The high-def night skyline of lower Manhattan seemed to scratch up against the glass of the bay window behind her. She turned and stared at the office towers.
“I took us out of that insane place in order to provide some sort of normalcy and security after Mary Beth was born,” she said quietly as she shook her head. “I wanted to send her to and from Brearley by car, but ever since Mary Beth was fourteen, she’s insisted on taking the subway.
“I have friends who hire professionals to try to get their wealthy kids to understand how normal people live, but it was almost the opposite with Mary Beth. It was like pulling teeth every time I had to convince her that it was okay to use the resources we’ve been fortunate enough to acquire.”
She looked at me, perplexed, as if I might know the answer to the affliction she was now suffering from. It pissed me off that I didn’t.
“Is your husband here?” I said.
“He works for UBS in London during the week, but he’s on the next plane back. Did you know some fool at Brearley actually tried to tell me my daughter might have just cut class? Mary Beth is the captain of both the lacrosse and volleyball teams. She got an early acceptance to Bard, for the love of God. This is not a girl who cuts classes.
“Please tell me you have an idea of who this person is who might have taken her. Please tell me you’re going to bring my Mary Beth back home.”
The woman’s hurt eyes locked on mine again as she started to silently weep. They only tore away as Emily sat down next to the woman and laid a hand on her wrist.
“We’ll do everything possible, Mrs. Haas,” Emily said. “I can’t guarantee you anything except that we’ll go to the ends of the earth to bring your little girl home again.”
Chapter 57
DESPITE ANN HAAS’S obvious pain, she managed to tell Emily and me about her daughter, Mary Beth. She was a solid 4.0 student whose dream was to help the poor of Latin America, where she’d summered from the time she was fourteen at various volunteer camps.
“This year, instead of going to Europe like a lot of her friends, Mary Beth is planning to run a children’s theater in Pérez Zeledón, one of the poorest sections of Costa Rica,” the CEO told us as she handed us a picture. “It’s all she can talk about.”
Mary Beth was a slightly overweight, attractive, blue-eyed girl with long jet-black hair. In the picture, she was wearing a green bandanna and matching camo shirt and cargo shorts as she smiled and waved from some muddy jungle path.
Most surprising of all to me was that Mary Beth didn’t have a social networking account on either MySpace or Facebook, unlike the other victims. A throwback, I thought, looking at her smile. A very good and special kid.
Ann Haas was about to take us up to her daughter’s room, when her wall phone rang. The department geek set up by the fireplace glanced at his laptop and nodded vigorously. I motioned for Mrs. Haas to pick up the phone in the family room as the tech handed me a set of headphones.
Mrs. Haas’s knuckles were as bloodless as her face as she lifted the cordless phone.
“Yes?” she said.
“Mrs. Haas,” the kidnapper said. “Poor, poor Mrs. Haas. How ironic, considering the latest Forbes listing, wouldn’t you say?”
I nodded to everyone around the room. It was the same guy.
“Oh, Mrs. Haas,” the kidnapper continued. “How glorious you look at your charity events. How brightly the flash packs of the paparazzi reflect off your diamonds. While the lights dazzled, did you maybe for a moment think that you had become more than mortal? I think you did. Pride is one of your main sins, Ann. I can call you Ann, can’t I? I hope you don’t mind. After spending so much time with your daughter, I feel like we’re practically related.”
“You fucking prick son of a bitch!” Mrs. Haas screamed. “Give her back!”
The kidnapper let out a long, sad sigh.
“My, my. What filth even a daughter of the highest privilege is capable of in our tainted society. Is that really any way to talk? Did those tight-ass lily-white-tower academics teach you to speak like that at Sarah Lawrence? Or did you learn that potty mouth at Daddy’s trading desk? Mustn’t we have been turned on, being one of the few women amongst all that heady Wall Street warrior testosterone?
“Which leads us to your next sin, Ann. Lust. Multiple acts of adultery with multiple partners, if the rumors are true. Shall I get into specifics?
