Cold Harbor (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 3)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

The detective looked sideways at Gibson. “You failed to comply with the officer’s verbal instructions. Then you assaulted that officer. That’s why you were Tased.”

  “I don’t remember doing that.”

  “Don’t worry. That’s what body cams are for. That’s one-to-five, by the way.” Jim Bachmann opened his file. “So . . . 53 Mulberry Court. That was your ex-wife’s address, right?”

  Gibson nodded, immediately uneasy at the mention of Nicole.

  Duke looked over the detective’s shoulder at the file. “Son of a bitch is setting you up for something.”

  “So what prompted the unexpected visit?”

  “I thought I was under arrest for assault. And if you have it all on body cam, what do you even need to question me for?”

  “Don’t worry about the assault. The officer is a friend. If you help us with our investigation, then I’m sure he could be convinced to let it drop.”

  “What do you actually want?”

  “Can you account for your whereabouts the day your ex-wife’s house burned down?”

  The question caught Gibson by surprise, but he understood now why he was here and why the family had freaked out. Nicole’s house hadn’t burned down; it had been burned down. And he was a suspect, probably the only suspect. Disgruntled, unemployed ex-husbands automatically went straight to the top of the list. The assault charge was nothing but a pretext to question him about the fire. It made him angry all over again.

  Bachmann repeated his questions.

  “Don’t answer that,” Duke advised.

  Gibson glared at his father. He didn’t need to be told that paranoid tales of CIA kidnappings and black-site prisons would go over badly. The detective followed Gibson’s eyes to the empty wall where Duke had been and jotted down another note. Gibson doubted it was flattering.

  “Mr. Vaughn, I can’t clear you if you won’t answer my questions.”

  “You already cleared me.”

  “Have I now?” Bachmann said with a practiced, condescending smile.

  “Well, you have nothing on me, so if you haven’t, you’re either stupid or a liar.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. I got you six ways and Sunday.” Bachmann didn’t look amused now.

  “Bullshit. I know you don’t because I had nothing to do with it. This little dog and pony show is just to see if I’ll incriminate myself.”

  “Gibson . . .” Bear pleaded. “Don’t.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Antagonizing the detective wasn’t helping anything, but Gibson was tired of humoring this jackal. “Was. Anyone. Hurt?”

  “Spare me, all right?” said Bachmann. “If you cared so much about your kid, you wouldn’t have burned down her home.”

  The eighteen months he’d spent wondering if he’d ever be released had been hell, but it was nothing compared to the last twelve hours not knowing if Ellie were alive or dead. He didn’t know that he wanted the answer, but not knowing was the most dreadful purgatory he could imagine. Bachmann’s sneer was the proverbial last straw. Gibson snapped.

  “Was anyone hurt?” he screamed, toggling from calm to rage in the blink of an eye. “Is my daughter safe, you fuck?”

  Spittle flew across the table. Gibson’s chair hit the back wall as he surged at Bachmann, stopped only by the handcuffs. Bachmann jerked backward, caught off guard by Gibson’s Jekyll and Hyde. A pair of uniformed officers burst through the door, ready to crack heads, but Bachmann got between them and Gibson and ushered them back out into the hall. Gibson raged against his handcuffs, unable to subdue the stream of threats and expletives pouring out of him or the tears that coursed down his face. Bachmann shut the door and put his back against it. He waited for Gibson’s storm to blow itself out.

  Gibson slumped to the floor, arms twisted over his head by the handcuffs still attached to the table. It should have hurt, but he felt nothing at all.

  “Are you about done?” Bachmann asked.

  “Please . . .”

  Bachmann looked down at Gibson and took pity on him. “No one was home, Mr. Vaughn. Your daughter and ex-wife are alive and well.”

  Gibson absorbed the news. Something hard and jagged loosened in his chest, and he took a newborn’s first breath. The sense of relief was primal, and he prayed thankfully to the god of little children. Too adrenaline scarred and exhausted to move, Gibson needed the detective’s help to sit up in the chair again.

  “Thank you,” Gibson said.

