Page 70 of Holmes Is Missing
“Hello, Constable.”
“Any progress there?”
“The police are staking out a location on Staten Island,” said Marple. “By morning we’ll know more. Anything on Rebecca yet?”
“I’m still betting on a needle spike,” he said, “but nothing definitive yet. Rebecca was a diabetic. Used insulin. She had multiple injection sites.”
“And whoever killed her knew that,” said Marple.
“I have something else,” said Dodgett. “I pulled the last session Tran was working on after you left. She was doing some high-level voice analysis.”
“Right,” said Marple. “She was looking for a match for a woman we’d picked out. Needle in a haystack. But I’d asked her to keep trying.”
“The woman in the Union Jack mask,” said Dodgett.
“That’s right.” Marple rolled over. “Did she locate any information on her?”
“Yes. Her name is Agnes Matts. Originally from Yorkshire. Dropped out of school and more or less disappeared from society years ago, but she has family money from a string of right-wing tabloids and a medical device company.”
“Medical devices?” said Marple, sitting up.The malfunctioning ID bracelets?She switched tacks. “Do you have a picture of Matts?”
“Nothing current,” said Dodgett. “Just this.” The screen lit up with a photo of a young woman with long brown hair and a bright smile. She was wearing an open-necked shirt under a blue sweater and an orange-trimmed blazer.
“Looks like a school photo,” said Marple.
“Precisely,” said Dodgett. “St. Swithun’s, 2004. Not long after that, she lost contact with family and friends. Then a few years ago, she started showing up at fringe meetings with other Brexit nutters. That’s when she first started speaking. Hasn’t been seen without the mask since 2019.”
The screen clicked to a grainy video of the Union Jack speaker. This was different from the one Marple had watched with Tran, but the message was the same: homogeneity over diversity, tradition over change, English over bilingualism.“Don’t let this be the last generation of true Brits!”the masked woman shouted from the tiny stage as members of the audience waved homemadeREGALbanners.
“Send me the link to this,” said Marple.
“Done,” said Dodgett. An email with the link pinged her inbox moments later.
“Nice work, Constable,” said Marple, rubbing her eyes. “I’m going to sleep now.”
“Right, then,” said Dodgett. “Sleep well.”
Fat chance,thought Marple.
As soon as Dodgett clicked off, Marple tapped the link he’d sent through. The video file was twenty minutes long. Marple stuck in her earbuds and sunk her head into a down pillow, as the voice of Agnes Matts bored even deeper into her brain.
CHAPTER75
BEFORE SUNRISE THEnext morning, Poe eased his growling Dodge Shelby Charger into the NYPD staging area north of Staten Island’s Latourette Park. In the predawn mist, his headlight beams swept across police cars, SWAT trucks, and FBI vehicles, arrayed like a military squadron at the border of the New York City Farm Colony, a long-abandoned poorhouse and sanitarium.
“This is the place,” said Poe. “No question.”
“Bleak,” muttered Holmes from the passenger seat.
“It looks like a lost civilization,” said Marple, leaning forward from the back seat.
Poe pulled to a stop and turned off the ignition. They were both right. The last residents had left or died off fifty years ago. Through a cluster of trees, Poe could make out the faint outlines of century-old structures and walkways, now laced with vines and covered in faded graffiti. The scene was as grim and foreboding as anything from his namesake’s imagination.
Suddenly, a fist banged on the driver side. Poe jumped in his seat and lowered the window. It was Duff, a thick ballisticvest hanging off his narrow shoulders. “Get this thing out of the way!” he growled. “This isn’t a goddamn car show.”
Poe waited for Holmes and Marple to exit, then put the car in reverse and swung it behind a huge flat-black SWAT transport, totally out of Duff’s view. He shut down the engine and walked back to where his partners and the tall captain were standing. A phalanx of SWAT officers had formed to their right. Poe could hear the crunch of boots and the crisp sound of gun chambers being checked. Dozens of uniformed cops hung back by their idling SUVs. A squad of boxy ambulances waited one row behind.
“We did drone surveillance on the place all night,” said Duff. “Looked livelier than usual. Could be something going on.”