by Barry Eisler
He came to the ocean end of the pier. The wind was gusting hard this far out, and he paused, looking out over the endless dark water, listening to the waves breaking below him. Yeah, he’d always liked the pier. He’d spent a lot of nights here as a kid. On the pier, or underneath it. Sometimes he wished he could go back to those days, when everything was easy. When he could do what he wanted. Or better yet, Iraq. That was the best time, the best ever. He and Snake had been like gods there—respected, feared, unstoppable.
But life didn’t work that way. It sucked, but all anyone had was the here and now. And somehow, you had to find a way to make the best of it.
He was about halfway back when he saw Snake strolling toward him. Boomer gave a subtle nod, relieved. They hadn’t wanted to risk any form of electronic contact, and Boomer realized now the radio silence had been making him nervous. He walked over to the railing and leaned against it, looking out over the water, the pier’s lights to his back.
“Hey, brother,” Snake said, stopping alongside him.
The dog, on Boomer’s opposite side, whined. Dogs didn’t like Snake. Boomer gave the leash a quick jerk. “Knock it off.”
Snake ignored the dog. “Sorry I’m a little late. Long day.”
Boomer glanced at him. “But good?”
Snake chuckled. “Hell, yeah.”
“I saw some weird shit on the news. A rape-murder. Woman and her kid. Nothing about a carjacking, though. What’s going on?”
“Yeah, I had to . . . improvise a bit.”
Boomer knew he didn’t have a right to be pissed. After all, Snake was doing him a favor. Or not a favor, exactly, because they each owed each other. But a solid, anyway. So it seemed unfair to gripe about the details. Still . . .
“Had to?” Boomer said. “Or wanted to?”
Snake sighed. “Maybe some of both. Nothing wrong with a little party, right?”
Boomer couldn’t help himself. “This isn’t the party, man, this is the cleanup. It’s not the toast, it’s the fucking hangover!”
Snake smiled. “Well, hair of the dog, then.”
“Dude. We talked about this. We agreed on the objective, and on the parameters. What the fuck?”
“Come on, man. It still gets you what you need.”
“How?”
“By looking like an ordinary crime, not an assassination. Sure, it could have been a carjacking that went wrong. But instead . . . it was a carjacking that got out of hand. And then went wrong.”
“What about the kid?”
Snake shrugged. “Way I see it, part of the narrative. Heinous, sure, but still an ordinary crime. This is why we did it before she started shooting her mouth off, right? So no one would ever think to connect it with you. Or with Noreen. But even if they did, and they won’t, you’ve got nothing but alibi. You were nowhere near Portland.”
Boomer shook his head. “I’m supposed to thank you for killing the kid?”
“Look, if you think about it, doing the kid made sense. Even if someone thought you might want to schwack the mother to shut her up, what kind of monster would do the kid, too? It would be too much. People won’t want to believe it.”
Boomer shook his head again. He knew Snake wasn’t wrong, exactly, but still. “You shoot them?” he asked.
“What am I, stupid now?”
No, Boomer thought. Just crazy.
They were quiet for a moment. Snake said, “Come on. I know the gun was untraceable, but the less evidence, the better, just like always. I strangled the mother. Smothered the kid. So, you know. Desperate guy, carjacks a soccer mom in her Volvo SUV, he’s planning to rob her, makes her drive someplace secluded, and things just . . . escalate. If you think about it, it’s not that different from what really happened.”
Boomer looked at him. “Are you really trying to convince me you did that bitch, and killed her son, as some kind of favor to me? And not because you wanted to?”
“Why does it have to be one or the other? Sure, I wanted to. I mean, honestly, man, you had good taste. There was something about her. The way she kept complying, you know what I’m saying? ‘Please, just don’t hurt my little boy. I’ll do anything.’ Well, she did. She did everything.”
Boomer couldn’t deny, he liked the sound of that. Yeah, he remembered Hope. She’d been fun.
“So how about you thank me?” Snake said. “I mean, I just had your sloppy seconds with no complaints.”
Boomer couldn’t help but laugh at that. “It’s not sloppy seconds twenty years later, man.”
Snake laughed, too. “I’m sorry, brother. I know it wasn’t what we planned. But I didn’t get carried away. I saw a better way to do it—a way to get you what you need, and get me something, too. So everybody wins, right?”
The dog whined again. Boomer looked at it and jerked the leash. “Knock it off.”
Boomer knew Snake wasn’t being completely honest. Maybe he hadn’t gotten carried away completely, okay, but he’d started with what he wanted and reverse engineered the rest. But his points about how it would look to investigators, and to anyone inclined to think the worst of Boomer, were actually pretty good ones. Boomer wondered if he would have gone along if Snake had suggested doing it this way up front. He decided he probably would have.
“Well?” Boomer said. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“The parts that weren’t on the news.”
Snake laughed. “Hell yes, brother, I was hoping you would ask.”
10
Just over twelve hours after her meeting with Little, Livia was on her way to Campo.
