Panic

by Jeff Abbott

‘I just don’t know.’

  ‘So. Let’s go through it again. She called you this morning. Around seven.’

  ‘Yes.’ Evan again walked Durless through his mother’s frantic phone call insisting he come home, his coming straight from Houston, the men attacking him. Trying to dredge up any detail that he’d forgotten in giving his initial account.

  ‘These men that grabbed you in the kitchen, you’re sure there were two?’

  ‘I heard two voices. I’m sure.’

  ‘But you never saw their faces?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And then another man came, shot at them, blasted the ceiling, cut you down from the rope. You saw his face.’

  ‘Yes.’ Evan rubbed a hand across his forehead. In his initial statement, still trembling with shock, he had said it was a bald man, but now he could do better. ‘In his fifties. Thin mouth, very straight teeth. Mole on his’ – Evan closed his eyes for a minute, picturing – ‘left cheek. Brown eyes, strong build. Ex-military, possibly. About six feet. He looked like he might be Latino. No accent in his voice. He wore black pants, a dark green T-shirt. No wedding ring. A steel watch. I can’t tell you anything more about his car except it was a blue Ford sedan.’

  Durless wrote down the additional details, handed them to another officer. ‘Get the revised description on the wire,’ he said. The officer left. Durless raised an eyebrow. ‘You have an exceptional eye for detail under stress.’

  ‘I’m better with pictures than words.’ Evan heard the low voices of the APD crime-scene team as they analyzed the carnage in the kitchen. He wondered if his mother’s body was still in the house. It felt strange to stand in her room, see her clothes, her pictures, know she was dead now.

  ‘Evan, let’s talk about who would have wanted to hurt your mom,’ Durless said.

  ‘No one. She was the nicest person you could imagine. Gentle. Funny.’

  ‘Had she mentioned being afraid, or threatened by anyone? Think. Take your time.’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘Anyone with a grudge against your family?’

  The idea seemed ridiculous, but Evan took a deep breath, thought about his parents’ friends and associates, about his own. ‘No. They argued with a neighbor last year about the guy’s dog barking all night, but they settled it and the guy moved away.’ He gave Durless the name of the former neighbor. ‘I can’t think of anyone who wishes us ill. This has to be random.’

  ‘But the bald man saved you,’ Durless said. ‘He, according to you, chased the killers off, called you by name, claimed he was a friend of your mom’s, and tried to get you to leave with him. That’s not random.’

  Evan shook his head.

  ‘I didn’t get your dad’s name,’ Durless said.

  ‘Mitchell Eugene Casher. My mother is Donna Jane Casher. Did I tell you that already? Her name?’

  ‘You did, Evan, you did. Tell me about the relationship between your parents.’

  ‘They’ve always had a strong marriage.’

  Durless stayed quiet. Evan couldn’t bear the silence. The accusing silence.

  ‘My dad had nothing to do with this. Nothing.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘My dad would never hurt his family, no way.’

  ‘Okay,’ Durless said again. ‘But you see I have to ask.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How you get along with your folks?’

  ‘Fine. Great. We’re all close.’

  ‘You said you were having trouble reaching your dad?’

  ‘He’s not answering his cell phone.’

  ‘You got his itinerary in Australia?’

  Now he remembered. ‘Mom usually keeps it on the refrigerator.’

  ‘That’s great, Evan, that’s a help.’

  ‘I just want to help you get whoever did this. You have to get them. You have to.’ His voice started to shake and he steadied himself. He rubbed at the raw rope burn on his neck.

  Durless said, ‘When you talked to your mom, did she sound afraid? Like these guys were already here in the house?’

  ‘No. She didn’t sound panicked. Just emotional. Like she had bad news to tell me, but didn’t want to tell me over the phone.’

  ‘You talk to her yesterday, or the day before? Tell me about her mental state then.’

  ‘Perfectly normal. She mentioned taking an assignment in China. She’s a freelance travel photographer.’ He pointed at the cracked frames, the photos distorted under the broken glass. ‘That’s some of her work. Her favorites.’

