The Key to Midnight

His mother had died while he was in that North Vietnamese prison camp, and he'd inherited seventy-five or eighty thousand dollars after taxes, which was a good chunk in those pre-inflation days. He put that money with his book earnings and whatever he could borrow, and he purchased a Honda dealership. Soon it seemed like half the people in the country were driving Japanese cars, especially Hondas. Tom added three more dealerships, got into other businesses, and became a rich man. He did a lot of charity work, earned a reputation as a humanitarian in his community, and finally campaigned for a congressional seat. He lost the first time, but came back two years later and won. Won again. And then moved on to the U.S. Senate, where he's been since-'
        Joanna interrupted him. 'What about the name you used, what you called me?'
        'Lisa Chelgrin.'
        'How's she fit in?'
        'She was Thomas Chelgrin's only child.'
        Joanna's eyes widened. Again, Alex was unable to detect any deception in her response. With genuine surprise, she said, 'You think I'm this man's daughter?'
         ' I believe there's a chance you might be.'
        'Are you crazy?'
        'Am I?'
        'I'm beginning to wonder,' she said.
        'Considering the-'
        'I know whose daughter I am, for God's sake.'
        'Do you.'
        'Of course. Robert and Elizabeth Rand were my parents.'
        'And they died in an accident near Brighton,' he said.
        'Yes. A long time ago.'
        'And you've no living relatives.'
        'So?'
        'Convenient, don't you think?'
        'Why would I lie to you?' she asked, not just baffled by his peculiar conviction that she was living under a false identity but increasingly angered by it. 'I'm not a liar.'
        The driver clearly sensed the antagonism in her voice. He glanced at them in the rearview mirror, and then he looked straight ahead, humming a bit louder than the music on the Sony Discman, too polite to eavesdrop even when he didn't understand the language that they were speaking.
        'I’m not calling you a liar,' Alex said quietly.
        'That's sure what I'm hearing.'
        'You're overreacting.'
        'The hell I am. This is weird.'
        'I agree. It is weird. Your repeating nightmare, your reaction to the Korean with one hand, your resemblance to Lisa Chelgrin. It's definitely weird.'
        She didn't reply, just glared at him.
        'Maybe you're afraid of what I'm leading up to.'
        'I’m not afraid of you,' she said curtly.
        'Then what are you afraid of?'
        'What are you accusing me of?'
        'Joanna, I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm only-'
        'I feel like you are accusing me, and I don't like it. I don't understand it, and I don't like it. All right?'
        She looked away from him and out the side window at the cars and cyclists on Shijo Street.
        For a moment Alex was silent, but then he continued as if her outburst had never occurred. 'One night in July, more than twelve years ago, the summer after Lisa Chelgrin's junior year at Georgetown University, she vanished from her father's vacation villa in Jamaica. Someone got into her bedroom through an unlocked window. Although there were signs of a struggle, even a few smears of her blood on the bedclothes and one windowsill, no one in the house heard her scream. Clearly, she'd been kidnapped, but no ransom demand was received. The police believed she'd been abducted and murdered. A sex maniac, they said. On the other hand, they weren't able to find her body, so they couldn't just assume she was dead. At least not right away, not until they went through the motions of an exhaustive search. After three weeks, Chelgrin lost all confidence in the island police - which he should have done the second day he had to deal with them. Because he was from the Chicago area, because a friend of his had used my company and recommended me, Chelgrin asked me to fly to Jamaica to look for Lisa - even though Bonner-Hunter was still a relatively small company back then and I was just turning thirty. My people worked on the case for ten months before Tom Chelgrin gave up. We used eight damned good men full time and hired as many Jamaicans to do a lot of footwork. It was an expensive deal for the senator, but he didn't care. Still… it wouldn't have mattered if we'd had ten thousand men on the case. It was a perfect crime. It's one of