The Body of David Hayes

by Ridley Pearson

  “There were two of them,” Beth repeated, her eyes darting between Lou and Liz.

  Lou said softly, “We know they told you to say nothing about it, Beth. Tony’s going to get better, and when he does, he could be in some trouble here, and no one wants to see that happen.”

  “They made him do it!” Beth shouted loudly. One of the patrolmen poked his head out from the kitchen and then retreated. “They told him they’d hurt the twins if they didn’t get a call within the hour. Then, when they did get the call, I don’t think it was what they expected. They panicked and took off. They must have heard he’d collapsed.” She added cautiously: “I’m afraid to leave. They told me not to leave.”

  Liz asked again if Beth could describe them.

  Beth explained once again that there were two of them, both wearing nice suits. Good-looking men whom she’d initially taken to be FBI agents or cops. They’d arrived at the back door the night before, just after dinner. “Tony was careful. Wouldn’t let them into the house. But then when they mentioned the embezzlement investigation and that they’d rather talk in private, he let them in.”

  Liz repeated, “Two men. Dark suits. Good-looking.”

  “The man who spoke… the one on the left… didn’t have much of an accent. But the other one… once they were inside the door… I knew something was wrong.”

  “What kind of accent?” Liz asked.

  “Thick. I don’t know. Italian? Russian? Not French, not Spanish.”

  She glanced at Lou’s list. Description and timing taken care of, she moved on, asking Beth what happened.

  Beth wormed her fingers as she spoke. “They were polite at first. I had no idea… ” She was interrupted by a muted peal of joy from the upstairs. The twins were clearly enjoying themselves, oblivious to their mother’s contained terror a floor below. Beth looked up toward them, her face bunching as tears threatened.

  Lou asked, “What did they say they were doing here?”

  “All I remember is that all at once they were pushing Tony. The other one pulled me, turned me, and covered my mouth. It happened so quickly.” She rubbed her wrists where Liz could see thin but deep red bruises. “They had the twins then. I don’t remember how, exactly. Tony and I… we did exactly as they asked. I stayed with the children in the living room. The one who couldn’t speak so well watched us while the other one took Tony into the kitchen. There was talking but I couldn’t hear.”

  “For how long?” Lou asked.

  “Five minutes? Ten? Everything slows down, you know? Did you know that? Slows down to where it feels like forever. All I wanted was them gone. To leave us alone. It seemed like forever.”

  Liz asked, “You don’t know what they said to Tony?” She saw immediately that this question frustrated Lou, and she resolved that before asking anything more, she would wait for a signal from him.

  “The one who could speak… it was something to do with the bank. Tony came in and told me to do whatever the man asked, that all he had to do was go to the office for a few minutes. Everything was going to be okay as long as we did what they asked. They’d stay at the house until they confirmed Tony had done whatever it was they were asking him to do.”

  “You said they panicked and took off,” Lou said. “When was this?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Beth said.

  Liz reminded her that Lou wanted to get Beth to the hospital, if possible.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Beth said. “I’m not leaving the children, and I’m not going without them, and I’m not taking them with me. You see? I’m staying.”

  “It’s over,” Lou said.

  “No!” she replied sharply. “Just because you say it’s over doesn’t mean it’s over.”

  “No, of course not,” Lou said, shooting Liz a quick look, which she took to mean she should continue.

  “You don’t know for sure what they asked Tony to do?” she asked.

  “Just something at the bank. That’s all. That they would hurt him-us-if he didn’t do this… ” She looked up at Lou and burst into tears. “I did what they told me to do.”

  Liz moved over to comfort her. “Of course you did, Beth. It’s not your fault.”

  Lou excused himself and walked into the kitchen. A lot of male voices in there, but Liz couldn’t make out what was said.

  Liz said gently, “We need to get you down to the hospital, Beth. That’s why Lou asked me here. Mary’s with the twins. The police can protect them better here, but Tony needs you right now. These men wanted something from Tony, wanted him to do something-we think we know what it might have been.”

