Hocus (3 page)

“Such as?”

“Maybe he’s gone missing for reasons of his own.”

“No. Not Frank.”

“Irene is right,” Jack said. “You know that as well as I do, Rachel. He wouldn’t leave the scene of a crime.”

“Which makes me wonder if he made it there,” Rachel said. “Look, all I’m saying is, we can’t jump to conclusions.”

I barely heard what she was saying. Like Jack, I would never believe that Frank would voluntarilyleave the scene of a homicide. The death of that informant meant Frank was in danger. Whether he failed to arrive before that informant was killed or was forced to leave afterward, he was in trouble.

A mixture of fear and blind rage jolted and twisted right through me, and I felt like screaming or hitting something just to get it out of my system. The thought of anyone harming Frank—

The thought of anyone harming him made me come to my senses. I didn’t scream or cry or use my fists. I took a deep — if shaky — breath and promised myself that I could go into hysterics at some future date. Even revenge would have to wait.

Think.

“What’s this junkie’s name?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “Pete never told me. Just calls him ‘the junkie.’ They try to protect informants, so they don’t usually refer to them by name.” She paused, then added, “Not that I would have wished the guy dead, but the fact that they found the body there gives me hope for Frank.”

“Because if someone—” It was so hard to make myself say it. I took a breath and tried again. “Because if someone was going to kill Frank, he would have done it right away. Left two bodies behind, not one. He might have a reason to keep him alive.”

“He or she or they. We don’t know. And again, maybe Frank left the scene because that’s what he had to do to be safe. We don’t know.”

The dogs came to their feet again, barking this time. The doorbell rang. Jack got the dogs to be quiet, and I looked through the peephole, wondering who the hell wouldn’t just knock after midnight.

The Las Piernas Police Department, as it turned out. Or its representatives, anyway. As I opened the door for Reed Collins and Vince Adams, I figured I was lucky. Although I hadn’t always been on good terms with either of them, they liked Frank. I could think of others who might have drawn this duty and made life more unpleasant.

“Hello, Irene,” Vince said. “Mind if we come in?”

“Not at all.”

They were walking ahead of me, blocking my view of the end of the hallway, but I knew exactly when they saw Jack. Their steps slowed, and they seemed suddenly wary. Reed was the first to ease a little. “You Frank’s neighbor?” he asked.

“Yes. Jack Fremont.”

Rachel called out a greeting to them as they shook Jack’s hand.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee, anything to drink?” I asked.

“No. No, thanks,” Vince said.

Reed watched me for a second, then said, “Yeah, I could use a cup. Thanks.”

“Anybody else?”

Rachel and Jack shook their heads.

As I moved to the kitchen, out of the corner of my eye I saw Vince make a questioning gesture to Rachel, who gave a quick nod.

Yes, I know my husband is missing, I wanted to shout, but busied myself with grinding beans and measuring out water instead.

Cody came in, snaked around my legs, then went over to Reed. He sniffed Reed’s shoes, then rubbed against him, too. Reed reached down and lifted the big lug into his arms. “You’re not going to scratch me, are you?” he asked, apparently aware of Cody’s reputation.

“Don’t trust all that purring,” I said. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black, thanks.”

I stared at the coffeemaker as if it were really important for me to keep an eye on it, as if an automatic coffeemaker were some delicate instrument that might require my attention in order to operate properly. In fact, what was so wonderful about it at that moment was that it did exactly what it was supposed to do. I needed
something
to be normal.

I reached for a couple of mugs, not wanting to test the steadiness of my hands with a cup and saucer. Reed put the cat down. As I handed him his mug he said, “You know why we’re here.”

A statement. I nodded.

“Is there a room where we can talk?”

“Just a minute—” Rachel began, but I shook my head.

“They’re here because they want to find Frank,” I said. I turned to Reed. “We can go into the guest room, or sit outside.”

“It’s a little chilly out, down here near the water,” he said. “The guest room would be fine.”

“Do you want us to leave?” Jack asked me, earning a dark look from Rachel.

“No. Please stay. I mean — if you’re tired, don’t let me keep you. Same with you, Rachel. If you need to go home to Pete—”

“Pete’s on his way to Riverside,” she said. “I’d be up anyway. I can never go to sleep until I hear his car—” She clasped a hand over her mouth. Tears started welling up in her eyes.

