by Brad Hart
For one, there was Brianne Jones. This was a particularly large problem, and one that had already begun to eat at Logan.
He pulled the envelope out of his backpack and sat it on his lap, taking a deep breath. He looked out the window and waited for the plane to start its trek down the runway. It took off like a race car and Logan watched the ground disappear as the sky came into view and then soon after he was up in the clouds.
He remembered being a little boy, on his first flight with his parents. They’d flown to New York City. Logan remembered watching the pink sky and the clouds and thinking they looked like raspberry flavored marshmallows. Now, as a grown man, he didn’t think that way at all. When he looked at the sky and the clouds, he thought nothing and felt nothing. He was numb, for better or worse, and had been for years.
His ears popped. He cracked his neck and pulled the stack of paper from the envelope. “Let’s get started,” he muttered.
“Sorry?” The woman sitting next to him asked.
Logan waved his hand. “Nothing.”
Typical weirdo, she was probably thinking. Logan didn’t mind. She stared at him for a moment as he began to read.
**
No known connections to Brianne Jones or the Jones family in San Feliz, California. Logan had never been there, except for a ride through on the California 1 Highway from LA to San Francisco. There was a university in the adjacent town, so Logan guessed there would be a lot of college kids.
A secret boyfriend, perhaps?
Logan thought about Brianne Jones’s boyfriend in LA. The papers said his name was Freddy, and that he worked at a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Waiters there could make good money, especially at a place as high end as that. It wasn’t a mom and pop diner by any means.
Logan thumbed through the papers, memorizing fact after fact and detail after detail. None of them seemed to matter much, as there was nothing to go on, but it was good to memorize them anyway. He’d learned in his four years of investigation that sometimes the little things one overlooked were the things that turned a case onto its head and solved it all.
Brianne Jones. Twenty-three years old, graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s in English literature. She’d been telling her family and friends that she was going to take a year and teach English in Asia. Maybe Korea, maybe China. Or maybe head Southeast and do it in Thailand or Malaysia. She didn’t know yet, and she didn’t have to. She was young, with her whole life ahead of her.
Maybe now she’d never teach English anywhere. Maybe now she was dead in a ditch or long buried in a shallow grave. Logan shuddered. He needed a drink. When he’d said it had been easy to quit, he’d been lying. He wanted one badly, and the urge started to make his stomach feel queasy.
Sometimes it was simpler than others. When he was on a case, however, it wasn’t simple by any means. A drink would have calmed him down, made him smoother. It would have made things clearer, he told himself. Deep down, he knew that was a flat out lie.
A drink would have dulled him. It would have softened things. It would have taken the bad thoughts and visuals away. Logan didn’t need any of those things to go away. He needed to know the extremity of the case. He couldn’t rely on his old crutch anymore, although he had solved plenty of cases when he had been a full-blown functioning alcoholic. But he had been sloppy then, and maybe even lucky. He couldn’t afford to be sloppy now, and he certainly couldn’t rely on luck.
He hoped that Brianne Jones would get to sit in a seat like the one he was in someday, sometime soon. He hoped she would be looking out at the clouds, traveling overseas to teach English. She looked young in her picture, full of life and happiness. She had a pure smile. She was probably a good person. And even if she wasn’t, then she didn’t deserve to die. Logan hoped she wouldn’t.
He hoped that she hadn’t already.
He gazed out at the clouds and drifted off into a nightmare of death and chaos. The crashing sound of the wheels colliding with the runway woke him five hours and forty minutes later when they arrived in Los Angeles. Despite having technically slept, Logan wouldn’t have called it sleep. He wiped the sweat from his clammy brow and got ready to go.
**
Fifteen minutes later, Logan Stone was walking through LAX past the baggage claim and out into the dry Southern California heatwave. It was a welcome heatwave, however, in comparison to the muggy humidity of Florida.
He squinted his eyes and wished he’d brought a pair of sunglasses from back home. Something about the sky was different here. Florida had been sunny, but there were clouds in the sky. When Logan looked up here, all he saw was blue. A massive, never-ending stretch of blue. It was late afternoon, and he stood for a moment before walking past the taxis and down the long road that led past the end of the airport arrivals.
He walked into a car rental service and spoke with a redhead at the desk. “I need a car, something basic. Good gas mileage.”
“How about this one?” She pointed to a picture on a laminated sheet of paper that looked like an old, worn out restaurant menu.
Her finger hovered over a basic Toyota sedan. Logan figured it looked fine, especially because the gas mileage. Plus, Toyotas were popular in California, and he didn’t want to stand out in a small town if the case led him to one. Blending in was key at all times in his profession.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
**
The first stop was a sunny ranch home in Calabasas, a sleepy and somewhat rural community bordering Malibu. It was behind the mountains, so it wasn’t next to the beach, but it also wasn’t far by car.
Logan pulled up to the address Tina had punched in on his phone. He had used the GPS to get there, because he didn’t know the area all that well. In his line of work, he had been taken all over Los Angeles, but generally speaking, it was the seedier areas he knew the best. Skid Row, South Central, Venice.
There was nothing seedy about this area, or this house. It reeked of money.
