Buried Secrets (Nick Heller) Page 8

  Another camera showed her arriving at the fourth-floor bar, where she met up with Taylor.

  “I like to take the stairs too,” Naji said helpfully. “It’s good exercise.”

  We continued watching as they found some chairs. For a long stretch, nothing much happened. The bar got increasingly crowded. A waitress in a skimpy outfit, her boobs almost popping out of her low-cut bra, took their order. The girls talked.

  A guy approached.

  “Move in on this,” Naji said to Leo. Now he was joining the effort.

  The guy had his shirttails untucked. He looked to be in his early twenties. Blond, ruddy face, an overbite. He sure didn’t look Spanish. Alexa smiled, but Taylor didn’t look at him.

  After a few seconds, he left. I actually felt sorry for the kid.

  The girls kept talking. They laughed, and I surmised it was about the guy with the untucked shirt.

  “You can fast-forward,” I said.

  Leo clicked on 3x mode, and the video sped up. Fast, jerky movements like in an old silent film. Laugh drink, laugh drink, smile. Alexa took out something and held it up. A phone, maybe? An iPhone, I realized. Taking a picture, probably.

  No: She held it near her mouth. Taylor laughed. They were playing around. Taylor grabbed it, and she too put it to her mouth. They laughed again. Taylor handed it back, and Alexa put the phone into a front pocket of her leather blazer. I made a mental note of that.

  Another guy approached. This one was dark-haired. Mediterranean, maybe Italian, maybe Spanish. This time the girls both smiled. Their body language was open; they looked at him, smiled. They were more receptive. This was a side to Taylor I hadn’t seen—no sullen pout. Lively and animated.

  “Is there a different angle on this?” I said.

  Leo opened another window on his monitor, and then I could see the man’s face in profile. He zoomed in for a close-up.

  Spanish or Portuguese. Maybe South American. In any case, a handsome guy. He appeared to be in his early to mid thirties. Well groomed, expensively dressed.

  The guy pulled a chair over and sat down, apparently having been invited. He signaled for a waitress.

  “This man, he comes here often,” Naji said.

  I turned to him. “Oh?”

  “I recognize him. The regular patrons, I get to know their faces.”

  “What’s his name?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  He was withholding something.

  I turned back to the monitor. The guy and the two girls were talking and laughing. The waitress came, took their drink orders. They talked and laughed some more. The girls seemed to be enjoying his company.

  The man was sitting next to Taylor, but didn’t pay her much attention. He was much more interested in Alexa. He kept leaning toward her, conversing with her, barely giving Taylor a glance.

  Interesting, I thought. Taylor was at least as pretty as Alexa, if sluttier-looking; Alexa seemed somehow more elegant, pure.

  But Alexa’s father was a billionaire.

  Yet how would he know that—unless he’d picked out his target in advance?

  The drinks came, served in big martini glasses.

  They drank some more, and after a while both girls got up. The man remained at the table by himself. He looked around the bar idly.

  “Can we follow the girls?” I said.

  Leo switched to an already open window, made it bigger. The girls were walking together, holding on to each other, both looking a little tipsy.

  “Keep on them,” I said.

  Leo made the window on the computer screen bigger still. I watched them enter the ladies’ room.

  “No cameras inside the restrooms?” I asked.

  Naji smiled. “That’s illegal, sir.”

  “I know. But I had to ask.”

  Then something in the other computer window caught my eye. The camera in which you could see the Latin man sitting alone.

  He was doing something.

  In one quick motion, he reached out a hand and slid Alexa’s half-full martini glass across the table toward himself.

  “What the hell?” I said. “Enlarge this window, could you?”

  Once Leo did so, we could see everything he was doing. The man slipped his right hand into his jacket. He glanced around. Then, nonchalantly, he dropped something into Alexa’s martini glass.

  He took the swizzle stick from his own drink and stirred hers, apparently dissolving whatever he’d just put in. Then he pushed her cocktail back in front of Alexa’s place.

  The whole process took around ten seconds, maybe fifteen.

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  21.

  “He put something in her drink,” Naji said.

  I guess someone had to speak the obvious.

  “Betcha it’s Special K,” Leo said. “Or Liquid X.”

  In the other window on the monitor, the girls emerged from the restroom, walked down the hall, and returned to their table.

  Alexa took a drink.

  More laughter, more conversation. A few minutes later, Taylor stood up, said something. Alexa looked upset, but the guy didn’t. Taylor left.

  Alexa stayed.

  She drank some more, and the two of them laughed and talked.

  It was only a few minutes before Alexa began to exhibit signs of serious intoxication. It wasn’t just the alcohol. She slumped back in her chair, her head lolled to one side, smiling gamely. But she looked sick.

  The man signaled again for the waitress, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he pulled out a billfold, put down some cash, then helped Alexa to her feet. She looked as if she could barely stand on her own.

  “Cash,” I said, mostly to myself.

  But Naji understood. “He always pays in cash.”

  “That’s why you don’t know his name?”

  He nodded, started to speak, but hesitated.