  Beth jerked her head up to meet Liz’s eyes, some of the brightness returned.

  “Tony’s security clearance allows him a great deal of access at the bank,” Liz said. She knew another possibility existed, but didn’t mention it: that Tony had been part of the earlier embezzlement, that everything that had happened here this morning connected directly to the past, just as what had been happening to her also connected to her past.

  “Tony’s a good man,” Beth mumbled. “You’ve seen him with the twins.”

  “He needs you, Beth. We’ve got to get you down to the hospital. Why don’t I check with Mary and make sure everything’s okay?” Mary was Tony’s older sister and the mother of five. “If she’s got it under control, we’ll let Lou take you to see Tony. Okay?”

  Beth nodded, though appeared off in another realm. Lou signaled a patrolwoman, who came over and sat across from Beth. Liz hurried upstairs, knowing in advance that Mary had everything under control. Finding it so, she returned to the living room and won Lou’s attention through the kitchen door.

  She told him somewhat loudly so Beth could hear, “Beth has agreed to go see Tony with you. I told her there’d be plenty of officers here while Mary looks after the twins.”

  “Absolutely,” Boldt said.

  Beth stood up from the couch, and the patrolwoman hooked an arm to steady her.

  Liz said, “Let’s get you freshened up, and Lou will drive you over there.” She felt nearly desperate to get back to the bank and keep her people on point, in Tony’s absence. Like it or not, the merger quickly approached, and her team was directly responsible for a smooth transition. She contained her impatience, willing to give this a few more minutes.

  Not long thereafter she pulled the Boldt minivan back into the bank’s subterranean parking garage and her reserved spot. She shut off the engine and collected her purse. Climbing out of the van, she was immediately jolted by the ringing of her cell phone, and she scrambled to answer it.

  Occupied as she was, her left hand holding her purse while her right hand dug down into a pocket for the phone, she jerked back but did not scream as a hand clapped over her mouth. Broad daylight, was her first inexplicable thought. The garage glowed beneath a gloomy twilight of tube lighting. By the time her panicked brain registered anything beyond the time of day, she’d been catapulted through the van’s open sliding door, a bag placed over her head and a wide piece of tape slapped around her head, holding it to a headrest while wedging open her mouth. She heard the tinkle of keys along with the contents of her purse spill. She heard her cell phone beep and the familiar sound of the van’s seat belt warning buzzer, but the engine did not start. In the course of events her arms were yanked and taped together behind the seat, although her wrists did not touch. All this in a matter of ten to fifteen seconds.

  By the time someone pinched at her eyes and pulled the fabric away, her head was swooning toward unconsciousness. She heard a sound she assumed to be the glove box, followed by another familiar sound she couldn’t place. She struggled, attempting to whip her head side to side. Her initial fear was rape-these were men, and she was a woman, and she’d been immobilized and her hands taped apart. Her ankles were bound too, now that she thought to try to move them. But sitting up? In the backseat of a car? When the first of the two eyeholes was cut away and she saw the front seat of the van empty, she braced herself, expec
ting to be groped or molested. Instead, her vision was temporarily blocked as a hairy wrist crossed its path and a second eyehole was cut from the fabric. Then she heard a metallic click, thinking first and foremost of Lou’s Leatherman all-in-one tool, a gift she’d given him not too many Christmases ago, but a gift she’d never seen him use since.

  They’re going to cut me. The thought threw her into a sudden frenzy. She feared anything to do with fire, drowning, or cutting. She’d have rather gotten struck by a train or hit head-on by a truck than any of those three.

  The van’s door slid shut, silencing her surroundings. Only a small hum penetrated the vehicle. She tugged at her arms, but to no avail, then quit altogether as she tired and took in more of her surroundings. The sounds she’d heard had been the operation of the van’s VCR and a videotape being inserted into a deck that hid in the console between the front seats. She knew this because the tiny television screen that folded down from the ceiling shone a bright blue, a bold white arrow pointing to the right.

