Ridley Pearson - Choke Point

“I combined the two,” she reviews for Dulwich. “Demir’s phone records, revealing a . . . donut,” she says, finding Knox’s word, “in his usage. Along with a water source.” She grabs the map and drags it lower, exposing more of the north. She double-clicks repeatedly. With each action, the camera draws closer to the earth’s surface, like a zoom lens.

“A circle in the triangle,” she continues.

Dulwich is noticeably anxious and agitated. An advertising flyer lies on the floor. He picks it up, rolls it and taps it against his open palm like a cop with a nightstick. “We need to move. We can do this anywhere.”

“Please . . .” Grace says, annoyed with him. It’s a rare display of emotion, and it is not missed by either man. “A blue circle in a triangle of green.”

“A fountain,” Knox says, “in a small park.” He’s captured by her constrained excitement.

“With a bonus.” She runs the cursor in a blurring circle around five dull brown rectangles that look like pieces of pastel chalk in a box. They lie adjacent to a massive horseshoe-shaped structure that abuts a canal to the northeast.

Dulwich beats the newsprint against his hand annoyingly, his impatience grating.

“Warehouses,” Knox says to Grace.

“Or garages. Storage. Manufacturing?”

“The knot shop.”

“Escaping, she passed through this fountain.” Grace points to the blue circle. The cursor moves street to street, arriving eight blocks away, and stops. “The medical clinic.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t interesting,” Dulwich says carefully. “But it’s a theory, nothing more.”

“Worth looking into,” Knox counters. “There have to be more girls. The van isn’t going to show up tomorrow morning. If they are there, this will be the last time they are.”

“Then we have lost them for good,” Grace adds.

“You can’t lose what you don’t have.” Dulwich’s frustration surfaces as anger. Toeing the company line is killing him. He addresses Knox. “Pangarkar is not in that building.” He convinces no one, perhaps not even himself. “More to the point: Fahiz is not in that building.”

“It’s possible,” Knox says, “that at night, no one’s in the building.”

“To Brian’s point: we can give the address to Brower. Closing the shop does nothing to stop Fahiz. And do not tell me,” he says, raising a finger to Knox, “that Pangarkar can lead us to Fahiz, because you lost her. Not Grace. Not me. You! ” The pressure and fatigue claim him. His face florid, his eyes bloodshot, his frontal vein bulging to bursting, he puts his face into Knox’s and beats the rolled newsprint against Knox’s shoulder. He’s dangerously close to starting a war. “You were right; fine. She was our one asset, our one ticket? Well, you punched that ticket !”

Knox swipes the newsprint from Dulwich’s hand with deceptive speed. He’s about to throw it to the floor when he sees it’s a pennysaver, the back page crammed with personals and classifieds. Time stops. Dulwich is poised defensively, expecting Knox to hit back; Grace holds her breath. Knox is locked in time travel, rooted back in the claustrophobic confines of the houseboat’s forward cabin.

Sonia sits with her laptop open . . .

Knox checks his watch. “What’s the time difference between here and Mumbai?” he asks.

“Four hours, thirty, ahead,” Grace says without consulting her computer. “Tehran and India both adopted the added thirty-minute difference in their time zones.” She silences Knox before he doubts her. “Do not ask me why.”

He does the math. Stares down Dulwich. “I’m going to need Winston’s help.”

“What the hell?”

“He needs to make a phone call for me.” He adds, “For us.”

“Because?”

“Because if he makes it, the publisher will listen.”

“I got that much.”

“Because I need to place a classified in Mumbai’s morning paper, which is about to go to press, if it hasn’t already.” He stumps Dulwich. “And I need you,” he says to Grace, “to post an ad on Craigslist right this minute.”

“What the hell?” Dulwich says.

“No matter what, she reads the classifieds every morning,” Knox says. “She reads them looking for her niece’s initials.”

“I don’t want to ask who, do I?” Dulwich says.

Knox answers, “I promise you, we can take this to the bank.”

It’s past midnight by the time Grace has been resettled and Dulwich drops off Knox at the Kwakersstraat bridge, on the eastern bank of the Bilderdijkkade canal. He heads away from the canal and his intended destination across the bridge and sits outside on a plaza in a rattan chair at the Grandcafé for an espresso while others around him drink beer. There’s cigarette smoke and conversation in the air. Any other night Knox would be happy to spend a few hours here, but tonight it’s about appearances.

If the area surrounding the knot shop is being watched or monitored by camera, Knox has taken a moment to blend in. But not too long: by now Brower and the police could be interested in him. Amsterdam is an easy place to remain anonymous, but Knox can’t be careless; some police could be on Fahiz’s payroll.

After five minutes, he crosses to the south side of Kwakersstraat and holds close to the buildings, pausing in shadow at the corner facing the bridge. The espresso fires up his hunger—he can’t remember when he last ate—and overcharges his battery to where he needs to expend some energy. He kills nearly ten minutes waiting for foot traffic across the bridge. It’s a group of eight from the Grandcafé, arms slung over shoulders, voices carrying off the water. Knox follows a few meters behind.

The line of structures, garage doors facing the street, is staggered like stair steps. Holding to shadow, Knox moves into a hard-packed dirt parking area. The moonless, cloud-covered sky blackens the area, preventing Knox from seeing clearly through the grimy windowpanes. What little he can make out, without using his Maglite, tells him the space goes empty. As does the next. And the next. The fourth facade is wider than the first three. It sports an oversized garage door, the windows to which are papered over from the inside. The butcher paper is white, not yellowed. The door entrance is to the right. By the dust and debris pushed up to the weather stripping, it hasn’t been opened in weeks, possibly months.

A vehicle approaches, heading for the bridge. Its halogen headlights throw off a sterile bluish light, creating a sharp shadow that conceals Knox. His eyes stray to the sand and dirt and his heart catches. Dozens of shoe impressions, all of them child-sized. They point to, and disappear around, a corner ahead, past the last of the warehouses. He’s nauseated and viscerally moved by the sight. The footprints of small ghosts. Some are gone and will never be found. Others, like Maja and Berna, are in limbo, their status unknown. They are like dinosaur tracks fossilized in stone.

It is the Pied Piper following the children as Knox’s large shoes obliterate some of the tracks. It only makes sense the girls would not be allowed in through the front where they would be easily seen from the street.

An extremely narrow alley runs to a back parking area behind the buildings. This was once a complex of no fewer than ten interconnected buildings. Most are in decay, their windows broken and boarded over. Some carry realtor and leasing information on placards. A high brick wall with rusting wrought-iron fencing and gates surrounds nearly the entire compound—the equivalent of two city blocks. The impressions of small shoes and bare feet flow like water to a single door.