Ian turned, accessed the Grants’ insurance site, and navigated to a history of past payments. Almost all were for the child’s treatments, and they totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars. He scrolled back three years earlier and found a claim for $74,000 for a ninety-day stay in Hazelden’s alcohol and substance abuse rehabilitation unit. The insurance company had paid $60,000, leaving the family with the balance of $14,000.
Ian turned and found the blue icon he had passed over earlier. He touched it with a fingertip and the screen filled with photographs of the Grant family. Most were of the girls, both alone and together, the younger, blond child irrepressibly sunny, the older, dark-haired child willful, challenging, even spiteful. The photos showed the family at the beach, rafting down a river. Then came the obligatory first-day-of-school pictures. The older girl, Jessie (he knew now), was dressed in baggy dark jeans and a T-shirt advertising a rock band. The younger girl wore a pleated skirt and a pink button-down shirt. At Halloween the older girl wore no costume, while her sister dressed as a strange yellow creature with a single eye. Ian believed it was called a Minion and was a mischievous character from a popular film. Further along he arrived at Thanksgiving. A photo of father and daughters. He tapped the photo and it filled the screen. So here was Joseph Grant. Finally we meet. He was tall, robust, and good-humored. No sign of the impetuous meddler. The man who would sacrifice his life for his career.
Ian tapped the photo again and returned to the library. Christmas. A photo of the family standing in front of a modest tree. Really, Mr. Grant, thought Ian uncharitably, can’t you do better than that? The four Grants were dressed in their Christmas best: dark suit for the father (poor-fitting and of questionable quality), red cowl-neck sweater and pearls for the mother. The younger girl in a white dress, the older in her jeans and shabby T-shirt.
Ian continued examining the photos, awed by the sheer number. Was there an occasion that didn’t warrant a few snaps? Grilling burgers at a community barbecue? Making Valentine’s Day cards from construction paper? Getting a good report card? Watching television on the family couch?
His eye came to rest upon a close-up of Joseph Grant and his daughters. The FBI agent had an arm around each and was hugging them close. Ian looked away, ashamed, as if caught intruding on an intimate scene. After a moment he looked back. It was the father’s gaze directed at his older daughter that provoked his response and filled him with a familiar emotion.
Ian ducked his head, peering through the canyon of screens to the far corner of his office. He found the scuffed black briefcase and fought to summon up an image of his own father, Peter Prince. He didn’t care if it was one of such beaming paternal pride. Any image would do. Scowling, laughing, sleeping…anything.
As always, his memory betrayed him. For a man of prodigious intellect, he was able to dredge up but a single image. It came from the morning of his father’s departure. Ian saw the pinstriped suit, then the shoes, then the dimpled tie, and finally the perfectly combed hair. It took a few seconds longer for his father’s face to come into focus, and when it did, Ian still could not conjure the expression. No matter how hard he tried, he could not make Peter Prince look at him with anything but a neutral regard. Nowhere did he see the kind of pride and unconditional love with which Joseph Grant looked at his daughters.
It required a herculean effort to return his attention to the photo of Joseph Grant and his daughters. Instead of love, Ian now read hubris in Joseph Grant’s features. In place of pride, selfishness. It was the FBI agent’s fault. He’d been warned. Edward Mason had made it clear that he should cease and desist in his investigations. Grant had known what was coming.
Properly enraged, Ian closed the photo app. Sympathy ill-served a man in his position. He straightened his shoulders. With an invisible shudder, he focused his priority on the task at hand: gaining absolute and inviolable control over another human being.
Ian spun until he found the Grants’ banking website.
There was no better place to begin.
72
Mary rapped her knuckles like a machine gun against Carrie Kramer’s sliding glass door. Beginner’s Morse code for help. A minute passed before a light went on and Carrie peered around a corner, her husband hiding behind her.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, sliding the door open.
“I need your help,” said Mary.
“It’s one in the morning. Why didn’t you call?”
“Tell you in a sec.” Mary looked over her shoulder. “Come on, guys.” Tank and Grace emerged from the shadows and bustled into the kitchen. “Lock it,” said Mary.
Carrie closed the door and flicked the lock. “Where’s Jess?”
–
Fifteen minutes, two cups of coffee, and a judicious explanation later, Mary sat with Tank in the Kramers’ study, chairs pulled up to the iMac. Grace was in bed, clutching her phone to her chest in case her big sister called.
Mary slipped in the disk containing the images from the Nutty Brown Cafe’s surveillance cameras. “Think they found McNair by now?”
“You can count on it.”
“Will they come to my house?”
“They’ll come.”
Mary took stock of her surroundings, telling herself that she and Grace were safe here, not quite believing it. For the tenth time she used Carrie’s phone to call Jessie. For the tenth time the call went to message and she hung up. “Why isn’t she answering?”
“She doesn’t want to tell you what she’s doing.”
“Where in the world could she be?”
“Trying to help her dad. At least that’s what she thinks.”
“When I get a hand on that young lady, I’m going to…” Mary imagined the dressing-down she was going to give her daughter. No matter how hard she tried, her anger wouldn’t last. “It’s my fault. I should have been here. Who do I think I am? McNair said it himself. He said, ‘Remember, Mary, you’re a mom.’ That’s all I am. I’m not Joe.”
“And you think Jessie wouldn’t have gone off if you hadn’t left?”
“Maybe…I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
Mary nodded. She’d set Jess on her path the moment she’d asked her about retrieving Joe’s voice message. She didn’t know what she’d expected Jess to do, but deep down, she knew she’d expected her to do something-to come up with some solution from her laptop of tricks. “And you? You all right?”
“Hanging in there.” Tank smiled weakly, but his eyes were red, fatigued. His once starched shirt was terribly wrinkled, decorated with coffee stains and flecks of blood. She wasn’t in this alone. Tank’s name was on the same list as hers.
“Let’s take a look at that disk.”
Mary double-clicked on the first clip. The segment lasted fifteen seconds and showed Joe entering the café, followed by the man the waitress called Boots. Mary hit the Pause bar as Boots, or Supervisory Special Agent FK, stared into the camera.
“I know you,” she said, pointing a finger at the screen. She studied the man’s face: the sagging cheeks, the wiry comb-over, the sad, pouchy eyes. He had a loud voice, she remembered. He was a storyteller. A laugher. A “good-time Charlie,” the admiral might say, referring to someone who liked to drink other people’s liquor a little too freely.