Shoot First

by Eva Hudson

  “So she hadn’t planned to see you? That wasn’t why she was coming to London?”

  “No, actually it was. She claimed she wanted to see where the baby would live. I guess we saved her the cab fare from the airport.” Tom Kerrison looked a decade older than the night they had met at the gallery.

  “As if she’d have got a cab,” Truman butted in.

  “And she had your address?” Ingrid’s phone vibrated in her pants pocket. She did her best to ignore it.

  Tom wasn’t sure how to answer. “You know, I don’t know. Honey, would she have had this address?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know that?” Ingrid looked over at Truman: was it really possible he was the same man as the beautiful young skinny-dipper in the YouTube clip?

  “Then how was she planning on finding you?” Ingrid asked.

  Tom rubbed his stubble and glanced over at Truman then stared at his screen, momentarily perturbed either by the volume or nature of his correspondence. The man had a business to run and a new exhibition to monitor. He returned his attention to Ingrid and blinked as he remembered what her question had been. “Um, Truman’s not hard to find. Every fan site will tell you they film at Elstree, or that square in Islington. There are hundreds of fans about whenever they’re on location.” He ran his fingers over his hair, smoothing down some of his bed-head cowlicks. “Or she could have come to my store, though to be fair if someone walked into the boutique and asked for me the assistants might not know how to locate me… But she’s smart, you know. She’d have found us.”

  “She seemed confident?”

  Tom thought before answering. “She was exhausted, but the kid’s got mettle.”

  “It’s good she can handle herself.” Ingrid looked at her notebook. She daren’t write down what she was really thinking in case Tom could read her scrawl upside down. “Did she explain why she left the… facility?”

  Tom bit the inside of his bottom lip. “Second thoughts, she said. She only wanted to see where her baby would grow up—”

  “It’s not her fucking baby,” Truman shouted.

  “It isn’t?”

  Tom took a deep breath. “The legal term is ‘gestational carrier’. The biological mother is a Wall Street trader, Harvard graduate; at least according to her profile.”

  Ingrid suddenly imagined the two of them swiping through a list of donors and carriers on a website: making babies, twenty-first century style.

  “And the father?” Ingrid asked.

  The two men looked at each other. “Um, we’ve asked not to be informed,” Tom said. Another image, less savory than the last, involving a small plastic cup, lodged in Ingrid’s brain. “Apparently the non-biological parent can have difficulty bonding. If we don’t know which of us is the father, the theory is we’ll make a stronger family unit.” Tom scratched his forearms, a nervous tic.

  Truman walked over to the counter and stood behind his partner. “If this leaks,” he said to Ingrid, “you will have a lawsuit to deal with that’s bigger than fucking Texas, you understand?”

  “Though of course,” Tom said in conciliation, “if the baby comes out cursing we’ll instantly know whose he is, won’t we darling?”

  Ingrid wondered how many times Tom had excused Truman’s awful behavior and language over the years. She took a second before continuing. “So, you brought Kate-Lynn here from the airport. Then what happened?”

  Tom took a swig from the Evian bottle. “She was exhausted. Eight months pregnant and a ten-hour flight. She had a lie-down, then we had some supper.”

  “Here, or did you go out?”

  Truman’s face expressed his frustration with Ingrid’s questions. “How is this finding her? How is this finding my son?”

  “Sir,” Ingrid said, “I appreciate that this situation is awful for you, but a couple of days ago you asked for my help and I was able to locate Kate-Lynn. For the next five minutes, can we please assume that I know what I’m doing and that I’ll achieve the same outcome?”

  Truman Cooper pursed his lips. It was obviously a long time since anyone had spoken to him like that. He turned sharply away. If Ingrid was being unkind, she’d have described it as a flounce. Tom tried to suppress a grin.

  “We stayed in for supper,” Tom said. “Truman is an excellent cook.”

  Ah yes, Celebrity MasterChef. Was that why Tom stayed with such a monster? A combination of firm pecs and advanced culinary skills?

  “And how was it? I’m not talking about the food, obviously.”

