“You’re really fucking good at this,” Junior said to him.
It was earnest and humbled, the burp face. Cap put that in his mental photo album of Junior’s unreadable facial expressions. Cap thought of a million gay jokes he could make. Actually just a couple, along the lines of Hey, you want to buy me a drink since you’re getting so emotional, you know, the way gay guys do?
But he didn’t. Instead he said, “So are you, Junior.”
Junior nodded, and then they both got in their cars and took off, and Cap headed for home. He was a block away when he realized he hadn’t turned his phone back on since talking to the McKennas. He said, “Shit,” pulled his phone out and pressed the power button, sorted through the mess of his thoughts while the white apple glowed.
Erica McKenna was right, ultimately; who the hell would give a reverse ransom? If not an outright payment for a human being’s life, which Cap was sure it wasn’t, then why else? A sociopath would never pay out money as retribution. He would feel like he deserved those girls.
So maybe the person who took Ashley Cahill and Sydney McKenna, and maybe the person who still had Kylie, the moneyman, maybe he knew he had done the wrong thing and felt bad about it. The only thing stronger than love or hate or fear was guilt.
His phone vibrated repeatedly, and Cap watched while the screen filled with texts and missed calls, all from Vega. The texts were all the same message: “Call me.”
He tapped the phone icon next to her name and then the speaker, and Vega picked up before the first ring went through.
“Where are you?” she said, her lips brushing the mike of her earpiece.
“Just left the station,” said Cap. “What’s going on?”
“Pull over.”
“What? Why?”
“Pull over. Let me talk,” she said, urgent.
Cap pulled over.
“Okay, I’m parked. What is it?”
“There’s a picture Stacy Gibbons gave me. Ashley in ballet class. The piano player.”
Vega paused her telegram-speak.
“What, Vega? What about the piano player?”
Vega let out a small, cool breath.
“I think it’s Lindsay Linsom. Cole Linsom’s mother,” she said.
“What? Really? From Tuesday?”
“Yes. And I just had Maggie Shambley search a database of home buyers and sellers—the Linsoms have moved three times in the past seven years. Two years ago they lived in Harrisburg. Two years before that—”
“Lebanon,” said Cap.
“Yes,” said Vega. “You need to call the McKennas and ask if they remember the piano player from Sydney’s class.”
“Okay,” said Cap. He pressed his hand to his forehead, felt like he’d been hit in the face. “What’s the narrative here, Vega?”
“Somehow the Linsoms meet Evan Marsh, pay him to lure Kylie, he gets cold feet…”
Cap continued: “One or both of them go to his apartment. They argue.” Cap paused. “They kill him.”
“Yes. Also they moved into their current house two years ago after selling their house in Hershey, which is halfway between—”
“Harrisburg and Lebanon,” said Cap.
“Linsom is a partner at a law firm in Harrisburg. So he makes money.”
“He could be the moneyman,” said Cap.
He looked at his face in the rearview, tired and ghoulishly white. A fun house spook.
“So Lindsay Linsom plays piano for ballet classes, finds the girls, they kidnap them…where are they?” Cap said. “I mean, physically. Where are they? Where is Kylie?”
Vega didn’t answer. In the silence Cap stared at the empty street, the stout houses and shops with skeletal trees lining the streets, firmly stuck in winter. Across the street a Domino’s Pizza, Fine Wine & Spirits. He stared at the Wine & Spirits sign. Wine.
He remembered the billboard for the Sherwood Forest subdivision—jacuzzis, wine cellars, outdoor grill islands. He heard Junior’s voice saying, “Lawyer got the jury to agree that the wine cellar didn’t count as immediate.”
“Wine cellar,” he said, starting the car. “Or basement, garage.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Vega. “What about the other two?”
“I don’t know. Where are you?”
“Rockland, I think.”
“Follow 54 west—you’ll see the signs to their subdivision. Meet me at the entrance.”
He started to drive, started to speed.
“Do you want to call Traynor?” Vega said, strangely tentative. “To get some backup?”
Cap recognized this was a rare kind of attention from her, that this was her being gracious.
“No,” said Cap, immediate and certain. “We call Traynor, the Feds, Junior, we risk the media circus.”
“Cap?” she said, almost whispering. “What if we’re off?”
Cap held the wheel tight, imagined he was gripping the wiry starfish that were Vega’s hands.
“Let’s find out,” he said. “If we’re crazy, then we say sorry and leave and get some sleep and talk to Ashley Cahill’s father in the morning. But Vega?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re not,” he said softly into the air.
He thought he could hear her catch her breath before she hung up.
Cap tapped Erica McKenna’s number and apologized for the hour when she picked up.
“It’s fine, Mr. Caplan. We’re still on the road,” she said, sounding only a little resentful since it was he who put her on the road so late to begin with.
“Right. Look, I have just one more question, and then I’ll let you go, I promise. I know this is reaching back and sounds pretty random. Was there a piano player in Sydney’s ballet class, do you happen to remember?”
Erica paused. Cap heard the white static of the road.
“Piano player,” she repeated. “Usually they used an old CD player, except you know, now that I think about it, they did have someone for recitals and the rehearsals leading up to them. Do you remember that, Toby?”
Cap couldn’t hear Toby’s muffled response.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she answered her husband. “It was a woman, real thin and pretty. Looked like she could be a dancer herself.”
“The name,” said Cap, trying not to rush the natural momentum of Erica’s memory. “Do you remember her name?”
“God, what was it?” said Erica, reflective. “I know this sounds weird, but I keep thinking of some kind of oil. Like grapeseed, linseed, something like that.”
“Linsom,” said Cap, running his hand hard down the back of his neck. “Was it Linsom?”
“Yeah, that’s it!” said Erica, pleased. “Miss Linsom. And her first name was an ‘L’ too, right? Like Lily Linsom or something?”
“Lindsay,” said Cap, his foot coming off the brake. “Lindsay Linsom.”
Erica said a few more things and asked a few more questions, but Cap couldn’t really hear her. He said thank you and that he would call her back tomorrow with any news. Then tapped the red button.
He sped up even more, to fifty-five, sixty. He didn’t know what they would do when they got to the Linsoms’. His heart rate climbed, and he thought of the Chutes and Ladders game, one bad move and you slide back down to the start.
He knew that somewhere close by Alice Vega had cried with his voice right in her ear. And he knew as soon as he saw her face he would know what to do.