“What your friend plans to do is illegal, Pam.” Jo’s lips pursed and the radiating trouble lines made her look her age. “I urge you to consider other solutions.”
“Not me,” I said. “My friend is doing this for her boyfriend. A do-it-yourself witness protection program when the government can’t or won’t help.”
“I must warn you that I’m required to report illegal activity …”
I interrupted. “Jo, please, I’m planning nothing. I’m talking about feelings …” It hurt my teeth to say that word, so I switched to, “Over time, how would it affect my friend to abandon everything, including her identity, to protect her boyfriend.”
Jo hesitated, but I banked on her being curious enough to respond. Sure enough, she tapped her pad thoughtfully, her gaze shifting off me to a potted plant in the corner. “It would depend on many factors—the extent of her attachment to what she’s left, the depth of her commitment to her boyfriend, her acceptance of the situation, her ability to adapt to new circumstances.”
“If she has all that and can do all that, what would my life be like two years from now?”
Her attention sharpened on the personal pronoun, but she answered anyway. “You would grow accustomed to your new identity. What was most rooted in your life from before—mannerisms, goals, foibles—have returned to be integrated in what you have embraced in the new life—habits, friends, community and work.”
An old memory surfaced, whether a true or false one, I couldn’t say. “So my friend could be discovered by things she couldn’t let go?”
Jo studied me soberly. “Yes, Pam. Anyone can be found if you look hard enough.”
I thought about Louisiana bayous, the ashes of the Twin Towers, and the caves in Colorado where the disappeared remained missing. What would it take to beat the odds of the forever gone?
“Pam, let’s talk about what you’d be leaving behind.”
“Strictly academic, Jo. I’ve no plans to disappear.” I glanced at my watch, which Jo again automatically recorded.
I smiled. “Our time is up.”
Plans settled for the morrow and the neurologist calls
Aunt Ivy sat in the waiting room, and rose when she saw me. I frowned. “I thought Jimmy was picking me up.”
“Plans change.” She smiled enigmatically and took my arm. “How was the session?”
I fended off her attempts to distract me with pointed queries about why she was there till we arrived at her Camry. I saw her overnight bag in the backseat. She clicked my door open.
“If you won’t stay at my place, then I’ll stay at yours.” Her teeth gleamed in the thickening dusk. “The neighbor will watch the cat.”
I rolled my eyes. “The neurologist is sure to say I’m fine. You could be doing this for nothing.”
“Not nothing, dear. I’ve Dr Pepper and popcorn in the trunk, and two Humphrey Bogart movies in my purse. I’ve missed our movie nights.”
I pretended to sulk while Ivy drove the fifteen minutes to my place mostly because I needed quiet to think. Ivy never minded, her serenity filling the car, her thoughts on hymns or prayers or whatever occupied her during my silences. She gave me the space to pout or ponder or grow in wisdom.
After we parked her car in my guest spot, we crossed the street for fish taco take-out. After retrieving her baggage and movie snacks, we organized my condo for a guest. Ivy cleared the dining room table of my breakfast dishes and stacks of mail while I dumped sheets and towels in the wash for the spare room. No message from the neurologist and it was nearly seven. While she set the table, I slipped into my bedroom to confirm with Jimmy that I needed a driver in the morning.
Ivy’s house was always ready for guests, down to the soap on towels on freshly made beds and homemade muffins thawing on the counter for breakfast. Yet when I returned, she surveyed my cluttered house uncritically, moving a pile of newspapers off a chair to the floor, replacing a quart of milk long past its expiration date with one she brought for her morning coffee and muesli.
While eating our tacos, we talked about Charlie’s oldest daughter’s college trials. I’d have time later to strategize my trip to Temecula tomorrow. Ivy had firm rules about not talking during movies. Apparently it broke one of the Ten Commandments.
The landline phone rang as Humphrey Bogart stepped aboard the African Queen. I talked with my neurologist, aware of Ivy listening intently and the DVD paused on a close-up of Katherine Hepburn.
