by Ben Rehder
Meanwhile, I would be wearing a hidden camera, of course. In my hat. Compact, but the video quality was damn good, and the audio was crisp. I might not get very far, though. He might kick me out after the first question. Or he might be the type who wants to hear everything I know. Who thinks he’s smarter than everybody else. In that case, I’d push him as far as possible.
That was my plan, for what it was worth.
But then I walked into the offices and saw a different young lady sitting at the reception desk.
“Brandi, you’ve changed,” I said.
The young woman smiled. “I’m Cindy. Brandi isn’t here today.”
“Oh, yeah? She sick?”
“Well, we’re not sure. We haven’t heard from her yet, which is totally unlike her. Anyway, I’m filling in.”
Doesn’t happen often, but I was at a loss for words.
“You okay?” Cindy asked.
I probably had a stunned look on my face. Sometimes that is unavoidable, despite my attempts to roll with the unexpected.
“You bet,” I said. “Uh, but I just remembered that I have a pedicure this morning. Where is my head today? Not on my feet apparently. I’ll have to come back later.”
Cindy emitted a laugh, but I could tell she didn’t know if I was kidding or not.
I started to turn for the door, but I couldn’t leave it at that. I said, “Not that it’s any of my business, but has anyone tried to call Brandi?”
“I did, several times.”
“Has anyone called the cops?”
“Somebody said they couldn’t do anything for 48 hours, I think,” Cindy said.
“That’s not exactly true,” I said. “An officer can swing by her house and see if everything’s okay. But somebody needs to call and explain the situation, and then ask for a welfare check.”
She looked at me, uncertain how to respond.
“Will you call?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Promise? You don’t need your boss or anyone else to give you approval.”
“I will, really. Right now.”
“A welfare check,” I repeated. “Insist on it. Tell them how reliable she normally is.”
She lifted the phone and held it to her ear. I gave her a wave and exited the office.
That news scuttled my plan, for now. I wouldn’t confront Jankowski until I’d thought this through.
I sat in the van, dumbfounded, quite frankly. Another rarity. I’d seen a lot in my years working fraud cases, but occasionally I still heard or saw something that shook me up pretty good.
This was one of those cases.
Brandi Sloan was missing.
Had she taken off? Had something happened to her? Was she simply sick and had her phone turned off? Seemed unlikely, but it was possible. I might be overreacting.
I started the engine. Made my way over to Interstate 35 and went north. Waded through heavy traffic until the MLK exit and went east to E.M. Franklin Avenue. Drove slowly past Brandi Sloan’s house—my first time seeing it—and was impressed. The place appeared to have been recently renovated—fresh paint, new metal roof, extensive landscaping. A Land Rover Discovery was parked in the driveway. Not a cheap vehicle. All of this raised new questions. How did a receptionist afford all this stuff? Family money?
There was no sign of a patrol officer yet, so I pulled to the curb.
Waited.
Ten minutes passed. Not a single car, bike, or pedestrian, went by.
I decided I would wait another thirty minutes, and if an officer hadn’t arrived by then, I’d go check it out myself. At least knock on the door and peek through any open windows.
Finally, just as I was about to get out of the van, a patrol unit showed up and parked at the curb. I stayed where I was. Watched as the cop climbed out and walked up the sidewalk to the front door. He knocked and waited. Knocked again and called out. Repeated several more times. He keyed the microphone attached to his collar and spoke to dispatch.
Then he tried the front doorknob and found it unlocked. He swung the door open, called out again, and then went inside.
I realized my entire body was tense.
Five minutes passed.
Then the cop came back outside and closed the door behind him. He tucked a note or business card into the crack between the door and the frame, then returned to his unit and drove away.
Simple as that.
He’d found nothing. Had seen nothing that concerned him.
Brandi wasn’t inside.
But she was still missing, wasn’t she? For the moment, yes, she was.
It occurred to me that Brandi was now the second person connected to Joe Jankowski who’d gone missing. What was the name of the first person? Took me a moment to recall.
Brent Donovan. The construction worker who had tried to orchestrate a fake injury on a Jankowski job site. Then he’d fled town to avoid criminal prosecution.
I was starting to wonder about that.
“Mrs. Donovan?”
“Yes?”
“I’m hoping I can speak to you for a few minutes about your son Brent.”
“Who is this?”
Doris Donovan sounded fifty years old, but I knew she was really 84 from looking her up in online records. She’d given birth to Brent when she was 47 years old.
“My name is Roy Ballard and I’m a legal videographer. It’s a long story, but I am currently working on a case that has made me aware of Brent’s disappearance.”
“I’m sorry, you’re a what?”
“A legal videographer,” I said.
“I’m not sure what that is,” she said.
