Vanished

by Joseph Finder

  Detective-Lieutenant Arthur Garvin met me halfway down the hall. He wasn’t quite what I expected. He had an almost professorial appearance: thick steel-rimmed glasses, scraggly white goatee, red-rimmed nostrils. On the way over, I’d called in to the office and asked Dorothy to do a quick backgrounder on the guy. He was sixty-four, with thirty-two years of service, and had gotten a retirement waiver. The police and the fire department had a mandatory retirement age of sixty, but they made exceptions in special cases. Most cops want to retire as soon as they can, I’ve found. The ones who get retirement waivers are the ones who love what they’re doing.

  He wore a light blue shirt with a button-down collar, neatly creased; he had his shirts professionally laundered, and they came back in boxes. Not a polyester kind of guy. Neat and orderly, though a large dark grease stain in the middle of his shirt pocket marred the effect.

  He shook my hand. His was damp. “Come on back to my office. Ordinarily, we’d talk in the conference room, but it’s undergoing maintenance.”

  “Smells like someone couldn’t hold their Jack Daniel’s,” I said.

  He scowled. “Nah, something’s going around the office. Some kinda stomach virus.” He sounded congested, kept sniffling.

  He didn’t share an office since he was a lieutenant. His was cramped and windowless, with a bad rug and wood-veneer paneling and a lot of framed certificates and awards. It reminded me of a home office in someone’s finished basement.

  Garvin sat behind his desk and took a long swig of coffee from a giant mug. “Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “So, snake-eater, huh?”

  I shrugged. He’d checked me out, too.

  “Isn’t that what they call you Green Berets?”

  No one I knew in the Special Forces ever used the term “snake-eaters.” We all went through a pretty nasty training program called the Q Course, but you didn’t actually have to cook and eat snake. Maybe in the old days you did. No one ever called us “Green Berets” anymore, either. Not since John Wayne.

  “Guess so,” I said.

  “You’ve been with Stoddard Associates for about three years.”

  “That all? Seems a lot longer.”

  “Now, I assume you’re here for personal reasons and not on business.”

  “Right,” I said.

  He sneezed, pulled out a crumpled handkerchief, blew his nose loudly. He sneaked a surreptitious glance at the contents of his handkerchief before crumpling it back up and stuffing it into his pants. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have come in to work today, and now you’re gonna catch this damned thing.”

  “I don’t get sick,” I said.

  “Bad luck to say that. Now you’re really gonna get hit bad.”

  “I’m not superstitious either,” I said. “Where’s your partner? Scorpino? Scardino?”

  “Scarpino. Tony’s on another case. He’s been reassigned.”

  I knew what that meant. The case had been deemed low-priority. Only one cop on it now.

  “Thanks for taking the time to see me,” I said. Cops are overworked and underpaid, overstressed and undervalued, and I always try to let them know I appreciate them. They also tend to be resentful of people who do roughly the same work they do but get paid a lot more. I can’t blame them.

  He sneezed again. “Ah, Jeez,” he said. He took out his handkerchief and went through his ritual all over again, right down to the furtive inspection.

  “I’m grateful for everything you’re doing to find my brother. I want to help anyway I can.”

  “You and your brother are pretty close, huh?”

  He peered at me for a few seconds over the rim of his coffee mug. The thick lenses of his eyeglasses magnified his eyes, made them look weird, like some space alien’s. If I had been guilty of something, I would definitely have been intimidated. He was probably quite effective in interrogations.

  I shook my head. “Not in years.”

  “Must be hard, living in the same town and all.”

  “We travel in different circles.”

  “Uh-huh.” He put down his mug, turned his chair to face his computer monitor. “How about you and Mrs. Heller? Don’t get along with her either?”

  “We get along great. I like her kid.”

  “Her kid? You mean, their kid?”

  “Well, Roger’s stepson. But Roger’s been his dad since Gabe was two or three.”

  “So you’re in touch with her?”

  “From time to time. Gabe and I talk about once a week.”

  The thought crossed my mind that he might consider me a suspect. Ex-Special Forces, which meant that I was capable of scary stuff. Unmarried and not currently in a relationship. So naturally I must have conspired with my brother’s wife to kill her husband and set this whole elaborate thing up.

  But fortunately he didn’t seem to be going down that path. “She ever talk about their marriage?”

  “No. She and I don’t really have that kind of relationship.”

  “I assume your brother never talked about that sort of stuff with you either.”

  “Right.”

  “So there could be serious problems between the two of them that you might not know about.”

  “Theoretically, sure. But I’d probably have noticed.”

  “Any drug use?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  He tapped at his keyboard. “Do you know if he was involved with bookies?”

  “Bookies? Roger? I don’t think he’s ever seen a horse race. Lieutenant, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “What tree should I be barking up, Mr. Heller?”

  “My brother was involved in some complicated financial arrangements at Gifford Industries. The stakes are pretty high-business partners, competitors, all that. Wouldn’t surprise me if he made some enemies. Bad actors.”

  “He have any enemies that you know of?”

  “I don’t want to give you carpal tunnel syndrome.”

