It was nearly lunch time by the time Carter and Fusco headed back to the precinct. “Wanna grab something to go?” Fusco asked.
Carter nodded. But when they got to the car, there were two white bags sitting in the middle of the front seat. She could tell from the smell that one of them was a corned beef sandwich. Fusco’s favorite. There was also the faint scent of dill pickles. She didn’t doubt that the other bag held a turkey sandwich, on rye, lettuce, tomato, mayo, from her favorite deli. Knowing Finch, her bag also had salt and vinegar chips and a big chocolate chip cookie. Fusco’s would have barbeque chips and a snickerdoodle.
She buckled her seat belt, looked over at her partner. Sometimes it annoyed her, how much John’s secretive boss knew about them. Sometimes she just let herself enjoy it.
“We deserve it,” Fusco said, as if she’d made any comment. He dug into his bag and took a bite out of his cookie. “Hell of a morning.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d the hospital say?”
“Same thing your girl said,” Carter answered. “Off the record, of course, but they don’t expect Mrs. Antonucci to make it until morning.”
“Huh.”
Carter was silent for a moment. “Would you do it?”
“What?”
“Kill your wife.”
Fusco smirked. “Would I kill my ex if I had half an excuse? You’re asking the wrong guy, Carter.”
“Yeah, never mind.” She grinned gently. From what she’d heard, there wasn’t a week that went by when Fusco didn’t give some passing thought to killing his ex.
“In her position, is what you mean, right?” Fusco continued. “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it. For a really long time.”
Carter nodded thoughtfully. “I think … I would. In that situation. No way out, no hope. If I knew he was going to suffer like that. But yeah, I’m with you, I’d have to think about it for a long time. And I’d have to be damn sure there wasn’t another way out.”
“I don’t think there was, in this case.”
“If there was, I can’t see it.” She shook her head. “She gave him all her morphine, did you know that? All her pain meds for the week.”
Fusco shrugged. “She wanted to be sure she dropped him.”
“Yeah. But she didn’t keep any for herself, for overnight. And she was hurting. By the time we got her to the hospital she could hardly move.”
He dropped the rest of the cookie back into the bag, his appetite apparently gone. Carter didn’t figure that would last. “Tough old bird.”
“Devoted.”
They were silent for a few minutes.
“So,” Carter finally said, “tell me about your girl Scottie.”
Fusco shrugged, but his mouth made a tight little circle like it did when he wasn’t happy. “Nothin’ much to tell. I’ve known her since she was in high school. Nice kid. Smart. She’s wound a little tight, though.”
“A little?”
“Okay, a lot. But she’d do anything for anybody.”
“Donnelly sure is interested in her.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“He thinks she can lead him to John. Finch says not to worry about it.”
“He’s right.” Fusco shook his head. “She won’t give them up, either of them. It’s kinda weird, though. The last time I saw her with Donnelly, she took a big chunk out of his hide.”
“What about?”
“She laid a big 9/11 guilt trip on him. About how the FBI and the CIA should be trying to stop real threats instead of playing grab-ass with each other.”
“She said that?”
“Yeah, and pretty much in those words. Accused him of pissing on the bushes to mark his territory. It was freakin’ epic. I mean, not really fair, but epic.”
Carter frowned. “And now they’re all cozy.”
“Some guys like the abuse. And the rest of us just get used to it.”
“I guess.” She parked behind the precinct. They each claimed their take-out bags and went inside. “She jacked him around about Sanchez enough.”
“I noticed. Damn, that kid looked young.”
“He uses the same acne medicine as Taylor,” Carter answered. “I think we’re getting old, Fusco.”
“Not us,” he promised. “No way. The Academy must be robbing the cradle now.”
“Yeah, I like that answer better.” Carter put her bag down on her desk. “Poor kid. I remember my first DB on the force.” She shuddered. “He’d been in the water for three days. The smell was what got to me.”
“Floaters, yeah. Especially once they start to warm up.” Fusco unpacked his lunch. “This guy, Antonucci? He was pretty, for a corpse. All clean, dressed. Guess that doesn’t matter. Your first is your first.”
The floated hadn’t been the first dead body she’d ever seen, Cart thought, just the first one she saw while she was carrying a badge. But that was a story for another time; she didn’t bother to correct him. “What was your first like?”
