by Jan Burke
“Right,” Cassidy said. “Let’s say he drove by and suspected something, then didn’t do anything about it until it was too late. Maybe they resent him for it. Maybe they believe he could have saved their fathers’ lives.”
“No, he had to have done more than drive by the place,” I said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be aware of his existence — how would they know he had seen anything in the first place? They must have seen him or heard him themselves. Samuel said they were certain the caller was a cop.”
“So he showed up, left, and didn’t save them—”
“Or was actually involved in the murders,” I said.
Cassidy rubbed a hand over his hair. I could see him resisting that theory, trying to come up with another explanation.
“They were afraid of policemen, remember?” I went on. “What reason would the cop have for fleeing from the scene? Even if he didn’t want to go in on his own, he could have radioed for backup.”
“Let’s go get that fax,” he said.
“I want to talk to Frank’s family. They’ve been waiting out there.” I stood up.
Cassidy stayed seated. “This fellow, Greg Bradshaw — he’s the one you were telling me about earlier, right?”
“Yes. He’s the Bear.”
“Former Bakersfield Police Department?”
“Yes.”
“You going to tell the family everything we talked about just now?”
I thought it over. “No, probably not. It’s just a theory.”
“Even if they ask you to tell them what Samuel said?”
“I don’t know….”
“Better if you don’t,” he said.
“I don’t want to lie to them.”
“I’ll make it easy on you. Let me talk to them.”
“You mentioned Bradshaw,” I said. “Bear’s the problem?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’re starting to believe it, aren’t you? You think a Bakersfield officer was involved in the Ryan-Neukirk murders.”
He shook his head “Not necessarily — but it’s possible. Don’t tell me that just as it’s starting to make sense to me, you’re moving on to some other theory.”
“No, but even if it’s true — not Bear. I know Greg Bradshaw. He was a good cop.”
“You knew him when you were in your early twenties?”
“Yes.”
“Have you grown any less trusting of people since then, Irene?”
“Yes, but I’m willing to bet he was a good cop even by my present cynical standards.”
“Willing to bet Frank’s life on it?”
I bit back the reply I wanted to make, not ready to have my mother-in-law hear that end of my vocabulary under her own roof. But Cassidy must have read it on my face, because he said, “Simmer down.”
“If you want me to simmer down,” I said, “quit turning up the heat.”
He smiled, which doubled my irritation. “Fair enough,” he said.
They were still in the living room, silent and tense. Bea sat next to Bear, her face full of worry. Mike paced with his hands in his pockets. Cassie sat on the couch, elbows on her knees, her forehead resting in one palm. Cassidy was behind me, so I was the first one to walk into the room. They all looked up at me at once, the way people in a hospital waiting room look up when a surgeon comes out to talk to them. I was no surgeon.
“They say Frank’s okay,” I said, “but they’re keeping the calls short. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him this time—”
“Will y’all forgive us if we keep you waiting for another twenty minutes?” Cassidy interrupted as he walked in the room. “I need to borrow Irene for a little while, but I’ll bring her right back. I’d love to explain, but for the moment, I can’t. You know how that goes, don’t you, Officer Bradshaw?”
“Sure, sure do — only I’m retired, so just call me Greg. That’s good enough. Mike, here, now he’s an officer. He works for the highway patrol.”
Cassidy smiled at Mike and said, “Forgive me. Irene neglected to tell me you were in law enforcement.”
“I’m sure she’s had other things on her mind,” Mike said.
“Yes, well, we’d better get going, Irene.” He handed a card to Bea. “My cell phone number’s on that card, Mrs. Harriman. Please call me immediately if Hocus makes any contact with you or if you need to reach me for any other reason.”
“We’ll be right back,” I said even as Cassidy walked toward the front door.
“Well, that didn’t go very smoothly,” I said as we headed toward the west side of town.
“I’ll try to do better next time,” he said, not even attempting sincerity. “Especially now that I have a little more information about the family.”
“Sorry. Mike was right, I’ve been distracted. But the real reason I didn’t mention it is that I think of him as Mike, not Mr. CHP.”
“No real harm done, I suppose. Don’t worry about it. And don’t worry about not telling the family everything there is to tell. It’s best if they understand right away that they aren’t all going to be included in everything that goes on — much as they might like to be. They do strike me as the type of folks who might have a curious nature.”
What he said made sense. The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became. “You have the tape with you?”
He smiled. “Why? You think your in-laws will listen to it while we’re gone?”
“No, of course not,” I said, shifting a little on the car seat.
“Of course not.” He laughed.
“Cassidy—”
He reached into an inside pocket on his suit coat and pulled out a cassette. “Why tempt fate — or anybody else, for that matter?” he said, and slipped it back into his jacket.
The copy store was busy. There was a long line at the order desk, and all of the self-service copiers were in use. The place was noisy and smelled of toner. The help was all under the age of twenty-three.
Students were preparing term papers, job hunters were copying résumés, businesspeople were printing newsletters and flyers. Normal life.
Fortunately more people were placing orders than picking them up. I walked up to the cashier, who had a name tag that read SHAUN, and asked if they had a fax for Irene Kelly.
