The Disappearance

by J. F. Freedman

  Allison shrugs. “There probably was. There were times when we wanted some space, other times when one of us had something to do later.”

  That’s a losing remark—any prosecutor would tear that one in half. Especially since they spent most nights together. A believable inference would be that he had plans for later that night, and had to be alone. Plans that included Emma Lancaster.

  Allison breaks into his thought process. “Now that I recall,” he suddenly remembers, “Nicole had a study group going with other students in her class at law school. Either she was going to get up early, or she needed time that night to prepare. One or the other. Maybe she would remember.”

  Luke makes the note. That could help—at least give Alison a decent reason for not being with his woman on that night, when his normal pattern was the opposite.

  He lays the folder aside. Fuck the details, he needs to get to what this case is about. “There are three pieces of damning evidence against you. The shoes, the condoms, and the key ring.”

  A Sisyphean nod. “I know.”

  “How are we going to account for those? Those are three smoking guns, Joe. Usually one is enough, and they have three.”

  Allison bows his head, running his fingers through his greasy hair. “I don’t know.”

  Luke looks at him sharply. “Are the shoes yours?”

  “I don’t know. I had a pair of New Balance once, but they disappeared before the kidnapping.”

  This is a disaster. “Disappeared? Jesus, man, can’t you do better than that?”

  “No.” Allison’s tired, baffled. His head drops against his chest, his neck moving like it’s lost its muscularity. This is a man who has suffered a catastrophe of monumental proportions and doesn’t know why. Jail time has taken a tremendous toll on him. Luke has seen and heard other men like Joe Allison in this situation. They’re so unprepared for something like this, they almost shrivel up and die right before your eyes.

  He hopes Allison can hang on to his defiance. Especially if he, Luke, decides not to take this case. “The shoes were found in your closet.”

  Allison nods.

  “So what you’re saying is, someone snuck your lost shoes into your closet and planted them?”

  Another nod. “What else could it be?”

  That you did it, asswipe. A pair of shoes linked to the abduction, were just found in Allison’s closet, but a year ago had disappeared before the kidnapping? What am I doing here? he thinks. “How many people have keys to your guest house?”

  “I don’t know. Half a dozen I gave keys to, like Nicole and my cleaning lady. And whoever had it before me. I didn’t change the locks.” He looks at Luke, smiling ruefully. “I don’t always lock it anyway. It’s back behind the house I rent from. They have good security.”

  “Not good enough,” Luke notes, “to stop whoever went in there and planted them and left without being spotted.”

  Allison looks up sharply.

  “That skepticism you heard from me is what any reasonable man or woman would think,” Luke says. “Such as the kind you’re going to have on your jury.” He goes on. “What about the key ring in your glove compartment? That was a plant, too?”

  “Any parking attendant could get in there,” Allison points out. “Hotel, bar, restaurant. Plus I park it at the station, people are coming and going all the time. Not a big deal to reach in.”

  “You’re a trusting soul.”

  “Not anymore,” Allison replies darkly. “You don’t believe what I’m saying about somebody planting all this on me, do you?”

  Luke leans back, considering his answer. “It’s pretty far-fetched, okay? If you didn’t kill her, then you’re right, somebody could have planted that stuff on you, to frame you. It’s going to be hard to convince a jury of that, I have to be honest with you.”

  Allison nods in understanding, but then says, “If I had done it, why would I have kept the shoes and the key ring? Why would I have held on to the only evidence that could connect me with the murders? It doesn’t make sense.”

  It doesn’t make logical sense, that’s true, Luke thinks. But the abductor wouldn’t know the shoes were evidence. That information was never made public. As for the key ring, there are plenty of reasons a guilty man might keep it as a remembrance of a past relationship, or an arrogant nose-thumbing at the authorities: You’re never going to catch me.

  He doesn’t say what he’s been thinking. He says, “There are always reasons. It could be nothing more than carelessness.”

  “Or it could be a plant,” Allison retorts stubbornly.

  “Yes. If you’re innocent, it likely was.”

