Vanish Read online

  “She’s the one who set this off. The one who chooses what happens next.”

  “Then don’t force her hand. You’ve got a negotiator here, Captain Hayder. Use him. And keep your SWAT team the hell away from my wife.” Gabriel turned and walked out of the trailer.

  Outside, Maura caught up with him on the sidewalk. She had to call his name twice before he finally stopped and turned to face her.

  “If they screw up,” he said, “if they go charging in there too soon—”

  “You heard what Stillman said. He wants to go slow on this, just like you.”

  Gabriel stared at a trio of cops in SWAT uniforms, huddled near the lobby entrance. “Look at them. They’re pumped up, hoping for action. I know what it’s like, because I’ve been there. I’ve felt it myself. You get tired of standing around, endlessly negotiating. They just want to get on with it, because that’s what they’re trained to do. They can’t wait to pull that trigger.”

  “Stillman thinks he can talk her out.”

  He looked at her. “You were with the woman. Will she listen?”

  “I don’t know. The truth is, we know almost nothing about her.”

  “I heard she was pulled out of the water. Brought to the morgue by a fire and rescue crew.”

  Maura nodded. “It was an apparent drowning. She was found in Hingham Bay.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Some guys at a yacht club down in Weymouth. Boston PD’s already got a team from homicide working the case.”

  “But they don’t know about Jane.”

  “Not yet.” It will make a difference to them, thought Maura. One of their own is a hostage. When another cop’s life is on the line, it always made a difference.

  “Which yacht club?” Gabriel asked.

  NINE

  Mila

  There are bars on the windows. This morning, frost is etched like a crystal spiderweb in the glass. Outside are trees, so many of them that I do not know what lies beyond. All I know is this room and this house, which has become our only universe since the night the van brought us here. Sun sparkles on the frost outside our window. It is beautiful in those woods, and I imagine walking among the trees. The crackling leaves, the ice glistening on branches. A cool, pure paradise.

  In this house, it is hell.

  I see its reflection in the faces of the other girls, who now lie sleeping on dirty cots. I hear the torment in their restless moans, their whimpers. Six of us share this room. Olena has been here the longest, and on her cheek is an ugly bruise, a souvenir left by a client who liked to play rough. Even so, Olena sometimes still fights back. She is the only one among us who does, the only one they cannot quite control, despite their calming drugs and injections. Despite their beatings.

  I hear a car roll into the driveway, and I wait with dread for the buzzing of the doorbell. It is like a jolt from a live wire. The girls all startle awake at the sound and they sit up, hugging their blankets to their chests. We know what happens next. We hear the key in the lock, and our door swings open.

  The Mother stands in the doorway like a fat cook, ruthlessly choosing which lamb to slaughter. As always, she is cold-blooded about it, her pockmarked face showing no emotion as she scans her flock. Her gaze moves past the girls huddled on their cots and then shifts to the window, where I am standing.

  “You,” she says in Russian. “They want someone new.”

  I glance at the other girls. All I see in their eyes is relief that this time they are not the chosen sacrifice.

  “What are you waiting for?” the Mother says.

  My hands have gone cold; already I feel nausea twisting my stomach. “I—I am not feeling well. And I’m still sore down there . . .”

  “Your first week, and already you’re sore?” The Mother snorts. “Get used to it.”

  The other girls are all staring at the floor, or at their hands, avoiding my gaze. Only Olena looks at me, and in her eyes I see pity.

  Meekly I follow the Mother out of the room. I already know that to resist is to be punished, and I still have the bruises from the last time I protested. The Mother points to the room at the end of the hall.

  “There’s a dress on the bed. Put it on.”

  I walk into the room and she shuts the door behind me. The window looks out over the driveway, where a blue car is parked. Bars cover the windows here as well. I look at the large brass bed, and what I see is not a piece of furniture, but the device of my torture. I pick up the dress. It is white, like a doll’s frock, with ruffles around the hem. At once I understand what this signifies, and my nausea tightens to a knot of fear. When they ask you to play a child, Olena warned me, it means they want you to be scared. They want you to scream. They enjoy it if you bleed.

