He Was Not There

by P. D. Workman

  He swore. “You couldn’t tell which?”

  “Not until we get direct DNA and paternity testing for each of them. Heather… she didn’t exactly freak out. More like… shut down. She said she wanted to go home, so I drove her home. She said her husband was there and she wouldn’t be alone. But she lied. He wasn’t home. She took the car and left.”

  “You think she’s going to hurt herself?”

  “I think she might… but I think she might also go after him. Or all of them.”

  “Has she kept in touch?”

  “No. Her husband doesn’t think that she knew where they were anymore.”

  “Then we’ve got some time to track them down and head her off. You don’t know where she’s gone?”

  “Well, that’s the thing.” Zachary tapped another search into his browser, quickly opening tabs and scanning through the information he found as he talked on the phone with Able. “In the past few weeks, while we’ve been waiting for the DNA results, I’ve been helping Heather out. She wanted to change the way she was living. Do volunteer work or develop some marketable skill. So I’ve been helping her.”

  “With what?” Able’s voice was gruff, and Zachary figured he’d already figured it out.

  “With basic detecting. Skip tracing. Finding missing people.”

  Able swore again. “How much of a head start does she have?”

  “A couple of hours. But she is a beginner, it might have taken her a while to find him with only internet search capabilities. She’s not hooked into all of the databases that I am, or that you have access to. Can you check DMV for current address?”

  He heard Able start to tap computer keys on his end. “What’s the name?”

  “Robert Astor. Age seventy-two. Do you need his social?”

  “You got DOB?”

  Zachary gave it to him. Able typed the information in. “Got it. Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll get someone sent right over on a welfare check. But I don’t think Mrs. Garrity presents much of a threat.”

  Zachary was about to ask who Mrs. Garrity was, before he remembered that was Heather. Even though they hadn’t seen each other for such a long time, it seemed incongruous that she should have a different last name from his. But they could all have different last names. Any of the children could have married or been adopted or just taken on the name of a foster family or started life with a new identity when they had aged out of foster care.

  “Heather carries a gun.”

  “She what?”

  “I asked her husband. She’s a former victim. She wanted to be able to protect herself from an attack.”

  “Great. Okay. I’ll give them a heads-up that this might be more than just a welfare check, then. I don’t want cops getting killed.”

  “Give me the address. I’ll head over there too. I might be able to talk her down.”

  “You think I’m going to give you that information? I don’t want you interfering. I’ll call you back when everything has been sorted. That’s the most I can do.”

  Zachary looked at the address on the screen in front of him. He read it aloud to Able. “Is that it? Is that the address on his operator’s license?”

  Able’s muttered curse gave him the answer. “Stay out of this, Mr. Goldman.”

  “I don’t want her getting shot by some jumpy policeman, either. She’s my sister. She’s more of a danger to herself right now than to anybody else. I’m going.”

  “Give the police department some credit. We can manage this.”

  “I’m a ways out. If it’s handled by the time I get there, then there won’t be anything for me to do when I arrive. If it’s not, you might very well be looking for someone who can talk to her.”

  Zachary hung up before Able could make any further objection. He jammed the phone into his pocket, sent the information on his screen to himself, and grabbed his keys. He was back in his car in no time, headed back to the highway. He ignored the calls coming into his phone from a blocked ID. That would be Able, and he didn’t want to talk to Able. After Able gave up and stopped dialing him every two minutes, Zachary called Grant back.

  “I’ve got an address for Robert Astor. The police are sending someone over there. I’m on my way. But I’m going to be a while, even speeding on the highway.”

  “Where is he?”

  Zachary tapped his phone to bring the address back up again, and read it out to Grant.

  “Don’t go in if the police aren’t there yet. Wait for them. Tell them that you can talk to her, there’s no need to go in guns blazing. I’ll be there as soon as I can. We need to give her some time to cool off. We don’t know what kind of shape she’s going to be in.”

  “Heather wouldn’t hurt anyone. She’s never hurt a fly.”

  “He hurt her. And if he triggers her, there’s no telling what she’ll do with a gun in her hands to protect herself this time.”

  30

  It was a good thing that Kenzie wasn’t in the car with Zachary, because he was going much faster than she would have tolerated on the highway. Having driven with her before in an emergency, he knew she would have been freaking out.

  But he was a good driver, and his ADHD meant that he could hyperfocus and react quickly if something unexpected happened. That wouldn’t necessarily help him if a cop happened to see him, but he hoped that the traffic gods would be on his side and there wouldn’t be any police on his way there.

  It was possible he would beat Grant there, but he didn’t expect to, not unless Grant was a real old-lady driver. If he stepped on the gas and ran a few lights or stop signs, he’d get there ahead of Zachary. The police would be there too. Zachary hoped that Able had activated whatever tactical team or hostage negotiator that he had to, and that they knew enough to approach the house quietly and not just rush in. He wanted Heather to see her way out of there. He didn’t want her to be a headline on the next day’s news, another statistic in police-involved shootings for the year. He prayed that they set up a perimeter and took it slow.

  And that Heather hadn’t already killed the sicko.

