by Jan Burke
“No,” Lewis said, “but—”
“Have you checked Lang’s and Colson’s family backgrounds?” I asked. “Or did you stop once you knew where they learned to work with explosives? Anyone look back beyond their years in the military?”
Bredloe looked uncomfortable. “We haven’t had much time. We’ve concentrated on Ryan and Neukirk.”
I decided not to mention that Lang and Colson had been under suspicion days before Hocus took Frank; decided against suggesting that perhaps Lieutenant Carlson had been too busy hassling Frank to allow time to thoroughly investigate his prisoners. I didn’t say it, but the anger was there all the same. “No matter which one of Detective Lewis’s four categories Ryan and Neukirk fit into,” I said, “we already know how the damage was done. We also know they are masters of the art of distraction.”
The next bit wasn’t so easy to say, but I swallowed hard and went on. “I don’t believe the body in that building belongs to Frank. They still need him as a bargaining chip. Making you think it was Frank was important, though. I think they’ve kept most of your resources busy while they were up to something else. Exactly what, I don’t know, but I’m fairly certain they just got rid of someone who had outlived her usefulness to them.”
“Her usefulness?” Bredloe asked. “The young woman?”
Before I could answer, his radio squawked.
“Bredloe,” he answered. “Hold on a minute, Carlos.”
He stood up and walked away from us, put an earphone in his ear. But he watched me the whole time.
Lewis was saying something about leaving things to professionals, but no one was listening. We were watching Bredloe.
He walked back over to us. “It’s not Frank,” he said.
“Oh, thank God!” Bea said, then clasped her hand over her mouth. “I don’t mean to sound happy about whoever—”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Harriman,” Pete said. “We all feel the same.”
“Coroner says the pelvis indicates a female,” Bredloe said.
“Pelvis?” Lewis said. “You mean they only had bones—”
“Yes,” Bredloe said, cutting him off. “Lewis, why don’t you wait for me over at the command post? I’ll be along shortly.”
“Yes, sir,” Lewis said, apparently not in the least perturbed by the dismissal.
“How did you know?” Bredloe asked me once Lewis had gone.
“I didn’t. I hoped.”
He was silent.
“No,” I said, “that’s not true. There were reasons I hoped — the ones I gave you. And remembering that last phone call, the way Samuel sounded whenever we talked about her. Remember? He said, ‘I can’t seem to make you understand that she is no longer of interest to me.’ ”
“Hmm. Yes, I remember.”
“A couple I talked to — the Szals? They said that even Bret Neukirk disliked Samuel’s attitude toward women — Bret thought he simply used them.”
After a moment he said, “The firemen found some gas tanks up there. You know anything about that?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry. What kind of gas?”
“Nitrogen. They think it might have been hooked up to the room somehow. Enough to asphyxiate someone, they said.”
We sat in silence, Bredloe’s thoughts seeming far away.
“Put Thomas Cassidy back on this case,” I said. “Please. He understands Ryan and Neukirk.”
“He undoubtedly does understand them,” Bredloe said. “That’s what he specializes in — understanding what drives people, what they want. But Hocus also knows what drives him, I’m afraid.”
“Just because—”
“I heard that tape, Irene,” he interrupted. “Even you would have to admit that the man is exhausted.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
“Don’t underestimate Lewis,” he said. “When he’s under pressure, he’s a different man. After SWAT moved in, the intense pressure Lewis has been under for the last few hours was suddenly off, and what you just saw was as close as he gets to a hysterical reaction.” He turned to Pete. “A reaction no one need discuss outside this group. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Pete said.
“Shall I have a car take you home?” Bredloe asked me.
“I’ll take them,” Jack offered. “I’ve got a van here.”
At home, the dogs and Cody gave me an exuberant greeting that went a long way toward holding off my own hysterical reaction. I got Bea settled in and went into the kitchen. Hank Freeman’s equipment was still set up. I supposed he would be back soon. I wasn’t sure what all of the equipment did, but I could figure out which line led back to the recorder. I unplugged it, looked at the clock, and made the call anyway.
“Cassidy,” he answered.
“You’re awake.”
“Yes. Tape recorder on?”
“No, Hank’s not back yet. But I suppose they’ll know I called you?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t worry over it.”
I told him what had happened, only leaving out most of my conversation with Bredloe.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Hanging in there,” I said. “And you?”
“Tuckered out, I’ll admit,” he said. “But if you hadn’t called to let me know what had gone on, I’d be about as restless as a toad on a griddle. Maybe now I’ll sleep. Thanks for calling.”
I reconnected the recorder just as Hank Freeman came in the door. He sleepily checked over the equipment, then looked puzzled. He pressed a button on one device, which made a phone number appear on a display. He smiled.
“How is he?” he asked, obviously familiar with the number.
“Fine,” I said.
“I thought he’d be… let’s see… ‘nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs’?”
“No, I got the toad—”
“On a griddle,” he finished for me.
I smiled. “Couch okay for you tonight?”
He nodded, yawning. “Don’t bother folding it out. I’m so tired, I could sleep on the floor.”
He was asleep before I turned out all the lights.
