HERE ARE THE FACTS

For the parents whose children have been taken, for the broken lives we piece back together one relentless investigation at a time, our town house is a sanctuary.

My name is Alice Crane. I’m just one of a talented team working for Naomi Nantz, the brilliant and very private detective.

Today that sanctuary was violated. The famous kid-finder Randall Shane was taken away by unknown assailants, possibly government agents. Shane’s client is dead, and a boy known as “the keyboard kid” is missing. What is the boy’s connection to a top secret physics lab? Unknown—for now. But under Naomi’s lead, we will infiltrate every illicit boardroom and bedroom and war room. We’ll find that little boy or die trying.

The only thing guaranteed in this life is that Naomi Nantz won’t give up. Not now, not ever.

Praise for the novels of

CHRIS JORDAN

“Harlan Coben meets Mary Higgins Clark—

that’s Taken. [It] will send chills up your spine.”

—Steve Berry

“A skillful storyteller,

Jordan keeps the action constant.”

—RT Book Reviews

“One of the short list novels for thriller of the year.”

—Midwest Book Review on Taken

“Shouldn’t be missed; with its plethora of thrills, engaging characters, and fast plotting, it has

all that’s needed…to make for a late night.”

—New Mystery Reader Magazine on Taken

“Jordan takes the action one step beyond.”

—RT Book Reviews on Trapped

“Puts you in the shoes of the parent

going through their child’s teen years and turns it into a great mystery novel.”

—The Bookworm Society on Trapped

“Extremely well written…a very good read,

with an interesting twist.”

—Crime Squad on Taken

“Heart-pounding.”

—Publishers Weekly on Torn

Measure
of
Darkness

Chris Jordan

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Lynn, forever and always.

Contents

Little Gull Cottage

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Little Gull Cottage

Prides Crossing, Massachusetts

Being a genius isn’t terribly useful when you’re five years old. Joey understands chord progressions, he sees the shape of music way better than most adults, but has very little understanding of evil in the shape of man. And yet he senses that something is wrong. The bad man has never touched or threatened the boy—all communication comes through the woman—but the man’s very presence makes Joey regress to his old habit of sucking his thumb. A habit he long ago—a year at least—abandoned to please his mother.

Mi Ma. Mommy. Joey last saw his mother two weeks ago, and he worries incessantly that he may never see her again, despite more or less constant reassurance from the woman who is taking care of him.

“Where’s my real mommy?” he asks. It’s his most frequent question, and the only one that matters.

“I told you, sweetie, she had to go away to the hospital.”

Joey nods, his eyes big. “Real Mommy’s okay?”

“She’s fine. She’ll be back in a few days, as soon as she’s all the way better. Okay?”

“Okay,” he says.

“You want to play some more? How about your Mozart, you love Mozart.”

On the verge of tears he shakes his head.

“How about a story. The Phantom Tollbooth? You like that one, don’t you?”

Weeping silently, the boy sucks his thumb and nods.

The scary man has many names. Just lately he’s been calling himself Kidder. He thinks of himself as having a sense of humor, although others might disagree. If the ability to kill without remorse is funny—and it does sometimes make him laugh out loud—then he has a great sense of humor. His present assignment involves keeping an eye on a very special little boy and his caregiver. Great location. A private, oceanfront estate with absentee owners. Less than an hour from the city and yet it’s country quiet, with total privacy and a lovely view of the sea. Easy duty for him, not so much for the woman, who gets all in a tizzy when the boy whines for his real mother.

Kidder doesn’t get it, why the kid won’t stop whining. The little brat has a new mommy, one focused solely on his welfare—a definite improvement on the old one, no question there. He has his special kid-size piano keyboard and his headphones, where he can practice for hours at a time—and only when he wants to, it’s not like anybody makes him. If he’s bored with music he has all the toys in the world, pizza whenever he wants and a big-screen TV loaded with DVDs of his favorite shows. Not exactly a torture situation. More like a trip to his own personal Disney World.

At the moment New Mommy is reading him a story, and when she gets to the end she starts all over again, keeps it up until the brat finally falls asleep.

Kidder thinks it’s funny that when New Mommy puts the kid to bed she calls it “putting him down.” Like he’s a dog at the pound being put to sleep forever. Not that New Mommy would ever do such a thing. She’s all soft and weepy and worried, totally clueless about the real nature of the operation, and comes to Kidder with her eyes wet, like she caught tears from the kid.

“How much longer?” she asks.

“A day. A week. Forever.”

“That’s not funny!”

“It is if I say it is,” Kidder says.

“How long?” she insists.

“Not my call. When Shane says so, that’s when. You know how he is.”

“I need to speak to him,” she says, her voice choking. “I need to talk to Shane. Please?”

He shakes his head, grinning. “You knew it was a one-way deal when you signed up. No calls to him. Not from me, not from you, not from anybody. That’s the only way to keep the boy safe. I explained all that.”

“I know, I know, but it’s making me crazy.”

“Yeah? I’ll make you crazy. Me and Wee Willie Winkie. Come on over here and sit on my lap.”

“You’re disgusting!”

That makes Kidder laugh. He makes the same sound when killing, a jagged, high-pitched giggle as sharp and sudden as a bag of razor blades. Not that he’s going to kill the woman or the brat.

Not yet anyway. Not today.

When it does happen, he’ll try to make it fun for everyone.

PART I

The Last Kid Finder

Chapter One

The Trunk Thing

The killer came to us in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car, and stayed just long enough to wreck the house. By that I mean the pile of brick that Naomi Nantz uses as her personal residence as well as for the business of solving unsolvable cases, assisting the helpless and generally amusing herself by being difficult, if not impossible.

My name is Alice Crane, and I serve as Ms. Nantz’s recording secretary and chief factotum. In case you don’t know—I had to look it up when she hired me—a factotum is an employee or assistant employed in a wide range of capacities. I mean, come on, this is the twenty-first century, who uses fusty old words like that anymore?

My boss, Naomi Nantz, that’s who.

The Nantz residence takes up most of a block in the Back Bay area of Boston. Don’t bother trying to find us, we’re camouflaged as two—or is it three?—typical Victorian brick town houses located somewhere between Storrow Drive to the north, Boylston Street to the south, Arlington Street to the east and Charlesgate to the west. Check your map and you’ll see that pretty much covers the neighborhood. On the outside we’re staid and rather ordinary, the kind of staid and ordinary that only money can buy. On the inside, which was gutted and rebuilt a few years before I entered the picture, it’s clean and sleek and modern, except for the Zen sand garden that takes up part of the ground floor. Boss lady often meditates in the garden, drawing what look to me like meaningless lines in the sand, saying it helps her to think.

Like several of the staff, I live in. At the time of hire, it wasn’t a choice for me because my adorable husband had suddenly vanished along with all of my money, and it was either the Nantz residence or my sister’s place in Malden. The choice was Back Bay, with twelve-foot ceilings, an exquisitely furnished suite, or Malden, a paneled basement with a cat-scented futon. Not a tough decision. There are days when boss lady drives me nuts, but my sister has the same ability, and she doesn’t pay. Whereas Naomi Nantz pays very well indeed, with benefits that include room and board, full medical and dental, as well as the occasional opportunity to right wrongs, dodge bullets, tilt at windmills and rescue kidnapped children.

I’d like to say there’s never a dull moment, but that wouldn’t be true. There are many dull moments, for which I’m thankful. Twenty-nine years on this planet have taught me that dull moments are to be savored. Dull moments fortify the soul, because without them life would just be one thing after another, blurred together like the windows on a passing subway car.

In my opinion the best dull moments occur around the kitchen table. In this case a ten-foot-long pickled-white oak table situated in the southeast corner of Mrs. Beasley’s basement kitchen. If Beasley has a first name, she’s not inclined to share it, nor any information about what might have happened to Mr. Beasley, if ever he existed. She’s not much for conversation, preferring to let her food do the talking. Her food, be assured, is eloquent on many subjects. For most people “fruit plate” suggests a cafeteria serving, but then most people have never had the experience of a Beasley Breakfast Fruit Plate. Farm fresh local strawberries dusted with one of her secret ingredients—could it be some exotic formulation of cinnamon? Perfectly ripened peaches that have doubtless been airlifted in from Georgia (Beasley has many connections) and sliced into mouth-size morsels. A single Medjool date stuffed with diced pecans. A chilled pear compote, lightly gingered. Honeyed bran muffins straight from the oven, slathered with hand-churned apricot butter that will make your eyes roll back in pleasure. And Mrs. Beasley’s famous French press coffee, which makes your favorite Starbucks taste like thin dishwater.

There are only three at the table this morning because young Teddy Boyle, our spiky-haired live-in computer guru, has not yet emerged from his dungeon. Too much late-night fun, apparently. Well, he’s of a late-night age, either twenty-one (so he says) or eighteen (so Naomi thinks) or barely sixteen (my theory). Whatever, he’s missing the muffins, so to speak.

For the better part of half an hour there are no more than a dozen words exchanged between us. Naomi, never a casual conversationalist, concentrates on her morning papers: the Boston Herald, Boston Globe, New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which she studies in exactly that order. Nothing casual about it, although she seems to enjoy the process as she scans and absorbs the text. Among her many talents, virtual retention of everything she sees, hears and reads. Not word-for-word, but the essence thereof. On many a case her remarkable memory has dredged up some small, useful item of information from weeks or months or even years ago. A notice of alternate parking on a particular street in the South End. Who was third runner-up in a celebrity fishing tournament in Nantucket. A warehouse fire in Jamaica Plain. A hit-and-run in Chelsea. Lives have been saved because of what she remembers, villains apprehended. In one very disturbing case a prominent sociopath took his own life—and if you knew the circumstances, and the unspeakable crime he committed, you’d undoubtedly agree he made the right choice.

While Naomi reads, uploading data, Mrs. Beasley, silent as usual, methodically fills in Sudoku squares using a felt-tip pen, never lifting her eyes from the page. Left to myself I’d probably have the TV on to one of the morning chat shows, but there are house rules about television, so I content myself with the Globe’s entertainment section, improving my cultural awareness about the hottest new reality show.

“Beasley, do you mind a question?”

Beasley looks up from her puzzle, shrugs.

“Okay, here goes. Say you’re a celebrity chef who has to prepare tarantula for eight—you’re in a Central American jungle, campfire but no stove—could you make it taste good?”

“No,” she says, after giving it some thought. “Not tarantulas. I could do something with jumping spiders.”

I’m pretty sure she’s kidding, but can’t be certain because that happens to be the moment when dapper Jack Delancey, our chief investigator, strolls in and makes the request that will soon result in us being invaded and the house, or part of it, being wrecked.

“Sorry to interrupt, but this is an emergency situation,” he announces, his lean, athletic figure ramrod straight in a gorgeously tailored dark gray suit, a look that gets him dubbed “Gentleman Jack” in the tabloids. “I need your help.”

“You, specifically?” Naomi asks, instantly alert.

“A friend.”

Naomi’s eyes drift back to the Journal. “Go through proper channels,” she says. “Being an employee doesn’t mean we drop everything to assist some crony of yours, Jack, certainly not before we’ve finished coffee. Run it by Dane, that’s the way it’s done.”

Jack, normally a very cool customer, responds with an unexpected edge to his mellifluous baritone. “In about three seconds you’ll be removing your foot from your mouth. The man in trouble is Randall Shane.”

The name is not familiar to me, but evidently it is to Naomi because she pushes back her chair and goes, “Why didn’t you say so? Where is he?”

Jack grins handsomely. “Little problem there.”

The Nantz residential garage is located on one of the so-called “public alleys” that bisect the blocks here in the Back Bay. The idea was that tradesmen would approach from the rear, skulking through alleys, rather than contaminating the formal entrances of the main streets. Nowadays there are more green Dumpsters than tradesmen in the alleys, but those town houses fortunate enough to have garages typically face them on the alley. It’s all part of being discreet—there’s no good coming from advertising where the BMWs are hiding. Also handy for smuggling in witnesses or suspects when you don’t want them to be seen entering your domicile.

There are three narrow bays in the Nantz garage, and one of them is filled to overflowing by Jack Delancey’s nearly new Lincoln Town Car. To my way of thinking, Townies have that airport limo look, but Jack favors them for ride and size, and the dapper investigator would never be mistaken for a limo driver, not unless you want to find yourself cuffed to the bumper, admiring his chrome. Supposedly he hasn’t done that to anyone since he resigned from the FBI and went to work for Naomi, but I wouldn’t advise testing the guy. My read on Gentleman Jack is that he can be charming when he wants to be, and dangerous when it suits him, as many a bad actor has discovered to his or her own chagrin. “Bad actor” is Jack talk for criminal. Most of the time he talks like a cop, except on those rare occasions when he’s relaxed enough to discuss the fine points of professional baseball, when he sounds like just another statistically obsessed Red Sox fan from the North Shore. Jack’s a Gloucester boy, in accent if not at heart. Gloucester being more famous for craggy fishermen in slickers than lightly tanned investigators who favor two-thousand-dollar Italian suits and metrosexual manicures. Probably pedicures, too, although his fourth wife will be happy to hear I’ve never seen him with his socks off.

“There’s a good chance that we’re already under surveillance,” Jack tells Naomi as we enter the garage. “So I did the trunk thing.”

Trunk thing? I start to ask what that means, exactly, when Jack presses his key fob and pops the lid, and out from the voluminous trunk unfolds a man who towers over us all. It’s a very neat unfolding, limbs and knees deployed, a muscular torso rising, and turning into the light a large round head with close-cropped hair and deep-set eyes in need of sleep. A head that keeps rising until it brushes the ceiling.

Randall Shane. Yards of him.

“I really messed up this time,” Shane says, looking forlorn. “I may have killed an innocent man.”

“We’ll see about that,” Naomi says. “My office. Now.”

What Naomi calls her office is really our command center. Think mission control, without all the giant screens, but with a similar sense of purpose, and the ability to communicate with just about anybody, anywhere, over any system, as well as extract data, voluntary or not. The style is spare and cool. Lots of dark laminates, cove lighting, discreetly recessed panels, stacks and servers hidden away. There’s never any doubt about who is in command, either. You can tell because she gets the pivoting seat behind the big curved desk with all the touch screens and gizmos, and we peons get the straight-back chairs with the wide unpadded armrests that are adequate for a laptop or a notebook, or in my case an unfinished cup of Beasley’s coffee and a legal pad.

Randall Shane wouldn’t fit in the peon chairs without a very large shoehorn, so he roams the big high-ceilinged room and finally, at boss lady’s insistence, parks on the far edge of the command desk, his long chino-clad legs crossed at the ankle and his large, muscular arms folded across his very substantial chest. Not a weightlifter type, from the lean-waisted look of him, just built to a larger scale than most. Making all six feet of Jack Delancey seem short and slight in comparison. The neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper Van Dyke beard gives Shane the look of a supersize jazz musician. The watery blue eyes are soulful, but pure cop, always watching.

