Chapter 27
“Ruthie’s missing.”
A simple declarative sentence. Two words.
But something in Katy’s delivery chilled me.
“What do you mean?”
“Jesus Christ, Mom.”
“Calm down.”
“I am calm. Where are you?”
“I’m at work.”
“Of course you are.”
I didn’t touch that.
“When did you last see Ruthie?” I asked.
“She went out around four yesterday afternoon and never came home.” Katy’s voice sounded unnaturally tight, her vowels too clipped, her consonants too hard.
“I thought you didn’t worr—”
“She left a note saying she’d be back by nine.”
“Where was she heading?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she meeting Lester Meloy and that crowd?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did someone pick her up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she go on foot? Call an Uber?”
“Are you listening to me?” I could feel us drifting into that zone of tension that makes every utterance seem confrontational.
“She probably spent the night with friends, right?” Even as the words left my mouth, they sounded lame.
“Probably. But Ruthie’s been good about letting me know her plans. It’s the deal I have with Kit.”
I almost laughed. As if my nephew would be at all diligent concerning his daughter’s whereabouts.
“Did your Ring doorbell catch footage of Ruthie leaving?”
“The battery is dead.”
Biting back the obvious response to that, I asked, “Do you know how to contact Meloy?”
“Yes. But I don’t want to look like I’m helicoptering the kid. I mean, Ruthie is seventeen.”
“Exactly. She’s only seventeen.”
“I’ll give it a bit longer,” Katy said. “If I don’t hear from her soon, I’ll contact Meloy.”
I made a quick phone call, then grabbed my car keys and hurried out.
While Charlotte’s neighborhoods may be village cozy, its Uptown is schizophrenically all about business and good times.
Restaurants. Theaters. Stone-and-glass high-rise office towers.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is housed at the heart of the beast, in the Law Enforcement Center, an enormous concrete structure looming over the intersection of Fourth and McDowell.
The LEC was my destination that weekday afternoon during a heat wave that seemed to be lasting forever. My car’s AC system normally would have kept the oven temps at bay, but today it was either overwhelmed or disinterested in its calling.
Mercifully, traffic was light. Fifteen minutes after leaving the MCME I pulled into the visitors’ lot at the LEC. Sliding from behind the wheel, I crossed asphalt that had to be close to the melting point.
The CMPD employs almost two thousand officers, so a steady flow of cops, each clad in deep blue and displaying a hornet’s nest patch on one shoulder, was entering and exiting the building.
Long story on the bug theme, one involving resistance during the Revolutionary War and a disparaging remark by General Cornwallis. Look it up. Or ask any local.
The CMPD maintains its own crime lab, directed by a man named Ron Gillman. After showing ID, I rode an elevator to the fourth floor, then walked a long and very shiny corridor to his corner office.
Gillman was perusing a file spread out on his blotter. He looked up when I knocked on the open door.
As a tall, silver-haired man with a body suggesting basketball or tennis, the only thing marring Gillman’s leading-man good looks is a Lauren Hutton space between his upper central incisors. A big one. Or maybe that dental quirk contributes to his charm.
“Tempe.” Big gap-toothed smile.
“Ron.”
“Broiler out there, eh?” Perhaps noticing my sweat-soaked bangs and tee.
“It is.”
“Take a load off.”
I dropped into one of two chairs facing his desk.
“What can I do you for?” he asked.
Gillman listened without interrupting as I told him about the series of animal and human displays and the man from the McDowell Nature Preserve with the oddly placed storage device.
“I’m not sure I have a good response for that, except… wow,” he said when I’d finished.
“Exactly. I’m wondering if there’s info your guys can tease from the drive that I missed just eyeballing it.”
“You said the man who had the device had been shot?”
“Yes.”
“Actually, I just heard about this. His death is being treated as a homicide?”
“A possible homicide.”
“Who’s on the case?” Gillman asked.
“Slidell.”
“Congrats.”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got.” Gillman popped forward in his chair to hold out a hand.
“It’s been disinfected,” I said, placing the drive on his palm.
“Bless you for that.” The lifting of one corner of his mouth left me unsure if the comment was teasing or literally meant.
Slipping on horn-rimmed glasses, Gillman studied the object in his hand. Then he picked up the phone and spoke to someone in the IT section.
“Things move faster if the request originates here,” he said, replacing the receiver.
