The Disappearance (21 page)

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“For a while?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Do you think he was having an affair with one woman, or was he playing around?”

“I think one woman.”

“But you never saw him with her. Whoever she is. Was.”

She combs her hair with her fingers, a nervous gesture. “No.”

“You weren’t suspicious? Or jealous?” Jesus, you have a woman like this, why would you screw around? “You never followed him, tried to find out?”

“I didn’t want to find out,” she says flatly.

That’s the most human explanation anyone can give. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.” Her little office has one small window which doesn’t open; it’s getting warm. Normally she would keep the door open, he thinks.

“Me too.” She plays with a paper clip. “That’s why I’m not going down to see him.”

“Do you think he knows that you think this?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably. Don’t you generally feel guilty when you’re fooling around? Afraid of being caught? We weren’t married, but … I thought we were being faithful to each other.”

He waits a bit before asking the next question. “Who do you think this other woman is? Do you have any suspicions?”

“No one I’m willing to name.”

He’ll get back to that later. There will be other interviews, and if he comes up with a name and says it to her, she’ll be straight with him. She seems like a decent person. Still, they were lovers, so there’s something there. There always is.

Something from one of his conversations with Allison jogs his memory. “You know what else I want to ask you? I just remembered this. You probably can’t help me, but you know about the running shoes the police found in Joe’s closet? The ones that matched the shoe print they found at the Lancaster house the day after Emma was kidnapped?”

“Yes?”

“Joe claims he misplaced them before that night. That he couldn’t have been wearing them, because he didn’t have them anymore. Did he ever say anything about that to you?”

“As a matter of fact, he did.”

“He did?”

She nods. “We were out jogging, about a week before, and he had a new pair of running shoes on, and I asked him what was wrong with his old ones, because he liked them, they fit him well, and he told me he couldn’t find them, that he must have left them at the gym or someplace.” She thinks for a moment. “I thought he’d misplaced them and found them later.”

“Maybe he didn’t misplace them,” he says. This is a break.

“Maybe he didn’t,” she says. From her tone he knows she doesn’t think Joe lost those shoes at all. But at least it’s on the record that he told someone else that he had, before the kidnapping.

He’s just about run out of questions. “One more thing. This is a delicate question, but I have to ask it.”

She smiles at him. She is very attractive, no getting around it. “You’re supposed to be fearless,” she says lightly.

“I wish.” He stands. “The condoms that were found where Joe lived. Was that the brand you used?”

Her smile shuts off abruptly. “I used a diaphragm. We didn’t use those things.”

“But if you thought he was having an affair, weren’t you worried about…”

“HIV? We stopped making love then. I lied to him that I’d developed an allergy to the diaphragm and couldn’t. He bought that.”

“So you stopped having sex before you split up?”

“It was only for the last month,” she says. “When I finally faced up to my suspicions enough to act on them.” She laughs involuntarily, a nervous, mirthless sound. “Pink rubbers? Where would they have come from, Mary Kay Cosmetics? If Joe had put on something that ridiculous, I would have been hysterical with laughter, and we never would have made love.” She pulls herself together. “If they were his, he was using them with another woman.”

“He claims they were planted there.”

She stares at him. “What’s the significance of a particular brand of contraceptives?” she asks.

This is going to come out anyway, so he might as well tell her. He’d like her to be an ally. He—his client—is going to need friends. “The same brand was found on the Lancaster estate. In the gazebo at the back end of the property.” He braces himself. “Used ones. Someone had been using the gazebo for a”—he almost says “fuck”—“love pad.”

She gasps. “Oh, that’s bad.”

“Yes, it is. That’s why my question is important.”

“I feel terrible for Joe,” she says. She’s fighting her emotions now, her voice beginning to break. “My life isn’t part of his anymore. But the fact that a particular brand of condoms was found in his bedroom and the Lancaster property doesn’t mean he killed anyone.”

He’s been riding his motorcycle around town. It’s easier to find parking spaces than with his big truck, and he enjoys riding it. He had parked it in an alley a block from Nicole’s office.

He stops in his tracks as he rounds the corner of the building. Then he sprints forward.