“Heard of you,” the big man says, focusing on Naomi. “Jack says you’re the best, and that includes me.”

Naomi smiles, shrugs. “We do different things. Or do things differently. Probably both.” After a moment’s pause, she begins again. “Normally when interviewing a potential client I’d wait for the rest of my team to be assembled and then record a formal statement, but since this is hardly a standard situation, please go ahead. We’ll do the legal stuff later, when our attorney is present.”

“There isn’t much time,” Shane responds, fidgeting, his big hands busy making fists. “This won’t be a normal arrest,” he cautions. “Once they take me, I’ll likely be transferred to an undisclosed location for interrogation. A form of in-country rendition. No lawyers, no communication. That’s how they do it.”

“Who are ‘they,’ Mr. Shane? Please be specific.”

“Randall, please, or just plain Shane.”

“‘They’?” Naomi persists. “Explain. Elaborate.”

“Sorry. Whatever covert agency is about to frame me for the murder of my client.”

“Your client?”

He nods, looking mournful. “Joseph Keener, MIT professor. His son, Joey, is missing, that’s why he contracted me. In all likelihood I’m responsible for Professor Keener’s death. I didn’t kill him, but they’ll make it look that way. The evidence will be rock solid.”

“What covert agency?”

Shane shakes his head. “I’m not sure,” he begins, “but my best guess is an agency associated with the Department of Defense. Or possibly Homeland Security. My client was working on a top-secret project, and it’s possible that—”

And that’s when the windows explode, covering us all in diamonds of shattered safety glass. The security alarms start to whoop but there’s no time to react, let alone flee to the safe room. Through the sudden breach swing half a dozen gun-wielding thugs wearing black ski masks. In less than a heartbeat there’s a second explosion and somehow a wire net engulfs Randall Shane, and they take him down like a wild animal, hitting him with several tranquilizer darts through the net, until he sighs and stops struggling.

Unconscious, maybe dead.

That’s all I can see from under my little desk, face burrowing into the thick carpet. That and the shiny black boots standing an inch from my head.

Chapter Two

Tea & Sympathy, Not

The first time I ever laid eyes on Naomi Nantz she had a bad toothache. I was the office manager for an association of dentists in Cambridge and she came in as an emergency appointment. Barely got through the door before fainting from the pain. By which I mean she stated her name and then her eyes rolled up and she dropped to the floor. Apparently she’d been ignoring a deep abscess in a lower left premolar for a couple of weeks, due to being involved in a case, and finally her body said that’s enough, we’re turning off the lights. That’s how Dr. Pavi, our really excellent oral surgeon, explained the situation when she regained consciousness. Then he ever so gently put her back under, did whatever he needed to do, successfully and with a minimum of fuss. From then on Naomi Nantz was one of our loyal patients. Came in every three months for a deep cleaning and, because she misses nothing, apparently took notice of how I managed the office. One time her appointment coincided with me having red eyes from days (and nights) of crying and she asked what was wrong and for some reason I told her, which was strictly against the office rules (written by me) of sharing personal or family troubles with patients (we were there to serve, not kvetch), and Naomi said she’d see what she could do, and I said my husband has vanished and my savings account is empty, what can you possibly do?

She’d smiled and said, let me get back to you.

Two days later she called me into the Back Bay residence—sent a driver for me, actually—had me take a seat and then proceeded to explain, very calmly and deliberately, that my husband wasn’t the man I thought he was, and for that matter my marriage had never been legal. The man I knew as Robinson “Robbie” Reynolds was in reality a handsome, charismatic con artist born William J. Crockett—“Wedding Willy” to the bunco squads—who wooed and married two or three victims at a time, then drained their assets. My assets had been a personal savings account (fairly substantial because I’m very careful with money and always keep to a budget) and my parents’ four-bedroom home in Newton, which I’d been managing as a rental since Mom died, the income being split between my sister and me. Somehow or other Robbie had got my signature on a legal document and he’d sold the big house in Newton, as well as our small but very comfortable condo in Arlington, cleared the bank accounts and then vanished. Leaving me more or less homeless and with my sister ready to kill me because she’d “always known Robbie was bad news,” although I’d never noticed that, what with her giggly jokes that were variations on “if you ever get sick of my little sister, you know where to find me!” Can’t blame her, really, Robbie was irresistible. I’m the living proof.

Anyhow, Naomi saw to it that he’d been arrested in Toronto on a similar charge—yet another “marriage”—where he’s currently serving time and supposedly writing a book about his exploits. None of the money was ever recovered because aside from his habit of proposing to foolish females who had a few bucks socked away, Robbie liked to trade on the currency markets, highly leveraged, and he lost every penny.

So, that’s my sad little story, and the upshot is that Naomi offered me a job managing her office, at twice the salary and double the benefits, and that’s how I happened to find myself face to the floor, and boss lady somewhere above me demanding, “Show us the warrant! Where’s the paper?”

During and after the snatch-and-grab of Randall Shane, Naomi Nantz is highly indignant, demanding legal justification for the home invasion. None is forthcoming, because no one on the assault squad ever says a word. They simply do not respond. Not a word. Not to Naomi, not to anyone. That kind of black-masked silence is truly scary, in a way much scarier than the invasion itself.

The only good thing about the whole awful mess is that it’s over in less than two minutes. They break in through the windows, seize our client and seemingly vanish into thin air, back out the same way they came in. By the time we call Beacon Hill Security and tell them not to bother sending a car, the crisis is already over.

As the security alarms cease whooping, I get up from the floor, still shaking. “Where’d they go? For that matter, where’d they come from?”

When Jack Delancey finally speaks—not a peep of protest out of him during the snatch, and no show of resistance—he says, tersely, “Had to be stealth helicopters. No other explanation.”

Naomi grunts, as if she hates the very idea.

“Hey! What happened?”

Standing in the doorway, looking as befuddled as a child, is our resident computer genius, Teddy Boyle, his ungelled Mohawk sadly drooping. Apparently he fell asleep wearing headphones and consequently didn’t hear a thing.

“Sorry I missed all the fun,” he says, convincing no one.

Mrs. Beasley, coming up to see what set off the alarms, glances at the wreckage of the command center, shakes her head and issues a command of her own. “Tea and scones, kitchen table.”

Like obedient children we all follow her down to the kitchen.

When angry I tend to raise my voice. Naomi gets all quiet and focused. Gave me chills at first, watching her cool down over a case. Wouldn’t want to be the object of her wrath, because she never, ever gives up. If she fails, and supposedly it has happened now and then—not on my watch, not so far—it’s usually because the bad guy has already died, taking essential secrets to his grave. “His” because most of our cases involve males, from my experience, although boss lady has no problem going after female criminals whenever they make the mistake of crossing her path.

Utterly calm, she begins to lay out assignments while we dutifully sip Beasley’s perfectly brewed tea and munch on her crumbly, jam-smeared scones. “Jack, everything you know. In order, please.”

Our chief investigator takes a moment, gathering his thoughts. “I was awakened by a phone call at 6:15 a.m. Shane needs my help, can I meet him in Kendall Square? There was the usual early-commuter traffic, so by the time I found him it was 7:10.”

“This was at the crime scene?”

Jack shakes his head. “No. Shane had fled the crime scene. His client, the professor, lives somewhere in Cambridge, not far from MIT.”

Naomi nods, and subtly checks to be sure I’m taking notes, which of course I am. “Joey Keener, the missing child. Any idea how old he is?”

Jack shrugs. “I think Shane said he was five. I’ll confirm when I get the murder location from Cambridge P.D.”

“Your friend Shane thinks he’s being framed by a ‘covert agency,’ possibly part of the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently having to do with the fact that his client was working on a top-secret project. Did he give you any hint what that project was about?”

“No. He just said the guy was a genius. Not what he was working on.”

“What made him suspect he was being framed?”

“His gun was missing.”

“Ah,” she says, pursing her lips as she registers the information. “A missing gun. That explains his suspicion about being framed, perhaps, but not why he believes a government agency is responsible.”

Again with the uncomfortable shrug from Jack. He loathes being asked to speculate when he’s unsure of the facts. “There wasn’t a lot of time for conversation. Shane said words to the effect of his client was a genius—something to do with physics, I think—and somebody must have wanted to shut him up.” Jack clears his throat, meets her eyes. “I’ll know a lot more in a couple of hours. After I’ve got background on the murder and the missing kid.”

Naomi studies him. “In other words you’ve got more but you’d rather not share it until you’ve collected pertinent data, confirming your suspicions.”

He nods.

“Fine, we’ll get your full report this evening. Plenty for us to do in the meantime.”

Jack gives her a tight smile, thanks Beasley and exits the kitchen, snapping open his cell phone as he goes.

Naomi turns to our young hacker, who looks sleepy no longer. Looking, for that matter, more than a little shell-shocked by what has so suddenly transpired, and having barely touched his scone, much to our chef’s clucking disapproval. Six months ago young Mr. Boyle was operating out of a Newbury Street coffeehouse, hacking for cash and sleeping in shelters and all-night cybercafés. All he owned in the world was a battered, customized laptop and the clothes on his back. Oh, and various body piercings of dubious quality, at least one of which looked like an ordinary paper clip hanging from his lower lip. Despite that, or maybe because of it, Naomi had taken notice. She tried him on a fairly easy assignment, and then a more difficult case that involved bending a truly frightening number of laws, and then one day she’d announced that the scruffy teenage hacker would be joining the household on a permanent basis. It was rough for a while—despite his innate politeness, the boy has a feral quality and hates to be confined—but just lately he seems to be acclimating, even blooming under her tutelage. Today his wrinkled black T-shirt says it all: LIFE IS A BITCH—I KNOW BECAUSE I WORK FOR HER. A gift from Naomi, who is not without a sense of humor.

“Teddy, I want to know everything there is to know about Randall Shane, his alleged victim, Joseph Keener, and the son, Joey. Public, private, personal, professional. Shane is a legendary kid finder and has worked a number of high-profile cases, so there will be a lot of hits. The juicy stuff will likely be in secure files, and that means take precautions.”

When Teddy rolls his eyes, Naomi hones in with a certain tone. “Young man, I’m aware you take pride in your ability to access data and remain undetected. Pride is good, and you’re a valued member of this team because of your talent and your tenacity. But given what just happened here—a man was snatched from this very house by persons unknown, in broad daylight, with clockwork efficiency—a little paranoia is more than justified. We don’t yet know who we’re dealing with, but make no mistake, there will be people with your skill set on the other side. If you get careless or arrogant or overconfident you could be the next one seized by men in ski masks. Is that understood?”

Teddy nods, looking just a little skinnier and even more tightly wound.

Naomi drains her cup and stands up. “Beasley, you’re on standby. No formal lunch today. Sandwiches on request to the library, which will serve as a temporary command center.” She turns to me. “Alice, make arrangements for repairs, completed by end of day if possible. Or, failing that, closed to the weather. And deal with the cops.”

“What cops?”

“The ones who will soon be at the front entrance, wanting to know what happened.”

“What shall I tell them?”

“Whatever you like,” she says. “Just keep them out of my hair and out of my house.”

Right on cue, the doorbell rings, followed shortly thereafter by the pounding of a fist.

Chapter Three

The Very Private Investigator

“A movie, huh?” the young patrolwoman says. “So where are they?”

“It was just the one scene. They needed the exterior shot.”

“The witness report said helicopter, unmarked, low altitude. Men swarming down ropes. Some kind of assault type of situation.”

“Stuntmen. Fortunately no one was hurt, and they’re paying for the repairs. Part of the contract.”

The patrolwoman makes a note, looks at me doubtfully. “There’s nothing about a film permit for this block.”

“Not my department. Up to the movie people.”

“You got a name for the production company?”

“Not me. The property manager might.”

“Name and number?”

I hand her our attorney’s card. A perfect endless loop, as the young patrolwoman will discover, if she bothers to follow up. Doubtful, since we’re not filing a complaint.

“There’s glass all over the sidewalk,” she points out.

“I’ll get my broom.”

More notes. The cop gives me a long look, as if trying to decide if I’m fronting for some criminal activity even now taking place inside the residence. “Must charge a lot, a place like this, to let ’em bust your windows.”

“Again, not my department. But I assume it was a generous offer.”

“What is your department, Ms. Crane?”

“Alice. I’m the caretaker.”

“Uh-huh. Is the owner in residence?”

“As I understand it, the property is owned by a real estate holding company.”

“So this is like, what, an investment kind of deal?”

“Apparently. As I say, I’m only the—”

“Caretaker. Yeah, I got it.” The notebook snaps shut. “We’re done. Have a nice day. My advice, take care of the glass. This city, somebody’ll sue ya.”

“Thanks, Officer.”

All of the above is conducted on the sidewalk, below the entrance, which rises seven steps from the pavement. Naomi’s rules forbid law enforcement officers from entering the premises unless invited. She calls it the vampire rule. Plenty of cops have been invited, over the years, and a chosen few have stayed for dinner, but this is the first full-scale invasion without a warrant. And it wasn’t cops this time, not exactly. And maybe not even slightly. More like a paramilitary mission executed with stopwatch precision.

Next task, fix the building. We have a standing arrangement with Danny Bechst. You’ve probably seen his vans around town, with the Bechst of Boston logo wrapped around the vehicles. The deal is, when we call Danny he drops everything and works the problem until it is completed, around the clock if necessary. For this he gets a very handsome annual retainer plus double the normal hourly rate, so Danny Boy loves it when we call. Included in the compensation package is an understanding that all work be conducted with the utmost regard to privacy and security. His men, and they’re all men except for a couple of females on his interior painting crew, are not to stray unchaperoned anywhere on the premises. As far as Danny’s crew are aware, the owner is a rich eccentric who treasures her privacy, only the last of which happens to be true, technically. It helps that most of his guys don’t speak English and wouldn’t know who Naomi Nantz is if they tripped over her, which Danny makes sure they don’t. Trip over her, that is.

I punch Danny’s number and in less than an hour a couple of his men, working from the outside, have screwed temporary plywood panels to the broken windows, and Danny himself is inside the command center taking measurements.

“No problem,” he promises. “End of day it’ll look like new, only better.”

There are a few more things you need to know about boss lady before we can proceed. What I said about how she treasures her privacy, believe me, that’s understating. When Naomi Nantz calls herself a “Very Private Investigator” she’s not kidding, and she’ll do almost anything to keep it that way. Also true, that she’s neither rich nor eccentric. Brilliant and difficult is not the same as eccentric. Eccentric is dressing your pets in period costumes; brilliant and difficult means you know exactly how to go about saving an innocent life and/or bringing the guilty to justice, and you don’t much care who might get offended or insulted along the way.