  Tom placed his hands on the counter and leaned back on the stool. He stole a glance at Truman. “It wasn’t easy, I’ll be honest. When we explained to Kate-Lynn that she had to return to California, like, today—”

  “Two ten-hour flights in two days? When you’re eight months pregnant?”

  Tom sighed. “The baby needs to be born in California.”

  Ingrid raised her eyebrows: “Why? The hospitals here are excellent.”

  “I’m sure they are, but it’s a legal thing. California lets us both be on the birth certificate. If she gives birth here, she becomes the legal parent.” He paused, the strain of the situation beginning to take its toll. “So you see our concern?”

  Ingrid nodded, even though it seemed to her their priorities needed reordering. “Of course, though right now I’m sure your focus is just on finding her and making sure Kate-Lynn and the baby are OK. I should tell you, if you don’t already know, it’s possible no airline will let her fly now until after she’s given birth. You might have to prepare yourselves for a formal adoption process after the baby is born.”

  “United let her fly yesterday? Why not tomorrow?” Truman demanded.

  “My understanding is that women who are that close to giving birth need medical approval to fly. They don’t want to have to divert to Reykjavik when her waters break.”

  “We can always charter something privately,” Tom said, as if hiring a plane was no more extravagant than ordering take-out. Truly, Ingrid thought, it might be the same planet but they lived in a different world.

  “So tell me, what did you do next? What happened after dinner?”

  Tom scratched his arms again. “Not much. Answered some emails, did the dishes. Domestic stuff. She went to bed soon afterwards, we stayed up and finished the wine, then we went to bed too. Fast-forward to six this morning and she’s gone. We got up, I came downstairs to make us all breakfast when I heard a scream from upstairs.”

  “A scream?”

  “Oh, it was just Truman being theatrical.”

  Ingrid shifted her attention to the actor. “Mr Cooper? What happened? You knocked on her door this morning and didn’t get an answer?”

  “I am not,” he said in tones reminiscent of a witness on the stand in a 1940s melodrama, “in the habit of opening young ladies’ bedroom doors. It was already open.”

  Ingrid’s eyes followed him as he walked up and down. His deliberate, controlled movements were a reminder that he had trained as a dancer. “And she hadn’t said she would leave? How were things between the three of you when she went to bed?”

  Truman Cooper shoved his hands under his armpits, stretching the cotton of his pajama top tight across his pectorals. “Oh fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Sir?” She turned to Tom, the more reasonable of the two, for interpretation.

  “She was upset,” he explained. “We told her she had broken the terms of the contract, that she wouldn’t get paid. She seemed pretty desperate. To be honest, we were all in a state.”

  “But she didn’t say anything about leaving?”

  The two men looked at one another. “No,” Tom said. “In fact, she said she wanted to stay with us until the baby is born. We just weren’t prepared—”

  “Prepared? In what way?”

  Tom Kerrison wasn’t quite sure how to answer. “Our plan was to collect him when he’s born and bring him home. Our schedules have been planned around his due date.” His laptop trille
d with a new round of emails as if to emphasize how overloaded their diaries were.

  “But you have the space. You can afford a midwife.” Ingrid didn’t mean to sound quite so combative, but for deep-seated reasons too uncomfortable to explore, her tone was veering toward aggressive. She knew she had to sound more sympathetic: confrontation wasn’t going to achieve anything.

  “Ah, that’s not really the point. We have paid Nuestra Señora. That’s the service they provide,” Tom said, his own tone somewhere between defensive and diplomatic. “We did not agree to have a stranger live with us while she is pregnant. Whatever your views are on our arrangement—”

  “I really don’t have a view.” When the words left her lips, Ingrid was surprised to discover that she did indeed have a view, and appalled to discover how traditional her opinions were. She supposed she had seen enough of children being treated as commodities in her work with the VCAC.

  Tom nodded. “So we told her that if she went back to LA, we’d make sure she got paid, even if we had to pay her in addition to the money we’ve already given the agency. The baby absolutely has to be born in California.”

