Bobby stood and had turned to leave when McClary’s phone rang. With a nod of thanks, Bobby backed out to give the man some privacy. But McClary held up his hand, signaling Bobby to wait.
“Yes, I did,” McClary said into the phone. “Yesterday evening. Sure.” Snatching a pen out of a desk caddy, McClary wrote down some information in sloppy cursive. “Thanks.” He hung up the phone and shook his head. “I’m really starting to hate coincidences.”
“What?” Bobby asked, his turn to be intrigued.
“A missing person report came in yesterday from one”— he paused to check his notes—“Liana Bekakos, bookkeeper-slash-receptionist for Kiriakoulis Plumbing. It seems the owner, Frank Kiriakoulis, never returned from his last job. The uniform who took the report assumed Frank decided to spend a long weekend in Atlantic City, blow off some steam.”
“Meaning Frank’s vehicle is missing as well?”
“White van, commercial plates,” McClary said, smiling like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “Kiriakoulis Plumbing painted on the side panels.”
“Either I’m slow,” Bobby said, “or you’ve got one hell of a hole card.”
“I put an alert in the system for anything else unusual related to the streets where we’ve had these bizarre accidents. And yesterday we had two fatalities on Lafferty Lane.”
“Guy burned on his sofa and the hoarder.”
“Care to guess the street address of Frank’s last job?”
“Find that van,” Bobby said, “maybe we find Mr. Chapeau.”
“Tie him to grand theft,” McClary said. “Possible kidnapping.”
Bobby suddenly looked solemn. “I’ve got a bad feeling Frank’s no longer among the living.”
“Look, I wasn’t hungry, okay?”
“I’m not criticizing, Dean,” Sam said. He was sitting in the passenger seat of the miraculously unscathed Monte Carlo, looking over the list of bus passengers Bobby had passed to them. “It’s commendable you gave up your last breakfast sausage to a feral cat.”
Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” faded and the classic rock station began a block of commercials. Dean lowered the volume on the radio.
“He’s not feral,” Dean said, bristling. “He’s got a name. Shadow.”
“Right.”
“He’s more like an outdoor cat,” Dean continued, frowning. “Look, Roy guilted me into it. We took over his house. We can’t let his damn cat starve.”
“I agree.”
“Fine,” Dean said. “Where to?”
“A twofer,” Sam said, tapping the list. “Janice Cummings and Felicia Akop rode the bus together. Both work at Salon Colette.”
He checked his map and relayed the directions to Dean.
Dean noticed a slight tremor in Sam’s hands.
“Everything okay in Sammy-land?”
Sam shot him a quick glance, then looked away, as if worried Dean might see something in his eyes. “I’m—fine. Fine.”
“Which you would say even if you weren’t?” Dean asked.
“No,” Sam replied. “Just the usual, you know. There’s a baseline …”
“A baseline of crazy?”
“Of stuff I need to deal with,” Sam said, “every day.”
“Your new normal?”
“Right,” Sam said with a hint of a smile. “This and that. I deal.”
“And that doesn’t change?” Dean asked. “Ever?”
“Sometimes it … catches me off guard.”
Sometimes Dean worried that Sam’s mental rollercoaster was one Lucifer ticket stub from flying off the rails. He couldn’t know the amount of crap Sam had to fight through each day to function without the benefit of a straightjacket and padded walls. He only knew what Sam told him. Fortunately, Sam seemed willing to admit to and discuss these mental battles. Maybe he couldn’t spare the effort required to maintain secrets while fighting for his daily dose of sanity.
“Don’t worry, Dean,” Sam said. “It’s under control.”
For now, Dean thought grimly. But for how much longer?
Ten minutes later, they stood in a beauty salon in a strip mall. Underneath “Salon Colette”, painted in broad gold cursive letters on the plate-glass windows, were the words “Walk-ins Welcome!”
