Sophie definitely cultivated an over-21 look. But you couldn’t overlook the baby fat that hung, pupa-like, from the underside of her chin or covered her cheekbones. Any club let her in knowing she was underage. Most of the photos were of her and Zippo; two were of her and other girlfriends, none of whom I recognized and none of whom was Amanda, though both photos had been cropped on the left-hand side, amputating Sophie’s shoulder at the point where it had presumably touched someone else’s.
I tossed the rest of the room and found some pills I didn’t recognize, with a holistic-medicine vibe to the labels. I snapped photos of them with my Droid and moved on. I found several wristbands, enough to suggest a fetish for wristsbands or a purpose. I took a closer look at them. Most of them were stacked in a pile on the upper shelf of the closet, but a few were strewn in with the general mess.
I pulled all the covers off the bed and pushed the clothes out of the way and found the laptop waiting for me, the power light blinking. I flipped it open and was greeted by a screen saver of Sophie and Zippo, flashing the universal two-fingered “gangsta” sign, which immediately defined them as white non-gang members. I double-clicked on the Apple icon in the top left corner of the screen and worked my way into the main control panel without a single password prompt. There I discovered the IP server info Angie required. I copied it all onto my Droid and texted it to her.
I clicked back to the main screen and then clicked on the mail icon.
Sophie wasn’t a big deleter. Her inbox had 2,871 messages dating back over a year. Her SENT folder contained 1,673 messages, also dating back over a year. I called Angie and told her what I’d found. “With the IP info, you can hack this?”
“Candy from a baby,” she said. “How long have you been in there?”
“I don’t know. Twenty minutes.”
“That’s a lotta time to be in the house of people who don’t have predictable work schedules.”
“Yes, Mom.”
She hung up.
I put everything back the way I’d found it and worked my way downstairs. In the dining room, I found a cardboard box filled with mail on the card table in the center of the room. Nothing out of the ordinary about the mail-utility bills mostly, some credit-card bills and bank statements-until I looked at the names and addresses of the recipients. None of them lived here. There was mail for Daryl Bousquet in Westwood, Georgette Bing in Franklin, Mica Griekspoor in Sharon, Virgil Cridlin in Dedham. I thumbed through the stack and counted nine more names, all living in nearby towns- Walpole, Norwood, Mansfield, and Plainville. I looked through the portico into the living room at the bank of computers. A barely furnished house, what furniture there was from a discount wholesaler, and no sense that anyone intended to make this a ten-year abode. Nine computers. Stolen mail. If I had another hour, somewhere I’d find birth certificates for babies who’d died decades ago. I’d bet every dime I had on it.
I looked at the mail again. Why so stupid, though? Why password-protect the computers but forget to turn on the house alarm? Why pick a perfect spot to do this kinda shit-in a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in a stalled development-and leave stacks of stolen mail in a box?
I looked around the kitchen, found nothing but empty cabinets and a fridge filled with Styrofoam take-out containers, beer, and a twelve-pack of Coke. I closed a cabinet and remembered what Amanda’s classmate had said about the microwave.
I opened it and stared inside. It was a microwave. White walls, yellow light, circular heating tray. I was about to close it when I got a strong whiff of something acrid and I took another look at the walls. They were white, yes, but there was an extra layer of white. When I tilted my head and adjusted my eyes, I saw the same film on the yellow bulb. I found a butter knife and scraped one of the walls very lightly, and what came off was a fine powder, as white and light as talc.
I closed the microwave door, returned the knife to its drawer, and went back into the living room. That’s when I heard the front door knob turn.
I hadn’t been face-to-face with her in eleven years. I’d kind of liked it that way. But here she was, four steps into her living room when her eyes locked on mine. She’d gained weight, mostly in the hips and the face, the sides of her neck. Her skin was splotchier. Her cornflower eyes, always her most attractive feature, remained so. They widened under her feather-cut ginger hair, the roots showing gray by the crown, and her mouth opened into a tight, wrinkled oval, then formed a hesitant P.
It wasn’t like I could claim I was here to fix the garbage disposal. I gave her what I’m sure was a hapless smile, held out my arms, and shrugged.
She said, “Patrick?”
“How you doing, Helene?”
Chapter Fifteen
Kenny came in behind her. He looked confused for about half a second before he reached behind his back. I reached behind mine.
He said, “Ho.”
I said, “Hey.”
A young girl came in behind him. She opened her mouth wide but no sound came out. She wrung her hands by her side as if she’d stepped on the third rail. I got a good look as she stepped hard to her left to get out of our line of fire. Sophie Corliss. She’d lost the weight her father had demanded of her. And then some. She was gaunt and sweaty and stopped acting electrified long enough to sink her hands into the back of her head and pull at her own hair.
I held out one hand. “This does not have to go this way.”
“What way?” Kenny said.
“The way where we both pull our guns.”
“You tell me, sport, which other way this can go.”
“Well,” I said, “I could remove my hand from my gun.”
“But I might just shoot you for your trouble.”
“There’s that,” I agreed.
“And if I remove my hand?” He frowned. “It’s the same result, different victim.”
“If we did it at the same time?” I offered.
“You’d cheat,” he said.
As I nodded, he cleared his gun and pointed it at me.
“Sneaky,” I said.
“Let me see the hand.”
I removed my hand from behind my back and held up my cell phone.
“It’s nice,” Kenny said, “but I think mine has more bullets.”
“True, but did your gun call anyone?”
He took a step forward and then another. My screen read HOME. CONNECTED: 39 SECONDS.
“Oh,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Helene said, “Fuck,” very softly.
“You put the gun down or my wife calls the police and gives up our location.”