“Hear his car pull into the driveway?” I asked. “Yes, I’m the same way. It’s good to have you here with me, Rachel. But I’ve never seen you cry, and this would be a stinking time to start.”

“I’m not crying,” she said. “I thought I was going to sneeze for a minute. That’s all.”

I nodded and walked off toward the guest room, Reed in tow. I could hear Vince ask Rachel something in a low voice and heard her reply loudly, “Did you see her face? Did you? Of course she didn’t call the newspaper, you clueless pinhead!”

If Vince said something back, I didn’t hear it. He followed us into the guest room.

I motioned Reed and Vince to the two chairs in the room and then sat on the edge of the bed. With three of us in there, it was pretty crowded. The door creaked open, and we turned toward it in expectation. Cody came sauntering in, then jumped on my lap. I was going to have a friend in the room after all.

Vince stood up, closed the door, and leaned against it, arms crossed. He ignored a look from Reed. Reed sighed and took out his notebook. The warm-up speech — how sorry they were to be in this situation, were doing everything they could but needed help from me — was quick and painless. It gave me a little time to pet Cody, to try to go numb. Reed did the talking. Once he had my (previously undreamed-of) permission to allow my phone line to be tapped, he worked his way to the questions.

“When was the last time you saw Frank?”

“This morning, when he left for work.”

“About what time was that?”

“About seven-thirty.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A suit. Gray suit. White long-sleeved shirt. A dark red tie.” One I bought for him. He looked good in it. He looked good no matter what he wore. “I’m sorry, what were you asking?”

“Shoes?”

“Yes, he had shoes on.” I felt my face turn red. “Sorry. That’s not what you meant. Black leather shoes.”

“Was he armed?”

“Yes, he had his shoulder holster on, his gun in it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I watched him dress.” I looked down at Cody. “I — I saw him put the shoulder holster on. The gun was in it.”

“Did you talk at all this morning?”

“Yes.”

There was a brief silence.

“What did you talk about?”

“Personal matters.”

They waited. So did I.

“Could you be more specific?”

“No. Contrary to your lieutenant’s opinion, we don’t tell other people what we talk about privately.”

Vince snorted.

“Vince, get me a refill, would you?” Reed asked, lifting his mug.

Vince gave him a stubborn look, got one back, and relented. When Vince had gone, Reed said, “Look, Pete told us you two had a hellacious fight this morning.”

“As Frank has said so often, Detective Baird has a big goddamned mouth.”

Reed sighed. “Yeah, he does, and he sticks his nose into everybody’s business. And right now, we are all just as worried as Pete is about Frank. Pete may be his partner, but the rest of us are sick about this, too. I figure there’s only one person on the earth who’s more worried than we are right now, and that’s you. Help us. Don’t let Vince and his attitude get in the way.”

So I told him, in a nutshell, about the argument — not all of it, I admit. But I told him about two out of three bones of contention. If he already knew about the third, a Harriman family secret, he would have to give me some hint of that knowledge before I talked about it. My own connection to that family might be only by marriage, my opinion about such secrets contrary to the Harrimans’ own — none of that mattered. I owed it to Frank to keep my mouth shut.

Reed kept his face completely impassive. If he agreed with Frank about asking Mark Baker for his sources, Reed never let any judgment show. If he thought Frank was crazy to let his wife know the former fiancée was beckoning, he kept it to himself. If he knew the family secret, he wasn’t letting on.

Vince came back in with the coffee. Cody put his ears back and hissed at him.

Reed tried, but for all his former composure, now he couldn’t hide a smile. Vince told him to shut up, and he laughed aloud. He took a sip of coffee, thanked Vince, and got back to business. He repeated some of what I had said about the fight, asked me if that was correct. I nodded. Vince went back to leaning on the door.

“Did Frank tell you anything about what he’d be working on today?”

“No.”

“Did he call or communicate with you at any time today?”

“No.”

“Did you try to contact him?”

“Yes.” I told them about the attempts at paging him.

“He didn’t call back?”

“No.”