  Truman looked like he wanted to hit something. If he hadn’t been in bare feet, the trash can was a likely candidate for a punt down to the far end of the steel dining table. No wonder the dog and Manuela were hiding in another part of the house. “She’s stolen my baby, don’t you get that?” He leaned over the counter, his face just a couple inches from Ingrid’s. “Do you fucking understand? It’s kidnapping. It’s theft. I want to see some fucking action.” His spittle sprayed Ingrid’s face. His hand reached forward.

  “Get any closer and you’re committing a crime.” She slowly and deliberately wiped her face. “Take a seat, Mr Cooper.” She turned to Kerrison, who was clearly embarrassed by his partner’s behavior. “From what you’ve told me so far, Kate-Lynn’s done nothing criminal. Sure, she’s breached her contract with you, but that’s a matter for your attorney. All you’re telling me is that an adult woman has gone for a walk. There won’t be much I can do for you.” And to be honest, there’s not a damn thing I’m inclined to do for you.

  “Can’t you trace her credit cards? Her cell phone? Surely—” He pointed to his laptop as another batch of emails announced their arrival in his inbox. “She’s got to be leaving some kind of digital trail?”

  “Mr Kerrison,” she raised a hand. “Those are the kind of measures we are authorized to use when a crime is suspected. There’s no crime here. It was already a huge invasion of her privacy for me to access the flight manifest for you. I have no reason to use those resources unless I think someone is in immediate danger. Anyway, didn’t you say she’d left her cards and phone in California?”

  Truman Cooper pushed himself away from the countertop with such force that it moved. “Our son is in danger!”

  Calmly, Ingrid reached out for her bottle of water, slowly unscrewed the lid and took a long drink. A few seconds later, she placed the bottle back on the counter. “You don’t know that.”

  “Really?” Tom said. “She breaches her contract, she crosses the Atlantic because she’s having ‘second thoughts’; she’s clearly unstable and she’s eight months pregnant. She no doubt has a chaotic history. I’d say that baby is pretty vulnerable.” Desperation was finally creeping into his voice.

  “I understand, but there are thresholds that have to be met before I can throw the FBI’s resources into tracking her down. But please, we’re not done here yet. There’s a lot of information I don’t have, and I’m sure there’ll be something I can do. She’s twenty years old: she’ll reveal something on Facebook or get in trouble for running out on a hotel bill. She’ll surface. They always do. Now, does one of you want to put that coffee machine on?”

  10

  Tom Kerrison placed a mug of coffee down on the long steel dining table in front of Ingrid. She had suggested a change of location in the hope that sitting formally at a table would aid a more rational conversation and help her get the information she needed.

  “Thank you.”

  “I think when Truman comes out of the shower he’ll be calmer. He finds these situations very hard.” He pulled out the chair opposite Ingrid and sat down.

  “These situations?”

  “Stressful situations.”

  “It must be stressful for you both,” Ingrid said, observing that yet again he was scratching his forearms. A control mechanism. Truman let his anger out, Tom stored his up.

  He took a sip. “You live on the streets for a couple of years, you get a different perspective on what’s stressful.”

  Ingrid’s research on Tom Kerrison had revealed his first business—a shoe store on the Lower East Side—had gone bust leaving him with crippling debts. A few years living rough followed, as did addiction and an overdose. Reading between the lines he had probably turned a few tricks. The scar on his wrist was likely evidence of a suicide attempt. He’d served eight months in Rikers when he was twenty-five, and on his release made a living with a spray can, creating interiors for bars and backgrounds for hip hop videos. It was, according to some of the cuttings she’d read, a chance encounter with an old client in a back room of a Greenwich Village club that led to him getting a job at Versini and his rehabilitation in fashion.

  “OK, let’s start with the basics. Kate-Lynn left here before six. Can you be any more precise?”

  “We went to bed around eleven. So, some time after that. I guess.”

  “And her bed has definitely been slept in?”

  “I can show you if you like.”

  “That would be helpful. Might reveal something.”

  “You want to come upstairs?”

