Gone in a Flash (24 page)

‘No shit?’ Willis said. ‘Who— Our guys?’

‘Those guys were awfully busy – kidnapping the wife, then the next day chasing down the husband. Gotta be more people involved. I mean, who’s holding the wife while those two dumbasses were here?’ Luna said. ‘So Mr Brown is working for somebody probably. Anyway, since Eddie’s coming in on Tuesday, I thought I’d hop on over to Houston tomorrow. Thought you might want to tag along, E.J.’

I was more than ready. My whole body wanted to see this through. But I took a second to look at my husband. ‘Hell, yeah, we’ll come!’ Willis said. ‘Come on, Eeg, we’ve come this far with these guys, we need to see it through!’

‘Willis Jerome Pugh!’ I said, letting out the dreaded middle name he so abhorred. ‘Are you actually encouraging me to get involved?’

‘Sure. As long as I’m there with you – EVERY STEP OF THE WAY,’ he said, emphasizing the last part with both his voice and his evil eye.

‘But the kids – we can’t leave Romeo and Juliet alone—’

‘Really, Mom? Really?’ came from behind me. ‘Romeo and Juliet? Isn’t that rather a cliché?’

‘Oh, hey, Graham,’ I said, ears, face, and neck burning. ‘Didn’t know you were there.’

‘Obviously,’ my son said.

Behind him someone giggled. Alicia peeked around. ‘Don’t worry, Mom. Y’all can go.’

‘We were coming down to talk to y’all when we heard your conversation. And, truthfully, Mom, I’m kind of surprised you’re not already in Houston hunting them down. But, here’s the thing. Someone, and I’m not naming names – but she’s short and her name starts with a “B” and ends with an “ess”, suggested to me last night that I go back to school and finish the semester, so that y’all won’t lose all the money you’ve already spent, and so that there can be a cooling off period for the whole family. Things have gotten out of hand, and I’m man enough to admit that some of that has been my fault—’

‘Some of it?’ Willis said sarcastically.

Graham ignored him. ‘So I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll go before y’all leave and you can call Megan at any point to make sure I didn’t turn around and come back – y’all know she’ll spill her guts first chance she gets. How does that sound?’

I got up and hugged my son, then my daug— no, then Alicia. Can’t call her my daughter anymore. It would just be too weird. ‘That’s a wise decision,’ I told him. To Alicia, I said, ‘Are you down with this, honey?’

She nodded. ‘At first I wasn’t, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.’ She smiled up at Graham, and for the first time since taking her into our home, I noticed she was absolutely beautiful. ‘But he’ll be home weekends,’ she said.

OK, then, I thought. No more sex on the weekends.

‘So what are we supposed to do now?’ Mr Jones asked Mr Brown when they were alone in the kitchen.

‘Don’t even speak to me!’ he snarled.

‘Hey! You were poking me in the chest! And you got a fingernail on you! It hurt. I got a scratch!’ Mr Jones said in his own defense.

‘A scratch? You got a fucking scratch?’ He held up his broken digit. ‘
This
is not a scratch! You broke my fucking finger!’

Mr Jones smiled at Mr Brown. ‘Next time, don’t poke me, ’k?’

‘I don’t know why Mr Smith just shot you in the foot! He should have shot you in the head! At the very least, in the nuts!’ Mr Brown said.

Mr Jones shook his head. ‘Don’t you even mention Mr Smith. You killed him! You’re not allowed to utter his name!’

‘I’m not
allowed
? By who? You the name-calling police, fuckface? Mr Smith, Mr Smith, Mr Smith—’

Although not completely done with his breakfast – there were rashers of bacon left on the serving plate, half a biscuit on his own plate, and some fruit he hadn’t even started on yet – Mr Jones got up and left the room.

He was wandering the halls of the big house, peeking into rooms, when he unfortunately peeked into the one containing Mr Big, his henchman and the crying lady.

‘I don’t want to hurt you, Elizabeth,’ Mr Big was saying, ‘or rather, have Misha hurt you.’ A nod of his head indicated the henchman. ‘But I will. You and your husband made a deal with me. Then your husband said no, after all the money I gave you for your research. Isn’t that true?’

The crying woman, Elizabeth, said nothing. ‘You owe me, Elizabeth,’ he said softly.

‘I’ll pay you back, I promise,’ she said, looking at her hands in her lap.

‘Yes, you will. I have set up a very nice lab for you downstairs – better than the lab you and James had. Much better. And look!’ he said, spreading his arms wide. ‘The location is
so
much better, don’t you think? And no commute. Well, only from your bedroom to the basement!’ Mr Big laughed.

