Subtle Deceit

by R. A. McGee

  The lot was full of second-hand luxury cars, with dents and dings and great safety ratings. Porter found a parking spot outside the building, parked his favorite rental, and again unfolded himself. It was turning into exercise, with all the leaning and squatting to get out. Porter wanted to set the car on fire.

  Industrial metal outdoor benches lined the walkway to the building. The large glass door slid open when he approached it. Porter wondered if everyone else felt like a Jedi when that happened.

  The lobby of the residence hall was wide open, with desks and couches strewn about. On the right-hand wall were several large bulletin boards. The area bustled with students, all of whom Porter stood at least a head above. He tried to blend in, but it wasn’t likely. Instead, he kept moving toward the bulletin boards and located a directory of the rooms. He went to the left, toward a hallway offshoot. There was a large wooden door with a small vertical window in it. It wouldn’t open. On the wall next to it was a square metal card reader.

  “You can’t get in without a student ID. You most definitely aren’t a student here,” came a shrill voice from behind him.

  Porter turned and saw a thin man with khaki pants and a tucked-in polo shirt. There was an ID card hanging from a lanyard around his neck. The card said ‘Resident Advisor.’ “I may be a student here. You never know.”

  “But I do know, sir. I work here every day and I don’t recognize you. I would recognize you, you know. You’re a memorable person.”

  “Why, thank you—” Porter reached out and flipped the man’s ID badge. “—Rodney. I think I’m quite memorable myself.”

  “Please don’t touch the badge, sir.” Rodney pulled the card from Porter’s hands. “I’m going to have to ask you to state your business or vacate the premises.”

  “A man who’s serious about his job. I can respect that. I’m here to see Katie.”

  “Katie who? There are plenty of Katies,” Rodney said.

  “Blond Katie. Pretty girl,” Porter said.

  “There are plenty of pretty blond Katies here,” Rodney said.

  “I imagine so. She told me she’s in room fifty-five,” Porter said.

  “You could have guessed that room number. Or maybe you saw it on social media or something. How do I know you aren’t here to hurt her?”

  “Because I said so,” Porter said.

  “Not good enough. Sir, please vacate the premises, before I call the campus police.”

  “You know, that’s the second time someone’s threatened to call them on me this week. I must be living wrong,” Porter said with a smile.

  “Rodney. Rodney.” A voice came from the scrum of the crowd. Blond Katie from room fifty-five appeared, slipping her way through people. “It’s okay, he’s with me.”

  “Are you sure? He doesn’t even know your last name. This is how people get hurt,” Rodney said.

  “Shut up, Rodney. Sorry,” Katie said to Porter.

  “Don’t be. Everyone should have someone looking out for them like old Rodney here. Keep up the good work, boss man,” Porter said.

  Rodney considered for a moment, then lifted his chin almost imperceptibly and walked off.

  “I wasn’t even thinking about the locked door. By the time I got down here I was looking around and once I saw you, I had to fight my way through people.” Katie motioned for Porter to follow her, the ID card on her lanyard beeping the square, metal card reader and unlocking the door.

  The hallway was like many mid-grade hotels: carpet running its length, with no windows anywhere, only doors on each side. Katie walked in front and led Porter toward her room.

  Porter noticed she was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, blond hair in a bun. “So what was it you needed to tell me that was so important?”

  Katie waved him on, down to the end of the hallway, and followed the bend to the right. Her door was on the left. She used her ID card to swipe another card reader, opening the door, which she held for Porter.

  Todd Jones was sitting on a couch underneath the window, a bottle of beer in his hands.

  Chapter 12

  “Don’t hit me.”

  “For a second I thought you’d used old Katie here to lure me into a trap. Get a bunch of your buddies to jump me, something like that. Teach me my lesson this time. Now I’m guessing that’s not right,” Porter said.

  “Jump you? I don’t want any part of that.”

  Porter stepped further into the small entryway and saw a neat room, a twin bed on each side. The bed on the right was neatly made, and the bulletin board above it had pictures of Evanna Blanchard and her family, whom Porter recognized from his brief meetings with them at their house. Everything, from the sheets to the clutter on the side table, looked like it had been untouched for days. Like some sort of shrine

  There was an identical bed on the right, with different linens and a different happy family on the corkboard above the bed.

  Todd Jones sat on a couch beneath the only window in the room, spanning the wall behind the two beds. He had a hand-shaped black and blue mark across the left side of his face. On the table next to the couch, four empty beer bottles were lined up.

  “This is what you wanted to tell me?” Porter said to Katie. “Todd likes to drink?”

  “He asked if I could get in contact with you. Said he wanted to—”

  “Don’t be mad at her. I asked her to call you. I didn’t know any other way to get a hold of you.”

  “Fair enough. Did you need something?” Porter said.

  “Well… yeah. My dad called me and told me you came to the house. Says you and a couple of the guys… got into it. Asked me what the hell I did to make you so mad.” He lifted the beer bottle and took a swig.

  “I’m not mad at all. Your dad had a dumb idea, and it got his guys beat up.”

  “Beat up? Dinh’s in a coma,” Todd said.