“Isn’t that what being rich is all about? Sex and money and hiring people to clean the eight-hundred-thread-count sheets? You’re a filthy sinner, Ann, and so’s your lackluster English poseur of a husband.”
“Please let me speak to Mary Beth,” Mrs. Haas begged. “Just for a second. For whatever I’ve done to you, I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” the kidnapper said. “But talking to Mary Beth won’t be possible. I’m here to teach you that you are human, Ann. And like all humans, you must come to terms with the reality of loss. Sin and loss go hand in hand. Please put my friend Detective Bennett on the phone now. It’s been a real pleasure speaking to you, despite your disgusting language. I hope he hasn’t pumped up your hopes concerning Mary Beth, Madam Chief Executive. On second thought, I hope he has. All the more pride to goeth before the fall. Ta-ta.”
“Detective Bennett here,” I said, taking the phone from the weeping CEO. “How’s Mary Beth? Is she okay?”
“Mary Beth is fine, Mike. For now. She has a big test coming up, though. A final final, you might say. It’s all in her hands. I’ll call you back the second her score is tallied.”
“Wait a minute. Don’t you want money?”
“All the money on this earth couldn’t prevent Mary Beth from facing her destiny, Mike.”
What the hell did that mean? How did that make sense? There was a sharp sound in the background suddenly, a distinctive click-clack. I winced. Goddammit. He’d just chambered an automatic pistol.
“Pray for her, Mike. That’s all she has now.”
Chapter 58
MARY BETH HAAS bit harder into the thick wraps of gauze gagged into her mouth as she wrestled herself up into a cramped seated position.
She was in a pitch-black metal box with a low lid and cold, rusty walls and floor. Her arms were tightly wrapped around herself in a straitjacket. She’d been in the box for several hours. At first she’d been terrified. Then angry. Now she was just sad, infinitely, inconsolably, hopelessly sad.
As she sat in the cramped dark, the events of the afternoon kept playing and replaying through her mind in a nightmare loop.
She knew she wasn’t really allowed to leave campus to run laps at the Brearley Field House on 87th, but since she was a senior and the cocaptain of the reigning New York State Championship volleyball team, her teachers and her coach often looked the other way when she snuck out during her morning free period.
She had been coming through one of those cavelike construction scaffolding tunnels across the street from the gym when a man standing beside the open door of a van had said, “Mary Beth?”
She remembered a stinging numbness in her chest as she turned toward the voice. Her whole entire body seemed to cramp at once as she fell forward, powerless. A strong, wet, medicinal smell filled her nose and mouth then, and she was out.
She’d woken up in the straitjacket with a massive headache. That had been what? Seven? Maybe eight hours before? Eight hours of blackness and silence. Eight hours of being starving and thirsty and dirty and having to use the bathroom. It was like she was stuck at sea. A sea of darkness where there seemed to be no hope of being rescued.
At first, the sadness had been sharp, but now it was lessening, weakening like a candle dying out. She thought of her friends and teachers. Her mom. I’m sorry, everyone, she thought. Sorry for being so stupid. Sorry for messing up.
She didn’t know how much more time had elapsed when she heard the clacking of a steel shutter rolling up.
Oh, God! Somebody was coming. The man who had taken her.
An unhinging bolt o
f animal panic gripped her, froze her. He would touch her now, wouldn’t he? That’s what they did, right? Crazy men? Hurt you. Raped you. Killed you. She whimpered. It would be better just to be buried. She didn’t want to be in pain.
That’s when she shook herself out of her pity. She found a hard place inside herself and went there. She would fight for her life. She would bite and scream and kick. She found the thought of it comforting. She wanted to live, but more than that, she wanted to fight. She suddenly knew she could, and that was somehow better.
There was the sound of a car motor approaching. The clackety-clack of a metal gate going back down again. The killing of the engine and the sound of the door opening made her new strength waver for a moment, but then she bit down harder on the gag, and it was back.
I want to live, she thought. Please, God, just allow me the chance to live.
