or SAP. The crystals in
baby diapers that do all the absorbing.”

Olivia was starting to feel the tug of fatigue. “Why?”

“Why coat the glass globe?” Micki asked. “Turns out SAP is also a fire retardant.”

“Absorbs pee and puts out fires. Can it cure cancer?” Kane asked, tongue in cheek.

“Smart-ass,” Micki said. “I couldn’t find any record of
arsonists coating a glass ball in diaper gel. The old SPOT group used ripped-up firefighter coats to keep the glass ball from
becoming damaged from the heat.”

“So this isn’t SPOT,” Kane said.

“Not necessarily,” Micki said. “Ultrathin baby diapers were around in SPOT’s heyday, but not the knowledge that the gel was
fire retardant.”

“Can you track that particular kind of gel?” Olivia asked.

“No,” Micki said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. This stuff is as accessible as a bag of baby diapers. Which is pretty
damn accessible. There’s no way to track it, and it’s a lot easier to get and cheaper than firefighter coats.”

“Aren’t you the bundle of joy?” Abbott asked sourly and she shrugged.

“Sorry. I’m going back to the site. We’re processing the scene outside and assisting the arson guys inside.”

“We’ll canvass the lake area with Tracey’s picture,” Olivia said. “Back at five.”

Monday, September 20, 1:00 p.m.

He checked his laptop, hidden under the counter. The phone he’d given Eric allowed him to track his movements all over town.
Eric was on the move, but not on the run. He’d stopped at a butcher shop. He pictured Eric leaving with some thick steaks
he could use to drug Tomlinson’s guard dog.

That they hadn’t been paranoid enough to have their conversation out of range of the bugged cell phone he’d provided disappointed
him. He’d thought Eric smart
enough to check for a bugged phone, but Eric was too scared to be smart right now.

That Joel was dead was a bit of a jolt. He wondered if Joel had really killed himself or if they’d already started to turn
on one another. He’d put his money on Albert.

So… they’re planning to kill me
. He had to hand it to Albert. Hadn’t given the big boy props for that many brains. His plan would never work, of course,
but it was better than what Eric had proposed. Run to France.
Idiot
.

But they were obeying him on the Tomlinson warehouse, so at least they were smarter than Tomlinson.

Between customers, he quickly typed in a command and brought up Eric’s bank account on his computer screen. Eric had withdrawn
a thousand at the bank branch near the university. At least he was smart enough to withdraw from his normal bank and in an
amount that wouldn’t raise the brows of the teller. Eric routinely withdrew a thousand, and at first he’d been curious as
to what the rich boy did with all that money.

Then he’d picked up on Albert and it made sense. Albert talked a good talk about walking away from his affair with Eric, but
there was no way a poor kid like Albert was walking away from money like that.

He checked the cell phone he’d activated for Barney Tomlinson. His text to Tomlinson had been simple—
pay or else
.

Tomlinson had been one of the few marks he’d initially misread. He’d thought Barney a smart man, but after his demands had
gone ignored, had changed his mind. Obviously Barney hadn’t believed he’d follow through on his threats to expose the man’s
affairs to his wife. Barney Tomlinson had amassed a modest fortune
in the last few years, and according to his sources, Mrs. Tomlinson had not signed a prenup.

Tomlinson responded to his text this time.
My wife found out. She’s divorcing me. What more can you do?

He smiled.
Oh, a lot
, he thought.
I can do a helluva lot
. He’d been invisible for so many years that he was used to being ignored in person. He used it to his full advantage, in
fact. But to have been ignored in direct communication… Well, that was simply rude.

If Tomlinson had simply paid when he’d first asked, the man would have kept the bulk of his fortune, at least initially. Now,
not only would Mrs. Tomlinson get her share in the divorce, she’d get it all. Insurance would cover the loss of the warehouse.
Plus the ten million Tomlinson had in life insurance would set his wife up for life.

I personally won’t get a dime
. And he was cool with that. What he would get was (a) the satisfaction of knowing Tomlinson would die, very scared indeed;
(b) the satisfaction that Mrs. Tomlinson would get the last laugh; (c) a visual aid for future marks who thought they could
ignore him; and (d) more really great leverage on Eric, Albert, and, last but far from least, sweet Mary. And he was
very
cool with that.