The assumption that she must be rich, to live in such a place and undertake cases of her choosing, regardless of recompense, is understandable, but mistaken. I’m in charge of the operating budget, paying the staff and so on, and I happen to know that she draws a salary like everyone else. Okay, more than everyone else, but still. Nor was I fibbing about the residence being owned by some sort of holding company, and legally managed through a law firm. So it is. As to who is really paying the bills and underwriting the whole enterprise—we call him (or it could be a her) the Benefactor—only Naomi knows the truth of the matter. Or so we all assume. When something extraordinary happens, she’s the one who makes contact, so she must know who it is, right?

As to the woman herself, for the past three years I’ve been working closely with her on a daily basis, and yet I know nothing for certain about her personal history, her family or how she came to be here, doing what she does. I’m not even sure if Naomi Nantz is her birth name. Boss lady is pretty much off grid and I’m inclined to respect that choice.

Up to a point.

With the repairs sorted out, I head down the hall to the library, a large room with tall built-in bookcases on three walls. There’s one corner window where if I stand on my tippy-toes I can just glimpse the Charles River. Other than the roof deck and Beasley’s kitchen, this is my favorite place in the residence, mostly because it’s so rarely used that I usually have it to myself. Not today. Naomi has taken possession of the leather-covered magazine table, setting up a laptop, a broadband phone with a couple of open lines and a secure line hardwired into a satellite phone antenna. I let her know where we stand, cop-wise and repair-wise, and she motions to a rail-back chair as she finishes her call.

“You’ll be writing up your notes for the daily meeting, of course.”

“Of course. That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

“Probably don’t have a lot to write up, just yet.”

“Not just yet. There’ll be a lot more when Jack and Teddy report.”

Naomi nods to herself, musing, and I can almost hear her brain humming as she shifts through scenarios and alternatives. “This is a bit delicate, but there’s something we need to keep in mind.” She hesitates.

“Shoot,” I urge her. “I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

“My concern is with Jack Delancey. He’ll be our main investigator on this case—he expects no less—but the circumstances are such that he may be compromised.”

“Excuse me?”

“Friendship can do that. He and Shane go way back, and Jack holds him in the highest regard. Clearly he can’t bring himself to consider the possibility that Randall Shane might be playing us.”

“Wait. You really think he killed this professor guy?”

“I’ve no idea, but I’m keeping an open mind. The facts must lead us, not our hearts.”

“So why aren’t you telling this to Jack instead of me?”

Naomi grimaces slightly, as if made uneasy by what she’s about to say. “Because I want you to keep your eyes open. If you think Jack misses something crucial, whether accidentally or on purpose, you will report to me.”

I’m astonished. “You want me to rat out Jack Delancey?”

“An unfortunate phrase. But yes, if the situation warrants it, that’s exactly what I expect.”

Chapter Four

The Rest of Forever

Gradually he awakens, becomes aware on some primitive level that is sentient. At first there is no sense of self. He’s no more than an assemblage of pain, nerves firing from various locations on his large body, defining a vague shape. Hands painfully cramped, feet aching, joints smoldering. Something in the middle makes itself known, unpleasantly. A sack of bubbling acid? No, a stomach, seething. At one end, pounding, a brain held like a bruised yolk inside a damaged shell.

He has a name, if only he can find it.

Halfway to forever, the name finally surfaces, drifting lazily around the brain. He claims it, holds it tight. At some point Shane realizes that his eyes are open and the darkness is an actual darkness. His limbs are restrained by something soft and unyielding. He’s strapped down, elaborately, on a padded table. Testing the restraints, he measures his own unnatural weakness and surmises that he’s been heavily drugged, possibly with muscle relaxants. They’ll be watching, whoever “they” are. Darkness being no barrier with the right equipment. He stops struggling and waits, knowing they will come, eventually, and that he must prepare himself.

The rest of forever goes by. As more memories surface he replays recent conversations, examines decisions, finds himself wanting. How could he have been so wrong?

At last, from deep inside the darkness, a voice. “Joseph Keener.”

Behind him somewhere, and then closer, much closer. Close enough to feel the air move in a reedy whisper. “Professor Joseph Keener. What did he know?”

Shane attempts to speak, discovers that his tongue will not respond.

Louder. “What did Joe know?”

Eventually it becomes a kind of chant.

Chapter Five

Free Thought Radicals

At 6:00 p.m. precisely we convene in the library for the first case briefing, which is always a big deal. Naomi is a stickler for being on time, so the protocol is to show up a minute or two early, take your seat and try to sit up straight. Boss lady is never there to begin with; she always makes an entrance, and this evening is no exception. The other notable entrance of the evening belongs to Dane Porter, our attorney. Dane is five foot nothing, but feisty, and has a legal mind that’s the antidote to every blond joke. How many blond lawyers does it take to keep Naomi Nantz and her team out of jail when they overstep the bounds? Exactly one.

“Sorry I missed all the excitement,” Dane says, sauntering in on spike heels that should be registered as weapons. She’s wearing a hand-tailored power suit—wide pinstripes on a dark blue background, trim lapels, a tight-vested waist—and a custom-made handbag given to her by a female hip-hop artist (a famous one, who shall remain nameless here because she likes handguns) who happens to dance to the same music as the lovely lawyer.

“Was it really a helicopter attack? Men on ropes?” she asks Jack, who is busy examining his well-buffed nails.

“That’s affirmative,” he says.

“Alice?” Dane says, flashing me a radiant smile. “Tell me lover boy is joking.”

“Never saw the helicopter,” I say, “but there were definitely men on ropes. With guns.”

“How exciting!”

“Good evening, Counselor,” says Naomi, entering with laptop in hand. She takes the temporary command seat, directly across the table from me.

As usual it will be my job to take meticulous notes in my personal shorthand, in a form known only to myself, and to keep a precise chronology of the ongoing investigation, updated on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. The active case briefings are never, ever electronically recorded for a variety of reasons, legal and otherwise. The idea is to prevent criminals we might be investigating—or interested law enforcement agencies—from hacking into our system and determining what we know at any given moment. It’s not paranoia, because it actually happened on an earlier case, hence the precautions.

“We convene this evening in extraordinary circumstances,” Naomi begins. “A man was kidnapped from this premises by agents unknown, possibly for the purposes of enhanced interrogation. We have as yet no clue as to his whereabouts, his state of health or who, exactly, is holding him. This is intolerable, and tonight we begin the process of finding out what happened and why. Teddy, you’ll present first. Start with the murder victim.”

Teddy’s hands shake slightly as he presses a key on his laptop. An image lights up the screen. “Joseph Vincent Keener,” he announces, gathering confidence. “Age forty-two. Born, Hanover, New Hampshire.”

We’re looking at a head shot of Joseph Keener, wearing an ill-fitting suit and tie. A round, unremarkable face. Heavy black-rimmed glasses and just a hint of jowls, despite a scrawny neck that doesn’t quite fill his shirt collar. High forehead with the beginnings of pattern baldness thinning his light brown hair. His ears stick out, making him look oddly vulnerable. He’s not smiling and was glancing to the side and slightly down when the shutter clicked. Even in a formal head shot with studio lighting he seems to be lost in a world of his own.

There’s a moment of awkward silence. We’re looking at a dead man.

Teddy says, “Keener was a ward of the state—his parents, both talented musicians, died in an accident—and he was raised in a succession of foster homes from infancy. Somehow he managed to get himself enrolled at Caltech, age fifteen, which pretty much says it all. Language skills pretty average, but mathematical concepts and theoretical geometry are off the charts. When Shane called him a genius he wasn’t exaggerating. After Caltech, Joseph Keener came back East to pursue doctoral studies in quantum physics at MIT and was eventually made a full professor. There’s no mention of a marriage, or indeed of any family at all. Professor Keener is widely published, and considered something of a recluse with a possible social interaction deficit, but at MIT that’s not exactly unusual. His lectures are well attended, and despite a shyness that causes him to avert his eyes while in conversation, Professor Keener is able to take questions and lead discussions with his brilliant and often challenging students. That’s a quote, more or less.”

“A quote,” Jack says, puzzled. “Where’d you get it? You didn’t leave the residence, correct? Didn’t interview any associates?”

“There’s a site for student evals.”

“Evals?”

“Evaluations,” Teddy explains. “Some were real flamers, others seemed fair and balanced. But they all commented on Professor Keener’s social awkwardness, one way or another.”

Jack nods, gives him a thumbs-up. “Way to go, kid. That would have taken me at least a day’s worth of shoe leather.”

Teddy tries to hide his grin, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or a physicist for that matter) to see that he’s pleased. For the first month or so on the job he was so intimidated by the former FBI agent that he avoided him whenever possible. To be fair it took dapper Jack a while to get used to Teddy’s fashion statements, in particular the piercings, which he refers to as “staples,” as in, hey kid, what’s with the staple in your cheek? Lately they seem to have entered a zone of mutual tolerance and now, perhaps, collegial respect.

“In addition to teaching full-time at MIT, Professor Keener helped found QuantaGate, an R & D firm in Waltham, out on 128.”

“Sounds familiar,” Naomi muses. “A defense contractor, I believe.”

Teddy looks startled. “Correct. Something to do with developing a quantum computer, which as far as I know is pretty much still theoretical. The stuff on the Net is very vague, mostly PR postings about the founding of the company. If we want more specifics on what exactly they’re working on, or how far they’ve gotten, I’d have to get into the DOD.”

Naomi’s eyes glint. “You will absolutely not attempt to hack into the Department of Defense, is that understood?”

“Oh yeah, understood,” Teddy says, without really backing down. “I understand I could do it, but you don’t want me to.”

Naomi says, “A quantum computer, theoretical or not, would be of interest to any number of covert agencies from any number of countries. It’s probable that’s what Shane referred to as a top-secret project. We’ll come back to that, but for now let’s stick with the victim’s bio. You say you found no mention of Professor Keener being the father of a five-year-old boy?”

“No,” Teddy says. “Not by the students or the staff. They pretty much peg him as an SWG. That’s, um, Single White Geek in eval shorthand. Professor Keener’s biweekly deduction for the university medical is for a single plan, and there are no births registered naming him as a father in any databases. From what I can tell this kid is so missing he doesn’t exist.”

“Sounds like your shoe leather might be useful after all, Jack,” Naomi suggests. “Who were his parents, how did they die, what was his experience in foster care? Maybe somebody from his past would know about personal things, like having a child out of wedlock.”

“I’ll get on it,” he says, making an entry in his notebook.

“Let’s move on to Randall Shane,” Naomi suggests.

The photo of the victim is replaced by a recent snapshot of Randall Shane, seen from the waist up and looking very purposeful and muscular. Teddy says, “This was posted on the Facebook page of a woman whose daughter was recovered by Mr. Shane, and who was effusive in her praise. He’s camera-shy and asked her to take it down, which she did, but it wasn’t deleted from the cache.”

We learn that Shane, 46, graduated from a public high school in East Hampstead, Long Island, and eventually from Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, with a degree in computer science. While at Rochester he met the woman he would eventually marry. Recruited as a civilian software engineer by the FBI to help modernize their fingerprint database, he’d eventually applied to and been accepted as a special agent, in which capacity he continued until the deaths of his wife and daughter, after which he resigned from the FBI.

“That’s the standard bio on the guy,” Teddy says. “There’s more, of course.”

“Hold on, cowboy,” Dane says. “Are you telling us that bad boy is a computer geek? With those guns?”

“Guns?” Naomi asks, puzzled. “He was unarmed.”

“Muscles, silly.” Dane poses, cocking her right arm. “Biceps.”

“Ah,” says Naomi, satisfied. “Continue.”

Teddy is new enough to the team to still be made uneasy by the frequent, challenging interruptions, encouraged by boss lady, who believes that banter and peer pressure create what she calls “free thought radicals.” The back-and-forth is all part of her method, which can be difficult for a person as naturally shy as Teddy. He swallows hard, takes a deep breath, finds his place. “In those days Shane was kind of a geek at heart, if not in appearance. That’s how the FBI used him, too. He spent about half his career testifying or lecturing on methods of forensic identification, not out in the field. He was basically an expert with a cool badge. They still use his program for the fingerprint database.”

Naomi interrupts, as is her wont: “Jack? Does that accord with your personal knowledge?”

“Yep,” says Jack, adjusting the crease of his slacks. “The kid has it right.”

Naomi’s attention returns to Teddy. “Continue.”

He takes a breath, nods. “So everything changes one rainy Sunday night in New Jersey. Shane and his wife and kid are driving back from D.C. to New York. Mr. Shane at this time works out of the FBI field office in Manhattan.”

“They’re in Washington why?”

“Um, school project for the daughter. Visiting the Smithsonian.”

“Keep going.”

“Jersey Turnpike. Shane’s feeling sleepy, so his wife takes over the driving. He nods off, and at some point the vehicle is sideswiped by a freight truck. When he wakes up in the wreckage, wife and daughter are both dead. As you might expect, the man himself was a wreck for a while. He resigns from the Bureau and eventually establishes himself as a legendary finder of lost children, but he retains a number of key contacts who still work for the FBI, including the current Assistant Director of Counterterrorism.”

“A-Dick,” Jack says, smiling, throwing it out there.

“What?”

“That’s what they call an assistant director. An AD or A-Dick. Not necessarily a term of affection.”

“As I was saying,” Teddy says, elbowing his way back into the conversation, “there’s some indication that Assistant Director Bevins is a friend with benefits.”

“They sleep together?”

“Past tense, if it happened. But they’re still close.”

“Jack?”

“A matter of speculation,” he admits with an indifferent shrug. “Nobody knew for sure and they certainly weren’t saying.”

“Okay. The counterterrorism connection is interesting, given what’s happened,” Naomi points out. “Let’s keep that in mind as we move on.”

“How did he first get in the business of rescuing kidnapped kids?” Dane wants to know. “Was that part of his purview at the Bureau?”

“No. Later, after the accident, while he was undergoing therapy for a sleep disorder. An acquaintance asked for help, he managed to recover the child and found a new calling.”

“Back up there,” Naomi says. “Sleep disorder?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if it’s weird or ironic or what, but ever since he woke up from the accident, Mr. Shane has suffered from a peculiar, possibly unique sleep disorder. Like they’ve studied him, written articles about it.”

“Ironic would not be the correct term,” Naomi suggests. “Tragic would be the correct term. Is that agreed?”

“Great song, though,” Dane interjects airily.

“Nuts,” Jack says, suddenly animated. “If you don’t know what ironic means, don’t use it in the lyrics. Rain on a wedding day isn’t irony, it’s bad weather. It sucks, but it isn’t ironic.”

Naomi interjects, “Enough on the golden-oldie lyrics. Back to subject, please. Teddy?”

“A death row pardon two minutes too late is definitely ironic,” Teddy points out, in a small, hesitant voice.

