Beeman stepped back and lowered his arm.
“Goodnight, children.”
Chapter 7
Mark Jensen slouched in a heavy leather chair in the den of his home in Irvine, twenty miles north of his Newport ranch, gazing without seeing through beveled glass panes of a French door. Though his body was slack, his mind was racing.
At the conclusion of jury trials, after finishing his closing argument and handing his client’s case over to the jury, Jensen often returned to his seat with a vague sense of grief. From that moment, he was powerless to do anything but wait for the verdict. Pacing empty courtrooms while juries deliberated, he replayed trials in his mind, willing the time to pass quickly.
It never did.
This was worse.
Courtrooms are fearsome places, where lives are changed and sometimes destroyed, where on occasion he could chisel out a way for ruined lives to begin rebuilding. But now that he was a civil practitioner and no longer a criminal prosecutor, his trial career no longer involved actual life-or-death stakes. There was always a list of pending cases from which to pick the next new challenge, the next battle. A fresh adventure always beckoned. The end of a case was only that—and his career marched on. By never forgetting this, he’d become fearless in the courtroom. He was neither complacent nor paralyzed by fear.
He’d learned a lot about managing fear in the Air Force, before trial tactics and dodging objections had replaced air combat tactics and dodging surface-to-air missiles.
By pinpointing what makes a case difficult and approaching that challenge as a source of pleasure—if not outright fun—he’d become lethal in court. A lawyer who actually enjoys kicking ass and serving people can become a veritable force of nature. The best trial lawyers in America respected Jensen for his brilliant tactical mind, his courtroom poise and presence. They envied him for his hallmark ability to remain cool under pressure—smooth, brilliant and unflappable. And always, always prepared for whatever happened.
His secret: never lose sight of the fact that trials were a game.
Other lawyers sometimes hated him because he often refused to take things as seriously as they did. To those practitioners, Jensen was worse than cocky—he was remorseless and unremitting. But what made it unbearable for some (including a few judges) was the fact that he rarely showed signs of stress or dread or even concern until he was in front of a jury, which was when his passion would emerge. Some accused him of being a phony because the persona he brought into a trial before a jury was entirely different from his demeanor in conference rooms. When courtroom matters involved only the judge, as in the case of motions practice, he rarely even bothered to appear. He had gifted associates for that, which contributed to his elitist, above-it-all reputation.
No, he wasn’t invincible—he merely pretended. Maybe a little too hard. He was feeling the remorse that comes to a man with much hubris when he finds himself in a situation that makes him feel terrified and helpless.
Oh, how the mighty fall.
Over the years, he’d developed a mastery of his craft, amassing great wealth along the way. Now he practiced law purely for pleasure. While he wanted for nothing, he was never bored. Money made life easy, and the challenge of his work made it interesting. His growing reputation gave him the opportunity to work on only the most fascinating, compelling and lucrative cases, winning most of them, which fueled what he thought was his mystique. He was at the pinnacle of his career. Television cameras favored his face and voice. His charisma, money and humor charmed women—though he had never been a womanizer—and people greeted him with enthusiasm most places he went. People he’d never met bragged that they knew him. They dropped his name in influential circles from Hollywood to Wall Street. He’d authored several books that sold surprisingly well, and there was no end in sight.
His way of life had him constantly skirting the edge of some cliff, some precipice. Perhaps he’d missed finding the balance between confidence and humility, between pride and self-delusion, between ambition and greed. While his cool demeanor—a signature trait of many fighter pilots—helped him to thrive in the high-stakes trial work that often eats lawyers alive, now he felt that his karma had circled back on him.
Where was the boldness, the icy calm that had been his hallmark when he’d been flying F-16s over the deserts of Iraq?
Gone. Now there was more at stake than he could possibly bear to lose.
His daughter’s life.
This was no game. If anything happened to Christie, he wasn’t sure he could cope with life. His wife Janet would surely crumble, and he was pretty sure he would as well.
