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“So what are you going to do with regard to my son? I told you that I was still wired into certain players and agencies who see me as a possible way to bring him down. Your working for him now might provide you an opportunity to collaborate with us to accomplish that.”
“There’s nothing I would want more,” said Gibson. “To answer your question, my best bet is to keep working away to find the treasure. With that I have a bargaining chip with him. The FBI will have to be ready to roll when I call you in.IfI get a chance to call you in.”
“From what I’ve seen, my money’s on you. And one more thing.”
“What?”
“My money’s also on Clarisse. You know,togetheryou two might be able to do what neither can do independently.”
“I have been working with her. She’s the reason I’m involved in all this. But I’m not sure our interests are totally aligned.”
“Nothing in life is ever perfectly aligned. I worked with criminals to bring worse criminals down. I’m sure you did, too. Sometimes you just have to go for it and hope for the best. Trust people not based on anything neatly reasoned, but on your gut. Just food for thought from an old man who’s seen far too much of that kind of life than was good for him. It might simply be me mellowing in my old age, or the fact that I wanted a daughter and never had one, but having spent some time with Clarisse and gotten a chance to think about her, I have arrived at one conclusion.”
“What’s that?”
“I would love to see her really smile at least once.”
Gibson said goodbye and clicked off and stared at the wall as Sam Trask’s words went round and round in her head.
Wanting to see Clarisse smile? After all the shit she’s put me through? No, I’m not there. Yet.
CHAPTER67
LATER, AS GIBSON SAT THERe she thought about something.
Parents.
Clarisse had talked about childcare for kidsandparents.
Okay, play this out. What if sheisFrancine and has been taking care of her mother, Geraldine? What if the woman is in a nursing home or an assisted living facility somewhere?
Gibson next thought about the phone call Clarisse had gotten while she had been on the line with her. Clarisse, normally unflappable and in control, seemed close to losing control. This was a long shot, Gibson knew. But everything right now was a long shot, and it wasn’t like she had lots of other leads to run down. She had asked Clarisse point-blank about what Gibson had overheard on the phone call, but the woman had evaded answering directly. However, Gibson could read people. Clarisse was definitely worried about something, about someone.
She went online and put in a fairly broad search request having to do with assisted living facilities and nursing homes, and any problems that had arisen in any of them over the last week or so—like people going missing, as she had heard the other woman say over the phone line, or maybe a death or an accident. She got a flood of stories and posts back on this.
Jesus, are these places dangerous or what?
She narrowed the search as much as she dared and hit the send key.
Ten items came back. That was better. She read through them all. Four pertained to some accident where someone had died. Two were shootings by relatives of their geriatric “loved ones.”
Wonderful.
And the rest were about residents who had walked away or otherwise vanished from their facilities. She checked each one of these thoroughly, but couldn’t draw any conclusions. She recognized none of the names, not that Clarisse would have placed her mother in the facility under the names Geraldine Langhorne or Geraldine Parker.
She put this search aside and was about to go get a cup of tea when an email plunked into her inbox.
It was from Jan Roberts, her contact at theStar-Ledgerin Newark. She had finally replied to Gibson’s earlier email.
You have time to talk?
She had left a number, which Gibson immediately called.
“Well this is a blast from the past,” said Roberts in her booming voice that Gibson remembered so clearly. She had met Roberts through her father when she was working a case in Jersey City. Roberts had assisted Gibson in one aspect of the case and had been given an exclusive interview by her as payback, all done anonymously, of course, because of Gibson’s being undercover for the investigation.
“How’s your father?” Roberts asked.
“Ornery as ever,” replied Gibson.