  I do not want to put on the dress, but I’m afraid not to. By the time I hear footsteps approaching the room, I am wearing the dress, and steeling myself for what comes next. The door opens, and two men step in. They look me over for a moment, and I’m hoping that they are disappointed, that they think I am too thin or too plain, and they’ll turn around and walk out. But then they shut the door and come toward me, like stalking wolves.

  You must learn to float away. That’s what Olena taught me, to float above the pain. This I try to do as the men rip off the doll’s dress, as their rough hands close around my wrists, as they force me to yield. My pain is what they have paid for, and they are not satisfied until I am screaming, until sweat and tears streak my face. Oh Anja, how lucky you are to be dead!

  When it is over, and I hobble back to the locked room, Olena sits down beside me on my cot, and strokes my hair. “Now you need to eat,” she says.

  I shake my head. “I only want to die.”

  “If you die, then they win. We can’t let them win.”

  “They’ve already won.” I turn on my side and hug my knees to my chest, curling into a tight ball that nothing can penetrate. “They’ve already won . . .”

  “Mila, look at me. Do you think I’ve given up? Do you think I’m already dead?”

  I wipe tears from my face. “I’m not as strong as you are.”

  “It’s not strength, Mila. It’s hate. That’s what keeps you alive.” She bends close, and her long hair is a waterfall of black silk. What I see in her eyes scares me. A fire burns there; she is not quite sane. This is how Olena survives, on drugs and madness.

  The door opens again, and we all shrink as the Mother glances around the room. She points to one of the girls. “You, Katya. This one’s yours.”

  Katya just stares back, unmoving.

  With two paces, the Mother crosses toward her and slaps her across the ear. “Go,” she orders, and Katya stumbles out of the room. The Mother locks the door.

  “Remember, Mila,” Olena whispers. “Remember what keeps you alive.”

  I look into her eyes and see it. Hate.

  TEN

  “We can’t let this information get out,” said Gabriel. “It could kill her.”

  Homicide detective Barry Frost reacted with a stunned gaze. They were standing in the parking lot of the Sunrise Yacht Club. Not a breeze stirred, and out on Hingham Bay, sailboats drifted, dead in the water. Under the glare of the afternoon sun, sweat pasted wispy strands of hair to Frost’s pale forehead. In a room full of people, Barry Frost was the one you’d most likely overlook, the man who’d quietly recede into a corner where he’d stand smiling and unnoticed. His bland temperament had helped him weather his occasionally stormy partnership with Jane, a partnership that, over the past two and a half years, had grown strong roots in trust. Now the two men who cared about her, Jane’s husband and Jane’s partner, faced each other with shared apprehension.

  “No one told us she was in there,” murmured Frost. “We had no idea.”

  “We can’t let the media find out.”

  Frost huffed out a shocked breath. “That would be a disaster.”

  “Tell me who Jane Doe is. Tell me everything you know.”

  “Believe m
e, we’ll pull out all the stops on this. You have to trust us.”

  “I can’t sit on the sidelines. I need to know everything.”

  “You can’t be objective. She’s your wife.”

  “Exactly. She’s my wife.” A note of panic had slipped into Gabriel’s voice. He paused to rein in his agitation and said quietly: “What would you do? If it was Alice trapped in there?”

  Frost regarded him for a moment. At last he nodded. “Come inside. We’re talking to the commodore. He pulled her out of the water.”

  They stepped from glaring sunshine into the cool gloom of the yacht club. Inside, it smelled like every seaside bar that Gabriel had ever walked into, the scent of ocean air mingled with citrus and booze. It was a rickety building, perched on a wooden pier overlooking Hingham Bay. Two portable air-conditioning units rattled in the windows, muffling the clink of glasses and the low hum of conversation. The floors creaked as they headed toward the lounge.

  Gabriel recognized the two Boston PD detectives standing at the bar, talking with a bald man. Both Darren Crowe and Thomas Moore were Jane’s colleagues from the homicide unit; both of them greeted Gabriel with looks of surprise.