  Durless cast his gaze along London, the coast, the prairie. ‘Places. Not people,’ he said.

  ‘She likes places better than faces.’ It had been his mother’s joke about her work. Tears crept to the corners of Evan’s eyes, and he blinked. Willed them to vanish. He did not want to cry in front of this man. He dug fingernails into his palms. He listened to the snap of cameras in the kitchen, the soft murmurs of the crime-scene team working the room, breaking down the worst nightmare for his family into jotted statistics and chemical tests.

  ‘You have brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No. No other family at all.’

  ‘What time did you get here? Tell me again.’

  He looked at his watch. The face was broken, hands frozen at 10:34. It must have happened when he fell as the rope broke. He showed the stopped watch to Durless. ‘I didn’t really notice the time, I was worried about my mom.’ He wanted the comfort of Carrie’s arms, the reassurance of his father’s voice. His world set to right.

  Durless spoke in a whisper to a police officer who stood in the doorway, who left. Then he gestured at the luggage. ‘Let’s talk about these bags she had packed, for both of you.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was going to Australia. To see my dad.’

  ‘So she begs you to come home, but she’s getting ready to leave. With a suitcase for you, and with a gun.’

  ‘I… I can’t explain it.’ Evan wiped his arm across his nose.

  ‘Maybe this crisis was all a ruse to get you home for a surprise trip.’

  ‘She wouldn’t scare me for no good reason.’

  Durless tapped his pen against his chin. ‘And you were in Houston last night.’

  ‘Yes,’ Evan said. Wondering if now he was being asked for an alibi. ‘My girlfriend stayed with me. Carrie Lindstrom.’

  Durless wrote down her name and Evan gave him her contact information, the name of the River Oaks dress shop where she worked, and her cell phone number.

  ‘Evan. Help me get a clear picture. Two men grab you, hold you at gunpoint, but then don’t shoot you, they try and hang you, and another man saves you but then tries to kidnap you and takes off when you run.’ Durless spoke with the air of a teacher walking a student through a thorny problem. He leaned forward. ‘Help me find a line of thought to follow.’

  ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you. But why not just shoot you? Why not shoot your mother, if they had guns?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You and your mother were targeted and I really need your help to understand why.’

  A memory crowded back into his head. ‘When they had me on the floor… one of them started up my laptop. Typed on it.’

  Durless called in another officer. ‘Would you go find Mr. Casher’s laptop, please?’

  ‘Why would they want anything on my computer?’ Evan heard the hysteria rising in his voice and fought it back down.

  ‘You tell me. What’s on it?’

  ‘Film footage, mostly. Video-editing programs.’

  ‘Footage?’

  ‘I’m a film-maker. Documentaries.’

  ‘You’re young to be making movies.’

  Evan shrugged. ‘I worked hard. I finished college a year early. I wanted to get into film school faster.’

  ‘More money-making blockbusters.’

  ‘I like telling stories about people. Not action heroes.’

  ‘Would I know any of your movies?
’

  ‘Well, my first movie was about a military family who lost a son in Vietnam, then a grandson in Iraq. But people probably know me for Ounce of Trouble, about a cop in Houston who framed an innocent man for a crime.’

  Durless frowned. ‘Yeah. I saw it on PBS. The cop killed himself.’

  ‘Yeah, once the police investigation into his activities started. It’s sad.’

  ‘The guy he supposedly framed was a drug dealer. Not too innocent.’

  ‘Ex-drug dealer who had served his time. He was out of the business when the cop came after him. And there was no supposedly about it.’

  Durless stuck his pen back in his pocket. ‘You don’t think all cops are bad, do you?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Evan said. ‘Look, I’m not a cop basher. Not at all.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were.’

  A different kind of tension filled the room.

  ‘I’m very sorry about your mom, Mr. Casher,’ Durless said. ‘I need you to come downtown with us to make a more detailed statement. And to talk to a sketch artist about this bald man.’

  The officer dispatched to retrieve the laptop stuck his head back in the door. ‘There’s no laptop out here.’

  Evan blinked. ‘Those men might have taken it. Or the bald guy.’ His voice started to rise. ‘I don’t understand any of this!’

