The Witness Series Bundle

by Rebecca Forster

  The black vehicle was parked in the third row, second slot from the south entrance to the restaurant lot and one space over from the steps that led down to the lower level of the old pier complex. Down there, working boats were moored to a horse-shoe shaped dock that was flanked by an outdoor restaurant, a sad excuse for an arcade, and a bunch of shops that sold kites and whoopee cushions to the tourists who managed to find their way down. Quality Seafood, the outdoor restaurant, served up lunches on Styrofoam plates, had ice beds for the catch of the day and bubbling tanks where lobsters crawled all over each other, their rubber-banded claws useless in their fight to survive.

  To Archer's right was a complex designed to look like a New England fishing village. It housed the now boarded up courthouse and still functioning professional offices. More right of that were the new Redondo Beach pier, the breakwater and a stretch of beach that wasn't the nicest. A lot of rough people went to that beach after hours: drunks from pier bars, inner city types looking to cool off, gang members and drug dealers. Josie could have run into a bunch of problems down there.

  Behind him was the Blue Fin Grill. Drinks were expensive, the menu predictable and the waiters distracted. Josie might have met someone there, but it wouldn't have been a friend. Friends went to Burt's or Scotty's or the Mermaid. There were lawyers, accountants and insurance offices in the small complex. She could have parked in the Blue Fin lot, walked over there and done what? He turned his attention back to the Jeep.

  The ragtop was down. The windows were up. That meant it had been left while the sun still shined. Josie always closed up the car after dark, even if she garaged it. Whatever happened, it happened in the open and after three o'clock if he added in drive time to her departure from the shelter in San Pedro. Given that time frame, and the fact that it was a weekday, it would have been dead quiet around here.

  "Okay, Jo, here we go. By the book."

  Archer opened the back of the Hummer. He was a cop again, a cop with a camera. The fact that he loved Josie might drive him, but it wouldn't overrule his common sense. He was trying to decide between the digital or film camera when he heard:

  "Hey! Archer!"

  His head snapped up. He smiled a real and relieved smile sure that Josie would come sauntering toward him. His smile faded when he saw Liz Driscoll.

  "Ask and you shall receive, huh?" Liz came to a halt beside him, looked at the Jeep and gave him a little shoulder bump to underscore how cool she was.

  "Yeah." Archer opted for the digital camera even though he preferred to use film.

  "Don't go overboard thanking me for sticking my neck out." She grinned, obviously unconcerned about her neck or much of anything else. "Brought you a present, bucko."

  Evidence bags. Sweet. Archer stuffed them in his pocket without saying a word and started to circle the Jeep.

  "You're welcome," she quipped and dogged his steps.

  Both of them looked for signs of foul play. If they found it, Liz would make this an official missing person's case; if they didn't, Josie was just another grownup who wasn't where other people thought she was supposed to be.

  An early drinker pulled into the parking lot and wanted to know if the Jeep was for sale and if Archer would throw Liz into the deal. A few chosen words from Liz – one of which was police – and the man drove on and parked at the far end of the lot. Archer looked after him, taking a minute to consider that beauty was definitely in the eye of the beholder. He gave up his musing when Liz dropped to her knees, flattened herself on her back, and checked under the chassis. She was up again a second later, brushing herself off.

  "Nada."

  Archer was leaning over the driver's seat when he said: "No keys. Parking brake on."

  Click. Click. Click

  He walked around the car and opened the passenger door, careful to cover his hand with his shirt. He snapped a few more pictures of nothing. Not even a gum wrapper on the floor.

  Click. Click.

  Running shoes in the back. A couple bottles of water. A jacket. All of this was standard emergency fare for Josie. She kept those things in a box next to chains and a jumper cable.

  Click.

  Archer paused when he saw Josie's baseball cap. The pain hit him in the gut. It took a second to put it in its place, and then he looked past the hat to the roll bar, the wheels, the tires.

  Click. Click. Click.

