“ U.S. attorney for the state of New Jersey.”

“Scott Duncan, please.”

“Hold.”

Two rings and a woman answered. “Goldberg,” she said.

“I’m looking for Scott Duncan.”

“What case?”

“Pardon?”

“What case is this in reference to?”

“No case. I just need to speak with Mr. Duncan.”

“May I ask what it’s about?”

“It’s a personal matter.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you. Scott Duncan doesn’t work here anymore. I’m covering most of his cases. If I can help you with that…”

Grace pulled the phone away from her ear. She looked at it as though from afar. She clicked the end button. She got into her car and again watched the brick building that currently housed her children. She watched it for a very long time, wondering if there was anyone she could truly trust, before deciding what to do.

She lifted the phone back into view. She pressed in the number.

“Yes?”

“This is Grace Lawson.”

Three seconds later, Carl Vespa said, “Is everything okay?”

“I changed my mind,” Grace said. “I do need your help.”

chapter 31

“His name is Eric Wu.”

Perlmutter was back at the hospital. He had been working on getting a warrant compelling Indira Khariwalla to tell him who her client was, but the county prosecutor was running into more interference than expected. In the meantime the lab boys were doing their thing. The fingerprints had been sent down to the NCIC, and now, if Daley was to be believed, they had an ID on the perp.

“Does he have a record?” Perlmutter asked.

“He was let out of Walden three months ago.”

“For?”

“Armed assault,” Daley said. “Wu cut a deal on that Scope case. I called and asked around. This is one very bad man.”

“How bad?”

“Poop-in-your-pants bad. If ten percent of the rumors about this guy are true, I’m sleeping with my Barney the Dinosaur night-lite on.”

“I’m listening.”

“He grew up in North Korea. Orphaned at a young age. Spent time working for the state inside prisons for political dissidents. He has a talent with pressure points or something, I don’t know. That’s what he did with that Sykes guy, some kung-fu crap, practically severed his spine. One story I heard, he kidnapped some guy’s wife, worked on her for like two hours. He calls the husband and tells him to listen up. The wife starts screaming. Then she tells him, the husband, that she hates his guts. Starts cursing him. That’s the last thing the husband ever hears.”

“He killed the woman?”

Daley’s face had never looked so solemn. “That’s just it. He didn’t.”

The room’s temperature dropped ten degrees. “I don’t understand.”

“Wu let her go. She hasn’t spoken since. Just sits and rocks someplace. The husband comes near her, she freaks out and starts screaming.”

“Jesus.” Perlmutter felt the chill ease through him. “You got an extra night-lite?”

“I got two, yeah, but I’m using both.”

“So what would this guy want with Freddy Sykes?”

“Not a clue.”

Charlaine Swain appeared down the corridor. She had not left the hospital since the shooting. They had finally gotten her to talk to Freddy Sykes. It had been a strange scene. Sykes kept crying. Charlaine had tried to get information. It’d worked to some extent. Freddy Sykes seemed to know nothing. He had no idea who his assailant was or why anyone would want to hurt him. Sykes was just a small-time accountant who lived alone – he seemed to be on no one’s radar.

“It’s all linked,” Perlmutter said.

“You have a theory?”

“I have some of it. Strands.”

“Let’s hear.”

“Start with the E-ZPass records.”

“Okay.”

“We have Jack Lawson and Rocky Conwell crossing that exit at the same time,” Perlmutter said.

“Right.”

“I think now we know why. Conwell was working for a private investigator.”

“Your friend India Something.”

“Indira Khariwalla. And she’s hardly a friend. But that’s not important. What makes sense here, the only thing that makes sense really, is that Conwell was hired to follow Lawson.”

“Ipso facto, the E-ZPass timing explained.”

Perlmutter nodded, trying to put it together. “So what happened next? Conwell ends up dead. The M.E. says he probably died that night before midnight. We know he crossed the tollbooth at 10:26 P.M. So sometime soon after that, Rocky Conwell met up with foul play.” Perlmutter rubbed his face. “The logical suspect would be Jack Lawson. He realizes he’s being followed. He confronts Conwell. He kills him.”

“Makes sense,” Daley said.

“But it doesn’t. Think about it. Rocky Conwell was six-five, two-sixty, and in great shape. You think a guy like Lawson could have killed him like that? With his bare hands?”

“Sweet Jesus.” Daley saw it now. “Eric Wu?”

Perlmutter nodded. “It adds up. Somehow Conwell met up with Wu. Wu killed him, stuffed his body into a trunk, and left him at the Park-n-Ride. Charlaine Swain said that Wu was driving a Ford Windstar. Same model and color as Jack Lawson’s.”

“So what’s the connection between Lawson and Wu?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe Wu works for him.”

“Could be. We just don’t know. What we do know, however, is that Lawson’s alive – or at least he was alive after Conwell was killed.”

“Right, because he called his wife. When she was at the station. So what happened next?”

“Damned if I know.”

Perlmutter watched Charlaine Swain. She just stood down the hall, staring through the window of her husband’s room. Perlmutter considered going over, but really, what could he say?

Daley jostled him and they both turned to see Officer Veronique Baltrus walk off the elevator. Baltrus had been with the department three years. She was thirty-eight, with tousled black hair and a constant tan. She was in a regulation police uniform that somehow hugged as much as anything with a belt and holster could, but in her off-hours she preferred Lycra workout clothes or anything that revealed the flat tan of her stomach. She was petite, with dark eyes, and every guy in the station, even Perlmutter, had a thing for her.

Veronique Baltrus was both exquisitely beautiful and a computer expert – an interesting albeit heart-racing combination. Six years ago she had been working for a bathing suit retailer in New York City when the stalking began. The stalker would call her. He would send e-mails. He would harass her at work. His main weapon was the computer, the best bastion for the anonymous and gutless. The police did not have the manpower to hunt him down. They also believed that this stalker, whoever he was, would probably not take it to the next level.

But he did.

On a calm fall evening Veronique Baltrus was savagely attacked. Her assailant got away. But Veronique recovered. Already good with computers, she now upped her ability and became an expert. She used her new knowledge to hunt down her assailant – he continued to send her e-mails discussing an encore -and bring him to justice. Then she quit her job and became a police officer.

Now, even though Baltrus wore a uniform and worked a regular shift, she was the county’s unofficial computer expert. Nobody in the department but Perlmutter knew her back story. That was part of the deal when she applied for the job.

“You got something?” he asked her.

Veronique Baltrus smiled. She had a nice smile. Perlmutter’s “thing” for her was different than the rest of the guys’. It was not built simply on lust. Veronique Baltrus was the first woman to make him feel something since Marion ’s death. He wouldn’t take it anywhere. It would be unprofessional. It would be unethical. And truth be told, Veronique was waaaaay out of his league.

She gestured down the corridor toward Charlaine Swain. “We might have to thank her.”

“How so?”

“Al Singer.”