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Durless. ‘Let’s go downtown and talk. Get you to work with an artist. I want to get a sketch of the bald man out on the news fast.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘We’ll go in a minute, all right. I want to make a couple of quick calls.’

  ‘All right.’

  Durless escorted Evan back outside. The local TV stations had arrived. More police. Neighbors, mostly stay-at-home moms, watching the activity, their children wide-eyed, the mothers keeping the kids all close.

  He turned his back on the chaos. Tried his father again on his cell phone, no answer. He dialed Carrie’s apartment. No answer. He dialed the dress shop where she worked.

  ‘Maison Rouge, this is Jessica, how may I help you?’ Chirpy and cheery.

  ‘Is Carrie Lindstrom in? I know she’s not working until two, but-’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said. ‘Carrie called in and resigned this morning.’

  4

  E van had never felt so alone. A shiver took hold of him and he willed himself to calm down. He had to find Carrie and his father. He’d left messages for Carrie; surely she’d call back soon. Her quitting her job stunned him, and a sick twist roiled his gut. She left you a note, she quit her job, maybe she doesn’t want anything more to do with you. He didn’t want to consider the possibility. So he focused on finding his father. An itinerary, penned in his father’s tight, precise handwriting, wasn’t on the refrigerator in its usual spot, but he found it folded underneath the phone. The itinerary listed a number for the Blaisdell Hotel in Sydney.

  ‘Mitchell Casher’s room, please,’ Evan said to the clerk.

  The night clerk – it was almost four in the morning Sydney time – was pleasant but firm. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have a guest by that name.’

  ‘Please check again. C-A-S-H-E-R. Maybe they registered him wrong, put Mitchell as the last name.’

  A pause. ‘I’m very sorry, sir, we don’t have a guest here named Mitchell Casher.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Evan hung up. He looked at Durless. ‘He’s not where he’s supposed to be. I don’t understand this at all.’

  Durless took the itinerary. ‘Let us find your dad, Evan. Let’s get a statement and a description while your mind’s fresh.’

  Fresh. It’s not likely I could ever forget, he thought. Evan leaned back, staring up at the smoke-colored clouds through the back windshield of the police cruiser as it drove away from his house. His mind whirled in a strange, panicked dance of logic and emotion. He wondered where he would spend the night. A hotel. He would have to call his family’s friends; but both his parents, though successful, tended to keep their circle of acquaintances small. He would have to make funeral arrangements. He wondered how long it would take for the police to do an autopsy. He wondered at which church he should have his mother’s funeral. He wondered how it had been for his mother. If she had known. If she had suffered. If she had been afraid. That was the worst. Maybe the killers had come up behind her, the way that they had on Evan. He hoped she never knew, never suffered a pitch-black terror overpowering her heart.

  He closed his eyes. Tried to reason past the shock and grief. Otherwise he thought he might just break down. He needed a plan of attack. First, find his dad. Contact his dad’s local clients, see if they knew whom he worked for in Australia. Second, find Carrie. Third

  … he closed his eyes. Make sense of the horror as to who wanted his mother dead.

  But they looked on your computer. What if this isn’t about her? What if it’s about you? The thought chilled him, infuriated him, broke his heart in one swoop.

  The police car, driven by a patrol officer who had been a responder to the initial 911 call, with Durless sitting in the front seat, turned out of the Cashers’ quiet, bungalow-remodeled neighborhood onto Shoal Creek Boulevard, a long thoroughfare that snaked through central and north Austin.

  ‘They staged the scene,’ Evan said, half to himself.

  ‘What’s that?’ Durless asked.

  ‘Staged. I mean, the killers murdered my mother, then were hanging me to fake a suicide. So you, initially, would think that I killed her and then killed myself.’

  Durless said, ‘We would always look deeper than the surface.’

  ‘But it would be the first and most obvious theory.’

  Evan’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He answered it.

  ‘Evan?’ It was Carrie.

  ‘Carrie, oh, God, I’ve been trying to find you-’

  ‘Listen. You’re in danger. Serious danger. You need to get your mother and come back to Houston. Immediately.’

