Here and Gone

by Haylen Beck

  ‘I got nothing for you,’ he said, waving them away.

  The diner had quieted down when he entered, but it still had more customers than he’d seen there in years. Reporters, for the most part. He ignored them and went to the end of the counter. Shelley came straight over.

  ‘Coffee to go, sweetheart,’ he said.

  ‘Another one?’ Shelley asked. ‘How many’s that today? Sure you don’t want a decaf?’

  ‘No, regular’s good.’

  She returned a minute later with a large paper cup with a plastic lid. He dropped a few bills on the counter, plucked a napkin from the dispenser, and wrapped it around the cup to save his fingers from the heat.

  ‘Hey, Shelley, you got a second?’

  The waitress had been on her way to the register, but she turned back to him. ‘Sure,’ she said.

  Whiteside beckoned her in close, lowered his voice. ‘You remember the gentleman you were speaking with earlier? Over by the window.’

  She wiggled her fingers at her face. ‘Oh, you mean the …’

  ‘Yeah, the Asian gentleman.’

  ‘Sure, I remember. He was a nice man. What about him?’

  ‘What did you two talk about?’

  ‘About this.’ She waved her hands at the world around her. ‘Everything going on. He hadn’t seen anything on the news, so I told him all about it.’

  ‘Did he ask about anyone in particular? Like the Kinney woman? Or me?’

  Shelley shook her head. ‘No, not that I recall. He just seemed interested in the whole affair. Well, I mean, who wouldn’t be?’

  ‘No one, I guess. Did you happen to see which way he headed when he left?’

  ‘No, sorry, we were jammed here earlier. I was too busy taking orders to watch him. He got another sandwich to go and left me a nice tip. That was the last I saw of him.’

  Whiteside leaned closer. ‘He ordered another sandwich?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Shelley said. ‘To go. Must have been hungry.’

  ‘Must have been.’

  ‘You don’t think he’s mixed up in all this, do you?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I was just curious about him, that’s all.’ He dropped another two bills on the counter. ‘Don’t let Harvey work you too hard now.’

  Whiteside carried his coffee out onto the sidewalk, slipped his shades back on, put his hat on his head. He looked up and down the street, knowing he wouldn’t see the man. A sandwich to go, he thought. Maybe he had been hungry, like Shelley said, but Whiteside had a different idea entirely. He looked across to the guesthouse, wondered if Audra Kinney was eating that sandwich right now.

  It wasn’t really the color of the man’s skin that bothered him, though he was an unusual sight around here. Rather, it was the kind of man he was. Whiteside had met enough over the years. Gets to be you know one on sight. A man is either wired to kill or he’s not. Most aren’t. But this one had the look about him, the eyes that see further then they should, the hollowness you see in them, if you look too close.

  Whiteside had seen that same hollowness in the mirror. The thought chilled him.

  Anyway, why would a man like that show up today, of all days? Could have been a coincidence, but Whiteside believed in coincidences about as much as he believed in Santa Claus. This man was a threat, Whiteside was certain of it. And, right this minute, he believed the man was in the guesthouse, giving Audra Kinney food. All he could do was watch and wait.

  Whiteside sat down on one of the benches outside the diner, took a sip of hot coffee. From here, he could see the front of the guesthouse, and a few yards of alley that cut to the north of it.

  He hadn’t even finished his coffee when everything went to shit.

  28

  AFTER HIS RUN-IN with Whiteside in the diner, Danny had gone for a walk. Along Main Street first of all, from one end to the other. So many places closed up, stores long gone. Guns and sporting goods, pet supplies, a bar, ladies’ fashion, home furnishings, a men’s store specializing in Western clothing, a pair of boots with spurs painted on its sign along with a Stetson hat. All of them falling into decay, their windows whited out or boarded up.

  The few locals on the street had given him second looks. They’d have given him more, if they hadn’t assumed he’d blown in with the press. He had nodded and smiled, given polite greetings. Some were returned, some were not.