Cody, who considered sleeping on the bed itself to be a cat privilege extended to certain humans as a courtesy, would usually not allow the dogs to come too near it. This night he magnanimously let them curl up on the rug within reach of my hand. He snuggled up to me, near my heart, and purred loudly.
I lay awake for a long time.
It was good to be home, just not quite good enough.
34
HE AWAKENED, first noting the darkness, the cotton gag over his mouth. He couldn’t move more than a few inches. Something was right above him — silky, padded. He was in a close-fitting, satin-lined box.
A coffin! They’ve put me in a goddamned coffin!
The last of his self-control shattered. He began screaming, beating his bound hands against the lid.
But almost instantly the lid was lifted, and he squinted in the sudden brightness. Bret’s pale face appeared above him. “I’m sorry!” Bret said anxiously. “I’m sorry! I thought you’d sleep longer!”
Frank was terrified, knew he looked it. Didn’t care. The gag was too much at this point. He tried to take in breaths of air as Bret continued to apologize, helped him to sit up. Dizzy again, he made a growling sound of frustration. Bret stepped away from him.
Gradually the room stopped spinning. He was in a trunk, he saw then, a magician’s trunk. Not airtight — breathing holes, in fact. Not a coffin.
It didn’t matter. He was shaking.
Bret still did not approach, and Frank realized that even bound and gagged he probably looked like he wanted to kill somebody.
Don’t frighten Bret, he told himself. You may need his help. Even if you don’t, the last thing you need to do is make him wary of you.
Still, it took a while to calm down.
He looked around. He wasn’t in the tent now. This was some kind of cellar. That thought nearly brought another round of
panic, but he fought it off.
His hands were tethered together at the wrist, the IV catheter — tender after his attack on the lid of the trunk — still in. Now, he noticed, his ankles were manacled as well.
Once he was fairly sure he could do so without appearing ferocious, he looked over at Bret. Made the unspoken request, knew Bret understood it.
Bret stepped closer again, moved behind Frank. Hesitated only slightly before he removed the gag.
Frank stretched his jaw, rubbed his tethered hands against his face.
“Thanks,” he said. “Where are we?”
Bret shook his head. “I can’t tell you that, of course. But we’ve moved. I should warn you that it would be as dangerous for you to harm me or to try to leave this place as it was to leave the tent.”
“Where’s Samuel?”
“He’ll be along later. He’ll be bringing his friend, Faye.” He paused, then said, “Would you like me to help you step out of there?”
More than just about anything, he thought, but simply said, “Yes, thanks.”
Awkwardly, unable to move his legs freely or use his hands for proper leverage, he climbed out of the trunk with Bret’s help. He saw other trunks stacked along one wall, although not as many as he had seen in the tent. The IV bottle and pole stood in one corner, near a folded bed. He decided he must have awakened while Bret was still in the process of setting up after the move.
His gaze traveled to a steep staircase that led up to a closed metal door. At the foot of the stairs there was an alarm keypad, its lights red — indicating it was armed.
He moved slowly, still dizzy from the drugs, weakened by the long hours under their influence. Bret watched him but did not prevent him from walking a few paces, dragging the chain as he moved. There was a small bathroom with a single shower stall, a few simple furnishings. The walls were brick lined, the floor concrete.
There were no windows, but the room was brightly lit. A panel of electronic equipment had been installed on one wall, including a phone, four small television monitors, and what seemed to be videotaping equipment. None of the monitors were on. For all this modern equipment, the building itself appeared to be old.
How much time had passed? Was he still in Las Piernas? In California? In the U.S.?
He turned to see that Bret had picked up a deck of cards, was idly shuffling, bridging, fanning, and moving them through his fingers with a dexterity that Frank found fascinating. Watching Bret distracted him from his fears, allowed him to relax a little more.
“You’re very talented,” he said as Bret completed a particularly complex series of flourishes.
Bret shrugged. “An amateur, really.”
“I’d like to see you perform magic someday.”
For the first time in all the time Frank had watched him practice these tricks, Bret dropped a card. The young man bent to pick it up, then set the deck on a small table. “That would have been nice — letting you see what I’ve learned,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll show you how a few of the tricks are done. We won’t have an opportunity for more than that, I’m afraid.”
“Why not?” Frank said.
“You already know,” Bret said patiently, without any sign of irritation. “I’ll be dead. We’ve been over this before.”
“What’s the rush? You can always die later,” Frank said. “That’s something any of us can do — all of us will do.”
Bret picked up the cards again but held them still in his hands. “Not the way we will.”
“You don’t really want to die, do you? This has to do with Samuel.”
“Do you know the story ‘The Outcasts of Poker Flat,’ by Bret Harte?” he asked, shuffling, fanning, then extending the pack to Frank — an invitation to participate in a trick. “I’m named for him, you know.”
Frank shook his head, tried to hide his frustration. Every time he approached this topic, Bret changed the subject.
But Bret didn’t tell the tale, as Frank thought he might. Instead he folded the deck again and said,“Samuel is damaged. So am I, even if it’s not so readily apparent to you. We aren’t whole, Frank. We don’t fit in.”
