by Jeff Ross
“But not last night?”
“No.” He shakes his head in an exaggerated motion.
“Did you sleep here last night?”
“No. At my place, like always. I’m here because I, like, need my dad’s car this morning.”
“What time did you arrive home?” Detective Evans asks.
“Oh, like, two?”
“Can I ask where you were?”
“Just at, like, a bonfire down on the beach.”
Grady pauses the video. “This guy is awesome,” he says.
“How?”
“Like, in every, like, way. Is he always, like, like that?”
“He’s pretty hollow,” I say. “If that’s what you mean.”
“Hollow. Yeah, that sounds right. I don’t mean to judge here, but does he always look like a giant douche?”
“Pretty much.”
“Look at that shirt! Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, and he’s flipped the collar as if he’s being asked to stand in for a professional model. And that hair! Who does that?”
“The endlessly vain,” I say.
Grady points at JJ on the monitor. “He doesn’t seem all that concerned about his missing brother.”
“Half brother,” I say. “And yeah, you’re right. It’s like they’re discussing where he might have left a skateboard.”
Grady gets closer to the screen. “There’s no emotion in his face.”
“What do you mean?”
“When someone is upset or worried, their eyebrows go up and their forehead wrinkles. But there’s none of that here. Also, he starts scratching his nose when he says he got home at two. And he’s always looking away from Detective Evans.”
“So?”
“That means he’s probably lying.”
“How do you know this stuff?” I say.
“I read a few books and watched a bunch of videos online about how you can tell if someone is lying.”
“You can tell if someone is lying?”
“Don’t freak out. It’s not an automatic thing. You have to really focus. But in a situation like this, it’s not very difficult. Why, have you been lying to me and I’ve missed it?”
“No,” I say.
“Well, good,” Grady says. “Nothing to worry about. Did you see what time JJ left the party?”
“I wasn’t really watching him.”
“Was this what he was wearing?”
I look at the video and realize I have no idea what JJ was wearing, even though I know I saw him at the party. “Not a clue.”
“Detective Evans asks about you in a minute. Here.” Grady starts the video, then fast-forwards.
“Did you see Lauren Saunders at this bonfire?”
“Yeah, like, for sure.”
“Did you happen to notice when she left?”
“Why? You think she has something to do with this?”
“We’re looking to follow up on everyone who came in contact with Benjamin over the past twenty-four hours. Lauren Saunders was with him yesterday.”
“She was still there when I left,” JJ says.
Grady pauses the video again and turns to me. “Were you?”
I look at the floor for a moment. “I don’t know. I lost track of everything that night.”
“Really? You don’t remember when you left?”
This is not a conversation I want to be having with Grady. I mean, going to a party and drinking is one thing. Not having any idea what happened at that party is entirely another. Luckily, Grady restarts the video without another word. The camera swings to frame Erin and Jack again.
“Can you think of anyone, anyone at all, who might want to take Benjamin?” Detective Evans asks.
Jack immediately says no. Erin takes another second before saying, “No, no one.”
Grady pauses the video. “So, she’s lying there.”
“What?” I say.
“I guess Detective Evans didn’t pick up on it. But you can see it right here.” Grady reverses the video slightly, leaving it paused. “Her eyes flick up and to the right.”
“So what?” I say.
“Your eyes move in the direction you want to stimulate your brain. So if your eyes go up and to the left, you’re stimulating the memory side of your brain. All your memories are stored in the left side. But if they go up and to the right, you’re going for your imagination.”
“So when Erin says she can’t think of anyone, she’s making up a story?”
“She’s lying, I think. I mean, it’s not a huge deal, but her eyes go up and to the right, and then she scratches her neck here.” Grady advances the video again. “You get itchy when you lie. Because your adrenaline gets pumping when you’re nervous, and your skin swells.”
“So you think she knows of someone who would want to take Ben but isn’t telling Detective Evans?”
“Possibly,” Grady says, leaning back in his seat. “There are some things I’m looking at in Jack’s financial statements. I don’t have anything solid yet, but it feels as though there’s someone out there no one knows about.”
“What do you mean?” I say.
“I have to keep digging,” he says. “I promise I’ll let you in on it as soon as I find anything out. If there is anything to find out. Right now it’s only a feeling.”
“What’s the other video?”
Grady pops forward in his seat. “Ah, yes, the walk-through.”
“Walk-through of what?”
“The house.”
