by Keith Yocum
After nearly twenty-five minutes of phone calls and voice messages to the police department, Dennis’s phone rang.
“Detective Brown? Yes, this is Dennis Cunningham. I’ve been dispatched here at the behest of the US Government to investigate the disappearance of a US citizen, a Dr. Forrester. Do you know about the case?”
Judy watched Dennis scribble something into his notebook, then stop abruptly.
“Well, I can certainly show you some identification, if that’s what you need,” he said, and then listened for at least a minute, his eyes squinting in concentration. “Sure, I can do that. When? Today? You’re at 8 Main Street? Great, see you then.”
“Well, well,” Dennis said to Judy. “He seemed very guarded. And he kept repeating that the jurisdiction for the case has been transferred to the intelligence service. This is a great lead, Miss AFP. You’re nice to have around.”
“Ha,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “I feel useless here. At least I can help a bit. And it takes my mind off returning to work.”
“When do you have to go back?”
“I told Calvin I’d be back next week, earliest.”
“Can’t you stay longer?”
“Dennis, what would I do here?”
“Hang out with me? Keep helping on this case, like you are now.”
“Don’t be daft. I can’t help you.”
“You just did.”
“That was nothing.”
He stood up and sat next to her on the bed. He kissed her gently on the cheek.
“Careful, you’ll spill my coffee, Yank.”
“Please don’t go,” he said. “Stay here. I’m lonely without you.”
“Well, you’ll just have to come back to W.A. then, won’t you?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be there as soon as this thing is wrapped up.”
“Mmm,” she took another sip.
Detective Michael Brown was much older than Dennis expected, given his youthful telephone voice; he was perhaps sixty years old, tall, gaunt-looking with a thick, barely controlled mop of gray hair.
“I hope you’re not offended,” Brown said standing in front of Dennis in the public area of the police station, “but this is not my case any longer, and I need to see some kind of identification.”
“Absolutely,” Dennis said, handing over the official brown-colored government passport that had been fast-tracked to him.
“Do you have anything else? A badge perhaps? This passport is for official US government employees.”
“No, we don’t hand out business cards,” Dennis said, smiling. “They can be faked easily. I’m sure you can understand that.”
“Yes, but how do I know you’re authorized to contact me about this case? Surely you can understand that? I called my contact Rangi in Auckland, but he was in a meeting. Even if you’re on official business, I don’t know why you want to talk to me.”
“Oh good, you called Rangi Winchester then,” Dennis said. “Great. I’ve already talked to him and Colin McCarthy. Good guys. They said I could talk to you.”
“They did? Well, they bloody hell could have let me know,” Brown said handing back the passport. “Follow me.”
They went past the front desk and into a hallway, through another two doors to Brown’s plain office. Family photos of his wife and three children through various stages of life were placed throughout the office; the newest one showed a huge family gathering with grandchildren.
“How can I help you?” Brown asked, settling into his very old and creaky chair.
“Do you have a police report for the disappearance of Dr. Forrester? I’d like to review it, if possible.”
“I’ll have to clear that with my boss,” Brown said, leaning forward and writing on a pad of paper. “Anything else?”
“Yes, who was in charge of the investigation?”
“I was.”
“Were you the first responder?”
“No, that was the officer on duty that night. I took it the following day. Strange case.”
“Why so?”
“We don’t have many stranger abductions. Drunken brawls, yes; domestic violence, yes; murder or abductions, not many.”
“I hate to ask this, but was there anything about the case that jumped out at you? I presume you’ve been a detective for a while.”
The desk phone rang, and Brown looked at the number. “Hang on a bit, mate. I need to grab this.”
Dennis nodded and looked around the small office.
“Hello, Rangi, how are you?” Brown said.
Dennis’s head swiveled sharply and watched Brown, who stared at his phone console as he listened intently.
“He’s here now. I’ve got him in my office—”
Brown looked up and they locked eyes.
“I see. Yes,” Brown returned his gaze down to the console. “Cheers.” He hung up and leaned back, creating a variety of high-pitched squeaking sounds from the chair.
“Rangi says that you are not authorized to talk to me without either he or Colin in attendance. I’m afraid this conversation will need to end until one of them can arrange to join us. Would you mind if we continued tomorrow perhaps? Early afternoon? One of them could be here by 1 p.m.”
“I like Rangi,” Dennis said. “A good man. I’m not crazy about Colin, though. Seems very rigid.”
They looked at each other.
“I think we’ll need to continue tomorrow,” Brown said, standing. “One o’clock?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Dennis said, still sitting.
“I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“You can ask, but I won’t leave.”
Brown’s face was animated, his eyebrows arched wildly.
“You must leave.”
“What do you think happened to Forrester? You’re a veteran detective. Been doing this for a long time. You met with Forrester’s husband when he came here. It must have been difficult dealing with him.”
