Thief of Souls

by Ann Benson

  Silence.

  “I would have to deal with the press, people who are his fans, all sorts of nutcakes who don’t know how to behave. People might follow us around. I can be much more effective in my job without that kind of interference. So until we catch this guy, I need you to work with me. I’m asking for you all to be like deputies this time. It won’t happen if the whole world knows who we are.”

  The magic word, we. There were solemn nods of accord from all three of my blessings.

  Two of my blessings retired to their beds, Julia first, then Frannie. Their little heads were undoubtedly full of imagined glory, of the unbelievable things that their omnipotent mother would do. Good. They should have a successful woman as their role model.

  In moments like this, I always feel like such an imposter.

  Once again, Evan and I were left alone for some precious minutes of companionship. Dear God, I prayed, let these sweet moments never end, let me always be this important to my son.

  It would pass all too soon. With every breath he took, Evan’s cells were dividing, his bones were lengthening, his hormones were surging, and he was moving away from me. This is what happens when you feed and water them. But in moments like this, I could imagine his once-tiny arms around my neck, smell his sweet baby breath, know his absolute trust and worship, all vestiges from the time when I was all-powerful, the goddess, the source of his sustenance and knowledge.

  It was such a diminishment to simply be his mother.

  “Mom,” Evan said, his eyes nevertheless alight with admiration, “I know you don’t want us to talk about it, but this is just way too cool. You figured this out—that’s so incredible. Your job is so great. I’ve been thinking maybe I’d want to be a cop too.”

  I want to grow up to be just like my mother—an odd thing for a boy to say, but delicious to hear. There was just one problem—becoming a cop isn’t the same as it was when I came on. The disrespect for authority that is so rampant now was just starting to take hold in those days. There wasn’t the acute danger then; the legal requirements weren’t so restrictive.

  “You’d still have to go to college. You need to know a lot. They want people with some education these days.”

  “That’s okay. I want to do that anyway.”

  “I’m flattered, Evan. It makes me feel really good to hear you say these things. But you have lots of time to decide what you want to do with your life.”

  “Meaning you don’t want me to be a cop.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you’re thinking it. I know you are.”

  I tousled his hair affectionately. He bristled. “I’m not a little kid, Mom.”

  How well I knew that. “I know, Evan. I’m sorry. Listen, while the girls are in bed, I want to talk to you about something.”

  He was quiet for a second, then said, “I know about sex, Mom. Dad told me a bunch of stuff last year.”

  I covered my surprise with a smile. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  He seemed inordinately relieved. “Good. But what, then?”

  “I just want you to be careful. I don’t want you to be afraid of the world, because it’s a wonderful place, and I hope you won’t lose sight of that. But there are people out there, people we can’t really understand because there is just something wired wrong in them. They don’t act the way normal people do. I just want you to start being aware of what’s going on around you. If someone makes you feel uncomfortable, move away from them. That goes for everyone. If someone you know and trust doesn’t seem to be acting right, you can just walk away. And please tell me. Please.”

  He sank back into the cushions of the couch and went quiet.

  “Evan?”

  His eyes met mine, but he said nothing.

  “This is important, honey.”

  Somberly he said, “Okay.”

  I caught myself before mussing his hair. “Thanks,” I said.

  “Quiet morning,” Escobar said. “The sharks don’t seem to be circling so close for some reason.”

  It had been ten days since the story broke. The frenzied initial fascination had begun to wear off as other important stories happened. There was a school shooting and a hostage situation at an airport to distract the fourth estate, not to mention the perpetual paranoia over potential acts of bioterrorism. Eleven days passed, then twelve; my kids were back with their father but called frequently, ostensibly to make sure I was okay. But there was a suppressed agenda: When could they start blabbing to their cronies?

  Not yet. Soon, but not yet.

  On the morning of the thirteenth day, I was sitting at my desk, immersed in organizing the massive paperwork for the Durand case. The phone rang. The caller ID gave a 617 area code. Boston calling.

  “All’s quiet on the western front, I take it,” Pete Moskal said.

  “Too quiet,” I said. “I wish this guy would show himself already. But he’s such a chameleon, if he does show, it won’t be as himself.”

  “Too bad. You could maybe get away with shooting him if he came out made up as some green scaly thing. But listen, I heard something interesting. Rumor has it that his sister is quietly passing most of her cases off to underlings.”

  “You’ve got someone in her firm talking to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I appreciate knowing who we’ll be up against.” For some reason I couldn’t pin down, I didn’t want to talk to him. “Thanks so much—”

  “There’s more.”

  It wasn’t gossip, I could tell by the tone of his voice.

  “I wanted to tell you that I’m going for an arrest warrant.”

  It had to happen sooner or later. “I guess I can’t blame you. You’ve been pretty patient, Moskal. I appreciate it. Good luck. I hope you have a decent judge to go to.”

  “A gem.”

  “Look, just do me one favor if you can. Keep me out of it as much as possible.”

  “I’m going to have to put your name in the report. The chain of information comes right through you.”

  “Couldn’t you say an unnamed Los Angeles police officer gave you the information?”

