by Nancy Smith
“What should we call these guys?” Rory asked. He was attempting to put them on the same team, invoke trust and intimacy. She wasn’t having it.
“You said that you knew my father. How?”
“He wanted to tell me something, but he was too. . . . ”
Isa knew the word that he was trying to replace with something more manly.
He was afraid. Paranoid. “Careful. Always.”
“Yes. We met once, but he said virtually nothing. I thought I’d never hear from him again, but he called and set up an appointment for tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t sound like a coincidence.”
“No,” Rory said.
“Would you like something to drink?” Isa opened the refrigerator door to see what was there.
“Do you have a beer?”
“Ginger beer.”
Rory nodded.
They took some time pulling out glasses, putting a few ice cubes in the bottom, pouring the ginger beer, and taking a few sips.
“So, I’ve just been calling them ‘the murderers,’” she said.
“Doesn’t that leave open the possibility of prejudging something, someone wrongly? How about ‘unknown subject’ like on Criminal Minds?”
“I think I prefer ‘perp’ like on Law and Order until we figure out who perpetrated this atrocity.”
He nodded.
“Now that we have that important tidbit sorted out,” Isa started.
“Oh, but it is important,” Rory said. “What if we sneak in somewhere and we’re hiding on opposite sides of the room when someone walks in. I’m mouthing to you “unsub” because I’ve seen them, but you can’t figure it out and I don’t even know if you’ve seen Criminal Minds. You walk right up to the perp and say ‘Hello Uncle Barney. He takes one look at you and shoots you dead.”
“I don’t have an Uncle Barney.”
“Uncle Fred, Uncle Joe. You’ve got somebody. You know what I mean.”
Isa sucked in her breath as she realized that, except for maybe her father, she actually had no one.
It struck her hard that her mother was likely dead. She’d tried so hard to keep her mind focused on figuring out where Dad might be that she kept thoughts of Mom at bay. Isa flashed on her horrible teen years, the fighting and yelling with her mother pretty much every day. And then came Wilder. Bad boy. Pretty boy. Her mother’s worst nightmare. She lied to her mother and sneaked out of the house to meet him. Her mother had hated Wilder.
Isa had meant to apologize to her mom when she moved back into the house after college. She thought a lot about what she wanted from her mom and how to make things right again. But that’s all she’d done—thought about it. Things had been tense between them. Now she’d never be able to smile at her mother and tell her she loved her.
“Have you seen them?” Isa asked.
“What?” Rory had been lost in his own thoughts.
“You said you had seen the perps. Have you seen them?”
Rory pulled his phone from his pocket and showed Isa a few pictures.
“Do you recognize anyone?”
“No.”
She went through them again, staring hard at each one. There were a couple of guards outside the building right afterwards and a couple of guards earlier that night.
“Why are you showing me pictures of the security team?”
Rory shrugged. He was holding back. That was okay. So was she.
“What do we do now?” Isa asked.
“Talk to people. Will you make a list of your parents friends?” Rory stopped short. Isa suspected he was going to say “and colleagues.”
“I’ll do my best.” Neither one of them had to point out that this would be hard.
“I’ll see you tomorrow then.” He waited for her response like the answer to a question he hadn’t directly asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
Rory sneaked out the back door of Isa’s house without calling the attention of the detective. He did a little walk around the block.
He thought about Isa. She should be in shock: confused, anxious, numb, but she was surprisingly sharp and—he searched his mind for a word— prepared. She was prepared.
Rory stopped in a convenience store, used the facilities and bought some salty foods—nuts and crackers—as well as a couple bottles of water. At the last minute, he picked up a candy bar. He didn’t eat much candy, but he knew that sugar would help with the lingering effects of the Taser that Isa had used on him.
He took his finds to his car and tossed them into the passenger seat. He went to the back and pulled a first-aid kit from his trunk, opened it and rummaged through.
He examined the burns in his shirt. “Ruined,” he said pulling it off and tossing it into the trunk. He patted a little burn ointment where the Taser had touched him and covered the burns with a bandage. He picked out a loose-fitting tee shirt, one of several shirts in his trunk and put it on. He hurt, so he poured a couple of aspirin into his palm before slamming down the trunk hood.
He climbed behind the wheel, took the pills with a big slug of water. He should be mad at Isa, but he really wasn’t. She was just too cute. She had her brown hair pulled into a spikey little ponytail that contrasted with the too-dark makeup around her eyes. She looked like a goth would look in the 1950s, but in a way that made sense for her. Sweet and tough. Soft and hard.
He settled in to watch Isa’s house for the night.
3
His brother, Percy Wagner, and Percy’s super-rich cronies had had carte blanche to come to the resort and play golf anytime. Percy had been in a foursome that was out on the links on a beautiful, sunny Florida day when successive waves swept them off hole fourteen and into oblivion.
