J. Daniel Sawyer - Clarke Lantham 01

by And Then She Was Gone

  Maybe he could, but he wasn’t answering his phone.

  I didn’t dare call Rachael—no time for the chewing out I richly deserved from her (and which I had no doubt she’d give me with great relish).

  What about Serena Tam? The therapist who kept dropping hints? Maybe if I knew this she could give me another leg up—or at least help me get my head around the rest of this puzzle.

  Something still didn’t fit.

  “This is Serena.”

  “Clarke Lantham.”

  “Mr. Lantham I really can’t be talking to you. I’ve told you too much already.”

  “That Nya’s sleeping with her father? Sorry it took me a while to catch on. I need to know if there was anywhere they liked to get away to.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Did they fuck at home, or did they get a hotel, or did they have a getaway? Excuse my French.”

  “I can’t tell…”

  “Because if you know and don’t tell me, you’re gonna have her death on your conscience. Phil killed one of her friends last night,” I heard a gasp. Good. “I saw the body. He found out Nya’s not his daughter, and I think he’s planning to kill her too if he hasn’t done it already.”

  “Mr. Lantham…”

  “You have an exemption for danger to life and limb. I’m a veteran cop and a private investigator who’s been trying to locate your client for three days. If you know where she could be, and you don’t blab now, she’s dead.”

  “Half Moon Bay,” she croaked. “They liked to go to Half Moon Bay.”

  “Where? Give me an address.”

  “I don’t remember everything she says. I’m not a computer!”

  “Look at your notes.”

  “She didn’t give me an address.”

  “What did she give you? Think, goddammit.” I lowered the phone from my ear as I approached a CHP. Once I was comfortably past I switched the phone to speaker and continued in a more legal manner.

  “…beach.”

  “Sorry, I missed that, say that again?”

  “I said it wasn’t far from the beach.”

  “Rent-a-cabin.”

  “No. Friend’s house.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Mr. Lantham?”

  “Yes?”

  “You find her.”

  “I will.”

  I hung up. Bernal was coming up in a couple miles.

  Something was still niggling at me.

  Dora. If Nya really had come home like she promised last night, then I was way off track.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Thales, this is Clarke Lantham. Calling to apologize, but I won’t have your bill ready until tomorrow. Something from another case broke this morning.”

  “Oh, Mr. Lantham! Thank you so much for your help.”

  “Come again?“

  “Nya—she came home this morning.”

  I just about swerved off the road. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine. A little the worse for wear. Looks like she and her friends really overdid it this weekend. She was sick all morning, but she’s okay now.”

  “Mrs. Thales,” I switched the phone back to handset. I needed to be able to hear her breathing. I had to know if she was telling the truth, “Are you sure she’s okay? Because when I saw her she…”

  “Mom, did you borrow my red boots?” Nya’s voice, from way in the background.

  “No, dear. Did you check under your bed?” She shouted away from the phone, and then returned her attention back to me. “I’m sorry, she’s getting ready to go out for the evening.”

  “Are you sure she’s okay?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Mr. Lantham, are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Glad she’s okay. Bye.”

  I hung the phone up.

  Right blinker. Pull off the road. To the nearest gas station. Into the bathroom. Look in the mirror.

  My pupils were dilating evenly. They seemed to track the same, best I could check. My headache was down to nothing more than a little pressure behind my eyes—could have been dry eyes.

  As near as I could tell, my brain was fine. I wasn’t hallucinating.

  Nya really was alive.

  What about the others? I had to know about the others.

  I nearly ran out of the restroom to the Malibu and dove into the front passenger seat. I pried open the laptop lid—the service station had an open network.

  Facebook scripts. The feeds—and private lists—popped up on my screen.

  Nobody had posted anything since the trip to Bondage-a-Go-Go. I wasn’t crazy.

  So why was Nya home? Where had I gone wrong?

  What the hell was I missing?

