A Tooth for a Tooth

by Ben Rehder

  26

  It wasn’t even eleven o’clock in the morning, but I had no idea what we would do with the rest of the day. We’d learned a lot, but now what?

  If Armbruster was willing to talk to the police, we’d simply turn everything over to them, as I’d done during my interview with Randy Wolfe after I’d shot Nathaniel Tate. But Armbruster wasn’t willing to talk, so it was a moot point for now.

  “You were great in there,” I said. “That was smart to use the Brandi Sloan situation against him.”

  “Thanks,” Mia said.

  “Think we can believe him?” I asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  We were in the car again, moving slowly in MoPac traffic.

  “The part about Jankowski threatening his nephew seemed real, and he might be making all the rest up because of it. Then again, in that case, why would he make up a story that still implicated Jankowski?”

  Mia didn’t say anything.

  I said, “Or maybe the part about the threat is a lie.”

  We both knew that we had to assume Jankowski had made the threat. He had probably been at the hospital to visit Nathaniel Tate—who’d been taken there after I’d shot him—and Jankowski decided to visit Armbruster on the same trip. One-stop shopping. And if the threat was real, we couldn’t tell the cops what we’d learned from Armbruster without placing the nephew at risk.

  I said, “If he’s telling the truth, I figure there’s about a fifty-fifty chance Brandi Sloan is okay, but hiding out, and it was probably Jankowski who insisted she take off.”

  Mia nodded. I didn’t need to say what the other fifty percent was. If Jankowski had had Brent Donovan killed, and he’d also tried to kill Lennox Armbruster and me, why not add one more person to the list? Sure, Brandi Sloan had been his lover, but that didn’t mean he’d be willing to go to prison for her.

  “If she’s alive and we can find her, we can probably break this one open,” I said. “I think she’ll be smart enough to understand her choices are limited if she wants to live a normal life from here on out.”

  Mia took the Enfield exit.

  “Of course, that depends on how much she participated,” I said.

  I’m no idiot, and by now I’d noticed Mia wasn’t actively participating in this conversation.

  “Want to grab an early lunch?” I asked.

  “I’m not very hungry, and I’ve had a headache all morning that won’t go away.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I feel like I just need to go home and lie down,” she said.

  “I have that doctor’s appointment at one o’clock,” I said.

  I’d been wondering if she might want to come with me, to ask questions and understand exactly what we were facing. But she hadn’t raised the idea and I hadn’t asked. I didn’t want to ask. I wanted her to come up with the idea herself, which would indicate that she wasn’t completely defeated by what I’d told her.

  She didn’t reply.

  “As far as the surgery itself, it’s minor—an outpatient procedure. Recovery is quick and there are rarely any complications.”

  I liked this guy. He seemed intelligent and competent. His reputation, from what I could gather online, was immaculate. He had lots of experience, the latest technology, and an excellent support staff. His success rate was very good. He even looked like a doctor, which was meaningless and yet somehow comforting. I judged him to be nearly sixty. He had silver hair and wore wire-rimmed glasses.

  He asked, “Do you have a partner right now? A significant other?”

  “Yes. A fiancée. Mia.”

  “When are you getting married?”

  “Next year.”

  “I assume Mia wants children, which is why you’re here.”

  “She does, yes.”

  “How many?”

  “I’m not sure. At least one. Probably more if they’re running a special.”

  He chuckled. “That’s something the two of you should discuss, because the answer to that question could impact your decision.”

  “How so?”

  “Have the two of you talked about in vitro fertilization?”

  “We have not,” I said.

  “For some couples who want a single child—some—that can be a better alternative to a vasectomy reversal. Not always, but sometimes. Have you done any research about IVF?”

  “A little bit, but not much,” I said, feeling less and less prepared for this appointment.

  “It can have a higher success rate, but it’s also more expensive. Quite a bit more. You’ll want to see if your insurance covers it. Another potential drawback is that the sperm-retrieval techniques can limit the chance of success for a reversal if IVF doesn’t work out. I’ll give you some materials that discuss all of these factors and might help you decide how you want to proceed.”

  “That would be great.”

  “How old is Mia?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Is she on birth control?”

  “The pill, yes.”

  “How long has she been on it?”

  “I’m not sure. Pretty long.”

  “How is her reproductive health?”

  “No problems. All good.”

  “No fertility problems that you’re aware of?”

  “Nope.”

  “And her health in general?”

  “Excellent.”

  “Has she ever been pregnant?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  He grinned. “You’d be surprised what some people learn about their partners when they come to see me, but I’ll take that as a no. Have either of you ever had an STD—as far as you know? It can affect fertility.”

  “No, but not for lack of trying. I mean on my part, not Mia’s.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “Frankly, I couldn’t tell you if she’s ever had, uh, anything or not,” I said. “I guess she could have a long time ago. I doubt she’d tell me about that if it wasn’t, you know, contagious. Why would she want to talk about that?”