I’d read the newspaper articles that had been published in the days after Brent allegedly fled town to avoid prosecution, and that’s where I’d learned his mother was the only family he had left. I figured if anyone could shed any light on this at all, it would be her.
“Normally I investigate insurance fraud,” I said. “And before you hang up on me, please hear me out. Do you happen to remember when a little girl named Tracy Turner went missing?”
“Why, I do remember that. The whole city was looking for her.”
“I’m the man who found her.”
I paused to let that sink in. I was shamelessly using that accomplishment to gain her trust.
“Bless your soul,” she said. “What was your name again?”
“Roy Ballard,” I said.
“Hang on a sec,” she said.
I waited. Didn’t know what she was doing.
“Ma’am?” I said.
“I’m just googling you,” she said.
I had to laugh. She was googling me. Teach me to make assumptions.
“Smart,” I said. “Make sure I’m telling you the truth.”
“Damn right,” she said. Twenty seconds later, she said, “Well, I guess you are a genuine hero.”
“I wouldn’t say that…even if it’s true.”
“And humble,” she said.
“Absolutely,” I said. “That’s one of my most admirable traits, my humility.”
Now she laughed, and then she abruptly went quiet again. I knew she was continuing to read the article. She was learning more about my past. A long moment passed, and then she said, “Oh. I see that your own little girl went missing.”
“She did, yes, many years ago. Her name is Hannah.”
“She was abducted.”
“She was, but a smart cop found her.”
It was my fault, I wanted to add. I wasn’t watching her closely enough. Even two minutes was too long to leave her unattended. I failed. My marriage failed. My ex remarried, and now my daughter lives two thousand miles away. We talk now and then, but she isn�
��t much interested in her dad. Too busy being a teenager—or that’s what I tell myself. Harder to face the fact that we simply don’t have a close relationship.
Doris Donovan said, “I live in Westwood. You know that neighborhood?”
“Yes, ma’am. Very well.”
“Why don’t you come over and we’ll talk?”
“What time would work for you?” I asked.
13
Westwood was an upper middle-class neighborhood in the city of Westlake Hills that had been built in the sixties and seventies. Doris Donovan’s home was on the north end of Blueridge Trail. The lawn was immaculate. An iron gate opened onto a flat stone patio that led me to a bright red front door. I was pleased to see a security camera hanging from the eaves.
The door opened before I reached it and there stood Doris Donovan. She was short and slender, with ramrod-straight posture. Her short hair was as white as a duck’s feathers. She wore round, rimless eyeglasses.
“Well,” she said, “you’re more handsome than that horrible photo in the newspaper.”
“I think they captured my worst side,” I said. “My front.”
She laughed and shook my hand with a firm grip. “Please come in. I made coffee.”
Five minutes later, we were seated in her living room, which featured a wall of east-facing windows that provided a breathtaking view of the Austin skyline. I’d done some snooping and learned that Doris had lived in this house for nearly fifty years. Her husband had passed away nineteen years earlier. She hadn’t remarried. Brent was her only child.
“Beautiful place,” I said.
It was one o’clock in the afternoon.
“It’s old enough now that things are starting to fall apart. Just like me.”
She laughed, so I did, too. “You seem like you’re in great shape,” I said.
“I walk the mall nearly every day,” she said. “Barton Creek Mall. Sometimes on nice days, I walk the trail around Town Lake.”
I noticed she didn’t refer to the lake by its newer name, Lady Bird Lake. Hard to drop the old name after all these years.
“How far do you walk?”
“Three or four miles, at least. Sometimes farther if I’m up for it.”
“Thanks again for seeing me,” I said.
“Would you like some cookies with your coffee?” she asked.
It was possibly the most grandmotherly thing I’d ever heard, which was ironic, since she was not a grandmother.
I nearly declined reflexively, but I caught myself and said I’d love some. She went into the kitchen and came back a minute later with half a dozen cookies on a small plate, which she placed gently on the coffee table.
“Thank you,” I said. I grabbed one. It appeared to be oatmeal and chocolate chip.
“I’m still not sure what you’re after, to be honest, but you didn’t sound like a cop or a reporter, so that got you through.” She looked at me over the rim of her glasses. “At least for the moment.”
“I’ll do my best to behave myself,” I said.
“Make sure you do,” she said.
I liked her, and I think she liked me.
I took a bite of the cookie, and wow, it was fantastic.
“These are incredible. Did you make them?”
“I did. My mother’s recipe.”
“Your mother was some sort of wizard,” I said, “and she must’ve passed the gene along.”
“I’m glad you like them.”
I took another bite, then said, “Let me explain why I’m here.”
“That would be a good start,” she said.
So I gave her an overview, without too much detail. Explained what a legal videographer was, and told her I was working on a case that was connected to Joe Jankowski. Then I told her someone involved in this current case seemed to have disappeared—although it was too early to know where she had gone, or why. She might pop back up at any minute. But it made me wonder about her son Brent.
