One Got Away

by S. A. Lelchuk

  “It’s not just swimmers,” Clauson put in. “People wade in the surf, and next thing, they got a one-way ticket out to sea. People die like clockwork out at Monastery.”

  “Of course,” said Jeffries, “it’s not like drowning has to be accidental.”

  I didn’t bother to hide my skepticism. “You think Susan killed herself?”

  “It’s possible, sure. We don’t know. Anything is possible,” Clauson said pointedly. “Some people die even though they don’t plan on it.”

  “Or she’s fine,” I suggested. “Is that so crazy? People leave their cars at beaches all the time. Plenty of parking. Maybe she went backpacking.”

  “An optimist,” said Clauson. “Good for you. That must be nice.”

  There was a burst of bright laughter from the kids playing. “Why did you ask if I knew Susan?” I wanted to know.

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  Police telling me something didn’t matter meant that it probably did. “Her phone records,” I realized. “You saw that she called me Wednesday evening.” Once they had my number, they’d have my name. I would have been designated a person of interest. My credit card would have led them to the Cypress. Where they would have seen a call from my room back to Susan.

  I’ve glimpsed this—this rot—this web.

  Clauson was watching me closely. “You never saw her yesterday?”

  I shook my head. “She wanted to talk to me. We had planned to meet in Monterey yesterday at noon. She never showed up.”

  “Was anything unusual going on in her life? Upset with anyone? Anyone upset with her?”

  “I don’t know her well enough to answer that. I met her once, for an hour.”

  Clauson put his notebook away and scratched his mustache. He handed me a card. “If you think of anything, let us know. The disappearance is under active investigation.”

  Something didn’t make sense. The time line, I realized.

  “Why all this urgency?” I asked. Maybe a deserted car at a beach didn’t look great, but it wasn’t the most damning thing in the world, either. This quick and intense of a response—digging through phone records, banging on my door—seemed extreme after just a day.

  “We received a tip,” said Jeffries. “Someone phoned in.”

  “Phoned in what?”

  He kept his words vague. Not wanting to reveal specifics that might allow me to guess too much. “That she had been threatened. We tried to locate her. Then we put out an all-points bulletin when we couldn’t find her at home or her gallery. A local sheriff saw her car at the beach and called it in.”

  Clauson said, “Call us if you learn anything. We need to find her.”

  I nodded and tossed my burrito wrapper and empty cup in the trash, where they landed on a crumpled pile of wrappers and napkins. We headed in different directions as though by mutual assent. I walked a block. Then I turned around and came back through the park. The two cops were gone. Everything else looked the same. Kids playing on monkey bars, yoga moms on their mats, squirrels and grass and sunshine.

  Curious, I peered into the trash can where I had tossed my cup. The cup was gone, along with the wrapper. The other trash seemed untouched. They had wanted my DNA—to learn if I had been in Susan’s car?

  A missing person. A deserted car. A beach notorious for deadly currents.

  Or a beach that could serve as a scapegoat. Seize a person, hide a body, move a car. All easy enough to do. Susan’s car being at the beach didn’t mean that she herself had left it there. Anyone could have taken her, then dropped the car there to be found. The cops had been holding back. A standard missing person case was one possibility. They thought they might be working a kidnapping. Or homicide. Maybe one involving me.

  I had only until nightfall to find Coombs. That had seemed impossible enough.

  Now I had to find Susan, too.

  I wondered if the two of them might be in the same place.

  With the same people.

  25

  A horn honked as I got back to my block. The sound came from an old blue Volvo parked on the quiet street. The Volvo needed a wash. Splats of mud streaked the balding tires and flaking paint. Through a dusty windshield I could see a man in the driver’s seat.

  I walked over. “Hey, Charles. Your phone stop working?”

  “Haven’t seen you in a while. Figured this was as good a time as any.”