The house looked new, freshly built and massive. He parked in the driveway behind an old Porsche and walked out, knocked on the door, and waited. He waited a minute and knocked again. He checked his watch. It was going to be getting dark in an hour, and he didn’t want to waste time. He planned on speaking to the family and then making his way up north until he reached San Feliz.
He waited a minute more, and then he thought about going to the back of the house. Maybe they were on the deck. Maybe the backyard. Maybe the family was having a cookout. He thought he could smell burgers and hot dogs, but it could have been the next-door neighbors, although that seemed to be quite a distance away. And besides, would they really be having a cookout if their daughter was missing?
Footsteps came from somewhere in the house. Close, heading to the door. Logan waited, hands at his side. There were a series of sounds as three different sets of locks were twisted unlocked. The door swung open.
A man stood there, sweating. He looked like he could have been fifty on a good day and sixty on an average one. He had a graying mustache and a slick bald head, except for the sides which had poofs of white hair growing over the top of his ears. He looked friendly enough, but he didn’t smile. Understandably so, considering the circumstances.
“You’re Logan Stone,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Yes, I’m Michael Jones, Brianne’s father,” he hesitated, and Logan could tell he was distraught. “Please, come inside.”
Logan followed Michael into the house. It was one of the biggest and most spacious homes he had ever seen, especially since it was laid out in such a bizarre way.
“Nice place,” he said, half-lying, but it was unquestionably more impressive than his own small one bedroom in New York. That wasn’t saying much, though.
There were no walls in the home. They must have been torn down at some point, unless Michael Jones had been the original architect. It was certainly an eccentric floor plan. It was an entirely open space, with no upstairs. Logan could see a bed in the
corner of the room. The kitchen was off to the right side, and the living area was off to the other. There was a large desktop computer that sat on top of a big glass desk with an expensive looking chair.
In the center of the home were six easels for painting or drawing. Logan strolled and looked at the artwork. He wasn’t a judge of art by any means, but to him it looked like a bunch of junk. Lots of random shapes and colors that added up to nothing much. Mr. Jones was an artist, or perhaps his wife, and an abstract one at that. There was plastic all over the floor surrounding the easels, covered in multiple shades of paint.
“I sell my art and also give weekly lessons to anyone who wants to learn how to paint,” he said, as if reading Logan’s mind.
“Cool. Private or group?”
“Either, but private will cost you a pretty penny.”
“I’m not an artist.”
“I mean, you in a general sense. I make most of my living from art sales, but the private lessons can be a nice side income.”
“Where is Mrs. Jones, if you don’t mind me asking?” Logan said.
“My wife is at the grocery store. Despite our lack of appetites, we know we still have to eat to survive. We want to live to see our daughter returned safely to us, Mr. Stone, so I’m forcing food down each of our throats to make sure we’re here when that happens.”
“I understand that.”
They stood for a moment. Michael Jones was an awkward man; that much was apparent to Logan. He had been around plenty of awkward people in his life, so it didn’t bother him. He just stood and waited, hoping the guy would calm down a bit. He gave him some time. He looked like a nervous wreck. Logan looked down at one of the easels. It was holding a mess of a painting that looked like it might be a mountain with stars above it in the sky.
There was a business card below the easel on the ground. It had a painting printed over it in a glossy finish. Logan stooped down and picked it up. The card read: Let us be artists together! Learn to paint with world-renowned artist Michael Jones. Logan put the card on the easel and turned his head up to meet Michael Jones’s gaze.
“Let’s talk, Mr. Jones.”
“Please,” he said. “Call me Michael.”
“Okay, Michael. Could I trouble you for a water? Thanks.”
“Of course,” he said. He hurried toward the open kitchen. He pulled a bottle from the refrigerator and walked back to Logan. He handed it to him. “It’s not that cold. I just put it in a few minutes ago.”
“No worries. I drink my water warm. It’s better for your insides.” Logan unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. “I need to ask you questions about your daughter. I’m just trying to make sense of this and get some kind of idea about why she would have gone to San Feliz.”
“Well, I haven’t the slightest idea,” Michael said, throwing his hands in the air. He took a long breath. “You’ll have to excuse my annoyance, Mr. Stone. I’m currently a bit of a mess emotionally. Although, if you think I’m not doing well at the moment, you should really see my wife.”
“I’d like to speak to her as well.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Shall we sit?”
“Let’s take a seat, yes,” Logan said. He was tired of standing and tired of waiting. Time was being wasted, and time was the most important thing of all.
He sat down on the large brown leather sofa. Michael remained standing. He was fidgety, moving his arms around and scratching his face and neck. He was a small, skinny man, with ghostly white cheeks and hollowed out cheekbones. He didn’t look healthy, and Logan wondered if that was a regular thing or something that just came on in the past couple of days. Stress could wipe a man out; he knew that just as well as anyone.
“I feel so nervous,” Michel Jones said, and then he started to cry.
Logan took a breath. He’d seen plenty of people crying. He wasn’t that good at comforting them, but he did his best to reassure Michael. “Hey, hey, hey. Sit down, relax. Michael, I’m going to do everything I can to try and find your daughter.”
