by Lisa Gardner
“Time frame?” he asked his ex-wife.
“Ummm, no rush. But soon. I think he has a place in Virginia if that helps.”
“All right, Bethie. Give me a few days.”
“Thank you, Pierce,” she said, and for once it sounded as if she meant it.
Quincy didn’t hang up the phone right away. Neither did she.
“Have you … have you heard from Kimberly lately?” he found himself asking.
Bethie seemed surprised. “No, but I’d assumed that you had.”
“Ah, so we’re equally shunned.”
“Maybe she tried to call you when you were gone.…” Bethie’s voice trailed off. She seemed to realize how that sounded and added hastily, “I tried to reach you earlier in the week, but you weren’t home and I didn’t feel like leaving a message.”
“I was in Portland visiting someone. An old friend.” He wasn’t sure why he offered the information, and the minute he did, he wished he could call it back. An old friend? Who was he trying to kid? When Bethie spoke, however, she didn’t sound angry or tense, which surprised him.
“Maybe I should pay Kimberly a visit,” she said. “She’s just an hour away, I could tell her I was in the area. It’s been a month.”
Quincy almost said no, then caught himself. Once, Rainie had accused him of taking his job too far. Even in his personal life, he showed up, gave his expert opinion, and left.
“Perhaps Kimberly just needs some space,” he tried neutrally.
“I don’t know why. We’re the only family she has left. Frankly, I thought she’d strive to be closer to us, not further away.”
Quincy rubbed his temples. “Bethie, I know that you’re sad. I’m sad, too.”
“Pierce, you’re speaking to me as if I were five.”
“We tried so hard for her. I know we don’t always agree on each other’s role as a parent, but we both loved Mandy. We wanted the best for her. We would’ve … We would’ve given her the world if such a thing were possible. Instead she got drunk, crawled behind the wheel of her vehicle and killed two people. I love her. I miss her. And some days … Some days, I’m just so angry.”
He was thinking of Sanchez’s call again, and the way his hands had fisted and his body had gone rigid. He was still angry, he realized. He was furious in places way down deep where it would take years to weed it all out and begin to feel normal again.
“Bethie,” he tried one last time, “don’t you get angry, too?”
His ex-wife didn’t speak right away. Then she asked quietly, in a strange tone, “Pierce, do you think if someone gets an organ transplant, that maybe they get more than just the other person’s tissue? Maybe … maybe they also get part of the other person’s being, some part of her soul?”
“An organ transplant is a medical procedure, nothing more.”
“I thought you would say that.”
“Returning to Kimberly for a moment—”
“She’s angry, she needs space. I got it, Pierce. I’m not as dumb as you think.”
“Bethie—”
The phone clicked off. His ex-wife had hung up on him.
Quincy slowly recradled the cordless phone on its base. And that, he thought tiredly, concluded one of the more civil conversations of his day.
Five minutes later, Quincy sat down at the kitchen counter. The scrap of paper with Tristan Shandling’s name had been pushed aside. Now, he had out a fresh spiral notebook and three black ink pens. He pressed the play button on his answering machine.
Then he began the two-page list of all the nice felons who’d called his unlisted telephone number simply to wish him dead.
The light on his security panel indicated his system was fully operational and armed. He watched it for a long time, thinking of Kimberly, remembering Mandy.
Shortly, he went into the front room he used as an office. He dug through a stack of cardboard boxes marked Criminology: Basic Theories, until he found a small cassette tape labeled “Miguel Sanchez: Victim Eight.” The original tape sat in an evidence storage locker in California. This was Quincy’s personal copy, used in several of his classes.
He placed the tape in an old cassette recorder. He hit play. He sat alone in the dark, while his office filled with sounds of a young girl’s pleading wails.
Amanda Johnson, fifteen years old and eight long hours from death.
“Noooooooooo,” she cried. “Oh God, nooooooooooo.”
Quincy put his head in his hands. And he knew he was in trouble, because one month after his daughter’s funeral, he still couldn’t weep.
8
Motel 6, Virginia
“Who is Miguel Sanchez?” Rainie asked an hour later. She was propped up against the headboard of her mud-brown motel room, having just treated herself to a late dinner of pecan waffles at the nearby Waffle House. The Motel 6 had been highly visible from the highway and seemed as good a stopping point as any. Besides, at fifty dollars a night, no one could question her expense account.
She’d found the motel. She’d found the neighboring Waffle House. She’d eaten her waffles alone, thinking of Officer Amity’s take on the accident scene and wishing she didn’t have a chill. Then she’d wasted ten minutes watching other diners, burly, working-class men out with their girls. In some cases, tables crowded with entire families. She was three thousand miles away from home. Funny how nothing seemed that different.
She’d walked back to the motel knowing she should call Quincy and deliver a report on her day. Instead, she’d turned on the TV and perused the modern miracle of fifty-seven channels and still nothing to see. She told herself she didn’t have much to report, anyway. Besides, she didn’t want to seem anxious to hear Quincy’s voice. She wanted to ensure that she was treating this as business, purely business. Quincy the client.