The interior of the salon was functional, with a long rectangular floor plan. Open, mirrored hair styling stations lined either side, with hair dryers and shampoo sinks in the rear. A tall glass and chrome rack filled with hair care products separated the reception area from the cutting floor, but a half-dozen female customers and stylists were visible from the entrance. Hanging ferns spaced at irregular intervals and glamorous headshots of models with assorted hair styles were the only decorative touches.
The bottle-blonde receptionist looked up, startled, when Dean and Sam approached her desk. “Do you have, um, appointments?”
“Sign says walk-ins welcome,” Dean said.
“We’re not here for haircuts,” Sam explained.
“Right,” the receptionist said, visibly relieved. “We don’t get a lot of guys.”
Sam gave her their insurance adjusters cover story. “We have a few questions for”—Sam checked Bobby’s list— “Janice and Felicia.”
“Janice Cummings?” she asked, eyebrows rising. “That’s me.”
“Great,” Sam said. “And Felicia?”
Janice craned her neck. “She’s finishing up with a client.” Speaking louder, she said, “Felicia, when you get a minute.” She returned her attention to the Winchesters. “How can I help?”
“It’s about the bus accident,” Dean said.
“Oh, my God,” Janice said. “That was awful. Scared the hell out of me.” She frowned, abashed, and lowered her voice. “I thought we were going to die. When we crashed through that place—the fitness center—I don’t know, I thought the ceiling might fall down or the bus would explode.”
“How about this guy?” Sam asked, showing her the grainy photo of the man in the bowler hat. “Was he on the bus?”
Janice took the photo, regarded it carefully, her brow creasing, then finally shook her head as she handed it back to Sam. “I can’t really see his face. But I would have remembered that outfit. Sorry.”
A tall brunette with frosted tips, wearing a white blouse and a short black skirt under a black hairdresser’s apron, approached them, scissors poised in her upraised hand. “What’s up, Jan—?” Then she noticed Dean and Sam in their suits and smiled. “You boys looking for a trim?” she asked provocatively. “I’m sure I could fit you into my schedule.”
“They’re here about the bus accident,” Janice explained.
“Oh.” The hairdresser’s smile evaporated. “That was a nightmare.”
“Felicia Akop?” Sam asked.
“The one and only,” she said. “Are you two cops? Because we already—”
“Insurance adjusters,” Dean interjected. “John and Tom Smith. Unrelated.”
“We were just asking Janice if she saw this man on the bus,” Sam said, showing her the picture.
Waste of time, Dean thought, they rode together.
Felicia nodded. “Oh, yeah, I remember that guy.”
“You do?” Janice looked surprised.
“He got on the stop before yours,” Felicia said to Janice. “The guy was huge, the bus creaked under his weight. He walked hunched over. As soon as he got on, he walked to the back of the bus. He must’ve gotten off before the accident.”
“He didn’t pass you on the way out?” Dean asked.
“He must’ve used the back door,” Felicia said. “It was closer to where he was sitting.”
“Did he … interact with the bus driver?” Sam asked.
“Other than paying his fare? No.”
“No bumping or jostling?”
“Nope,” Felicia said. “Never said a word to anyone that I recall.”
“Can you describe his face?” Dean asked. “Was there anything unusual about him?”
Feli
cia pursed her lips as she stared at the grainy photo. “I didn’t make eye contact. Something about him gave me the willies, you know what I mean?”
Sam nodded, waiting. Dean kept quiet too, hoping something would pop to the surface. The guy had walked right by her bus seat, an arm’s length away.
“The hat—a bowler—and the dark suit and cane. That’s kind of all I remember.” She closed her eyes, as if reliving the brief memory. Then she frowned. “His forehead, even with the hat …”
“What about his forehead?” Sam inquired.
“Frown lines,” she said, scrunching up her face. “Deep creases, like … furrows. I remember thinking he could be the ‘Before’ photo in a Botox ad. That’s it. It was a quick glance and then I looked away. He made me nervous, but I don’t know why. Maybe his size freaked me out. Does that help?”