  I reached up to the console and pulled the prepaid out one last time. I called Danville PD again. I asked for Randolph.

  “Officer Randolph here.”

  “Randolph, this is Lantham.”

  “Want to tell me why you sent me on a wild goose chase?”

  “Nobody at home?”

  “Oh there was somebody at home all right. And he wasn’t happy being disturbed by three cops and a SWAT van at seven in the evening on a Monday. What the hell are you on?”

  “Who was there?”

  “Sternwood.”

  “Richard Sternwood? Middle aged guy? A little over six feet? Mustache? Thinning salt-and-pepper hair?”

  “What? No, Charles Sternwood. Must be his son. Maybe twenty-four, hippie looking kid. Why?”

  “Never mind. Thanks.”

  “I should file charges…”

  I cut the line. Dropped the phone. Grabbed the Sternwood file again.

  Yeah, Sternwood had a son. Yeah, he was about twenty four. I flipped forward a few pages to see if Earl had given me some kind of deep dossier on the guy, beyond what was in the report on the Doc.

  Harvard. Biotech. ROTC. Kicked out of ROTC after an antiwar demonstration. Sticks around school till the first semester of his senior year. Starts attending the Ishmael’s Way student organization. Primitivist group. After that he drops off the map, except for an occasional appearance at rallies.

  Chuck something. Graduated Cal High a few years ago.

  Charlie—or Chuck—Sternwood.

  Gravity was Sternwood’s son. The man behind it all was the estranged child of the doctor who started it.

  Gravity, who hid his tracks.

  Who had no name.

  Who showed up at Sternwood’s lectures dressed for the occasion—like a dutiful son would—only to go out and join the protestors the minute his father was done speaking.

  The beneficiary of the living trust.

  And he was in with a radical primitivist revolutionary group.

  My brain’s clutch slipped in nice and easy. The gear teeth met and married like they were born for it. The dead-end cell phone. The trip to France to meet the girls. Playing Iago to Phil and Nya.

  It all fit.

  We can put ‘em down like monkeys.

  Nya was a diversion, sent home to shut Dora up so that Dora would play dumb if I sent the Oakland PD to her door. Now I’d sent Danville PD to the Sternwood house.

  They’d suspect I knew.

  Nya was going out again, and soon. This time, she wouldn’t be coming back. I could be at the Thales house in twenty minutes. Fifteen, if I really pushed.

  I laid rubber going up the ramp to 680, and the Malibu ate the road for lunch.

  This time, I was not going to let them get away, even if it killed me.

  8:00 PM, Monday

  Nya walked—flounced? floated?—out the front door and down the walk to the curb, where she slipped into her Mini Cooper like it was an old pair of shoes. She flipped the lights on as soon as the car was clear of its parking spot, and turned east at the end of her block.

  I waited until she was out of sight, and followed. There was still enough light in the sky that I could get away without turning my running lights on for the moment. That advantage wouldn’t last, but depending
on where she was going it might last long enough.

  Down the hill on Crow Canyon to 680, the wrong direction if she was heading to the Sternwood house.

  Over the freeway and through the canyon. She turned left at A street, left at Foothill, and merged on to 92 heading west.

  So it was to be Half Moon Bay, after all.

  I didn’t have my FastTrack transponder in the rental, so it was the cash lane for me. Lost about two minutes waiting behind a pair of big rigs, but caught up to her again by the rise in the bridge.

  Unlike Gravity, Nya didn’t have a suspicious nature or any reason to believe she was being tailed, and she also wasn’t pushing close to a hundred miles an hour. For her, it was just an evening drive to the coast.

  Me, I was finally getting some time with the woman I’d been trying to find all weekend. She drove easy—not an expert, sloppy around the edges, but like she enjoyed it. Climbing over the mountain, she pushed the curves just enough to make the Mini purr, not enough to make it chirp.

  Keeping up with her wasn’t a chore. First time all weekend I’d really enjoyed the endless driving. But once we crested the mountain and headed down, the relief at finding her alive started to give way to something else.