  Charles Miller was a slight, forgettable man, bland eyes and smooth cheeks. His unimpressive appearance masked a ferocious determination. As an investigative journalist working for a Texas newspaper, he had been a Rottweiler in his pursuit of facts and truth. That inflexible instinct, and his refusal to defer to big money and big influence after he was told to back off a story, had gotten him sued, fired from his paper, divorced, and wiped out. Understandably embittered toward journalism, he had followed the finest American tradition and started over in California. Now, as a freelancer, he went after his investigations with similar intensity.

  I got into his car, smelling cedar air freshener and wet dog. The radio was tuned to a sleepy blues station. “I’d invite you in for coffee but my boyfriend is probably still in bed,” I explained.

  Charles held up a stainless-steel thermos. “Got some right here.” He gestured to a takeaway cup. “One for you, too.”

  “Thanks.” I felt something lick my hand and realized that the wet dog smell was coming, indeed, from a wet dog. Two of them, actually. Golden retrievers, sprawled comfortably on the blanketed back seat. They wore bandanas, one red, one blue. The red-bandana dog looked at me with warm brown eyes and licked my hand again.

  “Took them for a swim,” Charles explained. “It was supposed to be a walk, but then they saw a duck.”

  “Ducks happen.” I leaned back to pet their silky heads, still damp from the water. “What are their names?”

  “The one you’re scratching is Bernstein. Blue bandana is Woodward.”

  “I’m sure they’re both great at digging things up.”

  He laughed. “A little too good, says my backyard.”

  I smiled. “They must get it from you. Things good?”

  Charles nodded. “Kids visited last month. Took ’em to Disneyland.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said, meaning it. I knew that his wife, after divorcing him, had been awarded sole custody. He didn’t see much of his children.

  “I have good news and bad news,” he said. “What do you want first?”

  “I’ve always hated that question.” I ruffled Bernstein’s ears and he licked my hand.

  “Fair enough. What do you know about VIN numbers?” Charles asked.

  Of all the things I’d put thought into during my life, VINs were not high on the list. “Just that they’re a unique code for each vehicle, I guess?”

  He nodded. “Before 1981, there was no regulation. An auto company could slap down whatever they wanted. But on all vehicles since eighty-one, a VIN is a federally mandated seventeen-digit string containing all kinds of information. Each digit means something specific. You can learn all kinds of things. Country of origin, manufacturer, series, body style, engine size, even information on braking and suspension and what plant they were produced at, plus a unique identifier. That’s what sixteen of the digits give you. But the ninth number in the sequence is a little different. That’s what they call the check digit.”

  “Check digit,” I repeated. I had never heard the term before.

  “The check digit is the only one in the seventeen that doesn’t have an inherent value. It’s only there to validate the rest of the VIN sequence. They use a bunch of complex formulas and something called a transliteration table—A equals 1, B equals 2, etc.—basically to tell them if a VIN is real. You can run a check-digit validation and see if the calculated value equals the original. If it does, the VIN is kosher. If not, there might be a problem. If you like math and have an extra hour, I can tell you all about how to do it.”

  Neither of those was true, and I
said so.

  Charles smiled. “Anyway, that’s what was confusing my DMV guy when he first ran the VIN you gave me. Something with the validation. But, just to make it more complicated, some of the European brands won’t pass an American check-digit verification, and you’re looking for a Mercedes, so he was trying to figure out what was going on.”

  “And?”

  “You’re looking for a stolen car,” Charles said. “That VIN isn’t going to get us anywhere. Whatever number you wrote down was put on at some point after it originally left the factory.”

  “That was the bad news?”

  “Afraid so.”

  I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment. “There’s no way to figure out who owns the vehicle? No way to get an address or name?” My last link to Coombs. Disappearing like tissue paper held above a lit match. And by nightfall it would be too late.

  “Not through the DMV,” Charles said. “It’s not in their system.”

  “Well, thanks for trying.” Woodward, with the blue bandana, sighted a cat outside and barked sharply. The cat sensed the attention and watched us, inscrutable, as it licked its paw before continuing on its way. “How about the other things I asked about?”

