by Thomas Perry
"Actually, Richard, if they find her for us, you do. If somebody can find her, he can find you. Some of these people aren't anybody you want to fuck around with."
"Look, Steve. I'm not sure if I made this entirely clear. She's not in the same situation as the other girls I asked you to help me with. I really need Christine back here healthy and in a receptive mood."
"A receptive mood?"
"If possible, I'd like her to be happy to see me."
"It's kind of late to worry about her mood. But I'll think about it, and see what we can do."
"Thanks," said Richard. "And I appreciate your keeping me up on everything. I really need to have this work out."
"Good-bye, Richard."
Richard sat there, staring at the phone for a moment. Maybe this extra aggravation was the price for letting Demming and his crew handle personal problems for him. There was a kind of unwelcome familiarity to the way Demming had been talking to him for the past couple of weeks. He seemed at times to think he was indulging Richard's whims. Maybe that was Richard's imagination, but Demming didn't sound like an employee talking to his boss.
Richard decided that he needed to get out of the office. Maybe he would take an early lunch. Maybe he would ask Marlene the new receptionist to go with him.
"There you are." The voice was his father's.
Richard looked up. "Of course I'm here. This is my office, where I work."
"That's why I'm surprised." He came in and sat on the couch. He always sat in the center of a couch and rested both arms on the back, taking up as much space as one human being could. If anybody else wanted to sit, they would have to endure a terrible proximity to him, and only after they actually sat would he move slightly. He looked at the door as though he hadn't seen it before. "Close that door, will you, Richard?"
Richard kept himself from expressing what he felt. He got up from his desk, walked around it to the door and closed it. "What's the occasion?"
"Maybe I'm here to take a close look at what you're doing to my business. Maybe I brought fifteen CPA's and four computer experts to snoop around and see if there's anything being hidden from me. Would that bother you?"
Richard fixed a smile on his face, but he knew it was the sort of smile a man put on when he didn't want to fight an opponent he knew would crush him. "Not unless they wasted a lot of time doing it."
Andy Beale smiled, too, but his smile was more convincing, and to Richard it was chilling. Why would he say that if he didn't think Richard had something to hide? "Well, I'm just here to talk to you about Christine. Have you talked to her since the day we were out on the boat?"
"No."
"Have you even tried?"
"Of course. She left her apartment a month ago and hasn't been back. No one has heard from her."
"That's it? You knocked on her door and talked to her friends?"
Richard took a moment to decide. There were a hundred reasons not to tell him any more than he had to, but there was no way to get rid of him without meeting each of his insinuations with an answer. "I've done a lot more than that. I hired some professionals to develop their own leads and find her for me."
Andy Beale cocked his head as though he had heard a sound in the distance that he couldn't quite identify. "Well, that's interesting. Who?"
"They've done some work for us before, and they've done it well, so I trust them. They're security specialists."
"I didn't ask what they were. I said, 'Who?'"
"The head man is named Steve Demming. He has a crew of three other men and two women."
"Women? That sounds sensible. It ought to reassure her if they find her."
"That's what I think. And they will find her."
"But they don't have her."
"Not yet."
Andy Beale looked at his son with new interest. "So how are they going about it?"
"I just got off the phone with Steve. He's offering a reward and distributing photographs of her. He's also using the Internet to get people to e-mail him if they see her. He has his own sources." He saw the unchanged look of curiosity on Andy Beale's face, and knew what his father was going to say before he said it.
"That's pretty convenient for you, having somebody else do it all?"
"I've been running credit checks on her every day to see if she uses a credit card or anything. So far, she hasn't. There's a skip-tracing company that I've occasionally used to find tenants who skip owing rent. I've got them searching the big commercial databases for any sign of her."
"She's been gone for over a month. How much cash could a girl like that have—a week's worth? After that she couldn't buy a meal or fill up at a gas station without the credit bureaus noticing. She's got to be with somebody."
The conversation had moved from the uncomfortable to the excruciating for Richard, but he could not think of a way to change the subject. He tried retreating behind a haze of vagueness. "Well, we'll see."
"Yeah. You damned well ought to see. Somebody's helping that girl, probably putting her up and paying her bills and signing for things so she doesn't leave a trail. Everything you're doing only works if she's alone, and she isn't. You must have some idea of who the guys are she might know well enough. You were fucking her for six months or so. Who else was?"
Richard felt his cheeks heating up. "Nobody. She was a virgin when she came to work here. And after that I was with her all the time."
"A secretary, about half your age, who had never been with anybody else. She wasn't exactly a difficult girl to impress, was she? Wasn't that a little too easy even for you?"
"She was a pretty, young girl, good-natured and unmarried. I work very long, hard hours, in case your spies hadn't mentioned it. I'm not out very often where I might meet a lot of women."
"Yeah, I know. You're a regular monk. One way or another, you found her and got her to sleep with you. But somebody besides you is taking care of her right now. Don't you think you ought to be curious about who the guy is?"
"It's not a man. It's a woman."