Chapter 59
THE METALLIC SCRAPE of a lock was loud right next to Mary Beth’s ear. The lid of the steel box screeched as it opened.
Even in the poor light, she knew it was him. The suit. The gray hair and the glasses. He looked intelligent, fatherly, like a kindly doctor or a popular professor. How could men be so evil? she thought.
Her arms and especially her hands were strong from volleyball. He’d free her to get at her, wouldn’t he? First chance she got, she’d smash the side of her fist into his glasses, try to ram a shard into his eye as deep as it would go.
He lifted her out by the straps on the back of her jacket. She saw that she’d been held in a large industrial toolbox. They were in an enormous dark warehouse of some kind. Behind the van were girderlike pillars and welding gas tanks. Could she kick one over and start a fire? Best of all was a high window above the steel shutter of the door. The world lay on its other side.
Make it there, she urged herself. For everything that everyone in your life has done for you, make it there.
The man sat her on a bench beside a metal table and sat down on the other side of it.
He took two items out of his jacket pockets and laid them on the tabletop for her to see. She made another whimper at the sight of them.
They were a straight razor and a black pistol.
“I’m going to remove your gag. If you scream, I’m going to have to cut up that flawless face of yours, Mary Beth. Nod if you understand.”
She nodded. He leaned across the table, slid the cold flat of the razor to her cheek, and shredded the gauze. She breathed through her mouth as she worked her sore jaw, wishing her hands were free to scratch her cheeks.
“Hi, Mary Beth,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”
Um, let me guess, she thought. You’re the sick freak who’s going around killing rich teenagers?
“The man from the paper. The one the police are looking for,” she said instead.
He nodded, grinned.
“Guilty as charged,” he said. “I won’t lie to you. The people who have died so far have done so because they failed a test. We no longer have the luxury in this world to allow those who are unworthy to live. That’s why I have brought you here. I need to find out if you are worthy.”
A test, Mary Beth thought as the man rolled and then lit a cigarette. As he exhaled blue fragrant smoke from his nose, she allowed herself a tiny sliver of hope. She suspected that he was lying, just playing games with her, but if he wasn’t, maybe she could pull this off.
If anything, she was smart. She’d gotten a 2120 on her SAT, been early accepted to Bard, her first choice. Most kids she knew came up with a whole bunch of bull crap for their college applications, but hers, all her volunteering and extracurricular activities, were actually true. She really did love to learn and read and engage her mind.
Please let it be true, she thought.
He tapped some ash on the table between the razor blade and the gun.
“Okay, question one: Tell me about fair trade coffee prices and their effect on South American coffee growers.”
Oh, my God, Mary Beth thought excitedly. I actually know this. It was last month’s topic from her Political Awareness committee at school.
“The modern fair trade movement began in ’eighty-eight in Holland,” she said. “It came about because of the horrendous exploitation of the Southern Hemisphere fieldworkers. It’s basically an economic partnership that protects small coffee growers and gives consumers a choice to pay a little more for their joe while providing a living wage for the workers. The summer I was fifteen, I actually went on a fair harvest trip to Nicaragua.”
For a moment, it looked like the cigarette was going to drop from the gray-haired man’s lower lip. He recovered quickly.
“You’re right,” he said, taking a drag. “Now let’s shift gears to global warming: How many gallons of gasoline are consumed by Americans each year?”
“One hundred forty-six billion gallons,” Mary Beth said without hesitation. She knew this answer because of the mock United Nations project she’d completed at school. She’d been given the role of representative from Darfur on their global-energy-issues debate.
For the first time, the man with the gray hair seemed to genuinely smile. He crushed his cigarette under his shoe. He even took the razor off the table and put it back into his pocket.
“Correct again,” he said. “That’s good, Mary Beth. You’re doing well. So far, at least. But we have many more questions to get through. Now, question three. The subject: abject hunger in the world’s richest nation.”