“Maybe,” Sam said.
Dean couldn’t think how the information was meaningful beyond adding a slight detail to their physical description, but he kept quiet.
“Do you think he was responsible for the accident?” Janice asked.
“We’re looking into all possibilities,” Sam said. He turned to Felicia and said, “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” she responded, smiling broadly again. She reached into an apron pocket, produced a business card, and tucked it into the breast pocket of Sam’s jacket. “Any other questions you want to ask, anything at all, call me.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Okay. Thanks.”
Ryan came home after school to an empty house. His father wouldn’t be back from his construction job for a couple of hours, then he’d have a one- or two-hour pit stop before heading off to his second job on an office cleaning crew Ryan dropped his overstuffed backpack on the dining room table and tugged out his textbooks and notebooks. He took a cursory glance at his assignments, with little motivation to work on any of them, and noticed the top edge of his calculus exam poking out, returned to him today with a big fat red D that looked as if it had been scrawled with gusto by Mr. DeGraff. Beneath the damning grade, his teacher had written, “Work harder!” Snatching the exam out of the notebook pocket, Ryan crumpled it into a tight ball and tossed it toward the kitchen trashcan—and missed. Naturally.
His temples throbbed, another tension headache coming on. He had to remember not to clench his jaw so hard or he would crack his teeth. Calm down, he admonished himself. But controlling his stress level never came easily.
It didn’t matter how hard he worked, the calculus textbook and the practice exercises might as well have been hieroglyphics for all the sense they made to him. He had always managed Bs in math—geometry, algebra, trigonometry—with an occasional A in a marking period here and there. Now, he struggled to make sense of it. He’d read that you reach a limit on what your brain can learn. At some point, the brain refuses to comprehend something, no matter what you do. Calculus gave him headaches. The harder he tried to make sense of it, the worse the headaches became. He might as well have been allergic to it. Or maybe he was making excuses for having no interest in math anymore. He didn’t want to learn it, so it became too hard. He could move onto something more interesting. People got psychosomatic illnesses, imaginary illnesses that felt real to them. Maybe he was sabotaging himself.
His father was never home, and he had never known his mother. Sumiko would probably run off to a distant college. He would be all alone. Stupid and alone. Worthless. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Maybe life had no real meaning. Anyone who believed otherwise was kidding themself.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket, startling him. Normally, he switched it from vibrate to ring mode straight after school, but with all the excitement he had forgotten. A glance at the face and name on the display made him smile.
“Hey, Sumiko,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Want to come over?”
“No homework?”
“I finished it in study hall.”
“Lucky you,” he said, glaring at the stacked pages of his own assignments. He tried to remember where his father kept the matches. He’d like to burn the entire mound. Why not blow it off? It wasn’t like his father would care, or even notice.
“Too much work?”
“Nothing that can’t wait,” he said. “I’ll be over in ten.”
“Great,” she said. “See ya, big guy.”
“I’m not calling you ‘little lady’,” he said. She wanted that to be their thing. “Feels like a bad John Wayne impersonation.”
“John who now?”
“You’re hopeless,” he said, laughing.
Thirteen
Barbara Nice-Miller led Bobby to a seat in her living room after he explained he was with the FBI. She even offered him a cup of tea, which he declined in the unspoken interest of expediting the interview. She sat across from him with her Yorkie—“Little” Sebastian—in her lap, as if Bobby might need to interview the dog as well. The tiny dog had yipped at him from the moment he walked into the house until she picked him up. Then it settled down and watched him warily.
Maybe the dog knows my FBI credentials are fake.
“So, what do you want to know about that horrible day, Agent Willis?”
“Notice anything unusual?”
“I was talking to my little Sebastian during our morning walk,” she said, staring lovingly at the dog as she scratched it behind the ears. “At first I thought it was an explosion. Then I saw all the cars out of control and crashing into each other. I picked up little Sebastian and ran behind the bank sign, the one that shows the time and temperature. Sebastian was shaking like a leaf. I closed my eyes during all the explosions and wanted to scream. Actually, I might have screamed, a little. Not that I could hear myself.”
