Goodbye Sister Disco

by James Patrick Hunt

  In front of the house, Murph said, “George. We’ve got the girl’s father on the phone. I think you need to talk to him.”

  Hastings followed Murph to the command post that had been set up after Hastings delivered his lecture to the young sergeant. Murph handed him a telephone.

  “This is Lieutenant Hastings.”

  “Lieutenant? You’re the one in charge there?”

  “Yes, sir. For the time being.”

  “This is Gene Penmark. I’m Cordelia’s father.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve received a telephone call from a man who says he has my daughter.”

  SIX

  Before he hooked up with Lexie, Gene Penmark had never attended a society event in his life. He did not own a tuxedo. Indeed, he thought he may have worn one to his high school prom, but that had been a long time ago. Gene was like that: brilliant in so many ways, ignorant in others. His had been a world of semiconductors and software, microchips and processors, not art or wine or people. For Lexie, he was a work in progress.

  Gene Penmark was married to a woman named Adele when he’d met Lexie Lacquere. Lexie had called him to set up an interview for Channel 9. They had talked for no more than an hour. But in that time, something had been awakened in Gene Penmark. He was not an experienced man. Adele had been his first lover and women had never taken an interest in him. But Lexie Lacquere had taken an interest. At least, he thought so. She was the one who had taken the initiative. She was the one who had asked him out to dinner. Within a few months, he divorced Adele and, as soon as the law allowed, married Lexie Lacquere.

  Eight years since and he owned a tuxedo now. An Armani. And he actually seemed to like mixing at the social events. He told Lexie he could not have done it without her.

  Tonight they were at the Carpenter home in the Kingsbury section of St. Louis. A three-story mansion near the old Pulitzer house. Jo Carpenter and Lexie were cochairs of the Light Opera of St. Louis. They were a contrast: Jo, fifty-five and looking it, wearing a conservative gray dress with a black satin wrap around her zaftig figure. Lexie, narrow at the waist, her high, artificial breasts flattered by the maroon strapless dress she wore, shoulders tanned and healthy-looking. Feeling good at forty-one, she was. Jo Carpenter was from that social set people called “old money,” such as it existed in St. Louis these days. Old money was not in Lexie Penmark’s pedigree. Not by a sight.

  But she was learning. Indeed, she was not surprised when a guest tipped her off that Jo’s toast earlier in the evening—“Let’s be frivolous tonight”—had been stolen from someone else. Lexie refrained from saying I’m not surprised or something else damaging. Her satisfied smile said enough, she thought.

  The party was pleasant, though. The wine was sipped, the catered food nibbled. Guests stood and talked and mingled and behaved more or less as they were expected to. The Glenns were the Glenns. The Harrises were the Harrises. The Carlsons were the Carlsons. Congressman Hirsch hit on a doctor’s wife who was roughly half his age. Pam Willits drank too much and started telling people her first husband was gay, so she knew what she was talking about. Ray Wharton was becoming irritated because none of the conservatives at the party would take his “impeach Bush” bait and give him a fight.

  Lexie Penmark enjoyed it all. It was a world she felt comfortable in. People smiling, laughing, talking. She did not think of it as work.

  She looked across the room at her husband. He was standing with three other men and a woman. He almost seemed comfortable talking with them. That was good. When she had first married him, he would follow her around at parties. Or expect her to remain with him at all times. As if he was afraid of being alone. She eventually taught him that he would be okay on his own. That if he remained in one place, people would come up to him. It was the way things worked.

  He was laughing now. Ugh, Lexie thought. His teeth. Or rather, the set of his jaw. It never looked good when he laughed. It was not flattering to him. And it was probably not something you could have fixed; not a goofy jaw set. Perhaps, Lexie thought, it was better not to think about it.

  She saw the smile on his face distracted. His glance down now, as he reached into the pocket of his jacket.

  Oh, Jesus, he was answering his cell phone.

  Lexie had told him not to bring the phone to events like this. It’s not like you’re an ER physician, she had said. You’re not on call.

  But it was no use talking to him about things like that. Clichéd as it was, his first love was technology. Gadgets. Things. He was never really comfortable without them.

  His cell phone was next to his ear now. The people around him lowering their voices as he answered the call.

  Lexie saw his expression change.

  * * *

  “Mr. Penmark?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Gene Penmark?”

  “Yes,” Gene said, his expression hardening now. “How did you get this number?”

  “I got it from your daughter, Mr. Penmark. She’s here with me.”

  “My daughter? Who is this?”

  Gene was aware of his wife standing next to him now.

  The voice was that of a younger man. Not much older than thirty, if that. He said, “Don’t worry about my name. The important thing is, you believe that I have her. Here. I’ll let you speak to her. Briefly.”

  There was a pause. Gene Penmark looked at his wife as he heard a shuffle. Waited for the joke to end. A prank. Like the time someone had tried to throw a pie in his face when he gave a commencement speech at Ohio State.

  Then he heard her.

  “Dad, it’s me.”

  “Cordelia?”

  “Yes.”

  The voice was hers. But it was strained. Not necessarily anguished; it was too, well, slow for that.

