Dark Eyes Part 8

Wally and the crew looked out at the Hatch home, a large two-story Cape-style home, at least five bedrooms, set back from the road. There was a closed three-car garage set to one side and a gardening shed visible out back. The place was neat and the grounds well tended, but the buildings themselves had fallen behind in upkeep, with a few missing s.h.i.+ngles and cracked, weather-beaten paint around the windows. In the back, the property sat against a wide stretch of forest-the western boundary of the Mashomack Preserve, as Wally had noticed on her map.

The cabbie seemed to sense their hesitation as Wally and the others looked up at the quiet home, which was completely dark.

"They don't know you're coming?" he said.

"Not exactly," Wally said. The situation was not what she had hoped for, obviously, but she was not about to be deterred.

"I can wait," he said. "The brothers might not even be home."

"No, thanks," Wally said. "We appreciate it, but we could end up being here awhile. Fantasy Island cab, right? We'll call if we need a ride back to the ferry."

The driver shrugged and pa.s.sed her a business card. "Cool."

Wally paid him and the crew climbed out of the cab. The driver did a three-point turn on the narrow dirt road and disappeared back the way they had come.

Wally and the others faced the Hatch home.

"Maybe he was right," said Tevin. "It doesn't look like anyone is home."

They entered through the gate and walked the fifty feet of upward-sloping lawn to reach the front porch of the Hatches' house, then climbed the stairs to the front door. Wally rang the doorbell, which they could hear echoing through the house. When there was no answer, she knocked as well. No one came to the door, and there was no indication that anyone was home.

"d.a.m.n it," Wally said.

They followed the porch-which wrapped all the way around the house-to the back deck and peered through French doors into the back rooms. The place was very spa.r.s.ely furnished. Next to the kitchen was a family area with an old dining table and a sofa turned toward a TV screen. To one side was a wood-fired heating stove, with the glow of a flame just visible inside. There were no other signs of anyone being home.

Wally tested the handle on one of the French doors, but it was locked. She walked around the rear wall, testing more doors and windows, and found an unlocked window above the kitchen sink.

"We're going in?" Jake asked.

"Just me," Wally said, feeling herself slipping into commando mode, tense in a good way and ready to go. She had work to do inside the house and didn't want to have to worry about the crew while she was into it.

"Why'd we come all the way up here, then?" Jake asked, annoyed.

"I know, but if this goes wrong, I'll need you guys free to help me out. Please stand watch and let me know if anyone shows up, okay? Just pound on the back door or something if you need to get my attention."

Jake was still annoyed, but Wally's argument was reasonable enough. She handed her shoulder bag to Ella and shoved the unlocked window open. She hiked herself up and through the window, supporting her weight inside by grabbing the edge of the kitchen sink and sliding all the way in until she was crouched on the kitchen counter. She then jumped down to the floor, and the sound of her boots echoed through the house. She slid off her boots and left them sitting by the kitchen counter, beginning her quiet search of the house in stocking feet.

Much like the outside appearance of the home, the inside was tidy but run-down. Wally pa.s.sed through a closed door into the living room, which was a good thirty degrees colder than the kitchen area. Obviously, the only heater being used in the house was the woodstove, and the doors to that area were closed to keep the heat in the essential living area. There was no furniture in the living room. Wally got the sense that the Hatch brothers had been selling off the furniture, one piece at a time.

She returned to the kitchen, where she began checking the cabinets. There she found enough food to last quite a while, but all of two categories: staples like rice and oatmeal in bulk sizes and various foods that must have been foraged from the area: berry preserves, root vegetables. It seemed to Wally that the Hatch brothers were nearly dest.i.tute, saving money everywhere they could-they were struggling to hold on to their family home.

Wally found a narrow servant's staircase next to the kitchen and climbed up to the second floor. There she arrived at a long hallway that stretched the entire width of the house, with doors leading into six separate bedrooms, including two "master" suites, one at either end of the house. These two large bedrooms were the only ones with any furniture: each had a bed-mattresses on makes.h.i.+ft platforms-and side tables with lamps. In each closet was a meager but practical selection of men's clothing.

