NOS4A2(108)

There were five of them in the kitchen now. Lou and Vic and Hutter sat at the table. Daltry leaned against the kitchen counter, squeezing his alcoholic’s nose in a hankie. Officer Chitra stood in the doorway, had hustled the other cops out at Hutter’s command.

“You’re Louis Carmody,” Hutter said. She spoke like the director of the school play, letting Lou know who he would be playing in the spring performance. “You’re the father.”

“Guilty,” Lou said.

“Say again?” Hutter asked.

“Guilty as charged,” Lou said. “I’m the dad. Who are you? Are you, like, a social worker?”

“I’m an FBI agent. My name is Tabitha Hutter. A lot of the guys in the office call me Tabby the Hutt.” She smiled slightly.

“That’s funny. A lot of the guys in the place I work call me Jabba the Hutt. Only they do it because I’m a fat shit.”

“I thought you were in Denver,” Hutter said.

“Missed my flight.”

“No shit,” said Daltry. “Something come up?”

Hutter said, “Detective Daltry, I’ll conduct the Q and A, thank you.”

Daltry reached into the pocket of his coat. “Does anyone mind if I smoke?”

“Yes,” Hutter said.

Daltry held the pack for a moment, staring at her, then put it back in his pocket. There was a bland, unfocused quality to his eyes that reminded Vic of the membrane that slid across a shark’s eyes right before he chomped into a seal.

“Why did you miss your plane, Mr. Carmody?” Hutter asked.

“Because I heard from Wayne.”

“You heard from him?”

“He called me from the car on his iPhone. He said they were trying to shoot Vic. Manx and the other guy. We only talked for a minute. He had to hang up, ’cause Manx and the other fellow were walking back to the car. He was scared, really scared, but holding it together. He’s a little man, you know. He’s always been a little man.” Lou bunched his fists up on the table and lowered his head. He grimaced, as if he felt a sharp twinge of pain somewhere in his abdomen, and blinked, and tears dripped onto the table. It came over him all of a sudden, without warning. “He has to be a grown-up, ’cause Vic and me did such a shitty job of being grown-ups ourselves.” Vic put her hands over his.

Hutter and Daltry exchanged a look, hardly seemed to notice Lou dissolving into tears.

“Do you think your son turned the phone off after he talked to you?” Hutter asked.

“I thought if it had a SIM card in it, it didn’t matter if it was on or off,” Daltry said. “I thought you federal people had a workaround.”

“You can use his phone to find him,” Vic said, her pulse quickening.

Hutter ignored her, said to Daltry, “We can have that done. It would take a while. I’d have to call Boston. But if it’s an iPhone and it’s turned on, we can use the Find My iPhone function to locate him right now, right here.” She lifted her iPad slightly.

“Right,” Lou said. “That’s right. I set up Find My iPhone the day we bought it for him, because I didn’t want him to lose the thing.”

He came around the table to look over Hutter’s shoulder at her screen. His complexion was not improved by the unnatural glow of the monitor.

“What’s his e-mail address and password?” Hutter asked, turning her head to look up at Lou.

He reached out with one hand to type it himself, but before he could, the FBI agent took ahold of his wrist. She pressed two fingers into his skin, as if taking his pulse. Even from where she sat, Vic could see a spot where the skin gleamed and seemed to have a splash of dried paste on it.

Hutter shifted her gaze to Lou’s face. “You had an EKG this evening?”

“I fainted. I got upset. It was, like, a panic attack, dude. Some crazy son of a bitch has my kid. This shit happens to fat guys.”

Until now Vic had been too focused on Wayne to give much thought to Lou: how gray he looked, how exhausted. But at this, Vic felt struck through with sudden, sick apprehension.

“Oh, Lou. What do you mean, you fainted?”

“It was after Wayne hung up on me. I kind of went down for a minute. I was fine, but airport security made me sit on the floor and get an EKG, make sure I wasn’t going to vapor-lock on them.”

“Did you tell them your kid had been kidnapped?” Daltry asked.

Hutter flashed him a warning look that Daltry pretended not to see.

“I’m not sure what I said to them. I was sort of confused at first. Like, dizzy. I know I told them my kid needed me. I know I told them that. All I could think was I had to get to my car. At some point they said they were going to put me in an ambulance, and I told ’em to go . . . ah . . . have fun with themselves. So I got up and walked away. It’s possible a guy grabbed my arm and I dragged him a few feet. I was in a hurry.”

“So you didn’t talk to the police at the airport about what had happened to your son?” Daltry asked. “Didn’t you think you could get here faster if you had a police escort?”

“It didn’t even cross my mind. I wanted to talk to Vic first,” Lou said, and Vic saw Daltry and Hutter trade another glance.

“Why did you want to talk to Victoria first?” Hutter asked.