by Kyle Mills
“Sorry about the wait, Jamie,” he said, striding through the door and closing it tightly behind him. “Your mom’s decided to wait for you outside.”
“Okay.”
Beamon took the chair across from the boy and looked him over carefully. His features were generally Caucasian, though he’d obviously inherited his skin and hair color from his mother. His eyes were a light brown that seemed to fade to dark green and then back again as he moved. His clothes were mostly black or dark gray and had that secondhand look that kids seemed to strive for these days—though based on what Chet had told him earlier, it was probably more of an economic necessity for him than an obsession with fashion.
“I guess you haven’t found Jennifer yet,” the boy said in a tired voice that carried an emotional maturity that should have been impossible at his age.
Beamon shook his head but didn’t answer.
“Uh, do you know who did it?”
Beamon’s silent stare was having the desired effect. What little calm the boy had entered with was starting to fray.
“Other than you? Nope.”
The boy’s eyes widened for a moment and he opened his mouth to say something, but checked himself. It was a moment before he finally spoke. “Why would I want to kidnap Jennifer? She was already my girlfriend. Ask anyone. We never even fought, hardly.”
Beamon cocked his head. “I don’t think you kidnapped her, Jamie. I think you and Jennifer were in this together. I think you finished your little concert and went home. Then I think you sneaked out of the house and took the car to Jennifer’s, where you blew her parents’ brains all over the living room. Then you took Jennifer somewhere where it would be a pain in the ass for me to find her and went home.”
Beamon watched his young opponent carefully. The boy was trembling, but his eyes were clear and he was obviously carefully considering Beamon’s words. He had to admire the kid—he’d had grown men face down on the table sobbing for less.
Jamie took a deep, shaky breath. “I read that Mr. and Mrs. Davis were found in the clothes they’d had on that day. No way I could have made it to their house before four in the morning—I got a hundred people I don’t even know that’d swear to that. They’d have to sleep in their clothes.”
Beamon shrugged. “I hear you got fifteen-eighty on your SATs, Jamie. I have to say I’d be a little disappointed if you’d just shot ‘em in bed. No, Jennifer would have known exactly what they were wearing and you’d force them to get dressed and come downstairs. My compliments. Not terribly creative, but not bad for a minor. I mean, at least you didn’t shoot the clock to establish a phony time of death, you know?”
Jamie ran a hand through his long black hair, dislodging the sweat from his hairline. Beamon watched as it ran down his face.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe my mom should—”
Beamon cut him off. “If you’re old enough to shoot two human beings in the face, I think you’re old enough to talk to us without your mommy, don’t you?”
“Why? Why would I kill them?” Jamie said in a pleading voice. “I didn’t have anything against the Davises. I mean, what good would it do me that it’d be worth risking my whole life?”
Beamon leaned back in his chair and scraped an imaginary speck of dirt from under his thumbnail. “Oh, come on, Jamie. Don’t insult my intelligence. Patricia Davis was not exactly shot in the ass with you. In fact, I think she had someone else in mind for Jennifer. Seems to me like a win-win proposition for you. You get rid of Patty and Jennifer miraculously escapes from her kidnappers a few weeks later. Just in time to pick up her inheritance.”
“No!” Jamie protested. “Mrs. Davis liked me. That thing with Billy had been going on for years. Jennifer wasn’t interested.”
“That’s not what I hear, son. What I hear is that she was putting a lot of pressure on Jennifer. That she hated you. She apparently thought that Jennifer could do better than a …” Beamon paused imperceptibly, choking a bit on the phrase, “halfspic living in a trailer park.”
Jaime’s face flashed with anger. “Fuck you, man.” He jumped to his feet and pushed a book lying on the desk in front of him as hard as he could, but Beamon stopped it easily before it hit him in the chest.
“Sit down,” Beamon ordered, raising his voice for the first time in the “interview.” The boy glared at him, his breath coming like he’d just run a race.
“I won’t tell you again. Sit.”
