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“I know my son.”
“Or that,” Hester added. “Bad news: We didn’t get the continuance.”
“Hester—”
“Before you say you won’t go back to Boston, hear me out. I’ve already arranged for a limo to come pick you up. It’s outside the hospital right now.”
“I can’t—”
“Just listen, Tia. You owe me that much. The driver will take you to Teterboro Airport, which isn’t far from your house. I have my private plane. You have a cell phone. If any word comes in at all, the driver can take you there. There is a phone on the plane. If you hear something while in the air, my pilot can have you there in record time. Maybe Adam will be found in, I don’t know, Philadelphia. It will pay to have a private plane at your disposal.”
Mike looked a question at Tia. Tia shook her head and signaled for them to keep moving. They did.
“When you get up to Boston,” Hester went on, “you do the deposition. If anything happens during the deposition, you stop immediately and go home on the private plane. It is a forty-minute flight from Boston to Teterboro. Chances are, your kid is just going to walk through the door with some teenage excuse because he was out drinking with friends. Either way, you will be home in a matter of hours.”
Tia pinched the bridge of her nose.
Hester said, “I’m making sense, right?”
“You are.”
“Good.”
“But I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t be able to concentrate.”
“Oh, that’s crap. You know what I want with this deposition.”
“You want flirty. My husband is in the hospital—”
“He’s already being released. I know all, Tia.”
“Fine, my husband has been assaulted and my son is still missing. Do you really think I will be up for a flirtatious deposition?”
“Up for it? Who the hell cares if you’re up for it? You just need to do it. There is a man’s freedom at stake here, Tia.”
“You need to find somebody else.”
Silence.
“Is that your final answer?” Hester said.
“Final answer,” Tia said. “Is this going to cost me my job?”
“Not today,” Hester said. “But soon enough. Because now I know that I can’t depend on you.”
“I’ll work hard to get your trust back.”
“You won’t get it back. I’m not big on second chances. I got too many lawyers working for me who will never need one. So I’ll put you back on crap detail until you quit. Too bad. I think you had potential.”
Hester Crimstein hung up the phone.
They found their way outside. Mike was still watching his wife.
“Tia?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Mo drove them home.
Tia asked, “What do we do?”
Mike popped down a pain pill. “Maybe you should pick up Jill.” “Okay. Where are you going?”
“For starters,” Mike said, “I want to have a little chat with Captain Daniel Huff about why he lied.”
21
MO said, “This Huff guy’s a cop, right?”
“Right.”
“So he won’t intimidate easily.”
They had already parked outside the Huff house, almost exactly where Mike had been last night before it all exploded around him. He didn’t listen to Mo. He stormed toward the door. Mo followed. Mike knocked and waited. He hit the doorbell and waited some more.
No one answered.
Mike circled around back. He banged on that door too. No answer. He cupped his hands around his eyes and the window and peered in. No movement. He actually checked the knob. The door was locked.
“Mike?”
“He’s lying, Mo.”
They walked back to the car.
“Where to?” Mo asked.
“Let me drive.”
“No. Where to?”
“The police station. Where Huff works.”
It was a short ride, less than a mile. Mike thought about this route, the short one that Daniel Huff took pretty much every day to work. How lucky to have such a quick commute. Mike thought of the wasted hours sitting in traffic at the bridge and then he wondered why he was thinking about something so inane and realized that he was breathing funny and that Mo was watching him out of the corner of his eye.
“Mike?”
“What?”
“You got to keep your cool here.”
Mike frowned. “This coming from you.”
“Yep, this coming from me. You can either rejoice in the rich irony of my appealing for common sense or you can realize that if I’m advocating for prudence, there must be a pretty good reason for it. You can’t go into a police station to confront an officer half-cocked.”
Mike said nothing. The police station was a converted old library up on a hill with horrible parking. Mo started circling for a space.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, Mo, I heard you.”
There were no spots in front.
“Let me circle down on the south lot.”
Mike said, “No time. I’ll take care of this myself.”
“No way.”
Mike turned to him.
“Sheesh, Mike, you look horrible.”
“If you want to be my driver, fine. But you’re not my babysitter, Mo. So just drop me off. I need to talk to Huff alone anyway. You’ll make him suspicious. Alone I can go at him father to father.”
Mo pulled to the side. “Remember what you just said.”
“What about it?”
“Father to father. He’s a father too.”
“Meaning?”
“Think about it.”
Mike felt the pain rip across his ribs when he stood. Physical pain was an odd thing. He had a high threshold, he knew that. Sometimes he even found it comforting. He liked feeling the hurt after a hard workout. He liked making his muscles sore. On the ice, guys would try to intimidate with hard hits, but it had the opposite effect on him. There was an almost bring-it-on quality that came out when he took a good hit.
He expected the station to be sleepy. He had only been here once before, to request keeping his car on the street overnight. The town had an ordinance making it illegal to park on the street after two A.M., but their driveway was being repaved and so he stopped by to get permission to keep the cars out for the week. There had been one cop at the desk and all the desks behind him had been empty.
Today there had to be at least fifteen cops, all in action.
