Dez drove Fenway home, and she had a couple of hours before she had to meet the private investigator. She walked through the door to her apartment in a daze.
She set her purse down on the kitchen table and kicked off her clothes as she went into her bathroom. She turned on the shower as hot as she could stand it and stood underneath the pulsing spray, feeling the water’s fingers drum against the top of her head. She had done the same thing in the dorm in Bellingham after the attack. After the rape. Trying to wash it all away.
Her hair had gotten wet—she’d have to have a wrap or something tonight, or flatiron it later. But she tried to think about other things. She tried to think about Dr. Barry Klein, terrified, in a holding cell with drunks and fighters and thieves, a long, hellish night ahead of him. She tried to think of him shouting through the bars, trying to pull rank with the police—Don’t you know who I am? I’m on the board of supervisors! But she knew that Dez held more sway with the officers than Barry did.
Yet the thought of him spending a cold, frightened, miserable night didn’t make her feel any better. So she turned the water all the way to the cold side. It felt like ice on her skin. It felt like walking through the freezing sleet on her way to class in Bellingham the morning after it happened, thinking how she would get an A in the class just to spite him, and how she would change her major from English literature to nursing.
She changed the water again, this time to a comfortable temperature. She got the soap and scrubbed her body, her thighs, her shoulders, her chest, her neck. She felt it all again, like it had happened yesterday: the shame, the fear, the worry. But this time, it didn’t stick; like an imprint, a ghost of the emotion, like she had vomited all the shame and fear out and only flecks on her heart remained. And she wanted it to all disappear down the drain with the soap.
She rinsed herself clean, turned off the shower, then got out and dried herself carefully and thoroughly. She walked into her bedroom and looked at the clock; she still had an hour and a half. She blow-dried her hair and took forty minutes to flat-iron the unruly curls out of it; when she finished, it hung at her shoulders, slightly curling in toward her chin at the bottom, framing her face nicely.
She looked in the mirror and set her jaw. She hated that Barry Klein could do this to her with a short series of nine-year-old photographs from the worst day of her life. But she took a deep breath and put those memories in a box in her mind, and got dressed.
She knew her father would want to see her in a dress, and not the jeans and cap-sleeve V-neck she pulled on, but she made the decision to be comfortable in her own skin. She did minimal makeup, then got her purse off the kitchen table and walked out the door.
After she walked down the stairs, McVie had pulled in the lot in his Highlander. For a brief instant, even after the horror of the last two hours, Fenway had butterflies in her stomach, like she did in high school when the boy she had a crush on came to pick her up. She shook her head to get the image out.
“Hi, Craig,” Fenway said. He wore a black T-shirt and dark blue jeans with black European-style loafers. The shirt snugly fit his muscular frame.
She didn’t seem to be able to call him Sheriff although she thought she gave it effort. “Is Amy okay with the change of plans for the evening?”
“She’ll get over it,” McVie said, somewhat gruffly.
They arrived at Grafton & Gale’s just before six, and were seated at the end of the bar, looking almost directly at the front door. Fenway ordered a Diet Coke; McVie a ginger ale.
Nathaniel Ferris joined them about five minutes later, still in his charcoal grey suit, white dress shirt, and a blue-and-orange tie. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Work meeting ran long. It doesn’t look like Vasily is here yet.”
“I’m sorry—who?”
“Vasily. He’s Russian. Haven’t I told you the story?”
“The story about Vasily? No.”
Ferris nodded, excited to have an adventure to tell. “He’s an interesting character. Loved computers when he was growing up around the Russian mob. He fell in with them as a teenager, stealing credit card information, stuff like that. Then when he turned eighteen, he came to New York and worked for the mob there. I heard he hacked into that big New York bank a few years ago. But then he broke away from the mob—apparently he hacked his own identity to escape them—somehow made it to L.A., probably on someone else’s credit card. But he had a change of heart. Wanted to start hacking for the good guys. He started finding missing persons for families and for a few police forces up and down the coast. You hear of people going off the radar, but no one can completely get away from their digital footprint. Not for long anyway, and not when Vasily is trying to find you.”
“And he’s good?”
“The best. I had an accountant go missing with about three hundred thousand dollars a few years ago. He had moved a lot of money around for payments for crude oil from Venezuela—this is when we were still importing oil from there—and we had to do a few complicated hops. He falsified the exchange rate in the books and pocketed the difference. By the time our auditors found it, he vanished from the company—from the country, in fact. I hired Vasily to find him.”
“I take it Vasily succeeded,” said McVie.
“Oh, of course,” said Ferris, nodding. “I had hired another P.I. first who didn’t get anywhere. Vasily found the accountant on a beach in Nicaragua. He had bought a fishing boat and found a little señorita” —Fenway cringed at this— “and he thought he’d live out his days fishing and snorkeling. We couldn’t extradite him, unfortunately, and he could only give us back some of our money. But we found him. Vasily can work miracles.”