‘I won’t make those pills!’ Elizabeth said, raising her head and staring at Mr Big. ‘You can’t make me!’

Mr Big barely moved his head, but Mr Jones saw it. And so did Misha. The big brute walked over to the woman, grabbed her hand and, taking a pair of pliers out of his pocket, yanked off the fingernail of her pinky finger.

Elizabeth screamed and so did Mr Jones.

Mr Big jumped up. ‘Aw, Mr Jones, so nice of you to join us.’

‘Hey, now, y’all don’t do that to her! Stop!’ Mr Jones said, coming into the room.

‘Oh, we have, Mr Jones. We have stopped. Elizabeth?’ he said, turning to the woman, who was again crying and holding her left hand in her right as blood dripped on the floor. ‘Misha, please clean that up. Elizabeth? I asked you a question. Have we stopped? We could of course, go on. There is so much further we could go. Nine more fingers, ten toes—’

‘Hey, Mr Big, I didn’t sign up for torture—’

Mr Big took Mr Jones by his beefy arm and led him to the door. ‘Of course you didn’t, Mr Jones. And no one is asking you to torture anyone. That’s just silly. Please send in Mr Brown,’ Mr Big said as he pushed Mr Jones out the door and shut it behind him.

Having lived for thirty-odd years without an original thought, Mr Jones did as he was told and went to the kitchen, telling Mr Brown that Mr Big wanted him. Mr Brown left and Mr Jones sat back down at the kitchen table, idly eating the remaining food on the table – fruit last, of course. But thoughts did begin to swirl around in his head. He thought about the brown-haired girl, Alicia, and the old man. How he’d tried to save them, and maybe he had. Then he remembered: before the girl and the old man had knocked him out, he and Alicia had put each other’s cell phone numbers in each other’s phones. He took his out of his pocket and looked. Sure enough, there it was: Alicia Brooks.

‘Hey, asshole,’ said Mr Brown from the doorway. ‘We’ve got an assignment. Get your ass in gear.’

Mr Jones put away his phone – for now.

M
ayfair caught the cast-iron gate just before the heavy hinge slammed it shut, and followed her sulking partner to the front door. He used the key to open that door and they found themselves in a small reception area with a heavy door directly behind a reception desk. They went to the door and used the last key to open it. Inside was the lab, about a thousand square feet of nothing but machines and test tubes. Two desks were at the front of the room, near the entrance door, and were turned parallel to the door, facing each other. Each had a name plate saying ‘Dr Unger,’ but one was pink and one was blue. A joke, Mayfair thought. She sat down at the pink desk, while DeWitt took the blue desk, and they began to rummage through what was left. They figured the Houston police, and possibly the perps, had already done most of the rummaging, leaving little of any interest behind. There were no computers on either desk, so Mayfair assumed the HPD had already rescued them. She’d ask, but it was a given.

Giving up on the desk, Mayfair walked around the different stations, noting subtle differences – one had one kind of machine, along with test tubes and other crap, including binders, and the next another kind of machine, along with its paraphernalia. She checked out the first binder and found it full of numbers and symbols that meant nothing to her. But possibly would to another scientist? Why didn’t the HPD take this with them? She put the binder under her arm and went on to other stations. Each had a binder – some were empty, and some had pages filled with the same kind of numbers and symbols. She gathered up the binders with writing in them, and left the empty ones.

‘Why not take ’em all?’ DeWitt asked her upon seeing her bounty.

‘Because these have been written in and the others haven’t,’ she said, enunciating clearly as one would to a child.

‘Fuck you,’ DeWitt said. ‘What’s in ’em?’

‘Stuff,’ Mayfair said.

‘I’ll stuff you in a test tube, Mayfair! Give!’

Mayfair opened one of the books to let him see. ‘So, what does it say?’ she asked.

‘Well, this is the symbol for aluminite, and this symbol means gestation,’ he said.

Wide-eyed, Mayfair said, ‘Are you shitting me? You can read this?’

DeWitt laughed. ‘Naw, just having some fun at your expense. I have no idea what it means.’

‘Jesus, you’re a shit,’ Mayfair said, and headed back the way they had come.

‘Don’t leave on my account,’ DeWitt said, still laughing. ‘Just leave!’ Which cracked him up even more. By the time he got outside, their unmarked sedan was gone and his partner with it.