On the screen is the Carters’ hallway. “This is the main corridor to the bedrooms,” Detective Evans’s voice comes through the speakers. “The mother has informed us that the boy’s door was closed. This is the room. We can see that the window remains open.” The camera moves around the room as Detective Evans details the placement of the bed, the distance between various pieces of furniture, and how the scene does not appear to be one within which a struggle has taken place.
It is one of the most boring things I have ever sat through.
Grady pauses the video again. “Not only does there not seem to have been a struggle,” he says, “but there’s no evidence that anyone other than Ben was ever in the room.”
“How can you tell that?”
Grady replays the last few seconds of the video. “See anything?”
“The window doesn’t have a screen.” I already knew this.
“Anything else?”
“No,” I say.
“Exactly.” He advances the video, laughing.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“It’s pretty basic stuff. I mean, I’ve watched the whole video, and Detective Evans never says anything about this,” Grady says, pointing at the screen. The video now shows the backyard. A close-up of the house, with Ben’s window in the center.
“What?”
“The garden,” Grady says, nodding his head and pointing at it.
“What about it?”
“It’s dirty.”
I put my head in my hands. “That’s kind of the point of a garden,” I say.
“So if someone climbed in Ben’s window, how come there’s no dirt on the floor of his room?” He goes back to the room-examination section of the video. He zooms in on the floor beneath the window. Sure enough, there’s no dirt there.
“Because no one ever came in?”
“Which means?”
“Which means?” Grady’s voice shifts to a higher pitch.
“He must know the person who took him.”
“Exactly. So if we’re working with that assumption, then what happened this morning makes way less sense.” He starts a video recorded from the local news.
Erin and Jack Carter are standing outside their house, behind a podium. “Mayor Jack Carter and his wife will now speak to the press,” a voice says.
Erin is wringing her hands and staring at the microphone. She leans in and speaks. “Our son, Ben Carter, disappeared Saturday night. We don’t know where he is, but someone out there does. We would like to say to whoever has Ben that all we care about is him coming home safe. That’s all. Whoever has Benny…” She stops and turns her face into the crumpled tissue in her hands.
“Our local law enforcement is doing an incredible job here,” Jack says, sounding every bit the politician. “They have been on top of this since minute one. But now we need your help. If anyone has any information about Benjamin or the situation surrounding his disappearance, please, contact the local police force immediately.” He throws an arm around Erin’s shoulders. “We just want our son to come home safe.”
Grady shuts the video down and laughs.
“You find the strangest things amusing,” I say.
“Heartfelt, wasn’t it?”
“I guess.”
He clicks a file on the laptop, and an audio clip begins.
“We have Ben. For one million dollars, you can have him back. We will be in contact.” The voice is muffled and high-pitched.
“What was that?” I say.
“That was a ransom call,” Grady says. “It came an hour before the heartfelt plea.”
“Today?”
“Yes, today.”
“Has anything been released about it?”
“Not that I’ve seen,” Grady says. “I imagine these kinds of calls often happen when a kid goes missing. Someone decides there’s a chance to make some money and jumps at it. So it might not be legit. But then again, it might be. What is interesting about it is this.” Grady plays the clip again, somehow slowing it down. It’s almost as if he’s able to lengthen the sound. “Hear that?”
“What?”
“In the background.” I listen more carefully. There’s a bit of a whine in the distance. A steady grinding noise.
“What is that?” I say.
“An electric sander. The kind used on cars.” Grady rolls away from the desk and grabs a giant tool. He pulls a trigger and the same whining sound whips up. “Like this one.”
“Do you have Ben in here somewhere?” I say.
“No. Sorry. I’ve never even seen the kid except on TV.” He rolls over to me and takes my hands. “If I had him, I’d give him to you.”
“How sweet. So what does the grinding have to do with anything?”
“Two things,” Grady says, releasing my hands. “First, did you know that JJ Carter was once a well-known street racer?”
“Like in cars?”
“What other types of street racing are there?” he asks, as if I know some secret and am keeping it from him.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Skateboards? Bikes? Big Wheels?”
“Cars. JJ raced cars on city streets. Anyway, about a year ago another street racer died in a single-car accident out on Beacon Hill Road.”
“And?”
“And oddly, that very same day, JJ’s car was reported stolen.” Grady pulls a police report up on his computer. I look at the scribbled mess of writing. “I found this in Detective Evans’s files. When she got the missing-kid case, she pulled everything on the family from the records. Right down to parking tickets.”
“Sounds like quite the coincidence. Do you think it was a coincidence?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Grady says.
I try to figure out if he’s being serious. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying you don’t believe in, I don’t know, air.”
