Coming Back

by Marcia Muller

  Each nodded at me, believing. God, maybe I had a future as an inspirational speaker! But I had faith in what I’d said. I had to believe it to keep functioning.

  “We’re here to pool our information. Also theories and wild-hair ideas. Remember: anything, no matter how small, can lead to a solution. Mick?”

  “J. T. Verke, the man whose van was sighted leaving Piper Quinn’s building late Sunday night, has been identified as a former operative of the CIA’s Special Activities Division. Craig can tell you more about them.”

  Craig explained that within SAD, there were two groups: one to exert covert political influence in sensitive areas of the world and the Special Operations Group, which conducted paramilitary operations. J. T. Verke had been classified as a Paramilitary Operations Officer, indicating that he was with SOG.

  So why was he running an operation within the United States?

  “Special assignment?” I asked.

  “Feels right to me. He could be attached to any unit under that umbrella.”

  “I think we can assume that Adah’s disappearance is a product of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Piper—why would the CIA be interested in her?”

  “The husband,” Mick said.

  “The husband’s dead.”

  “He was in intelligence. Maybe he told her something sensitive.”

  “Possibly. Any other ideas?”

  Blank faces. Maybe conducting these meetings in the early hours of the morning was a mistake.

  I said, “This was a fairly large operation, making not only a person but the residents of an entire apartment building disappear. What could be that important? What ‘matter of national security’?”

  Craig asked, “Another question—who’s this man I have a sketch of? The one who was asking people in the neighborhood about Piper?”

  “What about Morell Associates?” Mick added. “There must be some way we can connect them to Verke.”

  Patrick added a few notations and arrows to his flow chart.

  Thelia said, “Paper trails. They always leave paper trails.”

  Ted said, “I made a list—”

  Everybody ignored him and started talking at once.

  “The husband. Got to find out more about him.”

  “J. T. Verke—where’s he currently living?”

  “The Knowles woman—must be CIA or former CIA too. Can we get the autopsy report and whatever information they may use to identify her?”

  “Morell—got to find out more about them.”

  “How the hell can we go up against the CIA?”

  “How? Because we’re smarter.”

  “Well, that’s a given—”

  My phone rang. Hy.

  “I just tailed a man from Morell Associates’s offices,” he said. “I think he may be the operative who has Adah.”

  “Tailed him to where?”

  “A very secluded cottage—more like a shack—above Inverness, on the Point Reyes Seashore.”

  “Any indication she’s being held there?”

  “None. It’s a small place, maybe three rooms, and there’re lights on in all of them. There’s a shed, but it looks like a strong wind would blow it over.”

  “You carrying?”

  “You know I never do during routine operations.”

  “Well, it’s not routine now. Are you in danger?”

  “No. A woman drove up a few minutes ago, and they’re drinking in what looks like the living room. I’m well covered, taking photos and running a surveillance.”

  “Photos on your BlackBerry?”

  “Right.”

  “Send them to Mick.”

  “Will do.”

  “Give me directions, and I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

  As I said it, I thought, But how? This was a potentially dangerous situation. I couldn’t bring Chelle into it; it was bad enough that I’d involved her in the aftermath of Melinda Knowles’s murder last night.

  I looked around the table. “Hy needs backup. Not you, Craig. You need to be here for Adah and to take calls from your contacts. Who will volunteer to drive me to Inverness?”

  “I’ll help,” Mick said.

  “No, I need you here doing searches. You too, Thelia.”

  Ted said, “Let me go.”

  “Okay, you’re it.”

  He smiled, looking inordinately pleased.

  I could guess what he was thinking: The armchair detective rides again.

  ADAH JOSLYN

  She’d very nearly gotten a bolt loose from the base of the toilet. Attribute that to the strength she’d gained from last night’s meal. There must be a Mickey D’s nearby—but then there was one everywhere. No clue as to where she was being held.

  Her captor wouldn’t be back till this evening, she was sure of that. He would come and go only in darkness to avoid being seen. Plenty of time to work on this bolt with the underwire she’d ripped from her bra.

  Funny that she hadn’t thought about the wire—either as a device to use in getting free or as a weapon—until she’d awakened to the bra’s pinching and chafing under her breasts. She’d reached back to unhook the damned thing, and that was when she realized that underwire was extremely strong and resilient. And then in her jacket pocket, she’d found a tube of lip balm. He’d taken everything else, but either missed it or considered it too innocuous to bother with.

  When you thought about it, women had certain strategic advantages over men. A man thought of a bra as only something he wanted to take off a woman, not as something a woman could take off and use to defend herself. A man thought of lip balm as something sticky that smeared when he kissed a woman, not as a lubricant with nearly the strength of WD-40.

  Several applications of lip balm to the bolt had loosened the corrosion. She cleaned it out with the tip of the underwire and applied more, deep under the bolt where it would work on the rest of the rust. A lot of patience and a few more applications, and she might be able to twist the bolt off with her fingers.

  She rested back on her heels and waited, staring at the bolt as if she could will it to move on its own.

