Blood and Bone

by Austin Camacho

  “Yeah,” Phil said, sneering at Hannibal. “And you brought it all back.”

  “Did they say where they were going?” Hannibal asked.

  “She just said she was going home,” Daisy replied.

  Phil gave Hannibal an even harder look. “Why don’t you just leave her alone?”

  Hannibal stood. “I’m trying to end this. I need to find this Angela. If you want, I can get somebody to watch the house for a day or two until…”

  Phil was off the sofa and in Hannibal’s face in a second. “Look here. I love my wife. I’ll take care of her, and I don’t give a damn about her past or her ex-husband or any of that stuff.”

  “Don’t tell me, tell her,” Hannibal snapped back. “Don’t worry about seeing me again. As of now, I’m out of your life. Her first husband is dead. Jake Mortimer, the man she knew as Bobby Newton, is dead. And once I catch up to the girl, the two of you can bury the past for good. I promise you that.”

  Hannibal wanted to tell Phil Sonneville what a good man he was, how his love would heal all of Daisy’s old scars, how men like him made up for the weak and evil and selfish men he saw every day in his business. But it was not something to say, just to know. With a nod and thank you to Daisy, he waved Cindy out the door. They walked all the way to the street before he escaped the sound of Daisy’s crying. Without any conversation he strapped in, started his car, and headed back toward Washington.

  Daylight was fading quickly, the shadows slowly but inevitably growing and stretching until soon they would take over. While focused on the road ahead, Hannibal was aware of his seat mate. Cindy stared at him a long time before she spoke. He wondered what she was reading in his face, but was afraid to ask.

  “What if she’s there? I mean I can’t imagine you calling the police,” she said. There, he knew, was the Mortimer house. “You’ve got no more evidence of her guilt now than before. And she has a lot more detail of her supposed childhood and family. Do you think they’ll give her up?”

  “Got to try,” Hannibal said. “If they have all the facts and still choose wrong, well, that’s their problem. Her only real crime is fraud, and if Mortimer won’t charge her, there’s nothing the police or anybody else can do. Maybe I can at least shake Malcolm Lippincott loose. Angela’s crimes aside, he’s twice her age for God’s sake.”

  In the dark, Great Falls looked very much like any other neighborhood. True, the streets were a little wider, and the space between dwellings greater than a lot of places, but young men still hung out under street lamps and half lit windows still harbored deep secrets. Mortimer’s house was dark and quiet, the opposite of the way Hannibal found it on his last visit. He imagined everyone was settled into a quiet game of cribbage or Parcheesi, or whatever wealthy families did on weekday evenings. Or maybe they were all crowded around a big screen television, watching the latest Merchant Ivory film.

  Hannibal rang the doorbell and waited. Time passed slowly until someone approached the door. He heard a latch reluctantly release, freeing the deadbolt lock. Then the door slowly swung inward, revealing Harlan Mortimer’s face. Hannibal could not hide his surprise. From past visits he thought answering the door was one of Camille’s assigned duties. Yet here was the master of the house himself, in smoking jacket and slippers, his salt and pepper beard looking straggly. He was visually testing Hannibal’s face like unfamiliar waters. Hannibal felt Harlan’s gaze burn right through to the back of his skull. He was about to ask if he could come in, but Harlan spoke first.

  “You wear those things at night?” He asked, then turned and walked back into the house, leaving the door open. Hannibal took this as an invitation, and he and Cindy followed Harlan in. A library silence filled the house, prompting them to move quietly. They paused at the door to the cavernous great room. Harlan continued on, dropping heavily into an overstuffed chair and staring straight ahead at the fireplace. Hannibal entered slowly and walked around to stand left of Harlan’s visual target.

  “We’re looking for Angela,” Hannibal said. “Has she been here?”

  “Oh yes. She’s been here all right,” Harlan said, nodding toward the fireplace.

  Cindy moved forward until she stood beside Hannibal. “Mister Mortimer, we have reason to believe Angela is involved in a carefully developed fraud targeting you.”

  Harlan snorted one silent laugh. “Oh, I don’t think so. She’s gone now, and she won’t be back. Like father, like daughter, you know.”

