“I’m going to be heading out now,” Jacqueline said, standing in the open connecting doorway.
“Oh?” Ben questioned. Jacqueline had taken him completely by surprise.
“When you requested no meetings for today, I thought it would be a good day for me to take my mother for her annual checkup. Do you need anything before 207
I go?”
Ben swallowed a laugh and said, “No, I’m fine. Take your mother to the doctor.
I’ll just sit here and pine away.”
Jacqueline did a double take at the comment. Momentarily at a loss for words, she merely stared.
“The place has been so quiet,” Ben explained. “Actually, I’ll be leaving in a few minutes myself.”
“Okay, fine,” Jacqueline said quickly, willing to accept Ben’s explanation even though it wasn’t an explanation. “See you Monday.”
“See you Monday,” Ben echoed.
After Jacqueline had left, Ben sat at his desk for a few moments, wondering how much Jacqueline’s attractiveness had influenced his decision to hire her, above and beyond her intelligence and superb résumé. With Stephanie it had been her body and her willingness to use it that had been key.
On his way out Ben stopped into Carl’s office, where Carl revealed that iPS Rapid had sent him a flurry of e-mails that morning. “They seem to be very interested in an outright sale,” the CFO said. “I don’t know whether to be encouraged or to be more circumspect.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Ben said, confident in Carl’s professional skills. “I’m heading home. Maybe you should do the same. Jacqueline has already left.”
“I’ve too much to do. See you Monday.”
Emerging into the sun on busy Fifth Avenue, Ben enjoyed a mild surge of euphoria, having already adjusted to the disappointment concerning Jacqueline’s unavailability. The weather was beautiful, with a strong smell of spring in the air.
Things couldn’t be better at iPS USA, save for Satoshi not calling, but in the face of the blue sky and sunshine, he was even optimistic about that. He liked the fact that the weekend had arrived. And last of all, he had the sense that he’d at least broken the ice with Jacqueline with his clever comment about pining away when she left.
With an enjoyable springiness to his step, he headed toward the garage but then stopped at 57th Street. Luckily, he remembered then and not later that he’d forgotten Satoshi’s address. He could recall the street easily enough, but he couldn’t remember the number. Happily, he went back up to his desk to get it.
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Because of the upcoming weekend, other people were leaving early as well, and Ben had to wait at the garage for longer than he liked. But it wasn’t all bad, and being in a good mood, he had the opportunity to flirt with several secretaries while he waited for his Range Rover to be brought up from the garage’s depths.
As a monthly customer, he did get some benefit in terms of getting his car sooner than day renters.
Once inside his car with the door closed, Ben promptly entered 417 Pleasant Lane in his GPS before turning on his CD player. Insulated from the noise of the city, he selected a Mozart CD and allowed himself to be surrounded by pure audio pleasure.
Traffic moved steadily uptown. As usual, he took the upper level of the George Washington Bridge to give him a stupendous unobstructed view of the sheer Palisade cliffs running along the New Jersey side of the river, accompanied by Mozart’s piano concerto number twenty-one in C major.
On reaching the New Jersey side, Ben took the second exit as the GPS advised.
The directions took him to a small run-down area with a number of abandoned two-story commercial brick buildings, reminding him of a fact that few people knew: Fort Lee had been the Hollywood of the country before Hollywood, California, took center stage in the movie business. Pleasant Lane turned out to be anything but. It was a relatively short three-block street. Interspersed between the abandoned commercial buildings were small cottage houses, all of approximately the same design. Most appeared to be also abandoned, with broken windows and front doors ajar. There was debris everywhere, including a few tireless, rusted vehicles resting on their axles and a number of mattresses with their coil springs poking up through the ticking.
“You have arrived,” the GPS said in a pleasant baritone as Ben pulled over to the curb. “I certainly have arrived,” Ben said mockingly. He studied the house. It looked slightly better than its neighbors in that the windows were intact and the front door was closed. What bothered Ben was that there was no indication whatsoever that the house was occupied. Then he noticed something else that was even more disturbing. Although the front door was closed, a central pane of glass was broken out, with just a few shards clinging desperately to the window’s frame.
