Page 54 of To Have and to Hold

A few hours later, after purchasing a pay-as-you-go cheap cell phone on some side street, Icalled Knox, but there was no answer. I sent a text telling him it was me and asking him where he was. Like someone avoiding calls, he texted:

Back at the loft.

I snapped shut my phone and shoved it into my inside pocket. Knox was documenting any additional finds or maybe scoping out the scene over again, figuring out what he missed now that he had a recording of the kidnapper’s call. Good news, because I was standing outside his apartment.

Knox’s place didn’t have a doorman or any sort of security measure, theconsequence of being on a cop’s salary. He lived in a simple five-floor walk-up in Prospect Heights with two security doors at the bottom and a locked one (his apartment door) at the top. I wish I could say there were complicated plans in place that involved me scaling the side of the building, swinging on emergency fire escapes and sliding through his rooms with the ease and teenage-ness of Spider-Man. Alas, that kind of agility was better saved for the A-list actors with CGI effects and stuntmen at their disposal—or maybe for a day when I didn’t possess Knox’s spare key.

Knox handed me a copy for the usual reasons friends gave friends unfettered access—in the rare case that his pristinely organized self would become locked out, or there was some kind of emergency and I could save his cat from a burning building in less time than he could.

I was pretty sure he never considered I’d use it when my ex-fiancéewas abducted and I needed to copy all the evidence he’d collected so I could run my own freelance investigation.

With a quiet, internal apology to Knox, I inserted the key into the front door, used the fob to scan into the second, and trudged my way up five flights.

The mewlsstarted before I was halfway to Knox’s door. His cat was the weirdest feline I’d encountered, in that he welcomed people at the door like a dog would, all friendly and vibrating, and as soon as you took off your shoes he’d lick your toes in greeting. Knox also trained him much like a dog, and if I was so inclined I could throw some sparkly toys Knox kept in a bucket and this cat would play fetch. The thing was Knox’s pride and joy, and if anything ever happened to this fluffy gray pom-pom, I was confident he’d gaily shoot the one responsible in the eye sockets.

I clicked the lock open and cracked the door enough to creep in. “What’s up, Sushi,” I said to the cat who was trying to slip through the spaces between my legs and the door. “No, stay here, buddy.”

Shutting the door, I scooped him up, slightly lamenting the demise of my suit but needing all the leg space I could get, because I didn’t want to turn on any lights in case Knox came home early and looked up at his windows, nor did I want to trip on this fur ball and have Knox find my broken body in his living room with half my face chewed off.

Memory helped in navigating the small space, Knox having rented a one-bedroom flex that somehow managed to be less than five hundred square feet. “Flex” meant that one could rent a thin, portable wall to separate the bed and surrounding two feet of floor space from the rest of the apartment. Welcome to New York. There was also a small galley kitchen to the right and anavy futon facing a mounted TV straight ahead. Usually I came here to watch football with a beer in one hand and sparkle balls in the other; but this time,instead of moving to the couch, I pivoted left to the ergonomically correct computer chair and glass desk which was nestled against the temporary wall—as close to an “office space” as Knox was going to get.

I took my seat gently, with Sushi assessing the situation and pawing circles on my lap until he was curled up comfortably. His purring provided a soothing bass against my stomach as I opened the laptop and made quick work of doing a task that—while traitorous—was necessary. All I had to do to justify this crime was think of one word: Emme.

Knox’s laptop waspasscoded—unsurprising. I chewed on that for a few seconds before looking around, lifting papers and checking post-its, thinking maybe Knox was like 60% of people and left the password somewhere nearby. No such luck, but I didn’t really think Knox, detective of the NYPD, would be such a numb-nuts. I just needed to do something productive while I thought.

Then I glanced down.

Would Knox be so obvious? I thought not, so I tried various other contenders like his birthday, his mom’s, mine, then, on a whim I typed: Sushi17!

Knox’s favorite person, plus his favorite NFL player number, followed by an obligatory character that every password needed these days but most people were too lazy to go past the exclamation point. The computer blipped its approval.

Great Scott, I was right.

I wasn’t sure whether I should be relieved or horrified that Knox had yet to take my advice and figure out a random series of letters, numbers, and characters that no one could ever hack into with basic knowledge of a person.

No time to mentally berate him now. I had information to gather.

I found his personal Emme file easily, as Knox kept all his ongoing cases in separate folders on his desktop. Never the actual case file, because that would be illegal, but his own notes and impressions on the current supply of evidence. All spreadsheets, text docs, and jpegs of Emme’s case opened, and I carefully sifted around in my pocket for the USB drive while trying not to shift Sushi’s nails into my crotch.

In lessthanthirty seconds I’d copied all the files but didn’t stay to read through anything, even though the itch to start searching crawled under my skin. I put Knox’s computer back to sleep, swung Sushi into my arms, and went back to the door. I released the cat, but before I stepped out I twisted and pointed a finger at Sushi, who was seated inquisitively on his haunches, his eyes reflecting yellow in the backlight of the hallway. “Don’t tell your dad.”

I took the stairs three at a time because the sooner I was out of this vicinity the better, both for my guilty conscience and the potential of getting caught. The plan was to go back to my place, scroll through any additional information and add it to my board in the guest room. I’d run through everything all night until I found something new and triggered something in my brain that could lead to where she was.

When I got to the subway, luck was on my side once I got there. A train was in the station. I hopped on, held onto the pole and had additional support from the two exhausted people pressed up against me after a long day of work. Once the train reached Bay Ridge, I waded through the throng of passengers until I reached the platform and then swam and fought through that until I hit the streets above.

I wondered how much cat hair I left stuck to strangers.

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