  “Right, the two names you gave me,” Charles said. “Ron Johannessen did indeed get in some kind of trouble back at Princeton. There’s nothing on his formal academic record, but I found a pretty hefty donation, made through a nonprofit controlled by the Johannessen family, that same year—his sophomore year in college.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Something happened with a female student. No idea about the specifics—nondisclosures were signed—but she withdrew from Princeton that same semester and transferred. It looks like they used a different shell company to make another payout to the girl’s family that same year.” I could tell Charles was interested. “Johannessen—that’s the family with the pharmaceutical fortune, right? Better living through chemistry—and the more chemistry, the more profit?”

  “Same family,” I said. “And the other thing?”

  “Dr. Geoffrey Coombs. He’s a tricky one.” Charles drank some coffee, lowered his window, and lit one of his foul-smelling cigarillos. “He’s been a professional con man for almost half his life and is very adept at mixing the real and the fictional. All kinds of aliases pop up and he legally changed his name at least twice, according to court records. Hard to find anything solid on the guy. It’s like he’s made of water. Quite the journey, though, gotta give him that. He’s not actually from the U.K.—he was born near Edmonton, Canada—and he never graduated from college, much less earned a graduate degree, although he does appear to have been at Oxford for at least several years studying psychology.”

  “Why didn’t he graduate?”

  “There was an affair with a prominent Oxford dean’s wife. The dean returned home to find Coombs and his wife in flagrante delicto.”

  I nodded, unsurprised. That sounded like Coombs. “So he was expelled?”

  “Not really,” Charles said. He puffed bluish smoke out the window. “Actually, Coombs killed the fellow.”

  “What?” I stared at Charles. “Are you sure?” Nothing in the con man’s elegant demeanor had suggested violence.

  Or had it?

  The professional way he had bound me. The ease with which he had handled a gun. Our night together. Out on the high bluffs, the ocean surging underneath. I never said I was a romantic. Only you did. The shadows on his face, as though taking off a mask.

  “He was caught?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “Tried and convicted of manslaughter. The man went from Oxford University to the Scrubs. A journey of fifty miles—plus a universe or two.”

  “The Scrubs?” I repeated. “What’s that?”

  “Nickname for Her Majesty’s Prison—HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs, in West London. Gotta give it to them, the Brits sure can do names. The Scrubs is a Class B—the U.K. uses a four-tier prison system. Class A’s are where they stick the absolute worst, but Class B’s are no picnic. Not at all. The Scrubs was notorious for its poor conditions—rampant germs and disease, gang violence, abusive guards, you name it. They did a big investigation in the nineties, lawsuits and settlements and a warning to the prison that it better shape up or close down. The Scrubs is better, now, but your man Coombs would have been there for the worst of it.”

  Charles puffed more smoke. “A man who made it through the Scrubs would be able to make it through a lot. And the Scrubs would certainly leave a… distinct effect on anyone.”

  I tried to picture Coombs in that kind of squalor. No wonder he appreciated a good hotel.

  “Anyway,” Charles continued, “he served just over five years and then they kicked him out of the U.K. Gradually, over the next two decades, he fashioned his current identity. His cons seem to have gotten bolder and more complex as he gained experience, although usually they seem rooted around the common denominator of seduction. Wealthy widows and divorcees, family trusts, even an art museum convinced it had been dealing with a wealthy donor. By the time he reached the Johannessen lady, he’d been doing this kind of thing for the better part of twenty years. One could say he’s at the peak of his career.”

  “Indeed.” Susan Johannessen had told me that Coombs had been able to talk art like a professional collector. He seemed to be a man who studied for his roles. Meticulous. Prepared.

  Charles flicked dead ash off the brown cigarillo. “I won’t even begin to ask how you, and Coombs, and stolen cars, and the Johannessen family connect.”

  “I wish I knew.” Thinking again that I had only the remainder of the day to find Coombs. Learning about his violent past didn’t change that fact. It made me want to talk to him more than ever. More questions that I wanted answers to.