Monday, September 20, 2:10 p.m.

Phoebe Hunter leaned in David’s kitchen doorway, watching her son finish the tile medallion his neighbor had started. Finally
admitting his fatigue, Glenn had gone back downstairs, leaving her alone with David, the child
she worried about more than all of her other children put together. “Not bad,” she said.

David looked up with a smile. “Glenn did most of it.”

“He does good work,” she commented.

“That he does. I’m always trying to get him to rest, but he likes to keep busy.”

“I noticed that,” she said dryly. “He sat at the table with me for about a minute before he got up, grumbling about the big
bare spot you’d left on your kitchen floor.”

“A whole minute? That’s pretty good for him. I kept telling him I hadn’t decided what I wanted for the medallion, and he kept
going on about those ‘damn fancy tiles.’ He just wanted to do the design himself. Blowhard.” He said it affectionately.

“I noticed that, too. But he likes you.”

“I like him, too.” He refilled their coffee cups and they went to sit at the table. “I met him at the firehouse my first day.
He’s one of the retired guys who can’t stay away.”

“He told me. He talked more about that firehouse than anything else. But he also talked about you. He told me about all the
tenants and how you take care of them. How you rock those babies in 2A to sleep in the night so that Mrs. Edwards and the
girls can rest. How you rescue the Gorski sisters’ cat every time it climbs up a tree. How you make sure that he’s taken care
of every time he goes to chemo.”

David fidgeted in his chair. “It’s nothing, Ma. Just what anyone would do. So, what’s going on at home?”

David always changed the subject when she wanted to talk about his charity work. Well, that’s why she’d come to see him, so
she wouldn’t let him squirm away this time.

“Same old, same old adventures.” But she told him anyway, all the news of his siblings and nieces and nephews, no matter how
mundane. As she talked, he studied her, much like he’d studied the floor. He was her hands-on son. Always loved his gadgets,
taking things apart. Putting them back together, better than new. How often had she wished he’d do that with his own life?
“What are you looking at?” she asked. “Do I have a new wrinkle?”

He smiled and she saw a glimmer of his father in his eyes. Her husband had been a handsome devil, and their sons were, too.
David, most of all. “You look exactly the same,” he said. “I was just thinking about you driving yourself all this way. That
was pretty adventurous yourself, Ma.”

“You act like I’m old,” she sniffed.

“No, ma’am, just directionally challenged.”

That was a true fact, so she let it pass. “Your place is coming together nicely. I’d hoped for a little more furniture, but
I can see you’ve been busy.”

“Thanks. I put in windows, wood trim, and plumbing. I’ve got to do the floors on one and two, but you can start on color swatches
and carpet styles now if you want.”

She nodded, sipping her coffee. “Speaking of floors, I hear you had an adventure yourself this morning.” She said it calmly,
even though her heart still hadn’t returned to normal. “But you appear to be all right.”

He rolled his eyes, but there was worry there. “Who told Glenn about it?”

“Somebody named Raz, who heard it from somebody named Gabe, who heard it from somebody named Zell.”

“I’m sure the story was nowhere near the truth by the time it got to Glenn,” he said.

“Probably,” she agreed mildly. He was hiding something. She’d always been able to tell. Of all her children, David seemed
the most straightforward, but he was the most complicated. And the most unhappy.

“So,” he said casually. “What did Glenn tell you?”

“That you were searching for victims in that condo that’s been on the news all morning, and the floor collapsed under your
feet. You nearly plunged four stories.” She was still shaken. “And you caught some kind of ball before it slid into the big
dark hole.”

He frowned. “I was hoping it would be a lot further from the truth.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “The ball is supposed
to be a secret. You can’t tell anyone, okay?”

“I can keep a secret. It’s your friends I’d be worried about.”

“Yeah, I got that. I need to call the detective.” On his cell phone, he dialed a number from memory, holding his breath as
he waited for an answer.