“No one fits in, Bret. Not completely. Not the way you imagine it. No one.”
“You do.”
Frank laughed. “When you took me from Riverside — at Ross’s house?”
Bret flinched at the memory but nodded.
“That morning, I had a huge argument with my wife — part of a fight that had been going on for a couple of days — my mother wasn’t speaking to me, and I was happy to get out of the office, where I was being shunned after you planted that story in the paper—”
“What story?” Bret interrupted.
“About the arrests of Lang and Colson.”
“That wasn’t us.”
“But the details of the arrests—”
“No,” Bret said again. “We didn’t have anything to do with that story.”
Frank stared at him in disbelief, then quickly realized Bret had no reason to lie to him.
“What’s wrong?” Bret asked, setting down the cards.
“If you didn’t leak anything to the paper, then someone in my department did.”
“And everyone else assumed it was you?”
“Not everyone,” Frank admitted, “but I was definitely getting the cold shoulder.”
“You were betrayed,” Bret said.
“I don’t know if I’d put it like that — it’s not that serious,” Frank said, but Bret was lost in his own thoughts.
Frank heard a beeping sound. Bret moved to the keypad, entered some numbers. The door at the top of the stairs opened. Samuel walked in, dressed in dark, damp clothing, carrying a bundle. The bundle was wrapped up in what appeared to be a yellow slicker. “LPFD” was stenciled on the slicker in large red letters. Samuel was covered with soot.
“What’s he doing up?” he asked, looking at Frank.
“Where’s Faye?” Bret asked.
Samuel laughed. “She had to go to a barbecue.”
Bret was silent, his mouth drawn tight in a line of disapproval.
“She was dead before I started the fires,” Samuel said.
Still Bret said nothing.
“She said she was willing to die with us, remember?”
“But she didn’t, did she?” Bret said in a low voice.
“I almost didn’t get out of there,” Samuel said, but no one gave him any sympathy. Sulking, he walked over to the keypad, punched in some numbers, and said, “You forgot to rearm it.”
Bret shrugged, made a show of closing up the trunk Frank had been in.
Samuel turned to Frank, pointed at him. “You cause trouble,” he said, stabbing the air with his blackened index finger as he said each word. He turned and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
Frank began pacing again, thinking not of Samuel’s tantrum, nor lamenting the dead woman, but trying to recall the pattern of movement of Samuel’s hand on the alarm keypad. He drew close to the keypad, glanced at it furtively. He memorized the numbers with black smudges on them, thought again of Samuel’s sooty hand moving — upper right, lower left, lower right, middle, upper left.
Maybe, he thought, I will cause trouble.
35
“I’M GOING FOR A WALK,” I said to Henry Freeman as we finished breakfast the next morning. Bea, who had been completely exhausted when we had arrived home a few hours earlier, was still asleep.
“But if Hocus calls—” Hank protested.
“Tell them I went for a walk.”
He handed me a lightweight cellular phone. “Take this, please.”
It might come in handy, I thought, and thanked him for it. I put it into the back pocket of my jeans.
“Where are you walking?” he asked.
“I’ll be down at the beach. I’m taking the dogs.”
It wasn’t a lie — I did what I told him I would do. I took the dogs for a walk on the beach. Dunk — Frank’s dog �
� wouldn’t allow Deke or me to lag behind or rove ahead but kept shepherding us into a close pack. Several times the dogs looked back at the stairs that led up to our street. Watching for Frank.
The ocean air was good for me, as was my time alone with the dogs. I mentally sorted through the last few days, all that had happened, all I had seen and heard and felt.
Over breakfast that morning I had asked Hank Freeman for ownership information on the warehouse, knowing the police would have not only that, but any architectural drawings they could lay their hands on. Hank told me the building had been purchased by a company four years ago, a business police had just this morning traced back to Francine Neukirk. The late Mrs. Neukirk, Hank said, had owned most of the buildings on that side of the block. They were sold to her as a unit — the warehouse, it turned out, had once been connected to two other buildings, both now vacant. Basement passageways that building plans had shown to be sealed off had been reopened.
I had asked Hank if anyone had been in the passageways that night.
“Only firefighters and SWAT,” he said. “We were all over the place. Even if the taker had tried to leave that way, he would have been seen by one of us.”
Hank also told me that outside of the recent construction work on the soundproof room — which had been completed about six months ago — none of the few neighboring business owners had seen anyone entering the building.
As I approached the house when we returned, I went to our backyard gate and let the dogs in through it, but I didn’t follow them, much to Dunk’s consternation. I took my keys, got in the car, and drove off.
I wasn’t around the corner before the cell phone rang. I answered it by saying, “Leave me alone, Hank.”
“I’m responsible for you,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re responsible for Frank. I’m not under arrest, am I?”
“Of course not, but—”
“See you later, then. Please apologize to Bea for me when she wakes up.” I was at a stop sign. I hung up, studied the phone, found the power switch, and turned it off. I took the long way to the newspaper. It was about nine-thirty when I pulled into the parking lot. I walked past the space where Frank’s car had been left just a few days before, ignored the sudden queasiness those memories brought on, and entered the building.
