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Chapter 15

Gravesend Street, Allston, Massachusetts,

Christmas Day, 2000

Christmas Day dawned silvery gray and glaring as the sunshine streaked intermittently through oyster-colored clouds. With her hair all haywire because she had gone to bed when it was still damp, Liz took some time to dampen and re-dry her auburn waves, while coffee brewed in her kitchen. After dressing in a black lamb’s wool sweater, black slacks, and a festive gold and cream scarf, she phoned both her mother and Janice to leave them holiday messages. She knew they both kept their phones turned down overnight. It was better to leave one for each of them now than to get consumed in a day of reporting and miss sending her love on the holiday.

Hanging up after leaving her second message, Liz considered how sad Veronica must be feeling, wondering each time the phone rang if it would be her mother calling. And here it was Christmas, with no word of her.

Pouring coffee, Liz picked up the unread copy of the World. Amusingly, like the Banner, its front page also featured the poem The Night Before Christmas, but thanks to its larger format, it also contained articles on world and local news. Leading the paper’s Western Suburbs section, Liz found a piece by Nancy Knight bearing the headline, “Tragedy Haunts Past of Missing Newton Woman.”

Although the article revealed no more than could be found in news archives—the accidental drowning of Ellen Johansson’s father—the unearthing of old news was apparently enough to raise the ire of Olga Swenson, who phoned Liz moments later.

“It was only a matter of time until those old press clippings would be dug up. You know that, Mrs. Swenson,” Liz said. “They’re a part of the public record, after all. This is what happens when there are no new leads on a case that has gripped the public’s imagination.”

“All right, all right,” Olga Swenson said. “I understand what you’re saying, but it’s painful, nonetheless. Now that it’s out there in big type again, I’m wondering if anything I told you is getting you any closer to bringing my daughter home to me.”

“Not directly,” Liz said. The desperate, pleading tone of Mrs. Swenson’s voice caused the reporter to feel apologetic. Even though it had only been a few days since she’d learned about the boy from the school for troubled teens, she felt remiss in having no ready answers for Ellen’s mother. “But you can help me put to rest one item.”

“Oh, here’s Veronica,” Mrs. Swenson said. “It’s Christmas morning, after all, and we must open gifts. Let me meet you a little bit later. I shall need to walk Hershey.”

“Could we make it somewhere other than the topiary garden, please?” Liz asked.

“All right. I’ll meet you in two hours at the Wellesley College faculty club parking lot. We can stroll around the campus.”

“Assuming my editor okays this, I’ll be there. I’ll phone you only if the editor says no.”

“And, Liz?” Olga Swenson said.

“Yes, Mrs. Swenson?”

“Thank you for devoting your Christmas to this.”

“You’re welcome. May your day be the best it can be, under the circumstances. Please give my love to Veronica.”

“Yes, of course.”

Olga Swenson’s call gave Liz the opportunity she’d been looking for to design her own Christmas Day assignments. If she were given the okay by phone, she would not even have to drive in to the newsroom until the afternoon. Fortunately, Esther O’Faolin was ruling the roost. And she was in better spirits than usual.

“Gobble, gobble,” Esther said. “Cute turkey piece in today’s paper. Not that anyone will read it. Sales are close to zero on Christmas Day.”

“I may be onto something that will give us some news for tomorrow’s paper, when everyone picks it up for after-Christmas sales ads,” Liz said, telling Esther she had an exclusive opportunity for a Christmas Day conversation with Mrs. Swenson.

“Go for it,” Esther said.

Liz realized Esther must not yet have read the World, since she didn’t point out how that paper had scooped the Banner on Karl Swenson’s drowning death.

With more than an hour of free time before she would have to set out for the Wellesley rendezvous, Liz looked about for a way to enjoy the unexpected at-home stretch of Christmas morning. It was time to give Prudence her gift, a carpet-covered little cave that looked just the right size for the cat to cuddle up in. Hoping it would help attract the cat, Liz put the catnip mouse from Tom inside the structure. Standing up and stretching her front legs luxuriously, Prudence approached the gift as though it was the Trojan horse. After examining it for a good few minutes, she decided to ignore both the cozy interior and catnip mouse. Instead, purring loudly, she climbed on top of the structure and perched herself on it proudly, like a sentry.