"What woman? Her mother? A sister? Just trace her the way you would Christine."
"My man Steve says it's a pro—a detective or a bodyguard or something. The night they found Christine in Buffalo this woman broke one guy's knee and ran into another one with her car. I don't know much more than that, but we're assuming she's keeping Christine out of sight for now."
"This isn't normal," said Andy. "Are you sure your man Steve isn't just full of shit?"
"He's not. Why would you say that?"
"Where the hell would a girl like Christine get to know somebody like that?"
"We don't know that yet, either."
"What do you know about her relatives? Her parents?"
"Her mother died when she was a kid. Her father's in jail. He's serving a ten-year sentence for embezzling money from the company where he worked. She also has a stepmother and a half sister and brother she hates. The stepmother ended up with all the father's money and threw Christine out of the house when she was sixteen."
"It's the father, then. You've got to go see the father."
"In jail?"
"If that's where he is, that's where you see him."
"Why would I do that? He's not hiding her."
Andy Beale's expression showed his frustration and hopelessness. He didn't seem to see any point in raising his voice, or to have enough energy to do it. He blew out a breath and said carefully, "Christine is a kid. Somebody found this woman professional for her and hired her. The wicked stepmother didn't do it. The father is the most likely one. He's also sitting twenty-four hours a day in the best place there is for making contacts who know women who break legs and run over people. Maybe he talked to somebody in prison who could get in touch with the woman on the outside. From what you just said, of all the people Christine knows, the only one she's going to talk to again for sure is her father."
"And?"
"If you want to get a message to her, he's the one you have to leave it with."<
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"What am I supposed to say to him—that I knocked up his sweet little daughter, but he should be my buddy and help me out?"
"I said to get a message to the girl. You tell him you're in love with her. There was a spat, just a misunderstanding, and she got hurt feelings and ran out on you."
"Do I tell him I was her boss?"
"You tell him everything that will make him think you're a reasonable prospect for his daughter. You're not only her boss, but also the future owner of the company, a rich, successful guy. You're worried about her, you miss her, and you want to marry her." He glared at Richard with irritation. "Sometimes I think you're not a regular person, Richard. You're like some kind of lizard or fish or something, and you don't feel what other people feel. You have to make some kind of leap of imagination so you can figure out what to tell them to make them feel the way you want."
"What am I trying to get from him?"
"Maybe he hired this woman pro, and you can get him to let something slip about her. The least you want him to do is pass your message on to Christine. You want him to help you get her back. A twenty-year-old girl who was sleeping with you might think hearing from you is good news. But the father first. You need him on your side. If he's showing signs that he might think you're good news, too, then ask him for permission to marry his daughter."
"Why would I ask some jailbird for permission to do anything?"
"There. That's what I'm talking about. You've got to put yourself in this man's place. Yes, he's in jail. He's feeling guilty because being there made him unable to protect his daughter, so she got chucked out on the street. He wants to believe you, because it would mean everything worked out all right. She found a nice, steady, prosperous guy who loves her. So you help him believe in you. If he does, he'll try to get her to give you a chance."
"Why should she listen to him?"
Andy Beale studied him for a moment. "The more I think about this, the more I think you're not right for this. Forget I said to see him. I'll do it for you."
"I didn't say I wouldn't do it."
"No," said Andy Beale. "But you probably shouldn't. We get one chance with this guy, and you'd probably fuck it up. I'll just let you know what happened."
"Whatever." Richard shrugged and leaned back in his chair.
"What I want you to do is try some other angles on your own. Think. She's pregnant. She's going to be seeing an obstetrician. She's not going to wait and walk into an emergency room when the baby comes. You're her employer, so try to work with the health insurance company. We're the real customer, because we pay the premiums."
"They're not going to tell us anything about her medical file. It's private."
"Try. All you need is the name of a doctor. Hell, even a city would do. Another thing she'll need is an apartment. We're in the rental business. Send a picture of her to a thousand other large owners and say she's somebody who stole from us and we want to find her. Think about her. What does she need to get by? Who does she know to ask for help? Work on it."
"I will."
"Be sure you do," said Andy Beale. "If you screw around until after she's had the baby, it will be a whole lot harder to persuade her that she needs you." He stood and walked to the door, opened it, and looked out at the receptionist thoughtfully. "What's her father's name?"
"Monahan. I think it's Robert Monahan."
"And where is he?"
"Lompoc."
"All right. I'll talk to you soon." He spared Richard only a glance. "What's the new girl's name?" He returned his eyes to the receptionist.
"Marlene."
"Don't complicate things by fucking her, too."
14
The nightmare that woke Jane slipped away before she could hold on to enough of it to remember. Panting and sweating, she sat up and looked around her. Carey was still asleep beside her, the sheet only partly over his leg now. She must have thrown it off when she had jerked awake, so she gently pulled it back over him to the shoulder and looked at the red numbers on the alarm clock. Four already. He would have to be up at five-thirty so he could drive to the hospital. Ahead of him was another morning of surgery.
