Vanishing Point (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  And then, suddenly, the case was back-burnered. Press inquiries were routinely referred to the sheriff’s department’s public information officer, who merely said they were pursuing “various leads.” Roy Greenwood, who had been forthcoming with the media, declined to give interviews, citing the need to “return to normalcy for the sake of my little girls.” A silence settled, and since the press does not feed on silence, interest in the case waned and finally disappeared entirely.

  So what had happened to Laurel Greenwood? Kidnapping? There had been no attempt to collect a ransom. Foul play or suicide? Quite possible. The bodies of many victims of violent crimes—both inflicted by others or themselves—are never found. Voluntary disappearance? Again, possible. Even though the families, friends, and associates of most missing persons insist that they would never desert them, a vast majority of disappearances are just that. Family, friends, and associates aren’t always privy to an individual’s true feelings and inclinations. Laurel Greenwood could have had a secret life apart from them, one she’d finally decided to disappear into—or one that had claimed her life.

  And what about Roy Greenwood burning his wife’s paintings so soon after her disappearance? What had prompted that? His desire for a return to normalcy, as reported in the press? His determination to make a new life for the three of them without, as he’d told Jennifer, missing her so badly?

  Could have been either. People have their different ways of dealing with loss and grief.

  Or it could have been something else entirely.

  This case fascinated me. Both the what-happened and the why-it-happened. Tomorrow I’d assemble my staff in a meeting, reshuffle assignments, and get the investigation under way.

  At nine-thirty that night I was reclining on my bed, watching Hy pack for his trip to La Jolla. Over dinner at a favorite Cajun restaurant, I’d told him what I could about the new case without violating client confidentiality, and now I was mulling over some of his comments and planning tomorrow morning’s presentation to my staff.

  “Damn!” he exclaimed, startling me.

  I looked over to where he stood at the chest of drawers.

  “I don’t have any black socks,” he added.

  “You just bought some.”

  “Yeah, but they’re either at the ranch or Touchstone. I’ll have to buy more.”

  “Well, they’re not exactly a rare commodity.”

  He shut the drawer that was designated as his and examined the contents of his duffel, then zipped it. “McCone, does it ever strike you as ridiculous, having your possessions travel around from place to place and never knowing where they’re at?”

  “Sometimes. I’m always running out of underwear at the ranch, and I’ve never driven up to Touchstone without the trunk loaded with . . . well, stuff.”

  “Exactly—stuff. It goes back and forth, one place or the other, and when you want it, it’s never where you are.”

  “It would be an expensive proposition to have enough of everything at each place.”

  “Exactly. Three places is too many for two people. We ought to get rid of one.”

  “We’d never give up Touchstone, especially after all we went through having the house built there. And we need a base here in the city.”

  “I was thinking of my ranch.”

  “You love the ranch.” It was a hundred acres of sheep graze in the high desert of Mono County, near Tufa Lake, on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. Hy had inherited it decades ago from his stepfather.

  “I do love it, but I’m hardly ever there. If it wasn’t for Ramon Perez, the place would’ve gone to hell a long time ago.” He paused. “Ramon’s a good foreman, and he’s saved practically every penny I’ve ever paid him. When I was up there last month, he hinted he might want to buy the place.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Like I said, he only hinted. But if I did sell to him, I think I could work a deal where he’d let us come up and stay from time to time.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same, though.”

  He sat on the bed, put a hand on my ankle. “Things change, and sometimes it’s for the better. I was thinking if I did sell, we could use the money to buy a bigger place here in the city.”

  “A bigger— You mean sell this house, too?”

  “Well, it is a little small for two people to live on a near full-time basis.”

  “But it’s . . . my home.”

  “I know that, and it’s just a suggestion. Something to think about, is all. Now, how about we open that bottle of brandy that Mick and Charlotte gave us? Toast to us and our new beginnings.”

  Damn, the man certainly could drop a bombshell and just walk away while the rubble was settling. But it was a conversation I’d just as soon walk away from anyway, so I smiled and said, “Why not?”

  Later that night, though, as Hy slumbered peacefully beside me, I tossed and turned and fretted. When I’d first seen the little house on the tail end of Church Street out beyond where the J-line streetcar tracks stop, it had been a pathetically shabby structure. One of the city’s four thousand earthquake cottages—makeshift two- or three-room structures erected as emergency housing after the quake of ’06—it had been moved from its original location, expanded to five rooms, and raised up to accomodate a garage and laundry area beneath. I was able to buy it at a very low price because of the extensive work it needed to make it reasonably habitable, and I’d had the kitchen remodeled and later contracted for three new additions: a full bathroom to replace the cold cubicle on the back porch that contained the toilet and shower, a master bedroom, and a backyard deck. I loved the house, and I loved the close-knit neighborhood.

  Where else in the city could I hire a teenaged girl who was a wannabe real estate mogul to twice daily administer insulin shots to my diabetic cat, and also tend to my other cat, plants, and mail during my frequent absences? Where else would I have a doctor across the street who paid house calls? Or another neighbor who frequently dropped off care packages of homemade bread and preserves? People here cared about one another, watched out for the security of one another’s homes. I supposed there were more enclaves like this in the city, but it might take years to find one, more years to develop those kinds of friendly ties.

