Goodbye Sister Disco

by James Patrick Hunt

  But sometimes the unconscious mulls over things even when the conscious does not. So when Hastings walked into his office, Penmark was sad without fully knowing why.

  Penmark looked up at him and for a moment did not say anything.

  Then he said, “They’re going to kill her, aren’t they?”

  Hastings said, “We don’t know that.”

  “I don’t understand these people. They got their money. Why can’t they let her go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Penmark said, “I talked with her mother today. And that’s what I said to her: ‘I don’t know.’ She’s—inconsolable. Taking medication. I don’t know what to say to her. She was screaming at me and I didn’t know what to say to her. I’ve always known what to do. I’ve always had control over things. And I have no control over this. Adele thinks it’s my fault.”

  Hastings said, “Why is that?”

  Penmark shrugged. “The money, the success. She told me today that it’s all I’ve ever cared about. More than her, more than my children, more than Lexie. She told me that I don’t give a shit about Cordelia.”

  “She’s upset, Mr. Penmark.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Mr. Penmark, you spoke on a Nextel phone with the kidnapper. And those conversations were ones we couldn’t hear.”

  Penmark was looking down at his desk, disoriented and alone. “I told Agent Kubiak about it,” he said.

  “I know. I read his report. But I want you to tell me about it too.”

  Gene Penmark shrugged. He said, “He told me to get on the train. And then to leave the money on the train. And then to get off at Union Station.”

  “When you were on the train, did you recognize anyone?”

  Penmark shook his head.

  Hastings took out a photograph of the man who had tried to kill him in the bathroom. He put it in front of Penmark.

  “Did you see that man?”

  “I saw him on the train, I think. I never saw him before that.”

  Hastings pulled out a copy of the charcoal sketch of the man in the black raincoat. He said, “And him?”

  “I don’t remember seeing him on the train. I don’t think I do. I never saw him before. I know that.”

  “And you’re sure you’ve told us everything?”

  Gene Penmark lifted his head. “Yes,” he said. His face was contorting now, pain and anger registering. “What do you mean? You think I’m hiding something?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Take it easy, Mr. Penmark. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

  “You guys, it’s just a fucking job to you. But this is my family.”

  “I know. But I assure you that we’re doing everything we can.”

  “Then where is she? Where the hell is my daughter? You don’t even know. Lexie was right.”

  There was a pause.

  Then Hastings said, “Right about what, Mr. Penmark?”

  “She—she said that you guys don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Hastings sighed. “I think that’s Mr. Rook talking.”

  “So what? He couldn’t have done any worse than you guys.”

  “Mr. Penmark, I can’t tell you that I know how you feel, because I don’t. It’s not my daughter that’s been kidnapped. If it had been, I know I’d have trouble holding myself together. Respectfully, I don’t know why your wife felt it was necessary to hire Mr. Rook. But I assure you, he is not helping anybody. Now if he had some experience with kidnapping, I’d be happy to listen to him. But he doesn’t, so I’m not going to.”

  “He—”

  “We all want answers and solutions, Mr. Penmark. But he’s just second-guessing so he can look important. And it’s not helping. This is not the sort of thing you can solve by hiring your own police department.”

  Penmark was looking at his desk again, his thumbs up to his mouth.

  Hastings said, “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Penmark said.

  “Now, as you know, we disseminated copies of the sketch of the man on the train to the news media. And Agent Kubiak has also given them a photo of the man who attacked me. We don’t know their identities, but we’re hopeful that someone in the greater St. Louis area has seen them.”

  “So we wait?”

  “Well, partly.” Hastings said, “Now, I’ve been thinking that the person who did this knows you. Or at least knew something about you. Did you get that feeling during your dialogue with the kidnapper?”

  “Honestly? No.”

  “Hadn’t heard his voice before?”

  “No.”

  “You have staff at this house, yes?”

  “Yes. Agent Kubiak went over that with us.”

  “And drew no suspects, correct?”

  “Correct. Are you saying it was an inside job?”

  Not for the first time, Hastings noted that civilians liked to use crime terminology. Inside job. Five hundred large. And so forth.

  “Well,” Hastings said, “not exactly. What I mean is, the people who abducted Cordelia knew where she would be, what party she would be going to. Maybe even who she would be going with.”

  “Or they could have just followed her there.”

  Hastings made a gesture. “Yeah, they could’ve.”

  Penmark said, “Do you want to speak to my wife about it?”

  “Yeah, that might help.”

  “I’ll get her.”

  Penmark came back with her. When she came into the room, she looked at Hastings with a little bewilderment and some guarded hostility. But she had come without Rook and that was at least a partial victory.

  But the first thing she said when she sat down was, “Have I done something wrong?” Her tone clipped and a little surly.

  “No,” Hastings said. “I just wanted to check something out.”

  “Okay,” she said. Her legs were crossed.

  “I wanted to know if you knew what Cordelia’s plans were the night she was abducted.”

  “You want to know if I knew her plans?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I didn’t. I think I told you before we hadn’t seen her since the Tuesday before.”