  “Better than in a coffin. What is it you wanted?”

  “Two things. First, I wanted to warn you, about messing with my dad and the guys he works for. They’re dangerous people,” Todd said. “If you play with them too much, you’ll wind up chopped up in a barrel somewhere.”

  “Unbelievable. You brought me all the way out here to threaten me? You Jones men never learn your lesson, do you?” Porter said.

  “No, no, it’s not that, I promise. I just know that my dad has done… bad things. His friends, they’re worse. I don’t want you to get hurt. I know you’re only trying to find Evanna. That doesn’t make you a bad guy. I see that now.”

  “I had a talk with your dad. I think we have an understanding.”

  “Is he alive?” Todd said.

  “Your dad? Of course. You’ll talk to him soon enough, I imagine. What was the second?” Porter said.

  “Second what?” Todd said.

  “You said there were two things you wanted to tell me. Consider your message about your father delivered. What else did you want?” Porter said.

  Katie sat on her bed, hugging her knees.

  “Oh. Right. Well, I know you said you wanted to talk to me. I’ll tell you everything. Everything you want to know. I want to clear my name, so you don’t think I had anything to do with Evanna disappearing.”

  “Too late for that,” Porter said.

  “Why? What do you mean?” Todd slid forward on the couch, blinking rapidly. “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

  “You dad told me everything. At least, his understanding of your side of the story,” Porter said.

  “You believed him?” Todd said.

  “He had no reason to lie. But let me run this shit down and you tell me if I missed anything. You and Evanna were together around the same time as her and Jamie. She found out she was pregnant and then—”

  “Evanna was pregnant?” Katie interrupted.

  Todd sunk his head.

 
“Let me finish,” Porter said. “Evanna was pregnant and she didn’t know whose baby it was. Jamie told his sister and you told your parents, but Evanna didn’t tell anyone else, not even her parents.”

  “Not even me,” Katie said. “I’m her best friend. How could she not tell me?”

  “Jamie says he was in love with her and didn’t care if the baby was his or not, so why would he hurt her? Your dad said you swore you’d raise the kid right. Your dad says he really wouldn’t have minded if she did have the baby. So why would you hurt her? Does that about sum things up?”

  Todd nodded. “I’ll be… would have been… a good father. Not like my dad. I would teach my kid the right stuff and believe in them and tell them to follow their dreams.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it. Your dad’s a bad guy. Anything else you want to tell me?” Porter said.

  “Well… no. I just wanted you to know my side, and since you came to the house and beat the shit out of those guys, I was afraid…”

  “I was going to find you next?” Porter said.

  Todd Jones nodded. “I guess I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

  “You could tell me who would want Evanna and the baby to disappear. It seems like, in a rare post-Christmas miracle, everyone wanted to take care of an unwanted baby. Doesn’t make sense why anyone would do something to its mother.” Porter stood and started toward the door.

  “Wait,” Katie said. She picked up a bag from Evanna’s side of the floor. Into the bag, she put some pictures and notebooks from the side table and bulletin boards. Personal items and mementos. Then she knelt down and pulled the bottom drawer out of the dresser. In the hollow space underneath was a small bound journal. “You say Evanna’s pregnant, right?”

  “Sounds like it,” Porter said.

  “Are you going to see her parents any time?” Katie said.

  “I imagine so.”

  “This is her diary. She wrote in it every night. They deserve to hear about it in her own words, not from one of us. If she was pregnant, there’ll be something in there. If she doesn’t come back, maybe… I don’t know, maybe there’ll be some type of closure or something.”

  Porter took the small floral bag. “I’ll give it to them.” He paused at the door to say something, but thought better of it and left, letting the door clang behind him.

  Getting out of the hallway didn’t require a key card and Porter pushed his way into the common area, shouldering his way through coeds. The conversation with Todd had been a waste of time. It was unfortunate that Todd hadn’t come forward sooner, as it would have saved Porter a bunch of time and aggravation, and Dinh a trip to his shady doctor.

  Porter’s stomach reminded him he had neglected it. He remembered the burger joint from the night before and chose to head there as much for the fare as for the ability to get out and stretch his legs at the soonest possible opportunity.

  Same drive-through, same meal, same rooftop-table dining experience, except this time he didn’t touch his fries. He needed to ease off the carbs. This was as good a time to start as any.

  Porter racked his brain, trying to solve his Evanna Blanchard problem.

  All the likely suspects were no good. Jamie Duncan was a shitty person, and Porter was sure he was terrible to his girlfriends. But when he said he wanted the baby, Porter believed him. Call it a hunch or Porter feeling sympathetic after hearing about Jamie and his sister’s upbringing, but he was certain the young man was innocent.

  Todd was another bust. Dumb, yes; arrogant, sure. But Todd Jones was no killer. His father, Steven, was a killer, or at the very least knew how to make a person disappear. It would have been simple to stop a girl from ruining his son’s chances, his hopes and dreams, everything he had worked for. But Steven Jones was arrogant enough to tell the truth. He thought he was untouchable, and while Porter had proved that wasn’t true, he wasn’t lying about Evanna.

