We Can See You

by Simon Kernick

  As he stood there, taking deep breaths to get the foul smell of Logan Harris out of his system, Jenna came out the front door of the house and walked over. ‘The house is empty. No sign of anyone.’

  ‘The body’s definitely Logan Harris,’ he told her.

  ‘There are a lot of pictures of him, his wife and their daughter inside. I didn’t realize the wife was Brook Connor.’

  Giant looked at her. ‘Should I know that name?’ If the truth was told, he’d never really looked into Harris’s wife’s background. He hadn’t even thought about the possibility that he was putting her and a child in danger. It made him feel sick. He’d let his obsession with bringing down Tony Reyes get the better of him, and now other people were paying for it.

  ‘She’s like this big, celebrity life-coach,’ said Jenna. ‘She’s on cable sometimes. I think she might even have her own show, and I know she wrote one of those self-help books that sold a lot of copies.’

  ‘Did you buy yourself a copy?’

  She grunted with derision. ‘Yeah, right. I get enough horseshit on this job without having to read it for pleasure. I’ll tell you what else is interesting. Her parents died in suspicious circumstances. It was ruled as a murder/suicide – the father bludgeoned the mother, then shot himself – but for a while Connor was under suspicion for it. She inherited a lot of money and used it to kick-start her career in life-coaching.’

  Now that was really interesting. Giant decided to look up the case notes as soon as he was able. In the meantime, he felt a little better. He looked up at the grand house. ‘Logan Harris was a tennis coach, so I wonder if this was bought with her money. How old’s the daughter?’

  ‘Young. About five or six. Cute little thing.’

  A picture of little Adalina Hernandez came into his mind and Giant felt even sicker. ‘So the two of them could be in danger.’ Or worse, he thought.

  ‘There’s no sign of any struggle inside. No obvious bloodstains. Do you think this has anything to do with Tony Reyes?’

  God, I hope not, he thought. ‘I don’t know. Doc Wallace says Harris has been dead for between eighteen and twenty-four hours. He was stabbed three times. The knife’s still sticking out of him.’ Giant had noticed several things of interest and told Jenna them now. ‘He was killed elsewhere and put in the trunk, and he’s a big guy, so I think it would have taken a couple of people to have got him in there, which points to more than one killer. But there are no defensive wounds, either. Whoever killed him got very close – either without Harris spotting them or because he knew and trusted them. It was a very quick, clean kill. I’m a bit confused about the fire, though. Come and have a look.’

  Giant switched on his flashlight and led her around to the side of the garage, where the three burned-out plastic husks that represented what was left of the trashcans were lined up against the garage’s outer wall behind a separate line of police tape. They’d be taken away later for forensic examination to confirm how the fire had started, but the smell of accelerant in the air suggested it was pretty obvious.

  Giant ran his flashlight over the trashcans and the smoke-blackened wall behind them. He turned to Jenna. ‘This fire was started deliberately. You can smell that. But if the idea was to destroy Logan Harris’s body and conceal evidence, surely it would have been far easier to have poured fuel over his body and do it that way? So it looks like someone set this up, not to conceal the crime, but to draw attention to it.’

  Jenna smiled. ‘Ah, the Mozzarella Man strikes again. They obviously taught you well in detective school, Ty. That’s definitely the rational explanation, but it doesn’t take one thing into account.’

  Giant smiled back, pleased that she was making a reference to his one and only true achievement. ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Panic. People do bad things, the consequences creep up on them, then they panic and try to cover up the crime.’ She shrugged. ‘Happens all the time.’

  Giant looked at the damaged trashcans and thought about that. He was still thinking about it when Detective Joe Padilla – the cop who’d called him at home earlier – walked over. He had a notebook in his hand and was moving too fast for it to be about anything casual.

  Giant nodded a greeting and asked him what he’d got.

  ‘A neighbour across the road’ – Padilla consulted the notebook – ‘a Mrs Welsh, says she saw one of the home owners, Brook Connor, driving her Mercedes convertible out of the property tonight, at about eight-twenty, in a real hurry. Apparently Mrs Welsh was the first person to dial nine-one-one. She was in her front room and saw the smoke rising up from here, so she went outside to take a closer look, and that’s when she heard three distinctive cracks, about ten seconds apart, that sounded like gunshots. She said she got a bit scared then and went back inside the house, dialled nine-one-one and was watching the property through her front window when she saw Ms Connor leave.’

  ‘Was Ms Connor being chased by anyone?’ asked Jenna.

  The patrolman shook his head. ‘Not according to the witness. She stayed at the window, watching the place, the whole time until we arrived. In that time no other car came out. She’s adamant. And she seems reliable.’

  ‘My kind of witness,’ said Giant. ‘Were the security gates shut when you guys arrived?’ he asked.

  ‘No. They were open. That’s why we were able to drive straight in. There was no sign of anyone here, and no sign of forced entry, either. Just the fire in the trashcans. Something else. I don’t know if you’re aware, but Mrs Welsh told me that four people lived here. Logan Harris, his wife Brook Connor, their daughter, Paige, and a nanny whose name she didn’t know.’

