“You did great, son,” Charlie had reassured him. “You did great.”
Meagan was stirring now and rubbing her eyes. “I wanna go home, Daddy.”
“I know you do, sweetie. Soon.”
Charlie’s mind was whirling. What had Julie seen at the gas station that made her want to flee like that? And once somebody started chasing her, why would she have stopped and gotten out of the car? Was she protecting the kids? But from whom? And why didn’t she call 911? Or Charlie, for that matter? None of it made any sense.
The arrival of three people he took to be detectives offered some hope for clarity.
“Mr. Davis, I’m Detective Gerry Albez and this is Detective Reamer.” The one who spoke was a Hispanic man of about thirty-five, wearing a neatly pressed white shirt, a beige tie and khakis, his wavy black hair frozen into submission with hair gel.
“Cathy Ann Reamer,” the second detective said, shaking hands. She was older than Albez, with close-cropped prematurely white hair that gave her a somewhat grandmotherly quality.
Detective Reamer gestured toward the third person, a frumpily dressed black woman with pinched features and very long fingernails. “This is Jessica Mitchell from Social Services. She’s going to keep an eye on the kids for you.”
Charlie looked sharply at Detective Reamer.
“Standard procedure,” Reamer said. “We may get into some issues you wouldn’t want the children to hear.”
Charlie got a frigid feeling from Mitchell, particularly given the circumstances. Unlike the detectives, she had neither offered her hand nor met his eyes. But Charlie knew that the detectives were correct. This was standard procedure and there was going to be plenty to discuss that the children shouldn’t hear.
“It’ll just be a few minutes,” Charlie told his kids. “Give me a hug, huh, then go with this nice lady.”
Charlie watched them walk slowly away then disappear into a room at the end of the hallway. Collecting himself, he turned to the detectives.
“So what have you found out so far?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any forensic evidence at this point,” Albez said.
“And there are no witnesses at the cul-de-sac or the gas station?”
“Afraid not.” Albez gestured toward a door leading into a drab interview room. “If you wouldn’t mind . . .”
It was only as he stood that Charlie noticed the sign on the wall next to the interview room:
HOMICIDE UNIT.
Charlie knew that, like taking the children away, it was standard procedure for homicide detectives to follow up on disappearances. It was precautionary and bureaucratic: if a disappearance turned into a murder, there would be no need to shift to a new set of detectives. But that was hardly a consolation.
As Charlie walked toward the door, Reamer stood at the entrance to the room, holding it open. A simple enough gesture, but Charlie immediately read it for what it was: a command masquerading as a courtesy.
Albez patted the back of an uncushioned metal chair—“Have a seat”—and waited until Charlie obeyed. He crossed to the other side of the bolted-down desk and sat down opposite Charlie.
Detective Reamer did not sit. Instead she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, studying Charlie’s face. Her expression was pleasant enough, but there was a slightly unnerving quality to her gaze.
Albez fussed around with a notebook, crossed his legs, uncrossed his legs, clicked his pen and asked a few housekeeping questions—Julie’s full name, age, date of birth. Charlie did his best to remain patient, watching Albez dutifully record the data in his notebook. Jotting down the information in small, obscenely neat handwriting, Albez seemed very satisfied with his fastidiousness. “Now then . . .” He leaned forward, for the first time taking his eyes off the notebook. “You told one of the patrolmen that your wife just returned from New York.”
“That’s right.”
“Where she was visiting her sister?”
“Yes.”
“Rebecca.”
“Becca, yes. Rebecca Wingate-Rees.”
“Occupation?”
“She’s a real estate broker in Manhattan. Do you need her contact information?”
Albez hesitated, then slid a piece of paper toward Charlie. “Sure. That would be great.”
Charlie took a deep breath and gazed at Reamer. Her bland eyes held his. Charlie took Albez’s ballpoint pen, scribbled down Becca’s essentials, and handed the paper and pen back to Albez.
There was a long silence. Albez scooted his chair back, the legs screeching loudly on the tile floor, then crossed his hands over his chest.
“What?” Charlie said sharply.
Albez reached into his breast pocket and took out a folded piece of paper, which he set on the table. “Yeah . . . see we checked with the FAA. Your wife wasn’t in New York. She was in London.”
Charlie unfolded the paper and stared at it. It was a printed ticket record showing that Julie Davis had flown on a direct flight, British Airways 293, Heathrow to LAX, arriving last night at 10:05 p.m.. For a moment he imagined that maybe it was a case of mistaken identity, some other woman with the relatively generic name of Julie Davis. But it only took another second to disabuse himself of that appealing fantasy: all of Julie’s contact information was on the ticket record—street address, home phone, the whole bit.
Charlie felt the blood drain from his face. He’d called Becca’s apartment yesterday morning looking for Julie and Becca had told him point-blank that he’d barely missed her. Not only had Julie lied to him, but she’d apparently enlisted her sister as an alibi.
“Any idea what she was doing in London?” Albez asked.
Charlie pushed the paper back across the table, his fingers shaking slightly. “None.”
