by R. L. King
“We’ll keep lookin’,” Eddie said. “If we turn up anything, I’ll contact you right away.”
Ward was staring off into space, looking like he was deep in thought.
“Ward?” Stone asked. “You still with us?”
He snapped back to reality. “I was just thinking about something else. You mentioned your frustration at not being allowed to question the boy in the most recent case.”
“Yes. No chance of that, though. I’ve asked both Jason and our law-enforcement contact to try making it work, but they’ve had no luck. Can’t say I blame them—nobody’s going to let some mad psychic professor anywhere near their traumatized little darling.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t,” Eddie said dryly. “I mean, look at you.”
Stone shot him a mock glare, but he was mostly focused on Ward. “If you’re suggesting I try to talk to one of the other victims, that’s probably even less likely. At least with Tyler Ellerman I had a small connection to the case.”
“That’s true,” Ward said. “Or at least it would be if you were trying to question a child.”
Once again, Stone almost asked him what he was talking about, and once again the light bulb went off. In general, Ward was the quieter and far less effusive of the pair, but under that mild exterior lurked a mind every bit as sharp as his and Eddie’s. “Yes!” he said, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “Damn, I’m glad I came to talk to you two. If the cases that happened five years ago are related to this one, then at least one of those kids has got to be over eighteen by now.” He leaped up. “I need to get back. If Jason can track down any of the older ones, I can question them without having to be concerned with their parents getting in the way.”
“That’s why you keep us around,” Eddie said with a grin. “Somebody’s got to help you pummel that barmy brain of yours into action. We accept pints as payment.”
Stone was already fixed on getting home. “I’ll set you up for the rest of the night. Just don’t walk in front of a bus or anything on your way out. I’ll probably need your help again.”
14
Stone called Jason as soon as he came through the portal, but growled when the call went to voicemail. “I need some information from you as soon as you can get it,” he said. “I might have an angle I can investigate.”
He wasn’t particularly hungry, but in the interest of working off the pints he’d had at the Dragon before driving home, he stopped at another restaurant on Murphy Street and sat out on their patio eating a burger while he waited for his friend to call back.
By the time Stone finished his burger, Jason still hadn’t returned his call. He glanced at his watch: it was already almost three p.m. He wanted to get moving on this today if possible. He tried again, but once more got voicemail. This time he didn’t leave a message. He sent a text and that didn’t get a reply either. Finally, frustrated, he drove over to the agency.
Gina looked up from her computer at the reception desk as he came in. “Oh, hi, Dr. Stone.” She always seemed slightly distracted, like her brain was trying to follow several threads at once. Stone liked her because he knew the feeling.
“Hello, Gina. Is Jason around? I need to ask him something.”
“He’s not. He’s gone off to San Francisco on a surveillance job. Says he expects to be gone all day and probably won’t be back in the office until tomorrow.”
“Damn. That’s why I keep getting voicemail and he doesn’t answer my texts.”
“Yeah, he sends all his calls to voicemail, and if he’s busy tracking somebody he probably won’t see his texts until he takes a break. I have a way to reach him in an emergency—”
“No, no, it’s all right. It’s not an emergency. It can wait until tomorrow, I suppose. Thanks.” His frustration growing, he turned to leave, but then stopped. “Gina…”
Gina had already returned to her task. She looked up, brief frustration of her own crossing her face, but quickly replaced by a more neutral expression. “Yes?”
Stone could almost see her thought processes: this guy is the boss’s best friend and owns half the agency. “Would you mind checking on something for me? It’s terribly important, and I’d rather not wait until tomorrow if there’s another alternative.”
“Uh…” Her expression grew guarded. “Maybe. What is it?”
“Remember those people Jason asked you to trace? The ones where you found small clusters near Miami, Chicago, and here, with a couple of outliers?”
“Yeah. Related to the Tyler Ellerman case, he said, though I’m not sure how a bunch of kidnappings in other parts of the country are relevant. Especially not ones that happened several years ago.”
“They might not be—but then again, they might. Have you found any more, by the way?”
She consulted her computer. “One more, yeah. Another one in the Chicago area, a few months back. Twelve-year-old boy. He disappeared without a trace on his way home from school, then turned up on the other side of the city two days later, unhurt but with no memory of what happened to him.”
Stone pulled out his notebook and jotted it town. “Okay. Good. But the ones I’m interested in now are the older ones. The ones who were taken five years ago. Can you get me any current information about any of them? Specifically the ones who are over eighteen now.”
“I can try, yeah. But what good will that do?”
“I want to see if I can have a chat with one or more of them. If they’re adults, then I won’t have to try to persuade parents to let me talk to them.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I read the writeups on these cases—even some of the police reports. These kids didn’t remember anything about what happened—and that was when the whole thing was fresh. What makes you think they’ll remember it after several years?”
He shrugged and offered what he hoped was a charming smile. “I don’t know—wishful thinking, perhaps?” He sobered. “But I’ve got to do something, and this seems like a worthwhile place to start. Can you find the information for me?”
She only hesitated for a moment. “Sure, yeah. Have a seat—it might take a little while. There’s coffee in the break room if you want it.”