“No change from the last MRI.” I sat on the sofa with a triumphant bounce. “The doc said to up one of my medications, and I’m to see him again in a month but otherwise I can do everything I was doing before.”
“Oh, sweetie, that’s wonderful.” Ivy hugged me tightly, the television remote squeezed uncomfortably between us. The worries about yesterday’s fortuneteller fit dissolved as Ivy passed me the bowl of popcorn and quizzed me about what else the doctor said. I repeated everything I remembered, thinking about what the doctor hadn’t said. No change also meant no improvements since the last MRI. Medications could be changed, dosages altered to help, but I could seize again while talking about lost boys and hallucinating a Raggedy Ann. I could learn to curb impulses to solve missing person cases and break into houses. Or not.
Half listening to Ivy chatter about the blessings of modern medicine, I thought again about those who started a new life, without the burden of friends and families, still hoping the old life may be restored. High school physics teacher, commitment-phobic, rule-follower Pam Graff died in an event 17 months ago. The me that now walked around in her body had vastly changed.
While Ivy refilled our glasses with Dr Pepper, I realized I didn’t grieve much for the old Pam, didn’t hope much for her return. That woman lived for teaching atomic theory, wave-particle duality, quantum thermodynamics, and gravitational lensing. Probably a product of the brain damage that I now relished solving old crimes with the added benefits of lying and breaking laws. I liked that in the new me.
I passed the bowl of popcorn to Ivy as Bogart passed a kerchief to Hepburn. Today’s Pam Graff looked forward to whatever happened in Temecula tomorrow including danger, exposing ugly truths, and maybe finding Jackson Galon.
CHAPTER NINE
Fishing for answers in Temecula
“Really, Ms Graff?” Waiting outside my condo on a gloomy morning, Kirsten had traded her Sunset Boulevard hooker mini for a red satin geisha dress that slinked a few inches past her knees with interruptions of mid-thigh slits. Chopsticks secured a loose bun while stray black strands framed her carefully painted face of glittering yellow-green eye shadow and lips a shade of purple that should have been relegated to the non-visible spectrum. Seeing her shoes, I sighed. She wore sparkly gold, strappy four-inch platforms. If forced to flee a crime scene, I’d have to abandon her.
“Really, Kirsten.” I sat in the passenger seat of her mini Cooper. Her parents had more dollars than sense.
She slid into the driver seat. Even with the doctor’s okay to resume driving, I decided to retain Kirsten today. She’d be useful for recording possible interviews, to confirm reality versus hallucination, and serve as a distraction if I should need to escape.
Before she continued, I raised a hand. “Vice Principal Bettaker is giving you credit for today’s outing, so no complaints. I hear you’re also missing a midterm today.”
She started the car thoughtfully. “Yeah, and he called early enough that I hadn’t started studying for it either. Thanks for that.”
Words to warm a teacher’s heart. I punched the Temecula address into the GPS system as we headed for the freeway. Her ex-boyfriend Devlin drove loudly and for effect. Kirsten drove with James Bond panache, splitting lanes as if all of Europe’s criminal underworld followed.
Feeling surprisingly relaxed with an extra large latte and Andretti at the wheel, I sent long texts to my FBI agent brother Charlie and a longer email to Bobbi. I didn’t bother checking the legality of what I planned. I did leave a message on the home phone
for Ivy. No apology for borrowing her cell—my need trumped hers. She shouldn’t be taking calls on her day off anyway. In case things didn’t go well, I told her I’d be in contact with Charlie. Which wasn’t strictly true as I’d only told him where I wouldn’t be, leaving him to fill in the blanks.
We stopped twice—once to pick up salmon jerky and oranges at a stand outside Fontana and once for a baguette and olive oil in Old Town Temecula. As I stepped off the raised plank sidewalks of the latter, I saw Kirsten outside the saloon, a gold platform shoe tapping, mouthing, “Really?”