  “Do that again, and I’ll put you back in the cage for a week.”

  “Where’s Ellie?”

  “That’s not pertinent to this—”

  “Where are they?”

  “They’re not anxious to see you. You have to understand that much. Your ex-wife took out a restraining order against you, so I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew.”

  The words “restraining order” reverberated in Gibson’s ears. He caught Duke’s eye, who only shook his head and looked away. The detective carried on talking at him, but his words were fuzzy and indistinct.

  “Now I’ve answered all the questions I’m going to, so how about you return the favor? Where were you the day the house burned down? Where have you been?”

  “Away,” Gibson said. “On my own.”

  “Don’t get cute with me. I’m all out of good graces for the day.”

  “I don’t know where I was.”

  “You don’t know where you’ve been for the last eighteen months?”

  When Gibson stuck to his story, the detective started from the beginning and asked all his questions a second time. Then a third. After that, Gibson stopped paying attention. Someone had burned down Nicole’s house, and he hadn’t been there to stop it. Something else Damon Washburn would answer for. From the corner of his eye, he saw Duke nod in agreement.

  “How can you not know where you were?” Bachmann asked for the hundredth time.

  Finally, Gibson slipped up and told the truth. “I don’t know. I was locked up.”

  Bachmann sat forward.

  “Gibson,” Duke said. “Careful.”

  “You were in prison? Where?”

  “I told you I don’t know,” Gibson said.

  “You don’t know where you were in prison?”

  “Ask the CIA.”

  The detective wore the expression of someone who’d started a conversation at a party with a normal-looking person but found himself trapped arguing whether Jimmy Hoffa had Kennedy killed. Duke wore the same expression but for different reasons.

  Bachmann said, “You were in a CIA prison?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  Without a word, Bachmann rose and left the room. He was gone long enough for Duke to lecture Gibson on the virtues of silence. Bachmann returned in the company of the uniformed officers. Some kind of decision had been reached.

  “If we have follow-up questions, do you have a number where we can reach you?”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “Mr. Vaughn, do you have a home? Somewhere you live?”

  Gibson shook his head.

  “Is there someone we can call? Who could pick you up?”

  Gibson thought about that a good, long while even though the list was good and short. There was his aunt in Charlottesville, but that was a good two hours away, and the idea of mixing her up in any more of his legal troubles did not hold a lot of appeal. She’d been through enough on account of him. Everyone else he knew was dead, missing, or wanted nothing to do with him. Finally, he gave them Toby Kalpar’s name. He didn’t like the idea of getting Toby involved either, but there simply wasn’t anyone else.

  CHAPTER SIX

  With his slight frame and contemplative, scholarly air, Toby Kalpar looked as out of place in a police station waiting room as he did behind the counter of the Nighthawk Diner. After his divorce, Gibson had moved into a one-bedroom apartment within walking distance of the Nighthawk. The apartment was dreary and depressing, and cooking wasn’t among the skills he’d picked up in the Marines. The
diner had become a home away from home. He’d spent countless hours at a booth in the back, job hunting. Somewhere along the way, he and Toby had become good friends. The older man had offered Gibson much-needed perspective and advice, for which Gibson had been grateful, even if he hadn’t always been able to follow it.

  He fought the urge to slip out the door. All these strangers judging him were just that—strangers. It would be something else entirely from Toby. Before he could escape, Toby caught sight of Gibson. If he had a reaction to Gibson’s shabby appearance, he masked it well. Toby pushed his glasses high up on his nose, put his arms around Gibson, and hugged him fiercely. Gibson wept bitterly at the warmth of Toby’s embrace, who, misunderstanding the reason for the tears, held him all the tighter. Bear, who had a soft spot in her heart for Toby, stood nearby smiling.

  “I didn’t know who else to call,” Gibson said out in the parking lot. It was dusk, and a light, freezing rain had begun to fall.

  “I’m glad you did.” As was Toby’s way, he didn’t ask the questions that must have been on his mind, content to let the truth unfold in its own time.

  Gibson meant to ditch Toby now that he’d been released, but he had questions that needed answering first.