  “You mean like an anonymous informant? I suppose I could, but the case is relatively weak already. Having the name of a referring detective strengthens it. Considerably.”

  If he got Durand first, it would be because I had opened it up for him. The irony of it just scalded me.

  “Is there any way I can convince you to hold off for a few days?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You couldn’t give us another day or two to find him out here.”

  “I’m losing time if I do that. I can get my forces looking for him here.”

  “He’s not in your neighborhood.”

  “How do you know that?”

  There was no logical explanation, only my instincts. “Because the air around here is still foul.”

  I finally managed to convince him to wait “a few more days,” to give me a decent shot at Durand. The reward grew as more of the families of missing boys came forward to join in the public hunt. Predictably, the calls increased again. Following up on bad leads became a blood sport in the division; who could invalidate the most crank calls in one day? Typically it was Escobar or Spence, both of whom were exquisite interrogators who found the bottom line very quickly. We got serious again at the airports and hotels because none of us knew what else to do and because the heightened security in the wake of terrorist attacks made it easier. But there was little hope that we would find Durand that way; he could easily rent a house under an assumed identity, easily charter a jet and bypass the routine airport checkpoints. He hadn’t shown up at his home or studio, though his underlings continued to come and go at will. We had no legitimate reason to hold any of them, which did not keep me from teetering on the edge of hauling them all in for a brief cattle-prod demonstration anyway. They were all close associates, perhaps even accomplices—it seemed reasonable for one or m
ore of them to be involved on some level in his doings, but we had no direct evidence of complicity.

  We would just have to wait for him to surface.

  The phone call came just as I was getting ready to go home. I had my desk straightened and my briefcase loaded. The keys to the car were already in my hand when Pandora’s box sprang to life again on my desk.

  The ring had that don’t pick up the phone quality, a jarring, shrill, artificially elongated brrrroooooop tone that sent a bolt of lightning down my spine. A service aide was on the line. She said, quite skeptically, “This is a 911, but whoever it is asked specifically for you.”

  I touched the flashing red extension button.

  “Detective Dunbar.”

  “Lany?”

  It was Kevin. He never called me at work. His voice was full of panic. I stared at the phone. I knew instantly why he was calling.

  Or at least I thought I knew.

  “God, Lany, he should have been home an hour before and I kept waiting and waiting for him to show up, keeping supper hot for him. . . . I finally called over to Jeff’s house, and his father said he thought it was my turn to pick them up, and I said, no, this was your turn. And then I’d just barely hung up the phone when Evan called and he told me that Jeff’s father had come for them but told Evan to wait because I’d said I was going to get him so we could go somewhere, and he just took Jeff and left Evan standing there. Lany, he took Jeff. God. I thought they were too big for that kind of thing, to be kidnapped. . . . Jeff’s so tall, I mean, he’s taller than I am, for God’s sake. . . .”

  “Stay off the phone,” I told him. “I’ll call you right back.” I replaced the handset in its cradle, after which movement of any kind ceased to be an option. My paralysis must have been visible, because Escobar rushed over.

  “You’re white as a sheet, Dunbar,” he said. “You all right?”

  “No.”

  “Speak,” he ordered.

  “I think Durand grabbed Evan’s best friend.”

  Saying it aloud snapped me out of the stupor. I’ve been in all sorts of crisis situations over the years, had tons of training, done commendably well under stress. But right then all I could think was Oh, God, no . . .

  The troops were summoned for an emergency meeting in Vuska’s office.

  He told me right out that he had the authority to remove me as the primary and that I had no business continuing in a leadership role on a case where my own safety or the safety of another officer might be compromised by a hasty or emotion-driven decision.

  “But it’s your call,” he said, surprising me. He could have ordered me out of it, and by rights he probably should have.

  “Why, Fred? You don’t have to let me stay.”

  He drew me aside, away from other ears. His expression was drawn and pained. “I feel bad for not listening to you in the first place,” he confessed. “This might not have happened if I had.”

  It was an apology of sorts. I acknowledged it with a pursed-lipped nod.

  “You know more about this guy than the rest of us combined,” he went on. “So we need you. I’m gonna trust you to tell me if you start to falter, and if that happens, I expect you to pull back out of the front line right away and work with the support team. Let Spence and Escobar finish it then.”

  Before we went out, I knew that Fred would take both of my compatriots aside and tell them to keep their eyes on me, to yank me back if necessary.

  There’s no logical explanation for the fact that when we all left Fred’s office, I was calm again. I guess in my heart of hearts I knew that if Wilbur Durand intended to kill my son’s friend, there was nothing I could do at that point to stop him.

  The line was busy when I called Kevin back. I was on the verge of sending a squad car over when I finally got through.

  He was completely out of control, swearing, apologizing, begging to have the day over again.

  “Kevin, calm down. Breathe deeply,” I said. “Try to concentrate on staying clearheaded. Right now I have to ask you a lot of questions—”

  “Jesus, Lany, couldn’t someone else ask me the questions?”