  When the first of the sordid images filled that small screen, she thought this some kind of perverse, sick joke-someone tying her up and forcing her to watch pornography. Terror again stole through her as she imagined some stranger sitting directly behind her in the third seat, watching the video as he contemplated where to start with her.

  But then the woman, naked and on all fours, her blurry bare backside toward the camera, slowly turned around, a man’s chest and shoulders seen behind her. All at once the background looked far too familiar, logs, a lamp, a clock. All at once Liz couldn’t breathe, choked, the tape and hood pressing so tightly into her open mouth. She screamed, but barely heard her own voice. She squinted her eyes shut as that face on the screen slipped first into profile and then turned toward the camera’s hidden lens. But she looked again, driven by a defiant curiosity. The bare breasts and shoulders so familiar. The hair. The line of the neck. The curve of the hips.

  A face, all her own.

  For all her endless hours in this vehicle as driver, Liz realized she had never once sat in these backseats. The minivan’s VCR typically ran nothing more offensive than Peter Pan or The Wizard of Oz, something to occupy the kids in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or for the nearly two-hour drive up to their cabin. Liz looked away but found her blurry eyes wandering back to the small screen in a wave of self-loathing. The video was date- and time-stamped in the upper right-hand corner, a date she would have done anything to erase from her life.

  The camera angle, possibly shot from inside the cabin’s closet, offered an unobstructed view of the bed, where Liz, sporting a haircut she would never have again, a haircut that also dated the event, once again turned to face the camera. The contact of skin, the silent motions captured in grainy black-and-white, the pursed lips and agonized faces all added up to an unattractive, disgusting carnal dance that debased her.

  From outside the parked van, one saw only the flashing blue light from the screen playing out on a woman’s face wet with tears, and a gaping mouth held open by silver tape. As the woman struggled to be free, the van rocked side to side, as if driven by a strong wind. Inside, atop the stained carpet floor, lay her daughter’s second favorite doll, a coloring book, and a plastic bag of crushed Goldfish crackers.

  She felt half dead as she watched, amazed at the familiarity of the whore on the tape. Strange coincidences. Even the birthmark on the outside flank of her right buttock looked just like her own. “My little Martian,” her husband called it.

  It couldn’t possibly be she who had done these things, her heart told her, but of course her eyes proved otherwise. Back and forth she went, wife, mother, sinner, slut.

  Slowly, in timing with her efforts to free her wrists, she came to understand the effect this videotape might have on her own and her husband’s careers. Their lives. More important, their children if the tape ever went public. What kind of looks would the children endure from their teachers, the parents of their friends? How would it affect her own relationship with her children, for the rest of their lives? She attempted to measure the fallout if the tape were sent to Phillip, the date confirming a connection to David Hayes at the time of the embezzlement. The Seattle Times. Posted on the Internet. Her world shrank.

  Her cell phone rang from the front seat, where it had been dumped from her purse. With one mighty effort the tape tore and her hands came free, and only then did she see that one edge had been cleanly cut, only then did she connect this with the sounds she had heard just before she’d been closed inside. The Leatherman tool. They had wanted her to free herself.

  She tore the tape from her mouth and slipped off the hood, slammed the retractable video screen up into its locked position, and lunged for the phone. She fell to her knees, her ankles still taped.

  “Help me!” she hollered into the phone before her mind registered that this tape must never be revealed to anyone. Any kind of help was the last thing she wanted.

  A deep male voice that nearly hid the rich, Eastern European accent said, “Next time you are asked to do something, we will expect you to do it yourself, not send a replacement. Cooperate, and you can be the last person to ever see this tape. Be ready to act at a moment’s notice.” Disconnected.

  Standing away from the van, listening carefully, one could hear, along with the whine of passing traffic, a woman’s painful sobbing from within. A woman stretched thin between the past and the present, a woman faced with the reality of self-loathing and the disintegration of all things good, of all things held dear and sacred. Bared before her eyes. Destroyed.