Jamie looked over at Michaels, whose wide-eyed stare seemed frozen to his face, and then sank back into the chair.
“Look, Jamie. You’re underage. You love Jennifer. Maybe she even talked you into this? Been there. It’s hard to say no to the woman you love. You start talking to me right now and I’ll do everything I can to make things go easy for you. At this point, I think we can keep this in Juvenile—keep you from being tried as an adult.” Beamon dropped the front legs of his chair to the floor loudly. “You keep fucking with me, though, and I’m going to make it my mission to get you. You’re a smart kid. You go look up some articles on me in the library. You’ll find that the people who come up against me end up in prison for the rest of their lives. Or dead.”
Tears clouded the boy’s eyes for the first time. “I didn’t do it, man. Don’t you think I want her back? Don’t you?”
He ran past them and out the door, slamming it behind him. Beamon didn’t bother to stop him.
“Jesus, Mark.” Michaels said in a loud whisper that sounded a bit panicked. “You just threatened to kill that kid!”
“Did I?” Beamon pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to shake the feeling that he’d have made a hell of a Gestapo agent. Ripping into a seventeen-year-old kid with a history of abuse—and who was probably lying awake at night imagining his girlfriend being raped in the back of a van or something—was right up there with clubbing baby seals on the fun meter. There were times when he really hated this job.
“So what do you think, Mark?”
Beamon sighed. “I got a bad feeling about that kid.”
“Really? You think he did it?”
Beamon shook his head. “No, that would be a good feeling. It’d mean I found our man—boy—and was on the verge of finding Jennifer. I’m afraid that he didn’t do it. And if that’s true, I don’t have a fucking clue where that little girl is.”
8
MARK BEAMON SLAMMED HIS FOOT AGAINST the brake pedal and slid into a stand of snow-covered pines. The impact, slow as it was, knocked the snow off the trees and buried the front of his car. Apparently the snow-driving learning curve wasn’t real steep for Texans. At least not this one.
The condominium complex that had been his home for the past month sparkled as the beams of widely spaced floodlights bounced off ice clinging to the sides of the buildings. It had been the first place his realtor had taken him. The FBI had relocated him more times than he could remember—in fact, someone had recently pointed out that he might be closing in on the record. And with that many moves under his belt, the monotonous chore of looking for housing had become almost physically painful.
Of course, he had no one to blame for his career as the FBI’s tinerant lawman but himself. There was always some new office anxious to take on the man heralded as the best investigative mind in the Bureau. And there was always an office just as anxious to get rid of the man heralded as the biggest pain in the ass in the Bureau.
But that was the old Mark Beamon. He was the new, vastly improved Mark Beamon. He stepped from the car and kicked his front tire. Satisfied that he’d be able to get out the next morning, he started along one of the meticulously shoveled brick walkways that connected the forty units with the main office, frozen swimming pool, and each other.
Each building was configured with two units upstairs and two downstairs, and all faced out onto expanses of grass, trees, and flowers—or at least that’s what he’d been told. Any landscaping that existed had been long buried when he’d arrived in January.
; He slowed his pace a bit as his building came into view. As expected, Chet Michaels was sitting at the bottom of the stairs that led up to Beamon’s condo. He had undoubtedly been there for exactly fifty minutes—Beamon was supposed to have met him there forty-five minutes ago and Michaels was always precisely five minutes early for every appointment. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the little girl who was unsuccessfully trying to catch the snowballs he was gently tossing to her. And the disaster was the auburn-haired woman in electric blue mittens handing him a steaming cup of something or other.
“Chet! You’re early,” Beamon called. “I said seven o’clock.”
Michaels stood and brushed the snow off the back of his jeans as he approached. “You said six, Mark.” He pointed to Beamon’s right hand. “You wrote it on the back of your hand.”
“Oh, yeah. So I did. Sorry.” He turned to the woman standing next to Michaels. “Thanks for keeping him from freezing.”
