“It’s my Harvard roommate, not the one in Mexico City,” Alison assured me. “She’s working with an NGO in Botswana, and we text each other, like, twenty times a day, so she was upset when she didn’t hear from me.”
“Alison. Ms. Breen. You’re the Whizzo Wizard of Computerland, not me, but don’t you know that anyone who knows your phone number, whether it’s your father or Jari Liu or Ramona in Mexico City, can track your location if your GPS signal is transmitting?”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I’m so used to texting, it never occurred to me—I looked at my phone when I got up and thought I’d forgotten to take it out of airplane mode, and Caitlin, my roommate, she said if she didn’t hear from me by the end of the day in Chicago she’d text my mom. What should I do?”
“How long have you had your phone on?”
“Since I got up, maybe thirty minutes ago. I kind of do it automatically. I had about twenty texts from the people in Mexico, and then my roommate, and my folks had both texted saying they’d heard from my program director, and they called Harvard, so—”
“So you’d better get up to Lake Forest and let them know you’re okay,” I finished for her.
I hadn’t thought this through last night. Too much Echezeaux had made me overlook how many people would start looking for Alison the instant she disappeared.
“But what can I tell them? I don’t want to say I came back hoping that Martin might show up.”
“No, but can’t you tell them a part of the truth? Tell them siccing the FBI on members of your Mexico program is undoing all the good work you’ve been putting in. Tell them you needed to have this conversation face-to-face, that it’s too delicate a matter to handle by texts and phone calls.”
I wasn’t really paying attention to her problem; I was wondering whether there were unusual noises coming from the side of the house.
“And if they realize from my GPS signal that I was at Martin’s house?”
“Ask them why they were tracking your cell phone and tell them you’ll get a burn phone that you throw out every month if they don’t stop breathing down your neck.”
There were unusual noises on the perimeter. I leapt across the room to the kitchen door and stood flat against the wall, gun in hand.
“Get down,” I said to Alison, “get under the table. Someone’s here. I don’t want to hit you if I have to shoot.”
Alison stared at me, still holding her peanut buttery spoon.
“Get on the floor,” I hissed in fury.
She was too frightened to move: we both had seen a face appear in the window over the kitchen sink. The flaming hair topping it off was unmistakable. I put my gun back in my holster and left the kitchen through the garage door, since the back door was boarded over.
“Voss Susskind,” I called, stepping into the Binders’ yard. “What are you looking for?”
He spun around, his eyes wide with terror. “Who are—oh. You’re the detective who’s looking for Martin. Have you found him?”
“I’m not even close. What are you doing here?”
He’d been standing on a cement block under the kitchen window. He hopped down, his face almost as red as his hair.
“Ever since you came to see my folks, I’ve kind of been keeping a watch on the house. When I got home from school just now I thought I saw something in the kitchen so I came over to investigate before I called the cops.”
“Well done,” I said with a heartiness I didn’t feel. “We were looking for any clues the police had missed. You didn’t happen to be watching the night Ms. Binder was murdered, did you?”
He traced a circle in the hard-baked yard with the toe of his sneaker. “If I say, will you promise not to tell my mom?”
“Scout’s honor,” I agreed solemnly.
“It was two guys. I saw them break down the back door, and I ran to get my mom, but before she could even call 911, we heard these shots, and my dad, he said, better stay out of it.”
“Can you describe them?” I said. “If you can, I promise I won’t tell the police it was you I heard the details from.”
He shook his head unhappily, looking at the circle he’d been drawing. “They wore dark jackets, or sweaters, and their faces were all flattened-out funny. I think they’d put ladies’ pantyhose over them, that’s what I decided later, you know, I was talking about it to Aaron Lustic at school the next day and we agreed ladies’ stockings would squish your face out funny.”
“But you’re sure they were both men?”
“It was how they walked,” he said simply.
I smiled. “You have the makings of a superior investigator, Voss. Now I wonder if I could ask a favor. That’s Martin’s girlfriend in the kitchen; she’s been helping me search the house but she needs to get up to her folks’ place in Lake Forest. Can she borrow your bike? She’d get it back to you tomorrow.”