Waverly watched until they were out of the room. “He’s a cute kid, but he’s awfully young to be flipping you the bird.”
Preoccupied, Ray picked up on Waverly’s comment a second later. “What? Oh. I’ve got a hunch that was something else. If it turns out our Jane Doe is his mother, it could’ve been sign language.”
“Ah,” Waverly said a second later. “The scar across her throat… You think she’s mute?”
“The bartender at Gluek’s said she’s always texting—that she’s never talked to him.
Maybe she can’t. If that’s the case, the boy might’ve picked up sign language from her.”
“The kid, the woman, Lundquist, the bar, the theater…” Waverly said. “You know, I’m used to playing ‘connect the dots,’ but this is like doing it with invisible ink. We didn’t even get the kid’s last name. We’re not getting anywhere.”
Ray checked his watch. “What do you say we get out of here, Dick?”
“Yeah, let’s call it a day. It already feels more like two. I’d like to get home. We can get a fresh start Monday morning.”
Ray didn’t argue—didn’t want to. With the crazy hours he’d been working lately, Laurie, Krista and Joey weren’t growing up before his eyes; it was more like they were growing up behind his back. And then there was Gail. Her “Hello, stranger” greeting the night before left no doubt she was feeling neglected.
None at all.
9
The next morning Ray woke up in an empty bed—the same as it had been when he’d climbed between the sheets the night before. He sprawled across the mattress, stretching until his limbs reached their limit. Through the window, sunlight created a warm landing pad for his feet as he swung his legs off the mattress and got up.
It was the first good night’s sleep he’d had since… He couldn’t remember. Even the thought of the semi-nameless child at the theater hadn’t kept him awake. Knowing the boy was safe and in good hands had paved the way for the recuperative sleep Ray needed so badly. Once they could establish the identity of Nathan’s mother, they’d be able to figure out where he belonged.
Sounds of home traveled up the stairs to the master bedroom as Gail and the kids talked over breakfast. The lingering scent of bacon whetted Ray’s appetite. Sunday mornings—he loved them.
Ray turned the shower on so the water could heat up while he attended to the rest of his morning routine. He’d barely stepped under the showerhead when he heard, “Hi, hon.” Gail’s silhouette moved on the other side of the frosted shower door.
“Morning, babe. Did you have a good time last night?”
“It was nice. Brenda’s last-minute girls’ night out idea sounded pretty good. If you hadn’t told me you planned to go straight to bed, I would’ve stayed home. I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t.”
“No. I’m glad you went.” Ray hoped her time spent with a few of her friends would take some of the sting out of his absenteeism. He stuck his head under the spray. “Laurie babysat
Krista and Joey then?”
“She wasn’t thrilled about it, but she had nothing better to do anyway.”
“What? I’ve got shampoo in my ear.”
“It wasn’t important.”
Despite the distorted view, he could tell Gail was stacking clean towels in the cabinets.
“I’m sorry I missed you last night,” he said.
“Me too. When I got back, I was tempted to wake you up just to say hello, but I didn’t have the heart.”
“I wouldn’t have minded, but I really did need that sleep.” A plush, blue towel flopped across the top of the shower door. “Thanks, hon. Hey, it looks like it’s going to be a nice day out. How about if we take the kids to the Como Zoo this morning?”
“Great idea. The kids would love that. So would I.”
“Good. I’ll finish up here, get dressed, have a quick breakfast and we’ll—”
“Hang on, Ray.”
He saw her leave the bathroom before he heard the faint sound of a ringing phone. Please let it be for her.
She returned seconds later. “It’s the station, Ray.”
He knew the tone. Her words were filtered through clenched teeth. He turned the water off, popped the shower door open, and held out a dripping hand. With the precise snap of a nurse handing a scalpel to a surgeon, she slapped the cell phone into his open palm. “So much for your day off. I’ll get your thermos ready.”
Shampoo dripped through his wet hair, down his brow and into one ice-blue eye as he stepped out of the shower and stood dripping on the bathmat.