Fusco didn’t answer. After a minute, Carter looked up. He was standing very still, with a sad, blank expression frozen on his face. “Fusco?”
He shook himself. “Yeah. Yeah. My first was … Chrissy’s father.” He looked down, fussed with the paper under his sandwich.
“Scottie,” Carter corrected gently.
“Yeah, Scottie. She hates it when I call her Chrissy now. Can’t say as I blame her.”
“Is that how you met her? Working her dad’s case?”
Fusco shook his head slowly. “There wasn’t a case. Not much of one, anyhow. He came out of the bar and pointed a gun at us. We shot him.”
“We?”
He shrugged again. “There were twelve cops there. He had eight bullets in him. But … the one from my gun was the one that killed him.”
“And they made you go tell the girl?”
“Nobody had to tell her. She was standing right beside me.”
“You shot her father dead in front of her.”
“Yeah.” Fusco still wouldn’t look up.
Carter stared at him for a minute. It didn’t make any sense. The woman had thrown herself into Fusco’s arms the minute she saw him. It couldn’t be … “Oh,” she said suddenly. “Oh, right. I get it. You don’t want to tell me, Fusco, that’s fine. That was good. You had me goin’ there for a minute. Good one.”
Fusco looked up then. “Carter, I’m tellin’ you the truth.”
“Sure, sure. Now pull the other leg.” She shook her head. “You had me goin’, Lionel. You really did.”
He sort of chuckled and shook his head. “You want some coffee, Carter?”
“Sure.” She handed her mug to him. He took hers and his own and went off to the break room.
Carter sat down and finished unwrapping her lunch. She hesitated for a moment ” was Fusco’s story even possible? But it wasn’t. It didn’t make any sense. She shook her head again, at him and at herself. “What a jerk,” she muttered, chuckling.
***
It was much easier to call Christine the second time. “Hey, Random,” she said when she heard his voice. “I swear, I haven’t done anything.”
“I know,” Finch assured her. “I need a quite different favor now.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“How do you feel about children?”
“Ambivalent,” she answered immediately. “If you want me to provide you with an heir I’m willing to discuss it, but you should know that my parenting skills are probably negligible.”
On the line, Reese groaned audibly.
Finch chuckled. “Congratulations, Miss Fitzgerald. You’ve just become the second woman to horrify Mr. Reese today.”
“Well, damn, who beat me to it?”
“Just open the back door,” Reese said. From the sound of his voice, he was speaking through clenched teeth.
***
He’d given the girl the option of walking up the steps on her own. She’d said something unflattering about his mother behind her gag. So Reese hauled her out of the car, tossed her over his shoulder, and carried her up.
She was very light. It was like carrying a fragile child.
Christine opened the door and stared at him. Reese waited for the questions.
“Is it our anniversary already?” she finally asked. “I didn’t get you anything.”
She stepped back. Reese carried the teenager into the living room and set her on her feet. She kicked out at him and screamed again behind the gag.
“The apartment’s pretty soundproof,” Christine said calmly.
The girl went silent. She stared at the woman, at Reese, and then back at Christine. “Going to settle down now?” Reese asked. He reached over and took the handkerchief out of her mouth.
“You let me out of here, you mother fucking pervert! You fucking asshole, you can’t just put handcuffs on people …
She went on. Christine ducked into the bathroom and came back out with a bottle of liquid soap. She held it up calmly where the teen could see it. “Listen up, sweet pea. I don’t your name and I don’t know your story. I do know that this stuff tastes awful. And I know that you are not too old to have your mouth washed out with soap.”
The girl froze and stared at her, silent at last.
“Thank you,” Reese said to Christine. He steered the teen to the couch. “Sit down. Take a deep breath. Tell me your name.”
The girl sat. Her rage seemed to drain out of her. John could almost see her fear taking over. She began to tremble.
Christine walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The girl turned to watch her. Her brown eyes were wide now, and tears began to fill them. She was looking to Christine for comfort; Reese knew that in threatening her with something as ordinary and harmless as washing her mouth out with soap, the hacker had made herself the less-threatening opponent.
He wasn’t sure that was an entirely accurate assessment, but it served his purposes.
“Hey,” Reese said softly, drawing her attention again. “What’s your name?”
