The Darkness Gathers (5 page)

The fact was that she didn’t want to be sneaking around alleys and getting into gunfights,
either
. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have given a little investigational jaunt like this one a second thought. She would have been
hoping
to crack something big. But these days, she didn’t feel overly inclined to put their lives in danger. Not for the first time since she’d put the serial killer in Santa Fe in a coma that he lay in to this day, she thought, Maybe I’m losing my edge. The things that had always thrilled her, had always driven her were suddenly not as appealing as the thought of being home with Jeffrey by the fire. God, what a
girl
I am all of a sudden, she had thought, disgusted. Maybe I should take up macramé. Even though she wasn’t even sure what macramé was.

“Why are you frowning?” Jeffrey had asked.

“I’m not.”

“You are. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking, Let’s go. What are you doing?”

“I’m just sending an E-mail to Christian and Craig, asking them to do some checking around here. One of the articles you found mentioned that someone had seen Tatiana on a bus to New York City.”

“Cool. Are you ready?”

“Yep. What’s your hurry? Flight isn’t for another four hours.”

“I’m just anxious.”

He walked over to her, took her hands, and pulled her up gently from the couch. He kissed her forehead and pulled her into his arms. She breathed deeply, feeling his closeness, smelling the familiar scent of his skin. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find out what happened to her.”

“I know,” she said, feeling a little guilty because she wasn’t sure that was the source of her anxiety. “Let’s get a quick drink first.”

They had stopped at the Irish bar on the corner, where Jeff ordered two shots of whiskey and two Tylenol PM tablets and Lydia had a Ketel One martini. Then they took a cab, where, in the drizzly gray of the Friday-afternoon rush hour, they crawled to JFK in a sea of honking horns and screaming cabdrivers. Jeff was half-asleep as they boarded the plane in the last moments before the door closed, almost exactly twenty-four hours since Lydia had first heard Tatiana’s frightened voice.

The soft
ping
of the airplane intercom interrupted Lydia’s thoughts. The pilot’s practiced voice sounded muffled to Lydia because her ears always felt blocked when she flew. “We have begun our initial descent into the Miami area. The weather is a perfect seventy-five degrees. We will be pulling into the gate a few minutes earlier than expected this evening. Arrival time will be ten-fifteen
P.M.
We ask you to remain seated with your seat belts on and your trays in the upright position for the duration of the flight. Attendants, prepare for landing. We hope you enjoy your stay in Miami or wherever your final destination may be.”

chapter five

E
verything about this case had been weird. And it looked like it was about to get weirder. Detective Manuel Ignacio scribbled Lydia Strong’s cellular phone number onto his scratch pad and saved her message on his voice mail. A thin ray of hope shone through the fog of six weeks of fatigue. He looked at the scratched face of his leather-band Timex and saw that it was 10:15. He sighed and put his head down in his hands; his wife was going to kill him. He was supposed to have been home by eight o’clock and he hadn’t even called.

The children’s division of the Missing Persons Department was quiet; somebody’s screen saver made simulated ocean noises, and he could hear the desk sergeant’s phone ringing endlessly down the hall. Everyone else on the team had gone home hours ago. It wasn’t that they had given up on Tatiana; it was just that they knew the realities. Six weeks into an investigation like this, with no leads, no sightings, no legitimate tips—it didn’t look good. Honestly, they would have called the case cold unofficially weeks ago if it hadn’t been for Nathan Quinn breathing down the necks of the mayor and the chief of police, who, in turn, were breathing down his neck. Detective Ignacio knew that he was going to become the scapegoat on this if he didn’t turn up something.

From the first night, when he had been called to the Quinns’ home, he’d had a bad feeling. Sometimes it was like that with missing children for Ignacio: Sometimes he just knew he was going to find them safe and in one piece, and sometimes he could feel that they were gone for good—fallen prey to drugs, or abducted by someone with unspeakable desires—that their parents would forever be haunted by what
might
have happened to them. Sometimes he knew that he would end up recovering a body from a ditch, from the bottom of a lake. In this case, he didn’t have any solid feeling like that. Just a nebulous feeling that things weren’t going to go well.