She was just about to exit the second bedroom when she heard the sharp sound of something hitting the window beside the bed. She stifled a little yelp at the surprise of it. She looked out the window, and it took her a moment to find her crew, crouched beyond the fence at the edge of the property, probably forty feet away from the house. The three of them wore identical looks of alarm, and suddenly Wally heard the sound of a door closing downstairs, followed by the sounds of boots-two sets?-patrolling the first floor of the house. Wally looked at the crew again, and Tevin gave her a signal, holding up two fingers to signify two people downstairs, then changing the signal by pressing the two fingers together until they became the "barrel" in a hand gesture that meant gun.

s.h.i.+t. The Hatch brothers were home apparently, and, for some reason, they were carrying weapons. Had they been alerted that she had broken in? Wally felt a surge of distress but made a sign to the others that they should stay where they were. She thought about calling the police, figuring that getting busted would be better than getting shot by the Hatch brothers as a burglar, but then realized that her cell phone was in her shoulder bag, now outside with Ella. The only phone she had seen in the house was downstairs in the kitchen.

Then Wally remembered her boots. Sitting to one side of the kitchen floor, near the window over the sink. Had she closed the window behind her? Suddenly she couldn't remember.

Possibilities raced through her mind. Should she just call out in surrender? Let the brothers know she was there and apologize, explaining that she was innocently searching for her Russian mother and got carried away when they weren't home and ... no. No way. If she spooked them badly enough, they might take a shot at her-but even if that didn't happen, they would be so angry with Wally for violating their privacy that they would never help with her search for Yalena. So far, the Hatch brothers were still her only decent lead.

s.h.i.+t.

One set of footsteps-heavy, male, moving at a cautious pace-began climbing the main staircase, headed up in Wally's direction. Wally hustled down the hall as quietly as she could, headed for the back staircase-the one she had used coming up. Though her stocking feet were quiet, the ancient floorboards squeaked slightly under her. The footsteps on the main staircase suddenly halted and remained completely still. Wally slid to a stop and froze. The man on the main staircase didn't move for almost ten seconds-listening?-but finally continued upward, and Wally sped along the last section of hallway until she reached the narrow back staircase. Quickly she hurried downward and then stopped at the bottom of the stairs, alert.

There were still two sets of footsteps moving in the house: the ones upstairs walked the width of the house with occasional pauses and redirections, clearly searching the upstairs rooms. The second set of steps was still downstairs, moving slowly, opening closet doors, searching every inch of the place. From her position at the bottom of the rear staircase, Wally could see her own pair of boots sitting where she had left them on the kitchen floor, undisturbed. She realized that she had placed them mostly out of sight, halfway concealed by the kitchen counter and easy to miss if someone wasn't actually looking for them. Wally also noticed that she had in fact closed the window behind her. So, what had tipped off the Hatches that someone was in their house? Why were they searching for an intruder?

Wally needed to get the h.e.l.l out of that house. From her hiding place at the bottom of the servant's staircase, she cautiously emerged into the kitchen, making her way quietly across the linoleum toward her shoes, but suddenly the sound of the downstairs footsteps changed direction and headed toward the kitchen, toward her. Wally spun around and raced back to the cover of the staircase, ducking in just as the downstairs man stepped into the kitchen.

Wally heard the man stop and look around the kitchen. She heard a squeak as he opened one of the kitchen cabinets. Wally took a chance and peered out, getting a look at him from behind. He was dark-haired, average height but st.u.r.dily built. Salt-and-pepper hair, closely trimmed, wearing jeans and a black leather car coat and carrying an intimidating handgun that Wally recognized as a .45 automatic-Jason, her adopted father, had insisted that Wally take a series of cla.s.ses on handling guns.

As she watched the man search through the cabinets, Wally suddenly realized that this was not one of the Hatch brothers at all, but an intruder like herself. But if he wasn't looking for her, what was he looking for?

The man continued searching and suddenly his attention was drawn toward something Wally had not noticed in the dining area next to the kitchen. He approached a collection of photographs that were pinned to the otherwise empty wall, old black-and-white photos yellowed terribly with age.