  “Oh, I understand. Many people don’t. These are just general questions that allow me to get a sense of the situation.”

  “And it’s not like it’s something to be ashamed of.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

  “You’re not the first person in this room to do that,” he said. “If I tell you there’s no reason to be nervous, will that help?”

  “Probably not.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said. “But it was worth a shot.”

  “Mind if I ask how many reversals you’ve done? That might soothe my nerves a bit.”

  “At this point, thousands,” he said. “More than many surgeons, but not quite enough to make the Guinness book of records.”

  “Still, that’s a lot,” I said.

  “I’ve been doing this for a long time,” he said. “Since you were a teenager, or thereabouts. If you’re having second thoughts about the procedure, you could always—”

  “No, I’m good,” I said. “No second thoughts.”

  “How is Mia’s state of mind right now?”

  I think he somehow sensed he wasn’t getting the full story.

  “Well, honestly, not so great, because she only learned about all of this yesterday afternoon.”

  He tried to keep a poker face, but I could tell that he was surprised.

  I said, “That was stupid, huh? Keeping it from her?”

  “Well, I always encourage partners to be totally open and honest with each other,” he said. “That starts with deciding whether you both want to have children, how many, a timeframe, and then how to go about it. The process is
a lot less stressful when you’re working together as a team and have a plan. Going forward, you and Mia should probably focus on communicating as much as possible.”

  “Meaning me, specifically,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t hurt. May I ask why you didn’t discuss it earlier with her?”

  “That’s a good question,” I said. “So good that I’m not even sure I know the answer.”

  In the parking lot, I called Randy Wolfe and had to leave a voicemail.

  “Hey, it’s Roy Ballard. Just wondering where your investigation stands. Hoping you aren’t planning to arrest me anytime soon for shooting Nathaniel Tate, because I have tickets to Hamilton next week and I’d be totally bummed to miss it. Also, any sign of Brandi Sloan? In all seriousness, I would appreciate any news on her. Thanks.”

  I hung up and sat quietly in the van for a moment.

  Mia was at home, possibly still sleeping. Or maybe she was awake and wasn’t in the mood to have me home. Good chance of that, seeing as how she hadn’t texted to see how the appointment went. Instead of waiting, I texted her.

  How’s your head?

  Waited five minutes for a response, but didn’t get one.

  I drove to a nearby mall and parked in a remote area of the lot, with no other vehicles within fifty feet. Then I sat right there in the van and spent a solid hour online with my laptop. The subject of my research: Brandi Sloan. My objective, of course, was to figure out where she might be. Or, worst case, where her body might be. Mia had come up with the brilliant and correct blackmail theory, and now I felt it was up to me to bring this thing home.

  I started with family and friends on Facebook.

  Think some otherwise honest people won’t deceive the police and go to great lengths to protect a loved one? Imagine that your daughter comes to you, crying, and says she accidentally got mixed up with some bad people. It wasn’t her fault, you understand, but now she thinks she’s in danger and doesn’t know what to do or where to go. The worst part is, the police might come looking for her and she doesn’t think they’ll believe the truth about what really happened. That’s because the bad people—powerful people—might try to frame her. They’ll blame everything on her. What would you do to protect your little girl? How much would you spend? How many lies would you tell? I had no idea if this type of scenario explained Brandi’s disappearance, but it was worth exploring.

  Her younger sister owned an art gallery in Ruidoso, and her older brother was a software designer in Georgetown, about an hour north of Austin. Her parents lived in Spicewood, a small community northwest of town, along the south banks of Lake Travis, well upstream from the main basin.

  The brother, sister, and father were not on Facebook, as far as I could tell, but her mother was. Her name was Lucinda Sloan, a nice-looking, athletic, blond woman in her mid-fifties. It appeared that most or all of Lucinda’s posts were set to Public, meaning they were viewable by people who were not her friends. She posted frequently and received many comments from a wide circle of friends. She was a runner and a yoga enthusiast, and she liked to post photos from her workouts, with messages encouraging a healthy lifestyle. The photos were tasteful and not at all the “look at me” type, but I couldn’t help noticing she had the physique you would expect of a person decades younger.

  But as I scanned her posts, I immediately noticed that something wasn’t right.

  Lucinda Sloan hadn’t posted about her daughter’s disappearance. Not one word. Several of Lucinda’s friends had written pleas for assistance in tracking down Brandi, and Lucinda had shared those posts and thanked them profusely for their efforts, but she hadn’t posted about it herself.

  I guess there was a small chance Lucinda had created a post and forgotten to make it Public, but frankly I was skeptical. One of her Facebook-savvy friends would have reminded her to change the setting so it could be shared and viewed widely. Was Lucinda just too distraught or otherwise distracted to have thought of it? Did it mean anything? Did she know where Brandi was? If she did, I could assume that it might not have occurred to her that she needed to behave exactly as she would if Brandi had truly gone missing.

  Or maybe it meant nothing.

