The Disappearance of Grace (17 page)

I click send and wait for a reply.

It comes to me almost two hours later.

“Dear Sir, please contact me with your phone number to this email address [email protected] as soon as possible.”

I do it. I email her with my cell phone number.

When the phone rings with a number I do not recognize, but that most certainly originates from Italy, I know it must be her. Holding Grace's engagement ring in one hand, I answer the cell phone with the other. For the first time in two days, my heart begins to fill with hope.

“Pronto,” I say.

“Is this Captain Angel?” the voice asks. Italian accented, soft but low toned, the English perfectly spoken without hesitation.

“It is. Thank you for calling.”

She's not alone. Nor is she in a quiet place like her home or an office. Coming from over the phone, the sounds of a busy, congested place. Some people shouting in the distance. Laughing. Voices coming from over speakers, announcing arrivals, and departures. An airport more than likely.

“I'm at De Gaulle in Paris,” she explains. “I'm about to board a plane for Venice now.”

I glance at the article on the computer. It came out only last night. How could she write about Grace if she's in Paris? It's precisely what I pose to her.

“Welcome to the internet age, Captain. I can write about anything from anywhere so long as I've access to the proper information.”

“In this case, you don't have all the information, Ms. Betti.”

“Can you meet me this afternoon?”

“I can try,” I say. “If my eyes hold up.”

“Where are you located in Venice?”

I tell her.

“I'll come to you,” she says. “Three o'clock.”

“That will work,” I tell her. But she hangs up before I get to the word, “work.”

* * *

I sit in silence for the better part of an hour, stealing occasional drinks of whiskey to calm my nerves. But the alcohol doesn't prevent me from nearly jumping through the roof when my cell phone rings. I fumble for the phone on the harvest table, thumb Send.

“Hello!”

“Nick,” the woman says. “Nick, is this you?”

A wave of confusion sweeps over my body. A man's voice. I've heard the voice before, that much is for sure. But I can't recall where or when. Until it comes to me like a slap across the face. It's Grace's ex, Andrew, calling from New York.

“Andrew,” I say. “How did you get this number?”

“Grace goes missing and you don't call me?”

I don't have his number. Nor would I have called him anyway. I'm guessing Grace gave him my number. In case of emergency.

Emergency.

I swallow something cold and bitter tasting, then clear my throat.

“The police asked me not to call anyone just yet. They didn't want me to alarm anyone unnecessarily.”

“What a load of crap. I had to find out about it on CNN, online. The bloody internet for God's sakes, Nick.”

Andrew is panicked. Or still in love with my fiancée. Probably both. Flashing through my brain: the image of them both lying in bed together. Naked. Pressed up against one another. I try and remove the image from my head. But it's like pulling a molar from out of my mouth with a pair of rusty pliers.

“Calm down, Andrew. The police tell me it's very likely she will show up in a day or two.”

“You two have a fight?”

“Not really,” I say, recalling our afternoon at the café, arguing. “Nothing like that.”

“Then maybe she got smart and left you for good. Maybe she got sick of waiting around while you play cowboys and Indians in some desolate country we've unjustly invaded.”

“I'm a soldier. It's what I do. And maybe it's time you got used to the fact that I'm with Grace now. Not you.”

“Thought you were supposed to be a writer.”

“I am a writer.”

“So that's what this is all about then,” he pushes. “A fight. I bet you've been fighting and now Grace is seeing the light.”

“No, she saw the light a long time ago, Professor.”

I could tell him about the overcoat man, about Grace going missing at the café in San Marco. But then he'd be on the next flight over here and then the detective would have no choice but to put me in jail after I beat the professor to a pulp with my bare hands.

“Tell me the truth, Nick.”

“Yes, we've been fighting a little. It's been hard since I got back from the war. My eyesight comes and goes. Grace has been under a lot of pressure…taking care of me, the marriage, our future. She feels like hell about what happened with you while I was away. It's all a lot to take in.”

I hear him exhale over the phone.

“So you think she took off to be alone?”

“It's entirely possibly if not probable.”

“And what exactly are you doing about it?”

I picture the long-haired, brown-eyed man with the phone pressed against his ear with one hand and with the other, fingering the keys on his laptop inside his Columbia University faculty office.

“I'm working with the police and being patient. I'm told to be patient.”

“Patient. Isn't that what you asked of my wife when you decided to go off and be John Wayne once again?” An electric hum fills the connection before Andrew adds, “Call me back when you know something.” And then he hangs up.

Setting down the phone, I lay myself out on the couch, my open eyes staring at a ceiling that looks much better when I'm blind.

“She's not your wife anymore,” I say. But there's no one around to hear me.

Chapter 45

BY THREE O'CLOCK THAT afternoon, I have heard neither from Grace, which is as expected, nor from the police, which comes as an unexpected surprise. What is also unexpected is that my eyesight has lasted all day without interruption. The buzzer goes off at exactly two minutes after three. I go to the intercom, depress the speak button.

“Yes,” I say into the unit.

“Buonasera, Captain. It is Alessandra Betti.”

Unlocking the front door, I tell her to come up.