“Teddy!”

“Okay, okay. Took a while to separate the facts from the legend, but despite or possibly because of his sleep disorder, which means he sometimes stays awake for days at a time and eventually hallucinates, Randall Shane is considered to be among the best solo operatives who specialize in child recovery.”

“Not among,” Jack says, arms folded. “The best, period. Randall Shane is the last of the real kid finders. They broke the mold.”

Teddy shrugs his narrow shoulders, as if to concede the point. “Unlike many in the field, which can be pretty shady, monetary gain does not seem to be his primary motivation. For him it’s a calling.”

“Most of his cases are pro bono,” Jack concedes.

“Seventy percent,” Teddy says.

“Whatever, Shane ain’t about the money. He can’t even afford to drive a decent car,” Jack says.

Teddy suddenly has a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Current ride, a five-year-old Townie, previously registered to John B. Delancey of Gloucester, Mass.”

Jack shrugs his wide, well-tailored shoulders, but he’s no doubt impressed. “Donation to a good cause. And no, I didn’t get a tax deduction because Shane has never registered as a nonprofit, although he should.”

Teddy keeps going. “Current residence, Humble, New York. Small town in the general vicinity of Rochester.”

“Humble?” Dane says, grinning. “Is that ironic?”

Naomi sighs loudly, which effectively stops the banter. “You have more?” she asks.

“Tons,” says Teddy. “I found more than a hundred references to the so-called Shane’s Sleep Disorder Syndrome. Plus interesting facts on a variety of his cases.”

“Excellent, but hold for now,” Naomi says. “Jack, can you bring us up to speed on the murder investigation?”

Jack flips open his small reporter’s notebook. Strictly a prop, in my opinion, but he’s never without it. “So far everything Shane told me checks out. Cambridge homicide detectives are investigating the death by gunshot of Joseph Keener at his residence on Putnam Avenue, approximately two miles from the campus. The murder happened early this morning. State police are assisting—that means they’ll eventually run the investigation, in all probability—and the FBI is all over the scene.”

“Anybody you know?”

“Cambridge, affirmative, Staties, affirmative. I’m meeting with my state police source this evening. Hopefully he’ll have more to add.”

“Anything from your old colleagues in the FBI?”

“As you know, my former associates are mostly in the Boston field office, and normally the locals would be responding, assuming the murder has some federal connection. But this is a special team sent in directly from Justice. Unknown to me on a personal level.”

“You make yourself known?”

He shakes his head. “Not yet. Just to my guy in the Cambridge Major Crimes Unit and he won’t mention our interest unless I ask him to. He knows the deal.”

“Good,” Naomi says. “Let’s stay at arm’s length from our friends in federal law enforcement until we’ve had a peek at the big picture. That being said, did you get any sense they’re aware that Randall Shane has been seized and/or arrested by agents unknown?”

“The opposite. There’s an APB out on him as a so-called ‘person of interest.’ He’s their prime suspect and they think he’s in the wind.”

“Set the scene,” Naomi suggests. “Shower us with details.”

“There’s not all that much, I’m afraid. Cambridge police were alerted by a 911 call that originated from the Keener residence at 5:42 a.m. The caller would not give his name, but stated a man had been killed. That was Shane, so they’ll have him on digital audio making the call, for whatever that’s worth. The first mobile unit responded to the scene in ten minutes or less, found the front door open and the victim facedown in a pool of blood in the hallway, a few yards from the front door. Major Crimes and forensic units arrive, as well as the medical examiner. The M.E. determines the victim died of a single shot to the back of the head. Clotting and body temp suggest he’d been dead for no more than an hour or so before the call was made. No weapon recovered at the scene. Detectives did a canvas and his neighbors described him as the usual: shy type, kept to himself, very quiet. No one heard the gunshot.”

“Any indication of a child in the home?”

Jack shakes his head. “The investigating detective told me it was the residence of a single man, living alone. Cambridge police are unaware of any missing child connected with the victim. No such report was ever filed. There is no indication of a child in the home, not even a photo. No toys, no games, no bedroom set up for a kid, nothing.”

“No sign of a child,” Naomi muses, keenly interested. “How very odd. Two possibilities immediately present themselves. Either the victim has a child and all evidence has been removed from the home—surely he’d have pictures even if the mother has custody?—or the victim never had a child, certainly not a missing child, and Shane was somehow duped for reasons unknown.”

“To set him up for murder,” Jack suggests.

Naomi nods to herself, tapping her pen, wheels turning. “Okay, fine, that’s our theory of the moment, in deference to your relationship with the suspect—but he remains a prime suspect unless or until the evidence leads us elsewhere.”

“He didn’t do it.”

“You’re a friend. I need more.”

“Fine,” Jack says, with a steely edge to his voice.

“Now please explain the discrepancy,” she suggests.

“What discrepancy?” Jack says, all innocence.

“You rendezvous with your buddy Randall Shane at 7:00 a.m. and yet you don’t show up here until 8:30 a.m. Kendall Square is at most fifteen minutes from this location. Where did you go? What did you do?”

Jack sighs. “We attempted to break into a motel.”

“A motel located where?”

“The Residence Inn off Kendall Square. Shane thought it likely that he’d been lured to the victim’s home so that evidence could be planted in his room.”

“That’s his theory.”

“Yes.”

Silence. Everybody fidgets, including Jack. Uncomfortable moments accumulate. Finally I stick my oar in and go, “Um, attempted to break in?”

“I know,” Jack says with a sigh. “Embarrassing. Two former special agents, and we couldn’t manage to break into a motel room. We had the key card, so it wasn’t even a break-in, technically. My only excuse, the place was being staked out by state police detectives, and they happened to be good.”

“They must have been very good,” Naomi suggests.

“More stubborn than good, but still. The plan was, Shane creates a diversion, I slip into his room and check it out for planted evidence.”

“What kind of diversion?”

“An exploding vehicle just around the corner from the motel. Specifically a small GMC pickup truck with a full tank of gas.”

“Failed to explode?”

“Oh, it exploded,” Jack says with some satisfaction. “The cab went fifty yards in one direction, the chassis in another, mostly straight up. Produced a very impressive fireball and a really nice mushroom cloud of black smoke. But the damn Staties didn’t move. It was like they were expecting a diversion and determined not to budge. No way I could get into the room undetected, which had been the whole point.”

Dane stirs, says, “Hey, I don’t get it. How’d they know to stake out Shane’s motel room less than an hour after the crime was reported? How did they even know he was involved at that point? The Cambridge cops had barely taken possession of the scene, let alone been in a position to identify suspects, or pass it on to the state police.”

“Good question,” Jack says. “Shane told me the motel must have been under surveillance before he called 911. He gets back to the vicinity of the motel ten minutes after he makes the call, the state police were already in place, well established. That’s when he knows for sure he’s being set up and that’s when he calls me.”

“And you responded, even though you may have been assisting in the commission of a felony murder.”

“Damn right. I’ve known the guy since the Academy. No way did he murder a client.”

“And did detectives recover a murder weapon?”

Jack shakes his head. “Not yet, and not from the motel room.”

“So your working theory was mistaken and nothing was planted to incriminate Shane?”

“I didn’t say that. The detectives found a bloodstained shirt under the bathroom sink in his room.”

“Ah. You’re assuming that’s the forensic link. Shane’s DNA on the shirt, blood matched to the professor?”

“That’s my assumption.”

“But the murder weapon is still out there.”

“So far.”

Naomi announces, “Excellent case briefing.”

To an outside observer she might seem inordinately pleased, considering the subject matter, but that’s the way she rolls. “We’ll assume for now that Shane is alive and being held in some unknown location for purposes of interrogation, pretty much as he predicted. If they’d wanted to kill him they would have done so, rather than go to the trouble of seizing him from this residence. Dane, you’ll work your sources at the Justice Department, see if there’s any scuttlebutt on Randall Shane, or any known involvement by a covert security agency.”

“Whatever this is, it’s buried deeper than deep,” Dane says. “I think a personal appearance is warranted. Show the flag.”

“Agreed,” Naomi says. “Take the shuttle.”

Dane pouts. “I was thinking the Gulfstream.”

Naomi, very firm: “Not warranted.”

“But the Benefactor is always very generous with his—”

“Shuttle. End of discussion.”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Dane, crossing her arms across her chest. “Ma’am” being what she calls boss lady when she doesn’t get her way.

Naomi ignores the attorney being spoiled and childish—the Benefactor’s personal Gulfstream is indeed at our disposal, but only for exigent circumstances—and turns to the elder male in our presence, the handsome alpha dog.

“Jack, you’ll turn up whatever you can on additional background on the victim and his theoretical son. And see about infiltrating QuantaGate.”

“Budget considerations?” he asks, looking up from his notebook with a furtive glance at the still-pouting Dane.

“Whoever it takes.”

“Great. I’ll go with the Invisible Man. Assuming he’s available.”

The Invisible Man is an operative Jack has used in the past. None of us have ever seen him. I’m assuming he’s not actually invisible.

“Use whatever operatives you see fit,” Naomi says. “And there may be another line of inquiry worth pursuing. As I recall, QuantaGate was financed by local venture capitalist Jonny Bing. Who I believe is an acquaintance of yours, Dane.”

Dane, startled, bursts out laughing. “You recalled or you Googled?”

“I recall,” Naomi says firmly. “Am I wrong?”

“We partied once or twice a few years ago,” Dane admits. “You remember Sasha? The party planner? When Sash and I were having our little thing, one of her top clients was Jonny Bing. Sash always called him Jonny Bling, which I thought was pretty cute. Of course at the time I thought everything she did and said was cute. Anyhow, Jonny had these amazing parties on his yacht. Looked more like a cruise ship to me, but you know how that goes. For an egocentric billionaire, he’s really kind of cool. Wild sense of humor, and he likes to see that a good time is had by all. If you want, I can call his people, see if he’ll consent to an interview.”

“Absolutely. Do it,” Naomi says. “Are the assignments clear? Dane? Jack? Alice? Yes? Teddy, you will continue to mine data but will steer clear of the Department of Defense. I remind you all that certain agencies within the national security community have been known to run covert operations under the Patriot Act, answerable to basically no one. At this time we’ll continue to keep a low profile with local law enforcement, and allow them to proceed on the murder case unhindered. Our primary task is to determine if the victim has a child, as Shane apparently believed, and if that child is in fact missing, and, if so, to recover the boy alive. Anything else is secondary, including, at the moment, the safe return of Randall Shane—and that’s the way he’d want it, I’m sure. Clear? Good. We’ll reconvene at 7:00 a.m. for the morning brief. Jack, given the early kickoff tomorrow morning, you may want to spend the night at the residence.”

“Only if there’s a chocolate mint under my pillow.”

“Always. Further thoughts, anyone?”

Jack impishly raises his hand. “Comment on ‘Ironic,’ the so-called pop song by Alanis What’s-her-face. A traffic jam when you’re already late is not ironic, it’s maddening or unfortunate. Red Sox beating Baltimore seventeen to ten and Don Orsillo announcing, ‘This is a real pitcher’s battle.’ That’s irony. Case closed.”

Naomi rolls her eyes.

Chapter Six

Why Murder Is like Real Estate

An invitation to meet a source at a certain upscale lounge on Boylston Street means dressing for the occasion. In this case, for Jack Delancey, that means slightly down. He has changed into an off-the-rack JoS. A. Bank blue blazer, one that dry-cleans easily, and a pair of light, cotton twill dress slacks with knife-sharp creases. Top-Sider shoes, ever so slightly scuffed, because the outfit is already kind of boaty, so why not go all the way?

Upon entering the retail area of the cigar store, Jack is waved past the bar and through into the lounge. Not a large venue by any means, but nicely furnished, and one of the few places in the city where a man—or a woman, for that matter—can legally enjoy an alcoholic beverage and a tobacco product at the same time, in a nonfurtive manner. The source awaits him, puffing on a fat Padron Maduro, a snifter of port at his side. He doesn’t bother to rise. “Hey, Jacko. Very sporty.”

Jack adjusts his slacks and takes a seat in a very comfortable leather chair, not far from the fireplace, directly opposite the source. “Captain Tolliver, my pleasure.”

Glenn Tolliver, a captain of detectives with the Massachusetts State Police, chuckles. “If we’re going to be formal, guess I’ll have to address you as Special Asshole in Charge.”

“Special Asshole, Retired. Or resigned. I’m too young to retire, right?”

“You smokin’ tonight, kid?”

“That’s a Padron 1926 you got there? What is it, thirty-five bucks?”

“A little more. Live a little—I already started your tab. The way I figure, if I’m going for the most expensive drink in the joint, I might as well have the most expensive cigar. Especially if my hotshot pal from the private sector is paying.”

“So, how is the port?”

“Excellent. Dow’s 30 Year, Tawny. Maybe when I’m retired or resigned, or whatever it is you are, I’ll be able to afford a place like this. You think your boss would hire me?”

“Wouldn’t count on it.”

“Not as long as she has you, is that it?”

“Something like that.”

Jack decides what the hell, he should be able to expense this somehow, so he orders what Tolliver is having. Soon enough they’re puffing like a couple of locomotives, snug in the luxuriant stink of fine tobacco, and Jack thinks, not for the first time, that sometimes in life you get what you pay for. Which in this case includes a high-ranking detective in the state police. No one has dared call him Piggy (on account of his slightly upturned nose) since his days as a linebacker for Boston College. In his mid-forties now, and somewhat florid of face, Tolliver still has the military bearing of a uniform trooper, and the cool, calculating eyes of a man who has observed the worst of human behavior, from careless murder to child abuse. As is so often the case, his response has been to develop a sense of humor so deep and dark and apparently careless that it can frighten civilians.

“Ah,” says Tolliver, exuding a plume of smoke from the pricey cigar. “Thank God the man got murdered on the left side of the river. If it was Boston we couldn’t touch it. Murder is like real estate: location, location, location.”

“I’m sure the good professor was happy to oblige.”

“Poor bastard. All those brains and they end up all over the floor.”

“You put eyes on the scene?”

“Always, Jack. I need to see it for myself. What better way to work up an appetite? So what’s your interest in the croak?”

“Croak? Is that new?”

“Word up, dude,” Tolliver says, affecting a much younger voice. “Got it off a paramedic who looks to be about twelve years old. He says, and I quote, ‘Excuse me, sir, but when can we move the croak?’”

“Kids these days.”

“Yeah. So? Your interest?”

“The big guy.”

Tolliver sits up a little straighter. “No shit? Randall goddamn Shane. I should have known. You probably knew him since the Academy, eh?”

“Exactly that long. How’d you get onto him so quick?”

“Wait, hold on now, you wouldn’t be harboring a fugitive, would you? Doing a favor for an old friend?”

“No, I would not.”

“Swear on your little black book?”

