Footsteps(104)
“Her husband passed not long ago. Nasty death. She seems to have gotten past her grief pretty fast.”
Carlo didn’t answer. He stared at the little asshole and waited for him to ask a fucking question.
“Any chance there’s some connection here?”
With a slow shake of his head, Carlo indicated that no, there was no chance the incidents were connected.
Darby took the interview back. “What can you tell us about your ex-wife’s circumstances, anything that might give us some insight into where she could have gone, or why she took your son?”
“As far as I know, she’s lived in New York City since she left us. She had a place in the Village—I have her address on some of the legal stuff somewhere. She lives with a guy, or she did six months ago. Somebody she met here.”
“We’ve got that. Had agents at their place already. Neighbors haven’t seen them for three days, but the place looks occupied—just like they went on vacation or something. We’ve got eyes on the building. Your…girlfriend got the plate on the car they were in. A rental.”
“Then you know more than I do.”
“Your brothers say that she tried to see Trey over the weekend. For his birthday. And you wouldn’t let her.” Kohl again. His tone was confrontational.
Carlo narrowed his eyes. “You have kids, Agent Kohl?”
“Yeah. Two girls.”
“If somebody hurt them, turned their whole world upside down. Made them cry for weeks—gave them night terrors so bad you were afraid to sleep at night—would you ever let that person near your kids again? Would you ever give that person another chance to do that kind of damage, especially after your kids were better, after they were happy again?”
Agent Darby cleared her throat. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“Jenny is bipolar. She was on meds, but I don’t know if she still is. Her manic phases never were euphoric. She just got wound up and very easily angry. She got hyper-obsessive about everything and really unpredictable. And needy. Needy and jealous.” As he described her, Carlo remembered the life he’d led with her. Since she’d left, it seemed that the lens through which he looked back on their marriage changed and sharpened each time he recalled any part of it. Until she’d been medicated, and whenever she’d felt good enough that she went off her meds to ‘try to do it on my own now,’ she’d actually been nearly impossible to manage. All those quirks and foibles that he’d found endearing at first—all of it was madness. He’d navigated through a lot of landmines to love her.
And he knew that Trey was really in danger. “When she’s up, she loses control of her anger and gets destructive. When she’s down, she wants everything to end and gets destructive. Either way, she’s got my kid, and she’s got a gun. She’s already threatened to kill him. We need to stop fucking talking and find her before she fucking does it!”
~oOo~
When the law left, Uncle Ben caught Carlo’s eye and beckoned him with the crook of a hand. But Carlo had something else to do first. Talking to the Feds had not calmed him down in the slightest. If anything, he was angrier and more scared. Now reality had set in. Trey was really gone. Jenny had him, and he knew she knew that disappearing was the only way she could expect to live. She was crazy, not stupid. Whether she intended to keep Trey or whether she’d kill him, she knew she had to vanish.
His son was gone.
He turned and found Bina, sitting between Carmen and John. Carmen was holding her hand.
When he’d come out of the Connelly meeting, he’d had several texts and two voice mails. All the texts, two from Bina and three from Luca, had directed him to check his voice mail. Bina’s message had been nearly incomprehensible. She’d been sobbing, and all he’d gotten from that had been “Trey—Joey—come home—come now.” Luca, though, had been furiously, coldly calm and had given him some detail. And more detail when Carlo called him while Pete drove him home.
Luca had the story from Bina and had shared it with Carlo, so he knew, or he had a solid image, of how it had happened. He knew that Jenny had forced Bina to give Trey up—had put a gun to his little boy’s head and threatened to kill him on the spot if she hadn’t. He knew that Joey had put himself between Jenny and Trey and Bina and tried to protect them.
He knew these things, and the rational part of his head, the part that was an architect and a lover and a reasonable, good person told him that Bina had had no choice. That she had protected Trey by letting him go.