Between New Temecula and the sprawling vineyards, a small trailer park nestled in the foothills. As we crossed a cozy bridge curving sweetly over a man-made brook, I spotted a man sitting on a park bench beneath an ancient oak tree. Two fishing poles leaned next to him as he talked on a cell phone. On the other side of the parkway, a young boy splashed in the stream.
I remembered the fish bones in the backpack. “Drop me off here,” I said. Kirsten pulled onto a narrow verge next to the bridge. Before closing the door, I told her to continue to the address and park two trailers beyond it. Just to make certain, I added, “Do you see someone on the bench there and someone in the creek?”
An excellent reality-spotter, Kirsten scanned the area without questions. “On the bench next to two fishing poles, a man is talking on his phone. There’s a kid in the creek. A car approaching ahead. An old man picking up trash under the bridge.”
The car passed us without slowing. I skated a glance at the creek. I had missed the old man.
“Thanks,” I said. “I won’t be long.”
Using Kirsten’s car to block me from the man on the cell phone, I slid down the embankment to the creek, the tiger scar on my leg complaining. As her car disappeared into the wooded trailer park, I picked my way through the boulders to the boy.
A dog splashed between us, one of those creatures of little brain but an all-encompassing love of anything human. Grinning at me, its long hair dripping water, the dog crouched slightly, inviting me to play.
“Go away, doggy.” I flapped my hands nervously.
“He don’t bite,” the boy said. “Dad says he’s a terrible guard dog but a first rate fetcher of anything you don’t want.”
The boy didn’t seem brainwashed with stranger-danger fears, his expressive face as friendly and inviting as the dog’s. Not pacified by the child’s assurances, I stared warily at the dog. Fetcher of what? Shoes, fleas, rabies? The boy fished a pebble from the creek and tossed it upstream.
“Get it, Flash.” The dog leapt after it.
“Good name for a dog.” I remembered the dog collar in the backpack. “My name is Pam. What’s yours?”
“Colin,” he said and offered me a damp hand. Bingo.
I nodded to the bench across the parkway. “That your Dad?”
“Yep.” He resumed scrabbling in the stream. Plucking a tadpole from the water, he dropped it into a pickle jar full of water on the bank.
“Dinner tonight?” I pointed to the jar with a deadpan look.
He wrinkled his nose. “That’s diz-gusting. When Dad gets off the phone, we’re going fishing in Aswaga. Only he eats the fish. I’m having a grilled cheese samwich.”
“Your mom makes good grilled cheese?”
He ducked his head. “Don’t got a mom,” he mumbled.
As if I’d asked too many questions, which I supposed I had, he screwed the lid onto the jar and shouted for Flash. The dog dropped a pebble at my feet, and his tail wagged wildly.
“Time to go, son.”
I hadn’t heard the man approach, and I slewed around. He stared at me from the bridge with both suspicion and studied indifference. As Colin gathered his things, I scrambled up the embankment, the tiger scar on fire.
“Pam Graff.” I offered my hand. Not as well-mannered as his son, he ignored me.
“May I speak with you?” I asked as he reached down to pull Colin up the embankment. I casually started the small recorder in my pocket.
“Sorry.” A cap and his shaggy hair hid most of his face. He nudged the boy forward. “We need to be somewhere.”
“It’ll just take a moment, Mr. Galon,” I said.
He stalled on the bridge and slowly turned to stare at me with a dangerous mix of rage, fear, and despair.
“I won’t tell.” I tried for a reassuring smile.
He glanced down at the boy. “Stay with the poles. I won’t be long.”
He waited till Jackson scampered out of earshot and then turned on me. “What do you want?”
“I’m here to make sure Jackson is safe.”
“Who do you work for?” He stepped closer. Sunlight glinted on a filet knife sheathed at his belt.
Feeling thankful for the brain damage that blunted emotions, I answered readily, “No one. Just me and my driver are here today.”
“How did you find us?”
I debated whether I should tell him about breaking into his parents’ house but decided to keep it simple. Hoping to lower the tension, I sat on a boulder near the bridge.
“I’ve been thinking lately about disappearing,” I said. “Maybe under the guise of dying in an accident. Then I heard the story about your son’s abduction. It occurred to me that your own death earlier was fortuitous.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously.