The tears finally overflowed and trickled down her cheeks. John took a tissue from the side table and wiped them for her. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. What’s your name?”
“Lis,” she finally whispered.
Over her shoulder, Reese saw Christine pour a glass of orange juice, then stir something else in. “Lis? Not Liz, Lis?”
She nodded, sniffed.
Christine brought the juice over, with a bendy straw stuck in it. “Drink this,” she said, holding the glass in front of her.
The teen blinked up at her.
“Screaming like that rips your throat up. I know. Drink.”
Reese wondered what Christine had mixed into the drink. But she met his eyes calmly and he didn’t ask. The teen leaned forward and took a sip, then made a face. “It’s too sweet.”
“Stevia. It’s got no calories.”
“Oh.” Lis took a longer drink.
Christine looked at Reese again. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to take from the look.
“Can you …” Liz jiggled the handcuffs behind her back. “These kinda hurt.”
“Uh-huh.” Reese touched the scratch on his cheek. “So does this.”
She sniffed. “I’m sorry.”
He brought the key out. Christine put the juice down, moved over to her computer and pressed a few keys. Reese heard almost subliminally quiet clicks at each door and window. The apartment was secure. He released the girl. She rubbed her wrists, sniffed again, got a new tissue and blew her nose. But she didn’t try to run.
“Have some more juice,” he urged.
She picked up the glass and drank a little more. “You’re sure this doesn’t have any calories?” she asked anxiously.
“Pretty sure,” Christine answered.
“Where can I find Clay?” Reese pressed.
The girl looked at him. Her eyes were still tearful, scared. She looked back to Christine. “Can I use your bathroom?”
Reese sighed. “Wait a minute.” He went into the bathroom, threw a bath towel open on the floor, and sorted quickly through the drawers and cupboards, dropping anything the girl could use to hurt herself onto the towel. He made a bundle and grabbed Christine’s big first aid box, then stepped back into the hall. “Here you go,” he said.
Lis stared at him. Then she went into the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it.
Christine met him in the hall. “You think she’s suicidal?”
“I don’t know what she is.” He handed her the bundle. “Put these under the bed, would you?”
“Sure.” She went and opened the hidden drawer Finch had built for Reese’s emergency clothes.
Reese retrieved the teen’s backpack and went through it. There were a few clothes, twelve dollars and some change, an SD card, and a pawn ticket. No ID. Christine came back, and Reese handed her the computer card. “Can you copy this and send it to Finch?”
“No problem.” She went over to her computer set-up, which took covered all of what should have been her dining room.
He listened for the teenager. There was no sound from the bathroom. “She can’t get out of there, can she?”
“No. The window’s sealed.”
“You’re just not going to ask, are you?”
Christine glanced up from the computer, gave him half a smile. “I learned a long time ago, never ask a question you don’t really want the answer to.”
Reese studied the claim ticket. “You have a copier?”
“I have a scanner and a printer.”
“Close enough.” He took her the claim ticket; she returned the SD card.
“Is she in danger?”
“No. But her boyfriend is. I need to find him.” He waited while she printed a copy of the claim ticket for him, then put both items back in the pack and zipped it. “What was in the orange juice?”
“Sugar. A tantrum like that takes energy, and she doesn’t look like she has much in reserve.”
“Don’t overdo it. You’ll make her sick.”
“And you can go teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Been there, done that.”
John nodded. Christine had been there. She hadn’t been anorexic, but she’d been a heroin addict, and from a nutritional standpoint they were pretty much the same. From Finch’s description, she’d starved herself just like Lis had.
“Give me a little time,” Christine went on. “I’ll get some fatty acids through to her brain. She might smarten up for us.”
“I hope so. I don’t care what you do with her, just keep her in sight and keep her safe.” Reese brought out a credit card, black Amex, with her name on it. “Here. This might help.”
“I already have one of those.”
“This one is magic. The bills mysteriously disappear.” He brought out an earwig for her, too, and showed her how it worked. “Keep this in and your phone on. It will let Finch keep in touch with you.”
“Okay.”
From the bathroom, there were low screams of frustration as Lis discovered that she could not, in fact, escape through the window.
“Find out all you can about her. Anything that Finch can work with. Especially anywhere Clay might have gone.”
