He’s frowning now, and I can tell he thinks I’ve completely dropped my marbles. Maybe I have. Maybe coming at this crazy is the only way to understand it. “What about the eighteen-wheeler?”
“Rivard Luxe,” I tell him. “The truck on that road had Rivard Luxe written on the side of it. Mike, it’s big enough to fit a van inside.”
I see it when I blink: fancy gilded script on the dirty side of that eighteen-wheeler, as if it’s suspended on a jumbotron hanging right in front of me. The most vivid memory I’ve ever had. I noticed, but I didn’t pay attention. I was too focused on Gwen, on that van, to see what was right in front of me.
Mike still isn’t getting it. I open up the driver’s-side door and get in, and when he’s inside, too, he says, “Even if you’re right, what the hell does the truck have to do with the video we were just watching?”
“The first time we talked about the video, I asked if you knew the name Rivard,” I say. “And you told me that Ballantine Rivard is famous. From that moment on, we were making the wrong assumptions. We just did it again, while we were watching it.”
“Jesus.” Mike drags out the word, and it’s so reverent it’s almost a prayer. “That poor bastard PI wasn’t hired by Ballantine Rivard. He just said Rivard.”
“Exactly,” I say, firing up the Jeep. “He wasn’t hired by the old man at all. He was hired by Rivard’s son. The dead one.”
“And that’s not a coincidence,” Mike says. He gets it now. All the way. “Fuck.”
So now we know. The problem now is . . . what can we do about it?
There’s a reason I want Mike on my side. FBI agents carry weight.
Mike has a backroom conversation with an airline manager who magically produces two tickets for us, despite the backlog of travelers, and we’re rushed through security on the strength of his badge and into business-class seats to Atlanta on the first available flight.
I’m reminded of the plush seats on the Rivard Luxe plane we took to and from Wichita, and I feel angry and sick that I fell for it. I keep chewing on it. I can see it all now, every step. Ballantine Rivard has gone out of his way to mislead us, misdirect us, threaten Gwen, sow doubt and fear to split us up.
I’d lay heavy bets that Rivard’s son was never hounded to his death by Absalom. Not the way his father described to us, anyway.
“Rivard’s never going to talk to us,” Mike says. “I don’t have a hope in hell of getting a warrant based on a supposition and a wild-ass guess.”
“I know you don’t.” I sound bitter and angry, and I am, because I’ve been a damn fool. I’ve left the idea that Gwen’s guilty in the rearview. I don’t know why I ever fell for it in the first place, except that I was already conditioned to believe it. She’s only ever been straight with me. I’m the one who lied. I’m the one who came into her life intending to tear it apart.
And now I’ve done that, and I need to find her and help her put it back together. It’s the only way I can even start to make up for what I’ve just done to her.
“How do you feel about helping me out without that badge?” I ask Mike, and he sighs.
“I’m not too likely to be carrying one, anyway, once this is all done; the Bureau doesn’t much like agents going rogue, and brother, I am as rogue right now as it gets. But I’ll stand with you.” He’s silent for a second, maybe just contemplating the breathtaking mistake we’ve both made to get us here, and then he asks, “You think Rivard’s behind his son’s death?”
“Has to be,” I say. “That tower is his fortress, and if I had to guess, the stores are nothing but an elaborate money-laundering operation. Absalom’s dark web is his real business, and he wasn’t about to let anybody kill his golden goose. If his son got too close, maybe grew a conscience, that explains his ‘suicide.’” I air-quote. I’m basing a lot on an eighteen-wheeler and a guess, but it all rings true. It all, finally, makes sense to me.
I knew something was off about that slick old man. I’d felt it from the beginning—the effortless way he’d conned us into the tower, then gotten us to do his bidding in Wichita. He wanted a plausible way for the second false video about Gwen to be discovered, and maybe Suffolk had been getting a little difficult. Two birds, one stone.
This goes deeper and darker than I ever imagined. Melvin Royal, vile as he is, is just another tool for Absalom—fulfilling his own sick fantasies, and there was Rivard, ready to pay him to do it. I feel dizzy and sick with the scope of it, and the cruelty.
“I don’t care what we have to do,” I tell Mike in a low, dead-quiet voice. “I want Rivard to tell us where Gwen is. Whatever it takes.”
“Whatever it takes,” Mike says. “But you need to gear down a little, son. Save that edge for when you need it.”
I sit in impatient, jittering silence as the plane is deiced, as we wait for our turn for a runway, and finally, we launch upward toward Atlanta.
We land at three o’clock. The weather is crisp and clear and barely qualifies as fall, much less the winter we just left. We rent another SUV, this one on Mike’s personal credit card, and he takes all the damage insurance. “Screw it,” he says. “I’m not worrying about the paint job.”
We get to Rivard Luxe and park in the visitor’s area in the garage. We sit for a moment, and Mike says, “You got even the vaguest idea what we’re going to do now?”
“Sure,” I say. “I’m just trying to think of a better one, because this tactic is liable to get us adjoining cells. Mike . . . I’m talking federal offense.”
“You’re selling this plan hard. Well, I said I’m in, so let’s get on with it. Don’t spell it out for me. I don’t want to know.” I know he feels every tick of the clock, just like I do. Gwen’s out there, and in the back of my mind, I can’t help imagining what might be happening to her already. I have to keep that locked up. If I don’t, I’m going to rush, make bad decisions, and all this will be for nothing.
“Okay,” I say. “I need you to go across the street to that convenience store we saw on the corner. Buy a ball cap, a clipboard, a manila folder, bottled water, sunglasses, and a pen. If they have any hoodies, get two—one for me, one for you. By the way, do you have evidence gloves on you?”