Final Approach

by Rachel Brady

  I used as low a voice as I could. “Your money’s back in town, but it’s not at the motel. There’s no way I’ll go there alone.”

  “Where is it?” I heard his voice through the walls and the phone at the same time.

  I named an intersection I remembered from my earlier super center run. There was a gas station on the corner. “I hid it in the shrubbery behind the station’s dumpster. Now please let Jeannie go.”

  “It better be there.”

  “See for yourself.” I hung up.

  Immediately a dialogue erupted in the living room. One man asked if they should take Jeannie. The other said not to be stupid. The TV switched off, keys jingled, and the front door thumped closed. It was 8:20.

  The man who stayed to baby-sit told Jeannie it was his lucky day. I cracked the closet door open to hear better.

  “Thanks to your friend, we got some alone time, beautiful. A chance for some fun.”

  A car door thudded in the carport below us. An engine started.

  “I bet the only time you have that kind of fun is when you’re alone,” Jeannie said.

  I crawled out of the closet toward the window and parted the curtains slightly. The sedan reversed down the drive. I squinted at its front plate and flipped open Kurt’s phone.

  “A drunk keeps circling the Shell station,” I told the 9-1-1 operator. She took my description of the car and its tag number. I figured the cops and Trish’s minion would pull up to the station around the same time. Even if my idea didn’t work, at least he was out of the house.

  “Get off…Hey! Get the hell off me!” Jeannie yelled on the other side of the office door. She thudded into the wall. I scanned the office for something to use as a weapon and grabbed a brass paperweight shaped like a cube.

  On the other side of the door, Jeannie’s protests grew muffled and more distant as he pushed her down the hall, toward the bedroom.

  I opened the door. She was kicking and squirming on Kosh’s bed, pinned beneath a stocky man in a sweater and jeans. All I could see of her were flailing legs. I hurried toward them, ready to drive the paperweight into his skull.

  When I got to the doorway, Jeannie spotted me, but her attacker’s face was buried in her neck. His hand was already inside her blouse. He pulled it free and reached between her legs. I showed Jeannie the paperweight in my hand. She pointed toward the dresser. The pervert had set down his gun.

  I tossed the paperweight toward Jeannie’s open hand and grabbed the gun.

  “Get the hell off her.”

  The man whirled, and Jeannie hammered him in the face with the brass weight.

  He yelled and reached for his forehead. Blood streaked down the back of his hand. Jeannie shoved out from under him. She drove the weight into his crotch and he doubled over.

  “You goddamn son of a—” she blasted him in the side of the head, “—bitch!”

  She hurried toward me, pulling at her blouse until it covered her again. I kept the gun pointed at the bloody figure writhing on the bed and told Jeannie to go in the office and bring my bag.

  “Get your own bag,” she said, taking the gun from me. I was afraid to let it go, but I did. It wasn’t the time to argue.

  “You wanted to get naked so bad? Get naked now!” She pointed the gun at her attacker. “Do it.”

  I went back to the office closet.

  “Start with your pants,” Jeannie ordered behind me.

  I grabbed the bag with Trish’s money and took the laptop off the desk.

  When I got back, the man was halfway out of his jeans.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “Next, the tightie whities, and make it fast, you little bastard.”

  I tugged her arm, but it was as if I weren’t there.

  “Come on. You couldn’t wait to take them off a minute ago.”

  “Let’s go,” I said again.

  She bristled. I wondered if she’d shoot him down naked, right there. His nose, mouth, and cheek were wet with blood and Kosh’s expensive silk charmeuse bedding was stained now too. He pulled down his underwear like she said, exposing himself.

  Jeannie laughed. “How can he show that thing around?” she asked me. “Take off your ugly sweater and get off the bed.”

  I whispered. “What are you doing?”

  She ignored me.

  Completely naked, he slid off the bed and looked at us. His torso and thighs were white, untouched by sun. Blood from his face dripped onto what little chest hair he had. He was still wearing socks.