She was ahead of me. “I’ve been trying to tell the police for months that Brent didn’t just take off,” she said. “He disappeared.”
“And what have they told you?”
“Well, I don’t think they believe anything I say, because they think I’m protecting him. They haven’t come right out and said that, but it seems obvious to me. When I push back, they say they have no way of finding him unless he uses his credit cards, or unless someone spots him. Or if someone finds his body. I hate to think it will come to that, but I’ve prepared myself for it.”
“What about his cell phone?” I asked.
“They found it in his apartment. Wherever he went, he didn’t take it with him. Makes me wonder if he left in a hurry.”
My reason for coming here was simple: to determine if Doris Donovan had heard from her son anytime after he disappeared. I didn’t even need to ask outright. It was obvious she had not, or that she was a hell of an actor.
“What kind of son was Brent?” I asked, just to keep the conversation going.
“He had his problems, no doubt about that,” Doris said. “I tried to help him on dozens of different occasions, and then it reached a point where he had to help himself. Tough love. I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“At the same time, he had a lot of good qualities. He was very friendly and you couldn’t help but like him. Always joking around and laughing. He made friends easily, and many of his friends he’s known since he was just a boy—going all the way back to first grade.”
“That’s rare nowadays,” I said.
“I’ve talked to all of them several times, but if they know where Brent is, they aren’t saying. Being loyal, I guess.”
I nodded slowly and took another nibble on the cookie.
She said, “Once he started working regularly at that construction job, I was hoping he’d turned things around. But then he came up with that nonsense about the cement mixer.” She was shaking her head, and then she let out a sad laugh. “That was really an idiotic scam, wasn’t it? How on earth did he think that was going to work?”
“Did he admit to you that he’d set the whole thing up?”
“Not really, but I’m his mom. I could tell from the things he said. And then that other man he worked with came forward and spilled the beans. Just such a mess. I offered to hire an attorney for him—for Brent—after Joe Jankowski started pushing so hard for criminal charges. See, I don’t think Brent even understood he could get in serious trouble for that kind of fraud. He thought he’d get fired and that would be the end of it. And Brent said he didn’t need an attorney because he had a way to straighten everything out. He said Jankowski would drop the whole thing.”
“He thought he had a way out of it?” I asked.
“That’s what he said.”
“What was the way out?”
“I don’t know. He never told me. He disappeared just a few days later.”
She looked toward the windows—the skyline in the distance—and I could see that she was getting emotional.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She took a moment, then said, “I’m not naïve enough to think I’ll see him again, but I’m hoping to find out what happened to him. I think that’s reasonable, don’t you?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“And you seem to have a knack for this sort of thing, which means I’ll help you however I can.”
Driving. Just driving. Heading west on Bee Caves Road. Sometimes just getting out and cruising could help me think.
What I knew so far:
Joe Jankowski had struck Lennox Armbruster with his SUV—allegedly an accident—and he’d had a dash cam installed at the time, even though he’d said he hadn’t.
Base
d on what little I’d seen, Armbruster had not been faking his injuries. I couldn’t ascertain whether or not Armbruster had stepped in front of the vehicle on purpose.
Damon Tate, the man who’d accosted me on my porch, was an employee of JMJ Construction. He’d carried a gun that had been stolen from Claudia Klein, who used to be Lennox Armbruster’s neighbor.
There was no indication that Armbruster had any association with Jankowski or Damon Tate prior to the accident. Didn’t mean there wasn’t a connection, just that I hadn’t found one.
I hit Highway 71 and took a right, then drove for a couple of minutes and took a left on Hamilton Pool Road.
Brent Donovan was almost certainly dead. A guy like him—a bumbler without a lot of common sense—couldn’t disappear for any length of time without leaving an electronic trail or getting spotted. It just wasn’t feasible. I was a believer in Occam’s razor, the philosophical and scientific principle that the simplest explanation was usually correct. Not always. Usually. Was Brent alive and somehow managing to avoid detection and capture, despite the fact that technology today makes that damn near impossible? Or was he dead and buried in a shallow grave somewhere? Occam’s razor said it was the grave. The only other scenario I could envision was Brent being kidnapped and held somewhere. But why? And by whom?
Doris Donovan had given me a short list of names and phone numbers—Brent’s friends and a few coworkers. She’d also sent me along with a plastic bag of cookies, and I had already eaten five. Shame on me.
I turned left, heading south, on Ranch Road 12. The little town of Dripping Springs was eight miles ahead, but before I got there, I took another left on Fitzhugh Road. By now I had a destination in mind.
Ten minutes later, I turned on a caliche driveway between two cedar posts. Drove fifty feet and parked in a flat, grassy area.
