Joseph Finder - Vanished

When I clicked over to Garvin’s call, he began abruptly, without even identifying himself: “This is interesting.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I got back a trace on both of those tags-the Econoline van and that black Humvee?” Like most cops, Garvin called license plates “tags.”

“And?”

“And they both trace back to the same owner.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “Who is it?”

“The registration on file in both cases seems to be a holding company.”

I waited.

“Something called A.G. Holdings.”

“Is there an address?”

“Just a P.O. box.”

“Okay,” I said. “That helps. That helps a lot.”

I hung up, and a minute later I was talking to Dorothy again.

She cut me off: “I told you, Nick, I can’t do any more work for you.”

“I just need you to look at that tenant list I faxed you.”

“Just look at it?”

“Right.”

“I got it right here.”

“Is there a tenant in that building called A.G. Holdings?”

There was a long pause, a rustling of paper. Finally: “Seventh floor,” she said.

“Nice,” I said.

“What?”

“A.G. Holdings is Allen Granger.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do either,” I said. “But I intend to find out.”

It seemed like the more I knew, the less I understood.

Paladin Worldwide and Traverse Development and A.G. Holdings-they were all the same company. Or to put it more accurately, they all shared ownership, which wasn’t quite the same thing. One of them owned the other. Maybe it didn’t make any difference which company owned the other. They were all Allen Granger.

Okay, fine. So one of Paladin’s subsidiaries, Traverse Development, secretly shipped a billion dollars’ worth of cash into the United States, only the cash went missing. Why? Because it was stolen by the security director of the shipping company.

Who’d been hired by the same company that shipped it over in the first place.

So in essence, Paladin Worldwide was stealing from itself.

Or, maybe more to the point, Carl Koblenz was stealing from his own company. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was embezzling money on a grand scale.

Maybe Carl Koblenz had tried to steal a billion dollars, and Roger had found out and tried to extort hush money from him to keep it quiet. And Koblenz had decided it would be easier just to abduct, perhaps kill, Roger.

And Roger had somehow managed to escape their clutches.

Okay. But then why would Paladin-under the name of one of its subsidiaries, or holding companies, Traverse Development-hire my firm to track down the missing cash?

The only explanation that made any sense to me was that Stoddard Associates had been hired not by Carl Koblenz but by Allen Granger. In other words, Paladin’s CEO had no idea that his own president had stolen a billion dollars from the company.

And Roger had stepped into the middle of that mess.

And so had I.

As I returned to the airport parking lot, I called a guy I didn’t know, a friend of a friend who worked for Paladin Worldwide. His name was Neil Burris, an ex-Navy SEAL, and he worked out of Paladin’s Falls Church office in their private-security division.

He didn’t sound very friendly on the phone. But after I identified myself as Marty Masur of Stoddard Associates and told him that Stoddard was interested in possibly hiring him, at a salary at least twice what he was making at Paladin, he warmed up.

We arranged to meet for drinks.

With a trembling hand, Lauren picked up the phone to call Nick.

Her heart was racing. Her mouth was dry. She was nauseated, light-headed. The room seemed to be spinning slowly, and she had the physical sensation of falling through space.

How could someone have taken video of Gabe sleeping? Had someone sneaked in during the night? Was there some sort of hidden camera in his room? Could it possibly be?

And who could have done such a thing?

Feeling as if she were about to vomit, she put the phone down. No. It would be a mistake to call Nick. He’d already unearthed things about Roger and about their family life that she wished he hadn’t. How in the world had he discovered Roger’s affair, that terrible, gut-wrenching thing that had so blighted their marriage? She wished Gabe had never asked Nick to help.

Then she opened the St. Gregory’s website-Harvard crimson, elegant font, the school’s coat of arms-and found the main switchboard number on the bottom of the page. She picked up the phone again and called the school.

She recognized the voice of the woman who answered-the receptionist, Mrs. Jordan-and began speaking all in a rush. “Ruth, this is Gabe Heller’s mom, Lauren Heller? I wonder, do you think you could check to see if Gabe’s in school today?”

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Heller. Is there a problem?”

“No, not at all, I left the house early, and you know how late these boys sleep, and…”

Mrs. Jordan chuckled softly. Lauren could hear her typing. She stared at the school’s seal. The Latin motto: Mens Sana in Corpore Sano . What did that mean, “A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body”? She wondered what the Latin was for “More Rich Assholes than You Can Shake a Stick At.”

She couldn’t breathe.

“He’s in today,” she said. “I think he’s in science right now. Did you want to get a message to him?”

Lauren let her breath out slowly. “No, I-” She hesitated. “Actually, yes, Ruth. Can you tell him that I’ll pick him up from school today?”

She looked up the cell-phone number of Kate Vaughan, the mom who was scheduled to drive the car pool in the afternoons this week. She called Kate and told her not to drive Gabe home.

She could leave work early today. Leland wasn’t here, and Noreen would be more than happy to hold down the fort.

She needed to see her son and make sure he was all right.

That headache was back.

The same throbbing in her temples and her forehead, the feeling that her head was a lightbulb that could explode at any moment. That sensation of needles jabbing into the back of her eyeballs.

She could barely concentrate on the road. Since she never left work so early, she had no idea how bad the traffic on the George Washington Parkway was in the mid afternoon. It was only two thirty, not even rush hour, and it was already bumper-to-bumper.

And her head was about to explode.

In her mind she kept replaying that video of Gabe asleep in bed, over and over until she wanted to scream.

St. Gregory’s School was located on a verdant campus off Wisconsin Avenue, near the National Cathedral. It looked like an Ivy League school. It sure cost like an Ivy League school. She drove in past the tennis courts, past the huge new athletic facility, and pulled into a long line of very expensive SUVs. In front of her was a Range Rover. Behind her was a Porsche Cayenne Turbo.

The whole scene felt unfamiliar to her. Yet at the same time sort of nice. Picking your kid up from school-that was something she really missed. Not since Gabe was in first grade had she picked him up from school and taken him home. That was in the early years of working for Leland, and it had been hard to arrange time off, but she’d done it. Seven years ago. Apart from a few days when he was sick, anyway.

There was a time when Lauren knew she could keep Gabe safe. Once she’d been able to pick him up in the palm of one hand. She could still his cries by offering him a bottle or her breast, by patting his back until he gave a tiny burp, by wrapping him up in his blankets as snugly as an egg roll.

But then you send your kid out into the world and anything can happen.