  Jeannie said it was time to go.

  We backed out of the hallway and she kept the gun pointed at the naked, bloody guy as he emerged and shuffled to the living room.

  “Go out on the porch,” Jeannie said, “way over there, on the left.” She indicated the corner of the porch furthest away from the front door.

  “Lady, I’m naked.”

  “Asshole, I know.”

  She fluttered her hand toward the door as if hurrying a slow-poke child, and he went outside onto the porch like she said.

  Jeannie followed him out, stopping to turn the lock on the front door as she passed it. I went out behind her, carrying the bag and computer, and hustled down the front steps as fast as I could. The front door closed, and I heard Jeannie’s quick steps behind me.

  “Hurry!” she ordered. “He might be crazy enough to chase us.”

  ***

  Jeannie drove while I searched the laptop. There weren’t many folders and it wasn’t running any software beyond the standard load. I nosed around in the e-mail application but only found spam. Contents of the Deleted Items and Sent Items folders had been purged. The last websites visited were news sites. I found a link to a web mail application, but got no further than its password screen. The laptop was clean.

  “There’s one,” Jeannie said, flicking on the turn signal. I’d told her to find a place with wireless Internet access. She exited the highway and drove toward an upscale bistro situated near a bustling strip mall.

  Inside, smells of croissants, quiche, and gourmet coffee were intoxicating. It had been eighteen hours since I’d eaten. Jeannie ordered for us while I found a private table and connected to the Internet.

  I opened a search engine and typed Data Retrieval Houston. Several hits had promise. Nine years experience recovering data from damaged hard drives. Express data recovery nationwide. Recover losses due to hardware or software failure. And—my favorite—Recover losses due to human error. Scud’s hard drive was next to me, in my pack, and I was determined to find what he was hiding. I scribbled an address and closed the laptop as Jeannie returned with a To Go sack.

  My cell phone rang. It was Richard finally calling back.

  I flipped open my phone. “Where have you been?” Immediately, a series of beeps told me my phone’s battery was dying.

  “The police have been here forever, asking about the car,” he said. “I couldn’t call.”

  Suddenly I remembered. I’d left Richard’s car at the airport—now a crime-scene.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, although somehow the car seemed slightly irrelevant, compared to the rest.

  Jeannie pulled out a chair and sat down. She watched me like she expected me to relay everything he said, right then. Instead I mouthed “battery” and pointed to the failing phone.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “At least Tim was safe with cops around the house.”

  His first thought was for his family’s safety. Why hadn’t that occurred to me years ago, when I was accusing him of crimes and trying to get him fired?

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. I meant I was sorry for everything else. For making snap judgments, hurling accusations, and being mean. I wondered if I would ever find the right words.

  “After the police left, I got in touch with a contact at CPS and learned what I could about Trish’s boyfriend, David Meyer.”

  I pulled out a chair and sat across from Jeannie, who’d begun to rummage in the backpack. She discre
etly peeled a few hundred-dollar bills out of a block and stood to leave.

  Richard continued. “An auditor noticed that Meyer closed a lot of field cases by saying that, despite a diligent search, he couldn’t find the families. These were all white families, in a county with large Hispanic and black communities. It raised the question—was he favoring some ethnic groups over others? Meyer categorically denied it. The agency followed up by reviewing his time sheets, case notes, and files.”

  “What’d they find?” I took the lid off my coffee and watched Jeannie head for the door. She left with no explanation.

  “A dedicated and thorough investigator. In fact, he logs quite a bit of overtime.”

  “Was there anything to validate the racism concerns?”

  “No. So, they looked at his computer next. It wasn’t his files that got their attention, though, it was his log-on history.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Apparently, Meyer had logged into the system at times they knew he was in the field, away from a computer. There were several times he was logged in twice, from two IP addresses.”

