Vanish

THIRTY-ONE

Maura did not show up at their apartment alone. Standing beside her in the hallway was an attractive man with dark hair and a trim beard. “This is Peter Lukas,” she said.

Jane shot Maura an incredulous look. “You brought a reporter?”

“We need him, Jane.”

“Since when do we ever need reporters?”

Lukas gave a cheery wave. “Nice to meet you, too, Detective Rizzoli, Agent Dean. Can we come in?”

“No, let’s not talk in here,” said Gabriel, as he and Jane, carrying Regina, stepped out into the hallway.

“Where are we going?” asked Lukas.

“Follow me.”

Gabriel led the way up two flights of stairs, and they emerged on the apartment rooftop. Here, the building’s tenants had established an exuberant garden of potted plants, but the heat of a city summer and the baking surface of asphalt tiles was starting to wilt this oasis. Tomato plants drooped in their pots, and morning glory vines, their leaves scorched brown by the heat, clung like withering fingers to a trellis. Jane set Regina in her infant seat under the shade of the umbrella table, and the baby promptly dozed off, her cheeks a rosy pink. From this vantage point, they could see other rooftop gardens, other welcome patches of green in the concrete landscape.

Lukas placed a folder beside the sleeping baby. “Dr. Isles thought you’d be interested in seeing this.”

Gabriel opened the folder. It contained a news clipping, with a photo of a man’s smiling face and the headline: RestonMan Found Dead Aboard Yacht. Businessman Missing Since January 2nd.

“Who was Charles Desmond?” asked Gabriel.

“A man very few people really knew,” said Lukas. “Which, in and of itself, was what intrigued me about him. It’s the reason I focused on this story. Even though the medical examiner conveniently ruled it a suicide.”

“You question that ruling?”

“There’s no way to prove it wasn’t suicide. Desmond was found in the bathroom on his motor yacht, which he kept moored at a marina on the Potomac River. He died in the tub, with both his wrists slashed, and left a suicide note in the stateroom. By the time they found him, he’d been dead for about ten days. The medical examiner’s office never released any photos, but, as you can imagine, it must have been quite a pleasant postmortem.”

Jane grimaced. “I’d rather not imagine it.”

“The note he left wasn’t particularly revelatory. I’m depressed, life sucks, can’t stand to live another day. Desmond was known to be a heavy drinker, and he’d been divorced for five years. So it made sense that he’d be depressed. All sounds like a pretty convincing case for suicide, right?”

“Why don’t you sound convinced?”

“I got that tingle. A reporter’s sixth sense that there was something else going on, something that might lead to a bigger story. Here’s this rich guy with a yacht, missing for ten days before someone thinks to go looking for him. The only reason they could pinpoint the date he went missing was the fact his car was found in the marina parking lot with January second stamped on the entry ticket. His neighbors said he traveled abroad so often, they weren’t alarmed when they didn’t see him for a week.”

“Traveled abroad?” said Jane. “Why?”

“No one could tell me.”

“Or they wouldn’t tell you?”

Lukas smiled. “You’ve got a suspicious mind, Detective. So do I. It made me more and more curious about Desmond. Made me wonder if there was more to the story. You know, that’s the way the Watergate story got started. A routine burglary case blows up into something much, much bigger.”

“What was big about this story?”

“Who the guy was. Charles Desmond.”

Jane looked at the photo of Desmond’s face. He wore a pleasant smile, a neatly knotted tie. It was the sort of photo that might appear in any corporate report. The company executive, projecting competence.

“The more questions I asked about him, the more interesting stuff started to turn up. Charles Desmond never went to college. He served twenty years in the army, most of it working for military intelligence. Five years after he leaves the army, he owns a nice yacht and a big house in Reston. So now you have to ask the obvious question: What did he do to amass that huge bank account?”

“Your article here says that he worked for a company called Pyramid Services,” said Jane. “What’s that?”

“That’s what I wondered. Took me a while to dig it up, but a few days later I learned that Pyramid Services is a subsidiary of guess which company?”

“Don’t tell me,” said Jane. “Ballentree.”

“You got it, Detective.”

Jane looked at Gabriel. “That name just keeps popping up, doesn’t it?”

“And look at the date he went missing,” said Maura. “That’s what caught my eye. January second.”

“The day before the Ashburn massacre.”

“An interesting coincidence, don’t you think?”

Gabriel said, “Tell us more about Pyramid.”

Lukas nodded. “It’s the transportation and security arm of Ballentree, part of the range of services they provide in war zones. Whatever our defense needs abroad-bodyguards, transport escorts, private police forces-Ballentree can do it for you. They’ll go to work in parts of the world where there are no functioning governments.”

“War profiteers,” said Jane.

“Well, why not? There’s a lot of money to be made in war. During the Kosovo conflict, Ballentree’s private soldiers protected construction crews. They’re now ma

“I’m working for the wrong damn police force,” said Jane. “Maybe I should sign up for Kabul, and I could have a yacht, too.”

“You don’t want to work for these people, Jane,” said Maura. “Not when you hear what’s involved.”

“You mean the fact they work in combat zones?”

“No,” said Lukas. “The fact they’re tied in with some pretty unsavory partners. Anytime you deal in a war zone, you’re also making deals with the local mafia. It’s merely practical to form partnerships, so local thugs end up working with companies like Ballentree. There’s a black market trade in every commodity-drugs, arms, booze, women. Every war is an opportunity, a new market, and everyone wants in on the booty. That’s why there’s so much competition for defense contracts. Not just for the contracts themselves, but for the chance at the black market business that comes with it. Ballentree landed more deals last year than any other defense contractor.” He paused. “Partly because Charles Desmond was so damn good at his job.”

“Which was?”

“He was their deal maker. A man with friends in the Pentagon, and probably friends in other places as well.”

“For all the good it did him,” said Jane, looking down at the photo of Desmond. A man whose corpse had lain undiscovered for ten days. A man so mysterious to his neighbors that no one had thought to immediately report him missing.

“The question is,” said Lukas, “Why did he have to die? Did those friends in the Pentagon turn on him? Or did someone else?”

For a moment, no one spoke. The heat made the rooftop shimmer like water, and from the street below rose the smell of exhaust, the rumble of traffic. Jane suddenly noticed that Regina was awake, and her eyes were fixed on Jane’s face. It’s eerie, how much intelligence I see in my daughter’s eyes. From where she sat, Jane could see a woman su