  No, I didn’t want to sell my home. But I could understand Hy’s rationale about it being too small. And, after all, he was willing to sell his equally beloved ranch. . . .

  God, marriage was already changing things. Was this what Rae had hinted at when she’d said, “Just wait and see”?

  Wednesday

  AUGUST 17

  My staff members were milling around our conference room on the second floor of Pier 24 1/2, cups of coffee and muffins in hand. I set my briefcase on the round oak table and began taking files from it. While I arranged them, I studied my investigative team.

  Ted was clad in chinos and a vintage Hawaiian shirt, his latest fashion statement. His black goatee was trimmed very short because, he’d told me, it had begun to show more gray than the hair on his head. Beside him stood Kendra Williams, his latest candidate for the position of “paragon of the paper clips.” Dozens of young men and women, all of them eager to become Ted’s assistant, had been paraded before my eyes in the past few months, but none had worked out. So far Kendra, whom I’d met the previous afternoon, seemed the most promising. A tiny woman of twenty-five, with a chocolate-brown complexion and cornrows, she had greeted me cheerfully and hadn’t so much as winced when a great crash echoed up from the floor of the pier—two deliverymen dropping a crate destined for the architectural firm off the opposite catwalk. An ability to remain calm in chaotic circumstances was often required here at the pier, and apparently Kendra possessed it.

  God, I hoped she proved equal to the challenge of the job! I would need to rely heavily on Ted’s efficiency in the days ahead, and it would be good if he also had someone competent to fall back on.

  Mick, who headed our computer forensics department, was leaning again
st one of the bookcases that lined the room, talking with his new assistant, Derek Ford. While both were tall, the resemblance stopped there. My nephew’s blond good looks came from the Scotch-Irish side of our family; Derek was a handsome, dark-haired Eurasian. Mick showed evidence of putting on weight, a consequence of his and Charlotte’s fondness for trying whatever new restaurant came along; Derek was very lean and had told me he followed a strict vegan diet. Mick dressed casually, with little concern for style; Derek was a devotee of urban chic, a tattoo of linked scorpions encircling his neck. But the two men had instantly bonded over their fascination with the endless possibilities of computer technology. Together they were working on developing investigative tools that I failed to understand. Of course, I didn’t understand the tools they now possessed, even though Mick would dismiss them as rudimentary. I did know that one day they’d be able to retrieve just about any piece of information I’d ask for. And they’d retrieve it within the bounds of the law. Or else.

  Charlotte and Mick also shared a love of technology, but her expertise was in business and finance: give her a credit card number, and she’d run a subject to earth in no time; present her with evidence of corporate chicanery, and she’d build a case that would stand up in any court. She stood by the door with her new assistant, Patrick Neilan. Charlotte was telling him a joke, one that involved a lot of hand gestures and shaking of her brown curls. When she finished, Patrick blushed to the roots of his red hair before his wide mouth twitched and he snorted. Charlotte threw her head back and let fly one of her bawdy laughs. A risqué joke, no doubt about that.

  Only two staff members had yet to put in an appearance: Julia Rafael and Craig Morland. I’d decided to call the meeting to order without them when they rushed in, practically knocking each other over. Julia, a tall Latina with haughty features, moving stiffly as a result of having been shot in the chest by a sniper last month, immediately looked mortified. She was a relatively new hire; minor faux pas that wouldn’t have fazed the rest of us severely discomforted her, and it didn’t help that during our last investigation she’d unwittingly become embroiled in a situation that had almost cost me my private investigator’s license. Craig, who shared an office with her, sensed her discomfort, and threw his arm around her shoulders, leaning on her and miming great pain. After a moment Julia smiled wryly. Craig, in his running clothes, his longish brown hair tousled, barely resembled the tightly wound FBI field agent whom I’d met a few years before. Over the time he’d worked for me, I’d found him to be a surprisingly perceptive and sensitive man—just the kind of person Julia needed as a friend.

  Once they got their coffee and muffins, I called, “Let’s get settled, folks. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  For an hour I went over every case on the assignment sheet, finding out its exact status from the person who was handling it. Then I called a fifteen-minute break while I did some further reshuffling. Finally I was ready to get to the Laurel Greenwood disappearance. I’d had Ted make up packets containing all the background information on the case, as well as a transcript of my tape of yesterday’s meeting with Jennifer Aldin. While they glanced through the packets, I summarized the situation.

  “Normally,” I concluded, “I wouldn’t be briefing everyone on this. But the case is high pay and thus high priority; and it promises to be a difficult one. Any cop will tell you that if you don’t solve a missing person case—no matter if it’s foul play, kidnapping, or deliberate disappearance—within the first twenty-four hours, chances are you’ll never solve it. And what we’ve got here is a twenty-two-year-old case. Nearly impossible.”

  “Not for this agency.”