  Ingrid took a large gulp of coffee, put the mug back on the table and followed Kerrison out into the hallway. “Where’s your dog today?”

  “The veterinarian has him.” He paused at the bottom of the staircase. “Cully’s an old dog. Spends half his life there.”

  “How old?”

  “Not entirely sure. He’s a Battersea dog. You heard of Battersea Dogs Home?” He led the way up the industrial iron stairs. “It’s this candy shop of abandoned dogs, all with faces sadder than the last saying ‘Take me, please, please kind sir, take me and love me.’ We were lucky to get out of there with just the one dog.”

  They reached a broad landing decorated with an enormous abstract oil painting.

  “One of yours?” Ingrid asked.

  “You like it?” Sounds of running water could be heard from beyond the open door behind him. Truman was taking a long shower. Hopefully it would have a therapeutic effect.

  “It’s kind of stunning,” she said, “like this entire house.”

  “You didn’t say if you liked it.”

  “You noticed, huh?”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no’ then,” he said as he started up another flight of stairs. “Which is fine because it’s not one of mine. Truman bought it at an auction just to show off.”

  “You got anything from the Gardner heist?” she asked. All federal agents fantasized about discovering the stolen masterpieces that had eluded the Art Crime Team for decades. “After all, you are originally from Boston, aren’t you?”

  “We don’t put those on display. Never know when a Fed is going to swing by for coffee.”

  They reached another landing which had five doors leading off it. “It’s in here,” Kerrison said.

  Ingrid walked into the large room. Exposed brick walls, steel girders, dark wood floors: it looked like something from a realtor’s catalogue except for the fact that the shades were down. Kerrison started to open them.

  “Stop.”

  “Won’t it be easier to see with a little light?”

  “Sure, but first I want to look at the room as Kate-Lynn left it.”

  Kerrison let go of the cord pull. The room was furnished with a queen-sized bed that, like the clothes rack, had been made out of scaffold poles. The bedside tables were old cable reels and the galvaniz
ed steel light fittings looked like they’d been salvaged from the kind of barge that might have once delivered goods to the Dunedin Trading Co before the warehouse had become their home. An open door led into an en-suite bathroom, covered in subway tiles, and a small desk made out of trestle legs and an old door completed the room. The bedclothes, white Egyptian cotton, were pushed to one side. On the floor was a discarded newspaper.

  “You can open the shades now.”

  Light burst into the room as Ingrid stepped into the en-suite. A wet towel was on the floor. When she returned to the bedroom she saw an unlit neon sign on the wall that said NOT VACANT. She assumed that, when switched on, the NOT would flash. Ingrid didn’t want to make too many assumptions about the kind of woman who chooses to become a surrogate, but she’d be willing to bet a chunk of change this would be one of the nicest rooms Kate-Lynn Bowers had ever slept in: it was the sort of place you’d think twice about running away from.

  “What did she have with her when you picked her up at the airport?” Ingrid asked. “Did she bring a lot of stuff?”

  “Hardly anything. A small backpack, the kind of thing you take on a picnic not a transatlantic flight. I don’t think she even had a jacket.”

  “And yet she planned to stay until the baby was born?”

  “It doesn’t sound good, does it?”

  She didn’t want to agree with him, but it didn’t. “As far as you can tell, she’s taken all her possessions with her?”

  “Yes, it’s just a hanging rail in here, no walk-in closet. We didn’t want to encourage guests to outstay their welcome.”

  Ingrid inspected the sheets. They had definitely been slept in, so that probably put Kate-Lynn’s departure closer to 6am than 11pm. “You said she’d left her phone at the… I don’t know what to call it… the compound? The place she was staying at in Los Angeles.”

  Tom rubbed a hand over his stubble. “That’s why they were so concerned. Her phone, her wallet, they said everything was still in her room.”

  “Which begs the question of how she paid for her plane fare. Or rather who paid for it.” Ingrid crouched down and opened one of the bedside cabinets. It was empty apart from a stack of glossy magazines. “These are yours, I take it?”