No Second Chance
Page 39“The bag of money?” she said.
I handed it to her. “What are you going to do?”
She opened it. The money was in packs of hundred-dollar bills. She grabbed a wad and slowly slipped the money out, not breaking the band around it. She cut the bills like they were a deck of cards.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going to cut a hole.”
“In the actual currency?”
“Yup.”
She did it with the straight razor. She dug out a circle about the perimeter of a silver dollar, maybe a quarter inch thick. She scanned the floor, found a black device that was about the same size, fit it into the bills. Then she put the wrapping back on it. The device was totally hidden in the middle of the money wad.
“A Q-Logger,” she said in way of explanation. “It’s a GPS device.”
“You say so.”
“GPS stands for Global Positioning System. Put simply, it will track the money. I’ll put one in the lining of the bag too, but most criminals know about that. They usually dump the cash into a bag of their own. But with all this money, they won’t have time right away to search through every pack.”
“How small do those things come?”
“The Q-Loggers?”
“Yes.”
“They can make them even thinner, but the problem is the power source. You need a battery. That’s where we lose out. I need something that can travel at least eight miles. This will do it.”
“And where does it go to?”
“You mean where do I keep track of the movements?”
“Yes.”
“A Palm Pilot?”
“Designed with a special tracking screen. I’ll have it on me if I have to move.” She went back to work.
“What’s all the other stuff?” I asked.
“Surveillance equipment. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to use, but I’d like to put a Q-Logger in your shoe. I want to get a camera on the car. I’d like to see if I can hook up some fiber-optics on you, but that could be riskier.” She started to organize her equipment, lost in the activity. Her eyes were down when she spoke again. “Something else I want to explain to you.”
I leaned forward.
“Do you remember when my parents got divorced?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure.” It had been when we first met.
“Close as we were, we never talked about it.”
“I always got the impression you didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t,” she said too quickly.
And, I thought, neither had I. I was selfish. We were supposedly in love for two years—and yet I never so much as nudged her to open up about her parents’ divorce. It was more than an “impression” that made me hold my tongue. I knew something dark and unhappy lay there. I did not want to poke at it, disturb it, have it possibly turn its attention in my direction.
“It was my father’s fault.”
I almost said something really stupid like “It’s never anyone’s fault” or “There are two sides to every story,” but a flyby of good sense kept my tongue in check. Rachel still hadn’t looked up. “My father destroyed my mother. Crushed her soul. Do you know how?”
“No.”
“He cheated on her.”
She lifted her head and held my gaze. I did not look away. “It was a destructive cycle,” she said. “He’d cheat, he’d get caught, he’d swear he’d never do it again. But he always did. It wormed into my mother, ate away at her.” Rachel swallowed, turned back to her high-tech toys. “So when I was away in Italy and I heard you’d been with someone else . . .”
I thought of a million different things to say, but they were all meaningless. Frankly so was what she was telling me. It explained a lot, I guess, but it was the ultimate too-little-too-late. I stayed where I was, not moving from the chair.
“We were young.”
“I just wanted . . . I should have told you about this back then.”
She was reaching out. I started to say something, but I pulled up short. Too much. Just all too much. It had been six hours since the ransom call. The seconds tick-ticked, a deep, painful pounding in the well of my chest.
I jumped when the phone rang, but it was my regular line, not the kidnapper’s cell. I picked it up. It was Lenny.
“What’s wrong?” he said without preamble.
I looked at Rachel. She shook her head. I nodded back that I understood. “Nothing,” I said.
“Your mom told me you saw Edgar in the park.”
“Don’t worry.”
“That old bastard will screw you, you know that.”
There was no reasoning with Lenny when it came to Edgar Portman. He also might be right. “I know.”
There was brief silence.
“You called Rachel,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Nothing important.”
There was another pause. Then Lenny said, “You’re lying to me, right?”
“Like a Vegas toupee.”
“I better cancel.”
“No problem. Marc?”
“Yeah.”
“If you need me . . .”
“Thanks, Lenny.”
I hung up. Rachel was busy with her electronic gizmos. The words she had said were gone now, dissipated smoke. She looked up and saw something in my face.
“Marc?”
I didn’t speak.
“If your daughter is alive, we’ll bring her home. I promise.”
And for the first time, I was not sure that I believed her.
Chapter 22
Special Agent Ticknerstared down at the report.
The Seidman murder-kidnapping had been beyond back-burner. The FBI had realigned its priorities in recent years. Terrorism was number one on the most wanted list. Numbers two through ten were, well, terrorism. The Seidman case had only involved him when it became a kidnapping issue. Despite what you see on television, the local police are usually anxious to have the FBI involved. The feds have the resources and the know-how. Calling them too late can cost a life. Regan had been smart enough not to wait.
But once the kidnapping issue was—and he hated to use this term for it—“resolved,” Tickner’s job (unofficially at least) was to back off and leave it to the locals. He still thought about it a lot—you don’t forget the sight of a baby’s clothing in a cabin like that—but in his mind, the case had been inactive.