Three Women Disappear

by James Patterson

  At 8:00 a.m. sharp, a skeletal man with a slick comb-over and a bad case of scoliosis opened the door to Quick Money Pawn & Gun. I gave him ten minutes to get settled, then followed him inside, tote bag hanging from my right shoulder. The place was a junkyard with a roof over its head. You couldn’t take a step without tripping over an appliance or a box of comic books. Rifles and guitars hung side by side on every wall. Bicycles dangled from the ceiling. Power tools filled a metal shelving unit stuck precariously in the center of the store. Boxes of cheap cigars stood ten deep at the far end of the counter.

  The owner was smoking one now, eyeing me from behind a glass display case cluttered with knives and watches and the kind of costume jewelry Anna Costello wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. I walked over to him, set the bag on the counter, kept the straps drawn tight.

  “My first of the day,” he said, turning his head to blow out a ring of very rank-smelling smoke. “What can I do you for?”

  I had to wonder how many sad and desperate women had been here before, standing where I now stood, hoping this greasy stick figure of a man would pay enough for their baubles to get them out of town.

  “I’ve got something—some things—I’d like to sell,” I said.

  I stopped there. I had a whole sales pitch planned, but my voice was quaking, and I knew the more I talked the more I’d give myself away. Instead, I just opened the bag.

  He took a long look inside, and while he looked it dawned on me that he might very well have ties to the Costello family. Pawnshops need protection. More protection than most businesses. On top of which they’re an invaluable source of intel. A handgun just came in? Who sold it, and who got clipped the night before? Someone pawned a sixty-four-inch TV and a set of silver steak knives? Who got robbed, and how much would they pay to get their stuff back? I cursed myself for the risk I was taking, but it was too late now. Besides, I didn’t exactly have an abundance of options.

  “Interesting,” the man said. “Very interesting.”

  Interesting? It had to be the biggest haul his little shop had ever seen.

  “You are looking to sell all of this?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He started sifting through the bag, cautiously at first, but then two pieces in particular caught his attention: Anna’s antique silver locket, and a high-clarity blue sapphire pendant that Anthony had given her quite publicly at a banquet celebrating their tenth anniversary. The broker set them on his palm, held them up to the light.

  “I need to look at these under the glass,” he said. “Please wait here—I’ll just be a moment.”

  I started to protest, but before I could get out a word he’d turned his back to me and slipped into a side room. I thought about sacrificing those two pieces and running off with the rest. What if he was on the phone to the police? To Vincent? Maybe he’d recognized the sapphire. Maybe he’d been at that banquet.

  Not yet, Sarah, I told myself. Hold your ground.

  After what felt like a dozen lifetimes, he came back, grinning from ear to ear. I guessed this was his salesman persona.

  “Sixty thousand,” he said. Just like that.

  “For the two pieces?”

  “For all of it.”

  I studied his expression. He wasn’t joking. It was enough to snap me out of flight mode.

  “Sixty thousand?” I said. “They’re worth ten times that.”

  “Yes,” he said, “but how much is discretion worth?”

  I took a step back, stumbled over a crate of naked Barbie dolls.

  “Discretion?” I said.

  “I’ve been at this a long while,” he said. “You and I both know those jewels don’t belong to you. We both know how you came by them, and we both know that whoever you took them from has far more resources than you do.”

  I reached for the bag, grabbed the closest strap. He grabbed the other.

  “How do you know this isn’t a sting?” I bluffed.

  He sniggered.

  “Like I said, I’ve been at this awhile. I can tell the difference between a setup and a getaway. There’s a window in my office. I took down your license plate. I’ll know who you are five minutes after you walk out that door. Is sixty thousand starting to sound fair?”

  I nodded, felt my face turning colors.

  “I should think so”—he smiled—“given what you paid for them.”

  The stacks of bills fit neatly inside Anna’s tote bag.

  Chapter 20

  “YOU PAWNED Anna Costello’s half-million-dollar collection for sixty K?” Haagen said. “Now that’s priceless. I can’t wait to see the look on her face.”

  She laughed herself silly, then put on the brakes and fixed me with her most damning stare.

  “You realize you just copped to a felony?” she said, glancing up at the camera.

  “But I didn’t take the jewels—I just found them.”

  “That’s what every burglar says.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I was just trying to survive.”

  “Yeah, they say that, too.”

  I started biting my nails. She reached across the table, pulled my hand away.

  “We’ll get to that charge later,” she said. “Let’s keep our focus on the timeline. I’m guessing you’re on your way to Texas?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  I hadn’t planned on holing up in Texas. I didn’t have any plan at all except to get as far from Tampa as possible—far from Vincent and Sean and anyone who would care that Anthony was dead.

  I got on the interstate headed west and told myself I wouldn’t slow down until the sun had set and risen again. I drove out of Florida, through Alabama, and into Mississippi. I drove through Mississippi and into Louisiana. I didn’t see the time or the states go by. I don’t remember pulling over for gas or to clean out my wound, though I know I must have. I was in the zone. On autopilot. All of me save what I needed to keep the car moving forward had shut down.

