Kidnapped ik-10

by Jan Burke

  Frank answered it, and Ethan and I exchanged a look of surprise when we heard him say, “Caleb!”

  He invited him in.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Caleb said, and as he came within sight of the table, he began apologizing again.

  “Have you eaten?” I asked. “Why don’t you join us? This is my semifamous linguini with asparagus. I’ll be insulted if you don’t at least try it.”

  He protested that we shouldn’t have to feed him every night, that he’d just stopped by to drop off some notes for me and to ask if I had talked to Tadeo Garcia.

  “I haven’t talked to him directly,” I said carefully. “I talked to his wife. She invited us to come out there on Monday. We’ll see if that actually leads to an interview with Tadeo Garcia himself. He may pull a disappearing act if he figures out that she’s invited us there.”

  By then, Ethan had set a place for Caleb at the table, and it didn’t take much coaxing to get him to join us.

  “You said ‘us,’” Caleb said. “Does that mean that Ethan can go with you?”

  “Dr. Robinson said it would be okay,” Ethan said.

  “Under certain conditions,” I added.

  “Believe me,” Ethan said, “‘Take it easy’ isn’t an order I could disobey if I wanted to.”

  “I think the good doctor is on to the fact that you’ll keep testing your own limits.” I turned back to Caleb.

  This led to twenty minutes of the kind of dinner conversation you can have only with people who work in certain professions, because anyone with more sensitivity or better table manners would put his fork down and turn an unpleasant shade of green. We, on the other hand, demolished platefuls of noodles as we discussed in some detail the damage a bullet could do to one’s anatomy, one of us having discovered the facts the hard way.

  Eventually talk turned to the case of Gerry Serre and his missing son.

  “Not to speak ill of the dead,” Caleb said, “but we’ve dug up most of that slope because of the big ego of the late Sheila Dolson. Didn’t find the remains of a child there.”

  “I talked to Mark Baker,” I said. “He told Reed about the family dentist who unwittingly supplied those teeth she planted, and got a little information in exchange. Reed mentioned — off the record for the time being — that some cigarette butts were found up there. So the killer was a smoker?”

  “Seems likely to me,” Caleb said, “because of where they were found — but I shouldn’t be talking about it. We’re hoping they’ll result in a DNA hit at some point.”

  By the end of dinner, Ethan was drowsy, and while the rest of us sat at the table after it was cleared, he settled into a corner of the couch and listened in as Caleb went over some of his notes about his brother.

  “The prosecutor said that Mason went over to my dad’s studio, had an argument with him, killed him, and then killed Jenny. I don’t believe any of that happened. I think someone framed him.”

  “What makes you think so?” I asked.

  “Start with Jenny. He never would have harmed her — never. The prosecutor said that she must have surprised him killing my dad. That’s impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “We didn’t — We weren’t like these people who have nannies, you know? We took care of Jenny ourselves. My mom had two built-in baby-sitters. Mason and I watched her a lot, but mostly it was Mason. He loved spending time with her. He’d take her places even when he wasn’t baby-sitting her. I — I wasn’t as patient as he was.”

  He fell silent.

  “Preschoolers can try anyone’s patience,” I said. “She lived under the same roof with you, so you probably had your patience tried. You were studying hard, still in high school, right?”

  “Yes,” he said, not forgiving himself anything.

  “What did Mason do?”

  “He was — He’s an artist.”

  “He worked with your dad?”

  Caleb shook his head. “No, they didn’t get along about that. My dad wanted Mason to work with him. He wanted to teach him things about art. But Mason wanted to be on his own. He had already sold a couple of pieces.”

  “He was able to support himself with his own art?” Frank asked.

  “No, he had a band, too. Played keyboards. He wasn’t making a lot of money, but they had a steady gig at one of the clubs downtown.”

  “You were saying that he watched Jenny,” I said. “Is that another way he earned money?”