  “You did. But did she call either one of you, or e-mail, to let you know where she would be that night?”

  Gene Penmark said, “She didn’t tell me.”

  Lexie said, “She didn’t tell me either.”

  Hastings said, “Would you happen to know if she told anyone?”

  They looked at each other and both shook their heads. Gene said, “She could have told any number of people. We honestly don’t know.”

  “She didn’t come here before going to the party?”

  Lexie said, “I guess she could have and we didn’t know about it. But I was back here by three and she wasn’t here then. And Gene got home around six that evening. He changed and we went to the dinner party.”

  Hastings said, “I know I’ve gone over this with you before, but I think that the people who kidnapped your daughter knew where she was going to be that night. That they knew her plans. The drop with you”—Hastings gestured to Gene Penmark—“that was very well planned. I’m sorry, but it was. If they planned that so well, they must have planned the initial abduction with the same care.”

  Lexie said, “You think they knew her?”

  “I don’t know,” Hastings said. “They knew who she was. Who she went to the party with. They knew who she’d leave with.”

  Lexie said, “What about the man you killed?”

  It surprised Hastings, the ex-reporter popping him with a question like that. And she asked it like a reporter too, her tone dispassionate and professional.

  Hastings said, “Excuse me?”

  “The man you killed at the train station,” she said. “Haven’t you gotten anything from that?”

  Hastings avoided eye contact with the victim’s father. “No,” he said.

  “If you ha
dn’t killed him,” Lexie Penmark said, “maybe he could have given us some information.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said. He would give the woman that.

  But it wasn’t enough. Lexie said, “Was saving yourself more important than saving her?”

  The woman was giving him something of a nasty smile now. Enough that he felt sorry for her husband. He could ask the husband if he could be alone with his wife so that he ask her what her fucking problem was. But then that would bother the husband, maybe even emasculate him, which was what probably what this woman wanted.

  Hastings said, “Mrs. Penmark, if I’d been killed, it wouldn’t have made your stepdaughter any more safe. Yesterday you asked me if I wanted to work for your husband’s company. I said no and you’ve been trying to undermine me ever since. Is there something behind this?”

  Her face flushed with anger and her expression was tight when she answered him. “No,” she said. “Are you accusing me of having something to do with her abduction?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Because if you are, I’ll—Gene, are you listening to this?”

  Gene Penmark’s mouth was open. “I, uh,—”

  But she was back on Hastings. “I happen to be on very good terms with the chief, Lieutenant. Very good terms. And I will be taking this up with him.”

  “That’s fine, Mrs. Penmark.”

  “You screw things up and you try to put it off on me by suggesting I, that I—for Christ’s sake, that I would have my own stepdaughter kidnapped.”

  “No, ma’am, you misunderstood me.”

  “You’re a cheap, second-rate bastard,” she said. She stood up and walked out.

  After she was gone, Hastings turned to Penmark. He still felt sorry for the man, his wife having put him in this position.

  He was relieved when Gene Penmark finally said something and put his fears to rest.

  Penmark said, “She offered you a job at my company?”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Hastings saw Lexie Penmark conferring with Rook as he walked out of the house, Lexie murmuring something to the security specialist, and Rook probably assuring her that yes, reporting him to the chief would be a good idea. Chief Grassino, a man Hastings respected, might or might not act on it, depending on how he felt at that moment. If he did act on it, Hastings would be questioned by his captain, Karen Brady, and he would have to sit and nod quietly as Karen would tell him about using appropriate social skills with people like Lexie Penmark. As if he had talked smack to her.

  Hastings didn’t suspect Lexie of anything except being a controller and a busybody and a heartless gold digger, none of which was a crime. It was she who had decided to create that dramatic scene back in the house—How dare you—and Hastings took a little comfort in knowing that when she did report him, she would exaggerate what happened and undermine her own credibility in so doing. He accused me of having Cordelia abducted. He didn’t enjoy lowering himself to having a dialogue with her, but he thought it was necessary to give her a little shove so she would stay out of his way. At least for a while. And as he walked to his car, he believed that he had acted with admirable restraint, because if he hadn’t been watching himself, he could have told her, Your stepdaughter may be dead.

  She could be dead right now. And if she was still alive, her time was limited. The kidnappers had not released her. Hours had passed since they’d gotten the money, and there still had been no word about the girl. They had a dead man at the medical examiner’s and they didn’t know who he was. They had a sketch of a man in a raincoat and they didn’t know who he was either. The dead man had come at Hastings with a knife with a determination that chilled even after he had been killed. Hastings believed he would have nightmares about that bathroom the next time he slept and maybe for a while after. A man damn near takes your life in combat and unless you’re a hard-bitten soldier you don’t forget it anytime soon. But that was for later. The concern now was that the Indian’s willingness to kill a cop extended to the people he was working with. That is, if he would be willing to kill a cop, his cohorts would be willing to kill a rich girl they had abducted. This was the reality that Lexie Penmark didn’t seem able to recognize. This was the dread that was slowly but surely overwhelming Gene Penmark. They had the money now and nothing would be able to stop them from doing it.