  “Hey,” Crowe said. “I didn’t know the FBI was coming in on this.”

  “FBI?” said the bald man. “Wow, this must be getting pretty serious.” He stuck out his hand to Gabriel. “Skip Boynton. I’m the commodore, Sunrise Yacht Club.”

  “Agent Gabriel Dean,” said Gabriel, shaking the man’s hand. Trying, as best he could, to play it official. But he could feel Thomas Moore’s puzzled gaze. Moore could see that something was not right here.

  “Yeah, I was just telling these detectives how we found her. Quite a shock, lemme tell you, seeing a body in the water.” He paused. “Say, you want a drink, Agent Dean? It’s on the club.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Oh, right. On duty, huh?” Skip gave a sympathetic laugh. “You guys really play it by the book, don’t you? No one’ll take a drink. Well, hell, I will.” He slipped behind the bar and dropped ice cubes in a glass. Splashed vodka on top. Gabriel heard ice clinking in other glasses, and he gazed around the room at the dozen club members sitting in the lounge, almost all of them men. Did any of them actually sail boats? Gabriel wondered. Or did they just come here to drink?

  Skip slipped out from behind the counter, his vodka in hand. “It’s not the kind of thing that happens every day,” he said. “I’m still kind of rattled about it.”

  “You were telling us how you spotted the body,” said Moore.

  “Oh. Yeah. About eight A.M. I came in early to change out my spinnaker. We have a regatta coming up in two weeks, and I’m gonna fly a new one. Got a logo on it. A green dragon, really striking. So anyway, I’m walking out to the dock, carrying my new spinnaker, and I see what looks like a mannequin floating out in the water, kinda snagged up on one of the rocks. I get in my rowboat to take a closer look and hell, if it ain’t a woman. Damn nice-looking one, too. So I yelled for some of the other guys, and three of us pulled her out. Then we called nine one one.” He took a gulp of his vodka and drew a breath. “Never occurred to us she was still alive. I mean, hell. That gal sure looked dead to us.”

  “Must have looked dead to Fire and Rescue, too,” said Crowe.

  Skip laughed. “And they’re supposed to be the professionals. If they can’t tell, who can?”

  “Show us,” said Gabriel. “Where you found her.”

  They all walked out the lounge door, onto the pier. The water magnified the sun’s glare, and Gabriel had to squint against the brilliant reflection to see the rocks that Skip now pointed out.

  “See that shoal over there? We have it marked off with buoys, ’cause it’s a navigation hazard. At high tide, it’s only a few inches deep there, so you don’t even see it. Real easy to run aground.”

  “What time was high tide yesterday?” asked Gabriel.

  “I don’t know. Ten A.M., I think.”

  “Was that shoal exposed?”

  “Yeah. If I hadn’t spotted her then, a few hours later, she might have drifted out to sea.”

  The men stood in silence for a moment, squinting off over Hingham Bay. A motor cruiser rumbled by, churning up a wake that made the boats rock on their moorings and set halyards clanging on masts.

  “Had you ever seen the woman before?” Moore asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “A gal who looks like that? I’d sure as hell remember.”

  “And no one in the club recognized her?”

  Skip laughed. “No one who’ll admit to it.”

  Gabriel looked at him. “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Well, you know.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “These guys in the club . . .” Skip gave a nervous laugh. “I mean, you see all these boats moored out here? Who do you think sails them? It’s not the wives. It’s the men who lust after boats, not the women. And it’s the men who hang around here. A boat’s your home away from home.” Skip paused. “In every respect.”

  “You think she was someone’s girlfriend?” said Crowe.

  “Hell, I don’t know. It’s just that the possibility occurred to me. You know, bring a chickie here late at night. Fool around on your boat, get a little drunk, a little high. It’s easy to fall overboard.”

  “Or get pushed.”

  “Now wait a minute.” Skip looked alarmed. “Don’t you go jumping to that conclusion. These are good guys in the club. Good guys.”