The three of them sat in silence at the bar for several minutes. Ferris got his phone out and made a phone call, but hung up after about half a minute. He tapped his phone on the bar, then got up and walked over to the bartender, discussing bourbons with him, and ordered an old fashioned made with a rye whiskey Fenway had never heard of.
“You know this place?” Ferris asked McVie.
“I’ve been once or twice. Not really my speed, but decent enough food. Amy liked it. How about you?” he said to Fenway.
Fenway shook her head. She still looked at the door. She started to get up when it opened, but a couple walked in, laughing and smiling.
“Is Vasily usually on time?” she asked.
The bartender slid the old fashioned in front of Ferris, who nodded before picking up his drink. “It’s possible that his plane got delayed. He didn’t answer his phone just now.”
They chatted awkwardly for a few minutes. McVie kept looking at his watch.
“You still have time to catch the concert if you leave now?”
“I should,” McVie said. “It says 7:30 on the tickets, and there’s an opening act. I could leave now and even pick Amy up before we head over.”
Fenway lightly touched her father’s arm. “Call the airline, Dad.”
Ferris looked a little distracted. “I don’t know where he could be.” He had a little trouble getting his phone out of his pocket, but managed to retrieve it, and called, pressing the phone to his head.
“If I’ve cancelled on Amy for nothing, I’m going to be a little pissed off,” McVie said in a low voice.
“Remember that I found out about four hours ago that Olivia is really the one who’s missing,” Fenway said, raising her voice slightly, “and she’s now been gone for almost forty-eight hours. We’ve gotta get the P.I. going on this right now. If he’s another half-hour late, or hell, even an hour or two, that’s still closer than we’ll get to finding Olivia if we cut bait tonight.”
“You might be right, but this isn’t even official police business,” McVie said.
“Like that makes a difference? What if it was Megan?” Fenway pointed out. “What if the person in charge said to you, ‘Oh, I’d love to find your daughter before they kill her, but I’ve got a date with my wife, so can we start tomorrow?’”
McVie didn’t say anything.
Fenway turned back to her diet Coke, clenching and unclenching her fists.
Ferris hung up. “Flight landed in Estancia at three-thirty,” he said. “That should be more than enough time to go to the hotel and head here.”
“Let’s have dinner,” Fenway suggested, “and if he doesn’t show up by the time we’re done, let’s go to his hotel and figure this out. Maybe he thought we were meeting tomorrow, or maybe he had the wrong bar.”
“He picked it,” said Ferris.
“Maybe we have the wrong bar.”
“I guess,” Ferris said. He pulled his phone out and called again; but again no one answered.
McVie stood up and stretched. “Maybe his phone is powered off or maybe he left it at home. I’m going to head over to his hotel now. If he’s still there, I’ll bring him back. And if he’s not there, I better get to that concert,” he said. “If he shows up while I’m gone, let me know. I’ll leave the concert if I have to, but if this guy just flaked on us, I’m not going to miss out on this evening if I can help it.” He paused. “Plus, we have Mark working on this in secret, right?”
Fenway was glum. “Yes.”
“That might be just as good as a P.I. anyway. Someone who knows how to access police resources without setting off any alarm bells.”
“Okay. Let me know if Vasily’s at his hotel.”
“All right. Fenway, you can get a ride home?”
“Sure.”
Fenway nodded and stood up from the stool. Without thinking, she opened her arms for a hug and McVie hesitated before awkwardly embracing her. She could feel the stress in his back, probably from the conflict between his promise to his wife and his duty to the job—even though he had been placed on leave. But then, she felt him relax, and he held her for a moment longer than he needed to. The embrace mellowed into an embrace like the one in the hospital parking lot. Fenway broke from the hug first, and McVie turned and shook hands with Ferris, and walked out the door.
Ferris watched him go, then sipped his old fashioned. “Okay, Fenway, what do you want to do?”
“I think it’s kind of weird, don’t you?”
“That Vasily is so late?”
“Yes.”
“It’s certainly not like him. Especially for the first day on the job. I guess I could call around, see if he actually got on the plane in Los Angeles.”
“I mean, it’s a thirty-minute flight. It’s not like he wouldn’t have called, right?”
Ferris thought a moment. “It’s definitely not like him.”
Fenway tapped her fingers on the bar. “Is he the kind of person who might not take something like this seriously?”
Ferris shook his head. “No. He’d take something like this very seriously. His sister disappeared in Moscow when Vasily was little.”
“We can’t call Missing Persons yet. Maybe he’s just late. Maybe he got lost on the way here.”
Ferris was silent.
Fenway walked over to where the bartender stood, washing glassware, and ordered a beer. She went back over and sat with her father.
“Dinner?” she asked.
“I suppose,” he replied.
“We’ve gotta eat, right?”
Ferris nodded.
The bartender brought Fenway her beer and she asked for two menus. She knew as soon as she looked at the menu that her father wouldn’t like it. They may have had a bourbon that met with his exacting standards, but a man used to eating pheasant and sheep’s-milk cheese omelettes wouldn’t want to waste his palate on cheeseburgers and fried chicken.