Certain that no one could be living in the house and beginning to wonder if he’d been deliberately sent to the wrong address as some kind of bizarre joke, Ben opened his driver’s-side door and started to slide out of his car. But he didn’t get far. Blanketing the area was the stink of putrefaction, strong enough for Ben to gag before he managed to get back in the car and slam the door. Even in the 209
confines of the car he gagged a few more times as if he was going to vomit.
Recovering to a degree, Ben looked at the house in horror, frantically trying to envision what had happened and what he should do. The house and the surrounding area smelled overwhelmingly of death, a stench Ben had rarely smelled, and only as a boy coming up on a dead animal, such as a rabbit or a squirrel in the woods. But Ben knew this was no rabbit or squirrel.
Ben grabbed a rag from the car and held it against his nose. Preparing himself for the smell, he got out of his SUV and started up the front walk.
Although he gagged several more times, he made it to the front steps. He knew he should call 911, but he wanted to make absolutely certain what he smelled was not a dog or some other kind of large animal. Stepping up on the porch, Ben could see shards of glass peppering the ground. To avoid leaving fingerprints, he used the rag he had been holding against his nose to open the door. It was unlocked.
He stepped from bright sunlight into relative darkness. He didn’t have to go far.
There in the living room were the bloated remains of six people, all lying prone with their hands on the back of their heads and their faces resting in dried pools of blackened congealed blood.
Ben nearly fainted at the sight and the markedly more intense smell of death. He looked quickly at each corpse to find Satoshi, only to be surprised when he realized the scientist was not among the six. He knew he should get out of the house, as the smell was truly overpowering, but the circumstances had him paralyzed. He told himself to move, but his body refused, leaving him frozen in time and space and utter silence. For a moment he didn’t even breathe and in that instant he heard it. It was a high-pitched, soft keening. Unsure if it was a real sound or if it was a lamentation emanating from his own brain, Ben listened again. It was still there—and then it was gone.
“What the hell?” Ben questioned. He was still unsure if the sound had been real or imagined. Fighting an urge to flee the scene, Ben stepped over toward the staircase. At the base he stopped and stared up into the murkiness of the second floor. He was about to declare the disturbing sound a figment of his imagination when he heard it again. This time it sounded as if it was coming from the second floor.
With the hackles on the back of his neck standing straight up, Ben climbed the stairs, keeping his rag pressed against his nose and breathing through his mouth. By the time he got to the top, the sound had again disappeared. Ben stopped. There were two dormered bedrooms connected by a short hallway, 210
with a small bathroom off the hallway. He could see that in each bedroom the bureaus had been searched, as the drawers were open and the contents strewn across the floors.
Ben checked both bedrooms. Each had a small closet whose contents were also pulled out and thrown onto the floor. The first bedroom had a small drop-down desk. Its contents and drawers were on the floor as well. It was apparent to Ben that someone had trashed the house, most likely searching for something. At that point Ben heard the sound again, louder than it had been downstairs. At first it seemed to be coming from the bathroom, but when he checked it, he sensed that it was coming from a built-in bookcase directly across from the bathroom doorway. It was there in the hall that the sound was the loudest. Ben put his ear against the wall above the bookcase. To his surprise, the sound was the loudest, as if there might be a hidden room or closet occupying the equivalent space of the bathroom across the hall.
Ben quickly went back into each bedroom in turn. Each closet poked into the potential space, but there was no way in. Returning to the hallway, Ben grabbed the built-in bookcase and pulled. To his surprise, it slid out and the keening stopped. Now a new smell wafted out to join the stink of putrefaction. It was the smell of human waste. Suddenly, Ben remembered Shigeru, and that he was not among the victims down in the living room.
Ducking down, Ben entered a tiny room as black as pitch. Almost immediately he recoiled from something soft brushing his face. He swung his arm in front of him and grasped a string, tugging on a bare lightbulb.
Looking down, Ben found himself staring into Shigeru’s pale, pleading face, his pupils the size of quarters.
