Mean Streak

“She didn’t show up for work one day,” Eleanor said in sad reflection. “I called her all day, left messages that went unanswered. I thought maybe Sarah was sick.”

Following her divorce, Rebecca Watson had retained full custody of her daughter. After their disappearance, the ex-husband had made some noise, put out feelers of his own, but he gave up the search after only a few months. In Jack’s opinion he hadn’t tried all that hard. By then he’d remarried. His new wife was pregnant. He had other priorities.

“I got nowhere with Rebecca’s ex,” he told Eleanor now. “And I followed up with him for years. I knew he wouldn’t care much about Rebecca’s exit from his life, but I couldn’t believe he would let his daughter go so easily.”

“He’s a self-centered bastard, and an ass.”

Jack smiled over her candor. “I couldn’t agree more. His child was gone, but he seemed more concerned about how much a private detective would cost him to track her.”

“He was relying on you to find them.”

“Hmm, not exactly. He told me I couldn’t find a stinking pile of shit on a white rose.”

“Charming.” After a beat, she said, “The brothers-in-law hated each other. Did you know that?”

“Rebecca told me as much.”

“It was a mutual and passionate dislike.”

Jack had soon eliminated the ex-brother-in-law as a person to whom a seasoned war veteran and sharpshooter would turn for help. They’d been hostile toward each other from the outset of Rebecca’s marriage.

Jack said, “Eleanor, tell me true. After her brother disappeared, while I was chasing my tail trying to track him down, did Rebecca know where he was?”

“She swore to me she didn’t. I told you that four years ago. I also told you that I believed her.”

“Everybody lies,” he said gently, as though dispelling a myth to a child. “They lie to good friends. They lie especially to the authorities, and particularly when they’re trying to shield someone they love. And Rebecca’s sudden abandonment of her life here didn’t earn her any marks for trustworthiness. Not in my book.”

“No, I’m sure it didn’t.” The mother-to-be gave him a small smile. “But where her brother was concerned, she was trustworthy to the extreme, wasn’t she?”

* * *

When Jack Connell arrived at the Bureau’s Manhattan office after his visit with Eleanor Gaskin, he bypassed anyone looking for conversation, went straight to his cubby, and shut the door. At his desk, he replied only to the e-mails and phone calls that were time-sensitive but did nothing that wasn’t mandatory to catch him up on a typical Monday morning.

Putting everything else on hold, he opened the desk drawer reserved for a file with a well-worn cover, on which was stamped a name in red ink. As he dropped the file onto his desk, he cursed the name and the man who bore it, then opened the file and, after some rifling, located a photo of Rebecca Watson that had been taken four years ago by Jack himself, while surveilling her apartment, hoping her brother would show himself there.

The resemblance to the woman in the broadcast video was remarkable, but he couldn’t be positive they were one and the same, and he didn’t believe that Eleanor Gaskin could be either, although he didn’t doubt her conviction.

He was still comparing the two faces five minutes later when someone tapped on his door and then his associate, Wes Greer, a data analyst, poked his head in. “Now okay?”

“Sure, come in.”

He’d called Greer to ask a favor on his walk between the brownstone where the Gaskins lived and the nearest subway station. Greer was soft, pale, undistinguished looking, but brilliant. And he could keep his mouth shut, which, in Jack’s estimation, was a major asset.

He sat down across from Jack. “I called the TV station in Olympia and talked to the reporter who covered the story. Hundreds of protestors formed the picket. But that particular group was bussed to the capitol from Seattle. Reason they made it on camera? He said they were the most vocal and demonstrative.”

“Did you follow up in Seattle?”

“Found one Rebecca Watson in the county. She lives in a nursing home. Born 1941. Making her—”

“Too old. Dammit!”

“I’ll keep trying. Widen the net.”

“Thanks, Wes.”

He got up and made it as far as the door. “Oh, almost forgot. Late Friday—you’d already gone for the weekend—I got more info on the soccer coach in Salt Lake City. He’ll walk, but he’ll never kick another soccer ball. Coaching days are history.”

“The coach tell you that?”