The man concentrated his attention on two of the photos. One photo was of a small white rowboat, empty, sitting on a beach at the edge of a dark sea. The second appeared to be of a young couple and-was that a small child with them? The family of three stood in front of some sort of rustic farmhouse. The man reached for the second photo-of the young couple and small child-and pulled it off the wall, looking at it more closely.

"Yalena," he said out loud, with a Slavic accent.

Wally's heart was suddenly in her throat. The stranger had spoken her mother's name.

At that moment the doorbell rang-sounding incredibly loud in the quiet, barren house-and the man turned his attention toward the front of the house, allowing Wally a clear look at his face, in profile. She gasped. The man was older now, a little gaunt, and his eighties-style hair and sideburns were cut back, but there was no question in Wally's mind. This was the man whose photograph was included in the Brighton Beach file: This is a most dangerous man, Yalena had written on the back of the picture. If you see him, you must run. What had been instantly menacing in his photograph was evident now also, but to a greater extreme: a sense of danger and violence radiated outward from him, merely punctuated by the weapon in his hand. He grabbed the photo off the wall and stuffed it in his pocket.

"Gost!" the man barked in Russian. Visitor, Wally understood.

And now, to Wally's horror, the footsteps upstairs moved to the rear staircase-the same servant's staircase where Wally was now hiding-and began climbing downward. Toward her.

s.h.i.+t. Wally had no idea what to do. The man from above was halfway down the stairs when the man in the kitchen began moving toward the kitchen door that led to the entrance hallway and to the front door. Moving cautiously, the man s.h.i.+fted his gun hand behind his back, peered down the hallway toward the front door, then exited the kitchen on his way to check who might be at the door. Once he was gone, Wally jumped out of the staircase and lunged to her left, into a s.p.a.ce between the staircase and the refrigerator where a set of old mops and brooms were stored. Wally leaned into the vacant s.p.a.ce as far as she could, just barely out of sight, as the second man appeared from the staircase and moved swiftly past her at a distance of less than two feet. Wally held her breath, and thankfully he did not discover her.

The second man was very young-late teens, Wally guessed-taller and slimmer than the other, with long black hair trailing down to his shoulders. In his right hand he held his own weapon, a 9mm automatic. The younger man followed the course of the older, exiting the kitchen in the direction of the entrance hallway, and as soon as he was out of sight Wally sped across the kitchen floor-sliding in her stocking feet to avoid making any sound-to the kitchen counter, where she picked up her shoes in one swooping motion and hustled to the French doors at the rear of the room, unlocking one and fleeing out to the back grounds, careful to close the door quietly behind her.

Once outside, Wally heard a low whistle come from the side fence of the property, where she had seen her crew crouching out of sight. They were still there, motioning for her to hurry. Wally traversed the yard and leapt over the fence, tumbling down in the brush beside her friends.

"Are you okay?" Ella asked in a panic.

"I'm fine," said Wally, breathless but feeling a sense of relief. "That was you guys who rang at the door?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "We did a ring-and-run to distract them."

"Wally," Tevin said, "we're so sorry. Those guys snuck up to the house from the side yard. We didn't see them until they were at the back door."

"It's okay, you did great," Wally a.s.sured them. "Let's just get the h.e.l.l away from here."

The four of them crashed through some brush into a neighbor's yard, staying low, then moved directly toward Crichton Road. Wally got her shoulder bag back from Ella and was just reaching for her phone when the Fantasy Island cab pulled onto Crichton Road and slowed down to park in front of the Hatch home. Wally stepped into the street and waved the cabbie over. He accelerated and pulled up in front of the neighboring house, where they were waiting, and signaled them to jump in. They did, and he drove off.

"Thought I'd check back in case you needed a ride," the mellow young cabbie said. As he looked into his rearview mirror, seeing all four of them breathless and looking spooked, he asked, "How was your visit?"

The cabdriver dropped them off at the Shelter Island marina for their return trip. Wally thanked the cabbie and tipped him lavishly.

"Wow," said the cabbie, reacting to the extra fifty bucks. "Are you sure? It was just a few miles."

"I'm sure. Thanks again."

