We Can See You

by Simon Kernick

  ‘I’ll have one of my people run a trace on the number they called you from,’ said Angie as she inspected the contents of the cell, ‘but unless they’re fools, it’s going to be a burner.’

  ‘I also think Logan might have been involved in some way. There are four calls on that cell from the kidnappers’ number, but he only told me about three of them. It’s hard to imagine he’d be a party to the kidnapping of his own child, but …’ She let the sentence hang in the air, unfinished.

  ‘I know Logan pretty well, Brook, and that doesn’t sound like him. He wasn’t the most perfect guy in the world, but he did love his daughter.’

  ‘Maybe so, but he was hiding something. And he punched me in the face and left me unconscious at the bottom of a ravine.’

  ‘It’s possible they were blackmailing him somehow. Does – did – Logan have any enemies that you know of?’

  Brook shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. He was just a tennis instructor.’

  ‘He was also a tennis instructor who had an affair with you. I know it’s not something you want to think about, but could he have been having an affair with someone else?’

  Brook had thought about it plenty of times. It was why she’d hired Chris Cervantes. ‘It’s possible, I guess, but if it was like an angry husband or something, then surely he’d have taken out Logan. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble and make a five-year-old child suffer, would he?’

  ‘It depends on who that person is,’ said Angie. ‘Some people do crazy things, Brook. But the point is this: only two explanations for what happened to Logan make sense. One, you killed him and you’re making up this whole story to deflect suspicion away from you. Or two, someone’s setting you to take the rap for the murder of your husband, and potentially your daughter and the nanny, too.’

  The thought that someone could do this to her made Brook feel nauseous. And confused, too. She was certain she didn’t have any real enemies – not ones who’d go to such lengths to destroy her. She’d worked hard in life to stay on the right side of people. She ran her business ethically. She wrote books, for Christ’s sake! How could she inflame in someone the kind of passions necessary to kidnap a five-year-old girl? It had to be something to do with Logan. Or there was a third explanation that they hadn’t thought of yet.

  ‘Right now, the only people who can help you find Paige are the police. As your attorney, I strongly advise you to hand yourself in and tell them your story. I will do everything I can to stop them pressing charges, but I can’t guarantee anything.’

  ‘You think they’ll charge me?’

  ‘It’s possible. But I should be able to get you bail.’

  Brook didn’t like the sound of ‘should be’. If she went to the police station voluntarily, it was possible – maybe even probable – that she wouldn’t be emerging again. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t hand myself in. Not with Paige out there alone. I need to find out what’s happened to her.’

  ‘The police can do that a lot better than you can, Brook. And if you don’t report what happens, it will make you look even more guilty of Logan’s murder.’

  ‘Don’t turn me in, Angie. Please.’ She knew her voice was shaking and hated herself for it.

  ‘I can’t. Everything you say to me is confidential. But remember that every hour you remain free now increases your chances of being charged with murder. Sleep on it if you have to, but your husband’s body is in the trunk of your car, so now’s not the time for long contemplation. We’ll speak first thing in the morning and discuss what we’re going to do.’

  Brook nodded. ‘I understand.’ She pointed to the tape-recorder on the island. ‘Can I borrow that? If the kidnappers call back, I want to be able to record the call. It might help prove my story.’

  ‘Good idea. Here, I’ve got a spare I always carry.’ Angie took it out of her purse and handed it to Brook.

  They looked at each other. Angie gave her a reassuring smile, but there was something a little bit forced about it. Although Brook had known her ever since she’d got together officially with Logan, they’d never been great friends. They’d had Angie and her boyfriend, Bruce, over to dinner a couple of times, and had been to dinner at their place in Half Moon Bay, but a year back Angie and Bruce had split up and the dinner dates had ground to a halt. The point was that Angie had been Logan’s friend, not Brook’s, and it struck Brook as she walked her to the front door and watched her leave that she might have made a mistake by calling her.

  Maybe Angie didn’t have her best interests at heart after all.