  He had let his mind wander as he thought through the possibilities, and he almost missed his exit, which would have been bad because there weren’t a lot of places to get turned around and get going in the right direction again. He’d miss the whole town or have to wind his way through tiny streets at a crawl, watching for children and elderly pedestrians.

  When he pulled onto the block, he knew he had the right place. Lots of police cars. A nice wide perimeter around the house in question. It probably looked almost normal from the inside of the house. But past the house’s viewlines, activity buzzed and everybody was working on their particular jobs, keeping the public back where it was safe and letting the experts work out what they were going to do.

  Zachary left his car behind the barricades and walked in. He was looking around for whoever was in charge, not sure whether Able would be there, and if he was, what kind of authority he would have over the operation. Zachary didn’t try to breach the barrier, but walked up to one of the cops keeping the public at bay.

  “That’s my sister in there. I’m the one who called it in.”

  “That’s nice, sir, but there’s nothing you can do at this point. Just stay back out of the way and let the police do their jobs.”

  “Is Detective Able here? Who is in charge?”

  “Not Able.”

  “Is there a hostage negotiator? What’s the plan here?”

  The cop looked irritated. “Buddy. You got no special standing here. You’re going to have to wait and see what happens, just like everybody else.”

  Zachary looked over the faces of the police inside the taped-off area. “Is her husband here yet? Grant?”

  The cop’s eyes went to the side, and Zachary identified a small knot of people that must have included Grant Garrity. He walked along the outside of the perimeter toward them, pulling out his phone and dialing Grant’s number. Grant jumped when the phone rang, and pulled it hu
rriedly out.

  “Yeah? Zachary?”

  “I’m behind you. Can you talk to whoever is in charge about letting me inside?”

  Grant turned and looked, then waved at Zachary. He spoke to one of the cops, turning and pointing Zachary out. A couple of times. Until the cop finally nodded and spoke into his radio, and in a moment, there was a hulking big uniform in front of Zachary, looking him over like he was some kind of bug.

  “You’re Zachary Goldman?”

  “Yeah. Are they going to let me talk to her?”

  “Talk to her?” the big ape repeated. “I doubt that!” He laughed.

  But he led Zachary into the perimeter, and he was allowed to go over to Grant to talk to him.

  “Have they verified that Heather is inside?” Zachary asked. “That we guessed right?”

  Grant nodded slowly. He seemed distracted, like he wasn’t sure what to think of his wife being inside, the subject instead of the victim. He’d probably never even thought about her that way before.

  “They put listening devices on the windows. So they can hear what’s being said inside. Heather is there.”

  “Doing what? Talking to him? Threatening him?”

  “They won’t really tell me anything other than to just be quiet and wait for them to do their thing.”

  “Who is in charge?”

  Grant scanned the various worker bees, shaking his head a little as if he were lost. He pointed to a long truck on the other side of the perimeter, some kind of mobile command center. “I don’t know his name, but he’s in there. Or they are. I don’t know if it’s one guy or if there are different departments or what.”

  Zachary moved toward the truck. He was stopped by one of the apes. Either the same one as had escorted him through the barrier, or another very similar. Zachary hadn’t been paying any attention to their faces.

  “You can’t go in there.”

  “I’m Heather’s brother. I need to talk to her. They’re the only guys who are going to have any say in whether I can talk to her or not.”

  “You can’t talk to them.”

  “Just let me go talk to them. They’ll want to deal with someone with a clear head. Someone who knows Heather.”

  The big cop didn’t like it, but he shook his head and escorted Zachary over to the bus. He knocked on the door with loud bangs, and eventually, someone pushed the door open. “What is it?”

  “This is apparently the perp’s brother?” the cop said it as a question, and shrugged. “He said you might want to talk to him? I don’t know.”

  The other cop looked at Zachary for a minute, then motioned him up the three stairs into the bus.

  “Come on, come on,” he urged.

  Inside the bus, Zachary took a look around. Lots of electronics and people wearing headphones. Talking to each other, talking to someone off the scene, coordinating whatever plan they were setting up.

  “I thought the husband was here,” commented the man who had let him in. “I’m Jones.”

  “Jones. Uh. I’m Zachary Goldman. I’m Heather’s brother. I was with her earlier today when she… got some disturbing news about Robert Astor. If I could talk to her, I think I could help.”

  “Her husband is out there. What makes you think you’re in a better position to talk to her than he is?”

  “Because… she initially came to me about it. She talked to me about it before she talked to him. Because… we’ve both had some similar experiences. Some experiences that help me to understand what it is she’s going through in there.”

  “She’s not going through anything. She’s the one putting someone else through pain and distress. She may have been the victim before, but she’s not now.”

  “She still is. At least in her mind. So let me talk to her. What’s it going to hurt?”

  “Having the wrong person talk to her, or the right person say the wrong thing, and she could go nuclear. No one wants that. We’re just going to take this slowly, one step at a time.”

  “Exactly.” Zachary nodded. “That’s exactly right. Nice and slowly. Has she talked to anyone? Does she know you’re here?”