Carrie Johnstone smiled slyly and crouched down next to her daughter. “What do we do when Mr. Beamon gets home, Emory?”
The little girl ran at him and latched onto his leg. “Hi, Mr. Beamon,” she slurred through a less than full complement of teeth.
“I’m trying to get Mark to relate to children,” Carrie explained as Beamon tried to extract his leg from Emory’s grip. “It’s shaping up to be one of the greatest challenges of my career, but I think I’m wearing him down.”
“What do you do, Carrie?” Michaels said.
“I’m a psychiatrist.”
“Really? A psychiatrist? Wow.” Michaels handed her back the barely touched cup of coffee and started up the steps toward Beamon’s condo. About halfway up he paused and turned around. “You know. Doc, those of us who work for Mark would appreciate anything you could do for him. I’m sure I could take up a collection at the office to cover any fee.”
Beamon glared at the young agent, who said, “Thanks for the coffee,” and disappeared up the steps.
“Before you go up, Mark, could I talk to you?” Carrie said, suddenly looking a little nervous.
“Uh, sure. CHET!”
The young agent peeked over the railing at him and narrowly avoided being hit in the face by Beamon’s keys. “Go on in. I’ll be up in a second.”
Carrie looked at him with a hint of disapproval registering in her expression. “You know, you really shouldn’t leave your employees out on the steps to freeze, Mark. I tried to get him to come inside, but he wouldn’t. Thought you’d be mad.”
Beamon frowned. Michaels had obviously been busy using that Howdy Doody face to drum up sympathy from Carrie and make him look like an ogre. He’d have to remember to make his life a living hell for the next week or so.
“Couldn’t be helped.”
There was a brief lull in the conversation as Carrie reached one of her mitten-covered hands into her coat and pulled out an envelope. “I, uh, got this invitation to go to a wedding on Saturday and it says Carrie Johnstone and guest.” She held it out as though he’d require proof. “Anyway, it’s probably going to be pretty nice. I was wondering if you might want to go?”
He felt his eyebrows start to rise, but managed to stop them before they got too far from their normal resting position. He had met Carrie the day he’d moved in and had been instantly taken with her. She was intelligent, funny, and had a sarcastic edge that, while admittedly underdeveloped, showed real potential. He’d spent the last month trying to figure out a clever excuse to spend some time with her, but so far his normally devious mind had been a blank.
“Are you asking me on a date?” he said, a hint of a smile playing at his lips.
“Uh, I don’t know if I’d call it a date. I just thought it’d be … fun.”
He nodded thoughtfully and crouched down to bring himself eye-level with her daughter. “What do you think, Emory? Should I go on a non-date with your mother? Or should I insist on full date status?”
Emory looked at him blankly and then giggled and squealed. “Date!”
Beamon looked back up at Carrie. “Your daughter seems to think I deserve all the rights and privileges afforded a full-blooded date.”
Carrie’s expression turned severe, but he could tell she was trying not to laugh. “We’ll have to talk about what you consider ‘full rights and privileges,’ but I’m willing to compromise. I’d consider an honorary title.”
“I can live with that.”
Beamon knocked the snow off his boots with a couple of violent kicks to the doorjamb and dropped his coat on the floor. Things were starting to look up. Of course, he still had no idea as to the whereabouts of the elusive Jennifer Davis, but he had managed to get a date with Carrie without having to go through the torture of actually asking. Not every day you got something for nothing.
“Okay, Chet, what’ve you got for me?”
Michaels leaned back into the sofa and put his feet on the large box that contained Beamon’s coffee table. “She’s really cool. Pretty, too. And a doctor.” He rubbed at his bright red chin. “I think she likes you.”
Beamon opened his refrigerator and pulled out two beers. “You’d better be talking about Jennifer Davis.” He popped the tops off the bottles and walked around to Michaels.
“I was talking about Carrie.”