Liz was laughing when she picked up the ringing phone.

“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Tom said, sounding piqued. “You didn’t even leave your name when you called.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if you’d want your lady friend to know about me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The gal on your answering machine.”

“I can explain that.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation.”

“But—hey listen. I thought you said you’d be working today.”

“I will be, in a little over an hour.”

“Are you busy until then?”

“Very! Drinking coffee and playing with Prudence.”

“Can I come over and play with you two, too?”

“Oh, all right. But make it snappy!”

“Bah, humbug! See you soon.”

Liz applied a touch of make-up and lipstick and dressed in flannel-lined jeans, a heavy Irish-knit sweater, and thick wool socks. This time, she would be prepared to walk in wintry Wellesley. She was about to pull on her insulated boots when Tom arrived at her door. Still in stocking feet, she stood aside as he entered bearing two Styrofoam containers of coffee and a battered cookie tin.

“From my ‘lady friend,’” Tom grinned, handing Liz the cookie tin. When she said nothing, he said, “Well, aren’t you gonna open it?”

The tin contained two circular pastries, filled with currants.

“Eccles cakes,” Tom said. “Mind if I sit down?”

Liz swept her hand in the direction of her armchair. “Be my guest,” she said. But she remained standing.

“I gather you’ve never had Eccles cakes before. Well, they’re always a treat, but these are better than most. My cousin Caroline makes them every year. Most of the time, my relatives in Swanage—that’s on the south coast of England—get to eat them. But this year, she’s with us for the holidays. I’d have brought her to meet you, but she’s home with my folks.”

“Is she living with you?”

“Just for a few weeks. She’s a student at BU, lives in the dorms. She’s with me while the dorm’s closed for Christmas vacation.”

Liz bit into the pastry and smiled. “Delicious,” she said.

But Tom was quiet, looking at the ice bucket full of flowers.

“I guess there’s a lot we don’t know about each other,” he said.

“That’s for sure. But, oh my God, I’ve got to run! I’m supposed to be in Wellesley in under a half-hour,” Liz said pulling on her boots and grabbing her reporter’s notebook. She was glad the car keys were stowed in her jacket pocket, for once.

“That’s cutting it close,” Tom said, wrapping up her Eccles cake in a napkin and carrying it and the coffee containers to the door. Following Liz to her car, he handed a coffee and pastry to her before she slammed the door shut. Rolling down the window, Liz leaned out and said, “Thank you, Tom, for the treats. Merry Christmas!”

As she drove away, Liz took a sip from the coffee container and grimaced. It was loaded with sugar. Tom had handed her the wrong one.

By the time she reached the Wellesley College faculty club parking lot, it was almost twenty minutes later than the appointment time. And there was no sign of Olga Swenson. Cursing the cold and sickeningly sweet coffee, Liz got out of her car and scanned the scene. With the snow washed away by the rain, it was pointless to look for footprints. And, she reasoned, if she walked around the faculty club building to look for Mrs. Swenson and Hershey coming or going along the campus path to the lakeshore, she might miss their approach on foot—or by car if Mrs. Swenson was also late and had chosen to drive to the meeting place.

Deciding it was worth a quick look at the campus path in any case, Liz ran as fast as she could in her heavy boots and rounded the building. Olga Swenson could be seen, back bowed, returning along the path towards the lake. When Liz called out, Hershey bounded in her direction.

“I’m so sorry to be late, Mrs. Swenson,” Liz shouted.

Turning to face Liz, Ellen Johansson’s mother lifted her shoulders and straightened her posture, but her facial expression remained crestfallen.

“Still no word,” Liz spoke for her.

“And it’s Christmas,” the older woman said.

She didn’t have to say more. Both women shared the same thought. If Ellen Johansson were alive and well, she would not fail to be in touch on the holiday. The two women walked in step, side-by-side, along the campus path.

“It’s not much, but I think I’ve got a piece of somewhat heartening news for you,” Liz said, taking DeZona’s photograph of the living room from her handbag.

The older woman scrutinized it, perplexed.

“Do you see the teacup there?” Liz asked.

“Of course.”