  “What about the bottle of bourbon the cop that stopped me found on the floor behind the seat of my car?” Allison asks, pressing his thought process.

  “What about it?”

  That opened bottle was the reason for the search in the first place. If it hadn’t been in Allison’s car, they wouldn’t be sitting here in this funky jail, one having traveled hundreds of miles against his better judgment, the other about to go to trial for his life with odds hovering between slim and none.

  “I don’t drink bourbon. I haven’t drunk bourbon since college. Anybody who knows me knows that. So it couldn’t be mine. And if that wasn’t mine, what about the other stuff?”

  Good question. “That may have been left there by someone else,” Luke concedes. “But it’s a big stretch from a bottle on the floor to a key ring hidden in the back of a glove compartment and a pair of shoes stuck way back in your closet.”

  He stands up. “That’s enough for today, Joe. Unless you have anything else to tell me … that you haven’t yet told me, or anyone else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like have you been completely straight with me?” Before Allison can form an answer he offers his hand. “I’ll try and drop by tomorrow. If you can remember who had keys to your pad, that’ll be helpful.”

  Allison also rises. “So you’re taking my case?” he asks too eagerly.

  “Slow down, Joe. I told you I wanted to check things out, meet with you. I still have work to do on my end before I can decide. This was one step, but there are others.”

  Allison slumps. “When are you going to decide? I have a right to know that.”

  “Yes, you do.” He thinks about the question. “Today’s Tuesday. By the end of the day Friday. One way or the other.”

  He checks in with De La Guerra by phone, informs the old man of his misgivings, says he’ll discuss this further after he’s gone through the police reports again.

  “It doesn’t look promising,” he warns the judge. “He has no alibi for the hours when the girl was snatched, and this whole attitude of his that everything was planted, it sounds like a stretch to me, Freddie. The shoes particularly. It would take some real adroit planning to get those shoes in his closet after having made sure there was a print left both at the kidnap scene and where the body was found. And for them to have been discovered a year later? Off a fluke arrest? What’re the odds on all that coming together? By denying ownership so lamely, he’s painting himself into a corner I don’t think I could get him out of. No lawyer could.” He pauses. “I’ll hand it to him, though—he’s got guts, the way he’s maintaining his stand on the shoes.”

  De La Guerra, on the other end of the line, grunts noncommittally. He will not be an active participant in this; his tie is emotional. If Luke will do it, his job is finished. If not, he hits the road again, a prospect he isn’t looking forward to. “It’s been known to happen,” he says in gentle persuasion. “For all we know, the police had the shoes already, they had the key chain in his car, they decided to help things along a bit.”

  “No,” Luke protests strongly. “I was in the power seat a long time here,” he reminds De La Guerra. “I never saw that kind of corruption, and neither did you. The cops here will push the envelope, all cops do, but breaking the law that way, I’d have to have definitive proof before I’d entertain that.”


  “I’m sure you’re right,” De La Guerra agrees.

  They talk a bit more, how Luke is doing back in Santa Barbara after his self-imposed exile, other things. Luke will do some homework tomorrow and keep De La Guerra abreast of his findings and where he thinks he’s heading.

  Luke shaves, showers, lays out a clean change of clothes. He puts on a white soft-cotton collarless shirt, cord trousers, a tan linen sports coat.

  He takes a taxi to Meritage, a restaurant whose owners he used to know. He can sit alone at the small counter in the back room, eat his solitary meal, have a couple of glasses of good wine. He won’t be disturbed: not many people know he’s in town, and a casual look wouldn’t reveal his identity. He’s a changed man, and not only in his visage. Buffing his snakeskin cowboy boots and pulling his hair back into a neat ponytail, he sets forth into the night.

  A Ketel One on the rocks, a light meal—small Caesar salad, shrimp risotto, a glass of Foxen pinot noir. Tomorrow, for the third or fourth time, he’ll dig into the evidence against Allison—the police reports, how the evidence was handled, anything else that’s there. Maybe there’s something he’s missed. He has to give this an honest shot—he can’t help it, it won’t work for him to do it any other way.