Beamon sat down in a chair facing the sofa and took a long pull from his beer. “So what I’m hearing you saying, Chet, is that you don’t actually want to keep your job.”
The young agent smirked and pulled two folders out of the open knapsack at his feet. He pointed to one of them. “Autopsy.” Then the other. “Jennifer’s real parents. Which one do you want to start with?”
Beamon polished off his beer with one more healthy gulp and started toward the kitchen for a refill. “I’m pretty sure the cause of death was their brains leaving their heads at the speed of sound, so why don’t we start with the parents.”
“Good choice. We’ve started to get in the info you wanted on Jennifer’s real parents. James and Carol Passal. James was a grocery store manager in Portland, Oregon—Carol was a full-time mother, as near as we can tell. Both were killed in a fire that destroyed their home when Jennifer was two years old.”
“Where was Jennifer?”
“They found her wandering around on the lawn.”
“She was outside playing when the fire started?”
Michaels shook his head. “The fire started around midnight.”
“Midnight, huh. What caused it?”
“The report’s pretty cryptic. They ruled out foul play, but I’m not sure how, since they don’t give a cause. Also, no one seems to have ever figured out how Jennifer got onto the lawn.”
“Interesting.”
“Oh, it gets way better than that. James had a brother. He lived in Salem ‘til he left town under a black cloud.”
“And that cloud was …”
“Kidnapping category number three. Suspicion of child molestation.”
Beamon fell back into the chair with his fresh beer. “Now that really is interesting. Was Jennifer involved?”
“It’s possible, but I can’t say for sure. The police investigated briefly, but when David took off, I guess they never got anything concrete enough to warrant bringing him back.”
“Where is he now?”
“I think near Kanab, Utah.”
“Where?”
“It’s on the southern border of the state. Not that far from here, actually. I’m still trying to get a specific address, but the sheriff there said that Passal just lives up in the hills—pretty much keeps to himself.”
“We need to find him, Chet. Now.”
“I’ve called the guys that cover that area, they—”
Beamon pointed at the young agent, cutting him off. “That’s fine, Chet, but the buck stops here. I expect to be face to face with this guy, like, tomorrow. Understood?”
Michaels looked down at the floor and nodded.
“Okay,” Beamon said. “If you run into any
problems, call me here or beep me. I’m available twenty-four hours a day for this. Now what else do you have for me?”
Michaels didn’t seem to want to speak,
“Come on, Chet. Out with it.”
“We can’t seem to figure out who Carol Passal was.”
“What, did Social Security lose her maiden name?”
Michaels grabbed his beer off the box/coffee table in front of him. “No, we found her maiden name no problem. We also found another identity prior to that. We’re still trying peel back the layers and get at the original.”
“Really? You’re telling me that she purposefully changed her identity?”
He nodded.
“Only one reason to do that—you don’t want to be found,” Beamon said. “Check the database for any outstanding warrants on someone fitting her description. Maybe she was running from the law. Check with the IRS, too. People just hate paying their taxes. Otherwise, keep after it. Could be she was trying to get away from a psycho ex-husband or something. Anything else?”
Michaels shook his head and scribbled Beamon’s instructions on the back of the folder.
“Okay, then. Hit me with the autopsy report. Just the highlights—it’s getting late.”
“Both Mr. and Mrs. Davis were shot with the same forty-five, Mrs. Davis in the right side of the back of her head and Mr. Davis under the chin. There were minor contusions around Mrs. Davis’s mouth and nose that would suggest that someone pretty strong had grabbed her.” He put his hand over his mouth and pinched his nose shut with his thumb and index finger to illustrate the point. “Various contusions and a few fresh cuts were found on Mr. Davis, also suggesting a struggle.”
Beamon nodded. “We saw the aftermath of all that in the kitchen.”
“Yeah. Uh, no evidence that either of them was tied at any time, no evidence that either body was moved postmortem.”
“Time of death?”
“They’re putting it between eight P.M. and three A.M.”
“That’s kind of broad. The window?”