“Just a moment,” he said. “I’ll have someone check.”
He turned around and shouted, “Suzanne! Is there a fax here for Irene Kelly?”
“I don’t know,” Suzanne shouted back. “I’m with a customer.” That didn’t stop her from shouting in turn, “Heather!”
Heather, who was on the phone, shrugged when Suzanne shouted the question to her.
Cassidy hooked two fingers in his mouth and whistled like a drover. I’d swear it nearly broke the windows. All conversation ceased. Except for the soft shuck-shuck of the collator on a large, automated copier, the room was still. “Pardon me,” Cassidy said in a low voice, “but we can’t wait for y’all to holler your way around to everybody workin’ on first shift. Would one of you please just look for Ms. Kelly’s fax? It’s important.”
I don’t know how anyone found the fax, since all eyes seemed to be on us, but somehow they managed it. By the time Shaun handed me a manila envelope, the noise level was nearly its old self again, even if I hadn’t stopped feeling acutely embarrassed. I opened the envelope and saw a good number of pages. I pulled out the first one and turned to Cassidy. “Look.”
It was a cover sheet, which had the usual sort of information on it:
To: Irene Kelly
From: Hocus
Pages Including Cover: 21
It also gave my home phone number as the number to call if pages were not received. But at the very top of the page, the copy shop’s fax machine had printed the time the fax was received — eleven A.M. — and a phone number in my area code, a number that was not mine. Cassidy immediately took out his cell phone.
“That will be $11.13 with tax,” Shaun said.
Paying for the fax ran
kled, but I had bigger concerns.
Still the subject of a lot of attention, I decided to read the other pages outside. It was then I remembered Samuel Ryan’s exact words. “There was also supposed to be some mail here for me, too,” I said to Shaun.
“Oh, right!” he said. “You’re the one. We do have a package for you.”
“A package?”
“Well, an Express Mail envelope,” he said, reaching below the counter and handing me a brightly colored cardboard mailer.
I stared at the Express Mail address tag. My name was on it, printed in neat block letters. The return address was labeled “Mr. John Oakhurst,” with a Las Piernas address, on a street I didn’t recognize. I doubted it was a real one. After all, I realized, the package had to have been mailed the day before — when only Hocus knew I would be in Bakersfield to receive it.
“Do you usually do this sort of thing?” I asked. “Hold mail for customers, I mean?”
“No, but my manager said this John Oakhurst asked us to do him a favor, because he’d be sending a big fax later and you needed this to go with it. But the fax didn’t have his name on it, so I guess they were held in separate places.”
I pulled on the tab that would open the cardboard envelope.
“Don’t!” Cassidy shouted, but it was too late. The package was open.
Nothing exploded.
The inside of the envelope had been lined in bubble wrap. Within the lining there was a small object and nothing more.
“Please don’t reach in there,” Cassidy said, sounding as if he might actually be on the verge of becoming upset. “And please don’t go opening any other gifts from Hocus.”
I didn’t answer him. I was staring at the object.
It was a vial of blood.
17
THE ROOM STARTED CLOSING IN ON ME. I shoved the envelopes toward Cassidy and hurried outside. It was a while before Cassidy came out of the store, carrying the faxes and the package. He found me leaning my folded arms against the roof of the car, resting my forehead on them, trying very hard not to let this be the moment when every impulse that had been urging me to become hysterical won.
“Irene?”
I looked up at him.
“You look a little peaked,” he said. “Want to sit down in the car for a while? We don’t have to go anywhere. We can stay here until you’re feeling better.”
I stepped away from the door and let him unlock it.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Sure,” he said.
He rolled down the windows and pulled out of the parking lot. I didn’t talk to him, and it was a while before I realized that we weren’t headed back to my mother-in-law’s house.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You need me to give you directions, don’t you?”
“Naw, I remember the way back,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
He smiled. “I guess I don’t know the exact answer to that question. But I think the general plan will do us some good.”
He made a turn, and soon we were on a road that led to an orange grove. He pulled over. “Take a deep breath,” he said, turning off the engine.
The delicate fragrance of orange blossoms filled the car. Not as exotic as what might be found at a department store’s perfume counter, perhaps, but no less enticing for its sweet simplicity.
In the midst of this grove of bright green leaves and small white blossoms, inhaling a scent I associate with cleanliness and innocence, I said, “I want to kill those assholes.”
“I see the shock has worn off,” Cassidy said. “Take another deep breath.”
“What is this? Aromatherapy?”
“Sure,” he said easily. “You can work through all five stages of grief, one breath at a time.”
“Great,” I said. “These twisted sons of bitches may be torturing my husband while we sit here. Or maybe they’re just draining his blood and mailing it to me one vial at a time. But the important thing is that I’ll be in perfect mental balance because I’ve taken time to ‘stop and smell the flowers.’ ”
He didn’t say anything. I ranted at him for another ten minutes or so, at which point I finally caught on, said, “Oh shit,” and shut up.