  At the end of the street he came to the bridge that he’d driven across an hour or two ago. He walked along the narrow sidewalk to its center and looked over the railing. The river below had withered to a sluggish red stream at the middle of a wide basin, cracked reddish-brown earth all around. Dying, like the town itself.

  Danny made his way back to the town side. A row of houses, mostly empty, faced out onto what would once have been a lovely view of the river. An alleyway cut behind them, bordering their rear yards, and branched back toward the rear of the boarded-up stores that lined Main Street. From this end he could see all the way down, right to the wall that enclosed the sheriff’s station parking lot. Halfway along, hot air rippled from the vents at the back of the diner. A dozen properties between here and there, most of them unoccupied. Any one of them suitable for entering tonight, for a place to sleep. He’d try the furniture store first; they might have something left in storage that would be comfortable to lie on. In through a rear window or door, maybe a skylight. Danny was skilled at these things.

  He retraced his steps out onto Main Street, looked up and down to see if anyone had noted his coming and going. Then he jogged across to the other side of the street, found the alleyway that mirrored the one he’d just emerged from. This time the alley was truncated by the southern wall of the town hall, its grounds fenced off. He counted in his head. The guesthouse should be eight buildings down. He started walking.

  The pine fence stood out from the others; it was the only one that had been freshened with wood stain anytime in the last few years. A row of garbage cans stood alongside a gate. He stepped back and looked up. The house looked tired, but better than its neighbors. All the windows intact, everything still nailed together.

  One more look in all directions, then Danny tried the gate. A hole just big enough to slip his hand through and feel the padlock on the other side. No matter. He went to one of the garbage cans, noticed dusty boot prints on its lid. Someone had used it to stand on, maybe get a better view of the house. Danny did the same, then hauled himself up and over. He landed silent as a cat on the other side. A good-sized yard, but parched dry. What was once a lawn had been baked solid. A vegetable patch on one side still held a few living things, but mostly too shriveled to feed anyone.

  Danny stood still and listened for a moment, his ears alert for cries of alarm at his intrusion. No one had spotted him. He crossed the yard and climbed the few steps onto the back porch, with its wicker chairs and swing seat. A closed screen in front of an open door. He placed his body between the door and the window, edged closer to the glass, peered inside.

  A small television set played the local news, the screen showing images of this very street. He couldn’t quite make out the newscaster’s breathless voiceover. At the table, an elderly woman chopping up tomatoes.

  Shit, Danny thought.

  He was about to turn and go back the way he’d come, when the woman’s head jerked up. Danny froze, and so did she. Then he heard the jangle of a bell from somewhere inside the house, and the woman rose from the table and exited the kitchen.

  Danny took the emery board from his pocket and slipped it between the screen door and its frame, flipped the latch, and entered the kitchen. A ceiling fan moved warm air around the room, a steady hum above his head. He closed the screen again and crept to the open door leading to the hall. Voices out there, resonating beneath the high ceiling. Danny eased through the door, ducked into the space beneath the stairs, as far into the shadow as he could squeeze himself.

  Listening, he heard a man’s voice, hard and insistent, the old woman’s protesting. Then the man
being taken to a room, before the old woman climbed the stairs above his head. Danny waited in the dark, hearing another conversation upstairs, followed by two sets of footsteps descending.

  He pressed himself into the shadows beneath the stairs as the old woman passed on her way back to the kitchen. A few more seconds as he listened again, voices in the room along the hall. Then Danny slipped out of the alcove and moved to the foot of the stairs. He climbed the two flights to the landing above, checked each of the doors.

  All but number three were locked. He went inside and waited.

  More than twenty minutes passed before he heard Audra approach her room.

  29

  AUDRA SHOT TO her feet.

  ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

  The man put his hands up, the brown paper bag still held in his left. ‘I’m sorry for sneaking in like this, it was the only way I could—’

  She pointed at the door as she backed into the far corner. ‘Get out!’

  ‘Ma’am … Audra … please just let me talk to you.’

  ‘Get out,’ she said, still pointing. ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘Please just listen.’