  But they had planned things, Hastings thought. They had planned out the drop. The drop had been thought out in advance and well executed. They had sent a man to pick up the money and another man to guard him. And Hastings, the expert crime solver, had not even known about the second man until the man tried to gut him with a knife. So more than one man was involved. Hastings wondered now about the man with the knife, wondered how long he had been the man’s prey. Was it on the train that the Indian had decided he would kill Hastings? Hastings the hunted, Hastings the prey without knowing it.

  Cordelia Penmark hadn’t known she was the prey either. Hadn’t known that she was being tracked.

  Hastings had done most of his hunting in Nebraska. He liked all of it, the rituals, the cold, the smell, the getting up at 4:00 A.M., the draw of the silent places. He had learned at a young age that a gun was a tool to be respected. He remembered some girl at college calling him an “animal assassin,” something he’d never heard back home. He read books about hunting too. Books about professional hunters who went after big game in Africa, India, and South America. Guys going after not deer but lions that if you missed your shot would turn around and come after you and tear your scalp off. Hastings had learned that for the hunter in Africa, it is motion that gives you away, not color.

  In the city, there was no long grass to hide in. Had the man who tracked Cordelia Penmark remained concealed? Did he keep his movements hidden?

  Hastings called Gabler on his cell phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Gabe, it’s George. Hey, I understand Cordelia has a roommate in her apartment in the loft district.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. One of our agents interviewed her. Didn’t turn up anything.”

  “What’s the girl’s name?”

  “Uh, can you hold on a minute?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hastings started the Jaguar. Let it warm. The sun was coming down now, the beginning of a cold night. Maybe Cordelia Penmark’s last. There were only a couple of days left until Christmas. Did the Penmarks celebrate it? Would there be a Christmas dinner at their home, with Cordelia, Lexie, Gene, and Edie?

  Then Gabler was back on the phone. “Yeah,” he said, “her name is Lynn Akre. She’s a student too, working on her master’s in speech pathology. You want her cell number?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  When Terrill awoke, Maggie was still next to him sleeping. He watched her for a few moments. Then he quietly slipped out of bed. He stepped out into the dark hallway and slowly closed the door behind him.

  “Hey.”

  Terrill jumped.

  “Jesus!”

  It was Lee.

  Terrill said, “What are you doing here?”

  She stood there in the dark, clad in gray corduroys and a dirty yellow T-shirt. Terrill noticed that she had lost weight. She said, “I’ve been walking around.”

  Terrill said, “Inside?”

  She shrugged.

  “You’re supposed to stay inside,” Terrill said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  She remained there in the dark, looking a bit like a ghost. Perhaps for the first time, Terrill felt uneasy around her.

  Terrill said, “Have you slept at all tonight?”

  “No.”

  “What about last night?”

  She shook her head.

  Terrill said, “When was the last time—”

  “I told you, don’t worry about it. What are you doing out here?”

  The sharpness in her voice was new to him.

  “I’m going to take a piss,” he said. “Okay?”

  She was staring at him now.

  S
hit, Terrill thought. She’s speeding. Walking around, not sleeping, getting hostile and weird. He had started giving her amphetamines a couple of weeks after they left Oregon. He and Maggie had started her out with acid; ten strips dissolving on her tongue, and when that was done they would suggest things to her. Tell her that she was beautiful and clean and try to put her in a different place. After she came down, she would tell them about her hallucinations. The bluish light at the top of her screen, square at first, but then widening out into an onion shape, fat on the sides, and then slimming back down to the base. She said that the onion was the earth, Greenland and Russia large at the top and Antarctica icy and clean and smooth at the bottom. She said it was beautiful at first, but then it became dark and black, the ocean not quite fluid, but gelatined, the continental masses between jagged and rocky. She said she was up there looking down on it and then she was down there herself; seeing herself, in this fucking country, this place, this desert … seeing herself curled up, coiled. She was naked and strong in this vision. She was feral and unbound. They told her, yes, she was wild and free and lovely and aware.

  But when she came down, she said she felt gross and dirty. And she was tired. So tired. Terrill started feeding her speed. She started out with a couple of pills a day. Then it was three. And in the weeks preceding the kidnapping, the daily dosage had been increased to seven. Though Terrill himself had not kept track.

  Now he said to her, “Hey.” His nice-guy tone. “You’re beautiful. You want to come with me?”

  “In the bathroom?”

  “Yeah. We can share a joint. It’s nice in there.”

  “Why don’t we go to my room?” Lee said.

  “Okay.”

  In her room, she grabbed at him in the darkness, her hands at his belt buckle, her mouth furious on his. He wasn’t ready for it. She had been a soft, timid lover their first few times. Saying his name a lot and giving out little ohs … that was before … now she was pulling him down on top of her, wrapping her legs around him, her tongue plunging into his mouth, animal-like, loud and passionate, saying dirty things between her kisses. Terrill feared that Maggie would hear them.