Kidnapped ik-10

by Jan Burke

  To Cleo’s dismay, her decision was not enough. Vera became the first of Cleo’s relatives to die in a true accident, a car wreck. Cleo was fifteen then. For a time, remembering Vera’s threat on that first day, Cleo was certain that all her training would go to waste, that a twist of fate was going to cause her to be known as a murderer before she really had a chance to practice it as an art form.

  But months went by, Cleo continued to train, and no information was released. Uncle Greg continued to teach her all he could, expanding her lessons to include a wide variety of methods of deception. Whatever grief he felt for his loss of Vera was channeled into making Cleo a perfect “agent,” as he referred to her, on behalf of the family.

  On her twenty-first birthday, her uncle revealed that upon Vera’s death, certain information had been given to him, but he knew that Cleo had not caused Vera’s death.

  She never learned where Uncle Greg had received his own training. Five years ago, he died of injuries suffered in a rock-climbing accident. At his funeral, Roy had hinted that Greg had once been in the CIA, but she had a feeling this wasn’t true.

  Cleo rarely spent time around the rest of the family. She never liked being in a crowd, and didn’t like the idea of more than a few people being able to recognize her. She moved often, did not encourage neighbors who tried to become friendly. She focused her energies on training for the next situation in which she would be needed. That kept her away from home, for the most part.

  Her exercise and training routines provided some release for her energy. A carefully orchestrated series of affairs with men in her “family” provided a release for her sexual tensions. She believed herself to be their superior in every way, and one day she would demonstrate this in a manner they wouldn’t like. Well, she might keep one around for fun.

  She smiled to herself, picturing how that might work out. As for the rest, someday she’d be running everything. That was going to take planning and patience.

  And the removal of a few obstacles along the way.

  She stood and stretched and went back into the condo. She had come back from her place in the mountains after only two days. She had meant to stay away longer, but this fit of restlessness had come upon her and she’d returned.

  She looked around her living room and sighed. She’d have to move again. She wondered if she should do that before the next job came along.

  Uncle Greg’s voice sounded in her ear, warning her about staying anonymous.

  She would be out of here before tomorrow night.

  THE phone rang. She answered it and listened with a growing sense of anticipation.

  “Can you handle another job so soon?” Giles asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Keep your shoes on this time,” he said.

  She nearly hung up in his ear. Instead, she remained silent.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No,” she said. She let another long silence stretch, then said, “I’m moving.”

  “When?”

  She moved her schedule up a bit. “Today.”

  “Today!”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose that’s wise. Do you have the new address?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Call me when you have it.”

  He was certainly full of demands today. “I have to go now,” she said. She disconnected the call. That would be good for him.

  She immediately dialed Fletcher Moving and Storage. She asked for Andy. While she waited for him to come on the line, she glanced at the clock near her bed. She hadn’t unpacked her gear from her trip out of town, so it would take only a few minutes to gather what clothing she needed from the condo.

  Andy answered, excitement plain in his young voice. He knew that any request from her was to be dealt with immediately, and by a handpicked crew.

  Andy required a softer approach than the older men. She used what worked.

  “Where are we taking things? Not too far, I hope,” he said.

  “Just store everything for now. It may be a while before I can pay everything I owe you,” she said, her voice soft and low. “But if you come over now, I’ll give you a special down payment.” She paused. “I haven’t dressed yet.”

  He said he’d be right over.

  She said that would be delightful, her mind already on what outfit she would wear when she was able to get dressed again.

  CHAPTER 32

  Monday, May 1

  10:15 A.M.

  REDLANDS

  UNTIL we were about fifteen minutes away from the Garcia household, Ethan slept stretched out on the backseat, using three pillows, only one of which was beneath his head. The others were placed so that all the tender places on his back and shoulder were somewhat protected from the jouncing of the car. Dr. Doug Robinson had pleased him by saying he should be able to manage without the need for someone to stay with him during the day — and made him happier still when he said that Ethan could come along for the ride to Redlands — provided he continued to get lots of rest. This was not really something Ethan could avoid, much to his own frustration.

  He made a sound as he came awake, one I don’t think he knew he made, since he usually tries to hide any sign of his discomfort. He slowly sat up and rubbed his face and hair with his right hand.

  “Need something for the pain?” I asked. Frank had entrusted me with a couple of the pills in case the long ride — about seventy-five miles in each direction — proved too much.

  “I’ll wait until after we talk to the Garcias,” Ethan said. “I don’t want to be too out of it.”

  The we was not lost on me. “Ethan—”

  “Your story.”

  “Not really a story, but—”

  “I won’t interfere. Promise.” He smiled and said, “But I have to ask, did you mention to Mrs. Garcia that you’re married to a cop?”

  “Ben tells me that when you first met him, you told him you had considered a minor in anthropology.”

  “Hmm. That doesn’t seem like an answer to my question, but — Did I say that to Ben? Imagine that.”

  “Imagine is right, since I’d lay money you never took so much as a course in it.”