“My little black book went away when I married Eileen, but yes, I swear.”

“Because I couldn’t help you there. Other than to suggest you counsel the suspect to surrender himself posthaste.”

“Posthaste?”

“I have an education. Nuns gave their lives, and their rulers.”

Jack purses his lips, thinking over his next move. “Okay, here it is. I’ll tell you everything I know about where Shane might be if you’ll share why you want him for this.”

The state police detective sits back, smoking luxuriantly and thinking it over, or pretending to. All part of the tease because they both knew they were going to share before entering the premises, or the meet would not have taken place, certainly not on Jack’s dime.

“It was all very convenient,” Tolliver begins. “The tip came down from on high.”

“How high?”

“Not God himself, but close. A heads-up to be on the lookout for this former federal agent who had been observed entering and exiting the home of the victim.”

“The professor was under surveillance? Why?”

“I believe the term ‘national security’ may have been uttered. No details, of course. Other than that if we do pick him up we’re supposed to turn him over to the feds immediately.”

“What agency?”

“The notification came through Homeland. Which as you know doesn’t necessarily mean it originated there. Homeland can be a communication conduit for almost any other government agency, even those it doesn’t actively manage, like FBI and CIA.”

“And this tipster specified a local motel where Shane might be conveniently located?”

Tolliver is decidedly not amused. “Tell me that wasn’t you torching the vehicle.”

“It wasn’t me,” Jack says, pleased that he can be honest, at least in a technical sense. “Glenn, you should know I did have contact with your suspect later on in the day, before he was apprehended.”

“Apprehended? Like hell. I’d know if we had him in custody.”

“Not by you. Apprehended by others. Guys in black ski masks, very professional.”

The captain of detectives looks startled, then quickly regains some of his humor, shaking his head ruefully. “What do you know, they got there first. I can tell this is going to be a good one. What’s your interest? I mean besides the fact that you and the suspect were Academy sweethearts.”

“Mostly that. You know about his wife and kid?”

“I read the file, Jack.”

“Well, some of us keep an eye on Shane, help out when we can. He’s one of the good guys.”

“Yeah? If he’s so good what does that make the victim? One of the bad guys? And if we didn’t put your pal in cuffs, exactly who did?”

Jack, who has learned to balance his boss’s orders with the practicalities of maintaining access to various law enforcement agencies, decides to tell the captain of detectives what happened, mostly. He does so succinctly and without elaboration, as if writing a police report. By the time he gets to the end, Tolliver is openly gaping.

“Holy shit, a black helicopter? For real?”

“Figure of speech. No idea what color the thing actually was. But I swear you could barely hear it. Some kind of stealth version.”

“Still, I thought that was an urban legend.”

“Apparently not.”

“And they never showed a warrant?”

“Never said a word. Slam, bam, not even a ‘thank you, ma’am.’”

“Your boss must be freaked.”

“Naomi doesn’t freak.”

Tolliver shrugs, as if he doesn’t quite believe it. “So I heard. Good for her. Must be kind of weird, working for a female, huh?”

“Not weird at all.”

“No?”

Jack shakes his head, enough already.

Tolliver sighs. “Hey, one of these days maybe you’ll wangle me an invitation. I’d love to see the inside of that place.”

Jack changes the subject. “Long way around, Shane was not the shooter. That’s a definite. He’s that rarest of things, an innocent man.”

Tolliver snorts. “Nobody is innocent in this world, least of all Randall Shane. We have a garment with blood on it. A shirt, extra large, 17-inch neck, 37-inch sleeves. The shirt would fit your average gorilla. It has discernible splatter on the right sleeve, indicative of proximity to a gunshot. It will take a while, lab work being what it is, but I’ll bet you a bottle of this port that the blood belongs to the vic and the garment links to Mr. Shane.”

“No bet. You’re probably correct about the matchups but there’s an explanation: the shirt was deliberately used in the crime, donned by the real shooter and then planted. And if Shane never got back into his motel room, how did it get there?”

“Working on that. It’s not only the garment, which you already knew about from the detectives on scene, and don’t think I didn’t know that. There’s something else. Something way better.”

“Oh?” says the former FBI agent, the little hairs stirring on the back of his well-barbered neck.

“We have the murder weapon, Jack. Registered to your pal, and his prints are all over it.”

“What? Where?”

“Located behind a Dumpster on the same block. Like he tried to chuck it away and threw it a little too far.”

“Shit,” says Jack.

“Very deep shit,” the detective agrees, puffing happily on his forty-dollar cigar.

Chapter Seven

She Needs the Knowing

Maybe it was all that talk about Randall Shane’s sleep disorder, or the slice of strawberry rhubarb pie and the glass of ice-cold milk I quaffed an hour before bed (it can be dangerously tempting, having a superb chef living under the same roof), or the thought of a child so missing that people doubt he even exists, but for whatever reason, I can’t sleep a wink. Staring at the ceiling won’t work. Counting sheep, or anything, puts me in mind of bookkeeping, a wakeful activity. My mind is bright and will not shadow—lie awake long enough and I’ll start obsessing on my fake husband, and that leads to the money he swindled, the house we lost, hurtful things my sister said and so on, into an endless loop.

Times like this, the only thing that helps is to get up, don a robe and soft slippers and pad through the residence taking deep, restful breaths. The central lighting system has switched to the sleep mode, meaning the equivalent of night-lights at ankle height, providing soft illumination. Passing the room Jack Delancey uses when he’s spending the night in town, I detect the dirty-sock scent of the cigar smoke he carried home on his clothing, and smile to myself. Boys will be boys. Doubtless Jack was out with his cop buddies, sampling various bad-for-his-health potions. Did he learn anything interesting or useful? If so, he’ll make it known in the morning meet, which is something to look forward to.

Farther down the hall there are lights on under Teddy’s door, and the faint electric-train hum of the fans that cool his computers. He’ll be deep into the hunt. Ignoring the impulse to drop in, see how it’s going—our barefoot boy doesn’t need the distraction—I head on down the long hallway, over intervals of thick Persian carpets and cool hardwood flooring and take the back stairs, descending to the ground floor.

Despite the fact that we’d been invaded by armed thugs a little more than fifteen hours ago, I feel safer in the residence than anywhere else; safe because I know it intimately, the specific physicality of the place, and because my posse is within shouting distance. Naomi and Jack and, just lately, young Teddy, and even Mrs. Beasley. No, especially Mrs. Beasley, who I’m confident would defend me with her life, as I would her. Maybe this is what marines feel like, at night in their foxholes, surrounded by mortal danger but in the company of true, take-a-bullet buddies.

This wing of the residence has unusually high ceilings. On account of a very unusual architectural feature, a fifteenth-century Japanese Zen sand garden courtesy of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The original that was for many decades located in the Asian Gallery, not to be confused with the modern, picnic-friendly version located outside in the museum courtyard. According to Jack, who was already here when I came on board, the exact reproduction of the ancient garden was a gift of the Benefactor, who had loved it as a child. That’s his theory—when asked, Naomi manages to be quite vague on how the garden happened to move from the museum to the residence. Vague or not, she frequently seeks a kind of meditation there, although she refuses to use the word.

Relaxing, she calls it. Thinking.

And there she is in her favorite silk kimono, sitting on a stone bench in the lotus position, scratching in the recently raked sand with a long stick. Nocturnal lights of the city shaft through the skylights, softening the shadows. Already I’m feeling a little more relaxed, knowing that boss lady is adhering to routine, finding a pattern.

“Welcome,” she says, not the least surprised to see me wandering the residence at this time of night. “Be seated.”

“Ah,” I sigh, and park my butt on the unforgiving stone. “Have you ever considered cushions?”

“It’s more comfortable cross-legged.”

“Sorry, I don’t pretzel.”

“You need to learn to relax, my dear.”

“I need to know if there’s a missing kid. If there isn’t, I can relax. If there is, I relax by getting to work. Either way, I need the knowing.”

Naomi takes a long, slow inhale, as if savoring the slightly minty air, then exhales slowly, deliberately. “Me, too,” she says. “We’ll know more tomorrow but for now I’m thinking, yes, there is a missing child, based on nothing more than gut instinct.”

“How so?”

“I’ve been going over all the stuff Teddy found on Randall Shane. Shane doesn’t seem to be the type who is easily fooled. Quite the opposite. Plus he’s always been discerning, not to say cold-blooded, about the cases he agrees to work. If he’s not convinced a child is alive, he won’t proceed. Really, it’s the only way to fly. Otherwise you get sucked into the vortex of desperate parents who cling to hope, despite all evidence to the contrary.”

The way she says it makes me think, for a moment, that she’s been there, in the vortex. Then in the darkness she smiles and the certainty dissipates. She’s merely speaking from professional experience. Nobody is as cool and calculated about accepting cases as Naomi Nantz, who I have seen turn down weeping mothers camped out on the doorstep, begging for help. Generally speaking, a case must first be brought to Dane Porter, where it gets rigorously vetted as to merit and the possibility of success. Often there’s nothing to be done, or we can’t improve on what’s already being accomplished through normal law enforcement channels. But every now and then, a glimmer of hope shines through, and that seems to be happening now, based on nothing more than experience and judgment of character.

“I want in on this,” I say. “I want to help.”

“You’re always helpful, Alice. That’s why I hired you.”

“I mean out in the field.”

Her left eyebrow arches slightly. “What did you have in mind?”

“Let me chat with the neighbors. If the professor ever had a kid around, somebody must have noticed. Jack has more than enough ground to cover—this is something I can handle. Just chatting.”

Naomi draws a few more lines with her funny little rake. Looking up to meet my eyes she finally says, “Why not? You don’t look like a typical cop or an investigator and that may prove useful. Just be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Except when you aren’t,” she says with a smile.

There’s no reason at all that our brief conversation should help ease me into sleep, but for some reason it does. That and the sense, mostly unspoken, that if a child is missing, we’ll work the case until the child is found, or the sun goes cold, whichever comes first.

Chapter Eight

The Bad Boys Club

Taylor Gatling, Jr., the young founder and CEO of Gatling Security Group, likes to think that no matter how rich he gets, how much wealth and power he accumulates, a man should still empty his own spittoon. Unpleasant as it might be—and the thing has a vile smell, no question—it’s not a job to be delegated. Even if the man happens to have thousands of employees depending on his every whim, some of whom would no doubt consider it an honor to flush away the boss’s effluents, and scour the antique brass receptacle, and return it with a snappy salute and a brisk “Yes, sir! No problem, sir!”

Nope. He’ll handle the spittoon himself, thank you very much. A leader has to take responsibility for certain unpleasant tasks, something his own father never quite learned. And in this case it means he gets to spend a few moments by himself, out on his boathouse deck in New Castle, New Hampshire, overlooking the deep and roiled waters of the Piscataqua River, racing in the moonlight like a band of undulating mercury. Across the broad tidal river, shadowed and stark on its own few acres of island, rises the concrete carcass of the old Portsmouth Naval Prison, now abandoned, a fairy-tale castle with towers and turrets. Beyond that, the spiky tree line of the farther shore, interrupted by the occasional and very tasteful colonial mansions peeking out at the water from behind ancient guardians of spruce and fir. Elegant yachts moored in the cove, masts tick-tocking as hulls absorb the swell. Gatling smiles to himself when he recalls the real estate agent who handled the sale standing in this very spot and saying, “You can’t buy a view like this.” Pure salesman’s babble, and nonsense, because of course that’s exactly what Gatling was doing, he was buying the view. At the time the original century-old boathouse was falling into the mud, and would take half a million or so to restore to the current state of comfortably rustic, his own personal and very unofficial bad boys club. A luxury shack, lovingly restored, where he and his buds gather late into the night, playing poker, drinking and jubilantly spitting dip into their personally inscribed spittoons.

From inside comes a roar of laughter. A filthy joke has been told and celebrated. Gatling upends the spittoon, dumping the noxious contents into the tidal currents that curl around the deck pilings. No doubt in violation of some law of the current nanny state. No spitting in the river. Lift the seat before peeing. Women allowed everywhere. Not here, though. No wives, no girlfriends. Y chromosomes required, no exceptions.

When he steps into the card room, all eyes meet his. Taylor A. Gatling is the alpha wolf in this particular setting, well aware of his status. Thirty-eight years of age and just recently edged over into the billionaire level. Fit and trim, focused and self-contained, confident of his rarely expressed but deeply felt opinions. This is his place, his party, and the endless ribbing and mutual insults are all part of the camaraderie. The world being what it is, he keeps a security detail outside on the grounds, but here in the boathouse he’s just one of the boys, and he’s careful never to play at being the owner, or to show his cards unless called.

“You in?” asks one of his boys, dealing smartly, snapping the cards.

“Next game. I need a refill.”

He puts down the spittoon to mark his seat—that’s become the tradition—and heads over to the bar. Nothing fancy about it. Just a thick mahogany plank, three feet wide—hewn from a single tree, of course—a few wooden stools, a standard bar cooler for beer, a shelf of liquor displayed against a mirrored backing. Mostly high-end vodkas and some ridiculously overpriced bottles, a few oddly shaped, of single malt Scotch. Gatling pours two fingers of Macallan 18 into a fat-bottomed glass, and is about to return to the table—Jake the Snake is calling five card, jacks or better—when Lee Shipley sidles up the bar, puts a hand on his arm, briefly.

Lee, a retired New Castle cop old enough to be his father, keeps his raspy voice low and says, “Something you should know.”

Gatling sips from the glass. “Lay it on me, Chief,” he says, ready to make a joke of it, knowing the old man’s penchant for one-liners.

Lee glances at the table, where the first round of betting is under way—cash is the rule, no effing chips—and says, “I got a call from a brother officer, an old pal of mine who’s still on the job in Cambridge, Taxachusetts, and you’ll never guess who’s just been named in a murder inquiry.”

“No idea,” Gatling responds, playing along. “Mother Teresa? Martha Stewart?”

“This is serious, Taylor,” Lee says. “Randall Shane. They expect to have him in custody any moment.”

Taylor looks blank. “Sorry, Chief, I don’t get it.”

“Shane. That FBI jerk who testified against your dad.”

“That was twenty years ago. Lots of witnesses testified against him.”

“Yeah, but this guy Shane, he was the one got your father convicted. That’s what your dad believed. Told me so himself.”

“Yeah? Well, he never told me. If you recall, we weren’t exactly on speaking terms at the time. I was eighteen that summer—I’d just enlisted with the Marine Corps so I could get away from all that crap.”

Lee looks at him, can’t quite meet his eyes. They both know how it ended for Gatling’s father.

“Just thought you’d want to know.”

“Thanks, Lee. Best forgotten, though. Water under the bridge, or over the dam, or wherever it’s supposed to go.”

“Sorry,” the old man says, shrinking a little, now embarrassed.

