He cleared his throat.
“I know she’s had a hard life. My family’s had a tough time, too.” He covered his face and his voice broke. “We gotta do everything to find her. If we lose Jenn...”
* * *
“It’s true,” Kat said. “Everybody loves Jenn.”
Greg had gone to the basement to be with Jake, so Carillo and Kozak used his office to interview her.
Kat looked at the photo of Jenn and Jake on Greg’s desk as they took her through a range of questions, including Jenn’s relationship with Greg.
“I don’t know if there were any issues with their marriage,” Kat said. “But, does anyone really know what’s going on with a married couple?”
“Did Jenn ever confide any problems to you?” Kozak asked.
“No, we didn’t have that kind of connection,” Kat said. “But, to be honest, when you look at all the possibilities, the way you just listed them, yeah, anything’s possible.”
“What do you mean?” Carillo said.
“She could’ve been having an affair. Who knows? I might be wrong, but I get the sense that Jenn might not have been happy.”
“What makes you say that?” Kozak asked.
“I don’t know. A feeling, I guess. She just seemed a little sad to me,” Kat said. “But in my heart, I believe we’ll find her. I believe she’ll come home.”
* * *
When Carillo and Kozak left the Griffins’ house, a dozen newspeople were waiting for them on the street.
Shouldering their way through, they recognized some of the reporters who knew them from other cases. Extending microphones and recorders, they called out questions.
“Hey, Ned, did you find Jennifer Griffin?”
“No comment,” Carillo said.
“Claire, do you have a suspect?”
She didn’t answer.
“Any arrests?”
No response.
“Come on, Claire.”
“Give us a break, Ned.”
The detectives got into their Taurus with Kozak at the wheel.
They’d gone about four blocks in silence, Ned watching the suburb roll by before saying: “Those scrapes on his hands bother me. I think he’s hiding something.”
Kozak turned to Carillo.
“Of course he is. We never get the whole truth in the first round.”
Nineteen
Buffalo, New York
One more time.
Laila Price switched on her living room TV to a blast of static and snow. Pressing buttons on her remote, she went from channel to channel only to find the same hissing blizzard.
Nothing had changed.
The cable was still out.
So was their internet.
Switching off the TV, Laila looked at her phone. At least it had a connection. She scrolled through her calendar, relieved somebody from Distinctly Connex, the cable company, was coming between one and three this afternoon. Her husband, Darrell, would be home by then. He could deal with the cable person.
It was almost 9:30 now.
She’d put the laundry away later. Looking forward to her day off, a day of errands, shopping, and coffee with a friend, Laila got ready to go out. Grabbing her keys and her purse, she went to the garage, pushed the button. The door lifted. She went to her car but stopped. A white van with no markings but a flashing yellow light had just parked in her driveway, blocking her exit. A man studying his clipboard looked up and gave her a little wave from behind the wheel.
Laila went to the driver’s door. The window was down.
“Are you the cable guy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“They told us you were coming this afternoon.”
He paged through his clipboard. She noticed the name on his ID tag was Zoran Volk.
“My job sheet says from nine to twelve. A mix-up, maybe.” His eyes took a quick walk over Laila, her bag, keys in hand. “It’s no problem, if you want to reschedule. You have to call in.”
“Mmm,” Laila said.
“It might be ten days or longer before we get back.”
“That long?”
“We’re backed up.”
“How long do you think it would take to fix it now?”
“All I got on my sheet is your cable and internet are out.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I gotta check outside, then inside, all your connections and signal levels.”
She noticed a glint of a gold filling as he sucked air through his teeth.
“Forty-five minutes, give or take. Depends on the problem,” he said.
“Forty-five minutes?” Laila knew Darrell would not survive being TV-less for ten days. “We’ll do this now. Come to the front door.”
“I’ll check outside first.”
“Okay, ring the front bell when you need to come in.”
Laila returned through the garage and closed the door. She went to her living room sofa and sent messages on her phone, rearranging her errands and coffee date with Alicia.
This was not the morning she’d planned. They’d set it up for Darrell to be here. She preferred having her husband around whenever service people had to work in the house. But she had to get this done. Reaching for her tablet, she resumed reading the thriller she was enjoying.
She heard the faint jangle of a tool belt and through the window glimpsed the cable guy outside, walking around the house. Knowing he was out there made it hard to concentrate. Everything soon went quiet. She was starting to get back into her book, was halfway through a chapter, when she jumped.
The doorbell chimed loud and clear.
Exhaling, Laila opened the door.
“Hi again,” the cable guy said, his tool belt laden with pliers, screwdrivers, and other items. He was holding a device that looked like a credit card reader. “Everything looks good outside.”
He was tall, taller than Darrell, who was six even. His sleeves were rolled. His arms were muscular and tattooed. He had thick, wavy hair, was unshaven with what looked like a three-day scruff. His cool, deep-set eyes took a lightning-quick appraisal of her body before meeting hers.
“I need to look around inside. It could be a bad splitter, or a system problem. My sheet says you have two TV hookups and one for internet. Where are they?”