“Actually, it isn’t. It’s like saying I believe everything that happens is part of a string of events that culminates in some final event we actually pay attention to.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“In the newspaper reports of the accident, someone said they saw another car on the hill that night.” Grady scrolls through the local paper’s archive. “Right here. The only problem is that JJ was apparently safe at home, and apparently his car had been stolen that afternoon.”
“I remember his car being stolen,” I say. “He bitched about it for weeks afterward. Then said he wasn’t going to get a new one until he found the right ride.”
“Has he?”
“Not that I know of. Are you thinking that JJ had something to do with this other kid’s death?”
“They were both street racers. And it’s pretty convenient timing, isn’t it?”
“But what does this have to do with the ransom call?”
“Maybe nothing, but my uncle told me that JJ’s been wanting to open a high-end chop shop for a while. You know, pimping rides, putting big engines in old Pontiacs, that kind of thing. JJ’s been looking at a location in that weird industrial mall in the west end. My uncle sends work to this guy Hank who has a body shop out there.”
“What would that have to do with Ben?”
Grady’s genuine smile comes out again, and he says, “Fargo.”
“Who?”
“The movie Fargo.”
“I don’t know that one,” I admit.
“It’s about this guy who needs money but can’t ask his rich father-in-law for it because he’s too embarrassed and knows his father-in-law will never give it to him. So he hires a couple of guys to kidnap his wife and demand a ransom from her father.”
“How does that work?” I say.
“He asks for twice what he needs. The plan is to split it fifty-fifty with the hired kidnappers, and his wife comes home safe and sound.”
“Does she?”
“No,” Grady says. “Which is why we have to go.”
“Where?” I say. “Where are we going now?”
“If I’m right, we’re going to bring Ben back.”
TWENTY-ONE
The possible chop shop is empty—though calling it empty doesn’t do it justice. It is utterly deserted but for a For Lease sign on the window. This area would have once been referred to as the outskirts, but businesses and apartment buildings have been closing in. Unfortunately, this little industrial mall doesn’t seem any less weird for its proximity to civilization.
“Nothing here,” Grady says, coming away from the window.
“Should we break in?” I say. I get a look from Grady.
“You can see the whole space from here. I don’t think committing a crime is necessary.”
I put my hands to the window and look inside at the big empty space. Grady is right—there’s nowhere to hide.
“Dammit, and here I was getting all ramped up for a little criminal activity.” There’s a steady grinding sound coming from farther along the complex.
“I’m sorry. I thought we would find him this time,” Grady says.
“It was a good idea.”
“Let’s go talk to Hank,” Grady says, walking toward the noise.
The final unit of the complex is double the size of any of the o
ther spaces. There are two cars up on lifts and another one parked beside the doors. A man in dirty blue coveralls is working on the trunk of an old Mustang.
Grady leans into his peripheral vision. The guy jumps and shuts the sander down. He flips his goggles up onto his forehead. “Help you?” he asks.
“Hey, you’re Hank, right?” Grady says.
The guy sets the sander on the ground and leans back against the car. “Yeah?” His voice is smoker heavy.
“My uncle, Rodney, sends stuff your way sometimes,” Grady says.
The guy flicks a pack of cigarettes out of a shirt pocket. He gets one out and lights it with a lighter from inside the pack. “You’re Rodney’s nephew? Yeah, he’s talked about you some.” The guy pauses for a moment. “Is your name Gravy?”
“Grady. With a d.” Grady hiccups a little laugh.
“Your uncle’s got a lisp on him, doesn’t he? I always thought he was saying Gravy. Good to finally meet you and put that mystery to rest.” He extends his hand, and Grady steps forward to shake it. “What can I help you with?”
“We were wondering if you’d seen JJ Carter around here. His stepbrother is missing,” I say.
“I didn’t know that.”
Which is really surprising. With all the news about it because Ben is the mayor’s son, I find it hard to believe that anyone wouldn’t have heard by now.
“He was here earlier today, actually,” Hank says.
“JJ?”
“Yeah, the little shit.”
“Was he wanting to rent one of the spaces in this complex?”
“Rent? Nah, he came in as a courtesy.” He gives little air quotes here, flicking away some ash as he does so. “Says he’s gonna own the whole place soon enough. He’ll be opening his own shop down the far end. Specialize in making ugly cars go faster than they should. Put stupid rims on Subarus. That shit. He was looking around my space like he already owned it.”
“When was this?” I ask.
“Like I said, this morning,” Hank says.
“Did he have a little kid with him?”
“Nope, he came in alone. There was someone else in the car with him. An older guy. He stayed put.”