  The restaurant is three-quarters full. Couples and foursomes sit at tables covered with Irish linen tablecloths; a single pink rose adorned with baby’s breath in a slender cut-glass vase graces each table, alongside a candle in a brass ship’s candlestick. A fire’s going in the fireplace in the main room, the light low and soothing. He sits with his decaf cappuccino and a glass of port, feeling the alcohol spreading comfort and warmth in his body. He’s tired—he’ll sleep well tonight.

  On the other side of the room, a party of eight are finishing their meal—six men and a couple of women, from their attire professionals who came here directly from the office. They have been loud and boisterous in a good-natured way, trading insults and raucous opinions. Luke, his back to them, hasn’t been paying them attention.

  They debate their bill briefly, a couple of credit cards are thrown down. Then a voice cuts through: a voice too familiar for Luke not to notice.

  You can run, but you can’t hide. Luke knocks back the last swallow of port, pushes up from his bar stool, and crosses the room to the dinner party.

  It’s been three years. Ray Logan has put on a good twenty pounds, making his Newt Gingrich-like doughboy face even rounder. Balding, pink to the point of translucence around the ears, Ray looks the stereotype of the well-fed barrister.

  “Hey, Ray. How’re you doing?”

  The assemblage turns to look at him, at first without recognition—who the hell is this?—then with slack-jawed disbelief.

  “Luke?” This is Ray Logan finding his voice.

  “Hello, Ray.”

  They’re all staring at him like he’s a brother from another planet. They’re all senior deputy D.A.’s, almost all of whom were recruited by him, and worked for him, and took their marching orders from him blindly and with fierce commitment.

  A few of them mutter “hello” and “Luke.” Then Logan’s loud voice supersedes: “Jesus Christ!”

  Luke smiles. “Something the matter?”

  “You look like …”

  “What?” He’s grinning fiercely.

  “A biker.”

  “A biker? I do own a motorcycle. So does Jay Leno. What’s that mean?”

  “It means you look like a bad actor. Certainly not a professional lawyer.”

  The grin dies. Luke stares at Ray, then at the others. He knows them all except one woman and one man, the youngest in the group. Hired since he left. But they’d know who he is; oh, yes.

  “How are you all doing?” he asks, his eyes sweeping the group.

  They stare back at him. A mixture of respect, fear, anxiety.

  Logan is composed. “I heard you were back in town,” he says. “That you’re thinking about hiring on as Joe Allison’s lawyer.”

  “You heard it on the grapevine?” Luke asks coolly. “Well, obviously I am back in town,” he continues, “and I’m full of life.”

  “If you’re thinking of taking Joe Allison as a client, you’re full of something and it isn’t life,” Ray Logan says to him.

  “I thought the trial hadn’t happened yet,” Luke says evenly.

  Logan shakes his head in dismissal. “Only technically.” He looks Luke over again. “What’re you doing here? How did you get into this?”

  “Judge De La Guerra asked me to come down and peruse the situation,” Luke drawls. His voice and everything else about him are getting under Logan’s fair skin, which gives him pleasure.

  “He should know better than to stick his nose into this.”

  “My impression was that he was an emissary for the establishment. People like you, Ray.”

  “You’re laboring under a false impression, Luke.”

  Luke looks the group over again. They used to be as loyal to him as Hannibal’s troops. Now they’re looking at him like he’s the enemy.

  He’s the enemy now.

  Ray Logan reaches out and puts a soft, plump hand on Luke’s shoulder. It’s almost a gesture of affection. “You don’t want to get involved in this, Luke. It’s an absolute loser. This is as strong a case as I’ve ever been around.” He searches for Luke’s eyes with his own. “Look at the evidence I have. You’ll see it. You know what to look for, better than any of us.”

  Luke smiles. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, pal. If I take this case,” Luke replies, holding Logan’s stare, “I’ll remember you helped persuade me.”

  Logan stiffens. “I heard you changed, Luke. We all did. But we didn’t think you’d gone off the deep end.” He pauses. “Run across Polly since you’ve been back in town?”

  The question takes Luke by surprise. The expression on his face reveals everything Logan wanted it to.

