The Last Witness

[THREE]

Tradewinds Estate

Saint Thomas, United States Virgin Islands

Monday, November 17, 2:30 P.M.

Maggie McCain had gone through the spiral notebooks, then ordered a salad and grilled fish from room service, ate that poolside, and then went through the books again.

She quickly had decided that “meticulous” was not a word that could accurately be used to describe them.

They’re sloppy.

They certainly wouldn’t pass a high school accounting class, forget a college one.

But there’s a lot here-the challenge is making sense of it all.

It wasn’t just that the handwriting bordered on illegible. The entries in the books were at times illiterate-words misspelled or written phonetically in a rudimentary “Spanglish”-and structurally undisciplined.

I don’t think Ricky would recognize a ruled line, much less a spreadsheet.

But there’s no mistaking the numbers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs alone. They’re not selling on street corners. These are retail and wholesale figures.

One of the books tracked the girls, their locations and activity, how much they earned and how much they owed. The other tracked the drugs. It hadn’t been difficult to discern which notebook was which. The first clue was the crude doodles of female anatomy and of marijuana leaves, bongs, crack pipes, and other paraphernalia.

And there were lots of phone numbers. Each of the girls’ names had one-and Maggie figured they were go-phones given to them, just as Krystal had had hers. And the drug book listed pages of phone numbers. Some with names, some without names, and some names with multiple phone numbers, some of which, apparently the older ones, having been crossed through.

With a few exceptions, most of the area codes were local-a lot of 215 and 267 for the Philadelphia area, and 732 and 856 for New Jersey.

There’s got to be a way to use these numbers if I can’t get to Ricky through the dive bar.

But that’s just going to be a nightmare-worse than hunting a needle in a haystack.

She booted up the laptop and powered on the satellite antenna.

Back online, she launched the program that allowed for video and telephone calls. She clicked on the icon that mimicked a ten-digit keypad on a phone, looked in her computer address book under Krystal’s name, and found the number for Players Corner Lounge.

A woman’s harsh voice on the recording answered: “Players. Leave a message. .”

What do I say?

Maggie clicked END CALL.

She looked at the first page of numbers in the notebook that tracked the girls. Then she clicked REDIAL. Then she clicked to hang up again.

Before I do that. .

She then typed her personal cell phone number and dialed it.

When she heard her own voice recording say, “Hey, it’s me. Sorry we missed-” she clicked twice on the keypad’s pound sign. That took her past the automated voice-mail recording and to her voice-mail box.

The familiar computer-generated female voice politely but mechanically said, “You have forty new messages. You have ten old messages. Five messages older than seven days have been automatically deleted today.”

Forty? No surprise.

Not as bad as the hundred-something e-mails.

But then, there’s not a fifty-message limit on e-mails.

She clicked on the keypad’s numeral “1” and the female computer voice said, “First message. From Monday, nine P.M. . ”

Then the voice mail played: “Hi! It’s Krystal. Call me back!”

Maggie felt her throat constrict.

She clicked the pound sign, fast-forwarding past that and the older messages.

The female computer voice then announced: “New message from Saturday, ten thirty-one P.M. . ”

Maggie then listened to her mother’s voice, calmly asking Maggie to call when she had a chance.

“Nothing important,” her mother said, her voice tired. “Good night.”

Well, Mother, that didn’t happen.

Maggie deleted the message.

The next message was her mother again, almost two hours later, just after midnight. Her voice now was frantic.

“Maggie! Please answer! Call us! We need to know you’re okay!”

It hurt to hear her mother so distressed. She deleted the message.

That bastard Ricky is causing everyone pain. People who’ve done nothing to deserve it.

She listened to the next one. It was her father, his gravelly voice trying to sound calm.

And that really hurt to hear, too.

She listened to the entire message-felt the moral obligation to do so-then deleted it. And then she did the same with the rest-played them all, ones from family and friends and the police, and deleted them one by one.

The tone of her mother went from the initial frantic to hysterical crying to sheer exhaustion. Maggie thought that if there was any silver lining, it was that some of the messages had been thankfully brief. But toward the end, a few were just one or two words-“Maggie?” “Please call. .” “Hello?”-almost as if her mother had called the number simply to hear Maggie’s voice on the recording.