A minute later the journalist is standing inside my studio. She is an attractive thirty-something woman, with shoulder length black hair, deep brown eyes and an inquisitive expression on her face. She's dressed in a short black skirt, black tights and knee-high black leather boots like most of the women in Italy wear this time of year. For a top, she sports a thin black turtleneck under a leather jacket.

She's also carrying her travel bag which I assume carries her computer. It also tells me she came here straight from the airport. Reaching into her bag, she pulls out a notepad and a pen.

“You don't mind if I take a note or two,” she poses. But she says it more like she's telling, not asking.

I shake my head. Of course she can take notes.

“Would you like a coffee?” I ask.

“Please,” she says.

Happy that I have something to occupy myself with while she's asking me questions, I head the few steps to the kitchenette and fill the pot with tap water.

“Now,” she exhales. “I would like you to start from the beginning.”

“From my time here in Venice?” I ask, filling the pot receptacle with espresso blend coffee. “Or prior to that? Grace and I have had many beginnings.”

The studio goes silent while she thinks.

“Tell me about the war, Captain,” she says. “And how it took away your eyesight.”

“That beginning,” I say. I set the pot onto the stove, turn on the gas burner, and turn to face her. “There was a village way up north,” I tell her, surprised at how my voice chokes. “I called in the airstrike that destroyed it…”

I tell her some things about my war in Afghanistan. But I do not tell her everything. I tell her about the village that was filled with Taliban who would raid our encampment night after night causing multiple casualties. I tell her about the airstrike I called in. I even tell her about the little boy who got killed when the air-to-ground missiles impacted the earth beneath his feet. But I do not tell her about what happened afterwards. I do not tell her about the senseless slaughter.

I tell her about how the blindness began almost immediately after the incident in the village, and how I was medivacked to Kabul, and from there Frankfurt where the psychologists went to work on me once it was determined from numerous MRIs that there was nothing visibly wrong with my brain. Then I tell her about the surprise arrival of Grace in Germany and how the military thought it a good idea to send us here for a month for some rest and relaxation. It would be a chance for me to not only regain my eyesight, but also for my fiancée and I to get to know one another again, since it had been more than a year that we'd last been in one another's presence.

By the time I'm done telling the writer my story, we've gone through two pots of espresso, and my eyes are getting tired and beginning to lose their focus. Maybe it's exhaustion that triggers the blindness.

Alessandra stares down at her notes, bites the non-business end of her pen with her teeth.

She says, “Please allow me to get my facts straight. You went to the café in San Marco for an early lunch. While you were there, Grace was bothered by a man who kept staring at her. A man wearing a long brown overcoat. He approached your table, and then she was gone. You did not see anything because you were blinded.”

“Nobody else saw anything either,” I stress. “At least, no one has come forward who might have seen anything. That's why it's been so difficult getting the police to believe my story.”

“But the waiter at the café…this Giovanni… he believes you. Yet he did not see Grace being kidnapped.” It's a question.

“But he has seen the overcoat man on two or three different occasions. A couple of times outside his café and yesterday inside the church of Santa Lucia.”

“And you believe that this overcoat man has been calling your apartment phone, leaving only a message of ‘I. See.' And that it is possible he has entered your apartment in the night while you are asleep, as if he owns a key to the place. You also believe he attacked you here in the apartment last night?”

“I believe he planted a picture of Santa Lucia on my floor. And, yes, I now also believe he hit me over the head yesterday afternoon.”

“Have you reported this to the police? The detective?”

“I've done my best to convince them of everything. But still they suspect me of foul play. If I were to tell them about the attack, they might detain me at the police station for my own protection. I cannot allow that. Not with Grace being gone.”

“They have Grace's passport.” Another question.

“Yes. They found it floating in the canal. So they tell me. And I have this.” Reaching into my pocket, pulling out Grace's diamond. “Giovanni located it stuck in between the cobblestones under the chair she sat in before she was taken.”

“May I?” she offers.

“Please,” I say. She takes the ring in her hand, examines it. Then, “Captain, do you trust me?”

Her question takes me by surprise. Why shouldn't I trust her? She came here of her own accord directly from Paris. It's obvious to me that she is more than just interested in filling in the missing pieces of yesterday's article. She sees something else going on with Grace's disappearance. Something larger. Deeper.

“Sure,” I say. “I trust you. Why do you ask, Alessandra?”

She stands, returns her notebook to her bag.

“Because I'd like to take the ring, have it tested for prints.”

I feel my tired eyes go wide.

“What about the police? If they know I have the ring, it might make me look—”

She shakes her head.

“Please don't worry about that. I have friends on the inside, as they say, who can test the ring for prints tonight when things are not so busy. I can have it back to you in the morning with my findings.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

“Perhaps there are more sets of prints on the band than yours and Grace's. Perhaps there is a set of prints that match those of a man who wears a brown overcoat.” Cocking her head. “It's a long shot, but if it's possible to uncover the print of a third party and then cross-reference it on the Interpol database, you might have a solid ID on the man who stole your Grace. The investigation would be over before it begins and you would no longer be a suspect in the eyes of the police. You might even be able to locate Grace before any further harm comes to her.”

My stomach goes tight, breathing shallow.

I hand over the ring to her.

“I will take good care of it, Captain,” she assures me, storing the ring in a pocket on her jacket. She goes for the door. “I promise you that come morning, I will have some answers for you. One way or another.”