While Gerald was practicing his duet with the lady from the Louisiana church, I went back into the library room – that’s what they called it, the library, even though there were only a few books in there and the spines on them looked like they’d never been cracked. I got out my cell phone and called Linda, our church secretary, knowing she’d be busy printing out the bulletins for tomorrow’s service. Which made me wonder who Brother Joe had gotten to replace him. I’d have to ask Linda.

She answered on the third ring. ‘First Baptist,’ she said, her voice harried.

‘Hey, Linda, it’s Vera Pugh. You sound like you’re busy,’ I said.

‘Busier than a cat covering up poop in a windstorm. What can I do for you, Miss Vera?’ She only calls me that because I asked her to stop calling me Mrs Pugh. The woman’s in her sixties – not that much difference in our ages that she needs to go and call me ‘Miss Vera,’ but I ignored it as usual. But before I could answer, she added, ‘And how’s everybody doing? Y’all having a good time?’

‘How can you not have a good time at a Southern Baptist convention?’ I asked back. ‘And everybody seems to be enjoying themselves.’ Getting back to business, I said, ‘I need two things: first, who’d Brother Joe get to cover for him tomorrow?’

‘Nobody! He told me to do it. Couldn’t find a retired preacher available to save my life, so I got Brother Leeman Hodges to do a layman’s service,’ she said.

‘Well, that’ll be better than a lot of them retired preachers we got before,’ I said.

‘Don’t I know it! Some of those old codgers can be long-winded, boring, and loud.’

‘I hear ya. Listen, second question: what’s Sister Rachael Donley’s maiden name?’

There was a slight pause, then Linda said, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’

‘Don’t you have it written down somewhere?’ I persisted.

‘Why would I? She wasn’t married in this church, was she?’ Linda asked.

I sighed. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘Well, now, let me look at her file. Sometimes women, specially these younger ones, like to use their maiden names as their middle names. So let’s look. While I’m looking, how come you need it?’

‘Well, she had to leave to go visit her mother. She gave me the number but I lost it, so I want to look up her mother’s name – it’s got to be the same as hers. Her parents were never divorced or anything.’

‘That makes sense,’ Linda said. ‘Ah ha! Here it is and you’re in luck! I’m pretty sure this is a maiden name, ’cause who would call their daughter this? Rachael Gregory Donley.’

‘Gotta be the maiden name!’ I said with a grin. Then had a new thought that might help with Monday’s trip to Bethesda, Maryland. ‘Could you fax me a picture of Brother Joe? We need the official church photo.’

‘Goodness gracious,’ Linda said. ‘Brother Joe asked you to get this?’

‘Ah, no, we – that is, the choir, thought we could use it.’

‘Well, I hope to heaven he didn’t ask for it! I’ve been trying to get him to sit down with the photographer for over a month and he keeps putting me off. We don’t have any photos of him.’

‘OK, then,’ I said, then thanked her and said goodbye. No photo, huh? Curiouser and curiouser. I knew there was something about that guy I didn’t like!

I couldn’t wait to tell Gerald, but he was in rehearsal, which left me with the computer and Rachael Donley’s maiden name. I powered up, plugged in Rachael’s maiden name and anxiously awaited the four to five seconds it took to spew out this information. There were eight Rachael Gregorys, but only three of them spelled their first names with the second ‘a’ – Rachael rather than Rachel. One was a current high-school student doing quite well in athletics in Wisconsin, one was a housewife with a cooking blog in Indiana, and one was someone searching for a Rachael Gregory who graduated George Washington High School in Farmersville, Texas, in the year 2000.

OK, I thought, a person who graduated high school in the year 2000, would be roughly in their early thirties – depending on their age upon graduation. I would definitely put Rachael in her early thirties. I was pretty sure she was from Texas, although Farmersville wasn’t familiar, but then again, I don’t think she ever said where she was from in Texas, not that I ever asked. I should have thought ahead.

I clicked on that page and found a callout for the graduates of the 2000 class of George Washington High for a reunion this coming spring. She was on a list of people no one knew how to get hold of. There were three of those in a graduating class of eighty-five students, which seemed to me to indicate that Farmersville was a medium to small town.

There was an email address so I clicked on that and wrote the following: ‘I too am looking for Rachael Gregory Donley, who disappeared from her hotel room three nights ago—’

No, that would just scare the bejesus out of whoever I was writing to, so I erased it. The ‘To’ line just said, ‘Reunion Committee.’ Have to be more subtle than that. ‘I’m a friend of Rachael Gregory’s and would be pleased if you could send me some info—’