  Now was not the time for old resentments to surface. “I am the primary on this case and it’s my job to do this. We need not to get nuts with each other right now. Think of me only as a detective.”

  I used to talk to him about my cases all the time, or talk at him—I don’t think he heard much of what I said—but since we’ve been living apart, the opportunity isn’t there. Listening was one of our biggest problems; neither of us was very good at hearing the other. And toward the end it was hard to have a civilized conversation with him about anything at all, never mind the complexities of my work. But I’d always thought that he would have known about the potential risk if I’d told him about this case. Evan had been a good son and had done what his mother asked—he hadn’t talked to anyone, including Jeff, about the things I’d told him.

  And one thing I should have done right away when I knew the significance of it was to talk to him about the dinosaur exhibit, which they’d taken Jeff to see. But I never did.

  Two hours had passed since Jeff had been grabbed, half an hour since we’d learned of it. No doubt the silver Honda Accord Durand had surely rented to feign Jeff’s father’s car had long ago been dumped.

  It didn’t matter—he wasn’t ever going to need to rent a car again. There’s no driving in hell. Or maybe there is—you’re stuck in dead-stop traffic on the 405 at 6:00 P.M. on Friday in one hundred degree heat with no AC, and then there’s an earthquake. We’d already sent cars out to tell the watchers at both the studio and the house to be particularly vigilant for anything that looked even slightly unusual. A description of the car did go out on the police radio, preceded by a code to switch to a new channel. Details of what to look for—backpacks, restraint items, disguise components—were revealed to the patrol officers in the private airspace. Every relatively new silver Honda Accord in the city was stopped, especially if it had rental plates. It was a tremendously popular vehicle, and there were occasions where four or five were stopped on the same street at one time that evening. Some of the patrol cops took to putting a soap mark on the upper left windshield after inspecting a car to minimize the problem of repeat stops. Parked Accords of that color were given a once-over and booted if there was the slightest reason to be suspicious, such as a book or sports bag left inside or an extra set of clothes. Returning owners were questioned aggressively before having their cars released. But it all led nowhere.

  Jeff’s father had e-mailed a photo, which I sent out on the wires immediately. It went to the Teletype and on the computer system so the officers in the patrol cars could see him. We put out a picture of the undisguised Durand, which felt like an exercise in futility. For the next two hours, I sat and stared at the phone, hoping for a new lead, something, anything we could pursue. It stared back, mute, while the food someone shoved in front of me grew cold.

  Jeff’s father showed up, without his other kids.

  It brought the situation home to me in a way I could not have anticipated, to be in the presence of someone with whom I had regular interaction, whose child was now the object of a massive and urgent search because he was in the possession of a monster. His son was guilty of the crime of being with my son, nothing more, nothing less. I didn’t know yet whether Jeff himself had been targeted, or if he’d been mistaken as my son. A trip through Durand’s security videos might clarify that murk. Had Kevin clowned with Jeff as well as his own son? The two looked like brothers, and Evan favored his father. Durand might have made the mistake of thinking that Jeff was Kevin’s child—and mine.

  I couldn’t say that to him, not yet. It would just complicate things. “You should go back home, be with your other children,” I told him.

  “I just need to be here,” he countered. “He’s my son.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but you’ll have to go out into the waiting area. I promise I’ll come talk to you the seco
nd anything happens.”

  As the door was closing behind him, the phone rang.

  Spence intercepted the call before I could get to it.

  “Durand’s houseboy left the house in his own car,” he told me. “Opened the garage door, drove out, then closed it again.”

  “Well, then, stop him and search the car.” I was almost shouting.

  Escobar’s hand was on my arm, gentling me. “And if we find something in the car, will there be probable cause to have searched it?” he said.

  We could lose everything on a bad search; it’s happened many times before. “Follow him, then,” I whispered. “But for God’s sake, don’t lose him.”

  I turned back to Escobar. “He almost never leaves the house. Only once in a great while. There have been days on end when we haven’t seen him go in or out.”

  “Lany, calm down. He’s the houseboy. He probably just went out for milk.”

  “But he had stuff delivered this morning. The grocer’s van came, remember?”

  “So maybe he forgot something.”

  “We should call the guys at the studio and tell them to keep an eye out for him.”

  Escobar did just that. He gave them a description of the car and the houseboy himself.

  I heard him say, Five eight to five ten, white or light Hispanic, slender build . . .

  “Shit,” I heard myself whisper. “Wait a minute.”

  Then Escobar’s voice broke through the developing mist of realization. “They said that someone who fits that description left there this afternoon just as the shift was changing. Delivered groceries, then left.”

  thirty-one

  On Friday, October 14, there was no court. Outside our dank abbey, which we shared with a host of rare and unwelcome green substances that came and went with the damp, there was a hopelessly blue October sky dotted with high, fat clouds of the sort that simply pass over without surrendering one drop of rain but wet the eyes nevertheless with their beauty. I paused in my rush across the courtyard square to lift my face up to the sky; the warmth was like God’s fingertips caressing my skin. With one hand I took off my wimple and veil and let the sun touch my hair as well.