  TEN

  BOLDT MUMBLED THROUGH AN APOLOGY, embarrassed, humiliated, even, that Miles had not been picked up from his piano lesson and was awaiting a ride. Like every aspect of private education, admission to concert pianist Bruce Lavin’s afternoon session had required an application, referrals, a waiting list, and a substantial deposit. Six months later, Miles had finally been “asked to join.”

  “A confusion on our end,” Boldt said, sucking up to Lavin and feeling like a sycophant. He realized how stupid this explanation sounded.

  “I don’t run a babysitting service,” Lavin clarified. “The schedule here is-”

  Boldt interrupted, “-very tight. I know.” Lavin had nearly beaten this mantra into parents. Preparation and punctuality were his credo. As long as his students practiced and showed up on time, Lavin kept them in the program. “I’m on my way.”

  “If it should happen again… ”

  “It won’t,” Boldt assured the man. The cost of the course, paid in full and up front, was nonrefundable if a child was let go. Expulsions could not be appealed, but the child could reapply for future sessions.

  Boldt tried Liz at the office, and then on the cell, ready to give her a piece of his mind. But when she failed to answer either phone, his anger quickly shifted to concern. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t heard from her since their meeting out at Beth LaRossa’s house, earlier in the day.

  Having assigned it himself, he knew that the security duty amounted to a single, unmarked car watching either the bank or their home, depending on her location. By mutual consent, she wasn’t to be followed unless she requested it, and she was asked to make that request if her movement involved contact with Hayes. Otherwise, Boldt and Liz had agreed she should be allowed to “have a life.”

  Boldt was informed that “the Sienna was observed leaving the garage about twenty minutes after its return from the LaRossa residence.” That put her leaving work late morning or early afternoon.

  “No contact prior or since?”

  “No contact, Lieutenant.”

  He tried both lines again, and then on a hunch he tried home, but to the same result. A cop with Boldt’s experience didn’t panic; it had been programmed out of him, but a groundswell of internal dialogue ran as background chatter in his thoughts-several voices inside him competing for airtime. Prioritizing his responsibilities, he hurried to the Crown Vic and challenged traffic to reach Miles before Lavin reco
nsidered and expelled him from the program.

  He inched the car up to First Hill, staying on small streets with stop signs every block, trying to avoid the congestion of traffic lights, but he and a few hundred other drivers all had the same idea, and the going remained bumper-to-bumper. When his cell phone rang, he prepared to berate Liz.

  He answered, “Yeah?” hoping to project his anger so she couldn’t miss the subtext.

  “Lieutenant?”

  His expectations flattened, he barked, “What is it?”

  “Call for you. Something about your daughter.”

  He called the number. A cat did a somersault in his chest.

  Mindy Crawford answered-Sarah’s ballet teacher. He knew what was coming and cut in immediately, interrupting her introduction of herself.

  “We messed up our pickups today,” he said. “My fault.”

  The woman paused, perhaps surprised by his prescience. “I could drop her by your house,” Ms. Crawford offered, “but I’ve another class to teach first. It would be a little after seven, if that’s all right.”

  The ballet school was the other end of the world from Madrona, where Boldt was heading. He and Miles could try to make it, but her offer sounded like a better idea. He told her so.

  “No problem,” she said so cheerfully as to instill guilt in Boldt. It was a problem, a big problem for the Boldt family. He tempered some of his anger with calls first to SPD’s Metro, and then King County Sheriff’s Traffic Patrol, to make certain Liz hadn’t been in a traffic accident. Then he called LaMoia. Sergeant John LaMoia, who had mentored under Boldt for a good part of his Homicide career, who had stepped in as squad sergeant behind Boldt after Boldt’s promotion to lieutenant, was a man who knew few bounds but got the job done.

  “Yo,” LaMoia answered.

  Boldt asked how the terrorism seminar was going, unable to jump right in with a request to find his wife.

  “I’ve seen shit you wouldn’t believe! Bombs the size of cigarette packs and briefcase gadgets that can zero every computer in a building. This is the ultimate techno-romp, Sarge.” LaMoia continued to call Boldt by his former rank. “If these rag-heads get their mitts on half this shit, we got big problems.”