“Detective Schiller,” he said, squinting against the sting of the suds. “Lundquist’s wallet? Where? Yeah, that’s only blocks from where he was shot. Who has it?” He ran the towel over his face with emphasis on his eye. “No, I can’t do it today. Well, contact this Gunderson person and reschedule the meeting for tomorrow. Aw, crap. All right, I’ll get there as soon as I can. Have you got a description I can go by? Okay, got it.”
He toweled himself off, hurried back to the bedroom and called Waverly. Dressing with the phone tucked between his cheek and shoulder, he said, “Dick…Ray. Sorry to bother you, but Lewis Lundquist’s wallet has turned up. A Bobby Gunderson found it. Gunderson wants to turn it over to us, but refuses to bring it to the station—wants a one-on-one. Didn’t leave a number.” He listened while he stepped into his pants. “Yeah, I just got the call a minute ago. Look, I’m already in hot water with Gail— No, funny guy, not a Jacuzzi. Look, I planned to spend the day with her and the kids. Any chance you could field this one?” Ray’s heart sank as Waverly offered a non-specific excuse. “Yeah, okay. I just thought— No, if you can’t, you can’t.” He nodded as he listened to yet another apology. “It’s okay, I’ll handle it, but next time, I get to beg off. Deal? Okay, good.” He slipped into his shirt. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He finished dressing and went downstairs, said a quick hello/goodbye to the kids and located Gail. “Hon, I’m sorry,” he said. “I wouldn’t go if this wasn’t important.”
“When isn’t it important?” she asked. She raised her hands palms out. “Sorry. Don’t mind me. I’m just turning sour grapes into a good ‘whine’. You go ahead.”
“Believe me, I’m not happy about this either,” Ray said. “Look, hon, I don’t expect this to take real long. I’ll get back as soon as I can, okay?” He collected a less-than-enthusiastic kiss from Gail, grabbed his thermos and was gone.
The disappointment in Gail’s voice still reverberated in his head as he found a parking spot near the corner of North First Avenue and North Fifth Street where he’d been told he’d find Gunderson waiting for him.
From inside his car, he checked each corner of the intersection. People came; people went. Finally a pedestrian arrived and stood there shuffling from one foot to the other. The gray hoodie and jeans matched his contact’s general description.
Ray got out of his car and crossed the street, taking note of the person’s slight build. The facial features were hidden by a gray hoodie. One thing was clear: Gunderson was cold. Both shoulders were hunched up around ear height and the sweatshirt pockets contained both hands.
He approached from behind. Two feet away, he asked, “Are you Gunderson?”
Spooked, the sweatshirt-clad figure spun around. From beneath the hood, large brown eyes stared at him through long, pale eyelashes. Wisps of honey-blond hair whipped around the girl’s face as she tried in vain to secure them under the hood. “Yeah, I’m Bobbi Gunderson.”
“Oh,” Ray said. “Bobbi with an ‘I’.”
“Yeah. So?”
“I wasn’t expecting a girl, that’s all.”
“Neither was my father,” she said.
That personal bit of information was delivered with a hard-edged voice that didn’t match the girl’s delicate features.
Ray offered his hand. “I’m Detective Schiller.” One hand crept out of a pocket as she shook his hand, then quickly broke contact as though
it might be a trap. Her hand was bony, each finger as cold as an icicle.
“I was told you found a wallet,” he said. She nodded. “You have it with you?”
“Maybe.” She slipped her hand protectively back inside a lumpy pocket.
“Look, either you have it or you don’t, and unless it belongs to a Lewis Lundquist, I’m not interested, so what’s it going to be? Do you have it or not?”
“What’s it worth to you?”
It wasn’t avarice but desperation Ray saw in the girl’s eyes. “Bobbi, how old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“Bull,” he said. “Sixteen maybe, and I’m guessing I’m off on the high side.”
“What do you care? If you want the wallet, give me twenty bucks and you can have it.”