Cassidy stayed silent, just looking out at the trees. Finally he said, “Abductions are always triangles. Lot of folks think about the taker, or the taken, but not about that third side of the triangle, the person who waits and worries and — maybe worst of all — wonders. Wonders what the takers are doing to the person they love.”
I felt a tightness in my chest.
I must have looked bad, because Cassidy waited. After I had calmed down a little he said, “The takers know you care. They know you’re going to worry. It’s in their best interest to keep you worried. So they do things like this, to ensure your compliance. Truth is, Frank probably doesn’t even know he’s missing this little vial of blood. They probably took it from him while he was loaded up with morphine or Versed. They’ve got control of him. They want to take control of you as well.”
“So you take me to an orange grove so I can blow off steam, get back in control of myself.”
“They’ll keep you going twenty-four hours a day if you let them. They’ll exhaust you. Later on, when we find them, you may not have the luxury of fifteen or twenty minutes in an orange grove.” He looked out at the trees. “Scent is one of the strongest psychological links to memory we have, and you need to be able to remember to stay calm — so the next time they try to rile you, you think of orange blossoms, Irene.”
“You said, ‘When we find them.’ You think we will?”
“Yes. They’re starting to make little mistakes.”
“The Express Mail package was one, wasn’t it? There’s a cutoff time for next-day delivery. If that’s Frank’s blood, then it had to be mailed yesterday, after they took him and yet before the cutoff time.”
“Right. Usually that’s five o’clock, if the person wants any kind of assurance that it will get to its destination by the next day.”
I studied the Express Mail label more carefully. “The date and time of acceptance is written on the package by the mail carrier who picks it up,” I said, “so even though it was probably dropped in a roadside box with a stamp already on it, we know it was mailed before” — I looked at the place where the carrier had initialed the label — “four thirty-five P.M.”
“Yes.”
“And the zip code of the accepting post office is noted,” I said. “This is a Las Piernas zip code.”
“So we know the general area where they mailed it,” Cassidy said, “and just about when. Once we find out which carrier those initials belong to, we’ll be able to find out which box they mailed it from. But we’re getting a time frame at the very least. When I called Hank about this package, he told me that we’ve had another piece of luck.”
I looked up at him. He pulled out a notebook and flipped it open. “A fellow by the name of James Washington saw Frank in Riverside yesterday.”
“What?”
“Riverside PD had people interviewing rail workers, showing them photos of Frank. Washington remembered seeing Frank. He said Frank waved to him from the driveway of a run-down house — and described Dana Ross’s place. Working with the railroad people, Riverside has narrowed the time down to about eleven, eleven-fifteen. That fits within the general time frame of Ross’s death.”
He paused, and I saw his brows draw together a little.
“Go ahead and tell me, Cassidy. Your face doesn’t usually give much away, but for about two seconds there, you were easy to read.”
“No kidding. I must be slipping.”
I waited.
“The gun that shot Dana Ross was definitely Frank’s gun,” he said.
“Proving almost nothing.”
“I agree. Except that Ross had to be killed after Frank arrived. Some of the blood at the scene matches Frank’s blood type — which is different from Ross’s. The blood in the trunk matches
Frank’s blood type. More definitive tests will take longer, but for now we’ll assume the stain in the trunk is from Frank. We know he was injured, probably in a struggle out in Riverside. He was then placed in the trunk of the Volvo and driven to Las Piernas. He was drugged at some point, probably early on. So we’re getting a clearer picture of events.
“Hank had other news,” he continued. “They used one of Frank’s credit cards yesterday.”
“Where?”
“At a gas station in Riverside.” He consulted his notes again. “At a little after one o’clock. Used it twice — filled up two tanks.”
“Two vehicles? Frank’s and the one they used to get to Riverside?”
“Probably.”
“Were they caught on camera, by any chance?”
“No luck there,” he said. “There are cameras, but they only cover the area near the cashier, not the outside at the pumps. The pumps are self-serve only, the type that have credit card readers built in. The customer can pay the cashier, or use his card right at the pump. Hocus used Frank’s card at the pump.”
“One o’clock,” I said. “That means they drove back to Las Piernas in time to take Frank’s blood from him, pack it up in the Express Mail envelope, and mail it, all before four-thirty yesterday.”
He nodded. “One more item. Hank told me the number on the fax you received is from a public fax machine at the Las Piernas Airport.”
“A copy center at the airport?”
“No, an unattended machine — sort of like a pay phone, only it’s a fax. You have to use a credit card. The card was stolen, but we’ve got folks out there now looking for prints and trying to find witnesses. Hank’s already got photos of Neukirk and Ryan.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t just send the fax by computer.”
“So am I,” he said. “It would easily have been within their capabilities.”
“That fax was sent not long after the second call to my house — when they told me to go to the Californian — right?”
“Almost exactly an hour later,” he said. “You talked to Frank then, so unless they’ve moved him since the call, he’s probably no more than forty-five minutes away from the airport. That’s allowing for time to park at the airport, walk in, and set up the fax. The fax man was careless. I don’t think he knew the number was picked up by the receiving fax.”