“Look at the china pattern, please, Mrs. Swenson. Am I correct in concluding the pattern is called ‘Forget-me-not?’”

“Yes. It is. Of course! ‘Forget-me-not!’”

“When I first met your daughter and Veronica, Ellen served us tea. Veronica dropped her teacup. I think the cup must have cracked or chipped and Ellen wrote herself a blackboard memo noting the china pattern.”

Olga Swenson’s eyes brimmed with tears as, without a word, she embraced Liz. Then the two walked in tandem, with the older woman holding her companion’s elbow. Perhaps, once again, the pair shared the same thought: At least Ellen did not choose to desert her family.

But if this was not a case of suicide, what was the truth of the matter?

Olga Swenson seemed to collect herself. Noticing another dog walker approaching, she called Hershey to her side and attached his leash. But as he pulled in excitement at seeing the other dog, she grimaced.

“Blister,” she said. “It’s nothing, just from the dog pulling.”

“No, perhaps it’s not nothing,” Liz said, recalling the repeated e-mail messages.

“Hmm?” Olga Swenson said, pulling on her gloves.

“Do you have any idea what your daughter has been reading recently?” Liz asked.

“Why should I?”

“I must tell you this in strictest confidence.”

“It seems I owe you that, at least.”

“One of Ellen’s library colleagues seemed to be worried about your daughter’s choice of reading matter, which, I gather, she could see listed in the library’s circulation records.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if she refused to say what those records contain. Ellen’s talked to me about it. She and her colleagues regard themselves as a kind of last bastion protecting readers’ privacy. That seems reasonable to me when it’s a question of one scholar repeating or getting a hop on another’s research, but what could there be to hide in a housewife’s reading list?”

“Apparently enough to worry your daughter’s friend, Lucy Gray.”

“I’ll give Lucy a call right away.”

“That would make it clear I’d betrayed her confidence.”

“Well, we have to do something!” Olga Swenson said exasperatedly.

“I think there is something you can do, Mrs. Swenson. I have been repeatedly receiving a one-word e-mail message that might just be significant. It didn’t occur to me until just now, but the word in the message, ‘Blister,’ contains the word ‘list.’”

“And a B at the start of the word! That’s precisely the kind of shorthand Ellen and her colleagues often use. ‘Blown’ for ‘book on interlibrary loan’ and that sort of thing. Ellen has said they try to select words starting with b—for ‘book’ or ‘biblio’—that mean something in themselves.”

“I hope we’re onto something. Do you think you could get access to your daughter’s computer terminal and personal items at the library?”

“I think I’d find it easier to collect her knickknacks than log onto her computer. Why do you ask?”

“I’d like you to try that word on the library system and see if it’s a password to the circulation record. If it isn’t, perhaps you could look around and see if she kept a list of passwords to be used at work.”

“How would I guarantee that I’d have any privacy? I’m not very computer savvy, either, you know. Wouldn’t it be better for you to get Erik to do this?”

“I don’t think so. First of all, he hardly trusts me after he was misquoted in that article.”

“I could convince him that you’re working with us.”

“Even if you could, he’s under some suspicion in this case. I think the librarians would be much less likely to leave him alone in Ellen’s workspace than they would you.”

“But Ellen shares an office with Monica Phillips. If she’s not lording it over the library patrons, she’s at her desk impressing everyone with her efficiency.”

“That could be an advantage, since it would be quicker and easier to input a potential password on an active machine than to start up Ellen’s PC. And we have another advantage in predicting when Ms. Phillips would have to cover the reference desk. I happen to know when Lucy Gray’s coffee breaks occur.”

By the time the two had parted at the gate to the Pinetum, their scheme was complete, and scheduled for the next morning. As Olga Swenson walked off towards her home, she raised her blistered hand in a little salute to Liz. Both of the women held themselves taller as they strode purposefully in opposite directions.

New York City, December 16, 2000

“Of course it was a mistake,” Ellen said to the man in the closet, whose coffee-stained pants identified him as the fellow who had accidentally started the fire. “Anyone could see you didn’t set the fire intentionally,” Ellen added.

The poor fellow looked petrified.

Ellen was alarmed, too, to have been pushed into the closet by the stranger. But she saw his agitation as stemming from fear that he would be in deep trouble for the accident. After all, he appeared to be of Middle Eastern extraction, and wasn’t it common knowledge that crimes were punished harshly there?