Ferris didn’t say anything about the lack of finesse on the menu, however, and they ordered. Ferris didn’t even special order anything. It was clear to Fenway that Vasily weighed heavily on his mind.
She tried to distract him by talking about the rye whiskey he had ordered. He talked for a few minutes about the small batch rye in Utah that he had found after a trip to Zion, which became a story about taking a helicopter tour of some of the monuments there. In the middle of talking about the delicate hike of Angel’s Landing, he stopped.
“I can have Justin check this out,” he said. “He’s good at it.”
“Justin?”
“My new head of security,” he said. “Used to work for a cybersecurity firm up in Silicon Valley. Likes the surfing down here better.”
“Okay.”
Ferris pulled his phone out again and called a number. He spoke in hushed tones for about five minutes. Fenway watched the bartender clean the glasses as she sipped her beer.
“Justin’s going to look into it,” Ferris said, hanging up.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Ferris finishing his drink, Fenway drinking her beer, trying not to think about what Barry Klein had done to her that afternoon.
“I have to tell you something, Dad,” Fenway finally said.
“Sure,” he said. “Sorry I’m quiet tonight. It’s just not like Vasily to be this late.”
“I was raped in college.”
Ferris stared at his glass for a minute. “Did I hear that right?”
“Yes.”
He paused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. Are you okay?”
Fenway sighed. “I thought I was. It happened a long time ago. He was my Russian Lit professor.”
Ferris looked at Fenway. “He was your professor?”
“Yes, my Russian Lit professor. At Western Washington. I came in during office hours. He locked the door behind me.”
Ferris cleared his throat. “What—uh, why…” His voice faded away.
“Barry Klein came into the office this afternoon with pictures of me.”
“Pictures of you?”
“Of me with my professor while it was happening. Apparently, my professor had a hidden camera in his office.”
“What?” Ferris said sharply. “Why the hell would he bring in pictures of that?”
“It’s complicated,” Fenway said. “He thought I had traded sex for grades.”
“Where the hell did he even get them?”
Fenway shrugged. “Probably online. The dark web or something. I don’t know. I don’t think it matters.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Ferris seethed. He stood up from his barstool.
“Dez took care of it, Dad,” she said. “He’s cooling his heels in jail tonight.”
“I’ll kill him when you release him in the morning.” Ferris paused. “Why the hell are you telling me this now?”
“Because it’s out there. If Klein—who is an absolute idiot—could find them, then it’s for sure out there. I wanted you to hear it from me. I didn’t want you to find out from the internet, or someone forwarding it to you asking if you knew.”
“I hated that guy before,” Ferris snarled. “I’m going to drive a stake through his heart.”
“Dad,” Fenway said gently.
Ferris breathed heavily but turned his face back to Fenway.
“I thought I could just push it down and forget it ever happened,” Fenway continued. “But I guess I can’t. I didn’t know he recorded it. Or took pictures. And I definitely didn’t know you could find those pictures on the internet. So it’s out there. I’m out there. And,” she finished, “I wanted you to hear it from me.”
Ferris put his head in his hands. His shoulders started to shake.
“I really screwed up, didn’t I?” he said, his voice cracking. “I was so angry at Joanne that I totally forgot everything about you. About how all of this would affect you.”
“This isn’t about that, Dad,” she said, her tone curt.
“I’m sorry,” Ferris said. “I don’t know what to do.” He got up from the bar and started toward the door.
“You’re not going to stay for dinner? You just ordered.”
“I’m not hungry,” he said. Ferris stepped back, pulled out his wallet, and threw a pair of hundred-dollar bills on the bar. “I’m sorry, Fenway. I just—I don’t know. It’s a lot. I’m really sorry.”
And he, like McVie before him, exited Grafton & Gale’s.
Fenway turned back toward the bar. Her breaths were slow and even. She felt a little bit like she had just been talking about someone else. Like it happened to a woman she knew a lifetime ago. She felt something in her brain, a little chaotic, a little like screaming. But she kept her attention on her breathing.
She picked up her beer glass and drained it.
The bartender came back over. “Can I get you another?”
Fenway’s phone dinged. She looked at it; it was a message from McVie.
Vasily isn’t at the hotel. Checked in but not answering door or calls.
Let me know if he shows.
Fenway thought back to junior high, growing up poor, not only without her father’s wealth but without the man himself. It had been tough on her mother, and as much as she’d turned out all right, she knew she had gaps in her emotional maturity, in the way she dealt with people. Especially men.
And this little girl, Olivia, had a father who cared about her so much he was willing to go to jail so she would be safe. A father who would attend all the school plays and volleyball games and junior proms and graduation ceremonies. This little girl deserved to get home safely, and more than that, she deserved to get her father back.
But Fenway found herself at a dead end with nothing more to do. She had hoped the private investigator would start right away, not be a no-show for their first meeting. She had hoped she’d already have found Olivia, safe, back with her mother, and be in the process of getting Fletch out of police custody. But instead, she found herself exhausted and out of ideas.
It was seven-fifteen, making Vasily officially over an hour late. The bartender was still waiting for her answer.
“Can you make that food order to go?” she asked.