“Yeah.”
“We gotta hurry.”
NASH saw the unmarked police car pull up to the house.
Guy Novak got out. A plainclothes cop started getting out of the car, but Novak waved him off. He reached back into the car, shook the cop’s hand and stumbled in a daze toward the front door.
Nash felt his phone vibrate. He didn’t need to check the incoming number anymore. He knew it would be Joe Lewiston again. He had listened to the first desperate message a few minutes ago:
“Oh God, Nash, what’s going on? I didn’t want that. Please don’t hurt anyoneelse, okay? Just… I just thought you could talk to her or get the video or something. And if you know something about the other woman, please don’t hurt her. Oh God, oh God…”
Like that.
Guy Novak entered his house. Nash moved closer. Three minutes later, the front door opened again. A woman came out. Guy Novak’s girlfriend. He kissed her on the cheek. The door closed behind her. The date walked down the path. When she reached the curb, she looked back and shook her head. She might have been crying, but it was hard to tell from here.
Thirty seconds later, she too was gone.
Time was limited now. Somehow Nash had messed up. They had figured out who Marianne was. It was on the news. The husband had been questioned by the police. People think that law enforcement of- ficers are stupid. They are not. They have every advantage. Nash respected that. It was one of the reasons he’d gone through such great lengths to hide Marianne’s identity.
Self-preservation told him to run away, hide, sneak out of the country. But that wouldn’t do. He could still help Joe Lewiston, even if Joe wouldn’t help himself. He would call him later and persuade him to keep quiet. Or maybe Joe would see the light on his own. Joe was panicked right now, but he had, after all, contacted Nash to help in the first place. Maybe he would end up making the smart move.
The itch was there. The crazy, as Nash liked to call it. He knew that there were children in the home. He had no interest in hurting them-or was that a lie? Hard to know sometimes. Humans are all about self-delusion, and Nash wasn’t above wallowing in that overindulgence on occasion.
But on a purely practical level, there was no time to wait. He had to act now. That meant-with the crazy or without it-the children could very well end up collateral damage.
There was a knife in his pocket. He took it out now and held it in his hand.
Nash moved toward Novak’s back door and worked on the lock.
35
ROSEMARY McDevitt sat in her Club Jaguar office, her vest and tattoos now covered by a too-large gray sweatshirt. She swam in it, her hands disappearing into the long sleeves. It made her look smaller, less threatening and powerful, and Mike wondered if that was the point. She had coffee in front of her. Mike had one too.
“The cops put a wire on you?” she asked.
“No.”
“You mind giving me your cell phone, just to be sure?”
Mike shrugged and tossed it to her. She turned it off and left it on the desk between them.
Her knees were up on the chair, again disappearing into the sweatshirt. Mo was outside, waiting in the car. He hadn’t wanted Mike to do this, fearing a trap, but he also knew that they had no choice. This was the best lead they had on Adam.
Mike said, “I don’t really care about what you’re doing in there, except in how it relates to my son. Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“When did you last see him?”
She looked up at him with doe-brown eyes. He wasn’t sure if he was being worked here or not, but it didn’t much matter. He wanted answers. He could play the game back if that helped.
“Last night.”
“Where exactly?”
“Downstairs at the club.”
“He came here to party?”
Rosemary smiled. “I don’t think so.”
He let that go. “You talked to him by instant message, didn’t you? You’re CeeJay8115.”
She did not reply.
“You told Adam to stay quiet and it’d be safe. He messaged you that he’d been approached by Spencer Hill’s mother, right?”
Her knees were still up on the chair. She wrapped her arms around them. “How would you know so much about his private messages, Dr. Baye?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“How did you follow him to Club Jaguar last night?”
Mike said nothing.
“Are you sure you want to travel down this road?” she asked.
“I don’t think I have a choice.”
She glanced over his shoulder. Mike turned around. Carson with the broken nose was glaring through the glass. Mike met his eyes and calmly waited. A few seconds later, Carson broke eye contact and hurried away.
“They’re just boys,” Mike said.
“No, they’re not.”
He let it drop. “Talk to me.”
Rosemary settled back. “Let’s speak in hypotheticals, okay?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want. Let’s say you’re a girl from a small town. Your brother dies of a drug overdose.”
“Not according to the police. They say there is no evidence any of that happened.”
She smirked. “The feds told you that?”
“They said they can’t find anything to back up the claim.”
“I changed some of the facts, that’s why.”
“Which facts?”
“Name of the town, name of the state.”
“Why?”
“Major reason? On the night my brother died, I was arrested for possession with intent to sell.” She met his eye. “That’s right. I gave my brother the drugs. I was his supplier. I leave that part out of the story. People tend to judge.”
“Go on.”
“So I formed Club Jaguar. I already told you my philosophy. I wanted to create a safe haven where kids could party and let loose. I wanted to channel their natural inclination to rebel in a protected way.”
“Right.”
“So it started that way. I busted my butt and raised enough money to get it off the ground. We opened this place in a year. You can’t imagine how difficult that was.”
“I can, but I really don’t need to hear about it. How about fast-forwarding to the part where you started holding pharm parties and stealing prescription pads?”
She smiled and shook her head. “It’s not like that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I read in the paper today about a widow who did volunteer work for her local parish. Over the last five years she’s skimmed twenty-eight thousand dollars from the tithing basket. Did you see that?”
“No.”
“But you’ve heard of others, right? Dozen of cases like that. The guy who works for the charity and siphons off money to buy himself a Lexus-do you think one day he just woke up and decided to do that?”
“I don’t really know.”
“That church lady. You know what I bet happened? One day she’s counting out the money in the tithing basket and she stays late and maybe her car is broken down and she can’t get home. It’s getting dark. So maybe she calls the taxi company and figures, well, she volunteers all this time and the church should pay for it. She doesn’t ask. She grabs five bucks out of the basket. That’s all. She’s more than owed it. That’s how this stuff starts, I think. It’s an incremental thing. You see all these decent people getting arrested for embezzling from schools or churches or charities. They start small and move so slow it’s like watching clocks-they don’t even see. They don’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”
“And that’s what happened with Club Jaguar?”
“I thought that teens wanted to party in a social way. But it was like the midnight basketball program. They wanted to party, yes, but with booze and drugs. You can’t create a place to rebel. You can’t make it safe and drug-free because that’s the whole purpose-they don’t want it safe.”
“Your concept failed,” Mike said.
“No one showed-or if they did, they didn’t stay. We were labeled as lame. We were viewed like one of those evangelical groups that make you take a virginity pledge.”