  “Where are they?”

  “Let’s talk about it in the car,” Toby said.

  “Just tell me.”

  Toby held open the car door and waited patiently. “I’ll tell you everything on the way home.”

  Gibson eyed the car warily. It felt like a trap. What was home? Where the hell was that? But Toby refused to say anything more, so Gibson got into the car with his duffel bag across his lap in case he needed to get away quickly. Toby started the car and adjusted the heat. The windows had iced over, and light filtered through, ghostly and pale. Ghazal played quietly over the stereo. Toby and Sana Kalpar had emigrated from Pakistan more than twenty years ago, and in many ways had embraced the customs and culture of their adopted country. But Toby’s father had been a ghazal poet and singer of some renown, and it was still the music Toby preferred when he felt homesick in the winter months.

  In the car, Toby told the same story the detective had. Nicole’s house had burned to the foundations. Fortunately, no one had been at home. Clear indications of an accelerant. No witnesses.

  “The police think I did it,” Gibson said.

  “You weren’t here to defend yourself. It looked . . . well, it looked bad.”

  “Where’s Ellie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gibson became angry. “Don’t tell me that. Why wouldn’t Nicole tell you?”

  Toby sighed. “Because she knew that I would tell you if you ever came back.”

  That, and all it implied, hit home. Gibson sat back and looked out through the small patch of defrosted window. Nicole had disappeared with Ellie. Taken out a restraining order against him and run. She believed him capable of doing this thing. It had come to that.

  Gibson got out of the car, certain that he would be sick. Toby followed him, urging him to get back in.

  “I can’t,” Gibson said. “Appreciate you springing me, but I’m not your problem.”

  “You are not a problem. Please, get back in the car.”

  “And go where? What will I do?”

  “You will need time to figure that out,” Toby allowed.

  “He’s right,” Bear said. “You need time to find Ellie.”

  “I don’t know how,” Gibson said to both of them. Before the cell, he would have counted planning and decision-making among his skills, but now he saw no way back. Nicole and Ellie were gone, and he was out of time. If he had a gun, he didn’t know that he wouldn’t put it in his mouth. He couldn’t think of a single reason not to—all his reasons had gone into hiding.

  “Ellie,” Bear answered. “That’s always the reason.”

  “Just leave me,” he pleaded with Toby.

  For the first time since Gibson had known him, Toby became visibly angry. “Get in the car, stubborn ass. I will not tell you again.” Toby was famously gentlemanly in his language, and even that much profanity sounded awkward from his lips. “You’ll be a martyr on your own time. But I am not going home to Sana to tell her that I saw you and left you in a parking lot in the rain. No, you will not dishonor me this way.”

  “Toby—”

  “Get in the car! Or I will . . . I will kick your backside.” Toby snatched Gibson’s duffel bag and made a show of putting it in the trunk, slamming it shut. Then he got back in the car and sat there waiting, both hands on the steering wheel, until Gibson slipped back into the passenger seat.

  Toby said, “I apologize for my language.”

  Toby and Sana Kalpar lived in a town house in Arlington. Together they owned the Nighthawk Diner, and one or both was always there. Sana wouldn’t be home until late, so Toby parked on the street, leaving the garage for his wife. Gibson stood in the entry hall while Toby turned on lights in the living room. It was a warm, lived-in home. Gibson had always harbored an ignoble jealousy for Toby’s tight-knit family, but he found it doubly painful now. Pictures in frames dotted every surface, and on the walls hung a gallery’s worth of art. The work of Toby’s only child, Maissa—a gifted artist who had attended Corcoran School of the Arts & Design. Last Gibson knew, she’d moved to San Francisco but was having trouble finding steady work. Toby doted on his daughter, and it had pained him to see her struggle.

  “Maissa has a job,” Toby said with his typical clairvoyance.

  “That’s so great. Doing what?”

  “Graphic designer for an advertising agency.”

  “Does she like it?”

  “No.” Toby smiled. “But one step at a time.”

