by Dan Ames
Eventually, those words became the soundtrack to her thoughts. It was her movie, but the visitor had supplied the soundtrack.
One that kept playing on a loop, until the next visit.
Lamarr sat in the great room, a vacant look on her face. Her head was canted to one side, her shoulders raised unevenly. Even the pain didn’t seem to break through the fog.
She was wearing that same empty expression when the doorbell rang.
It jarred her.
Lamarr’s face registered surprise and then anxiety.
This hadn’t been covered. The doctor lived alone. His ex-wife had moved to Europe. No children. A housekeeper, yes, but the doctor had cancelled her services three days ago, as instructed.
There were supposed to be no visitors. Had there been any plan for this happening? Her mind played back the soundtrack and there was something that had been mentioned, but she struggled to remember what it was. That was how her brain worked, or more accurately, didn’t work since the accident. Since Jack Reacher had punched her in the side of the head and killed her. Lamarr remembered the expert talking in court about brain damage, but exactly what was said she couldn’t remember.
It was lost in the fog forever.
Replaced with the visitor’s words.
Lamarr sat, frozen. She remembered a home security system, with a viewable screen in the doctor’s office. She went there now.
The screens were dark so she tapped the keyboards on the doctor’s computer, and then found the remote that turned on the smaller television.
The screen came to life, and Lamarr found the security system on the computer. She clicked through the various screens until she got to the one that gave a view of the front door. She double-clicked it and the large image came onto the full-screen television on the wall.
Lamarr walked over to it to study it more closely.
There were two men standing at the door.
Police.
27
They landed in Milwaukee’s Mitchell Airport around noon, and headed down to Milwaukee’s Third Ward, a historic district. It was set just south of downtown, and used to be home to factories and warehouses. Decades ago a renovation began and soon the Third Ward was home to furniture stores, boutique art galleries and brew pubs. Once the businesses arrived, many of the old warehouses were converted to loft apartments.
It was one of these that belonged to Michele Chang. Pauling had found the woman’s home address via her databases and had decided to start there, even though she knew there would most likely be little to find.
Sometimes information in successful searches came from the most unlikely of sources, so while it was a gamble, Pauling decided to take the time and make the effort. It would only cost them an hour or so before they moved on to Chang’s place of work.
Tallon and Pauling had grabbed a rental car at the airport and within forty minutes arrived in front of Chang’s loft.
They parked, entered the building and took the elevator to the third floor. Chang’s loft was one of six units on the floor, and the last one at the end of the hall. She would have two balconies, one of them giving her a view of Lake Michigan.
They rang the bell but no one answered.
“I figured no one would be around, but I wanted to see where she lived,” Pauling explained to Tallon. They walked around the building, went to the office, but the office manager refused to open the apartment to them, which was perfectly understandable. He told them he didn’t really know anything about the residents, and even if he did there was no way he would share information.
They stood outside the loft and looked around the neighborhood.
“How much do you think these go for?” Tallon asked.
“The sign back there says $200k to $800k. Hers is a corner unit, top floor. Probably closer to the high end of that number.”
“The private detective business in Milwaukee must be pretty good,” he pointed out.
“Let’s go find out.”
They got back into the rental car and drove into downtown Milwaukee, to an office building off of Van Buren Avenue.
It was mid-afternoon by then and traffic was minimal.
“Not a bad little city,” Tallon said.
“First time here?” Pauling asked.
“Yep.”
“I’ve been here a couple times. Really nice in the summer. Not so much in the winter.”
They made their way to Chang’s office and went inside.
A receptionist looked up.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, we’re trying to get some information on Michele Chang,” Pauling said. “We know she’s missing and wondered if there was someone here we could talk to who might be able to give us some information.”
The receptionist took them at their word. “Yes, Doug Marrone can speak with you. May I tell him your names? And are you with law enforcement or…?”
“Lauren Pauling and Michael Tallon. We’re working with the FBI as consultants. I run a security firm in New York City.”
Pauling handed the woman one of her business cards and the receptionist spoke into her phone.
Moments later, a man appeared at a halfway off of the lobby. He had on jeans, a sport coat, and a Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap.
“This is about Michele?” he asked without preamble.
“Yes.”
“Have they found her?” he asked.
“No, I’m afraid not,” Pauling said. “Do you have time for some questions?”
“Sure, can I see some ID first?”
Pauling and Tallon showed their respective identification and Marrone led them back to his office, a corner deal with lots of windows and a nice view of the lake.
“I guess most importantly, was Michele working on anything that might put her in danger?” Pauling asked.
Marrone shook his head. “Not really. Michele and I started our investigative agency a decade ago, with a third partner named Keever. He was the one who got Michele involved in the case out in Mother’s Rest. But now, we do mostly corporate stuff, although we sometimes take on our own individual cases. There was one years ago Michele did that was downright gruesome.”