When he’d arrived at the Quinn home, the first thing he heard was a woman crying—there was something haunting about the sound of it, something resigned and despondent. It was not the desperate, enraged cry of a woman who had just discovered her child was missing. He’d heard that sound so many times, there was something primal about it, something that made him shiver. But there was hope in it, a fierce need to believe that everything would turn out all right. The sound he heard when he stepped into the magnificent foyer was the cry of grief, total and inconsolable. The first thing he
saw
was the surveillance camera at the front door. Before he had a chance to be briefed by the uniformed officer who was first on the scene, Nathan Quinn had rushed to greet him.

“She’s gone,” he blurted out. “You have to find her.”

Something about the way he said it, about the look in Quinn’s eyes, gave the detective a sick chill. There was a petulant anger in his tone, a white rage in his eyes. But then the giant man broke down, sobbing, and Ignacio decided it had just been grief and fear. But he kept coming back to that moment in his thoughts.

The glorious Mission-style mansion was more opulent than Detective Ignacio had ever seen; the marble floors alone had probably cost more than he made in a year. Jenna Quinn hadn’t risen to greet him when he’d walked up the dramatic staircase, down a wide hallway lined with expensive-looking art, and entered Tatiana’s bedroom. She hadn’t looked at him with hopeful eyes, as most parents did when he arrived to find their lost children. She had stopped crying, but her eyes were pink and swollen, and she sat on her daughter’s bed, holding a tattered stuffed Snoopy.

He put his hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s going to be all right, Mrs. Quinn.” She jumped a little, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t have the vacant stare of someone slipping into shock, however; she was alert and, Detective Ignacio thought, uneasy.

Tatiana Quinn’s bedroom was the dream of every teenage girl. The king-size bed on which Jenna sat was covered in the pink-and-white Laura Ashley sheets his own daughter had wanted but couldn’t have because they were too expensive. The matching wallpaper was almost hidden by posters of the Backstreet Boys, ’NSYNC, and other teen idols, ones the detective recognized but couldn’t name. A Sony Viao computer sat on top of a white desk, her school books and notepads were in a neat pile, and a deflated red backpack with stickers and buttons all over it hung from the chair. A huge entertainment center held a big-screen television, DVD player, and CD player, with tiny high-powered Bose speakers sitting on top. Her DVD collection ranged from
Snow White
and
101 Dalmatians
to
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
and
Chocolat
. The walk-in closet was bigger than his daughter’s entire bedroom, stuffed with more clothes than he had seen outside a department store and a shoe collection that would have made Imelda Marcos blush.

He had a sense of her from the things in her room: a little girl, on the verge of being a young woman and not sure which she was more comfortable with yet—like all teenagers. As he looked at the Quinns sitting on their daughter’s bed, Nathan with his arm around Jenna, whispering something in her ear, he thought, What could take a young girl from a home like this? Whatever it was, it had to be pretty bad—either she’d been abducted, taken against her will, or there was a drug problem, a bad boyfriend. Or maybe there was something even worse going on behind these expensive doors.

With the help of Jenna Quinn, who seemed to come alive again, they determined that also missing were Tatiana’s small suitcase, a few of her favorite outfits, her Walkman and favorite CDs, and the $160 she had kept in her jewelry box. The surveillance camera had been turned off at 9:00
P.M.
, an hour after the Quinns had left to go to a party at the home of the late Gianni Versace, just minutes away. And that was pretty much it. No foreign fingerprints in the home, no sign of struggle or forced entry, no strange noises heard by the neighbors. No one had seen Tatiana leave the house.

The million-dollar reward had been more of a hindrance than a help in the investigation. In the first few days after the Quinns’ impassioned plea on the five and eleven o’clock news, the phone rang off the hook. Thousands of man-hours were wasted following up on false tips. But then a couple of weeks into the investigation, a Greyhound bus driver had come forward to say someone meeting Tatiana’s description had ridden the 12:05 bus from Miami to New York City the night she disappeared. He had come into the station, given a statement and his contact information to one of the detectives on Ignacio’s team. The team was infused with hope again. But the next day, when Ignacio called to follow up, the contact information turned out to be false, and Greyhound denied having an employee by that name. It had already run in the paper; with all the heat on them, they never revealed to the press that they had been duped. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why someone would do that.

