by Rachel Brady
Vince seemed devastated. “What’s she done?” His shoulders fell slightly. “Tell me what she’s done.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” David asked. “Vince? What aren’t you telling me, man?” He stood. “Can somebody please tell me what’s going on?”
There was a collective pause while Vince and David waited for answers we couldn’t phrase.
“Why aren’t you at work today?” Jeannie asked David. I’d nearly forgotten she was there.
David looked at her, irritated. “What?”
“Why aren’t you at work today?”
He scoffed. “Took a day off. Things to do.” He gave Jeannie a final glance and turned back to Vince. “What’s going on, man?”
Jeannie sighed an exaggerated, impatient sigh that indicated she’d crossed over into loose cannon mode.
“I thought,” she said to David, “that you were sick.”
Richard pursed his lips and shot her a stare.
“How do you know I called in sick?” David looked from Jeannie to Richard. “I don’t even know you. Who are you people?”
“I’m sorry for the ambush,” I said. “The truth is, Richard knows you called in sick today because he’s in touch with CPS.”
David ran his hands through his blond hair and clasped his fingers behind his head, elbows to the sides. When he took his seat again, he let his hands fall into his lap.
“Why are you in touch with CPS?” he asked Richard. “Why so interested in me?”
“Who you are, and where you work, matters to me because you live with Trish Dalton.”
Vince raised his head.
“I don’t know the right way to say this…” I said. “Trish is…involved with—”
“Your girlfriend’s a felon,” Jeannie said.
I scowled at her.
“A felon?” Vince asked.
“The boy I’m looking for,” Richard said, “It looks like Trish was involved in his kidnapping, and a long line of kidnappings before his.”
“That’s nuts,” David said. “What makes you think—”
Richard continued. “Trish flew for the company this boy’s father worked for. She had access to information that would facilitate his abduction. We have evidence linking the kidnapper to Gulf Coast Skydiving. And the boy’s mother recognized a photo of Trish.”
“Worked for?” Vince asked.
“Dead,” Jeannie announced. “Shot in the chest, dumped in a river.”
Vince looked stricken.
David shook his head. “Trish would never—”
“Before you get too deep into defending her,” Jeannie added, “you should know she has another man.”
I marveled at her utter lack of tact.
David looked at me. “What’s she talking about?”
“Jeannie,” I said, “could you please not…”
David didn’t seem to hear. “That’s crazy,” he said. “You’re not making sense.”
His ignorance was painful. But, I decided he’d have to hear the facts now and nurse his wounds later.
“She’s using you,” I said. “She’s involved with another man, probably has been since way before she met you. They run this scam together.” I looked at Vince. “They sell babies on the black market.”
Vince’s face grew paler. He looked away, incredulous.
I continued. “I found a computer file. The baby Richard’s looking for is being sold today, to somebody in Tempe, Arizona.”
Vince’s head snapped up. “That’s why she took the plane.”
His candor jarred me. “What do you know about the plane?”
“I know it’s not here,” he said. “I was supposed to fly it back to Oklahoma this morning. An FBI agent gets shot at our airport last night. The plane is gone. My cousin’s missing. It’s not too hard to figure she’s had a hand in this.”
“Why would you conclude that?” David asked.
Vince glared at him, “She’s not the woman you think she is.”
“You didn’t mention the FBI agent earlier,” David said. “What do you mean she’s not who I think?”
I wondered what Vince and David were discussing before we got there.
Vince checked his watch. “She took the kid to Tempe in the Otter. They must be there by now.”
I shook my head. “She didn’t take him to Tempe. Somebody else took him, or he’s still in Houston.”
Vince cocked his head.
I wasn’t sure how much to say. Vince’s role in this wasn’t clear. Just because he looked surprised didn’t mean he actually was.
“Emily was on the plane,” Jeannie said. “No Casey.”
“You were on the plane?”
I looked for help from Richard, but he shrugged. If Vince was part of the operation, he already knew, or would soon find out, what happened on the plane anyway. And if he had no part in it, there was no harm in telling him what happened. I explained about the night before.
When I came to the part about Scud, Vince sat down. He seemed more shocked at Scud’s involvement than Trish’s. I told him about our struggle in the training room, how I’d been stabbed in the leg, and that I’d shot Scud but didn’t think he was dead. Vince said Clement was alone at the drop zone when the ambulance arrived. He walked over to me and raised my pant leg as if he had every right to do so. The fabric around my calf was stained dark red. I hadn’t realized my bandage had bled through. Vince peeled back the sticky gauze and the wound brightened with a fresh surge of blood.
“You should have this looked at,” he said, kneeling behind me.
“Nasty.” Jeannie shuddered. “He’s right.”
“Scud did that?” David was pale, his face sweaty. Maybe the facts were beginning to settle in his mind. I couldn’t bring myself to add that Scud—Edward Kosh—was Trish’s Other Man. But the thought reminded me of something.
“David, do you have a computer?” I asked.
He gestured toward the hall. “In my study.”
I removed the saturated gauze from my leg and dropped it in David’s kitchen trash. He passed me some paper towels for my leg.