“Hey. No need to be sorry. I appreciate your concern. You were his good and loyal friend when times got tough, and I’ll never forget that. Get yourself a glass, we’ll have a little toast.”

Lee Shipley, relieved, pours a splash from the same bottle, raises his glass.

“To the old man,” Taylor says. “May he rest in peace.”

“Amen to that.”

They sit down to play poker, and not another word is said about his late father. But inside, behind his bad boy smile, Gatling is very pleased by the news. Randall Shane, the so-called hero, is down for a count of murder in the first degree, a charge long overdue.

Good.

Chapter Nine

What the Cat Lady Said

There’s nothing very grand about the neighborhood where Professor Keener lived and died. The modest two-story house is one of a hundred similar wood-framed dwellings situated along this particular stretch of Putnam Avenue, some with actual white picket fences, in the area dubbed “Cambridgeport” because the Charles River winds around it like a dirty shawl. Keener’s place, built narrow and deep to fit the lot, appears to date from the 1940s, but it could easily be considerably older, having been renovated a few times along the way. Asphalt shingle siding removed, clapboards repaired and painted. Inside, carpets and linoleum have been taken up to expose the original hard-pine floors, a few interior walls taken down to open up the downstairs—I can see that much by peering through the windows from the narrow, slightly sagging front porch.

The front door has been sealed with yellow crime tape, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not like I’d attempt a break-in in broad daylight, or at any time, for that matter. The place has been thoroughly searched by professionals, and if there’s any evidence that Professor Keener had a son, surely it exists in the minds of neighbors, colleagues, friends. Memories can’t be so easily erased. Anyhow, that was my argument to boss lady, who normally doesn’t approve of me playing investigator, as she calls it. The homes on this block are close together, barely room to park a vehicle between them, and my plan is to prowl around the porch playing looky-loo until someone in the neighborhood responds, if only to tell me to mind my own business.

As it happens the watchful neighbor is a retired school bus driver, Toni Jo Nadeau, recently widowed, and she couldn’t be nicer. Pleasantly pear-shaped in velour loungewear, big hair and with the keen eyes of a nosey parker—in other words, exactly the person I was hoping to find.

“Excuse me,” she begins, having come out to her own little porch, right next door. “Are you looking for the professor?”

“Oh dear,” I say, clutching my handbag, acting a bit frazzled, which isn’t difficult. “No, no, I know he’s gone. Murdered, I should say, but that’s such an ugly word. Awful! No, I’m looking for his son? His five-year-old boy?”

Mrs. Nadeau gives me the once-over, decides I’m okay and introduces herself, including the part about her late husband. Then she glances up and down the street, as if to check if we’re being observed. “You mean the Chinese kid? Come around the back,” she says, gesturing down the narrow driveway. “My cats own the front rooms, we can talk in the kitchen.”

Unlike some of the other homes in the neighborhood, Toni Jo’s house has not been upgraded in the last few decades, and the kitchen still has the feel—and smell—of a place where cooking happens. Most recently, roast lamb with a few cloves of fresh garlic, if my nose hasn’t failed me. She urges me to have a seat at her little counter, offers coffee, which I decline, having already topped up on caffeine, courtesy of Mrs. Beasley. “I’m good, thank you. Alice Crane,” I say, offering my hand. “I work in the physics department. As a secretary slash office manager, I wouldn’t know an electron if it bit me on the ankle! This is so nice of you. I’m at my wit’s end. Did you say Chinese boy? I’ve been so worried.”

“Oh yeah?” she says cautiously, attempting to suss me out.

“Couldn’t sleep a wink last night, worrying about that poor little guy.”

“Wait,” she says, her eyes hooding slightly. “You know the kid?”

“No, no,” I say, shaking my head and keeping up the frazzled bit. “Never met him myself, and nobody in the department seems to know where he is, or who has legal custody. But everybody says Joe had a little boy, so he must be somewhere, mustn’t he?”

“Everybody, huh?”

“You know how it is. People talk.”

“And they say the kid is Professor Keener’s son, do they?”

It’s easy enough to look befuddled. “Do I have it wrong? Oh dear, maybe I’m worried about nothing. But you said—what was it you said?”

“Haven’t yet,” she says, going all cagey. “Joe, is that what his friends called him? Really? He was always Professor Keener to me. Very formal man, very private about himself. First time I went over there and introduced myself he looked at the ground and said, ‘Professor Keener,’ and that’s how it stayed. It fit him, too. He was the perfect neighbor, really. Anyhow, he used to have a little kid that came around on a regular basis, but that stopped a couple of years ago. Not every day, but like on weekends. A toddler, couldn’t have been more than three years old, the last time I noticed. Played in the backyard a few times, but mostly they kept him inside.”

“They?” I ask, genuinely surprised.

“The Chinese lady I assumed to be his wife. Or ex- wife, or whatever. She was always here with the boy and she was obviously his mother. She’s a real beauty, an exotic type, wears those formal Chinese dresses, doesn’t speak a word of English. At least not to me.”

“But you haven’t seen her or the boy for the last two years?”

“Something like that. At first I thought maybe she was just a friend of his. They didn’t look like a couple, if you know what I mean. Not even a divorced couple. But one day one of my ninjas got out.”

“Excuse me?”

“My kitty cats. Ninjas, I call ’em. I’m owned by four cats, shelter cats, and they like to hide under the furniture, whack your ankles as you go by. Anyhow, Jeepers got out and bolted over to Professor Keener’s yard, and the little boy was sitting in the sandbox, playing with a scoop, and wouldn’t you know, Jeepers was interested in the sandbox, or that’s what I thought. I go running out, afraid the kid might get scratched, but the cat was sitting there, perfectly well behaved, letting the little boy pet her. Very cute, I wish I’d had my camera. The professor came out at the same time, and I retrieved Jeepers and he retrieved the boy, and we had ourselves a little conversation. Which is all you ever got with the professor. I said, what an adorable child, I can see he takes after his father, and he smiled and said, ‘He’s my keyboard kid,’ and that was all. Not another word. I mean, what does that mean, ‘keyboard kid’? I asked, but the conversation was obviously over. He never even told me the boy’s name.”

“But you took him to mean the boy was his son.”

“Absolutely. You could tell, the way he was holding him, the pride in his eyes. He actually looked me in the eye that one time, just for a second, and I could tell how much he loved the boy. And close-up like that you could see the resemblance, I wasn’t kidding about that.”

“You haven’t seen the child in at least two years. Did you ever ask Professor Keener where his son was? Why he didn’t come around anymore? What happened to the boy’s mother? Anything like that?”

Mrs. Nadeau shakes her head, gives me a flinty, dismissive look, almost scornful. “Who are you really?” she wants to know. “If you worked with Professor Keener, you’d know what he was like. You’d know not to ask him personal questions like that. What are you, some kind of reporter?”

Boss lady always says that when you’re engaged on a case, it’s best to season your prevarication with just enough truth to make it edible—and be ready to alter the recipe on the fly. “Not a reporter, no, absolutely not,” I say, backpedaling in place. “And to be totally truthful with you—I’m so sorry I fibbed—I never actually worked in the physics department and I never met Professor Keener personally. But before he died, before he got killed, Keener hired a friend of mine to help him find his missing five-year-old son. It was my friend—he’s a former FBI agent who specializes in child recovery—it was my friend who found the body, okay? And my friend who is now a suspect in the murder.”

To my surprise, Toni Jo Nadeau grins at me. “This is a much better story, sugar,” she says, eyes bright with interest. “Some of it might even be true.”

“Please don’t tell the police. They’ll think I’m meddling.”

“Describe this ‘friend’ of yours and I’ll think about it.”

“You want to know what he looks like?”

She shakes her head. “I know what he looks like. I want to know if you know what he looks like.”

“You know… Oh, I get it. You happened to notice when he visited Professor Keener, is that it?”

“I’m waiting, sugar.”

“Okay, what he looks like. Here goes. Well, for starters, he’s a hunk, big and lean and tall. Way over six foot—I mean, I barely come up to his shoulders, you know? Soulful eyes. And a cute little salt-and-pepper chin beard.”

Mrs. Nadeau nods along with the description. “You had me at hunk, sugar. That’s our boy. I saw him ringing the bell over there last week and my first thought, I wish he was ringing the bell over here, you know what I mean? No offense, but your man is tasty.”

As you may have noticed, I’m rarely at a loss for words, but that pretty much stops my tongue. Mrs. Nadeau notices my discomfort and reaches out to pat my hand. “Wispy little thing like you, I’m guessing he really is just a friend. Don’t look so worried, these things take time.”

Wispy? I’m wearing what I call my librarian glasses, Target clothing and a cloth handbag, going for the nonthreatening mousy look. But wispy? Really?

“Man like that, he’d want a woman with some meat on her bones,” Mrs. Nadeau says. “Somebody with a little bounce in her jounce. But he may come around. You just hang in there.”

When my power of speech finally resumes, I say, “Yesterday morning, when it happened, did you notice anything wrong?”

Mrs. Nadeau explains that because of her allergies—she’s allergic to cats, why is that no surprise?—she takes an antihistamine before bed and sleeps, in her words, like a dead dodo bird. Therefore she has no awareness of what happened in the early hours, or who might have murdered Joseph Keener.

“The sirens woke me. That’s the first I knew something was wrong. The cops wouldn’t tell me what happened, but when I saw that body bag coming out I knew it was bad. The worst. The poor, poor man. I wonder who’ll get the house.”

On my way out the narrow driveway, I stop to take a gander at the dead man’s backyard. And there, partially obscured by fallen leaves, is a child’s sandbox, covered with a plastic turtle lid. Looks like it hasn’t been used in a while, but that fits with what the cat lady said, and as far as I’m concerned proves beyond doubt that a child once played here.

A little boy, missing.

Chapter Ten

Promises to Keep

Kidder loops the big brass padlock over his index finger and shows it to the woman he thinks of as New Mommy.

“You’ll be safe,” he says in his teasing, wheedling way. “It’s a finished basement with a kitchenette, full bath, a nice pool table and a big-screen TV. Plenty of room for the kid’s keyboard. It’s not like you’ll be locked up in a dungeon.”

“The basement is fine, but why do we have to be locked in?” she says. Seated on a divan, the little brat clinging to her side.

“Because your boyfriend said so, that’s why.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Shane saved my life once. I owe him.”

“That’s sweet. Down you go.”

The boy has tucked his head into her hip, averting his face. She strokes his hair, tries to calm him, but the kid picks up on her nervous tension and avoids making eye contact with Kidder. Nothing new there, the brat has never liked him.

“I need to speak to Shane,” the woman pleads. “I want Shane to tell me why we have to be locked into the basement whenever you go out. It’s not like I’m going to run away.”

“I told you, it’s for your own protection. You and the kid. I’m a bodyguard, I’m guarding, and that’s really all you need to know. Those were his instructions and I intend to follow them to the letter.”

“This isn’t right,” she mutters.

Kidder squats so that he’s at eye level. His predatory grin has all the warmth and welcome of a chilled ice pick. “This is not a topic for discussion,” he says softly. “The word comes down from the big guy, we obey. End of story.”

“But why—”

Kidder puts a finger on her mouth, feels her trembling inside. “Sssh,” he says. “You’re going to play in the basement for a while, isn’t that right? You and the kid will be nice and cozy, safe as churches. I’ll be back this evening, we’ll have pizza, maybe watch a movie.”

The touch of his fingertip is like a button shutting off her resistance. Less than a minute later he snaps the padlock on the hardened steel door of the secure room in the cottage basement, heads for his vehicle and is soon exiting the gated estate. A few miles west of the rocky coastline, this scenic road will intersect a major highway. Until then he makes sure to keep just below the speed limit. It would be very awkward if one of the local cops pulls him over, wants to see what he has defrosting in the trunk.

Yikes.

Kidder feels content with his purpose—this new, last-minute assignment is going to be fun. Challenging but fun. He glances at Google Maps in his lap and thinks happy thoughts.

Chapter Eleven

Where It Gets Complicated

I return to the residence walking on air.

Alice Crane, Super Investigator, able to successfully interrogate reluctant neighbors, discover leaf-obscured sandboxes and enter tall buildings in a single bound. Okay, the neighbor wasn’t exactly reluctant, but still, it was my idea and I came away with an eyewitness account that proves beyond doubt, to me at least, that Joseph Keener was the father of a small child. Considering the circumstance, I shouldn’t feel this happy—a kid is missing, what is there to be happy about?—but the success of the mission makes me want to punch the air and shout yes! just like they do in the movies, only Mrs. Beasley might see me and throw a stale muffin at my head. Not that her baked items ever last long enough to go stale, but you get the idea.

Be cool, girl. Like it’s all in a day’s work.

Right, right, let me give it a try. Trying, trying. Nope, never happen. I’ll never be cool. Not unless cool involves shouting, “I did it! I did it!” while bounding up the stairs to the command center.

Only to find the big room hushed and empty.

For one horrible moment I imagine that the mysterious assault team returned in my absence, abducting everyone but me. And then light footsteps come padding along the hallway carpet and boss lady pokes her head inside the door.

“You screamed?” she says, and beckons me to follow.

She and Teddy have been hunkered down at his main computer terminal, all agog over some new spy program developed by our young software genius.

“It’s so simple that it’s almost beautiful,” boss lady enthuses, acting very much like a proud mother. “And it’s functioning perfectly.”

“Simple also means limited,” he reminds her. “We can look but not touch.”

“It’s a kind of invisible, undetectable window into their system,” Naomi explains, attempting to share. “Planted by Jack’s operative at Keener’s company, QuantaGate.”

“More like a reflection of a window,” Teddy corrects. He manages to look embarrassed and pleased at the same time. Then, as if to deflect attention away from his fauxhawked self, he goes, “Alice? Um, what happened out there?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just proved that the dead professor had a kid, that’s all. With a mysterious Chinese lady.”

That finally gets their attention.

“Details,” boss lady demands.

“I should save it for the next case briefing.”

“Don’t be cute,” she says, giving me The Squint. The Squint means we’ve had our fun but joke-time is over, wisecracks are no longer appreciated. It’s boss lady turning off the friendly switch and getting serious and making you serious, too. And so I give her the play-by-play, including the demon cats and the sandbox, and Professor Keener calling the child his “keyboard kid.”

“Odd that he would call him that,” she says. “I wonder what it means, exactly. It must mean something.”

Riffing, I say, “Maybe if you’re a weird genius that’s a term of endearment. Anyhow, the point is, whatever their names are, the mother and child used to visit frequently, but the visits stopped two years ago. Haven’t been seen since, at least by the neighbor. They stopped coming around. Does that mean the mother broke up with the professor, possibly returned to China?”

“I suppose anything is possible at this point. Whoever this woman is, Keener kept her off the grid. Randall Shane never mentioned anything about the mother being Chinese.”