  “That many, huh?”

  “Roger has an abrasive manner. I’m sure he pissed people off all the time.”

  “Maybe the wrong people.”

  “Could be.”

  “People he’d want to run away from.”

  “It’s possible.” I watched him tap at the keys for a few seconds, then said, “I assume you’ve flagged all his credit-card accounts.”

  He typed a while longer, sniffled, then turned to me. “Huh. Hadn’t thought of that.” His sarcasm was bone-dry. I liked that.

  I let it pass. “Nothing popped up, I take it. You ran his name through all the standard databases-NCIC and so on?”

  “Another excellent suggestion,” he said. “So glad you stopped by. Wouldn’t have thought of that either.” He sneezed, and blew his nose, but this time he didn’t bother with the examination. “Any other tips for me?”

  “How about checking those closed-circuit crime cameras you guys have all over the place?”

  “Actually, Mr. Heller, we don’t have a single crime camera in Georgetown.”

  That was news to me. “No crime in Georgetown, huh?”

  “No budget,” Garvin said. “I think this is what they call backseat driving.”

  I ignored him. “Then what about traffic cameras? I’ve seen plenty of them around Georgetown.”

  “They don’t record anything. They’re monitored, but only for traffic-related incidents.”

  “Like running a red light.”

  “Like that.”

  “Still, there have to be dozens, maybe even hundreds, of private security cameras in that part of Georgetown. Businesses, embassies, probably some apartment buildings, too. Anyone canvass the area?”

  He gave me one of his styptic, space-alien glares. “Maybe we can bring in the National Guard to assist us. I don’t think we put in that kind of effort to look for Osama Bin Laden. What makes you think we’ve got that kind of manpower for a missing-persons case?”

  “Of course you don’t,” I said in a matt
er-of-fact tone. “But let’s speak frankly, Lieutenant. This is probably a homicide.”

  “Think so?”

  “The odds of my brother being alive at this point are negligible. You know it as well as I do.”

  “Hmph. Interesting. Well, you’re the expert.” He sneezed twice, did his handkerchief thing. “Being a high-priced investigator with Stoddard and all.”

  “Lieutenant Garvin,” I said, “this is your case, not mine. I get that. I just want to help.”

  “Yeah? Then maybe you could explain something to me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Since you’re so sure your brother was abducted by unnamed ‘enemies’ and probably killed. How do you explain the fact that about half an hour after he and his wife were attacked, he went to a Wachovia Bank ATM and made a withdrawal?”

  I stared at him.

  “Kinda raises the odds of your brother’s being alive, doesn’t it?” he said, and he sneezed again.

  14.

  You don’t seem surprised.”

  “Because it wasn’t him,” I said. In fact, I was pretty much blown away at first, but I’ve got a decent poker face. So Garvin had put a flag on Roger’s bank accounts. “You might want to ask for the ATM videotape,” I said, just to watch his reaction.

  Garvin began to sputter with indignation, but then he grinned. “Got me,” he said. “Wachovia’s sending it over as soon as they pull it.”

  “Whoever abducted my brother grabbed his card and forced his PIN out of him. He didn’t withdraw the money of his own volition.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Nothing else makes sense. I’m sure my brother has several bank accounts. Which one?”

  “His personal checking account. The one he uses most often to get cash.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Eleven oh-nine P.M. Sixteen minutes after we got the nine-one-one call from someone who saw his wife lying on the ground.”

  “Gotta be a holdup, then,” I said. “If someone abducted him for some reason, they’d never jeopardize it for, what-a thousand bucks? The maximum Roger could withdraw at any time?”

  “Probably.”

  “A holdup that went bad, then.”

  “If by ‘went bad,’ you mean they killed him, where’s the body?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Right,” Garvin said with muted disgust.

  “It’s also possible they’re still holding him.”

  “Your big kidnapping theory again, that it?”

  “Look, Lieutenant, you guys are stretched way too thin. You don’t have half the resources my firm has. It’s not fair, but it’s true.” I ignored his cold stare. “We’ve got access to some very powerful, and very expensive, investigative databases. How about I put some of that firepower to work? Case like this, I figure you can use all the help you can get.”

  Garvin took off his glasses and set them down on top of a neatly stacked pile of folders. He closed his eyes and massaged his eyelids with his fingertips, pressing hard. “Believe it or not, Mr. Heller, this ain’t my first rodeo.”

  It was never anyone’s first rodeo, was it? “I’m only talking about the investigative tools we have at our disposal.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “We’ve got asset locator services and corporate databases and law-enforcement databases that you probably think only the National Security Agency has. We’ve got access to international records that the CIA and the NSA wish they had. Don’t tell me you’d turn away a lead if I handed you one.”

  “Actually, yes. I would turn it away. I can’t use anything you find, Mr. Heller. It wouldn’t be admissible in court. I can’t establish the chain of custody.”

  “Forget about trial. If I can piece together what happened to Roger, you’re not going to ignore what I come up with.”