  ‘Get out!’ Audra ran through her few remaining possessions in her mind, wondering which might serve as a weapon.

  ‘My name is Danny Lee,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t care what your name is, just get out.’

  ‘What you’re going through now,’ he said, ‘I went through the same thing five years ago.’

  Anger outran Audra’s fear. ‘You don’t know shit about what I’m going through.’

  He took a step forward and she grabbed the empty vase from the windowsill.

  ‘Just listen,’ he said, his hands up, his head down. ‘I think I know what they’re doing with your children. It might not be too late for them. Maybe I can help you get them back.’

  She moved the vase from hand to hand. ‘You’re full of shit.’

  ‘Will you at least hear me out?’

  Audra pointed to his hand. ‘What’s in the bag?’

  ‘It’s for you,’ he said. ‘A sandwich from the diner. Are you hungry?’

  Without thinking, Audra’s free hand went to her stomach.

  ‘Take it,’ he said, and tossed it onto the bed.

  Audra left the corner, dropped the vase on the blankets, and lifted the bag. She opened the top and the smell of bacon and warm bread billowed out. Her stomach growled.

  ‘It’s good,’ the man said. ‘I had one earlier. Eat.’

  Audra knew she shouldn’t. He could have put anything in it. But the smell. And she was so hungry. She reached inside the bag, pulled out half a sandwich, took a bite.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down,’ he said. ‘Give me five minutes to explain.’

  She perched on the edge of the bed, chewed, swallowed. ‘You’ve got till the end of this sandwich,’ she said. ‘Now talk.’

  30

  DANNY AND MYA had fought before she left. Sara had asked, what’s wrong? Danny had stroked her hair and said, nothing, honey. But Sara was smart, and she knew. She saw the tears as she looked at her mother’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

  Neither of them had called it a separation. Simply a couple of days away, Mya driving the few hours north to her parents’ place between Redding and Palo Cedro. She would be back after the weekend, she’d said, and neither of them had believed it.

  Two hours into the drive, she had pulled off the interstate to find somewhere to eat. Outside the small town of Hamilton she was stopped by a police officer named Sergeant Harley Granger for a minor traffic offense. Something so trivial Danny couldn’t even remember what it was. According to the officer, Mya was agitated and uncooperative, so he radioed for another car to come and assist. Two of Hamilton Police Department’s six-strong fleet of cruisers at the scene. According to Granger and the other cop, Lloyd, Mya had no child in the car with her. She had a booster seat and a bag of clothes, but no sign of Sara.

  By the time Danny got to the station in Hamilton, Mya was in a state of near-hysteria.

  ‘They took her,’ she said, over and over. ‘They took her.’

  The FBI arrived the next morning. They questioned Mya for three straight days. On the fourth day, Mya tried to hang herself in her cell. After that, they let her go, and she and Danny drove back to San Francisco. The story made the regional news, and Mya’s photograph became a fixture on the evening bulletins. People they knew, old friends, stared at them in the street. The story held the press’s interest for about a week before the reporters moved on. But Danny’s and Mya’s friends did not. They kept staring, kept refusing the couple’s phone calls. All the while Danny and Mya voluntarily attended interviews at the FBI field office, while Hamilton PD compiled evidence.

  What Danny didn’t know was that on that last morning the Hamilton Chief of Police called to tell Mya to surrender to them within twenty-four hours, for arrest in connection with the murder of her daughter. If she failed to do so, a warrant would be issued, and SFPD would execute it.

  Danny had embraced her before he left for that evening’s Youth Outreach meeting, placed a kiss on her cheek. If he had known the finality of it, he would have held her longer, kissed her harder.

  Five years ago, almost to the day. Danny arrived home from the meeting, feeling weary and worn. He called Mya’s name as he entered their darkened house, the silence telling him something was wrong. No sign of her in any of the downstairs rooms. As he climbed the stairs, he saw the closed bathroom, and the buckle of one his belts trapped between the top of the door and the frame.