  “No — I mean yes, he watched Jenny, but no, he didn’t take money for that. My mom wanted to pay him for it, but he wouldn’t let her.” He took a deep breath, let it out in a rush. “My mom never would have let him take care of Jenny if she thought Mason would hurt her. If you had ever seen Mason and Jenny together… Anyway, he would have known that if Jenny wasn’t with me or my mom, she would be with my dad. He knew my mom’s work hours. He knew I was at school.”

  “So he knew Jenny would be with your dad.”

  “Exactly — no way would that be a surprise.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. “But he was found drunk—”

  “That’s another thing that’s all wrong,” he said.

  “Drunk and full of barbiturates, as I recall.”

  “That’s how he was found, but he didn’t put himself in that condition. He didn’t drink or use drugs.”

  Ethan, who had almost nodded off, sat up at that. “What?”

  Caleb laced his fingers together and rested his hands on the papers. His shoulders tensed. “No one ever believes this,” he said, “unless they knew Mason. The minute they hear he was an artist, or learn that he was in a band, they assume he must have been high all the time. He wasn’t.”

  Ethan said, “I know what you mean about the stereotypes, but speaking from experience, some people get pretty good at hiding their habits.”

  Caleb looked up at him.

  “Another time,” Ethan said. “Keep telling us about Mason.”

  Caleb’s shoulders relaxed. “Okay. When Mason was in high school, he dated this girl named Jadia. She was kind of wild, a little bit of a loner, and so was Mason. You talk about people who could hide their habits — that girl drank and did who-knows-what else, but until it got kind of late in the day, you’d hardly know it.”

  “And Mason was with her a lot?”

  “Not really. Typical high-school romance — didn’t last more than a few weeks. That was long enough for Mason to figure out that she had a drinking problem.” He paused. “I know that a couple of years before he met her, he was running with a different… well, I won’t make excuses for him. He tried all kinds of things and he had done some drinking, but he was never big-time into that stuff. By the time he got together with Jadia, he had already done all his experimenting… it was no real thrill for him.”

  “He’s six years older than you?” I asked.

  “Yes. I was this total pain in the ass — uh, I mean nuisance—”

  Ethan laughed. “Dude, she’s not your mom. You can say ass and all kinds of other stuff. They’re cool with it.”

  Caleb’s face reddened.

  I could see the amusement in Frank’s eyes, which undoubtedly had more to do with the “mom” business than anything else, but I decided to ignore him. “So,” I said to Caleb, “you looked up to your big brother?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that simple. My brother isn’t a saint. I’d never say that about him. He wasn’t always easy to get along with. He liked being the rebel.”

  “Hard on the rest of the family sometimes,” Frank said, none of the amusement of the previous moment anywhere in his voice. “My older sister was a rebel. Diana was always making it hellish for my parents, and I didn’t like that, but at the same time I also admired her. She was more daring than I was, but she was also always getting into trouble.”

  I tried not to let my shock show. Frank was twelve when his sister Diana died, and his family had developed a code of silence about her that had lasted decades. That ban had been lifted awhi
le back, but old habits lingered — this was the first time I had heard him mention her to anyone other than his closest friends.

  Caleb, unconscious of this honor, said, “Yes! That’s what it was like for me, too. Did she outgrow it?”

  “No, she was killed in an accident, so we didn’t get a chance to see if they would have been getting along later.”

  “Sorry.” He paused. “I guess that’s what I hate most about all of this — losing all the chances. I’ll never know my dad any better than I did when I was in high school. I don’t know what he’d say to me now, or if we’d even get along. I’ve already missed knowing what kind of bratty kid Jenny might have been over the past few years. I haven’t been able to be a brother to her. At first I thought it would only be a few days before someone would find her.” He paused again, and this time the silence stretched out before he went on.