“My God!” Ben said. “You poor, poor kid.” Ben bent down to hoist the child into his arms but then changed his mind. Instead, he ducked back out of the hidden room to get a blanket. He could hear Shigeru immediately start his high-pitched crying again. “I’m coming,” Ben yelled. Grabbing a blanket, Ben rushed back into the hidden room. Immediately, Shigeru stopped his unique wailing. The child was terrified to be left alone.
“Okay, big guy,” Ben said, wrapping the flaccid child in the blanket. As he did so he noticed an empty baby bottle next to him. After he lifted Shigeru he glanced around the small, windowless room that had probably saved the child’s life. If the house was a safe house, the room was probably used to hide drugs or weapons or both. In his mind’s eye he could see Yunie-chan, Satoshi’s wife, expecting the worst, desperately hiding the child.
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Ducking out of the room again, Ben didn’t bother with the light or the bookcase but rather tried to hold the child in one arm and the rag over his nose with the other. He carried the child downstairs into the kitchen to get him some water, knowing the child had to be seriously dehydrated. He also wanted to see if there were any more bodies, including that of Satoshi.
Holding Shigeru in one hand and the water in the other, he raced out of the front door and to his car, where he deposited Shigeru on the front passenger seat.
Then he climbed in himself with the water. Aware the child desperately needed IV fluids, Ben let him have some water by mouth. Once he’d done that, he propped Shigeru on the passenger seat and dialed 911. He made sure the child was covered except his head, because he stank to high heaven.
29
MARCH 26, 2010
FRIDAY, 12:47 p.m.
B
rennan had figured out at least one reason why Louie had sent six people instead of two, which he had assumed would have been adequate. The moment he and his four-man crew had entered Central Park, the nanny and the child had seemingly disappeared. What Brennan had not noticed in his excitement when he’d first seen the pair come out of the house was that the nanny was wearing running shoes.
Assuming that the nanny and her charge were just out of sight down the serpentine footpath, Brennan had insisted that everyone run, hoping to catch up to the pair. But Brennan and the others were seriously out of shape, and the footpath was surprisingly hilly. After only a little more than a hundred yards, Brennan and the others had stopped running. With his chest heaving and his hands resting on his knees, he managed to say, “This is not going to work. She must be a goddamn marathoner.”
“All right, here’s what we are going to do,” Brennan continued, once he’d caught his breath. “We’re going to split up to search for the nanny and the kid and stay connected by our cell phones.”
“Most runners in the park run around the reservoir,” Duane Mackenzie offered.
“Why don’t me and Tommaso head over there. It’s east of here and a little south, if I remember correctly.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Brennan said. They quickly exchanged cell phone numbers.
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“You guys stay with me,” Brennan said to the two Japanese men. “We don’t want you getting lost in here. We’ll head directly south.”
The group started off together, with Duane and Tommaso looking for a pathway to branch off to the west.
As he walked, Brennan wasn’t happy. He had never appreciated the park’s size and its hilly topography, and had not imagined that they would lose the nanny and the kid so damn fast. He wondered what the hell he was going to say to Louie, especially with this being his first time in charge of an operation. As the group progressed, he began to believe they’d probably have to return to where the nanny and the kid had entered the park and just wait for them to return. The worry with that plan was whether they would be alone.
Then serendipity shined down on them. Off to the right they came across a playground with tire swings, a couple of tree houses, monkey bars, a brick pyramid, and a large sand area where the child had been deposited. The nanny was using the monkey bars to stretch her hamstrings.
“Bull’s eye!” Brennan said to himself. Taking out his cell phone, he called Carlo.
“We’ve found the nanny and the kid,” he said softly. “They are at the West One hundredth Street Playground. How about you drive down here, but I want you on the northbound side of the street. Just pull over to the curb and wait! Got that?”
“Of course I got that,” Carlo responded without enthusiasm. He disconnected abruptly.
Brennan flipped his own phone closed. As wired as he was, Carlo’s acting out wasn’t completely over his head. Brennan intently looked at the others with a devilish grin. “This is almost too good to be true. The playground is empty except for our target. How good is that?”