  I sent her a friend request from my fake Linda Patterson Facebook profile, which I used for instances exactly like this, and moved on.

  I had reviewed Brandi’s social media accounts four days ago, after Lennox Armbruster had stopped at her house the night before. Now I took a fresh look at her Facebook account. I didn’t see anything new from her, of course, but she’d been tagged by friends in several posts and those showed up on her profile page. Those friends’ posts were similar to the ones written by Lucinda’s friends—pleas to help find Brandi. I checked those friends’ profiles and from what I could see, all of them were genuinely concerned about Brandi and desperate to find her. I sent Brandi a friend request, too.

  Next, I jumped over to the county tax records website for a moment. When Tracy Turner had gone missing, I’d managed to find her by checking properties her father owned. During an ugly divorce, he’d hidden Tracy with his brother in an unoccupied house. Maybe something similar was happening here. Maybe Brandi was hiding in a property owned by her parents. Except I learned there was nothing on the tax rolls other than the home they owned in Spicewood. I checked several surrounding counties and found nothing.

  While I was on that site, I checked to see if Damon Tate owned any property. He did: A house in south Austin, in a neighborhood off Stassney Lane, near Garrison Park. I noted the address and tried not to think about him anymore right now. It wasn’t easy, knowing that he might seek revenge at any moment.

  Forget about him. Focus.

  What about Brandi’s sister in Ruidoso? Ingrid, the art gallery owner. She presented an intriguing possibility. Could it be that obvious? Brandi could have hopped a bus and been in Ruidoso less than 12 hours later. Just hang out at sis’s place until everything blows over. Talk to an attorney. Figure out the best way to proceed.

  But wait a second. Ingrid would have to come to Austin, right? How would it look if her sister was missing and she didn’t come to town? So I needed to find out if she had or not. If she had, Brandi would have Ingrid’s house to herself while Ingrid was in Texas, pretending to look for her sister.

  I clicked over to a subscription-based telephone directory that was helpful on occasion. Most phone directories were riddled with inaccurate or outdated information, but I’d found one in particular that was correct maybe half of the time. That was about as good as they got. And it even included cell phone numbers, which was a must nowadays.

  In less than five seconds, I had a number for Ingrid Sloan. Was it the right number? Should I call it now or wait? While I was trying to decide, I got a text from Mia.

  Still at the doctor?

  Strange that I experienced so much joy from a simple text, but that was the current state of affairs. She wasn’t ignoring me. She was showing some interest in the situation.

  No, sitting in a parking lot, doing research. Didn’t want to wake you. How is your headache?

  She replied: All gone. How was the doc?

  I said: Fine. We have a lot to talk about.

  She said, k.

  Not very enthusiastic. I said: Ready to give up on me yet?

  A minute later: Of course not. You know better.

  I’ll admit it: There are times when I’m a sensitive guy. Right now, I was tearing up. Not sure why.

  I should have told you sooner, I said.

  True, she said.

  I had to laugh.

  I sent: xo.

  She said: Coming home soon?

  Not yet. There’s something else I need to do.

  27

  The home was on a street called Turtle Creek Boulevard, which was way too cute of an address for a man like Damon
Tate. The house needed paint and a new roof, just for starters. This guy was in construction? He owned the most neglected home on the block, by far. Maybe that’s why he was willing to do Jankowski’s dirty work; he needed the money. Should’ve simply asked for a raise.

  I was relieved to see that his dirty Chevy truck was parked in the driveway. Made sense, though. He wouldn’t be at work while his brother was in the ICU, but he wouldn’t want to hang out at the hospital all day.

  I drove past, then turned around at the end of the block and parked in front of a home that looked quiet, with no vehicles in the driveway. There were quite a few vehicles parked along the curb on this block, so the van blended in just fine.

  I waited. It was 3:14 in the afternoon. I knew he might not go anywhere. No problem. I had plenty of patience when so much was on the line. Worst case, the sun would set and then I could take action.

  But I got lucky. Forty-seven minutes after I’d parked, Damon Tate emerged from his house, climbed into his truck, and drove away.

  I followed discreetly.

  East on Turtle Creek.

  North on Emerald Forest.

  East on Stassney.

  Then a left into a retail center, where he parked in an angled spot in front of a place called the Rusty Cannon Pub.

  Perfect. I parked closer to the Rite-Away Pharmacy and watched. Tate got out of his truck and went inside. I gave it five minutes, then I got out of the van and walked casually in the direction of his truck. Fortunately, there were vehicles on both side of the Chevy to shield me from view.

  A few more steps and I reached the tailgate of his truck. I’d learned over the years to always act like you know exactly what you’re doing and you have every right to do it. I squatted down, rolled onto my back, and shimmied underneath the rear of the truck. It took me less than five seconds to find a good out-of-the-way spot to slap a magnetic GPS tracker. Then I was back on my feet, returning to the van. Quick. Smooth. Nobody saw a thing.