“Did you know your wife was lying to you?”
Charlie’s temper flashed. “Obviously, I wouldn’t have told you she was in New York if I knew she was in London!”
The room was silent.
After a moment, Reamer shifted almost imperceptibly and in a light, conversational tone, as if she was offering him a cup of coffee, asked, “She sleeping with somebody, Charlie?”
Charlie kept his voice even and soft. “No.”
Reamer shrugged apologetically. “Because we find that’s usually what’s going on when husbands and wives lie to each other.”
“Well that’s not what’s happening here,” Charlie insisted.
“Then how do you explain your wife jetting off to her old stomping grounds and using her sister to lie to you about it?”
Charlie searched for a reason that made any sense. But rather than offer some half-baked hypothesis that would only make him look more suspicious, he stuck to the truth. “I can’t,” he said.
“We already spoke to Rebecca in New York. She confirmed for us that your wife was seeing somebody. In London.”
Charlie felt his stomach drop.
“She said you called her apartment yesterday morning looking for your wife. She said you sounded suspicious.”
Charlie looked from one to the other. Was this just a bluff? Or was it possible Becca had actually told them that?
Albez glanced at Reamer.
“Seems as good a time as any,” she said, then hit the play button on a VCR. “This is off the security camera from the gas station on Norwalk.”
A grainy black-and-white image appeared on the television screen. It was a view from inside the mini-mart, several gas pumps visible through the front door.
After a moment a car drives up and stops. A woman gets out.
Even with the graininess of the video, Charlie instantly recognized her—
—the slim body, the way she brushes back a lock of her long black hair, the graceful economy of her motion. Unruffled as she opens the back door and takes Meagan out of the car.
The only sound as they watched was the soft hiss of the air conditioner. But the tiny black hole of Meagan’s mouth made it clear she was screaming.
Charlie’s breath caught. It was so entirely normal, so peaceful, so unmarred by any sense of impending trouble that it seemed impossible anything could have gone wrong after that.
Julie lifts Meagan into the car. The Donald Duck falls from her hand. Julie doesn’t see it. She grabs the pump. Leans one hip against the car, motionless, as the tank fills.
Charlie shifted in his seat, knowing from Ollie’s account what would be coming next.
A flare of light on the camera lens—headlights pulling into the station. Julie’s face turns, tracking the car as it crosses the lot. But the approaching vehicle is ominously out of frame. Her body stiffens. She scrambles back into the car. And tears away. The gas nozzle sprays fuel everywhere then lies limp on the asphalt.
Reamer paused the tape. “Somebody was following her.”
Charlie read her expression. “And you think that somebody was me.”
Reamer looked at him briefly, one eyebrow raised, as if to say, “You said it, not me.”
Charlie couldn’t believe this was happening—they were treating him as the prime suspect.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, “can’t you get an angle off the security cam? You can grab a license plate.”
“Whoever it was, they managed to avoid the cameras,” Albez said.
“Which means they were really smart,” added Reamer.
“Or really lucky,” chimed in Albez. They really had their Abbott and Costello thing working now.
“Of course,” Reamer added, “they might not have realized how lucky they were. Which is how the do-er usually gets tripped up—trying to cover his tracks.”
She hit the fast-forward button. The counter scrolled forward, then suddenly the detective jabbed the play button again. For a moment the screen was empty. Then a car pulled up. It was Charlie’s white Pathfinder.
He felt himself flush as his image moved around the screen.
“Looking to see if there was a security camera?” Albez asked blithely.
Charlie finds the Donald Duck.
“Ohh. You found your kid’s doll. Better take that with you. If you’re lucky, maybe nobody’ll realize she was ever at the gas station.”
“I told you.” Charlie gritted his teeth. “I was looking for them. When she hadn’t called me back, I thought something had happened to them.”
“If you were so concerned, why didn’t you call 911?”
“And what would I have said? My wife hasn’t called me back for an hour, send out the SWAT team?”
“Exactly our point, Mr. Davis.” This was Albez at his most condescending. “You don’t hear from your wife for an hour, so you jump in the car and go chasing after her forty miles from your house. And then by some giant stroke of luck you manage to find them at some gas station in the middle of nowhere.”
“I told you, I was navigating her home. I knew where she got off the freeway.”
Albez gave him an ironic smile. “We understand you left work early today. Decided to take a half day?”
Charlie was reeling. They’d already talked to Sal?
“I had a disagreement with my boss,” he told them.
“And where’d you go?”
“Home.”
“Anywhere else?”
“No.”
“Anybody see you there?”
“Look . . . ,” Charlie said, taking a deep breath, trying to reason with them. “I get it. Ninety percent of the time wife goes missing, husband did something to her. You’re playing the odds and I’ll admit there’s some circumstantial evidence here, but look at me. Do I look like a man who did something to my wife, or do I look like a man who’s desperately wanting to find her?”
Charlie searched their eyes, trying to form a human connection.