  I tried to understand. “He obviously couldn’t be in two places at the same time. Someone else must use his password. But why would he share that? It could only get him in trouble.”

  “I asked myself the same thing. Then it came to me. Maybe he unknowingly gave it to his new live-in girlfriend.”

  He let me digest that for a moment.

  “I also found out investigators get case assignments on their computers, flagged in order of priority. Priority Ones are urgent, so they’re addressed immediately. Investigators have a few days to address Priority Twos. The missing babies he couldn’t find? All Priority Twos…the ones that could wait a few days.”

  “Sorry to be so thick, but—”

  “If Trish knew David’s caseload, and wanted to snatch a kid, she could do it days before Meyer ever even tried to look for the kid. Later, Meyer could look high and low for weeks and never get warm.”

  “But surely parents would report their missing baby.”

  He hesitated. “What if she takes out the parents? Anyone who looked into it would have to assume the parents were trying to avoid a CPS interview. It’s a nearly perfect crime.”

  I opened my mouth. The words on my tongue were “it’s impossible to believe,” but they disintegrated as soon as the thought formed. Eliminating parents, stealing babies. I thought of Eric and Casey Lyons. It wasn’t hard to believe at all.

  Jeannie hadn’t returned by the time the call ended, so I ate without her. Eventually she returned with a yellow plastic sack from which she produced a pre-paid cell phone.

  “For you,” she said. “Otherwise, when your battery dies we’ll be screwed.”

  I shrugged. “There’s always Kurt’s phone.”

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. “They could cancel service anytime.”

  “So I have to carry three phones?”

  She pushed it across the table with a stack of twenties and fifties. “There’s a bank in the next parking lot so I got more small bills too. You never know.”

  That much was true. I unzipped the backpack and dropped the new phone and extra bills inside.

  ***

  “Why do I have to do it?” Jeannie asked, as we walked into the offices of the disk recovery people.

  On the drive north to Houston, she’d helped herself to my cheap cosmetics and a pair of sunglasses scavenged from Inez’s glove box. The glasses disguised her swollen eye well enough for her to appear stylish, maybe even rested. It was another eerily masterful transformation.

  “You should do it,” I whispered, walking with her toward the counter, “because you’re older than me. They’ll believe it if you say it.”

  “I’m not that much—”

  “Shh. Here he comes.”

  A lanky associate in Dockers and a polo shirt stepped up to the counter in front of us. A plastic nametag said BRAD. He didn’t look old enough to shave.

  “How can I help you this morning?”

  Jeannie stepped up to the counter and grimaced. “This is embarrassing.”

  The technician gave her a dopey grin. “We pass no judgments here at ResusciData.” He chuckled.

  She produced the hard drive I’d given her.

  “I caught my teenager visiting an…inappropriate chat room. When I grounded him from the computer, the little shit password protected our machine. Now I can’t use it either. Can you fix it?”

  The tech suppressed a smirk. I wondered if he’d done something similar in his formative computer geek years.

  “Does the password box come up when you boot the machine or when you try to get into a particular application?”

  “When she boots the machine,” I answered.

  Brad swiveled his head toward me and seemed to notice me for the first time.

  “Let’s have a look.” He took the drive from Jeannie, dropped it into an electrostatic discharge bag, and carried it to a workbench.

  “The protection you described is probably in the system’s BIOS.”

  Jeannie looked at me. I couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses, but the creases in her forehead and the skeptical twist of her mouth said it all: “Huh?”

  “If I install your drive as a secondary drive in another work station,” he continued, “we should be able to get to your data that way.”

  He took a seat on a stool and we watched him use a ribbon cable to connect the drive to an open CPU and turn on the computer.

  “Go ahead and have a seat,” Brad said. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

  Jeannie and I sat in chairs along the wall. Current issues of PC Gamer, TidBITs, and Linux Today were spread over the surface of an oblong coffee table with uneven legs. Jeannie dug through the magazines and curled her brightly painted lips in disgust.