  I thanked Charles and got out, lost in thought. A stolen vehicle. A stolen vehicle in a state with about 14.5 million registered vehicles and close to 200,000 auto thefts a year. And only a single day to do this. The odds hopelessly long even for a well-staffed police department—let alone one person. A needle in about ten acres of haystacks. Something that would be almost impossible for anyone to trace or track down.

  Almost anyone.

  I knew who I had to see.

  26

  Apparently, Buster was on some kind of health kick. When I found him, he was working out in a makeshift gym that had been set up in a relatively motorcycle-free corner of his Vallejo garage. Buster didn’t go for ellipticals or rowing machines. His workout space was all bone-bare iron and concrete. He wore black jeans and his usual Timberland boots and was hammer-curling a pair of fifty-pound dumbbells. Under a sleeveless black undershirt, his massive, tattooed arms were glossy with sweat.

  “If it isn’t Nikki Griffin!” Buster gave me a broad smile, which, along with his six-foot-five frame, pirate’s goatee, and ponytail, would have been ferocious enough to keep little children up at night. “How’d you know I needed someone to spot me on the next set?”

  “Intuition.” I walked up close enough to reach out and pluck the lit cigarette out of his mouth. “I’m not sure if you’re supposed to smoke while lifting. Maybe your doctor forgot to mention it?”

  “Listening to your doctor is the best way to tell you’re getting old.” He grunted, heaving the weights up in an alternating one-two pattern. “Why, you gonna tell on me?”

  I dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. “We’ll see.”

  “That means you need something.” Buster put the weights down and pulled a new cigarette from a rumpled pack of Camels that lay on a big, chromed-out Indian motorcycle. The saddlebags were decorated with tasseled leather and the handlebars looked wide as a Boeing’s wings. He stuck the cigarette in the same corner of his mouth that the first had resided in and lit it with a match, wiping sweat from his forehead as he took a deep drag.

  I smiled. “Always so cynical. I could just have your health in mind.” I gestured at the weights. “Glad you’re getting your exercise in, at le
ast.”

  Buster jetted smoke from his nostrils. The resemblance to a dragon was impossible to miss. “You get to be my age, and you’ll be worrying about your delicate figure, too. Just you wait.”

  I had to laugh. The delicate figure in question was about 250 pounds. “You’re really giving me something to look forward to.”

  “Aging, Nikki. It’s the curse that handsome gentlemen like myself struggle with each and every day.”

  “Yeah, well, for the time being you’re a very handsome gentleman, Buster, so enjoy it while you can.”

  He mopped more sweat off his face and jabbed his cigarette my way. “You really want something from me today. You’re never this nice.”

  I gave him a bright smile. “I want to buy you lunch.”

  “Lunch?”

  I waved stray smoke away from my head. “Don’t worry, we can get salads. Not trying to spoil your delicate curves. Plus, I’ve always suspected you were secretly a quinoa guy.”

  He shook his head and lumbered past me, a very slight limp in one leg. “Quinoa. Sure. I know just the place.”

  * * *

  I’d never seen someone stare a waiter in the face and—without any irony—order two separate orders of bacon cheeseburgers and fries along with two pints of beer for himself. Maybe I wasn’t dining out with Buster enough. He had driven us to a nearby bar that looked like a low-rent knockoff of an Irish pub. None of the charm but all of the GUINNESS and JAMESON signs. Whoever had designed the place had forgotten windows. From the outside it looked like some German pillbox in an Alistair MacLean novel. Inside, the main source of illumination was a row of wide-screen TVs slung over the bar at different angles. There was no sign of a hostess so we sat ourselves at a booth. There were plenty to choose from. My half of our table was sticky with the remnants of a spilled drink. I tried to balance my elbows on a little paper placemat that seemed the only clean thing in sight.

  This included our waiter. He was a lanky teenager with a diamond stud earring and a too-cool-to-be-here attitude. He looked down at Buster skeptically as he shoved a bread and butter plate onto our table. “Our kitchen makes big burgers. How ’bout I put in one order, and then you can order the second one if you’re still hungry?”