Continuing to clutch his clothes against his chest, Jack moved quickly and silently down the hall to the archway leading into the great room. He leaned through the opening, expecting the room beyond to be deserted. To his surprise, the whole family was there on the couch, with the parents at either end. They appeared as if they were watching television, but the TV was off.
From his vantage point, Jack could not see any faces. For a moment he stood still, watching and listening. No one moved or spoke. Mystified, Jack stepped into the room and approached. When he got about ten feet away, he tentatively called out Alexis's name. He didn't want to disturb them if it was some family thing, but he couldn't seem to walk away, either.
Both Craig's and Alexis's heads shot around. Craig glared back at Jack. Alexis got to her feet. Her face was drawn and her eyes were red. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
15
"So there you have it," Alexis said. She'd told Jack the story about how she and Craig had come home after the trial had been recessed to find their terrified daughters bound and gagged with duct tape. She'd spoken slowly and deliberately. Craig had spat out a few gory details, like the fact Tracy had been dragged from the shower stark naked and rudely struck.
Jack was speechless. He was sitting on the coffee table, facing his sister and her family. As the story unfolded, his eyes jumped from Alexis, who was anxious, fearful, and concerned, to Craig, who was beside himself with outrage, to three children who were shocked and clearly traumatized. All three children were sitting silent and immobile. Tracy had her legs tucked under herself and her arms folded across her chest. She was dressed in oversized sweat clothes. Her hair was frizzed. There was no bare midriff. Christina and Meghan both had their arms clutched around their legs with their knees jutting up into the air. All three had raw, red bands across their lower faces from the duct tape. Tracy had a split lip.
"Are you guys all right?" Jack asked the children. It appeared to him that only Tracy had been physically abused, and thankfully, it looked minor.
"They are as well as can be expected," Alexis said.
"How did the intruders get in?"
"They forced the back door," Craig snapped. "They were obviously professionals."
"Has anything been stolen?" Jack asked. His eyes rapidly scanned the room for any damage, but everything seemed to be in order.
"Not that we can determine," Alexis said.
"What did they want then?" Jack asked.
"It was to convey a message," Alexis said. "They gave Tracy a verbal message to give to us."
"What?" Jack asked impatiently when Alexis didn't elaborate.
"No autopsy," Craig snapped. "The message was no autopsy or they'd be back to hurt the kids."
Jack's eyes rocketed back and forth between Craig and Alexis. He could not believe his offer to help could have caused such a situation. "This is crazy," he blurted. "This can't be happening."
"Tell that to the kids!" Craig challenged.
"I'm sorry," Jack said. He looked away from the Bowmans' faces. He was crushed he'd been the cause of such a disaster. He shook his head and looked back, particularly at Craig and Alexis. "Well, fine then, no autopsy!"
"We're not sure we're ready to give in to this kind of extortion," Alexis said. "Despite what's happened, we're not ruling an autopsy out. It seems to us that if someone is willing to go to the extent of threatening children to block the autopsy, that's all the more reason to do it."
Jack nodded. The thought had occurred to him as well, but it wasn't for him to put Tracy, Meghan, and Christina any more at risk. Besides, the only culprit that came to his mind was Tony Fasano, and his motivation could only involve fear of losing his contingency fee. Jack looked at Craig, whose anger had seemingly lessened a degree as the conversation progressed.
"If there's any risk at all, I'm not for it," Craig said. "But we're thinking we can eliminate the risk."
"Have you called the police?" Jack asked.
"No, we haven't," Alexis said. "That was the second part of the message: no autopsy, no police."
"You have to call the police," Jack said, but his words rang hollow since he'd not reported either his confrontation with Fasano et al. the previous day or his confrontation with Franco a half-hour earlier.
"We're considering our options," Craig explained. "We've been talking it over with the girls. They are going to stay with their grandparents for a few days, until this trial is over. My mom and dad live up in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and they are on their way down here to pick them up."
"I'll probably be going along with them," Alexis said.
"You don't have to, Mom," Tracy said, speaking for the first time. "We'll be fine with Gramps and Grandma."
"No one knows where the girls will be," Craig explained. "They'll stay out of school at least for the rest of this week and maybe for the year since there's only a few days left. They've promised not to use their cell phones or tell anyone where they are."
Jack nodded, but he didn't know what he was agreeing to. It seemed to him he was getting mixed messages. There was no way the risk for the children could be completely eliminated. He was concerned that Alexis and Craig might not be thinking clearly under the stress of the trial. The only thing Jack was certain of was that the police had to be notified.
"Listen," Jack said. "The only person that comes to mind who might be behind this outrage is Tony Fasano and his cronies."
"We thought the same," Craig said. "But it seems almost too venal, so we're trying to keep an open mind. The one thing that has particularly surprised me during my trial is the animosity colleagues feel about my concierge practice. It gives some credence to the rhetorical questions you posed last night about a conspiracy."
Jack allotted the idea a quick thought, but other than being grist for an avowed conspiracy-theory aficionado, he gave the chances of such a scenario an extremely low probability, even though he'd suggested it the previous evening. Tony Fasano and his tag team were a much more likely possibility, especially since Tony had already threatened him. "I don't know if you've noticed my fat lip," he said, gingerly touching the swelling.
"It would be hard to miss," Alexis said. "Was it from basketball?"
"I was going to pass it off as such," Jack admitted. "But it was from another run-in with Tony Fasano's Franco. It's becoming a regrettable, daily ritual."
"Those bastards," Craig snarled.
"Are you okay?" Alexis questioned with concern.
"I'm better than I would have been had my newly made Boston basketball buddies not intervened on my behalf in the nick of time. Franco had an accomplice."
"Oh my God," Alexis said. "We're sorry to involve you in this."