  Harlan’s grim smile made Hannibal think he was missing something. He followed Harlan’s gaze to the fireplace. What he finally saw there turned his blood to ice water and for a beat of time his heart ached in sympathy with Harlan’s.

  Cindy squeezed his hand and whispered “What’s wrong?”

  “The mantle,” Hannibal said. “It’s empty.” The rare coin display cases which had stood in a row, on guard like stiff beefeaters above the fireplace, had all deserted. Or been taken prisoner in a war without rules. Hannibal knew their absence would not dent Harlan Mortimer’s fortune, but it would tear open an old wound which had barely begun to heal.

  “I’m sorry,” was all Hannibal could think of to say.

  Harlan looked at him with more curiosity than malice. “You must be happy to be proven right,” he said. “You’ve been busy, I understand. My attorney, my friend of many years, is under arrest. As I understand it, he was also busy trying to rip me off. But you stopped that, didn’t you? And now,” Harlan looked back at the emptiness over the fireplace, “now I’m alone.”

  Alone. Hannibal had almost forgotten. “Harlan, where is Camille?”

  “Bedside,” Harlan said, then looked up in surprise. “You don’t know, do you?” Hannibal moved his hands apart, palms up, signaling his ignorance. “Kyle had a serious attack this afternoon. Just as we were sitting down to lunch. Larry checked him into the medical center in Herndon. It’s not the greatest, but it’s nearby and it’s close to Dulles. At first he was talking about flying the boy out to some specialist, but now I don’t know. He says Kyle’s probably only got three or four more days.” A silent sob shuddered through Harlan Mortimer, his voice tightened and his eyes slammed shut. “I know I should be there but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t stay. Then I get back and, and this.”

  Hannibal listened numbly until Harlan ran down. This morning they had argued with Larry Lippincott, trying to get to talk to Abby Nieswand. This afternoon they dragged him from his office to see Abby, and then to Nieswand’s house. Through it all he said nothing about Kyle’s condition. Probably he, like Mortimer, assumed Hannibal already knew.

  “Better get over to that hospital,” Hannibal said to Cindy, who nodded.

  “What good do you think you can do there?” Harlan asked. Hannibal headed for the door, wishing he had an answer.

  As much as Hannibal hated lying in hospital rooms, he preferred it to being in one for any other reason. He never knew what to say or what to do with his hands when he visited people. He stood at the door to Kyle Mortimer’s private room, staring into the darkened space, feeling helpless. The soft whoosh of oxygen would have been a soothing sound if not for the transparent tent it supported over the top of Kyle’s body. Camille sat as still as her chair, bent under the weight of her anguish, clutching Kyle’s hand through the plastic.

  Cindy walked past him to wrap her arm around Camille’s shoulders. The women shuddered together, perhaps crying, perhaps chilled by the spirit of death wafting through the room. When Hannibal did enter, he walked to the foot of the bed so he could face Kyle. Hannibal wanted to tell him about his efforts during the last week, about the false trails he ran down, about his complex case filled with aliases, rumors, and the basest human motivations. But all he could manage to say was “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Kyle said. His bald head bobbled on a drinking straw neck. His eyes were sunken but bright. His face was wan and gaunt, but his voice was full of energy. “You found my father, and that’s all you ever promised to do. And you found A
ngela. That’s got to count as a bonus. I know we don’t have the results yet, but she’s still a possible marrow donor, right?”

  Swallowing part of the truth, Hannibal simply said “Angela’s gone.”

  “I know,” Kyle said, his smiling asking Hannibal what his point was. “You’ll find her.”

  “Kyle,” Hannibal said, walking to the far side of the bed to take Kyle’s hand. “Doctor Lippincott told your grandfather we didn’t have much time.”

  “Three to four days,” Kyle said with a matter of fact smile. “A lifetime if you’re a fruit fly. Besides, you’ll find her and bring her back in time. Or Doctor Lippincott will turn up another compatible donor.”

  Hannibal’s chest squeezed his heart. What in this young man’s life had bred in him such courage, such indomitable optimism? “You’re not giving up, are you?”

  “Nope,” Kyle said. “You?”