  15

  Brook slept surprisingly well. It must have been exhaustion, but she didn’t wake up until gone 8 a.m., having slept right through the night.

  For those blissful first few seconds of consciousness she had no memory of her current predicament and, as she opened her eyes and saw the sunlight streaming around the edges of the blackout blinds, it felt like another ordinary May day in California.

  And then – bang, it hit like a sledgehammer. Her husband was dead in the garage; her daughter had been abducted; and very, very soon she was going to be a murder suspect.

  She sat up fast in bed. Both her cellphone and the kidnappers’ were on the bedside table. The kidnappers hadn’t rung, and she doubted if they ever would now, although, as it was her only link with them, she was determined to keep the cellphone with her at all times. She’d put her own cell on silent and saw that she had a missed call from Angie at 7.35. Brook knew that Angie was going to keep putting the pressure on her to go to the police. She also knew it was by far the most logical step forward.

  Except for one overriding issue. And that was that the evidence really was stacked against her. Logan was dead in the trunk of her car. He’d been stabbed with one of their kitchen knives. Brook’s DNA was bound to be on it somewhere. It wouldn’t be hard to create a story in which she and Logan had had an argument, he’d punched her and she’d stabbed him. For all anyone knew, she could have killed Paige and Rosa, too. Unless one or both of them suddenly appeared to back up her story of the kidnapping – and the more time that passed, the less likely that was proving to be – Brook would be the prime suspect in their disappearances. She’d be under suspicion for three murders. There was no way she’d avoid charges, let alone post bail.

  No, for the moment she was on her own, which meant it was time to go to work.

  And she knew exactly where to start.

  Ninety minutes later she parked her car on a quiet residential street in east Monterey and got out. Earlier that morning she’d googled how to find trackers on a car and had searched hers inside and out for one, but had found nothing.

  Chris Cervantes, the private detective she’d hired three weeks earlier, was a divorcee who lived alone and used his house as his office. ‘No point spending your money, when I don’t need to,’ he’d told her when she’d first visited him there to talk through her concerns about her husband, and it had seemed a valid enough point.

  The house itself was a small two-bed place in need of a lick of paint, older than the ones around it, and set back in the shade behind a couple of orange trees on a private, corner plot. As she walked up to the door, Brook was relieved to see Cervantes’s car – an oldish white Dodge Avenger – parked in the driveway, which meant he was almost certainly home.

  She thought about ringing the doorbell, but decided against it. He was clearly avoiding her and he had a camera above the front door, so it was going to need to be a surprise visit.

  The room he used to meet clients in was at the front of the house, facing out onto the orange trees, and Brook couldn’t see from the angle she was at whether or not he was in there, so she crouched down and crept beneath the window, then continued through an unlocked gate at the side of the house and into a scruffy back yard. It occurred to her that, rather worryingly for a PI, Cervantes didn’t seem to have much in the way of security. This feeling wasn’t alleviated when she discovered that his back door was unlocked.

  She hes
itated before opening it, as it occurred to her that the reason she hadn’t heard from him for the past few days might be because something bad had happened to him, in which case, if she went inside and found his body, it would probably make things even worse for her.

  In the end, she stepped inside anyway. She was about to call his name when he appeared out of a side door, leaning on his walking stick and dressed only in a T-shirt and underpants, both of which had seen better days. His hair was a mess and it was clear he hadn’t been out of bed long.

  The moment he saw her, Cervantes jumped back in shock, banging his head against the wall and only just managing to stay upright. ‘Jesus!’

  Brook eyed him coolly. ‘We need to talk.’

  He put up his free hand as if he was scared she was going to hit him. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I should have called. I was going to refund your money. I’ll write you a cheque now.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  He looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I need some answers from you. Why don’t you throw some pants on and we can talk in your office?’

  ‘This isn’t a good time right now,’ said Cervantes.

  ‘It’s not a good time for me, either. Which is why we need to talk.’

  Cervantes gave a resigned sigh. ‘Give me five minutes.’

