by Blair Howard
“Hey, Laura,” I said. “You’re just in time to save his miserable skin, yet again. How the hell are you?”
“What do you think, Harry? I’m just peachy.” And then she leaned forward over the bar to show them to me. I shook my head. They really were amazing.
“Hello, Amanda,” she said, sliding her gaze to my right. “Big boy here treating you proper, I hope.”
“Better than I deserve.”
Laura turned again to look at me. Her gaze travelled down, paused a lot longer than was necessary, and then came back up. She looked me in the eye, smiled—she reminded me of hungry barracuda—and winked.
“Yeah, I’ll just bet he is.” She never took her eyes off me.
“Drinks, Laura,” I said. “Pour the damned drinks.” And she did. When she was done, I turned to Benny. “We need to talk,” I told him.
“You need to talk; I need you gone. Every time you come in here you cost me money. Five customers just left, and it’s down to you. What do you want this time?”
“Let’s go to your office. I need to be able to hear myself think.”
Benny’s office, if you could call it that, looked no different than it had the last time I’d been in it, and that was almost a year ago. An open pizza box on the desk held the remains of a half-eaten slice that could easily have been the same one I remembered. The desk was inches deep in papers, bills, delivery notes, newspapers—not an exaggeration. The iron bed under the window sagged in the middle, and the bedsheets were crumpled in a pile at one end; a large calico cat lay on top, contentedly licking its paws. Two more cats stared down at us from the top of a rusty file cabinet. The number of beer crates, soft drink crates, and cardboard boxes full of empty wine and liquor bottles stacked against the walls had increased two-fold. The place was a pigsty. A literal health hazard.
“Sit,” he said, as he flopped heavily into the chair behind his desk. “Tell me what you want and then get outta here. I got a bar to run.”
Amanda looked at the two folding metal chairs and shuddered—she did, she really did—and remained standing. I can’t say I blamed her.
I took the photos of Emily from my inside jacket pocket and laid them out in front of him.
“She was in here last Saturday night. What time did she come in, who was she with; what time did she leave, and who did she leave with?”
“Shit Harry. You ain’t asking for much.”
“Sarcasm, Benny, is what I don’t need. Just take a look and tell me.”
He picked up one of the photos, stared at it, spread the other three a little with his fingers, nodded again, then looked up at me. “Yeah she was here. I remember. There were five… no, six of ’em. Nice kids, but loud, and drunk. Four girls and two guys. They came in around ten thirty and left sometime after midnight. What time exactly, I don’t know. I don’t keep tabs on my clients.”
“Names, Benny.”
“Hell, I don’t know. I don’t even know her name. Who is she, by the way?”
“She’s Chief Johnston’s daughter, Emily, and she’s missing, so think. Give me something.”
“Whoa! Phoo-eee, the chief’s kid, huh? Emily? Yeah, I heard that name… and… Jess, I think, but that’s all.”
“You sure, Benny?”
“Yeah, Harry, I’m sure. You know how it is out there, especially late. Can’t hear much of anything.”
“The chief seems to think she left with a girl. Did you see them?”
“It wasn’t no girl; at least, not a kid like the rest of ’em. She had to be at least thirty-five, maybe more.”
“She was with them?”
“Nah. She was on her own. Sat most of the night at the far end of the bar, nursing her drinks. Tight-assed bitch. She and this… Emily, you said? They were eying each other most of the night. It was late. I didn’t see ’em get together, but I did see ’em leave.”
“She been in before?”
“Three, maybe four times over the last three months. Always on her own.”
“She meet anyone in the bar?”
“She always came in alone. Only hooked up once, and that was last Saturday. High dollar, that one. Class.”
“And you didn’t get a name?”
“Nope.”
“Would you recognize her if you saw her again, this woman?”
He nodded, “Yeah, I think so. Prob’ly. Yeah.”
“Did you see the car?”
“Yeah. It was parked out front, a late-model Merc SUV, white.”
“Anything else, Benny?”
He shook his head.
“How about Laura?”
