“And she had been supermarket shopping, right?”
“Yes.” PT shifts in his seat. “Did you ever find that odd? I mean, she goes supermarket shopping. It takes under an hour. That’s a pretty narrow window—yet that’s when the killers show up. Convenient, don’t you think?”
Patricia shakes her head. “Wow.”
“Wow?”
“You don’t think I read up on my own case over the years?” she says, still keeping her temper in check, but the mercury is rising. “My mother, I mean, with all the crap you guys threw at her, she never complained. Of course, you guys thought it was her. You grilled her. You searched through her financials. You questioned everyone she ever knew. They found nothing.”
“Back then maybe.”
“What does that mean?”
“Were you supposed to be home, Patricia?”
“What do you mean?”
“When the killers arrived. You were a popular and attractive eighteen-year-old girl. It was a Friday night. My guess is, you were supposed to be out. My guess is, your dad was supposed to be home alone. According to the file, you were in your bedroom. You heard noises and then a gunshot. You came out of your room and you saw two masked men and your father dead on the ground.”
“Point being?” Patricia snaps.
“Point being, if it was a hit, how would the killers have known you were home? It was a Friday night. You didn’t have a car, did you?”
“No,” she says.
“So it’s not like they could have seen your car in the driveway. The hitmen come. They see only your father’s car. Your mother’s car is gone. They break in, they kill him right away, and then—bam—you surprise them. That’s all possible, right?”
“Possible,” Patricia allows.
“So then what happened?”
“You know. It’s in the file. I ran into my bedroom.”
“They kicked down the door?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“They told me to pack a bag and come with them.”
“Why pack a bag?”
“I don’t know.”
“But they specifically told you to pack a bag?”
“Yes.”
“And you did?”
Patricia nods numbly.
“This is the part we in the FBI”—PT nods toward Special Agent Max—“have never understood. We didn’t understand it back when your father was murdered. We don’t understand now, over twenty years later.”
Patricia waits.
“This whole suitcase thing. I don’t want to cast aspersions or anything, but it has never quite added up. Do you know what my colleagues back then concluded? I mean, once they found out about the suitcase being packed. Oh, and your mom didn’t tell them. Seems she didn’t notice. One of the agents went through your room. Saw clothes missing from a hanger.”
Patricia does not move.
“We don’t understand the suitcase, Patricia, do you?”
Her eyes well up. I debate calling a stop to this, but she gives me a strong side-eye that screams, Don’t you dare.
“Do you?” PT asks again.
“I do, yes.”
“Tell me then. Why would they ask you to pack a suitcase?”
Patricia leans a little forward and keeps her voice soft. “They wanted to give me hope.”
No one replies to that. The grandfather clock chimes. In the distance, a landscaper turns on a lawn mower.
“What do you mean, hope?” PT finally asks.
“The one guy,” Patricia continues, “the leader, he’s in my bedroom. His voice is almost kind. He tells me I’m going to stay in a nice cabin by a lake. That he wanted me to have my own clothes—‘Don’t forget a bathing suit,’ he actually said that—so I would be comfortable, he said. He said I would only be gone a few days, a week at the most. He did that a lot.”
PT leans further forward. “Did what a lot?”
“Gave me hope. I think he got off on it. Sometimes, after he raped me in that hut, he would tell me, ‘Oh, Patricia, you’re going to go home soon.’ He would say that my family was finally ready to pay the ransom. One day, he told me he finally got the money. He tossed a pair of handcuffs and a blindfold into the shed. Said to put them on for the ride. ‘You’re finally going home, Patricia,’ he tells me. He led me to a car. Helped me into the backseat. He put his hand on top of my head. ‘Don’t bump your head, Patricia.’ I remember how gentle he was, putting the seat belt across me. Like suddenly he was too modest a man to touch me. Then he got in next to me. In the back. Someone else—maybe the guy from the first night, I don’t know—he drove us. ‘You’re going home,’ my rapist kept telling me. ‘What are you going to do first when you’re free? What food are you craving?’ Like that. On and on. You can’t imagine. For hours…and then at last, the car stopped. Both of them took me by the elbow. They march me to what I hoped was freedom. I can’t see anything, of course. I’m still blindfolded and handcuffed. ‘Your mom is right up ahead,’ he whispers. ‘I can see her.’ But now I know.”
For a moment, no one moves.
“Know what?” PT asks.
But Patricia doesn’t seem to hear him. “They lead me through a door.”
The room is completely silent, as though even the walls are holding their breath.
“And I know for sure,” she says.
“Know what?” PT asks again.
“That familiar stench.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t forget that stench.” Patricia raises her head and meets his gaze. “I was back in that same shed. They just drove me around in circles. I can hear them both laughing now. I’m back in the hut and I’m handcuffed and blindfolded, so they both come in…”
She wipes her eyes, shrugs, forces up a smile.
For a while no one says anything. Even the creaks of this old home stay respectfully silent. After some time passes, PT gestures at Max, and Max pulls out a sheet of paper.
“Could this be the man who raped you?” PT asks in his gentlest voice.
He slides a sheet with six different images of Ry Strauss. The first was a closeup of the famed Jane Street Six image. The last was Ry Strauss in death. The four between them had probably been created using age-progression software. One image would theoretically be Ry Strauss at thirty, another at forty, at fifty, at sixty. In some, Strauss had facial hair. In others he did not.
Patricia stares at the photographs. Her eyes are dry now. I am still trying to sort the possibilities in my head. Did Ry Strauss know my uncle Aldrich? I’m assuming so. Did Ry Strauss coerce or blackmail Aldrich or my family into giving him substantial financial assistance? Again I’ll assume that it was an affirmative. So what happened next? Why the art heist? Why kill Aldrich? Why kidnap Patricia?
What am I missing?
“I don’t know,” Patricia says with a shake of her head. “I could have seen this man years ago. The kidnapper always wore a mask, but this could be him.”
PT puts the images away. “After you escaped, you found a way to turn your personal tragedy into some good.”