“Mind booting up your machine?” I asked. “I’d like to know the IP address of your cable router.”
I hobbled behind as David led us to his study.
“Why?” he asked, but didn’t argue.
He powered up the computer and waited for it to go through its self-checks.
The desktop icons appeared and I told David where to get the information I wanted. He hunted and pecked at his keyboard and finally a string of numbers came up.
“Richard, do you have that information from CPS?”
The call had come in during our drive from his office. Richard rooted in his pocket and produced a scrap of paper. He read off numbers as the rest of us leaned toward the monitor. The digits matched.
“What’s that mean?” David asked.
“Did you ever give Trish your system password?”
He shook his head. I wasn’t surprised. Someone as resourceful as Trish could get it herself. I imagined her coming up behind David as he worked, wrapping her arms around him in the same warm hug I’d seen in the rigger’s loft. All she’d have to do is watch his painfully slow typing as he logged in.
I faced David. “Sometimes when you were in the field, someone logged onto this machine as you. Other times, when you were logged in at work, a dual log-in occurred from this machine.”
Vince asked, “Are you saying Trish logged into David’s work account as him?”
I nodded. “David, you’ve been having trouble locating some families.”
He didn’t answer, but I could tell by the way his eyes bored into mine that I had his full attention.
“Richard looked into it. Those families were all lower priority cases.” I nodded at his computer. “If Trish knew you wouldn’t get to those babies for a few days, she could get them first.” I hesitated. “At work they think you’re discriminating based on race. Many prospective ‘buyers�
�� want white babies, so Trish targets white families.”
David stared at me like only half of my words were getting through.
“I think she takes the babies and, when necessary, makes the parents disappear,” Richard said.
“Records simply show another deadbeat parent skipped town with their kid,” I added. “No kidnapping report, no homicide investigation. Her relationship with you was a gold mine.”
It was hard to remember as we spouted our theories that this was the first David had heard of Trish’s crimes. The poor sap was in love with her. He’d clearly been blindsided.
I didn’t get the same vibe from Vince. David swam in disbelief, but Vince looked to be seething with rage. I just wasn’t sure where that anger was directed.
Richard scanned the room. “Does Trish keep many personal things here? Files on your computer? A notebook? PDA? We know which cities some kids were moved to, but not their addresses.”
All I could think about was Galveston. Four years had passed. Was Annette still there?
“Is it okay if we look around?” Richard asked, too late for Jeannie. She’d opened the closet door and was already inspecting the shelves inside. David seemed too distracted to take offense. He nodded, crestfallen.
I wanted a break. “I’m going out for some air.”
I retraced my path to the living room, opened the door, and only made it as far as the front landing. My leg hurt too much to go down any more stairs than I had to. I looked down. The jump rope was gone, probably picked up and carried inside by a little girl who still lived with the right family.
The door opened behind me, but I was too worn out to turn.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Vince said. I was thankful not to be facing him. “When you said you were down here helping a friend, and had lied about a new job, you left out a few important details.”
There was a light quality to his voice. My throat was too tight to answer.
He continued, “I’m not a part of that, you know. I’m nothing like her.”
My eyes stung. I told myself it was still too early to trust him enough to explain about Mattie’s case and the boat accident. That’s when I realized I was still thinking of it as an accident. Like David, I struggled with my own form of denial. I wasn’t strong enough yet to think in terms of my husband’s murder.
I sniffled and folded my arms, my back still turned. “Why’d you come here today?”
He moved up beside me. I was careful to keep my eyes forward. Vince rested his hands on the railing.
“The short answer is, to find out what David knew.” His tone was quiet. He took a breath and started again. “Trish is a time bomb. I know that. I also watch the news. I didn’t like what I saw this morning, particularly the part about the missing plane. I called David. He was worried sick because Trish didn’t come home last night. He doesn’t even know her. The woman he sleeps with is an actress and a fraud.”
He drummed his thumbs on the balcony railing and continued. “Her brother has a rap sheet a mile long. And she’s doing worse things, I think, but has no record at all. Never anything to call her on. To me, that’s scarier. You’ve seen her. Appearances are deceiving.”
I remembered her beautiful smile in the picture on Scud’s laptop.
“Years go by with no consequences,” Vince was saying, almost musing, “and it seems she gets bolder. I hooked her up with Rick and Marie. Figured a new job around nice folks would be a step toward a cleaner life, but…” He didn’t bother to finish.
I listened, curious about the references to her earlier crimes. It wasn’t clear if he knew exactly what those crimes were, but either way I was disappointed and angry he hadn’t intervened somehow. If he’d ever bothered to follow through with his hunches and turn her in at any point along the way, Eric Lyons might be alive. Casey might be home.
“I have a question for you now.” He placed a hand lightly on my shoulder, encouraging me turn toward him. I did the best I could, but had no courage for eye contact.
“You know things about Trish I’m learning for the first time,” he said. “She’s the reason you were at the drop zone this week.”
I nodded.
“The time you spent with me, was that to get leads on Trish?”