  I finally stopped eighteen hours and thirteen hundred miles later, at a diner in a flat and dried-out wasteland where nothing seemed to grow—not trees or shrubs or even grass. Nothing but a sprawling vista of dirt in every direction. And two buildings: a restaurant with a hand-painted sign out front that read THE DINER THINGS IN LIFE and a large and only slightly dilapidated farmhouse maybe fifty yards past the diner.

  I couldn’t say for sure what state I was in. I’d stopped keeping track. I only knew that my gut was churning from lack of food and my head was buzzing from lack of sleep. Coffee and flapjacks would give me the strength I needed to get back on the road. I’d worry about getting some rest later.

  I heard country music playing inside. I figured it would be one of those backwater eateries where everyone turns and stares as you enter, then whispers about the outsider who’s eating alone. Carrying a PBS tote bag wouldn’t help matters, but I wasn’t about to leave sixty thousand dollars sitting in my car.

  A tiny Liberty Bell hanging above the entrance rang when I entered. A minute later, a waitress came charging through the kitchen’s double doors, carrying a pot of coffee in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other.

  “Anywhere ya’d like, hon,” she said.

  The place was nearly empty, the only customers a sun-beaten family of four in a booth by the window. I took a stool at the counter, set the tote bag at my feet, and hooked the foot of my uninjured leg through the straps. At first I was alone, but then an elderly man in a John Deere baseball cap came back from the gents, sat two stools over, and buried his head in a newspaper.

  Be friendly, I told myself. But not memorable.

  “Peaceful in here,” I said to the man, then smiled. “Like we might see a tumbleweed roll by.”

  He didn’t so much as glance in my direction, but the waitress, who was fiddling with the cash register at the opposite side of the counter, gave a little snort.

  “As long as it’s a payin’ tumbleweed,” she said.

  She walked over to me with a me
nu.

  “I’m Doris,” she said. “I own the place. Special today is split pea.”

  “I’m Michelle,” I told her. “This might sound dumb, but I just pulled off the highway, and I’m a little disoriented. Can I ask what town we’re near?”

  “You headed west?”

  “East,” I said.

  “Oh, you from Phoenix? I got cousins in Prescott. Next town east from here is Kerens. Sixty-one miles. Not much of a town compared to Phoenix. Doubt it has a hundred people in it. Love your hair, by the way.”

  She had the Texas accent, but you couldn’t call it a drawl. She talked faster than any New Yorker, almost as if she was trying to clear room for the next thought. She was younger than Aunt Lindsey, but not by much, and she had a similar air about her—as though she’d treat you with kindness but wouldn’t be taken for a fool.

  “Sixty-one miles,” I repeated.

  To a town with no population to speak of. What were the chances anyone would think to look for me there?

  I glanced around at the decor before opening my menu. There were truck parts hanging wherever you’d expect a poster or a sign. An air horn painted in polka dots dangled from a hook above the fountain soda machine. A mud flap decorated with stick figures and an arrow pointed to the restrooms in the back. A radiator grille separated patrons from the area behind the counter. A side mirror jutted out from a support beam like a fancy light fixture, in contrast to the chandelier made out of a semi-size tire. The wall behind the counter was plastered with license plates. All in all it was an homage to the interstate, without which this place couldn’t exist.

  “I see you’re noticing my Great Wall,” Doris said, nodding toward the license plates.

  “I like it,” I said. “A travel theme.”

  “More like a departure theme: every state worth leavin’. Which is to say, every state but Texas.”

  So I was in Texas, somewhere between the interstate and a town called Kerens.

  “Coffee’s free with waffles,” she said. “Just so you know.”

  “I’ll take waffles, then.”

  “Good choice. They ain’t killed no one yet.”

  I smiled, handed her the menu, went back to perusing the Great Wall. Mixed in with the license plates was a sign that read HELP WANTED.

  “Any chance you’re hiring a cook?” I asked.

  “Waitress. I’ve got bunions on my bunions. Why, you lookin’?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m a chef.”

  “Don’t need a chef. Need a waitress, though.”

  She gave me a wink I couldn’t quite interpret, then headed into the kitchen.

  My mind started racing. I’d been thinking I’d push on for Mexico just like every fugitive in every movie, but as plans went, that one had its flaws. First and foremost, I’d have to cross the border with a sack full of sixty thousand dollars. Second, if I made it across the border, I’d be driving blindly into a country I knew nothing about, and I’d have to learn the ropes in a language I barely spoke. Then there was the question of how long sixty grand would last given that I was unlikely to score a work visa.

  But Texas was a different story. I spoke the language. I was employable. No one would look at me twice. And if they did, they wouldn’t know what they were looking at: the Costellos’ network petered out around Pensacola, and my disappearance wasn’t exactly national news.

  I’d have to ditch the car, buy a used one someplace that accepted cash and wasn’t fussy about paperwork. Maybe I’d get a Ford F-150, circa 1980. Something old and cheap, but functional. Something that would blend in. I’d waited tables before, during and just after college. I could make this work. Maybe not forever, but for as long as it took Vincent and the cops to give up on me.

  By the time Doris returned with the waffles and coffee, my mind was made up.

