Gone(54)

“Why would this be about your father?”

“What he knew.”

“Are you saying you think that the disappearance of the Kemp family has something to do with your father, and so, you? That’s rather narcissistic, Detective. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Let me see.” He spat to the side. “The family.”

“Detective, in your delusional state you believe we have somehow orchestrated all of this in order to get to you, yes? Aside from it being so elaborate, when we could have just come for you directly — what would we gain?”

Rondeau thought of the recent crimes in the region: a thirteen-year-old boy, murdered; a serial killer at a college campus. The Sheriff’s Department needed investigators to handle the rise in major crimes, so he had joined their first detective squad. For a rural area, there was a dark underworld at work. It was the perfect part of the country for criminals to work in anonymity. Drugs, prison breaks, internet crimes, mafia.

And it was the perfect environment for off-the-books government ops. Private security groups, CIA, working together.

“You don’t have an answer,” the woman said. “That’s usually how it goes with paranoia.”

While she laughed in that distorted voice, Rondeau took the opportunity to look around. The lights were dazzling, but he thought he saw additional tripods, bearing speakers. His captor was wearing a microphone which hooked into a sound system. At least that part wasn’t in his head.

“Besides,” she said, “we could do any number of things. Make it look like you committed suicide. Stage a murder. But, again, these would be great lengths for us to go to in order to satisfy your delusion.”

“You . . . will kill me then.”

The woman snapped on a pair of gloves. “Well now,” she said, “there are things worse than death. And better for us.” She waved a hand in the air, and one of the others handed her a small package.

“You gave me something. What you give me?” He thought of the patient on the hospital bed, septic and dying. But he didn’t think he was sick. He squinted in the blinding light, trying to see his captor’s face.

“It’s called 25-I.”

25-I? That was a powerful hallucinogen. A brain-scrambler. Used by high-tech security firms and government agencies during interrogations.

She leaned in, and he noted the angular cheekbones, the blond hair drawn back into a tight bun. The woman in black fatigues looked impossibly like Connie Leifson.

He heard a firearm racked, a bullet loaded. The woman moved toward him with a syringe.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE / Bluestone

The door snapped open and Jackson returned to the driver’s seat, purged, at least for the time being.

“You alright?” Peter asked.

Jackson eyed Peter’s phone as Peter slipped it back in his pocket. “Yeah, I don’t know. I must’ve caught something. Anything important?” He meant the call. He must’ve seen Peter talking.

“Just the little woman checking on me.” The lie surprised him — it had slipped out easily. Right or wrong, he felt protective of Rondeau.

They got going again, coming up on the interstate. “I hope this family is alive,” Peter said. “I hope those kids are okay.” He had another thought. “You ready to tell me where we’re going now?”

“Ulster County.”

“Ulster County?”

“Bluestone quarry.”

Peter thought it through. There were several stone quarries in the state. Bluestone was no longer an active site.

He tried to reason through why the mob would take the Kemp family there, why that would be the location Spillane gave them. “Bluestone’s been shut down for decades,” he said to Jackson. “It’s all new-growth there now, along the Hudson River; it’s a park. I drove through there this spring. Little trees, wide open views.”

Jackson pinned the needle at eight-five miles an hour. He looked pale and grim. “New York State hemorrhaged labor in the 1930s thanks to the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Quarries used a lot of off-season farm workers, but the farms were shutting down. When the quarries were abandoned, states took over the land. Lots of people hated that, blamed industrial farming, which was really getting underway. It went on for years. Last quarry was disposed of in 1990.”

“You know a lot about it.”

Jackson cut him a look. His eyes were bloodshot. “Bluestone used to mine feldspathic sandstone. You get smooth, thin slabs out of that, good for sidewalks. New York City is covered with it. It’s fine-grained, evenly bedded, easy to process.”

“Is that right?”

Jackson took the ramp to merge onto the interstate. They passed three state trooper vehicles — two cruisers, one van — followed by an ambulance, all lights blazing, waiting to fall in behind them. A temporary traffic funnel had been set up — fire police keeping traffic in the left lane so that the vehicles had an unimpeded route. Peter tried to see if he recognized anyone in the bright yellow jackets. The afternoon was dark, a cold rain stirring in the air.

Jackson brought the SUV up to interstate-speed, the convoy following, the lights twirling, engines roaring. The press was somewhere back there, too, Peter was sure of it. Trailing them down to the Bluestone quarry, eager to get the scoop of the year.