  After a while, he said, “Another thing — Mason and Dad never got the chance to be adults with each other. Our family was close, and I didn’t like to hear him giving my mom and dad shit all the time, but I think they were seeing that he was growing out of it. Mason was always braver than I was — still is. He can be funny, too.” He grinned. “I think I was ten before I realized that his biological father was probably not a guy named Mr. Jar. He replaced that story with half a dozen others, including one about my mom naming him after a jar because of the way she got pregnant with him — I was completely freaked out, of course, and he knew I’d never ask my mom if it was true.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Ethan said, but he was laughing.

  “Does he know who his biological father is?” I asked.

  “No. Mom didn’t want the guy’s name on anything, because she didn’t want him to try to get custody of Mason. She’d never tell anyone the guy’s name — claimed she didn’t know, but none of us believed that. I asked Mason once if he wanted to know, and he said, ‘Only as a matter of idle curiosity.’ He also used to say that we had different fathers but the same dad.”

  “Which doesn’t exactly fit the picture the prosecution painted of their relationship.”

  “No.”

  “You were saying that you know he didn’t drink because of this girl he dated,” Ethan said, demonstrating one of the reasons I think he’ll be a great reporter one day — he never loses track of any thread in a conversation.

  “Right,” Caleb said. “Jadia. The way that happened was that one day Jadia showed up at our house, and she was drunk and wanted Mason to go somewhere with her. She was going to drive. Mason didn’t have a car of his own yet. My dad wouldn’t let Mason go with her. Mason acted all pissed off about it, but to be honest, I think he was relieved to have an excuse not to go with her.”

  “So did they just hang out at your house?” Ethan asked.

  “No,” Caleb said. “My dad tried to stop her from leaving, but when he went to the phone to call her parents, she took off. She made it home safely before anyone could do anything about it, but she was mad, and said some things about my dad that Mason didn’t like much, and so they split up.”

  “So that’s why he stopped drinking?” I asked.

  “No. Two weeks later, she hit a kid on a bicycle — killed him. He was eleven. I didn’t know him, because he went to a different school, but he was my age. Eleven. That’s how old I was when it happened. Mason kept saying, ‘It could have been you,’ to me. So I finally said, ‘It could have been you,’ right back at him. Kind of shut him up, you know? Anyway, he never did any drugs or booze after that.”

  “He was lucky to have someone confront him,” Ethan murmured.

  “I don’t know that it was what I said to him. I think he saw how many lives got totally screwed up because of that accident. The parents of the kid, the kid’s sister, Jadia’s parents — but it was really hard on Jadia, too. And I don’t mean because of the drunk-driving charges and all that. Mason told me that she never forgave herself for it. I think he knew that he was the type of person who never would have forgiven himself, either, if he ever did something that hurt somebody while he was drunk.”

  Caleb glanced at his watch and said, “I’d better get going. I’m working on some things with Ben tomorrow morning.” He paused. “He’s always good about giving me Sundays off — that’s when I see Mason.”

  “Is Ben doing okay?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  When I saw he wasn’t going to say more, I said, “Thanks for bringing these notes over. I’ll look through them before I talk to the Garcias.”

  “Thanks. There’s not much there. I never was able to be of much help to Mason.”

  Our protests that he was wrong about that seemed not to make an impression on him. Ethan walked with him to the front door. As Caleb was leaving, I overheard Ethan say, “You believe in him. Don’t underestimate how much that means to someone.”

  ETHAN asked Frank for a painkiller — something he almost always waits too long to do. When he first got out of the hospital, Ethan worried about the possibility of dependency problems with them, and talked things over with his AA sponsor. The decision was made to put Frank in possession of the pills, to dole them out on request, but he was supposed to call the doctor if the requests were too frequent.

  So far, there had been no need for a call. If anything, Frank and I worried that Ethan was trying too hard to do without them, and losing sleep to pain.

  “Tired of me yet?” he asked us as he headed toward his room.

  “No,” we answered in unison, and wished him good night.

  CHAPTER 31

  Monday, May 1

  9:30 A.M.