Ironically, the owner of the resort, not there that day, was a seventy-five-year-old climate change denier. The owner probably thought that he could outlive the dire predictions for the state of Florida and it wouldn’t matter to him. This was, of course, all he cared about—himself. But as it turned out, that had not been the case. Unconcerned about the thousands of people who had lost their lives, their homes, and their livelihoods, the owner and many of his one percent friends were loudly upset because they had lost major investments all along the Florida coast on that day two years ago.
That was the day when Pierce Wagner’s life thirteen hundred miles away in Austin had taken a turn. Father had been grooming Percy for years to take over the family business—the Wagner Company. Percy was hot to do it. Percy had a succulent, young wife to impress. Percy wanted the job. Percy wanted the money.
Pierce had never had any interest in the family company. Pierce was a lawyer and he liked it. He liked finding out the secrets, searching out the evidence and arguing the case. He was a man of many words and he was happy to use all of them.
He had also liked being away from the Wagner Company, on his own with his own firm. But, he hadn’t been able to make a go of it. He’d lost one client after another to bigger, better-funded law firms. And then when Percy died, he found himself back where he started, working for his father at the Wagner Company.
After the tsunami, the television news had said an underwater landslide on the Great Bahama Bank triggered the swells that hit Cuba and Eastern Florida. From landslide at sea to the golf course, it was just over twenty minutes before the eighteen-foot waves began to hit. Scientists had said that global warming caused changes in sea level that impacted the crust of the earth. The Great Bahama Bank buckled. Hence the landslide that brought the tsunami.
Pierce had watched the YouTube footage over and over. Calm waters began to develop a current, like a sudden tidal change. The yachts along the shore submerged or floated free. Alarm systems went off on the television, radio and in the air. Waves began spilling higher than the boundaries designed to hold them back. Cars washed away on the road that lined the shore and Pierce could see that people were screaming and drowning. The mansions and hotels all along the coast flooded first, breaking apart and crunching togethe
r like they were made of tinker toys, and then the golf course.
The phone in his hotel room interrupted Pierce’s musing.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Wagner, will you please make your way up to the roof?”
“Certainly. Thank you.”
Pierce stared for another minute out a large window toward the Atlantic Ocean. He was in a brand-spanking new plush room in a brand-spanking new hotel.
Rather than lose it all, many of the rich investors had made repairs, rebuilt their fancy resorts. And so the hotels reopened and some stupid meeting important to his father was scheduled in the same place and in the same month where his brother Percy died two years before.
The only people who survived the tsunami, thought Pierce as he ascended the stairs, were those who evacuated early. They reacted to the first warnings and got as far away as possible from the Atlantic coast.
When Pierce reached the roof, he looked at the darkening sky over the ocean. From this height, he could see the massive damage left over from the tsunami—shells of homes that were abandoned in the real estate slump that followed it. The federal government had decided that it could no longer provide emergency assistance for the region. If homeowners relocated, the government would provide a small subsidy to help finance the move, but there was nothing provided to help rebuild. It made an odd picture—beachfront luxury accommodations surrounded by ruins.
Today, hurricane warnings were all over the media, maybe it would hit, maybe not, but unlike his brother, Pierce had plenty of advance notice and he planned to heed it.
“Mr. Wagner?” The helicopter pilot shook his hand. The blades swished the air with such force he had to yell.
Pierce nodded.
They climbed into the waiting helicopter, buckled in and put on earphones.
“Not going to try to ride it out?” asked the pilot, a little grin on his face as he made polite conversation.
“You can’t defeat the water,” Pierce said.
Pierce entered the Wagner Company building in downtown Austin. His father stood in the lobby, hands on his hips. Anger personified.
“You skipped the meeting,” Father said.
Pierce called the elevator. He and his father got on and they rode it in silence up to the top floor. Pierce went into his office and opened the bar, a cabinet that was placed between two chairs under his glorious view of downtown Austin. Pierce had already had two on the plane. He’d been drinking more and more of late. One day, he’d have to get that under control, but not today.
He fell into one of the chairs and stared across the room at a bust of Percy that his father had given him to fill his near-empty bookshelves.
His father stepped in front of him, between him and Percy, as he had always done in life as well.
“You don't know what you've done,” his father criticized. “I want you to immediately call and apologize.”
“It was a hurricane. Millions of people were instructed to evacuate, so I did.”
“It was a very important meeting.”
“Why? Why so important?”
His father didn’t answer him, as Pierce knew he would not. Pierce picked up a remote and turned on the television.
He had followed the weather reports since he left Florida. Except for a few dark clouds, he’d left in clear weather. Now six hours had passed.
“Hurricane Zelda slamming into the Florida coast....Wind gusts up to 120 miles per hour.” The video showed the coast being hammered by rain and high winds. “Half a million homes are without power at this time. A state of emergency has been declared.”
Pierce poured another drink. He tentatively offered it to his father and when Father declined, Pierce downed it in one gulp.
“I don’t think they’re having their little meeting,” Pierce said.
“They have hurricane-safe rooms, generators.”
The television showed the roof being ripped off a high-rise hotel.
“The storm surge may be up to fifteen feet. That does not account for the waves that will swirl around the eye of Zelda when it hits. People will die in this storm,” the newscaster predicted.
