Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 19

Nate Rosenberg glanced worriedly at the clock in the lower right-hand corner of his computer screen. 8:32, which was precisely two minutes since the last time he’d looked. Then he stood up and peered over the partition separating his cubicle from Andrea Costanza’s.

Her chair was still empty.

Which is not a problem, he told himself. There were any number of reasons why Andrea might have been late. She could have overslept, she could be sick, she could have had a doctor’s appointment, or a hairdresser’s appointment. She could be out in the field, checking on one of her cases. The problem was that in the six years in which he’d occupied the cubicle next to Andrea’s, neither of them had ever been late. Not because of sickness, appointments, oversleeping, or any of the other reasons he’d thought of. It had actually become a competition, but only the kind of competition two hopeless bureaucrats would indulge in. “Bet I end up with a better record than you,” Andrea had said over lunch a couple of years ago when they’d realized that they were the only two people they knew of that had never missed a day of work. “Bet you don’t,” Nate had shot back. “My record is spotless since kindergarten, right through grad school.” Which hadn’t bothered Andrea, who’d retorted that she still had measles and chickenpox on her side, since she’d had them and he could still get them. And now, this Monday morning, she was late.

Nate had already ruled out oversleeping and illness — he’d called her apartment, and the answering machine had picked up on the eighth ring, just like it always did. A recorded voice answering her cellphone number had informed him that “the customer’s phone is either off or out of the service area.” He’d also ruled out appointments by checking her calendar, which was even more meticulously kept than his own. The last appointment was her visit to Dr. Humphries yesterday afternoon; the next was a case-management meeting at two o’clock this afternoon. No doctors, no hairdressers, no nothing.

Which left the things Nate hadn’t wanted to think about, and still didn’t want to think about. Things like mugging and rape.

Not Andrea, he told himself. She’s smart, and she can take care of herself. And after what had happened to her friend’s husband almost a year ago, she’d gotten even more careful. “I’m done running in the park, I can tell you that,” she’d told him, still shuddering at the thought of what had happened to—

The name was gone, if she’d ever even told him what it was, but it didn’t matter. The point was that Andrea was determined to be even more careful than she’d always been. And nothing had ever happened to her.

And nothing’s happened to her now, Nate insisted to himself. She’s just late, that’s all. And what was he going to do? Call the police because one of his co-workers was half an hour late for the first time in history? They’d probably lock him up!

At noon, when there was still no sign of Andrea, he took his bag lunch, eating his sandwich on the subway while he rode up to 72nd Street, then walked the three blocks to her building. He leaned on the buzzer to her apartment, and when he got no answer, rang the bell for the super. A surly voice demanded to know what he wanted, but when he explained who he was and that he just wanted to make sure Andrea Costanza was okay, the super only snorted a humorless laugh.

“You think I’m crazy? I open it up and she’s there, she can sue me. I open it up and she’s not, and she finds out, she can sue me. I got orders from the management — I don’t open no apartments without no court orders. So get’cha self a court order, okay?”

When Nate pressed the bell again, the super’s voice turned ugly. “I don’t wanna have to come out there an’ kick your ass, buddy.”

Back at the office, he told himself it wasn’t his problem, and that there could be any number of places she could have gone, and that she’d probably be at the two o’clock case-management meeting and he’d feel like an idiot.

She wasn’t at the case-management meeting, but everyone who showed up agreed that something must have happened to Andrea, and grilled Nate on what he’d done so far. “But I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation,” he said after he’d repeated everything he’d done.

“If it were anyone else, there probably would be,” Corrine Bradshaw agreed, putting aside the agenda she’d drawn up only half an hour earlier. “But not for Andrea. She’s like you, Nate; everyone always knows where she is and what she’s doing.”

“So what do we do?” Nate asked. “We can’t even file a missing person report this soon. Hell, we hardly pay any attention if a kid’s gone all day.”

“We split up her Rolodex,” Corrine decided. “Don’t get anyone upset — just ask people to have her call the office if they hear from her. Tell them she has a sick relative or something.” Her gaze shifted back to Nate. “Have you called her last appointment from Friday?”

Nate reddened. “I’ll do that right now.”

Two minutes later Nate was on the phone with Dr. Theodore Humphries. “Oh, yes, she was here,” Humphries told him after he’d identified himself. “Asking questions about the little Mayhew girl.”

The doctor’s annoyed tone made Nate frown. “She’s the child’s case manager — it’s her job to ask questions about her.”

“And I answered them, as far as I thought was proper,” Humphries replied, his tone sounding somewhat more temperate. “But I’m afraid when she began impugning my reputation and demanding to see the Mayhew child’s medical records, I responded in kind.”

Oh, God, Nate thought. Don’t let Andrea have called him a quack. “Impugned your reputation?” he said aloud. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

For a moment he thought Humphries was going to hang up on him, but then the doctor seemed to have a change of heart. “May I ask exactly why you are calling me, mister…”

“Rosenberg,” Nate repeated, then told Humphries exactly why he was calling. When he was finished, Humphries sighed heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. I refused to show her Rebecca Mayhew’s medical records without a court order, which I believe I am within my rights to do. Then she questioned my credentials, and left.”

Corrine Bradshaw listened silently as Nate recounted his conversation with Andrea’s last appointment, then began checking with the rest of the caseworkers. Not one of them had found anyone who had seen or talked to Andrea Costanza since Friday. “All right,” she said, picking up the phone on her desk. “Let’s see if I have any clout at all. That’s the twentieth Police Precinct up there, isn’t it?” As Nate Rosenberg nodded, she dialed the Precinct House’s number from memory. She wasn’t sure whether knowing the numbers of every Precinct House in Manhattan was a benefit or a curse, but it was certainly part of her job. Usually, though, she was calling about a missing child, rather than a missing caseworker.