“Where were you when the train exploded?” I asked.
“Home.” He exhaled, and his shoulders sagged. “I’d overslept. My mother woke me when she heard about the accident and called my phone. We both had the same thought. Me dying could open the door to my mother getting guardianship of Jackson.”
“Did your dad know that you weren’t dead?” I remembered the guilelessness of Durbin’s gaze and his mother avoiding my eyes.
He shook his head. “Step-dad. We figured it was best not tell him. He’s not the discreet sort.” He shot me a challenging look. “How did you know we were here?”
“I saw Jackson’s backpack at your mother’s house.”
He frowned. “How did you …?”
Since I wasn’t confessing to breaking into the house, I cut him off. “Your ex, Jackson’s mother, had been abusing him?” I thought about the child explaining his bruises by saying he’d fallen.
His eyes darkened. “Not her. Simon. He had a history of it. He likely killed Tracy’s brother.”
What little still worked in my brain, reset. Tracy Locksley hadn’t hit him, but the boyfriend and the father of her two-month-old baby had. A new piece of information.
“Simon was there when her brother went missing? How?” I suspected this, but couldn’t figure out how they’d met.
A flash of guilt crossed his face. “It was spring break my freshman year of college. A bunch of us decided to go rafting near Mesa Verde. We met Tracy working at her grandparent’s camp store. After Simon saw her and her kid brother, he seemed more interested in spending time with them than rafting.”
Remembering Bobbi’s police report, I said, “She was with a friend. I assumed it was a girl her age.”
Defensively, Nick said, “We weren’t much older than her. How were we supposed to know that Simon was a murderer? I didn’t even know about the other kids that had gone missing till after I rescued my son.” Under his breath, he said, “Everyone thought Simon the nicest guy they’d ever met. You would have, too.”
I decided not to school him about sociopaths, and how to tell pedophiles by their flat eyes, soft and inviting at the edges. Prison guards and policemen recognized predators by their eyes. So could teachers.
Needing to know why Nick had taken his son on the same day as my accident, I finally asked him the question that had brought me to Temecula. “Why did you take your son on April 4, 2012?”
He directed a somber gaze to the oak tree across the parkway where Jackson waved a fishing pole like a sword. “My mother called me the night before. Told me that Jax asked her for a door lock. Said he didn’t like the games Simon played with him after Tr
acy fell asleep.” His hands strayed to the filet knife. “The kid still has nightmares.”
“I bet.” But what did that have to do with my accident? I was still a physicist and too old to start believing in a random universe.
Restlessly, he moved away from the bridge. “We done here?”
“Did you know Tracy and Simon have a little girl?”
His eyes closed briefly. “Yeah, but what can I do? My son comes first.”
“She’s Jackson’s sister.”
“All the kids that went missing, I mean all the ones that Simon probably killed, were boys. She’ll be okay. And he can’t afford another kid to go missing on his watch.”
“You willing to bet her life on that?”
“What do you expect me to do?” he shouted.
Across the parkway, Jackson froze, his fishing pole sword lifted in a defensive parry. Even a hundred feet away, I could feel his fear.
“Nothing.”
Now it was his turn to freeze. “Nothing?” He seemed uncertain, bound by a father’s instinct to protect his son’s sister.
“I’ll take it from here.” I offered him a crooked smile. “You still got that boat hook? I can act like a pirate, too.”
He chuckled and then choked as if surprised by his mirth. “I only took the boat hook in case the babysitter had locked the gate. Just lucky that was all the kids remembered about me.”
Luck. Another word that frustrates scientists.
“You’d really kidnap the baby?” he asked.
“If it comes to it, I will.” I thought about me and Dante breaking into the Tustin apartment and smothered a grin. “I know you tried working within the system to rescue your son. I know despite everything you tried, you failed. I’ve got good contacts. I think we can get Simon for one of his priors.”
Jack Fell Down: Deluded Detective Book One (Deluded Detective Series 1) Page 6