The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

  He chained his bike and helmet to a lamppost then walked to the door of the apartment building. He pressed the intercom and, when a woman answered, he said, “I called earlier. About the reward you posted.”

  “You’re—”

  “Colter.”

  The door buzzer sounded and he stepped inside and climbed to the third floor, smelling fresh paint, garlic and pot. He knocked on the door of 3C. He heard the creak of footsteps and she answered.

  Maria Vasquez looked him over cautiously, eyeing the leather jacket and jeans and boots.

  In most assignments, when meeting with offerors he wanted them to see him as a professional—part lawyer, part detective, part psychologist. His garb would be sport coat, laundered jeans, polished shoes, dress shirt in dark shades. Not an option now, not with the Yamaha.

  She’d have to deal with the reward-seeker as biker.

  Something about his face, perhaps, put her at ease, though. “Come in. Please, come in.”

  Vasquez, in her forties, was about five eight or nine, a pretty face and trim figure. Her dark features suggested blood from Mexico.

  The one-bedroom apartment was nicer than he’d expected. The furniture was cheap but the walls had been painted recently—and were hung with bold floral posters and a half-dozen fine-arts photographs, reminiscent of the work of the famous West Coast photographers of the mid-twentieth century: Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham.

  She asked if he wanted anything to drink and he declined. They sat and the woman held her hands to her face. “Oh, it has been a terrible year. Such a terrible year. My husband, he died without insurance, and I lost my job. I was a receptionist at a tech company.” A cynical grimace. “Big start-up! Oh, we were going to all be millionaires. They promised everything. Stock bonuses. All that. It went under. I’ve been doing that since then.” She waved toward a pink waitress’s uniform. “We lost our house. And the bank owns it and still they’re suing us! I never wanted a big house in the first place. But Eduardo . . .” She shook her head, as if exhausted at replaying the car crash of her last twelve months. “And now this.”

  Tears formed, and she found a tissue in a battered, cracked beige purse with an old-style clasp on top. She blotted her eyes.

  From a pocket in his leather jacket, Shaw extracted one of the 5-by-7-inch notebooks in which he jotted information during interviews like this. His handwriting, like his father’s, was extremely small and precise. The notebooks were not ruled but each line of his script was perfectly horizontal.

  He used a Delta Titanio Galassia fountain pen. The barrel was black and it featured three orange rings toward the nib. Occasionally an offeror or a witness might glance at the pen, which was not inexpensive, as if using it were pretentious or showy. But this wasn’t the case. The pen was largely practical; filling page after page of notes in Shaw’s minuscule script was tough on the hand and the gold-tipped fountain pen eased words onto the paper smoothly and with less effort than the best ballpoint. It was also a pleasure to use the fine device.

  Someone once asked him why he didn’t just use a tape recorder or at least type answers into a computer or tablet. His response: Speaking or typing creates just a glancing relationship with the words. Only when you write by hand do you truly possess them.

  Shaw said, “Let me tell you who I am and what I do. You can look at me like a private investigator that you don’t pay until I’m successful. I’ll try to find your daughter. If I do that, you pay me your reward. You don’t have to pay for any expenses.”

  A reward is, under the law, a unilateral contract. The offer is made but there is no enforceable bargain until one party—the reward-seeker—successfully completes the job. Then an enforceable contract comes into existence.

  Vasquez nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Two days ago Tessy was gone when I got home from my shift. She was supposed to be at work at six but she didn’t show up. Her phone doesn’t ring. It just goes to voice mail. She didn’t show up for work that night. I called her friends . . . Nobody’s heard from her.”

  “Was she going someplace before work?”

  “I don’t know. She played guitar with friends some.”

  He asked if she’d talked to the police.

  At this she grew silent for a moment. “Not yet. I heard with someone who’s older, the police won’t be interested for a few days.”

  They might be interested. But what she was really saying was: mother and daughter were undocumented and the cops might report them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That was a big concern he’d found in the immigrant community; while some police departments might not report them, by federal law they were required to.

  “Did you have a fight? Did she run off?” The most common cause of missing youngsters.

  “Oh, no, no. We are very close. We never fight. She’s the love of my life!”

  Parental kidnappings were the most common form of abduction. Even with children above the age of majority, like Tessy, a mother or father might coerce the youngster to come live with him or her. More and more were living at home until later in life nowadays. Vasquez was a widow but the general principle could apply.

  “Have you had a partner or someone you’re seeing who might’ve had an interest in her?”

  She gave a laugh. “I work twelve-hour days, two shifts. That is the last thing on my mind.”

  “So you think someone forced her to come with them.”

  She sat forward, her hands shredding the tissue. “Here’s what I’m worried about, sir. Tessy had some drug problems a few years ago. She fought it and won. She goes to meetings. She’s a good girl. But there was this man, older. They dated. Mostly she went out with him because he supplied her. After she got sober, her sponsor told her she couldn’t see him anymore. She broke up with him. He got furious. He stalked her.”