The one with Jack Reacher, Pauling thought.
“But not among her current cases?” Tallon asked.
Marrone shook his head. “She was doing a corporate gig. Some dude was making extra money by selling his company’s software secrets. But it wasn’t huge money, and the people involved weren’t criminal. White-collar crime.”
“How about personally? Was she in any kind of trouble?”
“No. She’s single, but not seeing anyone seriously and quite happy about it. Michele’s got a heart of gold, but she’s not naïve. You can’t be in our line of work.”
“What else can you tell us?”
“Nothing I haven’t already told the police and the FBI.”
“Did she ever mention a Jack Reacher?” Pauling asked.
“She did,” Marrone said, nodding. “Sounded like a bad-ass loner kind of guy. She liked him, though. Respected him. I don’t know what happened between them, but she was modest with her praise, but not with Reacher.”
They confirmed how long Chang had been missing, whether or not she had family in the area, and what the local news had discussed.
“You’re an investigator,” Tallon said. “What do you think happened? Where do you think she is?”
Marrone drummed his fingers on his desk.
“I’m trying to stay positive, but we’re way past the 24-hour rule.”
Pauling knew he was talking about the fact that if the victim in an abduction isn’t found within twenty-four hours, the odds of finding them alive worsen dramatically.
“I think someone grabbed her, but I don’t think it had anything to do with the cases we were working on,” Marrone ventured. “I think this was something else entirely. My guess is totally random. Or it would have to be something in her personal life, but I’m not buying that. I rea
lly think it’s something random. I’ve exhausted all other avenues and it’s the only conclusion I can come up with.”
They continued to talk and ask questions for another twenty minutes but nothing new was learned and Pauling got to her feet. She thanked Marrone for his help and gave him her business card.
Outside, Tallon asked, “What’s next?”
Pauling pointed her key fob at the rental car and hit unlock.
“Colorado,” she said.
28
Lamarr sat in silence, staring at the image of the two cops outside the front door.
This hadn’t been covered! her mind screamed at her.
Maybe the right thing to do was what she was doing; sitting quietly and not answering the door. What would they do? Break in? Why were they here? What was more suspicious? Not answering the door? Or answering?
She thought about the garage.
Was there a window?
Lamarr raced through the sequence of her arriving.
Yes, there was a window. A single back door to the garage had a window.
The cops could walk around, look in, and see the doctor’s vehicle. They would know he was home.
That means not answering the door would be more suspicious.
The doctor was home, why wasn’t he answering? The cops would ask themselves that, and not having an answer, would probably find a way in. If they came into the house, it was game over.
As she watched, Lamarr saw one of the cops reach up and squeeze a handheld radio attached to his shoulder. He tilted his head toward it and spoke into it. What was he saying? Calling for backup?
Now, she realized her imagination was getting the best of her, but she had to move.
She got up, raced into the kitchen and found an apron hanging on the back door of the pantry. Lamarr turned on a stovetop burner and was relieved to see it was a gas cooktop. That meant she could heat something up quickly. She dug out a frying pan, quietly, and put it on the stove. She splashed some olive oil and found a jar of crushed garlic in the refrigerator. She dumped a big glop of the garlic into the pan and within a minute it was sizzling and the odor of garlic was all around her.
That would be good. She was cooking, deep in thought, and that’s why she hadn’t heard the doorbell right away.
It was tough to get her mind to work quickly. That part of her mental ability had been greatly diminished since the ordeal and now, she felt the frustration at not being able to think things through.
Like, what would happen if they weren’t fooled?
What if they forced their way in and demanded to see the doctor? What could she do? Lamarr desperately cast around for a weapon and saw the butcher block knife set on the counter. She found one of the longer blades and tested its edge on her finger.
It drew blood.
That would be good.
She wafted some of the garlic smell toward her so it would seep into her clothing and her hair, then walked quickly to the door.
Her heart was beating quickly and pain was shooting up and down her neck. She tried to tilt her head so it was correct. She worried that the cops would think there was something wrong with her – there was – and come in to investigate.
She absolutely had to prevent that from happening.
Lamarr let out a long breath and went to the door.
29
“Hope and Despair, side by side,” Tallon pointed out. “Sounds like a poem by Lord Byron or something.”
Pauling glanced over at him. “Poetry? You?”
“Hey, I’m a Renaissance man. There once was a man from Nantucket…”
They had already passed through the town of Despair, Colorado, and had just entered the city limits of Hope. It was where Officer Vaughan had been until her disappearance.
Pauling wasn’t sure what she had expected, but for some reason she expected it to be a bigger and more populous area. This was a classic small town.
It amazed her the places Reacher found himself.
“So what happened here? This woman was tied to Reacher, too?”
