The Brea File

by Louis Charbonneau

  Macimer was conscious of a disturbing irony in these reflections. Their love had endured and deepened through all the normal crises of marriage for couples of their generation, including raising three children through particularly turbulent times. They were still good together. Even desire-at-a-glance was true for her as often as for him. But the isolating silence of their drive home tonight was not unusual. If anything, it was symptomatic of a steady drift.

  Macimer had a remembered image of two giant ships moving very, very slowly apart in a harbor, so slowly that for a time it seemed as if they were not separating at all, until at last a small gap appeared. And then, once made, the rift widened swiftly with each passing second…

  He shook off the vivid impression with irritation.

  They weren’t in any real trouble. Couldn’t be. Jan was too independent and intelligent to fit meekly into a stereotyped role as the model FBI Wife, but Paul had never really expected her to. It was true there had been more arguments lately, more contention over seemingly small things, sharper disagreements over the children. Two nights ago he had overreacted when Jan expressed caustic concern that Chip, their eldest, was turning into what she called the Worst of Jock. But those were normal dips in the broad plain of any twenty-year marriage, he thought. Viewed from the perspective of distance, they weren’t visible at all.

  Jan sat up, reacting to a familiar bump in the winding road that told her they were close to home. “Did you hear what Carole said about her appeal? She lost. She doesn’t even get visitation rights. Can you believe that?”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  A bright, articulate woman, at thirty-five a successful Washington interior designer, Carole Baumgartner had become Jan’s best friend. She was also an ardent feminist, and during the past year she had helped Jan to revive long-buried teaching ambitions, lost in the years of child rearing. At Carole’s urging Jan had taught an adult evening class at a local community college in what she called Workplace English. Most of her students were young black working women. Paul remembered the intensity in Jan’s voice one night when she said, “The hardest part is getting them to realize what they can do if they really want to.” The class, Macimer knew, had been good for Jan as well as her students. He was grateful to Carole for that, even if he wasn’t so sure of some of her other ideas.

  The decision on Carole’s appeal, anxiously awaited in recent weeks, had to do with her attempt to contest the awarding of sole custody of her only child to her former husband. Just into her teens now, the girl had been ten years old when Carole walked out on her husband, determined to “find herself.” She had taken the child with her and fled her native North Carolina for the nation’s capital. Her daughter’s tenth birthday had coincided with Carole’s thirtieth—and with a traumatic feeling that her life was slipping out of her control. A conventional role as a cheerful domestic had begun to smother her, and in panic she had broken out.

  Two years ago a private detective hired by the father had snatched the child from the street while she was on her way to school one morning. Unable to see her daughter since, Carole was not even sure where she was, the father having denied her any kind of access. At one time she had even appealed to Paul Macimer to become involved in the case. “It was a blatant kidnapping!” Carole had insisted. “Isn’t that one of the things the FBI is for?” It hadn’t been easy to explain that it was not a federal crime for one parent to steal his own child from another. Even the private detective who grabbed the girl could not be prosecuted under any federal law.

  In the custody hearing, Carole’s initial flight with the girl had apparently been held against her, the father arguing—and the judge agreeing—that she couldn’t be trusted not to do it again. “I didn’t do it the right way,” Carole had admitted. “I just didn’t know any other way.”

  Her husband, Macimer suspected, had not listened to the signals. He wondered suddenly if he could have been missing some from Jan.

  “The appeal was heard over in Charlotte,” said Jan, “and Carole ran into another elderly southern male judge. I guess he was going to teach her a lesson.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t that way,” Paul said without conviction.

  “Oh, Paul, you know damned well it was! The real reason she lost is that she wouldn’t stay in her place. She rocked that safe little chauvinist boat, and you don’t do that in Charlotte. She’s still the girl’s mother. What the judge is saying is that, because she wouldn’t stay with her husband and play the obedient bride forever, she has no rights to her own daughter. Is that fair?”

  “No,” Macimer admitted.

  He turned into the Meadows onto Laurel Tree Lane. It was nearly midnight and the street was dark. The big trees lining both sides met overhead, forming a long nave that blocked out the light from occasional streetlamps. The car’s windows were open to the early-summer breeze, and a million crickets filled the night with their music, the din like a million tiny unending screams.

  “Where were you tonight, Paul?” Jan asked quietly. “What’s on your mind?”

  They were close to the house and he turned to stare at her, his mind only dimly registering something he had seen. He knew better. Anytime you feel that something is wrong, or even in the slightest way different, you don’t open a door and walk inside.

  You don’t ignore the subliminal warnings even if there is no clear physical evidence that something isn’t quite what it is supposed to be. But her question distracted him. “Nothing,” he said. The truth was that San Timoteo had been on his mind all week, reawakening memories of that long hot summer three years ago, and bringing a vague uneasiness about the coincidence of files from the San Timoteo RA’s office being in the trunk of a stolen FBI vehicle. “Nothing I can talk about, anyway. And certainly nothing that has anything to do with us.”