He could have seized it as evidence, but chose to go another way. “What makes you think it’s worth that much to me?”
She hesitated. “Because… because you’re a cop and it belongs to the guy who got killed—the one whose name I saw on the news. Lewis Lundquist. That’s what the driver’s license says. That’s him, right?”
Ray stretched his hand out. “Let me have a look.”
“Oh, no. First you pay, then you get the wallet.”
“Bobbi, where are you from?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m just curious. I like to get to know a little about a person before I do business with them.”
“I’m from Wisconsin, all right? Make it fifteen bucks and you can have it.”
Ray shook his head. “That’s still pretty steep.”
“Look, do you want the wallet or don’t you?”
“Actually, I doubt it’s worth anything at all,” Ray claimed. “You’ve had your mitts all over it by now. You’ve probably ruined whatever fingerprints might’ve been on it.”
Panicked, she said, “No, I was real careful. I only opened it up to see if there was any money inside.”
“Was there?” he asked.
“No, but it belongs to that dead guy so that’s got to make it worth something to you.”
“I don’t know.”
“Ten. C’mon. A lousy ten bucks. That’s not much.”
She can’t be a day over fifteen. The knot in his stomach tightened. “Tell you what. It might be worth ten bucks to me if you’ll give me some information to go with it.”
“What kind of information?”
“Nothing too tough.” Ray pulled his jacket around him. “First I need some coffee. This wallet business dragged me out of my house before I got a chance to eat. If you want the money, you’re going to have to earn it while I get myself a stack of pancakes or something.”
At the mention of food, she swallowed hard and ran her tongue over her lower lip. Standing in front of him, shivering, she said, “Forget it. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Ray’s past experience with hard-as-nails teenagers, told him that bringing down the “hammer” got him the quickest results.
“Fine,” he told her. “You can leave or come along. Or if you want to stand around waiting for me to come back, that’s up to you, but I’m not guaranteeing I will. Your choice.”
Ray started walking. He’d gone half a block before the girl caught up with him.
He entered the nearest diner and took his time over a glass of orange juice, a bagel with cream cheese, and several cups of coffee while Bobbi Gunderson scarfed down two eggs over easy, three sausage links, a stack of pancakes, a side of fruit, and a large glass of milk. While she ate, he asked for details about when, where, and how she’d come by Lundquist’s wallet. The pertinent questions about her, she answered grudgingly between bites of food.
When she finally fished the billfold out of her pocket, Ray was surprised to see it secured in a plastic sandwich bag. The bag, she said, had come out of the same trashcan as the wallet. For a kid, she was pretty savvy. The girl had thought to turn the bag inside out to keep it mayonnaise-free. Whatever prints she’d left on its surface could be used by the lab to eliminate hers from the more relevant ones… if any existed.
As they left the table, Ray caught her eyeing the tip he left under the edge of his plate and ushered her out ahead of him. Bobbi Gunderson’s tough-girl façade was still in place, but a week alone in a strange city had worn her cockiness down to a level that let her fear show through.
Outside the diner, Ray held his hand out. “Okay, let me have the wallet.”
She shook her head. “The money first.”
“That meal you just put away in there cost me more than ten bucks already,” Ray said. “Hand it over.
Her jaw dropped. “But you—”
“What—you figured I’d pay for your meal out of the goodness of my heart and then give you the money, too?”
“But you… That’s not fair.”
Pinched between his fingers, he held a folded ten dollar bill several inches from her face. She made a grab for it, but he jerked his hand away. “If I give this to you, how long do you think it’s going to last?”
“Long enough.”
“Long enough for what?” he asked. “Long enough to beg, borrow, or steal more?”
“I’ll manage somehow.”
“It’s not that easy, and you know that. Maybe I can help you out.”