  He was shooting zilch: no dirt, leaves, new scratches or scrapes. He took five more pictures because he hoped he was just missing the one thing that would set him on the right road. The paint gleamed. The Jeep was recently washed. That could be good news or bad. Good news because there would be fewer fingerprints to check, bad news because everything would have been cleaned out of the inside. He made a note to visit the carwash. Archer slid on to the passenger seat, covered his hand again with his shirt, opened the glove box, and sat still as a statue as he peered inside.

  "Archer?" Liz called. "Hey, Archer. What have you got?"

  He raised those dark eyes of his, his boxer's face expressionless. He slid out of the car.

  "Nothing."

  "Just as well. Means we can be pretty sure she was okay while she was in the car," Liz said.

  "But someone could have taken her outside of it," Archer countered.

  "Yeah," Liz said. "Or she's on a bender."

  "Josie doesn't drink that way."

  "Everybody drinks sometime." Liz's grin indicated she knew that from personal experience. "I don't know Josie all that well, but I'd say she has a hard time getting on with her life. She's always being side tracked by one thing or another. You know, like saving the world, lifting up the downtrodden. Not like you and me."

  Archer almost laughed at how off-base Liz Driscoll was. He carried every pain, every joy, and every uncertainty with him every damn day. He didn't share any of it unless someone got real close, and Josie was about as close as anyone had got to him in his whole life. Liz mistook his silence for petulance and tried again to engage him.

  "I looked up the Rayburn trial. That woman? Linda Rayburn? She almost killed Josie, didn't she? And now Josie's guardian for a killer's kid."

  "Is there a point, Driscoll?"

  "Point being, the attack was bad."

  "Broken ribs. Shiner. Cracked cheekbone. Dislocated arm." Archer filled in the laundry list he knew was coming.

  "Head injury?" Liz hooked her thumbs in her belt and talked slow, but he didn't need the lead.

  "I see where you're going, but no," Archer shook his head. "Clean bill of health."

  "Yeah, but there was the McCreary thing, too. He had her under those waves a good long time. How long did she spend in the hospital after that?"

  "Two days. Totally cleared by every doctor who saw her. Josie's an athlete. She's strong."

  "That doesn't rule out residual damage. Blood clot. Something," Liz went on.

  "I called Torrance Memorial and Little Company of Mary hospital this morning. No one matching her description was brought to emergency."

  "Maybe she couldn't get to a hospital. Maybe she hasn't been found." Liz kept at the argument while Archer raised his camera and angled one from the passenger to the driver's side. Liz shut the driver's door to give him a clean shot, still talking as she came around beside him. "On the off chance something's going down, though, I'll have this baby towed."

  "It's Redondo's jurisdiction," Archer pointed out.

  "Redondo PD has no reason to take it. You want the restaurant to tow it? Let it sit in a lot and leave possible evidence unprotected?"

  Archer's lips tipped. He cast a sidelong glance. "I thought there wasn't anything to be worried about."

  "Just helping a friend, and protecting my sweet little butt in case there is. Don't want you suing the city because I was derelict."

  Liz's wide grin transformed her face. That pug nose of hers looked way cute and the wrap-around glasses didn't look so ominous. No matter how hard she tried, though, sh
e wasn't going to get Archer to smile back. He just wasn't that kind of guy. Archer snapped one more picture, grateful that the detective was getting a hinky feeling about this too. He dropped the camera to his side and gave Liz's arm a squeeze.

  "Thanks, Liz. I'll wait for the truck. You go on and save Hermosa from itself."

  She gave him a friendly slap on the rear and a 'hang in there' as she took her leave. Archer watched her go. They had been acquainted a long time but had never really gotten to know one another. Liz Driscoll, he thought, just wasn't the kind of woman who got to know anyone really well. She probably liked it that way. Then Archer just didn't think of her at all.

  Leaning against the Hummer, running through the images on the camera, he formed a strategy for the next twenty-four hours: check the offices in the adjacent complex, check with the folks at the Blue Fin Grill, follow up on everyone who had contact with Josie in the last week, get a lock on her cell from the provider, get these pictures to someone who could analyze them properly. His planning was interrupted when the tow truck lumbered into the lot. The guy didn't say a word as he hitched the car with the winch. Archer stood aside as the Jeep was raised.