“Maybe. She was here. You’ll have to ask her.”
“Okay. We’re done, for now. Would you mind asking Laura to join us, please?”
“Screw you, Starke…. Okay, okay!” He held up his hands as I reached for his neck. “I’ll send her back, jeez.”
“Hey, one more thing. Make copies of your security footage for me, say from nine until two. She’ll be on them, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.” And with that he shuffled on out the door.
“So, Harry. What can I do for you?” Barely twenty seconds later, Laura parked herself on the corner of Benny desk in front of me and folded her arms. I blinked. That was some pair of legs. Amanda smiled and dipped her head.
I handed Laura the photograph of Emily. “She was here last Saturday.”
She looked at it, nodded, said, “Yeah, and late. Left with a pickup. At least I think that’s what she was.”
“The pickup, you seen her before?”
“Yeah, she’s been in several times. Nice woman, friendly, well off, I should think, judging by the way she was dressed.”
“How was she dressed?” Amanda sked.
“Dark colored silvery cocktail dress, more metal than cloth. You know the kind of thing I mean, right?”
Amanda nodded.
“And a short, dark green jacket.”
“How did the two of them hook up, did you see?”
“Oh yeah. She sent the girl a drink, gin and tonic. I took it to her. Next minute, she, the girl, had joined her at the end of the bar and they had their heads together, talking, laughing.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of.”
It was at that point that Benny came back in and dropped a disk on the desk in front of me.
“Got ’em both on there. Got ’em all, all six of the kids. Good shots of the woman. Now I need Laura back behind the bar, and you gone.”
“Thanks, Laura,” I said. “You’d better do as he says.”
She slid off the edge of the desk. “Keep him honest, Amanda.” And she left.
I picked up the disk and slid it into my inside jacket pocket with the rest of the photos. “Benny, we’re not leaving just yet. I arranged to meet Kate in the bar. Oh, don’t worry,” I said as he opened his mouth to object, “we’ll stay out of the way. Thanks for the disk.”
Kate arrived less than thirty minutes later. She had security footage from four different locations. She dumped them on the table, sat, then turned and waved to get Laura’s attention.
Orange juice. She mouthed the words.
“So,” I said. “What did you find?”
“Not a whole lot. It was Saturday. Everywhere was busy. Nobody remembered seeing the girl. I’m sure she was out and about, though. There were plenty that were. The footage on those disks runs from six until two. We know she was here, so maybe we’ll get lucky. How about you?”
I filled her in on what we’d learned from Benny and Laura. By the time I’d finished it was almost eleven, and I’d had enough of the noise. We made arrangements to meet at my office the following morning and run the footage, and then we all headed home.
Chapter 4
I try not to work on weekends. That was one of the reasons I quit the PD in the first place: no time off, ever, so it seemed. That Saturday, however, was different; I was doing it for Emily. Those true crime shows on TV make much of th
e First Forty-Eight Hours, and it’s hard to argue with the tenet. Now, there we were, seven days since Emily had disappeared. Time had already run out for her. I was sure of it. But I could still hope.
Amanda and I were already there when Kate arrived at my office. Tim Clarke, my computer geek, and Bob Ryan, my second-in-command designate, arrived a few minutes later; Jacque, my PA, arrived a few minutes after them. A little small talk and a few minutes later we were all settled in the back office in front of the four huge flat-screen monitors—two over two—that were the focus of Tim’s world. A world that had just set me back more than eighty-five grand: a very fancy and very expensive Haswell dedicated private server, three Dell 7910 towers, and a whole bunch of extras I didn’t, and didn’t want to, understand.
Tim is a member of that rare breed of weirdo that lives only to sail the binary ocean. He’s been hacking since his dad bought him his first IBM PC back in 1998. He never got caught, although to hear him tell it he came close a couple of times. Now he’s reformed. At least I think he is. I found him in an Internet café less than a month after he’d dropped out of his second year of college; he’d only been seventeen.