Bobby showed her the traffic cam photo of the man in the bowler hat. “Notice this man?”
“Oh, yes, the crazy man!”
“Crazy?”
“At first, I noticed him because he was dressed so formally,” she said. “He stood there the whole time. Of course, he didn’t have a little doggie to protect, did he, Mr. Sebastian?” Her voice climbed a few registers as she addressed the dog.
Bobby cleared his throat, hoping to redirect her attention to the other human in the room. “Crazy like he was fearless?”
“Or paralyzed with fear,” she said. “To be charitable. Maybe he was too ill to take cover.”
“Why would you think he was ill?”
“Before the accidents started, he was massaging his temples,” she said, “like he had a bad tension headache. My aunt Wilhelmina had migraines so bad she would throw up. Maybe the poor man was too sick to run.”
“And after the accident? Did you see him leave?”
“He must have felt better after the shock,” she said. “He walked away before the police could talk to him. I hung around to help—I took a first aid class fifteen years ago— but it was so awful … There was nothing I could do before the paramedics came.”
“Thanks for your time, ma’am.”
“You’re welcome,” she said as she walked him to the door. “Say goodbye to the nice FBI agent, Sebastian.”
The little dog resumed yapping at Bobby until he was back in his Chevelle.
His next stop was at the small storefront of Kiriakoulis Plumbing to talk to Liana Bekakos, who had reported her boss, Frank, missing after his last job on Thursday. She hadn’t witnessed anything in person, but he hoped she could shed some light on Frank’s habits.
She addressed him from the other side of the store’s counter, nervously twisting ringlets of her black hair between her thumb, index and middle fingers.
“No, Frank isn’t like that at all. He’s very responsible. He certainly wouldn’t run off to Atlantic City on the spur of the moment. He is the business. If he doesn’t do the work, it doesn’t get done. It’s his reputation. I’ve been calling customers to cancel. I don’t know what to do.”
“When was the last time you spoke to him?”
“He called to tell
me when he arrived at Kerry Gillard’s house on Lafferty, to do a new toilet installation,” she said. “Routine stuff.”
“Never called after?”
She shook her head. “Usually he calls on the road, if he’s stuck in traffic,” she said. “Otherwise, he’ll check in when he arrives at a job. I called his cell, but no answer. It just goes to voicemail. Same for his home number.”
“He got family? Wife? Kids?”
“He’s a widower,” she said. “His wife died five years ago. Breast cancer. There’re no children. He lives alone, but I have a spare key. I checked his home. There’s no sign of him.”
“You call this Kerry person?”
“Yes, when Frank was late for his next appointment,” she explained. “To check what time he’d left. She said he’d been gone for an hour. There was no sign of the van.” She had been speaking quickly, as if in a rush to get the facts out so the investigation could continue. “Do you think he’s been kidnapped?”
“It’s a possibility?”
“Who would do such a thing, and why? For ransom? He’s a working man. Not rich by any means. I would know, I’m the bookkeeper.”
“Wish I knew,” Bobby said sympathetically. He suspected Frank had been killed for his van, nothing more, but didn’t have the heart to tell her. Who was he to destroy any hope she harbored for his safe return? He could be wrong about Frank. It was certainly possible.
But not likely.
Dalton Rourke couldn’t go home until after school dismissal, so he hung out with Jimmy Ferrato at the basketball court behind the old Barkley Middle School. They were hidden from the street by the shuttered school in front and by the woods in back. A small pocket of sanity. They sat on the cracked court, tugging out tufts of grass that were trying to reclaim the space for Mother Nature.
“Got any weed?” Dalton asked.
“I wish,” Jimmy said. “Mom found my stash Saturday morning. I’ve been tapped out since then.”
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