Page 56 of Cougar Point

“Keep that tight and you won’t die,” are the last words she hears before she blacks out.

THIRTY-NINE

TUESDAY

Sleep comes in fits. It’s like being paralyzed and running possibilities through your mind like a black-and-white film. The storm gave up hours ago and moved south. I lie on the bed with my mind churning like a vortex. It dissipates as the door opens and Ronnie rushes in.

“Meg, you need to come downstairs.” She takes off without waiting for me. I haul myself out of bed and tap my phone on, the screen glare dazzling my eyes before they adjust to see that it’s 2:12am.

Rebecca and Ronnie are pacing in the kitchen, and there’s no sign of Jack. “What’s up?” I ask.

Rebecca touches an icon on her phone and a voice comes through. A man’s voice. Deep and undisguised.

“Hi, Rebecca. I guess you know who this is. Don’t talk. Just listen.”There’s a short pause.“If you go to your mailbox where I left the pictures, you’ll find a present. I’ve warned you and your police friends to stop. You’ve caused this. Only you can stop it.

“After you open your gift, you’ll believe. I will kill your mother if I don’t get the money. But since you seem to ignore me, I’ll send another gift, and another, until you comply. The price has gone up. I told your father two million. Now it’s tenmillion and I don’t want any more excuses or delays. Let’s just say, her life depends on it.

“I’ll be in touch unless cops are still involved.”

The call ends. I ask, “Where’s Jack?” He’s got some explaining to do. Therewasa ransom demand and he’s received pictures. He’s lied the whole time.

The front door opens and closes, and we all stand, staring as Jack comes in the kitchen. He’s unsteady on his feet, holding a legal envelope that is stained red. Rebecca is closest and steers him to a chair. His legs give out and he plops down on the seat.

“You’re scaring us, Dad. What is it?” Ronnie says.

Jack pours the contents of the envelope onto the kitchen table, and Rebecca puts a hand over her mouth and backs away from the table like she’s just seen a snake. Ronnie just stares. It’s the gift the kidnapper promised. A pinky finger with chipped red nail polish, red raw tissue, white bone. Blood has soaked into the envelope.

FORTY

FEBRUARY 2023

Cincinnati

Several hours after the discovery of Edward Greenwood’s body at his home, Lucas checked into a Days Inn on the southern edge of the airport and wondered what he could do with the rest of the evening, seeing as how his schedule had been thrown off and he seemed to be surplus to requirements in the CPD investigation of Greenwood’s death. Mac promised they would call him with an update later on, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

Did Greenwood’s suicide mean he was guilty of his wife’s murder? Mac certainly thought so. But Lucas knew there was a lot more to the story.

He took out his laptop and opened it up on the small, scuffed desk in the corner of the room.

The day before, Detective Anderson had showed him the security footage of what was almost certainly OliviaGreenwood’s abduction from the Park Plaza hotel. He had asked her to send the link by email and had watched it several times now. The footage was of acceptable quality, but hecould see how it would have been inconclusive enough for the investigation not to have been a priority.

The footage was time-stamped for the early hours of February 17th. The clip opened at 02:07:36 on an empty corridor that could have been from a million hotels across the world. Doors on both sides, a beige carpet, low lighting from wall lamps.

At 02:07:52, a moving, indistinct shadow appeared in the bottom of the frame. It was followed by two figures shuffling into view. A man and a woman. The man wore a long coat and a baseball cap. His hair was dark and looked like it was short. Using the doors in the corridor as a guide, he looked about five-ten. It was impossible to tell anything else about him. He could have been black or white, skinny or well-built, twenty years old or seventy.

The woman was a little easier to place. She had blonde hair that looked unkempt. She had a coat, but she wasn’t wearing it; it was draped over her shoulders. Bare legs showed below it, and Lucas couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though she was wearing slippers.

At 02:07:56, she glanced back down the corridor, as though she had forgotten something, and showed her face to the camera. On a freeze frame, despite the quality, it was clear it was Olivia Greenwood.

Then the man, without turning back, steered her back around and kept her walking down the corridor. Her gait was unsteady, like she was drunk or drugged, but the man walked steadily, guiding her with an arm across her shoulders.

They reached the elevators at the end of the corridor, and the man pushed the button. Lucas noticed that he kept his face away from the camera at all times, and positioned his body in front of Olivia’s while they waited. Ten seconds later, the car appeared, the doors opening and casting a brighter wedge of light out ontothe dimly lit corridor. The man guided the woman inside. The doors slid shut, cutting off the light, and that was it. The video clip ended at 02:08:49, and that, as far as anyone could tell, was the last sighting of Olivia Greenwood.

Edward Greenwood had said that wasn’t his wife on the tape at the time, that he had been mistaken, and so the line of inquiry had been discarded. Piecing it together weeks later, the investigating cops had searched in vain for more footage of the couple on the 19th floor of the Park Plaza in the wee hours of February 17th.

The foyer had several cameras, but the elevator allowed access to the basement parking lot, which had only one operational camera that did not cover the elevator. The couple could have taken one of the cars parked there, or even climbed the ramp to the street on foot and gone from there. The only vehicle seen leaving the lot within an hour of the video was a black Nissan Frontier pickup truck. The Ohio license plate was visible. It hadn’t been run at the time, since by the time the footage had been recovered, Edward Greenwood had called off the search. Now, a week later, it turned out the plate was stolen.

“We’ll take a look at black Nissan Frontier, see if we can find anything,” Mac had said, adding, “I’m betting there’s a lot of them out there.”

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