I said he was geeky, and he is. Tall, skinny, less than 150 pounds even with his glasses on, he speaks in tongues, a language known only to himself. He’s also the busiest member of my staff, hence his new baby.
“So lemme see it,” he said, adjusting his seat with one hand and flapping his fingers at me with the other.
I handed him the first disk, the one we’d gotten from Benny Hinkle. He slipped it into one of the drives and opened the file.
“Okay, what am I looking for?” he asked as he scanned through the footage. No sound, but the quality was surprisingly good. Benny must have upgraded to HD cameras.
The time log running at the bottom of the image gave the date and time as 10/1/2016, 22:16, that would be ten-sixteen p.m. The footage ran slowly, jumping from one camera to another to give an almost 360-degree view of the bar. I saw a few familiar faces, but not the ones I was looking for.
“Stop,” I said, pointing at the screen. “That one, can you pull it up?”
He could, and he did.
It had to be her. The woman Emily had left with. She was seated at the far end of the bar on a stool, legs crossed at the knees, in a short silvery dress and green jacket, with dark brown hair and a drink in her hand. Just like Laura had described. It was hard to make out her features, though; the angle wasn’t quite right.
“Okay, Tim. Start it up again. See if we can get a better look at her.”
Five minutes later, we had her. She’d leaned back on the stool and turned her face toward the camera. She was obviously casing the room.
“Stop. That’s it. That’s what I need. Can you enlarge it, enhance it a little? That’s it. That’s good. Get me six copies of that, would you? Okay. Now let’s move things along a little. Fast forward to ten thirty and let it run.”
And there they were. Benny had been right. There were six of them, including Emily. They came bustling in, obviously talking loudly, laughing, and generally being the obnoxious bunch of students out on the town that they were.
“Okay, Tim. I need a half dozen sets of prints of those faces.” That took a few minutes.
“Okay, now let it run,” I said. “Let’s see what happens…. Can you speed it up a little? Whoa. Stop right there. Back up a little… there. Good.”
The screen froze. Emily had her back to the camera and was facing the woman, who was obviously making eyes at her: her chin was down, her eyebrows raised, and even from the high angle of the camera, I could see the tip of her tongue.
“That’s plain enough,” Kate said. “A bit in-your-face, in fact. I wonder if they know each other.”
“Okay, Tim. Let it run, but slowly. No, hell—not slow motion, real time, damn it.”
I heard Bob snigger. I ignored him. Damn, I wish I could do this shit myself.
The images continued to jump around, seemingly in random order, from one camera to another. We almost missed Laura when she delivered the drink to Emily, then turned and pointed to the woman at the end of the bar, and it jumped again just before she reacted. Five minutes later it jumped back again. The timestamp at the bottom of the image read 00:32, half past midnight, when we saw the woman beckon for Emily to join her.
“Damn,” I was frustrated. That kind of jumping around is for the birds. The next time the camera scanned that end of the bar, the two of them were together. The woman was still seated and Emily was standing close to her, well inside her personal space. It looked as if maybe their thighs were touching. Their heads were close together—talking, I assumed. And that was how they stayed, heads sometimes dipped, sometimes thrown back, laughing.
Finally one of the girls in the group looked around at Emily, shouted something, and beckoned for her to rejoin them. They were, so it seemed, about to leave. I looked at the timestamp: 01:07. Emily smiled, shook her head, then said something and waved a hand, indicating for them to go on without her. At least, that was what it looked like. And that was what they did. They left. Emily stayed with the woman. By now, they were discreetly holding hands.
It was 01:32 when the woman beckoned for Laura and paid the tab. They left the bar right after, the woman leading by perhaps a couple of steps. A few seconds later, the footage switched to an outside camera, just in time to catch the passenger door of a white Mercedes M-Class SUV closing. It was too late to see the passenger, but I had to assume it was Emily. Fortunately, the license plate was visible. The number was JEPSON2.
“So where the hell did they go?” I was asking myself more than the group, but I didn’t get an answer either way. “Run the plate, Tim. Let’s see who she is.”