He didn’t take her up on the coffee, since his nerves were jangly enough as it was. Instead, he paced the waiting room and watched the traffic going by on First Street, hoping to spot either Jason’s red Mustang or the agency’s boring gray Ford.
Jason still hadn’t turned up twenty minutes later—not that Stone had expected him to—when Gina called, “Got something for you.”
He hurried over. “Yes?”
She tapped her screen. “Not a lot to choose from. Of the five that were kidnapped five years ago, three of them are still under eighteen.”
“Did you find the other two?”
“Yeah, but you’re only going to be able to question one of them.”
“Why is that?”
“The other one committed suicide two years ago.”
15
An hour later, Stone was heading for a bar on the outskirts of Gary, Indiana.
On paper, it only took thirty-five minutes to drive there from the Chicago portal, but by the time he found a rental car and negotiated the rush-hour traffic out of the city, it was already almost eight p.m. local time. That was probably all right, though. The place he was going barely got started that early.
As he drove, he went over the information Gina had given him. The man’s name was Roy Darner, he was a couple months shy of twenty years old, and he was on parole after spending six months in prison for auto theft. According to what she found, he’d dropped out of school at sixteen, lied about his age to take a factory job, and had several brushes with the law as a juvenile. These days he was working as a maintenance assistant at another rundown factory.
Stone had used the phone number she’d found and tried to call him, not expecting to get anywhere. He was surprised when someone answered.
“Yeah?” His voice was rough, and sounded like it belonged to someon
e at least ten years older.
“Mr. Roy Darner?”
“Yeah.” The voice grew suspicious. “Who’s this?”
“You don’t know me, Mr. Darner. My name is...Michael Townes.” He’d figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to use his real name, so impulsively he’d chosen the less unusual of his two middle names and paired it with Aubrey’s last. He didn’t bother disguising his accent, though—too much of a pain to remember to do it later.
“Yeah, okay. I don’t know you.”
“No, you don’t. I was hoping you might chat with me about something.”
“About what?” The suspicion ramped up.
Stone didn’t want to tell Darner anything about his purpose until he had the man face to face—too much chance he’d freak out and bolt, or simply refuse to talk to him. “I have something that belongs to you. I’d like to give it to you.” It wasn’t entirely a lie: he had no problem giving Darner some cash in exchange for talking to him, and he suspected the young man could use it.
“What the hell are you talkin’ about? Are you a cop?”
“No. Come on, Mr. Darner—you’ve got nothing to lose by talking to me. We can do it wherever you like. Someplace public, someplace private—you choose. I promise, I can make this worth your while. I’ll give you the details when we meet.”
There was a long pause, and Stone was sure he could follow Darner’s thought processes: on the one hand, this sounded sketchy and he was on parole, so he couldn’t afford to get involved in anything illegal. On the other, it could be potentially lucrative, and he likewise couldn’t afford to miss out on that.
“Yeah, whatever,” he finally said. “I’ll talk to you—for a few minutes, anyway. You know where Morrie’s Roadhouse is, out off 94?”
“No, but I can find it.”
“Okay, you do that. I’ll be there tonight, starting around seven. Ask the bartender—he’ll know where to find me.”
Now, as he pulled the nondescript rented Chevy into the dirt parking lot of Morrie’s Roadhouse, Stone wondered if he might have asked Darner to choose a better location. Even from here he could tell the place was busy, with loud country music blaring from speakers around the outer perimeter and several small, drunken knots of customers clustered around other cars, laughing and smoking. As he watched, a man in a work coat and jeans erupted through the front door, his arm around a laughing woman in too much makeup and stiletto heels. Both of them paused to steady each other, and then they abruptly switched directions and headed for the other side of the lot. As Stone got out of the car, the strong odors of diesel fumes, smoke, beer, and pot hit him like a wall.
He sent off a quick text to Jason letting him know where he was and what he was doing, set his phone to voicemail, then paused to put a disregarding spell on the car before heading in. He’d left his wallet and identification in the glove compartment, taking with him only a rolled sheaf of twenties and hundreds, and used his illusionary disguise amulet to make himself look like a middle-aged man in work clothes. Best to do these kinds of things anonymously, especially since his true appearance and style of dress, coupled with the accent, tended to be memorable.
He thought about what else Gina had said. The other adult victim, Shawn Petrie, had stuck his father’s shotgun in his mouth and blown his brains out in the garage behind his family’s home at the age of seventeen. He’d left no note, but apparently he’d been in therapy on and off since his kidnapping. He’d been a good kid, done well in school, and had apparently had a bright future ahead of him.
At least that’s what everyone else thought, Stone mused bitterly. He knew all too well how easy it was for the mind to play haunting tricks on you, especially after something that bad had happened. Hell, Verity had gone through a lot of the same thing. He wondered sometimes if she could benefit from some therapy to help her work through some of it, but didn’t think he was the right person to bring it up.
You’re not here to think about Verity, he cautioned himself. He wasn’t worried for his safety in this place: his disguise made him blend in, and if things got rough he could count on his magic to get him out of any bad situations. But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t keep his wits about him.