  “Dad … they … they’ve got me.”

  “Cordy? Cordy.”

  Another pause.

  Then the young man on the phone again: “Okay, Gene, that’s enough for now. Notice a little slur in her speech? We’ve given her a little something to help calm her down. Nothing too harsh, just a little tranquilizer. She’s been through a lot, you see. Have you seen the news?”

  “The news?”

  “Oh, well, I guess you haven’t. Well, when you do, you’ll understand what I mean. But for now, you understand that we have her.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You don’t—? Gene, what is the matter with you? Are you so enmeshed in your technology, you can’t believe your own ears? That was your daughter you just spoke to.”

  “Maybe.”

  There was a silence.

  Gene said, “Hello?”

  “Yes, I’m still here, Gene. You’re making things harder.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will,” the man said.

  SEVEN

  Penmark told Hastings about the conversation he’d had with the young man on the telephone. He told Hastings that he hadn’t taken it very seriously until he got home and saw on the news that Tom Myers had been murdered. Penmark said, “I remember meeting him.”

  Hastings said, “You’re home now?”

  “Yes,” Penmark said. “I’m here with my wife.”

  Hastings looked at his watch. After midnight now. They weren’t done with investigating this scene yet. Rhodes and others were still interviewing witnesses and the young man’s body was still on the ground. Hastings estimated that they would be here when the sun came up. But then, this call changed things.

  Hastings said, “You think it’s someone trying to be funny?”

  “Well, I’m not sure. I may or may not have heard my daughter.”

  “You mean, on the phone?”

  “Yes.”

  Christ, Hastings thought. The man seemed awful nonchalant about it. Hastings said, “I think we need to talk about this.”

  “Okay.”

  “No, I mean, in person.”

  Hastings heard the man sigh. “Wel
l, it’s late and I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”

  “Well, Mr. Penmark, I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist. This is a homicide investigation. Perhaps your daughter’s been abducted as well.”

  “Oh. Well, all right. Do you know my address?”

  Now how the hell would I know that? Hastings thought. He said, “No, sir, I don’t. Could you tell me?”

  * * *

  Klosterman gestured to the forensic investigators behind them, picking at things with their tools and tagging items for evidence. The St. Louis CSI guys. Klosterman had said before that if it were like the TV show, the detectives could just go home and rest once the technicians showed up to solve the crime, watch slow-motion film later on how the pieces explained precisely what happened. Would that it were so easy. They could match DNA with a donor, if an individual was suspected. But there was no O.J. to suspect here and the only bloodstains they’d found belonged to the young lawyer.

  What they didn’t have, Klosterman said, was witnesses. No one who saw people shoot the poor kid and drag away the girl. They had no description of a vehicle. They had very little.

  Hastings stood in the dark with Murph as Klosterman summed things up as best he could. Murph had gotten a cup of coffee somewhere and there was steam coming out of the top.

  Murph said to Hastings, “What about the girl’s father?”

  “It’s a lead,” Hastings said. “He got a call from someone claiming to have her. I have to go talk to him.”

  Klosterman said, “So it is a kidnapping?”

  “It may be.” Hastings said, “Can you take over here?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m going to take Murph with me, if you can spare him.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got Howard here. And some county guys to help out.”

  Hastings looked out amid all the emergency vehicles until he found his Jaguar.

  “Shit,” he said, “I’m blocked in.” He said to Murph, “I guess we’re taking your car.”

  * * *

  They were going west on Litzinger Road. The road twisting and narrow; at times, Murph had to slow the Chevy to twenty to make right-angle turns.

  Murph said, “You know, this is the only road through this area.”

  Hastings said, “Yeah?”

  “So … after the shooter killed Myers, they had to go down this. One way or the other.”

  “Yeah. It’s something to think about.”

  “It’s something,” Murph said. Though he didn’t seem optimistic about it. If nothing came about, they would canvass the homeowners along the street and ask them if they’d seen someone driving a car that, what, “looked suspicious”? In the dark on an unlighted street, through the trees. Shit.

  Murph said, “This is unusual.”

  “What?” Hastings said. “A murder in Ladue?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ladue, Scarsdale, Beverly Hills. Places where people didn’t have to think about gangsters, street corner drug feuds, prostitutes, pimps, or Saturday-night-special gunfire interfering with cable television. Clean, well-kept places with grounds as opposed to front and back yards.

  Detective Tim Murphy had grown up a million miles away, in a part of St. Louis known as Dogtown. Though he was conscious that his circumstances had been limited, it had never occurred to him that his childhood was deprived or even that rough. He remembered seeing some movie with Susan Sarandon playing a Dogtown hoosier who has an affair with a James Spader character who was supposed to have been West County rich. He thought the movie was ridiculous and he made a point of telling his wife, a Chicago girl, that he’d spent his entire childhood in Dogtown and had never once heard any woman or man say “cotton-pickin’.” His wife responded that St. Louis did seem to cling to its class distinctions though, didn’t it? And Murph rolled his eyes in reply.

  Lieutenant George Hastings had grown up in a small town in Nebraska. From early adolescence, he had been more or less wanting to get out. He did not consider himself much of a scholar or a thinking person. But he was a good athlete and his hope was that baseball would move him out of the heartland.