Michael sobbed and took a deep breath. “Excuse me. I’m ridiculous.” He sat down on a recliner and pursed his lips together, looking past Logan at the wall. His eyes were glossy with tears and he wiped them with the back of his hands and then forced a smile.
Logan nodded his head. “Not ridiculous. This is understandable behavior. What you’re feeling now is normal,” he paused. “When did you last see Brianne?”
“The night she left. She stopped by and said she needed to borrow some money. That wasn’t weird, or anything – she always borrowed money. I can’t blame her; the job market is awful for fresh graduates and this is an expensive city. I like to treat my family well and so I always ensure that my daughter has some spending money after her bills are paid.”
“Okay. How much did you give her?” Logan asked, not knowing if it mattered. However, if it was a large sum of money, then maybe it would be suspect. Maybe she owed someone money. Maybe not.
“I think two thousand, two thousand five hundred? I usually give her four or five or six for the whole month, depending on how much she needs. She has her own place and rent is expensive. I’m not spoiling my daughter, as that’s barely a livable wage here. I’m helping her until she gets on her feet.”
“When was the last time she borrowed money? Was this sooner than you’d expected?”
“No, every two weeks I give her around two or three thousand.”
“So, nothing out of the ordinary when your daughter asked for money? She didn’t ask for a specific amount?”
“No. She was even surprised and gracious when I gave her the amount I did. She tried to give some back and said she didn’t need that much now.”
“Sounds normal to me, then.”
“Yes, very normal.”
“And then what happened?”
“That was it. She kissed her mother and me goodbye, and said she was going to come back for dinner with us later in the week. She said she was going to San Feliz for a day or two. My daughter travels a lot. She’s an adult. I didn’t ask why, and neither did her mother.”
“She travels a lot,” Logan said.
“Yes.”
“Where and why?”
“All over California. Music festivals, San Francisco where she has friends. Sometimes she and her friends will just take little road trips, you know. Youngsters have that sense of adventure these days.”
“Was she going to San Feliz alone?”
“I don’t know that,” Michael said. “I didn’t ask. I assumed she was with friends of course, because she usually is.”
“But you’re not sure.”
“Right. She was alone when she came to the house, unless someone else was in the car waiting.”
“Does that happen sometimes?”
Michael sighed. “I don’t know, Mr. Stone.”
“Okay. So, she doesn’t know anyone in San Feliz – at least no one you know of.”
“Correct. I can’t think of anyone. Neither can my wife. Our daughter has never even talked about San Feliz. It’s a fairly small town. I don’t know why she’d go there, now that I think about it. There’s not much to see. It’s normal. Nothing special.”
“And the police aren’t taking this seriously, I assume.”
“Right.”
“Business as usual.”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t know that, as I’ve never had to work with police. All I know is I reported her missing in Los Angeles and by calling the San Feliz Police Department, and both simply told me that she was an adult so there isn’t a whole lot they can do, but they’ll look into it and to call later if she still doesn’t come back. They said after a while longer then they’ll really look into it, but it’s only been two days.”
“Tell me about her boyfriend.”
Michael sighed again. “He’s a little prick. Wants to be an actor, you know the Hollywood wannabe type. He works at an upscale place called Moons or something in West Hollywood. He’s a waiter. He makes
good money for a kid his age and pays for all her dates. He is arrogant and cocky when Brianne brings him home for dinner. We’ve met him three or four times now, haven’t gotten a chance to know him at all because he’s quiet and thinks he’s hot shit. That’s all I know about him.”
“He acted in anything I’d know?”
“He’s acted in nothing at all,” Michael rolled his eyes. “Like I said, he’s a wannabe.”
“Got to start somewhere in that business. Well, I’m going to look for your daughter now, Michael. I’d have liked to have spoken with your wife as well, but since she isn’t home then I think this will have to do.”
Logan stood up and began to move. Michael stood up and put his hand on Logan’s arm. Logan stopped and looked him in the eyes. “Please find my daughter, Mr. Stone. The first check will clear by tomorrow, that’s what my bank told me.”
Logan paused. “If it makes you feel a little more confident, I’m not in this for the money. I’m not trying to get rich off of your missing daughter.”
“Everyone wants money.”
“Yes. I like money, and I need it to pay my bills and put food on the table. But I like some things more than money.”
“Like what?”
“Solving cases. Righting wrongs. Getting bad people off the street. All that cliché nonsense, right? I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Jones.”
“Call me Michael.”
“Here’s my card. It’s got my number on it,” Logan handed him a business card and walked out the door. He got into his car and drove off. He had plenty to think about, and plenty of time to do it.
An hour later he was cruising down the California 1 Pacific Coast Highway. He was an hour past Malibu and the cliffside that dropped into the Pacific would have been daunting for anyone who happened to be afraid of heights. Logan smiled. Life looked beautiful right then and there. It almost made him forget what he was there for, but only almost.
He trekked along, going at a reasonable pace. San Feliz was about two hours away judging by the GPS, and he turned the radio on to kill time. He was hungry, but that would have to wait. For now, he was antsy. He needed to hurry. He needed to arrive.