Inside, the smells he’d noticed outside were even stronger, except the beer and pot had fully eclipsed the diesel fumes. The music jangled through low-fi speakers, so loud it was hard to hold a conversation—or even a thought—without effort. Stone liked most musical styles, but country wasn’t one of them. At least not the modern stuff. Hopefully he could talk to Darner and get this whole thing over with quickly.
The bar was choked with customers, overwhelmingly male. All the tables were occupied, and on the far side of the room Stone spotted several more clusters of people spread out around three battered pool tables. The wall décor was eclectic—neon beer signs, pinup posters, rusting street signs and license plates, and the taxidermized heads of a buck deer, a bear, and what looked like a coyote. Over the bar, in pride of place over a mirror featuring the image of an old muscle car, was the bleached skull of some large, horned creature with a bullseye painted on the center of its forehead.
Stone pushed through the crowd until he reached the bar. The bartender, a beefy guy in a Bears T-shirt, ignored him. He waited until the man had worked his way closer, then said, “Excuse me.”
Apparently the bartender wasn’t used to hearing anyone announce himself so politely. He jerked his head toward Stone and narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, what’cha want?”
Stone shoved a twenty across the bar. “Give me one of your special, please. And tell me where I can find Roy Darner.”
The bartender had been in the act of turning to grab a glass, but he stopped at the name. “Why d’you wanna know?”
“I’m meeting him here. He said you’d be able to point him out to me.” He nodded toward the twenty. “Keep the change.”
There was a brief pause, but then the guy shrugged. Apparently they weren’t paying him enough to care. “Yeah, whatever.” He picked up the twenty, poured a glass of something called Permanent Funeral, and pushed it toward Stone. He glanced around for a few seconds, then jerked his chin toward the pool tables. “Roy’s over there. Skinny guy in the red hat.”
“Thank you.” Stone picked up the glass and worked his way back through the crowd. It was easier getting out than getting in. He feared he might lose sight of Darner, but once he broke free he spotted the man still standing on the far side of the rightmost pool table. He had a cue in one hand and a beer in the other. Another man, even beefier than the bartender, was lining up a shot.
Stone tasted the beer as he crossed the room. It wasn’t his style, but surprisingly it wasn’t bad. He waited until the man finished his shot, which missed, and watched as Darner took his own. He missed too. Stone wondered how many beers the two of them had already downed.
“Mr. Darner?” he called over the country din when he got closer.
Darner jerked. “Yeah?” He was tall and thin, with an acne-pocked face, stringy dirty-blond hair in need of a cut, and a neck liberally scrawled with amateur tattoos. He looked at least a few years north of twenty. His stained red hat had Trask Mfg. on it, with the stylized form of a man holding a spear.
Stone lowered his voice so the other man at the table wouldn’t have a chance of overhearing. “We spoke on the phone earlier, remember?”
Darner’s gaze shifted left and right, almost like he was trying to locate an exit. He swallowed hard, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Yeah, I remember. You said you had something of mine.” He looked Stone over, settling on his hands.
“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you, man. You just stand there till I finish this game, okay? I got a beer ridin’ on it.”
Stone fought not to let his annoyance show. Roy Darner might be his last reasonable chance of finding out anything about the mysterious kidnapper—he could wait a few minutes. “Fine. But I’m not staying her
e all night. If you want what I’ve got for you, you need to give me a bit of your time.”
“Yeah, yeah.” It was Darner’s turn again. He took a long pull from his beer on the corner of the table, then bent down, lined up on the seven ball with narrowed eyes, and took the shot. To Stone’s surprise, the ball shot straight for the pocket and sank cleanly. Maybe the guy wasn’t as drunk as he thought he was.
His opponent muttered something, glared at Stone, then took his own shot and missed.
Darner grinned, showing stained teeth with one missing. “You’re good for me, man,” he said to Stone, patting his arm. “My fuckin’ lucky charm. Magically delicious. You stay right there like a good little leper-chaun, yeah?”
Stone, fuming a bit but still not showing it (good thing nobody here could read auras), waited while the two men finished their game. It didn’t take long—Darner’s shot was apparently a fluke, but he still managed enough accuracy to sink the last of the solids and wrap up the game. “Y’owe me a brew, Natty,” he announced with a big grin. “I’ll collect later, okay? Don’t go nowhere.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The beefy man flashed a scowl in Stone’s direction and trundled off.
“Like shootin’ fish in a barrel,” Darner said. “He’s always good for a beer ’cause he fuckin’ sucks at pool. Hey, you play?”
Stone did, in fact, play, but he was out of patience for diversions. The country music was getting on his nerves. “Do you want what I’ve got for you or not, Mr. Darner?”
“Yeah, okay. Okay. Whatever. C’mon.” Without waiting to see if Stone would follow, he pushed back through the crowd and located a tiny table near the wall, under a faded poster of a barely-clad blond woman holding two beer steins in front of her ample chest. He dropped into one of the chairs, ignoring the drift of empty pint glasses, scattered peanut shells, and a soggy, wadded napkin.