49
CANDACE WASN’T sure when the feeling she was being followed first came to her. It’d crept up slowly, starting in a far corner of her awareness. As a woman in the city, she was always at least dimly aware of strange eyes on her when she was on the street, men checking her out. At first this feeling just blended with that, but gradually it grew into something else. She couldn’t nail it down, though, couldn’t tag a specific person who was always behind her. But even without that, the feeling persisted, grew solid, and after a while Candace stopped doubting its basic truth.
She wanted to talk it through with someone, but nobody seemed right. Her parents would freak out, insist that she call the police. If she told anyone at the paper, they’d feel obligated to have meetings about it, maybe even rope in the lawyers. That is, if they believed her—if not, they’d probably rope in a shrink. She told herself as soon as she had anything concrete she’d take it to Nugent.
She started walking around with her cell phone in hand, set to camera, wanting to be ready if she ever identified someone. After two days of doing this and not coming up with anything she started feeling stupid and gave it up. Candace knew that she could be paranoid, feel like people were conspiring against her, but she’d never in her life felt like she was being spied on before this. If it was actually happening, she had little doubt who was behind it.
After separating from her husband, Candace had rented a one-bedroom just off Smith Street in Boerum Hill. As soon as she walked into her apartment that night she knew something was wrong. The first thing she noticed was that her cat was not at the door to greet her as he almost always was.
Someone had been here. It was obvious as soon as she started looking around: the apartment was a mess, books dropped on the floor, her television’s screen bashed in.
Candace’s first impulse was to leave. She stood frozen in the open doorway, straining to hear whether someone was still in the apartment. After a moment her cat came padding out from the bedroom. Candace relaxed a little at the sight: Lazlo was scared of strangers and wouldn’t have emerged from under the bed if a burglar was still in the apartment. Candace went to her bedroom, first stopping in the kitchen and grabbing a butcher knife, even though she felt sure she was alone. Her bedroom was also trashed, her dresser drawers open, clothes on the floor, the top mattress of her bed askew. Candace’s heart was still pounding; the knife in her hand was quivering like a struck tuning fork.
Candace called 911, reported the break-in. Her nerves were still jangled—first the purse snatching, now this. Life in New York could be tough, but two incidents like this in one summer seemed a little much. She wondered if someone was sending her a message.
Candace pushed the thought out of her mind and set about figuring out what was missing before the police arrived. Her jewelry box had been emptied, although for the most part it held little of actual value. Her iPod was gone, her almost-new bottle of Vera Wang perfume. Only then did it hit her, and she hurried back to the living room to double-check.
It was true: her laptop was gone. As soon as she realized it, everything else missing seemed trivial. She occasionally e-mailed notes and even drafts between her laptop and her office computer. Her home computer was like a second brain. More than that, it was a window into what she was working on, where she was with it.
It was the most valuable thing stolen out of her apartment, and its value to her went well beyond its cost. Her mind quickly went to the question of whether the laptop was what the thieves had come for.
A couple of uniformed cops arrived fairly quickly in response to her 911 call. Candace listed for them everything that was missing, stressing the laptop as the most important. She resisted the urge to tell them that she thought Simon Roth was behind the break-in.
Candace ended up packing a suitcase and taking a cab back into Manhattan to stay at Brock Anders’s apartment. She planned to call a locksmith, maybe even get an alarm installed—she wasn’t sure what it was going to take for her to feel safe inside her apartment again. Brock told her she could stay as long as she needed. He insisted that she share his king-size bed, rather than sleep on the couch, and though Candace acted reluctant she found comfort in having someone there in the room with her; it made her feel a little safer.
At work the next morning she went straight to Nugent, filling him in. Her editor looked dutifully concerned, but also a little unclear as to why Candace was telling him about it.
“Do you need the day to take care of stuff?” he asked.
Candace shook her head impatiently. “I’m worried about whether what I’ve been working on has been compromised.”
“By a break-in?” Nugent said, frowning as he looked at her.
“They stole my laptop. It had work-in-progress stuff on it—interview notes, some research.”
“You’re not suggesting this was a targeted thing coming out of your reporting?” Nugent asked.
“I’m saying, yes, that possibility has occurred to me. You think it’s so far-fetched?”
“You name sources in your notes?”
“Not full names, but initials sometimes, yeah. Someone who understood what they were reading could probably figure some of it out.”
“You should be more careful.”
Candace resisted the urge to stand, pick up her chair, and throw it at her editor’s head. “I didn’t leave the f*cking thing in the back of a cab, Bill,” she snapped. “Somebody stole it out of my apartment.”
Bill held up a hand in silent apology. “What did the police say?”
“They took down a list of the missing stuff, said you never know, sometimes things turn up. But they were just going through the motions.”
Nugent nodded, the two of them sharing an awkward gaze. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he finally said.
“Not sure how I’m looking at you, but don’t you think it’s a little strange that somebody breaks in and steals my laptop while I’m digging into this Roth stuff? They’ve already shown how willing they are to play hardball.”
Nugent cocked his head, making no effort to hide his skepticism. “You think Simon Roth broke into your apartment?”
“Not personally.”
“Should I even bother to ask if you have any proof of this?”
Candace tried to force herself to stay calm. She thought Nugent was condescending to her; she wondered if he’d be so dismissive if she were a man. Of course, he didn’t know that Candace also thought she was being followed, but she certainly wasn’t going to bring that up now. “Look, I understand that break-ins happen, that coincidences happen. But I think you could be underestimating what we’re up against in Roth. I’m not saying I know he’s behind it, but it certainly doesn’t strike me as outside the realm of the possible.”
Nugent was still giving Candace a look she didn’t like. “You know what I’m wondering?” he said. “I’m wondering if you’ve been on this story too long.”
Candace gave up on Nugent and went back to her desk. She was too angry to think about anything else, though. After a minute an idea came to her and she picked up the phone.
Tommy Nelson’s phone at the Aurora construction site was answered by a brusque woman who informed her that Nelson was no longer working on the project. When Candace asked where she could reach him she was told he was out on medical leave.
Candace found herself wondering if Roth had somehow gotten to Nelson. Christ, she thought, maybe Nugent was right: she was getting paranoid.