“No man is as vulnerable as a man with a daughter,” he whispered.
Late last night the Irvine police had sent him home to wait for a call from the Denver cops. The passing hours had been torture. He’d fallen asleep in his chair more than once, startled awake over and over again, as though his brain was shorting out. He couldn’t bring himself to crawl into bed. If he did, he’d just toss about in a hell-stew of anxiety. He felt he had to be upright just so he could breathe. It was easier to try to sleep in his chair, but every time he started to drift away, horrible pictures would intrude upon him like dream-demons guarding the realm of sleep to keep him out.
Images of Christie as a toddler, stamping her feet in a rain puddle. Holding her as a baby in his arms. A suffocating moment of agony blistered his mind as he imagined police telling him they’d found her dead. He pictured Janet hearing the news, how the agony in her features would carve his heart out of his chest.
Knock it off!
He pulled his mind back into the here and now, forcing himself to concentrate on what was real. No more runaway imaginings, he told himself. All we know is that she’s missing, nothing more. She could be anywhere.
He tapped the screen of his iPhone: 3:59 a.m.
He swiped the slider and touched Christie’s name on the glass, watching her picture appear beneath her number for what must have been the hundredth time, noting his battery was nearly gone.
Straight to voice mail once again.
He touched END without leaving another message and reached across his desk to plug in his phone.
Now what?
Before him sat a yellow pad on which he’d scribbled a few pages of notes during the night, recording in detail what he’d pried out of the Irvine police during his interview. None of it seemed to help.
Christie, where are you, honey?
It was appalling that she’d been missing for more than twenty-four hours before the police had seen fit to contact him. The Denver police had been about as helpful as a barbell to a drowning man. They couldn’t even figure out who was in charge, it seemed, as they’d passed him from officer to officer. Strange.
What was going on in Denver?
It reeked of confusion and uncertainty—but that wasn’t all.
Jensen had a nagging feeling that somehow there was more to it than just bureaucratic bumbling. He couldn’t say why, but he had a gut sense of something malignant in the way the Denver police had dealt with him. An inner voice honed by years of working in the justice system told him they were keeping something from him. After a dozen fruitless calls, it seemed as if they were intentionally giving him the runaround.
What was causing this nagging sense of obstruction?
The phone was getting him nowhere, and he couldn’t keep sitting like this, or he would surely lose his mind. Precious time was passing, and here he was, planted on his ass, waiting for the phone to ring. If he hadn’t given up smoking years ago, he would have lit a cigarette—he was surprised by how badly he wanted one, as though the craving had never left him.
Go over the facts again.
He sat up in his chair and picked up his pad once more, reading what he’d written:
Jackie Dawson—Robert Sand—report filed.
Classic Jaguar, key in lock. west p-lot, 3rd level. Started OK. Fresh scrape on fender.
No witnesses or surveillan
ce cameras in p-lot.
Credit cards? Cell phone? GPS?
Christie’s house? Her car at Sand’s? No answer at home. No entry by police.
Neighbors?
Abduction or impulse trip?
Jackie Dawson. Emergency?
Hospitals—no admissions per LE.
Transport: airlines, taxis, limos? Buses?
Interviews? Investigation reports? Witness statements?
Track cell phone destinations? Warrants?
Jensen uncapped his fountain pen and circled the name Robert Sand. He flipped back a few pages.
The Denver police had taken a missing persons report from Sand, age fifty-six, who’d claimed that Jaqueline Dawson, his much younger girlfriend, was missing.
Jackie was Christie’s closest friend and former roommate. Jensen had met her a few times. Jackie was twenty-two. Pretty. “A man trap,” Janet had whispered on their first meeting, with uncharacteristic crassness that had surprised Jensen.