  "Whoa!" Archer called to the driver. Then he hollered 'hold it' when it didn't stop.

  Finally, the winch shut down, suspending the Jeep at a forty-degree angle. Liz hadn't shut the driver's side door tight and it was swinging. As Archer caught it, he saw the floor mat had shifted and was wedged between the door and floor. He started to adjust it but stopped. A piece of paper had been exposed when the mat shifted.

  Heart pounding, Archer held the door against his backside and photographed what he had found. The color was off-white and the stock was cheap. Picking it up in his fingertips, Archer was surprised to see that it was smaller than he originally thought it would be. Closer inspection showed the paper had been cut, so somewhere there was a matching piece. It could be stationery, but he doubted it.

  Archer backed away, let the door of the Jeep slam shut, and strode to the Hummer. Swinging the back door open, he put the piece of paper on the bed of the vehicle and dug two pairs of tweezers out of his camera bag. Working carefully, Archer manipulated it. There was nothing on the back and only the printing on the front. He tipped it, and saw there were no watermarks. There was absolutely nothing interesting about the paper. What was written on it, however, was intriguing.

  "Hey! You done, man? I got a schedule."

  Archer looked from the impatient driver to the Jeep.

  "Yeah, I'm done here."

  Putting the paper in the plasticine envelope Liz had given him, Archer took out a Sharpie and noted the specifics of the find on the bag. The bag went into the breast pocket of his shirt as he climbed behind the wheel of the Hummer, pulled out his phone, connected with the Internet and started to type.

  A second later, the cell snapped shut and the yellow Hummer was speeding down Pacific Coast Highway. The first stop wasn't far.

  CHAPTER 7

  An Outbuilding in the California Mountains

  It was hard for Josie to swallow and harder still to open her eyes. It was impossible to move her hands, but she could move her legs if she concentrated. That was good because it meant those legs of hers were still attached to her body. And her arms were still there because her cheek brushed against her bicep when she jerked out of whatever sickness had come upon her. She could wiggle her fingers. Her wrists burned. She didn't feel afraid because sleep came and went, taking with it all opportunity to panic. She was addled. She was forgetful. At least she was awake enough and lucid enough to register the water bottle.

  With great effort, she raised her head. Behind her eyes there was an explosion of light and pain. Her head fell and she landed cheek down in the dirt. She was drooling. That struck her as funny. Max drooled.

  Max. . .

  He was. . .

  Who was Max?

  Josie threw her head up, balanced her cheek between her upper arm and shoulder, craned her neck and finally managed to get her mouth on the sport top of the water bottle. Clamping her teeth down, she tilted it and dragged it closer. Counting to three, she threw up the bottle. Once. Twice. The third time was the charm, and she balanced the bottle above her. Water flowed. She gulped, and choked and the heavy bottle fell away. Using every ounce of energy, Josie kept her teeth around the top. Once more she whipped it up. The water went down her throat, and she drank like she had never tasted water before.

  A Business Complex, Manhattan Beach

  Archer walked toward the elegantly appointed building in an office complex peppered with identically well-appointed buildings. Each of the ten three-story structures was set at an angle and separated by well-established greenery: tall trees, lush bushes, and dense ground cover. Archer threaded through it all on a wide stone walk, noting strategically placed pools of water and benches. The only things that set the structures apart were letter designators high up near the roofline. He passed building A and B and F giving no thought as to why F came after B.

  Spotting J, his step quickened as he took the three low-rise steps that led him to J's double glass doors. Archer could see straight through to a back door that led to a garden and a parking lot. In the space between the two, Archer saw an elevator, two facing couches and a coffee table with a tabletop fountain. There was a chrome-framed legend board. He pulled the heavy door open and stepped through.