“Got it.” She left the computer, went to the kitchen and ran cold water over a clean dishcloth. Then she came back and dabbed at Reese’s scrape.
“How’s it look?”
“You’ll live. Hang on.”
She went into the bedroom, came back with a tube of antibiotic cream.
“It’s okay,” Reese demurred.
“Hush.” She dabbed the cream over the cut. “It’ll blend in in a minute. I don’t even want to think about where those nails have been.” She tucked the rest of the tube into his inside pocket.
He couldn’t disagree. He went and tapped on the bathroom door. “Lis? I need to find Clay. He’s in danger.”
“Fuck off!” the girl shouted.
Reese shrugged at Christine and let himself out.
He would much rather deal with armed gangsters, he decided, than hysterical teenage girls.
***
Aldo Rossi was not happy. He held the ice pack against his face and glared at his men. “Can’t believe you let them get away,” he growled at Smithy.
The man spread his hands in apology. “I was out front waiting for you … “
“Well next time be out back!”
“I will, Al. I will.”
“And you,” Rossi said turning to Fuhrman, “how you let that guy get the drop on you like that?”
The man just looked at him. His eyes looked funny; one pupil was bigger than the other one, and he kept throwing up. He hadn’t said ten words since they’d picked him up off the floor of the butcher shop.
“I don’t know what the shit I pay you guys for,” Aldo complained. “I want that kid. And I want his girlfriend. And I want the guy that hit me.”
“We’ll get him, Al,” Smithy promised.
Rossi stared at him. “I don’t see you out there getting him!” he finally shouted.
“Oh.” Smithy stood up. “Yeah. I’ll go find him.”
“Take him with you.”
Smithy looked at Fuhrman doubtfully. “I dunno, Al. I think he ought to lay down or something …”
Fuhrman lunged into the bathroom again. He didn’t shut the door; they could both hear him vomit.
“Or maybe I should take him to the hospital?” Smithy offered.
Rossi glowered at him. “Whatever. Just get him the hell out of here.”
Smithy gathered him up and they went out.
As soon as the door shut, Aldo hurried into the bathroom himself. He stood in front of the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. “Cut it out, Aldo,” he whispered furiously. “You’re not a little kid any more. Don’t do this.”
When he was a child, the sound of vomiting had always made him vomit, too. Even the sound of a cat hacking up a hair ball could make little Aldo lose his lunch. But he wasn’t a child any more. And that sound couldn’t get to him anymore. Just because Fuhrman had tossed his cookies didn’t mean …
Aldo kicked the door shut, dropped to his knees in front of the toilet, and threw up.
***
Reese lifted the bag of stolen cards and turned it over. The cards fell like a little rainstorm onto the polished wood table.
Finch scowled at him. “Did young Mr. Clay steal all of those?”
“Nope.”
“And there’s no way to tell which ones he did steal?”
“Nope.” Reese added the two intact wallets to the stack. “We know he stole these two. But they’re too recent to be causing his problems.” He put the flash drive down next to the stack. “This is everything on Clancy’s computer.”
Finch sighed. Then he opened a drawer and brought out a square card reader. He clicked it onto his cell phone, hit a few keys and scanned the first credit card through it.
“We’re just going charge stuff on stolen cards?” Reese asked curiously.
“I’ve modified the ap,” Finch answered. “This will send the information to my computer, where it will be compiled into a sortable list.”
“Oh.” Reese considered the small mountain of cards with relief. He had not been looking forward to sorting them out. He watched while Finch rapidly scanned more cards. Anything that didn’t have a scan strip ” social security cards, insurance cards and the like ” Harold tossed into a second pile. John noticed the various colors of the drivers’ licenses. Evidently out-of-state tourists were the favored prey. “Anything on the girlfriend?”
“I glanced at the files Miss Fitzgerald sent. They appear to be photographs, from around the city. They may give us a lead to where Mr. Clay is hiding.” He gestured stiffly with his head toward the computer monitors. “But these,” he held up a card “are more likely to help us identify the threat.”
Reese went over to the desk and looked through the photos. Some of the locations were easy to recognize “ Time Square, Battery Park, Wall Street. Others were more generic. Nothing jumped out at Reese. “Some of these are pretty good,” he commented.
“Are they?” Harold answered absently.