The classic Triumph is in ruins. Whoever trashed it did a thorough, brutal job. The tires have been slashed, the seat has been pulled off, the instrument panels have been broken, hundreds of glass shards litter the asphalt. Wires have been pulled out and cut, a spaghetti bowl of twisted plastic and copper. And something heavy, like a sledgehammer, has laid siege to the block, splitting the heads clear off, then smashing the pistons and cylinders into metal mush.

He slumps on his knees next to the wreckage. “You motherfucker!” he screams to the unknown executioner.

Then he sees the note. Big, crude block letters, written with a child’s crayon on butcher paper:
GET OUT OF TOWN WHILE U CAN! WE DON’T WANT ANY HIPPIE DOPE-SMOKING BABY-KILLER LAWYERS HERE!
And a few other similarly sophisticated lines he doesn’t bother reading.

The hero who did this noble deed left his note unsigned.

Enraged, he starts to crumple it up and throw it away, but the police will need to see it. He springs to his feet instead, looking from one end of the alley to the other.

Except for him and the remains of his machine, the alley is deserted.

“Did you file a police report?” Riva asks him.

“For what it’s worth.” He’s still shaking inside, he’s so angry. “They practically laughed in my face. I’m sure the note’s already in the circular file.”

“Who do you think did it?”

“Somebody who doesn’t like me, I guess.”

They’re walking along the beach, Butterfly Beach near the Biltmore, watching the sun go down. The motorcycle, the hundreds of pieces of it, sits in a bin at Precision Motorcycle Works on Salsipuedes Street. The shop owner, Gentle Ben Loomis, a 350-pound former outlaw biker turned semilegitimate, didn’t sound sanguine about the old Triumph’s prospects for survival.

“This is a rebuild from the ground up, and the bitch is, they don’t make parts for this model anymore. Triumphs are dinosaurs, bro. I’ll check around the country on the handy-dandy Internet, see what parts are available, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath.” He’d looked at the box of parts tenderly. “I love these old bikes, man. Beautiful pieces of art. Sculpture they are, truly. Even if they ain’t born in the U.S. of A.” Preparing Luke for the worst, he’d said, “If I were you, ace, I’d be looking to buy me a Harley. Get you a Soft-Tail—smooth, smooth ride. Not like that old beast you were rasslin’.”

They walk along the water’s edge, getting their feet wet on the foam. “Have you thought some more that you shouldn’t have taken this case?” she asks.

“Yes, I’ve thought about it,” he admits.

“Are you worried?” She bends over to pick up a piece of beach glass, a bottom of an old bottle, milky blue like a cataract eye, the jagged edges smoothed off from the water’s long caressing. She drops the glass into her pocket.

“Pissed is what I am. Cowardly goddamn act. Whoever did it hit me where it hurt, I won’t deny that.” He picks up a scallop shell and sidearms it at the water, where it skips three times before sinking.

“I’m worried,” she tells him.

He stops and faces her. “About someone coming after me?”

“Yes.”

He dismisses the thought with a wave of the hand. “Nobody’s going to come after me, they’re going to come after my shit. Fuck with my head. It’s bullshit, baby shit.”

“I hope you’re right.” She scratches at a sandflea bite on her calf. “Do you think Doug Lancaster could be involved?”

He stares at her in surprise. “Doug Lancaster? Don’t you think a pissant act like this is beneath him?”

“You’re defending the man he’s convinced killed his daughter. He tried to buy you off, and you haven’t returned his money.”

“Nah.” He dismisses that idea. “Doug Lancaster wouldn’t pussyfoot around. He’d come at me straightaway. Which I’m assuming he will, sooner or later, but not like this. He’s going to want me to know he’s on my ass, he isn’t going to be anonymous about it. This was the act of a coward.” He takes her hand as they walk slowly towards the sunset. “Coming after me would hurt the case against Joe Allison, not help it. Even a pit bull like Ray Logan wouldn’t stomach that.”

They stop and watch the last mushroom-topped sliver of the sun dive into the ocean. “It’s a beautiful world we live in, Riva.”

She squeezes his hand. “I know. And I want to enjoy it with you. For a long time.”

He squeezes her hand back. That’s the best he can do.

