The Disappearance (23 page)

One thing is certain, Luke wants to know where Doug Lancaster was that night. Luke can’t conceive of a man being involved in his own daughter’s kidnapping and murder—that would be horrendous—but it’s happened before. If Doug was catting around though, he’d have an alibi for his time that night. It would be ugly and messy and he’d lose sympathy points, but better that than the alternative.

He has another reason to check this out, too—the personal reason, the one that’s been festering—Doug Lancaster’s crude, insulting move to try to buy him off. The more he thinks about it, the more dismissive he realizes it was: the act of a superior to an inferior, a boss to an employee. King to serf is the best analogy, to be brutally honest.

He appreciates that the man lost the most precious thing in his life, that his life will be damaged forever. He’d feel for anyone in that situation, friend or foe. But the idea that he or any lawyer could be bought off a case with the stroke of a pen on a check is outrageous. And what makes this particularly outrageous is that Doug Lancaster thought—not thought, assumed—he’d go for it. That Luke Garrison has become such a loser in the eyes of this community.

The drive down the Pacific Coast Highway, especially from Oxnard to Malibu, is one of the great motorcycle runs in California. The ocean on one side, the Santa Monica mountains on the other, you pass beach after glorious beach of surfers, campers, hikers, volleyballers, the sun a golden mantle shining off the water, the air fresh, clean, bracing, smelling of salt and sea life, and the bodies stunning, women and men, California sun worshipers all buffed and sleek, moving on the sand, lying on it, swimming in the water. Golden beaches of the golden people of the Golden State.

On a motorcycle, like a vintage Triumph, you feel a part of the life you’re riding through, a piece of the completeness. Luke knows—he’s done this route many times over the years. This, along with the ride up Highway 1 to Big Sur, is his favorite.

But some coward put his machine in the ground, and he hasn’t gotten around to buying another one. He wants the right bike, and finding the right motorcycle takes time. Besides, he’s still in mourning for the late, lamented Triumph. He can’t desecrate its memory by replacing it so soon after its demise. So he’s driving a rental Toyota. All the windows are down, he feels the air rushing by on his face, but it isn’t the same thing.

The one benefit of being in a car instead of on a motorcycle is that on a motorcycle you’re engaged in the ride one hundred percent; you have to be, or you can become a statistic lickety-split. In a car you can think, let your mind wander.

Which is what Luke’s doing. He’s evolving a hypothesis, which is a reason why he’s driving down to L.A. this morning.

It’s a risky scenario. Buying into it means believing, much more than he has previously, Joe Allison’s assertion that he was framed by someone else, the real kidnapper/killer. And it involves doing something he’s always detested—putting the victim on trial. Only a desperate defense attorney would be thinking along these lines. But as of this moment, he has nowhere else to go.

His hypothesis goes as follows:

1. The kidnapper and Emma Lancaster knew each other. (
And he wasn’t Joe Allison. Unless Luke, Allison’s lawyer, buys that, he’s dead.
) She let him wrap her up in a blanket and carry her away without struggling. In fact, the abduction wasn’t a kidnapping at all.
In Luke’s mind, this point is unquestionable.

2. Emma Lancaster was pregnant;
this much is in the record
. It stands to reason that whoever carried her away got her pregnant.

3. The gazebo was a fuck pad. A reasonable deduction is that Emma and her lover had some of their trysts there.

Here’s where the big leap comes:

4. Emma’s lover
didn’t know
she was pregnant. She tells him that night. Maybe she’s going to go public with it, bust him. He panics and kills her.

That’s his number one scenario. He has a number two as well.

1. Again, Emma knew her “abductor,” but he
wasn’t
her lover.

2. Whoever carried her out of her bedroom knew Emma was pregnant.

3. The abductor was taking her to get an abortion, with “kidnapping” to explain her absence.

4. Something unexpected happened, with or without reference to her pregnancy. The “abductor” kills her, etc.

They both make sense, meaning they could have happened, although they seem pathetic stretches to Luke, thinking about them on his sunny drive down the coast. The idea that Emma was being taken to get an abortion is particularly messy, since she had friends sleeping over. But maybe the abortion had been planned, and the friends were an afterthought; too late
not
to go through with it.