  I relaxed into my chair and stretched my legs. I let my eyes close. It’d been almost thirty hours since I’d slept. My leg throbbed and a headache was coming on. Or maybe I’d had the headache all along but had been too distracted to know.

  My cell phone rang. The call was coming from BioTek.

  “It’s Bowman.” I punched Ignore Call, annoyed he was wasting my precious battery.

  “Of course, it’s him.” Jeannie checked her watch with an exaggerated flourish. “While I am on vacation today, I’m afraid you are three hours late for work.”

  I rested my head on the wall behind me and closed my eyes, wishing my life had a button: Ignore All.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Quit it.” Jeannie didn’t look up from her hands. She was picking at a cuticle. Her legs were crossed, the top foot swinging.

  “Quit what?”

  “Stop staring at me. You’re bugging me.”

  I didn’t know I’d fixated on her. I shifted my gaze to the cluttered tabletop and took in the layers of computer magazines. Except for us, ResusciData’s waiting room was empty.

  “I’m trying to make sense of Richard’s theory,” I said.

  Jeannie stopped swinging her leg and looked up from her nails. This time, I felt her eyes lock onto me. An automatic air freshener mounted on the wall sprayed out a poof of something lemony.

  I stood and paced the little room.

  Jeannie followed me with her eyes. The way she looked over the top of her sunglasses reminded me of a disapproving teacher.

  “Something’s wrong with you.” She cocked her head, like she was figuring something out. “It’s not what Richard said that’s got you thinking. It’s what Clement said, isn’t it? I’ve been wondering when you’d come back to that.”

  I lowered my voice. “How could I not be thinking about Clement? He all but told me Trish’s people had something to do with Jack and Annette. That means we were right…they did kidnap Mattie Shelton. When their threats didn’t work, they tried to kill me before I could testify. Except…”

  I felt tears welling and wondered if she could see that.

  She was car
eful to keep her voice low too. “Except what?”

  “I didn’t go on the boat that morning. Jack wanted me to have time to myself, quiet time to decompress after the threats and the break-in. So, while I was painting my toenails…or reading on the beach…or doing some other selfish, indulgent thing—”

  Jeannie dropped her head into her hands. “They went after the boat you rented. Because they expected you to be on board.”

  “I think so.”

  “But you’re alive. Why not try again?”

  I shrugged. “They got what they wanted. I missed the trial.”

  She didn’t speak right away.

  “I think they got more than they wanted,” I said. “I think they got Annette.”

  When I blinked, tears fell down both cheeks. I swiped at them and tried to compose myself, turning my back to the counter so Brad wouldn’t see.

  Jeannie seemed confused. “Sweetie, why don’t you—”

  “I think they sold her,” I blurted.

  I knew I couldn’t keep it together. Not seeing a ladies room, I rushed outside.

  Jeannie followed. We stopped at the corner of the building, beyond the lobby windows. If there were people in the parking lot, I didn’t notice.

  “Sold her?”

  “This is bigger than Trish and Casey Lyons.” My voice sounded far away. Putting words to my fears made my chin quiver. “I think it’s a group, like a ring. Trish Dalton, her brother Mark, Ed Kosh…I think they’re like a cell, part of something bigger.”

  Jeannie wiped my cheek. “Slow down.”

  “Think about it,” I said. “Cells use people with different skills. People who can fly planes, disable alarms, kidnap hostages…”

  Her eyes flashed at the last one. She started to say something, but the glass door to the computer shop swung open, ringing bells that were tied to its handle. Brad poked his head outside. I turned away from him and wiped my eyes and nose.

  “Good, you’re here,” he said. “It’s done.”

  The bells clanged on the glass again.

  “He’s gone,” Jeannie said.

  I sniffled, composed myself. She ran a thumb under each of my eyes, her way of fixing me up and taking care of me.

  “Guess we should see what he’s got,” I said.