“Curiouser and curiouser,” Hendler said, glancing at Faith.
“Yep,” Cain said. “The two guys get into a dark four-door and drive off fast. They just pass our unit as it’s turning into the parking lot.”
“The girl who lived in the apartment,” Faith said. “What about her?”
Cain shifted a little on his seat and took a drink of Diet Coke. “You know, I hate diet drinks. They’re nasty, vile, awful stuff. Nutrasweet is evil. But my doc says I’m prediabetic, have to cut down on the calories.” He took another drink and made a face. “The apartment was leased to a Katherine J. Hall, age twenty-four. She’d just lived there about a month. Mrs. Holzbauer said she was friendly enough, but she didn’t see her very often. The girl, Hall, was supposedly a writer working on a book. At least that’s what she told the neighbors, and that’s what she put on her rental application. She paid the first three months rent in cash, in advance.”
“Any other leads on her?” Hendler said.
“She’s not real,” Cain said.
“What?”
“She’s a phantom. We couldn’t reach any of her rent references. The landlord says they all checked out a month ago, but all we got were post office boxes and disconnected phones. Her Oklahoma driver’s license was issued just last month, and-get this-her Social Security card was only issued two months ago. Her credit history is all bogus. She has no credit cards, no employment records, hasn’t paid taxes or paid into Social Security. The girl’s a ghost. A ghost who’s missing. How do you find someone like that?”
They all looked at each other.
“One theory that I’ve floated,” Cain said after a long moment, “is that she was in some sort of witness protection.”
Faith shifted on her seat, bumping her knee against the bottom of the table.
Cain looked at her.
“Sorry,” she said.
Cain appraised both of them. “Neither of you know anything about that, do you?”
“WITSEC is run by the U.S. Marshals Service,” Faith said.
“I know that,” Cain said quickly. “I’ve already talked to them. The chief deputy in the local office is a guy named Mark Raines. He checked up the line, and to his knowledge, they have no jurisdiction in the case. That’s his way of telling me the girl’s not theirs.”
“Any lead on the two men?” Hendler said.
Cain shifted again. Faith marveled at how the man had given them every bit of information without once referring to written notes.
“Oh, this all gets better,” Cain said. “Have you been watching TV and listening to the radio on this?”
“A little,” Hendler said.
“The media’s loving it. They’ve fallen in love with the neighbor lady. Refugee from Nazi Germany, she’s lived in Oklahoma for sixty years but still sounds like she’s just off the boat from Munich. Sweet face, probably bakes cookies for the reporters. They love her, so they love the story. Mrs. Holzbauer talks about how she viewed ‘poor dear Katherine’ as a surrogate grand-daughter, since all her own grandkids live in California. Literally wrings her hands on camera.”
Faith smiled.
“Anyway, she got a partial license plate on the dark four-door that the two guys left in. Wasn’t hard to find, though. We found it in the parking lot of French Market, over at Sixty-third and May.”
“That’s barely a mile from the apartment complex,” Faith said.
“Right. Theory was, they had another car ready and waiting for them there.”
“Did you run the car?” Faith asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Cain said. “The plot thickens, as they say. It was a rental, and it was rented to a Franklin Sanborn, with an address in Bloomington, Indiana. So we track him, and he’s a ghost too. His address is fake, so’s his phone number. You get a time and temp recording from Indiana if you call the number he left with the car rental place.”
“One ghost going after another,” Faith said quietly.
Sounds like Department Thirty business, she thought, then had to remind herself that not all strangeness in the world was centered on her little corner of the Department of Justice.
“There were bloodstains in the rental car,” Cain said. “The lab’s working on them now, along with the fingerprints.” He spread his hands apart. “That’s all we have. Chasing shadows while the TV stations wonder what we’re doing to find ‘poor, dear Katherine.’ ” Cain leaned back against the back of the booth. “So what’s your interest here? I’ll take all the help I can get, but I admit that I’m not quite sure why you called me, Scott.”
Hendler nodded at Faith.
Faith sat motionless.
Franklin Sanborn.
I know that name, she thought.
“Hello?” Cain said.
Franklin Sanborn.
It was nothing to do with any of her Department Thirty cases. She knew that-all of those names, past and present, were burned into her memory by now. But she’d heard the name Franklin Sanborn, had seen it, knew it.
“Faith?” Hendler said. “Did you want to…” He tilted his head in an are-you-going-to-tell-him gesture.
She’d told Hendler on the way to the restaurant that she intended to give the detective her brother’s name, and describe what had happened with him, carefully omitting details about his suspension from ICE. In a way, he was a missing person as well, and he wasn’t a phantom.
But now…
Cain was looking at her intently. She thought he was seeing for the first time the white line scar that ran from alongside her nose almost to the edge of her upper lip. He didn’t look away.
Faith met his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Hendler’s eyebrows went up.
“I have nothing to say,” she said. “Thanks for the information, Detective Cain.”
But why do I know the name Franklin Sanborn? Faith thought.
She stood up. “I have to get back to my office,” she said abruptly. She needed the DOJ database, and she needed it right now. Hendler had met her at the courthouse and driven them to Barry’s, so he stood with her.
Hendler shook hands with Cain. “I’ll be in touch, Rob,” he said quietly.
Cain clasped his hand a moment too long. “What was all this about, Scott?”
Faith was already halfway out the door. “I’m not sure,” Hendler said.
18
A WEEK PASSED.
The house near Mulhall was alive with activity. Two members were responsible for “media relations” and began drafting press releases. Two others-Daryn and Alan Davenport-kept the troops focused with “pep rallies” every evening, with lectures and readings ranging from de Tocqueville to Marx to Emerson.
Sean and Daryn talked and talked. She gave up more little pieces of herself to him, embellishing the portrait of her fictional father with tidbits from her real father’s life and career. She never mentioned the incest again. Sean played the game with her, creating an authoritarian father and a bad marriage that mirrored his own real life. She’d also kept Sean well supplied with bourbon. She’d learned to watch his signs, knew the tremble of his hands and the furrow in his brow when he’d gone too long without a drink. It was a strange twilight existence.
Every night they unleashed physical passion with wildness and abandon. Daryn let him take her in every way possible, and she took him as well a few times. Sometimes Britt joined. Sometimes she watched. But when she joined the sex, she only touched Sean at Daryn’s urging, at her direction, and only seemed to derive pleasure from Daryn herself.
At six o’clock in the morning of the seventh day since their arrival at the house, Daryn slipped out of bed and pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and a T-shirt. She rarely slept well anymore and was always tired, but she couldn’t think about herself. Not any longer.
She took three extra-strength Tylenol and went downstairs. Jeannie Davis, the unlikely revolutionary-a social worker from Edmond-was in the kitchen, making coffee.