  “I see,” Jan said. “You spend the entire evening off by yourself, brooding over something that’s obviously important to you, and when I ask you what it is your answer is that it has nothing to do with us”

  He swung into the drive, listening to her instead of to that small warning voice that was trying to tell him something. “It doesn’t, Jan. Believe me.”

  “If it doesn’t,” she answered, “maybe there isn’t any us worth talking about.”

  “Jan-”

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore tonight. You’re just locked into the nineteenth century, Paul.” She spoke with something like resigned affection, as if she could not really excuse his condition but was still able to view it with a degree of exasperated understanding.

  “How can you say let’s not talk about it anymore and then drop that little bombshell?”

  She didn’t answer.

  The garage door rose in response to its electronic signal. Macimer drove inside and cut the engine. Behind them the door swung smoothly shut. Jan stepped out of the car on her side with brisk independence and walked quickly toward the door that led from the garage into the kitchen. She had her key out, not waiting for him.

  Macimer frowned as he started after her, belatedly wondering what it was about the front of the house that had caught the edge of his vision.

  “Wait a minute, Jan,” he called after her.

  But she was already up the short flight of steps. She unlocked the door and stepped inside. Then it was too late.

  Macimer saw Jan stiffen. She gripped her purse with both hands and gave a stifled gasp. He cracked a knee against the Buick’s front bumper as he charged toward the steps. Jan stood rigid in the doorway. He couldn’t see what had caused her reaction. He wasn’t even sure why an alarm was ringing so loudly in his brain.

  He vaulted from the garage into the kitchen, heart thudding.

  The knife stopped him as if he had crashed into a wall.

  The knife poised at Linda’s throat.

  A thin, muscular brown arm was around the girl’s slim waist, gripping her tightly. With a father’s irrational perception Macimer was aware of how the arm pressed upward against the swel
l of a young breast. The trained cop also noticed that the man wore ultra-thin rubber gloves, the kind you can buy in any surgical supply. Linda’s face was slack with terror. Her eyes rolled upward, white crescents showing, toward the man who held her. The knife had nicked the soft flesh of her neck, leaving a fine horizontal thread of red more than an inch long.

  Macimer’s hot anger must have shown clearly in his eyes. The young-old face that leered over Linda’s shoulder was suddenly wary. “That’s it, Pops. Let’s stay cool, huh?”

  Macimer had not worn his gun—he had no reason to carry it during an evening of dinner and drinks among friends on the Fishers’ patio—but he doubted that it would have made any difference. The threat to Linda was too naked and immediate.

  Carefully Macimer stepped into the room, halting at Jan’s side. He put a hand on her arm in an instinctive gesture of reassurance. She was trembling.

  “Daddy…” Linda’s voice quavered and her eyes filled.

  “Let her go,” Macimer said huskily. He had trouble meeting the liquid plea in his daughter’s eyes.

  The young man had the burnished skin and jet-black hair of a Hispanic. He shook his head, grinning. He had large, very white teeth. “All in good time, Pops. Close the door, huh?”

  Macimer obeyed. His anger was under control and his brain was beginning to function more clearly, but one question engulfed everything else. Where was Kevin? Macimer knew that Chip was not yet home—he always parked his car out front, and in any event he could hardly be expected before midnight on a Saturday-but Kevin had been in the house with Linda.

  The question was answered almost immediately.

  The youth holding the knife at Linda’s throat backed off a step, turning sideways while maintaining his grip on the girl and the frightening position of the blade. He gave a brief jerk of his head, as if he wanted to look over his shoulder but couldn’t risk taking his eyes from Macimer. “Hey, everything’s cool,” he called out. “Bring the other kid out.”

  They emerged slowly from a corner of the family room, which was a half flight below the kitchen and visible through the open counter. There were two of them, holding Kevin between them. They were also Latins. One was a man, older and more heavily built than the youth with the knife. He held a gun in his left hand, tipped upward so the muzzle rested lightly against Kevin’s temple. He also wore the surgical rubber gloves. The third member of the group, a slender twin of the one with the knife, was a girl. She had long straight hair, jet black. She wore a bright red satin blouse over jeans—and a pair of white cotton gloves. Hardly older than Linda, she would have been strikingly pretty if her expression had been less sullen and defiant.

  Kevin’s face was flushed, as if he were embarrassed to be found this way, a helpless captive. Macimer saw that the boy was fighting tears—whether of fear, anger or embarrassment was not clear.

  Too late, Macimer remembered what it was about the front of the house that was amiss. The front porch light was off. It had been turned on when he and Jan drove off earlier that evening. It was always left on until the last member of the family arrived home. The draperies were also drawn over the front living-room window—uncharacteristically. Neither Kevin nor Linda paid much attention to such details as open draperies. Jan often chided Linda about parading about the house half dressed with the windows open to everyone in the Meadows.

  Macimer’s glance brushed Kevin’s. No reason for you to feel chagrined, he thought. The old man is supposed to know better than to be surprised by a trio of punks.