Chapter 60
WE SAT THERE, staring at the phone. It just didn’t make sense. The kidnapper should have called back by now. Every other time, he’d called to let us know where the body was. Was not telling us and leaving the parents hanging his latest method of torture? If it was, it was working like a charm.
The only whiff of a lead came when Verizon Wireless called back with a cell site triangulation of his first call. It had come from somewhere in the vicinity of Gateway National Beach, on the south shore of Staten Island. But not surprisingly, when detectives from the 122nd Precinct had raced to the scene, they found nothing but gulls. The killer could have been in a car when he’d called—or who knew? A boat maybe. Another stone wall. Another dead end.
When I went to the window for about the thirtieth time, I noticed a funny thing happening on the sidewalk out in front of the Haases’ brownstone. A crowd had formed. It looked like a block party.
I went outside, thinking at first it was the press, but then I spotted a Brearley sweatshirt. Mary Beth’s friends. They were holding candles beside a pile of teddy bears and flowers and a signed volleyball. Almost every member of the Brearley senior class showed up to the vigil. They were crying, smoking, holding pictures of her.
I thought about breaking it up but then decided, why? If the kidnapper was watching the house, maybe the outpouring of love might make him see Mary Beth as a flesh-and-blood valuable person instead of the symbol of his hate.
I stared at the young, solemn faces as a guitar started playing. The vigil was oddly beautiful. The flickering flames from the candles seemed to merge with the lights of Manhattan across the dark bay. Mary Beth was obviously a great kid who had affected many lives.
It set my teeth on edge that I couldn’t find her. Even after all this time, we were as baffled by everything as anyone, completely useless.
Ann Haas came outside and was embraced by her daughter’s friends. She ordered pizza. Emily and I joined her in handing it out. I have to say, I was pretty overwhelmed by the emotional reactions of everyone, the genuine outreaching to comfort one another. Too bad it so often has to take tragedy to bring out the best in people, I thought.
Emily and I used the opportunity to learn more about Mary Beth. Ann Haas introduced me to Kevin Adello, a tall, mop-headed basketball player from Collegiate, Brearley’s exclusive brother school. He told us he’d dated Mary Beth off and on.
“She’s going to Bard, and instead of going to Princeton, I decided to go play for Vassar so we could be near each othe
r. She isn’t like any other girl at Brearley, I’ll tell you that. Mary Beth is real. She’d puke seeing all these debutantes here in their just-so Seven jeans. I’m sorry. I’m being too harsh. I guess it’s nice that they showed. I just wish I could do something.”
I wheeled around as a cab slowed in the street. The crowd converged on it. My blood went cold as a ragged cry rang out.
“Move!” I yelled as I forced shocked teenagers aside.
A scared-looking girl in a wrinkled Brearley hoodie opened the door of the cab as I arrived beside it.
“It’s okay,” Mary Beth said, holding her hands up. “I’m okay.”
What? I couldn’t believe it. Another twist. The first one in the case that was actually welcome. Mary Beth’s bowled-over friends clapped and whistled as I guided her toward the brownstone stairs and her joyfully crying mother.
He’d let Mary Beth live?
Chapter 61
BACK INSIDE UNDER the kitchen high hats, Emily and I stood back as the mother and daughter embraced. I couldn’t tell which of them was crying the hardest. It even looked like Emily was about to join in.
“Something in your eye there, Detective Badass?” she teased.
“Hey,” I whispered to her, blinking back the moistness. “I guess I must have a heart or something, huh? You breathe a word about it to Schultz or Ramirez, we’ll be exchanging gunfire.”
“Toss me a block now, Mike,” Emily said, taking a deep breath. “We need to debrief the girl while she’s still fresh. I need to get Mary Beth alone.”
“Mrs. Haas? Can I talk to you for a moment?” I said, tapping the mother on the arm. “We need to start thinking about a media strategy. It’s very important.”
“Now?” she said as I ushered her into the hall. “Can’t it wait? I have to get my daughter cleaned up now. She needs me. Nothing is more important than that. In fact, why are you still here? I’d like you to leave so we can all get back to normal.”