That, however, is not the most serious problem. The real problem with these scenarios is that all the criteria could easily fit Joe Allison, literally her mother’s lover.

In the first scenario, Joe Allison, despite his denial, could have been Emma Lancaster’s lover too. Joe Allison could have knocked her up—the drugstore was out of pink rubbers one day, so he went bare-back, with dismal results. He didn’t know she was pregnant, that night she told him, and furthermore she was going to tell daddy, his boss. He freaked and killed her and did the rest.

Or, in a combination of the scenarios, he did know she was with child, took her to get rid of it, bad results, same bad ending.

And if scenario number two is real, it still could be Joe. Emma is too ashamed and frightened to tell her parents she’s pregnant. She confides in Joe, who agrees to help her. Something terrible, beyond an abortion, happens, he panics, and so forth.

Her key ring was found in Joe Allison’s car. Incontrovertible. The same brand of condoms found on the Lancaster property was found in his house, also without question. That he didn’t use rubbers with Nicole, his woman, only makes things worse.

Allison and Emma knew each other. They spent time in each other’s company. He was desirable, she was a fruit too ripe and tempting not to pluck. Nature took its course. Humbert and Lolita. A match made in tabloid heaven.

Was Emma Lancaster ever at Allison’s house by herself, without her mother present? He has to get straight with Allison on that. He should have asked the Wilsons that question. He’ll have to go back and do that.

Scenario number two presents its own set of problems for Allison. If he wasn’t Emma’s lover, then who was? Who would she know and trust well enough to let the mystery man carry her out of her bedroom with her friends present?

The list is frightening. Men who worked at the house? A minister? A sports coach?

Her father?

Doug Lancaster knows she’s pregnant and is taking her to get an abortion? That feels completely wrong, and unnecessary. He wouldn’t sneak her out of her bedroom while others are present, with the possibility of being seen, when they could go out of town, to L.A. or San Francisco, have it done without fear of being discovered, come home, and no one’s the wiser. And then he’s going to hide the corpse of his own daughter miles away, letting her lie there and rot, rather than properly burying her? Only a complete monster could do that, and Doug, whatever else Luke thinks of him, is no monster. Is he? He has to know where Doug was that night.

Palms is a working-class enclave in West Los Angeles, tucked between the tonier areas of Westwood, Cheviot Hills, and the movie studios in Culver City. An old section as far as L.A. goes, it’s been stagnating for decades, not going up, not getting worse. A place to live and work, nothing special.

The restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place, is on a side street in the seedier section of the area. It does just enough business to stay open.

The owner’s brother, the man Luke drove down to see, is sitting at a table at the rear of the small room. The lunchtime crowd, whatever it was—people who work nearby and want a fast, cheap meal—has come and gone. No one’s in front now except the owner’s brother, who sits hunched over a Tecate in a can. From the way he’s dressed—white shirt unbuttoned, the clip-on bow tie askew, black slacks, black shoes—he’s the waiter. His thick black hair starts a couple inches above his eyebrows, flamboyantly styled with a generous helping of gel.

Luke introduces himself. “You’re Ramon Huerta?” he asks, slipping into a chair opposite the man.

A slight nod. Sip of beer.

“Thanks for seeing me.”

A shrug. “
De nada
.” Huerta pauses, holds up his can questioningly.

“Sure. Appreciate it.”

Huerta fishes a can out of the display refrigerator behind the counter. “Can you drink on duty?” he asks. He has a basic east L.A. Mexican accent of a native, not a wetback.

“On duty? I’m not a cop,” Luke says. “You didn’t think I was with the police, did you?”

Huerta shakes his head. “I meant on business. When you’re doing business.”

“No problem,” Luke says, smiling. “I work for myself, make my own rules.”

“Good for you, man.” Huerta sips from his beer, almost with a daintiness, his pinky finger extended. “I don’t work for myself. My brother, he’s my employer now. I got to do it his way.” The way he says it, his brother’s way isn’t fun.

“But it’s better than working at Shutters, isn’t it?” Shutters on the Beach is the fancy hotel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica where Doug Lancaster was staying the night Emma disappeared.