“That’s why I came to you,” I said.
“How did you get involved in all this?” Gillman asked, leaning back again and slowly swiveling his chair.
I’d just finished answering when a man appeared in the doorway, the name Koster embroidered above the pocket of his lab coat. He had a strong-boned, deeply lined face and a head of platinum hair anchored by ebony roots. I guessed his height at five three, his age at midforties.
Gillman introduced the man as Orson Koster, a new hire in the IT section.
I rose and we shook hands, me smiling, Koster not.
Gillman handed Koster the thumb drive and explained what I wanted.
“There’s a long queue, so it may take a whi—”
“Could you do it now?” Gillman asked, not asking.
“On it.” Koster turned to exit the office.
“May I watch?” Hiding my surprise at the man’s brusqueness.
“Of course you may,” Gillman said, ignoring Koster’s frown.
I followed Mr. Sunshine down another polished corridor to a room containing an array of computers, lighting rigs, backdrop screens, and microscopes. Positioning two chairs in front of a terminal, my reluctant guide gestured for me to sit.
I sat.
After logging on, Koster inserted the thumb drive into the appropriate port. When the familiar home screen appeared, he double-clicked the key icon.
As expected, nothing happened.
“Okay, smart guy,” Koster mumbled under his breath. “Let’s have at it.”
Koster worked the keyboard with lightning-fast fingers.
More nothing.
“Not bad, buddy boy.” As before, Koster spoke to himself. “But not good enough.”
I watched without comment.
Forty minutes and a million keystrokes later, the screen changed color and a rotating box appeared.
“Fucking A!” Koster hooted, air-pumping one arm.
I would have joined in the victory theatrics were I not frozen in shock, eyes glued to the monitor.
A video had launched, showing a setting as recognizable as my own face. The Annex with its ancient pine in the side yard, my Mazda parked on the driveway below.
A wavery transition morphed to a different but equally familiar tableau. One far more disturbing in its intimacy. In the intrusion it implied.
Footage of my bedroom filled the screen, recorded through the open door leading in from the hall. The lights were off, the walls and furnishings cast in an eerie blue-gray.
Koster must have picked up on my altered body language.
“You know the place?” he asked without turning.
“It’s my home,” I said, masking the white-hot anger sparking below my sternum.
“Yeah?” Whipping to face me.
I nodded, too shaken to reply.
“You cool to who shot this?” he asked, thumb-jabbing the screen.
“I’ve no idea.”
“That’s some heavy shit.”
I said nothing.
“Want to view it again?”
“Yes.”
We did.
And again.
The third time through, with the playing speed slowed, we both spotted a previously overlooked detail. A flick of purple-and-black entering the edge of the frame as the camera made its sweep of the room.
“Did you see that?” Koster asked.
I had.
“Go back,” I said, twirling a finger.
Koster rewound and hit play.
“Freeze there!” I snapped when the purple-and-black flash reappeared.
He hit pause.
“I think that’s a pocket,” I said, squinting hard. “Holding some sort of paper.”
Koster didn’t agree or disagree.
“Can you zoom in?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Koster enlarged the area to the point of pixelation, adjusted and readjusted, finally landed at a setting that provided reasonably clean detail.
I’d guessed correctly. A folded document peeked from the side pocket of a jacket or shirt. A jacket or shirt worn by the person filming inside my home.
The anger flamed hotter.
Focus, Brennan.
I squinted at the front-facing portion of the document. Saw print and tried to make out the words. Got nowhere.
“Can you read that?” I asked, thinking Koster’s vision was probably better than mine.
“Not a chance,” he said.
“Would it help to rotate the image?” I suggested, hoping proper positioning might improve legibility.
It didn’t.
“How about I try a little more cleanup?” he asked.
“Please.”
Koster performed more of his cyber magic, expanding and sharpening the print. Another million keystrokes, and the boldest letters topping the document grudgingly crystalized.
…network of tunnels running beneath Charlotte’s streets…
“Looks like a photocopy,” he said.
“It does.”
“What the hell does it mean?” Koster asked.
I provided a quick explanation. He’d heard of the tunnels, but always thought the stories were myth.
“Want hard copy?” he asked.
“Please.”
Koster printed the screenshot.
I took the page, thanked him, and left.
Unaware that those very real tunnels would soon upend my life.