  He was a good first baseman. Not good enough to get a scholarship to either of the Oklahoma teams or the many in Texas, but good enough to get one out of Saint Louis University. He arrived in St. Louis in the early 1980s driving a ’72 Buick Skylark. One of his earliest memories was viewing the Checkerboard Dome off Highway 40 and thinking it was the biggest sale barn he’d ever seen. A farm boy back then, but anxious to leave rural America behind. He had a good feeling then. A good feeling about living in a big city for the first time.

  Injuries in his second year of college pretty much sidelined any realistic expectations of a career in baseball. But he stayed in St. Louis anyway and enjoyed watching the Cardinals play in the World Series in 1985 and ’87. Graduated and tended bar for a year or so before enrolling in the police academy, giving it little thought at the time. A moderately successful career followed, with a failed marriage thrown in.

  Joe Klosterman was Hastings’s best friend. He thought Hastings was the best detective and the best overall law-enforcement officer he had ever worked with. When Hastings was passed over for the rank of captain in the last round of promotions, it angered Klosterman more than it did Hastings. It was the same way when Eileen left Hastings. Klosterman was a man who did not hate easily, but Eileen Hastings gave him pause. While Hastings seemed to accept her abandonment of him and her daughter with a certain understanding, Klosterman would spend perhaps too much time trashing the woman to his own wife.

  Anne Klosterman, a smart and wise woman, said to her husband, “He knew what he was doing when he married her. It was what he wanted.”

  “She lied to him.”

  “How do you know that? You don’t know him apart from the work.”

  “She left him for a guy with more money.”

  “Well, that was just a matter of time. Beyond being a babe, was there ever much to her? He knew what he was getting into.”

  Had George Hastings been privy to that conversation, he would have been inclined to agree with Anne. Though theirs was hardly an open arrangement, he had known that Eileen was hardly a safe bet for a stable marriage. But he had not thought her to be a shallow woman. They had shared an intimacy, a friendship that he could never quite explain to others. Not that he cared to. Eileen was selfish and unreliable, but she understood Hastings in a way few people did. She could make him laugh, too; open up a side of him that not many knew was there. It was easy to say that Eileen didn’t deserve his love. But then deserving had little to do with it.

  When Eileen left him, she told him that within a year he’d be grateful to her. Whether she meant it or was just performing was not something Hastings had spent a lot of time thinking about. It was what it was.

  But he wasn’t feeling very grateful tonight. He was thinking about the hurt on a little girl’s face when she realized that her mother was bailing on her. I hate Christmas, Hastings thought.

  “George?”

  Hastings acknowledged Murph.

  “Yeah?”

  “You look pretty beat. Do you want to stop at a convenience store, get a cup of coffee?”

  “No, that’s all right. Let’s just finish this.”

  “Do you really think it’s an abduction?”

  They were on I-64 now, heading west toward Chesterfield. The streets were still wet from yesterday’s snowfall.

  Hastings had let his mind drift from the kidnapped girl to his own domestic situation. Shitty, but he knew all cops did it. He said, “Yeah, I’m afraid it is.”

  “Do you know how much Penmark is worth?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “No. Not exactly. I know he’s one of the richest people in the country, though.” Murph said, “It must be nice.”

  “To be rich?”

  “Not to be rich, so much. But not to have to worry. About money, I mean.”

  If he’s the least bit human, Hastings thought, he’s
worrying tonight.

  The twin green truss bridges came into view, looming over the Missouri River. They crossed over. Fifteen minutes later they were on a twisting rural road. Murph used the brights when there was no oncoming traffic.

  They took another, smaller road off that one, which eventually led them to a security gate.

  An armed guard came out of a small booth. His uniform was green.

  Hastings leaned over to the driver’s side window.

  “Lieutenant Hastings. I’ve an appointment with Mr. Penmark.”

  The guard looked over the unmarked police car, going through a motion probably out of boredom as much as habit. Then he waved them through.

  Murph said, “God, you’d think we were going to NORAD.”

  Hastings was looking out the windows and not seeing anything but forest and road. He said, “Where does this guy live?”

  “I guess we just keep following the road.”

  Which they did. It twisted up, the bright lights of the car illuminating dark forest and dead leaves. Thick woods, though they were only a forty-minute drive from downtown.

  The trees cut away and the view changed to one of grounds and open sky. And then they saw the mansion. A massive, beige brick thing. Obviously built within the last few years, but a traditional design. They could see only the front. But they knew it was perched on a bluff overlooking the Missouri. In back, there were two Olympic-size pools put together to form a T, a screened eating pavilion, a gazebo, his and hers cabanas, and three guest bungalows.

  “Wow,” Murph said.

  EIGHT

  Lexie Penmark was telling them that she had met Chief Grassino before. At a fund-raiser earlier in the year. She told them that she thought he was doing a great job.

  The detectives nodded.

  They were sitting on a couch in the study. Lexie sat across from them on a smaller sofa. There were a lot of hardback books on the shelves in the room, their covers still on them. Hastings didn’t think they had been cracked.