“I’m going to have to call this in,” I tell him.
That does the trick. “I have a delivery,” he finally says. “Flowers.”
“For who?”
“Let me check the name again. It’s on the clipboard in back.”
He steps out of the van. He’s even bigger than he looked in the driver’s seat, and as I follow him to the rear of the van, I feel like I’m walking behind Hercules.
“Maybe you can take a look at the name on the card,” he says. “Tell me if I’m at the right address?”
“Show me.”
He opens the rear door and steps aside so I can look in at the flowers.
Only there are no flowers. There’s just an empty van.
A hand clamps over my mouth. I try to twist free, try to fight back, but I’m wrestling with a wall of muscle. My phone clatters to the ground as he lifts me off my feet and heaves me into the back. He climbs in and yanks the door shut, trapping me inside with him. After the glare of sunshine, the van seems so dark I can barely make out his figure bent over me. I hear the screech of duct tape.
Just as I draw in a breath to scream, he slaps the tape over my mouth. Rolls me over onto my belly, and savagely yanks my hands together behind my back. In seconds he binds my wrists and ankles, working with swift and brutal efficiency.
A professional. Which means I’m going to die.
“I knew something wasn’t right as soon as I saw that cell phone lying out here in the street,” said Agnes Kaminsky. “I knocked on her door and she didn’t answer, but the door wasn’t locked. Your mother always locks her door because of all the horror stories you tell her. That’s why I called you.”
With a mounting sense of alarm, Jane examined her mother’s cell phone. There was a photo of Regina on the cell phone case, which left no doubt this was indeed Angela’s phone. She wanted to believe there was a perfectly benign reason for why it had been lying in the street, that perhaps her mother had gone out for a walk and simply dropped it, but that did not explain why she’d left her front door unlocked. When your daughter is a homicide cop, when your boyfriend is a retired cop, and you’ve heard all their stories about predators in the big city, you never fail to lock your door.
“Her house is fine inside,” said Agnes. “Nobody’s robbed it.”
“You’ve already been inside?”
“Well, I had to check. We ladies living alone have to keep an eye on each other.”
Just a few weeks ago, Agnes and Angela weren’t even speaking to each other. Now it seemed they were best buddies. Life moved fast.
“She didn’t make her bed but she did make coffee and the pot’s still warm,” said Agnes. “And there are two cups on the kitchen table, so she had a visitor. If that means anything.”
Jane stepped into the house with Agnes tagging along, trailing her usual miasma of cigarette smoke. There on the foyer table, in its regular place, was Angela’s purse and her house keys. Another bad sign. They headed into the kitchen, where the carafe was indeed still warm. And on the table were two empty coffee mugs, just as Agnes had described.
Someone visited this morning. Someone who’d sat down at this table and sipped coffee with Angela.
“You see?” said Agnes. “It’s just like I told you.”
Jane turned to her. “Did you see who was visiting?”
“No. I was busy watching QVC. They’re selling these newfangled vacuum cleaners and I think I might want one.” She pointed to the cell phone. “Don’t you know how to unlock that thing? Maybe she called someone or someone called her. Maybe that’s the vital clue.”
Jane frowned at her mother’s phone. It required a six-digit code to unlock it. She’s my mother. I should know this. She typed in her mother’s birthdate. Wrong code. She typed her own birthdate. Wrong code.
“That’s your little girl, right?” said Agnes.
“What?”
“On the phone case. That’s her picture. Before she started going to preschool, she was here with your mother almost every day. Angie misses her something awful.”
Of course, thought Jane, and she typed in Regina’s birthdate.
The phone magically unlocked and opened to the screen that had last been in use: the camera. She clicked on the most recent image. The photo was the back of a white van, and it was taken two hours ago, at 1:12 p.m.
“That’s our street,” said Agnes, leaning in to look at the screen. “It’s right out front.”