  “I said nearly, Mick.” I looked around the table. “I’m going to need to count on all of you. Those who aren’t assigned to the investigation this morning will keep their individual caseloads, and pick up the slack from others. As the investigation progresses, it may be necessary to pull some people off and make reassignments. So you’ll need to familiarize yourselves with the information in your packets, and of course, you’ll be briefed on what’s happening during our regularly scheduled conferences.”

  “You’ll be in the field, Shar?” Craig asked.

  “Yes. Ted’ll be holding things together here in the office, and Kendra—you’ve all met Kendra, right?—she’ll be holding him together.”

  “About time somebody did,” Charlotte said.

  “Wait till you turn in your next expense report,” Ted warned her.

  I said, “Okay—assignments. I’ll be personally talking to everyone we can locate who is mentioned in the accounts of Laurel Greenwood’s disappearance, as well as anyone else Jennifer Aldin suggests. Derek—you’ll locate and background those people, starting immediately. I’d also appreciate it if you’d make yourself available to conduct spur-of-the-moment searches for me while I’m in the field.”

  Mick was frowning, hurt at being left out.

  I said to him, “You—the genius, as Derek calls you—need to concentrate on running your department.” There was a growing corporate demand for computer forensics—the science of recovering files that had been inadvertently or deliberately deleted. Mick had originally suggested we offer the service to our existing clients, and once we’d announced it, the work had poured in, both from them and other companies they’d referred to us.

  “Shar,” he said, “I can handle both.”

  “Not and have a life, you can’t. And I think Charlotte would agree that you having a life outside the agency is a good thing.”

  “Amen to that!” Charlotte exclaimed.

  “Don’t get excited,” I told her. “You may end up being the one in your household who needs coddling and cosseting.”

  “Say what?”

  “Needing TLC after a hard day at the office. You’ll retain your caseload, but I may have to call on you if any tricky financial angles come up. Plus I’m temporarily taking Patrick away from you. Patrick,” I added to Neilan, “you’ll be assisting me full-time.”

  His eyes widened, and then his freckled face glowed with pleasure.

  Patrick Neilan was my newest operative, and I suspected most of the staff regarded him as a sympathy hire. When I’d first encountered him—as a witness during last month’s major investigation—I’d learned that he was also the subject of a search we had undertaken for his ex-wife the year before. My regret at the fact that the information we’d provided her had resulted in his financial downfall had prompted me to hire him temporarily, and he’d shown the potential to be a good investigator. Now that I’d hired him full-time, I wanted to give him the chance to prove himself to his coworkers.

  I added, “Let’s get back to work, everybody. Patrick and Derek—I want to see you in my office.”

  My office was at the far end of the pier, a large space with a high arching window overlooking the bay and the East Bay cities and hills. One side wall rose toward the roof, a strip of multipaned windows at its top letting in soft northern light; the other was an eight-foot-high partition with a door that opened onto the catwalk. The furnishings—desk and clients’ chairs; file cabinets; armoire that served as a coat closet; easy chair beneath a schefflera plant, in which to do serious thinking—seemed dwarfed by their spacious surroundings. When we’d moved in, the rent set by the Port Commission had barely seemed affordable, even though it was low by waterfront standards because of the pier’s unfortunate location under the western span of the Bay Bridge and next door to the SFFD fireboat station. But within a couple of years, we’d taken over all the upstairs space on the northern side and were handling the increased cost easily. We’d also become inured to the fire station’s siren going off, as well as the roaring and clanking of traffic on the bridge’s roadbed overhead.

  I dumped my files on the desk, motioning for Patrick and Derek to be seated. Then I pulled a list from on top of the pile and handed it to my computer expert.

  “These are the people we need to locate and background,” I said. “Whatever info
rmation we have on them appears in your packet. E-mail the files to me, copy Patrick, and also print it out for Ted to copy and distribute to everybody. Any questions?”

  Derek studied the list. “You want me to search in the order you’ve got them listed?”

  “Yes, but don’t waste too much time on those that’re difficult to locate, just move ahead.”

  “Will do.” He stood.

  “One more thing,” I said. “Mick will want to help you. Don’t let him. He’s got enough to do.”

  Derek nodded and gave me a little salute as he left the office.

  I turned to Patrick. “Okay, your function will be to coordinate things here in the office. I’ll be messengering tapes and e-mailing reports back from the field for you to organize and study for patterns or leads that I may have missed. Any and all suggestions or theories will be welcome. As you saw last month, I’m not the sort of investigator who refuses to listen to input, so feel free to offer your two cents whenever. Right now”—I looked at my watch—“I think we should grab some lunch. Then I want you to come with me while I conduct a field interview with Jennifer Aldin’s sister, Terry Wyatt.”

  Patrick stood, looking eager. He was thirty-four, twice a father, had a business degree from Golden Gate University, and had been an accountant before his job was eliminated and he’d been forced to turn to security work to make ends meet. His wife leaving him for another man, her frequent refusals to allow him to see their children, her garnishing of his small wages—all that should have left him a broken man. But Patrick had somehow maintained a balance, and now, as he began a new career, he exhibited both optimism and an almost childlike pleasure in life.