  ‘My mother’s dead, Carrie. She’s dead.’

  ‘Evan. Oh, no. Where are you?’

  ‘With the police.’

  ‘Good. That’s good. Stay with them. Babe, I am so sorry. So sorry.’

  ‘What danger?’ Her first words rang in his head. ‘What the hell do you know about this?’

  Suddenly a car passed them, cut them off hard, forcing the patrol car into a manicured front lawn, a blue Ford sedan skidding to a stop, Durless yelling, ‘Holy shit!’ as the brakes threw him forward into the windshield. Evan wasn’t buckled in and the brake-jam slammed him into the back of the front seat. He dropped the cell phone.

  He looked through the front windshield, aware of Durless cussing, aware of the patrol cop opening the driver’s-side door.

  On the other side of the windshield, the bald-headed man got out of the blue Ford. Raised a shotgun. Aimed it right at Evan.

  5

  E van fumbled at the door handles. But he couldn’t get out of the car; the locks were controlled from the front seat. The mesh and glass trapped him.

  The young officer hit the pavement, crouching down as he swung open the door. Bald jumped onto the police car’s hood, then roof, pivoted the shotgun in a blur, felled the policeman with two precise blows on the side of the head with the shotgun’s butt stock. The officer crumpled. Bald jumped down from the hood and leveled the shotgun through the driver’s door at Durless, who bled from a gash on his nose.

  ‘That’s him!’ Evan yelled. ‘The guy from my house!’ He heard Carrie’s voice calling his name, sounding tinny on the dropped phone.

  ‘Hands where I can see them,’ Bald ordered in a voice of total calm. ‘Don’t be an asshole.’

  Durless raised his hands.

  ‘Unlock Evan from the back.’

  ‘Durless, he’s the guy!’

  Durless threw himself out his door, and Bald vaulted over the cruiser, skidding across the hood. Durless landed on his back on the grass, freeing his service revolver in a smooth yank, firing. He missed. Bal
d slammed both feet onto Durless’s chest, a brutally efficient blow that purpled Durless’s face. Bald kicked away the service revolver onto the well-trimmed green of the yard.

  Bald leaned down, nailed Durless with two sharp blows in the jaw.

  It had taken all of ten seconds.

  Evan pivoted onto his back, kicked at the window. It was reinforced; the glass held. ‘No need for that,’ Bald said. Evan scrambled off the seat onto the floor.

  Bald leaned in the driver’s side, studied the controls, and popped the back door locks.

  Evan leaned forward and pushed the passenger-side door open. But Bald already had the driver’s-side door open, the shotgun nestled against Evan’s back. Evan froze.

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ Bald said.

  ‘Please, what do you want?’ Evan yelled.

  ‘It’s for your own safety. Come on.’

  Evan was suddenly full of a determination not to go with this man. Bald had dispatched a much younger cop and Durless with shocking ease. The police might have heard the attack over the radio. Or Carrie, she might be calling 911 in Houston and reporting the attack. Or a busybody on this street might be peeking out his window, dialing for help. The cops might arrive at any second. ‘No. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Goddamn it,’ Bald said. ‘I didn’t kill these cops when I could’ve, you think I’m gonna kill you?’

  ‘Who are you?’ Evan spoke louder. Carrie might hear this conversation. He had to give her information to help him. ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘I want goddamned cooperation. You’re dead in a day unless you come with me. I’ll tell you everything. I promise. But you’ve got to come with me.’

  ‘No! Tell me what this is about. How do you know my mother?’

  ‘Later.’ Bald seized Evan by the hair and hauled him from the back of the car. Then Bald closed fingers around Evan’s throat with a practiced hand, squeezing on the rope burn. Black circles widened in the air before Evan’s eyes.

  Bald jammed the shotgun’s barrel up under Evan’s jaw. ‘I don’t have time to coddle you.’

  The barrel was cold against his throat and Evan nodded.

  Bald lowered the shotgun, shoved Evan toward his Ford. ‘You drive. You disobey me, I shoot you in the leg. Cripple you for life.’