He tapped the back of his pen lightly against a tooth. Janet was right. Jackie Dawson could probably have her pick of men her own age. And who the hell was Robert Sand? What kind of man was he? Even to Jensen’s sleep-deprived mind, the obvious way to start the investigation would be a background check on the man and a thorough search of his home. If Sand wouldn’t consent voluntarily, that would be a red flag.
Had the police done those two things? Why hadn’t he thought to ask such rudimentary questions despite covering so many other things?
The police had mentioned several times that Sand was African American. Why did that fact seem so important to them? Was it their way of marginalizing him, to minimize the importance of the fact that Jackie and Christie were missing, to justify their lack of progress?
Jensen tried to remember all he could of what Christie had told him about Sand.
He was well-off financially and thirty-four years older than Jackie. The detectives had also mentioned these facts more than once. Did dating a rich older black man disqualify a young girl and her friend from enjoying the benefit of a full-court-press investigation when they went missing? Did Sand’s color, age and wealth immunize the man from a search of his home? Or did it make him a suspect?
Were these officers just a bunch of racist cops looking for excuses to conserve resources by neglecting an investigation or even putting the brakes on it?
Earlier, during a short nap, Jensen dreamed that he was walking on the dark coral sand of an ancient volcanic beach; now he remembered the dream, shaking his head as the symbolic meaning of it came to him: old black sand.
The workings of Jensen’s fatigued mind intrigued him.
He’d gotten most of his details from a Detective Uttley of the Denver Police Department. Sand’s race and age preoccupied Uttley, as if those two facts were the source of all answers and possibilities. Uttley’s subtle indifference offended Jensen. “Maybe they just ditched Dawson’s sugar daddy,” he’d speculated, causing Jensen to resent the man’s cavalier dismissiveness. He scribbled absently on his pad some more.
They don’t take this seriously because Christie’s friend was dating an older black man with lots of dough? That couldn’t be—or could it?
Fighting back the bile rising in his throat, he flipped the page on his pad.
Jackie and Christie had taken Sand’s car, an old Jaguar classic, to the Cherry Creek Mall. They’d said that was where they were going, and that was where police found Sand’s car. The car had started on the first try, discounting the idea that the girls had abandoned the vehicle due to mechanical trouble.
Oddly, they had not dusted the car for prints. They had performed no forensic tests of any kind on it, and Sand had driven it home. Very, very strange.
He kept reading his notes, finding more questions than answers as he proceeded through the pages.
Sand had expected the girls to be gone for no more than four hours.
They were planning to go out for dinner together. The police confirmed Sand’s claim that he’d made a reservation for two at Ruth’s Chris, a high-end steakhouse.
What had Christie’s plans been for the evening?
At 10:15 p.m., when the girls still hadn’t returned, Sand had made his first call to the police.
Why so late?
Twelve hours after that, they found Sand’s car in the west lot, level 3.
How had it possibly taken so long to find the car when they knew where to look for it?
The key was still in the driver’s door, which could indicate that the girls had been nabbed—or summoned away—while getting into the car. Also, it was mildly intriguing that no one had stolen the vintage Jaguar with the key hanging from the door.
Was the evidence just a little too convenient?
He sat ruminating at his desk as the sun came up. Bright beams of light flickered off the pond in the marble patio outside, casting dreamy streaks of color on the wall.
Exhaustion finally overcame him. He closed his burning eyes to rest them, and his head rocked back, coming to rest on the back of his chair. His last waking thought was that he would head to Denver.
His breathing grew deep as he slipped away.
Just beyond the doorway of the den, his wife Janet watched him nod off, her face lined with concern, before she turned and shuffled back up the stairs.
Chapter 8
The vodka produced a warm, relaxing glow as it crept through Antonio’s bloodstream, enhancing all of his senses. The aromas: burning logs and steaks on the grill. The sounds: firewood crackling and popping in the outdoor fire-pit and the sizzle of burning fat hitting the charcoal. Visual: flashes of orange light as tongues of flame occasionally lapped the scorched edges of two thick filets, briefly outshining the fire ten feet away. Antonio’s mouth watered.