  He had to shoulder the door open, and he heard the buckle spring free, and a sickening weight hit the floor on the other side. An age passed as he stood there, knowing what he would find when he finally gathered the courage to look. But he did look, eventually, and he pulled the belt from Mya’s neck and sat cradling her for an hour, howling and blinded by tears, before he thought to call an ambulance.

  Two months after Mya’s suicide, Danny drove back to Hamilton. Through his contacts in the SFPD, he had learned that Sergeant Granger had taken a leave of absence due to the stress of dealing with the case. He had gone to Mexico to recover. No one knew when he would return.

  But Lloyd was still around, drinking in the town’s one small bar every night. Lately he’d been generous with his tips, bought lots of drinks for his friends. He’d even bought a new car. Nothing too fancy, an Infiniti, but upmarket enough to be noticed by those he drank with.

  Lloyd was also known to be an idiot.

  Danny waited and watched outside the bar. Lloyd lived only a twenty-minute walk away and would usually leave his new Infiniti parked on the street outside, to return for it in the morning. He was pissing in an alleyway when Danny snatched him.

  An hour later, Lloyd was tied up, suspended by his wrists from a roof beam in an abandoned storage shed Danny had found a week before. No one for miles around to hear him scream. Danny took his time with the knife. Lloyd didn’t know much, only what Granger had told him. When Lloyd told Danny they’d received less money than they wanted because the little girl was mixed-race, Danny lost the sliver of control he had, and Lloyd died too quickly for his satisfaction. No matter, he would make up for it with Granger, and find out how to get to the buyer.

  When he found the buyer, he would keep him alive just long enough to find out what they’d done with Sara. Whether they’d let her live or not. His higher mind knew the answer to that question, but he would ask it anyway. He would ask it hard.

  Danny had a flight booked for Cabo San Lucas two days later, but when he arrived in Mexico and asked around, he discovered Granger had been stabbed to death in a bar fight a week earlier. On a beach, sand burning hot on the soles of his feet, Danny mourned for his wife and daughter, knowing he might never find the men who had destroyed his life.

  He didn’t tell Audra about the hours spent with Lloyd, showing the cop pieces of himself before tossing them on the fire. But he to
ld her about Granger. By that time she had grown calm, the food gone. She remained on the bed while he sat on the thinly upholstered chair.

  ‘There’s a group of men,’ Danny said, ‘very wealthy men. They’ll pay a large sum of money for the right child. Seven figures, I heard. There’s a ringleader. He holds parties at a mansion somewhere out west. Him and his friends, they have these children procured and …’

  Audra looked away. Danny cleared his throat.

  ‘Well, I guess you know,’ he continued. ‘They could get trafficked children easy, refugees, whatever, but they want American kids. White, if they can get them. There’s a specific method, a way of working. They use the Dark Web, it’s like the underside of the Internet, where criminals and perverts hang out. There’s a close circle of dirty cops from around the country who talk to each other there. I’ve tried to find a way in for years now, but I can’t. I was told they discuss ways of making money. Odd jobs for the Mob, evidence tampering, sometimes even contract killings. And these wealthy men have a request out for kids. If one of these cops comes across a vulnerable parent traveling with children, preferably alone, they find an excuse to arrest them, separate them from the kids, then say the kids were never in the car. If they do it right, if they find the right target, suspicion falls on the parent. They can pull it off maybe once a year, twice at most.’

  ‘Why don’t they kill the parent?’ Audra asked. ‘Why didn’t Whiteside just kill me? That’d be simpler, wouldn’t it?’

  Danny shook his head. ‘Simpler for the cops, maybe, but not for the men paying the money. See, my theory is if they just snatch the kids and kill the parent, then the authorities know there’s a murderer out there and they go looking. If the parent’s alive, and the suspicion’s on them, then the authorities waste days and weeks chasing their tails. You look at all those cases where a kid goes missing, there’s a big search, and they find a body. How many times does it turn out it was the father, the stepfather, the uncle, the cousin? Naturally the authorities look to the last family member to have seen the child. And if it’s a parent who does what my wife did …’