“By his partner. A child smuggler.”
“We take our saviors where we find them.” Annie leaned her elbows on the table. “And Luther Blue will spend the rest of his life in a federal prison for his crimes, not the least of which was shooting Brendan in cold blood. At least the operation was shut down.”
Mia drained her glass and reached for the bottle to refill it.
“Until someone else picks up where they left off.”
“That’s always a possibility, of course,” Annie said, “but I know that entire area is being watched pretty closely. I doubt you’ll see truckloads of children being smuggled out of Santa Estella again. Let’s be grateful for that much, okay?”
Mia opened a cabinet and took out a colander and set it in the sink.
“Look, there are a lot of bad things going on in this world, I don’t have to tell you that. You deal with it every day, just as I do. We do the best we can to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
From where she sat, Annie could see that Mia had tears on her face.
“It’s Brendan’s sin, Mia, not yours,” she said gently.
As if she hadn’t heard, Mia grabbed the pot from the stove and drained it in the sink. She put the spaghetti on plates and topped it with sauce, then placed one before Annie.
“You might want to move your file. Spaghetti sauce finds a million ways to splatter when you’re trying to read.”
“Right.” Annie sighed and moved the file aside. She watched Mia refill both wineglasses and move her own files out of the way so she could sit across the table from Annie.
“So,” Mia said. “How is Mara feeling? It must be so exciting for her and Aidan, with the birth of their first child so close…”
And just that quickly, Mia had changed the topic and hadn’t brought up Brendan’s name again for the rest of the evening, Annie recalled later. Once dinner was over-a dinner during which Mia had just about polished off the rest of the wine-Mia excused herself to go up to her room with her file, presumably to work.
Annie had settled into Connor’s room and studied the case files Beck had given her earlier that day, but her thoughts kept returning to the woman pacing the floor above. It didn’t take a doctorate in psychology to see that Mia was very troubled.
Finally, when the sound of footsteps overhead ceased, Annie got out her phone and dialed a number that very few people knew. She listened as the phone rang until voice mail picked up.
“Connor, Annie here. Hope you’re safe and well, wherever you are.” She paused. “Please give me a call when you’re able. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
14
“Everyone seated? Got your coffee, your tea, whatever? Once we start, I don’t want any interruptions, so whatever it is you need, get it now. Anyone?”
Beck stood at the head of the table in the conference room where once again he’d gathered his staff behind closed doors for what he referred to as a “situational update” on the Holly Sheridan case. Everyone who’d had an assignment was expected to report their findings, and everyone present was expected to be tuned in to whatever information was being shared.
Noting that everyone appeared to be set, he continued.
“First, I want to thank all of you for giving up Sunday morning with your families. If circumstances were different, we’d have waited until tomorrow. Agent Shields is with us again today, along with her colleague, Dr. Anne Marie McCall, who will offer her insights once everyone else has reported on their piece of the pie. Any questions?” Beck surveyed the room. There were none.
“Then let’s get started. Duncan, you’re first up.” Beck pointed to the officer who sat halfway down the table to his right.
As Duncan cleared his throat, about to begin, the door opened and Christina Pratt hurried into the room.
“Am I late?” she asked.
“We’re just about to start,” Beck told her.
“Great.” The woman settled into a seat to the left of Mia and took a small notebook and pen from her handbag.
Mia caught Beck’s eye to see if he’d noticed, but he hadn’t appeared to. She made a mental note to call it to his attention. Letting civilians have confidential information made her nervous, whether that civilian was the mayor or the guy who sold you coffee in the morning. When that information was written down, it made her doubly so.
“Do I need to remind you all that what is said here, stays here? Anyone not understand what that means?” His eyes surveyed the room. “Anyone?”
No one spoke up. Mia hoped the mayor understood that that meant her as well.
“We’ll be having a community meeting once I’ve sorted through everything we discuss here today, but I will be the one who decides what information is made public and what we keep close to the vest.” He leaned over the chair, his arms resting on its back. “ Duncan, let’s do it.”
Duncan Alcott’s fingers tapped so lightly on the table that only those seated to either side could hear the sound. He was tall and thin and wore military-style glasses and a crew cut. He’d joined the force under Hal as a patrolman, and had never distinguished himself as either a great cop or an especially poor one. He was pretty much average in every way. There’d been a few flare-ups over the years-like the times he’d been bypassed for a promotion he’d wanted, and about a decade ago there’d been an incident in a bar down in Cambridge-but for the most part, he’d been reliable and trustworthy. Because he had no family in the area, he could be depended on to work holidays and weekends, which made him popular with his fellow officers. He had nearly twenty years in uniform and preferred traffic and night patrols, and Beck was content to let him remain in his comfort zone. Efforts over the years to fit him into any other mold hadn’t been successful anyway. Hal had once described Duncan as “a good soldier,” and Beck found it still fit.
“Um, well, Chief asked me to figure out Holly Sheridan’s itinerary between Colorado and Maryland. What roads she took and that sort of thing.” Duncan cleared his throat again. “The victim left her parents home in Denver on Monday, July second. She filled up her Explorer right outside of Denver, headed onto to Route 70, took it all the way to St. Louis, then dropped down onto 64 into Kentucky, then picked up 79 into West Virginia. Around Morgan-town, she got onto 68, took it as far as 70, took it straight on over to Baltimore.” He looked up at Beck and asked, “Do you want every stop she made? She had an overnight in Columbus, Missouri, and made a number of gas and food stops.”
“Are any of them particularly relevant?”
“Just the last one.”
“Which was?”
“She stopped in Wye Mills.” He glanced at the two FBI agents and added for their clarification, “That’s in Maryland, not far after you come off the Bay Bridge. You probably drove through it on Route 50.”
Mia nodded. She remembered.
“Anyway, the victim stopped for gas at a mini-mart off Route 50, 1:00 A.M. on Thursday, July fifth. Filled up her tank, went inside, got a soda and a snack. Got her on tape,” Duncan said. “Can’t see outside near the pumps, though, so I checked in with the manager, which is how I got a copy of the tape.”
He held it up.
“The manager called in the guy who was working that night, showed him the tape.” Duncan continued his flat recitation. “He did recall the victim, but he-”
“Holly Sheridan,” Beck reminded him. “Let’s use her name once in a while. She was someone’s daughter, someone’s sister. Let’s give her a little dignity.”
“Right.” Duncan reddened. “Anyway, the witness recalled Holly Sheridan coming in that night. She bought a diet Pepsi and a packaged sandwich. She opened the soda and drank it standing there, said she’d been on a long drive and how good it felt to stand and stretch her legs and how happy she was to be back.”