  “Not until it’s over. Not until the day after it’s over.” After meeting this teenager, Hannibal felt no one in the world could ever have an excuse for quitting again.

  Hannibal did not drive wearing his dark glasses at night, and now the world around his car was as dark as his mood. He had failed to bring any real comfort to the Mortimer family, because the truth does not always set you free. He might have saved Abby Nieswand from her own madness if he had seen the problem sooner. Not now. He may have saved Malcolm Lippincott from being taken in by Angela, but his attention was elsewhere at the time. He might even have saved Daisy Sonneville from being sucked into the cesspool this case had become, but he was too busy chasing his holy grail, the truth.

  Most painful of all, he had failed to save Kyle Mortimer. As he parked in front of his home, he tried to add it all up in his mind and concluded he had brought everyone involved a lot more pain than help. He was aware of Cindy grasping his hand as he walked toward the door, but he barely felt the pressure. He recognized the numbness as a cowardly defense, but he could do nothing about it.

  “Welcome home.” Jewel popped out of the office as Hannibal was closing the building’s outer door. He figured she must have been listening for him. Her smile dropped off when she saw his face, and she took a small step backward.

  “Don’t mind him,” Cindy said. “He’s just in a pissy mood because the world won’t do what he says. Come on over to his apartment for a moment. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  The last thing Hannibal wanted was company, but he said nothing. Besides, he hardly recognized the girl. The skirt she wore reached halfway to her knees, easily the longest he had seen her in. And she was in flats, not heels. And, most obvious, her face was scrubbed clean. Without makeup, she looked a lot closer to her real age.

  When he opened the door, Cindy led Jewel to the kitchen table. Hannibal found three glasses and pulled a bottle of white zinfandel out of the refrigerator. He poured for each of them, then sat behind one of the glasses. Most people he knew would consider this a humorously mild reaction to needing a drink, but alcohol affected him more than anybody he knew.

  “Jewel, remember my telling you I’d help you find your family back in Jersey?” Cindy asked. “Well, it turned out to be a lot easier than I expected.”

  Hannibal could only stare, and Jewel asked “You found my Mama?”

  Cindy sipped her wine. “You told me you were from New Sharon, outside Trenton. Not exactly a bustling metropolis. And you said your mother was a secretary.”

  “Yeah,” Jewel said, “but she never held a job very long.”

  “So I tried the obvious first,” Cindy said.

  “Kelly?” Hannibal asked.

  Cindy nodded. “I started there, today while you were dealing with Rissik and the judge he went to for the warrants we needed to confront Lippincott. She’s not a Kelly Girl, but I tried all the temp agencies in the area. All those places are on the World Wide Web as it turns out, and they were very cooperative.”

  Jewel was panting now, eyes round and shiny as new quarters. “You mean it was easy as that?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it easy,” Cindy said, fishing a notepad out of her purse. “But I managed to make some headway sitting there in my office. She’s moved around quite a bit in the last two years, but here’s what her agency believes to be a current address.”

  Jewel’s face crinkled with joy as she accepted the paper. Hannibal’s mood lifted a bit and he reached to squeeze Cindy’s empty hand. At least one of his clients would find what she needed, even if he was not responsible for her happiness. A few more years seemed to drop from Jewel’s face as she stood to hug Cindy and, for the first time, she looked to Hannibal like a girl under twenty.

  “God bless you, Miss Santiago,” Jewel squealed. “Thanks to you, I can finally go home.”

  Home. Home for Jewel was someplace she had never been. Home was not a location filled with memories and personal history, but rather, the place she would find unconditional support. Home for her was wherever her mother was.

  Hannibal looked at Jewel, looked at Cindy, and drained his glass.

  “Of course,” he mumbled, “how stupid could I be?” His chair fell over as he bolted for the wall phone. He felt Cindy’s and Jewel’s stares on him but he did not care. His head ached with the obvious revelation which had struck him.

  “Who in the world are you calling?” Cindy asked.

  “Lippincott,” Hannibal said, punching buttons on the receiver. “I think he’ll buy our tickets to Corpus Christi.”