  The interior was serene and silent save for the little bubbling fountain. The edge of his lips tipped when he saw that someone had put a penny in the water. They were either desperate for a miracle, or their dreams were as small as the place they left their wishes. Out back there were a couple of cars in the lot: a pearl-white SUV that had seen better days, an old Toyota, two Mercedes and a Lexus. The Mercedes and the Lexus were in reserved spaces and both were black. The Toyota needed a wash.

  Satisfied with the manageable environment, Archer ignored the elevators and took the emergency stairs two at a time. Exiting the second floor, he paused to get the lay of the land. Four doors. Discrete nameplates. No windows. Knowing he would see any challenge before it became a problem, Archer made his way down the hall, counting off the tenants as he went.

  Brahms. General Surgery.

  Cochran. DDS.

  Fistonich. Gynecology.

  The door of Dr. Fistonich's office opened. Archer stepped aside as a woman the size of a barn waddled into the hall. He nodded; she flashed him a beatific smile. He nodded again, flustered as only a childless man can be when faced with a woman in the throes of hormonal bliss. When the pregnant lady was well inside the elevator, Archer moved on and found what he wanted.

  Young. Daniel P. Psychiatry.

  Archer opened that door.

  A young woman with shoulder-length, light brown hair smiled at Archer with practiced sincerity and rehearsed serenity. She spoke with a voice modulated to a perfect, peaceful pitch.

  "Hello there."

  Archer took a second to admire her and her surroundings. In this doctor's office there was no room divider with a sliding, frosted glass window, no clipboard for him to fill out with his name, time of appointment and his insurance information. There were no chairs lined up against the wall or old magazines to leaf through. This place was a haven for the weary, the wounded, and the worried.

  Three of the walls were painted a mole color with an accent of brick red on the fourth. On that wall hung a huge portrait of a woman with moist eyes and expressive lips. A tear of white paint trickled down her cheek to her bare shoulder. Her lips were matte, her eyes sparkled with a trick of technique that made it seem as if she was daring the viewer to look closer and see inside her. Over a couch of saddle leather hung antique baskets and what appeared to be an ancient papoose. There was a walnut table cut from a giant burl. Music played. He couldn't identify it but it soothed him as intended. And then there was the receptionist, though he doubted she considered herself such.

  She was young but not too young; pre
tty but not gorgeous; interesting without being intimidating. She sat behind a delicate desk with a carved apron that hid all but the lower sweep of her gorgeous gams. Her shoes were expensive, her posture was perfect and Archer imagined she had once been a dancer who had wisely stopped chasing the dream and settled for a regular paycheck. Her hair was stick straight and hung past her shoulders; severe bangs covered her brows so all he saw were those two blue eyes encapsulated by kohl smudges. Archer glanced at the painting. Those eyes of hers were as daring as those of the woman in the picture. Doctor Young had very specific taste in women.

  "May I help you?" She smiled wider, enticing Archer's attention away from the artwork. The real thing, she seemed to intimate, was far more interesting.

  Archer looked just in time to see her right hand fall gracefully to her lap. Best guess: a panic button was wired somewhere underneath. His hesitation had made her cautious, but her instincts were good. She gauged that Archer was only the possibility of a threat.

  "I need to see Dr. Young," he said.

  "Dr. Young sees new patients on Wednesday."

  "I'm not a patient." Archer pulled out a card and put it in front of her. That errant hand reappeared. She held the card in both hands. Her nails were clipped short, filed square and buffed to a sheen. Her lips moved slightly as she read and her nude lipstick sparkled. She looked charming until she stopped smiling.

  "I'm sorry, the doctor doesn't partner with private investigators. I could recommend some of his colleagues who do." She tried to hand the card back, but when Archer made no move to take it she put it aside like a Vegas dealer knowing the house would win.

  "This is a personal matter."

  "I see." She pulled a pad of paper out of a drawer and picked up a Mont Blanc pen. "If you could give me an idea of what this is about, please."

  "I'm looking for Josie Bates."

  The receptionist jotted the name. She looked up from underneath those incredibly sexy bangs.

  "I'll get this to the doctor, but I doubt he can help. The name doesn't ring a bell."