Chapter 41
June
June already had Sanjay Mishra’s home address.
He lived about two miles from the university on a tree-lined street in Ravenna, across from the ravine park that gave the neighborhood its name.
He owned two small Craftsman-style houses that were joined together with a modern glass addition.
June guessed if you had money and four kids and you wanted to be able to walk to work, that was a pretty good option.
When they knocked on the door, a woman answered immediately.
She had long blond hair, a ski-jump nose, a peaches and cream complexion, and a scowl.
She carried a fussing baby on her hip with another clinging to her leg.
“You bloody buggers better not be trying to sell me something. I just had this one down for his nap.” She sounded like a woman pouring pints in an English pub.
June handed her a business card. “I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Mishra. We’re looking for your husband. I understand he’s been out of the office for a few days. Is he home today?”
Her face crumpled for a moment, until she recovered, holding herself together. “No, he’s not home—he’s bloody missing. I can’t bloody reach him.”
She stepped back, ushering them into the comfortable clutter of the house. It had been opened up into one large room, with a bright kitchen, a wooden train set looping a sectional couch, and unfolded laundry heaped on the dining table. The two children stared at June with enormous eyes.
“I tracked his mobile to a parking lot in feckin’ Sumner, of all places. I loaded up the kids and drove all the way down there yesterday, found his feckin’ car with the mobile under the seat. I can’t imagine why he’d leave it behind. He lived on that damn thing. I was always on him to put it down.”
She blinked hard, then furiously swiped away a falling tear. “Silly bugger’s never gone this long without checking in. We usually talk three or four times a day. I didn’t think he even knew where Sumner was. I called the coppers and they couldn’t be bothered.”
Then she caught herself. “What the bloody hell do you lot want with my Sanjay?”
June gave the woman a sympathetic smile. “My name’s June Cassidy. Mrs. Mishra, we think your husband might be involved in something we’re looking into.”
“Call me Sally, please. Is Sanjay in trouble?”
“We hope not. Did he ever mention something called the Gun Club?”
“I don’t believe so.” She hugged the fussy baby closer. “Now you’re scaring me. My husband is a good man.”
“What about somebody called the Messenger?”
“No. What on earth is this about?”
“Did your husband ever talk about preparing for some kind of natural disaster?”
Sally Mishra made a face. “Had a midlife crisis, if that’s what you mean.
Got all worried about living in an earthquake zone, filled our basement with bottled water and tinned food and nappies and all kinds of other supplies.
” She shrugged, bouncing the baby on her hip.
“A couple of years later, he was on to something else. We’ll be eating tinned beans until we’re ninety. ”
June fished into her pocket and came out with the Messenger cassette. “Have you seen your husband with one of these?”
“That was Midlife Crisis 2.0,” Sally said. “He got interested in jam bands.” She made air quotes and shuddered. “Phish and Widespread Panic? I can’t stand that shite. But he started trading tapes of live shows with people through the mail. He plays them on his walk to work.”
June raised her eyebrows at Lewis. Geoff Reed had told his sister he collected bootleg tapes, too. She said, “May we see his collection?”
Sally Mishra stared at her. “Who the bloody fuck are you people? And what is this all about?”
“Better you don’t know,” June said. “Not yet. We need to see those tapes.”
Sally scowled again, but she detached the toddler from her leg, took the child’s hand, and led them all through the glass addition, which was set up like an English solarium with plants and couches, and into the other house, where a back bedroom had been converted to a home office.
It had a reading chair by the window, a large wooden table with a giant monitor and related computer clutter, and floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Mouth set, the baby fussing on her hip, Sally pointed at the shelves, where a rack for cassette cases stood about three-quarters full. Beside it was a portable tape player and a pair of cheap headphones.
June walked over to the rack. Like the tape case from KT’s, these were unlabeled, with the blank white facing out.
She took one from the rack and opened it.
The cassette inside was the same brand as the one from KT’s house.
On one side was the same kind of label with a date written in the same spidery hand.
The dates were different, though. She pulled the next few cases from the rack and opened them.