“Is that what you wanted for me?” Pierce asked. “To die like Percy?”
“Everything I do, I do for a reason. You don’t know what’s at stake here.”
“Is that your idea of an apology?”
Father scanned his thumb on the security panel for their connecting door and stomped out of Pierce’s office to his own office. Pierce had never used this connecting door.
Bertrum Wagner angrily clumped around in his large corner office. He had plenty of pacing space despite his heavy oak furniture and plush sofas.
Percy had taken right to leadership and running the company. He was happy, but Pierce was a forty-five-year-old man-child. He was self-indulgent and self-centered. He played too much, drank too much, did whatever he liked. The only reason he was good as a lawyer was because he could be overly loud and disruptive. Bertrum didn’t think that Pierce actually even cared about his clients.
His cell phone buzzed for a text that displayed a code.
Bertrum unlocked his safe and got out his secret cell phone. He dialed.
“Yes sir,” Bertrum answered. He listened silently while he got reamed out.
“I think Pierce panicked, you know, because of his brother Percy.” He listened to yelling for a few more minutes.
Bertrum rolled his eyes and waited. “No sir. You’re right. He’s not ready.”
More sharp words.
“I promise you, I’ve not told him a thing. You asked me to leave that to you and I did.”
Bertrum tapped out on his cell phone.
Pierce had responsibilities now and he better learn to meet them before he got them both killed.
To the casual observer, Pierce looked to be immersed in his work. He had found new vigor for the company. He had purpose. If something was so important that his father cared more about it than the life of his son, Pierce would discover what it was and take it away from him. Pierce knew where to start. He opened a ledger account on his computer. Money. With his Dad, it was always about money.
4
Isa fell asleep on the living-room sofa almost immediately after Rory left. She was exhausted by the stress of the day, slept about four hours, and woke a little after two o’clock in the morning. She knew that there was no hope of falling back to sleep and got up.
She peeked out the living-room window and could see the detective in his car as he struggled to keep his eyes open. His head fell down and then bobbed up. Isa had intentionally left a crack in some of the curtains on the living-room windows. She didn’t want Jimenez to worry if he couldn’t see her in one of his Peeping Tom sessions and then do something stupid. As she heard loud sonorous breathing echo down the block, she knew she had nothing to fear from the detective for a while.
Isa pulled her burner phone from her back pocket. She tried her father’s number again. This was maybe the sixth or seventh time she had tried the burner phone with no response. She dialed any number that she could think of that her father might answer, but he did not. Isa kept the phone in her jeans pocket on vibrate with her shirt and a light sweater pulled over it. She wanted to know if the phone rang, but she didn’t want Jimenez to see it and maybe confiscate it, so she kept it well hidden.
In their planning, her father had promised to leave her a note or a clue if he had to run—something to tell her where he had gone if the family was ever separated. If he had, she’d never find it in this mess.
Isa’s shoulder-length bob had pulled itself out of its band. She brushed her brown hair into a ponytail to keep it out of her brown eyes. This is what she did whenever she undertook something difficult or dirty. She liked drawing, painting and photography, but she loved sitting at the pottery wheel and throwing a pot from slippery, wet clay. In her mind, she flashed to her pottery studio at school and wondered if she would ever see it again.
She cleaned the house room by r
oom, starting with Dad’s office. She examined each item before she cleaned it, restored it to its proper place or threw it out. It was a laborious process, but it made her feel better—bringing order back into her house, if not her life.
But she never found anything that would give her a hint where her father was.
Isa found a pad and pen on her father’s desk. Each time she came across a piece of paper with a name, she added the name to a list. She paid particular attention to her father’s appointment calendar. Her father hadn’t liked all the steps required to use an electronic calendar. He used a small red book on which he wrote dentist appointments and her art shows.
Dad didn’t have much need of a calendar. At work, if he wished to talk to someone, he yelled across the big, open room or walked to where he saw that person standing. He went to work with Mom, worked with the other scientists and then come home to the house where he lived with Mom and her.
When she was finished cleaning, she took a shower, and then made a cup of chamomile tea. She sat on an oversize wicker porch swing, rocked and listened to Jimenez snore. There was something calming in that too.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Rory asked as he walked up the sidewalk to the front porch.
Isa startled, recognized him and then shook her head. “You too?”
“I had to write up my notes and then get my story in for tonight’s news.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Nah.” Rory handed her a single page of type. She gave it a quick read. Nonoffensive. Not very informative either.
Isa had spotted Rory camped in his car down the street, tapping away at his computer. Rory had that too-pale British skin and it practically glowed in the computer’s light. If he had been a woman, they would have applauded his porcelain complexion. On a man, the most comment he might get is to watch out for skin cancer.
“Got some names for me?”
“A few.” Was she in partnership with Rory? Isa didn’t know how she felt about that. What was his motive? It surely was not the same as hers—to find her father. Since she had no idea how to go about doing this, she decided that he might be useful for a while. But she’d watch him.
