“I woke Carlos up,” Cassidy said, and she chuckled. “In a big way.”
I glanced at the clock. “Our hour’s almost up, but I have a quick question.”
Cassidy said, “Okay.”
“What do you want out of our sessions? If we go on, I mean.”
She sighed, studied the ceiling, and said, “I’ve been eighteen months with Carlos. He’s a stand-up guy. He divorced his wife for me, and I really do love him. Not only that, I genuinely like him. He’s my best friend ever. But I know what’s coming in six months, a year at the outside, and I … I guess I want to learn how to be a sleepwalker and stay with someone forever.”
I smiled. “That’s a good goal.”
“Something we can talk about next time?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Cassidy took her iPhone off the table and got up. “Thank you, Dr. Cross.”
“You’re more than welcome. I’ll need an e-mail address to send my forms.”
“Oh,” she said, her brow knitting. “I had a computer virus over the weekend and I’m between e-mails at the moment. I’m opening a new account on Gmail tonight. Can I ping you with it?”
“That works.”
“Thank you for understanding all this.”
“It’s what I do.”
“And you do it well,” she said. She smiled uncertainly and left.
I stood there a few moments, wondering if Bree and I were sleepwalkers, then deciding that if we were, I was more than happy in my semiconscious state of marital bliss.
Remembering I had to take some leaves I’d raked and bagged out front for pickup, I went outside. The light was fading. Drizzle fell. I got the leaf bags, carried them around the house, and put them on the sidewalk.
I happened to look down the block and saw Cassidy getting into a black Nissan Pathfinder. Wondering if her Carlos might be driving, I walked a few yards that way and was in deep shadow near a retaining wall when the Pathfinder came closer, headlights off.
I could see the silhouette of Cassidy sitting sideways, facing the driver, who was just a dark shape until the Pathfinder crossed beneath a street lamp. For a second his face was clearly visible through the windshield.
Recognition stopped me cold. I was confused.
What was Annie Cassidy doing with Alden Lindel?
CHAPTER
69
GRETCHEN LINDEL’S FATHER used to tell her that the brain could be the strongest part of the body, or the most fragile.
“It’s your choice, Gretch,” he’d said not long before she’d been taken captive in the twisted world of sickos.
Lying on her filthy mattress in her plywood cell, holding her left leg so it wouldn’t be irritated any further by the manacle around her ankle, the seventeen-year-old was doing everything she could to keep her mind strong.
I am going to get out of here, Gretchen kept telling herself. I just have to survive long enough to get the chance. I’m going to be like Dad. Nothing they’ve done hurts me in any way. It makes me stronger. This only makes me stronger.
But it had been several days since they’d come for her. Hour upon hour of silence created all sorts of dark voices in her mind.
Doubt crept up on Gretchen and whispered that she’d die there in the box. Fear wormed its way into her stomach and said they’d take her again before that happened. Self-pity wrapped her head and heart, told her she was defeated.
But time and time again, whenever Gretchen realized the voices of despair were taking control of her thoughts, she’d think of her father and everything he’d endured, and she’d take heart.
I will survive. They can’t hurt me. This will only make me—
The dead bolts turned. She closed her eyes, not knowing if this was a meal or another of their twisted games. If it was a game, she was done crying. She was done being scared. They seemed to feed on her fright, and as the door swung open she vowed to give them none.
The big one in black came in carrying a semiautomatic AR rifle. Her father had one just like it.
“It’s time, Gretchen,” he said from behind the paintball mask. “We’re all but done here. Cleanup time now.”
Gretchen said nothing, just stared through him as if he didn’t matter anymore, as if nothing mattered anymore.
Be like Dad, she thought as he went to work on her ankle manacle.
For God’s sake, be like Dad.
CHAPTER
70
HAD THAT BEEN Gretchen Lindel’s father driving the Pathfinder?
I kept trying to convince myself I was wrong, but each time I closed my eyes, I saw Alden Lindel clearly. But why? And how?
When Annie Cassidy called to set up the appointment, she’d said that Father Fiore had referred her, hadn’t she? Well, now that I thought about it, she hadn’t actually used his name. She’d said she’d gotten my number from “a mutual friend, a priest with challenging problems.”
And Lindel? He’d contacted me directly. No reference that I remembered.
What were the odds of two people who knew each other coming to my office and never mentioning it to me?
I thought about Gretchen Lindel’s mother, Eliza, and how distraught she’d been in the days after her daughter’s kidnapping. Was Annie Cassidy the reason she and her husband separated? Had she used fake names for her lovers? Was Alden Lindel actually Carlos?
I went inside, told my grandmother I was going out, and got the car keys.
By the time I drove into a residential neighborhood west of the Cabin John Parkway, it was pitch-dark and the rain had stopped. I found the address I was looking for and parked the car across the street from a brick-faced Colonial with a big flower bed gone dormant, a crushed-gravel driveway, and a bronze Volvo station wagon. Lights gleamed in the narrow windows that flanked the front door.
I climbed out, smelled wet leaves, and started toward the house, wondering about the reception I’d get, a lone man at night unannounced. My cell phone buzzed. I ignored it, climbed the stoop, and rang the bell.
A dog started barking. A small Jack Russell terrier was soon bouncing and barking an alarm on the other side of the lower right window.
“Tinker!” a woman said. “Get back, girl!”
The dog kept barking and then yelped in protest when the woman grabbed her and held her in her arms. She peered blearily out the window at me. Despite the exhaustion and despair that seemed to hang off her like rags, I recognized her.
“Mrs. Lindel?” I said. “Eliza?”
The terrier in her arms showed her teeth.
She said, “If you’re a reporter, please go away, you’re not helping the situation. No one’s helping the situation here.”
“I’m not a reporter,” I said. “My name is Alex Cross. I’m a … my son Ali goes to school at Latin with Gretchen.”
Eliza studied me a long moment before opening the door. The dog growled like a little demon.
“Hush, now,” Eliza said, and the dog stilled but kept a close eye on me.
The missing girl’s mother was in her mid-thirties but looked older in baggy sweatpants, Birkenstock sandals, and a George Mason University tee. Her hair was in disarray and graying at the roots. Her eyes were bloodshot, rheumy.
“Alex Cross,” she said. “You’re that cop on trial for murder.”
“Innocent as charged.”
“I read you’ve killed eleven people.”
“In the course of duty I have, that’s true.”
“I also read you’ve found kidnapped girls before.”
“That’s also true. Including my niece, who today is part of my defense team. Life can go on after an abduction, Mrs. Lindel.”
“That why you’re here?”
“In part. Can I come in?”
She hesitated, then stuck her face in her dog’s face. “You be good now, Tinker, hear?”
Tinker licked her cheek. Eliza set the dog down. The Jack Russell eyed me when Eliza stood aside and I entered. I smelled gin and cigarettes as I walked past her into a center hall lined with hooks where pictures had once hung.
“Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?” I asked.