She’d stayed up much of the night reviewing Little’s file on the nine missing girls, Presley of course among them. Then she’d slept briefly, made an early appearance at headquarters, and caught a morning flight to San Diego, spending most of the time in the air researching the town. Campo was an unincorporated community on the Mexican border, a little over 2,600 people, mostly white and about a third Hispanic. There was a small Native American population and two nearby Native American tribal areas, one that included a casino. The biggest employer was the Border Patrol. The navy ran its Mountain Warfare Training Camp a few miles away. And the town was the southern terminus for the Pacific Crest Trail, which continued all the way to Canada. Nothing that leaped out at her. Nothing notably in common with the other places the girls had disappeared from. It was all right, though. The initial research was about providing a foundation. For real insight, you almost always had to get up close and personal.
She rented a car and drove the fifty miles from the airport, most of it along a winding road cut through the arid hills. Visibility was bad because of the California fires, but once she was east of San Diego she could tell there wouldn’t have been much to see anyway, just mile after mile of rock and dirt and scrub, punctuated by tiny towns that announced themselves with not much more than a roadside gas station and a momentarily slower speed limit: Dulzura. Barrett Junction. Canyon City. The whole area felt remote, even abandoned. She tried to picture the landscape through the eyes of the men she was hunting, but couldn’t yet see it the way they would have.
And then, there it was: the Campo Green Store, a low-slung wooden building that, truth in advertising, was painted forest green. According to the sign, purveyors of groceries, liquor, beer, and wine. Where, two weeks earlier, fifteen-year-old Hannah Cuero had picked up a box of pancake mix and some berries for the breakfast her mother planned to make the next morning, and then vanished into thin air on the walk home.
Livia parked, stepped out of the car into an incongruously large lot, and checked her surroundings. The midafternoon sun was obscured by haze, and the mountain air was cool. A hill rose behind the store, nothing but boulders and chaparral and a few stunted trees. The area was quiet, and it was hard not to feel that the silence was in recognition that something had happened here recently, something terrible.
She shook off the feeling and walked inside. A gray-haired woman behind
the cash register wished her a good morning. Livia returned the salutation and wandered the aisles, not looking for anything in particular, just letting her mind relax and open up, imagining herself as Hannah, trying to feel like that lost girl. There, the pancake mix. Pick it up, grab some berries, and head home because it’s getting dark and there’s homework still to be done . . .
She bought a bottle of water and went back to the car. Ordinarily, she would have engaged the proprietor in conversation, tried to see what she could learn from the local scuttlebutt. Maybe the woman had even rung up Hannah’s purchase on the evening in question. But she needed to keep a lower-than-usual profile for Little’s sake. And for her own.
Hannah’s house was only a minute’s drive from the store: a white clapboard. It wasn’t much, but it had been painted recently, the tiny lawn was trimmed, and there were neat rows of desert flowers along the walkway. A red SUV was parked nose-out in the gravel driveway. Like the house, it was clean and obviously well cared for. Livia went past, drove around the town for a half hour, and then parked back at the Green Store.
She stood in the lot for a moment, considering. There were any number of places two men could have positioned themselves. On the road itself, of course, or along the Pacific Crest Trail, which paralleled and looked down upon it. In fact, it wasn’t clear whether Hannah had been walking on the road or the trail, which would have offered something of a shortcut, when she was taken.
Livia had already driven the road, so she decided to take the trail. She set out, briefly marveling that this narrow slice of dust and sand continued north for another 2,600 miles, all the way to Canada. Well, like everything else, it started somewhere. And had an endpoint, too.
As soon as she was clear of the store, she decided she had made the right choice. If you were hoping to snatch a girl, the trail would offer more possibilities. If the girl were on the trail, too, you’d have her that way. If you saw her on the road below, you could cut through the scrub and be on her in seconds. Either way, just before grabbing her you’d call your partner, who would move in from somewhere close by in a vehicle. Teamwork like that would require planning, practice, and precision, but it could be done. And had been done, if Little was right. Again and again, by the same two men.
Little hadn’t called the Cueros to tell them to expect her—he’d been concerned someone could be listening in on their calls, and he’d repeatedly told her to watch her back. It all struck Livia as paranoid, and his precautions, which were already circumscribing her ability to investigate, were going to make the whole trip a waste if it turned out no one was home. Well, there was that SUV in the driveway. That was promising. Anyway, she would know soon enough.
The trail crossed the road a short distance from the Cuero house. Livia stopped and looked around. Little had told her to be surveillance conscious. She doubted anyone was going to be watching the house, but it couldn’t hurt to check. She saw no cars anywhere, parked or moving. Just the quiet, empty afternoon street.
But still, that feeling of . . . aftermath. A silence born of sorrow.
She came down off the trail, went to the door, and knocked. A minute passed. Then the door opened—a woman of about forty, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was pretty, and would have been more so but for the utter exhaustion in her eyes.
“Mrs. Cuero?” Livia said.
The woman nodded slowly. “Can I help you?”
“I apologize for disturbing you, ma’am. My name is Livia Lone. Detective, Seattle PD. I don’t have any information on your daughter, I’m very sorry to say. But I’m investigating another missing girl, and it’s possible there are some commonalities with Hannah. If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions that might help with my investigation.”