Listening to them all had been emotionally exhausting. Maggie was glad to finally hear, “You have one new message. From Monday, at twelve-ten A.M. . ”

“I believe you have something that belongs to me,” a man’s steely voice said. “Call me at 267-555-9100 and I’m sure we can come to some arrangement that is mutually satisfying.”

Maggie shivered at the sound.

That is one cold voice.

And what is that accent? Eastern European?

It’s certainly not Hispanic. Not Ricky’s.

And “mutually satisfying”?

Like what? What happened to Krystal?

She played the message again, this time writing down the number on a piece of paper. She stared at it for a long time.

It’s a Philly area code.

Then she opened a new window on her browser and typed the telephone number in its search field.

The first search result read: “267-555-9100, a KeyCom Mobile Device. Month-to-month service. Never be locked in a long-term cellular contract again!”

Well, only a fool would use a landline number that could be traced.

So, it’s a go-phone.

I don’t trust myself to call it.

But I can see what happens when I text.

She opened another new browser window, then went to myfreetexts.net and, registering with false information, created a new account that assigned her a new telephone number with an 831 area code.

That page was then replaced with one that was almost a mirror image of the text message screen she had on her cell phone. Almost, because the difference was that both sides of the My Free Texts page had annoying advertisements scrolling from top to bottom.

A small price to pay, I suppose.

She watched the cursor blinking in the field for the recipient’s cell phone number. After a long moment, she typed in the phone number.

And then her stomach suddenly knotted.

That could be the killer. Probably is the killer.

Or, if not the killer, then a killer.

She inhaled deeply, then slowly let it out.

I’m okay. He can’t get to me here.

And if I’m going to get to him. .

She hit TAB, putting the cursor in the bubble that represented the message field, and typed:

MAYBE I HAVE YOUR BOOKS. MAYBE I DON’T.

She read that three times, nodded, then added at the end, “Who is this?”

She read it all once, then clicked SEND.

Maybe whoever it is will be stupid enough to tell me.

Or, more likely, lie to me.

She stared at the screen. She picked up the water bottle on the table beside her and sipped.

She then realized that she was shaking slightly.

I’m terrified.

What if I screw this whole thing up?

She drained the water bottle.

Well, I can’t sit here forever waiting.

Who knows when they’ll reply?

She put her fingers to the keyboard and started to sign out.

Under the bubble that held the message she sent, a new bubble suddenly popped up:

267-555-9100

WHO THE HELL IS THIS?

She immediately yanked her fingers back.

She stared at the reply.

Why do I read anger in that?

And not just any anger.

A fury.

She caught herself typing:

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK?

She stared at that, then immediately tapped the DELETE key over and over.

When the bubble was blank, she turned her head in thought-and realized her impulse had been the right one.

These bastards are killers.

I can’t show weakness.

She typed:

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK?

AND WHAT THE HELL DO YOU CONSIDER AN ARRANGEMENT THAT IS MUTUALLY SATISFYING?

It was a long moment before a new bubble popped up:

267-555-9100

MY APOLOGY. AREA CODE 831 IS CALIF

I KNOW NO ONE THERE

That’s probably a lie.

She sighed.

This is all a damn lie. A nightmare.

What am I doing?

Another bubble quickly followed:

267-555-9100

WHAT MAY I CALL YOU? MS MAC?

Maggie felt her heart race.

That’s what Krystal called me!

Don’t let your guard down!

I can hear that Eastern European voice in his sentence structure.

And then came another bubble:

267-555-9100

PLEASE LET’S MEET — ANYWHERE YOU LIKE

I’M SURE WE CAN WORK THIS ALL OUT

With what? Another bullet?

Slow down, Mag. .

She quickly typed:

I NEED $200,00 °CASH BY TOMORROW.

I’LL BE IN TOUCH.

Where did that come from?

She hit SEND, then clicked to shut down the connection with the satellite. Then-unnecessarily, but it made her feel better-she unplugged from the computer the cable that linked to the antenna.

I have to think this through.

She then looked at her hands and realized they were shaking uncontrollably.

With some difficulty, she got the top unscrewed from the bottle of Cruzan gold rum, sloshed some into a glass, and drank it all at once.