“Why the hell should I? I ought to push your face in.”
“Welcome to try.”
Their eyes locked and held. During the staredown, the waiter returned with the fresh Guinness and that broke it up. A slow, sardonic grin turned up the corners of Ulbrich’s mouth. He shrugged, picked up his fork.
“Hell,” he said, eating, “I’m not trying to be a hard-ass here. Mrs. Dunbar is missing, you’re a friend of hers, you’ve got a right to be worried. I’d be worried, too, in your shoes.”
“You haven’t answered my question about Monday night.”
“I was right here in San Diego. Imperial Beach, actually.”
“You don’t live in Imperial Beach.”
“That’s right, I don’t. But my daughter does. With her husband and her two kids. One Monday a month I go out there, have dinner with them, and she tells me all about what her mother’s doing these days and I try not to puke while she’s doing it. That’s where I was last Monday night. You don’t believe it, I’ll give you my daughter’s phone number.”
Fallon slumped against the booth back. Wrong again. Sam Ulbrich wasn’t any guiltier than David Rossi or Sharon Rossi or Bobby J.
“Truth hurts sometimes,” Ulbrich said philosophically. “So where do you go from here, Fallon?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where to go or what the hell to think. I just keep stumbling into dead ends.”
“Maybe you need some help.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Professional help. My kind.”
Fallon considered it, but only briefly. Even with better resources, what could Ulbrich do that he hadn’t already done or couldn’t do himself? Something in the long run, maybe, but he needed answers now. Besides, it would mean telling him the whole story. All confiding in Ulbrich would accomplish was to put himself into greater jeopardy.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“If it’s because you’re low on money, we can work something out.”
“Money’s not an issue. I’ve got to see this through on my own.”
Fallon slid out of the booth, started to turn away.
Ulbrich said, “Wait a minute.” And when Fallon leaned down, “I don’t know that this’ll help you much, but you can have it for what it’s worth. I had the feeling Casey Dunbar was holding something back when she hired me. Hiding something, maybe.”
“Such as what?”
“I don’t know. Just an impression I got when we were talking about Spicer and the kid. I can read people pretty well—one of the reasons I’m good at what I do.”
“Lying to you?”
“Not exactly. Just not giving me the whole story, leaving out details that I should’ve been told. You didn’t get the same feeling from her?”
“No,” Fallon admitted, “I didn’t.”
“Probably because you wanted to believe her. That’s the difference between the personal and professional perspective.” Ulbrich lifted his fresh Guinness. “Luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll need it.”
THREE
NOW HE HAD SOMETHING else to think about. Had Casey kept something important from Ulbrich, something that might have a bearing on Spicer’s death and her and Kevin’s disappearance? If so, then it was likely she’d withheld the same information from him too. Her account of her life and troubles with Spicer had seemed straightforward enough, and nothing he’d found out so far had contradicted it. But he didn’t really know her. And as Ulbrich had said, he’d wanted to believe her.
Where do you go from here, Fallon?
Good question, and it kept echoing inside his head as he walked back to where he’d parked the Jeep. No theories left that fit the facts as he knew them. No clear-cut course of action. Options, sure, but Ulbrich had had a phrase that fit them, too, all of them: grabbing at straws blowing by in the wind.
All right. The only thing he could do was to keep grabbing.
Avila Court ran parallel to Adams Avenue, not far from San Diego State University—a ten-minute drive from Ulbrich’s office building. Number 716 was an old-fashioned, Spanish-style bungalow court, the kind that had proliferated in southern California in the ’30s and ’40s but that you didn’t see much of anymore. There were eight stucco units in this one, each facing a central courtyard and separated from their nearest neighbors by grass strips and wooden fences.
The courtyard was empty when Fallon walked in. Casey’s bungalow was the second in from the street on the left, its stucco front wall age-pocked and in need of a fresh coat of whitewash. Some kind of flowering shrub grew tall in a planter box next to the front door, giving off a cloyingly sweet scent.