  “Oh, she’s knows we’re here. We’ve had some contact.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She doesn’t have any demands. She just wants to kill the guy. But she hasn’t done it yet, and that’s a good sign.”

  “How long has she been in there?”

  Jones looked at his watch. He had dark hair and bright, intelligent eyes. Every movement looked like it was choreographed. “Thirty-five minutes.”

  Zachary had been right, it had taken her a good amount of time to track down his address and get there. They had caught up to her quickly. And maybe that meant she wasn’t too invested yet in killing him or being killed herself.

  “How long have the police been here?”

  “Twenty, give or take. The phone contact was… ten minutes ago, maybe. She’s doing well; she didn’t drop him as soon as she arrived, and she didn’t do it when we got there. So far, she’s kept her cool.”

  Zachary shook his head. Cool, Heather was not. She might come across that way, but she was traumatized and Zachary knew that she wasn’t feeling calm and collected at all. She felt like the whole world was coming down around her and she didn’t know what to do.

  “I want to talk to her. I have my cell phone, does she have hers? If I call her, she’ll pick up.”

  “No unauthorized contact. That’s just playing with fire.”

  “I can talk to her. I know I can.”

  “You’re not a trained negotiator. And you may think you know your sister, but in a case like this, you have no idea what’s going on in her head.”

  “She came to me to help her to find out who hurt her. I need to finish it. I understand what’s going on in her head. He hurt her and she wants to hurt him. He ruined her life and she wants to ruin his too. It’s not enough to just shoot him. She needs him to be just as afraid of her as she was of him. Physically, it doesn’t really matter how badly he’s hurt. She wants him to hurt on the inside. To be as broken and terrified as she was.”

  Jones looked at Zachary in silence, chewing on his gum, considering. Finally, he nodded. “Give me your phone.”

  Zachary handed it over uncertainly, expecting Jones to dial Heather’s number on it. But Jones slid it away in his own pocket. He motioned to one of the techs. “Get Mr. Goldman a headset.”

  In short order, one was placed over Zachary’s head. He looked at Jones. “What do I do with this?” There was no keypad, no way he could see to dial out.

  Jones smiled. “Just keep it on. We’ll do all the work. Understand that we can cut you off at any time. We can also whisper prompts in your ear. Our job here is to deescalate. Get her calmed down and hopefully she will come out of there of her own free will, without any guns and without any harm done to Mr. Astor.”

  “Right.”

  Though Zachary himself would have liked to have been left alone with Mr. Astor for a few minutes. He was not a violent person, and had never been the instigator of a fight in his life. But he would have liked to hurt Mr. Astor. Just like he would have liked to hurt Teddy.

  31

  There was a ringing on his headset, and everybody in the bus was suddenly silent, listening in. Zachary rubbed his clammy hands down his pants. He waited to see whether Heather would pick up. Maybe she was too far gone. But they were monitoring her through the windows. They would know if she had already killed Mr. Astor.

  “What?” Heather demanded.

  Zachary took another breath. He forced a smile, which he hoped would make his voice sound cheerful and unstrained. “Hi, Feathers.”

  “Zachary?”

  “I guess I should have walked you in.”

  She grunted. “You weren’t going to get in my way.”

  “How are you doing in there?”

  “Things aren’t going quite the way I expected,” she growled.

  “It’s a little harder than they m
ake it look on TV, isn’t it?”

  There was a lengthy silence. Zachary wondered if he had said the wrong thing. But she wasn’t shooting Mr. Astor to bits, so he supposed it could have been worse.

  “I thought… I could come here and talk to him and he’d admit what he did. I’d tell him that I had proof he was the baby’s father and he’d admit what he did.”

  “But he’s not budging?”

  “He’s… weird.”

  “What does that mean? Weird how?”

  “He’s smaller than I remember. He was all… authoritative when I was a kid. He was… like God.”

  “And now, he’s just a regular man. A regular man who isn’t as big and scary as you remember him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he say about the assault?”

  “He said… he couldn’t believe I thought he had anything to do with it. That there must be a mistake. Someone screwed up the DNA samples.”

  Zachary’s first reaction had been that the mittens had been cross-contaminated and that it wasn’t the baby’s DNA that they had ended up testing. But Heather swore that Mr. Astor had never touched the mittens. So how could his DNA end up being on them? Or the DNA of one of the boys?

  Zachary had told Mr. Peterson about DNA transfer. Heather could unwittingly have transferred the DNA. She would have touched other things that had the Astors’ DNA on them at home. Then she could have transferred it to the mittens herself. Maybe it wasn’t the baby’s DNA at all. Maybe it was one of the other boys’.

  “Do you think that’s true?” he asked Heather. “What do you remember about your attacker? You lived with Mr. Astor every day. He couldn’t fool you just by wearing a mask.”

  Zachary jumped when he heard Jones’s voice in his ear. “We’re trying to settle her down, Mr. Goldman. Not make her more angry toward the victim. If she has doubts about him being her attacker, that’s a good thing.”

  He looked over to Jones, then away again, trying to stay focused on Heather. He couldn’t talk to her if he was being interrupted by someone else’s thoughts. But he remembered Jones’s warning that they could shut down the call any time they wanted to.