  A CONDOMINIUM IN LAS PIERNAS

  CLEO sat on her balcony wearing nothing but a fluffy white bathrobe. She sipped fresh-squeezed orange juice and watched the ocean. The morning was overcast, the gray clouds reflected in a gray sea. Her mood matched the grayness.

  She stretched her legs out and rested her heels on a nearby chair. The onshore breeze made it a little nippy out here, but quieter than usual — the air was cool enough to keep all but a few joggers away from the beach.

  Her own workout had gone well this morning. A little later today she might put some time in at the firing range. She reflected on the fact that much of her life was spent preparing for incidents that rarely occurred. Hours and hours spent training and planning for an action that might take place once a year. The most exciting part would be all over in a few moments. Adrenaline-loaded moments, to be sure, but few of them.

  This didn’t bother her. She knew that many people worked for years in jobs that never produced one second of excitement.

  For her own safety, it was best that she did not work too often. She knew her success depended on controlling certain factors, and one of those factors was the frequency of abductions and kills. If she were to work too often, inevitably a pattern would be seen, small mistakes (a shoe lost!) would be connected to one another, and then to her. She was confident of her abilities, but luck could go lousy on anybody. There were things no one could plan for — like those reporters being at Sheila’s house, just at that time. A shoe coming loose, sticking in the mud.

  Long ago she had been questioned in connection with a criminal investigation, and she remembered how unnerving that had been. This had taken place in her childhood, when she was known by a different name, and she had never come close to facing charges of any kind. Her memories of her earliest years she kept locked away in a distant corner of her mind, but she clearly remembered the fire and all that had followed.

  Investigators believed a set of tragedies had befallen her. Her parents, known by everyone in the neighborhood to be heavy drinkers and smokers, died in a fire. Smoking in bed, arson investigators said. The ten-year-old girl had barely escaped with her life. That’s the way it looked to all the adults.

  She had been sent to the home of her only living grandparent. Her father’s mother, as wicked as he was and as much a drinker. Grandmother had drowned in her swimming pool. There were questions then. A rail
-thin detective, with eyes like black buttons, had asked them, while his partner, who looked to Cleo to be yet another drinker, looked on unhappily. Did she know, the thin one asked, why her grandmother had decided to go swimming at night? No, she didn’t. Why she went swimming with her clothes on? Cleo shrugged.

  The questions had stopped when Vera, her mother’s younger sister, arrived from California to take care of the twelve-year-old girl. Vera had two attorneys in tow, both by the last name of Fletcher. She was married to one of them. Within a few days, they were on their way to California, where Cleo would live with her aunt.

  Aunt Vera had run away from home at the age of sixteen, pregnant and unmarried. She had the good fortune to be taken in by a family that had a habit of caring for stray kids, and when she decided she was too young to raise the baby, they adopted her infant out to a good home. By the time Cleo arrived on the scene, Vera was married to one of the Fletchers. Cleo quickly learned that Vera was an entirely different kind of person than the other family members she had known, and not just because she didn’t smoke or drink. She had not lived under her aunt’s roof for twenty-four hours when Vera looked her in the eye and said, “You thinking of trying to bump me off, Cleo? I hope not, because if I die in any kind of accident, the world is going to know exactly what you are.”

  Cleo didn’t say anything. She tried not to let her nervousness show.

  Vera’s smile got bigger, then she said, “And besides, it would be a waste of your talents. I’ve been talking to one of my cousins. The family could use someone like you.”

  Cleo had never felt warmth toward anyone, and she didn’t develop an attachment to her aunt. But Vera and her husband, Uncle Greg, provided a kind of consistency and reliability that had not been part of her life up to that time, and that steadied her. They were strict, but that helped Cleo to develop discipline. And Uncle Greg turned out to have skills in self-defense and weaponry that Cleo had only dreamed of possessing, skills he enjoyed teaching her. She decided they would live.