It wasn’t a she. It wasn’t a he, either. It was a company: the Jepson Animal Clinic on Taft Highway, Signal Mountain.
“Well, I suppose that’s something,” I said. “Tim, I want you to run through the rest of these disks. You know what we’re looking for: anything with any of these people, especially the woman or Emily. Questions?”
“Er… no, sir.”
“Good. Call me if you find anything. We’ll be in the conference room.”
“So,” I said, after everyone had refilled their coffee cups and we were seated at the table. “Anybody have any thoughts or comments?”
“She’s gay, right?” Bob asked, his voice a low growl.
Bob Ryan is a quiet man, most of the time, and deceptively easygoing. He’s my lead investigator, been with me almost since the first day I opened the agency. Like me, he’s an ex-cop—Chicago PD. Also like me, he’s six foot two, but there the similarities end. He’s an ex-marine and a lot heavier than I am: 240 pounds, all of it solid muscle. He carries a Sig Sauer, 1911 compact .45, but he also has a fondness for baseball bats. He’s quiet, dedicated, and not someone you’d want to screw around with.
His question didn’t surprise me. That Emily was gay had been obvious to anyone who watched the security footage, but I looked at Kate quizzically. She merely shrugged.
“Come on, Harry,” Bob said. “Anyone with half a brain can see it was a pickup, if not a damned prearranged date.”
“Well, yeah,” I said, grudgingly, “but keep it to yourself. Johnston doesn’t want it getting around.”
Bob nodded. “If she’s gay, I’d say it isn’t much of a secret. Not among her friends, at least.”
“Yeah, well. Let’s move on. Kate?”
“I’m thinking she already knew the woman,” she said, “and that the meeting was prearranged. It looks like a pickup, but if so, they got real close real soon, and that I don’t buy. The woman’s obviously well off. I’d say they’re probably on a beach somewhere having a good time. She’ll be back.”
“I dunno,” I said, shaking my head. “Johnston swears it’s not like her not to be in touch with her mother. It’s never happened before, he said.”
Amanda shook her head. “How old is she, twenty-two? Come on, Harry. You know h
ow kids are at that age, especially when they’re away from home at college.”
“If that were the case, she’d have her phone with her, and we’d be able to track it. Johnston says it’s still active and up at the school somewhere. Kids never go anywhere without their phones.”
That swept a gloomy cloud over our little gathering. We all knew time was running out—no, I had a bad feeling that it already had run out, and by the looks on their faces, so did the rest of my crew.
“There’s not much we can do today, it being the weekend, and tomorrow is Sunday. We need to find that woman and talk to those kids. Jacque. Give the Jepson Veterinary Clinic a call. I doubt you’ll get anyone, but it’s worth a try. Then try the college. We need to talk to her friends, professors, her councilors if she has them. I’d like to get started on it today, tomorrow at the latest. See what you can do.”
She left to make the calls, but was back just a few minutes later.
“Jepson’s is closed until Monday. I got their answering service. I did get a number for a Dr. Henry Jepson, but he’s not answering. The calls just go straight to voicemail. All I got at the college was a recorded message giving the office hours. We won’t be able to get through to them until after nine on Monday.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “That’s not good. What the hell…?” I looked at Kate, then Amanda. “We can’t wait that long. She’s been gone almost a week. We have to get moving.”
“Uh, you’re right,” Bob interrupted me. “She’s been gone too long, and whatever’s happened, if anything, probably happened within the first twenty-four hours. A day and a half more ain’t gonna make a difference.”
“So you say, but I can’t spend the rest of the weekend twiddling my damn thumbs. I’m going up there. Kate, you can go with me or not. Amanda, can you manage on your own this afternoon?”
Stupid question. Need to think before I open my mouth. Of course she can.
“We have an appointment to view the house on East Brow Road at three, but I can handle that myself.”
I nodded. “Sorry. I’ll call you later. Bob, what about you? There’s no point in all us of heading up there. I’ll see you here on Monday morning, unless something comes up. In which case, I’ll give you a call, okay?”