  Who might be banging chickies on their boats, thought Gabriel.

  “I’m sorry I even mentioned the possibility,” said Skip. “It’s not like people don’t get drunk and fall off boats all the time. Could’ve been any boat, not just one of ours.” He pointed out to Hingham Bay, where a cabin cruiser was gliding across the blindingly bright water. “See all the traffic out there? She could’ve tripped off some motorboat that night. Drifted in on the tide.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Moore, “We’ll need a list of all your members.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “Yes, Mr. Boynton,” said Moore with quiet but unmistakable authority. “It is.”

  Skip gulped down the rest of his vodka. The heat had flushed his scalp bright red, and he swiped away sweat. “This is going to go over real well with the members. Here we do our civic duty and pull a woman out of the water. Now we’re all suspects?”

  Gabriel turned his gaze up the shoreline to the boat ramp, where a truck was now backing up to launch a motorboat into the water. Three other vehicles towing boats were lined up in the parking area, waiting their turns. “What’s your nighttime security like, Mr. Boynton?” he asked.

  “Security?” Skip shrugged. “We lock the club doors at midnight.”

  “And the pier? The boats? There’s no security guard?”

  “We haven’t had any break-ins. The boats are all locked. Plus, it’s quiet out here. If you get any closer to the city, you’ll find people hanging around the waterfront all night. This is a special little club. A place to get away from it all.”

  A place where you could drive down to the boat ramp at night, thought Gabriel. You could back right down to the water, and no one would see you open your trunk. No one would see you pull out a body and toss it into Hingham Bay. If the tide was right, that body would drift out past the islands just offshore, straight into Massachusetts Bay.

  But not if the tide was coming in.

  His cell phone rang. He moved away from the others and walked down the pier a few paces before he answered the call.

  It was Maura. “I think you might want to get back here,” she said. “We’re about to do the autopsy.”

  “Which autopsy?”

  “On the hospital security guard.”

  “The cause of death is clear, isn’t it?”

  “Another question has come up.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t know who this man i
s.”

  “Can’t someone at the hospital ID him? He was their employee.”

  “That’s the problem,” said Maura. “He wasn’t.”

  They had not yet undressed the corpse.

  Gabriel was no stranger to the horrors of the autopsy room, and the sight of this victim, in the scope of his experience, was not particularly shocking. He saw only a single entry wound that tunneled into the left cheek; otherwise the features were intact. The man was in his thirties, with neatly clipped dark hair and a muscular jaw. His brown eyes, exposed to air by partially open lids, were already clouded. A name tag with PERRIN was clipped to the breast pocket of the uniform. Staring at the table, what disturbed Gabriel most was not the gore or the sightless eyes; it was the knowledge that the same weapon that had ended this man’s life was now threatening Jane’s.

  “We waited for you,” said Dr. Abe Bristol. “Maura thought you’d want to watch this from the beginning.”

  Gabriel looked at Maura, who was gowned and masked, but standing at the foot of the table, and not at her usual place at the corpse’s right side. Every other time he’d entered this lab, she had been the one in command, the one holding the knife. He was not accustomed to seeing her cede control in the room where she usually reigned. “You’re not doing this postmortem?” he asked.

  “I can’t. I’m a witness to this man’s death,” said Maura. “Abe has to do this one.”

  “And you still have no idea who he is?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no hospital employee with the name Perrin. And the chief of security came to view the body. He didn’t recognize this man.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “We’ve sent his prints to AFIS. Nothing’s back on him so far. Or on the shooter’s fingerprints, either.”

  “So we’ve got a John Doe and a Jane Doe?” Gabriel stared at the corpse. “Who the hell are these people?”

  “Let’s get him undressed,” Abe said to Yoshima.

  The two men removed the corpse’s shoes and socks, unbuckled the belt, and peeled off the trousers, laying the items of clothing on a clean sheet. With gloved hands Abe searched the pants pockets but found them empty. No comb, no wallet, no keys. “Not even any loose change,” he noted.