My phone rings. It’s Metcalf. Not a text? An actual phone call? In the middle of the day?
“You gotta get right down here,” he says.
“Right downwhere?”
“We’re holding a guy named Carlos. Could be the guy who threatened you.”
“The guy at the front door? He didn’t threaten me. He—”
“But we have to release him soon. The twenty-four-hour rule.”
“I can’t come now,” I say. “But later—”
“It’s gotta be now,” he says. “He’s been in jail since yesterday. If we can’t charge him with something in the next hour, we have to let him go.”
“Metcalf, I’m in a car with two dogs and a crabby baby. I can’t.”
“You have to. This could lead to something.”
“The traffic will be—”
“One hundred Centre Street, nineteenth floor. You now have fifty-seven minutes.”
“I can’t possibly.”
“Do it,” he says.
Then the bastard hangs up.
CHAPTER 30
THE HIGHWAY TRAFFIC IS CRAZY. Everyone is looking for the same thing: the absolute quickest lane into the city. The fact is, there isn’t one. Not to this city, and certainly not at this time of day. But that doesn’t stop every driver on the Hutchinson River Parkway from hoping.
Then, a text from Metcalf:Meet in the parking lot across from Centre Street.
The parking lot? Not the office?
When I pull in, he’s already there, standing outside his car. I check on Lily and the dogs, then get out of my car and wave. He walks toward me.
“Ingrid did a good job,” he says, looking me up and down. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Almost?He saw me a week and a half ago. Does he think this getup bearsanyresemblance to the real me?
But before I can say anything, he has the balls to say, “We had to let the guy go. What took you so damn long?”
“Me?Youhad him locked up for twenty-three hours. Why did you wait till the last minute to call?”
He hands me a batch of photos. “Take a look at these. They’re known cartel people. People we’ve had an eye on. See if one of them—”
Now it’s my turn to interrupt. “Hang on. You hadphotosof the people you’re looking for all this time? Why didn’t you just scan them and send them to me in the first place?”
Because that would have been the nice, easy thing to do. And Metcalf is neither nice nor easy.
The dogs in the back of the car are getting hungry. Lily, in her car seat, is restless. I rifle through the photos, fanning them out like cards in a poker hand. All men, all Latino, all in their late thirties or early forties. Are they Mexican? Colombian? I have no idea.
“Anyone look familiar?” Metcalf asks.
I study the first one. Dark hair, sort of mean-looking, snarling, with a nose that looks like it’s been broken a few times. I hand the photo back to Metcalf.