  ‘The house is definitely empty now,’ said Jenna. ‘And if anyone was killed in there, there’s no obvious sign of it that I can see.’

  ‘Do we know the car the nanny drives?’ Giant asked Padilla.

  Again Padilla consulted his notebook. ‘A red Honda.’

  ‘Like that one over there.’ Giant pointed to the solitary car in the driveway.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Padilla. ‘I guess that’s hers.’

  Giant tried to put together what they’d got. A dead husband; a wife leaving the house in a hurry; and a missing daughter and nanny. It wasn’t easy to come up with a narrative for what might have happened, which would usually have irritated Giant, who was a man who liked order. However, this time round he couldn’t help feeling relieved. Given what they knew so far, the obvious suspect was the wife.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, trying to keep the relief out of his voice. ‘We need to track down Brook Connor. And fast.’

  22

  ‘Never be afraid to call in favours from those who owe you.’

  The first line of Chapter Twelve of You Can Be the Hero, which dealt with the need for individuals to be assertive in handling day-to-day issues, had never been so apt as it was now for Brook.

  She knew the police would be looking for her soon. She might have cut her hair short but, with the bruise on her jaw from where Logan had struck her still very much in evidence, even after the application of plenty of make-up, she was going to stand right out. The problem was that she didn’t have too many people she could turn to. Her parents were dead, as was her husband; and, although she had made some good friends in the time she’d been back in the States, she couldn’t think of one to whom she’d entrust herself now. And she’d already burned her bridges with Angie and was no longer sure she could even trust her.

  So here she was, at close to midnight, parked next to a dumpster in the far corner of a motel parking lot set in the midst of the flat, sparsely populated stretch of coast that ran north of Monterey, waiting for Chris Cervantes. In the end she’d figured he’d be the best person to help, because he owed her for not warning her about Logan’s affair with Maria Reyes, making him at least partly responsible for everything that had happened subsequently. So she’d turned up on his doorstep once again. He hadn’t wanted to get involved, of course, but Brook could be persuasive when she wante
d to be, and she knew which buttons to press with Cervantes.

  She watched as he came out of the motel reception now, got in his car and then reversed into a space in front of one of the ground-floor rooms. He climbed out slowly, using his walking stick for leverage, and she saw him wince in pain as he stood upright. She felt for him, and was sorry she’d had to involve him once again.

  He nodded in Brook’s direction before opening the motel-room door.

  Leaving her own car where it was, Brook strode quickly across the empty courtyard, keeping her head down, and followed Cervantes inside, shutting the door behind her.

  The room was small and boxlike, decorated in various tasteless shades of brown, containing just a bed and a single chest of drawers with a cheap TV sitting on top of it.

  Cervantes handed her the key. ‘Here you go,’ he said wearily. ‘The proprietor’s an old guy and he didn’t see my car, so you can park yours here easily enough. I told him I might be joined by my girlfriend.’

  Brook managed a weak smile. ‘You wish! How long did you book the room for?’

  ‘Three nights and I paid cash. It came to two hundred and ten dollars.’

  She took a wad of cash from the money belt beneath her jacket and counted it out. ‘Thank you.’

  He looked at her with a sympathetic expression. ‘I know I keep saying it, but handing yourself in to the police and telling the truth are the most effective ways to find your daughter.’

  ‘I disagree,’ she told him. ‘If Tony Reyes wanted me dead, he would have sent around an assassin to kill me. But he didn’t. He – or someone else – sent someone around to set fire to my garage for one reason only: to draw attention to the fact that Logan was dead inside. No one tried to touch me. Which means I’m better off to them alive.’ She’d been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of hours. ‘I’m the fall guy, Mr Cervantes. If I give myself up now, I’m going to be accused of Logan’s murder, and possibly Paige’s disappearance as well. The police won’t be looking for kidnappers. They’ll be looking for Paige’s body. And maybe not that hard. And I can promise you this,’ she concluded, putting a strength into her voice that she didn’t feel, ‘I’m innocent.’

  Cervantes nodded slowly. He looked old and tired, as if the pressures of the world had squeezed all the life out of him. ‘I know, and that’s why I’m here. But please be realistic, Ms Connor.’ He gave her a look that was almost paternal. ‘What are you really going to be able to do now? You’re on your own.’

  Brook didn’t see much point in keeping it a secret. Cervantes already knew enough to sink her. ‘I’m going to approach Reyes’s wife. She’s a mother. If she knows a five-year-old girl’s missing, she might be able to put pressure on her husband.’

  ‘You think she doesn’t know what her husband’s capable of? It’s an open secret that he’s made whole families disappear. It’s not going to work.’

  ‘Right now, it’s all I’ve got. Unless you’ve got a better idea.’

  He didn’t say anything.

  ‘I didn’t think so. The point is: I believe Paige is alive. I was sent a photo of her yesterday morning, and I’m certain it was taken then. So I’m going to do everything I possibly can to find her. Is there anything you can tell me about Maria Reyes that might help?’

  Cervantes shook his head. ‘The make and licence plate of Maria Reyes’s car are in the file you took, and I believe she and her husband live in a ranch up around Carmel Valley … But that’s it. I’ve always figured the less I know about these people, the better.’ He paused. ‘Look, just do me a favour. Whatever happens to you, please don’t mention my name. I’ve got family, too, you know.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she told him. ‘I promise.’