“Shutters paid better money,” Huerta says, staring at Luke. “Especially with the tips. But I don’t work there anymore.” He frowns, saying that.

“You were fired?”

Huerta nods. He looks away, his beer can at his lips.

“How come?” If the guy has a record, this could be a wasted trip.

“They said I came on to one of the guests.”

“You accosted a woman?” This isn’t starting out well.

“A man,” Huerta says with no inflection in his voice. He looks at Luke. “Do I look like a fag to you?” he asks with a challenge in his soft voice.

You could be, Luke thinks; so what? “No,” he says. “You don’t.”

“I’m not,” Huerta says belligerently. “The guest was drunk. He was angry because he said I didn’t bring his car around fast enough. So they eighty-sixed me.” Another shrug, another hit from his brew. “No more big tips.” He looks around the tiny restaurant. “No tips, period.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I got my application in at the Miramar, Holiday Inn, Hilton. Someone’ll hire me on. Anything to get away from here,” he says in a quieter voice, glancing over his shoulder towards the kitchen in the rear. “The hotels always need experienced parking lot attendants. I’m good at it. The people at Shutters are prejudiced, anyway,” he adds, finishing his beer and crushing the can in his hand, a show of manliness for Luke’s benefit. He gets up and fetches another for himself. Then he sits down again.

Prejudiced against Latino laborers? Luke thinks. They couldn’t stay open a week with that attitude.

He gets down to business. “You were working the parking lot at Shutters the night Emma Lancaster was kidnapped?” he asks.

Huerta stares at him. Then he extends his hand, palm up.

Luke pulls out his wallet, plucks a crisp hundred-dollar bill from inside, lays it on the outstretched palm: the price Huerta quoted over the phone for speaking to him. The disgruntled waiter squints at it, making a show of holding it up to the light to make sure it’s authentic. Satisfied, he folds it once and puts it in his shirt pocket. “Double shift,” he confirms. “My regular shift was nights, but one of the guys called in sick, so I took his shift. The early morning shift.”

“So you were there all through the night?” Luke hits on his beer. It’s cold, the metallic taste from the can stings his throat going down. A good sting.

“From five that night till ten the next morning. Wore me out. I slept there in a caretaker’s room, because I didn’t have time to go home, sleep, change, come back for the five o’clock. But I made double overtime,” Huerta boasts, remembering.

“But you were manning the parking lot all through the night,” Luke says. “You didn’t take any breaks?”

“To piss. Five minutes. I was out there the whole time. I didn’t miss a thing,” he declares.

“So you were there when Mr. Lancaster went out for the evening.”

“Went out, came back, went out, came back. Went out.”

“Do you remember when he came and went? The different times?”

“Went out at seven, came back at eleven. Closer to eleven-fifteen,” he says with more precision.

“You’re sure? This was over a year ago.”

A forceful nod. “I’m sure. Mr. Lancaster stayed with us a lot. He was a big tipper. You remember the people who treat you good, everybody wants them. I made sure I was special nice to him, so he used to ask for me by name.”

Great. Luke jots that down.

“I especially remember that time because it was on the TV practically every day,” Huerta continues. “It stuck in my head.”

Makes sense. “And the second time?”

“Left at one, about ten after one. I remember that clear because I was watching
Saturday Night Live
in our command post in the lobby by the front doors, and he called down to have his car ready right when the show was ending. Then he came down for it a few minutes later.”

“You brought it around for him.”

A nod.

“When did he come back after that?”

“A quarter after nine in the morning.”

This is critical: “You’re sure?”

“Positive,” the former parking attendant says. “I remember looking at my watch, ’cause I was dragging my ass by then. He pulled up real fast, jumped out, told me not to garage it, because he was going to change clothes and leave again right away.”

From one at night until nine that morning Doug Lancaster was not in his hotel room. Which is not the story he told the police. “Do you remember what he looked like?” he asks. “When he came back at nine o’clock?”

“Like he’d been rode hard and put up wet.” Huerta smiles slyly.

Where was Doug Lancaster from one at night until nine in the morning? Luke grimaces inwardly at the thought of having to pursue that, but now he has to, he has no choice. “When did he come back for his car that third time?”