A stuffed-full mailbox told him he wouldn’t get an answer when he rang the bell. He rang it anyway, three times. Then he reached down to test the knob—another futile gesture.
Salsa music, not too loud, filtered out of one of the bungalows across the way. Its facing window wore a set of closed Venetian blinds, as did the windows on all of the other units except for one at the far end. The angle of the sun let him see through the glass to the room inside that one. Furniture shapes, but nobody moving around.
Casually, as if he belonged there, he took the accumulation of mail out of the box and shuffled through it. Catalogues, two bills, a handful of junk mail. No letters or postcards.
Between Casey’s bungalow and the neighbor on the right were a pair of gated areaways separated by a fence, where garbage cans and odds and ends could be stored. Still carrying the mail, Fallon moved over there and lifted the latch. The gate opened inward; he stepped through, shut it again behind him. Two bicycles, one a small boy’s, and a pair of garbage cans all but filled the narrow space. The wooden fence was seven feet tall, weathered but in decent repair, built to provide privacy because the bungalows were set so close together.
One window, small and frosted, overlooked the areaway. Bathroom window. On the way to it, he dropped the mail onto one of the cans. When he pushed upward on the frame, it gave an inch or so before binding up. Casey wasn’t one of the people who left their bathroom windows unlocked.
Not that it mattered. From the way the sash had moved, he knew it was locked with a simple lever arrangement hooked into a plate in the sill. The largest of the blades in his Swiss Army knife slid easily into the crack. He maneuvered the blade against the lever, wiggled and prodded until it released from the plate. With his left hand he held it balanced on the blade while he pushed the sash up with his right.
It made a creaking noise, loud enough in his ears to freeze him for a few seconds. Closing the knife, he sidled over to the gate. There was a thin gap between two of the boards, wide enough for a view of the courtyard. Still nobody around. He stayed there for a couple of minutes, watching and listening. No one came out of the other bungalows or into the court from the street.
Back to the window. Illegal trespass: one more risk, one more felony added to those he’d already committed—and the hell with worrying about it. He hoisted himself into the opening, ducked his head under the sash, corkscrewed his body until he had one leg and then the other inside.
The bathroom was just large enough for a stall shower, sink, toilet. The toilet was positioned directly below the window, its seat lowered and hidden inside a furry pink cover. He stepped down onto the linoleum floor, then out into a short hallway.
Two small bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining alcove, a living area with a gas-log fireplace—all the rooms small, almost cramped, and smelling faintly of dust and the mustiness of places closed up for more than a few days. The bungalow had come furnished—the bland sparseness of the pieces told him that—and Casey hadn’t made much of an effort to personalize it. But she kept a neat house. Everything in its place, the kitchen sink and counters scrubbed clean, the beds made, the books and other kid things in Kevin’s room put away.
Fallon started in the living room, with no idea of what he was looking for. Something, anything—new information, a fresh lead, another straw.
In one corner
was a secretary desk, a Dell PC and monitor perched on it. He turned the computer on, booted it up. Casey hadn’t installed a password; he was able to open her mailbox and document files. All of the E-mails she’d received during the past week were spam. And all that was stored on the hard drive were a tax file listing income and expenses, another file of PG&E online receipts, and a handful of video games. The Web sites she’d bookmarked told him nothing, either. Health sites dealing with asthma and women’s issues, YouTube, eBay, kid-related sites.
He made himself take his time going through the desk drawers and pigeonholes, putting whatever he looked at back where he’d found it. The usual paperwork: bills, receipts. A Book-of-the-Month Club flyer, a brochure from a youth camp. In one of the drawers was her checkbook, and a filled transaction register; the combined entries went back nearly six months. Rent, water and garbage, MasterCard, doctor, dentist, a day-care outfit that had probably looked after Kevin when he wasn’t in school and she was working. None of the checks had been written to private individuals.
He scanned through the deposits. On Friday of every week, she banked the salary and commissions she earned from Vernon Young Realty, noted as such in the register—all modest sums. But there were other deposits as well, regularly posted at the beginning of each month, each in the amount of $1,000. The source of that money wasn’t noted. He booted up the computer again, checked the tax file. No record of the monthly $1,000. So where did it come from and why wasn’t she listing it as income?