She pulled up the last bit of bravado from the soles of her feet. “If it has anything to do with you unzipping your pants, you can—”
“Whoa. That’s not what I had in mind.” His stomach turned. In a week’s time, had the Cities’ dark underbelly already shown itself to her? “All I’m saying is that ten dollars won’t even get you a place to stay tonight. I know somewhere you can be safe, and it won’t cost you a cent. Warm bed. Decent food. Other kids. You’ll be okay there until you can get things worked out.” He knew if he pressed too hard, she’d run like a jackrabbit. “It’s your call.”
The girl started away.
Ray grabbed her by the shoulder. “I want the wallet.”
“And I want the money. Even swap.”
“Tell you what,” Ray said. “Let me take you to the place I was telling you about, get you set up there, then you give me the wallet, and I’ll give you the money.”
“Make it twenty.”
“Ten, and you’d better take that deal before I change my mind.”
“I’m not going to ‘juvie’.”
“No, not juvie.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Then where are you talking about?”
“A shelter for kids like you, who are homeless and on their own.” It wasn’t Disneyland, Ray knew, but she’d be safer there than on the street.
She gave him a skeptical look. “Where is this place?”
“Only a couple of miles away.”
“So I’m going to have to get in your car with you?”
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “I’m a police detective.”
She looked him dead in the eye. “So?”
Ouch.
10
After getting Bobbi Gunderson safely tucked away, Ray delivered Lewis Lundquist’s wallet to the crime lab. On one hand, he was grateful Bobbi had been as careful with it as she’d claimed. On the other, it broke his heart that a girl only fifteen knew so much about such things.
Ray checked his watch. If he worked fast, he could swing by the station, track down Bobbi’s parents, give them a call and still get home in time to fit in the trip to the Como Zoo he’d proposed to Gail earlier.
He’d barely stepped inside the station when Officer Schermerhorn spotted him and waved him over. “Your timing’s perfect,” he said.
“Why? What’s going on?” From beneath the smoldering ashes of his fast-fading plans, a spark of hope sprang to the surface. “Did you get a missing person’s report on my Jane Doe?”
“Not yet, but see that guy over there?” the officer said, pointing across the room.
“The one in the suit?”
“Yeah. He just filed a parental abduction report.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Schermerhorn raised his hands palms out. “I could be wrong, but I overheard some of what he told Kempler, and the description of his ex sounds like the woman you and Waverly are trying to I.D.” He lowered his voice. “It’s Dave Dunn.”
The name didn’t set off any bells—only a faint chime. “Who’s Dave Dunn?”
Schermerhorn looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “You know—‘It’s a Dunn deal’. You must’ve seen his ads. Every time you turn around, he’s on the TV, plugging his car dealerships.”
“Oh, him.” Ray’s brow furrowed. “He filed a parental abduction report?”
“Yeah. He claims his ex took off with their kid yesterday.”
“Girl or boy?”
“Boy.”
The image of the child found at the theater flashed through Ray’s mind. “Any chance you caught the kid’s name… his age maybe?”
“No. Why?”
“Never mind. Listen, do me a favor, Scherm. If Kempler hasn’t already set the wheels in motion on the abduction thing, tell him to hold off on it until I give him the go-ahead. It might not be necessary.”
Ray did an automatic assessment as he approached Dunn: mid to late thirties, well-dressed, six feet tall, average build, dark hair—nothing out of the ordinary with the exception of his remarkably large, blue eyes. Extending a hand in his direction, Ray said, “Mr. Dunn, I’m Detective Schiller.”
Dunn had a salesman’s handshake: firm, two pumps and a quick release. “I was just about to leave. Do you need more information, Detective?”
Ray said, “Let’s go talk privately.”
He led the way, showing Dunn into the first vacant interrogation room in their path. “Have a seat,” Ray told him. While Dunn settled on the chair tucked in a back corner of the room, Ray turned the tape recorder on and added the basic time, date, interviewer/interviewee information.
“What’s that for?” Dunn asked.
“It’s standard procedure,” Ray told him. “You don’t have any objections, do you?”
Dunn shrugged. “No, I suppose not.”
Web of Silence: A Ray Schiller Novel (The Ray Schiller Series Book 4) Page 6