  “When?”

  “Six months ago.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “All I know is Roman. I think it’s a nickname.”

  “Address?”

  Vasquez shook her head.

  “Arrests?”

  “Probably. I think so.”

  “Describe him.”

  “He’s about thirty, no, probably more. Not tall, slim. Has a shaved head. Or he did. He’s white but has a darker skin. There’s a tattoo of a cross on his neck. An old-fashioned cross. Like the ancient times.”

  Shaw took a few moments to jot these notes. Then he asked, “Where does she work?”

  “In a folk music club, in North Beach.”

  Shaw got the name.

  “Every time I look at those, I want to cry.” She waved at the photographs on the wall.

  “She took those? She’s talented.”

  A nod. “She studied, art school. And she can sing too. She has a nice voice.”

  She looked out the window. Her jaw was tight. “I wasn’t there for her like I should have been. So expensive here . . . Working two jobs, both Eduardo and me. We weren’t there . . . She got into trouble.” She touched a finger to a lower lid and examined it—for running mascara. Of which there were some streaks. She grimaced and, taking a compact mirror from her purse, examined the damage and blotted some of the stain away.

  Her hands were delicate, her skin smooth. She must have been in her early twenties when the girl was born.

  Shaw asked questions he’d developed over the years in cases involving missing young people and jotted down her answers in his distinctive handwriting.

  Friends’ names and numbers. There was no find-my-phone app on her mobile. The phone was in her name, so her mother couldn’t have the phone company ping it; only the police could and even then only with a warrant. Tessy had one of her mother’s credit cards, but she hadn’t used it.

  “When was your last contact?”


  “A phone call. She left a message. I couldn’t pick up.” Her lip trembled. She’d be thinking that maybe it was the last chance she would have had to speak to her daughter.

  “Play it.”

  She did. They heard a light, cheerful voice chatting briefly and saying she’d call later. She was outdoors, on a noisy street.

  Shaw asked, “Can you send it to me?”

  She didn’t understand. “Send . . . ?”

  He explained, “You can save a voice mail as a WAV file.”

  “A wave?”

  “W-A-V. It’s a sound-recording format. You can save it on your phone. Google it. It’s easy to do. Then email the recording to me.” He gave her his address: ColterShawReward@gmail.com.

  She said she would.

  “I’d like to see her room.”

  “She doesn’t have one. She sleeps here—on the pullout.”

  “Any personal effects? Papers, computer?”

  She waved around the sparsely furnished place. “Most everything of ours is in storage in Mountain View. Where we had the house that was foreclosed.”

  “I think I have enough to get started. I’ll need a photo. A better one than you posted online.”

  She didn’t have any hard copies but she uploaded one to his phone.

  The young woman, with long dark hair, was striking. High cheekbones, broad lips and big eyes, deep brown.

  “Has anyone else called about the reward?”

  “A couple of people.” Her voice lowered. “They were just assholes. They didn’t know anything. Just making stuff up about her being here or there so they could get the money.”

  “That happens. All right. I have other projects going on. But I’ll do what I can.”

  She shook his hand warmly. “Thank you, Mr. Shaw.”

  “Colter.”

  “Thank you. Bless you.” She touched the silver crucifix at her throat. Then said brightly, “It’s more now.”

  “More?”

  “What I can offer. I looked at the GoFundMe page an hour ago. People’ve contributed another $234. And I’m praying that there’ll be more.”

  Shaw said, “Let’s find her first. We’ll worry about that later.”

  21

  Never be blunt when subtle will do . . .

  Colter Shaw was adept at guile. He liked outthinking the criminals he was pursuing, liked strategizing against the geography, the elements, the forces that conspired to keep him from finding a missing person.

  But sometimes you just had to throw clever to the wind and go for it.

  Blunt . . .

  When he stepped out onto the pungent street in front of Maria Vasquez’s apartment he caught a glimpse of the green Honda.

  In one sense, there was some subtlety involved, in spotting the car. The driver had not parked directly on Vasquez’s street, but around the corner. As he scanned around him he saw the Honda in a reflection—a newly washed plate-glass window was at the apex of a triangle, which also included Shaw and the green car.

  Since there was no direct view of Shaw’s bike from the car, that meant that the driver wasn’t now in the vehicle but was one of dozens of people on the street, lying low and surveilling him. That population included shoppers, folks delivering packages and envelopes and restaurant provisions, shopkeepers hard at work in the never-ending job of scrubbing the sidewalks, some women and men who were probably sex workers, a few pushers hawking their wares, and their consumers, those just standing around, talking to others in person or on cell phones and a few talking exclusively, and with animation, to themselves.

  Only one way to find out who.

  Shaw made sure his holster was snug and turned in the direction of the cross street walking quickly toward the side street where the green Honda was parked.

  He flushed the spy in one second.