They were organized sequentially, each dated roughly a month from the one before.
She counted forward and found a single empty slot.
After that was a single final tape case.
She checked the date on the last one. It was for the month after KT’s tape.
The dates fit. The tape had come from Mishra’s collection. June would bet her life on it.
Sanjay Mishra was KT’s whistleblower.
She turned and saw Sally staring at her, the baby fussing louder now. “I know you’re not interested in a ring of bloody jam band bootleggers. Please, please tell me what this is about.”
June felt for the woman, but she couldn’t allow herself to be human just yet. She kept her voice businesslike, as if she couldn’t see Sally’s distress. “Just a few more questions. Did your husband ever travel without his phone before?”
Sally Mishra swallowed. “A few times, yes, when he went to meet with some startup founders. He said they were a little paranoid about their big idea getting out. They made him put his phone in a kind of security pouch to cut it off from the cell network. I thought it was odd, but he told me the startup might be a game-changer. It only happened a few times. And only for the day. Never overnight.” Her eyes were brimming.
“In the last few weeks or months, did Sanjay seem upset about anything?”
Sally knuckled away the tears. “Not that he’d ever talk about,” she said. “I mean, we’re English. But a wife knows. Maybe two weeks ago, something changed. He was different. Tense. Five days ago he said he had a meeting and I haven’t heard from him since.”
June looked at Lewis. He nodded. She took a deep breath.
“Sally, we believe your husband got involved in something unfortunate. My guess is, he probably thought it was a good thing, something to help your family in case of a disaster. Then, I would like to think, he realized it was not such a good thing. That it was dangerous. And he did something that he hoped might put an end to it. He reached out to a colleague of mine. And now that colleague is dead.”
Sally held the children to her like an anchor, like they were the only things keeping the tide from washing her out to sea. “And my husband?”
June cleared her throat. “We’re looking for him. Do you have any contact information for these startup people he went to visit?”
“I already looked,” Sally said. “I checked his phone, I checked his computer. His work and personal calendars. I know all his passwords. We didn’t keep secrets, at least I thought we didn’t. But I found nothing.”
June had a thought. “May I see his phone?”
Sally led them back through the solarium to the kitchen and took a phone off the counter. She put in the password, then handed it to June, who immediately went to the alphabetic list of apps, looking for Telegram. It wasn’t there.
June went to the app store, found Telegram, and began to download it, holding her breath.
When it was finished, she opened the app.
It went directly to the chat screen. Mishra had deleted the app just like Enderby had. When it loaded, it had remembered the phone. Unlike Enderby, Sanjay Mishra had put the details in his password manager. And now she could see any messages.
There were only two. The first was with Circuit Rider, a single text dated six days ago.
“I understand you’ve chosen to leave our community. Would it be possible to have an in-person exit interview about your reasons? It will really help us improve the experience of other members. Tomorrow, 10am? Usual place? Won’t take long.”
Sanjay had responded an hour later with a thumbs-up.
The second set of messages was from somebody calling himself WILKS, dated four days ago, after Sanjay’s disappearance. It had never been opened. And it was in all caps, the text equivalent of a shout.
“RE OUR PREVIOUS CONVERSATION, RECOMMEND YOU TAKE NO ACTION. NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES HIGHLY LIKELY.”
The next message arrived an hour later. “STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU DO NOT ACT. TOO DANGEROUS. PLEASE RESPOND.”
Then another message a few hours after that. “SANJAY WHERE ARE YOU?”
Sanjay Mishra had never responded.
Now the only question was whether he was still alive.
June turned to Sally. “Do you have any family nearby? Anywhere you can go stay?”
Sally burst into tears.
—
They walked out to the Lexus under a threatening sky, Lewis carrying the rack of cassette tapes. “Some dude calling himself WILKS, on a private chat with Sanjay Mishra?”
“Only one guy that could be,” June replied. “Isaac Wilkinson.”
Of the people KT had interviewed, he was the third person who’d disavowed knowledge of the Gun Club. From the messages above, he was clearly a part of this, too. June was pretty sure she knew where to find him. The question was, would he see her?