Again she tried to remember her dream, but it was gone. There was still enough time to go back to sleep, but she knew she couldn't do that while she could still feel her heart pounding. There was a very faint breeze coming through the screen of the open window across the room, pushing the thin white curtains inward an inch or two and making the sweat on her back feel cold.
After a minute she stood, stepped out of her nightgown, walked down the hall to the farthest of the guest rooms, shut the door, and went into the bathroom. She ran the shower until it wasn't cold, and then stepped into the spray. There was no uncertainty about what had caused her dream. She had been home for a few days, and she had been getting used to being Mrs. Carey McKinnon again, the doctor's wife who lived behind the thick, solid door of the big old stone house. But Jane had promised that she would go and see Christine's father. As she stood in the shower she wondered whether she regretted not having kept her promise more than she regretted having promised at all.
Visiting the prison where Christine's father was serving his sentence would be incredibly dangerous. Jane supposed she must have been thinking about it for days without acknowledging it consciously. She knew she would have to do what she had promised. If she didn't, the man would probably be so devastated by the loss of his daughter that he would find a way to kill himself. He was a middle-aged convict who apparently didn't have much left except his daughter.
Even years from now when he was out of jail he would never have a job as good as the ones he'd had, might never find a woman to love him, probably never even have friends who completely trusted him. Jane had promised Christine that at least this man would know that his daughter had not erased him from her life.
When the shower had soothed her and made her feel fully awake, she put on a bathrobe, and went downstairs to the kitchen. She made coffee, set the table for breakfast, took out eggs and butter and bread for toast, then went to the computer in the small office off the den and made flight reservations in the name Donna Ruggiero, then printed out the tickets and confirmations.
At five-fifteen she climbed the stairs to the bedroom and stood for a moment watching Carey sleep, then touched his shoulder to wake him. He opened his eyes, then gave a sigh and looked up at her, smiling. "I had a dream that we . .. Oh, yeah. I guess that wasn't a dream."
"No, it wasn't," she said. "Good for us."
He sat up, looked at the clock, and then stood and put his arms around her. "I'd better brush my teeth before I kiss you." He went into the bathroom, and as she straightened the bed she heard the hum of his electric toothbrush, then the buzz of his razor.
As she had each morning since her return, she looked out the upstairs window at the road outside, trying to detect any change since the night before. Then she went downstairs and walked out toward the end of the driveway to pick up the morning newspaper. She could hear faraway sounds—robins on the lawns today and crows in the big trees of the McKinnon yard, and others calling to one another along the road. Jane pretended to look at nothing, but she used the walk down the long driveway to scan the neighborhood for unfamiliar vehicles and people who were out of place. There was nothing to disturb her. She stepped back in through the kitchen entrance and locked the door.
Carey was standing beside the kitchen table, and she could see the papers in his hand were the airline tickets she had printed. He looked troubled, but when he saw her he erased the expression and turned to hand them to her. "You're leaving today?"
"I was going to talk to you about it after you were awake, but you were a lot faster coming down than I thought you'd be. What I have to do will take one day, but it'll take me a day to fly there and at least two to make it back home. I'll be back here on Saturday, probably."
"Why do you have to go at all?"
"I don't want to. It's just something I have to do."
"You won't tell me more than that?"
"It wouldn't make anybody safer—you, me, the girl."
"Look, I don't want to start a fight with you, especially just before you go away. But maybe you ought to spend some time asking yourself why you don't trust me."
She put her arms around him and kept them there, rocking slightly. "You know I trust you. We went through this years ago, and I thought you understood. I've made promises. One was that I wouldn't tell anyone where this person is or what I'm doing for her. Not that I'd only tell my husband."
"Getting married is a promise, too," he said. "There's not supposed to be anybody who knows more than you tell me."
"There isn't," she said. "I'm sorry, Carey. Right now just isn't a good time for this conversation. When this trip is over, we can talk. Please, just don't make this harder."
Carey studied her for a second, then relented. "Just make it back here safe, and get this whole thing finished."
"I will." She released him, then stepped back to look at him. "What do you want for breakfast?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"I'm not hungry right now. I'll get something at the hospital later."
"I love you," she said, and kissed him on the cheek, then picked up the carton of eggs and put it back in the refrigerator. "I love you" had always struck her as a foolish, inadequate thing to say, but it was exactly what she meant in exactly the way she had said it. She remembered times, years ago, when she had called him from various places around the country, only daring to talk on a pay phone for a minute or two. In her memory it was always night, and always raining. She wouldn't be able to tell him where she was because she was afraid his phone would be tapped or he would forget and mention the name of the place to someone else. He would be impatient for her to come home, and she would say, "I love you," and what it meant was "I'm sorry." And then when it was time to hang up she would say "I love you" again, and wait, holding her breath and listening, because it meant "Do you still love me?" In the past five years, since she had quit going away, the meaning had always been happy and sure. Maybe five years of that was as good as a life. It was more of a life than many people had, and she felt lucky to have had it. By this time tomorrow she could be dead.