  The smile became a grin. “Key word is considered. You don’t have to take a course to consider a minor. But I get your point — you actually are married to a cop. So you did tell her.”

  “I went very easy on that. It could have backfired.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean.” He paused. “Frank told me about Anna. That maybe she had other motives for being with Ben. That sucks.”

  “It bothers me, too. I can’t convince myself the whole relationship was a ploy, but it bothers me all the same.”

  “I’ve been thinking… if you’d let me help you out, maybe that’s something I could help with. I could track down Fletchers. You know, do what I can to find out how far the branches of that family tree stretch.”

  My impulse was to tell him that he should just rest and recover, but I knew how bored he was. Other than doctors’ appointments and an AA meeting, he hadn’t been out of the house until today.

  “If you think you’re up to it, sure.”

  THE Garcias lived in a two-story house on a quiet block. Like all the other houses on the street, it was neatly landscaped and appeared to be well cared for.

  Dora Garcia was a short, slender woman with dark hair that she wore in a chignon. Her big brown eyes had a hint of amusement in them, as if she had just remembered a good joke that she dared not tell in present company.

  She welcomed us warmly and fussed over Ethan in a way that I suspect he would not have tolerated from anyone else. He could be a master manipulator, so I wasn’t sure about the sincerity of his appreciation, but she lapped it up.

  Tadeo Garcia stood aside and watched us make our entrance, then took a seat in what looked like a favorite armchair. He was wide-shouldered and tall, one of those men whose sinewy strength does not desert them
in maturity. His arms looked as if he tied knots in railroad tracks for a workout.

  He wore a neatly trimmed mustache. His hair was silver and long, tied back in a short ponytail. This surprised me — I don’t meet many ex-cops who have given up the burr. His eyes were as brown as Dora’s but held no amusement whatsoever. In fact, he looked as if he was more than a little pissed off.

  He let his wife do all the talking. This is one of the many ways an interview can go south whenever more than one person is present. One-on-one is almost always best, but given the state of Ethan’s health, I could hardly ask him to take Dora out for a walk in the garden while Tadeo and I talked.

  I didn’t jump right in with the third degree, of course. I’ve been at this long enough to know that a little patience up front, taking the time to build rapport, pays off later. But every attempt I made to draw Tadeo into general conversation was a bust. Tadeo grunted, nodded, shook his head, or managed a monosyllable. Dora frowned at him and responded at length. I couldn’t blame her — if this was the level of interaction the guy offered on a regular basis, she was undoubtedly starved for attention.

  I asked him if the group of kids in a picture near his elbow were his children. All he said was, “Grandchildren.” His wife was expanding on that answer when Tadeo interrupted her and asked Ethan, “How’d you get shot?”

  “The usual way,” he said. “Being a fool.”

  That won the slightest smile from the man.

  “Saving my life,” I said.

  “Not the same thing at all,” Ethan said. “And as I recall, you started out trying to save mine. Fool rescue is a dangerous occupation.” He looked across the room. “As anybody in law enforcement can tell you.”

  Tadeo’s smile widened a little, and he said to Ethan, “Tell me what happened.”

  So Ethan gave him the condensed version of the whole tale, minimizing his own role. Somewhere in there, he worked in the fact that he knew Caleb Fletcher. And as his brief account ended with his talking about staying with us, he also said, “Caleb has been over to visit me twice now. He’s not the kind of person who forgets people, you know? He’s good that way.”

  “Does he visit his brother?”

  “Every week. That’s as often as he can see him.”

  Tadeo sighed. “I wasn’t happy with Dora when she told me you were coming over here today.”

  “We picked up on that,” Ethan said.

  That won a laugh. “Sorry. Nothing personal.”

  “Like hell,” Dora said. “Not personal against the two of you, but personal to him. Those bastards in his department—”

  “Dora…”

  “It’s the truth. It’s eating you up, old man, and you know it. Tadeo’s union had to fight the department to get his detective rank back.”

  Ethan and I looked at Tadeo. Thank God Ethan knows when to keep his mouth shut. He was probably thinking the same thing about me.

  The silence drew out. Finally Tadeo said, “Dora told me you were just working on background. You won’t quote me?”

  “I want to be completely honest with you about this,” I said, “so let me tell you what I told your wife. I’m not working on a story. I’m married to a homicide detective who works in the Las Piernas Police Department, so I rarely cover anything directly related to a crime. I know Caleb, though, and I know what was happening in our crime lab in the years when his brother was convicted.”

  “Yeah, we’ve heard about your problems.”

  “So I’m not doing this for a story, I’m trying to see what I can learn for a friend. If you tell me something that can be corroborated in other ways, I may try to convince you to go on the record with one of my colleagues. But it will be your choice.”

  After another long silence, Tadeo said, “I made a suggestion at a crime scene, about how a murder might have gone down. It wasn’t… in agreement with the way the lieutenant saw it.” He rubbed a hand over his chin. “It’s a good department, no matter what Dora says. My problems were with this one guy. Anybody else I’ve ever worked with would have at least thought about what a more experienced detective had to say. Not this guy. We got into a big argument. He was newly promoted, and kind of insecure.”