“He didn’t have time to mention much of anything before the windows got kicked in.”

“Good point. Give Jack and Dane a call, let them know about the boy.”

“Will do.”

Boss lady nods, frowning to herself. “I’d love to know what the ‘keyboard kid’ reference means. We’ll try Googling the phrase, but off the top of your head, what first comes to mind when you hear the word keyboard?”

I shrug. “Computers, I guess. And pianos.”

“Pianos?”

“Pianos have keyboards.”

“Right! Of course they do. Hmm. Interesting.”

Without formally ending the conversation—a habit she has when distracted—Naomi wanders away, looking even more thoughtful than usual, which is sort of like saying a saint looks even more religious when the halo blinks on.

Chapter Twelve

Waves of Water, Waves of Light

The good ship Lady Luck currently resides at an upscale marina in Quincy, just south of the city, in sight of the skyscrapers in the financial district, which seems fitting. Speaking of skyscrapers, Jonny Bing’s hundred-and-ninety-foot yacht looms over every other boat in the marina, many of them quite sizable, but nothing much compared to four stories of Lady Luck, gleaming like a huge pile of freshly laundered cash.

Jack Delancey positions his spotless vehicle in the far reaches of the marina parking lot, where it’s less likely to get dinged. He’s just back from Concord, New Hampshire, three and a half hours turnaround, a waste of time, most of it spent behind the wheel, and he’s more than ready to stretch his legs on this last little task before reporting back to Naomi. He happily saunters past a waterfront condo development, which includes a few trendy restaurants and at least one destination bar that’s been cited numerous times for an infestation of noisy, wine-quaffing yuppies. The rent-a-cop at the gate picks up on Jack’s cop vibe and waves him through with a lazy salute that makes the former FBI agent grin to himself. Beyond the breakwater the harbor sparkles under a clear sky, although the view is more than a little restricted by the sheer bulk of Lady Luck.

He proceeds along a system of floating docks. Thirty yards from the enormous yacht, Jack pauses to flip open his cell. By previous arrangement he identifies himself and announces his proximity. Less than a minute later a little Asian dude wearing a faded pink guayabera, baggy shorts and a jaunty gold-braided captain’s hat comes out to what Jack assumes is the bridge and waves him aboard. A red-carpeted gangway delivers him to one of the lower decks, where he waits for further guidance. Almost immediately the little dude with the spiffy captain’s hat leans over a rail of an upper deck and asks, in a distinctive Boston accent, “You wearing deck shoes, Mr. Delancey?”

Jack shakes his head, sticks out a perfectly polished leather shoe. “Morellis.”

“Ten and a half?”

“Eleven.”

“Wait there.”

Minutes pass. The little dude returns with a pair of brand-new Sperry Top-Siders, still in the box. He comes down a curving, mahogany-railed stairway, hands the box to Jack. “Keep ’em,” he says. “We’ve got plenty.”

“You’re Jonny Bing.”

“The one and only,” the little dude says, pleased to be recognized.

Jack unlaces his Italian handmades, slips on the Top-Siders. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice. It’s much appreciated.”

“Any friend of Dane’s. Although I do prefer friends of the female persuasion, whatever their sexual orientation. Just so you know.”

Jack follows Bing up the staircase to the second deck, then in through the open doors of a palatial salon, furnished with several leather thrones. The salon, obviously where Bing does his entertaining, is designed to make jaws drop and offshore bank accounts wither. It spans the width of the vessel, and could have been furnished by Michael Jackson, back in the day, were it not for the distinct lack of chimpanzees. Lushly draped polarized windows reveal a spectacular view of the harbor. Must be ten varieties of exotic blond hardwoods at play in the trim, all curving and varnished. The inlaid teak deck beneath his Top-Siders feels as solid and unmoving as gold bullion.

Jack whistles in appreciation, which pleases Jonny Bing.

“Hundred million,” he says, waving Jack to one of the lushly upholstered leather thrones. “Not that you asked. But people want to know.”

“I did wonder. Thanks for sharing.”

Bing takes off his captain’s hat, revealing a thatch of thick, glossy black hair, cut fashionably short on the sides, and with what looks suspiciously like an emo bang over his left eye. Add that to his diminutive size and the slightness of his build, and the second-generation Chinese-American billionaire looks like an eager teenager, but Jack happens to know that he’s in his late thirties. Bing’s slightly mischievous expression is more welcoming than might be expected, considering the high-altitude circles where he flies, or, more accurately, cruises. Jack has met his share of the super wealthy, and usually finds them guarded with strangers, or at least more outwardly canny. Jonny Bing looks like a boy who has just come down to Christmas, found everything he ever dreamed of under the tree and is willing to share his new toys with anyone who comes in the door. Or hatch, or whatever it is. Notwithstanding the fact that he’s a native of Gloucester, Jack’s experience with boats is somewhat limited—an endless summer when he was sixteen, toiling on his uncle Leo’s leaky, smelly scallop dragger as penance for various infractions, and the occasional striper fishing with a Marblehead cop-buddy who married money, and therefore can afford a nice thirty-foot center cockpit with twin outboards. The striper boat, which is Jack’s idea of rich, would fit comfortably in the far corner of the Lucky Lady’s main salon, with plenty of room left over for a bowling alley.

“Sorry about the lack of fawning servants,” says Jonny Bing, lounging back in his throne, which threatens to engulf him. “In ten days Lady heads for Bermuda, so the crew is on furlough through the weekend. We have the place to ourselves. There’s a full bar, or I could manage a juice or a coffee or whatever. Sparkling water?”

“I’m good,” Jack says. “This chair is so comfortable I may never get up. What kind of leather is this?”

“Sick, eh? It’s made from the skin of young virgins.”

“Excuse me?”

“Kidskin. Young goats,” Bing adds impishly.

“Ah,” Jack says, a little relieved in spite of himself, visions of billionaire psychopaths receding into bad movie land. “Obviously you heard about Professor Keener.”

For the first time Jonny Bing breaks eye contact. He sighs and drums his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I couldn’t believe it. Who’d want to kill poor Joe? It doesn’t make any sense. You know how they always say ‘he didn’t have an enemy in the world.’ Well, Joe really didn’t.”

“He had at least one,” Jack points out.

Bing shudders. “I keep thinking it was a mistake. Like they went to the wrong address, or mistook him for someone else.”

“I suppose mistaken identity remains a possibility, but it doesn’t look to go that way,” Jack says. “More like a professional hit.”

“That’s insane.”

“I think Dane mentioned we’re looking for background on Joseph Keener. Your name came up.”

“Whatever you need.”

“It’s usually best to start at the beginning. How did you happen to invest in Professor Keener’s company?”

Bing touches his slender fingertips together as if making a steeple. “How it usually happens. He was brought to my attention by one of my researchers.”

Jack has his reporter’s notebook open on one knee, ballpoint pen in hand. “In what context?” he asks.

Bing seems amused by the question. “You know how it works in the game of venture capitalism, Mr. Delancey? No? Why should you, you’re a man of action, am I right? Not a banker. So I could bullshit you about computer modeling and try to make it sound all scientific, but the truth is, what I do is gamble on brilliant people. And to do that I have to know about them. As you may be aware, my investments are in emerging technology. That’s my area of expertise. I made my first three hundred million betting on video streaming software while I was still at the B School. I heard about a couple of BU geeks who had an interesting idea and I backed them with money from my parents’ restaurant, and we all got very, very rich. But you can’t rely on the grapevine to bring you opportunity. You have to be tuned in. You have to find the next new thing and make your own luck, which, believe me, is not so easy. What happened in this case, Joe published a paper in a scientific journal that caused something of a stir, and we decided to meet with him and see if he had any ideas for practical applications. He supplies the ideas, we provide finance and structure for the business model. I’m an entrepreneur, not a physicist, and I do not pretend to understand Joe’s theories about gated photons, but I understood immediately that he was a genius.”

“How so?”

Bing smiles, as if at a pleasant recollection. “You and I look out this window and see a beautiful scene. Joe looks out and sees how light works, on the very smallest level. What happens when an individual photon, the tiniest component in a beam of light, is either absorbed or reflected. Joe saw and understood the energy within waves: waves of water, waves of light. At first he didn’t even want to talk with us, and swore he had no interest in founding a private research lab, but my instincts told me otherwise, and so I persisted, and finally he began to talk about light, and that’s when I knew. That’s why I succeed where others fail, Mr. Delancey, because I am tenacious by nature. I fasten my teeth on the ankles of genius and I won’t let go.”

Jack looks up from his notebook. “Strange way to put it, Mr. Bing.”

“Call me Jonny. No, not strange at all. I know exactly who I am, okay? I’m a little bulldog, I don’t give up. I keep fighting. And believe me, Joseph Keener was worth fighting for. And not just because of the financial opportunity. His ideas, the particular way he thought about things, it’s a privilege to know a person like that, because there are only a handful alive in the world at any one time.”

“So what was he like on a personal level?”

Bing chuckles, sounding surprisingly girlish. “Joe didn’t really have a personal level, not one he could share. Do you know what Asperger’s is, Mr. Delancey?”

“Not really. I’ve heard the term. Something to do with autism.”

“That’s right, and at the moment it’s a very trendy diagnosis. There’s been a lot of nonsense talked about Asperger’s syndrome, mostly by pop shrinks who should know better. They’d like us to think that every creative and difficult person suffered from a mild form of autism, from Leonardo to Einstein. It’s become the excuse for behaving like a selfish asshole. Sorry, my Asperger’s made me do it! Asperger’s means I can be rude and it’s not my fault! But I think Joe really did have some form of the disorder. He struggled mightily to deal with us mere humans, if you know what I mean.”

“Don’t think I do,” Jacks says. “What was he like? Personally, I mean.”

“Difficult to describe. It’s as if Joe wanted to connect with people but didn’t quite know how. Early on I mentioned his shyness and told him that it wouldn’t be a problem, he didn’t have to meet or talk with anyone who made him uncomfortable, and he told me the most remarkable thing. He said he wasn’t really shy, but that he had learned to mimic shyness because it’s more socially acceptable than explaining that he prefers to be alone because the only place he ever felt comfortable was inside his own head.”

“That may be helpful,” Jack says, making a note. “Did he ever mention growing up in foster care?”

“Mention it?” Bing shrugs. “Not directly. I know his parents died when he was an infant, and that he was raised by a succession of foster parents. I asked him what was that like once, he said it was adequate.”

“Adequate? A strange way to put it.”

“That was Joe. He once told me his real father was the public library. That’s where he discovered who he was, by looking in books and finding math and physics and so on.”

“What was the connection to Caltech, do you know? How he happened to go there at such a young age? To the other end of the country?”

Bing smiles. “Again, it was light. He read an article by someone who taught at Caltech and decided he had to go there. Distance from home didn’t matter, since he didn’t think of himself as having a home in the usual sense. I believe his high school principal made a few calls. Everybody knew he was special, you knew it the moment you met him. Different, but special. I can’t really explain it, but he was.”

“You’re doing fine, Mr. Bing. I’m getting the picture. The victim—excuse me, Joseph Keener—was brilliant but socially inept.”

Jack has been waiting to drop a particular bomb ever since he heard from Alice, earlier in the day. Good stuff, and he happily decides to make use of it. “How did he happen to meet that Chinese girlfriend of his, do you know?”

Bing appears stunned by the question, maybe even a little hurt. As if he’d been under the impression that he and Jack were becoming quite chummy, and a question like that was simply out of bounds.

“Chinese girlfriend?” Bing says. “No, I don’t think so. I seriously doubt that. Joe didn’t have a girlfriend that I know of. Chinese or any other kind. No, no, no.”

“I thought maybe you put them together.”

Bing puts a small hand to his heart. “Me? Why would you think that?”

“You know lots of beautiful women, Mr. Bing. Maybe Joe was at one of your, um, gatherings, and you introduced him to a lady, something like that.”

“Because you think he had a Chinese girlfriend, I had to be involved? I’m insulted.”

“No insult intended. I mean, where else would Keener have had the opportunity to cross paths with such an exotic beauty? I’m sure it was quite innocent. A social occasion, two people meet who happen to have you in common. No big deal. Not insult worthy.”

Bing keeps shaking his head, disturbing the emo bang, and looks, for a brief moment, something like his age. “No, no, no. Never happened.”

“So you wouldn’t know about the baby they had? A five-year-old?”

“Definitely, I am now insulted.” Bing studies his small hands, examining his beautifully buffed nails. He seems to have recovered his aplomb. “Someone has given you bad information, Mr. Delancey. That is the only explanation. As far as I know, Joe Keener never had an actual relationship with a woman, or with anybody, really. Not that kind of relationship.”

“It doesn’t take a relationship to father a child,” Jack points out.

Jonny Bing laughs, a little too sharply. “Believe me, I know that! But seriously, someone has been pulling your leg. Not Joe. No way.”

“Okay,” says Jack, letting it go for the time being. “What about enemies, threats, anything of that nature? Something connected with QuantaGate, perhaps?”

Bing thinks about it. “I’m the prime investor, but that doesn’t mean I have anything to do with the day-to-day operations. Quite the opposite. Still, I would know if there was anything to be concerned about. Corporate espionage is always a worry, but those types steal information—trade secrets and so on—they don’t kill.”

“But there is something worth stealing?”

“Absolutely,” Bing says, folding his spindly little arms.

“So what exactly do they make at QuantaGate?” Jack asks, pressing.

Another big, boyish grin as Bing raises his eyes, looks directly at Jack. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you—sorry, bad joke under the circumstances. The truth is, I don’t know or understand the technical specifics, but it’s public knowledge that the company has an exploratory contract with the Defense Department to develop a new way for computers to communicate over long distances. Joe had a theory about that, which he believed had practical applications. That was the basis for the company, taking one of his ideas and finding a way to make it work.”

“And did he? Make it work?”

Jonny Bing smoothes the thatch of hair away from his eyes, grimacing slightly. “No, not yet. There are many difficulties, which is to be expected with a breakthrough technology. To my surprise, the DOD has shown remarkable patience and has continued to fund the project. They seem to understand that they’re dealing with the future, and that it will take a while to get there.”

“And now that Professor Keener is gone?”

The smaller man shrugs. “The project continues as long as there is funding. We will continue to work on developing practical applications to Joe’s theories. Beyond that, I have no way of knowing. Time will tell.”

“Who gets his share of the company?”

Bing winces, looking slightly embarrassed. “I was looking into that just before you arrived. The answer is, I don’t know, not yet. Voting control of the shares, which are privately held, reverts to the partners. That’s me, mostly. But any income derived will go to his estate.”

“So you won’t benefit financially?”