  TED SMALLEY

  Inverness: a wide place on the road that followed the shore of Tomales Bay in west Marin County. Dark and foggy in the early hours of a winter morning. Wind-warped trees and shrubbery, houses on the shore and hills without light, faded yellow double line wavering along a snakelike country road. His sense of direction was lost in the mist, his sense of reality too. They could have been in another universe—one whose population had died out eons ago.

  They: Shar and him. Two brave detectives off on a mission.

  Who was he kidding? He was quaking in his cowboy boots and was afraid he might have to pull off the road and puke.

  Part of it had been the drive: over the Golden Gate Bridge and up 101 to the Highway 1 turnoff. On a twisting, jarring ride along the high cliffs leading to Stinson Beach and Bolinas, a harrowing route that Ted, a confirmed urbanite, shuddered at even when someone else was at the wheel.

  He tried to relax, make small talk.

  “I’ve never been here. Have you?”

  “A long time ago, on a case. You remember—when Hank’s old friends were being killed off.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He had good reason to remember that case; it was the first time he’d seen Shar act violently, and it had scared him, as well as the other folks at All Souls. Put a wall up between them and her—for a while.

  “Then you realize things didn’t end up well.”

  “The guy shot himself.”

  “Yes, and I’ve avoided this area ever since.”

  “But most of your cases don’t turn out that way.”

  “Well, I’ve come out alive so far. And, as you know, very few of my clients have stiffed me on the fee. But sometimes what happens to the people involved is less than satisfying. To put it mildly.”

  “How so?”

  “The case out here. And the one when I traced that Paso Robles
woman who had been missing twenty-some years. What I found tore up her daughters’ lives. The guy who was bombing RKI’s offices—I couldn’t stop him till he’d killed a lot of people. Involvement in a crime changes people, even if they’re only connected peripherally. You find out what they’re made of, and a lot of times it isn’t good. You also find out what you’re made of. The crime becomes a part of you that’ll be with you the rest of your life.”

  “Why d’you do it, then?”

  “It’s what I do; it’s who I am.”

  Ted slowed for the little town, although it was obvious he didn’t need to. No cop was lurking in the fog to arrest speeders; the businesses were closed, most of the houses dark.

  She said, “I’ll start watching for the landmark Ripinsky gave me.”

  “Okay.” All of a sudden he felt surprisingly calm. Shar was in control; he was safe. “What’s my role in this? How can I help?”

  “By staying in the car when we get there.”

  “But…”

  “Stay in the car, Ted. Keep an eye out for any sign of trouble and if there is, head back to the pier.”

  “And just leave you here?”

  “I’ll be all right. Remember, I’ll be with Ripinsky.” A few minutes later she said, “Turn left by that mailbox shaped like a lighthouse.”

  The road wound steeply uphill through pines and bay laurels and oaks. Dark bulky shapes were all he could see of the houses. They appeared suddenly and then receded into the mist. Their ghostlike quality made him nervous all over again.

  “Up there on the left,” she whispered, “is a secondary road with about a dozen mailboxes at its foot. Hy should be waiting for us.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t know. Why am I? I guess because when it’s this dark and deserted I feel like there are secret microphones everywhere.”

  “And I thought I was paranoid.”

  “Well, I guess it goes with the territory. Slow down—there’re the mailboxes.”

  Mailboxes, but no Range Rover. No Hy either.

  Anxiety nibbled at Ted, but he concealed it as Shar said, “We’ll just pull over and wait.”

  Fifteen minutes and still no Hy. Shar said she didn’t want to call his cell because he might have it on ring mode, and if he was still running his surveillance, it could give him away. But, Ted thought, Hy had run plenty of surveillances; surely he’d remembered to switch the phone to vibrate.

  To cover his nervousness he chattered for a while about his new silk fashion statement. By the time he’d gotten to the problems of wrinkling and frequent dry cleaning, he knew she wasn’t listening and felt silly. Maybe he was really just a trivial person. Maybe he didn’t have empathy for others when they were in need.

  Shar took his hand. “I’m glad you’re the one who drove me.”

  He squeezed her hand. It was cold, so he took it into both of his and chafed some warmth into it.

  After a while he said, “Wouldn’t Hy have left his car down here and snuck up on them? That’s a dead end road; he could get trapped.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Also Hy’s unarmed; he has a carry permit but doesn’t like to keep firearms on him unless he’s anticipating serious trouble.”

  “But you’re armed, right?”

  “I brought my three-fifty-seven Magnum along tonight.”

  Her phone rang. “Mick,” she said to him after a brief conversation. “The property at the address Hy gave me is owned by a Santa Barbara corporation. The whole tract on that road, in fact. Bayside Realty in Point Reyes Station manages the rentals. He’s left a message on their voice mail—he’ll call again as soon as he knows anything more.”

  “I heard you tell him to call my cell. Why?”

  “Because I’m going up there.”

  Ted’s pulse accelerated. “Maybe you should wait a little longer.”

  “No, I’ve waited long enough.” She took her .357 from her bag.

  Ted focused on the gun: ugly, gleaming in the red light from the GPS indicator on the dashboard. He’d seen her remove it dozens of times from the office safe, where Craig and Julia Rafael also kept their firearms. He knew she had a .38 in a lockbox at home. And Hy—God knew how many guns he possessed. None of them were nuts about weapons, but their ownership of them was enough to make him uncomfortable.

