“You’re home,” Ali repeated. “I thought you weren’t coming home until tomorrow.”
“I wasn’t, but another blizzard is due to hit the East Coast early tomorrow morning. It’s predicted to be bad enough that I had a choice of ducking out of town tonight or being stuck in Manhattan for the whole weekend. When I managed to snag a last-minute flight, I canceled tomorrow’s meetings and came home. I didn’t call because I was hoping to surprise you. Turns out the joke’s on me.”
“I’m having a pizza party with Sister Anselm and Leland on the maternity floor of St. Jerome’s Hospital in Flagstaff.”
“And Bella?”
“Leland dropped her off with my folks. They’re not allowed to own a dog, but this was regarded as an emergency.”
“So maybe you should bring me up to date. I talked to Stu as I was driving up from Phoenix, but I have a feeling that there’s a lot more to the story.”
It was not a particularly happy conversation, and it took the better part of an hour. By the time it was over, Ali’s iPhone was burning her ear, the battery power was down to 5 percent, and B. was over being pissed at her for, as he called it, “going off half cocked.” By the time they said good night, though, things were better.
“All’s well that ends well, I suppose,” B. said finally, “but there goes that Leland—saving the day again. Whatever are we going to do with the man?”
“Keep him around, I guess,” Ali said. “Now let me go. My phone’s going to die any minute if I don’t find my charger.”
By the time she found the charger, an outlet, and had her phone plugged in, Ali realized that Leland was curled up on a nearby sofa, sound asleep. She prowled around the floor long enough to find a linen cart stocked with clean blankets. She collected several and took them back to the waiting room. She used a couple of them to cover Leland and wrapped one around her own legs. She didn’t know if the temperature in the waiting room had really gone down or if she was simply dealing with the dissipation of adrenaline.
She was glad Leland was sleeping, and she hoped Sister Anselm was, but Ali herself was wide awake and chewing on the way Richard Lowell had been dressed—his spiffy suit and tie, as opposed to the homespun crap and thrift-shop rejects in the box containing Enid Tower’s personal effects.
It was close to midnight when she sent Stu an e-mail, copying Cami as she did so.
Richard Lowell paid us a visit at the hospital earlier this evening. I believe Cami said he was probably the guy in charge right now, since he lives in the house closest to the church. I want to know everything there is to know about him.
Ali
She had no sooner sent it than a response came back from Stu. Didn’t the man ever sleep?
Hey, I thought you’d be downloading some zzzzs about now, but I wanted you to know that I got the drone thing handled. A buddy of mine is using drones to do aerial surveys of all BLM land abutting Grand Canyon National Park. I asked him to do the job for us and made it worth his while. Since he’s already done some work in that area, it won’t be any trouble for him to get himself and his equipment where we need them. He’ll be there bright and early tomorrow. Make that today.
And yes, I’ll start digging on Mr. Lowell. Cami’s right. Since he lives in the big house, he’s probably the big cheese.
Oh, and did you know B. is home? He called me on his drive up from Phoenix, but he asked me to keep it a secret because he wanted to surprise you. Felt like I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Hope you don’t mind.
Stu
Relieved to know the supposed greenhouses might soon give up their secrets, Ali sent her response immediately:
A tale of two bosses. Not to worry. Thanks.
Ali
Having done as much as she could do for the night, Ali rested her head against the back of the love seat and pulled the blanket more tightly around her legs. She had just drifted off when her phone startled her awake. When she picked it up and Kate Benchley’s photo peered back at her from the screen, Ali realized that the bag with Gordon Tower’s cheek swab in it was still in her pocket rather than in a FedEx envelope on its way to Banshee Group.
“You said it was urgent, and we treated it as urgent,” Kate said when Ali answered. “I know it’s the middle of the night there, but we’ve got a match, and I wanted you to know right away.”
Ali was still on the groggy side. A match? she wondered. Of course there was a match. Baby Ann was Enid’s daughter, after all. Why wouldn’t there be a match? Maybe the note Ali had sent along with the samples hadn’t been clear. She thought she had said she just wanted the profiles. But the urgency in Kate’s voice put Ali on edge.
“Don’t worry about waking me. I was still up, sort of, but what kind of match do you mean?”
“Two of them actually,” Kate answered. “Not exact matches, but near matches.”
Now Ali was truly mystified. “Matches from where?”
“One came from a victim from the tsunami in Thailand and the other from a mass grave at the scene of a Colombian drug cartel massacre. I’m looking at the forensics reports right now. Both were female and both were estimated to be no more than six or seven years old. One is a second cousin of the sample labeled Baby Ann and the other is a half sister of the one named Enid.”
Ali was thunderstruck. “How’s that possible?” she asked. “Baby Ann is barely two days old. She and her mother live with a group of people, a cult actually, that carves out a meager existence in northern Arizona. I can’t imagine any relatives of theirs being able to travel outside the U.S. How could they?”
Kate took a long steadying breath. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” she said. “Those girls didn’t go traveling of their own free will. In the world of sex trafficking, girls that young are the crown jewels. I’d guess they were smuggled out of the United States and sold on the black market for a ton of money. The one in Thailand was found virtually intact and tossed up on a hillside days after the tsunami. The one in Colombia was skeletal remains only.”
Kate was still speaking when Ali took the phone from her ear. For a moment she stared at it in disbelief. Then, as she tried to suppress her gag reflex, the phone clattered to the floor. Throwing off the blanket and scrambling to her feet, she raced for the nearest restroom. At least she managed to heave the last few undigested bits of her pepperoni pizza into the toilet rather than onto the floor.
26
When Ali finished in the restroom and staggered back out to the waiting room, Leland was sitting up on his sofa with Ali’s cell phone clutched in one hand. His white hair stood on end, reminding Ali of that iconic photo of Albert Einstein, but she was too heartsick to mention it.
Seeing what must have been a desolate expression on her face, he immediately pushed himself to his feet and hobbled across the room to hand over her phone. “Madame,” he said, taking her arm to lead her back to the love seat. “Whatever is the matter? Are you ill?”
“I am,” Ali said. “I’ll tell you in a minute. First I need to call Kate back.”
She redialed the number. “What happened?” Kate asked. “It sounded like you dropped the phone.”
“I did drop the phone,” Ali said. “I had to. I was about to barf my guts out. The whole idea makes me sick to my stomach. How do you do what you do?”