Before I left the rink, Elizabeth asked where I’d be spending the night. With a target on my back, it certainly wouldn’t be at my apartment, so she offered up hers. She also asked when Tracy was due back with Annabelle.
“Not until the end of the week,” I said. “And thanks for the offer, but I’ve already booked a hotel.”
Not just any hotel.
I had Jade make one call before I removed the SIM card from her phone. It was to the client who’d hired her to set up Carter von Oehson. Ironically, her freelance gig for the guy was the only reason she knew his cell number. “Every date I had with him was arranged through Mother Hen,” she’d explained. That’s what she called the booker, the woman who oversaw all the escorts. What about the guy’s name, her client? “He told me to call him Vincent,” she said.
Maybe his name really was Vincent. Maybe it wasn’t. Without a last name it didn’t really matter.
What mattered was getting him alone, face to face.
Dialing *67 before his number ensured that Jade’s identity would appear as “No Caller ID.” This had to be a message, not a conversation. She couldn’t give him the opportunity to ask questions. No one answers a “No Caller ID” call. “Straight to Voicemail,” it might as well read.
Sure enough. After the beep Jade quickly explained what had happened. “He needs to hear the panic in your voice,” I’d told her.
She’d been found out. Her boss—“the man who runs everything”—knew about her involvement with the rich kid’s disappearance. That made her a liability. She feared for her life. She was skipping town while she still had the chance. Her flight was the next day at noon, but before leaving there was more she had to tell him. Important details.
The devil is always in the details.
She couldn’t cover everything in a message, but the upshot was simple. The best way for Vincent to protect himself was by coming to see her. She’d left a room key for him with the concierge at their usual hotel. It wasn’t safe for her to remain at her apartment.
Be here at noon, was how she ended the message. After that she was leaving straight for the airport. “Don’t call me back. Just come.” And then came the kicker, the two words I told her that she absolutely had to say before hanging up. The real secret of making someone believe you? It’s not plausibility. It’s vulnerability. “I’m scared,” she added.
At a few minutes before noon the next day, I stood waiting in the bathroom of room 2106 of the Stafford Marshall hotel a few blocks south of the United Nations headquarters on the East Side. The door to the room—only about six feet away from the door to the bathroom—was propped open against the security latch. I’d left the key and room number in an envelope with the concierge, as Jade had told Vincent she would do. He would need the key to access the elevator. Not the room, though.
Okay, Vincent, or whatever your name really is. Don’t let me down. All you’ve got to do now is show up…
The soft knock came at noon on the dot. It sounded almost as hesitant as the whispered voice that I heard through the crack in the door. “Jade, it’s me. Are you in there?”
I waited as he waited. He knocked softly again. Whispered again. When he got no response a second time, I heard the hinges creak. He was coming in.