  She waited in the hallway while he went back into the room he’d just come from, and when he reappeared a few minutes later he’d shaved and was dressed in a suit and tie, with his hair combed.

  At one time Cervantes would have been a good-looking guy, and he still had the vestiges of those looks, with a full head of black hair, touched with only the faintest hint of grey, and brooding dark eyes. But his face was that of a heavy drinker, with clusters of broken capillaries across his deeply-lined olive skin, and this – coupled with the limp that he carried from an old police injury – gave him the appearance of an old man.

  He didn’t offer her anything to drink but instead walked straight into his office, leaving Brook to follow. It was clear he didn’t want her there, and that simply piqued her curiosity even more.

  She took a seat opposite him, across an ancient wooden desk piled high with files that didn’t look like they were in any order. Cervantes definitely needed to improve the way he marketed his business, but then maybe he was going for the shabby, Colombo-style maverick-gumshoe look, in which case he’d got it down to a tee. But Brook remembered that when she’d first met him he’d had an air that suggested that, where detective work was concerned, he knew exactly what he was doing.

  So it was something of a surprise when he told her he hadn’t been able to find out anything useful about Logan’s movements during the time he’d been tracking him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he continued. ‘That’s just the way it goes sometimes.’

  It seemed a curious turn of phrase for him to be sorry he’d found out nothing untoward about a client’s husband, when that client suspected the husband was up to no good. Cervantes didn’t look very happy about it, either. He looked like he wished Brook would get up and walk straight out his front door, never to return.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘In the last forty-eight hours my life has turned upside down. I’m in a lot of trouble. So is my husband. And I need to know the reason why’

  Cervantes fidgeted in his seat for a couple of seconds. ‘Is your husband all right?’ he asked.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Brook said, aware that the more detail she gave him, the more vulnerable she made herself.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter right now. I just need to know what you found out.’

  Cervantes took a deep breath and stared at the ceiling. ‘Look, I don’t want to be involved in any of this. I’m sorry your life’s in trouble, but it’s nothing I can help with.’

  ‘I’m not leaving until you tell me what you’ve found out.’

  Cervantes opened a desk drawer and took out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit one, not bothering to ask if she minded him smoking, and made little effort to avoid blowing the smoke at her.

  Fair enough, she thought. It was one way of trying to get rid of her but, like the others, it wouldn’t work. Brook could be stubborn when she needed to be.

  They stared at each other for a while and Cervantes broke first. ‘Okay,’ he said at last, looking at her through the smoke. ‘You want to know. I’ll tell you. I think your husband’s having an affair. And if I’m right, he’s picked probably the most dangerous woman in the whole state to have it with. I’m going to give you a piece of advice now, Ms Connor. If I were you, I’d put some distance between you and Mr Harris. Kick him out. Do anything. But get rid of him. He’s toxic.’

  Brook leaned forward in her chair. ‘Tell me about this woman.’

  Cervantes shook his head. ‘The less you know about it, the better it is for you. And, more importantly, the better it is for me.’ He pulled on the cigarette. ‘Do not get involved in this, Ms Connor. It really won’t end well.’

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ said Brook, knowing she had to lay her cards on the table. ‘My husband’s dead, and our daughter’s been abducted.’

  Cervantes frowned. ‘Then it means he’s found out.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Someone I don’t even want to mention by name. Have you been to the police?’

  Brook shook her head. ‘No. Whoever killed Logan framed me for his murder. That’s why I’m in so much trouble. I have to find Paige, Mr Cervantes. She’s only five years old.’ She took a smiling photo of her daughter from her purse and, unable to look at it herself, pushed it across the desk so that it was directly under his nose.

  Cervantes didn’t want to look at it, but couldn’t seem to help himself. It was clear his self-interested side was having a wrestling match with his conscience, and it was turning into a close fight. He didn’t say or do anything for a good thirty seconds or so. Finally he picked up the photo and examined it, before pushing it back across the desk to Brook. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said. ‘Right from the start.’