  “You know something.”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I think he may be a dealer.”

  “Drugs.”

  Naji nodded. He quickly added, “But he never deals here. Never. If he ever did, we would ban him.”

  “Of course.”

  This wasn’t good.

  Now the Spanish guy turned back, took Alexa’s handbag from the floor, then walked her toward the elevator. He pushed the button. She hung on his arm. A minute later the elevator arrived and they got in.

  She had an elevator phobia, but I doubted she knew where she was.

  * * *

  THE LOBBY camera captured the guy escorting Alexa toward the front door, almost dragging her. In his left hand he held her handbag. She was stumbling. People entering the hotel saw this and smiled. They probably figured the guy’s girlfriend had had too much to drink.

  In one of the exterior cameras, Alexa appeared to be almost asleep standing up in front of the hotel’s entrance. The man handed a claim check to the valet.

  Five minutes later, an older black Jaguar arrived: an XJ6, it looked like, from the mid-1980s. A classic, but not in very good shape. The rear quarter panel was dented, and there were dings and scrapes all over.

  The dealer helped Alexa into the back seat, where she lay flat.

  My stomach clenched. The car pulled away and out of the circular drive.

  “I need another angle,” I said.

  “Certainly, sir,” Naji said. “His face?”

  “No,” I said. “His license plate.”

  * * *

  OF COURSE, the plate number would be recorded on the man’s valet ticket, but I wanted to be absolutely certain. A camera directly in front of the valet station had captured his license plate with perfect clarity.

  The name on the ticket was Costa. He’d arrived at 9:08, before the girls did.

  Naji burned a bunch of still frames of Alexa and Taylor with the guy, including close-ups of his face from several different angles, to a CD. I had him make me a couple of copies. Then I borrowed his computer and e-mailed a few of the s
tills of Costa to Dorothy.

  The Defender was parked in one of the short-term spaces out front. I got in and called Dorothy. When she answered, I gave her a quick recap of what I’d seen. Then I read her the license plate number, a Massachusetts tag, and asked her to pull up the vehicle owner’s name and address and anything else she could get. I gave her the name Costa, warned her it was probably fake, and asked her to check her e-mail. She already had. I told her that the hotel’s security director suspected he was a narcotics dealer.

  Then I pulled out of the hotel’s front lot. About three blocks away I suddenly had another thought, and I drove back to the hotel. This time I didn’t bother with the groovy kid with the stubble at the reception desk. I walked straight back and found Naji in the hall.

  “Sorry,” I said. “One more thing.”

  “Of course.”

  “The Jaguar,” I said. “The valet records show an arrival time of nine oh eight.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to see all video from the valet station around that time.”

  It took Leo no more than a minute to call up the video I wanted: the banged-up Jaguar pulling up to the curb earlier in the evening, and Costa getting out.

  Then I saw something I didn’t expect.

  Someone getting out of the passenger’s side. A woman.

  Taylor Armstrong.

  22.

  “Alexa,” the voice said, “please do not scream. No one can hear. Do you understand this?”

  She tried to swallow.

  “You see, when you panic or scream, you hyperventilate, and this only uses up your air supply much quicker.” His accent was thick and crude but his voice was bland and matter-of-fact, and all the more terrifying because of it.

  “No no no no no no,” she chanted in a little voice, a child’s voice. And she thought: This is not happening to me. I am not here. This is not real.

  “Carbon dioxide poisoning is not pleasant, Alexa. You feel like you are drowning. You will die slowly and painfully and you will go into convulsions as your organs fail one by one. This is not a peaceful death, Alexa. I promise, you do not want to die this way.”

  The top of the casket was two or three inches from her face. That was the most horrible thing of all, how close it was.

  She gasped desperately for air, but she could only take shallow little breaths. She imagined the tiny space at the very top of her lungs. She thought of the air in her lungs as if it were water steadily rising in some sealed room in a horror movie, the air pocket shrinking to just an inch or two.

  She felt her entire body wracked by violent shudders.

  She was trapped ten feet underground, under tons of dirt, in this little tiny box in which she could barely move, and the air would soon run out.

  Frantically she clawed at the silky fabric directly above her face. Her throbbing bloody fingertips touched the bare cold metal and tore off strips. They hung down and tickled her eyes and cheeks.

  Her shuddering was uncontrollable.

  “You are listening to me, Alexa?”

  “Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t do this. Please.”

  “Alexa?” the voice said. “I can see you. A video camera is mounted right over your head. It gives infrared light you cannot see. I can also hear you through the microphone. Everything comes to us over the Internet. And when you speak to your father, he will see and hear you too.”

  “Please, let me talk to him!”

  “Yes, of course. Very soon. But first let us make sure you know what you must say and how to say it.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she cried, barely able to talk through the sobs. “You don’t need to do this.”

  “If you say your lines correctly and your father gives us what we want, you will be free in a matter of hours. You will be free, Alexa.”

  “He’ll give you anything—please let me out now, oh God, please, what can I possibly do to you?”