  There was always the wild card option: Someone had chanced upon Evanna and found her to be too irresistible to let her walk away. Stuffed into the back of a van or chained up in a basement somewhere. There was no way to account for this. Statistically, however, the odds were low. It was almost always someone the missing person knew.

  Nowhere to go and in no rush to get there, Porter picked up the bag of Evanna Blanchard’s things. The loose pictures showed a happy family. The father, a big man in his firefighter uniform, lifting a small girl high into the air. Evanna and her mother, flour on their faces while baking cookies. A gangly teenager next to a black Labrador. A pretty, freshly minted adult, on her first day of college.

  Porter pulled out the diary, a small, spiral-bound journal. The front had doodles of flowers and small bits of poetry. Porter recognized Emily Dickinson:

  “Hope” is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—

  He paused for a minute before opening the diary. Porter had never kept a diary, but he knew how sacred it was. A place where a person’s innermost thoughts were housed. It was a violation of privacy to read it. At this point, it didn’t matter very much.

  On television, the cops always wanted the missing person’s diary. They believed it would have a clue. Always a clue. In the real world, it didn’t work like that. As a general rule, people disappeared before they wrote about it to say who took them. In the case of a secret boyfriend, it would be good to find a new name to look at. Porter was sure Evanna had enough boyfriends that she didn’t need to hide any of them.

  No, in the real world, diaries never told investigators anything and were a waste of time.

  Except this one did, and it wasn’t.

  Chapter 13

  Porter thumbed through his phone, looking at the recent missed incoming calls. An unfamiliar California number was highlighted red. Porter clicked call.

  “Hello?”

  “Sarah?”

  “Yes?”

  “It's Porter. We met yesterday, remember?”

  “You kicked in our door. How could I forget you? Frank wants us to pay for that, by the way,” she said.

  “I’ll pay. I need to talk to Jamie,” Porter said.

  “He already told you, he didn’t have anything to do with—”

  “I know, and I believe him. If I gave Jamie a million dollars, he couldn’t tell me who killed Evanna.”

  “You know she’s dead?”

  “Yes. Jamie doesn’t realize it, but he knows who did. I don’t have his number, so I called you.”

  “He’s here, with me. We wanted to stay at the Imperial a couple more nights, to make sure Todd Jones doesn’t get him, but they kicked us out on account of the door.”

  “Understandable. Can we meet? Just tell me where,” Porter said.

  “Hold on.” The phone was muffled for a few moments. “He says what’s the point? He doesn’t know anything.”

  “Tell Jamie that if he can answer a question for me, I can find the guy that did this.”

  “You know the guy?” Sarah said.

  “I have a good idea. Like I said, let’s meet.”

  “Fine. We’re at the townhouse.”

  “I’ll be there soon. Hang tight,” Porter said and hung up.

  Porter pushed the little car to its limits, crossing the bridge and repeating his steps from the night before, with one variation: He parked in a spot across the street from Sarah’s townhome. Porter didn’t want to poke the hornets’ nest that was down on the stoop at the end of the road, so he walked down the sidewalk opposite. Fortunately, no supernatural handyman had shown up to change all the light bulbs in the street lights, so most of his movements were clouded in shadow.

  He bounded up the stairs, illuminated for the first time by the overhead porch light. He stole a glance at the end of the street, and the guys on the stoop seemed unaware of his return.

  Better that way. Don’t have time for them right n
ow.

  Several rapid knocks later the door opened, first a crack, then closed again to unlock the chain, and then opened to grant Porter access.

  “I don’t even know why I bother with the chain now,” she said. “You kicked the one at the Imperial off. They don’t seem very secure anymore.”

  “It was cheap. This one’s anchored a little better. It would take me a couple kicks before it gave up on you.”

  She walked him into the townhouse, past a sparse kitchen with a small card table and two chairs, and into a living room, with a well-worn brown couch and ottoman. Sarah pulled out a chair from the kitchen table for Porter.

  Jamie sat on the couch, legs splayed out on the ottoman.

  “Surprised you guys came back here,” Porter said. “Between the guys down the street getting their feelings hurt yesterday and you wanting to hide out from Todd Jones’s family, figured you’d lay low somewhere else.”

  “Where else is there?” Jamie said. “Besides, this is our place.”

  “The guys down the street were cool,” Sarah said. “I went down there and told them it was all your fault. Told them you kidnapped me and hurt me. They’re quick to forgive. Everybody has a sister or daughter.”

  “Whatever works,” Porter said.

  “Sarah said you figured out who took Evanna. That true?”

  “I think I have it all figured out,” Porter said.

  “So who is it? I swear I’ll kill the bastard,” Jamie said.

  “Be quiet. You aren’t killing anyone,” Sarah said.

  “Fine, but at least tell me who he is. How did you even find out? I deserve to know.”

  Porter recounted the highlights of the last day to the still-battered young man. The bruises left by Steven Jones’s guys were turning his face interesting colors.

  “So you kicked their asses? Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” Porter left out the part about kidnapping Mr. and Mrs. Jones. That information was need-to-know, and Jamie didn’t.

  “Good. Assholes really worked me over. I was just trying to find my girl, you know?”