There was nothing else in the desk. Or in the rest of the living room; he opened every drawer, even lifted the cushions on the couch and two chairs and examined the backs of the pictures on the walls. The kitchen next. Drawers and cabinets, the refrigerator and its freezer compartment— nothing. He went from there into Casey’s bedroom.
The first thing that drew his attention was a silver-framed 8 × 10 photograph on the nightstand. Professionally done head-and-shoulders color portrait of Kevin, his pale hair neatly brushed, his mouth shaped into a shy smile. In this photo you could see that his eyes were light brown, with long, fine lashes. Fallon felt his chest constrict. The boy didn’t look anything like Timmy, really. But the longer he looked at Kevin’s likeness, the more it seemed to morph into Timmy’s.
A dog-eared paperback novel, a package of tissues, a tube of hand cream, and a pair of nail clippers were the only contents of the nightstand drawer. He turned to the mirrored dresser. On top was a teakwood jewelry box that contained a tray of earrings, two bracelets, a necklace, and a brooch, none of the pieces expensive. The dresser drawers held nothing but lingerie and folded shirts and T-shirts.
The closet. Dresses, pantsuits, blouses, slacks, jackets, and a pair of raincoats on hangers; a rack of shoes, an umbrella on the floor; some boxes on the shelf above. All the clothing pockets were empty. He took the boxes down one by one. Some kind of fancy gown in the first, baby clothes in the second. The third contained mementoes, most relating to Kevin—a gold-plated baby spoon, a wallet of baby photos, a lock of fine blond hair. None of the other items meant anything to him, except for a woman’s plain gold wedding band without an inscription. He wondered fleetingly why she’d kept it. Not for sentimental reasons, not the way she felt about Court Spicer.
In the bathroom he scanned the contents of the medicine cabinet. The usual over-the-counter medicines and first-aid items, a prescription vial of Ambien, a packet of birth-control pills, an asthma inhaler.
Kevin’s bedroom. Fantasy books, a Nintendo Game Boy, a stuffed tiger with a torn ear, a poster illustration from one of the Harry Potter novels. The boy’s clothing neatly put away in his dresser and closet. Everything in place, awaiting his return.
Fallon went out of there, hesitated, then on impulse stepped into Casey’s bedroom again. He stood sweating in the stuffy air, looking around. He wasn’t sure why—just a vague feeling that he’d missed something the first time. Under the bed? He dropped to all fours, lifted the bedskirt to peer beneath. The only things on the carpet were a pair of skeletal dust mice.
When he straightened, his gaze was on the bureau—on the teakwood jewelry box. Its size registered on him for the first time: twelve inches wide, eight or nine inches deep. He opened the lid again. The tray with the earrings and other pieces was only a couple of inches deep, which meant another six inches or so of space. It took a little effort to lift the tray out; there was a fingertip catch that you couldn’t see unless you put an eye down close to it. And underneath— A ribbon-tied sheaf of handwritten notes, a wallet-sized photo album, two small jewelry cases. Casey’s secret stash, hidden away in the one place where a small boy was least likely to stumble across them.
Fallon opened the cases first, both of which bore Tiffany’s labels. Their velvet-lined innards were empty, the expensive jewelry they’d contained hocked or sold to finance Sam Ulbrich’s investigation. Presents from Spicer, bought with the blackmail money from David Rossi. That was what he thought until he read through the bundled notes, looked at the photos.
Those told a different story. The true story about the source of the jewelry, and a lot of other things too.
They told him what she’d withheld from Ulbrich and from him—some of it, anyway. Deliberate lies of omission that had led him in all the wrong directions and jeopardized his freedom.
They told him who might be responsible for Spicer’s death.
They told him the probable reason for her and Kevin’s disappearance, and how he could go about finding them now.