He sipped his drink, ice cubes clinking in his glass. How could such simple sensations produce such pleasure? His earlier tension was gone now, leaving in its wake a deep feeling of contentment and satisfaction. He felt fantastic.
He closed his eyes, propped up his feet, and savored the moment.
“Man, I needed this,” he said.
“Perhaps we ought to check on them,” Beeman said as he swirled his own drink.
“The girls?” Antonio asked eagerly.
“The steaks. We don’t want to burn them.”
With a deep sigh, Antonio said, “That would be a crime.” He lowered his boots to the flagstone and stood, raising his glass. “Just what the doctor ordered,” he murmured.
Beeman smiled, raising his own drink. “Good stuff, this.”
Like Antonio, Beeman was sipping frigid Gray Goose from a bottle he kept in the freezer, but, unlike Antonio, Beeman wasn’t drinking vodka laced with secobarbital, a hypnotic sedative that reduces anxiety, produces mild euphoria and causes short-term antegrade amnesia.
Antonio drained his glass and set it beside the grill. Picking up a knife and barbecue tongs, he cut into a steak.
“How do you want them?”
“Bleeding.” Beeman responded.
Antonio grinned, and stepped back to avoid a jet of flame from burning fat. “Then they’re ready. I’ll take ’em off now. How ’bout them taters?”
“Done.” Beeman went inside.
Antonio put the steaks on a plate. Beeman was waiting in the kitchen with two foil-wrapped potatoes steaming on a plate of his own.
“Trade you a steak for a potato,” Beeman said.
They seated themselves at the table in the kitchen, a pair of candles burning between them, melodic jazz riffing through the cabin-style house.
Between bites, Antonio picked up a CD case and turned it over to look at the back. “Good old Ben Webster,” he said. “Just one more thing you’ve turned me onto. Old-style jazz, cultured and sophisticated, like a fine wine.”
Beeman shook a bottle of steak sauce and then stopped, staring at the bottle intently.
“What’s wrong?”
Beeman picked up the remote and silenced the music. “Listen
,” he whispered.
The faint wail of a female voice came through the ventilation duct. Even with the music off, the sound was almost below the level of Antonio’s hearing.
“You heard that over the jazz? You have ears like a bat.”
The sound faded away.
With a grin that reminded Antonio of a curved razor blade, Beeman restarted the music but lowered the volume.
They ate without speaking for a while.
When he finished his steak, Antonio looked up. “This reminds me of a TV show.”
“Oh?”
“Watched it as a kid. Two single, uh, bachelors …”
Dabbing his mouth with a napkin, Beeman said, “The Odd Couple?”
Antonio shrugged. “Or something”
“That was a comedy about two complete idiots. We are something else entirely, my friend.”
Antonio was growing muddled. “What are we then?” he asked.
“We are the wolf and the eagle.”
Antonio gave a broad smile. “I’ve always liked the sound of that. How did you learn what you’ve taught me? About life, death and predators?”
Beeman finished his drink. Setting his glass down, he regarded Antonio curiously for a moment. He sighed, shrugged and then continued. “It came to me late one night at the lab, after I’d ingested a small amount of LSD.”
“LSD?”
“I’d been working twenty-four hours without sleep on a very complex problem, involving a nanotechnology-based technique for gene splicing, far more advanced than CRISPR.”
“Crisper? What’s that?”
“A tool to make changes to DNA—genetic engineering. State of the art two years ago, but our group has developed something far more advanced. With that technology, I’ve developed a new microbe, unlike anything on earth. It will be my legacy.”
“There will be a germ called ‘Arthur Beeman’?” Antonio asked, stifling a giggle. Why did everything seem so unreal?
The ends of Beeman’s slit mouth curled upward slightly. “Not exactly. I will tell you something about myself that you may never repeat to anyone. Ever. It is illegal even to speak of it.”
Black Sunrise Page 4