And for the first time, Albez connected with him. But now, the glib, sarcastic artifice fell away. Instead, the man was dripping with anger and certitude. “You found out that she went to London and not New York. You knew she must have been running around on you, so you bolted from work, ready to tear her head off. Your office is downtown, only twenty minutes from Disneyland, why not head over there and confront her? You get there, maybe you realize this is not the best forum for it, so you follow them. When they head home, she calls you, not even knowing that you’re right behind her on the freeway. Now, you can’t resist. You start arguing. Maybe she figures out you’re stalking her, maybe not. Either way, your daughter melts down, your wife pulls over. You tear into the gas station. Maybe to continue the argument, maybe to beat the crap out of her. The second you pull in, she recognizes your vehicle. She drops the gas nozzle, hops in her car and hightails it out of there. You chase her. She makes a wrong turn, winds up at a dead end street. She knows it’s going to get ugly so she tells the kids to sit tight, don’t open the door for anyone, not even Dad.”
“She never said that. That is not what Oliver told anyone.”
“It was implied,” Albez continued, unruffled. “She didn’t want to freak the kids out about their daddy. So she says ‘not anyone.’ She gets out of the car to confront you. Oliver hears an angry male voice.”
“Voices,” Charlie insisted.
“Maybe. With a six-year-old, it’s hard to tell. At any rate, you and she brawl out there. Only question is, what happened next? I think you lost your cool, hurt her in a way you never really intended. Now it’s panic time. You got to get rid of the body and do it fast. You’re also going to need an alibi and an explanation for why you’re not home, what you’re doing in that area. You start calling every fifteen minutes or so—make it seem like you’re a concerned guy. But you never leave a message ’cause you’re not sure you can sell it.” Albez pointed at the video screen. “Then you realize maybe that camera there picked up your car going into the gas station. You double-back to check it out, find the doll, and now we’re back to where we started.”
“You’re wrong.” Charlie was seething. “Dead wrong. And while you’re in here pointing the finger at me, someone out there’s got my wife. Doing God knows what to her.”
Charlie looked from Reamer to Albez. Their vacant, cynical expressions said it all.
“You know what I do for a living? You think I won’t have your names splattered all over the front page of my paper when all this goes south? When I prove you rushed to judgment—against a man with no record of violent behavior?”
Reamer stepped forward with concern, her voice gentle. “Mr. Davis . . . when did you find out that your wife was cheating on you?”
Charlie knew it was over—that there was no convincing them.
“You charging me with something?”
Reamer and Albez exchanged a look. “Not yet,” she offered brightly.
“Then I’m going home.”
Charlie stormed out and hurried down the hallway, searching for the room where the Social Services lady had taken his children.
He found them in a grungy office, half asleep on a weary old couch.
“Come on, angels,” he whispered, leaning down to them. “We’re going home.”
Chapter Ten
Holding one sleepy child in each arm, Charlie shook with anger as he strode through the precinct parking lot at almost two thirty in the morning. He passed a trio of cops, standing by a squad car, drinking coffee and cackling about the wacky events of their graveyard shift. He was sure they had no idea who he was, or why he was here, but their laughter felt personally directed toward him. He wanted to grab them. To shake them. To order them to put away their French fries and get out there and find Julie. Instead he climbed into his car, phone clutched in his hand. The moment the door was closed, he dialed Julie’s sister.
The phone rang and rang before finally going to voice mail. Becca’s clipped English voice answered, “You’ve
reached Becca. Do what you do. Cheers.”
“Becca, it’s Charlie.” He cleared his throat, struggling to keep his voice under control. “I know you spoke to the police. And I know Julie wasn’t in New York. You better have some goddamn answers for me. Call me back.”
Forty-five minutes later, Charlie arrived at home, carried the children up the stairs, gently removed their socks and shoes and tucked them into their beds.
He barreled downstairs and hurried into Julie’s office. The first thing he needed to do was check her computer. If she was carrying on some kind of affair in London—and that was somehow related to her disappearance—there might be some evidence of it in her emails.
He opened her computer. Normally her screen saver brandished a photo of the kids, but now it was just a pale blue screen. Had the power gone off and caused it to reboot? No, that didn’t make sense. It had a battery backup. He typed in the codes for system check. It didn’t take him more than a few moments of key tapping to realize there was nothing there at all. Her computer was empty. No files, no software, not even an operating system. It had been wiped clean. Had Julie done that? To hide something from him?
Charlie hurried toward the kitchen. He could access her email from his own computer, assuming she hadn’t changed the passwords. But when he got there, and he saw his laptop, he was faced with the same blank blue screen. His computer had been wiped too?
He felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck and remembered that he hadn’t set the alarm before he’d rushed out the door. Could someone have broken into the house?
He opened a drawer and grabbed for the longest, sharpest knife he could find. But before he could venture a step, his cell phone rang.
At three in the morning?
He grabbed the phone from his pocket and looked at the screen.
It read—JULIE.
He held the phone for longer than he might have expected, then stabbed the button.
“Jules?” he implored.
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