  He nodded and limped slowly past her to the door. Then, without another word, he was gone.

  Brook listened as he reversed out and drove away, then she retrieved her own car, parked it in the same spot and got her belongings out of the back. She’d rubbed dirt on the licence plate to help obscure the number, and most of the rooms around her looked empty, so she figured she’d be safe here for a short while at least.

  Even so, there was no escaping the knowledge that she was a fugitive now and, as she closed the door behind her for what she hoped was the final time that night, she felt a wave of emotion engulf her and she collapsed on the bed, sobbing silently.

  She cried for her mom, who’d always been the rock for her to cling to; for her dad, who’d shown her nothing but unconditional love. She cried for her childhood; for innocence; for the cool, grey, faraway shores of England where she’d been happy and had had a life; for the missing child whom she’d brought up as her own; for the collapse of all her desires for a happy, stable family life after the death of her parents; even for Logan, who’d at least been there, and whom she’d loved once, in those heady, early days.

  And, most of all, she cried for the fact that right now she was all alone in the world, with enemies at every turn.

  Part Three

  23

  Saturday

  Yesterday morning

  Detective Tyrone Giant was exhausted as he and Jenna went into the Chief’s office for the 9 a.m. meeting. Neither he nor Jenna had left Harris’s home address until gone 2 a.m., and they’d both been at the station for 7.30 a.m., managing only four hours’ sleep in the meantime.

  The Chief was sitting behind his desk, looking concerned. ‘This is going to be a big one,’ he said straight away.

  He was a tall, well-groomed man, with a full head of neatly coiffed silver hair, a degree in Political Science and an eye for bigger things. In other words, exactly the kind of guy you don’t want breathing down your neck on a high-pressure case like this one, because men like the Chief only have loyalty to themselves.

  ‘I’ve got a press conference out front at nine-thirty,’ he said, as they sat down opposite him. ‘Have you seen how many media are out there?’ Giant had. A lot. ‘There’s nothing those guys like more than an attractive murder suspect,’ the Chief continued. ‘So what have you got for me to give them?’

  As the senior of the two detectives, it was Giant who apprised the Chief, first of all going through the bare facts of what they had, then moving on to the working theory that he and Jenna had decided upon a few minutes earlier. ‘It looks as if at some point on Thursday night, Brook Connor killed her husband by stabbing him to death. The murder weapon matches a knife that’s missing from a set in the family kitchen. It’s been sent for testing and we should have fingerprint results back later today. At the moment her stepdaughter, Paige Harris, aged five, is missing, as is her nanny, Rosa Fernandez, aged forty-nine. The last known sighting of Paige and Fernandez was on Wednesday afternoon when Rosa picked Paige up from kindergarten.’

  ‘I just spoke to the principal at the kindergarten,’ said Jenna. ‘She said everything was perfectly normal with Paige and Rosa on Wednesday. Apparently Rosa’s a very reliable nanny who’s been working for the family for two years, and Paige is a sweet, normal kid, popular with everyone.’

  ‘Do you have photos of the two of them?’ the Chief asked.

  Giant nodded and passed across the desk two blown-up copies of photos they’d taken from the house the previous night.

  ‘Wow! She’s a beauty,’ said the Chief, staring at the one of Paige, having barely glanced at the photo of Rosa. ‘The public are going to want to know what’s happened to her. Have you got any leads on that front?’

  Giant shook his head. ‘There were no obvious signs of foul play at the house, and Rosa Fernandez’s car’s still there, so it’s unlikely she took off of her own accord.’

  ‘The principal told me that Ms Connor, the stepmother, called the kindergarten on Thursday morning to say Paige was sick and wouldn’t be in that day,’ said Jenna.

  The implication was obvious. Brook Connor had been buying herself time. But it still left plenty of unanswered questions, the most important of which was: if something had already happened to Paige by the
time Connor contacted the kindergarten, why was it another twelve hours or so before her husband was killed? It bothered Giant, because it didn’t seem like a case of a violent argument that had gone too far, which meant it was far more likely to have something to do with Tony Reyes.

  The Chief put down the photo of Paige and gave him and Jenna a puzzled look. ‘We’ve got a fire started deliberately, reports of gunshots and Brook Connor driving out the gate in a hurry, but according to what you’re saying, the husband had already been dead for close to a day.’

  Giant shrugged. ‘It’s possible Connor was trying to burn her husband’s body to get rid of the evidence and the fire got out of hand, but we can’t explain the gunshots. A single shell casing from a small nine-mill pistol was found by the Forensics team in her bedroom, but no bullet or bullet hole, so it wasn’t a failed suicide attempt. The bedroom window was open, so Connor was probably firing at something or someone at the back of the property, but there’s no sign that anyone was injured, and Forensics are still looking for the bullet.’

  ‘I don’t think we’re going to know for sure what happened until we pick Connor up,’ said Jenna. ‘We’ve got an APB out for her and the car she’s driving, but we’re going to need to make a media appeal.’