Page 45 of Go Under

Let me save one. Damn it, let me at least save one.

“All right,” the officer replied. “Do you have something to write with?”

Kate pressed the phone to her shoulder and held it with her cheek, then pulled out her pen and notepad. A snowflake dropped onto the pad, raising a welt on the paper and loosening the pressed fibers of the high-quality stationery.

She stepped into the lobby and flipped to another page. “Go ahead.”

The records officer gave her the number, then finished with, “I really wish I could do more.”

“You did your best,” Kate said. “Thank you.”

She hung up just in time for Marcus and Darnell to step out of the elevator and approach her. “Anything yet?” Marcus asked.

Kate showed them the notepad. “I have the landline phone number from which the call was made. No caller ID, and the caller wanted to be anonymous.”

“Shit,” Marcus snapped. “Of goddamned course.”

Darnell kept a slightly better handle on his emotions. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number. Kate overheard the stiff male voice inform Darnell that the number he’d dialed was no longer in service.

Darnell nodded. “Worth a shot. I’ll contact the phone company and see if we can get a name.”

“Would they still have it after thirty years?” Kate asked.

Darnell didn’t answer verbally, but his face told Kate the bad news.

He stepped away to dial the number. Marcus glowered, burly arms crossed over his broad chest. “This is horseshit. We’re right there.”

“I know,” Kate replied softly.

“How can our APB not have popped? How different could she look from our reconstructions?”

Kate didn’t answer, because she knew the answer was very different. Nora could have had plastic surgery. She could have gained eighty pounds. She could have lost weight and now be skinny as a rail. She could have shaved her hair, more than enough to fool all but the shrewdest of observers. There were any number of ways Nora could look entirely different from their best guesses, and even if she was a match, Philadelphia was a big city, the metro area even bigger. She could be lost in a crowd or among people who hadn’t seen the public service announcement or paid much attention to it. By sheer luck, she could have just not encountered a single police officer since the bulletin went out. They were searching for a needle in a hayfield.

Darnell returned a minute later. “Well, as I suspected, the phone company no longer has records of that number. They keep subscriber records for ten years, and it’s been over three and a half times that long.”

“So, they have nothing.”

“They have the building,” Darnell said. “It’s a luxury high-rise in Rittenhouse Square directly across from the former location of the jewelry store.”

“Call them,” Kate said. “Maybe they have residency records.”

Darnell didn’t look any more hopeful for a result with this call than with the first call. Less than a minute later, his pessimism turned out correct once more. The property managers likewise kept records for only ten years. A call to the previous management company revealed it had gone out of business fifteen years ago. Its number now belonged to a mobile car wash service.

The three agents paced the lobby, earning glances from other agents and staff that they ignored. Darnell’s face was drawn and tight, his stoicism pushed to the breaking point. Marcus ran a hand over his face, through his hair, down his sides, restless but unable to direct that energy productively.

Kate hugged her chest, eyes pulled into a scowl. This wasn’t fair. Damn it, they were so close. It was like Cox was mocking them, dangling a carrot just out of reach. Like he wanted them to know that there was no hope. It was inevitable. God’s will would be done.

“Not God’s,” she muttered. “Not His will.”

“What?” Marcus asked.

“Nothing,” Kate said. “Darnell, you said the phone company knows what building. Do they know which unit?”

Darnell shook his head. “They only know what building because of the central office code. That’s the three digits after the area code before the four-digit line number.”

“And they can’t trace the line number?”

“No. The line numbers changed when the city reorganized its telephone grid mapping in 2018. The central office codes remained the same, but the line numbers were all changed.”