There had been nothing good on TV. She had spent the day in a strange state thinking, this is where Quincy lives, and she had been anxious to hear his voice. She’d called. And it had taken her all of one second to realize that she should’ve called sooner. Quincy sounded tired, nearly flat, as if he had no emotions left. She had never heard him sound like that before.
“Miguel Sanchez was my first case,” he told her now. “Worked out of California in the mid-eighties, with his cousin, Richie Millos. They specialized in sadistic rape-murders of young prostitutes. Eight total. Sanchez liked to tape his work.”
“Nice guy,” Rainie commented. She turned off the TV and set down the remote. “So you were instrumental in catching Sanchez?”
“I formulated the strategy used by the police for Sanchez’s arrest. A witness had reported seeing two men dragging the eighth victim into a white van twenty-four hours before her corpse was found mutilated alongside I-5. At this point, we already knew we were dealing with an organized killer. As I explained to the LAPD, partnerships are rare for psychopaths, but in the few occasions we’ve encountered them, the partner has generally been subservient—a weak sidekick who merely fulfills the psychopath’s desire for an audience. My advice, therefore, once the police had identified two likely suspects, was that they focus their attention on the weaker member of the pair. Turn Richie to give up Miguel, who was the real instigator and threat.”
“I’m guessing this was easier said than done.”
“Yes. Richie idolized his older cousin. He was also terrified of him. For good reason. Six months after Richie handed over Miguel in return for a reduced sentence, he was found in the prison showers with his penis cut off and shoved down his throat. Miguel never believed in being subtle.”
“Ah. So this fine piece of humanity called your personal line tonight?”
“Him, and forty-seven of his fellow deviants. Then I had eight calls from various prison officials, who thought I should know that my unlisted telephone number is currently being circulated in prison yards in everything from scraps of paper to packs of cigarettes. Oh, and in one prison, my number is now scratched into the shower wall.”
“Quincy—”
/>
“By my count, the forty-eight inmates represent twenty-one different correctional facilities, so I imagine I will be hearing from more prison officials in the morning.”
“Quincy—”
“But don’t worry,” he continued, his voice no longer flat, but gaining an edge, “most corrections departments have the right to monitor an inmate’s calls, so I’m sure the new members of my fan club will be suitably punished. Maybe have a disciplinary ticket written up or receive ad seg—administrative segregation. You know, penalties I’m sure more than compensate for the sheer thrill a bunch of psychopathic lifers can get by toying with a federal agent.”
“Change your number.”
“Not yet.”
“Quincy, don’t be an ass!”
“I’m not. I’m being patient.”
Rainie grew silent, then she got it. “You want to keep everyone calling in case you can trick one of them into revealing the original source of your phone number.”
“In the morning, I will report the incident to my SAC. The Bureau takes the protection of its agents very seriously. I’m sure my line will be tapped and monitored in no time at all. Calls will be going out to the various prisons. Perhaps even a personal visit to one Miguel Sanchez. I would like that.”
“Do you have a theory of who did this? It has to be somebody who knows you.”
“Maybe. Then again, it could be some bored college flunkie who hacked into the telephone company’s records in order to have a little fun.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No. I think it’s personal. And I think the mysterious practical joker gave out more than just my private number, Rainie. Think of what Mr. Sanchez said. That he wanted to fuck my daughter in her fucking grave with a white fucking cross. Why a white cross? What’s the first thing you think of when you picture a white cross?”
Rainie closed her eyes. She pictured a white cross, and her stomach went hollow. She shouldn’t be at this stupid motel, she realized. She shouldn’t be sitting here pretending that business was just business. She should be at Quincy’s home. She should be holding him the way he had once so kindly held her. And she should be putting her hands over his ears to spare him from what she knew he would say next. He had always been too brutally clever.
“Arlington,” Quincy continued relentlessly. “The instigator didn’t just give out my home telephone number. He told at least one convicted sadist where to find my daughter’s grave. The son of a bitch.” His voice finally cracked. “He gave away Mandy.”
Rainie waited. On the other end of the phone, the sound of Quincy’s breathing grew less ragged. She could feel him pulling himself back together, becoming once more the cool, composed federal agent he so prided himself on being. He needed his masks, she thought, just as she needed hers. It surprised her how much that realization hurt her.
For no good reason, she was thinking about the baby elephant again, his desperate run across the desert. Kicked down, getting back up. And still the jackals shredded him in the end.
“Do you think they’re connected?” she asked him shortly.
“What?”
“The phone calls. With Mandy’s accident. Seems rather interesting that you’ve no sooner hired someone to investigate Mandy’s death, than you’re getting a bunch of threatening calls.”
“I don’t know, Rainie. It could simply be opportunity. There are enough people out there who have nothing better to do than hate me. Maybe they heard about my daughter’s funeral and decided it was their chance to have some fun. We’ve had incidents in the past where someone has gotten an agent’s personal information. Nothing on this big of a scale, but then again, we’re now in the computer age.”
“I don’t like it,” Rainie said flatly. “Plus the fact that Sanchez evoked Mandy in the phone call … Seems a rather pointed message.”
“I … I don’t know.” Quincy sounded tired again. “I think they must be connected. Then I think I’m paranoid. Then I think I’m merely being diligent. I don’t … I’m not myself at the moment.”