“Yes, he was quite upset. But would you please leave now?”
“I just need you to answer my question before I go: was there anything especially unusual about this case? Something that just didn’t add up? I’m just asking for your unofficial instinct on this.”
“This is awkward, Mr. Cunningham. I’ve been ordered by Rangi not to talk to you without someone from his group in attendance. Please accommodate me on this request. I’m a simple policeman in a small town.”
“Please,” Dennis pleaded. “Just a moment longer. Rangi is a good man and is just following orders. But you know how silly some of these bureaucratic procedures can be. They have to fly someone down from the North Island just to sit in on a conversation that lasts five minutes.”
“Well, you are welcome to sit in my office as long you like,” the detective said. “But I’ll be elsewhere.”
“So, do you think Mr. Forrester had anything to do with his wife’s disappearance? Did he seem like a normal concerned husband?”
“Why are you Yanks so impulsive and demanding? You can’t go tromping around demanding answers instantly. Please have some respect for our laws, though we may be a small country with more sheep than people.”
Dennis laughed. “How many people live in New Zealand?”
“About four and half million.”
“How many sheep?”
“About thirty million or so.”
“Well, you might want to start taking care of your visitors instead of your sheep,” Dennis said standing. “Dr. Forrester was an important person in some quarters, and her disappearance has created a stir. I’m sorry to cause trouble for you, Detective Brown, but it seems your intelligence folks are keeping absolute control of everything I do here. And that makes me suspicious, as it would you.”
Brown bit the inside of his lip. “That is unfort
unate. The case was very perplexing. Very.”
“Why?”
“As I said earlier, we don’t experience many stranger abductions.”
“How do you know it was a stranger?”
“She wasn’t here long enough to have a relationship. She was only in Blenheim for two nights, and she disappeared on that second night.”
“Did you think her friend Caldecott was involved somehow?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She was despondent; cried continually. Seemed very authentic. Just my guess. The hotel CCTV shows she never left her room.”
“And Dr. Forrester’s husband?”
“Was a little stiff in my opinion. Sad, but very controlled. Probably his personality. Very shocking event to process. I’ve seen all sorts of responses, from hysterical to cold. Says more about the personality than anything else, in my opinion.”
“Have there been other disappearances in the area?”
“Just a teenager, who ran away to Christchurch. Came back a week later. And a wife who ran away from a violent husband.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“How about disappearances in Christchurch or other places on the South Island?”
“Not really, I’m afraid. There is no obvious connection or pattern. Sorry.”
“What do you think of the theory about the Iranian family?”
“Have a nice visit,” Brown said, flashing a wan smile. He turned and left the room.
Dennis scanned the office’s array of family photos one more time, then left.
She sat on the bed, fully clothed with her winter coat still on, crying.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” he said. “Judy. Talk to me.”
“My stepdad; he’s had a heart attack.”
“Oh god,” he said. “Is it serious?”
“Mum doesn’t know yet. They don’t know whether he needs a bypass or a stent. I don’t know. Something like that. He’s stable and they’re doing tests. Mum is a mess. My sisters are a mess.”
“You have to get back there right away,” he said. “Have you checked flight schedules?”
“No, I’m too upset. Can you help me?”
“Sure,” he said sitting down in front of the laptop.
“Every time I say goodbye to you, I feel like it’s the last time I’ll see you,” she said, her faced buried in his shoulder.
They were standing in the terminal at the small regional airport in Marlborough. It was late afternoon, and Judy felt frightened and exhausted. Her stepfather—the only father she had known—was the rock of the family. With a mother and two stepsisters, her family life had always seemed full of drama. Dad, on the other hand, was the only one who could calm the family down.
And he was sick, perhaps dying, for all she knew. Her hysterical mother was barely intelligible about his condition, and her sister Nancy was not much better.
She needed to get home and see for herself how her father was doing.
But there was the stress of her job waiting, and then there was Dennis.
Would he ever return? He was a complicated man.
“They’re calling the flight, Judy. You need to go,” he said, prying her arms from around his back.
She looked into his eyes, searching for something that might reassure her.
He smiled. “Stop it, your gaze is hurting!”
“Sorry,” she said, reaching for her roll-on suitcase. “I miss you already.”
“Not half as much as I’m going to miss you,” he said.
“I worry about you,” she said. “I worry about us.”
“Stop worrying. You have enough stress in your life right now.”
He kissed her hard. She noticed that he kissed when he could not find the words to express himself. A man of action, she thought. I wish he could use words.
Dennis was walking to his rental car in the parking lot when his phone rang. At first, he thought it was Judy, but the number was blocked.
“Shit,” he said, stopping in the chilly wind.
“Cunningham, what the hell are you doing talking to Louise Nordland?” Simpson yelled from 9,000 miles away.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, ‘What the hell are you doing talking to Louise Nordland?’”