  “Alexa, you must listen.”

  “You can lock me up in a room or a closet if you want. You don’t need to do this, please oh God, please don’t do this…”

  “If you do exactly as we ask you will be out of there right away.”

  “You are a goddamned monster! Do you know what’s going to happen to you when they catch you? Do you have any idea, you sick goddamned psychopath?”

  There was a long silence. She could hear her own breathing, shallow and labored and quick.

  She said, “Do you hear me, you creep? Do you know what they’ll do to you?”

  More silence.

  She waited tensely for his reply.

  Had he decided to stop talking?

  Only then did she understand how much she depended on the Owl.

  The man with the owl tattoo on the back of his head. The Owl was her one and only lifeline to the world. Its power over her was absolute.

  She must never again offend the Owl.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  More silence.

  She said, “Please, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Please talk to me.”

  Nothing.

  Oh, God, now she understood that phrase “the silence of the grave.” Absolute silence wasn’t peaceful at all. It was the worst thing in the world.

  It was hell.

  She shuddered and moaned and cried softly, “I’m sorry. Come back.”

  “Alexa,” the voice said finally, and she felt such sweet relief.

  “Do you want to cooperate with us?”

  She began to weep.

  “Oh, I do, I do, please, tell me what you want me to say.”

  “Do you understand that it is my decision whether you live or die?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. Please, I do. Anything. If you let me out of here I will do anything you want. Anything at all. Anything you want.”

  But why was he now saying “I” instead of “we”? What did that mean?

  “Alexa, I want you to reach under your mattress. Can you do this?”

  “Yes.”

  Obediently she lowered both hands to the thin mattress and discovered that it rested on a series of metal bands that ran crosswise, spaced a few inches apart and probably running down the length of the casket. Her hands found a space between the bands and plunged into an open area below. How far down did this space go? Her left hand touched an object, a cluster of objects, and she grasped the cap and narrow neck of what felt like a plastic bottle. There were many. She grabbed one in her left hand and pulled it up and through the space between the bands. A water bottle.

  “Yes, very good,” said the voice. “You see I have given you some water. You must be thirsty.”

  “Yes, oh God, yes, I am.”

  Now that she thought about it, her mouth was completely dry.

  “Please to drink,” he said.

  She twisted the cap with her other hand, and it came off with a satisfying snap and she put it to her parched lips and drank greedily, spilling some on her face and her shirt, but she didn’t care.

  “There is water enough to last you a few days,” the voice said. “Perhaps a week. There are protein bars too, but not so many. Enough for a few days. When the food and water run out, that is all. Then you will starve to death. But before that you will suffocate.”

  She kept drinking, swallowing down gulps of air along with the water, quenching a deep thirst she hadn’t been aware of until now.

  “Now you must listen to me, Alexa.”

  She pulled the bottle away from her mouth, terrified that the Owl would abandon her again. She gasped, “Yes.”

  “If you say exactly what I tell you, and your father does exactly what I ask, you will be free from this torture.”

  “He’ll give you whatever you want,” she said.

  “But are you sure he loves you enough to set you free? Does he love you enough?”

  “Yes!” she said.

  “Does he love you at all, really? A mother will do anything for her child, but your mother is dead
. A child never really knows about his father.”

  “He loves me,” she said piteously.

  “I guess you will now learn if this is true,” the voice said. “You will learn the answer very quickly. Because if your father does not love you, you will die terribly down there. You will run out of air and you will be dizzy and confused and you will vomit and you will have convulsions and I will watch you die, Alexa. And I will enjoy it.”

  “Please don’t please don’t please don’t…”

  “I will watch the last minutes of your life, and you know what, Alexa?”

  He paused for a long time, and she whimpered like a baby, a small animal.

  “Your father will watch the last minutes of your life too. He will try to look away or turn it off but it is human nature—whether he loves you or not, he will not be able to stop watching his only child’s last minutes on this earth.”

  23.

  After a brief visit to a great old tobacco shop on Park Square, I made a pit stop at home to do some tinkering. I called a friend of mine and asked him to do a very quick job for me. A little while later, my BlackBerry rang.

  Without preface, Dorothy said: “The Jaguar is registered to a Richard Campisi of Dunstable Street in Charlestown.”

  “Bingo,” I said.

  “No bingo. He reported his car stolen over a week ago.”

  “I take it you’ve looked at his photo.”

  “Of course. And he’s not Costa. Not even close.”

  “So our guy stole the car.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “So he couldn’t be traced, I assume. This isn’t good, Dorothy. It’s been more than twelve hours since she disappeared. No one’s heard from her. No one can reach her. It’s like what happened to her a few years ago, only this time it’s for real.”

  “A kidnap for ransom, you think?”

  “I hope that’s all it is.”

  “You hope it’s a kidnapping?”

  “I hope it’s a kidnap for ransom. Because that means she’s alive, and all her dad has to do is pay money. The other possibility…”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know what the other possibility is.”

  I called Diana and asked her to put a rush on her request to locate Alexa Marcus’s phone.