The notes were all brief, written in a precise, backslanted male hand, some containing promises and sexual innuendo. Only a few were dated; the earliest was October 2000. All were signed with a single initial. The color snapshots were of a lean, handsome man in his forties, of Casey, of the two of them together. Just them, nobody else. Several had been taken around a garden swimming pool with rows of palm trees in the background; in one of those, she’d struck a provocative pose wearing only a pair of bikini swim pants. Fallon took that one out of its glassine envelope. Written in purple ink on the back, in a different hand from the letters—Casey’s hand—was “V. and me, Indio, 7/03.”
V. The same initial that was on the notes.
V for Vernon. Vernon Young.
She’d been having an ongoing affair with her boss that dated back a long time before her divorce from Court Spicer.
FOUR
WERNON YOUNG REALTY WAS a successful operation, housed in its own stone-and-glass building in an upscale neighborhood near Mission Bay. Eight desks arranged behind a gated counter laden with brochures, flyers, and business cards. Five of the desks were staffed when Fallon walked in, the sales reps, three men and two women, all busy on phones and computers. None of the men was the lean, handsome type in Casey’s photo collection.
Fallon said to the receptionist, a young woman with red hair, blue eyes, and a white smile, “I’d like to see Vernon Young.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Young is out of the office today.”
“Hasn’t been in all week, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t. He’s away on a personal matter.”
“Where can I reach him? It’s important.”
“I’m afraid you can’t. He’s not available.”
“Not even by phone?”
“Not at all. If it has to do with a property, perhaps one of our agents can—”
“I need to speak to Mr. Young personally. I left a message for him yesterday, but he didn’t get back to me. Has he called in for his messages?”
“No. No, he hasn’t. I’m sure he’ll be in touch soon, Mr.—?”
“Jablonsky. When do you expect him back in the office?”
“I really don’t know. Perhaps tomorrow or Friday. Would you care to leave another message?”
“No. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Casey Dunbar, either?”
“Why, no. Ms. Dunbar has been on vacation the past week.”
Vacation. Sure.
Like the one he’d been on since last
Friday.
The woman who answered the phone at the Young home sounded middle-aged, tired, and not overly bright. “Mr. Young’s not here. Neither is the missus, but she’ll be back pretty soon.”
“Who am I talking to?”
“Mrs. Reilly. I’m the cleaning woman.”
“Does Mrs. Young know where her husband can be reached, Mrs. Reilly? It’s important that I talk to him. I stopped by his office, but they said they don’t know where he is.”
“I’m sure I don’t know either. You’ll have to ask the missus.”
“How soon will she be back?”
“She said around three. She’s at the hairdresser’s.”
Three o’clock. Close on two-thirty now. Another thirty or forty minutes of downtime.
He said, “I’ll come by around three, then. What’s the address there?”
“The address?”
“I’ve only been to the house once, two years ago, and I don’t remember the street or number.”
“Well . . .”
“It’s best if I see Mrs. Young in person. It could mean a big sale for her husband’s company.”
“It could?” the woman said, but not as if she cared. “Well, I guess it’s okay then. One two five five nine Wildwood, San Pasqual Valley. You know, where they had them bad fires last year.”
Fallon remembered “them bad fires.” They’d been all over the media a year ago this month. Four of them in San Diego County, the two worst in Poway south of Escondido and San Pasqual Valley in the northeast corner of the city. Over 400,000 acres burned, more than a thousand homes destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people evacuated into Qualcomm Stadium and other shelters. The scars were visible in the hills and canyons above the valley, irregular blackened swaths and patches where houses had once stood. New construction flourished in the area; he saw more than a dozen sites on his way up winding Wildwood Road.
He’d never quite understood the willingness of people to rebuild in the same area where a natural disaster had struck. Maybe they thought it couldn’t happen again. But this was wildfire country. The homes and the vegetation would grow thick again, the canyons would clog with dry brush, and all it would take to set it off again was another bolt of lightning or incident of human carelessness. One more reason why he preferred the desert. It had its natural dangers, sure, but if you knew what you were doing, you had some control over the risks they presented. In the remote, expensive firetraps in locations like this, you had little or none.
The Other Side of Silence Page 18