  She told him and, by the time she’d finished, he’d lit another cigarette.

  ‘Now it’s your turn,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you know.’

  ‘On one condition. Whatever happens, you keep me out of this.’

  Brook nodded. ‘Done.’

  ‘The woman your husband was having an affair with is called Maria Reyes. Now Ms Reyes’s husband is a very high-powered Mexican-American businessman who’s suspected of having strong connections with a major Mexican drugs cartel. And when I say “suspected”, I mean that he is actually a senior member of the cartel himself, although no one’s managed to prove it yet. However, one thing is beyond doubt. You do not cross Tony Reyes under any circumstances. Certain people have done so, of course. There was an assistant DA down in LA who was trying to set up a case against him, and who ended up dead in a hotel room with a prostitute. There was a financial advisor who fleeced Reyes out of some money that he was supposedly laundering, and who disappeared without a trace, along with his wife. And that’s the thing. Bad things happen to people who cross Tony Reyes. And sometimes to their whole families, too. He’s the devil incarnate, Ms Connor. He has a ruthlessness that most ordinary people can’t even comprehend.’

  Brook felt a cold sweat on her forehead as she listened to Cervantes speaking. The thought that Logan could have got himself entangled with the wife of a man who killed off whole families made her feel sick. ‘Are you absolutely sure they were having an affair?’

  He nodded. ‘As you know, I had a tracker on your husband’s car and last Thursday I followed him down the coast to Andrew Molera State Park. I watched the two of them walk together on the beach down there. They were definitely intimate. I didn’t realize who she was at the time, but I got an old colleague of mine to run the plates, and that’s when I found out. That same colleague told me to keep well away from her, which was the reason I didn’t return
your calls. I was trying to work out whether I should tell you I’d found nothing, and risk you getting caught up in the whole thing, or tell you the truth and advise you to leave your husband before Tony Reyes found out about him.’

  ‘And in the end, you did nothing.’ It wasn’t a question.

  He sighed. ‘No. I did nothing. I’m good at that.’

  ‘And now my daughter’s missing. How do you feel about that?’ Brook sat back in the chair and wiped the sweat from her brow, experiencing a potent mixture of anger and panic.

  ‘I feel sorry about it. I really do.’

  ‘Do you think Tony Reyes is the one behind her abduction?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t sound like his MO to organize a whole complicated kidnap and ransom drop. If he’d found out your husband was sleeping with his wife, it’s very unlikely he’d kill him quickly. He’d either have Logan abducted and taken some place where he could spend time taking him apart piece by piece. Or, if he was feeling particularly vengeful, he’d have all three of you abducted, and then make Logan watch you and Paige die before finishing him off.’

  Brook felt sick, as the full enormity of what she was up against took hold. ‘Would he really do something like that?’

  Cervantes gave her a look that said, You really don’t understand. ‘These people take murder to a whole new level, Ms Connor. It’s one of the reasons they’re so successful. But Tony Reyes is first and foremost a businessman, so it could be that he had Logan killed and then sets you up for the fall. That way, no suspicion settles on him. I’ll be honest, if he’s got Paige, then I …’ He paused. ‘Then I don’t think she’s still alive.’

  The words knocked Brook sideways, but she held herself together. She couldn’t lose hope. Not yet.

  ‘But it’s still possible Reyes has nothing to do with this,’ continued Cervantes hurriedly. ‘Last Friday, the day after I saw your husband and Mrs Reyes at Molera State Park, and before I’d had it confirmed who she was, I was parked at the tennis courts where your husband coaches. As he was getting back in his car after the session, a guy in a suit appeared out of nowhere and got in the car with him. They talked inside for seven minutes, according to my watch, and it looked as if, during the course of the conversation, the guy handed Logan something, which they were both looking at. Then the guy got out and walked into the park next door, so I didn’t get a chance to see what car he was driving. I did get a photo of him, though.’ He dug out a cardboard file from the pile on the desk and leafed through it until he found what he was looking for. ‘Do you recognize him?’ he asked.