The Reincarnationist

Chapter 50

New Haven, Connecticut-3:06 p.m.

Carl watched the house from across the street. Inside the rented car, slumped down in the driver’s seat, he appeared to be talking on a cell phone, but in fact it wasn’t turned on, so to anyone who noticed him, he looked like he was parked for a benign reason.

Taking his eyes off the house, he checked the cheap drugstore watch that irritated his wrist. The nanny should be getting home anytime. He’d followed her to the park, watched her talking to the other nannies while the kids played with one another, and, when she got up to come home, he’d taken off so he’d be here waiting for her. He preferred sustained surveillance before he started a job, but he hadn’t had the luxury. He’d gotten the call at three in the morning, which gave him far too little time.

He’d wanted to complain that it was no way to start a job, except the money was too good. How could he afford to turn that much down?

“Not this month. Hell, not this year,” he said out loud. If you’re going to feign being on the phone, you might as well be on the phone.

Narrowing his focus, he concentrated on the street from one end to the other. There wasn’t a soul coming or going, and no sign of activity in any of the houses. Carl closed the phone and shook his head as if he had finished the call and was disturbed by it. Easy enough to fake-he just imagined he was listening to his wife. Damn, he was getting antsy.

This was the one part of the job that sucked: waiting to make the initial contact.

He’d been at attention from the time he left his apartment at six that morning, when he’d taken a train from Grand Central to Thirty-Third, and from there to Hoboken, New Jersey, where he rented the car. The woman behind the counter barely looked at him as she went through the process of setting him up. He made small talk with her, asking what part of Maine she was from. She told him Manchester and seemed a little surprised that he’d guessed. But Carl had an ear for voices and accents. He only had to talk to someone once to recognize them the very next time he spoke to them. Only had to meet one person from a region of the country and then he’d be able to identify it again.

He didn’t tell her that, though. It might make him too memorable. Instead he told her his wife’s family was from there.

Altogether he was pleased with his effort: he’d looked and acted normal enough to be completely unremarkable. For this job he’d become a middle-aged man of medium height with a slightly bumpy nose, glasses, sandy hair and mustache, wearing nice slacks and a sports jacket that had seen better days but was by no means shabby. He enjoyed building a disguise. As the layers and wigs and contacts and makeup went on, he’d disappeared into the man he was becoming, so that by the time he was ready to go, he couldn’t recognize himself in the mirror.

Opening the phone again, Carl pantomimed talking while mentally going over the plans one more time. There was no such thing as being too careful. What he always had to be prepared for-the one thing he could never be prepared for-was the unexpected. At that moment, he saw movement at the end of the block. There she was! Coming around the corner, pushing the stroller, she was ambling slowly, disappearing twice in the shadows cast by heavy maple trees.

Carl waited until she was closer, then shut the phone, patted his pocket, felt his wallet and detective’s badge, got out of the car and crossed the street.

“Excuse me, you’re Miss Winston, aren’t you? You work for Professor Chase?”

The woman was in her early twenties. Short and sweet-looking with round, bright eyes that had suddenly become cautious. He glanced at the stroller. The little girl was sleeping. Perfect.

“Yes, is something wrong?”

He pulled out the badge and his identification.

“I’m Detective Hudson. I’m going to need you to come with me.”

“Why?”

“I can explain everything once you get in the car.”

“Did something happen to my parents?”

“No, there’s absolutely no reason to panic.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Bettina whimpered, and the little girl stirred. That wasn’t good. He didn’t want her to wake up now.

“Of course you didn’t. Please, Miss Winston.” Very gently, he put his fingertips on her elbow and moved her toward the curb. “But I do need you to come with me across the street. My car is over there.” He pointed.

“Right now? Can’t I go into the house first and-”

Leaning down toward her just enough to be inclusive but not enough to suggest intimacy, he spoke in a grave voice. “Mrs. Chase has received a letter threatening her child, and after the recent robbery in her office, we don’t want to take any chances. We want to get you and Quinn someplace safe.”

“That’s just horrible.” Bettina’s fingers tightened on the stroller, and she pulled it closer. “Why would anyone want to take Quinn? What does that have to do with-”

“We’ll explain everything, but right now I need you to come with me.”

As he led her across the street toward the car, Carl could feel Bettina trembling slightly. Good. If she was nervous, this would be easier. He opened the door for her and she looked inside.

“I can’t-we need the baby seat.”

Damn, something he’d missed. This was the problem with a job that involved a child; he usually avoided them. There was too much information that wasn’t intuitive to him.

“Can you hold the stroller?” she said. Before he could answer, she had run back across the street toward the car parked in the driveway. As she opened the back door, he looked up the street and then down in the other direction. The road was clear, the sidewalk still empty, but it was taking too long for her to unclip the seat, and the little girl was stirring. Then, just his luck, a silver sedan turned onto the block.

From this distance it looked like Mr. Chase’s car.

Bettina had gotten the seat out and was coming toward him. Carl rushed to meet her, grabbed it and went to work strapping it in. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the car looming closer. He fumbled with the baby seat. The sedan turned into a driveway halfway up the block. He breathed easier.

After strapping Quinn in, Bettina started to get in beside her. “I’d like you up front with me, so I can explain everything to you without twisting around.”

After they were both inside the car, he turned on the ignition and was pulling out when he saw a second car, an SUV, turn the corner at the opposite end of the block. In the shadows cast from the tall elm trees he couldn’t tell if it was black or dark blue. Mrs. Chase had a dark blue Jeep. Which way to go? Risk passing the car or make a U-turn and risk the driver seeing his license plate. Carl made the U-turn. Checking the rearview mirror, he still couldn’t tell what color or make the car was from this distance. If it was her, she was hours early. Was she close enough to see the plates? Probably not. Besides, she wouldn’t be paying attention. A car driving down the street wasn’t suspect in itself. Even if it was Mrs. Chase and she found the nanny out, she wouldn’t question that right away. Not yet. Not for a few hours.

“Do you have a cell phone?” Carl asked Bettina.

“Yes.”

He made a right at the corner. No one was following. “Can I have it?”

“Why?”

“Procedure.”

She took it out of her purse and handed it to him. He opened it, shut it off and slipped it into his pocket. “I don’t understand. Why do you need my phone?”

He didn’t answer. She stared at his profile. Looked around at the car. Noticed now for the first time that there was nothing in it. Totally empty. And that struck her as odd. Didn’t detectives practically live in their cars?

She’d learned this kind of thinking at drama school. The details of a character brought him to life.

“Can you tell me why you need my phone?”

He didn’t answer.

And that didn’t make sense, either. Why wouldn’t he tell her? He was there to help her and Quinn and Mrs. Chase.

“Oh, God,” she said in a voice that quaked with fear. “You’re not the police, are you?”