She sleeps now and he, awake, sits on the porch with a cognac that he hasn’t touched, the night winds flowing up off the ocean, ruffling the hair on his bare arms and legs. He thinks about his life and the moment of it that he’s in and how he got to this place and what the point of it is. If there is one.

Some of the specifics he thinks about are his age, over forty; his marital status, divorced; how many children he has, none. He’s going in the opposite direction—the fear is that it’s the wrong direction. From solid, upwardly moving career to almost no career; from alleged storybook marriage to no marriage; from defending law and order to—what? Opposing it?

No, that’s not it, he’s not against law and order. He is against corruption, and he sees it everywhere, he’s become obsessed with it. Obsessed, outraged, consumed. And that way lies madness, almost certainly. And paralysis.

There are different ways to fight and not give in, and there are different battles. This battle he’s presently engaged in has heavy Don Quixote overtones. It’s masochistic in some way, and he’s afraid he’s beginning to enjoy the pain and, furthermore, believe that he deserves it. That he’s supposed to be doing a lifetime of penance because of an accidental mistake, a miscalculation—an honest mistake, one that anyone in the world would have made. Except “anyone” didn’t make it, he did. And it came from his ego, his inability at that time to admit, or even know, that anyone else’s ideas or opinions might have merit and value, and that he needed to look at his own more deeply.

But it was an accident. It wasn’t as if he’d fabricated or suppressed evidence against Ralph Tucker. He did everything right, clear and above board.

In the end, it turned out wrong, all of it. That can happen with accidents. Especially when you’re convinced, in your heart, that you know the immutable truth.

In the old days, his corps of detectives would have done much of the sleuthing: who was with whom, when and where. But since his entire case (unless something startling comes out of the woodwork) is going to be based on the theory of a frameup, he needs to talk to everyone who’s involved. He wants to see the expressions on their faces when they answer tough and uncomfortable questions, so he can get a feel for the big picture.

He approaches Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, the owners of the property from whom Joe Allison rented his guest house. An elderly couple, longtime residents, they are activists on various environmental issues in the county—oil exploration, land development, urban encroachment.

He phoned ahead, they’re expecting him. They come out to meet him as his car pulls into the driveway, a hearty couple, full of energy. The woman, who has steel gray hair cut short and looks vaguely Scandinavian in origin, is half a head taller than the man, who looks vaguely southern European and is bald.

“How is Joe?” Mrs. Wilson asks solicitously, right off the bat.

“This must be so hard on him,” Mr. Wilson chimes in right behind her.

“Yes,” Luke says noncommittally. These people seem to like Allison. That’s good.

“We don’t think Joe did this,” Mrs. Wilson says with force. They’re walking up the path to the house from the driveway. The path is lined with flowers in a lovely, cluttered, English-countryside, helter-skelter fashion. “Everyone else in town does,” she says with aggressive cheerfulness, “they’ve already convicted him, but we know Joe. We know he couldn’t have done what he’s accused of.”

“Why not?” Luke asks, intrigued. Could these people have an alibi for Allison that he isn’t aware of?

“Because he isn’t that kind of person,” the husband answers, bringing him back to earth. “He isn’t capable of violence.”

Anybody’s capable under the right circumstances, he’s been around enough violence to know that. Still, it’s good that Allison has some people on his side.

Their living room is furnished like a Hollywood idealization of a Swiss chalet. It’s overdone for Luke’s taste, but charming, like the Wilsons. “I only have a few questions, so this will be short,” he says.

“First of all, I don’t suppose you can account for Joe’s whereabouts the night of Emma Lancaster’s kidnapping,” Luke says.

Both shake their heads in unison. After several decades of marriage, they move and think alike. “We go to bed early,” Mrs. Wilson says. “We were usually asleep before Joe ever got home.”

“Celebrity like him, he was out on the town nearly every night,” Mr. Wilson adds.

“I didn’t think so,” Luke rejoins. “But I do have a question I hope you can help me with. You knew Nicole Rogers, didn’t you? Joe’s girlfriend?”

Mrs. Wilson beams. “Very well. She’s a nice young woman. Always helpful in my garden.”

“She was here a goodly amount of time?”

“Quite a bit, yes,” the old lady answers. “We looked forward to her visits.”

“And she spent some nights here. With Joe.”