  “I know you want to find your brother,” Garvin said. “I get that. But if you start meddling in my case, you’re going to screw it up. You start talking to a potential target before we have our ducks in a row, you’ll tip our hand before we’re ready. The target’s going to start destroying evidence and building alibis in advance. I can’t have that.”

  “It ain’t my first rodeo either.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “You’re the pro here, not me,” I said. “I’m not here to bust your butt, and I sure as hell don’t want credit. If an envelope happens to turn up in your mailbox with some interesting information in it, don’t throw it away. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I didn’t ask you do to anything,” Garvin said.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “And certainly nothing illegal.”

  “Never,” I said.

  Garvin looked at me for a second or two, then nodded. “Good. Just so long as we’re clear on this. I don’t want you doing a damned thing.”

  “Hell no,” I said, and smiled. I handed him a business card. “Here’s my cell number. Let me know if you find anything interesting, okay?”

  MY CAR-or maybe I should say truck-was an old, rebuilt Land Rover Defender 90. It was rugged and utilitarian and indestructible and totally reliable. Not at all luxurious. Not a living room on wheels like the Range Rover. It was a tall steel box with hand-cranked windows and a Spartan interior, and it could tow cars and drive through rivers. A true off-road vehicle, even though my off-road driving, since I started working for Stoddard, was mostly limited to gravel driveways in Nantucket.

  The Defender was a gift from a grateful Jordanian arms dealer after I made the mistake of admiring it while advising him on protection at his Belgravia estate. He had it reconditioned, repainted the same glossy Coniston green, and shipped over. It was a 1997, but it looked brand new.

  I climbed in just as my cell phone started ringing.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Nick.” It was Lauren, and she was whispering. “Can you come over?”

  “What is it?”

  “I just got an e-mail,” she said. “From Roger.”

  15.

  Lauren was sitting in front of a computer screen in the small nook off their living room that served as her home office. She was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, and she was barefoot. She looked up as I entered. She’d been crying, I could see. Her eyes were bloodshot.

  She tilted the screen so I could see it. I read a few lines, then stopped.

  The e-mail was from Roger.Heller@InCaseOfDeath.net.

  “ ‘IN CASE of death’?” I said. “What the hell’s that?”

  She looked at me for a long time. “I just looked it up. It’s an e-mail service that sends out e-mails to your loved ones,” she said. “After you die.”

  We were both silent for a few seconds.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” I said.

  Lauren spoke haltingly. “It’s sort of morbid, really. But I guess it’s a useful service. You know, if there are things you want to tell your family after your death…” And she bit her lip.

  “Okay,” I said. I put a hand on her shoulder.

  She swallowed, wiped away her tears with the backs of her hands. “You sign up for these automatic e-mail notifications. For up to five people. The e-mails go out after you’ve died.”

  I said gently, “And how do they know you’re dead?”

  “I’m not sure, Nick… It looks like they automatically e-mail you as often as you request-weekly, monthly, whatever-and you have up to a week to hit REPLY, and if you don’t…”

  But I’d stopped listening. I’d moved closer to the screen and started reading Roger’s letter.

  My sweet Lauren,

  This has to be the strangest letter I’ve ever written. Because if you get it, that means I’m dead.

  I looked up and saw that Lauren was standing.

  “I need to make sure Gabe’s doing his homework,” she said.

  I nodded, kept reading.

  How it’ll happen, I have no idea.

  But first things first. I want you to know how deeply
I love you. I’m not an easy man to be married to, so you might not always have realized it-and for that, all I can do is ask your forgiveness. I’ve never been good about expressing affection, but I hope at least you know I tried my best.

  Who knows what they’ll do? Will they try to make it look like I committed suicide? You’ve known me for 9 years-you know I enjoy my life far too much to be suicidal. Or maybe they’ll set it up so it looks like I drove drunk-even though you know how rarely I drink, and that I never ever drink and drive.

  Or maybe they won’t even leave a body-no evidence. I have no idea what they might try. But if you get this, that means they finally succeeded.

  I can only hope that you actually receive this e-mail. I’m not sure you will. The people who are trying to stop me have the ability to intercept e-mail. Given what I know them to be capable of, that’s the least of it. So one copy is going to your work e-mail address, and one copy to your personal one, and I hope you get at least one of them. I’m certain they can, and will, read this e-mail.

  Whether or not I can save myself, I’ve taken precautions to protect you and Gabe-to give you the means to hold them off. You’ll know what I mean.

  But whatever you do, you must never trust anyone.

  I thought long and hard about e-mailing Gabe separately, but in the end I decided to leave it to you. You’ll know how to handle it. Tell him whatever you think best. Just make sure to tell him I love him immensely. That if there’s an afterlife, I’ll be cheering him on, and I know he’ll grow up to be a terrific man.

  And for all the ways I messed up your life-for all the wreckage I’m leaving behind-please forgive me.

  I love you so much.

  Roger.

  P.S.: Please say good-bye to the librarian.

  When I finished reading, I sat there for a minute and stared at the screen in a kind of fugue state.

  Then I heard Lauren’s voice, and I turned around. “He wants you,” she said.

  It took me a few seconds to realize she meant Gabe.