A somber expression adds years to his youthful appearance, making him look closer to forty than thirty. “I don’t benefit at all, Mr. Delancey. No, no, no. Joe dying is absolutely the worst thing that could happen. If faith in QuantaGate collapses the whole investment is in jeopardy.” Bing sighs, fishes a vibrating cell phone out of one of the guayabera’s many pockets, checks the screen. “Sorry, it’s been really cool talking with an action dude like you, but I have calls to catch up on. Can you find your way out?”

“No problem.” Jack stands up, shoots his cuffs. “Just one thing. You mentioned a concern about corporate espionage. Who handles security for QuantaGate?”

“The usual rent-a-cops, I suppose,” Bing says vaguely, as if he couldn’t care less. “Sorry, but that kind of day-to-day really isn’t my thing. I’m a big picture guy.”

“I can see that,” Jack says affably, offering his hand.

“Tell Dane to have her people call my people. Joke, joke. She has my number.”

“Thanks again for your time,” Jack says. “And have a blast in Bermuda.”

Kidder observes the marina from his vehicle, from a carefully chosen location not covered by any of the security cameras he’s been able to identify. Most of the cameras are along the shoreline, focused on the floating dock area, which makes sense, and presents a mild level of difficulty. All part of the game. As is the constant awareness that he has an item in the trunk that will be defrosting in the heat, and that must be delivered before it goes bad.

Tick tock.

Watching through his pair of small Nikon binoculars, Kidder sees the lean, athletic man in the sharp suit exiting the big yacht, striding purposefully toward the security gate, obviously leaving the area. This is good. Every inch of the guy says “senior investigator,” and Kidder doesn’t need the complication of dealing with a professional, not when he has to find a way around the security cameras.

Using the Nikons, he follows the sharp dresser to the back of the marina parking lot, and manages to pick up the plate number on the gleaming Lincoln Town Car as it makes the turn. What is the guy, a glorified chauffeur? Would any self-respecting investigator have an uncool ride like that? Maybe he’s misread Mr. Sharp, maybe he’s an empty suit, but that can all be resolved later, when he runs the plate.

For now, keep to the task at hand. Kidder glasses the big yacht, notes again that it’s tied to the farthest of the floating piers, just inside the breakwater. Kidder grunts, having arrived at a solution. There’s more than one way to skin a cat—not that he’s ever skinned one, he sort of likes cats, cats are killers—and more than one way to board a fat-cat yacht.

One if by land, he thinks, grinning to himself, two if by sea.

Chapter Thirteen

Life Is Short But She’s Not

Dane Porter perches at a sidewalk table in downtown D.C., seething. Her arms are firmly crossed, her brow furrowed. She has never been so humiliated. First she’s refused entrance to the FBI by a pudgy female with a smug attitude, and then she’s ordered to cool her heels—and heels is where the trouble began—at a Five Guys hamburger joint.

As if. A French fry hasn’t passed her lips in two birthdays, at least, which is part of how she maintains her lithe and youthful figure and a body mass index of nineteen. She’s in the open air, but every time the restaurant doors open she can feel deep-fried calories exuding through the atmosphere.

Twenty minutes, the voice on the cell had promised, and sure enough in twenty minutes exactly Assistant Director of Counterterrorism Monica Bevins comes striding up the sidewalk, all six foot plus of her, looking in every way formidable. Smart, no-nonsense hairdo, power pantsuit, black executive handbag on a long strap slung from her wide athletic shoulders. Ready to leap tall bureaucracies in a single bound, save the planet, no problem that can’t be solved.

“Attorney Porter?”

Dane stands, formally shakes the big lady’s hand, figuring that’s what you do with high-ranking feds, you tug the forelock and curtsy, or whatever.

Bevins towers over her.

“Let’s go inside, shall we?”

Dane opens her mouth to demur—she loathes the smell of frying cow—but AD Bevins is already moving through the door. A force-of-nature type, obviously, and used to assuming full command of any given situation. Bevins marches to a recently vacated table in the back of the place, sweeps away the peanut shells, slips into a seat, points Dane to a chair.

“You hungry? You want something?”

“I’m good, you?”

“I’d love a dog and fries but I’m dieting.”

“Oh?”

“I’m always dieting. Dieting sucks. You wouldn’t know because you’ve never weighed more than what, a hundred and five?”

Dane wants to tell the big lady that she, too, has to watch her weight, but knows from past experience that, given the exquisite petiteness of her figure, nobody wants to hear it. “So what are we doing here?” Dane asks. “I offered to take you to lunch at Café Milano. They have lovely salads.”

“Ambient noise,” the big woman intones, lowering her voice. “Lots of ambient at Five Guys.”

“You think we might get bugged?”

Bevins smiles and shrugs. “Better safe than sorry. Considering who may be involved.”

“There’s a ‘who’?” Dane says, bright with excitement. “What have you learned?”

“First, tell me what happened at the checkpoint. All I heard, Naomi Nantz’s personal attorney failed to pass security.”

“My heels,” Dane says, showing off her Pampili strap-ons. “This horrible woman made me take them off so she could measure. Said the maximum heel length allowed is three-and-a-half inches and mine were five, and I’d have to leave them with her if I wanted to enter the building. I said I wasn’t going to walk the halls of Justice in my bare feet and that was that.”

AD Bevins smiles, her eyes twinkling.

“Glad to amuse you,” Dane says tartly. “These heels cleared Homeland Security at Logan Airport. That should be good enough.”

“Logan will never be good enough,” Bevins responds darkly. “Flight 11? Mohamed Atta? Ancient history, but it still rankles.” The big woman grimaces and leans forward, her face inches from Dane’s, as she begins to speak very quietly, almost a murmur that very nearly blends into the bright background noise of the restaurant. Her breath is mouthwash-minty. “You first. I understand you bring news of my friend Randall Shane. What’s the latest?”

Keeping her voice equally low, Dane says, “In the last hour or so we confirmed that his client, Joseph Keener, did indeed have a child, possibly out of wedlock. All evidence of the child had been erased from the crime scene. Well, almost all evidence: one of our investigators found a sandbox under some leaves in the backyard, and a neighbor who will swear to the little boy’s existence, and to the fact that the mother is Chinese, possibly a Chinese national. It’s clear that the victim was secretive about the child, for reasons yet to be determined.”

“I never doubted it,” Bevins says.

“That the kid was real?”

The big woman nods. “Shane wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. He can be fooled—we all can, depending on circumstance—but not like that. Not Randall Shane.”

“What’s your take on the case against him? All the physical evidence indicates he killed the professor.”

“Crap. His own gun? A bloody shirt? Shane does the deed, then keeps blood evidence? No way.”

“So you believe he’s been set up?”

Bevins nods, keeping direct eye contact with Dane. “No doubt. There are national security implications I can’t discuss with you, and which I’m not fully briefed on myself, but you can take it to the bank. Shane is being framed.”

“By who?”

Bevins looks grim. “Unknown to me at present.”

“Why? What possible motive?”

“Also unknown.”

“Come on, who took him? You must have some idea. Some theory.”

“Lots of ideas, no evidence. But I’ve been making noise, letting it be known that one of the FBI’s own has been detained, and that if he’s harmed we’ll be all over it.”

Dane sits back. The place is packed, quite noisy, and nobody obvious is listening in to the conversation. “Can we speak normally for a bit? I can call you Monica?”

“Not if you worked for me, but you don’t. Monica is fine for civilians. As to the conversation, proceed. I’ll stop you if we need to go SV.”

“SV?”

“Sotto voce. With a hushed quality.”

“Got it. Is that FBI lingo now?”

Monica shakes her head, shows the hint of a smile. “Just me.”

“Interesting,” Dane says, filing it away under Personal Eccentricities. Because she works for Naomi Nantz the file has numerous entries, starting with the boss. “So. You and Shane go way back.”

Bevins nods, her eyes large. “All the way to boot camp at Quantico. I came in straight out of law school, he’d been on the FBI civilian side for a couple years as a technical expert, then decided to apply for Special Agent. We’re both big, so we got lumped together, sort of. I fell in love with him in about twenty minutes.”

Dane is startled by the confession. “Seriously?”

Bevins shrugs. “He was married, so I kept it to myself. He figured it out, of course. So he played it like we were going to be best friends. And you know what? That’s how it worked out in the long run. I got over the crush after a while, but never the friendship. Randall Shane is the bravest, truest, most decent human being I’ve ever known. Point one. You’re aware of his personal tragedy? Wife and daughter? Ever since, he’s devoted his life to rescuing children. Most of his cases are pro bono. Long as he’s got enough to put gas in that big fat car of his, he’s good to go. Therefore incorruptible as to financial temptation. Point two, to my certain knowledge he’s a red-blooded, salute-the-flag, die-for-your-country patriot who would never do anything to threaten the security of the good old U.S.A. Caveat: unless a child’s life is in danger, then it might get complicated.”

“So you believe there might be national security implications?”

Bevins ever so casually checks the burger crowd to see if anybody is paying particular attention. Satisfied, she puts her elbows on the table, goes into sotto voce mode.

“Genius physicist working on a top-secret project, who just so happens to have a secret Chinese mistress and a missing child? Of course there are national security implications. Not that any agency has admitted to involvement. And believe me, I’ve been asking. Like I said, making noise to let them know we know. Kicked in a few doors, metaphorically speaking. Folks look blank, shake their heads. Never heard of Shane, no business of snatching him in plain sight, cross their hearts and hope to die.”

“Somebody made it happen. From all descriptions, this was a professional, military kind of outfit, precision- executing a mission.”

Bevins nods in recognition. “Covert special ops. Which leaves us with at least a couple of possibilities. One of our agencies dispatched an elite unit to seize and detain a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil and has somehow managed not to share that fact with any of the other interested national security agencies, mine included. Or some evildoer has it in for Shane and sent mercenaries to snatch him.”

“Evildoer?”

“That’s how we talk in the FBI. Saves a lot of explaining. ‘Evildoer’ covers terrorist, dictator, gang boss, Wall Street banker, the Yankees, take your pick of the loathsome.”

Dane looks startled. “The Yankees?”

“I’m from Jamaica Plain. My dad was a Boston cop.”

“No kidding? I should have known that.”

“You can’t know everything.”

“Anything I found on Google, it alluded to you growing up on Long Island.”

Bevins reveals a sly smile. “Evildoers might want to target family. Search engines can provide a useful smoke screen. We call it ‘identity diversion.’ Simple but effective.”

Dane nods thoughtfully. “You’re FBI from Boston and Shane’s your BFF, so you must know Jack Delancey.”

After a slight hesitation, Bevins says, “That’s an affirmative.”

“You could be telling this to him.”

“You’re the better choice.”

“You and Jack don’t get along?”

Bevins shrugs. “We never saw eye to eye, and that’s his problem. Me being tall.”

“What?” Dane does a double take. “Your height? Seriously?”

“He calls me ‘The 50 Foot Woman,’ as in Attack of The 50 Foot Woman, some cheesy horror flick he finds amusing. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Jack loves women. What you may not have noticed, he only loves ’em if they’re five foot ten or less. Turns out, he can’t handle a female boss who’s taller than he is. Admitted as much. I’m one of the reasons he resigned. The other, of course, is that a higher salary means he can buy more suits. And wives.”

“I’ll give him your love.”

“Do that. Really, it’s not a problem. We get along fine just as long as we don’t have to speak, or see each other.”

The shiny-top table starts to vibrate delicately. Bevins retrieves a cell phone from her briefcase, flips it open, checks the display. “Sorry, gotta go. You’ll keep me informed?”

Dane stands, takes a deep breath. “Monica? One more question. Do you think Shane is still alive?”

The big woman blinks, holding herself still. “Absolutely. I’d bet everything that he’s been taken alive for interrogation purposes. Whoever it is behind this, they think he knows something.”

“What? What could he know?”

Bevins hoists the handbag strap to her shoulder. “If I knew that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It wouldn’t be you, it would be Shane, and he’d be buying bacon cheese dogs for two and insisting I eat with him, because life is short but we’re not.”

Chapter Fourteen

The Invisible Man Revealed

The first time I saw Naomi destroy one of her beautiful watercolors, I screamed for her to stop. She gave me a look as flat as Death Valley and kept slowly and methodically shredding the damp paper.

“Get used to it,” she said.

Three years, close to a thousand attempts at perfection, and I’m still not used to it.

Here’s the deal. Almost every day at 3:00 p.m., boss lady goes to the ground-floor solarium, which has the requisite northern lighting, and arranges a still life on a small table kept there for that purpose. Could be cut flowers, or an antique cream pitcher, or a found object, or all three. When she has the arrangement just so, she tapes a heavy, pre-cut sheet of Arches watercolor paper on to a small, horizontally-tilted drawing table. She selects her brushes and colors. She takes a deep breath and does some sort of Zen thing that involves closing her eyes and holding her hands out, palms up. Then she sets a timer for thirty minutes and gets to work. First a quick pencil sketch. That never takes more than a minute or two. Then she wets her brushes and begins. Sometimes the mistake happens right away, in the first pass of the brush. More often the timer will ding and she’ll step back, look at the still-life arrangement, glance at her painted version—almost always lovely, in my opinion—and then calmly peel it away from the drawing board, tear it into strips and feed the pieces into a paper shredder.

Zzzt, zzzt, zzzt. It’s gotten to be a sound that makes my teeth hurt.

Today is no different, except that the arrangement involves a folding carpenter’s ruler, a combination square and a brass bevel, donated to the cause by Danny Bechst, who once told me, in confidence, that Naomi was like van Gogh, except better looking and with two ears. Apparently van Gogh wrecked a lot of his paintings, too. A fact you wouldn’t expect the average carpenter to know, but in Boston there are no average carpenters. Most of them seem to have Ph.D.’s. Anyhow, Danny isn’t as appalled by the daily destruction as I am. Says he understands a quest for perfection and that one of these days when the bell dings, voilà, a flawless masterpiece.

As for Naomi, you’d think that failing on a daily basis would bother her, but she insists that the process is relaxing. Indeed, she always appears to be calm as she methodically destroys her creation. Maybe driving me crazy makes her feel serene. All part of the unwritten job description.

Today the shredder sounds about twenty minutes into the process, cuing me to enter the studio with the latest update on the investigation. Naomi, breaking down the still life, looks up, raises an eyebrow.

“Dane called,” I tell her. “Shuttle delayed out of Reagan National, but they should be wheels down at Logan by five. She has some interesting tidbits about possible evildoers, but nothing solid.”

“Evildoers?”

“Dane does enjoy the evocative phrase.”

“Worth the trip, just to show the flag.”

“Jack’s day has been more productive. He interviewed Jonny Bing, the venture capitalist, and formed, he says, ‘an opinion.’ Declined to specify what opinion, exactly. Before that he made a quick run up to New Hampshire to talk to the foster care folks about Joseph Keener’s childhood. Said he uncovered some ‘facts of interest.’ He’ll fill us in tonight.”

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