  Dressed in black jeans and a gray windbreaker, head covered with a black baseball cap, the spy—about two hundred feet from Shaw—turned instantly and ran back toward the car. It began as a fast gait, then a sprint, though he paused briefly to speak to two large workers, in T-shirts, one with a shock of curly red hair, the other with a black, unwashed ponytail. Colleagues? Shaw didn’t see how. They were unloading supplies from a battered cab truck, double-parked at the intersection around the corner of which sat the green Honda.

  The driver continued sprinting, Shaw was closing in. He’d catch up before the man could leap into the car and speed off.

  Or that would have happened, if not for one problem.

  As he approached the delivery truck, the two men stepped directly into his path and held out hands. Curly growled, “Not so fucking fast, asshole.”

  Shaw tried to dodge but Ponytail jogged in front and grabbed him by the arm.

  “Out of my way.” Shaw lowered his center of gravity and got ready to grapple him to the ground.

  Curly took the other arm and they pushed Shaw up against the truck. He was pinned.

  “Going to break more bones? Lemme ask. That make you feel like a man?”

  Ponytail, who bathed as infrequently as he shampooed, growled, “Me and him oughta break a few of yours. See how you like it.”

  “Okay. Take it easy.” Since Shaw had no idea what was going on, he only offered those generic words. He relaxed a bit and when Ponytail did too, Shaw yanked his right arm free and got the man’s meaty wrist in a come-along grip, dropping him to his knees.

  “Fuck no.” Curly casually slugged Shaw in the belly, and he too went down.

  Shaw caught his breath, slowly rose and backed away.

  He heard, from around the corner, a car start and tires cry.

  Hell . . .

  The men started toward him. Shaw backed up farther and lifted his left hand toward them, palm up, and with his right, pulled his jacket open and sweater up, revealing the gun.

  “Fuck, you a cop?”

  “Look, man . . . We didn’t know.”

  The nausea faded. He snapped, “What’d he say to you?”

  “Who?”

  “The man I was chasing.”

  The workers regarded each other.

  “You got it wrong, mister,” Curly said.

  “Wasn’t no man. Was a girl.”

  “And hot, you ask me.”

  * * *

  —

  He spent several hours in his search for Tessy Vasquez.

  The music club where she worked didn’t serve lunch but Shaw was able to talk to the manager, a skinny young man in clothes two sizes too big and with a droopy Vietnam War–era mustache. He wore a stocking cap not unlike Russell’s, but in green. He couldn’t provide any helpful information and had never seen anyone fitting Roman’s description interacting with Tessy, who was a waitress and occasional performer at the club.

  “I’ve asked the staff if they know anything about where she is,” the guy said, “and nobody does. She just didn’t show up for work. That’s when I called her mother.”

  Outside the place, Shaw called the friends whose names Maria Vasquez had given him—at least those whose numbers he could find. Three answered but no one had any knowledge of where Tessy might be. One young woman, though, did tell him that Tessy was really into busking—street singing—lately. She’d mentioned she’d worried about some of the “pervs” in the parks and the squares she sang in, but she could provide nothing specific.

  Shaw biked back to the safe house.

  The place, which had seemed alive thanks to Russell’s presence, was now stark. A newly formed fog didn’t help much.

  June gloom . . .

  Shaw hung his leather jacket on a rack near the front door and tugged off his sweater, draping it on the rack too. The house was warm. He walked into the kitchen and pulled out a bag of ground Honduran coffee from the cupboard. He brewed a pot through a filter and poured a cup
for himself. He hadn’t brought the milk from the Winnebago, but he found some powdered Carnation in the refrigerator. Apparently his brother liked coffee the same way he did.

  And where was the man now?

  On a private jet to Singapore?

  In a bunker in Utah?

  Tracking down a terrorist in Houston?

  The survivalist skills that Ashton had taught the family were a double-edged weapon. They could keep you safe from intrusion. But they could also be used to get close to your enemies, eliminate them and then evade detection as you escaped.

  He recalled the matter-of-fact expression in his brother’s eyes after he’d killed Blond in the alley. The only concerns were practical—getting his team there efficiently and quickly for the cleanup and getting away.

  He sat on the couch and stretched back, boots out in front of him.

  Thinking of the driver of the green Honda.

  A girl . . .

  And hot . . .

  But who the hell was she? What was her mission?

  One thing about her was clear. She was smart about keeping him from catching her: pitching the nails into his path. Smart too in using the two Neanderthals on the street in the TL. They’d said she’d been panicked and begged them to help; the man chasing her was an abusive ex, who’d put her in the hospital a dozen times. He’d broken her arm twice.

  “You believed her?” Shaw had muttered.

  Curly had shrugged. “’Course. She was like, yeah, you know, beautiful.”

  Ah, beauty. A lie detector that Shaw had heard of before.

  They knew nothing else and had not seen the Honda’s tag, so he’d left them to their labors. He’d made a brief canvass of the street where she’d parked the Honda. No one had noticed the woman or the car—at least that was everyone’s story.