  We chased the sunset out to sea, hit Highway 1 just as the last of the day’s light flashed away to night. Twilight didn’t bring the fog with it—it never does in a heat wave. The coast was clear all the way to the ocean’s rim, and as far north and south as I could make out.

  We turned south and breezed a couple miles down the coast, then hung a right onto Poplar. I parked a block in, in front of someone’s house. Snagged a spot behind a black BMW for cover. She rolled all the way out to the end of the road, parking up against the barrier that blocked beach access.

  In the space of the last five minutes, night had swallowed up the paltry shelf of land between the mountains and the water, darker than any city night except for the track of moonlight running halfway out to the horizon. Once her lights winked off I lost her completely, and if I opened my door the dome light would give me away.

  Unless I did something breathtakingly boring, like turning the switch off.

  I gathered a few supplies—my folding knife and pocket flashlight—from the passenger seat, then slipped out of the car, whisper quiet.

  The coastal breeze, maybe fifty degrees coming up off the water, bit through my bomber like it wasn’t there.

  Three blocks of salt-scented stroll brought me to the end of the neighborhood, but not the end of the street. It stretched on for maybe a hundred yards past that.

  Nya had disappeared into the dark at the far end of the road—judging by the quiet rushing sound and the wind I had to assume it ended right on the beach, so she’d have headed down there most likely.

  Why had she been looking for her boots earlier, when I was on the phone with Dora? Maybe the beach wasn’t the only stop on her itinerary.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard a faint echo behind my footsteps. I stopped at the last corner, the last place I’d have available to be inconspicuous while I took stock.

  The echo continued. Light, rubber soled shoes on the pavement. Quick gait. Definitely somewhere behind me.

  Nya had gone straight on to the beach. I turned right and headed north.

  The steps faded behind me, almost disappearing behind the baffles of the building. Then, when I was maybe half a block up, I heard them turn the corner.

  I had a tail. Someone following me from the East Bay? Or did someone pick me up when I parked?

  I kept my pace steady and fought down the adrenaline that urged me to run, to duck behind the nearest fence and draw my gun, to turn and shout and make enough of a racket that someone in these weather-beaten old houses would call the police.

  Do that, Lantham, and the game’s up. You’ll lose Nya.

  I was already about to lose Nya, and the footsteps behind me were gaining.

  Gaining fast.

  I hooked a right at the next street and ducked behind an old Jeep.

  The footsteps followed, then stopped three steps in—only reason they’d do that is if they were following me.

  In the right pocket of my jeans, I always keep a telescoping dental mirror. Out here there were no streetlights for it to catch, just the dark blue of the quarter-moon hanging over the water.

  Crouching as low as I could, I snaked the mirror out with my left hand, while I laid my right hand on the .45 automatic in my back holster.

  Twist the mirror.

  I saw a silhouette standing about fifteen feet away, just parallel with the rear of the Jeep. Black against the dark blue of the rest of the night. Hard to tell from where I was, but I’d guess five foot six, combat boots, long overcoat. Could conceal a shotgun.

  The coat hid the shape. The head looked like it was covered with some kind of hood or brimless hat. It jerked around, trying to figure out where I was most likely to have gone.

  It stepped forward. I faded back behind the Jeep. I heard a rustle of fabric and a soft click, like someone thumbing off the safety on a polymer gun. Maybe a Beretta. Maybe a Smith.

  I padded back again, wrapped around the bumper, kept my mirror low so I could keep track of the feet, and stayed well below the profile of the car.

  The feet stopped at the front passenger-side wheel. I slunk back to the driver’s rear.

  Fast shuffle. My stalker rounded the front of the car and stopped, classic tactical. His gun would be pointed right at the ground where I’d been not a minute before.

  I took a long low stride backward and got behind the vehicle.

  The feet’s position relaxed. Their owner probably trying to figure out where else I could have gone.