Rainie fell silent. She kept thinking there was something comforting she should say. She had not grown up in a house big on comfort. Thirty-two years old. It was kind of funny all the things she didn’t know how to do.
“I spoke with the investigating officer,” she said, since like Quincy, business was what she handled best. “He did a good job at the scene. I couldn’t find anything he’d overlooked.”
“What about the seat belt?”
“The driver …” She stuttered immediately, shocked by her coldness at using that impersonal word.
Quincy didn’t say anything and the silence loomed huge this time, a giant black void between them. They couldn’t get this right, Rainie thought suddenly, desperately. Even when they were trying, they couldn’t get this right.
“Mandy reported the seat belt broken a month before the accident,” she tried again, her voice meek now, humbled by her mistake. “She made an appointment with the garage that serviced her vehicle, then canceled at the last minute.”
“She’d been driving without a working seat belt for a month?”
“It would appear so.”
“Why didn’t someone pull her over? I thought there were seat belt laws in this state!”
Rainie didn’t reply to his outburst. She knew he didn’t expect her to.
“What had happened to the seat belt?” he redirected his line of questioning. “How did it break?”
“We don’t know yet. Officer Amity is helping me locate the vehicle so I can examine it, but fourteen months later makes things difficult. Most likely the Explorer has already been broken down for parts at some salvage yard.”
“I want to know what happened to the seat belt.”
“I’ll find it, Quincy. You know I’ll find it.”
“And the man, the one she was supposedly seeing?”
“First thing tomorrow morning, I meet with Mary Olsen. Hopefully she can point me in his direction. I’ll also check in with Mandy’s local AA group. They probably know more about her personal life.”
“AA has policies about giving out information.”
“Then I’ll just have to turn on my charm again.”
“Rainie—”
“I’m on top of the case, Quincy. Things are beginning to happen and I know you need answers. I’ll get them.”
His silence was subdued now, a long soft spell where they both sat not too many miles apart and yet still too far away. She wondered if he was sitting in a darkened room. She wondered if he’d skipped dinner again, the way he’d probably skipped lunch before that and breakfast before that. She wondered how many hours he’d pace before finally falling in a restless, exhausted sleep. And then she wondered how they could know each other so well, and still have this chasm between them.
“I should go,” Quincy said. “I want to speak to Everett first thing in the morning.”
“Everett?”
“Special Agent in Charge. He’ll want to know about the phone calls, assuming he doesn’t already. Plus, I need to type up this list of names.”
Rainie glanced at the clock. It was now after midnight.
“Quincy,” she began.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m not that far away. One hour tops, I can be at your front door.”
“And then what, Rainie? Then everything’s all right, because now I’m your charity case?”
“Hey, it’s not like that at all!”
“Yes? And what do you think it is I’ve been trying to say? Understanding is not pity. Oh, but excuse me, in your world it is.”
“Quincy …”
“Thank you for the update, Investigator Conner. Good night.”
The phone punctuated his sharp sentence with a click. Rainie thinned her lips, shook her head, and replaced her own receiver much more slowly.
“But my case was different,” she muttered.
Her motel room remained silent. She figured that was an appropri
ate enough reply.
Later, six hours later, the motel alarm clock beeped to life and Rainie crawled blearily out of bed. Jet lag had caught up with her. She gulped down twelve ounces of Coke for breakfast and still felt half dead.
She hit the four-lane street, running for thirty minutes through the concrete maze of a seemingly endless strip mall tucked conveniently off Interstate 95. Middle-aged men in rumpled suits poured out of the motel. A line of cars sat impatiently at a McDonald’s drive-through.
Rainie ran through parking lot after parking lot, dodging reckless cars and people already fed up with their morning commute. Tall maple trees and dark waxy magnolias beckoned lushly in the distance. Wild honeysuckle grabbed at cement barriers lining the parking lots as if the vine would reclaim the urban jungle as its own. Rainie coughed on diesel fumes from spewing trucks and fought her way back to Motel 6, wishing the green landscape didn’t make her think of Bakersville again and long for the feel of salty ocean air upon her face.
She took a five-minute shower, towel-dried her hair, and combed in mousse. Expecting another long day, she donned a pair of worn jeans and a clean white T-shirt, the official uniform of the aspiring PI. She checked her phone messages on her home answering machine while lacing up her shoes. The weather was already brutally hot outside. Man, what she would give to wear sandals and shorts.
She blew the thought aside while hearing that she had six new messages, a personal record. She grabbed the motel pen and pad of paper.
First two messages were from clients wanting updates. She really should do that. The next three messages were all hang ups, received in hourly intervals. If the person couldn’t be bothered to leave a message, she decided, she couldn’t be bothered to wonder about who they were. The final message was from some lawyer she’d never heard of, requesting a basic information packet.
She eyed the clock, judged it to be four A.M. Pacific Coast time, and shrewdly called back the law firm to tell the lawyer that her secretary would send him something in the mail. Then she left her number at Motel 6, just in case the lawyer wanted a more immediate reply. She now felt industrious and exceedingly clever and it was not even noon.