He shrugged and smiled, pocketing the tip. "You've got my card." He gave her a winning grin and drove off.

Within a few minutes, Wally and the crew were at the bow of the ferry again, the chilly wind to their backs this time, looking out over the water and waiting for their heart rates to return to normal.

"It was him, right?" Ella was the first to speak. "One of those guys was the one from the picture?"

"Yeah," Tevin said. "I got a pretty good look. It was him."

"He's looking for her," Wally said, certain she was right, remembering the gratified tone in the man's voice when he had spotted the ancient photograph on the wall of the Hatches' house and spoken her mother's name-Yalena-before pulling the photo from the wall and taking it with him. And why was an old photograph of her Russian mother pinned to the wall of that house? Things were all tied together somehow-Yalena, the Hatches, and the two intruders in the Hatches' house.

"He's looking for Yalena," Wally repeated.

"And he's following the same leads that you are," said Jake.

Wally nodded in agreement, feeling a jacked-up sense of urgency.

"I have to find her first."

TEN.

The streetlights along Centre Street were just flickering on as Atley parked his car and stepped into Bergin's Pub. He took a table at the back and ordered a beer to nurse while he reviewed Wallis Stoneman's Social Services file. While he waited for his drink to arrive, Atley checked his voice mail and listened to messages from his lieutenant and his watch commander, both curious about why he had nothing to show for all the hours he was putting in on the Sophia Manetti murder. The only other message was the one he had heard two hours earlier from his longtime friend Bill Horst, special agent at the FBI's Manhattan headquarters.

"Yo, Atley," came Bill's voice on the voice mail recording, "I've got something you might need. I'll be at Bergin's around five."

Atley erased the messages and checked his watch, confirming that he had at least fifteen minutes before Horst showed up. His pint of ice-cold Stella arrived, and Atley took a deep end-of-the-workday drink before finally opening Wallis's file. He could see right off that it would be interesting reading, some of it familiar juvenile stuff, some not so much.

The collection of doc.u.ments covered the previous two or three years, a time when Wallis Stoneman started acting out in various ways and eventually ended up on the street. There was truancy, of course, and several cases in juvenile court, mostly minor stuff-two instances of shoplifting, a charge for resisting arrest when she and some friends were stopped in the East Village at three in the morning. Wallis was expelled for disciplinary reasons from Harpswell and two other expensive prep schools.

When she finally ran away from home, Wallis's record showed that she was frequently in the company of someone named Nick Pierce and-there she was-Sophia Manetti, recently deceased. Pierce was a runaway minor one year older than Wallis but with a very long record in juvenile court, including drug charges. Apparently the two of them were no longer connected. There were no other mentions in the file regarding the Manetti girl.

According to the file, much of the grief in Wallis's life seemed connected to the fact that she had been adopted, a detail that hadn't come up in Atley's interview with Claire Stoneman. Atley had friends who had been through some of that stuff. The adopted kid reaches adolescence and the usual rebellion issues can get magnified, sometimes to an extreme, as if they wake up one day and they're living in a stranger's home. For the most part, it seemed the mother had done what she could to heal the situation, including various types of counseling, but with mixed results.

There were a couple of special entries in the files by her caseworker that amounted to warnings. In an effort to help her daughter learn discipline and channel her emotions, Claire Stoneman had enrolled Wallis in a mixed martial arts program at a well-known dojo up on Columbus. The girl had kept with it for two years. Wallis was an angry and defiant twelve-year-old when she began the training. After two years of high-level cla.s.ses she was an angry and defiant fourteen-year-old who now knew fifty different ways to cripple a man. In addition, the mother's ex-husband, Jason Stoneman, was a gun owner, and for safety reasons he had schooled Wallis on the use of various firearms.

Fantastic, thought Atley. Nice parenting. Mr. and Mrs. Stoneman had turned their daughter into a one-teenager wrecking crew, currently at large on the streets of New York City and, apparently, uncatchable. There had been a PINS warrant out on her for a full year, but in that time she hadn't been collared, not even once.

Atley finished the file and his first beer just as Bill Horst arrived.