  Luke’s former assistant lets fly his harpoon. “When Polly sees you, she’ll know she made the right decision.”

  He sweeps out of the restaurant with his entourage flowing behind him, leaving Luke nailed to the floor, shaking in rage and pain.

  Before dawn he arises from a restless sleep. The freshly pressed pants and newly laundered shirt are carelessly flung over the burnt orange Naugahyde chair that is jammed into the near corner of the small motel room. Underwear and socks lie balled up in another corner, hastily pulled off and flung away.

  Crusty with sweat, his armpits stink—he hadn’t opened the window or turned on the phlegmy air conditioner, so the air overnight has turned warm and stale, like pond water becoming stagnant. He had tumbled into sleep on top of the covers, naked, teeth unbrushed.

  After leaving the restaurant the night before, too keyed up with exposed nervous emotion to go back and work, he walked into the center of town and wandered through the Paseo Nuevo mall, mingling with the sparse midweek nighttime crowd. He ambled through both large chain bookstores, Borders and Barnes & Noble, catty-corner across State Street from each other, leafing through magazines and paperbacks but not buying anything, then walked a block over to Anacapa and down to the Paradise.

  He sat at the bar of the Paradise from ten until closing, midnight. The television was tuned to ESPN, featuring wrapups of the day’s sports and a recap of the weekend’s PGA tournament. Sitting at the bar, watching the tube, he drank five margaritas.

  He was high, but not close to drunk. He never gets drunk, he knows his limit. During the cab ride back to the motel he has the driver detour to the Albertson’s on upper State, where he bought a pint of Fundador Spanish brandy and a large box of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies.

  Back at the motel he watched the tail end of Leno and part of Conan O’Brien and ate cookies and drank brandy. When he got undressed and went to bed, he doesn’t remember exactly. Time wasn’t particularly important.

  Now he drinks half a large bottle of Mountain Spring water without pausing, pisses at length, brushes his teeth, flossing last ni
ght’s grunge out. He needs water from the source, the sting of the spray on his face.

  Standing on the beach at Rincon Point, fifteen miles south of town in Carpinteria, he sees the sun starting to rise to the east, already a strong, soft, rosy explosion. Red sky at morning doesn’t apply here: storms rarely hit this part of the Pacific, and when they do, they’re tropical tails from the south or Hawaii.

  Today’s waves are small ones, not the ones that have made this beach a famous surf spot, but good enough to get wet over. Wearing his ancient wetsuit, he paddles out on his board past the shore break and sets up at the edge of where the outer waves are forming.

  He rides for a couple of hours, nothing higher than three-footers. There are few other surfers out here. The mild surf report has kept most of the regulars in bed.

  He didn’t come expecting big waves, or needing them. He came because he needed to feel the water of the ocean on him. Up north he does this a couple of times a week. The waves are big there, sometimes fifteen or twenty feet. Those he handles gingerly, usually passing them by. He’s your basic okay surfer, not a lifer by any means. But he loves it, the communion with this watery vastness. Even when he’d become the D.A. and was the epitome of workaholism, he would come out early in the morning, weekends mostly, and paddle out into the water and catch some waves.

  As he’s throwing the board into the shell of the pickup truck and is peeling off his wetsuit, a splinter of sunlight momentarily blinds him. Looking to the cliffs above, he sees a shadow moving out of his line of sight. The figure has a pair of binoculars around its neck.

  Someone’s watching him. He doesn’t know why he thinks that, since there are other hardy souls out here, but he knows it to be true. He’s being spied upon.

  Someone from Ray Logan’s office? No. That would be overkill. They know he’s in town, what would they be watching him for? He isn’t dangerous. As far as he knows, no one is aware that he’s in town except Logan and the others he encountered last night, Joe Allison, and Ferdinand De La Guerra. By midmorning, of course, Logan will have spread the word about his return home; he will speak of Luke in a jokey, dismissive manner, like the toadstool that he is, forget that he’s an important elected official now; to Luke, who was his boss, he’s still and forevermore shall be a nerd, a dweeb.