  Two cats, one gray, one black, wound between Toby’s ankles and disappeared down the hall toward the kitchen. Toby apologized and followed after his hungry pets, telling Gibson to make himself at home. Gibson couldn’t decide how to do that, and when Toby came back from the kitchen, he still hadn’t moved.

  “Well, you didn’t run out into the street, so I suppose that’s progress,” Toby said, but his joke couldn’t hide his unease. “So, my friend, I have a question.”

  Gibson tensed. Toby had held off asking Gibson any questions, but here they came. He had no idea how he would explain the last eighteen months.

  “Are you aware of how dreadful you smell?”

  Not the question Gibson had expected. “I thought that was you.”

  “A retort.” Toby looked relieved, as if Gibson’s feeble joke assured him that he hadn’t let a crazy person into his home. “I knew it was still you.”

  Gibson wasn’t so sure, but it felt good to be recognized all the same.

  Toby said, “In all seriousness, my friend, you are rank.”

  He led Gibson upstairs and showed him into Maissa’s bedroom. She visited only once a year, but her parents kept the room just as she’d left it. For the most part, it was a grown woman’s room but with vestiges of her adolescent affections. In one corner, a watercolor rested on an easel as if Maissa had set down her brush for a moment and would be back any second.

  If Gibson lived to be one hundred, the shower would go down as the best of his life. It took three applications of Maissa’s coconut-scented shampoo before his shoulder-length hair began to feel clean, four for the beard. He lathered in conditioner, leaned against the tiles, and let the water beat down. In a trance, he stayed there until the water ran cold.

  He toweled off and watched the stranger in the mirror brush the tangles out of his hair and beard. It was slow going; patches had matted together in haphazard dreadlocks. He badly needed a shave, but it would take a barber—or a grounds crew—to make headway in this thicket. In the meantime, he borrowed one of Maissa’s hair ties and put his hair back in a ponytail. If his former commanding officer could see him now, there would be hell to pay. He’d be right at home in Saskatchewan . . . or Brooklyn. Where he didn’t feel at home was in his own skin.

  “This is a good move,” D
uke said. “We need a base of operations.”

  “Can you just not right now?”

  Duke pointed an admonishing finger at Gibson. “Toby Kalpar is on a need-to-know basis only, and he doesn’t.”

  The smell of bacon frying roused Gibson from his thoughts. His last meal had been the truck-stop burgers in West Virginia, and the thought of Toby’s cooking caused his stomach to turn giddy backflips. Toby cooked at the diner only in dire emergencies, but the man knew his way around a kitchen. Gibson pulled on his jeans, his least dirty shirt, and followed the scent downstairs to its source.

  “Just in time. I was about to call the Coast Guard,” Toby said, sniffing the air. “You smell like a piña colada.”

  “Take it up with Maissa.”

  Toby plated a pair of omelets and drizzled them with sriracha. He set them at a kitchen table already weighted down by a platter of bacon, sausage, and potatoes; toast; cantaloupe; and a pitcher of orange juice, fresh squeezed or Gibson would eat his musty T-shirt. Gibson and Toby shared a love of breakfast and saw the time of day as no impediment.

  The two men tucked in to Toby’s impromptu feast. It beat a truck-stop burger all to hell; the man could straight-up cook. Gibson was halfway through his omelet before it occurred to him to say so. Toby reached across the table and gripped Gibson’s shoulder for a moment, said nothing. Gibson felt human for the first time in as long as he remembered and put his hand over Toby’s. Then he saw Duke lurking by the door, watching, and the feeling was gone.

  “Do you think it was me?” Gibson asked when the food had gone to meet its maker.

  “The man I knew could not have done it.” Toby rose to clear the plates, considering the question further. “Are you?” he asked. “The man I knew?”

  A fair question. It was Gibson’s turn to pause before answering. “I don’t know. I don’t know who I am, but I didn’t do that. That much I can tell you.”

  Toby nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “That is good enough for me. Now get up and help me with the dishes.”

  When the kitchen was squared away, the two men moved to the living room for coffee. Toby did much of the talking, telling stories from the diner and catching Gibson up on his family. Gibson could feel his friend trying to draw him out.