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “It’s strictly a precaution.”

  He grabbed her arm. “Please don’t go up there. Call the cops, the sheriff, whatever they have out here.”

  “You know I can’t do that. Adah…”

  Adah. Of course. In his anxiety he’d almost lost sight of her.

  He clung to Shar’s arm a moment longer, then said, “Go do what you have to. I’ll be here waiting.”

  CRAIG MORLAND

  He was losing his mind. He sincerely believed it.

  In the next office, Mick was still working on identifying the sketch Roxanne Cramer had made. Still insisting the guy in it looked familiar. So why couldn’t the kid remember where he’d seen him? He had a young, sharp mind, hadn’t he?

  In contrast, Craig’s mind felt like mud. He’d been hunched over the computer, soaking up meaningless details about CIA covert operations, and alternatively taking calls from connections in DC. The notes he’d made during those calls were virtually indecipherable, the information jumbled.

  Mud. Hardening by the hour.

  When had he last slept? So long ago he couldn’t recall. He’d tried to nap on the air mattress in the conference room; that had been no-go, and he was sure he couldn’t sleep now. But sooner or later he’d crash. And then what good would he be to Adah, or anyone?

  He was considering trying to nap again when his phone rang. A man he’d been referred to at the CIA, known to him only as Lyle.

  “This J. T. Verke,” Lyle said. “He was with SOG, but in the last year of the past administration was tapped for an operation called TRIAD—Terrorism Resistance and Investigative Assignment Division. A nasty bunch specializing in kidnappings, torture, murder—anything in the interests of keeping the right people in money and power. When Obama was elected, TRIAD was disbanded, but apparently a number of their people went rogue, kept operating.”

  Craig’s mind was no longer moving sluggishly. “Their objective?”

  A laugh, rough and cynical. “What d’you think? Patriotism unbound. Preserve the status quo, no matter what it takes.”

  “You know anything else about them?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve never heard of them. And you’ve never heard of me.” The connection was broken.

  Craig sat alert, tapping the desk with his fingertips. Mentally repeated acronyms: CIA, SAD, SOG. And now this new one: TRIAD.

  Patriotism unbound.

  And who were the right people who must be kept in money and power? Defense contractors, lobbyists, politicians with their hands out. Rich people who ran things from behind the scenes, who made large political contributions to ensure they stayed rich. And they were not all in this country either. Foreign interests had controlled much of American policy and probably still did, and the networks through which influence and cash were exchanged had grown more intricate, less detectable—unknown but to a select group of people, hidden from public and governmental scrutiny.

  So what had Piper Quinn done to draw the attention of a rogue intelligence agency? Or more likely, what had her husband done?

  ADAH JOSLYN

  The bolt came loose and she pulled it out, clasped it in both hands like a talisman. Then she bent her head over it and cried a little.

  So many hours, such reining in of her natural impatience. So much fear of the dead bolt turning and the underwire being snatched from her hands before she could hide it. So much fear of dying…

  No time for crying now. She dried her face on her shirtsleeve, examined the bolt. Its end was flat, still corroded.

  Some weapon.

  She stared at it, hope fading. All that time, and what did she have b
ut a rusty piece of junk? Useless, unless she could manage a lucky jab into her captor’s eye. He—more likely they—would slap it out of her hand as if it were a toy gun.

  Since when did you become such a defeatist? Your other kidnapper was a certifiable lunatic, but you practically talked him to death till help arrived.

  That was different: these people are sane, professional, and even more deadly. They have weapons, drugs, and strength in numbers.

  Or did they? There had been the woman, Eva, who attacked her on the stairs. The man in the upstairs apartment—his height and build weren’t the same as the one who’d been tending to her. So maybe there was just this one man to contend with. If she had a weapon, a suitable weapon… that and her self-defense skills could bring him down.

  Adah looked at the bolt in her hand. There had to be something else she could use….

  HY RIPINSKY

  He never heard the man slip stealthily behind him. Didn’t know he was there until the cold muzzle of a gun jabbed into his neck and a sharp voice commanded, “Make a move and I’ll blow your head off.”

  Hy froze. There was nothing he could do but obey.

  Shit! He’d been watching the woman who had arrived earlier leave the shack, and the man had gone out the back way and circled around behind him. Sleight-of-hand, the staple of any magician’s repertoire. Stupid to have been taken in by it.

  The man marched him across the uneven ground toward the house, searched him, and took his car keys, wallet, and BlackBerry. Pushed him into the ramshackle shed and shut the doors. Hy heard a padlock click shut, and then the man’s voice said, “We’ll have a little talk later, but there’s something I gotta do first.”

  Darkness. Hy stared into it, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Tool shed—yard waste cans and a wheelbarrow, gas can and lawn mower, hammers and jars full of nails, clippers, and trimmers. And a shovel.

  This guy isn’t too bright.

  He listened at the door. Footsteps crunching on the gravel of the long driveway. When they faded he hefted the shovel, felt its blade. Dull and rusted, but it would do.