“Some. She didn’t have a camera in her pack.” Reese brought out his copy of the claim ticket and looked at it thoughtfully. He brought out his phone, dialed Christine and put her on speaker.
“Chaos Home for Wayward Girls,” she answered cheerfully.
Finch raised one eyebrow but didn’t stop his rapid-fire scanning.
“And how is our wayward girl?” Reese asked.
“Still locked in the bathroom.”
“Ask her if she wants to talk to me.”
There was a little pause. “Hey, Lis. Open the door and talk to John.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Uh-huh.”
John sighed. “Ask her where I can find Clay.”
“He wants to know where to find Clay,” Christine repeated.
“Tell him to fuck off!”
“Okay. Did you get that?”
“I got it.”
“Perhaps the Home for Wayward Girls needs to start a class for charm and comportment,” Finch suggested.
“I’m not even sure I know what comportment is, but we could give it a shot,” Christine answered. “I have a question.”
“Only one?”
“One with a possible follow-up.”
“Go ahead,” Finch said carefully.
“Is this what I was like?”
Reese looked up at him. Finch hesitated, a card just at the edge of the reader. “Do you want me to lie?”
“Desperately, but I don’t think it will help.”
Finch shrugged lightly and swiped the card. “You had a better vocabulary.”
“Ahhh.”
“Do you wish to exercise your follow-up option?”
“Yes, please. If I was like that why did you put me in the back seat of the car? As opposed to, say, under the tires, which would have been more reasonable?”
Finch smiled, a very small and gentle smile that Reese rarely saw from him. “Obviously because I saw in you something worth saving.”
“What was it?”
“That’s your third question.”
Christine swore, but under her breath and in Russian. “Are you seeing it in her?”
“Not the same thing, no. But there’s something there. I’m confident that you’ll find it.”
There was a very long pause. “Right, then,” she finally answered. “Should I just leave her in there, or have Zelda open the door for me?”
Reese looked at the claim ticket copy again. “Tell her that if she talks to me, I’ll get her camera back for her."
“Hang on.” There were footsteps. “Hey, Lis. John says if you come out and talk to him, he’ll get your camera back for you.”
A second pause, and then the teenager called, “What?”
“Talk to John and eat something, and he’ll get your camera back.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
A door creaked open, and then Lis’ soft voice came onto the phone. “It’s at a pawn shop.”
“I know,” Reese answered quietly. “I’ll get it. I need to know where to find Clay.”
The girl took a little sobbing breath. “I don’t know.”
“Listen to me. He’s in danger. I can help him, but I need to find him.”
“I don’t know,” Lis said again. “He said … he said if one of us got caught, the other one should go somewhere we never went together. So they couldn’t catch both of us.”
“And how were you supposed to get back together?”
“The one who didn’t get caught was supposed to find the one who was, when he got out. Like, around the jail or whatever.”
Which was probably, John thought, the most unworkable plan in history, but that was about what he was coming to expect from these two. He kept his voice even and patient. “All right. I’m sending a picture to the phone. I need you to tell me if you’ve ever seen this man before.”
He shot her a picture of Aldo Rossi. After a brief pause, Lis said, “No.”
“Are you sure? Clay didn’t pick his pocket or something?”
“I don’t … I don’t think so. I mean, sometimes he went out without me, I didn’t really see everybody …”
Reese considered for a moment, but he couldn’t think of another useful question. “If you think of anything, anything at all that would help me find him, you call me, okay? Christine knows how to reach me.”
“Okay.”
“And Lis? Get something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat anyhow.” Reese hung up the phone and put it away. He looked at Finch, who was a quarter of the way through the stack of cards. “Will you tell me what you saw?”
Finch frowned, then seemed to understand what he was asking. “In Christine? Potential.”
“Potential for what?”
“That’s always the question with young people, isn’t it?” He looked back to the cards with a certain finality.
Reese rolled to his feet. He was tempted ” very tempted ” to ask what Finch had seen in him, what had moved the billionaire to kidnap an ex-operative who was determined to drink himself to death. But he was fairly certain Finch wouldn’t answer him. And he was a little afraid that he would. “I’m going to go look for the kid,” he announced.
Finch nodded absently and continued scanning. “I’ll let you know when I find something,” he promised.
***
q95;
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