"Brother Atley." Bill flashed a smile as he sat down and signaled the waitress for two Stellas.

Bill had been a cla.s.smate of Atley's back at the academy, almost twenty years earlier. One day during a lecture break, two FBI agents had appeared and stolen Bill away, presumably to be tasked on an undercover a.s.signment that required a face with no law enforcement history. Atley never found out why the feds had chosen Bill-a raw recruit-or what his a.s.signment had been. Bill had been completely off the radar for almost ten years, then shown up in the city again as a regular duty agent in the FBI's Manhattan field office.

"What've you got for me?" Atley asked.

Their beers arrived. Bill nodded thanks to the waitress, then waited for her to leave before continuing. "You put out a BOLO on some girl from the Upper West?"

"I did," said Atley, surprised. He had put out a Be On the Look Out bulletin for Wallis Stoneman but had distributed it to local law enforcement only. He couldn't imagine how the sixteen-year-old could possibly be of interest to the bureau. "Her name is Wallis Stoneman. Street kid."

"She a perp?"

"No," said Atley. "Witness, hopefully. Source, maybe. How'd the BOLO come across your desk?"

"Are you kidding? All of us in the Manhattan field office are huge fans of your work," said Bill. "We have a special bulletin board to keep us up to date on your current cases."

"f.u.c.k off," said Atley.

Bill smiled. "We got a double homicide up the coast yesterday. You know Shelter Island?"

"Heard of it, never been there."

"The victims ..." Bill paused, clearly trying to figure out how much information to share with Atley, a non-fed. "Okay, so ... we had a guy on a watch list, just him at first and eventually we added his two sons also. Benjamin Hatch, sons Andrew and Robert. Those names mean anything to you?"

"Nope," said Atley, still perplexed as to how Wallis Stoneman could possibly fit into a federal case.

"Anyway," Bill continued, "this Hatch guy ... he ran an import business. A few years back the bureau caught word he was sidestepping Customs regs. We ended up plugging his name and his boys' into a watch list, just to keep a heads-up; you know how much of a hard-on Homeland Security has for overseas trade activity. Years go by, no hits ever come up on Hatch or the sons."

"How many years?"

"Ten or more. Hatch croaked three years ago. As for the sons, there's been nothing ... until yesterday. Apparently, the Hatch boys were out running errands and came home to some surprise visitors. Whoever it was left an awful mess. Andrew and Robert both very dead, very wet. The local cops put the Hatches' names into the system and the case gets flagged on our end 'cause they're still on our watch list. We went up there to show some due diligence."

"Did you find anything?"

"Nope," said Bill. "Nothing for us. Just homicide, far as we could tell. We left the case for the local yokels."

"Okay ..." said Atley, still waiting to hear what all this had to do with Wallis Stoneman.

Bill pulled out his smart phone and scrolled through the content files for a moment, looking for something. When he found it, he hit play and handed the phone to Atley. It was a color video clip-surprisingly sharp-shot from above by a security camera in what looked like a train station platform. The footage showed four teenagers on the platform, dressed in emo street attire. Looking closely, Atley identified one of the teens as Wallis Stoneman. As he continued to watch the footage, a train arrived at the station. Wallis and her friends climbed aboard the train and rode away.

"That's her," said Atley, handing the phone back to Bill. "What station is that?"

"Greenport, end of the line. Near the ferry landing for Shelter Island, yesterday. Day of the killings."

Atley considered this for a second and gave Bill a look. "You're not thinking these kids had anything to do with the murders. ..."

"Nah," said Bill. "The local cops have a pretty solid timeline and a general description of the two unsubs and their vehicle. Plus, your kids left Greenport at least two hours before time of death. We went over the security camera footage from the train station and parking lot, hoping to spot the unsubs in the vicinity-"

"Okay," said Atley. "So, your facial recognition system scanned the faces at the station and ran them against current warrants, and that's how my BOLO popped up. I don't suppose your super-secret software can tell me what young Wallis Stoneman and her friends were doing way the h.e.l.l up Long Island. ..."

"I do not know, my friend," Bill said with a cheerful grin, "and as of right now, I consider it your problem, not mine. Cheers."