“Did he
try
to reach you?”

I looked away. “Not that I know of.”

“Didn’t page you?”

“I don’t carry a pager.”

“Nothing on your answering machine or voice mail?” Vince asked.

“No.”

“Is that typical?” Reed asked.

“No. But we had been fighting.”

“Is this what typically happens when you fight?”

“Look, I don’t see what this has to do with anything. I’m not sure Frank would want me to talk about our marriage in this way. In fact, I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

Vince acted as if he would argue, but Reed made the slightest of gestures to him, a small movement of his fingers, and Vince subsided. Catching this interaction awakened me to the fact that I had been seeing teamwork all along. Reed was playing a role, so was Vince.

“Did you know that Frank planned to go to Riverside today?” Reed asked.

Still smarting from kicking myself, I said, “I’m not saying another word.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What the hell are you two imagining? That I let someone who might harm my husband know where he would be? That I — that I arranged for this to happen?”

“Of course not….”

“Oh, no,” I mocked. “Of course not!”

Reed shifted in his chair. Vince’s mouth became a hard line.

“Just trying to help Frank, right, Reed? Who sent the two of you out here? Lieutenant Carlson? What about you, Vince? You come into this house and ask me if I had made my own husband’s disappearance a news story?” I was shouting by then.

“Look, we’re just trying to learn what we can about the situation,” Reed coaxed.

“Get out.”

“Listen, Irene—”

“Get out of here. Both of you!”

The dogs were barking, I realized, and wondered if it was because they had heard me shouting. Rachel knocked on the door. “Are you okay, Irene?”

Before I could answer, the doorbell rang again.

I heard Rachel answer it, heard the low sound of men’s voices. Vince and Reed exchanged puzzled looks.

A moment later there was a knock on the guest room door. Vince moved away from it, opened it slightly.

“Step back,
Vincente,”
she said with a grin. “You boys are in for a surprise.”

He stepped back, and Rachel pushed past him. A short, skinny kid in a suit walked in, carrying a briefcase and rubbing his nose with the back of the other hand. He had mouse brown hair and a baby face and moved with the awkwardness of those who are still growing, although I doubted he was. If he was older than he looked, he was starting the second half of his twenties. His eyes, though, were alert and curious, and as he nodded at me I wondered how often he had been underestimated.

He was followed by a big man, a man as tall as Frank — about six four — but lankier. He strolled in with a slow, easy gait. He had a strong face, rough-hewn but not unpleasant. His hair was cut very short. It had been dark once but now was turning gray. His eyes were slate blue.

With Rachel, Vince, Reed, me, and the two newcomers bunched in there, the guest room was crowded. I wanted out.

The big man spoke first. “Mrs. Harriman?” He drawled it out. Pure Texan.

I nodded.

He flipped open a badge holder. “Detective Thomas Cassidy.”

Cody ran over and bit his ankle.

C
ASSIDY GAVE ONLY THE SLIGHTEST WINCE
, then picked up the cat and scratched him gently beneath the chin. Cody started purring. Fickle little feline has always been too easy.

“This is Detective Henry Freeman,” Cassidy went on, nodding toward the skinny kid.

“Shit. Tex and the Dweeb,” Vince grumbled. “We’ll never find Harriman alive.”

I felt as if I had been kicked. Hard.

“Christ, Vince,” Reed said, looking over at me. “Shut up.”

“What time is it, Hank?” Cassidy asked the kid, all the while looking at Vince.

The kid pulled back the sleeve of his suit coat and looked at an instrument that appeared to be the Swiss Army knife of watches. Apparently one of the things it could do was tell time, because the kid said, “It’s twelve thirty-four, sir.”

“Note that as an entry in the AD, would you, please, Hank?”

“Yes, sir,” Hank said, grinning as he pulled out a notebook.

Vince took the bait. “What the hell is an AD?” he asked.

“Asshole Diary,” Cassidy replied. “Twelve thirty-four
A.M
. is a little early to make an entry, grant you, but it would have happened sooner or later. I’ve been keeping track, and I swear I come across at least one asshole a day. The frequency alone is pretty wondrous. Y’all must be breeding with each other. How big is the average litter of assholes, Vince?”