“Since when can’t I talk to folks at Langley? What the hell’s got into you? I’m a contractor who works for the agency and has a million former colleagues there. Christ, Simpson, you’re just a little too jumpy, don’t you think?”
Dennis could hear Simpson breathe heavily, trying to compose himself. As deputy director of the Operations Directorate, Simpson had the unenviable weight of a thousand clandestine operations on his plate. And this project was the last thing he needed to deal with. Dennis was also aware of the internecine battles in the vast bureaucratic CIA empire, and that Louise and Simpson were competitors.
“Were you not directed to deal with me exclusively on this contract?” Simpson snapped.
“Yes, I was. But no one said I was prohibited from talking to anyone else at Langley. I don’t know what’s got into you. Do you want a rundown of what I’ve come up with, or do you want to keep complaining about the chain of command crap?”
“She said she gave you the five names of agency people who were seeing Forrester, is that correct?”
“Yes, I assumed the permission was cleared in Langley. Why is that so important?”
“You were supposed to go through me on that,” Simpson said.
“You’re a busy guy, and it just came up in a conversation with her. She said she might be able to help. Why are you being such a control freak?”
Again, he could hear Simpson breathe heavily to compose himself.
“Don’t talk to Louise again about this case, Cunningham. Do you read me?”
“Louise Nordland is a thousand levels above my pay grade, and I’m not about to tell someone that far up the chain of command to screw off,” he said.
“You are a real piece of work, you know that?”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
“My clock says you have ten days left. Finishing sooner would be better.”
“The headline is that the Ghorbani connection seems plausible,” Dennis said.
“Well, that’s good news,” Simpson said, the tension sliding away from his voice.
“But there are parts that don’t make sense, so I’m digging a little deeper.”
“What parts?”
“The Ghorbani connection is completely circumstantial except for the DNA. If you take out the touch DNA, I’m not sure we have a strong connection.”
“What the hell do you know about touch DNA? You were a goddamn investigator for OIG, not a CSI professional. You’re watching too much TV in retirement.”
“Touch DNA is a specious connection. And if I know that, you must know that. Do you want to kick off assassinations of Iranian agents as payback for something that isn’t proven? Listen, the director said himself he wants another pass at this, and that’s what I’m doing. I’ve got ten days to make my recommendation.”
“Your recommendation is going through me.”
“Yes, I understand that. And I need to get going if you don’t mind.”
Simpson hung up without another word.
Dennis stared at his phone, then slowly put it in his jacket, looked up at the partly cloudy, late-afternoon sky and breathed deeply. To the north, he could see the tops of a small mountain range over the buildings. Coming back from a golfing retirement was a lot less fun than he had thought.
Dennis sat at the small desk in the hotel room and looked through his notes, looking for a thread that might lead to another thread, something that could unify the perplexing elements of this disappearance.
B
ut he could not concentrate. He could smell Judy’s presence in the room. Was it her shampoo? Hair conditioner? The intensity of the loneliness surprised him. He pushed the notes away, stood up, and went to the bed. He picked up her pillow and put it against his nose. It smelled of romance, sex, soap, and longing.
He sat on the bed. There were times in his life when he could recognize the creeping appearance of depression, like the first wisps of fog. Dr. Forrester taught him through cognitive behavior therapy to change his thinking to focus on action, physical exercise, work duties, anything that would stop the chain of thoughts leading to a deep, black hole.
Today he didn’t give a shit about taking positive steps. He was depressed and sat holding the pillow in his lap like he was comforting an old dog.
The phone, set to mute, vibrated on the desk like a wounded cicada. He stared at it but didn’t move. It agitated again in a low hum. He tossed the pillow and grabbed the phone. He did not recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Cunningham?”
“Yes.”
“This is Dr. Caldecott. I was traveling with Jane when she disappeared. We talked recently, remember? You called me and said I should call you if I remembered anything that might be helpful.”
“Yes, I remember our conversation quite well.”
“Well, I did remember something.”
Chapter 9
He plugged his ear with his left forefinger, blocking out the sound of the bustling airport, while he pressed the phone to his other ear. It rang three times and went to a voicemail prompt.
“Hey, Judy, this is Dennis. Hope your father is doing well. I’m hoping everything is OK there. Just wanted to let you know that I’m heading to Washington. Something came up and I need to get back to the states. I’m in Auckland and catching a flight to Los Angeles, and then on to D.C. Please call or text me about how your father is doing. Bye. I miss you.”
He looked around the airport, sighed, stood up, and walked toward a coffee shop. A flight to Adelaide, South Australia, was boarding next to his departure gate. How he wished he was going back to Australia instead of deeper into that cesspool of deceit, Washington, the District of friggin’ Columbia.