Nothing was meant by the comment, but Pauling still knew that Tallon was aware of how it might sound. Hey, she was a mature woman. Days of being jealous over another woman and a man she had been intimate with were over. She was past all that. Of course, she knew Reacher had been with plenty of females. They were drawn to him, just like she had been.
“A guy in Despair had been running a military scam. The entire town was on his payroll. A drifter was killed and Reacher, always sticking up for the little guy, wanted to find out who killed him. He ended up taking down the whole town. The factory went out of business, and the town pretty much dried up.”
“And this Vaughan worked with him?”
“From what I read in the news stories online, she and Reacher worked together to bring the guy down. Of course, she was probably doing it in an official capacity and Reacher was doing his own thing, like always.”
“And now she’s missing. Just like Chang. And the others,” Tallon commented. “What a weird pattern.”
“If it is a pattern,” Pauling pointed out.
“Of course it’s a pattern.”
“What if it’s a pattern that’s really camouflage?”
Tallon nodded. “Always a possibility.”
Pauling turned onto Main Street and found Hope Police Department two blocks over, between the library and city hall.
They parked in a visitor space and went inside. A woman dressed in civilian clothes and with a headset and microphone glanced up.
“Could we speak with whoever’s in charge of the Vaughan disappearance?” Pauling asked.
“And you are…”
Pauling and Tallon each took out respective IDs. “I’m former FBI, asked to consult with them on the missing women. He’s my assistant.” The woman glanced up at Tallon. He smiled back at her.
“Let me see what the chief says. Have a seat.” She pointed with her chin toward waiting chairs on the other side of the room. Obviously, the woman didn’t want them listening to what she had to say.
Pauling sat and waited.
It was a classic, small-town police station. Mostly posters around the room dealing with safety and emergency procedures. There was an FBI’s Most Wanted poster near the door, but it looked several years old. That, or the guy had been a fugitive for that long.
No one came in or out of the station, and the room was totally silent.
Eventually, a door to their left opened and a stocky man with salt and pepper hair poked his head out.
“Come on back,” he said. He lead them to his office – complete with Ansel Adams black-and-white photographs of mountains, a big desk, and two chairs. The air smelled of cologne and coffee.
“Have you got news for me?” the man asked.
“Sir, what’s your name?” Pauling asked.
“Chief Jackson. You?”
“I’m Pauling, that’s Tallon. We’re–”
Jackson cut her off. “I hope you’ve got some information for me, because we’ve got nothing so far. We’re chasing down every lead we can, but so far, nothing substantive. The state police are helping us, too, but they’ve come up empty. Please tell me you have something.”
“I’m afraid the same. We’re looking at a pattern here.”
“The pattern no one at the FBI will tell me about?”
Pauling looked at him. He was a western type – rugged, clear blue eyes. Not afraid of confrontation, certainly not one to back down, but also not hoping for it.
“The reason they’re not telling you is because it wouldn’t be helpful. It’s nothing to do with Hope, your department, or what Vaughan was working on. It was something from her past that she shares with the others.”
Jackson nodded. “Okay. That’s more than what I had before.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Pauling asked. “Anything about Vaughan that you haven’t already shared with the FBI?”
“No ma’am. That case a few ye
ars back in Despair was the only big thing she was ever involved with. Heck, that was almost as big as when they caught the FBI agent who killed those women.”
Pauling remembered that. Julia Lamarr. A mindhunter at Quantico and an expert at hypnosis. She’d coached the women to swallow their tongues.
Another case that had involved Reacher.
Pauling felt a twinge of intuition. She needed to research that case. That was the one that had involved Agent Harper and she’d already studied the case files. But maybe she had missed something. According to her own rough timeline, Harper may have been the first one taken. Was that significant? Or not?
Maybe that was what she would do. Dig up as many case files as possible. Harper. Chang. Vaughan.
“What can you tell us about Vaughan?”
Jackson glowered at her. “One of the finest cops we’ve had. And as good a cop as she is, she’s an even better human being. Salt of the earth.”
His mouth trembled a little and Pauling wanted to ask him a question so he wouldn’t start crying in front of them.
“What about her personal life? Would there have been anyone who wanted to hurt her?”
“No, we’ve been through all of that already. She kept to herself. Her husband passed away less than a year ago and I think she was just getting used to that idea. She worked hard, took care of her house, and that’s about it.”
“Would there have been anyone interested in harming her from the case she worked on with Reacher?”
Jackson shook his head. “That stuff in Despair destroyed that town. Anyone who lived there, had been pretty much captive by Thurman. He was the guy who ran the plant there. Once he died and the plant blew up, that place became a ghost town. Fact is, people were glad it happened. And if someone wasn’t, they didn’t blame Vaughan. They probably put it on that Mr. Reacher. He beat up half the town over there, you know.”
Pauling nodded. Yes, that sounded like Reacher.
They quickly ran out of questions and after an exchange of business cards, she and Tallon left.