“I would vouch for you, sir, and I’m sure my friend would, too,” Ellen said, hoping that he would relax enough to let her exit the closet without much ado. “Please don’t worry yourself so much.”

Samir Hasan was overwhelmed. One after the other, this woman had destroyed every assumption he had ever held about her. First, she looked like a spoiled American out-of-towner who knew nothing about New York traffic and less about his language. Then she seemed to know taxi routes and understand the radio communication she should never have heard. Now, it was clear that this assumption was a mistake, too. And last, the woman he had put into grievous danger turned out to be a person who would help him—Samir Hasan, a total stranger and an Arab, too—when he was in trouble. This was a good person, a kind woman.

Standing there, in the closet he’d thrust her into, this shaqra was a living and breathing contradiction to the kind of rhetoric that had won his cooperation in the code-passing operation. Large-eyed and clearly afraid, this woman who was putting his worries before her own proved all Americans are not cold-hearted infidels.

“Do you have children?” she asked him next, surprising Hasan with the question.

“A son, at home with his mother in Baghdad,” he found himself replying.

“You must miss him terribly,” the woman said. “I have a daughter at home. She’s just eight years old. How old is your son?”

Hasan’s head was spinning. Why in Allah’s name was this woman making small talk? He had to get this shaqra out of here. But how? And where to? “He’s the same,” he said. “The same age.”

And then, the closet door was flung open by a firefighter. Before the fireman could finish demanding, “Is everything all right in here?” Ellen flew past him and across the lobby, into the embrace of her pen pal.

“I thought I would protect the lady,” Hasan explained before brushing past the incredulous fireman. Inspired, Hasan added, “I see she has found my sister.”

Hasan hastened across the lobby as the women exited, arm-in-arm, crushed in one compartment of a revolving door. While Hasan followed, the pair crossed the plaza to the globe-shaped sculpture and asked a passerby to take their photo in front of it. While his head spun in the effort to find a way to warn her about her plight—or to somehow to be man enough to carry out his horrific order—he nevertheless found himself marveling, again, at the woman’s faith in other people. He would never hand his camera over to a total stranger and leave, as she did, valuables such as a purse and briefcase lying on a bench while the photo was being taken. In fact, the woman never picked up her things. Instead, rapt in animated conversation with her friend, she simply walked away from them.

Now I am a thief, as well, Hasan told himself as he picked them up. Or, maybe not, he thought, more happily. Here was the excuse to approach the woman again as a Good Samaritan.

Waving the purse and calling out, “Lady, lady! I have found your handbags!” Hasan attempted to get Ellen’s attention. But he was too late.

The women were already too far away to hear him, and before he could break into a run to catch them, they had entered an idling cab. To make things worse, Hasan’s cab was nowhere to be seen.

Exasperated and frantic, Hasan was confused as to where he had left his cab. Nevertheless, he retained the presence of mind to repeat to himself the medallion number and cab company name emblazoned on the women’s cab as it drove away, headed uptown. He could plant it in his memory.

At least in the eyes of one man, he didn’t look suspicious carrying the woman’s things.

“Nice try, buddy,” a businessman said to him. “You’re a rare bird.”

Whatever that meant, it was said in friendly manner. Still, Hasan was uneasy to be seen with the bags. He wished he still had his Gap bag containing his old clothes. But that had been left behind in the restaurant. Taking off his blazer, he wrapped the purse and slim briefcase in it and hailed a cab himself, asking the driver to follow the woman’s cab. But such chases are far more difficult in real life than they are in films, and the cabbie soon lost sight of the vehicle. Hasan ordered him to return to the World Trade Center and make a circuit of the building. Allah be praised, Hasan’s cab had not been towed away, although it was parked in a tow zone. Perhaps the police had been too preoccupied with the fire emergency to take heed of it.

Hasan’s relief was short-lived. The two-way radio crackled to life as Faud’s voice commanded, “You know what you have to do. The teena must go missing. For always.”

“Hamdu-lillah,” Hasan said, hoping his cohort would take it as assent, while in fact it was his prayer to Allah to help him have the manhood to do what he must.