The shaky breath I heard after his question told me those words hadn’t come easily.
I looked up at him. “I didn’t know you were related until yesterday.”
His expression brightened almost imperceptibly.
I added, “You might have mentioned that earlier.”
He smiled then, a genuine smile like the ones I’d enjoyed all week. I feared that in the lightness of the moment, he might try to hug or kiss me, or do some other demonstrative thing to confuse me even more. I copped out and shifted my eyes toward the parking lot again, turning my face away from him. I wasn’t feeling the same closure to our conversation.
“I need to know the truth, Vince,” I said, my mind still on my little girl. “How much of this did you know? Did you ever cover for her?”
He didn’t answer, but I heard the door open behind me. By the time I turned around, the door to David’s apartment was closing between us.
Chapter Thirty-three
Jeannie sidled up to me at the balcony railing. She’d come out so quickly after Vince left me there, I wondered if she’d been watching the door. Almost as swiftly, she lit a cigarette.
“I thought you two would be out here forever.” She took a draw on her Salem Light. Its tip flared.
She turned her head to exhale and let the cigarette rest between her fingers.
Jeannie’s smooth, ivory hands were so beautiful they even made a cigarette look tolerable. I’d watched her smoke enough to know something here was different.
“You’re usually a better actress.”
She rubbed what must have been a stiff spot on her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You never wait this long before the second puff. I can tell you’re fake-smoking, using it as an excuse to be out here.”
She waved the smoldering tip in front of my face. “Am not.”
Even outside, the smoky odor was oppressive. “That’s obnoxious. What do you want?”
She huffed and dropped the nearly-new cigarette onto the concrete porch, where she used the toe of her shoe to smash it. Then she edged it forward, under the railing, until it fell. We watched it disappear into the shrubbery below.
“What’s up with you two?” she finally whispered, nodding toward the door.
I felt my shoulders sag. “I don’t have energy for this.”
She put a hand on my arm. “I’m not imagining it, am I? Something’s going on.”
“Maybe there could have been,” I said. “That talk we had ended badly. I can’t look at him now, much less talk to him.”
She brushed a wisp of bangs away from her eyes and studied me for a moment. In her gentle look, I found the unwavering support of a lifelong friend.
“You don’t need this today. We should go.”
I nodded.
“I’ll get Richard.” She gave a weak smile and went inside.
I stayed on the balcony, trying unsuccessfully to think about one thing at a time. I rehearsed what I’d say to the police. When I came to the part about Trish’s money, I remembered the bag of cash was still on David’s sofa. I opened the front door to grab it.
Jeannie and Vince were together in the living room. They looked at me, startled, and the moment was as awkward as if I’d found them naked.
“Richard’s wrapping up with David, in the office,” Jeannie said.
I looked down, snatched my bag off the sofa, and left.
For the next half-hour, I couldn’t speak to Jeannie about it because Richard was with us in the car. We were headed toward the Texas Medical Center, a virtual kingdom of hospitals inside Houston’s I-610 loop. An HPD buddy had told Richard where Clement was being treated for his gunshot wound. Jeannie figured we could double up
our mission and get my leg fixed too.
We parked in the garage and found our way to the congested emergency room. An old man with an oxygen mask sat beside a father pressing an ice pack onto his son’s arm. In the corner, a toddler wailed in long bursts. Another was drooped eerily across his mother’s lap. Both children were still in pajamas at one o’clock in the afternoon.
“This looks bad,” I said.
“Check in and ask about the wait,” Richard said. “There should be time to hit the cafeteria before you get called.”
“Time to eat and speak to Clement, I’d say.” Jeannie cast a sideways glance at a woman coughing into a bloody rag. “Go check in, Em. These people freak me out.”
I filled out the requisite paperwork. A chorus of elevator dings echoed in the halls behind me. Persistent crying seemed to carry from all directions in the vast hospital. I wondered about Casey. Wherever he was, was he crying too?
When I finished, we followed signs to the cafeteria and passed an information desk. Richard wanted to ask about Clement, so he got in line behind a group of disoriented visitors and waited. Jeannie and I took the opportunity to visit the nearby gift shop. Balloons and flower arrangements crowded the entrance to the small, over-stuffed store and I almost knocked over a vase of carnations.
“I should get him something,” I said. “What do you get for a guy?”
Jeannie surveyed the arrangements and shook her head. “Not flowers. Do they sell any porn here?”
She laughed. I scanned the room for irritated parents.
“You know,” she said, turning toward a shelf of candy, “I think he likes you.”
I picked up a basket of gourmet coffee samples and walked toward the counter.
“He’s FBI, Jeannie. I don’t think he’s supposed to like anybody.”
She met me at the counter and added a pack of Wrigley’s to my coffee basket.
“Not Clement, you screwball. Vince.”
The clerk rang us up. Jeannie, restless in the smoke-free environment, tore open her gum with particular zeal.
“What were you guys talking about at David’s?” I asked.
We turned for the exit and found Richard walking toward us, struggling through a jungle of ribbons hanging from a collection of helium balloons.