  One more step back. Still watching the mirror for movement.

  The feet turned.

  They very slowly moved up to the next driveway to investigate it.

  Five feet, maybe six, of open ground to cross to get into the shelter of a coastal pine with a thick enough trunk to shield me. My mirror told me that my impromptu adversary’s gun was drawn and sweeping around a Cadillac in the next drive.

  I sprang.

  Two long strides, and I was safe behind the tree.

  I checked over my shoulder with the mirror.

  No reaction.

  He continued around the Cadillac, crouching down behind it.

  I took my chance, and ran. Clear around the corner, sticking to the grass as long as I could, then across the street and over the barbed-wire fence in a rolling dive that shredded my jacket.

  I hit the ground with a grunt, and lay perfectly still in the tall grass.

  Footsteps chasing. They ran right past me, just behind.

  I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. A few yards on, I heard the fence creak as someone climbed it.

  Whoever this was had a hard-on for me and no mistake. Gravity? No chance. Didn’t seem big enough for him, but it could be anyone in this light. Rawles? Same problem. And why the hell would he be out here in the first place?

  Whoever it was knew their shit. Knew it good.

  The tail tromped by me not ten feet away.

  The gun was still in my holster. I could reach it, no problem. Out in this field, with my target somewhere between me and the beach, I had a safer shot—assuming I could rise and draw a bead faster than he could turn and shoot me. Fat chance—I was still flat on my belly.

  But there was a rock just near my left hand. A big one.

  Trying to disturb as few stalks of grass as possible, I grasped the rock with my left and passed it behind my back to my right. More force in my right arm, better chance he’d go down in one.

  Five feet away now. Moving laterally right in front of me.

  I dragged my right leg under me, praying that the sound of the sea would be enough cover. Then a twig broke.

  He started. There was nothing left to do. I sprang forward with everything I had, hitting him flat in the solar plexus with my left shoulder and bringing the rock down
on the top of his head with my right.

  His gun went off.

  My left triceps screamed at me.

  I didn’t wait to see what had happened. I clubbed him again—I think I got him in the back—and ran flat out across the field to the beach trail. I had to get to Nya, before she got to Gravity.

  I mounted the bank between the field and the beach, and didn’t see the drop off in the dark. I tripped, and plunged headlong eight feet down into the sand, just managing to tumble forward enough to land on my back.

  All the wind rushed out of me. I gasped for air, certain I was dead.

  Out the corner of my eye, I saw a fire off in the distance, what looked like a mile down the beach. I held onto the image as hard as I could while my diaphragm struggled to reinflate my lungs.

  I rocked. Flailed against the paralysis.

  Managed to get a few degrees over onto my side, and the glorious, salty, hacking cold air rushed in again.

  I lay there on the ground heaving for what felt like a whole lifetime, trying like hell to keep my lungs from collapsing again.

  How long it took, I don’t know. I don’t even care to guess. What I do know is that when I finally struggled to my feet, I found that my left arm worked. After that shot I expected it to be useless, but a little careful probing satisfied me that it was just a graze. Hurt like the devil, but it went in a stripe diagonally up and to the back.

  I hoped to hell I’d put my man down for good. The thought of meeting him again didn’t exactly wax my carrot.

  Then again, maybe it didn’t matter if I’d killed him.

  I fumbled for my phone—or the prepaid piece of crap I was currently using for a phone. Time to call in the cavalry.

  Back pocket. That’s right. I’d stowed it in the back pocket.

  Pulling it out didn’t do me much good. Nothing more than a bundle of cracked, smashed plastic spiderwebs with a stupidly-optimistic keypad.

  Fine. No cops. If fate wanted me to play it this way, fate could pay my damned insurance.

  My legs worked fine after I tested them a couple times. How the hell I was gonna find Nya was anybody’s guess. Facing the ocean, north was to the right and south to the left. I’d turned right to shake my tail, so I was north of the beach road by maybe a hundred yards.