Kelson and Rodman ran to Kelson’s car. They circled the block, then circled the surrounding blocks. They saw no one who looked like Emma Almonte, nothing that indicated where she’d gone.
They drove back to her house and searched it. When she’d gone to the kitchen for a pencil and paper, she’d left her phone on the counter. Kelson pocketed it. Rodman found her purse in her bedroom. Aside from a business card for Ed Davies’s law firm, another for FBI Special Agent David Jenkins, and a wallet-sized picture of her and Victor at an amusement park long, long ago, nothing connected her to the Rogers Park Library blast or the evil that seemed to emanate from G&G Private Equity. But Kelson said, ‘They made her vanish too.’
‘What does she know worth making her disappear?’ Rodman said.
‘Wrong question. What do they think she might know?’
‘Maybe,’ Rodman said.
‘What do they think Victor could’ve told her? How big is the mess they think they need to clean?’
‘We need to call this in,’ Rodman said.
‘What are we going to say? What will anyone do with it?’ But Kelson dialed the number on Special Agent Jenkins’s card. An answering service picked up, and Kelson recorded a message – ‘Emma Almonte’s missing.’ He left his name and number and hung up.
Then he called Venus Johnson at the Harrison Street Police Station. When she got on the line, he told her, ‘Emma Almonte just disappeared.’
‘That’s OK – the FBI cleared her.’
‘You don’t understand. She disappeared.’
‘That’s her right.’
‘Someone took her.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘I’m standing in her living room, aren’t I?’
‘I don’t know, are you?’ Johnson said.
Kelson tried to explain, but when he told her that Emma Almonte stepped outside of her own house, leaving him and Rodman behind, Johnson said, ‘I don’t know – after a few days with the FBI, people get screwy.’
‘You’re ignoring what I’m telling you,’ he said.
‘Maybe you should take that as a hint,’ Johnson said.
When he called Ed Davies, Davies showed more concern but said, ‘There’s little I can do. You can file a missing person report, but considering all she’s gone through with her brother and the ugly news coverage and the crank phone calls, the cops will make this low priority. Good sense for her to go into hiding.’
‘They should take it seriously because of all she’s gone through,’ Kelson said.
‘You sure she didn’t walk away?’ Davies said.
‘I’m sure, dammit.’
The more worked up Kelson got, the more composed Davies became. ‘I’ll make a few calls. But keep your expectations low.’
‘That’s how I live,’ Kelson said.
Kelson drove back toward Bronzeville. Beside him, Rodman thumbed through Emma Almonte’s phone history.
‘Victor called Emma about thirty hours before the library blew up,’ Rodman said. ‘They talked for eighteen minutes. Last call before that was four and a half hours earlier. They talked for eleven minutes. The day before, six minutes.’
‘What’s that tell you?’ Kelson said.
‘Nothing. They talked, is all. Afghanistan might’ve traumatized him, but he could lean on her.’
‘Who else did she talk to?’
‘Two calls from David Jenkins at the FBI. Both of them this morning. Each less than a minute. Some other names I don’t recognize – one call each. Mostly three to five minutes. A gynecologist yesterday.’ He closed call history, checked text messages, and said, ‘Nothing here.’ He went to voicemail and played a four-second message from Victor, recorded a week before the blast. His voice was thick and sleepy but with an anxious edge. ‘Hi, Em – when’ll you be home?’
‘Ghost voice,’ Rodman said.
‘A ghost on Xanax,’ Kelson said.
Rodman played the next message, which Victor recorded just ten minutes after the first. ‘Halogen floods. Ninety watt.’ His voice pitched high on the word ‘watt’.
Rodman played it again, and said, ‘They must’ve talked between messages. Sounds like he’s asking her to pick up bulbs for the security lights.’
‘I guess he couldn’t see his PTSD hallucinations in the dark,’ Kelson said.
Rodman played a recording from two days later. It repeated the earlier message – ‘Halogen floods. Ninety watt.’ But this time Victor’s voice pitched high on both ‘floods’ and ‘watt’.
‘That’s just weird,’ Kelson said.
‘Compulsion,’ Rodman said. ‘Unless he and his sister burned through a lot of bulbs.’
‘Or someone kept breaking them – like tonight.’
Rodman played the last voicemail, recorded on the morning of the blast. Now Victor’s voice sounded firm and confident. ‘I’ll get the floods,’ he said.
‘Ha,’ Kelson said. ‘Sounds like he got his drugs right.’
‘Or found a purpose,’ Rodman said.
‘Blowing up a library?’
‘Hell, I don’t know.’
They went up to Rodman’s apartment. Doreen, Cindi, and Genevieve Bower sat together on the couch watching Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure on Netflix. Kelson and Rodman stood inside the door and watched them watch. Rodman’s snub-nose Colt lay out of reach on the dining table.
‘Life confuses me,’ Kelson said.
‘Escapism,’ Doreen said a half hour later, as Kelson drove to her apartment. Rodman and Cindi had made the couch into a bed for Genevieve Bower when the movie ended. ‘And anyway, the young Keanu Reeves, right?’
‘I guess,’ Kelson said, ‘but what if you can’t escape?’
‘There’s always alcohol and sex.’
‘Alcohol didn’t work so well for Genevieve Bower last night.’
‘There’s always sex. You want to come up?’
He did.
‘You’re right,’ he said at two in the morning, her ass pressed against his naked belly.
‘Tell me about it,’ she said.
He got up in the dark, went into her bathroom, and showered. When he came back, dressed, she was sleeping. He hung his face over hers until the shape of her lips emerged from the dark. He touched his lips to hers and whispered, ‘Good night.’
‘Good night … Keanu,’ she said.
He drove home and parked on the gravel lot behind his building. He went in through the lobby, rode the elevator, and wandered down the hall to his apartment.
As he put the key in the lock, he heard a sound inside. He sighed. ‘Just when you think …’ He removed the key and pulled his KelTec from his belt. He listened at the door. He heard a rustling – a soft voice – and then a long meow. ‘Huh,’ he said, and he tucked his pistol back in his belt and opened the door.
Sue Ellen, wearing the pajamas she kept at the apartment, was lying on her back on the carpet. She held Payday above her in her left hand. She tossed Painter’s Lane a few inches in the air above her right hand. When she turned to see Kelson coming in, the kitten landed on the carpet, rolled, and sprang on to her belly, as if demanding to be tossed again.
‘What are you doing?’ Kelson said.
Sue Ellen smiled up at him. ‘I’m teaching them to juggle.’
‘It’s almost three in the morning—’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Where have you been?’
‘At – why are you here?’
‘I couldn’t sleep, so I came over to play with the kittens.’
‘Does your mom know you’re here?’
‘Of course not.’