  “Our? Why are we going to Corpus Christi? And why in the world would he buy the tickets?”

  Hannibal impatiently listened to the phone ringing at the other end. “Because, babe, he wants me to bring his son back. And I’m sure the boy’s travelling with Angela. And the last thing she said to anybody was she was going home.”

  -32-

  TUESDAY

  A huge, angry sun stabbed into Hannibal’s eyes from his left as he drove his rented Ford Tempo out of the United States. A Tempo because it was the car available when he arrived at the airport. Each pothole jarred his frame and rattled the car, but slowing down was not an option he considered. The air was still crisp, and he drove with his window down, allowing a chilling wind to blow the road noise into his face. The cool air tasted sweet, and more importantly, the breeze kept him sharp and alert. Cindy, dressed as she was on their first trip to Mexico, wrapped her arms around herself against the slight chill. He knew higher temperatures would come soon after dawn, and later in the day his white, loose fitting jeans would be collecting sweat. He wore a light blue polo shirt, but his jeans and hiking boots were clear concessions to the fact he expected a good deal more action on this trip south of the border than the last.

  The road turned slightly left, allowing his Oakleys to block the cruel sun’s rays. He searched for a dust plume ahead, or skid marks on the side of the road, any sign the road was recently traveled. All he saw, so far, were donkey carts and ancient pickups strategically placed to delay his progress as much as possible. His mouth was set in a grim line, his mind repeating his failures like a litany. He could not save Abby Nieswand’s mind. He could not save Daisy Sonneville’s peace of mind. He could not save Kyle Mortimer’s life. But he could save Malcolm Lippincott’s future. And he would bring Angela Robinson, AKA Angela Briggs, AKA Angela Mortimer to justice.

  “What are you looking for?” Cindy, sitting beside him, stared into his face as if she suspected he forgot she was there.

  “Signs of passage.”

  “You can’t be serious,” she said, although she had to know he was. “They can’t possibly be in front of us.”

  “Can’t they?”

  “Do the math,” she said. “We flew. They’re driving. It’s got to be more than sixteen hundred miles. And they only left the Sonnevilles’ house about fifteen hours ago.”

  “Okay,” Hannibal said, his voice implying a patience he did not feel. “Let’s look at this logically. Angela’s a young kid. Malcolm’s about my age, but he’s foolish, and acts like a k
id. And they’re in a hurry, running scared. So I think it’s reasonable they might take turns at the wheel and drive all day and all night. And they’re not going to be worried about safety margins or scheduled rest stops, because the young and foolish just don’t. Oh, and they’re not just young and foolish, they’re young and foolish in a brand new Porsche that’ll probably push a hundred eighty miles an hour on the straightaway. If the drivers were up to it, the machine could certainly average over a hundred miles an hour. So yeah, I think it’s just inside the realm of possibility they might be ahead of us.”

  Good job, Hannibal thought as Cindy crossed her arms and slumped into her seat. One more thing he regretted saying as soon as it came out. Well, she would get over it after he had Angela and Malcolm under wraps, and he could salve her wounds with dinner and a show.

  By the time they rolled into the dirt road town of Esmeralda, Hannibal had the window up and the air conditioner blowing full blast. People moved slowly but purposefully into and out of stores. He supposed morning was the time of greatest activity, before the heat moved from objectionable to unbearable. As he rolled through, he noticed the same heavy jowled man on the chair in front of the small grocery store. He looked like he had not moved since they were last in town. In fact, he wore the same canvas pants, tee shirt and thong sandals. Like everyone else on the street, he ignored Hannibal’s car.

  Hannibal pushed the car into park and turned to face his passenger. “If I say I’m sorry and admit my ignorance of local language and customs, will you go in and get us something for lunch? And coffee, please.”

  Hannibal drove the Ford over the narrow wooden bridge and turned left at the fork. Less than ten minutes later he passed Scooter Johnson’s whorehouse and, about a hundred yards later, managed a three-point turn and parked in the shade of a giant spreading oak. Having long since gulped down his coffee, he sipped from a bottle of water, tipped his seat back and started fiddling with the radio. Cindy laid a hand on his shoulder to get his attention.