The woman frowned as though perplexed. Her fingertips rose to her cheek and remained there for a moment, as though to confirm her own presence. Livia sensed she was medicated, probably with Valium. Well, how could she not be? Two weeks ago, she’d been a mother, with a daughter, living a life that followed predictable rules. Now, every morning, she woke into a nightmare.
She looked at Livia, her eyes wide and beseeching. “Could you help find Hannah?” she said.
“I don’t know, ma’am. But I’m certainly going to try.”
The woman nodded, but only once, and quickly, as though more than that would have been to give in to a hope she must have found terrifying.
“My husband is at work,” she said. “Border Patrol. They were very generous, but he couldn’t take any more time off. But . . . please, come in.”
Livia stepped inside. The woman closed the door and led her past a small living room. That was good. Kitchens were always for the real conversations. Living rooms were where people tried to hold you off.
There was another woman, sitting at the kitchen table, who from the resemblance Livia made instantly as the woman’s sister. She stood when Livia and Mrs. Cuero came in. “My sister,” Mrs. Cuero said. “Staying with us for a while.”
“Arbel,” the woman said, offering Livia her hand.
They shook. “Detective Lone, Seattle PD. Livia.”
Arbel offered a pained smile. “No new information about Hannah?”
Livia shook her head, pushing away a pang. Sisters looking out for each other wasn’t something she could allow herself to feel. “I’m afraid not. But her disappearance might relate to a case I’m working on.”
“Can I offer you anything?” Mrs. Cuero said. “Coffee? Tea?”
Livia realized the woman still hadn’t introduced herself. It wasn’t surprising. Just putting one foot in front of the other would be effort enough. “Just water, ma’am, if you don’t mind.”
Livia spent three hours with Mrs. Cuero and Arbel. They looked at photo albums, at report cards, at artwork from as far back as the first grade, some of it framed and hung on the walls because Hannah had hoped to be an artist and her parents wanted to encourage her. It seemed Little had been right: Hannah presented none of the risk factors of a typical runaway. Her parents were involved in her life; they knew her friends; they had her Facebook and cellphone passwords. And they’d already been through all her online accounts with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, who had also interviewed Hannah’s schoolmates and her younger brother. There were no leads. Nothing suspicious. And though Livia would have liked to do her own interviews, including the father, she sensed nothing deceptive or otherwise off about Mrs. Cuero or her sister. She had hunted enough freaks and sniffed out enough lies to know a good family from one with secrets. This was one of the former.
She would have wished otherwise, but her wishes didn’t matter. From all she could see, Hannah hadn’t run away. Nor had she been abducted by a predator she’d met online or was otherwise acquainted with. Most likely, Hannah was taken by a non–family member unknown to her. A stranger. The rarest form of abduction, and also the hardest to solve.
When Livia left, the sun was already low in the sky. She gave Mrs. Cuero a card and told her to call anytime, for anything. It was frustrating to leave without having done a real investigation, but her hands were tied. By Little’s concerns, and by the need to get back to Seattle before anyone noticed she’d been away.
She’d left her phone off since landing in San Diego—Little’s admonition about being watched, combined with her own cellphone-tracker paranoia—so she turned on the car’s GPS and chose a slightly different route back to the airport: Buckman Springs Road, the northern loop instead of the southern. Just outside of town, she saw a sign: Mountain Warfare Training Camp Michael Monsoor. She might have swung by just to satisfy her curiosity, but there wasn’t time.
She drove on along the two-lane road. She passed a few small agricultural plots amid the arid terrain, but soon even these isolated settlements were gone, and it was nothing but the road again, winding through rocky hills and stunted trees and dry grass, with not even a telephone line in sight.
As she came to a bridge spanning a dry arroy
o, she saw a gray Taurus approaching in the rearview, the magnetic light on its roof flashing blue. She checked the speedometer and saw she’d been a few miles over the limit, but not enough to warrant a traffic stop. Especially not by an unmarked car. She felt a twinge of unease. She gave a wave of acknowledgment with her right hand to obscure the brief disappearance of her left, which had dropped for an instant to ease her fleece aside and undo the strap securing the Glock in her belly-band holster.
The bridge had no shoulder, so there was no place she could safely stop. Immediately on the other side, the road curved right, with a wide gravel turnoff she could have pulled onto. But she kept going. The turnoff was too secluded a spot, too hidden by a clump of trees, and too much where she might have been expected to pull over.
A quarter mile down, she came to a long straightaway. She took her foot off the gas and coasted onto the shoulder, the gravel suddenly loud beneath the tires. When the car had rolled to a stop, she put it in park, released the seatbelt, cracked the window, and turned on the hazard lights. Then she put her hands on the steering wheel and watched through the rearview.
The Taurus drifted in behind her and stopped about a car length away. Closer than she would have expected for a tactically correct traffic stop. And it was parked in line with her car, rather than offset. Like the distance, the lack of an offset wasn’t unheard of—cops had different traffic-stop preferences, and some cops were just plain sloppy—but still.
She watched in the mirror, her heart beating hard, her hand ready to go for the Glock. But the situation was dicey. If she mistook a real stop for something illegitimate, she might wind up shooting a cop. If she mistook it the other way, the one shot might be her.