But there were a lot of things about this case he couldn’t figure out. Like why, when he started looking into some of Nathan Quinn’s business dealings, the police chief himself called to assure Ignacio that he was barking up the wrong tree—and to stop barking, or else. And why had the maid, Valentina Fitore, who generally spent the night when the Quinns went out, gone home early instead? Who had turned off the surveillance camera, since Tatiana supposedly did not know how to operate it? And now, the call from Lydia Strong. So far, the national media had not shown any real interest, specifically because it
did
look as if Tatiana had run away and not been abducted. How had someone like Lydia Strong gotten interested? What information did she have? She said she was staying at the Delano Hotel in South Beach but wouldn’t be in until late.

He dialed the cellular number he had scribbled down. Her voice mail picked up.

“Ms. Strong, this is Detective Ignacio, returning your call. I’m anxious to speak with you and hear what you have to say. You can reach me here tomorrow morning. Or if you get this message tonight, don’t hesitate to try me on my cell phone.” He left the number and hung up. He thought to call his wife but decided it was better just to go home. If he called, she’d bitch at him now and then again when he got home. If he just went home, she’d only have one opportunity to give him hell. He took his suit jacket from the back of the chair he had been sitting on and put it on, noticing that he had some catsup on the sleeve. He shut down his computer, turned off the metal desk lamp, and headed out the door.

chapter six

I
t was nearly ten when they checked into the glamorous Delano Hotel on Collins Avenue in South Beach. Lydia loved the luxurious Ian Schrager hotels for their chic atmosphere and exquisite service. Jeffrey thought everyone who worked there was falsely obsequious, and it made him uncomfortable. It didn’t matter to him where they stayed, as long as the bed was comfortable. And on that detail, they both agreed—it was just that he couldn’t believe how much it cost for a truly comfortable bed. The bellman escorted them through the billowing white curtains that towered above them from the twenty-foot ceiling and draped elegantly to the floor, past the dramatically arranged eclectic pieces of antique furniture. A white chaise longue was accented with a faux fur throw, white lilies were glam in their crystal vases atop veined marble surfaces, and each thick column that lined the long hallway hid a cozy sitting area.

The bellman, dressed in matching white shorts and polo shirt, towed their luggage down the very white, very long hallway to their room.

“Who’s paying for this?” Jeffrey asked as the bellman left with a five-dollar tip from Lydia.

“Jacob Hanley,” Lydia answered, smiling as she opened the French doors that led to the balcony. The sound and smell of the ocean swept into the room and billowed the white gauze curtains. He walked out onto the balcony with her and wrapped her in his arms from behind. The palm trees beneath them were illuminated by a glowing amber light, and the fronds rustled in the wind, which seemed to be picking up. And the infinity pool glowed a bright sky blue. In the distance, the sounds of the perpetual party that was South Beach drifted on the night air. A heavy bass from some punk’s too-loud car stereo reverberated like a heartbeat; shrieks that could be delight or terror echoed like the cries of seagulls. Somewhere glass shattered, and a car alarm sounded in protest. The night was in full swing.

“You feel like going out for a drink?” she asked, sounding hopeful. The ten-year difference in their ages generally manifested itself at around this hour, when he was ready for bed and she was ready to go out dancing.

“Sure,” he answered, casting a longing glance at the plush king-size bed behind them. “Let’s go.”

She picked up her big Furla black leather bag.

“You don’t need that,” he said.

“I never go anywhere without it, Jeffrey. You know that. It has my notebook, all my addresses.…” she said.

“Well, I’m not going to wind up carrying it,” he said, knowing of course that he would if she wanted him to.

Ocean Drive was a parade of supermodels, drag queens, bodybuilders, and dumpy tourists looking around in awe of the scene. Each person was more gorgeous, more boisterous than the last. Surrounded by outrageous outfits, big hair, and loud voices, Lydia always thought of South Beach as the bastard child of the East Village and Mardi Gras on ecstasy. She was fascinated by the endless circus of fabulous, vacuous people … narcissism at its exuberant best. Passing a seemingly endless array of restaurants with hostesses beckoning them in, they finally settled on an Art Deco Mexican restaurant with a mariachi band singing love ballads. They slid into a plush velvet sofa that faced the street and ordered margaritas on the rocks with salt.