  “And he was a racist,” Dora said.

  Tadeo shrugged. “Not the first I’ve met, undoubtedly not the last.”

  “Your family has been in this country longer than his! Your cousin fought in Vietnam. Your dad fought in World War II. He sees brown skin and right away he assumes you were born in Mexico.”

  “Nothing wrong with being born in Mexico, Dora…”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “And as for his attitude — I don’t know. You ask me, that wasn’t what bothered him most that night. It was his pride, after what happened.” He turned to me. “I knew we had press there. He showed up at the scene because of that. What I didn’t know at the time — there was a reporter with a parabolic microphone pointed at us. So my theory about the crime got reported in the paper.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You turned out to be right.”

  “Well, yeah. But by the time anyone figured that out, I was already in trouble. I had embarrassed him, so he had me written up for being insubordinate, and eventually he managed to get me reassigned and demoted.”

  “Tadeo is not a politician,” Dora said. “That lieutenant, he was more politician than anything.”

  “The union helped me out,” Tadeo said. “But I was miserable for quite a few weeks before it all got straightened out.”

  “And it was during that miserable time that you were on patrol in the mountains?”

  “Yes.” He paused. “It was the most exciting thing that happened the whole time I worked up there. But… that’s not why I remember it so clearly. I remember it because it has been eating at me for five years.”

  “Why?” I asked softly.

  He looked over to his wife. “Because I should have spoken up and I didn’t.”

  “You’re speaking up now,” she said.

  “About what?” I asked.

  He took a big breath, as if he were about to dive into deep, cold water. “I think someone staged that scene.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Monday, May 1

  11:15 A.M.

  REDLANDS

  “THERE were all kinds of things at that scene that just didn’t make sense, and yet no one from Las Piernas seemed to notice them.”

  “Give me some examples,” I said.

  “First of all, the place he was found — makes no sense. He doesn’t have a cabin up there — I checked that out. He’s supposed to be smart enough to carry out a double homicide in broad daylight and manage to dump his sister’s body in some woods somewhere without anyone seeing him, but then he decides to drink and pop pills and get naked in the mountains? You know what the roads are like up there?”

  “Curving, with cliffs and steep embankments.”

  “Right. He’s supposed to be blasted — nearly died of the booze and barbiturates alone, but he doesn’t drive off a cliff. He doesn’t scrape a guardrail. He doesn’t even hit a tree. He makes it into a shallow little drainage ditch off a driveway. Hardly any damage, either — doesn’t even knock out a headlight. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he carefully backed into that ditch.”

  “Backed into it?”

  “The headlights were shining up into the trees, pointed away from neighboring cabins. I looked around — the shape of the ditch, the way the road and trees were lined up along there — the only way I could see the car ending up at that angle was if it had been backed in.”

  He hunted up a piece of paper and drew a little diagram.

  “This isn’t exact, just something to give you a rough idea. Okay. He supposedly drives into that ditch, and the sound isn’t loud enough to wake the neighbors — I woke them, shouting the little girl’s name.”

  “Jenny.”

  “Yes. But that’s not all that’s off about this scene. He isn’t
bruised or cut — not even a scratch. Although he had two victims to kill, neither of them harmed him in any way. Okay, maybe he held them at gunpoint or knifepoint — but no. No weapons other than that metal sculpture. Some kind of award. Not many people get held up at award-point.”

  “There was more than one room at the studio, though,” I said, thinking about this. “He could have killed his stepfather with the trophy and then attacked his sister by strangling her… but… yes, I see. If he killed her at the studio, then why not leave her body there?”

  “Lots of stuff about this doesn’t make sense.”

  “On that we agree. Tell me more about what you noticed that night, the things that bothered you.”

  “Okay — no keys.”

  “What?” Ethan said.

  “No car keys. Not in the ignition, not anywhere on the ground that I could see them.”

  “Wasn’t he supposed to have put stuff in the trunk? Maybe he dropped them when he was doing that.”

  “Yeah, when did that happen? After he hit the ditch? So he wrecks a car on a cold, damp night, he gets out and strips everything off but his socks and underwear, then passes out in the front seat. Does that make sense, even for a drunk? Oh, and there’s a laundry miracle while we’re at it — the bottoms of his socks stayed clean, even when he walked around in the mud, leaving shoe prints. And the shoe prints he leaves don’t look like the bottoms of his shoes, which are in the trunk.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You could see the bottoms of his socks while he was passed out in the driver’s seat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without moving him?”

  “Yes,” he said, frowning.

  “But then the seat must have been back too far.”

  “What do you mean?” Ethan said.

  “When you drive,” I said, “you drive with the seat close enough to reach the brake and accelerator, and to reach the clutch if it’s not an automatic. If his seat is so far back that the bottoms of his socks can be seen, how did he operate that vehicle?”

  “If you ask me, he never did,” Tadeo said. “Not that day, anyway.”

  “But if someone had to move his unresisting but heavy form behind the steering wheel…”