Run Away(85)

She stopped. Her heart fell.

“Elena?”

She didn’t say it out loud, but suddenly the answer seemed obvious. A suicide. Two murders.

And a disappearance.

Henry Thorpe was probably dead. If the killer wanted to make sure he didn’t link to the others—if he didn’t want a cop to start looking at any links between murder victims on, say, a DNA site—you’d just make one of the victims look like a runaway.

Damn.

Was Elena searching for a dead man?

“Elena?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Something else we need to look at.”

“What’s that?”

“We know Paige Greene signed up with Ance-Story too.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not a half sibling. That’s the total list there. All male.”

“Maybe some other way.”

“There’s a search engine. Use it.”

She typed in “Paige Greene.” Nothing. She typed in “Greene” and her initials and a few other ways that Lou suggested. Nothing. She looked through the relatives list. There was one first cousin, also male, listed and then several third cousins.

No Paige. No PG.

“Paige Greene is not a relative,” Lou said.

“Then how does she fit into this?”





Chapter

Twenty-Nine



A commuter app told Simon that taking the 1 train south to get to Columbia University would take eleven minutes total, which was considerably faster than a taxi or car. Simon stood waiting for the elevator that plummets you into the bowels of Washington Heights when his mobile rang.

The number was blocked.

“Hello?”

“I’ll have the paternity results in two hours.”

It was Randy Spratt from the genetics lab.

“Great,” Simon said.

“I’ll meet you in the courtyard behind the pediatric wing.”

“Okay.”

“Mr. Greene, are you familiar with the expression ‘payment on delivery’?”

Man, it was amazing how easily people fell into small forms of corruption. “I’ll have the cash.”

Spratt hung up. Simon stepped back and called Yvonne’s mobile.

Yvonne answered with a tentative “Hey.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not calling to ask about Ingrid’s big secret. I need a favor.”

“What’s up?”

“I need to make a cash withdrawal of nine thousand nine hundred dollars from our branch near the hospital.”

The amount had to be under ten thousand dollars. For any amount over that, you had to fill out a CTR—currency transaction report—with FinCEN. In short, it would be reported to the IRS or law enforcement, and Simon didn’t want to deal with that right now.

“Will you arrange it, please?”

“On it.” Then: “What’s the cash for?”

“Maybe you and Ingrid aren’t the only ones with secrets.”

It was an immature thing to say, but there you go.

As soon as he hung up, the elevator doors opened revealing a dingy and poorly lit car. Commuters piled in until an alarm of some kind started to beep. Subway elevators plunging down into the earth’s core are probably the closest urbanites get to what a coal miner goes through, which, of course, wasn’t close at all.

The 1 train was pretty much at capacity, though not sardine-can packed. Simon chose to stand. He held on to a pole. He used to check his phone or read a newspaper, anything to escape the claustrophobic feeling of being locked in with strangers, but lately, Simon liked to look around at the faces of his fellow passengers. A subway car is a microcosm of our planet. You saw all nationalities, creeds, genders, persuasions. You saw public displays of affection and arguments. You heard music and voices, laughter and tears. There were rich people in business suits (often Simon himself) and there were panhandlers. You were all equals on the train. You all paid the same fare. You all had the same right to the same seats.

For some reason, over the last year or two, the subway hadn’t been something to avoid. It had become, when there weren’t issues with construction and delays, something of a refuge.

Simon entered the Columbia University campus at the center gates on Broadway and 116th Street. This was the same entranceway he had first crossed as a high school junior visiting for a prospective tour with his father. His father, the greatest man Simon would ever know, was an electrician with the IBEW union, Local 102. The idea that a child of his could one day go to an Ivy League school stunned and intimidated him.

Dad had always made Simon feel safe.

That was the thing. Two weeks before Simon graduated, Dad died of a massive coronary while he was driving to a job in Millburn, New Jersey. It had been a devastating blow to Simon’s family—the beginning of the end, in many ways. When Simon started to have children of his own, he would try to remember how his own father had done it, like an apprentice trying to study the master, but he always felt as though he was falling short.

Did Simon’s children love their father as much as Simon had loved his?

Did they respect him like that?

Did Simon make them feel that kind of safe?

And mostly: Would his father have taken his eye off the ball and let his daughter become a junkie? Would he have stood by idly while his wife got shot?