  “I want to apply,” I said, standing and extending my hand as though the job interview had already begun. And as I stood, the straps hooked around my ankle sent me lurching out over the counter while the bag itself flew backward. Bundles of the pawnbroker’s bills spilled out across the linoleum floor. The old man spun his head in my direction as if he was seeing me for the first time. I dropped to my knees, started shoving thousand-dollar stacks of cash back into Anna’s tote bag. I figured when I was done I’d bounce up and run for the door.

  Doris stepped out from behind the counter and stood there watching me with her arms folded across her chest.

  “And you want to waitress for me?” she said. “Whatever trouble you’re running from, it must be bad.”

  Something in her voice told me I had nothing to fear. Not from her, anyway. I looked up, flashed a timid smile.

  “You own that big yellow farmhouse?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you let me use the shower.”

  She studied me hard.

  “I’m guessing there’s a reason you can’t go to a motel?” she said.

  “More than one.”

  She dug her fingers through her thick gray curls while she thought it over.

  “All right,” she said. “Eat your waffles and meet me out back.”

  Chapter 21

  I FOUND Doris standing by an industrial-size dumpster, a shotgun dangling from one hand. I cursed myself for being so goddamn dumb, for tagging along after a woman I’d met five minutes ago as if she was some kind of savior, as if she didn’t have her own set of problems that sixty grand might fix. Whether she was planning to kill me or just rob me, I had it coming.

  “Perfect day for target practice,” she said, glancing up at a cloudless sky. “Can see a hundred miles in any direction.”

  I took a slow look around. She was right: no point in running.

  “Guess I won’t be taking that shower,” I said.

  There’s a calm that comes with having lost all control. I set the bag full of money that wasn’t really mine on the ground at my feet, raised my hands, and backed away. It became suddenly clear to me how far I was from anyone and anything I knew.

  Doris looked at me and lost it. She laughed until her gut couldn’t take any more.

  “You’re no career criminal, that’s for sure,” she said. “Hell, I’m not even pointing this thing at you. What is it? Abusive husband? Handsy boss? You can tell me—I’m familiar with both.”

  I lowered my arms—slowly, in case the situation might still go sideways.

  “So am I,” I said.

  She sauntered over to me, held out the gun.

  “Take it,” she said.

  For a long beat I just stared.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Is the trouble you’re in serious?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” she said. “Look at you, meetin’ a stranger in a Texas back alley here where no one can see, all ’cause you got some seat-of-the-pants notion that you might hide out and play waitress. You see what I’m sayin’?”

  “I think so,” I lied.

  “I’m saying we need to get you ready.”

  She thrust the gun at me so hard I had no choice but to accept it. I thought I understood then: she was looking to make a sale.

  “How much?” I asked.

  She ignored me, pointed across the yard to a wooden trellis with old coffee cans hanging from its frame. A makeshift shooting range.

  “Think you can bull’s-eye one at this range?”

  I pushed the gun back toward her. She refused it.

  “I wouldn’t know how,” I said.

  “Well, that’s what we’re doin’ here, ain’t it? I once taught a twelve-year-old girl to fire that thing, and she wasn’t exactly what I’d call precocious. I figure I can teach you, too.”

  The question was, did I want to learn? Sean was always after me to take up shooting. He booked sessions at a firing range, gave me a Glock for my thirtieth birthday. I made him cancel the sessions, return the gun, and buy me a new set of stainless ware instead. I’m not the
killing type. That isn’t me pleading my innocence—it’s just the truth.

  But things had changed since I turned thirty. There were people who wanted to hurt me. Professionals who inflicted pain for a living. Even sixty-one miles outside of Kerens, Texas, there was a chance I’d end up serving one of Vincent’s men. Maybe Vincent himself, if his stomach started growling at exactly the wrong spot on the interstate.

  “Okay,” I said. “Maybe you’ve got a point.”

  “You ever fire a gun before?”

  “No. But I’ve been around guns.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I know how. I’ve just never had a reason to.”

  She pointed to the trellis, which was maybe twenty feet away.

  “Knowing and doing are two different things,” she said. “Let’s start with a coffee can. They’re small, but at least they don’t fire back.”

  I pressed the butt plate against my shoulder, shut one eye, and stared down the front sight with the other.

  And then I froze.

  “If you believe Sun Tzu, the battle’s won before it’s fought,” Doris said. “Visualize the Maxwell House guy’s face exploding and then go on and pull that trigger.”

  I took a deep breath, aimed, and froze some more. I’ve never performed well in front of an audience. As a kid, I wanted more than anything to be a singer. Aunt Lindsey bought me some lessons, and by the time I finished with them I could carry a tune better than most sixth graders. What I couldn’t do was make myself walk out onstage come talent night. The vice principal tried to shove me out of the wings, but I grabbed on to her leg and wouldn’t let go. Sometimes I think that’s what drew me to the kitchen: the chance to work quietly behind the scenes.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Doris said. “Hit the target and you win a free shower.”

  I adjusted my grip.

  “And if I miss?”

  “Then I get to laugh at you guilt-free. That’s a twelve-gauge—it’ll be like hitting the side of a barn with another barn.”