  He remembered something Gordon Ruhle had once said to him. “If you’re gonna take someone and you think it might be rough, do it when he’s feeling safe.” Gordon Ruhle had been Macimer’s mentor, the calm and encouraging voice of experience, during his early days with the agency—teacher, backup, ultimately his closest friend in the Bureau, although their assignments had not brought them together very often in recent years. “Do it when he’s relaxing in his favorite chair with his feet up. But not if he’s got a bottle of beer in his hand,” Gordon had added with characteristic attention to detail. “That can be a weapon. Do it when he’s tying his shoelaces or feeling up his wife.”

  Or quarreling with her, Macimer thought grimly.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “You don’t need to play rough with these kids. You’ve got the gun.”

  The youth with the knife snorted derisively. “Hey, you hear that? He’s telling us what to do.”

  The older member of the group did not smile. He was about thirty, Macimer guessed. He was blocky and powerfully built, thick-chested, with a broad, impassive face. His two companions had the lean, underfed quickness of a couple of street sparrows. “Let the girl go,” the blocky man said.

  “Hey, I can have some fun with her. Maybe she likes it, you know? And Pops there—”

  “Let her go.”

  It was a command. After only a second’s hesitation the youth pushed Linda away and in one swift motion slicked the retractable blade into its long handle and wedged it into the pocket of his tight jeans. With a sob Linda stumbled across the kitchen into her mother’s arms.

  The heavyset bandit released Kevin. The boy retreated to the bottom of the steps. Defiantly, he did not run. His glance went from the trio of intruders to Macimer expectantly, as if he were waiting for his father to take over and thrash the villains. It isn’t that easy, son, when they’re holding the weapons—and hostages.

  The family was herded in a group down the stairs into the lower-level family room. It was a large, warm room with wood paneling, a used-brick fireplace, a wall of built-in shelves that housed books, stereo equipment, family memorabilia. The blocky man with the gun quickly established himself as the leader of the trio. The other two were quicksilver; he was stolid, careful, in control. “Sit on your hands,” he ordered Macimer. “And do not be brave. It wouldn’t help nobody.” His English was accented but fluent. American-born, Macimer judged, unlike the youth with the knife. The girl had not yet spoken.

  Linda huddled on a corner of the Naugahyde sofa, Jan sitting beside her protectively. Jan tugged Linda’s sweater down where a portion of bare midriff showed. The youth with the knife grinned.

  Kevin, still defiant, flopped into a chair. Macimer sat at the long harvest table used for family dining. There were two facing bench seats and a ladder-back armchair at one end of the table, Macimer’s regular seat. Out of habit he took his place there. He sat on his hands as ordered, hoping that the table might prevent the three young robbers from watching his hands too closely.

  He knew that he would resist an attempt to tie him up along with the others, leaving them completely helpless. A dangerous psychology began to work in such situations, and he was not about to risk it without a fight. Quixotically, his memory dredged up a fact from FBI statistics on robbery: robbers working in pairs or small gangs were far more dangerous than the lone assailant, far more prone to violence—even murder. The presence of one or more companions tended to goad any unstable member of the gang into a need to prove himself, to show off, to dominate helpless victims.

  The youth with the knife was the most volatile member of this trio. Nitro poured into a pair of jeans. Especially dangerous if his slender companion was his girl.

  “Where is the safe?” the stocky leader demanded.

  “There is no safe,” Macimer said. “You’re welcome to what money we have—”

  “Empty your pockets on the table,” the other said curtly. “The lady’s purse, too.” He turned to the slender girl in the bright red blouse. “See what else you can find in those rooms upstairs. Stick to the small stuff—we don’t have all night.”

  “What about Xavier?” the girl protested. “You gonna let him feel up that girl again—”

  “Cállate!” the leader cut in sharply. He released a torrent of Spanish at the girl, too rapid for Macimer to follow with his limited smattering of the language, although the gist of it hardly needed translation. The leader was angered because the girl had u
sed a name. Sounded like “Habier,” Macimer thought. Xavier. Only one name, but it was a small piece of information that might prove useful—as the gang’s leader knew.

  Macimer concentrated on the stocky man’s Spanish, trying to isolate any peculiarities of accent, inflection, choice of words. Stationed for five years in Atlanta, Macimer had been involved in a number of assignments that took him down into Florida’s Cuban community. This man’s accent might have been Cuban. His speech was very rapid and clipped, with a tendency to eliminate some of the s’s. Etá instead of está.

  The black-haired girl disappeared around the landing and up the short flight of steps to the bedroom wing. The house was a tri-level, living room, dining room and kitchen on the main floor, bedrooms a half flight above, with the large family room and a small den beneath the bedroom wing. As the girl moved from one bedroom to another upstairs, everyone below looked up at the faint sounds of her movements.

  After a moment the stocky Cuban—if that was what he was—gave Xavier his gun, ordered him to watch the prisoners and left the family room. He went into Macimer’s den, once an extra bedroom which Macimer had converted into an office for himself. Macimer heard desk drawers being pulled out carelessly, their contents dumped on the floor. Books tumbled from shelves. Something splintered when it fell—glass from a picture frame, Macimer guessed.

  In the family room there was silence. Linda had stopped crying. She remained in a curled-up, protective posture on the sofa beside Jan. Kevin watched Xavier with obvious fascination.